June 8, 2008
Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo answered questions about various current issues, including the Ordinary Session of the Diet which is to end on June 15, “capitalism in a no-way-out situation,” and what is behind the boom of Kobayashi Takiji’s Kanikosen (The Factory Ship) in an interview on an Asahi Newstar Communication Satellite TV program.
Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo answered questions about various current issues, including the Ordinary Session of the Diet which is to end on June 15, “capitalism in a no-way-out situation,” and what is behind the boom of Kobayashi Takiji’s Kanikosen (The Factory Ship) in an interview on an Asahi Newstar Communication Satellite TV program broadcast on June 6. The interviewer was Hoshi Hiroshi, a senior political writer of the daily Asahi Shimbun.
JCP’s arguments in Diet have influenced national politics
Hoshi Hiroshi: Looking back on the 150-day Ordinary Session of the Diet, how would you characterize it?
Shii Kazuo: I would say that it was a session in which the public had a presence and began to influence government policies. The House of Councilors passed a bill to repeal the new health insurance system for elderly people aged 75 and older. Revenues earmarked for the construction of roads and the provisional higher gasoline tax rates were abolished temporarily. These parliamentary developments show that it is possible for the public to change policies if they raise their voices.
We tried to take the offensive in the parliamentary debates by proactively making new proposals. We took up issues relating to the use of temporary workers and pursued the issue of the new health insurance system for people aged 75 and over. We also published a plan for the revitalization of Japanese agriculture to establish food sovereignty. All these JCP actions are very significant.
Hoshi: The JCP began addressing issue of the new health insurance system in the early stages, didn’t it?
Shii: That is correct. This issue arose in November 2000, when the Health Insurance Law was adversely revised with an additional resolution adopted. The resolution called for a new system excluding the elderly aged 75 and over from the existing health insurance program and imposing a fixed-rate medical fee payment system (regardless of medications and treatments). Only the JCP opposed this additional resolution.
The bill to introduce the new medical insurance system was railroaded through the Diet in 2006. The JCP was the only party to expose the discriminatory nature of the proposed system that separates the elderly into a separate insurance system. House of Representatives member Kawasaki Jiro, who was the Health and Welfare Minister at the time, appeared on this same program and said, “Only the JCP’s argument was to the point at the time.” Consistent efforts of ours led to joining with the three other opposition parties in introducing a bill to abolish the new health insurance system for the elderly.
Hoshi: The final stages of the current Diet session, ruling and opposition parties reached agreement on several bills that were enacted. The JCP agreed to some of them and did not agree to others. Do you have any comment on that?
Shii: We do not see any problems with passing through bills agreed upon by parties. However, the problem is that the Liberal Democratic, Komei, and Democratic parties are seeking to push ahead with a series of undemocratic laws behind the scenes. They bulldozed a bill into law to pave the way for the use of space for military purposes with little discussions on committee meetings simply because the LDP and the DPJ had already agreed to the bill. The general public wants the basic law on the government employee system to include provisions to eradicate “amakudari,” under which retired bureaucrats can get executive posts in the public sector or government controlled corporations, and eliminate corrupt relations between politicians and bureaucrats. However, the three parties rammed through the bill to further enhance the cozy and corrupting relationships. Similarly, they have the same position regarding constitutional revision. This is very serious and we must take special precautions.
Has capitalism reached its limits?
Hoshi: The Fukuda Cabinet may try to rebuild itself after the current session of the Diet is over. In that regard, the upcoming G8 Toyako Summit will be a crucial moment for it. The main issues will include the environment, the economy, energy, and food. In this context, you and the JCP are using various occasions to argue about “capitalism reaching its limits.” Could you tell us what is meant by this?
Shii: It is interesting to note that the argument about “capitalism reaching its limits” comes from not only the JCP. In fact, it has been arising from various quarters. For example, in the wake of the widespread U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis, speculative funds began to flow into the oil and grains markets, pushing up their prices. The trend is so powerful that it is very difficult to keep these moves under control. Observing this situation, some economic analysts are saying, “Capitalism is reaching its limits.”
