AGAINST BILL BLAND An answer to the article “The Workers’ Party of Korea and Revisionism- Francesco Alarico della Scala deputy director of the Juche idea Study Centre in Milan and KFA Italy Piedmont Region

1. On questions of history and diplomacy
To begin with, the document is flawed by a typical dogmatic Hoxhaist bias: putting inter party and inter­-state relations on equal terms with ideological struggle. China and Albania
notoriously   went   so   far   in   the   struggle   against   revisionism   to   break   party   and   state
relations   with   the   USSR   and   some   other   socialist   countries;   this   was   also   due   to
Khrushchev’s   intemperance,   but   they   unambiguously   stood   against   the   unity   with
modern revisionists since they were nothing less than class enemies. A specific feature of
the Workers’ Party of Korea was instead to carry on ideological struggle against revisionist
trends  while sticking fast to the international unity of the communist movement and
trying to reconcile the contrasts between socialist countries, whom Kim Il Sung used to
compare to temporary disagreements among members of a single family and which were
often traceable to the different national conditions of each party (for example, it was much
easier for the Soviets to talk about peaceful coexistence thanks to their wealth and stability
when compared to the Chinese).
History   proved   whose   attitude   was   more   effective:   not   only   the   DPRK   was   able   to
preserve   the   revolutionary   line   against   revisionism,   contrary   to   its   critics,   but   it   also
retained relations with all socialist countries and managed to benefit from them. Because
of this balanced attitude and of their peculiar geopolitical positions, Korean communists
almost always avoided calling by name the target of their criticism, they rather employed
diplomatic   periphrasis   such   as   “a   certain   socialist   country”,   “people   from   a   certain
neighbouring country”, etc. to refer to the USSR and its leaders: everyone understood
what they meant and, at the same time, they avoided stirring up diplomatic relations.
For example, in June 1991 a foreign guest asked Kim Il Sung to “rate” Gorbachev and the
great leader replied: “I only wish everything could be good in the Soviet Union. I am
neither a journalist nor a commentator. So I do not want to comment on him. I do not
think  it is  advisable to  appraise the president of a country.” (Works, vol. 43, Foreign
Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 1998, p. 135). Yet in the same talk he spoke
highly of Fidel Castro, so the message was clear: I think bad of Gorbachev but I don’t want
to talk about him, so as not to add oil to the fire in DPRK­USSR relations.
Same was the case in the early 1960s: while the WPK talked about “complete identity of
views” with the CPSU at diplomatic level (where incidentally the Soviets used not to
express   their   revisionist   views   openly),   it  re­state  its  anti­-revisionist   line  at  the  4th
Congress a few months later: “Revisionism, a reflection of bourgeois ideology, is still the main   danger  to  the   international   communist   movement. The   modern   revisionists  are   
scheming  to  emasculate  the   revolutionary  essence  of   Marxism­-Leninism,  paralyse  the
revolutionary fighting spirit of the working class and undermine the socialist camp and
the international communist movement from within; they are coming out as apologists for
imperialism and its reactionary policies.
” (Works, vol. 15, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 1983, p. 273). And next year ideological struggle against revisionism was notoriously went in full swing at the March Plenum.

As for the leadership role of the CPSU, the great anti­-revisionist scholar Kurt Gossweiler
criticized Khrushchev in 1957 precisely for not emphasizing it enough strong; in that
context,   the   leadership   role   of   the   CPSU   was   meant   to   counter   “national   roads”   to
revisionism by people like Nagy in Hungary, Tito in Yugoslavia, Gomulka in Poland, etc.
and to uphold the principles just established ad the two Moscow Conferences. When the
Soviets   tried   to   impose   wrong   lines   instead   this   was   the   attitude   of   Kim   Il   Sung:
“Revisionists refashion Marxism­-Leninism. They claim to be cleverer Marxists-Leninists
than Marx or Lenin. Certain individual countries have this tendency. Some people insist
that we must peacefully coexist with the Yankees. How can we do so, without opposing
US   imperialism?   People   of   great   powers   may   also   commit   errors.  We  cannot
indiscriminately   agree   with   them   or   follow   them   blindly.”   (Works,   vol.   14,   Foreign
Language   Publishing   House,   Pyongyang   1983,   pp.  261­262).   The   criticism   of   peaceful
coexistence can  be found also  in the famous  speech  “On  eliminating  dogmatism and
formalism and establishing Juche in ideological work” delivered on December 28, 1955,
thus we can validly say that the WPK started the struggle against revisionism even before
it emerged on the surface with the 20th CPSU Congress.
