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Communist Party of Japan (Left)

Lessons of anti-U.S. and anti-war struggle in Japan

1. Situation

The world today is experiencing the greatest turbulence we have ever seen in the period after World War II. The world situation has now entered a new phase of crisis, war and revolution. U.S. imperialism has declined, particularly in economy. This superpower has reigned in the world so far through its predominant military strength, mighty U.S. dollar and control over the oil resources. The U.S. unipolar domination is now collapsing.

The anti-U.S. and anti-war struggle of workers and people is developing unprecedentedly on a large scale in the world including the U.S. In the meantime, the contradictions among the imperialist powers are sharpening. These circumstances have driven the Bush administration into a corner and made it so savage that though besieged by the peoples of the whole world, it has launched a war of aggression on Iraq in cooperation with Britain for redivision of the world.

(1) How should the U.S-led war be considered?

The U.S. has shown its very cruel nature in the war on Iraq. It has bombed indiscriminately and used various kinds of weapons of mass slaughter like cluster bombs and depleted uranium rounds, by fighting as if it were a "champion of freedom and democracy" under the pretext of eliminating the "threats of weapons of mass destruction" and for the cause of the "freedom of Iraq, liberation of the Iraqi people and democratization of the Middle East."

The peoples in the Arab countries, the Middle East and the world demand that the U.S. and Britain should stop their war. More than who else, the Iraqi people themselves strongly oppose the military invasion. How could it be a "war for liberation of the Iraqi people" to militarily invade Iraq, an independent sovereign country, trample down the national sovereignty and install a colonial government? Such an argument is never tolerable and acceptable to the Iraqi people.

The Bush administration admitted that any option including the use of nuclear weapons could be considered in the attack on Iraq. It also publicly stated that it would deal with the occupation of Iraq by making a model of Japan's "democratization" under the U.S. occupation after World War II. This is an insult to the Japanese people. U.S. imperialism dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to massacre hundreds of thousands of innocent people on the pretext of "minimizing the victims and ending the thoughtless war caused by Japanese militarism as early as possible." It is an obvious fact that the only purpose of these acts was not to bring "freedom and peace" but to invade and occupy Japan exclusively and turn it into a military foothold for wars of aggression in Asia along the U.S. counterrevolutionary world strategy.

The U.S.-led military aggression on Iraq is not for the "liberation of Iraq" nor the "democratization of the Middle East," but for other purposes. U.S. imperialism aims at plundering the oil resources of this country which ranks second in the world in terms of oil reserves, securing huge profits for the U.S. military industry and construction companies, and installing a pro-U.S. government to predominate over the whole region. Moreover, the Bush administration has plans to invade militarily Syria, Libya and Iran in the wake of Iraq, overturn the regime in Saudi Arabia and provoke a war against North Korea. It also designs to go to war against China and Russia as well. U.S. imperialism has an ambition to colonize the whole world by overthrowing all the sovereign states by war.

U.S. imperialism came out with the "globalization strategy" for world domination after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This strategy is aimed at compelling all the countries by force of arms to accept the principles of the market economy and the "American standards," or in other words, to ease barriers on trade and capital investment and carry out "structural adjustments and reforms" in industriy, so that the American capital can overwhelm the world market.

Along this strategy for world domination, U.S. imperialism established its control over all industrial sectors like financing, communications, power generation, construction, distribution, transportation, agriculture, mining and so on in many countries. It forced other nations and peoples to sacrifice themselves through mass dismissal and unemployment, destruction of agriculture and fishery, bankruptcy of the national economy and ever-increasing accumulation of debts. This way, it robbed the wealth from other nations and peoples and impoverished them while it enjoyed an "unprecedented prosperity."

However, this "prosperity" which lasted ten years under the "globalization strategy," turned out to be a failure with the decline of the information network industry and the burst of economic bubbles depending on high stock prices. The U.S. economic crisis deepened much more. It was the war policy of the Bush administration that U.S. imperialism adopted in this situation and that should be regarded as the second phase of the "globalization strategy." This policy is designed to conquer those nations and peoples who do not obey, by resorting to military pressure and even war and to dominate politically and economically and "Americanize" the world. It is an atrocious policy, but also full of anxiety about the historic decline of U.S. capitalism.

The Bush administration launched aggression on Iraq along this policy. We vehemently oppose this unjust imperialist war of aggression.

