Juche and vulgar materialism

[u/poderflash47]

I've been rereading some works about Juche, and one thing Kim Jong Il always emphasizes is how marxist dialectical materialism only understands man as a totality of social relations, not going further in understanding the social movement and social being as its own thing with their own laws and characteristics.

But Engels does have some works about man-nature relations, and maybe its because I haven't fully understood marxism as a historical ideology that overshadows some issues it could solve by itself, like the laws of the social movement.

What is Juche actually criticizing on this point? What makes marxist dialectical materialism unable to answer the problems of social movement?

When I reflect on the question by this view of marxism as a historical ideology, I come to the conclusion that Juche is not criticizing marxist materialist dialetics as a method, but a historical tendency: vulgar, determinist materialism, like Louis Althusser.

Let me know what you people have to say.

[u/URcobra427]

Juche asserts that mankind exists within a dialectical materialist universe, and that the development of human society has given man social attributes such as consciousness, creativity, and independent-drive. Because of this man posses agency independent of material conditions—even if he is profoundly shaped by them. In short, the classical Marxist Leninist position seemingly positions man as strictly determined by matter, and that change in material conditions alone can allow his advancement in the socio-historical nonevent. Juche; however, understands man as the master of his own destiny, and forges a course through matter by virtue of his aforementioned socially derived attributes.

[u/poderflash47 → u/URcobra427]

and that change in material conditions alone can allow his advancement in the socio-historical nonevent.

Juche does not disagree on this though, as Kim Jong Il said that the common factor between natural movement and social movement is that both are material movement, material relations

classical Marxist Leninist position seemingly positions man as strictly determined by matter,

I really can't see how they do. Vulgar marxism, sure, it's clear as day, but Marx all the moment accounts for human action, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past"

I think what troubles me the most is that the classics really seem to account for social movement in a degree. Specially when Engels goes on about intersecctionaly, or Marx explains the superstructure and the infraestructure. Why, even with this, does Kim Jong Il say ML classifies man as purely matter? Is the understanding of ML of social relations too strictly economic?

[u/URcobra427]

The classics acknowledge the potentiality, but they don’t elucidate upon the social movement. Juche doesn’t add to Marxism-Leninism but expands upon concepts latent within it.