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Japan: Its Rise from Feudalism ...
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 4, 28 January 1933, pp. 3 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Can there be any greater irony than that the Comintern, founded by Lenin and Trotsky, should urge the Japanese Communists to gain “legality” at any price, including the yielding of its own platform and program? What better object lesson is required of the extreme importance of maintaining unity of action through clarity of policy and unity of point of view – that is, through, restriction of the membership of the Party to those advanced workers only, who accept Marxism and the Leninist concept of discipline – than the rich history of the Russian Bolshevik Party? And under what striking similarity of conditions! Yet history presented that irony in Japan as elsewhere. Fortunately the adventure proved in vain.
It is the function of the Party to utilize every vital activity of the proletariat to lead and direct the class along the road to power. In the light of its ultimate “illegal” revolutionary goal – the dictatorship of the proletariat – the Party demands democracy not for its own sake but for the political education of the masses, for their disillusioning with all reformist methods and objectives. The Party demands the “right” to propagate its own revolutionary platform and if this right jeopardizes democracy, so much the worse for democracy. The workers must fight for democracy, for legality of the Party, for reforms, – but this struggle must never leave the masses in doubt as to the position of the Communists who, taking the objective conditions of the moment and their future trend into account, advance the interests of the working-class as a whole so as to strengthen the class for further struggle along the road to power. Even those Communist parties that have achieved legality never forget for a single instant that they may, under changing circumstances, be forced underground.
Universal suffrage was granted to the Japanese workers under the strong pressure of the masses. But it bore also a different character. It was used as a pawn by the bourgeois capitalists in an attempt to win over the workers and the petty bourgeoisie for a struggle against the militarists. The capitalists would prefer, if possible, peaceful penetration to outright conquest in China. But the struggle proved abortive, the capitalists were tied hand and foot to the war machine. Furthermore the internal crisis resolved the problem for the capitalist imperialists by its urgent demand for the most desperate remedies. Not in vain are the changes in the mode of production and in the productive forces the “shock factors” of historic development!
The moment universal suffrage was promised, in 1925, the militarists prepared carefully for any untoward eventualities. Baron Tanaka – the author of the Tanaka document – immediately resigned from the army and became president of the Seijukai Party. In the eyes of the military clique the situation called for a “strong” man, a Bonaparte. And Tanaka was groomed for the task at precisely the same moment and in precisely the same fashion as Marshal von Hindenburg (as President) in Germany. Tanaka became premier in the first elections held under universal suffrage, elections so tainted by fraud and corruption, so strongly controlled by acts of autocracy that to stifle the angry criticism of the masses a thousand workers and intellectuals were arrested under the frame-up of a nation-wide Communist plot. The Tanaka regime ended in scandals strikingly like those of the Harding administration in America.
The wily Japanese capitalists have made every effort to establish the two-party system in Japanese politics. The Seijukai may be compared with the English tory party, the Minseito with the whigs. Both parties are under complete boss control. The party platforms mean nothing, are much alike, in fact do not vary from election to election. The government connection with big business, plain enough in America, is far more open in Japan. The party leaders become directors of the South Manchuria Railroad, of steamship companies, etc. These leaders cannot reward their followers with government jobs as these are reserved for the bureaucracy under the military clique. Hence, the parties resort to a more open cash system. The cost of elections is far greater, owing to greater corruption, than in other countries, and elections are more frequent. Before the War it took more than 20,000 yen to elect a man to the Diet. Now it costs more. Each candidate pays one-half the requisite sum – the party the rest. Since four hundred are elected each time, party expenses are enormous, control falling naturally into the hands of the rich (as elsewhere). The pay in the Diet is small but bribery for concessions and purchases provide rich plums.
The workers have no illusions concerning the bourgeois parties whose history has been all too short to permit the use of those refined niceties of technique of the Western countries. The masses pin little faith in types like the first great “commoner”, premier, Hara, who came to power after the Rice-Riots. This lawyer in the pay of the copper king, Furukawa, this liberal whose doctrines were expressed in his remark: “My platform is a blank sheet of paper. I can write upon it what I will”, was the willing tool of the military in the Siberian adventure. It was Hara and his minister for Home Affairs, Tokonanu (one of the worst suppressors of free speech and the press), who organized one of the largest of the thirty reactionary societies ready at all times to attack the workers. Despite his personal bodyguard, despite his great services in the interests of the ruling class, Hara was assassinated for the slight difference that existed between the interests of finance capital and those of the militarists.
Japanese history embodies a great lore of bloody deeds of vengeance. When feudal society was dissolved by decree, there remained a class of “masterless men”, the former samurai whose only occupation had been the wielding of the sword in the services of some lord. These ronin form the hirelings of the reactionaries in politics to convey and carry out threats against political opponents. Assassinations by these feudal mercenaries are of frequent occurrence.
In the split that followed the debacle of the all-embracing farmer-labor mass party, three parties gradually crystallized out, each one supported by a split-off section of the trade unions. The writer has been unable to obtain sufficient data as to the precise activities of the Communists in the various splits so that he can merely enumerate the parties and their strength. The Japanese General Federation of Labor supports the Shakai Minshuto (Right wing social democratic party) which obtained 165,000 votes and 4 seats in the 1928 elections. The Nihon Ronoto – Japanese Labor-Farmer Party was organized by the centrists of the General Federation of Japanese Labor and Farmers. It captured 2 seats with 96,000 votes in 1928. The Left wing organized the Rodo Nominto which obtained no seats despite its 85,000 votes. The centrists and Left wing parties were both dissolved by the government as being dangerous. However, the party reorganized, the Lefts forming the Shin Ronoto (Labor Farmer Party) in 1929. The centrists formed the Ninon Taishuto or Japan Mass Party. In the 1930 elections the combined vote of the parties was over half a million.
From the attacks made by Japanese Communists at the present time on the “social Fascists” of the other worker parties, it is clear that the Japanese Communists have followed blindly the Stalinist zig-zag tactics, tactics that have resulted at this crucial moment in the history of the working class of the world, in causing loss of confidence in the vanguard by the Japanese masses. Although we cannot accept without question the opinion of so confirmed an enemy of the Communists as Matsuoka of the Japanese General Federation of Labor, yet there is a sufficient element of truth in his remark, made in 1929:
“The Communist movement is getting more and more idealized and formularized. In other words the movement has become one of students or young men and women; it is diverging increasingly from the practical fighting line, so that it is coming more and more under the surveillance of the Minister of Education than that of the Home Minister. Their sphere of action is passing from the factories, mines and agrarian villages to the schools and colleges.”
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