The Iraqi people has confronted the U.S. and British troops, nobly minded to defend their homeland from the aggressors. The U.S. was conceitedly thinking at the beginning that the Saddam Hussein's regime would be driven into unconditional surrender by its operation "shock and awe" and the uprising of the Iraqi people and that its troops would be welcomed as "liberators" by them. However, contrary to its expectations, the whole country turned into a lawless area and splits were brought about in the anti-Hussein groups, some of which took a hostile attitude toward it. There is no certain program for a pro-U.S. provisional government to be installed in Iraq. The Saddam Hussein's regime was brought down due to the U.S. and British troops' attack. But their invasion and occupation will surely stir up further the outrage of the Iraqi people and other peoples in the Middle Eastern and Arab countries. Surrounded by their struggle, the U.S. is going to get bogged deeper in the mud and will not find a way out.

Nobody is able to stop the current of history that "Nations want independence and peoples want liberation." Temporary zigzags are inevitable. But it is the people's power that decides the current of history, however cruel weapons imperialism may possess.

If the people are united to rise up, the aggressor certainly shall be defeated. This truth has been proved in the historical experiences of the Cuban revolution, Korean War and Vietnam War. The Iraqi people and other peoples in the Middle East and the world will undergo an ordeal through this struggle and accumulate strength for socialist and national liberation revolution enough to eradicate imperialism, the root cause of wars.

(2) Japan's Koizumi government supports the U.S.-led war of aggression on Iraq

The Koizumi government has made every effort to support the isolated Bush administration. It has ignored this way the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Japanese people and other peoples in the world oppose the war on Iraq. This war has exposed very clearly the strong structure of Japan's subordination to the U.S. and the real nature of the anti-national Koizumi government.

The Koizumi government openly declared through the Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations that it urged the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution for the use of armed force against Iraq even when the U.N. was still discussing the agenda about its inspection of the weapons of mass destruction. It supported later a military attack against Iraq without a new U.N. resolution. Prime Minister Koizumi made an incoherent speech at the Diet (National Parliament), by choosing war rather than peace. He said, "Conducting politics while following public opinion can be a mistake." (According to a public opinion poll, more than 80 percent of the public opposed a military attack against Iraq.) This fact exposed that he did not represent the Japanese people.

The Koizumi government fawns upon the U.S. who dropped atomic bombs to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people of Japan and takes the course of opposing itself against the peoples of the world.

The Koizumi government has continuously complied with the requests of the Bush administration. For example, it dispatched fueling vessels of the Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to support the war of aggression on Afghanistan and prolonged their stay several times. It has sent even an Aegis warship, which is used as a piece of the vessels of the U.S. Fifth Fleet under the Central Command responsible for the military operations against Iraq.

The Koizumi government seems to accept the payment of more than 2 trillion yen (17 billion U.S. dollars) as a part of the cost of war for the Bush administration and states that Japan will send SDF personnel to help the U.S. in its post-war military administration and shoulder a part of the expenses for the "reconstruction" projects in Iraq.

The Koizumi government also plays a part of the aggressive program of U.S. imperialism against North Korea. It describes this country as strange and mysterious and plans to buy cruise missiles and interceptor missiles from the U.S. It has launched even a military reconnaissance satellite. It also stirs up hostility and chauvinism toward the Korean nation and schemes to establish the "emergency legislation," by profiting from the "abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea." According to the bills already submitted to the Diet, the wartime laws would allow the SDF to make a preemptive attack when the government recognizes the danger of military attack against Japan and authorize the U.S. forces in Japan and the SDF to expropriate land and facilities in case of emergencies. The people's life protection law would put every field of the people's life under control like food and production. This is like the general mobilization law in the time of World War II. The government schemes to enact the bills during the present session of the Diet.

In the meantime, the Koizumi government intensifies attacks on the Japanese people, by pushing forward with structural reforms under the U.S. direction.

Under the pretext of dealing more speedily with the bad debts, the government urges the banks to take measures for reduction of their bad debts. But these measures have driven many small companies and even some big companies into bankruptcy and have thrown hundreds of thousands of jobless people more on the street. Millions of young people are now looking for job in Japan.

The government uses the increasing unemployment as an excuse for bringing low-paid and underemployed workers like part-timers, contract workers and casuals into the process of production to lower the wage level drastically and impose such an exhausting and intensified work that would kill workers.

