Remember Hiroshima? (1965)

From the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the aircraft carrying the atomic bomb appeared above Hiroshima early in the morning of 6lh August 1945, the people of the city were not especially alarmed.

They assumed that it was the reconnaissance ‘plane which every day reported on the weather over a nearby lake, used as a rendezvous point by the American bombers. For months, the B-29’s had been hammering at one Japanese city after another; in August 1945 there were only two of any importance which had not suffered a heavy raid. One of these was Hiroshima.

Uneasily, the city was organising its defences. Every home was required to have a concrete water tank readily accessible for fire-fighting. Many houses were being torn down to make fire breaks. But the Super-Fortresses kept roaring past to the lake, and swung away to other targets. The people of Hiroshima became convinced that the Americans were saving something especially horrible for them.

All these fears came to a head, at eight-fifteen that morning, when the bomb flashed in the sky and the blast roared down and out and eighty thousand human beings died in a way which nobody had ever known before. More than four square miles of Hiroshima was destroyed; within a year the death roll had reached one hundred and forty thousand.

The effects of the bomb were gruesomely strange, and this gave rise to panic rumours about what had happened. Some people said the Americans had sprayed petrol over the city and set light to it. Others thought that a cloud of magnesium had been dropped, and ignited by high tension wires. Unfamiliar and menacing things were happening to the survivors of the bomb. Their hair fell out, their gums bled, trifling cuts stayed open and festered for weeks. Pregnant women suffered miscarriages and premature births; countless babies were born dead. People who had no visible injuries or burns quietly and simply died. And as if in mockery at this, weeds and wild flowers of all sorts flourished under the bomb’s rays and grew in profusion over the wreckage of the city.

President Truman announced that the weapon he had launched against Hiroshima had “. . . more power than twenty thousand tons of T.N.T. . . . more than two thousand times the blast power of the British Grand Slam, which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.” Although the people who were dying and suffering at Hiroshima did not appreciate it, history had been made at their expense.

In the United States, the New Yorker added its own little bit of history by devoting its entire edition, for the first time in its life, to a single feature. This was a report by John Hersey on the experiences of six people…..a German Catholic priest, an office girl, a Protestant Minister, two doctors and a windowed housewife—who had lived through the destruction of Hiroshima. Hersey’s story was immediately famous, and in November 1946 it was published in this country as a shilling Penguin (Hiroshima, by John Hersey—Penguin Books).

Here was the reality behind the politicians’ statements and the statisticians’ tables and the scientists’ measurements. These people had been crushed and wounded and frightened by the bomb. They had seen inexpressible horrors. Hersey told their story with restraint and sympathy, leaving the enormity of Hiroshima to speak for itself. Only once did he stand in judgement, and that was when he was telling what happened to the office girl when the bomb went off:

“. . . the bookcases right behind her swooped forward and the contents threw her down, with her left leg horribly twisted and breaking underneath her. There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.”

For the rest, the tragedy of Hiroshima is laid out in clean and compassionate English. All the horror is there, in the description of the wounded peoples’ macabre procession into the Red Cross Hospital:

“Dr. Sasaki worked without method, taking those who were nearest him first, and he noticed soon that the corridor seemed to be getting more and more crowded . . . Before long, patients lay and crouched on the floors of the wards and the laboratories and all the other rooms, and in the corridors, and on the stairs, and in the front hall, and under the portecochere, and on the front stone steps, and in the driveway and courtyard, and for blocks each way in the streets outside. . . . Dr. Sasaki lost all sense of profession and stopped working as a skilful surgeon and a sympathetic man; he became an automaton, mechanically wiping, daubing, winding, wiping, daubing, winding.”

The twenty years which have gone by since that nightmare have been full of the lies and evasions of the official propaganda machines. The allied governments excused Hiroshima on the grounds that there was no other quick way of ending the war. They have never successfully explained why it was necessary to show the bomb’s power on a virtually undamaged city, when there were plenty of other places where it could have been demonstrated without killing over a hundred thousand people.

Then they fed us with the deterrent theory, which began with the argument (remember?) that so long as the United States was the only power to have the secret of the Bomb no other country would dare to start a war. The other capitalist powers, however, did not see it in this light; many of them said that the best way to preserve peace was for them also to have the Bomb and so restore the balance of power in the world. And while they have been arguing, and while the disarmament conferences have been droning on, and while the official lies have been flowing out, nuclear weapons have spread and become more powerful. If one of today’s hydrogen bombs had been used at Hiroshima, none of Hersey’s six people would have lived to tell their stories; they would all have been well inside the first fireball.

The important question now is what effect the establishment of nuclear armaments has had on the world. There is no evidence that the six people of Hiroshima, among the luckiest alive, learned anything from their experiences. The widow, for example, descended into destitution, and placidly accepted it. The office girl relapsed into bewildered despair. The priest had his own consolations:

“If your God is so good and kind, how can he let people suffer like this?” She made a gesture which took in her shrunken leg, the other patients in her room, and Hiroshima as a whole.

“My child, Father Kleinsorge said, “man is not now in the condition God intended. He has fallen from grace through sin.”

And of course there were always the delusions of blind patriotism:

“. . . I never heard anyone cry in disorder, even though they suffered in great agony. They died in silence, with no grudge, setting their teeth to bear it. All for the country!”

This was not unusual. In every city and in every land, in 1945 the war-weary working people could see no reason to abandon their support of the social system which had brought them to atomic warfare. All over the world, capitalism ruled on. Eventually there came the anti-nuclear movement, but that was a protest not against capitalism, nor even against war, but against a particular method of waging war. The nuclear disarmers were no different from the other movements which have protested against capitalism’s problems without understanding why they exist.

The atomic bomb was a refinement of the high explosive bombs—like the Grand Slam—which were becoming increasingly cumbersome, because the only way of stepping up their destructive power was to increase their size. High explosive bombs were an extension of the artillery shell, which in turn was a development from small arms fire. The refinement and the increase in the power of armaments is a continuous process, spurred on by, and inseparable from, the ever-present possibility of war.

All the time, the powers of capitalism are in conflict—over the right to exploit the places where they can sell goods and over access to the places where they can find the raw materials to make the goods. Singly or in alliance, they dispute over oil, tin, rubber—which means that they dispute over the Middle East. Malaya, the Congo. They dispute over trade routes and the ports and bases which serve and protect them—which means over Suez, Cyprus, Gibraltar. Here is the basic reason for armed forces, for the arms race and for the build up in weapons which now holds the possibility of a future too terrible to imagine.

It is time now to remember Hiroshima, but not in protest against the Bomb, nor against the men who made it or who dropped it, nor even against the men who sanctioned its use. The only effective protest is against capitalism, against the social order whose conflicts have brought us to the stage where human society can almost wipe itself out. Remember, then, Hiroshima—but not as a beginning nor as an end, only as an incident in a terrible story.

Ivan

Ours and theirs (1981)

From the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The main points in the Bank of England Bulletin, which was issued last month, were well covered by television, radio and newspapers. Anyone taking what was said in these reports as what was meant would have been delighted with the good news. Here are some of the ways in which the news was reported: “Recession or no WE are getting richer abroad”; “According to figures assembled by the Bank’s statisticians . . . OUR external wealth was actually £4.3 billion more in 1979 than we thought it was a year ago”; “In 1980, for the first time, OUR assets abroad exceeded £200 billion ...” (Our emphasis).

Great, you might think. You can leave that dreary job, or stop looking for one. You can move out of your cramped home and move into spacious accommodation with pleasant amenities. No longer will your lifestyle be tethered by a meagre and insecure income. No longer will your impulses be repeatedly smothered by your poverty. So you get on the blower to the Bank of England, explain that you have heard the news about our great wealth which is invested abroad and ask how you might go about getting some of your share now.

