– Kim Ung Chon –
(Translated by Rachel Minyoung Lee, 38north.org)
(Article in the Journal Kyongje Yongu, 2018, Volume 2)
Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il instructed as follows
“Socialist ownership, which consists of state and all-people ownership and cooperative ownership, is the socioeconomic basis enabling the popular masses to occupy the position of masters of the state and society and to fulfill their role as the masters.” (Selected Works of Kim Jong Il, Enlarged Edition, Volume 17, p. 323.)
Highly displaying the superiority of the socialist economic system and solidifying and developing socialist ownership, a gain from the revolution, in a struggle to safeguard socialism have arisen as important issues.
The fact that production means fall under socialist ownership means the means and objects of labor, which make up the material conditions of production, are not privately owned but commonly owned by all the people, thereby resulting in all members of society occupying an equal position in the possession of production means.
The masses of working people from the first have been the creators of production means and all material wealth. As such, they should as a matter of course be the possessors of the means of production. In the course of history’s development, however, production means have come to be privately owned, and class divisions have occurred in societies. After that, a reverse social phenomenon has occurred where the masses of working people, the creators of material wealth, were separated from the means of production, while a small number of the exploiting classes monopolistically possessed the material conditions of production. Deprived of the means of production due to the domination of private ownership, the masses of working people have become shackled by the means of production and become objects of exploitation and oppression.
Only by becoming the masters of production means through socialist ownership do the masses of working people at last occupy the position of direct performers of economic development, as the principal subjects of history.
In the past, the essence of socialist ownership was interpreted arbitrarily in various countries where socialism was being built. This [the arbitrary interpretation] was even reflected in party economic policies in some countries, causing enormous harm to the revolution and the construction.
Representative of this was the theory about a “social ownership system” advocated by revisionists in some Eastern European countries in the early 1950s. They said the basic trait of a “social ownership system” — a form of a common ownership system where the means of production and the product are owned by all those who directly take part in labor — is that workers are personally united with the means of production and the means of production are directly and independently managed by a united group of workers. Their viewpoint on “social ownership system” is, in essence, a Right opportunist theory that negates the socialist characteristics of state ownership under the signboard of a “socialist self-governing system” and breaks it up into individual enterprise units’ ownership.
Counterposing the interests of plants and enterprises to those of the state and society is the same as counterposing an individual’s interests to those of a social group. As such, it fundamentally contradicts the principle of socialist collectivism.
In socialism, the state is the supreme representative of the interests of the masses of working people. As such, the popular masses’ position as the masters of production means can be guaranteed only through the thorough domination of state ownership.
If the unit of ownership were viewed as groups in individual plants and enterprises instead of the state; if each plant and enterprise were to independently draw up a plan and carry out production activities, and if profits therefrom also were to be divided up among plants and enterprises, departmentalism and anarchy of production would prevail and undermine the unified development of the entire society. Furthermore, the popular masses’ very position as common masters of all the production means in the country will crumble, and ownership will become an empty shell.
The opportunists’ view toward destroying state ownership while artificially counterposing all the people’s ownership to state ownership was further changed for the worse afterwards, through the “radical economic reform” theory in the former Soviet Union and various socialist countries in Eastern Europe and the “early socialism stages theory” in some countries.
Modern revisionists and modern social democrats have babbled that state ownership turns the entire socialist economy into an “economy without an owner” due to its own characteristics of inevitably generating overconcentration of the management function, the separation of the management function from the producer masses, and departmentalism. Saying so, they presented the nonsensical theory that all-people ownership can be realized through the functions of organizations like an “all-people association,” not through the state’s economic functions.
They also artificially divided socialism and democracy and, saying the superiority of socialism should appear in the “realization of democracy on a higher level,” claimed the “commanding-bureaucratic” functions of state ownership should be limited to the maximum even in completing the socialist ownership balance, and various types of economic models embodying the “democratic” essence of socialist possession should be developed. These viewpoints are all but deceptive sophisms of the bourgeois restorationism thought aimed at weakening the superiority of state ownership, which occupies a leading position in the socialist ownership system, under the signboard of the “democratization of the possession system” and, by degenerating it [state ownership], demolishing the entire socialist ownership system.
The theory about the essence of socialist ownership was distorted for the worse by the “diversification theory” on ownership argued by modern social democrats.
What is striking about modern social democrats’ “diversification theory” about ownership is their singing the praises of the “socialist stock system.” These advocates have publicized the stock system as though it were an economic model where the workers are made to be the true masters of ownership, saying this and that about how the “socialist stock system is in short kind of a concrete form of realizing workers’ direct possession of production means under the condition of a commodity economy,” and that “in a socialist stock enterprise, the person who has the sovereignty is the worker and the owner of the enterprise. Hence, the exploitation-and-the-exploited dynamic does not exist here.”
By nature a form of a large-size enterprise prevalent in capitalist societies, the stock system is an exploitation system of capital for the interests of financial oligarchies and great monopolies. Servers of bourgeoisie extensively propagated the defense that class contradictions between the capitalist and working classes disappeared with the emergence of the stock system, as capitalism metamorphosed into “popular capitalism” and the “democratization of capital” was realized. The capitalist nature of the stock system cannot be concealed no matter how one may put a “socialist” cover over it and say it has metamorphosed. No matter how one looks at it, those who pose as masters in the stock system are the owners of great capital who command more than 15 to 30 percent of capital stocks. They also are the ones who amass a fortune from the dividends, and workers still cannot break away from their lot of being exploited.
The very introduction of the stock system in socialism is modern social democracy’s antisocialist maneuver toward degenerating socialism into capitalism by corroding capitalist economic relations. As can be seen, the “diversification theory” about ownership argued by modern social democrats is bourgeoisie reactionists’ absurd sophism aimed at destroying the socialist ownership system where the masses of working people are thoroughly the masters, and at reviving again the capitalist private ownership system.
When socialist ownership crumbles, that place is soon taken by private ownership. A society founded on private ownership cannot but be a capitalist society.
This is clearly shown by the reality of those countries where socialist ownership returned to private ownership: while the broad producer masses have once again become chained to a system of exploitation and oppression and have degenerated into slaves of capital, a small number of the bourgeoisie have once again posed themselves as masters and controlled the countries’ economic life.
All the functionaries and workers should correctly know the reactionary essence of the “diversification theory” about ownership advocated by modern revisionists and modern social democrats and establish a powerful socialist state in this land at all cost by vigorously waging a struggle to protect and adhere to socialist ownership.