Revolutionary Communist League, Japanese section of the Fourth International, explains the situation in the country, beginning with these two events, the Upper House elections and the trade-union spring offensive. Question. In an interview you gave to Quatriême InternaFionale last February you asserted that the situation that prevailed then could give rise to "the biggest general strike in Japanese history." What actually happened? Answer. A considerable number of workers -- about five or six million of them - were effectively mobilized during the spring campaign. Japan was poralyzed by a general strike for about a week. That was unprecedented in the history of our workers movement, In that interview I predicted that the spring offensive would lead to a really serious confrontation between the employers and the workers. But as it turned out, this confrontation was postponed, probably for a year, or perhaps, even worse, for two years - in spite of the breadth of the strike. We have to try to explain why. In our view, there are two basic reasons. First of all, the Japanese bourgeoisie was able to make important economic concessions because of the profits it has made from inflation. These concessions were politically necessary. Popular discontent, fed by rising prices, was running high, and the bourgeoisie knew that the position of the government party was getting worse and worse as the elections to the Upper House approached. The bourgeoisie had to avoid a direct confrontation. That's why it granted such high wage increases -- on the order of 25-30 percent! Next, the reformist trade-union leaders were seeking a national accord with the employers over the workers demands. Workers combativity had grown sharply and the position of the bureaucracy within the trade unions hod seriously declined. The bureaucracy was often thrown on the defensive. It was therefore ready to seize on the first opportunity to compromise in order to defuse the situation. And it must be remembered that while combativity has risen significantly, there is still no alternative left pole of attraction capable of offering per spectives on a national scale. Q. You say there is no national alternative pole of attracfion. But could you give some examples of your local inter28 vention in these strikes? A. We threw all our forces into the 1974 spring offensive. But our Implantation remains uneven in the various regions. In Tokyo, in spite of a few cases of real trade-union implantation, our Intervention was propagandistic, given the mass of workers concentrated in the capital. In the cities of the northeast we were able to carry out some real activity, but only in some unions and in certain factories. If was the same in Osaka and Kyoto (in the postal system and in the telephone and telegraphs). But in Sendai our more important implantation enabled us to organize real centralized regional activity. I think this example provides the best illustration of our orientation in this type of struggle. We won our influence through work in the unions' "youth sectors, " which are sectors grouping together young workers, generally the most militant elements, and have their own organizational life. In the middle of the 1960s an "internatonalist tendency" was formed within the young socialists. Today the political situation in the union movement in Sendai (in the Liyaga prefecture) is a triangular one. Besides the socialists and the CP, we have our own influence, especially in the posts, telephone, and telegraphs, and among the railway workers. In 1970 the Internationalist Workers Committees, organizations of young workers of Trotskyist orientation, were formed. In 1973 a trade-union tendency was formed, the Roken (Society for the Study of the Workers Movement). Roken hod two aims: to organize the workers on a regional basis (you have to understand that in Japan the weight of factory-based unionism is very strong) and to offer a political outlet for struggles around economic demands -- an outlet other than the class collaborationist one of the reformist leaderships. During the latest strike we participated in the formation of strike committees controlled by daily general assemblies of workers. In liaison with these committees we set up a regional committee composed of "action groups, " which were mobile groups made up of young workers, about 150-180 in each. These action groups carried on a twofold activity. First of all they hardened the strike, breaking with the pacifist instructions of the union leaders, who are now attacking us. We were able to organize some factory occupations, and there were some clashes, either with the employers' agents or with the police, Second, they strengthened weak points or points that were threatened, as in the postal system, where the police and the bureaucracy got together to try to isolate the strike. We, on the other hand, tried to make the strike the affair of the workers themselves. For its part, Roken put out twelve leaflets in the space of a week (about 100, 000 copies all together) to give news on the struggles going on and to draw the political lessons. The SP and the CP did not produce a single leaflet. Q. At the beginning, you said that the expected confrontafion was put off for a year or two. Why a year or two?
