>DEMOCRATS NOT VOTING
>
>Boxer, Calif.
-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA
And the Asiaweek article is a pretty good vertical slice of the Japan situation. But it didn't mention the Japan Democratic Party (JDP) at all - who's behind them? Instead, a cryptic remark about the Communist Party (JCP) "sniffing around". Which reminds us of another feature: Japan, together with France, Russia, China, Ukraine, N. Korea, Cuba & Vietnam, is what I call a "residual CP country", i.e., a country still with a substantial Third International "Communist Party" leftover from the previous period of class struggle. And trade unions, slowly declining in overall percentage (~20%) - what is their industrial distribution?
My speculation is that the most competitive industries (traditionally in the export sectors + now computer/telcom) and their associates in the state bureaucracy are most influenced by neoliberal ideology (yes, I do recognize its existence _as such_). However, these won't be able to so easily "disarticulate" itself further than it already has from the rest of Japanese society. Unlike Russia, China or even the US, Japan lacks a provincial hinterland for workers to fall back on. What little they have looks tapped out. And, in the keiretsu structure these provincials are traditionally vertically integrated as local suppliers to the export/hitech core. But their displacement with imports now appears well underway.