Chapter 5

Reestablishment of the Party, 1926-1927

In 1926 the Comintern intensified its campaign to get the Japanese communists to reestablish a secret party. It asked them to send a representative to discuss the matter at the Sixth Plenum of the Executive Committee to be held at Moscow from February 17 to March 15, 1926. The Japanese communists selected Tokuda as the representative and approved a report to the Comintern that he and Sano Manabu drafted. At Moscow, Tokuda served on a special committee on Japan that included E. H. Brown of Great Britain (chairman), M. N. Roy of India, Voitinsky, Heller, and Katayama. The main task of the committee was to draft theses for the new Japanese Communist Party. Voitinsky was to prepare a draft for approval by a subcommittee composed of Tokuda, Katayama, and Roy. The committee did not complete its work during the plenum; however, draft theses—the so-called Moscow Theses—were adopted with the proviso that they would be submitted in final form for approval at the next plenum.¹

The Moscow Theses began with a brief statement acknowledging that Japanese capitalism was continuing to expand and that “the political power of the landlord-capitalist bloc, in which the landlords held hegemony, is now completely under the hegemony of the bourgeoisie.”² According to the theses, the bourgeoisie and the landlords recovered from the recession following World War I and from the great earthquake of 1923 “through intense exploitation of the workers and peasants and through dispossession of the semifeudal business organizations of traditional domestic industries and small traders.” The workers’ and peasants’ movements were therefore “rapidly turning to the left,” and the petty bourgeoisie had become “considerably more proletarian.” The theses declared that in order to suppress the opposition of the workers and peasants, the Japanese bourgeoisie and landlords were mobilizing their semifeudal political machinery and, at the same time, were bribing Christian right-wing leaders like Suzuki Bunji and Kagawa Toyohiko “in order to make them their agents in the workers’ and peasants’ movements.”

What implications did this have for overall communist strategy and tactics? At first glance, the Comintern answer appeared to be the same as before. The bourgeois-democratic revolution carried out by the workers in alliance with the peasants and petty bourgeoisie was still to be the first stage in the revolutionary process. However, there was one important change in the view of that process. Now, the theses declared, there was a much greater possibility that the bourgeois-democratic revolution would be rapidly transformed into a proletrian one.

The revolutionary leadership was to be provided by the Japanese Communist Party, of course. The theses called for the reestablishment of the party and defined its role in general terms:

A labor-farmer party movement… is necessary in order to unite all forces opposed to the bloc of bourgeoisie and landlords. Although the policy of creating a united party, in defiance of the right-wing policy of disunion, is correct, the Communist Party should not lose its independence, but should form strong fractions within the Labor-Farmer Party to gain hegemony over it… The Japanese communists must participate wholeheartedly in the workers’ day-to-day struggles and devote their energies to strengthening and expanding left-wing labor unions as well as the labor union unification movement.

The committee also provided Tokuda with specific instructions on how to transform the “communist group” into a party. The communists were told to overcome the tendencies toward “petty bourgeois indecision” and the “dissolutionism and legalism” of the old bolshevists, to broaden the base of party support by discontinuing the “100 per cent” principle for membership and by taking more workers into the party, to establish cells in factories and to form more fractions in mass organizations, and to issue more secret publications, replacing abstract discussions with consideration of “immediate, concrete problems.” Finally, they were instructed to hold a party congress and report to the next Comintern executive committee plenum.

Tokuda returned to Japan in May, and the next month, Japanese communist leaders met in Gunma Prefecture and approved the Moscow Theses. They also worked out plans to increase membership to 300 and to hold a party convention in February 1927, when most of the communists arrested in June 1923 would be out of prison. (Tokuda began serving his sentence shortly after his return; Watanabe, who served his term from April to August, assumed Tokuda’s responsibilities and established close contact with Janson at the Soviet Embassy.)³ In September the communists decided to move faster with their plans—to hold the organizational congress in November 1926 instead of in February. They set up a preparatory committee whose members had the following responsibilities: Fukumoto Kazuo, the preparation of a party manifesto and political theses; Sano Fumio, party rules and theses on the peasant movement; Watanabe, theses on the labor movement; and Kitaura, a report on the political and economic situation in Japan.⁴ They also decided to establish Kanto and Kansai district committees. The reason for the shift in plans probably lay in the ambition of Sano Fumio, Fukumoto, and their followers to gain control of the new party. They felt that they had to act before the members of the first Communist Party were released from jail.⁵

FUKUMOTO

Fukumoto had emerged in 1925 and 1926 as one of the most influential writers in the left-wing movement. He was a prolific writer with articles in almost every issue of Marxism, and had established a reputation as an outstanding theorist through his interpretation of the thought of Marx and Lenin and his criticism of Japanese Marxist scholars and polemicists, particularly Professor Kawakami of Kyoto University and Yamakawa. His knowledge of Marxist economics, of the materialistic dialectic and view of history, and of Leninism gave him a prominent position in left-wing intellectual circles.⁶ Although his presentation was often awkward, the very complexity of his style held a perverse attraction for many young intellectuals. Whereas Yamakawa’s approach was basically empirical, Fukumoto had a tendency to start from ideas and formulas. He emphasized theory over practical means for the solution of political and organizational problems, and among his followers, a knowledge of theory counted for more than experience. The ideologically inclined young students and university graduates who were entering the left-wing movement found a convenient guide and weapon in Fukumotoism, and Yamakawa and his followers found it increasingly difficult to overcome their arguments.

Born in 1894 in Tottori Prefecture, the second son of a moderately prosperous landlord, Fukumoto had received the best education that Japan could offer. After attending local schools, he studied at the First Higher School of Tokyo and at the law department of Tokyo Imperial University. Upon graduation from the university in 1920, he entered government service as a junior official in Shimane Prefecture. He became a lecturer in law and economics at Matsue Higher School a year later. In 1922, the Ministry of Education sent him to Europe to study law. In Europe, he became engrossed in Marxism, reading widely in Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebnecht, and others; he also joined the German Communist Party. Ordered home by the Japanese government in 1924, he returned to his post at Matsue, but was transferred to Yamaguchi Higher School in January 1925.

Fukumoto began publishing his views shortly after his return to Japan. He gave up his post at the Yamaguchi Higher School in March 1926 and went to Tokyo. Shortly thereafter, he joined the small communist group, and worked as an assistant editor of Marxism.⁷ From June to December, 1926, he published his own small journal—Under the Flag of Marxism (Marukushizumu no Hata no Moto ni); at the same time, he continued to be the chief contributor to Marxism, often writing under the pen name Hojo Kazuo.

The program that Fukumoto formulated for the Japanese proletariat and its “true vanguard,” the Communist Party, was based upon several assumptions about the nature of Japanese society. Like most of his leftist contemporaries, he believed that Japanese capitalism had reached the stage of imperialism, even though the bourgeoisie had not yet swept away “absolutist and autocratic forces.” But he differed from the other leftists on a crucial point: he firmly believed that Japanese capitalism was already in a period of rapid decline, reflecting the general decline of world capitalism. He concluded therefore that the Japanese proletariat, which grew with the development of capitalism, had an opportunity to make a “great leap forward to the stage of political struggle”—a leap that had to be based on the attainment by the proletariat of “genuine class consciousness.”⁸ It was his belief that the working masses were ready for the development of such class consciousness.⁹

According to Fukumoto, the political struggle would focus at the outset on “fighting for bourgeois democracy.” He specified how that fight should be conducted:

First, we must fight politically. Our movement must become total and united. Second, the present struggle must be carried on as part of a historical process leading to the complete victory of the proletariat. Third, to achieve the immediate goals of the struggle, a mass united front, led by the proletariat, must be developed among the proletariat, peasantry, and petty bourgeoisie. This united front, with particular emphasis on cooperation between the proletariat and peasantry, is eventually to prepare for a government of workers and peasants in the struggle for the complete victory of the proletariat… But we must not let the left-wing spirit [Marxism] become dissolved among the masses because of the need to cooperate in a front. We must not hesitate to stage a bold political struggle against all types of opportunism—so-called “realism,” petty bourgeois ideologies, unionist ideologies, parliamentarianism, etc.—and thereby expose their substance to the masses.¹⁰