Waiting for your reply from the other end of the line, the dialling tone, or worse, would be your signal that all is not as it seems. In fact what is described as "our overseas wealth’, if it was being reported from the point of view of the great majority, would be described as "their overseas wealth’. In Britain today, the entire pooled wealth of the poorest 80 per cent of the adult population amounts to less than that which is owned by the wealthiest 1 per cent (Report of Royal Commission on Distribution of Income and Wealth, 1980) and 93 per cent of adults do not own any stocks or shares. (CIS report, The Wealthy).

Meanwhile, in Japan the capitalist minority’s quest for profit continues with its inevitable disregard for the common social good. For many years a drug developed by a Professor Chisato Maruyama to treat terminal cancer has been dispensed at his small clinic in Tokyo. The vaccine seems to be regarded as effectual, at least by the hundreds of people who queue from dawn every day outside the clinic to collect a forty days’ supply for their suffering friends or relatives.

Research conducted at Tohoku University suggests that where the vaccine has been used in conjunction with other medical treatment survival rates in terminal cancer have much improved over treatment with other drugs. However, the small clinic cannot keep up with the demand and at the moment it is the only place allowed to dispense the vaccine. In order for the drug to become generally available it must be licenced by the Pharmaceutical Council of the Health Ministry. The Health Ministry usually rules on new drugs within 18 months but the Pharmaceutical firm making the vaccine first applied for licensing five years ago, and still no decision has been reached.

The issue became publicised after patients’ families petitioned the Ministry with 60,000 signatures, and the clamour could no longer be ignored by the government. The reason for the extraordinary delay in official approval being granted to the drug cannot be certain as deliberations of the decision makers—and this applies across the world under capitalism—are conducted in secret, or privately as they would prefer to call it.

But all of the available evidence suggests that there have been “close relations" between the Health Ministry and major drug companies. It seems that these firms are exerting strong pressure (the Yen variety) on health officials to block the commercial licensing of the Maruyama vaccine, which would present damaging competition to their own anti-cancer drugs already on the market. There is a trend for many senior ministry bureaucrats who are ‘co-operative’ with the representatives of large drug companies to be given highly paid appointments with the companies once they have retired from government employment. The rather well-titled ‘vice-president’ of one of the largest Japanese pharmaceutical companies was Deputy Health Minister a few years ago. Until the power of control and decision-making is withdrawn from the minority who now exercise it all over the world, society will continue to be run by us for them.

Gary Jay

The Yellow Peril (1945)

From the July 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Miss Hoare was mentioned in the Daily Express of April 18th, 1945, as a person with quaint ideas. She has lived in Japan for 26 years, including nine months after the war started. This is what she had to say: “The Japanese are a most lovable, courteous and kind people. I was never afraid of them. I loved them and they loved me.” She went on to say that the Westerners have driven the Japanese into war and that before that they were peaceable, self-supporting and content. Historically it is true that Japan used to be isolated from the outside world, but it is not the Western world which now has driven the Japanese into war, it is capitalism. It was owing to the fact that a certain section of the ruling-class of Japan set out upon a programme of capitalist expansion with the object of obtaining cheaper raw materials and access to markets that the Japanese are at war. All war under capitalism is brought about for the same reason whether it is by Japan, Germany, Britain, Russia, or any other up-to-date country.

The workers of Japan, owing to their political ignorance support war in the same way as the workers of other countries support it. Until they understand the working of the present system of society they will continue their support. British fellow workers please note.

Chester.

Out of the ground in Asia (2003)

From the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is plain that the invasion of Iraq was essentially caused by Western capitalism’s desire to control that country’s oil supplies. But the Middle East is not the only area with such resources, and other capitalist powers are keen to get their hands on whatever energy supplies they can.

China, for instance, used to pride itself on its oil industry, with “In industry, learn from Daqing”, referring to a celebrated oilfield, being part of a ubiquitous slogan in Maoist days. Since 1993, however, it has been a net importer of oil, and now imports 30 percent of its requirements. Existing fields are approaching depletion, and on one estimate, by 2020 at least half of the oil it needs will have to be imported. This is problematic for China’s rulers, in terms of both cost and security of supplies.

Hence the interest in exploring and exploiting the Tarim Basin, a vast area located in the extreme west of China, near the border with Kirghistan (see Beijing Review, 9 October). This has both oil and gas, possibly as much as 6 billion tons of the former and 8 trillion cubic meters of the latter. Oil production is already under way, but it is gas that is the current focus of interest. A pipeline, over 4000 kilometers long and costing untold billions of dollars, is being planned to carry natural gas from Tarim to the Shanghai area on China’s eastern coast. Even this, though, is only likely to provide thirty years’ worth of gas supplies.

Meanwhile, oil resources in Russia have also become a subject of dispute. The Angarsk area, near Irkutsk on the shore of Lake Baikal, is at the centre of a sizeable oilfield, and the Russian rulers, relatively strapped for cash as they are, see this as a resource they can sell in return for foreign exchange. However, the amount of oil there is unlikely to be enough to justify more than one pipeline to deliver it to prospective customers, so there is a scramble to see where that pipeline should go. China, of course, wants it to go to Daqing so that its own needs for oil can be met.

But Japan has another idea, a pipeline to Nakhodka, which is in Russia’s far east, just down the coast from Vladivostok and facing Japan. The Japanese Prime Minister visited Moscow in January this year, and the pipeline was one of the items on their agenda. And the United States, not content with getting hold of Iraq’s oil, has its own eyes on what is happening: a pipeline in the other direction to Murmansk, near Russia’s border with Finland, could lead to the oil being exported to the US instead.

Behind all this diplomacy lie two issues, apart from the general one of ensuring access to energy. One is diversification of supplies, so that problems in one area will not lead to a drastic cutback in availability of oil or gas. China, for instance, sees Kazakhstan as another potential supplier, and a Chinese company is already exploring there. Japan currently takes nearly 90 percent of its oil imports from the Persian Gulf area, and this is not a healthy situation as far as Japan’s capitalists are concerned. The other issue is seeking to prevent any one rival country from dominating oil supplies in a particular area. Japan, again, does not want China to control the lion’s share of oil in east Asia. Any country that was in such a situation of dominance would quite likely have the whip-hand over its competitors.

The availability and sensible use of energy is an issue for any society. But under capitalism, questions of strategy and inter-nation rivalry far outweigh environmental and other concerns. We cannot predict whether there will be an Oil War in central or eastern Asia in the near future, but there is no doubt that this is one area of the world to watch very closely.

Paul Bennett

The Passing Show: Houses (1952)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Houses

We hear a lot about the housing shortage. Officially, housing is considered to be adequate when there is one room per person in a household; though anyone who has to live in a household where six persons are crammed into a six-roomed house may be excused for supposing that the official who arrived at this conclusion has never had a similar experience. But the last census shows that more than a quarter of the total population lives in households where not even this ratio is attained—where there is not even one room per each member of the household.

This is, however, only one side of the picture. There is another, and a happier, side. For like food-rationing, the housing shortage is a problem that affects one class in the country only—the poorer class, the working class. Just as the rich have never needed ration books—the restaurants and hotels have always been able to provide them with all the food they wanted without rationing—so have they never needed to put their names at the bottom of the housing lists. For the question the social system asks of the house-hunter is not "How badly off are you for accommodation? ” but “How much capital have you got?” If, like most people, you have none, you can join the housing queue; but if you have five or six thousand at your command the estate agents will fall over themselves offering you desirable residences with all mod con. Take one issue of The Times—for example, that of August 5th. Here there are a hundred houses and more offered for sale; there are none below £1,000, and only one or two below £3,000, the prices of most being from £5,000 up to £35,000. But supposing there was a worker so frugal that out of his wage of £6 or £7 a week he managed to put away £1 each and every week, even when he was out of work through illness or "redundancy"; how long would it take him to save up £5,000 for one of these desirable properties? If he began saving now, he would have his five thousand in the year 2052. This scheme, though, like all schemes for the amelioration of the working class under Capitalism, has its drawback: the snag in this case is that the worker would almost certainly be dead in 2052. 

