ICC introduction

As we have already pointed out in several articles published in the International Review and in our territorial press, the events in France during May 1968 were only part of a much broader movement around the world.

We are publishing here an article from a comrade in Japan, which demonstrates clearly that this broader movement also had its counterpart there, despite the specific and difficult historic particularities of that country.

The future proletarian revolution will be internationalist and international or it will be nothing. It is one of the greatest responsibilities of internationalists around the world today to place their local experience firmly within the framework of world events, to understand the movement of the working class in any one place as being only a part, an expression of a greater whole, and to contribute to an international debate within the working class on the lessons of past events for the future of the struggle against a moribund capitalism. We therefore salute comrade Ken's effort to place the events of 1968 in Japan in both a historical and a global context. We support his conclusion wholeheartedly: "We would be satisfied if this brief summary reflection upon the Japanese "68" could assist in some way in the international coordination of the global working class (this was the most important thing then, and the most important thing now)."

There are several points in the article which are for us ambiguous either due to difficulties in translation or because of our own ignorance of Japanese history. We will highlight just some of them here, because we think that they are important elements for debate both among Japanese internationalists and more generally:

1. It is clear that the workers' struggles saw many new features during this period: attempts at self-organisation, even at self-management, many of which had their parallels in Europe for example. It was inevitable at the time that the workers' should be influenced by the "socialist" and "communist" (ie Stalinist) parties and by trades unionist ideas; this seems to have given a certain importance to the SOHYO union. However it is unclear to us to what extent SOHYO was an expression of a real workers' movement in the form of wildcat strikes for example, which got derailed into an impossible attempt to set up a new union, or whether it was an attempt by the left fractions of the ruling class to create a more "radical" structure that could channel workers' discontent and struggles. What are the lessons to be drawn from the SOHYO experience in terms of organising workers' struggles today? What comparisons can we make with other workers' struggles around the world, particularly the massive strikes in Poland 1980?
2. It is clear to us from talking to comrades in Japan that the degeneration of political infighting between the principle leftist groups and sects (which has apparently left as many as 100 dead and more than a thousand seriously injured over the years) has been profoundly traumatic for the political milieu in general. What lessons are to be drawn from this? Why is it that the "New Left" has been "forced into stagnation" as the comrade says? It seems to us that the new generation in Japan 1968 suffered from two handicaps: on the one hand, a tendency towards anti-American nationalism as a result of Japan's situation as a militarily occupied country, and on the other the lack of any left communist tradition which could serve as a reference point: the works of Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Gorter are virtually unknown and the left communist tradition represented by the Italian left is unheard-of.
3. The comrade in one part of the text speaks of the "Vietnamese-Indochinese revolutionary war" and "revolutionary solidarity with the people of Vietnam and Asia". From our point of view, the war in Vietnam was an imperialist confrontation between the USA and the Vietcong, who were backed up either by China or Russia. Only very few young people who opposed the war in Vietnam developed their rejection of the war into a real internationalist position which rejects the participation in any imperialist war and calls for the class struggle against both sides in an imperialist conflict. It was a real tragedy of history, that all across the globe many young people were drawn into support of national liberation struggles, thinking that this would reinforce the struggle against "imperialism". Now with 40 years hindsight, it is vital to come to a deeper understanding of the nature of these wars at the time. Which balance sheet can be drawn of these so-called national liberation struggles?

We have wanted to keep this introduction as brief as possible, in order to reduce the problems of translation. There are clearly other questions raised in this article which it would be necessary to discuss, however we think that the three we have raised above are probably the most important. We hope that the publication of this article, with our comments, in English and in Japanese, will encourage an international debate that will contribute to a better understanding of the "Japanese ‘68" and a strengthening of the internationalist milieu in Japan itself. In this sense, "The world gets wider, but also smaller"!

ICC, 20 July 2008

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Background History

The dissident movements which managed extraordinary significance in post-war history during the struggle against the AMPO (Mutual Cooperation and Security) treaty between the United States and Japan, and yet appeared to stagnate in the period immediately afterward, in fact maintained a constant mass base in the student self-governing organizations which had spread to universities across the country. In 1965, after a similar struggle against the treaty for normalization between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK), the political season of the anti-war movement follows not long after, characterized by the struggles of the Zengakuren and the Zenkyoto and the 1970 anti-AMPO and Okinawa struggles.

Within the workers' movement, the SOHYO (General Council of Trade Unions of Japan) established itself in the course of leading the Mitsui Miike coal strike of 1959-60, which was the most important labor dispute in the post-war period, together with its participation in the struggle against AMPO in 1960, raising the demands for peace against war as well as a variety of democratic demands.

Besides the existing parliamentary parties, i.e. the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP), the student/worker organizations under their influence, and those trade unions under SOHYO, there were a variety of sects and organizations such as the Japan Communist League (BUND, the main section of the Zengakuren during the AMPO struggle in 1960), and the Japanese Revolutionary Communist League （under the Japanese Trotskyist Federation） which organized and participated in struggles.

These groups were organizations brought together through a critique of the USSR and Stalinism in the wake of the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and critiques of the Japanese Communist party line

National university struggles, the Zenkyoto

As opposition to the Vietnam war grows on a world scale, the struggle in universities accelerates in Japan.

Nihon University, May 1968

Struggles are waged against student fee increases at Keio University in 1964, Waseda University in 1965 and Chuo University in 1966.

