Turning Marx on his head? North Korean Juche as developmental nationalism

The existing literature on North Korea has been divided over whether the country’s state ideology of Juche should be regarded as a variant of Soviet Marxism-Leninism or whether the explicit voluntarism of Juche means that it should be viewed as a distinctive indigenous ideology. Drawing on Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development and Gramsci’s theory of ideology, the paper argues that North Korea’s status as a geopolitically insecure postcolonial country engaged in a forced march from “backwardness” to a modern industrialized economy has had a decisive impact on both the form and content of North Korean state ideology. Understood as a form of developmental nationalism that seeks not only to legitimize authoritarian rule but also to create a collective subjectivity suited the task of rapid catch-up national development, Juche constitutes a combined ideological form that rests on Marxist-Leninist origins but has deliberately drawn on existing forms of “common sense” conducive towards the mass mobilization of society. In doing so, this paper critically engages with the argument that the voluntarism of Juche represents a decisive break from the supposedly objective laws of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, thereby “turning Marx on his head.”