The government abolishes the subsidies for the farmers reducing the acreage under rice cultivation, accelerates liberalization of rice production and distribution and revises for the worse the Agricultural Land Law with the aim of allowing big companies to acquire agricultural land. These measures will destroy completely the economy of three millions of small farmers.

The government revises for the worse the medical care system, unemployment insurance system and public pension system and increase taxes and premiums. The people will be plundered and impoverished further.

The government enforces a streamlining plan on the municipalities through merging cities, towns and villages, cuts down mercilessly on the budgets for welfare, medical care and education and reorganize the local administrative bodies in such a way that would meet the wartime needs.

The government drastically changes the school system to accelerate privatization and Americanization of the education. It sings the praises of the U.S., spreads a decadent culture and wants to have a new generation so selfish as to kill people insensitively.

The above-mentioned all-out structural reforms are aimed to facilitate the takeover of the Japanese economy by the U.S. capital and offer the U.S. our impoverished people and their children as cheap human bullets. In this context, those reforms are going on within the framework of the globalization strategy of U.S. imperialism, a strategy for its world domination and war.

(3) Fight the enemy's attack of pulling out our national backbone

U.S. imperialism strengthens its control over Japan while the Japanese anti-national monopoly capital and the Koizumi government deepen their subordination to the U.S. In these circumstances, the Japanese society is in ruination and decline. Its colonial conditions become more and more serious in all aspects - political, economic, cultural, educational - and even social climate. The outrage of tens of millions of people pervades the whole Japanese society. The national and social contradictions are extremely aggravated. The Japanese people are angry more than ever at the arrogance of U.S. imperialism in its politics and the subservience of the Koizumi government which prostrates itself before the U.S. master and destroys Japan's politics, economy, culture and education. There are growing opinions and movements against the war of aggression on Iraq. But a large-scale anti-war struggle has not yet emerged. The advanced activists are deeply concerned about the questions of how they should break through this situation and how the Japanese people should perform their international duty.

What they are discussing centers on the backbone of the Japanese nation. They think the most serious problem is that this backbone has been broken. The Koizumi government and bourgeois mass media propagate views like "The war is wrong, but we can't help supporting the U.S." "The Japan-U.S. alliance has priority. We have no other choice" and "We can't manage without the U.S." They are systematically making attacks to spoil the spirit of national independence. It is very important to break through this ideological oppression in order to renew the workers' and people's movement in Japan.

During World War II, U.S. imperialism took advantage of an anti-fascist aspect of this war to make a big trickery of describing itself as "liberation force for peace and democracy" opposing fascism and militarism. It occupied exclusively and dominated Japan after the war. This situation has continued unchanged up to now. Japan is one of the countries with the highest concentration of U.S. military bases as seen for example in Okinawa island. A country where foreign military forces are stationed is not independent. It is a serious problem that the revolutionary movement, therefore the workers' and democratic movement in Japan have been eroded by the modern revisionist line which considered U.S. imperialism to be a "bearer of peace and democracy" and accepted the U.S. aggression and domination over Japan.

After World War II, the national leadership of the Japanese Communist Party welcomed the U.S. forces of aggression as liberators and glorified the so-called post-war democracy. This tendency to embellish the "peace and democracy" under the U.S. occupation and domination still remains even today and stops the workers and people from rising in struggle.

Our Party and the advanced workers and people have a heavy responsibility of breaking through this ideological oppression and opening up a new struggle.

2. How should we fight?

(1) Character and basic contradictions of the Japanese society and tasks of revolution

Our Party Program clarifies that Japan is a developed monopoly capitalist society and an imperialist country. Japanese imperialism is subordinate to U.S. imperialism. Now the U.S. control over Japan becomes stronger while the subordination of the Japanese society to the U.S. deepens further.

The basic contradictions running through the post-war Japanese society are the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the contradiction between the Japanese nation and U.S. imperialism. Based on these two basic contradictions, the major contradiction is formed between U.S. imperialism and Japanese anti-national monopoly bourgeoisie on one hand and the Japanese people with the working class at the head on the other hand. The major contradiction stems from two factors. One is that U.S. imperialism occupied Japan exclusively after World War II along its counterrevolutionary global strategy and consequently emerged as a new ruler of the Japanese people. The other is that the Japanese monopoly bourgeoisie took a way to prolong its life and remain as a ruler of the Japanese people, by selling out the interests of the Japanese nation to U.S. imperialism. The major contradiction has existed in the Japanese society over the whole post-war period. Its aggravation and development conditions the revolutionary movement in Japan to develop.

