No bother at all on the short delay (as you can see, I’m not always the fastest at replying, myself)!
I appreciate the answer. My mind is quite blown at the moment, as your comments have challenged my understanding of Marxism—but coherently. It fits neatly and yet changes everything. I can see how Juche branches off Marxism-Leninism but in such a dialectal way that it remains Marxist.
This reminds me of issues in orthodox conceptions of objectivity and subjectivity. I kind of had all that philosophy well worked out before reading Marx, etc. I wasn’t necessarily right, but I had an answer. Then reading Marx disrupted what I had once accepted but I never really went back to re-work the objectivity/subjectivity problem from a Marxist perspective. I’m thinking that Juche could provide a good starting point for resolving that issue.
I’m going to have to investigate further 🙂 I’m glad you’ve explained all this to me. Thanks.
Glad I could help! On the topic of the philosophy of objectivity/subjectivity, some of the best advice I ever got as a communist was to read a whole lot of philosophy (sounds like you’ve already done this) before tackling Marx, because it helps you see the thing in context, and avoid applying Marxian insights dogmatically. I think ultimately, the Marxist tradition rediscovers and more precisely articulates a kind of core human-ness that was lost with onset of modernity in the west. I like Juche because it seems, out of all the schools of Marxism, to address this most explicitly. (I think for religious communists too – I’m one – it also provides space for the human experience of the transcendent, which is so important for many societies historically).
That’s good advice. I’d add that it’s also worth going back to the philosophy that Marx engages with after reading Marx.
There’s lots of philosophy I’ve yet to read, but you’re right, that’s where I started. Eventually this took me to Habermas (who I enjoyed at the time but didn’t realise was supposed to be a Marxist – I mean, he’s not, but he pretends to be, which makes it strange that readers won’t necessarily see this in his writing) and other twentieth century anti-communists. They all made sense but something was missing. I then came to Isaiah Berlin, who seemed to provide the missing piece, but not quite. His book on Marx took to me Marx and made me realise that although Berlin is oh-so-close for emphasising something like the law of contradiction, he doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head because he tries to liberalise DiaMat.
As soon as I read Marx directly, it was clear that Marxists represent the highest form of philosophy, following threads from the the Ancient Greeks (and earlier, considering their plagiarism of even more ancient Africans). To that end, I now think human thought can only progress if it begins with Marx/ists. Unfortunately, we’ve had 150 years of going in the opposite direction. That’s a lot of wasted brainpower.
Marxism should have been the foundation of all fields for over a century, each coming up with novel insights (maybe even surpassing Marxism with something significantly different) but instead we’re still at the point (in the West, at least) where almost every other branch of knowledge needs to be (for want of a better phrase) dialectically materialised. Juche sounds like a promising lead in that direction. (I’ve also heard good things about China now insisting that Marxism is taught throughout higher education, at least.)
No bother at all on the short delay (as you can see, I’m not always the fastest at replying, myself)!
I appreciate the answer. My mind is quite blown at the moment, as your comments have challenged my understanding of Marxism—but coherently. It fits neatly and yet changes everything. I can see how Juche branches off Marxism-Leninism but in such a dialectal way that it remains Marxist.
This reminds me of issues in orthodox conceptions of objectivity and subjectivity. I kind of had all that philosophy well worked out before reading Marx, etc. I wasn’t necessarily right, but I had an answer. Then reading Marx disrupted what I had once accepted but I never really went back to re-work the objectivity/subjectivity problem from a Marxist perspective. I’m thinking that Juche could provide a good starting point for resolving that issue.
I’m going to have to investigate further 🙂 I’m glad you’ve explained all this to me. Thanks.
Glad I could help! On the topic of the philosophy of objectivity/subjectivity, some of the best advice I ever got as a communist was to read a whole lot of philosophy (sounds like you’ve already done this) before tackling Marx, because it helps you see the thing in context, and avoid applying Marxian insights dogmatically. I think ultimately, the Marxist tradition rediscovers and more precisely articulates a kind of core human-ness that was lost with onset of modernity in the west. I like Juche because it seems, out of all the schools of Marxism, to address this most explicitly. (I think for religious communists too – I’m one – it also provides space for the human experience of the transcendent, which is so important for many societies historically).
That’s good advice. I’d add that it’s also worth going back to the philosophy that Marx engages with after reading Marx.
There’s lots of philosophy I’ve yet to read, but you’re right, that’s where I started. Eventually this took me to Habermas (who I enjoyed at the time but didn’t realise was supposed to be a Marxist – I mean, he’s not, but he pretends to be, which makes it strange that readers won’t necessarily see this in his writing) and other twentieth century anti-communists. They all made sense but something was missing. I then came to Isaiah Berlin, who seemed to provide the missing piece, but not quite. His book on Marx took to me Marx and made me realise that although Berlin is oh-so-close for emphasising something like the law of contradiction, he doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head because he tries to liberalise DiaMat.
As soon as I read Marx directly, it was clear that Marxists represent the highest form of philosophy, following threads from the the Ancient Greeks (and earlier, considering their plagiarism of even more ancient Africans). To that end, I now think human thought can only progress if it begins with Marx/ists. Unfortunately, we’ve had 150 years of going in the opposite direction. That’s a lot of wasted brainpower.
Marxism should have been the foundation of all fields for over a century, each coming up with novel insights (maybe even surpassing Marxism with something significantly different) but instead we’re still at the point (in the West, at least) where almost every other branch of knowledge needs to be (for want of a better phrase) dialectically materialised. Juche sounds like a promising lead in that direction. (I’ve also heard good things about China now insisting that Marxism is taught throughout higher education, at least.)