The key issue of the political struggle, as Fukumoto saw it, was the problem of establishing a correct, unified theoretical basis for the proletarian movement. To him this meant dealing with the question of how “to give life to, deepen, and spread Marxism and Marxist influence.” His answer to that question came to be called Fukomotoism. First, he called for the separation of genuine Marxists from false Marxists and reformists as a prerequisite to the achievement of unity. He quoted Lenin in support of this principle: “Before people unite themselves, they must separate themselves cleanly.” Second, he urged the true Marxists to make theoretical struggles their major activity: “Revolutionary Marxism must fight persistently against every form of bourgeois thought influencing the proletariat.”¹¹ It was his judgment that the development of the theoretical struggle had already brought reformist unionism “to a climax (or the beginning of its collapse)” and had led the left wing “to a mature consciousness of political action worthy of the whole proletariat.”¹² To Fukumoto, the Communist Party was the only instrument that “could use, direct, promote, or transform all political opposition, thereby making the proletarian movement a genuine class movement.”¹³ He advocated a “new method of struggle”—the establishment of a national daily newspaper to express the party line.¹⁴

Fukumoto devoted much time and energy attempting to discredit the views of Yamakawa, which from the standpoint of strategy and organization were so different from his own. His main charge was that Yamakawa, like Sakai and so many others, did not understand the basic need to concentrate upon “unity through separation.” He branded Yamakawa’s concept of “change of direction” an “eclectic theory”—a compromise between socialism and unionism. Fukumoto charged that Yamakawaism represented a reversion to reformism and parliamentarianism, and that Yamakawa was a victim of the very danger against which he had continually warned.¹⁵ What Fukumoto criticized most was Yamakawa’s failure to recognize that only a communist party could play the important roles of separating and uniting the Marxists and of carrying on theoretical struggles. He found it lamentable that “among Marxists today, there are those who believe, consciously or unconsciously, in a spontaneous growth of the left-wing spirit.”¹⁶ Fukumoto conceded that Yamakawa understood the necessity of shifting from a labor union struggle to a socialist political struggle, but he claimed that Yamakawa did not realize what this involved.¹⁷ “He is unable to realize how class consciousness nurtured by economic struggles can be developed into proletarian political consciousness or socialist political consciousness, and what intermediate steps are needed in the process of this development.” Yamakawa’s change of direction theory had reached a limit and could go no further, Fukumoto asserted.¹⁸

Fukumoto attacked Yamakawa’s position on related tactics as well. A key issue concerned the efforts to establish a noncommunist left-wing party by a small group, some of whose members had broken with the Society for Political Studies in the spring of 1926 and had established the journal The Masses (Taishu). (Among the members were Suzuki Mosaburo, Kuroda, Oyama Ikuo, and Urata). Yamakawa continued to uphold the idea of the need for a single legal proletarian party that would incorporate such moderate elements. What he wanted was a united front of all left-wing proletarian elements—in his words, a “left-wing advance” against the “increasing influence of the right wing” (the Social Democrats).¹⁹ (He had, for all practical purposes, written off the possibility of securing the cooperation of right-wing proletarian elements. For example, he appealed to left-wing elements in the September 1926 issue of Marxism not to make concessions in order to form the Labor-Farmer Party.)²⁰

To Fukumoto, the struggle was not with the right wing of the proletarian movement, or the “unionists,” but with the noncommunist left-wing elements of the movement. He saw no danger of a deliberately formed right wing. “Our view of the right-left struggle at the present stage is that the right wing can no longer exist and develop as the right wing of the proletariat.” However, he feared that a moderate left wing might lead to a genuine right wing.²¹ He attacked the group around The Masses for their contention that the extreme leftists, or communists, were in decline,²² and criticized Yamakawa’s appeal for a “left-wing advance.”²³

Fukumoto’s ideas were attractive to those communists who were moving in the direction of reestablishing a communist party. Unlike Yamakawa, whose empirical approach emphasized the spontaneous growth of a revolutionary vanguard, and who pressed for an all-inclusive legal proletarian party based upon mass support, Fukumoto urged that a communist party be formed. Fukumoto accepted the need for a legal proletarian party, but his major concern was that a vanguard be prepared to capture the leadership of the legal party at the decisive time. His main impact on the communists was to improve their understanding of the importance of a theory of revolution, the organization of a revolutionary party, and a unifying principle for such a party. Thus, he contributed greatly to the reestablishment of the party and paved the way for its ready acceptance of the strategy and tactics prepared by the Comintern. The obvious danger in Fukumoto’s strategy was the likelihood of the communists becoming isolated from other left-wing groups as well as from the masses. His emphasis upon theoretical struggles to achieve Marxist consciousness involved the communists in seemingly endless and meaningless discussion. The communists tended to rationalize any type of intra-group feuding in the name of consciousness and theoretical struggles to achieve separation and unity.

REESTABLISHMENT OF THE PARTY

The Japanese Communist Party was formally reestablished in December 1926, a month later than originally planned. On December 3, Fukumoto, Watanabe Masanosuke, Sano Fumio, Mitamura, Nakao, and Matsuo Naoyoshi held a preliminary planning conference at Anahara spa in Fukushima Prefecture; on the following day, they were joined by “other communists at nearby Goshiki spa.²⁴ This so-called T hird Congress formally organized the Japanese Communist Party as a branch of the Comintern. It also elected a new central committee: Sano Fumio, chairman and chief of the peasants’ department; Fukumoto, chief of the political department; Watanabe, chief of the organizational and labor departments; Sano Manabu (who was to be released from jail in January), editor of The Proletarian News; and Tokuda (also to be released shortly), Comintern representative in Japan. Ichikawa was also on the committee, as was Nabeyama, who had left for Moscow in October to attend the Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern to be held in November and December. Nakao, Mitamura, Sugiura, and Kawai Etsuzo were elected candidate members.²⁵ The election of these men meant that the supporters of Fukumoto’s theories were in control.²⁶ They had additional strength in the party because members were being recruited for the most part from among young intellectuals and university graduates who were attracted by the concept of theoretical struggle.

Fukumoto set the tone of the discussion at Goshiki on strategy and tactics in a prepared statement he read.²⁷ In it he asserted that the Constitution of 1889, not the Meiji Restoration, constituted a bourgeois-democratic revolution, although it was not a complete one because the reactionary bourgeoisie compromised and united with the old autocratic system.

The revolution of the restoration… paved the way for the development of capitalism. This revolution overthrew Japanese feudalism, but since it brought about the rule of autocracy, it was not a bourgeois revolution. The bourgeoisie, which was still weak and remained under the rule of despotic forces, gradually increased its power, resisted those forces, and fought secretly and openly for bourgeois democracy until it finally won a constitution in 1889. This was a bourgeois revolution that was artfully concealed from the masses. The significant revolutionary nature of this event should not be overlooked because of the form of its achievement or because of the inconclusiveness of its content.

According to Fukumoto, because the bourgeoisie had compromised with the autocracy, it had been forced to fight unceasingly to strengthen its position and establish its hegemony. However, as Japanese capitalism continued to develop, the bourgeoisie turned reactionary.

The bourgeoisie, which increased its power as capitalism developed, continued to resist the institutional remnants of autocracy. This opposition ended, for all practical purposes, with the establishment of the first party cabinet. Before the rise of the working class… following the World War, the bourgeoisie turned reactionary, compromised and combined with the autocratic forces, and has today developed in itself the germ of fascist dictatorship.

Therefore, said Fukumoto, the Japanese proletariat, in cooperation with the peasantry, must struggle to achieve bourgeois democracy and bring about the proletarian revolution that is inevitable in the process of dialectical change. Such a struggle would be led by the Japanese Communist Party, which previously had been controlled by compromise, or Yamakawaism, but which, as a result of the recent theoretical struggle, had achieved complete political consciousness.