Look at the world in the 21st century in a broader perspective. Under the present form of capitalism that puts profit making before anything else, poverty and economic inequalities are increasing at an alarming rate worldwide. The population facing hunger is increasing by 4 million each year. The rampage of speculative money is destroying people’s living conditions in many countries, in particular developing countries. The destruction of the global environment has emerged as a major critical issue.
The profit-first principle of capitalism is causing many to wonder whether the world can survive along with it. In a broader perspective, the world is facing a major question whether capitalism is a viable economic system.
Poverty, speculative investment, and environmental disruption can only be solved in a system that can overcome capitalism
Hoshi: The upcoming G8 Toyako Summit is expected to take up such issues as the need to control speculative investment. European countries are putting forward various anti-pollution measures. How do you evaluate these moves?
Shii: On every one of the three issues that I mentioned, we must not lose time in making efforts to solve them even within the present framework of capitalism.
For example, the effort to regulate speculative money will require international cooperation. All information on the activities of hedge funds must be made public. It is said that there are about 9,000 hedge funds in the world at present managing assets worth 180 trillion yen, but their real status remains unknown.
George Soros says that that the financial system needs a global sheriff. The question is whether the world can set out to control speculative money flows.
Take the “Tobin Tax,” a proposed tax on currency speculation, for example. This is aimed at controlling short-term currency speculation so that repeated transactions will be taxed fairly. This tax revenue could be used as a fund for official development assistance to developing countries. I think this is a noteworthy proposal and should be seriously studied.
It will also be important to establish a new international mechanism that will disallow speculative investments in food and oil.
The same applies to environmental issues. Concerning the mid-term target for greenhouse gas emission cuts, the EU calls for a 30 percent cut by 2020 (and a 80 percent cut by 2050) by the developed countries. This is also a matter that the world must address without delay even within the framework of capitalism.
However, a question remains unsolved: can these two problems be solved through the efforts being made within the framework of capitalism? I would say they cannot be completely solved under capitalism, which is, after all, based on “profit-first” principle. This point will be made clearer in the course of attempting to implement structural changes. In that respect, the 21st century will be an era in which conditions for creating a new future society replacing capitalism will increasingly emerge.
Capitalism is seen adrift in the historical context
Hoshi: In the 20th century, capitalism has tried to overcome its crisis incorporating a Keynesian economic model, as I referred to in another TV program (TV Asahi’s Sunday Project broadcast on May 18). Do you find any similarities and differences?
Shii: Historically, capitalism up to the 19th century was classical liberalism, under which the state basically refrained from meddling into business activities. In those days, people regarded only postal services and law enforcement as part of state power. At best, the state established a 10-hour-a-day work system under the factory law.
However, the laissez-faire policy could not prevent depressions from taking place frequently. The Great Depression of 1929 was a major worldwide depression causing a crisis for world capitalism. The Great Depression marked a turning point in capitalism, and the so-called Keynesian model began to be adopted. Keynesianism means state intervention in the economy through various fiscal and financial measures of regulation, ostensibly with the aim of overcoming and preventing future economic depressions. In the 1970s, the Keynesian approach began to be seen as a failure.
Since the 1980s, so-called neo-liberal approaches began to take the place of Keynesianism. Neo-liberalism is an approach that leaves everything to market forces. Of course, the state will gladly support the large corporations, but the people’s living conditions are left to the law of the jungle. Neo-liberalism spread to major capitalist countries, starting from the Thatcher Cabinet of Britain and the U.S. Reagan administration along with the Japanese Nakasone Cabinet.
In Japan, the Koizumi and Abe governments promoted neo-liberalism to the extreme and turned the country into a testing ground for neo-liberalism, though with some twists and turns. This led to increasing poverty and widening economic inequalities. Today, Japanese society is seriously suffering from the spiraling increase of the “working-poor.”
Neo-liberalism is failing in Japan, but it has already failed in many other parts of the world. For example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank tried to arrogantly impose neo-liberal economic policies, particularly on countries in Latin America. The contradictions sharpened, and as a result, democratic governments and leftist governments have emerged in many Latin American countries.
The IMF imposed neo-liberal prescriptions on Southeast Asian countries in 1998, when a currency crisis occurred, undermining living conditions in those countries. Determined not to repeat the same mistake, people in this region have begun to seek an independent and democratic economic order.
