THE SITUATION AND TASKS
IN PRESENT-DAY JAPAN
(Excerpts' from Draft Theses)
By TK
II: THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC
STRUCTURE AND THE STATE IN
CONTEMPORARY JAPAN
8. The social and economic structure of Japan is based on capital goods production state and private capital and petty commodity production. The relationship of forces between these two elements is measured as follows:
9. Class structure:
Capitalism (working class, 43%; bourgeoisie, 5.°): 48%; petty comodity production: 51%; Standing army and police: 1%?
It is characteristic of the social and economic structure of our country that half the people are small producers; this fact distinguishes our country from such advanced capitalist countries as the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany.
10. The relationship of the two elements varies according to industry. In agriculture, capitalism is very weak and small producers amount to 96% of the agricultural population. But in forestry, fisheries, manufacturing, services, and commerce, the capitalist economy embraces from one third to four fifths of the population. In mining, transportation, and communications, capitalism
These varying relationships give its particular character to each branch of industry. In branches where capitalism holds the majority, the petty producers are dependent upon and become ar organic part of it. Here the small producers are hardly independent of but supplementary to canitalism. In agriculture, however, the situation is the contrary. Though in the other branches, small producers are overwhelmed by and subordinated to the high productivity of capitalism, in agriculture, particularly in farm production, domestic or foreign capitalism does not yet threaten and exists only in embryo. Because of this fundamental fact, peasants maintain their existence today as independent private producers, though they are now in a process of class decomposition,
1 Sections 1 to 8 are a study of the international situation as background for the Japanese situation. Since their line is identical with that of the International as a whole these sections have been omitted for considerations of spa From an article by Shimada in Vanguard no 134.
included in the capitalist econom" by commodity circulation, and exploited by capitalism.
Il. In the capitalist economy there exist sideby-sıde big modern industry, home industries, manutactures, and divers types of petty shops. lhe latter three types lack the material characteristics proper to capitalism. The relationship of forces between the first (state capital and big private capital) and the last three (middle anc small capital) is as follows:
Small companies with less than a million yen 3 capital each amount to 71.4% of all companies and 13.2% of all capital; while big business with more than 100 million yen capital each amount to 0.33% of all companies and 58.8% of all capital (these data are from 1955). This becomes even clearer when we learn that about 1,100 companies of big business dominate and control 67.1% of all corporate capital. In manufacturing, firms employing more than 300 workers amount to 0.4% (1,700) of all firms, while those employing less than 50 workers amount to 97% (420,000) of all firms. But in number of all employees, the former have only 26%, while the latter have 50% manpower In output, the former amount to 43%, the latter 1o 20% (again, 1955
Workers' productivity in manufacturing plants employing more than 300 is quadruple that of those employing less than 30. The annual value added is, in the former, 62,900 yen, and, in the latter, 15,800 yen, per worker.
Big capital, with productivity quadruple that of small capital, employs only one fourth of the total manpower, but its output 1s between one half and two thirds of the total. Small capital employs more than half the total manpower, but produces less than a third of total output.
The wages of those employed by big capital are twice those of workers employed by small capital.
13. The above general analysis shows the overwhelmingly superior position of big capitalisin in the economy, though it employs a minority of the working class. But this general survey requires completion by concrete studies of the relationships in each branch of industry.
In heavy industry and the chemical industry,
3 360 yen = US $1; 1,000 yen = £1.
the superiority and control of Big Business is complete. In these fields, small capitalists occupy a secondary position. In light industry, however, modern machinery has not yet won hegemony. In some branches such as food, textiles, wood, furniture, and leather, small enterprises occupy first place not only in employment but also in output. In ' these fields, the hegemony of Big Business is exercised only indirectly, high productivity and quality, control of finance capital, state power, and so on.
14. Between big and small capital lies middle
This group is always uneasy, being threatened from above by high productivity, new machinery, and cartel control, and from below terprises running between one and ten million yen capital each, it forms 16.5% of all capital. It seems that it amounts to 20% both in percentage of workers and in output. Its productivity is one third to one half that of big capital. It is characteristic of our capitalist economy that this group is secondary and weak: on the one hand, big capital holds the greater part of production finance; on the other hand, small capital has half the working class and between a quarter and a third of production.