We see before us the movement of the working class, which having eliminated the consciousness of narrow unionism, has achieved the consciousness of political struggles involving the whole proletariat, i.e., the opposition of small peasants to the institutional remnants of autocracy, the resistance of the petty bourgeoisie to the reactionary bourgeoisie, the growing opposition of women to their subordinate position under autocracy, and the rise of the movement to liberate the colonies. With the working class in the lead, we must direct, promote, and transform the opposition of all these groups… The objective of our struggles lies for the present in achieving bourgeois democracy. To this end, they must first be directed to overthrowing the institutional remnants of autocracy. The revolution directed against these remnants will, however, be transformed into a proletarian revolution through an inevitable and inherent dialectical process.

The party congress adopted a platform that was consistent with this strategy. It included planks calling for abolition of the imperial system; dissolution of the Diet; enactment of universal suffrage; establishment of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association; abolition of all antilabor and antipeasant legislation; institution of an eight-hour working day, and of company-paid unemployment insurance; confiscation of the land of large landowners, religious institutions, and the emperor; and enactment of a progressive income tax. There were also planks demanding the defense of the Soviet Union, nonintervention in the Chinese Revolution, antimilitarism and anti­war campaigns, and independence for colonies.²⁸

The congress also adopted the report on party rules that Sano Fumio had been assigned to prepare, and organized the party on the basis of the principle of democratic centralism. In general, the party was like other communist parties, though there were some differences because of the security problem. The party congress was designated the highest organ, with the central executive committee acting for it between sessions. In fact, power was centered in the executive committee; it appointed all committee chairmen, including those of district committees, and together with the district committees, established fractions in mass organizations. The district committees controlled party cells, maintained liaison between them and the central executive committee, and exercised party discipline with the consent of the central committee. Cells of five persons or less constituted the basic units of the party. In order to maintain maximum security, new cell members had to receive the unanimous approval of the cell as well as the approval of the district committee and the central executive committee.²⁹

The hold of Fukumotoism on the Goshiki convention was most clearly demonstrated by the character of the political and labor theses approved by the party. The political theses presented by Fukumoto, put forward the view that the Labor-Farmer Party was the only genuine left-wing legal mass party and that the communists should therefore help the Labor-Farmer Party to win over the masses on the right and become a national, united front party of all the oppressed classes.³⁰

An examination of the proletarian parties now in existence shows that the Japan Farmer Party is a reactionary party that seeks to cut off the peasants from the working class and make them lose sight of the class struggle. This party should be thoroughly denounced. The Social Democratic Party… is representative of bourgeois interests in the proletarian political movement. We must seek to intensify internal antagonism and contradictions within this party and free the proletariat from its influence. The guiding spirit of the Japan Labor-Farmer Party is unionism… We must win over the masses of its members to the Labor-Farmer Party. The Labor-Farmer Party has become a national, united front party of the working class, the peasantry, and all the oppressed groups who work for bourgeois democracy… We must help the Labor-Farmer Party to form an opposition of all groups in order to attain the objective of the struggle—the achievement of democracy.

Watanabe Masanosuke presented the labor theses, in which the tendency to compromise (Yamakawaism) was condemned. The theses held that the struggle of the labor movement had been primarily an economic one, and that even Hyogikai, in its political struggle for economic welfare, showed a willingness to compromise. Communists were called upon to concentrate upon converting daily economic struggles into a militant political struggle, and in the process to help achieve the unification of the labor movement.³¹

Because of his position in the communist group and in Hyogikai, Watanabe was perhaps Fukumoto’s most important convert. Before he went to jail in April 1926, Watanabe had not paid much attention to Fukumoto’s theories, but after his release in August, he began to accept them, largely because of conditions in the labor movement, where a continuation of the Sodomei-Hyogikai clash seemed inevitable.³² Watanabe found comfort in Fukumoto’s assertion that the split in the labor movement, though unfortunate, was bound to have occurred, and that such a split would promote the development of political consciousness among the working class.³³ Watanabe therefore accepted the general proposition that the strengthening of the position of the left wing through theoretical struggles was a prerequisite for the development of a united left-wing movement.³⁴

However, Watanabe, like other communists in Hyogikai, found it difficult, if not impossible, to strengthen the left through attacks on the right and center elements in the labor movement and simultaneously work for a merger of unions to prevent mass organizations from remaining under their “opportunistic leadership.”³⁵ The communists formed a “Labor Left” in September 1926 for the former purpose, but dissolved it a year later because of the confusion it caused in the labor movement.³⁶ At the same time, working through Hyogikai, they infiltrated a “Unification Movement League” that worked for the merger of unions. The league had been established by intellectuals associated with The Masses in order to unite a group of centrist unions. Hyogikai at first opposed the league, but because of increasing hostility between the left and the right, changed its attitude and worked to transform it into a body uniting left and center unions under the slogans, “Establish a General Federation of Labor” and “Support the Labor-Farmer Party.”³⁷

ANTI-FUKUMOTOISM

Although the Japanese Communist Party was reestablished, it was not as united as the Goshiki meeting seemed to indicate. A number of leading communists were opposed to Fukumoto and his views. Among them was Arahata, who, shortly after his release from jail in January 1927, was visited by Sano Fumio, chairman of the new central committee. Sano asked Arahata to accept the post of chief of the control committee (which maintained communication and discipline within the party), but Arahata firmly refused on the ground that he was opposed to Fukumoto. (Shortly thereafter he rejected the same offer when it was made by Ichikawa.) Arahata disliked Fukumoto personally, regarding him as an upstart; moreover, he had little sympathy for his theories. Although Arahata had advocated that membership in the “communist group” be limited to communists only, he rejected the concept of “unity through separation.” He also opposed the notion of “strength through theoretical struggles,” and he was disturbed by what he called a “discussion frenzy.”³⁸

Sano Manabu also rejected Fukumotoism and remained inactive in the party for a while. He objected not only to the new policies but also to the new central committee’s dismissal of Kitaura Sentaro from the party. Kitaura, who edited The Proletarian News while Sano was in jail, had refused to participate in the Goshiki convention and to prepare the report on the political and economic situation that had been assigned to him. He opposed Fukumotoism and maintained that the convention should have been postponed until the other leaders were released from jail. The central committee felt it had no alternative but to dismiss him, and did so on December 5.³⁹ Kitaura retaliated with an attack on Fukumoto and his views in the March 1927 issue of Reconstruction.⁴⁰ He argued that the Labor-Farmer Party, under the influence of Fukumotoism, intensified the conflict with the Japan Labor-Farmer Party, thereby preventing the development of a united party. This article set off a bitter controversy among party members and non-party members alike that continued into the middle of the year.⁴¹

Janson, the Comintern representative in Japan, also opposed Fukumotoism and reported to Moscow his concern about its impact upon the emerging party. When he expressed his criticism of Fukumoto and his views, he was boycotted by the new Japanese communist leaders.⁴² He instructed Nabeyama, who had been released from prison in October, to report to Bukharin on Fukumotoism and the opposition to it at the Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in November-December, 1926. According to Nabeyama, the leaders of the Comintern were deeply disturbed, and the Stalinists were ready to associate Fukumotoism with Trotskyism.⁴³

The central committee of the Japanese Communist Party could not ignore the opposition to Fukumoto. It met in the middle of January at Kusatsu spa in Gunma Prefecture and decided to send a delegation to Moscow to get Comintern help in settling the difference of views. Tokuda, Sano Fumio, Fukumoto, Watanabe, Nakao, and Kawai were appointed to form the delegation along with Nabeyama, who had remained in Moscow as the Japanese representative to the Profintem. Since most of the members of the central committee would be away for some time, a “remaining center” was selected; Ichikawa Shoichi was chairman, and Sano Manabu, Mitamura, Kokuryo, Sugiura, and Shiga the members. Ichikawa, Shiga (chief of the political division), and Mitamura (chief of the organizational division)—all supporters of Fukumoto—formed a small standing committee that held decision­making power. Sano Manabu continued to remain inactive because of his opposition to Fukumotoism, and in fact later considered leaving the party and founding an anti-Fukumoto periodical in cooperation with Yamakawa, Sakai, Arahata, and Kitaura. In the end, he decided to remain within the party and voice his criticisms there.⁴⁴

