Historically, socialism arises in self defence.
The achievement of the Bolsheviks is having successfully turned imperialist war into civil war. The rise of the Soviet Union then served both as a backdrop to imperialism and its resistance in Asia, and as an existential challenge to European imperialism and the capitalist system which sustained it.
WWII is when this challenge is attempted, with the Axis representing never before seen coordination between European and Asian colonial powers. Appeasement reflected the hopes of a war weary Europe, willing to bet that Germany, with its debt and its unremarkable allies, might tire as they had, neutralising the Soviets in the process win or lose or draw.
With the Soviets securing a last minute truce with the Germans and partitioning Poland however, the winds changed and the Germans marched west into France. It’s on the Western Front that the West begins to emerge as a singular entity, capital exchange between allied and warring countries creating the blueprint for neocolonialism, a higher stage of imperialism. In the Eastern Front and Pacific Theatre, with the Axis waging wars of extermination, the world learned how to colonise in this new fashion and how to resist, honing the tools for doing so.
When WWII finally ends, it does so inconclusively. The challenge of socialism remained and the socialist camp, though war torn, was bigger than ever and set to develop rapidly. Though Europe too was war torn, the settler colonies came out largely unscathed, with the US, having acted as the “arsenal of democracy” during the war, becoming the international bulwark of imperialism. Consequently, there emerged a new human ideology: intercommunal consciousness, which arose reflecting the neocolonial West and it’s colonies, the socialist and anti-imperialist bloc, and those non-aligned countries.
Intercommunalism, understood as the recognition of one’s oppression as part of a hegemonic, global oppression, is the kernel of revolutionary consciousness in the era of neocolonialism.
It’s the Juche Idea, crystallised eventually into Kimilsungism, which identifies this, and recognises the innate human striving for independence from natural and social fetters as the root of contradiction in human society.
It’s this understanding which underscores Songun Politics, the economic and military philosophy developed by Kim Jong Il to resist the pressures of neocolonial economic warfare by fortifying the entire country militarily, economically and politically, single minded solidarity being recognised as the ideological fire of revolution and the state as a weapon to be aimed at the imperialists and their global order.
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