In 1968, the medical department at Tokyo University enter an indefinite strike against the "Doctor Registration law" (which would have extended the internship period of graduates by 2 years and introduced strict hierarchies in the workplace). A Student-body Struggle Committee (Zenkyoto) is assembled, an indefinite strike is declared and barricades set up by 10 academic departments. The next year in 1969, 8500 riot police attack the striking students, and the barricades at Yasuda lecture hall, among others, are cleared by force. More than 600 people are arrested inside Tokyo university. The University entrance exams of the same year for Tokyo University are cancelled as a result.

At Japan's largest private university at the time, Nippon University (Nichidai), instructor tax evasion in connection with unfair student entrance policies, as well as the discovery of over 2 billion yen (roughly 100 million dollars) of fees that have gone unaccounted for, sparks student struggle. In 1968, after an armed confrontation between right-wing/athletics students, an indefinite barricade strike is launched across the university. Over 35,000 people and students attend a mass negotiation session that the university director is forced to attend.

The student movements and the Zenkyoto came to be symbolized by these twin struggles at Todai and Nichidai University, and the movement spread to over 300 universities and high schools across the country. Blockades using barricades and student strikes continued up until the dawn of the 1970s, connecting with the anti-war movement, the anti-AMPO movement and the struggle in Okinawa which were peaking in the same period. These movements would take to the streets in columns.

The decisive difference between the Zengakuren and the Zenkyoto during the anti-AMPO struggles of the 1960s lies in the question of organization.

The Zengakuren is organized as its abbreviated name implies, an "All-Japan Federation of Students' Self-Governing Associations", being supported by a vertical organization beginning at the university level, down to department, to class, to individual (automatic membership for all students). In this sense, the Zengakuren was created in accord with the character of the "Potsdam Self-governing Associations" i.e. the top-down democratization brought about by the American occupying forces.

On the other hand, the Zenkyoto was premised on an extremely broad, free participation, quite the opposite of the self-governing associations, the Zengakuren or the party sectarians, and endeavored to be a mass movement based on direct democracy. From the start the Zenkyoto was a pluralist organization with a deeply parliamentarist character, centered around particular struggles. The majority of its constituents were known as ‘non-sect radicals', i.e. those who did not affiliate with particular political sects.

The movement against the war in Vietnam

Bearing the fruits of the 1960 AMPO, anti-war and anti-base struggles as well as the struggle against the ROK normalization treaty, a movement against the war in Vietnam began in Japan as well.

In 1965, an organization called Beheiren (meaning "Citizen's Union for Peace in Vietnam") was established. With no constitution nor member system of any sort, the movement depended on the independent initiative of its members, and spread nationally, eventually constituting over 300 groups.

The student movement at large, the Zengakuren, the Socialist Party, labor unions such as SOHYO and anti-war youth organizations were central to the movement, and a variety of struggles were developed against the war.

October 1967, sees the first phase of the struggle over Haneda airport and a struggle to prevent the then prime minister Eisaku Satou from visiting Southern Vietnam. In the melee, a Kyoto University student dies.

The same month: International anti-war day. Demonstrations and meetings held across the country to which 1.4 million people attend.

November, second phase of the struggle over Haneda airport (struggle to prevent the prime minister from visiting the US). Fierce fighting between the Zengakuren and riot squads over 10 hours. Nationally, more than 300 arrestees on this day alone.

January 1968, struggle to prevent the American nuclear submarine Enterprise from docking at Sasebo harbor.

February, mass meeting to prevent the construction of a new airport at Sanrizuka (now known as Narita International Airport). Farmers against the airport and students fight together for the first time. 3000 people battle the riot police.

February to March, struggle against the opening of Ojino war hospital. Physical struggles overflow into Tokyo city.

April, Okinawa day struggle. 250,000 people participate nationally. Subsequently, a ‘destructive activism prevention law' is passed against the Revolutionary Communist League (Chuukaku-ha) and the Communist League.

(May general strike in Paris)

October, unified international anti-war action. 4.5 million people participate nationally under the slogans of "against the war in Vietnam, for the return of Okinawa, stop the AMPO agreement". The Communist League and the Socialist Student's League attack the defense department; the Socialist Party, the Socialist Youth Liberation fraction attack the Diet and the American embassy and rush inside. The Chukaku-ha Socialist Student League (4th international) along with other people occupy Shinjuku station which is the critical supply point for American fuel tankers. Tens of thousands of people hold a mass meeting outside and around the station. The two national rail unions go on a limited strike. The Japanese government indicts participants for incitement to riot.

April 1969, Okinawa day struggle.

September, mass meeting establishes a national Zenkyoto federation. 26,000 students in 178 organizations at 46 universities nationwide meet in Tokyo.

October, international anti-war day. The Socialist Party, Communist party and SOHYO march together with 860,000 people. Under stiff conditions of repression, the various parties of the New Left engage in armed struggle around Tokyo. Police departments and police boxes are attacked. Tactics escalate with the organized use of molotov cocktails as well as explosives. Over 1500 people are arrested.

In the same month, the national rail workers, followed by 4 million industrial workers in 67 unions plan a 24 hour strike in November.

These struggles continue into the anti-AMPO struggle and the Okinawan struggle of 1970.

The worker's movement and other struggles

At the height of the 1960s economic expansion, the Japanese workers' movement moved into a period of constant growth centered around the Socialist Party, the Communist party and the SOHYO union, while engaging with a variety of political problems such as the place of the Soviet Union and the "Socialist Bloc", the progress of the anti-imperialist (anti-American) struggle and nationally, the AMPO, Okinawa and anti-war struggles. Labor disputes and strikes spiked after 1968 (in terms of numbers of disputes and participants), peaking in 1974. In this period, the national spring labor offensive of 1974 (2,270,000 workers in 71 unions on strike, winning a 32.9% increase in wages), the 1975 strike for the right to strike (led chiefly by the KOROKYO [Federation of Public Corporation and Government Enterprise Workers'Union] and the national railway unions), described as the second largest post-war struggle, and other struggles were fought.