A. The crisis of Japanese capitalism is not basically conjunctural. In fact, the very rapid expansion from the end of the 1950s to the end of the 1960s exhausted the reserves on which it hod based itself. Japanese capitalism is short of labor; it is running up against big problems caused by pollution and the structure of the cities, which went through a development that was at the same time very rapid and anarchic; it is not capable of responding to new needs. And the Japanese bourgeoisie, threatened by the intensification of interimperialist competition, has to move to a deep rationalization of its economy and deal with a profound now rise of popular struggles at the some time. The Tanaka government has already been compelled to give up one rationalization program because of these struggles. And also because of the pressure of American imperialism. And the wage increases I mentioned should not make for any illusions. Since last autumn, the rate of inflation has climbed to 30 or 35 percent! That is, the buying power of the workers is actually stagnating or declining. Conditions for the workers in small and modium-sized factories, where the level of unionization is low, are especially difficult. More and more, the government is speaking of the necessity of establishing an "incomes policy, " that is, wage controls. So we can see that the problem of defending and increasing the buying power of the workers will continue to dominate social struggles. It is symptomatic that Sohyo (the left trade union, dominated by the socialists, with the participation of the CP) has asked for a cost-of-living index for persions granted retired workers and for social security benefits for old people, the handicapped, mothers of families, etc. And the government has had to give some concessions on this. We are advancing the demand for a sliding scale of wages, but this remains a minority demand within the unions. It is for all these reasons that we think that the coming two years will see the outbreak of an important class confrontation in Japan. Q. What problems do you see for yourselves given this outTook ? A. We have two problems to resolve. First, there is the quesFion of getting a better grasp of what will be the nature of the next spring offensive in 1975. Will the bourgeoisie still be able to continue its policy of making economic concessions? Second, there is the problem of determining the best way to contribute to the building of a class struggle left opposition on a national scale capable of putting forward a political alternative to the union bureaucracies. In the final analysis, the problem is political. Because of the crisis of the government party, the reformists, the CP and the SP, are more and more tending to advance a popular-front perspective. That strengthens the necessity for militant developing their own independent perspectives on this ground also, that is, the perspective of a workers government. Q. Did the latest elections to the Upper House confirm this crisis of bourgeois leadership? A. Yes. In fact, three general lessons can be drawn from the latest electoral results.
1. The government party, the Liberal Democratic party (LDP), suffered a defeat. Ir lost nine seats and now holds only 125 seats in a chamber of 250. Taking account of the five "independents" who will nearly always vote with the LDP, it has a majority, but a very slim one. In certain commissions, the opposition in fact holds a majority, or at least half of the seats. The situation is even more difficult for Tanaka and the LDP in that the LDP is the only solid bourgeois party in Japan, having held uncontested power for more than twenty years. Suddenly, factional struggles are breaking out in the LDP. Tanaka, the prime minister, is opposed by Fukada, the former minister of finance and one of the leaders of the most right-wing foction of the LDP; it favors maintaining privileged relations with Taiwan and advocates a limited economic expansion. Obviously, this struggle is weakening the present government. The LP does, however, maintain o strong majority in the Lower House. 2. The traditional left is stagnating. This is especially clear for the Socialist party, which gained only three seats. It is also true for the Communist party, despite its important gain in seats as compared to 1968 (nine seats). In comparison to the 1971 elections, the gain was only six seats, and in percentage terms, the vote increase was tiny. The SP and CP were disappointed. The CP particularly had advocated a very moderate, conservative line. During an important strike of teachers -- a sector in which the CP is especially influential - it called on some of the professor to stay at work so as to "maintain order in the schools"! Needless to say, the teachen didn't take this very well. The CP also abandoned its slogan on child care (As many child-care conters as mailboxes!) out of fear of a dynamic of confrontation. Finai z, both the SP and CP took an extremely conciliatory attitude during the spring strikes. The CP has seen the interruption of its electoral growth. 3. There has thus emerged a massive fringe of combative militants. The setback for the LDP combined with the stagnation of the CP and SP shows the gap that exists between the combativity of the masses and the policy of the reformist parties. But, once again, this combative fringe had no organization and no candidates able to fully represent them during the latest elections. Q. You intervened in these elections, particularly by supporting the candidacy of Isahu Tomura, a leader of the Sanrizuka Peasants Association. * What sort of balance-sheet would you draw of this campaign? A. We had two aims in this campaign. The first was to aid in continuing the struggle of the Sanrizuka Peasants Association. It is probable that the government will do everything possible this autumn to destroy the tower that is now blocking the extension of the airport runways. The first objective of the 1. Tomura campaign was to develop the greatest possible solidarity to prepare for this possibility. *For the past eight years, the Sanrizuka Peasants Association has been waging an exemplary struggle against the construcfion of the new Tokyo international airport. At the beginning, the peasants organized around the key question of defending their land. Then two further problems were added: the pollution generated by the airport and the integration of the airfield into the American military system in Asia. Peasant resistance to construction of the airport has given rise to some of the most violent demonstrations seen in decades in Japan. Today, most of the airport has been constructed, but the peasants have built a towermore than 200 feet high at the end of a runway, thus preventing utilization of the airport! The opening of the airport has already been deferred five years!
