The emergence of West Germany and Japan as leading industrial, commercial, and financial powers over the last fifteen years has its counterpart in the relative decline of American imperialism's hegemony in the capitalist world, which it acquired in every sphere at the close of the Second World War.
The plummeting of the dollar relative to the deutsche mark and yen, far from being simply a maneuver on the part of American imperialism to ease the way for exports of its goods, is the purest reflection of this change in the interimperialist relationship of forces.
Against the background of gloomy economic prospects for the international capitalist economy, this change in the relationship of forces means a sharpening of interimperialist rivalries and conflicts.
Each side is striving to make its own working class, as well as the world working class, bear the costs of this battle of giants. The battle revolves around such major sectors of industry as automobiles (20 percent of the automobiles sold in the United States in 1977 were imported, mainly from Japan and West Germany), steel, shipbuilding, electric appliances, pocket calculators, synthetic textiles, even "sectors of the future" (some future!) like nuclear power and computers.
A previous article (see Intercontinental Press/ Inprecor, February 6, 1978, p. 132), analyzed the narrowly averted trade war between Japan and the United States. In this article, we will try to show how the organized workers movement in Japan has been thrown into crisis by the combined effects of a recession, the end of full employment, and the bosses' offensive.
We should recall that in the wake of the Lockheed scandal (which revealed that the country's top bourgeois politicians, including a former premier, had taken bribes from an American aircraft company), the Liberal Democratic Party, the bourgeois party in Japan that had held power uninterruptedly for thirty years, went through an exceptionally severe crisis.
The fact that the Socialist and Communist parties did not manage to take advantage of this unusually favorable combination of circumstances to put an end to the parliamentary reign of the Liberal Democrats, and instead emerged from the political and economic crisis relatively weakened, on the defensive, and beating a retreat on the ideological and political front, says a great deal about the political impotence and spinelessness of these reformists.
The blows that will rain down on Japanese workers in the coming months could be crippling, especially where jobs are concerned. Revolutionary Marxists in Japan are striving to make sure that an adequate response is given by the toiling masses on as broad a basis as possible, through a policy of alliances and unity in action, working mainly within the tradeunion movement.
The reformist parties in Japan suffered a defeat in the elections to the high chamber in July 1977. This defeat helped stabilizeat least temporarily-the political regime in power in Japan since the end of the 1950s, a regime characterized by the continuation in office of the Liberal Democratic Party (see Inprecor, October 13, 1977).
However, while the open crisis of the ruling party was temporarily overcome, that of the reformist parties continued to deepen, leading to a series of splits and expulsions from the CP and SP.
During the recent national congress of the SP, several members in the right wing of the SP parliamentary bloc, who were opposed to the alliance between the SP and CP, split and later formed a new parlia mentary party with a grouping that had come out of the Liberal Democratic Party, the New Freedom Club. In the district of Fukushima, a largely agricultural area north of Tokyo, the local SP organization in its entirety decided to establish a new socialist organization, based on a peasant movement that has national influence. The crisis of leadership shaking the SP was, to be sure, superficially resolved by the election of a new president, Asukada. Nevertheless, the July election defeat continued to have a deeply unsettling effect on the party, spreading gradually to all echelons of the SP.
The major difference to emerge up to now concerns what policy to follow with respect to the CP. Should the SP's unitedfront policy continue to include the CP (in addition to the center-left formations, like the Democratic Socialist Party and "Clean Government" Party), or should it exclude the CP from now on and present itself as a more moderate alternative to the Liberal Democratic Party?
It should be recalled that the reason the SP and CP suffered a defeat in the last elections is that their leaderships, for the sake of a class-collaborationist orientation applied both in the legislature and in the plants, alienated their own mass base by breaking up struggles. The progress made by the new, so-called center-left currents (like the Democratic Socialist Party, the Clean Government Party, and above all the New Freedom Club) reflects the feelings of many voters who rejected the Liberal Democratic Party, but could not place their confidence in the CP and SP leaderships, and thus had no other alternative but to vote for relatively new formations that had not yet been tested in the eyes of the masses.