Neo-liberalism has failed worldwide, and in Japan, too. What guiding principle for economic policy should capitalism count on hereafter? Keynesianism failed, and neo-liberalism failed. There is no way to returning to Keynesianism today. First of all, the JCP is calling for promoting economic democracy to establish an economy in which economic activities should come under certain rules with a view to defending people’s living conditions, even within the framework of capitalism. This is the only way forward. In fact, European countries are making efforts to a certain extent in this direction.
I must say that world capitalism as a whole has gone astray, so to speak. It has lost its guiding principles and is now adrift with no place to go. From a broad point of view, capitalism has no way out of the current impasse.
Hoshi: To make the matter worse, hedge funds and other speculative investors are running rampant throughout the world.
Shii: They are indeed running rampant to make extraordinary short-term profits. At present, the world financial asset is said to stand at about 150 trillion dollars. As world GDP (gross domestic product) stands at approximately 50 trillion dollars, there is a difference of about 100 trillion dollars. Of this amount, several tens of trillions of dollars or so in excess is being used as speculative money in the global market. It is extraordinary that the size of finance economy is three times the size of the productive economy.
Even under capitalism, making investments and producing goods or providing services and thereby earning profits is a sound activity to a certain extent. Irrelevant of such substantial economic activity, money making short-term moves in the hunt for quick profits from foreign exchange and other trading schemes will cause serious corruption. Such corruption is now advancing worldwide.
How ‘Kanikosen’ became popular?
Hoshi: In connection with the issue of the “working poor,” unemployment, low wages, and temporary jobs, the novel Kanikosen (The Factory Ship) written by Kobayashi Takiji is now enjoying a boom among young Japanese people. What is your view of this phenomenon and its background?
Shii: I believe that the barbarous form of capitalism that existed in prewar Japan has reemerged with new brutality. In Kanikosen, workers are forced to work like slaves. They are former farmers and workers taken by brokers, like staffing agencies in present-day Japan, to crab-canning boats and forced to work in slave-like conditions there. Their situation is very similar to what current temporary workers are experiencing, many of whom are treated as disposable workers. This is why the novel has gained the sympathy of many young people, I think.
Otaru University of Commerce, Kobayashi’s alma mater, held an essay contest to mark the 75th anniversary of his death. It compiled young people’s essays about Kanikosen. What impressed me most is that some wrote that they felt envy toward those workers in the novel. Although Kanikosen workers were working in slave-like conditions without a labor union, they had colleagues to struggle together with in the same workplace. However, young workers today are isolated from one another and have no idea as to how to begin a united struggle. Some essay writers said they wish to join labor unions that allow individual workers to join.
The prewar style of exploitation with overt violence as described in the book, no longer exists. Nevertheless, workers today are suffering verbal violence, sexual harassment, and power harassment. They have difficulty uniting as workers. I think it is a major task for young people to seek ways to build solidarity and fight to change their current conditions.
In addition to efforts made by the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren), I find major hope in the future development of the union movement that allows individual workers to become members. An increasing number of young people have sympathy with and have been impressed by Kanikosen. It illustrates not only their deep anger at the current conditions they are facing but also their strong desire to be able to understand the root cause of their hardships and to find ways to unite with each other to better their conditions. I believe that very healthy current is developing among young people.
JCP position toward a motion of censure against Prime Minister Fukuda
Hoshi: In the final stages of the current Ordinary Session of the Diet, a motion of censure against Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo is likely to be submitted. The issue now is what to do next if the Diet approves the motion. What will be the JCP response to such a proposal?
Shii: The Fukuda Cabinet is a cabinet ripe for censure. It has made a series of blunders, including the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces abroad, the enactment of the medical insurance system for the elderly aged 75 and older, and the road tax policy. But we must be careful about choosing the timing of proposing the motion of censure. It is a grave proposal, and we must examine the possible effects and future consequences before deciding on action.
