In an article on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the people’s democracies it was argued that in a number of countries, the dictatorship of the proletariat was not built and socialism was not constructed. (1) In the instance of DPRK this was contested by Francesco Alarico della Scala, a prominent supporter of Juche and a philosophy scholar. (2) Kim Il Sung had argued that the understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat should not be determined by the classics of Marxism and international experience but according to the doctrines of Juche and Korean experience. It was ‘flunkeyism’ to think otherwise. (3) Our critic rejects this view as irrelevant to the point at stake and considers that anti-revisionists have not been aware of a particular Korean text which asserted that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been established in North Korea in February, 1947 with the establishment of the North Korean People’s Committee.

But this organ formed in 1946 included representatives of all strata and also the democratic parties and social organizations of North Korea. (4). The Soviet specialist Shabina noted: ‘The People’s Assembly and the People’s Committee elected in February, 1947, exercised legislative and executive authority in North Korea’. In analyzing Korean developments in the light of the transition from New Democracy to People’s Democracy she does not consider that this development represents the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in North Korea. State power after all included also the democratic parties. Apart from the Workers’ Party the People’s Assembly embraced the Democratic Party and peasant and religious Chonudan Party and non-Party members. All these parties were a part of the United Democratic Front of North Korea. The Democratic Party was a party of the urban middle and small industrialists and tradesman as its main body (5)

There is nothing to suggest that a proletarian dictatorship was established in February 1947.

The democratic revolution was carried out from 1946 through the end of the property of the Japanese and comprador bourgeoisie; agrarian revolution; democratic rights being granted to the working class through the labour law and female equality was being gained through the Law on Sex Equality. In this process of New Democracy and the first phase of People’s Democracy it was apt to include sectors of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal bourgeoisie in state power and in the economy.

Shabshina pointed out that the People’s Government from October 1946 protected the rights of private property and encouraged private initiative in industry and commerce. This was done in ‘the interests of drawing in the private capital of Korean citizens for increasing the output of production and goods of wide consumption for the needs of the population’. This section was allowed sale and lease of mills, factories, mines, forests and fisheries with not more than 50 workers. Commercial establishments of the Japanese were also handed over to private industrialists and merchants. (6)

The class character of the DPRK Constitution, which was adopted on September 8th, 1948, was within the first phase of people’s democracy namely the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry and had yet to transit to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Constitution declared North Korea as a state of people’s democratic dictatorship established on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance under the leadership of the working class. The nature of the people was specified: the working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and the anti-imperialist and anti-imperialist national bourgeoisie under the leadership of the working class. (7)

There are clear parallels with the people’s democratic system projected in China the following year. (8)

The Constitution reflected the economic system of the DPRK. The ownership of the means of production had diverse forms in the relations of production: state ownership, co-operative ownership and private ownership.

The state owned the basic means of production of the economy and the former property owned by the Japanese government and pro Japanese traitors. Co-operative property was protected by the state. At the same time the state protected private property in the means of production by law as also the right to inherit private property.  The state encouraged the creative initiative in the private economy though distinguishing between the private ownership of the working people and that of the exploiters. It assisted the private economy and encouraged it ‘toward the road of co-operativizatrion on voluntary principles’. The private economy wars permitted to participate in the planning of the national economy.  The Constitution recognized the running of private medium and small enterprises and those engaging in commerce. (9).

Complementing this approach to national capital was the incorporation of the peasant bourgeoisie in the rural co-operatives. North Korean literature distinguished between three types of co-operatives. The first type of co-operatives were the mutual aid co-operatives which rapidly developed into more advanced forms.  The second type preserved private land ownership. Here the ‘collective economy’ was practiced by pooling the land. Other means of production such as draught animals and farm implements were owned either privately or in common by way of purchase. The third type of co-operative was regarded as the most advanced. Land and other means of production were pooled for common use. Here too private ownership of land was preserved. Privately-owned draught animals and farm implements could be purchased by the co-operatives.