The New Left sects raised objectives such as "creating a class-based workers movement", and set about intervening in existing workers' vanguards and creating left-wing factions within them. These sects also aimed for an independent direction involving the organization of unorganized lower class workers as well as those working at smaller corporations, creating regional labor unions, and attempting autonomous production and self-management.

In 1965, the Socialist Party-affiliated Anti-war Coordinating Committee (established to oppose the war in Vietnam and stop the Japan-Korea normalization treaty) managed to expand on a large scale under the slogans of "autonomy, originality and unity" without involving labor unions or top-down organizations, however this expansion was riven with the hegemony struggles of sects in the same way as the Zenkyoto movement not soon afterwards.

While the anti-AMPO, anti-war/anti-base struggles, the Okinawa struggle and the Sanrizuka struggle were constantly fought, the New Left sects began to devote their energy to single-issue struggles such as immigration struggles (for a refugee recognition law as well), solidarity with Koreans and Chinese people living in Japan, solidarity with the people of the ASEAN countries, the women's liberation movement, the Buraku liberation movement and movements of the handicapped.

Organized at the same time were regional struggles, anti-pollution struggles such as the fight against the Minamata disease (where mercury from a local factory poisoned thousands), the anti-nuclear movement, environmental movements, day laborer struggles (at Sanya, Kamagasaki and so on) as well as the ongoing struggle against the emperor system.

The fruits of "68"

Today, the post-war power structure, the so-called "1955 system", has "collapsed". We have moved from the one-party dictatorship of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to a two-party system that includes the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The Socialist Party, which acted a left foot of the political rule of the bourgeois, has dismantled, the diet seats of the Japanese Communist Party have decreased severely and the influence of the existing left organizations has dropped quite remarkably.

The Japanese-American system is all the more powerful and American bases or institutions exist at 135 locations nationally (20% of the main island in Okinawa is occupied by the US army). Troop dispatches to the Iraq war and "threats" from the DPRK have served as pretexts for the accelerated reform of the peace constitution centered around "article 9".

In terms of a workers' vanguard, SOHYO has dismantled and merged with RENGO (the Japanese Trade Union Confederation). New Left sects which had worked towards the creation of "revolutionary workers' parties to replace the Socialist/Communist parties" and a "class-based worker's movement" are being forced into stagnation.

Considering this, it is important to decipher the meaning of 1968, which served as a junction in world history. For ourselves, the Japanese working class, it is particularly meaningful to draw up a balance sheet of Japan's "68" from the perspective of the international communist movement.

1. The accomplishments and the limits of the JCP during both the period when the Japanese branch of the COMINTERN was active, and the post-war period in which it was legalized, seeking "sovereign independence in defense of scientific socialism" and shifting to a parliamentary road.
2. Criticism of Stalinism and the JCP and their result, the New Left and the birth and stagnation of Japanese Trotskyism.

With these questions in the forefront, to what extent does Japan's "68" fought above all by students and young workers connect with the French and American "1968s", the "Prague spring", the Italian "Hot Autumn" of 69, the huge Polish strike developed over the winter of 70 to 71 which gave birth to "Solidarity", and the Vietnamese-Indochinese revolutionary war?

These are questions we must continue to examine.

Japan's "68" was a struggle which questioned the real meaning of "post-war democracy", which included struggles by workers and students for themselves, and refused the future proposed by the existing left, Stalinists and the Socialists. It was a new struggle in which the Japanese working class attempted to shape the future by asserting its own hegemony. This "68" was a collection of struggles in search of proletarian internationalism, in particular revolutionary solidarity with the people of Vietnam and Asia, which attempted to realize a truly peaceful world in which prejudice, repression and exclusion of any sort was eradicated.

In the end, its ascendant period was unable to exceed the framework of rapid democratization and parts of the movement turned to mere terrorism. Unable to win the support of over 50 million workers, the aims of the struggles went largely unrealized and remain unfulfilled today.

However we are conscious of the systematic changes to Japanese politics, economy and society after "68".

Abolition of the foreigner registration and fingerprinting law (obligation of all foreigners on Japanese soil to be fingerprinted). Enactment of the "Gender Equal Opportunity Law". Slowly growing support for eliminating barriers for the handicapped and normalization (this country only formalized a law against discrimination towards the handicapped in 2004 (!) with the "Handicapped Law". This law states that "No person may engage in any conduct which infringes on the rights and well-being of a handicapped person because that person is handicapped"). Unlike that time in which the struggle against the Minamata disease was waged, today officials and companies stumble over each other to announce the themes of ecology, energy-saving and post-pollution. Movements for human rights, environmental preservation and regional struggles have transformed into NGOs and NPOs (non-profit organizations), which organize towards those goals. And so on.

Things that seemed at the time so unrealizable have to a certain extent been realized (disregarding to what ends they are used). Of course most of these gains have been "democratic" demands and symbolize nothing other than compromises and harmony with the enemy class. Recognizing the prevalence of class collaboration in the situation of Japanese capitalism at present can help us move towards real victories without our guard down.

However, "68" as a social movement still bears effects even today. The seeds of "68", which went beyond a framework of counter-power and resistance culture to spread to all of society, will certainly continue to foment changes in the future.

Thirty years after the crossroads of 68, we would be satisfied if this brief summary reflection upon the Japanese "68" could assist in some way in the international coordination of the global working class (this was the most important thing then, and the most important thing now).