Finally, the great leader said those favourable words about Gorbachev at a time when
Perestroika still looked like a continuation of Andropov’s line of anti­-corruption struggle
and tightening of discipline, in full agreement with Marxism-­Leninism, and the USSR had
increased its exchanges with the DPRK, agreed to hold joint military drills and helped in
the   first   stages   of   nuclear   development   while   advising   the   DPRK   to   join   the   NPT.
Gorbachev showed his true colours in 1987 with the appointment of Yakovlev at the
Glasnost   Commission   in   the   Politburo   and   the   subsequent   flood   of   anti­-socialist
publications on the media as well as with “diversification of the forms of ownership” and
giving up the planning of prices. The first signs of change in Gorbachev’s foreign politics
towards Asia emerged in his July 1986 speech in Vladivostok and Kim Il Sung rushed to
meet him in October precisely to slow down the change; that meeting was actually the last
positive moment in Korean­-Soviet relations, since already on December 30 the great leader
delivered his policy speech “For the complete victory of socialism” to counter Perestroika
and resumed the attacks on revisionism.
On January  3, 1987 he further said: “Modern  revisionism which  has appeared in  the
international communist movement, is also creating a lot of difficulties for our revolution.
On the pretext of “reforming” and “reorganizing” socialism, the modern revisionists are
following the road to capitalism and abandoning internationalist principles. It is, therefore,
difficult for us to expect from them cooperation based on internationalism in the building
of socialism. What is worse, they are applying economic pressure on us because we do not
follow  their   wrong   revisionist   policy.”   (Works,   vol.   40,  Foreign   Languages   Publishing
House, Pyongyang 1995, p. 225).
2. On the people’s democratic dictatorship
The question of the establishment of people’s democratic dictatorship is explained here:
http://www.ryongnamsan.edu.kp/univ/en/research/articles/443cb001c138b2561a0d907
20d6ce111?currentPage=3
In   summary,   the   dictatorship   of   the   proletariat   could   be   immediately   established   in
advanced capitalist countries of Europe where socialist revolution was on the agenda
while   the   worker­peasant   democratic   dictatorship   was   established   in   Russia   where
capitalism was less developed, in Korea instead the tasks of anti-­imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution were to be carried out and so a broader social basis was
needed   for   state   power   to   include   people   from   all   the   walks   of   life   but   landlords,
comprador capitalists and other pro-­Japanese traitors; doing otherwise would have meant
to isolate one’s self from the masses and to arbitrarily skip the objective stages of social
development.
This form of state power fulfilled its tasks and developed into the dictatorship of the
proletariat, dragging even capitalists into socialist revolution and construction thanks its
previous links with them. This may sound intolerably unorthodox to dogmatists, so do not
tell them who said the following words: “Perhaps we are mistaken when we suppose that
the Soviet form is the only one that leads to socialism. In practice, it turns out that the
Soviet form is the best, but by no means the only, form. There may be other forms—the
democratic republic and even under certain conditions the constitutional monarchy…”
(Stalin,  quoted  in  The  Diary  of  Georgi  Dimitrov,  Yale  University   Press,  New  Haven  &
London 2003, p. 358)
The only way they could show that Kim Il Sung was incorrect when (in 1956) he stated
that the people’s democratic dictatorship was a proletarian dictatorship is to refute his
argument, i.e. to prove that socialism wasn’t built in the DPRK. And Bill Bland tries
precisely to do this. He opposes remoulding of capitalist elements along socialist lines
because he conflates it with their integration into socialism advocated by Bukharin: while
the   latter   allows   capitalists   to   join   cooperatives   while   keeping   their   properties   and
privileges, the former implies the transformation of their social ­class status.