15. Let us list our social and economic structure in the following way:
1) capitalist production: a) big capital; b) middle capital; c) small capital; 2) artisanal production.
Now when we compare the productivity of hese groups, we can set a ratio from top to bottom' of 8: 4: 2: 1. The figures tell us the relationship of forces and the overwhelming superiority of modern capital in Japanese society. The ratio of workers employed shows an opposite picture: 1.5: 1: 2.5: 5.
The ratio of output: 4.1.3.2. These three ratios show us in a simplified way the social composition of contemporary Japan. In spite of its complex reality, its tendencies, and the superiority of "big modern industry and big capital, in essence it has a remarkably petty-bourgeois character.
16. The five big capitalist monopolies - Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Furukawa, and Yasuda — have rebuilt their trusts, covering all important industries, each through its own big banks. It may be said that the big steel monopoly, the electric monopoly, the national railways, and the Japanese airlines are in fact foint enterprises these trusts. New industries
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL in oils, chemicals, and atomic power are also founded by them.
In this way, our social and economic composition resembles a pyramid, with a summit conof private monopolies, such as the five big. and state capital, through a middle section of private capital, big, middle, and small, down to the base of small commodity production. Private monopolies exploit even the base of small commodity producers by means of state capital. We also find a great mass of petty farmers and an industrial reserve army in both towns and villages (hidden unemplovment in both small capitalist and petty commodity production), owing to the backwardness of capitalism in agriculture.
*
The petty bourgeoisie, forming one half the population, is in full decomposition. In the present situation, with capitalism in a death agony within its own iron frames of both private property and the national state, the decomposition of the petty bourgeoisie is tremendous. Several hundreds of thousands of the laboring population are at the same time thrown out of the productive process.
With the capital accumulation and class decomposition in agriculture now in progress, the small farmers have a tendency to become either bourgeois or proletarians.
Hegemony within the bourgeoisie in the hands of big business combined with the apparatus. The chief shareholders and top staffs of a few hundred mammoth companies and the leading banks, i e, a few hundreds of the richest and most privileged part of the bourgeoisie, hold the highest ranks in the state bureaucracy, through which they can control the state appa-
The Diet conceals this monopoly of the capitalists from the eyes of the people. It is by means of the Diet that the bourgeoisie can make its own will "the people's will" sovereignty "the people's sovereignty."
17. The concrete incarnation of the capitalist dictatorship (that is in fact carried out by monopoly of finance capital) is some ten thousands of the biggest capitalists, a hundred thousand of the middle ones, and a million of the small ones. This dictatorship takes the form of parliamentary democracy, possible by means, on the one hand, of an alliance with the petty bourgeoisie, composing half the ponulation, and, on the other, of the support of the Social-Democracy as the political form of the upper stratum of the working class. Thus bourgeois democracy, as the present form of capitalist dictatorship, not only has a state apparatus belonging to the bourgeoisie, but also is administered by the Liberal-Democrats and the
The petty bourgeoisie through the more intensify their dependence on US impergle and a crisis in the present regime will once to advance to the Socialist United States of the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL Socialists. former, and the working class through the latter, are mobilized in support of the capitalist dictatorship.
The Treaty of San Francisco changed Japan's status from that of an occupied country to that of a dependent ally. This alliance is essentially different from the alliances among the imperialisms before the First World War. It is a united front of the international bourgeoisie and reaction, to defend imperialist rule against the world revolution. Within this alliance the economic and military superiority of Yankee imthe US A makes its weaker allies, according to the case, either into protectorates (the Latin American countries, the Philippines, South Viet-
41 ialism. At present Us imperialism is playing the role of reserve army for the capitalist dictatorship in Japan.