This third type was regarded as being part of the socialist sector.

By March 1957, 97.8 per cent of the co-operatives, which included private landownership, were of the advanced type. (10)

By February 1947 then and even later proletarian dictatorship was not established in North Korea, as claimed by our critic.

This is evident from the discussion on People’s Democracy by A.I. Sobelov in 1953. (11)

It was argued that in the Asian people’s democracies of China, Korea and Vietnam, the dictatorship of the proletariat had not been established. This was in contrast to the situation in the European people’s democracies. The three countries were all in the first phase of the people’s democracy where there existed the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

The observations of Sobelov corresponded to the analysis of Stalin in his discussion with Soviet economists on 22 February 1950. In the example of People’s China it was pointed out the dictatorship of the proletariat had yet to be established there. The country was a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in the first stage of people’s democracy. (12) Till the close of the Stalin period People’s China was not considered a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the second phase of people’s democracy the perspective opened up of establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism. This demanded the exposure of middle capital and its expulsion from the state.  Middle capital and the kulaks as intrinsic opponents of socialism required elimination and liquidation from the economy. (13).

Lenin was clear that small-scale production engendered capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons made the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary. (14).

The analyses of the people’s democracies in the west and east were similar. Both mandated the formation of the initial dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Both indicated the leading role of the working class in alliance with the entire peasantry, and the middle bourgeoisie. In both the later formation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the inception of socialism required the exposure and expulsion of the middle bourgeoisie from the state structure and the liquidation of the bourgeoisie from the economy by nationalization and the removal of the kulaks, the largest section of the bourgeoisie. (15).

 In North Korea the party of middle capital remained in state power; middle capital ‘co-operatives’ were described as ‘socialist’ and the kulaks were preserved in the ‘co-operatives’. In substance the transition from the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry to the dictatorship of the proletariat was stalled. Consequently with the preservation of national capital and the retention of the kulaks socialism could not be established.

Why was it necessary to exclude middle capital from the state and the economy?

Here the instance of the western people’s democracies is instructive.

Central and South-Eastern Europe subsumed countries of medium level capitalist development which were dependent on imperialism. They included some such as Poland, Rumania and Albania which had numerous anti-feudal tasks.  In such countries Stalin argued in 1928 the immediate stage of the revolution was the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. The initial inclusion of middle capital in the people’s democracies facilitated the isolation of the pro-fascist big bourgeoisie and the landlords when the working class did not have a majority in the country. Along with the peasantry the middle bourgeoisie participated in the government. It was considered expedient to neutralize the middle bourgeoisie and so within limits private ownership of the means of production was permitted and freedom given to private enterprise and also the middle bourgeoisie was allowed to participate in the solution of state issues. This forestalled the formation of a single bloc of reaction from the middle bourgeoisie to the landlords. It enabled the later policy of isolating middle capital and then crushing it. (16).

Stalin and the central committee were a major guide in the developing theorization on the question of people’s democracy in Europe and Asia. In the case of Central and South-Eastern Europe this is evident in the Dimitrov Diary, the discussions of Stalin with European communist party leaders, the inter-actions of Stalin with Soviet economists and the polemics with Tito and Kardelj. Regarding Asia of import are his exchanges with Mao and Kim Il Sung. Mao had put forward the view in November, 1947 that the successful Chinese revolution should lead to the formation of the dictatorship of the proletariat on the lines of the Soviet Union. In this view all parties apart from the CPC would have to leave the political arena. Stalin and the central committee replied to this in April 1948 expressing their disagreement and considered that the middle classes who were in opposition to the Kuomintang would have a role for some time, they should be involved in the people’s government against the reactionaries and imperialism while maintaining the hegemony of the working class. The CPC accepted the advice of the Soviet party. (17).

