The 8th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea stressed the need to enhance the role of cities and counties as regional bases in the present struggle for the full-scale development of socialist construction. In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, cities and counties as local administrative units serve as regional bases for strengthening the revolutionary positions.
The respected Comrade
"It is the consistent, strategic policy maintained by our Party in socialist construction to consolidate its revolutionary position, develop the rural economy and other sectors of the regional economy and improve the people's living standards with cities and counties as the bases."
To consolidate the revolutionary position as firm as a rock is one of the fundamental factors guaranteeing the victorious advance of the revolution and construction. Only when the revolutionary position is consolidated as firm as a rock can we successfully solve all problems arising in the revolutionary struggle and construction work.
The work of consolidating the revolutionary position is the work of strengthening the driving force of the revolution in every way, and this is done with cities and counties as a unit. The work is to rally the broad masses of the people around the Party, accelerate economic and cultural development and push ahead with the overall socialist construction.
In Korea, cities and counties strengthen their revolutionary positions in every way through their role as political bases for directly organizing and implementing the Party's policies. Cities and counties are political bases for infiltrating the lines and policies of the Workers' Party of Korea into all sectors and units in the countryside and other regions concerned and organizing and guiding the work for implementing them directly. The cities and counties arm the working class, agricultural workers, intellectuals and youth and students in the region with the Party's lines and policies, the revolutionary idea of the leader and its embodiment, and train and educate and transform them in a revolutionary way in the practical struggle to implement them, thus realizing the ideological unity and single-hearted unity of the Party and the revolutionary ranks. Agricultural, fisheries, rural, land management, education and public health policies set forth by the Party at every stage and at every stage of the developing revolution are all transferred and infiltrated into the cities and counties, and the work for implementing them is also conducted by enlisting the revolutionary enthusiasm and creative activeness of the masses from all walks of life in the region. In the course, the ideological consciousness of the people is further enhanced and the militant power of the revolutionary ranks is remarkably enhanced.
The more vividly the vitality of the Party's policy manifests itself in the reality, the more empathetic people will be to it and acquire it as their faith and turn out more actively in implementing the Party's policy. The Juche-oriented forces and revolutionary positions in the DPRK will be further consolidated through the course of such activities in all cities and counties.
In the DPRK, cities and counties further strengthen their revolutionary positions by enhancing their role as bases for realizing economic ties between cities and countryside. After the establishment of the socialist system, both the working class and the peasant class struggle for socialist construction on the basis of one ideology and idea as socialist workers, and all-people ownership and cooperative ownership form the economic basis of the socialist state as both forms of socialist ownership.
However, due to the remnants of the old society, the class difference between the working class and the peasantry and the difference between the towns and the countryside exist for a certain period of time, which negatively affects strengthening the revolutionary position and accomplishing the cause of socialism.
Cooperative ownership is a form of ownership that is both socialist as well as all-people ownership but has a low degree of maturity. Cooperative ownership presupposes the ideological, technical and cultural backwardness of the countryside and serves as an economic basis for the remaining class differences between the working class and the peasantry.
In order to turn cooperative ownership into all-people ownership, it is necessary to combine the two ownership organically in the direction of vigorously conducting the three revolutions of ideology, technology and culture in the countryside and steadily enhancing the leading role of all-people ownership.
The organic union of the two holdings is solved through the role of the city and county as the stronghold of economic links between the city and the countryside.
Economic links between urban and rural areas mainly consist of two types: productive and consumer links. Productivity links are links to meet the productive needs of industry and agriculture, and consumption links are links to meet the personal needs of urban and rural residents.
It is the direct productive link that actively acts on the transformation of ownership by realizing the organic combination of the two holdings.
The direct productive link between all-people ownership and cooperative ownership consists of state-owned enterprises such as farm machinery works and irrigation management stations which serve the rural economy directly in the form of direct participation in agricultural production in the cooperative economy.
If the direct relations of production are strengthened, on the one hand, the state-owned material and technical means serving the rural economy take an overwhelming share, and agriculture is industrialized, and on the other hand, under the influence of the working class, the agricultural working people are more firmly equipped with the idea of socialism and collectivism, thus strengthening the revolutionary position. The struggle for the full-scale development of socialist construction in the DPRK urgently calls for further consolidating the revolutionary position with cities and counties as a base.
The revolutionary position will be further strengthened and the struggle for the full-scale development of socialist construction will be further accelerated when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea strengthens the role of more than 200 cities and counties in every way by thoroughly implementing the Party's idea of giving priority to the people and its policy of strengthening cities and counties.