3. On the DPRK’s economy
Bland thinks he has caught DPRK theorists in contradiction since they claim they didn’t
have state capitalism and at the same time they mention a second form of cooperation
where former capitalists perceive both a wage according to work done and dividends
upon the investments, which is actually a mixture of socialism and state capitalism. He
would be right if this form of cooperation had been left unchanged over the years and
played a major role in the economy, but this is not the case.
Those   semi-­socialist   cooperatives   were   few   already   from   the   beginning:   “Among   the
agricultural cooperatives, we still have the economic form where the private ownership of the   means   of  production   is  retained  and  the   semi­-socialist  economic   form   where  the
distribution  of   incomes  is  according  to   the   amount   of   work   done   and   the  means 
 of production contributed. However, as of the end of February 1956, these forms applied to only   four   per  cent   of   all   agricultural   cooperatives,  and   they   too   will   be   converted completely to the socialist economic sector in the near future.

” (Works, vol. 10, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 1982, p. 185)

In October 1957 they had already halved: “Ninety­ eight per cent of the total number of the
agricultural   cooperatives   belong   to   the   higher   form   of   cooperatives   which 
  determine distribution according to the work done.
” (Works, vol. 11, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 1982, p. 312)
And they completely disappeared in the following year,
actually they existed just in the early stages of agricultural cooperativization as Kim Il
Sung later recalled: “Most of our peasants organized cooperatives of the third category
from the outset. They did so, not under coercion, but of their own accord. There were no
cooperatives of the first category in our country, and there were very few of the second
category   in   the   initial   stage.”   (Works,   vol.   27,   Foreign   Languages   Publishing   House,
Pyongyang 1986, p. 390)
By the end of 1958, the whole DPRK agriculture had completed socialist transformation
and all  cooperatives  were of the third type, the fully socialist form with  distribution
according   to   work   done   only.   In   the   early   1960s   also   management   methods   were
transformed along socialist lines with the dawn of Chongsan­ri method and Taean work
system, but unsurprisingly Bland doesn’t say a word about this.
His attacks on joint ventures as if their existence proved the falsity of slogans about selfreliant economy cannot be taken seriously since in 2016­17 — when they are far more
developed that back then — they accounted for just 1,2% of the state budgetary revenue
(Vv.Aa,  Enigma Corea del Nord, Mondadori, Milano 2017, p. 52). Joint ventures serve to
acquire hard currency and technology, so ultimately to raise the level of self­reliance of the
DPRK economy; they help to get the needed know how for reverse engineering Korean
comrades   have   shown   to   be   masters   of,   from   cellphones   to   intercontinental   ballistic
missiles.
4. On Juche phiolosophy
His criticism of Juche philosophy is a mere rehashing of most trite misinterpretations of
the leaders’ words which could be easily avoided by reading their works more carefully.
Stating that man is the master and transformer of the world does not mean he is free from
objective laws, but rather the opposite: “Man acts upon and transforms the world as he
desires, drawing on the objective laws.” (Kim Jong Il,  On the Juche philosophy, Foreign
Languages   Publishing   House,   Pyongyang   2002,   p.   31)   That’s   also   why,   among   other
things, consciousness is what guarantees independence and creativity: man can rule and
transform the world only when he is conscious of its objective laws, in full agreement with
propositions by Engels and Stalin.
What   does   Kim   Jong   Il   mean   when   he   writes   that,   contrary   to   animals,   man   is   not
subjugated to laws of nature then? He is explaining the difference between natural beings
and social being: while animals act according to behavioural patterns which are inherent
in their biological structure (and which thus didn’t change over centuries), man lives in
social relations that bring about a new type of laws — social laws which are objective as
well and lift him above biological spontaneity and towards the development of economy
and technology, of art and culture, of law and philosophy, etc., of everything specific to
humans.