The Japanese CP could not remain immune to this far-reaching postelectoral crisis of the left, even if the strength of its bureaucratic apparatus enabled it to contain these centrifugal forces to a greater extent. On January 4, its paper Akahata (Red Flag) announced the expulsion of its vice-chairman, Satomi Hakamada, a longtime associate of CP General Secretary Kenji Miyamoto. Hakamada, along with Miyamoto, spent eighteen years in prison, before and during the Second World War. He symbolizes a period in the history of the Japanese CP that the party boasts about. At that time, it was the only political formation involved in antimilitarist resistance under the imperial regime.
The immediate reason for Hakamada's expulsion is bizarre, but what it really reflects is the profound crisis currently shaking up this bureaucratic party that claims more than 300,000 members.
According to Akahata, Hakamada disclosed the content of secret discussions in the CP Executive Committee to a rightwing weekly. Moreover, the former vicechairman of the CP reportedly claimed that General Secretary Miyamoto was indeed responsible for the death of a government agent who had infiltrated the CP's ranks nearly fifty years ago (for which Hakamada and Miyamoto spent eighteen years in prison). Leaving aside the sensational aspects of the matter, which are of interest only to the bourgeois press, it is important to take a closer look at what Hakamada said he proposed at the Executive Committee meeting following the July elections.
He claims to have said that the responsibility for the election defeat fell on the Miyamoto leadership and on its political line; he criticized the way in which CP activists, wholly preoceupied with selling the party's paper, were turning away from mass work; and he also criticized the way in which the "bureaucratic administration of the party" had demoralized sincere worker cadres and provoked their wholesale resignations. Hakamada calculates that 132,550 members left the party in the last eight years! He went so far as to describe the current electoral policy of the Miyamoto leadership as "anti-workingclass." This policy led the CP to "defend Japanese national interests in opposition to the USSR's establishment of a 200-mile fishing zone," to state that "national defense is a necessity," and that "the problem of the American military presence in Japan would not be an obstacle to forming a coalition government including the CP."
For trade-union cadres who must confront attacks by the bosses on a daily basis, the CP's current line, which aims to hold back all struggles in the name of a supposed "public interest," is intolerable. For instance, the CP is against teachers' strikes on the grounds of the "dedicated" nature of their work.
'he fact is that open criticism 1s nov eing directed at the CP leadership by rank-and-file activists in various sectors of the trade-union movement since the outbreak of the strange Hakamada incident.
Taking advantage of the postelection crisis of the two reformist parties, the Fukuda government has engaged in a series of repressive measures aimed at the independent, radical struggles led by workers, peasants, and fishermen. However, it has steered clear of any provocative actions that might imperil the classcollaborationist policy of the SOHYO! leadership, and other national unions, by pushing them too far and risking their loss of control over young worker activists. In the guise of "worker participation," decisions about how many workers-and which ones-will be laid off or transferred to affiliates are now made by the DOMEI? unions in most of the large monopoly firms.
In the big steel industry, for example, thousands of seasonal workers had their jobs transferred to other companies controlled by the same big families, particularly in the automobile plants like Toyota or Nissan which are less affected by the current "trade war." The DOMEI bureaucracy also plays a direct and influential
2. dean coneration of tabla Daten ery of Labor Unions, closely with the bosses. Its main strength is in big private industry.
2. Japan Confederation
role in organizing scab and company unions in Southeast Asia, Brazil, and other neocolonial countries, expecially in the automobile, metal, and chemical industries. This corresponds, moreover, to the broader steps taken by Japanese imperialism to strengthen its ties with the regimes represented in ASEAN.
The new leadership of SOHYO, represented by Tomizuka, essentially no longer opposes these practices of DOMEI, but since it comes under constant pressure from rank-and-file trade-union activists, it cannot openly espouse such a right-wing policy. When the DOMEI bureaucracy announced that it would not raise a single demand-even regarding wages—for the upcoming "spring offensive," the SOHYO leadership used more cautious formulations, stating that the problem of unemployment was going to become graver than that of wages, since it was a time of economic crisis. With such an attitude on the part of the trade-union leaderships, the Japanese working class must stand up to the ruthless attacks of the bosses on its own, unable to count on the support or initiative of its leadership, and must also combat the bureaucrats'
control over its organizations.
