Job Discussion Forums

[JimDunlop2]

Ok, here they are. I was going to paste them into the other thread but I was having troubles with pasting thumbnails with links to the full images. So, if you have a reasonably quick Internet connection, here are the full images.

First, we had a visit from the NOVA Bunny. He was all ready to whip those lazy workers into shape!



Here's the group just about ready to go...



We also had some musical entertainment....



The banner that went in the front of the march.



We had a visit from Human Rights activist Debito Arudo. For anyone who doesn't yet know who this is, his website is www.debito.org and gives some interesting information about civil rights in Japan.



We also had a Brazillian group give a capoera demonstration.



A shot of some of the large signs used in the march.



The march in action.

[Sody]

Woot! Great pics Jim, thanks for posting that

Nova Bunny - hehe

Looks like the march was a success

Sody

[shuize]

[JimDunlop2]

Bolshevism? Not exactly. That would be like me labelling you a rightist reactionary imperialist. It's probably wise to stay away from such labels, especially when they are mired in half-truths. To sardonically dismiss it as an outdated concept to be filed in the closet of 20th Century History is just plain silly. If you put aside your pre-conceived notions and stereotypes, and open your mind beyond the propaganda you've been taught in school, you may begin to realize that there's much more to it.

For starters, the slogan itself, coming from the last paragraph of Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto, is no less valid today than it was in 1848 when it was written. The fact that it was adopted by the Russian Bolsheviks is only incidental. After all, even the Mensheviks were revolutionaries and members of the same Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

In any event, the slogan represents a socialist goal -- not a Bolshevik one. It was penned years before the Bolsheviks even came to power. To confuse Russian Communism with socialism in general, or even Japanese Communism is a grave error. In the 1890 preface to the German edition of the Communist Manifesto, Engels explains the reason why they named it what they did, rather than a socialist manifesto. For us it's an unfortunate nomenclature, as the word Communist has so much negative baggage attached to it. What we must really do is understand what we are talking about. Japanese communism and the Japanese Communist Party has NOTHING to do with Bolshevism nor with Cold-War era Leninism. It's no coincidence that many of Japan's unions are affiliated with the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). I know that trying to convince someone who has been raised in a Western country, brought up hating Communists and being indoctrinated by the same kind of hate and fear propaganda that circulated in the East during the Cold War is like trying to sell ham in Tel Aviv. Nevertheless, I have great respect for the JCP. I think it's just what's called for to balance out many of the extreme, far-right-reaching factions that have their hand in Japanese politics and government.

Currently the JCP has over 400,000 members (the second largest non-ruling Communist party in the world) with 7.3% representation in the Diet (that's about 5,000,000 voters who voted Communist for you bean counters).

The party's principle guidelines are:

*Attach importance to promoting friendships and exchanges with Asian countries on the premise that Japan expresses remorse for the history of its war of aggression and colonization.

*Champion the international order for peace as established by the UN Charter and oppose any hegemonic attempts to violate or to destroy it.

*Exert efforts to establish peaceful coexistence among countries with different social systems and to establish dialogue as well as relations of coexistence among various civilizations with different values.

As far as I can tell, those are honorable goals in my mind -- and go farther than any of the pitiful attempts that the LDP has made at achieving these things. The JCP also wants to achieve its goals peacefully (as in, no violent revolutions), abolish nuclear weapons, and adhere to UN charters. It believes that the only way to fight terrorism is to have international solidarity with the UN.

So far, I have nothing other than bad memories of Cold War-era propaganda to stop me from saying that I have NO problems with Japan's unions and labour movement being supported by a political party that stands for many of the the same things that I do.

[Glenski]

So, where was it you marched from/to?

Did you speak to any crowds / individual citizens / bureaucrats?

What was the general response of anyone around you?

[angrysoba]

Jim:

[shuize]

[wangtesol]

Jim Dunlop says:

[JimDunlop2]

Almost sounds like you've been reading The Black Book of Communism Edited by Dr. Stephane Courtois.

Again, finger pointing is for naught. If you want to argue about attrocities, French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique does mention that the Capitalist world, for its part has no lack of bloodshed on its hands, whether it be repressions of the working class and trade unions in the 19th and 20th centuries, or deaths resulting from colonialism and imperialism, or the various pro-Western dictatorships during the Cold War. In its critique of this book, it also mentions the fact that the regimes and terror you mentioned in your post, though indeed Communist, were exacerbated by AT LEAST as much (if not more) influence derived from local history or tradition as the political ideology itself.

I can also find flaws in an ideology that relies on exploitation that frequently results in murder based on greed and selfishness. Fact of the matter is, pure Capitalism as an ideology fell and failed almost a century before Communism did. A great case in point is the Great Depression of the 1920s. America learned that strictly adhering to the tennets of Capitalist theory (as proposed by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations) was doomed to failure.

Nowadays, it could well be argued that virtually every country touting itself as a Capitalist economy is, in fact a mixed economy. In Europe, Canada and many other countries, it's more of a social democracy (or democratic socialist) ideology. Ironically enough, a true Capitalist (by the historical definition of the word) believes that mankind is essentially evil and selfish in his motivation, whereas the socialist belives in the good of mankind to back up his drive towards a utopian society.

So, again -- "that ideology" like any other, when attempting to purvey it in its purest form will ultimately fail, just as mankind is not perfect. Certainly, no one denies the fact that many evils have been committed in the name of political ideology, it almost seems as though it's human nature to do so. But aside from Communism I'd include Capitalism right there beside it. The propaganda machine of the West during the Cold War was working just as overtime as it was in the Eastern Bloc. An entire generation of Americans were being told that every Ivan and Kolya would like nothing more than to take away their freedoms in the name of Communism (which was knocking on America's back door), just as surely as my own dad (who served in the Czech military when he was young) was being told that ANY DAY they were to expect G.I. Joe and an American paratrooper invasion force and had drills to prepare them for that terrible, inevitable day... Those days are now gone, and now I have friends from both ends of the political spectrum. As long as we can respect each other's views on things, I'm cool!

[JimDunlop2]

[angrysoba]

Jim:

[shuize]

[JimDunlop2]

[shuize]

[JimDunlop2]

Those kinds of body counts are irrelevant. To me, the fact that Capitalism has killed less people than Communism doesn't make either of them right. Does it matter which system killed more? Does Stalin deserve a hotter spot in hell than Hitler because it was 24 mil. versus 6? (No, I'm not saying Hitler was a Capitalist. I'm just making a point). Neither should have happened. Period. I won't try to invent numbers for how many people Capitalism has killed -- it's not nearly as easy to do. How can you quantify the deaths resulting from colonialism and imperialism, or the various pro-Western dictatorships during the Cold War? (What I mentioned earlier). Those are figures I just don't have, and cannot take the time to research just for the point of a thread discussion. In the end though, I think it's moot anyway.

But I'm also trying to say that making a blanket statement about a socialist slogan on a sign doesn't address the issues. The JCP is no more responsible for killing 100 million people than you are for the crimes of Capitalism. That's the same if an Iraqi family is pi$$ed off at all Americans because an American soldier killed one of their family members. It's understandable. Sure. But to hold the whole nation responsible for the crimes of one soldier is short-sighted. Understandable. But short-sighted.

So unless you can show me how many people the JCP has killed, your figure of how many people Communism has killed is no more relevant to me than the number of Iraqi civilians killed by Americans since the war began. I'm glad you can appreciate the cause for workers' rights -- it's unfortunate indeed that so many people can't see past the semantics of a sign to understand the underlying issues.