 The involvement of the middle and small bourgeoisie in People’s China and North Korea flowed from this understanding. It was not considered that the national bourgeoisie would continue indefinitely in government and the economy in the period of the projected dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. At the appropriate juncture the dictatorship of the proletariat would be established and the socialist period would be inaugurated. This implied the liquidation of middle and small capital from the government and the economy. That was accepted by the CPC is evident from On People’s Democratic Dictatorship where Mao declared that under socialism the capital of the national bourgeoisie would be nationalised. (18) Cominform and Pravda regularly pointed out in the Stalin period that People’s China did not yet establish the dictatorship of the  proletariat. This implied that the situation was such in Korea and Vietnam.

The rightward shift after March 1953 had a radical effect in the theory and practice of people’s democracy in Europe and Asia. In the latter the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was frozen and the dictatorship of the proletariat was not to be established. It implied the retention of the parties of middle and small capital in the government and the preservation of the middle bourgeoisie and the rich peasantry in the economy whilst their economic role was restricted. The small bourgeoisie which daily, hourly created capitalism and which Lenin, Stalin and Dimitrov considered needed to be liquidated by the proletarian dictatorship was to be retained. The dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was now repackaged as the dictatorship of the proletariat while the restrictions on the middle, small bourgeoisie and the kulaks were presented as the establishment of socialism.

Kim Il Sung defended the continued retention of the landlords, the middle and small capitalists and merchants in the government thereby continuing indefinitely with the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry in place of their exposure and eradication and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. (19). He argued that it was permissible to continue the united front of different classes, including exploiting classes in order to build ‘socialism’. This was possible as they ‘reformed’ and ‘remoulded’ themselves to build a socialist society by joining the ‘co-operatives’. It was also argued that the united front of classes did not impinge on the People’s Army which was subjected only to the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The reality was however that the Workers’ Party remoulded itself to preserve the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry and thereby repudiating Marxist-Leninism. Lenin made it abundantly apparent that small-scale commodity production daily, hourly generated capitalism for which reason it was necessary to build the dictatorship of the proletariat.  This was repudiated in the Asian people’s democracies in the DPRK and People’s China.

Kim Il Sung argued for the preservation of the bourgeoisie and landowners in the government and the state under ‘socialism’. The critic takes up a defence of the kulaks in the ‘co-operatives’. He does not accept that under Marxism the peasant bourgeoisie had to be excluded from the co-operative system. In ‘The Peasant War in France and Germany’ in 1894, Engels had centred his discussion on the small peasant in the class composition of the cooperative farms. He suggested that Marxists in Germany and elsewhere could learn from the rich peasants in Denmark when constructing the co-operatives of the small peasants. In that country there were many big homesteads where land was pooled to form a bigger farm where the total area was cultivated for common account, the yield was then distributed in proportion to the land, money and labour contributed. Engels explicitly suggests that the example of the rich Danish peasant could be applied to a region of peasant small holdings. This would lead to a saving of labour which was the benefit of large-scale farming. Surplus labour could be given land from neighbouring big estates or provided with the means of engaging in industry on an accessory basis. The position of small peasant labour would be improved. Further, Engels, continued the general social directing agency would be in a position to transform the small peasant co-operative to a higher form and to equalize the rights and duties of the co-operative as a whole as well as of its individual members with those of the other departments of the entire community. The discussion of Engels continues but the point here is that he nowhere says that rich peasants may be incorporated in the peasant co-operatives.

The position of Engels in opposition to the inclusion of the rich peasants in the collective farms is also clear in his critique of the German right wing Socialist, Georg von Vollmar. (20). Vollmar campaigned in Bavaria for an alliance of the Social Democratic Party with the rich peasants, in his writings ignoring peasant class differentiation by referring to the mobilisation of the peasantry in general terms.  In two letters to Friedrich  Adolph Sorge in November and December 1894  Engels in no uncertain terms condemns the reactionary views of Vollmar. (21)  

Soviet collective farms were primarily composed of the small and medium peasantry.  Kulaks were excluded except for those whose sons were members of the Red Army.  The Soviet experience was utilised in the People’s Democracies until 1953.