The bill to repeal the medical system for the elderly aged 75 and over has been approved by the House of Councilors. It will go to the House of Representatives next week. So our responsibility to the public is to have it enacted after winning its passage through the House of Representatives. Even former Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro says the law should be repealed. Horiuchi Mitsuo, former LDP General Council chairman, says he is opposed to the system. Koga Makoto, LDP Election Strategy Council chairman, calls for a moratorium on the law. The task now is to make every effort to get the bill to repeal the medical system enacted in this session of the Diet before considering introducing a motion of censure against the prime minister. - Akahata, June 8, 2008
JCP’s arguments in Diet have influenced national politics
Hoshi Hiroshi: Looking back on the 150-day Ordinary Session of the Diet, how would you characterize it?
Shii Kazuo: I would say that it was a session in which the public had a presence and began to influence government policies. The House of Councilors passed a bill to repeal the new health insurance system for elderly people aged 75 and older. Revenues earmarked for the construction of roads and the provisional higher gasoline tax rates were abolished temporarily. These parliamentary developments show that it is possible for the public to change policies if they raise their voices.
We tried to take the offensive in the parliamentary debates by proactively making new proposals. We took up issues relating to the use of temporary workers and pursued the issue of the new health insurance system for people aged 75 and over. We also published a plan for the revitalization of Japanese agriculture to establish food sovereignty. All these JCP actions are very significant.
Hoshi: The JCP began addressing issue of the new health insurance system in the early stages, didn’t it?
Shii: That is correct. This issue arose in November 2000, when the Health Insurance Law was adversely revised with an additional resolution adopted. The resolution called for a new system excluding the elderly aged 75 and over from the existing health insurance program and imposing a fixed-rate medical fee payment system (regardless of medications and treatments). Only the JCP opposed this additional resolution.
The bill to introduce the new medical insurance system was railroaded through the Diet in 2006. The JCP was the only party to expose the discriminatory nature of the proposed system that separates the elderly into a separate insurance system. House of Representatives member Kawasaki Jiro, who was the Health and Welfare Minister at the time, appeared on this same program and said, “Only the JCP’s argument was to the point at the time.” Consistent efforts of ours led to joining with the three other opposition parties in introducing a bill to abolish the new health insurance system for the elderly.
Hoshi: The final stages of the current Diet session, ruling and opposition parties reached agreement on several bills that were enacted. The JCP agreed to some of them and did not agree to others. Do you have any comment on that?
Shii: We do not see any problems with passing through bills agreed upon by parties. However, the problem is that the Liberal Democratic, Komei, and Democratic parties are seeking to push ahead with a series of undemocratic laws behind the scenes. They bulldozed a bill into law to pave the way for the use of space for military purposes with little discussions on committee meetings simply because the LDP and the DPJ had already agreed to the bill. The general public wants the basic law on the government employee system to include provisions to eradicate “amakudari,” under which retired bureaucrats can get executive posts in the public sector or government controlled corporations, and eliminate corrupt relations between politicians and bureaucrats. However, the three parties rammed through the bill to further enhance the cozy and corrupting relationships. Similarly, they have the same position regarding constitutional revision. This is very serious and we must take special precautions.
Has capitalism reached its limits?
Hoshi: The Fukuda Cabinet may try to rebuild itself after the current session of the Diet is over. In that regard, the upcoming G8 Toyako Summit will be a crucial moment for it. The main issues will include the environment, the economy, energy, and food. In this context, you and the JCP are using various occasions to argue about “capitalism reaching its limits.” Could you tell us what is meant by this?
Shii: It is interesting to note that the argument about “capitalism reaching its limits” comes from not only the JCP. In fact, it has been arising from various quarters. For example, in the wake of the widespread U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis, speculative funds began to flow into the oil and grains markets, pushing up their prices. The trend is so powerful that it is very difficult to keep these moves under control. Observing this situation, some economic analysts are saying, “Capitalism is reaching its limits.”
Look at the world in the 21st century in a broader perspective. Under the present form of capitalism that puts profit making before anything else, poverty and economic inequalities are increasing at an alarming rate worldwide. The population facing hunger is increasing by 4 million each year. The rampage of speculative money is destroying people’s living conditions in many countries, in particular developing countries. The destruction of the global environment has emerged as a major critical issue.
The profit-first principle of capitalism is causing many to wonder whether the world can survive along with it. In a broader perspective, the world is facing a major question whether capitalism is a viable economic system.
