Laying to rest the ghost of Bill Bland's "critique of the DPRK

 

The hostile critique of the DPRK by the British anti-revisionist writer Bill Bland surfaces from time to time and receives attention . Two substantial counter -arguments have been already produced;

Anglo-People's Korea/Songun: 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

Anglo-People's Korea/Songun: More on Why Bill Bland was wrong about the DPRK -by Dr Dermot Hudson

Now we are producing a third critique of Bland

To attempt to lay the ghost of Bill Bland’s critique of the DPRK to rest  we would say the following .

In People’s Korea the transition to socialism began in 1947 under the the People’s Committee of North Korea .

In fact in the northern part of Korea by 1949 90 per cent of industry had been nationalised without compensation  and a thoroughgoing land reform carried out which confiscated any land larger than 5 hectares and restricted the rich peasant economy . Most of the industry in the northern half of Korea had actually been owned by Japanese capital and there were very few big capitalists who were actually Koreans ( was Bland was actually aware of this ) .

Comrade KIM IL SUNG and the WPK did launch a struggle against the Right capitulationists  who wanted to create a bourgeois republic with the national bourgeoisie and even pro US , pro Japanese lackeys ! . Also there was a sharp struggle against Jo Man Sik a bourgeois nationalist who was removed and expelled from positions . Ironically there are monuments to Jo Man Sik in puppet south Korea .

The DPRK was different from China which in the 1950s did have capitalist and a state capitalist sector . The DPRK which already had 90 per cent state ownership of industry rejected this line ( pro Chinese factionalists tried to oppose the socialist transformation of industry in the DPRK and copy the Chinese line ) and went for 100 per socialist ownership of industry and trade as well collectivisation , which was achieved by 1958.

Thanks to his wise leadership, the socialist transformation of both indi­vidual handicraft work and capitalist commerce and industry was complet­ed almost simultaneously with the completion of agricultural cooperativiza­tion. Consequently, the socialist transformation of the relations of produc­tion was carried out in the short period of four to five years, with the result that a most advanced people-centred Korean-style socialist system, free from exploitation and oppression, was established in the northern half of Korea. (Condensed Biography of KIM IL SUNG 2002).

Later President KIM IL SUNG pointed out that 

“There is no need to make society capitalistic and go to the trouble of fostering the capitalists just to smash them and then build socialism, on the basis that we could not discharge the task which we should have completed in the capitalist stage. The working class in power should not revive capitalist society, but should carry out this task under the socialist system which it could not tackle in the stage of capitalist revolution, in order to build a classless society”

(ON THE QUESTIONS OF THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM CAPITALISM TO SOCIALISM AND THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT Speech Delivered to Party Ideological Workers May 25, 1967)

Arguably Bland’s views on the DPRK were based on insufficient knowledge of the DPRK and a belief in trying to prove that Albania  was the one and only socialist country in the world . Surely if Bland's views held any water the DPRK would have gone the same way as the German Democratic Republic (East Germany ) or Mongolia not to mention other socialist countries . The fact was the DPRK upheld the dictatorship of the proletariat and and class struggle under socialism .