To all our comrades who struggle in Europe:

The world gets wider, but also smaller. We await real opportunities to organize alongside you.

(23/03/2008 Ken)

 

The open letter published here is in response to the interview between Loren Goldner and the Korean group Sanosin, concerning the history and present condition of the communist left. In a very brief exchange of mails, Loren has not objected to the publication of the letter, considering that "Your letter is fair and I see no need to respond at this time".

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ICC to Loren Goldner, 05/07/08

Dear Loren, 

We recently read with considerable interest your interview with the Sanosin group in Korea. We would like to emphasise first of all our agreement with you when you state that "It's important to understand that in the general reaction against vanguardism, Bolshevism, Trotskyism, there's also a relatively large milieu in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain in which people call themselves anarchist, libertarian communist, anarcho-communist and other combinations that I think could be fairly seen as part of a broadly left communist mood.".

Actually we would go further than this, and we think that it is useful to distinguish more clearly the different traditions that partake of this "left communist mood". While there are certainly some from the anarchist or perhaps more specifically anarcho-syndicalist tradition (the KRAS in Russia for example, which is a part of the CNT-AIT) who are open to the ideas and positions of the left communists on the basis of a shared internationalism, there are others who consider that the left communist tradition, far from being anti-Bolshevik, in fact represents the continuation of revolutionary internationalist Bolshevism (ie the tradition of the Bolshevik party as it was when the workers took power in 1917 in Russia).

This aspect of the left communist spirit is by no means confined to the European countries you mention. It also extends to countries in Latin America (you may for example have seen the reports on our web site of our public meetings in Brazil held jointly with comrades of the Oposiçao Operaria group or on our own account [7]); to the Philippines (see for example the report on our web site from the comrades of the Internasyonalismo group concerning the food crisis [8]; you might be interested to see that thanks to these comrades we have also been able to open a site in Tagalog [9]); and to Turkey (we have published several texts on our site by the left communist group Enternasyonalist Komünist Sol). We don't propose to go into the reasons for this in depth here - we would happy to discuss it another time should you wish.

This "left communist mood", and a fraternal spirit of cooperation, was also present at the conference in Korea in 2006. As you said at the time, in your mail to us after the conference, "everyone else appreciated the comradely atmosphere which prevailed throughout". In our view this is something that should be encouraged. You would describe yourself as a "left communist" in the interview with Sanosin - though as you know of course, left communism covers a number of different currents with some pretty substantial differences on questions ranging from political organisation to the national and union questions. Perhaps we could make one brief point about this. In your text, you put forward the idea that "What left communism is, in my opinion, in addition to what I said, just to re-emphasize it, was the one important current that rejected the universal application of the model of the Russian revolution". In our view, two things above all distinguish the left communists: they were the first and have remained the most consistent opponents of Stalinism; and they have remained internationalist including during the most difficult moments of the last world war. It is this question above all, the question of internationalism and a developing awareness around the world that the problems posed by a world wide economic crisis and looming ecological disaster simply cannot be resolved within the national framework, that accounts in large part for the "left communist mood" of which you speak.

Given this new situation, this new openness to the ideas and principles of the communist left, we think it is particularly important that the groups and militants who represent this current should maintain the spirit of fraternal cooperation and debate which presided, as you say, at the 2006 conference. With this in mind, we would like to take up some of your comments about the history of the communist left and about the ICC in particular, which we think are somewhat inaccurate.

On the question of the Italian Left and the Spanish Civil War, you say "for the Bordigists, really nothing important happens without the party. For example, during the Spanish revolution of 1936-1937, they said "There's no revolution, because there's no party." And they actually split at that time. Some of the Bordigists went and fought in Spain, others stayed in Europe and said "This is a battle between factions of the bourgeoisie." So there's a kind of excessive view of the importance of the party in my opinion". We presume that by "Bordigists" here, you mean the group which published Bilan in France during the 1930s. However, this group (to which the ICC traces its own origins incidentally) could certainly not be called "Bordigist", at least not in the sense that the word has today. Moreover, the position of the Bilan group was not such a caricature as you seem to think. As we say in our book on the Italian Left, for the Italian Left Fraction "If the party did not exist it was ‘because the situation had not permitted its formation'." (p94 of the English edition).[1] In other words, there is a dialectical relationship between the development of class consciousness among the mass of the workers, and the development of political organisations which are themselves an expression of this class consciousness.

Given the emphasis you place on the history of the communist left, we also find it surprising that - while you urge the comrades of Sanosin to visit the site where Philippe Bourrinet has published his own versions of the Italian Left and the German Left (inaccessible by the way at time of writing), you fail to mention the fact that it is the ICC which has undertaken to publish in English and French the histories not only of the Dutch-German and Italian left communists (the latter also in German), but also of the left-communists in Russia (the Miasnikov group in particular - this last book should shortly be published in Russian and French by the way) and in Britain. Don't you think that this at least deserved a mention? It is true that the Russian and British traditions have left less of a trace, but they nonetheless have their importance, in particular in the case of Russia as a means of better understanding the struggle within the Bolshevik party itself against the Stalinist counter-revolution.

In fact, it seems to us that you have a bit of a "blind spot" when it comes to what the ICC has to say in general. "The ICC lives only in its own world"; "I read many of the texts and I considered the ICC in particular to be very weak in critique of political economy. They have a certain kind of Luxemburgist analysis which I don't think it is as good as Luxemburg herself. And I don't think they have really developed at all to take account of the evolution of capitalism in the last 50 years, possibly more. The ICC thinks basically that nothing new ever happens". But is this really justified? Let us offer just two counter-examples:

The first concerns Korea - which you mention having discussed in 1982 with one of our militants. But have you read the analysis of the boom in Korea and the other Asian "dragons" [10] which we cited in our report on the 2006 conference? Certainly the analysis contained here may be different from your own: the process described in this article has nothing to do with an "evolution" of capitalism and everything to do with the spread of American imperialist power, however we think it hardly justifies the claim that "the ICC thinks that nothing ever changes".