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JAPAN The second aim, for us, was to provide a focus for this left opposition on a national scale through the example of the struggle that Tomura represents and through our own interventionElectorally, we suffered a defeat. Tomura got 230, 356 votes; that is, 0.43 percent of the vote on a national scale. He would have needed af least twice that to be elected. I should point out that in the elections to the Upper House some of the candidates stand on a district basis and others as national candidates. Tomura was a national candidate. His 230, 356 votes was a weak figure. It amounts to just about the support estimated he had at the beginning of the campaign. To understand why the influence of this candidacy did not expand during the campaign you have to take into account the state of the far left in Japan. That is the political defeat. We had hoped for more! We formed a united front to direct the campaign. But we were the only national political organization to participate in it. There were also some Mooist formations, but their implantation was only local. Also participating were some militants of the left pacifist movements, the Beheiren, and a national coordination of left trade-union militants. And, of course, there was the Sanrizuka Peasants Association, as well os some left Christian militants. (Tomuro himself is a Christian.) The rest of the for left stayed out of it. Several groups have gone through a deep sectarian degeneration and have exhausted themselves in "internal wars. " (In Japanese, there is oven a special word for these wars: uchigeba.) The violence-of these confrontations has been such that many militants have been killed! Such was the case with Chukaky, an organization with some characteristics similar to those of a "third period" StalinIst organization, but which rejects Stalin and considers the USSR a Stalinist state, and Kalho, or "Liberation, " a spontanéist formation that falsely describes itself as Luxemburgist and is moving back toward the 5P. The Kakumaru, on economist current that defines the Sovier Union as state capitalist, apart from its internal wars, has taken a deep rightward counse and called for a vote to an SP candidate, a bureaucrat in the railway union. (Some analogies could be drawn to the Lambertists in France.) But the balance-sheet of the campaign obviously goes beyond that. For one thing, the Sanrizuka Peasants Association has at least 230, 356 people in Japan who support is struggle. The electoral campaign will have been very useful for preparing the coming stages of the struggle. Further, in the course of the campaign we were able to establish contacts with currents and elements of the left with whom we had never been able to work previously. Finally, it opened an important battle within Sohyo over the bureaucratic control by the SP of the union and for the right of each union to choose the workers candidate that it desires. 2. What program was the electoral campaign based on? A. It was a unitary campaign, but its components were politically heterogeneous (Maoists and Trotskyishs, left trade-union militants, pocifists and left Christians). As for 1. Tomura, he has a very firm position on the SP and the CP (which refused to give active support to the struggle in Sanrizuka). He represents a striking example of rodical struggle and illustrates the desire of combative militants to define a political position independent of the reformist leaderships. The unitary program of 30 the campaign was an elementary one. These were its slogans: -- All power to the working masses! -- For the occupation and expropriation of the factories by the workers! - For the control by the peasants of the land and water now monopolized by the trusts and the government! -- For the control of the sea by the fishermen! Against pollution! - For control of the distribution network by the consumer! -- Against all discrimination against women, the Buraku (Japanese "untouchable" castes), South Koreans, and the handicapped! - For the overthrow of the lying, thieving LDP government! -- Agoinst the invasion of Asia by Japanese imperiolism! -- We will destroy Japanese Imperialism in common with the peoples of Asia! - Vote for Tomura, for "Yonooshi" (change of society)! This latter slogan is in fact virtually untranslatable, because it utilizes a traditional Jepanese word that means both "revolution" and "change the conditions of life"; it was used even during the feudal era. Obviously, we distributed our own program within the framework of this unitary campaign. Our main slogans were these: -- Down with the Tanaka-LDP government, against any capitalist government! - For an