While the Japanese Communist Party was preparing to send its delegation to Moscow, the Comintern began to take action on its own. Although the Comintern was pleased with the reestablishment of the party, it decided not to approve the party’s policies or the composition of its central committee, and sent a telegram to Janson in Tokyo requesting that the committee and the supporters of both Fukumotoism and Yamakawaism assemble at Moscow without delay. The Comintern also requested Bukharin to make a preliminary study of the Japanese situation.⁴⁵

Janson acted quickly to carry out the wishes of the Comintern. The party decision to send a delegation was of great help; however, he still had the task of persuading Yamakawa and his followers to undertake the long journey to the Russian capital. He approached Yamakawa and Arahata through an employee of the Tokyo bureau of the Soviet news agency TASS. They declined his request, but provided him with written statements of their views.⁴⁶ Janson also contacted Sano Manabu, with whom he had conferred often. Evidently, Arahata and Sano agreed to accept the decision of the Comintern regarding the policies of the party.⁴⁷

Janson went to Moscow for the discussions. Arriving before the Japanese delegation, he found that Fukumotoism was already under attack by Japanese communists in Moscow. Takahashi Sadaki, then studying at the Lenin Institute, was pointing out to Japanese students at the Eastern Workers Communist University that the theories of Fukumoto were little more than an adaptation of the extremism of Gyôrgy Lukâcs, whose doctrines had been condemned by the Comintern.⁴⁸ Nabeyama, influenced by Takahashi, became convinced that Fukumotoism was a dangerous form of left-wing extremism.⁴⁹

The delegation of the Japanese Communist Party arrived in Moscow in two groups in February and March, 1927. Watanabe, Nakao, and Kawai comprised the first group, and Tokuda, Fukumoto, and Sano Fumio, the other. Important changes had taken place in Russia and in the Comintern: Trotsky had been discredited and Zinoviev removed from office by the Stalinists; Bukharin had been elevated to new status and responsibilities. It is difficult to trace the course of events at Moscow because the sources are not complete and vary in important details, but one thing is clear—one by one the Japanese delegates gave up Fukumotoism.⁵⁰ Unfortunately, it is not clear to what extent their shift was the result of discussions among themselves or of the pressure of criticism by a committee on Japan formed by the Comintern. However, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that a “workers group,” comprising Watanabe, Nabeyama, Nakao, and Kawai, was able to make Tokuda the scapegoat for the rise of Fukumotoism on the ground that he failed to maintain proper and effective liaison between the Comintern and the Japanese communists.⁵¹

The committee on Japan—Bukharin (chairman), C. Kuusinen, Bela Kun, J. T . Murphy, Katayama, O. Piatnitsky, B. A. Vasiliev, and Janson—met several times before and after the Eighth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, held between May 18 and May 30. At the first session, Watanabe reported on the Japanese labor movement since the 1923 arrests, and Murphy analyzed Japanese capitalism; at another, Fukumoto outlined his theories before an audience of some 30 persons. After the plenum, the committee met in late May, when Watanabe reported on the status of the Japanese Communist Party. In late June another meeting was held—this one in Bukharin’s office at Comintern headquarters.⁵² On this occasion, Fukumoto again discussed his theories, and Watanabe again reported on the Japanese party and labor movements; both presentations were criticized by Bukharin.⁵³

THE 1927 THESES

The committee appointed a subcommittee that included Bukharin, Murphy, and Katayama to work out theses on Japan. Murphy prepared a first draft, based largely on reports provided by the Japanese delegates, but Bukharin was not satisfied with the result and rewrote it completely. On July 15, the presidium of the Comintern met, with all the Japanese delegates in attendance, and approved Bukharin’s theses, reserving the right to make amendments in phraseology.⁵⁴ After some changes in wording, a summary of the theses was published in Pravda on August 19. A Japanese translation of this version appeared in October issues of The Masses and Literary Arts Front (Bungei Sensen), but Japanese translations of the full text, which had been published in the English, German, and French editions of International Press Correspondence, did not appear until much later—in an appendix to the February 1928 issue of Social Thought (Shakai Shiso), a moderate socialist publication, and as a supplement to the March 1928 issue of Marxism.

For the most part, the July 1927 theses followed formulas laid down in the 1922 draft platform. However, like the 1926 theses, they re­ flected a recognition of changing conditions in Japan. The theses began by emphasizing Japan’s transformation into a “first-class imperialist power” in Asia, and pointed out that the implications of this were threefold. First, as “the most dangerous foe of the Chinese revolution,” Japanese imperialism was adopting an increasingly “open and active counterrevolutionary policy in China.” Second, the struggle against the Chinese revolution had driven the Japanese imperialists to unite “with the British [and American] imperialists for joint action against the Chinese workers and peasants at the present time and for joint preparations for war against the U.S.S.R. in the more or less immediate future.” Third, this joint opposition to the Chinese revolution would not eliminate “the profound and ever sharpening contradictions” between Japan and the other imperialist powers: “while jointly combating the Chinese revolution and preparing for a war against the U.S.S.R., the United States, Britain, and Japan are at the same time preparing for war among themselves—preparing for a bloody struggle for an imperialist partition of the Pacific basin.”

Shifting to an analysis of Japan’s domestic situation, the theses pointed out that Japanese capitalism had developed with unusual rapidity and, in contrast with Great Britain and the capitalist countries of Europe, was “undoubtedly now on the rising curve of development.” This was quite different from Fukumoto’s view of the decline of Japanese capitalism. As for Japan’s modem political development, it was “a twofold process of lending to the old feudal forms a bourgeois content and of transforming the bourgeoisie into a counter­revolutionary force,” which, despite its many differences with the feudal elements, was “nevertheless acting jointly with them against the labor and agrarian movements.” The course for the communist movement was clear. According to the theses, there were in Japan both the objective prerequisites for a bourgeois-democratic revolution (the feudal remnants in the state structure, an acute agrarian problem) and the objective prerequisites for the rapid transformation of the bourgeois revolution into a socialist revolution (the high level of concentration of capital, the growing number of trusts, the close relationship between the state and the trusts, the approximation of the Japanese economy to state capitalism, the unity of the bourgeoisie with the landed nobility). This continued advocacy of the two-stage theory of revolution by the Comintern was to create difficulties for some of the communist leaders. They were disturbed by what they regarded as a basic inconsistency between indications of bourgeois hegemony and the call for a bourgeois-democratic revolution. They felt that since the bourgeoisie held power the revolution should be directed against them. Therefore, the revolution should be a proletarian revolution. This was the view held by former party members like Yamakawa and his followers.

While emphasizing that Japan’s economic and political development—the “objective revolutionary situation”—had prepared the way for a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the theses declared that Japan’s backwardness in ideology—the “subjective revolutionary situation”—was a “great impediment and stumbling block.” The theses continued: “Neither the proletariat nor the peasants of Japan have any revolutionary traditions or any experience of struggle. The broad masses are only now awakening to political consciousness, and only an insignificant section at that… Class sentiment and understanding of the necessity of class struggle are still stifled by nationalist poison or pacifist illusions among the broad masses.”

According to the theses, the “driving forces in the Japanese revolution” were the proletariat, the peasantry, and the urban petty bourgeoisie. Of the three, the proletariat was “the only consistent revolutionary class”:

The peasantry can be victorious in its struggle for land, in its struggle against feudal survivals, and the oppression of contemporary concentrated capitalism only under the leadership of the working class. The history of any country shows that the peasant movement is always doomed to failure unless it is led by the proletariat… The isolation of the proletariat from the peasantry would be exceedingly dangerous, and would give the bourgeoisie a most effective weapon. An alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry is absolutely essential in the interests of both classes. But this alliance will be revolutionary and victorious only if the working class has hegemony.