The second concerns the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. Perhaps it is worth quoting what we wrote in January 1990: "Everywhere (except in Romania at the time of writing), changes are happening daily, any one of which, only a few years ago, would have brought in the Russian tanks. This is not as it is generally presented, the result of a deliberate policy on Gorbachev's part, but the sign of a general crisis throughout the bloc, at the same time as Stalinism's historic bankruptcy. The rapidity of events, and the fact that they are now hitting East Germany, the central pillar of the Eastern bloc, is the surest sign that the world's second imperialist bloc has completely disintegrated.

This change is by now irreversible, and affects not just the bloc, but its leading power, the USSR itself. The clearest sign of Russia's collapse is the development of nationalism in the form of demands for "autonomy" and "independence" in the peripheral regions of central Asia, on the Baltic coast, and also in a region as vital for the Soviet national economy as the Ukraine.

Now when the leader of an imperialist bloc is no longer able to maintain the bloc's cohesion, or even to maintain order within its own fron­tiers, it loses its status as a world power. The USSR and its bloc are no longer at the centre of the inter-imperialist antagonisms between two capitalist camps, which is the ultimate level of polarisation that imperialism can reach on a world scale in the era of capitalist decadence.

The disintegration of the Eastern bloc, its disappearance as a major consideration in inter-imperialist conflict, implies a radical calling into question of the Yalta agreements, and the spread of instability to all the imperialist constellations formed on that basis, including the Western bloc which the USA has dominated for the last 40 years. This in its turn will find its foundations called into question." (International Review n°60).

As far as the perspectives for the class struggle were concerned, we wrote that: "We are entering a completely new period, which will profoundly modify both the present imperialist constellations (the Western bloc will also be affected, though to a lesser degree and at a less frenetic pace, by convulsions and instability; this is inevitable to the extent that its main reason for existing - the other bloc - has disappeared) and the conditions in which the class has fought up to now.

At first, this will be a difficult period for the proletariat. Apart from the increased weight of democratic mystifications, in the West as well as in the East, it will have to understand the new conditions within which it is fighting. This will inevitably take time (...)"

How many people in the communist left were able to say, barely weeks after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, that this meant not only the disintegration of the USSR's imperialist bloc but of the USSR itself, increasing rivalries and clashes of interest between the USA and its "allies", and a long and difficult period for the class struggle and its revolutionary minorities (which did indeed last throughout the 1990s)? Is this the reaction of an organisation that "lives in its own world"?[2]

The same "blind spot", and an unfortunate lack of interest in historical accuracy, seems to hold true when you describe our analyses of the class struggle. You say, for example, that "I don't remember the exact dates but they [ie the ICC] thought that the mid 1980s was a period of very intense class struggle, at least in Western Europe and United States. When in fact it was a period of tremendous working class defeat". We would point out in reply that "intense class struggle" and "tremendous defeat" are by no means contradictory. Indeed, if the wave of "intense class struggle" that followed 1917 in Russia had not ended in a "tremendous defeat" then we would certainly not be discussing these issues today because we would be too busy building a communist society! And it seems to us hard to deny that the 1980s were indeed a period of "intense class struggle": let us mention only the British miners' strike in 1985 (followed by the massive strike at British Telecom not to mention the complete shutdown of the London subway system by a strike in 1989), the French rail workers' strike in 1986, the massive strikes in Belgium in 1983 and in 1986, the strikes in Holland which were the biggest since 1903, the strike in Denmark in 1985 which was the biggest the country had ever seen... Was the ICC wrong to engage its militants to the utmost of our energies to defending a left communist perspective in these struggles?

In this respect, we think it worth setting the record straight on the only concrete example you give: "Former members of the ICC have told me about being sent to some city in France or Belgium with huge bundles of newspapers and arriving at a scene and absolutely nobody was there". This sounds very much like our intervention at the end of the massive French steel workers' strike in the Lorraine region in 1979, where as far as we were able our militants had been present throughout, speaking at the steelworkers' mass meetings on more than one occasion. Following the mass demonstration in Paris which in reality marked the end of the movement, we considered it necessary to try to hold a street meeting in the town of Longwy, which had been at the heart of the movement, in order to try to encourage the workers to draw the lessons of the strike and in particular the role of sabotage played by the unions and the PCF (French "Communist" Party, ie the Stalinists). This was something of a risky business, since in those days the Stalinist-dominated CGT union would generally greet our presence at factory gates with physical violence, hence the decision to send a large cohort of militants to the town. In the event, the steelworkers were too demoralised and exhausted by the defeat to have the heart for such an effort - our meeting was held in the town square but it hardly drew a crowd. But was it not the duty of a communist organisation at least to make the effort?

To conclude on this point, it is worth quoting Luxemburg's words (Order reigns in Berlin) written on the eve of her assassination in 1919: "This contradiction between the demands of the task and the inadequacy of the pre-conditions for its fulfilment in a nascent phase of the revolutionary development results in the individual struggles of the revolution ending formally in defeat. But the [proletarian] revolution is the sole form of ‘war' - and this is also its most vital law - in which the final victory can be prepared only by a series of ‘defeats'! (...) The revolutions have until now brought nothing but defeats, but these inevitable defeats virtually pile guarantee upon guarantee of the future success of the final goal". 