anti-imperialist, socialist, workers and peasants government! Against goverments of the "popular front" or the "center-left"1 - Overthrow the rule of Japanese and U.S. imperialism in Asia! - Let us march toward a socialist Asia with the peoples of Asia! - Let us construct a proletarion front for the anti-imperialist struggle and the struggle for socialism! Vote for Tomura as a representative of the fighting masses! To these general slogans we odded specific slogans on workers struggles, the oppression of women, antimilitorist actions, international solidarity with the peoples of Asia, against the peaceful coexistence engaged in by China and North Korea, etc. As for the local candidates, we called for votes to the candidates of the workers parties, the 5P and the CP. Since we were the only national political organization involved in the Tomura campaign, we provided the bull of the effort, both militant and financial. But because of the state of the for left and our own relative organizational weakness, we were not able to achieve a better electoral score. Q. What lessons do you draw from the spring offensive and the latest elections? A. There is a real continuity in the lessons that we con draw From the two events. First, a new stage was reached in the crisis of the LDP. We are seeing the opening of a real crisis of political leadership of the bourgeoisie in Japan. Then there was the affirmation of a real militant potential of the working class and the stagnation of the influence of the CP and SP and the weakening of their ability to control struggles. Finally, there is the decisive problem of the absence of a national class-struggle political pole of attraction able to oppose the reformist leaderships, including on the question of the government. It is to the construction of this pole that the leadership of our Japanese section, the Revolufionary Communist League, is now committed.
JAMES D. CANNON Continued from p. 2. Interational Labor Defense, the organization formed to fight for the freedom of class-struggle prisoners, notably Sacco and Vanzetti. The two: Third Internationalist groups that had emerged from the SP Left Wing were unified in 1921. The new united party soon became the hegemonic organization among the workers vanguard in the United States. It continued the traditions of militant class struggle established by the IWW and the Eugene Debs wing of the Socialist party and took big steps in combining that tradition with the new farms of struggle and organization thar had been vindicated by the victory of the October Revolution. As a member of the party's Political Committee, Cannon played a central role in this process of establishing the first solid roots of communism in the United States: But the early American CP, subjected to the pressures of the economic boom of the 1920s and the ascendancy of American imperialism, and crippled by its lack of internationalist understanding and tradition, was racked by foctionalism -- factionalism that was by no means always based on clear political differences. Cannon - - as he wos the first to admit later on - was a vigorous participant in these factional wans. Toward the end of the 1920s, he began to realize the threat they represented. But viewing the development of the party solely through the prism of the American situation, he was unable to see any way out of the increasingly less meaningful factional warfare. In 1928 Cannon went to Moscow as a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the Communist International. Each delegate was assigned to a commission set up to deal with a particular question. Cannon's factional opponents, angling for positions on the American commission, hod him assigned to the program commission, the body charged with drafting the program for the International. That, they believed, was a harmless and rather uninteresting assignment. Leon Trotsky had been expelled from the Russian Communist party the year before. But he was appealing that expulsion and had sent a document, the Criticism of the Draft Progrom of the Communist International, to the World Congress. By a slip up in the bureaucratic apparatus, the document was translated and distributed to the members of the program commission. When Cannon read Trotsky's document, he became convinced that the Left Opposition was correct on the points of division within the International, and he resolved to break out of the trap of dead-end factionalism and launch a principled struggle in the Americon CP for the program of the Left Opposition. He smuggled a copy of Trobsky's Criticism bock to the United States. By that time, the American CP was well on the road to becoming bureaucratized. Like most parties of the