The decisive role to be played by the Japanese Communist Party was made clear in the theses: “The Communist Party is the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat fighting for the fundamental historical interests of the working class as a whole… Without a communist party there can be no struggle for a proletarian dictatorship.” It was as essential to have a party as it was to keep in mind the principal task of the proletariat—the establishment of the dictatorship; it was as essential to have a party as it was to preserve the main revolutionary thrust at every stage of the struggle and to give it precedence over everything else; it was as essential to have a party as it was to have that party actively participate in the day-to-day struggle and lead it. “Any other orientation” signified “a descent to opportunism” and resulted in the abandonment of the political struggle for the abolition of capitalism.

Clearly, any theory that slighted the importance of the party would be a calamitous error. On that basis, the theses criticized Yamakawaism as a type of “liquidation” policy against which the party had to fight.

One of the principal errors of the Japanese communist leadership consisted in the underestimation and misunderstanding of the role of a communist party, and in the underestimation of its specific importance in the labor movement. The idea that a communist party can in any respect be supplanted by left trade union fractions or a broad workers’ and peasants’ party is fundamentally wrong. Without an independent, ideologically sound, disciplined, and centralized mass communist party there can be no victorious revolutionary movement. The struggle against every tendency toward liquidation, particularly those that found their expression in Comrade Hoshi’s [Yamakawa] policy is therefore the first task of the Japanese communists.

Fukumotoism was criticized just as positively, and at greater length:

The Communist Party of Japan will be in a position to solve its historical tasks only as a mass party. There is no doubt that the Communist Party of Japan must work energetically in raising its ideological level. It must definitely realize that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” But it must just as definitely realize that without a revolutionary mass struggle, without actual and strong connections with the masses, theory is futile. The Communist Party of Japan must become a workers’ party not only in aim but also in composition.

Fukumoto was accused of isolating the party from “the mass organizations of the proletariat.” According to the theses, Fukumoto did not analyze the concrete tasks facing the party and suggest “the methods of their solution given by history,” but instead proceeded “from artificially and arbitrarily formulated abstractions” and occupied himself “with the development and application of principles of logic.” He did not try “to understand actual relationships.” The significance of Fukumoto’s error was specified:

Mass organizations are, on the one hand, the reservoir from which the Communist Party gathers new forces, and on the other, a transmission belt that connects the vanguard with its class, with the whole mass of the workers. The larger the proletarian mass organizations, the greater the potential of the Communist Party’s reservoir and the broader the audience the communists can address. The policy of splitting up the mass organizations is therefore a policy of draining the reservoirs, limiting the scope of the party’s activity, weakening the connection with the masses… Such a policy has nothing in common with bolshevism.

Isolation of the party from the masses meant “abandoning the struggle for the social democratic workers—abandoning the struggle to win over the centrist workers and abandoning efforts to expose the avowed reformism of the rightists and the tacit reformism of the leftists concealed by leftist social democratic phrases.” Such a course could not be tolerated. The communists were called on to struggle against the “opportunist and reformist leaders” of the Social Democratic Party, the “bought agents of the bourgeoisie,” and of the Japan Labor-Farmer Party; they were not, however, to estrange the leftist elements of the trade unions and mass parties, but instead were to fight within these organizations by “exposing the leaders and winning over the masses from them.” According to the theses, communists had to take active part in the everyday struggles of the working class and, by doing so, assume leadership in those struggles: “They must prove to the workers that they are the only staunch and consistent fighters for the interests of the proletariat.” The Communist Party was also directed to try to merge the Labor-Farmer Party with the Japan Labor-Farmer Party.

A discussion of tactics—particularly the united front—followed. The theses stated that “to win the social democratic and centrist workers, to conquer the trade unions and mass parties from within by means of the proposed united front tactic,” involved “certain difficulties.” Since “big mistakes” could be made by a young party without much experience in the class struggle, the Japanese communists were advised to study the mistakes committed by the Communist Party of China in the Kuomintang, taking into consideration all of the differences between the conditions in China and Japan. The analysis continued:

In adopting the united front tactic, the Communist Party must not lose its identity. By no means must it submit to the influence of those whom it is combating; it must preserve its absolute independence, both ideologically and organizationally… In speaking of a united front, one must have in mind not only a united front of the small illegal Communist Party with legal mass organizations such as the Labor-Farmer Party and the Unification Movement League, but also a united front of mass organizations (the Labor-Farmer Party, for instance), under the influence of the Communist Party, with the mass social democratic and centrist organizations.

The party was warned not to limit its actions to the struggle against capitalism. It must, at the same time, work for “the creation of a revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ bloc” and secure working-class hegemony in that bloc; organize the struggle of the peasantry to work for lower taxes and reduced rents, and later for seizure of the land; lead the struggle of the workers and peasants for the democratization of the Japanese state, “without forgetting the general goal of the transformation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution”; and struggle “against the menace of imperialist war,” as well as “against Japanese intervention in China and against preparation for war against the U.S.S.R.”

On the basis of the strategy and tactics in the theses, the Japanese Communist Party was directed to advance the following program of action and to issue slogans based on it: opposition to “the menace of imperialist war”; nonintervention in the Chinese revolution; defense of the U.S.S.R.; “absolute independence” for the colonies; dissolution of parliament; abolition of the monarchy; universal suffrage for everyone 18 or over; right of assembly, association, coalition, etc., freedom of speech and of the press; an eight-hour working day; unemployment insurance; repeal of antilabor laws; confiscation of the estates of the emperor, landlords, the state, and the church; and establishment of a progressive income tax. This action program constituted a minimum program. It was to be linked with “the slogan of the workers’ and peasants’ government and the slogan of the proletarian dictatorship” and would provide the basis for progress “in the political education of the proletarian masses, in the organization of the workers’ and peasants’ bloc, and in the preparation of a real revolutionary mass struggle.” According to the theses, the struggle for these demands would lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Though the way was clear, the road was not without difficulties. The theses sounded a note of caution and then concluded on a note of optimism:

This struggle will be successful only if there is a sound and ideologically consistent Leninist discipline—a centralized and mass communist party—fighting jointly with the world Communist Party marching shoulder to shoulder with the entire Communist International.

The admission by the Japanese delegation of its mistakes and its adoption of all directives and decisions of the Communist International guarantee that the Communist Party of Japan will be able to overcome the deviations existing within it, will be able to take a correct political and organizational course in its work, and will be able to cope with the great tasks raised before it by history.

The last important business transacted at Moscow was the formation of a new central committee of the Japanese Communist Party, composed of Watanabe, Arahata, Ichikawa Shoichi, Nabeyama, Sugiura, Nakao, Kokuryo, Sano Manabu, and Yamamoto. Sano Fumio (who left the party after his return to Japan), Tokuda, and Fukumoto were dropped from the committee.⁵⁵ The composition of the new committee was based upon a recommendation of the Comintern after consultation with the Japanese delegates; it clearly represented a victory for the delegation’s “worker faction.”⁵⁶

ACTIVITIES IN JAPAN

While the leading members of the Japanese Communist Party were away in Moscow, the caretakers, backed by the efforts of some 125 party members, continued to operate effectively through Hyogikai and the Labor-Farmer Party.⁵⁷ The activities of both of these organizations, and of other left-wing bodies as well, gained momentum from the economic unrest arising from a financial panic in March-April 1927. In a situation in which factories were closed and production in general curtailed, wages cut or withheld, and workers laid off, all the left-wing organizations increased their agitation and propaganda activities. The Labor-Farmer Party launched a “Diet dissolution petition campaign” in order to put pressure on the government to advance the date of the general election, in which the new parties would participate, and to expand its own influence among the masses.⁵⁸ It was particularly interested in establishing a united front with the center Japan Labor-Farmer Party.