A lack of concern for historical accuracy is all the more regrettable when it gives rise to statements which in our view are simply misleading. Towards the end of the interview, you say: "I really recommend this website which is a website of... It's called libcom.org -libertarian communist. They have really interesting coverage of struggles all over the world. There is one place you can see a lot of these. They even allow the ICC to participate in their debates but everybody just kind of laughs at the ICC". We will answer this simply by repeating what we have already written to the Sanosin comrades: "we would certainly agree that it is worth looking at the libcom.org site (and even participating in the debates). However, LG presumably does not follow the debates very closely since otherwise he would be aware that people do not generally "laugh" at the ICC - though they certainly do not always agree with us. But don't just take our word for it. You can find ICC militants and sympathisers interventions in the discussions on libcom under the following "handles" amongst others: alf, beltov, baboon, alibadani, demogorgon303, LongJohnSilver. During the CPE struggle in France the articles from our French section were posted on libcom, and a libcom member has recently translated our Venezuelan section's article about the steel strike against the Chavez [11] government.".

This trivialisation of debate seems to us all the more regrettable in that your interview raises many questions which are important both for the comrades in Korea and more generally, questions that we ourselves are currently debating with comrades around the world and which we would be glad to take up with you should you wish to engage with us. Certainly one of the most important of these is the union question: what do the unions represent in the present period, and what if any are the possibilities of working within them? We don't propose to take up the argument here, but we would like to point out one very basic error on the question (unless of course we have misunderstood your meaning, in which case we hope you will correct us). Towards the end of the interview you refer to the situation in Britain around World War I as follows:

"The English working class did have a series of radical explosions both before and after World War I . From 1908 to 1914 was a whole series of syndicalist strikes in England and in Scotland and in Ireland and many English capitalists thought the game was over, that the revolution was there.

And then right in the last year or two of World War I and up into 1919, a further mass strike wave occurred throughout Great Britain.

To the point that as you may know Lloyd George, who was the prime minister in 1919, met with the head of the Trade Union Council and said "If you people want power, it's yours." They were ready to give up!

The bourgeoisie understood the power of the working class better than the working class did in that particular moment".

What exactly is meant by this? Surely you cannot seriously believe that Lloyd George (one of the most devious politicians ever produced by the British ruling class) intended for one moment to hand power over to the TUC? Or that the leaders of the TUC - who had supported the war throughout and had acted as the recruiting sergeants of British imperialism for the biggest slaughter the working class had ever suffered - would have wanted to take power even if Lloyd George had handed it to them on a plate? As for the idea that the British ruling class, at the head of the biggest empire that the world had ever seen and confronted with no physical threat to its rule should be "ready to give up" power... to be blunt this is simply nonsense, both historically and generally. Historically, the British ruling class in 1919 was not faced with imminent revolution; more generally, ruling classes (and especially the bourgeoisie) never simply "gives up" power without a fight.

If any kind of useful debate is to take place about the nature of the trades unions and the question of how to organise the struggle in the decadent period of capitalism, then in our view a much more rigorous foundation is necessary as a starting point. 

Lastly, since your interview with Sanosin is posted on your web site, we ask you to consider this as an open letter: we have written with the intention that this letter should be published, and we would like to ask you to publish it on "Break their haughty power". We will also send the letter to Sanosin, since the questions raised here originate in your interview with them.

We would prefer, however, that you should have the opportunity to reply and if necessary correct any points you may think to be mistaken before publication.

We look forward to hearing from you 

Fraternal greetings, JD for ICC

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[1] Here is what we wrote to the comrades of Sanosin in this respect: "...in our view it is incorrect to call [the Bilan group] ‘Bordigists': although Bordiga had played an important role in the left of the Italian Communist Party, and the Bilan group considered themselves to be in that tradition, there was no such thing as Bordigism at the time (Bordiga himself was in internal exile under the Mussolini regime in Italy), and above all the Bilan group certainly did not hold to some of the almost mystical ideas that Bordiga developed in the 1950s about the ‘unchanging' nature of the communist programme (on the contrary, a major part of the group's purpose was to learn the lessons of the Russian revolution and develop the communist programme on this basis), or about the role of the party. LG is also wrong to say that the Italian and Dutch Left Communists "hated" each other. Bordiga and Pannekoek corresponded before World War II (though they did not agree), and Italian left communists (as well as French left communists some of whom had belonged to the Bilan group originally) took part in a conference organised by Dutch left communists after 1947 (see the article in n°132 of the International Review [12]). The situation changed during the 1950s as some of the Italian left communists came more and more under Bordiga's influence, whereas the Dutch left communists moved more towards what is known today as "councilism". It seems to us that LG is adopting here a rather superficial and inaccurate view of the history of the left communist groups."

[2] Incidentally, since you think that we "can't intelligently discuss the nature of the post WWII boom", we'ld be interested in your opinion on the article which discusses precisely that subject, published in n°133 of the International Review [13].

 

We have received the report reproduced below on police repression in Japan, from a comrade on the spot.[1]

We declare our solidarity with those workers and students who have been arrested in a brutal wave of repression that gives the lie to the myth of bourgeois democracy in Japan: the ruling class has revealed its true face in unleashing the riot police on demonstrators and activists in a particularly violent manner. One of the most striking aspects of the events in Kamagasaki is that the workers there were protesting not over bad wages and working conditions but seem to have been concerned first and foremost with defending their dignity as workers and human beings: police brutality "brought over 200 workers to surround the police station and demand that the police chief come out and apologize".