Personal Column

While you are looking in The Times for your house, turn to the Personal Column. Here you will find houses for sale at £10,000, houses or flats to rent at £20 a week (e.g., 31.7.52). Here you will come across a number of other items which might lead you to suspect that the Labour Party’s claim to have taxed the rich out of existence is exaggerated. On July 29th there was an advert, inserted by someone who had £100,000 to spare to buy a drapery business; on July 23rd there was offered for sale a book-publishing business for the same sum. Then on July 31st a gentleman going to Scotland for a month wanted a “chauffeur-loader-handyman”; in other words, besides being able to go on holiday for a month himself, he could afford to take a servant along. And students of the rate of interest after six years’ Labour Government will be interested in the following item, which appeared on August 2nd: 

Torquay.—Sound investment offered; 12 new proprietary 4-berth caravans £4,250; net £800 yearly income guaranteed.—Write box . . .

The happy purchaser will be able to rake in £16 a week net, this being a return of nearly 19 per cent., at the expense of the twelve unfortunate families who have to pay what must be high rents for caravans.

Korea

As the war continues in Korea, the headlines still say “No progress in truce talks.” What discussions still go on are now largely taken up with arguments about how to translate “United Nations” into Korean. But each side claims that deadlock has been reached because of the intransigeant attitude of the other side in the matter of the return of the Korean and Chinese prisoners held by the so-called “United Nations” forces. It is certainly difficult for the impartial observer to decide whether these prisoners would be worse off in North Korea under the Stalinists or in South Korea under Syngman Rhee. One thing is clear: whichever part of the country finally gets them, their social position as propertyless workers will be exactly the same. North of the firing line or south of it, the social system is capitalist, and will continue to be so for as long as the present sets of rulers hold power.

The Koreans

Each world group maintains that its forces went into Korea to defend the Koreans against aggression and to uphold their liberties. But while each side poured men and arms into the country, both nominally in defence of the inhabitants, what actually happened to the Koreans? At the meeting in Toronto of the International Red Cross, it was stated that ten million people had been driven from their homes, and another million were permanently injured or had disappeared (Times, 4.8.52). And this in a country the total population of which is only nineteen million!

Woe betide any people when the power-blocs of the world decide that its liberties and independence are in danger.

Wage-freeze

At the end of July the engineering employers turned down the claim of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions for a £2 a week increase in pay. Two of the reasons they gave are worthy of note. The rise in the cost of living, they said, had been partly offset by higher family allowances. This reinforces the Socialist case that family allowances are in effect merely one of the devices of the employers to keep down wages. In fact, a given sum paid as family allowances is worth more to the employers than the same sum paid in the wage-packet. For wages are paid at the same level irrespective of whether the worker is married or has any children to keep. But family allowances go solely to the man who has a sizeable family to support, and thus allay discontent among that very section of the working class who would be the hardest hit and therefore the first to complain when the cost of living rose. In this way family allowances act to keep the general wage level down.

Germany and Japan

And, secondly, the engineering employers pointed out that the industry was faced with a revival of competition from Germany and Japan. This competition, which is no doubt a very real menace to British capitalists, leads the worker only to speculate on the uselessness of war. For as soon as Germany and Japan were defeated, the ruling classes of Britain and the United States decided that the real danger to their overseas markets and sources of raw material now came from Russia and her allies. After the first world war it was fifteen years before Germany rearmed. This time it has taken only seven years, and Germany is rearming at the instance of her late enemies. Rearmament is impossible without flourishing heavy industries. So the last war, while it halted Germany’s aggrandisement for a time, and while it provided British industry with orders for a time, was only a temporary palliative. In order to prepare for a third world war, British Capitalism has now to watch the resuscitation of its German rival.

Militarism

What of the workers, who were exhorted to fight Germany in the last war under the pretence that the real fight was not so much against the German state as against the Nazis and German militarism? If this tale ever carried credence, it should do so no longer, as more and more reports come in of the Nazis and militarists, once supposed to be defeated, still in the seats of office in Germany. The Krupp family were prominent among the industrialist supporters of Hitler; on August 4th it wasreported that the Villa Hugel, the Krupp family home, was being derequisitioned, and that Herr Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was building a new house in the grounds—this while many of the British houses destroyed by Krupp armaments are still unreplaced. On August 8th an article in The Times, remarking on the difficulties encountered by the Israeli-German conference on reparations, contained the following comment:

“Some of the Jewish delegates had themselves suffered grievously at the hands of the Nazis and before sitting down to the same table with the Germans had to submit to the difficult process of sinking their own feelings—a process which was not made easier by the fact that some of the German delegates themselves had been members of the Nazi Party or had worked in the German Foreign Office under Ribbentrop.”

In the same paper, on the same day, a letter appeared from Randolph Churchill attacking a suggestion that “no former German officer should be allowed to serve in the German contingent of the European Defence Community,” on the unusual ground that it was un-Christian. Well, perhaps; but if this proposal is un-Christian, it doesn't say much for Christianity. And finally, General Sir John Harding, one of the NATO European commanders, and next year’s Chief of the Imperial General Staff, has said, “I think that German military thinking will contribute immensely to Western defence.” Obviously, if Randolph Churchill and General Harding have anything to do with it, the old gang of German militarists will be fully employed in the expected struggle against the Russians.

So anyone who thought we were fighting against “German militarism” in the last war will have to think again.

Nationalisation

From The Times, 31.7.52:

“Russian armed guards are to-day reported to be patrolling the power station at Amstetten, Lower Austria, to prevent its being taken over by the Newag—the Lower Austria Electrical Supply Corporation — in accordance with the federal nationalisation law."

But if nationalisation is supposed to be to the advantage of the workers, why are the Stalinists denying its benefits to the Austrian workers?

Alwyn Edgar

One-party rule in Japan at an end? (2007)

From the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politics in Japan has reached a turning point—or a dead end—with the crushing defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party in the upper-house election on 29 July.

The Liberal Democratic Party, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, lost the majority it had held in the upper house (along with its coalition partner the New Komei Party), so that now it is controlled by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Many within the LDP have called for Abe to resign, which is customary after such a major defeat, but as of mid-August he is still holding on to power. Whatever Abe’s destiny, however, the election result seems to herald the beginning of the end of what has essentially been a system of one-party rule since the LDP was formed in 1955.

There is no shortage of reasons for the defeat suffered by the LDP. First and foremost, there was the scandal involving the pension system. It was revealed in May that some 50 million pension records had been lost. This means that people who regularly paid into the system are at risk of being shortchanged on their pension benefits. With a huge percentage of Japan’s population at or nearing retirement age, it is easy to understand why this scandal has alienated so many people from the LDP.

There were also the scandals involving cabinet members, including the illegal funding of political activities and the usual LDP “verbal gaffes.” Two members of Abe’s cabinet resigned and the minister of agriculture, who was under fire for a funding scandal, committed suicide. Incredibly, the new agricultural minister was implicated in a similar funding scandal and resigned immediately after the election defeat.