Third Internafional, it had passed motions condemning Trotsky and the Left Opposition as counterrevolutionary. To openly declare for Trotsky's program would have meant immediate expulsion from the party. Cannon began showing Trotsky's document to selected party mombers. The first few recruits were thus won to what was to become the American section of the International Left Opposition. Within a few months, the other leaders of the CP discovered Cannon's activity. In October 1928 he, along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern, was summorily expelled. The small group of Trotskyish that had been ossembled in the CP had prepared for the expulsion. Within a week, the first issue of the Trotskyist newspaper, the Militant, appeared. It began publishing twice a month. The conditions under which the first independent nucleus of American Trotskyists hod to function were extremely difficult. The group had no money, no staff, no headquarters, not even a mimeograph machine. They numbered far less than 100. They were facing o Communist party that at the time had about 10,000 members and a formidable apparatus, including several daily newspapers. The Trotskyists were cut off from their milieu. Communist party members discovered to be even discussing with them were expelled from the CP. But the group held together nonetheless. In May 1929 a. conference of fifty participants representing about 100 members was held in Chicago. The conference founded the Communist League of America, Left Opposition of the Communist party. For the next four years the CLA concentrated on publishing propaganda materials aimed at the membership of the Communist party: The Stalinish responded with a huge slander campaign and often with violent attacks on the comrodes selling the Trotskyist press. For the first several months, scarcely a meeting was held by the Tratskyists that was not assaulted by gangs organized by the CP. The Trotskyists had to defend not only their political position, but their physical safety as well. It is a tribute to the political and organizational capacities of that small group - and of Cannon in particular -- that it was able to hold Itself together and successfully prepare to make a turn to mass work when the objective situation changed. In 1933, while the Nazis were consolidating their power in Germany, the comrades of the CLA waged a big campaign to popularize the program of the International Left Opposition among the vanguard. When the historic betrayal of the Comintor leoder produced no significant ripples of protest from the ranks of the International, the ILO raised the call for a new international and new Communist parties. The Communist League of Americo participated in that campaign and made a turn to moss work in the labor movement to build that party. In 1934 the Trotskyists in Minneopolis, Minnesota, led three massive strikes of teamsters. Cannon wos sent to Minneapolis, where he played a major role in the political leodership of the strike, editing the Orgonizer, the first strike daily ever produced in the history of the American labor movement. The strikers had to foce martial-low; they orgonized themselves and battled the police and the national guard on the streets of Minneapolis. The strike was won, and the Americon Trotskyists had become a real factor in the labor movement. They had proved able to break ouf of the previous isolation. At the end of 1934, the CLA fused with a leftward-moving centrist organization called the American Workers party. The AWP had played a leading role in a major strike in Toledo, Ohio. The Toledo strike, the Minneapolis strikes, and the San Francisco longshore strike were the high points of the first national strike wave of the depression years. In June 1936, the now organization, called the Workers party, entered the Socialist party to try to attract the newly growing left wing of the SP, whose members were militant workers and youth who had gone to the SP in reaction to the bureaucratism and conservatism of the Communist party. While the American Trotskyists were in the SP, Cannon led the Trotskyist foction, editing Labor Action, a weekly agitational paper published on the West Coast. In 1936 the TrotskyIsts organized the Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow frame-up trials. The Commission, headed by John Dewey, held hearings in Mexico City, Troky's place of exile, during 1937. The issuance of its report, Not Guilty, was instrumental in
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exposing the Moscow trials throughout the world labor movement. By early 1937, the bureaucrats of the Socialist party had decided that the Trotskyist faction had become too dangerous.