Hyogikai was active with other labor unions in the establishment of councils of factory representatives in the most important industrial areas of the country. Hyogikai leaders had been urging that all economic struggles be developed into a “political struggle of the whole proletariat” to increase the workers’ “consciousness of political action.” Now they shifted their ground. At Hyogikai’s third convention, in May 1927, the emphasis was on economic issues. A new platform was adopted that concentrated on the “concrete immediate demands of the workers.” Its planks included demands for an eight-hour day and forty-eight-hour week for industrial workers, and a six-hour day and thirty-six-hour week for miners; enactment of an unemployment compensation law, a law to protect female and child laborers, and a labor union law; revision of factory, mining, and maritime laws, and of health and insurance laws; abolition of restrictive legislation like the Peace Preservation Law; and freedom of workers to join political parties. The platform also called for “a total struggle against fascism.”⁵⁹ The Hyogikai leaders urged unions to return to economic struggles and to eliminate the type of union that set itself political tasks as well as economic ones. They felt that a political struggle by labor was no longer appropriate, because the Japanese proletariat had already acquired political consciousness, the Labor-Farmer Party had been formed and was carrying on the struggle for democracy, and the Japanese Communist Party had been reestablished.

The Proletarian News stepped up its campaign against capitalism on both the political and economic fronts. In April, for example, it appealed for a united front of the working masses to fight “the most reactionary political body of the imperialist bourgeoisie”—the Seiyukai Party. The issue of July 9 continued in the same vein: “For the present, the focus of all political struggles for the proletariat is to fight for the freedom of speech, assembly, association, and press, and to rally all oppressed people for such a struggle. The political struggle is against autocracy of the military clique and against bureaucratic centralization.” On the economic side, the editorial of May 24 was typical of this period. It read in part: “It is a proper and just demand that the government set up a special relief fund to save workers from economic distress rather than save capitalists with 900 million yen, that it enforce an unemployment allowance law, that fertilizers and farming implements be nationalized under the control of the proletariat, that the savings of small depositors be guaranteed, and that heavy and unjust taxes be abolished.”⁶⁰

On the international front, the communists were active in helping to establish the League Against Intervention in China. Both the Communist Party and Hyogikai followed the Comintern line, attacking Chiang Kai-shek and calling for support of the Hankow regime and the Chinese Communist Party. Members of the Japanese Communist Party began actively reassessing the “objective conditions” of Japanese society for purposes of strategy and tactics. It had become increasingly clear to many of them that the situation in Japan, especially the relationship of the bourgeoisie and the “absolutist, autocratic forces,” had changed dramatically during the past decade, and that there was “pressing need for amending our general strategy and laying it down more precisely.”⁶¹

Several party leaders began outlining their views in the journal Marxism. One was Murayama Toshiro, a party organizer in the Kansai region, who in the April 1927 issue analyzed the existing situation in terms of what seemed to be a combination of the views of both Fukumoto and Yamakawa.⁶² Murayama emphasized that the Japanese bourgeoisie, already in the stage of imperialism as a link in world capitalism, had not swept away the “absolutist forces” but had become reactionary instead, as its economic position worsened with the decline of world capitalism. The bourgeoisie had played down the notion of “contradiction or opposition to the absolutist remnants,” and in fact had transformed itself from an opposition force to a supporting force. In Murayama’s words, “In the present process of history, the basic political contradictions—the contradiction between the absolutist remnants and all the people and the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—are being transformed into a single contradiction between the reactionary political forces and the groups of suppressed people.” Therefore, he asserted, the strategy of the proletariat had to be as follows: (1) objective of the struggle—a bourgeois democracy; (2) allies in the struggle—all suppressed people, including the petty bourgeoisie; and (3) organization of the struggle—a mass, united front party (the Labor-Farmer Party), with the proletariat as the vanguard, representing the interests of all suppressed people.

Ichikawa Shoichi, speaking for the majority of the party members, took exception to Murayama’s analysis.⁶³ First, he criticized the tendency to underplay the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the absolutist elements. According to Ichikawa, this contradiction constituted the most fundamental weakness of the ruling forces and provided a basis on which the proletariat could direct the struggle against absolutism. Second, he felt that Murayama did not give sufficient emphasis to the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and thus did not clarify the role of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. “Is it not such a fundamental contradiction that makes the proletariat take the lead of all the oppressed people?” Ichikawa answered his own question:

Our proletariat must first be the spearhead or leading force in carrying out the anti-absolutist struggle of all the oppressed people; by so doing, it can isolate the imperialist bourgeoisie and cut off the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie from the bourgeoisie’s direction and influence… [It] must at the same time conduct a bold struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie and hence against fascism, as well as against petty bourgeois, or menshevik, opportunism. In this way, it can prepare itself for the next stage of the struggle—the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.⁶⁴

Ichikawa concluded that Murayama was still influenced by “eclecticism, or Yamakawaism,” in his advocacy of a united front party, and that he therefore minimized the role of the proletariat’s political party—the Communist Party.⁶⁵ Ichikawa stressed the need to struggle against right-wing opportunists and the Yamakawaists. He did not overlook the value of the Labor-Farmer Party as a means of effecting an alliance between the proletariat and other groups of oppressed people, but he urged that the communists establish hegemony within it.

In brief, Ichikawa summarized the important strategic considerations as follows: (1) objective of the struggle—bourgeois democracy; (2) main strength of the struggle—the proletariat; (3) basic organization of the struggle—the Communist Party; (4) direct allies—the poor peasants and the working petty bourgeoisie; (5) allied organization—the united front party, or Labor-Farmer Party; and (6) indirect allies—colonial and semicolonial peoples, especially the Chinese. Ichikawa emphasized the need for the Japanese Communist Party to broaden the basis of its support, criticizing Fukumotoism as “left-wing infantilism.”

The Murayama-Ichikawa controversy stimulated other communists to express their views on strategy, especially their views of state power and the need for a bourgeois-democratic revolution. Both Sano Manabu and Shiga contributed articles to the August issue of Marxism in which they emphasized the continuing hold on state power of “the absolutist forces”—peers, bureaucrats, the military clique, and big landowners—“interlocked with finance capital and with industrial capital under the financiers’ control.”⁶⁶ Both agreed that the bourgeoisie had turned reactionary, and that workers and peasants had to “open the way for bourgeois democracy by their struggle for freedom and thereby liberate their classes in the future.” Sano characterized the revolutionary process as follows: “The achievement of political freedom will generate the momentum… to ensure that the working class, through freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association, will unify all opposition forces and become their spearhead, and reduce the power of the absolutist forces, and, as a result, enable the working class to conduct the struggle directly against its fundamental antagonist, finance capital.” Shiga added: “If the proletariat can achieve political liberation in the struggle against autocracy, it will deprive finance capital of its political prop… and will in turn overthrow the rule of capital… This is the main reason why, for the present, the proletariat should fight for bourgeois democracy.”

The need to reassess “objective conditions” was not the only reason for the many statements of strategy and tactics; the communists also had to refute the views of others who claimed to represent the cause of “genuine Marxism-Leninism.” On the one hand, there was the group of intellectuals and publicists who had founded The Masses in March 1926, among them Oyama Ikuo, Kuroda, Suzuki Mosaburo, and Takano Minoru. In the September 1926 issue of The Masses, Suzuki and Urata advocated the formation of a centrist left-wing party and invited criticism from the editors of Marxism.⁶⁷ Later, the group announced its support of the Labor-Farmer Party, while branding Fukumotoism as “left-wing infantilism” or “sectarian separatism.”

Another group in opposition to the communists was made up of those former party members who had remained close to Yamakawa. They were active in the Labor-Farmer Party, through which they hoped to develop a united front party, but they found it increasingly difficult to remain in the party, as Fukumoto-inspired elements infiltrated it and succeeded in capturing the leadership. Among them, the most militant in his criticism of Fukumotoism was the former Waseda University lecturer Inomata.