The views of Engels were widely known in the communist movement.  In the polemics of Stalin and Molotov against Titoism in 1948 and the two resolutions of the Cominform  of 1948 and 1949 the notion of alliance with the rich peasantry and their inclusion in the co-operative farms were rejected. Stalin and Molotov explicitly referred to the errors of Vollmar on this question. Titoism was subjected to criticism for the failure to liquidate the urban bourgeoisie and the kulaks and later temporarily building collective farms embracing the rich peasantry. But such views re-emerged after 1953 in different ways in the people’s democracies of the east and west, including the DPRK.

The critic ably seeks to support the North Korea state from criticism from the point of view of Marxism yet in his attempts to defend the failure to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and the preservation of the national bourgeoisie and the rich peasantry in the government and economy fall flat.  This arises from the ideological influence of Juche thought.

Endnotes

1. Some Questions of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the People's Democracies, Vijay Singh, Revolutionary Democracy, April 2022. http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdnsv1n1/VijayDofP.htm

2. Francesco Alarico della Scala, On the Fate of the Bourgeoisie in North Korea. https://medium.com/@alaricus96/on-the-fate-of-the-bourgeoisie-in-north-korea-2a3e6aa49067

3.‘On the Questions of the Period of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, May 25, 1967 in Kim Il Sung, Works, Vol. 21, FLPH, Pyongyang, 1985, pp. 228-232.

4. F. I. Shabshina,  ‘Korea: After the Second World War’ in Colonial Peoples' Struggle for Liberation,  Reports to the Joint Session of the Scholars’ Council of the Institute of Economics and the Pacific Institute of the Academy of Sciences, USSR, devoted to the problems of the national and colonial movement after the Second World War, 1949. Published by People’s Publishing House Ltd, Bombay, n.d. See: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/CrisisColonialSystem.pdf p. 93.

5. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, 1958, p.169.

6. Shabshina, p. 91.

7. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, p. 144.

8. Mao Tse-Tung, On People’s Democratic Dictatorship. (Original English language edition) (1949). http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/MaoPPD2.pdf

9.Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, p. 148.

10.Ibid, pp.224-5.

11. People's Democracy – A New Form of the Political Organization of Society, A. I. Sobolev (Moscow, 1953), p. 23. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PDSobolev.pdf

12. J.V. Stalin, Five Conversations with Soviet Economists, 1941-1952. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n2/5convers.htm

13. Georgi Dimitrov, Political Report of the Central Committee to the V Congress of the Bulgarian Workers' Party (Communists)’, December, 1948.  Original English language translation. www.revolutionarydemocracy.org › archive

A.I. Sobolev, People’s Democracy, A New Form of the Political Organisation of Society, Moscow, 1953. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PDSobolev.pdf

14. “Left-Wing” Communism—an Infantile Disorder, V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 31, p. 24.

15 A.I. Sobolev, People’s Democracy, A New Form of the Political Organisation of Society, Moscow, 1953. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PDSobolev.pdf

16. A.I. Sobolev, 1953, pp.18-9.

17.  A. Ledovsky, The Secret Mission of A.I. Mikoyan to China (January-February 1949), https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv22n2/mikoyan.htm

18. Mao Tse-Tung, op. cit. In the post Stalin period this was deleted. We owe this information to Bhupen Palit.

19. Kim Il Sung, For the Implementation of the Judicial Policy of Our Party, 29th April 1958. Cited in https://medium.com/@alaricus96/on-the-fate-of-the-bourgeoisie-in-north-korea-2a3e6aa49067

20. F.L. Carsten, Georg von Vollmar: A Bavarian Social Democrat, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 25, No. 2/3 May-June 1990, pp. 317-335.

21. Marx, Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 50, New York, 2004, pp. 357, 378-9.

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