Furthermore, in a time of growing inflation and very high unemployment (the number of bankruptcies of small and medium enterprises is constantly setting new records), it is essential to organize a united response of the working class to defend its living standards and job security, and to fight deteriorating working conditions.
The close cooperation between employers and trade-union leaderships has been facilitated by ancient paternalistic traditions based on the guarantee of lifetime employment that has existed up to now in the big companies, and on the strength of the company unions. When workers reject such collaboration and enter into struggles on their own initiative, it is common for the police to intervene to smash the radical elements within the unions, with the tacit approval of the bureaucratic leaderships. On January 11, for example, sixty or so plainclothes police searched several union headquarters of the metalworkers federation, including one belonging to the workers at Citizen Watch, a watchmaking company on the outskirts of Tokyo, and arrested four union leaders.
(In December 1977, the local metalworkers federation had organized a "collective negotiation"- in which about 200 workers participated-at the headquarters of Mitsubishi Metal Company, one of the
Ladin This achobilization leading metal-manufacturing trusts in Japan. This action was carried out during a nationwide mobilization called by SO- HYO. The objective of the repressive measures was clearly to smash the militant leadership of this metalworkers local, which had "gone too far," mainly by organizing solidarity actions with the Sanrizuka farmers.)
The workers in small and medium businesses, the first to be hit by the crisis, have to face conditions that are still much harder than in the big companies. To take but one example, the Petri firm, a wellknown camera exporter, closed on account of bankruptcy at the end of last year. The 200 workers at the Petri company in Saitama, north of Tokyo, found themselves abruptly facing a cruel dilemma-either to leave the firm with vague hopes of finding a new job, or to stay behind to fight for the payment of back wages and for reorganizing production. The leadership of the SO- HYO union local asked for support from the leadership of the district council of this union, to no avail. It then decided to occupy the plant with the help of the Japanese Communist Youth (JCY-the youth organization of the Japanese section of the Fourth International). At present, the union local is selling the camera stocks to other worker militants and to all who support their fight, in order to be able to continue the struggle.
Occupying factories and placing them under "self-management" has become increasingly frequent in the small-business sector, where the management often suddenly declares bankruptcy to avoid having to pay back wages, and later simply "disappears." It is becoming more and more essential to provide regionwide coordination of these struggles, since they cannot rely for support on the national federations of SOHYO, which are organized along branch lines of industry and which are strongest in the public sector.
The militancy of the Japanese working class, expecially the young workers, has not been completely smashed in the wake of the rightward evolution of the reformist SOHYO leadership. Consequently, it is necessary to organize a class-struggle current inside SOHYO, as well as in the unorganized sectors, to develop a national alternative to the class-collaborationist leadership of the CP, SP, and SOHYO.
On January 21-22, the bimonthly publication Workers News held its second national conference in Osaka, in which 200 workers, representing radical struggles across the country, participated.
Workers News serves as a liaison not only for small, radical unions representing a minority of workers, but also for a broad layer of trade-union officials within SO. HYO itself. It thereby reflects the growing political polarization at work within the union, which should lead to the formation of class-struggle currents in a number of important sectors in the period ahead.
The conference heard greetings from the former president of SOHYO, Makoto Ichikawa; the former general secretary of the national teachers union, Miyoji Hiragaki; and the president of the Sanrizuka Opposition League, Issaku Tomura.
The main report was presented by a local leader of the metalworkers union. He dwelt on the need for workers unity in the fight for socialism to deal with the severe capitalist crisis in progress, and on the need to revive the militant traditions of the Japanese working class in order to combat class-collaborationist currents within the workers movement.
A good part of the discussions at the conference centered on the struggle of the Sanrizuka farmers and on the tasks of working-class solidarity with this struggle. A representative of the union of Japanese National Railway workers from the Chiba district called for a boycott of fuel shipments to the new Tokyo International Airport in Narita, which the Sanrizuka farmers have been fighting. The union is under a two-pronged attack from the government and from the national leadership of the rail workers union. He emphasized the need to strengthen the alliance between the workers and farmers, and especially to see to it that all class-struggle currents nationwide were united in support to their strike against the opening of Narita airport.