Inomata had been a contributor to Marxism in its early years, but upon his release from jail in January 1927, he found it dominated by Fukumotoists. For this reason, he did not rejoin the party. However, he considered himself a communist, and intimated that if the party leadership were to revert to the proper line, he would return to the fold.⁶⁸ He held views very different from the Fukumotoists and from other communists, and began to publish them in various journals. He believed that Japanese capitalism had not yet begun to decline or move downward in its economic position, but that, on the contrary, the Japanese economy was generally “on the upswing.”⁶⁹ He also believed in “the predominance of the bourgeoisie over the civilian and military bureaucracy, who had been the rulers of the state.”⁷⁰ In his view, Japanese capitalism had already reached the “stage of imperialism” or the “stage of monopoly.” As evidence, he cited the control of production by big business, the concentration of capital, and the formation of cartels. According to Inomata, capitalism dominated the political world, with the bourgeoisie controlling government through party supremacy in the legislative and executive branches. In November 1927, after having been denied the right to express his views in Marxism, he published his most influential article of the period—“The Political Position of the Bourgeoisie in Contemporary Japan”—in the journal The Sun (Taiyo).⁷¹ This piece pushed him to the forefront of Japan’s leftist intellectual world because it provided a theoretical basis for refuting Fukumotoism. Inomata’s powerful writing, his sharp, analytical mind, and his consistency of argument had considerable appeal, particularly in view of Fukumoto’s increasingly tiresome prose style.

Inomata’s contribution to the discussion of the development of capitalism was his analysis of the relationship of the bourgeoisie to the landowners, the peasantry, and the urban petty bourgeoisie of Japan. In his article in The Sun, he denied that Japan’s landowners were politically important, and emphasized the fact that, unlike Russia and Germany, Japan had not experienced a fierce conflict between the capitalist class and the landowners. He discussed this in some detail:

As capitalism began to grow rapidly following the changes of the Meiji Restoration, the big landowners of Japan did not seize the real power of government. They did not have the kind of privileges that would have made them resist the bourgeoisie. One historical task of the restoration government was to abolish the feudal system of landownership and open the way for the development of capitalism. Therefore, the government could not be one of the landowner class. Resistance to the autocratic government after the restoration came from the famous democratic (“Liberty and People’s Rights”) movement, which was a united front of varied social groups and classes… The landowner class… was, of course, one of the main forces mobilized in the early democratic movement. On the other hand, the proletariat was still immature, and the bourgeoisie could not play a leading part in the movement because of the government’s role in developing capitalism. Therefore, the movement ended in an unfortunate compromise [the Meiji Constitution]… In the early political parties, the majority of members were landowners. Yet the political power of clan government did not fall into the hands of the landed class, but into those of the bureaucracy and military clique. The political parties that were pitted against the bureaucracy and the military were gradually to become instruments of the bourgeoisie. As this process went on, the franchise was expanded, causing a change in class relations in the Diet—the decline of the agrarian forces. The recent realization of universal suffrage means a decisive victory of the capitalist class, not only over the landowners but also over the bureaucracy and the military. This was reflected in the establishment of the principle of party cabinets, an historical turning point in the rise of the capitalist class’s political position.

Even more important, Inomata maintained that Japan’s landowners had become part of the bourgeoisie. He noted that as capitalism developed, most of the landowners, who collected ground rents, became capitalists. They converted the profits derived from their tenants into bank deposits, public bonds, and securities, instead of reinvesting in land and agriculture. Several, he pointed out, were company directors, presidents of banks, and big moneylenders.

Inomata’s theory of the transformation of the landowning class into elements of the bourgeoisie quite naturally colored his view of the peasant movement in Japan and was decisive in his formulation of revolutionary strategy. W riting of the peasant movement, he declared: “The tenants’ movement, which developed in the last decade, is a struggle against the class that receives in the form of farm rents about one-third of the total agricultural production of Japan… However, since the landowning class has lost the real power of ruling with respect to the state power, the class basically opposed to the peasantry is the monopolistic, imperialist bourgeoisie.” Inomata asserted that though the peasantry was not yet conscious of this opposition, the mass movement in farm villages was forming a common political front with the urban proletarian movement. He gave several reasons: the interchange of labor between agrarian and urban areas; the development of the tenants’ movement under the direct influence of the proletarian movement; the transformation of the landowning class into the bourgeoisie; and the impoverishment of the peasantry—the material basis for the peasants’ movement—that was the result of “the heavy burden of imperialism in the form of taxes” and the fact that Japanese capitalism had entered the phase of monopoly. Most important, said Inomata, a great number of poor peasants and tenants were also semi-proletarians, that is, wage earners.

Inomata characterized the urban petty bourgeoisie as another political opponent of monopoly capitalism; however, he found that the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie, like the landowners, tended to support the ruling capitalists: “The small property owners, high-salaried men, and professional men can no longer form a political force with their own demands and policies in the period of monopoly. Its ideology is characterized by the hope of improving its lot on the basis of capitalism.” He continued:

The upper petty bourgeoisie is essentially dependent on the big capitalists… It is easily won over in elections, and as the intellectual class, has a great influence on public opinion. The formation of this group and its political awakening were the factors that caused the bourgeoisie to give the people limited universal suffrage, an act that reflects the establishment of the rule of monopoly capitalism. The ruling bourgeoisie finds its political support in the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie.

By contrast, said Inomata, the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie had for the most part been transformed into proletarians. He noted that in the period of the peaceful development of capitalism, this group, together with the poor peasantry, had supplied the wage workers, and that in the phase of monopoly capitalism, its economic condition was becoming worse, with increasing unemployment and a lowering of income. “Its members are semi-proletarians,” he asserted; “they are driven to partial opposition by discontent and unrest. The spontaneous mass uprisings known as the Rice Riots of 1918 had their origin in this group.” On the basis of this analysis, Inomata concluded that the political strategy of the ruling bourgeoisie was to isolate the proletariat by using the landowners and owner-cultivators to control the poor peasants, and the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie to control the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie and the less conscious workers. Inomata had now laid the foundation for the central purpose of the article—to define the relationship of the “absolutist forces” and the bourgeoisie. The implications of this relationship for the strategy of the proletariat were obvious to him. What Inomata was concerned about was “the rising view among some Japanese Marxists that the proletarian class had to direct its struggle against the feudal absolutist forces”—a view that raised the question of the political position of the bourgeoisie. “We recognize the strong holdover of feudal absolutism,” he wrote. “But we should remember that it remains as an institutional expression and as an ideology. The political forces of feudal absolutism are functioning only as remnants of the past. They have already lost their class, material basis.” Reiterating that Japan’s landlords had been transformed into bourgeoisie and that, because they had little influence over the control of production, they could not expect any longer to seize political power as an independent social class, Inomata proceeded to an analysis of the aristocracy of Japan. In his view, the aristocracy did not represent any particular social class; it could not be equated with big landowners. “We also have in Japan poor peers, bourgeois nobles, and military and bureaucratic nobles.” Nor did the bureaucracy and military represent any particular social group. Therefore, they had no basis on which to oppose the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, “the imperialist bourgeoisie makes their existence possible.”

Thus, declared Inomata, although the “reins of government” had passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie, Japan had neither political democracy nor political freedom. This was not because the old ruling groups remained as a powerful political force, but because the bourgeoisie came to power through compromises and without staging a decisive mass struggle. The Japanese bourgeoisie did not stage such a struggle against the old ruling groups because if it had mobilized the masses on a political front, it would have been forced to give more political freedom to the people than it considered necessary and would have thus undermined its own position of power. The bourgeoisie, however, had no need for such a struggle, “for the old ruling groups… lost their material basis too early to remain as a powerful political opponent.”