While these scandals seem to have been the direct cause of the LDP’s defeat, there are long-term political and social changes that have gradually eroded the party’s power and contributed to the unpopularity of Prime Minister Abe. One trend, which has been much commented on in the press, is the increasing “social divide” between the richer rich and poorer poor. Among the have-nots the impression is that the “structural reforms” implemented by the LDP, starting with Abe’s predecessor Koizumi, have only worsened their lives.

The divide between rich and poor corresponds to a growing disparity between the more affluent cities and the economically depressed rural areas. Traditionally the LDP has depended on votes in the rural districts, and repaid this support with the agricultural protectionism and large-scale public works projects that are the two pillars of the local economies. These policies have become difficult to maintain, given the ballooning government debt and need to form free-trade agreements, not to mention the public opposition to wasteful government spending on unnecessary roads and dams. The LDP has tinkered with reform, including the promotion of decentralization of government administration, and this has already eaten away at its base of support. One of the most striking aspects of the election result, for example, is that the DPJ was able to win seats in rural districts that up to now have been impregnable LDP strongholds.

Abe hoped that a revival of nationalism could help to conceal or bridge the divisions between rich and poor, and between urban and rural Japan. He raised the creepy goal of creating what he calls a “beautiful country.” Abe thought this could be achieved through such efforts as revising the Constitution to eliminate its pacifist clause, whitewashing history so students can “take pride” in their country, and advancing a more interventionist foreign policy in tandem with the US.

But even here Abe has had little luck. One problem is that his campaign to turn back the clock to the 1930s began just as the US was demonstrating to the world the limitations of hairy-chested jingoism. Many people in Japan—even capitalists—must have wondered whether it was a good idea to adopt the George W. Bush approach to winning friends and influencing people. The two-headed quagmire in the Middle East has also forced the US to take a less belligerent stance towards North Korea; a move that caught the Abe government off guard and complicated the effort to use the fear of North Korea to bolster the revival of nationalism.

There has also been hostility towards Abe because the public feels as if it has been “sold a bill of goods” by the LDP. Japanese voters provided overwhelming support to Prime Minister Koizumi when he posed as a renegade hell-bent on overturning the status quo within his own party, resulting in the LDP regaining a firm majority in both houses of parliament. But Koizumi’s hand-picked successor, Shinzo Abe, used that power to push through reactionary legislation with little public support, fill his cabinet with political cronies, and even bring back to the LDP some members that Koizumi had expelled for opposing his “structural reforms.” The general feeling among the public is that it was a very bad idea, indeed, to have handed the LDP a blank check.

Finally, there is the problem of Abe himself, who clearly lacks the essential political skill of lying in a convincing manner. The charismatic Koizumi might have been to talk his way out of at least some of the problems listed above, creating a useful distraction or two, but Abe has proved quite incapable of charming the public.

Tweedledum

Probably the least significant factor behind the LDP’s defeat was the opposition Democratic Party. The general consensus is that people were voting against the LDP, not for the DPJ. Given the numerous problems facing Abe’s party just outlined, the DPJ had to do little more than criticize the LDP’s handling of those problems and offer some vague solutions.

Under its new leader Ichiro Ozawa, the election campaign of the DPJ emphasized the growing gap between the “winners” and “losers” in society and made the claim that it could implement policies that would improve the standard of life for common people. In its election manifesto, the DPJ raises the goal of “creating a nation where people can live their lives free of anxiety” and “putting people’s lives first.”

How the DPJ intends to deliver on this promise, under an economic system of production for profit, is a complete mystery.

And even the more concrete “pledges” and “proposals” listed in the DPJ manifesto are unlikely to ever see the full light of day. The party offers three pledges: to resolve the pension problem, increase subsidies for childrearing (to deal with the low birth rate), and providing greater support for farmers. All three require lots and lots of yen, which the government does not have or would prefer to use in more capital-friendly ways.

The DPJ election manifesto includes seven proposals as well: (1) protect jobs and rectify social disparities, (2) solve the shortage of doctors and improve healthcare, (3) eliminate administrative waste, (4) advance the decentralization of government, (5) support small and medium size businesses, (6) take a leading role in environmental protection, (7) adopt a new approach to foreign policy.

The first two require increased spending, while any savings from the third and fourth proposals will mean job losses for government workers and economic hardships for the provinces. The next proposal, to help out the “little guy” (=small capital), would also require increased expenditures and run directly counter to the interests of the big-time capitalists who run the show. The sixth proposal is an empty promise, as long as capitalism, with its anarchical money-chasing, remains firmly in place.

Even the final proposal on foreign policy, which is one of Ozawa’s primary obsessions, will be difficult to achieve because Japan is so closely intertwined militaristically with the US, to which it has outsourced its foreign policy for the past sixty years. Ozawa has stated that the DPJ would use its new power to oppose the extension of the Antiterrorism Law, under which Japan has supported the US wars of aggression in the Middle East. It will be interesting to see if he follows through on this promise, given the heavy pressure already being exerted on the DPJ by the US since the election. The DPJ itself is split over this issue, as reflected in its manifesto, which states that, “a strong and equal Japan-US relationship based on mutual trust” is the “foundation of Japan’s foreign relations,” while in the very next sentence calling for the “immediate end of the dispatch of Self-Defence Forces (=Japanese army) to Iraq.” If the DPJ can stand up to the pressure from the US, they are certain to gain tremendous public support, but unless there is a real alternative to the current foreign policy, Japanese capitalists may decide to stay aboard the USS Hubris.

The promises, pledges, and proposals of the DPJ are not only difficult (and at times impossible) to achieve, they present a false image of that political party. In the election campaign, the DPJ emphasized a liberal, people-friendly image, but a brief look at the history of the party and its members reveals how similar its outlook is to that of the LDP. Many of the big players in the party, including Ozawa, got their start in the LDP prior to the formation of the DPJ in 1998.

Ozawa rose as high as the Secretary General of the LDP, in 1989. But he found himself on the losing end of a factional struggle, and in 1993 decided to strike out on his own, forming the Japan Renewal Party. The next decade saw Ozawa in a number of other small parties. Far from steadfastly opposing the LDP, however, Ozawa’s Liberal Party formed a coalition with the LDP and was even negotiating with Prime Minister Obuchi to return to the fold. When opposition in the LDP blocked this political merger, Ozawa tried his luck with the DPJ, dissolving the Liberal Party within it in 2003. Ozawa is clearly is an opportunistic politician who does not offer a fundamental break with LDP politics, not to mention that he is wholly faithful to the capitalist system.

If the DPJ represents a step forward for politics in Japan, it is only in the sense of contributing to an understanding that capitalist political parties are fundamentally the same, quite unable to deliver on their sweet-sounding campaign promises. Some may still be holding out the hope that the DPJ will set Japan on the right path, but they are sure to be disappointed. It is the role of socialists to prevent their disappointment from resulting in impotent despair, by showing where the real problems lie and offering a solution.

What’s left?

But the “left” in Japan is not offering a critique of capitalism or pointing the way beyond it.

During elections, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) makes its presence felt. Even in the smallest towns JCP posters and politicians can be seen. This might give a tourist the impression that there is great interest in socialism in Japan today. In fact, however, the election campaign of the JCP makes no mention of socialism. The primary issues for the JCP are the defence of the current “pacifist” Constitution and the quixotic goal of achieving something called “capitalism with rules” through Keynesian economic policies. And the same approach characterizes the politics of the Social Democratic Party (Japan), which includes remnants of the now defunct Socialist Party.