Poverty, speculative investment, and environmental disruption can only be solved in a system that can overcome capitalism
Hoshi: The upcoming G8 Toyako Summit is expected to take up such issues as the need to control speculative investment. European countries are putting forward various anti-pollution measures. How do you evaluate these moves?
Shii: On every one of the three issues that I mentioned, we must not lose time in making efforts to solve them even within the present framework of capitalism.
For example, the effort to regulate speculative money will require international cooperation. All information on the activities of hedge funds must be made public. It is said that there are about 9,000 hedge funds in the world at present managing assets worth 180 trillion yen, but their real status remains unknown.
George Soros says that that the financial system needs a global sheriff. The question is whether the world can set out to control speculative money flows.
Take the “Tobin Tax,” a proposed tax on currency speculation, for example. This is aimed at controlling short-term currency speculation so that repeated transactions will be taxed fairly. This tax revenue could be used as a fund for official development assistance to developing countries. I think this is a noteworthy proposal and should be seriously studied.
It will also be important to establish a new international mechanism that will disallow speculative investments in food and oil.
The same applies to environmental issues. Concerning the mid-term target for greenhouse gas emission cuts, the EU calls for a 30 percent cut by 2020 (and a 80 percent cut by 2050) by the developed countries. This is also a matter that the world must address without delay even within the framework of capitalism.
However, a question remains unsolved: can these two problems be solved through the efforts being made within the framework of capitalism? I would say they cannot be completely solved under capitalism, which is, after all, based on “profit-first” principle. This point will be made clearer in the course of attempting to implement structural changes. In that respect, the 21st century will be an era in which conditions for creating a new future society replacing capitalism will increasingly emerge.
Capitalism is seen adrift in the historical context
Hoshi: In the 20th century, capitalism has tried to overcome its crisis incorporating a Keynesian economic model, as I referred to in another TV program (TV Asahi’s Sunday Project broadcast on May 18). Do you find any similarities and differences?
Shii: Historically, capitalism up to the 19th century was classical liberalism, under which the state basically refrained from meddling into business activities. In those days, people regarded only postal services and law enforcement as part of state power. At best, the state established a 10-hour-a-day work system under the factory law.
However, the laissez-faire policy could not prevent depressions from taking place frequently. The Great Depression of 1929 was a major worldwide depression causing a crisis for world capitalism. The Great Depression marked a turning point in capitalism, and the so-called Keynesian model began to be adopted. Keynesianism means state intervention in the economy through various fiscal and financial measures of regulation, ostensibly with the aim of overcoming and preventing future economic depressions. In the 1970s, the Keynesian approach began to be seen as a failure.
Since the 1980s, so-called neo-liberal approaches began to take the place of Keynesianism. Neo-liberalism is an approach that leaves everything to market forces. Of course, the state will gladly support the large corporations, but the people’s living conditions are left to the law of the jungle. Neo-liberalism spread to major capitalist countries, starting from the Thatcher Cabinet of Britain and the U.S. Reagan administration along with the Japanese Nakasone Cabinet.
In Japan, the Koizumi and Abe governments promoted neo-liberalism to the extreme and turned the country into a testing ground for neo-liberalism, though with some twists and turns. This led to increasing poverty and widening economic inequalities. Today, Japanese society is seriously suffering from the spiraling increase of the “working-poor.”
Neo-liberalism is failing in Japan, but it has already failed in many other parts of the world. For example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank tried to arrogantly impose neo-liberal economic policies, particularly on countries in Latin America. The contradictions sharpened, and as a result, democratic governments and leftist governments have emerged in many Latin American countries.
The IMF imposed neo-liberal prescriptions on Southeast Asian countries in 1998, when a currency crisis occurred, undermining living conditions in those countries. Determined not to repeat the same mistake, people in this region have begun to seek an independent and democratic economic order.
Neo-liberalism has failed worldwide, and in Japan, too. What guiding principle for economic policy should capitalism count on hereafter? Keynesianism failed, and neo-liberalism failed. There is no way to returning to Keynesianism today. First of all, the JCP is calling for promoting economic democracy to establish an economy in which economic activities should come under certain rules with a view to defending people’s living conditions, even within the framework of capitalism. This is the only way forward. In fact, European countries are making efforts to a certain extent in this direction.