Inomata concluded that the struggle for political democracy must be a struggle of the masses led by the proletariat against the reactionary bourgeoisie. He continued: “No group other than the proletariat can take the lead in the struggle for political progress. Sooner or later, the proletariat will win support from the masses of the semi-proletariat, including needy peasants. Victory in the struggle depends upon mass support. If its tactics are effective, it may even neutralize the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie.” Inomata insisted that the “historic struggle for progress led by the proletariat must include in itself a struggle against reactionary absolutist ideology.” He wrote:

This latter struggle is very important. Ideologies have weight in government. The Japanese bourgeoisie, which has made use of feudalistic, absolutist ideology to achieve power, has many weaknesses that can be exploited by the semifeudal reactionaries. As a result, when its potential supporters, the petty bourgeoisie, begin to demand more democracy, the bourgeoisie finds its hands bound by conciliatory policies. To fight the anachronistic reactionaries means therefore to fight the bourgeoisie. And by so doing, the proletariat can fight effectively against petty bourgeois reformism.

In closing, Inomata explained that “the historical struggle for political progress in Japan” would culminate in a bourgeois-democratic revolution. He was careful to make his meaning clear: The bourgeois-democratic revolution did not mean that the bourgeoisie would carry out a revolution against the remaining feudal forces; on the contrary, the bourgeoisie would oppose a revolution, not because it feared to lose its political support, but because it realized that a mass struggle would destroy its material basis, and pave the way for the victory of the proletariat. Inomata was only a step away from espousing the concept of a single process of revolution, or permanent revolution.

THE RONOHA

The critics of party leadership and ideology were encouraged when the outline of the 1927 theses appeared in the August 19 issue of Pravda. They felt that the Comintern, in criticizing the communist movement in Japan, supported their views on basic points, e.g., the continuing development of capitalism, the political predominance of the bourgeoisie, and a strategy for revolution based upon a common proletarian party movement under the hegemony of the proletariat. Inomata, for example, was convinced that the views expressed in the theses coincided with his view of the revolutionary process. He became even more insistent that the bourgeois-democratic revolution would quickly develop into a socialist revolution. In December he wrote:

Why then will the bourgeois-democratic revolution immediately develop into the proletarian revolution? It is not, as some writers claim, because that revolution will overthrow the feudal absolutist forces and deprive the bourgeoisie of its political base… Rather, it is because with that revolution the hegemony of the proletariat will be near completion. When the proletariat establishes an alliance with broad groups of people, particularly with the poor peasants, the bourgeoisie will then lose its true political base, the petty bourgeois groups…

The coming revolution cannot be separated from the proletarian revolution. Those writers who… insist that the remaining feudal absolutist forces are the target of the struggle in the immediate historical phase wrongly separate the two revolutions and draw an analogy between Japan and China to the benefit of the bourgeoisie. To neglect to make it clear to the working class that the prospect of the first revolution turning into the second is the decisive factor at every stage of the struggle is to deviate from “the direction of Marxist-Leninist strategy and tactics.”⁷²

In December, Yamakawa, Sakai, Arahata, Kitaura, Inomata, and Yoshikawa began to issue a new “theoretical journal of militant Marxists” called Labor-Farmer (Rono). They were soon joined by other veteran socialists and left-wing intellectuals, including Suzuki Mosaburo, Aono, Kuroda, and Takano Minoru.⁷³ The initial issue of Labor-Farmer focused attention on the political and economic power of the bourgeoisie and the capitalistic landlords, and raised the fundamental question for the proletariat and peasantry: “In what battle formation and with what tactics can we fight effectively against the united front of the bourgeoisie and the landlords?” The Labor-Farmer faction, or Ronoha, as the group was soon to be called, answered that question in great detail in a number of articles in the initial issue. Those by Yamakawa and Inomata are especially noteworthy.⁷⁴

Yamakawa was very clear about the basic task of the proletariat. “The object of the present political struggle is the political power of the imperialist bourgeoisie. This is almost beyond question. The fact that the present stage of capitalism in our country is the period of monopoly finance capitalism generally indicates this.” According to Yamakawa, the Meiji Restoration was basically a bourgeois revolution against absolutism, but because the bourgeoisie was weak, the lower-samurai (the bureaucrats and military clique) played the major part in it. However, their bureaucratic clan government was not a democratic government, but a transitional, middle government.

Yamakawa maintained that subsequently a complete bourgeois government came into existence. “The bureaucracy and the military clique at one time seemed to be growing into a force opposed to the bourgeoisie, but without an economic foundation of their own, they were quickly assimilated by the bourgeoisie.” He characterized the bourgeoisie as “a reactionary imperialist force”—corresponding to the stage of imperialism in world capitalism. He insisted that the communist classification of the Seiyukai Party as the party of the landowning interests, and the Kenseikai as a party of the urban commercial and industrial interests, was no longer valid. “The decisive factor today is the internal differences within monopoly finance capitalism.”

According to Yamakawa, it thus became the task of the proletariat and its vanguard to take up the struggle for democracy that the bourgeoisie had abandoned, thereby providing the fundamental conditions for socialism. To this end, the proletariat and its vanguard had to mobilize all classes and social groups opposed to the imperialist bourgeoisie, including the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie, to form a powerful antibourgeois front and political force: “The duty of the proletariat and its vanguard is to establish the basic conditions for the transition from capitalism to a new social order.” What Yamakawa had in mind was the creation of a single, mass political party as the instrument for “a decisive victory” in the proletarian revolution that would develop from the struggle against the bourgeoisie.

Inomata wrote even more forcefully than Yamakawa, especially in analyzing the stages of revolution. Although he regarded the writers in Marxism as members in the same camp, but with “different views,” he was not sparing in his criticism of them. He continued to attack Murayama, Ichikawa, and other communists for making “the achievement of bourgeois democracy” the main objective of the struggle of the proletariat and its allies. He accused them of ignoring the basic facts that (1) the remnants of absolutism had lost their class basis and could not prevent the progress of history; (2) political power had passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie; (3) the opposition of the bourgeoisie to the remaining absolutist forces was not a fundamental one, though such opposition existed; and (4) Japanese capitalism—the material basis for the prolonged survival of the absolutist forces—was serving as a medium for the assimilation of those forces by the imperialist bourgeoisie. According to Inomata, “The starting point of the bourgeois revolution will be that of the proletarian revolution… These two will be condensed into one stage instead of being extended to two stages.” He charged that the analysts in Marxism were deluded in believing that the present stage of revolution could be separated from the next stage in a country with “highly developed state capitalism.” He was convinced that their strategy and their tactics—especially the tendency of some to overemphasize the role of the Labor-Farmer Party and to underestimate the role of the vanguard elements, or communists—would “lead the proletariat to dash straight along the course of petty bourgeois and menshevik opportunism.” He concluded by declaring: “The struggle for democracy is very important. But it is important as one aspect of the whole struggle against imperialism and will be achieved only in this sense.” The proletariat would not mobilize its main power simply for the achievement of democracy; only when the drive for democracy was linked to the main struggle against imperialism would it become a proletarian struggle.

The Ronoha position developed by Yamakawa, Inomata, and others challenged the strategy and tactics of the Japanese Communist Party in two fundamental ways. First, the members of the Ronoha denied the power of feudal absolutism and focused on a single revolution against the bourgeoisie. Second, with the exception of Inomata, the members of the Ronoha minimized or denied the need for a communist party, emphasizing instead the need for a mass party of workers and peasants as a united front against “the despotic, imperialist bourgeoisie.” Since the Ronoha single-revolution theory eliminated the need to attack the imperial system, the group was able to remain a legal segment of the left-wing movement for a decade. However, because of its doctrinal extremism, the Ronoha tended to be just as isolated from the mainstream of the left-wing movement as was the illegal Communist Party, and ultimately, although it had no relationship with international communism, it invited suppression by the authorities.

The Ronoha never became a political force because it never developed any organization or program. It tended instead to represent only a point of view—one whose influence was confined largely to intellectuals. (Yamakawa and Inomata, for example, were more interested in theory than in practice.) Consequently, the Ronoha was never able to develop a foundation from which to work to achieve political unity in the Japanese left wing; its influence was probably more significant in the academic community, where many “progressives” in history and the social sciences found the Ronoha interpretation of Japan’s modern development attractive. The weaknesses of the Ronoha were not apparent in 1927, however. At that time, it represented a serious challenge to the leaders of the Japanese Communist Party and to their two-stage theory of revolution.