20. Thus the supreme necessity for the capitalist states in the contemporary world is the defense of capitalism against the world revolution by means of the international capitalist alliance For them too their class interests prevail over national interests. Therefore the Japanese bourgeoisie is making a desperate attempt to keep the revolution from our country, against the gigantic pressure of the workers' states and the Chinese revolution, by means of dependence on the US A in the military domain, in diplomacy, and in trade.
In sum, the top bourgeois in our country take nam, Thailand, South Korea, the Bagdad Pact direct hold of the state apparatus and attract the bloc, etc) or into dependent allies (Japan and Western Europe). But they are themselves not the principal objects of Wall Street. It is in order to crush the class struggle and the colonial reand to win the counter-revolutionary war against the workers' states that imperialism and reaction are at present uniting all over the world. In their panic about the world revolution, inner oppositions among the allies do not hold a prominent place. In order to defend the capitalist system against the revolution, it is natural for the Japanese bourgeoisie to cede Ryukyu to the US A and to limit its own sovereignty in
"the national must be subordinated to class interests. The international union of the bourgeoisie for a counter-revolutionary war is primary, and the internal opposition between the US A and Japan within this union is secondary.
19. In the military field, the dependence of Japan upon US imperialism is decisive. In the neighborhood of Japan, the US A has naval and air superiority, and South Korea, a US protectorate, has superiority in ground forces. construction of Japan's military power is undertaken as part of the preparation of the counterrevolutionary Third World War, in accordance with the Pentagon's timetable. The keystone of Tapanese diplomacy is agreement with the US A. his means sympathy with US imperialism's offensive against the Chinese revolution. Consequently our foreign trade is dependent on the US A and alienated from China.
Year by year since the Treaty of San Francisco. Japan's internal political and economic dependence on the US A has diminished. This has meant economic power and political stability for Japanese capitalists. But a rise in the class strugpetty bourgeoisie and the laboring masses to the side of the capitalist dictatorship through the Liberal-Democrats and the Socialists: And the immense power of the US A constitutes its final reserves.
The foregoing is the essence and disposition of forces in Japan.
III. THE COMING REVOLUTION: ITS CHARACTER, TASKS, AND MAKERS
21. The bankruptcy of capitalism is shown by the facts that not only private property and anarchic distribution come into collision with the social character of production, but also that its national boundaries are inconsistent with the worldwide character of production. Hence the working class must not only • replace capitalist property o state dandal bitindaries in a bot also wipe out the national boundaries in of an international planned economy. It is this problem that modern society must resolve to become a socialist society.
The productivity created by capitalism comes into collision with private property and the na. tional state that heads it. This is the reason why the redivision of the world by national monopolies and imperialism is a most important aspect of capitalism. But it is an impermanent solution. Two world wars, a world panic, and a series of local wars and partial panics brought us monstrous waste of life and wealth, and the present preparation of the counter-revolutionary world war will also bring them on us.
Our coming revolution will not be complete in itselt with the overthrow of the Japanese bourgeoisie, but must be international sense of being an organic part of the worldwide class struggle. Our coming revolution is part of the permanent world revolution that never ceases
42 World under workers' democracy. Because contemporary capitalist productivity cannot function regularly without conscious operation on a world scale, and because the capitalists all over the world unite in order to maintain their imperialist domination and prepare the counter-revolutionary war, our coming revolution is essentially international whether we are conscious of it cr not.
22. The proletariat of our country is essentially a part of the international proletariat, and the ourgeoisie of our country is a part of the international bourgeoisie. Therefore, our revolution, as it develops, must on the one hand take as its opponent not only the bourgeoisie of our country ut also the international bourgeoisie, Americar mperialism in particular: and, on the other hand, it must unite with the world proletariat, particularly the Russian and Chinese. In the US SR and People's China, workers' states, the workers cannot yet enjoy workers' democracy of orthodox Leninism and higher productivity. Particularly in the US SR, the dictatorship of the privileged bureaucracy is an intolerable obstacle to economic development and to world revolution.
Nevertheless, our revolutionary working class is in the same camp as the workers' states in Russia and China and opposed to the Japanese bourgeoisie and world imperialism. These two camps are each moved by a supreme strategy, on which every partial front depends.