To borrow the old comparison, the reformist politics of the JCP and SDP are like treating a patient’s symptoms, without paying much attention to the disease. For example, JCP leader Kazuo Shii, in comments made to the Foreign Correspondent’s Club on 3 July, raised the party’s slogan of ending poverty, proposing the following three measures: (1) Oppose regressive taxes (residential tax, consumption tax); (2) enhance social services; (3) enforce work regulations. Not a word about how poverty is endemic to capitalism itself, as a society where production is for profit and profit arises from the exploitation of labour.

No matter how well intentioned, the politics of the JCP and SDP generate the illusion that capitalism can change its stripes. Perhaps in the short-term this will win them some votes, but neither party is offering a solution to problems people in Japan and throughout the world face. And until a genuine socialist party does emerge, Japanese politics — and society — will be stuck in an impasse.

Michael Schauerte

Tokyo 1985 (1967)

From the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

To those of you who remember a few years ago the “double your standard of living in twenty-five years” promise from R. A. Butler, The Times, of 27.2.67 should have made interesting reading. It carried an article on page 5 about some of the promises being made currently to the workers of Tokyo. They certainly have a familiar ring.

No housing problems, no smog, a car for everyone of Tokyo’s 4,300,000 families—yet no traffic jams. And so on . . . But this is for twenty years time if they all work hard and if the economy continues to expand, conditions which no planners can control, but this does not stop them planning, of course. Incidentally, do you notice how these “plans” have a longer period set aside for their fulfilment now? No longer do we hear of “five year plans” which were so popular (particularly with left wingers) in the thirties and forties Such are the massive problems of modern capitalism that no “expert” can even pretend to solve them in such a short time.

So now we get a twenty (or 25 or 30) year plan superseded after a year or two by another twenty year plan. Which, in its turn is superseded, and so on. Which keeps workers on their toes in pleasurable expectation, the planers in business, and capitalism generally ticking over.

Voice From The Back: Statistics (2004)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Statistics

From an American learned journal Mental Health Journal of the Berkshires (Spring 2004) comes an interesting review of James Gillespie’s book Preventing Violence (published by Thames and Hudson). Dr Gilligan is a trained psychoanalyst who has worked in the Massachusetts prison mental health system interviewing violent inmates, for 25 years. “Unemployment breeds both poverty and shame . . . and as Gilligan reports, for every one percent increase in unemployment, there is a 6 percent increase in violence. Statistics show the US has the greatest gap between rich and poor of any of the developed countries: the richest 225 families have $1 trillion (that is 1,000 billion dollars!), equal to the total wealth of 47 percent of the world.”

Debtors

“Personal debt is about to break through the £1 trillion ceiling in the UK for the first time, realising the worst fears of consumer bodies. The Bank of England said yesterday that UK mortgage lending increased by a record £9.8bn in April, leading City economists to predict that total outstanding debt would breach the thousand billion pound threshold” Herald (3 June). Behind these cold facts and figures lie the reality of many men and women of the working class living with anxiety and fear. Wasn’t capitalism supposed to lead to happiness and prosperity? So why in such a wonderful world do so many men and women of the working class find themselves in a desperate debt situation?  

 

Students

Capitalism is a very competitive society. It sets capitalist against capitalist, hence war. It sets worker against capitalist, hence strikes and lock-outs. It sets worker against worker, hence nationalism and racialism. There is another aspect of competition that effects young workers. Trying to convince potential employers that they are better material for exploitation than their rivals has led to some workers doping themselves up. “The number of teenagers relying on drugs such as Prozac to see them through GSCEs and A-levels has soared with prescriptions reaching 140,000 in less than a decade . . . The statistics – from the government’s watchdog, the MHRA – also highlight the pressure being put on students by the exam system. They say how that in 1995, 46,000 anti-depressants prescriptions were given to teenagers between 16 and 18 in full-time education. By last year this had risen to 140,000, more than treble the amount” Observer (6 June).

 

Death of a nobody

That capitalism is a cruel and uncaring society was well illustrated by a news item in the Times (11 June) reporting the death of a Japanese worker in his Tokyo flat. ”Only one thing distinguished it from hundreds of other lonely deaths that occur in Japan every year – the dead man’s body was two decades old. The newspaper by his side was dated February 20, 1984. In a busy residential district of the world’s biggest city, he had lain undisturbed and unidentified for 20 years.”

 

Nice for some

“Millionaires around the world saw their ranks swell to 7.7 million last year as economic growth quickened and stock markets recovered. The world’s wealthiest people were worth an estimated £15.8 trillion in 2003, with their riches forecast to grow, according to an investment bank survey known as the World Wealth Report” Herald (16 June)

Why Bother About the Burma Road ? (1944)

From the March 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

There has been quite a bit in the papers, one way and another, about getting supplies through to the Chinese. At one time it was simply a question of whether the British Government should open or close the Burma Road, but when the Japanese solved this problem by taking over the route themselves, plans were laid for the rapid building of a great new road from North India to “Free” China. We heard a great deal about the urgency and importance of the task of sending China the materials needed for the fight of the sorely beleagured Chinese troops in their effort to restore their country to freedom from the oppressing occupation of the War Lords of the Rising Sun. The Japanese had raped and pillaged, looted and burnt in the Chinese territory they occupied. The cruellest of soldiers, the most sadistic of foes, they had swept right into the very heart of China over a period of twelve years. Never had a people suffered so long and so much in modern times under the iron heel of the conqueror.

In view of what we have been told, therefore, it is surprising to read the following report in the Manchester Guardian Weekly (December 17th, 1943): —

“Trade between Japanese occupied and Free China has recently taken on larger proportions on account of the Chinese Government’s endeavour to attract useful goods from enemy territory and the accelerated fall or the Japanese puppet currencies in terms of Chinese national dollars.

“Value of the known imports from occupied areas to Free China during the last six months, according to a Government spokesman, was £1,250,000 sterling on Government account, and £25,000,000 through commercial channels.”

So why bother about building new roads or reopening old ones? It seems that British supplies might be shipped to Chunking via Tokio so long as the label was correctly addressed. Nobody would be a bit less happy surely—unless it were the Chinese soldiers if it turned out that British raw materials did not furnish such good weapons to kill the Japs with as Japanese produced supplies.

N. S.

China takes up the White Man’s Burden (1942)

From the November 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is at the End of the Road?

The long-term results of war are notoriously difficult to predict. Each side sees post-war events as they would be shaped by their own victory, but even when the victory of one side is decisive the result is rarely the same as the expectation. War destroys an existing balance of power and gives rise to more or less drastic adjustments, but it is beyond the capacity of most of the actors in the war-drama to see what will happen after the curtain falls on the military combat.

At present the thinking of most of those who plan the future world is clouded by wishes born of their class interests. One group want capitalism to be restored just as it was in 1939. Others, the Labour Party for example, vaguely hope and believe that capitalism will have disappeared, or will be “different.” Both groups will be disappointed. Capitalism will remain after the war, but it will not be the capitalist world envisaged by British and American capitalists. The failure of the German-Japanese-Italian gamble for dominance will not leave things just as they were, and some observers are already uneasily aware of this. A Japanese officer who told a Daily Mail correspondent (Daily Mail, September 10th) that ”if Hitler won this war every man in Japan knew they would have to fight the Germans to retain their empire,” was doubtless right, but likewise when the Axis Powers fail the East will show some developments little regarded at the moment. Only the Manchester Guardian among British newspapers appears to have interested itself in the problems that will arise then:

“China can expect to emerge from the war as one of the world’s Great Powers with all the scope and responsibility which the status entails.”— (“Manchester Guardian,” October 12th, 1942.)

One politician, Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, Britain’s High Commissioner in Canada, would not be aware of any problem. Speaking about the great 1,500 mile Alaska Highway which links up U.S.A., across Canada, with Alaska, he dealt with its present purpose as a “springboard for attack on Japan,” and then spoke customary soothing words about the important part the highway and its defence system will play

“When the war is won, in bringing our friends in the Orient, the Chinese, the Russians, the Americans, and ourselves, into much closer communication and harmony.”— (“Daily Mail,” October 17th, 1942.)