Marx already discovered this difference between man and animal in his  Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: “The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It
does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life activity. Man makes his life activity itself the
object of his will  and of his consciousness. He has  conscious life activity. It is  not a
determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity distinguishes man
immediately from animal life activity. It is just because of this that he is a species ­being. Or
it is only because he is a species­ being that he is a conscious being, i.e., that his own life is
an object for him. Only because of that is his activity free activity.” (MEW, Erg. Bd. 1, p.
516) Kim Jong Il further develops this elucidation of the social nature of man by disclosing
the   essential   traits   of   man   which   can   be   immediately   seen   in   socialist   society   —
independence, creativity and consciousness — and which are not by accident the opposite
of the alienation process studied by Marx under capitalism.
Lastly, the domination of the world by man does not mean “the primacy of spirit to nature
in the relation of thinking and being”, because man is not just “spirit” but a very complex
material being whose independence exists on the basis of his organic structure: “Man’s
independence is inconceivable without his unique physical organ which has taken shape
and developed in the long course of evolution.
Thanks to his sophisticated organism, man has peculiar functions, mental and physical,
which no other living matter can acquire, and accordingly he has independence.” (Kim
Jong Il, op. cit., p. 6) The problem of the relation between thinking and being has already
been solved by dialectical materialism; Juche philosophy addresses the new problem of
the relation between man and the world and reflects upon the conditions of existence of
man’s special position and role in the world.
5. On classes, ideology, distribution and Comintern
As for class categorization, if the WPK put the ideological distinction between the people’s
masses and the enemy IN THE PLACE OF objective class categorization, why do they
always say that Korean society is made of two classes (workers and peasants) plus a social
stratum (intellectuals)? Indeed, those are two different types of social categorization, one
based on the production relations and the other on ideology, and the WPK makes use of
both; class categorization alone is not enough since also workers can have capitalist ideas
and indulge in anti­-socialist practices, while also capitalists can be true patriots and allies.
The focus on ideological remoulding comes from the observation that changing material
and social conditions alone is not enough, the whole history of the failure of socialism in
other countries proved that if you establish socialist production relations but you fail to
imbue people with socialist ideas social troubles are likely to raise and capitalism can be
restored. This explanation cannot be put against the one which traces the cause of failure
to revisionism, as Bland does, since one of the main features of revisionism is precisely the
underestimation of ideological work: “The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist
countries  in  Eastern  Europe  was  also  due to  the neglect  of the  ideological  education
among their peoples. These countries did not give their peoples ideological education. The
modern revisionists, who came to power in the Soviet Union in the mid­ 1950s, discarded
ideological education. They did not educate their people in the idea of socialism and
communism,   but   clamoured   only   for   money,   private   cars   and   villas. 
  The   neglect   of ideological   education   in   the   Soviet   Union   for   about   30   years   corrupted   the   peoplei deologically and ruined the Soviet Union in the end
.
”(Works, vol. 44, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 1999, p. 69)

In   the   part   about   socialist   distribution   principles   Bland   literally   cuts   Kim   Jong   Il’s
quotation where he please to distort its meaning. Here is the full passage: “They argue that
even after the establishment of the socialist system the remnants of the old ideology left
over from the exploiter society remain to a large degree in the minds of workers. They
even maintain that in socialist society, too, such economic levers as profit, bonus and price
should be used as the basic means of economic management in order to increase returns.
Along with this is the notion that enterprises should be allowed to set prices as they please
and produce those goods which bring a great amount of profit. This is an anti­-socialist and
revisionist   theory   which   aims   at   reverting   the   socialist   economy   into   a   capitalist
economy.” (Selected Works, vol. 1, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 1992,
p. 212)
It clearly appears that what Kim Jong Il calls “anti­-socialist and revisionist” is not the
Marxist principle of distribution according to the work done under socialism but the
theories of “market socialism” which were the fashion in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and
Hungary back then. The DPRK, contrary to China during the Cultural Revolution, didn’t
abolish material incentives and makes wide use of them, as stipulated by art. 32 of its
Constitution,  since  they  belong  to   the  transitional   character  of  socialist  society  which
cannot   be   overlooked.   However,   the   main   stress   is   to   be   put   on   moral   and
 political incentives which belong to the communist nature of socialist society so as to enhance the
workers’   ideological   consciousness;   in   the   countries   which   gave   priority   to   material
incentive instead egoism and corruption harmed the correct functioning of socialist system
over   the   years,   the   mentality   of   private   owner   was   resurrected   and   socialism   was
eventually overthrown.

