Two Socialisms of Socialist Reading Groups in Colonial Korea

This paper case-studies the reading lists of thirty socialist reading groups in colonial Korea from the late 1920s to the early 1930s. It finds that the reading groups of peasants and workers, on the one hand, read Yamakawa Hitoshi’s Shihonshugi no Karakuri (The Mechanism of Capitalism) and Sakai Toshihiko’s Shakaishugi Taii (An Outline of Socialism) as their main texts, while the groups of vanguard youth and revolutionary mass movement, on the other, read the Communist Youth International’s Musansha Seiji Kyōtei (Political Program for the Proletariat). In peasants and workers’ readings, socialism was understood as the socialization of production and property under Marxist principles, which was to be achieved by proletarian class struggle. In contrast, the vanguard youth’s textbooks emphasized Leninism, identified socialism as being materialized by the Soviet Union, and demanded a communist party-led Korean and world revolution following the Soviet and Comintern’s lead. Witnessing the coexistence of these two schools, the paper suggests that the socialism did not progress linearly from Marxism to Leninism, and that it had a hierarchy within itself.