Capitalist politicians always talk in this way about the development of means of transport and communications, as if closer contact in a world given over to capitalist rivalries necessarily produces harmony. (Incidentally Mr. MacDonald is a member of the government which still, under the 1927 Trade Disputes Act, forbids British Civil servants who handle some of the international means of communication, the posts, telegraphs and telephones, to come into contact with their fellows in the Dominion, Allied and other countries in an international association, for fear, no doubt, that closer contact might produce too much working-class harmony.)

The Manchester Guardian, however, comes closer to reality in its report of discussions that are going on about China’s war aims. The principle laid down by Madame Chiang Kai-shek is that in the relations between West and East there must be absolute equality, there “must be no thought of superiors and inferiors”; but, as the Guardian adds, “To translate those simple phrases into political action is a process that will demand all the statesmanship that the United Nations can discover” (Manchester Guardian, August 25th, 1942). In the same editorial the Guardian quotes Mrs. Pearl Buck, the writer on China, as saying that unless the problem is solved “the end will be a war in which China will not be on our side,” and Mr. Owen Lattimore, Political Adviser to General Chiang Kai-shek, says that, it is taken for granted in China and the rest of Asia “though perhaps not yet … so decidedly taken for granted in the Western democracies,” that “colonies lost in battle by countries unable to defend them and unwilling to grant them the full right of self-defence can never be subjected or returned to the status quo of December 7th, 1941.”

Mr. Lattimore envisages a great danger that will arise if Japan can one day present herself “as the defender of colonial Asia against white reconquest.”

Mr. Wendell Wilkie has added his view that “no foot of Chinese soil should be or can be ruled from now on except by the people who live on it” (Daily Telegraph, October 7th, 1942).

Up to this point the problem looks a comparatively simple one of the renunciation of territory held in China, but those who so view it forget that we live in a capitalist world which inexorably drives on each capitalist group to strengthen its commercial competitive power and to strive for expansion. Will the new Pacific Power, China, escape from this law of capitalism ? The Guardian, returning to the subject in an editorial on October 12th, 1942, is apprehensive that it will not. The following passage shows the potentialities and dangers of the situation : —

“Discussion about post-war plans seems to be as lively in Chungking as it is in Washington or London. . . . The general trend of ideas, both official and private, has just been described in an American publication by Gunther Stein, who stresses that much of it remains highly controversial in Chungking. There is agreement on one point. Japan must be disarmed, freed from militaristic rule, and effectually prevented from re-arming. Some Chinese wish to see Japanese industrial equipment and industrial skill used to aid in the development of the countries ravaged by the invaders. Territorial aims seem to vary; while the return of all territories lost since the war of 1894-5 is taken for granted unofficial ambitions go far beyond that. Korea is to have independence, but there is a desire to make Siam a Chinese protectorate, and among the areas expected to return to full Chinese rule are Outer Mongolia and Tibet, as well as Sinkiang, Manchuria and Formosa. The independence of all other nations of East Asia from colonial rule is considered essential. This includes Indian sovereignty and close Sino-Indian collaboration for the protection and development of the backward Eastern peoples”.— (“Manchester Guardian,” October 12th, 1942.)

The reader who takes in the vast implications of the above official and unofficial ambitions of the ruling class of the China that is becoming a Great Power may well ask whether they are different from the ideas of expansion of all the other powers that have aspired in the past to build up empires. The Chinese, it seems, along with India, are even to take on the “white man’s burden” of protecting “backward peoples” ! As the Manchester Guardian tactfully remarks, China expects to take a leading part in the development of an East Asiatic economic group, “and some enthusiasts seem to push this reasonable desire rather far.”

The only comment Socialists have to make is that the outlines of the new order as sketched in Chungking look remarkably like all other capitalist imperialisms, except that there is a drastic change in the cast. The remedy is not new empires for old but the abolition everywhere of capitalism, which engenders these ambitions.

Edgar Hardcastle

News in Review: Mr. Robens (1960)

The News in Review column from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Robens

The Labour Party rank and file and the Mineworkers’ leaders have received with mixed feelings the news that Mr. Robens, a Labour Party leader, is to be elected Chairman of the National Coal Board. The majority of the Mine Workers’ leaders at their Conference at Llandudno were vociferous in their attack on the proposed decentralization that is now being discussed by the Management side of the industry. Mr. Sam Watson however suggested that Robens' name should be kept out of the discussion as the Conference should have confidence in a man who has spent his life in the working class movement, and he should be preferred to a retired General, Admiral or a Tory.

Putting aside all the discussions on the rights or wrongs of the appointment, one should view the set-up in its true perspective. After all, the retiring Chairman, Sir James Bowman, ex-Mineworkers’ leader, has been a party to the closing of uneconomic pits for at least the last two years. In fact, the East Fife coalfields of Scotland have become almost a depressed area, and this year it is proposed to close another 40 pits. And he also spent his life in the “working class movement.” With all the changes that will have to take place in the industry, it is important that the Chairman should have some understanding of the running of it and also some understanding of the best approach to the union.

Mr. Robens is undoubtedly a good choice from the Board’s point of view. Firstly, he has the association with trade unions as an ex-official of a union and Labour M.P. and also as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power in the Labour Government. He clearly has a knowledge of the administrative side of the industry. So, to sum it up, Mr. Macmillian has appointed himself a good chairman, and Mr. Robens has got £10,000 a year. What, of course is not mentioned by the Press is that nationalisation is just another form of capitalism and whoever is chairman of the N.C.B., his job is to run the coalmines and make them pay.

Cuba

Until recently, America has been paying inflated prices for Cuban sugar for the privilege of refining and marketing oil in Cuba. The current fracas was touched off by the American proposal to limit imports of Cuban sugar. As to be expected, the old imperialist game of fishing in troubled waters is being played with great gusto by the Soviet Union. Their agreement to supply crude oil to Cuba will serve the dual purpose of getting rid of some of the surplus oil that is steadily accumulating in the Caucasus and getting one foot firmly stamped down on America's doorstep. Undoubtedly, having the “enemy” so close to the American mainland will upset the U.S. defence system. The Cuban dictator, Dr. Castro, is taking full advantage of the situation and whether America will tolerate this remains for the moment a matter of conjecture. Only one thing is certain, Whatever the outcome, the poverty stricken peasants and workers of Cuba will remain the poverty stricken peasants and workers of Cuba.

Japan in Turmoil

From recent events in Japan it would appear that the more help one gets the less grateful one becomes. When it is considered that Japan’s economic recovery was primarily due to U.S. assistance and America’s need for overseas military bases, one would have thought Uncle Sam’s representative, Mr. Eisenhower, would have had no difficulty in a courtesy call to a “ great sister democracy.” The visit was to have been marked by the signing of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty which would extend the Japanese agreement to U.S. military bases. Despite the precautions taken (which included the President’s “ bullet-proof bubble-top car,” 25,000 police, 2,000 firemen, 38 fire engines, 15 ambulances and four radio cars), the trip was called off.