The workers' states in Russia and China reserves to the revolution in Japan; Yankee imperialism, reserves to the counter-revolution in Japan. They belong to the respective class camp in our country and form the main force of each. Therefore each reserve plays a decisive role under definite conditions. From the end of the war till the Treaty of San Francisco, American imperialism, as reserves of the Japanese counterrevolution, stood at the head of the struggle against the rise of the working class in Japan.
For the power of our bourgeoisie was very weak. But the US SR to a large extent acted against the interests of the revolution by means of the reactionary nationalism and chauvinism of the bureaucratic leadership during and just after the Second World War.
After the Treaty of San Francisco, American imperialism moved aside. Now the main force of the enemy is the Japanese bourgeoisie. The reserves are not out front. But their reappearance will be determined by the political and economic situation in the next phase.
23. The reserves of the working class have been rapidly reenforced since the end of the Second World War. Evidences of this fact are the overthrow of the capitalist system in Eastern
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL Europe, the commencement of the great rise of the colonial revolution, the development of the victorious Chinese revolution, the economic and military might of the US S R, etc. Nor are these all. Stalinism, the political expression of the privileged Soviet bureaucracy that is a conservative obstacle to the working-class movement all over the world, is in decline and on the road to its conclusive fall. This reality does not weaken the workers' states but makes their progress more rapid and gives a stimulus to world revolution.
24. In the above-mentioned situation of the revolution and counter-revolution, our tion marches on. It is essentially a socialist revolution, part of world revolution. This revoluoverthrow of capitalism in Japan, the foundation of a statified and planified economy through a workers' and an advance to working-class rule throughout the world. In the process of the revolution the working class must overthrow and destroy the Japanese bourgeoisie and its reserves — American imperialism. And the perspective that the revolution must overthrow American imperialism as the final step does not give a character of nationalism to the revolution but reveals the essence of its internationalism.
25. The main force of the revolution is of course the proletariat. It forms 44% of the national population. The main body of the counterrevolution is the bourgeoisie. It forms only 5%. Between these two camps is the petty bourgeoisie, with which the counter-revolution at present and the revolution in the future must unite as an ally. It forms 51% of our population.
The strategy of the revolution is to unite the working class against the capitalist class, to separate the petty bourgeoisie from the capitalist class, to neutralize the petty bourgeoisie, draw it toward the working class, and get it to take part in the struggle against the capitalist class; thereby to isolate the capitalist class, covering only 5% of the population, to encircle it with the overwhelming majority of the masses, and to disarm and destroy it.
Along its march, the revolution must spread and develop the class struggle in the US army and isolate the handful of Wall Street from the American workers and farmers in uniform, in order to paralyze and break down this army. This task must be closely combined with the struggle for socialism by the American proletariat.
26. The working class, main force of the revolution, is composed of the modern stratum (in state and big private enterprises), the modern stratum (in small enterprises), and the intermediate stratum. And in the modern and
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL intermediate strata there is a distinction between regular and irregular workers.
The trade unions of today have organized six million workers, viz, almost the whole modern stratum, half the intermediate stratum, and a very small part (perhaps 5) of the pre-modern stratum. Most of the more than one million irregular workers do not have own trade unions as a weapon of self-defense.
Among the workers in big business enterprises. there is a tendency on the one hand for the supervisory workers to become well-to-do, and on the other hand for the irregular workers at the bottom to become fixed and crystalized such. Many irregular workers do the same work as that of the regulars, but their wage is at the level of that of workers in the pre-modern enter-
Though in this way the working masses are divided by the economic structure and policies of the capitalists, as a class they have only one aim: the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the statified and planified economy. At the same time achievement of this aim must mean the amelioration of living standards and the liberation of the poorest bottom layers comprising the majority of the working class. The anti-capitalist unity of the working class will be brought about only when the enormous masses of the pre-modern and intermediate workers are mobilized by the powerful revolutionary initiative of the middle and lower strata of the workers in big business enterprises. To mobilize the class means in fact to win over the majority of the class, to liberate and organize the energy of the lower working masses who are being crushed by life and are not organized in trade unions. class will overcome the split into various strata and will march on to the revolution.
