The way that I understand it, Yoshie is arguing that the Japanese
Left's lack of success is due in large part to the fact that its
traditional program of social democratic reformism was long ago
co-opted by the country's ruling LDP. That given the Left's
renunciation of its traditional Marxism and Keynesianism, it, now a
days, has little to offer to distinguish itself from the ruling party
in terms of economic policy.


-- "Wojtek Sokolowski" <sokol@jhu.edu> wrote:
Yoshie:


Moreover, they are conservative in the true sense of the word, unlike
the so-called conservatives in the USA and the UK.  Just as
parliamentary communists, as well as social democrats, worldwide, with
the exception of Cuba and Venezuela, rejected Marxism and many of them
even abandoned Keynesianism to boot, Japan's right-wing power elite
cherished the conservation of the status quo, so such neoliberal
policies as they have adopted have been far less radical than the kind
that most leftists, when in power, put into practice, in the South as
well as the North.*


[WS:] So what is it exactly that you argue, Yoshie?  That there is no Left
worthy its name in Japan?  That the Japanese Left (in the name only) lost
politically because it renounced its Marxist ideology?  That the Japanese
Left has been successful in the implementation of its economic policy, but
the price of that success was the loss of distinguishable political
identity?  That cultural tradition influences political identity more than
ideology?  That Japanese Left should follow Iranian Islamism in its
political rhetoric?

Wojtek

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