Through its activities in the trade-union movement and its political offensive within the SP on questions like the Spanish civil war and the defense of Tronky, the Trotskyist faction was winning over the best elements of the Socialist party youth. In June 1937 the Trotskyist faction was summarily expelled The expelled members organized a National Committee of Expelled Branches and, over the New Year's weekend of 193738, held a national convention. In their one year of activity within the Socialist party, the Trotskyists had doubled their membership. Moreover, they had recruited virtually all the proletarian elements of the SP, leaving the American Social Democratic party a crippled organization that never recovered it influence in the working class. The New Year's convention of 1938 founded the Socialist Workers party, which was to become the American section of the Fourth International. Within the first two yeors of its existence, the 5WP had to fight a major battle for the integrity of the revolutionary Marxist program. A minority of the party, under the pressure of anti-Soviet public opinion in the United States generated by the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact and the Soviet invasions of Poland and Finland, developed the notion that the Soviet Union could no longer be considered a workers state and that it should not be defended by revolutionaries in the event of war. The internal fight in the SWP broke out openly on the first day of the second world war. In the course of the fight, the minority challenged not only the Fourth Internatonal's position on the closs character of the Soviet state, but the validity of dialectical materialism and the Bolshevik principles of organization as well. The fight against the SWP minority -- based almost wholly among the nonproletarion sections of the party -- occupied the last months of Trotsky's life. Cannon was the central leader of the proletarian majority. He collaborated closely with Trotsky during the fight, producing a document called The Struggle for a Proletarian Party (later published as a book), a deferse of the principles of Bolshevik organization: The struggle in the SWP in defense of the revolutionary Marxist program was crucial on an international scale in ensuring the programmatic integrity of the Fourth Internattonal. If was also crucial in preparing the SWP for standing up to the repression if was to face during the war. In 1941, eighteen leaders of the SWP, Cannon among them, were Indicted under the Smith Act, the witch-hunt legislation later extensively used during the MeCarthy period. The trial of the SWP leaders was the first to be conducted under the oct, which made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government: Cannon was the chief defendant in the trials. The transcript of his testimony, an explanation of the fundamental principles and politics of revolutionary Marxiam, was later published as Socialism on Trial, a book that for many years served to introduce workers to the bases of Marxism. The SWP leaders were convicted under the Smith Act and, on December 8, 1941, the day of U.5. entry into the second world war, were sentenced to twelve to eighteen months in prison. For the next three years, the SWP waged a fight against the verdict, a fight that was integrated into the party's opposition to the war and to the antistrike legislation and other measures designed to force the working class into line behind the capi1 32 talist wor program. In January 1945 Cannon and the other seventeen leaders entered prison, where they remained for more than a year. The American government hoped that the Imprisonment of the SWP's top leadership would destroy the party. But the secondary leadership was able to rise to the leadership and guide the party, even expanding its influence, despite the war-imposed isolation and despite the absence of eighteen of the party's leaders. Cannon's political octivity was not halfelt wittle he was in prison. He was in constant correspondence with the party leadership, expressing his views on the content and style of the party's publicotions, the program of education of the party membership, the importance of re-establishing confoct with European Trotskyists, which had been cut by the war, the probable evolution of the American political situation after the war, and the ways of carrying out a new turn to moss work in the labor movement. These letters have been collected and published as a book, Letters From Prison, by Pathfinder Press, New York. The immediate postwar period in the United States saw the biggest strike wave in Americon history. The SWP was able to turn its attention to the strike wave and grew to a membership of several thousand, many party militants playing leading roles in the class bottles. But the strike wave subsided after only a few years, as capitalism -- with the aid of the moss Stalinist parties -- was able to restabilize itself. In the United States, the witch-hunt accompanying the restabilization was especially severe. Leftish of every variety were driven out of the trade-union movement, sometimes violently. All the workers organizations were driven into the deepest isolation. which was to last throughout the 1950s and even into the beginning of the 1960s. Despite his age - he was sixty years old in 1950 - and despite the difficult conditions, Cannon remained active in the leadership of the party throughout those years. And, when the development of the civil rights movement and the victory of the Cubon revolution began to leod to a change in the situation, Cannon was again instrumental in leading the SWP in making a fresh turn to the new layers of rodicalizing youth. In early 1950 Cannon gave a speech of a dinner sponsored by the Los Angeles branch of the Socialist Workers party to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. In the course of his speech, he remarked that for most of his life he had been too busy to bother about celebrating birthdays. But it had occured to him that af age sixty it was perhaps time to "make a sort of appraisal of the sixty years. " He came to what he thought was the most important question in any self-examination: "Has your life been consistent with your youth? For me that has always been the decisive criterion, for one's youth is the gauge to measure by. Youth is the age of wisdom, when our ideals seem to be, as they really are in fact, more important than anything else in the world. Youth is the age of virtue, or more correctly, the age of courage, which is the first virtue. Every man's youth is his better self." Cannon's life was consistent with his youth. His courage in defending his ideas was equal to anybody's. He leaves behind not only the revolutionary-socialist organization he worked so consistently to build, but also a large body of litercry work to serve as instruction for the youth of today. The number of militanh in the world today rallying to the building of the Fourth International is greater than it has ever been since the Stalinist bureaucracy usurped and destroyed the Third Internafional. That must have been a source of great satisfaction for James P. Cannon. It was one that he richly deserved.