27. The union with the petty bourgeoisie can become substantial only as an open agreement between classes on the basis of constant revolutionary propaganda and repeated united actions against the capitalists. It obliges the working masses to unite as a class for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. In this struggle it is necessary tor them to separate the petty bourgeoisie from the bourgeoisie, to neutralize it and draw it to them.
Agreement between the working class and the petty bourgeoisie is absolutely not one between the former and the politicians and political representatives of the upper stratum of the latter, agents of the capitalists. (They appear as LiberalDemocrats and Right-Wing Socialists in the ranks and as Right-Wing Socialists in the Diet and the Prefectural Assemblies.) Agreement will be reached only when the working class reno-
43 vates the leadership of the mass movements and controls it under the intluence of the revolutionary workers' party.
A relatively upper stratum, one third or one fourth of the petty bourgeoisie, is the most conservative sector of the masses, an important support to the capitalist dictatorship. If the working class succeeds in neutralizing this stratum in the struggles, the bourgeoisie will fall like a general without soldiers. In such a process, the small capitalists, comprising the overwhelming majority of the bourgeoisie, are also drawn along into neutralization together with the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie. Of course, this perspective is dependent, on the one hand, on the objective contradictions of interests among certain groups of the bourgeoisie, and, on the other, on the development of the class struggle and the capacity of the working, class to utilize consciously these contradictions among the enemy.
The poorest majority strata of the petty bourgeoisie consist of the underemployed and the part-time workers. They are nearly proletarian-
- nay, they are lumpenproletarianized. Their interests are clearly incompatible with the present regime. When the revolution begins to march, they will start along with the revolution and part of them will struggle actively. Only the statified and planified economy of the workers' state will open up for them the perspective of an improvement in living conditions. Alliance with the petty bourgeoisie generally means allance with these elements. The working class must support their demands, unite them at the rank-and-file level, make agreements between their organizations and the workers' organizations at the leadership level, and advance with them to the overthrow of capitalism.
The fundamental tasks of the Jananese revolution are:
1). The overthrow of the capitalist regime maintained by the alliance between American imperialism and the Japanese bourgeoisie dependent thereon; the expulsion of all the forces of American imperialism from Japan.
2) The arrival to power of the working class at the head of all the laboring people and the establishment of the soviet government by the workers and peasants; the carrying out of th lictatorship of the proletariat supported by the poor masses of the towns and villages.
3) The confiscation without compensation of all capitalist means of production (industry, credit, trade, transportation, mines, and forests) by the workers' state.
4) The creation by the workers' state, supported by the laboring people, of the planner economy on the basis of the toregoing contiscation. the rapid improvement of productivity, and the
44 establishment of the preconditions for the free and equal socialist society.
5) Through the development of state collective farms of the agricultural workers and poor farmers, and by the gradual intensification of coöperation among small farmers on the basis of state aid in funds and techniques, the final incorporation of all agricultural production into the workers' statified and planified economy.
6) Establishment on firm foundations by our revolution of the advance to the socialist society by coöperation with the victorious proletariat in Asia and Africa, and in particular the USSR and China, the establishment of the Socialist United States of the World in cooperation with he working class all over the world, and setting out on the road to the attainment of communist society in free and equal union among all the world peoples. IV. PROSPECTS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS' PARTY - PARTY AND CLASS
29. It is an indispensable precondition for the completion of the revolution to found the revolutionary party that represents and concentrates the class interests of our laboring masses. working class must unite under the leadership of the revolutionary party in order to complete the class's strategic aims. • At present the objective conditions for these strategic aims are completely ripe. The sole problem to be solved is the formation of the revolutionary leadership capable of leading the masses to these aims.
