Japan

Christian Gregory christian11 at mindspring.com
Wed Mar 14 19:40:43 PST 2001



> I will be happy if
> Japanese workers repel the impending assault in a defensive action similar
> to the magnificent struggle put up by French workers in the mid-90's (the
> transport/state sector strike), greatly slowing the impetus towards
> "Americanization" that everyone thought "inevitable" at the time.

I think that would be great too--far better than the current situation. I can't for the life of me imagine why anybody on the left thinks of Japan in even modestly-utopian ways. Its bourgeoisie are the keystone cops of finance; it's just about the only developed nation that can claim a head of state more inept than Dubya; it makes the US' two-party one party state look populist and responsive.

The strengths that Yoshie mentioned (aside from the efficiency of its civil servants: I don't get where this idea comes from--Yoshie?), though, point to the difficulty in your vision. The "glorious revolution" that you described above sounds a lot like the kind of stuff that's been advocated in Asiaweek and Asahi Shimbun for years now--under the rubric of "Americanization." Not to say that there's an irreducibly American moment in this dialectic, but how do you see working w/o spillover into economic governance?


> Optimally, a reasonably successful outcome for
> the struggle might even begin the process of reversing the reactionary
> tide, on a world scale even.

Sure, but in the current moment, US neoliberalism has positioned itself as the _alternative_ to Japanese reaction--and with that, more and more of the Japanese bourgeoisie and media are beginning to agree. They are waiting for their Japanese Clinton, and in a certain way, you can understand why.

Christian



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