We are not particularly concerned with the reasons for the cancellation of the visit. It is certain that considering the nature of the mass demonstrations, many of the Japanese have memories of the consequences of military alliances, particularly since it is the only country which has had experience of nuclear warfare and its effects. The point must be made, however, that mere demonstrations against the effects will not solve the problems facing the Japanese people. The history of capitalism is littered with broken treaties and alliances. The Japanese capitalist class whom Prime Minister Kishi represents, and who have benefited greatly by their close relations with America and its enormous post-war loans, have every interest in establishing and developing once again their so-called “defensive forces.” These armed forces and the fact that Japan is the most highly industrialised power in Asia with a dearth of natural resources and an increasing population, will ensure more success in their demands for greater “freedom of action” and the usual demand for a more independent “foreign policy” which in capitalist terms means the rat-race for a share of the world’s markets. To the Japanese working class we suggest that treaty or no treaty, they have still got capitalism and the constant threat of another holocaust, nuclear or otherwise.

The Labour Party

The decline of the Labour Party since its 1945 election success has now reached a level that has caused some speculation in the Press as to whether the Party is finished as a political force In their articles on the subject, the writers usually attribute the troubles of the Labour Party to the lack of unity within its ranks. In capitalist political circles, unity is an expedient for winning elections and not a factor brought about by an understanding and acceptance of basic principles. How often in the past has the SPGB been urged by critics to unite with the various capitalist left-wing parties as a means to further the cause of Socialism? This despite the fact that the political outlook of the parties are in direct opposition.

The present dilemma of the Labour Party arises out of the apathy of the working class towards policies which sufficed to lure the workers into returning a Labour Government in 1945, but failed to deliver the goods. The arguments ranging round Clause 4 show that the main plank in the Labour Party’s policy—nationalisation—has been tried and found wanting as a solution to the workers’ problems.

Homes—at a price

Are you desperately searching for a flat? Are you dissatisfied with your present housing conditions? Do you feel perhaps that you would like to improve upon your existing living quarters? Do not delay, but instantly get in touch with Ralph Pay & Taylor, agents for builders Rush & Tompkins (absolutely no connection with Slapiton & Leavitt of Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist fame), who are just about to start building a block of 12 luxury flats and a penthouse in Hyde Park Gardens with splendid views across Hyde Park Evening Standard (30/6/60). The flats will sell for about £40,000. However, if you’re interested in the penthouse, which will cost more, you’d better put your skates on, because Mr. Whitney Straight, deputy Chairman of Rolls-Royce, is understood to have first refusal.

Nationalisation and Profits

A little simple arithmetic gives the game away. Last year, the British Transport Commission piled up what they call a working deficit of £12.6 millions. But this deficit was declared after taking account of the fixed interest which the Commission must pay on its stock. This stock, of course, replaced private shares many of which had not paid a dividend for some time before the nationalisation of the railways and other transport undertakings by the Labour Government. The fixed interest charges, with other central expenses, came to £42 millions. Now £12.6 millions away from £42 millions leaves £29.4 millions. And that is the profit which the Transport Commission actually made last year. It is fairly safe to assume that no privately owned railway—or any other company—which made £29 millions, would deliberately land themselves in the red by paying £42 millions out in interest. But that is precisely what British Transport Commission—like many other nationalised industries—have done. Which is an indication that, whatever nationalisation may be, it is not a kick in the teeth for the shareholders.

Clean Sweep

Hoovers have something of a reputation for American business ruthlessness. This was a popular explanation for their recent declaration that 800 of their workers were to be sacked as redundant. It was certainly common among the two and a half thousand Hoover workers who struck in protest at the proposed sackings. Hoovers blamed the redundancy on to the hire-purchase restrictions which the government had just imposed. But that is only part of the story. In fact, orders for products like washing machines had been falling for some time before the restrictions came on; production had started to decline well before the last Budget. In addition, foreign competition has been strong, as a glance in the window of any electrical goods shop will reveal. Hoovers estimate that 10 per cent of the washing machines and 8 per cent, of the vacuum cleaners sold in this country in 1959 were imported.

This could mean that last year’s boom in what are called the durable consumer goods industries has blown out—and Hoovers, who benefited so extraordinarily from it, have been the first to suffer. There is one other point worth noticing. Hoovers employ some expensive brains so that they can be forewarned against slumps. The company’s last Annual Report said that 1960 would be “. . . another satisfactory year although not at the same level as 1959." This is not the first economists’ forecast to be upset by . the inherent anarchies of capitalist society.

Inside Prison

Recently, the Home Office announced the Government’s plan to spend £12m. over the next three years on a new prison building programme. It is hoped that the new prisons and other penal-institutions will ease the present need to incarcerate thousands of prisoners three to a cell.

One feature of the new buildings that has been claimed as a step forward is the proposal to build lower perimeter walls.. In future these will be concrete walls only 6 ft. in height though just within these walls will be an inner 12 ft. chain fence surmounted by barbed wire. But for the most part, prisoners will continue to be confined within punishment houses, such as Wandsworth, Brixton, Reading, Strangeways and Dartmoor, all jails many years old.

A great deal has been made of these proposals and they have been taken as the policy of an enlightened administration, but in fact they are further evidence of the Government’s commitment to dealing with offenders against propertied society with repressive punishments. In perspective, prisons are a horrible scar across the face of modern society filled with the worst failures of our cruelly competitive social system, persons who in the main start out with enormous handicaps of ignorance and poverty. At best prisoners are robbed of all dignity and locked up in degrading circumstances. At worst they are starved on a diet of bread and water, sometimes flogged and occasionally have their necks broken on the scaffold.

A basic hypocrisy of capitalism is that it legalises the exploitation of the mass of mankind and supports the social privilege of the propertied class. The individual is usually held responsible for crime and very few suggest as the cause the failure of our own society. When all men are elevated to the dignity of an equal relationship in regard to wealth, the rebellious act of crime and the irrational institutions of punishment will not exist.

Hagerty in Tokio (1960)

From the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. James Hagerty, President Eisenhower’s press secretary, had to flee by helicopter from a crowd of six thousand Japanese students who mobbed his car and battered at the windows. Mr. Hagerty had landed at Tokio airport to arrange the details of President Eisenhower’s visit to Japan. The incident underlines the falsity of some of the propaganda that the ruling class serves out to us in time of war. In the last war all the American and British organs of propaganda repeated ad-nauseam that the Japanese were inherently militaristic: their very nature, we were told, made them warlike and aggressive. At the end of the war the Americans insisted that a clause be written into the new Japanese constitution renouncing for ever the right of the Japanese to establish again their armed forces. But soon the Americans decided that the real enemy in the Far East was not Japan, but Russia: and that Japan in fact would be a useful ally. So then the Americans insisted, against the opposition of many Japanese, that the “renunciation” clause in the Japanese constitution be scrapped, and that Japan should again set up her army, navy and air force. Now the Americans have pushed through a new military alliance with Japan. If the propaganda had been true, this would have suited the "inherently militaristic’’ Japanese down to the ground. But large numbers of Japanese are strenuously resisting the new alliance, even to the extent of rioting against Hagarty and threatening to riot against Eisenhower. Some of the opposition, no doubt, comes from those who would rather see Japan allied to China and Russia than to America; but many Japanese wish to avoid all militaristic alliances altogether, because they think they bring with them the risk of involvement in a new world war. We are not now concerned whether it is possible for Japan to stand apart from the two great camps in the world as it is today: the important point is that such a policy commands widespread support from the Japanese people. Clearly, the theory of the “inherent militarism" of the Japanese will have to be abandoned. Events have, in fact, revealed yet more of our rulers' propaganda as lies.

Alwyn Edgar

A Forecast of the Coming Revolution: Interview with Paul Lafargue. (1904)

From the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amongst the best known leaders of Socialist thought is our comrade Paul Lafargue, author of "The Evolution of Property", "Socialism and the Intellectuals", and many other volumes and pamphlets of great value to International Socialism. A visit to Paris brought us in touch with a French comrade, through whose kindly offices we received an invitation to visit the veteran debater at his pleasant retreat in a little village some dozen miles from the French capital. Lafargue and his wife (once known personally to English Socialists as Laura Marx) received us with the true comradeship, which in palpable form made it plain that “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, is no empty phrase amongst Socialists.