30. The Socialist Party is a reformist workers' party - because, though it does not fight for some retorms, it plays the role of satistying the workers by partial retorms granted by the capitalists and of keeping the workers' struggles within the limits permitted by the capitalists, whereas the present situation leaves little room for serious reforms, which meet with the lifeand-death resistance of the capitalists, and necessitates the release of the powerful energy of the mass movements in order to crush capitalist resistance. The capitalists concede a little to the ipper strata of workers, while they attack and mercilessly exploit the majority of workers. If the working class, faced with this splitting policy, does not raise the struggle for partial demands to a level capable of releasing the energy of the lower strata of workers, i e, an anti-capitalist struggle through which the working class can win substantial concessions, working class will be drawn into the vortex of this splitting policy and its demands will become reformist demands separated from the revolutionary struggle against capitalism.
The SP does not represent the interests of the workers as a class. It (1) is mainly based on
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the upper stratum of workers in the modern capitalist enterprises (private big capital and state capital); (2) plays a role as the agent of capital the pre-modern capitalist enterprises; (3) is based also on the radical part of the petty bourgeoisie. In general, its left wing represents (1) and its right wing (2) and (3).
Therefore the SP forms a chain that draws the overwhelming majority of the workers and a part of the petty bourgeoisie to the hegemony of the above-mentioned strata through the party apparatus.
Lastly, the SP is a main support to bourgeois democracy.
31. The historical origin of reformism is to be sought in the pre-imperialist epoch when the conquest of power by the proletariat was not yet on the order of the day, i e, when the workers' party definitely distinguished two tasks -the struggle for the everyday interests of the masses, and propaganda for socialism.
In the imperialist epoch, objective conditions broke through the Great Wall of China between strategy for the socialist revolution and the everyday struggle. Nevertheless, when the task of combining these two came up on the order of the day, the parties of the Second International completely laid bare their bankruptcy. Under the conditions of the imperialist epoch, these parties on a world scale fell into the hands of representatives only of the upper strata of the privileged workers, only one part of the working masses. And in opposition to the interests of the overwhelming majority of the working class, they fell into the hands of supporters of the splitting policy of the imperialists.
For the upper strata of workers, separated from the overwhelming majority, placed at the top of the trade unions, patronized and utilized by the capitalists, relatively stabilized and granted a part of the excess profits of the monopolies at the expense of the majority, reformism suited to their conservatism not only by ideology but to some extent by objective conditions. Because of this base, the SP can pay no attention to the resistance of the masses, can take on itself the trouble of mediating between the masses and the capitalists, and can play the role of a principal political apparatus of the working class.
32. 'The renovation and intensification of capitalism, particularly private monopoly capitalismas for reformisin. At the same time it pro- after the Korean War, made an effective duced a relative — and in part an absolute -lowering of the standard of living of the majority of workers, which produced also an intensification of class opposition. Accordingly the working class is forced to choose between two courses - a reformist course and a revolution-
[To be concluded in
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL ary course. Each of them is respectively the basis for ZENRO and SOHYO. The history of SOHYO is a rough process where the masses, in a zigzag, experimentally, and without the guidance of a evolutionary party, resisted a retormist course, but the left reformists dragged down their efforts. In ZENRO the hegemony of the labor arıstocracy is tundamentally established. In SUHYO it has been shaken and pushed to the left by pressure from below, and its leadership is maintained only by radical speeches dangerous to itself, and by manoeuvres.
The two-party system that was brought about by the unity of the conservative parties and that of the Socialist parties is part of the policy ot shutting the working class as a whole up within reformism under the conditions of the renovation and intensification of capitalism. It pernits the working class to struggle for reformist demands but forbids it to struggle for revolutionar demands. This is a premiss of capitalist strategy. From above, it consciously intensifies reformist strength inside the working-class movement.
33. At the beginning of 1957, the two-sided operation - repression and reform - by ruling class, and the reformist course included in the above operations - symbolized by the establishment of the two-party system - came into distinct collision with the resistance of the masses. But the resistance of the masses is spontaneous and generally zigzag in form, not guided by a revolutionary leadership. And in these struggles the worker militants of the CP and the SP Lett Wing are rapidly growing and crystalizing. Though they are weakened by their leadership and occasionally lose their way, on the whole they are advancing toward the course of class struggle. our next issue.]