U.S. imperialism is a main pillar of the reactionary forces in the post-war world. The Japanese monopoly bourgeoisie prostrates itself before U.S. imperialism. Our task is to break up this structure of subjugation. U.S. imperialism puts Japan in a state of colony. To overthrow this has priority over other issues in the struggle of the Japanese people.

Therefore, if you argue against directing the people's struggle at U.S. imperialism and deny the patriotic just struggle against the U.S. and anti-national forces, it is an abstract argument separated from the real conditions in Japan. Such an argument conceals the crimes committed by U.S. imperialism which dominates Japan and embellishes this criminal. If you argue against directing the people's struggle at the Japanese anti-national reactionaries with the monopoly bourgeoisie at the center, such an argument also hinders the people's masses from rising up in struggle and, in fact, is opposed to giving a blow even to U.S. imperialism.

In the actual conditions, it is important to hold on to the anti-U.S. patriotic line in order to intensify the anti-U.S. struggle and expose and fight the Japanese anti-national monopolies and their government which are subordinate to U.S. imperialism. In this context, we must link the issue of opposing imperialist war with the issue of fighting against structural reforms. This way we can carry out our most important present task of expelling U.S imperialism from Japan, overthrowing Japanese imperialism and building an independent, democratic, peaceful, prosperous and socialist Japan.

Our struggle in Japan has an international significance in wrecking the strategy of U.S. imperialism for world domination. With the significance of our struggle clear in mind, we fight in Japan shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi people and other Arab people.

(2) Positive lessons of the Japanese people's struggle after World War II

Our Party has striven to inherit and adapt to the actual conditions the revolutionary traditions of the Japanese people's movement against atomic and hydrogen bombs at a time when the U.S. government has mentioned Iraq, North Korea, China, Russia and some other countries by name as targets for the preemptive nuclear attack and has increased this way the danger of another nuclear war which would hit also Japan.

The movement to ban atomic and hydrogen bombs began in Japan five years after World War II with the Hiroshima Peace Rally of August 6, 1950. The Chugoku Regional Committee of the Japanese Communist Party and workers and people under its guidance confronted squarely the U.S. occupation forces which directly engaged in suppressing the movement. They also fought frontally against the JCP national leadership's strategic line of considering U.S. imperialism to be a "liberation force" and the economist and right opportunist tendencies predominating in the then workers' movement. They openly exposed the real purposes of the atomic bombing and the crimes of the U.S. for the first time and succeeded in holding the Peace Rally on August 6 in Hiroshima city under state of emergency.

The peace movement against nuclear weapons soon won the support of the broad masses of the people and spread all over the country. It was only five years later when the First World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs was organized in Hiroshima. The movement developed into a world-wide campaign and a huge force against production, possession and use of nuclear bombs. It was this world-wide movement that bound U.S. imperialism hand and foot and stopped it from using atomic bombs again in the Korean War.

The movement continued as anti-U.S. patriotic struggle and culminated in the fight against revision of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1960, the biggest political struggle in Japan in the post-war period.

The JCP's Chugoku Regional Committee abided by the anti-U.S. patriotic line in leading the August 6th struggle in 1950. It also had established the course of relying on the people and following the mass line, by drawing lessons from the negative experience of the communist movement in Japan before and during World War II. Our Party has its origin in the August 6th struggle in 1950 and the following people's movement in 1950s. Carefully, the enemy has tried to destroy the line of August 6th struggle. But we stick to the line and positive lessons of the struggle and advance toward rebuilding the peace movement against atomic and hydrogen bombs on the basis of workplaces, production centers and communities.

The most important lesson is that we must look at everything from the strategic standpoint, abide by the anti-U.S. patriotic line and follow always the style of work: "from the masses to the masses," with confidence in the people's power and with the thought of thoroughly serving them, in order to investigate and remove their plights.

The anti-U.S. and anti-war struggle in Japan, the only atom-bombed country in the world, has a great significance. We oppose the nuclear war schemes of U.S. imperialism and its servant, Koizumi government and demand the immediate pull-out of the troops of aggression from Iraq, the withdrawal of the Koizumi government's support to the U.S.-led war, the return of the SDF vessels from the Indian Ocean, the removal of the U.S. bases from Japan and the abrogation of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. We are determined to carry out our international duty at any cost in unity with the peoples in Iraq, the Middle East and the world.