For twelve years, the farmers of Sanrisure he seane to bailing at d been waging a determined of the new international airport in Narita, a densely populated area about sixty kilometers northeast of Tokyo. This struggle has received broad support from students and workers. One of the measures taken by the Fukuda government to attack the militant sectors of mass struggles was to schedule the opening of the airport for March 30 of this year, more than six years after the date originally chosen. In May 1977, the two steel towers set up at the end of the runway, which had barred its use by planes, were torn down by the government. To do this, thousands of riot police were mobilized. One of the demonstrators was killed after a heavy barrage of tear gas. The government and the airport authorities used all the means at their disposal, both legal and illegal according to their own laws, to smash the opposition movements.
However, even though the opening date for the airport is now only a month away, a series of major technical problems remain unsolved. Currently, the airport has only one runway, and there are still at least two "fortresses" built by farmers on undeveloped land tracts where the other runways are supposed to be built. Furthermore, the handling of 150 flights per day Will ronnire chinning enormous quantities will require shipping enormous quantities of highly flammable fuel to the airport by rail. However, the local railway workers union has decided to go on strike if the airport opens.
In addition, opposition to the airport is no longer limited to the farmers and workers involved in the struggle. The International Air Transportation Association has lodged several public protests with the Japanse government, since the fees that the airlines will have to pay will be three times as high as at any other international airport. Security costs are also considered too high, because airline personnel are unwilling to transfer to Narita airport from Haneda airport, where they now work. Narita is one of the most remote airports in the world. The trip to downtown Tokyo from there takes more than two hours, assuming the trains run on time. However, trains on the outskirts of Tokyo are frequently stalled for long periods.
lhe employees association of the Japa ese Ministrv of Foreign Affairs has als protested, annuncing that it would refuse to use the new airport to welcome foreign diplomats and guests of the government because of security problems and the airport's "ramshackle" construction. In an open letter to the government dated September 1977, the association noted that "at the new Narita airport, planes will be forced to land and take off amid security forces and barricades. An opportunity and a place for celebrating international friendship will be lost."
For some time now, the struggle of the Sanrizuka farmers has become a national rallying point for all who are revolutionary-minded, and for all those within the workers movement who want to fight back against the attacks of the bosses and the class-collaborationist line
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Intercontinental of their reformist leaderships. The support to Chiba Doro (the local rail workers union that is ready to strike against the opening of the airport and shipment of fuel) is spreading across the country to many trade-union bodies.
Rentaisurukai, a unified solidarity committee to support the Sanrizuka farmers, has launched a month-long campaign that began February 20, to prepare for as large a turnout as possible when the airport opens. In September 1977, this committee organized a 600-kilometer march from Kobe to Sanrizuka, during which the farmers were able to share their experiences with a large number of local unions, antipollution groups, and others. In October, 22,000 persons from around the country responded to its call to participate in a rally near the site of the airport.
The struggles in March in Sanrizuka will be a test of strength between the revolutionary mass movement and the Fukuda government's repressive apparatus. On February 6, a 50-meter-high metal tower was built overnight on the roof of one of the "fortresses" ringing the airport. The police were finally able to tear it down with the help of a gigantic crane, even though four members of the JCY were perched at the top.
Whatever repressive means the Fukuda government resorts to, whatever the brutality of the measures it takes, one thing is certain: the fight of the Sanrizuka farmers will continue, as it has for twelve years already. It will continue to win ever broader revolutionary support from farmers, students, and workers who reject the class-collaborationist outlook offered by the reformist leaderships.
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Notes
1. General Council of Trade Unions of Japan, whose leadership mainly looks to the Socialist Party, with a minority supporting the Communist Party. Its principal strength is in the public sector.
3. Association of Southeast Asian Nations, made up of the governments of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
4. "Spring offensive" is the name given to the economic struggles that take place each spring. when collective-bargaining contracts come up for renewal.