About the judgement on international communist movement, Bland once again cuts Kim
Jong Il’s words where it better suits his purposes. Here is how the passage continues: “As
a consequence, the ideological unity and comradely relations of cooperation between the
socialist countries were greatly weakened, and this made it impossible for them to counter
imperialism with a united force. The parties of some countries yielded to the pressure of
the great powers and acted under the baton of others, and the result of this was that they
meekly accepted revisionism when the big countries took to revisionism and accepted
‘reform’ and ‘restructuring’ when other did so. Therefore, in the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe socialism was frustrated, and this is a serious state of affairs.” (Selected Works, vol.
12, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 2008, p. 281)
So he was referring to East­ European countries who stuck to “the old customs of the
Communist International” of seeing Moscow as the centre of international communist
movement   and   of  unconditionally   obeying   it,  even   when   it   imposed   perestroika   and
restoration of capitalism, and not to the Communist International itself. A fair assessment
of Comintern, with its virtues and defects, can be found in volumes 3 and 4 of Kim Il
Sung’s Reminiscences “With the Century”.
6. On the role of the leader
All other aspects of Juche whom dogmatists see as an unpardonable revisionist deviation
are  creative  ideological  developments   whose  validity  has   been  proved  by   decades  of
victorious revolutionary practice. I refer especially to the leadership issue. While it’s true
that Marxism­-Leninism condemns loyalty to an individual, Juche theory showed that the
leader of the working class is not just an individual but the top brain of soci-o­political
organism. Did Khrushchev in 1956 attack Stalin merely as an individual, or he rather dealt
a blow to the whole history of socialist revolution and construction in the USSR which his
name was inseparably associated to, a blow that shook the people’s trust in socialism and
the international communist movement never recovered from? We all know the answer
and Kim Jong Il gently repeats it for us: “Historically, in opposing socialism, imperialists and   renegades   from   the   revolution  have  directed   their   attacks  on   the   leader  of  the
working   class   and   the   revolutionaries   of   the   preceding   generations.  This   is  
 because socialism was pioneered and has triumphed thanks to the guidance of the leader 
and the self ­sacrificing struggle of the revolutionaries of the preceding generations, and because the dignity of socialism is associated with their honour. Modern revisionists and socialist renegades have caused socialism to degenerate and collapse by disgracing the leader and their   revolutionary   elders   and   by   obliterating   their   exploits.   The  process  of  the degeneration and collapse of socialism began with the emergence of modern revisionism,which   vilified   the   leader  and   revolutionary   pioneers  and   distorted   and   debased  the revolutionary ideas of the working class. Because of modern revisionists, socialism began to go off the track and crumble from within. Its collapse was due to the policy of ‘reform’and ‘restructuring’, pursued by  socialist renegades  who  denied and obliterated every historical   achievement   of   socialism

”   (Selected   Works,   vol.   14,   Foreign   Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang 2010, p. 106)

In theory, it would seem right to obey individuals only as they hold the top positions in
Party and state hierarchies, but where did this lead to? Party bodies elected traitors such as
Khrushchev   and   Gorbachev   at   the   top   positions   and   people   blindly   followed   them.
Loyalty to the leader instead does not depend on his formal office but on his revolutionary
ideas, and it ensures a higher degree of vigilance. The infamous Jang Song Thaek used to
hold all sort of prestigious offices, yet he was unmasked as well and openly called a
traitor; that would have been  unimaginable in the old CPSU where Khrushchev  was
dismissed   without   any   publicity   and   without   officially   condemning   his   ideological
deviations