Ju

Juche

Juche is the name given to the ideology of the Workers Party of Korea under Kim Il-sung. It means ‘self reliance’.

Historical Development: In rejecting Khrushchev’s policies of de-Stalinization within the Soviet Union, Kim Il-sung established the idea of Juche within the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and furher developed it after the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s.

Juche was outlined as an ideal on April 14, 1965, in a speech by Kim. He outlined ideals of Korean independence, based around independence in politics, a self-sustaining economy and the ability of self-defense. These were outlined as the three fundamental principles of Juche.

In 1982, Kim Il-sung’s son and eventual successor, Kim Jong-il, wrote On the Juche Idea, the authoritative work on Juche. As leader of North Korea today, Kim Jong-il has the final authority over the interpretation of Juche.

Juche promises freedom of thought, freedom of politics, economic self sufficiency and self-reliance in defense. It states that policy must reflect the will of the masses, and that the most important work of revolution is to mould people as Communists in order to work for the state. Juche demands full loyalty to the party and leader.

Tom Rattin

Judgment

In Hegel’s system, Judgment is the “middle term” of the Subjective Notion: Notion - Judgment - Syllogism, leading to the Objective Notion. A Judgment is, in its simplest form a simple assertion, denoting the immediate “agreement of the Notion and reality” (Judgement of Existence), and in its development becomes an assertion which is posited as against an other – a Judgement of Reflection, a criticism of the other – a Judgement of Necessity, and ultimately transcends the other as a new Notion, – the Judgement of the Notion.

Further Reading: the Science of Logic: “Judging is thus another function than comprehension, or rather it is the other function of the Notion as the determining of the Notion by itself”, or the Shorter Logic: "‘The rose is red’ is not a judgment".

Julian Calender

A calender introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.E., identical to the present-day Gregorian calender in all but one respect: the beginning of the year was not a fixed date because the calender did not account for leap year.

Russia continued to use the Julian calender until 1918, when the Soviet government switched to the Gregorian calender. Dates in Russia before 1918 are commonly given with two dates, the first according to the Julian calender, the following in parenthesis is the Gregorian date. The differences in the two calenders in the last three centuries of its use:

In the 1700s the Julian Calender was 11 days behind the Gregorian calender.
In the 1800s the Julian Calender was 12 days behind the Gregorian calender.
In the 1900s the Julian Calender was 13 days behind the Gregorian calender.

Junkers

The name given to students at the officers’ school of the Tsarist Army. They were used to try to crush the Bolshevik uprising. Modelled after the Prussian military caste of the 18th and 19th Centuries, they had loyalty to the monarch and aristocracy.

Justice and Injustice

Justice and Injustice are the normative concepts of right and wrong. These concepts are ancient in origin but their content is historically conditioned.

The Just is broader than what is lawful, in that the concept of justice encompasses social issues outside the scope of law, including production and distribution and social welfare. Also, the concept of justice and injustice differs from the concepts of good and evil in as much as it concerned with ethical social life;

if someone is hit by lightning or born with a disease, they may be said to be unlucky, but not to have suffered in justice (Act of God)
if a person does them self harm, it may be said that they behaved badly, but would not be an issues of justice (autonomy)
if someone does wrong, but they had no choice, then they have not acted unjustly (doctrine of impossibility).

Most importantly, though the content of justice may be normative and historically conditioned, consciousness of justice transcends the institutions of justice and a legally constituted institution can come to be seen as unjust.

In a sense, the project of revolutionary socialism is to demonstrate that capitalism is unjust – that it results from the actions of people, causes harm to others and is avoidable.

“No philosophical proposition has earned more gratitude from narrow-minded governments and wrath from equally narrow-minded liberals than Hegel’s famous statement:

“'All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real’

“That was tangibly a sanctification of things that be, a philosophical benediction bestowed upon despotism, police government, Star Chamber proceedings and censorship. That is how Frederick William III and how his subjects understood it.

“But according to Hegel certainly not everything that exists is also real, without further qualification. For Hegel the attribute of reality belongs only to that which at the same time is necessary: “In the course of its development reality proves to be necessity”.

“A particular governmental measure – Hegel himself cites the example of ‘a certain tax regulation’ – is therefore for him by no means real without qualification. That which is necessary, however, proves itself in the last resort to be also rational; and, applied to the Prussian state of that time, the Hegelian proposition, therefore, merely means: this state is rational, corresponds to reason, in so fas as it is necessary: and if it nevertheless appear to us to be evil, but still, in spite of its evil character, continues to exist, then the evil character of the government is justified and explained by the corresponding evil character of its subjects. The Prussians of that day had the government they deserved.

“Now, according to Hegel, reality is, however, in no way an attribute predicable of any given state of affairs, social or political, in all circumstances and at all times. On the contrary.” [Ludwig Feuerbach & the End of Classical German Philosophy, I]