Over and above this declaration of basic solidarity, however, we feel it not only necessary but a part of this expression of solidarity to make some comments on the events described in the article.

First of all, it is clear that the insolent parading of the world's leaders in Hokkaido this year, as in Heiligendamm (Germany) last year, is a legitimate cause for anger especially amongst the politicized youth around the world. This anger, and the desire to fight for a better world without the class exploitation, poverty and brutality that the G8 leaders symbolize, is justified and understandable. There is however a danger in the polarizing of demonstrations against the G8 summits and similar events like the Davos meetings of the world's rich on the basis of nothing more than "anti-capitalism": it can easily lead to a tendency to obscure the real class lines that separate a proletarian response from the response represented by various leftist organizations which tout an "anti-capitalism" that is in fact nothing of the kind, but only a remake of the discredited political state capitalist ideology that reigned in terror over the USSR and the Eastern bloc until its collapse in 1989. This is something that comrades and workers everywhere need to consider, though without more detailed knowledge about the organizations involved (the Rakunan Union or the "workers' organizations" mentioned in the article for example: in our view the Chuukaku-ha organization has nothing to do with working class politics) we will limit ourselves to these comments and will not enter here into any considerations regarding the positions of particular groups.

Secondly, we want to emphasize our profound agreement with this statement in the article: "it is important to explore the possibilities of spreading the antagonism of the Kamagasaki workers to the larger population of exploited people in order to imagine doing away with this power structure once and for all". While it is clear from the events described that the fighting in Kamagasaki[2] was above all a matter of workers' self-defense against police violence, the danger for the Kamagasaki workers is that they end up being simply ghettoized by the very violence with which they try to defend themselves. For an effective class defense, the largest mass participation of as many workers as possible is necessary, not simply in fighting but in organizing independently of all political parties and trades unions in order to bring the pressure of a more massive movement to bear against the state. How can this be done? We will certainly not pretend that there are any easy answers, but the question is - as the comrade says - essentially one of spreading a political reflection more broadly within the working class and politicized youth not just on the immediate issues but on how to do away with the whole of capitalist exploitation world wide.

One of the most important questions that such reflection has to take up is this: how to build up a real pressure against the state? Does such a pressure come about through military clashes - in which the police and the army are expert and specialized or does it come about through a massive mobilization of all exploited and oppressed? History has shown that when it comes to resisting armed attacks by the state, the state has only ever been forced to retreat through massive proletarian mobilization - through strikes, through street demonstrations, etc. Mobilising on a mass scale means posing the question who can offer solidarity? For example when in 1980 in Poland the Polish and Russian ruling class threatened to send the army against the striking workers in Gdansk the railway workers in Lublin did not call for armed fighting with the forces of repression, instead they threatened to paralyze the railway lines through massive strikes thus cutting a vital supply line for the Russian army between the Soviet Union and the then East-German front-line state. The Russian and Polish state had to give in because of the threat of the extension of the strikes.

In this sense, there is a danger which we feel the article misses, when it seems to express the idea that the best answer to the riot situation is to come and join it ("Visitors to Kamagasaki from near and far have over the past five days participated and found their own struggle in riots fought by total strangers."), since this can potentially offer the forces of repression the ideal opportunity to create a "ghetto of violence" separated and alienated from the rest of the workers. Not only in Japan but in many other countries the ruling class prefers to provoke violent clashes and to push workers into these in order to avoid a real movement of extension the struggles and the indispensable reflection in the class. In the question of violence, organization is critical: there is a world of difference between the spontaneous, uncontrolled violence of the riot, and the violence exercised by the working class acting as a conscious force independently organized in its own mass assemblies.[3]

ICC

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Over the past week and a half, an unprecedented political crackdown has been enacted in advance of a series of economic summits around the country. Despite this, the brave workers of Kamagasaki stood up against the stiff security environment in riots against the brutal beating of a day laborer over the past five days. The twin situations of repression and revolt deserve to be examined in more detail. 

Repression

In the run-up to the series of summits, over 40 people were arrested in pre-emptive sweeps of broad left and anarchist groups.

On May 29th, 38 people were arrested at Hosei University in Tokyo at a political assembly against the G8. These large-scale arrests were carried out by over 100 public security agents after the students staged after a march across campus protesting the summits.[4] All of the arrestees are still jailed, and among them are apparently some leadership of the Chuukaku-ha Leninist organization, one of the largest organizations of its kind in Japan.

On June 4th, Tabi Rounin, an active anarchist from the Kansai region, was arrested on accusation of having his address registered at a location other than where he was living. When arrested, his computer, cell phone, political flyers and more was taken from him; these items were used when detectives interrogated him, asking him about his relationship to internationals possibly arriving for the G8, as well as his activity around Osaka. He would be the first obviously political arrest masked as routine police work.[5]

On June 12th, an activist from the Kamagasaki Patrol (an Osaka squatter and anti-capitalist group), was arrested for allegedly defrauding lifestyle assistance payments. This person has been constantly followed by plainclothes police and even helicopters during demonstrations. Clearly, his arrest was planned with the idea of keeping him away from the major anti-summit mobilizations and he will be held without bail for the maximum of 23 until the summit is over. The office of an anarchist organization called the Free Worker was raided in order to look for 'evidence' in this comrade's case.

The same day the Rakunan union in Kyoto was raided, with police officers searching their offices and arresting two of their members on suspicion of fraudulent unemployment insurance receipt. One of these two arrested are accused of funneling money received from unemployment insurance to the Asian Wide Campaign, which was organizing against the economic summits.[6]

In the meantime, Osaka city mobilized thousands of police with the pretext of preventing terrorism against the summit, setting up inspection points and monitoring all around the city. But the strengthened state high on its own power inevitably deployed it in violence, and turned the day laborers of southern Osaka against it in riot.

