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Japan: Its Rise from Feudalism ...
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 5, 4 February 1933, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
It is a far cry from the peaceful, agitational phase of the Japanese labor movement at the time of the Russo-Japanese War to the necessarily stern and virile movement of the present time. At that time the Japanese Social Democrats wrote their famous greetings to the Russian comrades despite the reality of the imperialist war into which both governments had plunged the two nations. The Japanese workers, struggling against nationalist jingoism and capitalist imperialism, understood clearly the international aspect of their movement. Yet they had not advanced beyond the stage where they could say:
“We are neither nihilists nor terrorists, but we are Social Democrats. We object absolutely to using military force in our fighting. We have to fight by peaceful means, by reason and speech.”
Lenin replied to these historic greetings in Iskra and his words stand out today, the day of open violence and organized terror against the Japanese workers, in startling boldness and with striking applicability:
“Amid the jingoistic chorus of both countries, their voice sounds as a herald from that better world, which, though it exists today only in the mind of the class-conscious proletariat, will become a reality tomorrow We do not know when that ‘tomorrow’ will come. But we, the Social Democrats the world over, are all working to bring it nearer and nearer. We are digging a grave for the miserable today – the present social order. We are organizing the forces which will finally bury it. Force against force, violence against violence! And in saying this we speak neither as nihilists nor as terrorists ... What is important for us is the feeling of solidarity, which the Japanese comrades have expressed in their message to us. We send them a hearty greeting. Down with militarism! Hail to the international social democracy!”
Ours is a stormy epoch, an epoch of profound upheavals. Capitalist civilization, its contradictions laid bare before the entire world, its component parts warring against each other, is bankrupt and threatens chaos unless the vanguard of the workers leads the proletariat alone the only road out. But leadership is not a mechanical process, it is dynamic and creative and, after clear-sighted analysis of each situation, it must carefully choose the proper weapons for the struggle.
The vanguard must know above all how to unite and rally the workers for the march to power. This road remains blocked and impassable so long as the majority of the working class remain under the deadening influence of the reformists and opportunists. Mere denouncing of these misleaders as social Fascists, not only does not accomplish anything, but tends to alienate the masses still under the yoke of the reformists. Surely the Japanese Communists, the vanguard of a movement that has from the first shown itself sensitive to the bitter lessons of the international proletariat, have learned from the experience in China with Chiang Kai-Shek, the need for a separate, unified Communist party. But surely also they have learned from a study of the German situation for the past several years, the danger of alienating themselves from the masses, the aid given to the reformist leaders by the Stalinist blunders in united front tactics. In Japan the acuteness of the crisis, the crushing of workers and peasants under the heels of the imperialists, offers an unexampled opportunity to unite the workers in struggle. As in every country, the immediate demands must be for relief for the unemployed and the starving, then the workers must be rallied together to demand unemployment insurance. But particularly in Japan, the struggle for bread can be linked directly with the struggle for peace, against militarism. The workers and peasants starve while the government wastes huge sums to maintain an army of conquest. Remember the rice riots!
The Japanese face the task, as in no other country, of liberating women through organization, first in unions, then in the Party. Young girls and women form the majority of factory workers, the overwhelming majority of textile workers, Japanese women, like all women of the East, have been kept in virtual slavery in the home as well as in the shops and factories. Theirs has been the duty of unquestioning obedience. It is of utmost significance that divorces in Japan are three times as great in number as in America, the
classic land of divorce. The reason for this is the wretched position of the woman in the home. Signs are not lacking that the working women of Japan are learning to throw in their lot with that of the organized workers. But organization of women kept in dormitories is necessarily difficult. All unions can surely be united in the fight against this vicious system which has actually been utilized on occasion to starve women into subjection where they have had the courage to strike.
The second special task of the Communists is to secure the cooperation of the outcaste Etas of Japan. The three million or so Etas have an organization of their own, the Suiheisha or Equality Society. This society with its 200,000 members played an important role in organizing the first labor party. The Etas, rough toilers, not afraid of violence, took a most active part in the rice riots of 1918. They live in separate villages generally shunned by the forces of law and order. The Communists must see to it that these sturdy outcasts are not misled into dissipating their energy entirely in a fight for social equality, important as such a fight is. The Etas are inevitably part of the working class and must be taught the importance of struggling for the interests of the entire working class. At the same time the other workers must prove their willingness to accept the Etas into their organizations on an equal footing.
Conscription makes of the Japanese army essentially a peasant army with a peasant psychology. The army is at the same time the strength and the weakness of Japanese imperialism. The peasants are not suddenly metamorphosed in the army; they remain the potential rebellion. They cannot help but wonder at the contrast between the misery and starvation in the homes they have just left, and the care taken of their health and “welfare” in the army. As cannon-fodder they are evidently worth far more than as toilers on the land.
The army is the armed peasantry and workers. It is in this sense that Communists must propagandize the army, bringing home the meaning of the contrasts between civilian and military life, showing that the starvation at home is the direct result of the use of the army abroad. The Chinese comrades have in this respect a duty whose fulfillment may prove decisive. They must aid their Japanese comrades to spread Communist propaganda among the troops. It may well be that if the next phase of the Chinese revolution, resulting from the Japanese aggression, once more brings the Chinese proletariat in the arena of struggle. The red heat of the Chinese revolution will communicate its intensity to the Japanese army.
The soldier workers and peasants must be fore-warned particularly against their use as tools to set up a Bonapart to stave off the revolution. The military clan in Japan, the dictators to both the Emperor and the Shadow government ever’ since the Restoration, is ready to proclaim army rule at a moment’s notice. The generals are not lacking in Bonapartist aspirations. The Machiavellian role of the military clique in keeping workers and peasants under the heavy yoke of exploitation by using a special (armed) part of the working class and peasantry, must be emphasized in soldier propaganda. Not Fascism is the danger in Japan but Bonapartism (military “mediation” between the classes) due to the special historic status of the generals. Bourgeois democracy has never been established in reality and hence need not be swept aside.
It is unthinkable that the present crisis in Japan can pass without profound changes. It is the extreme instability of Japanese economy that forces the army into Manchuria in search of desperate remedies. The war of conquest threatens to precipitate world war at any moment, on the one hand with the U.S., on the other with the USSR. To the revolutionist, it is utterly out of the question to think of helping to precipitate an imperialist war (between the U.S. and Japan) in order to avoid an attack on the Soviet Union, as has been in the minds of some. Just as inconceivable is it to think of any alliance between the U.S. and the USSR against Japan. Imperialism must be fought on all fronts, more especially on the home front. And if war nevertheless results, the Japanese workers long ago set an example of solidarity for all the world (of workers) to follow.
The revolutionary way out is only through the proletarian revolution. In Japan the situation is a rapidly-changing one. Under mass pressure, the capitalists, to save their own skins, may attempt to lead the workers and peasants against the militarists. The Communist must know in advance how to act in such an eventuality. If the capitalists are permitted to place themselves undisputedly at the head of the peasants, the revolution is doomed to failure. The Communists at the head of the proletariat must teach the peasants to carry out in actuality their real demands – to seize the land, to refuse to pay rents, to repudiate debts – and thus assure the “democratic” phase of the revolution. But the proletariat must not stop there, it must, with the aid of the poor, overburdened petty bourgeoisie, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. The international proletariat, beginning with the Russians, must help in this tremendous task.
THE END
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