Socialism & Ecology in Japan-Look back to '47

[Brad De Long]

>Deja vu for Japan. Starting in 1947, the US occupation forces in 
>Japan, allied with conservative business groups, powerful US 
>companies and suddenly rehabilitated Japanese war criminals, turned 
>its immense power on the Japanese trade union movement and its 
>communist leadership. First a general strike scheduled for Sept. 1 
>1947 was banned on MacArthur's orders. In the coming years, strong 
>unions were busted in the railroads, Nissan, the steel industry and 
>coal mines; then, with the Korean War 'boom,' those industries took 
>off and didn't come down until the 1990s. In 1948 a Detroit banker 
>named Joseph Dodge was brought in to force an austerity budget on 
>Japan that sharply reduced state spending and was almost a carbon 
>copy of what the IMF would later do in Asia, South America and 
>Africa. The CIA poured millions of dollars to create and sustain the 
>LDP, which remains the most slavishly pro-American ruling party in 
>the world. I'd say Japan already had its US-sponsored counter-revo!
>!
>lution.
>
>TShorrock

After which things went rather well, at least as far as real wages 
and personal liberties were concerned.

To speak of U.S. post-WWII reconstruction policy in Japan as a 
fascist coup seems to me to miss most of the point...

Brad DeLong