Revolt

Kamagasaki is a traditionally day laborer neighborhood that has experienced over thirty riots since the early 1960s. The last riot in Kamagasaki was sparked in 1990 by police brutality and the exposure of connections between the police and Yakuza gangs.

The causes this time were not much different. A man was arrested in a shopping arcade near Kamagasaki and taken to the Nishinari police station where he was punched repeatedly in the face by four detectives one after another. Then he was kicked and hung upside down by rope to be beaten
some more.

He was released the next day and went to show his friends the wounds from the beatings and the rope. This brought over 200 workers to surround the police station and demand that the police chief come out and apologize. Later people also started demanding that the four detectives be fired.

Met with steel shields and a barricaded police station, the crowd began to riot, throwing stones and bottles into the police station. Scraps with the riot police resulted in some of their shields and equipment being temporarily seized. The riot stopped around midnight with the riot police being backed into the police station. The next day they brought over 35 police buses and riot vehicles into the Naniwa police station with the intention of using these against the rioters.

During the riot, the police surveilled rioters from the top of the police station, from plainclothes positions and from a helicopter. Riot police with steel shields were deployed all around the neighborhood in strategic places to charge in when the action kicked off. The workers' organizations which by the second day were maintaining the protest had chosen a good time to do so because the police department proved unwilling to unleash the direct, brutal charges seen in the 1990 riot due to the international spotlight focused on them. On Saturday a police infiltrator was found in the crowd, pushed up against a fence and smashed in the head with a metal bar.
The riot has lasted since the 13th and every night there is a resumption of hostility between the day laborers and the cops. Workers so far refuse anything less than the fulfillment of their demands in light of the police brutality incident. Despite the call from more ‘moderate' NGOs to ‘stop the violence' there has been no let-up in hostility towards the police, although the real level of violent confrontation is not as strong as the weekend of the 13th-15th. The riot has been characterized by the participation of young people as well as the older day laborers in confrontation with the police. As the guarantors of everyday exploitation under capitalism who have to assertively maintain the constant dispossession of the urban working class, the police have many enemies. This they are finding out every night.[7]

Over the past couple of days there have been points where more than 500 people have gathered and rioted around the neighborhood. Police have responded mainly by defending the Nishinari police station, their home base, while getting back up from the local Naniwa police station, which has a riot countermeasure practicing lot, and holds tens of anti-riot vehicles. Despite this mighty arsenal, the police were perhaps surprised when they deployed their tear gas cannon on the first day only to be met with cries of joy and laughter. The use of force no longer has any spell of intimidation, it is simply expected.

Still, the combined brutality of the police and their riot vehicles has netted over 40 arrests (including of many young people), many injuries and even blinded one worker with a direct shot of tear gas water to his right eye.

The struggle here is inevitably limited by the particular situations of day laborers, who are dispatched to their job sites and have no direct access to the means of production that standard wage workers would. This prevents them from for instance calling political strikes against police brutality, and hitting powerful interests in the city where they really hurt. As workers deprived of these means to struggle, the day laborers will always have the riot as a method not only of collective defense but for also forcing concessions from the city in the form of expanding welfare access, creating jobs, backing off of eviction campaigns etc. While these are more or less important gains strictly in terms of survival, it is important to explore the possibilities of spreading the antagonism of the Kamagasaki workers to the larger population of exploited people in order to imagine doing away with this power structure once and for all.

It is unclear exactly where the situation is headed, but we can know for sure that the real repression in Kamagasaki will arrive after the summits have ended and the focus is off of the Japanese government. Then we will see the raids, the arrests and the scapegoating of particular individuals for the righteous outburst of class violence that these riots are. Instead of quietly accepting their fates as people to be trampled upon, the participants have directly attacked the wardens of wage labor who guarantee the violence of everyday slum life.

Overall, the ongoing repression against those involved in organizing against the G8 summit as well as Kamagasaki should not convince anyone that the ruling class here is once again afraid of the working class. In repressing certain left groups organizing against the economic summits, the Japanese government is more interested in preventing a movement from emerging that starts to question capital at the macro level, than actually attacking an existing one. On the other hand in Kamagasaki, the state tries to deny the possibility of antagonism in a major metropole and the visibility of this revolt, for fear of it spreading. This is why most news reports have blacked out the ongoing riots in Kamagasaki. The concreteness and universality of the Kamagasaki revolt truly threatens to expand beyond the borders of police violence. Visitors to Kamagasaki from near and far have over the past five days participated and found their own struggle in riots fought by total strangers. The ruling class fears and knows that it cannot control this horizontal sympathy and the real practice of revolt that accompanies it.

 

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[1] The text was sent to us in June - we have not published it earlier because we wanted to give the comrade who wrote it the possibility of answering our introduction, and we hope that the debate on the points raised here will continue.

[2] See also the previous article on events in Kamagasaki [17].

[3] ICC Note : see our theses on "Terror, terrorism and class violence [18]"

[4] https://hosei29.blog.shinobi.jp/Date/20080531/ [19]

[5] Tabi Rounin was thankfully released after a week in jail, and is back home

[6] The Rakunan Union can be contacted at the following address:

Kyoto-fu Uji-shi Hironocho Nishiura 99-14 Pal Dai-ichi Biru 3F
Rakunan Union
Jiritsu Roudou Kumiai Rengou
TEL:0774-43-8721　Fax:0774-44-3102

[7]  Updates about the situation in Kamagasaki are being posted here (Japanese) [20]