I must say that world capitalism as a whole has gone astray, so to speak. It has lost its guiding principles and is now adrift with no place to go. From a broad point of view, capitalism has no way out of the current impasse.
Hoshi: To make the matter worse, hedge funds and other speculative investors are running rampant throughout the world.
Shii: They are indeed running rampant to make extraordinary short-term profits. At present, the world financial asset is said to stand at about 150 trillion dollars. As world GDP (gross domestic product) stands at approximately 50 trillion dollars, there is a difference of about 100 trillion dollars. Of this amount, several tens of trillions of dollars or so in excess is being used as speculative money in the global market. It is extraordinary that the size of finance economy is three times the size of the productive economy.
Even under capitalism, making investments and producing goods or providing services and thereby earning profits is a sound activity to a certain extent. Irrelevant of such substantial economic activity, money making short-term moves in the hunt for quick profits from foreign exchange and other trading schemes will cause serious corruption. Such corruption is now advancing worldwide.
How ‘Kanikosen’ became popular?
Hoshi: In connection with the issue of the “working poor,” unemployment, low wages, and temporary jobs, the novel Kanikosen (The Factory Ship) written by Kobayashi Takiji is now enjoying a boom among young Japanese people. What is your view of this phenomenon and its background?
Shii: I believe that the barbarous form of capitalism that existed in prewar Japan has reemerged with new brutality. In Kanikosen, workers are forced to work like slaves. They are former farmers and workers taken by brokers, like staffing agencies in present-day Japan, to crab-canning boats and forced to work in slave-like conditions there. Their situation is very similar to what current temporary workers are experiencing, many of whom are treated as disposable workers. This is why the novel has gained the sympathy of many young people, I think.
Otaru University of Commerce, Kobayashi’s alma mater, held an essay contest to mark the 75th anniversary of his death. It compiled young people’s essays about Kanikosen. What impressed me most is that some wrote that they felt envy toward those workers in the novel. Although Kanikosen workers were working in slave-like conditions without a labor union, they had colleagues to struggle together with in the same workplace. However, young workers today are isolated from one another and have no idea as to how to begin a united struggle. Some essay writers said they wish to join labor unions that allow individual workers to join.
The prewar style of exploitation with overt violence as described in the book, no longer exists. Nevertheless, workers today are suffering verbal violence, sexual harassment, and power harassment. They have difficulty uniting as workers. I think it is a major task for young people to seek ways to build solidarity and fight to change their current conditions.
In addition to efforts made by the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren), I find major hope in the future development of the union movement that allows individual workers to become members. An increasing number of young people have sympathy with and have been impressed by Kanikosen. It illustrates not only their deep anger at the current conditions they are facing but also their strong desire to be able to understand the root cause of their hardships and to find ways to unite with each other to better their conditions. I believe that very healthy current is developing among young people.
JCP position toward a motion of censure against Prime Minister Fukuda
Hoshi: In the final stages of the current Ordinary Session of the Diet, a motion of censure against Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo is likely to be submitted. The issue now is what to do next if the Diet approves the motion. What will be the JCP response to such a proposal?
Shii: The Fukuda Cabinet is a cabinet ripe for censure. It has made a series of blunders, including the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces abroad, the enactment of the medical insurance system for the elderly aged 75 and older, and the road tax policy. But we must be careful about choosing the timing of proposing the motion of censure. It is a grave proposal, and we must examine the possible effects and future consequences before deciding on action.
The bill to repeal the medical system for the elderly aged 75 and over has been approved by the House of Councilors. It will go to the House of Representatives next week. So our responsibility to the public is to have it enacted after winning its passage through the House of Representatives. Even former Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro says the law should be repealed. Horiuchi Mitsuo, former LDP General Council chairman, says he is opposed to the system. Koga Makoto, LDP Election Strategy Council chairman, calls for a moratorium on the law. The task now is to make every effort to get the bill to repeal the medical system enacted in this session of the Diet before considering introducing a motion of censure against the prime minister. - Akahata, June 8, 2008