Mindful of the interests of the Party, we secured from our comrade the following interesting expression of his views upon some vital topics of moment:

“The two countries which will benefit from the Russo-Japanese War”, said Lafargue, in answer to a query, “are America and England. Though the Japs succeed in expelling Russia from Manchuria, they are at the same time weakening themselves for a long period, and thus limiting their capacity for industrial competition. Again, the financiers of England and America—principally the former—will draw from Japan a great deal even of such profit as may accrue to her in return for their present assistance. Japan has for years been developing extraordinarily, but the War hinders this. The resources she is squandering in war are lost to industry.”

“And the results of all this upon our policy in the Far East, comrade?”

“The most important thing is the appearance of Japan upon the scene as the strong power of the East, so strong that no European country can compete with it. The rise of Japan marks the conclusion of European piracy in the Far East. Nobody expected such an extraordinary power. Further, Japan will organise China, industrially and politically.”

“What is your view, comrade, of the industrial position in Japan?”

“The rise of Japan industrially has been so rapid that the horrors of child and female labour in the England of the early nineteenth century have been reproduced—with the great difference that the intermediate stages from the England of the fifteenth century were totally absent in Japan. The psychological difference is enormous, and must produce a revolt, but the form we cannot forecast. In England and France the revolt was against the machine, and whilst this may not prove so in Japan, this we know—the Japs start with a Socialist movement such as was not, and could not be, in England and France in the initial stages of Capitalism. Just as the Japs adopt and adapt the ready-made science of Europe, so the Social science of the New Age finds there a ready soil. We may expect the Japanese people, who have shown such extraordinary courage on the battlefield, to show in the Social struggle the same indomitable energy and enterprise.”

“Now, as to the War again, comrade, what are its results upon Europe?”

“This war has shown that Russia has made a fool of Europe with a show of power. Particularly has Czarism befooled France. That show has enabled her to draw from France about eleven milliards of francs (some £400,000,000) by State loans and financial companies for the industrial exploitation of Russia. The latter investments have been chiefly for coal-mining and metal works. These found prosperity as long as the Russian State was a huge customer for railway construction, &c, but even before the War this fell off; and now, in so far as they have a revival, it is only the artificial stimulus of war time, which will have its due reaction. Even now the lack of money is strangling this revival. Either victory or defeat for Russia now means revolution—a bourgeois or constitutional revolution. The first thing that the new power will have to do will be to proclaim the bankruptcy of Russia—as the best means to obtain credit. You will recollect a similar process in the French Revolution. The new rulers of Russia will be the more ready to declare this bankruptcy, in that the losers will be, not the Russians but the French. The international effects will be felt primarily in France, where the chief debt of Russia is held. The fall of the present Russian political system will shake the whole fabric of European society.”

“What is the likely effect upon Socialism in France of the loss of all this capital through the fraud and folly of the bourgeois politicians and the financial magnates who dominate them?”

“Ah, that is the question. Remember the fuss about Panama involving only 1½ milliards of francs. You will see why I anticipate great results from the loss of some eight times as much. Only the Socialist Party of France has opposed itself to the Franco-Russian Alliances and denounced it as a fraud upon the French people. The discrediting of all the bourgeois parties must mean the immense growth of the party of the Proletariat. Only the Socialist Party of France, the Revolutionists of France, had the courage and insight to oppose the alliance with despotism.”

“Very good, comrade; so much for the economic factors. What of other forces?”

“Russia is a compound of different nationalities. In the centre the Slavs, surrounded by Poles, Finns, Caucasians, Armenians, &c, held down by main force. These will spring into position again on the occasion of the Revolution, and Poland principally (the Ireland of Russia), which has never lost the sense of nationality, despite the tyranny of centuries, will make her influence felt. She will want to reconstitute her nationality with the Austrian and the German Poles. Thus I believe that the next few years will bring us the European revolution, which, if Socialists are sufficiently bold and well organised, will mean also the Social Revolution.”

This concluded, as far as the War is concerned, one of the most instructive conversations in which 1 ever had the pleasure of participating. In a future issue I hope to reproduce some expressions of our comrade upon trade unionism, but with which it would be a pity to complicate this article. The difference between the Socialists and the pseudo-Socialists can easily be seen by a comparison of the large-mindedness and grip of the situation disclosed by our comrade, with the puny reflection of Capitalist sentimentality exhibited by Jaurès in dealing with this same position. The attitude of the Reformists in France sufficiently indicates the absurdity of the claim of such superficial politicians to in any sense represent Socialism either in France or elsewhere. Jaurès and his school are straining every nerve in a “Stop the War” agitation, on the surface in the interests of peace, but in reality designed to, if possible, stave off the evil day of capitalist collapse. It was not for nothing that our comrades of the Socialist Party of France moved the resolution at the recent International Congress, which declared against compromise and intrigue with capitalist parties. The Socialists of France have fought and are fighting the same battle against treachery and folly of opportunism, which we of The Socialist Party of Great Britain are waging in this country.

I am sure every Socialist in England joins with us in reciprocating the fraternal greetings extended by Paul and Laura Lafargue to the unofficial representatives of British Socialism to whom this interview was accorded.

H. J. Hawkins.

(Socialist Standard, November 1904)

Correspondence

Our comrade Hawkins forwards a copy of the following letter which he has received:

“Draviel, 15.11.04

Dear Comrade,—I have just received No. 3 of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD, containing your interview, and I am glad to find that you have given a very full and faithful account thereof.

Trusting that the paper will be successful and with my best wishes and our kind regards to Mrs Hawkins and yourself.

Yours fraternally

Paul Lafargue." LAFARGUE.

(Socialist Standard, December 1904)

City of despair (1999)

From the March 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Japanese city of Osaka looks like a scene from a grainy black and white film about the Great Depression,” writes Leeroy Betti in the Western Australian (6 January). “Scores of cardboard and plastic shanties line the footpaths for block after block.” Thousands of men stand around open fires, many offering all kinds of rubbish for sale; others arrive as early at 5am outside the Imamiya Labour Centre, hoping to find jobs for building projects.

Officially, unemployment in Japan is 4.4 percent, or just on three million, but, says Betti, “the real jobless rate could be closer to 12 percent, according to some US economists”. And, he continues, “as the worst recession in Japan’s postwar history bites deeper, construction jobs, like those in other sectors, have dried up”. Moreover, many company executives are concerned at losing their jobs.

Betti concludes:

“As Japanese authorities search optimistically for signs that the economy will bottom out in 1999, its ninth year of stagnation, they could be caught unprepared for a burgeoning social crisis among those for whom time, hope and money already has run out.”

They may be whistling in the wind. Production in Japan, as elsewhere, is not geared for the satisfaction of people’s needs (Japanese workers need new homes while construction workers stand idle in Osaka), but with a view to profit for those who own the means of production. And without the likelihood of a profit, production will be curtailed or, ultimately, cease altogether, resulting in a surplus of the means of production and commodities on the one hand, and a surplus of unused labour-power, and mass unemployment, on the other. Indeed, in Japan, again as elsewhere in much of the world, too many commodities have been produced, not as compared with the actual needs of the overwhelming majority of the people but compared with their purchasing power. And workers in Japan, as well as Korea, Malaysia, Russia, and now Brazil, are discovering the hard way.

Is it not more than time that they organised to replace the chaotic, planless, society of capitalism with one in which rational planning, and the satisfaction of needs, social and individual, are paramount?

Peter E. Newell