Book Review
John Crump: Nikkeiren and Japanese Capitalism.
RoutledgeCurzon.
Nikkeiren is the Japan Federation of Managers’ Organisations, the rough
equivalent of the Confederation of British Industry. Here former
Socialist Party member John Crump traces its history in the second half
of the last century, against the background of developments in Japanese
and world capitalism and working-class resistance.
After defeat in the Second World War, Japan was under US occupation,
and the occupying authorities were at first not prepared to countenance
a strong organisation of employers. This was because they did not wish
to see a powerful Japanese capitalist class in the short term,
especially one linked to militarism and companies that had profited
from the war. But in 1947 General MacArthur, head of the Allied Powers,
prohibited a general strike called by public sector trade unions, which
clearly showed on which side of the class struggle the occupiers stood.
Nikkeiren was founded in 1948, as part of a reassertion by Japanese
capitalists of their control over the workforce, and spent its first
decade helping to establish a clear ‘right to manage’, becoming
involved in a number of bitter industrial disputes. For instance, in
the dispute with power workers in 1952, it undermined the union by
encouraging companies to enter into regional negotiations, and in other
ways supported class solidarity among the capitalists, such as helping
to spread the cost of anti-strike measures. In other disputes, it
helped in the formation of company unions and persuaded rival employers
not to take advantage of the difficulties of the firms where strikes
were taking place. Crump depicts its role in this period in dramatic
terms:
One could do worse than think of Nikkeiren as pro-capitalist Bolsheviks
who shared many of the authoritarian assumptions, belligerent attitudes
and manipulative practices of their Communist Party opponents. The
difference was that Nikkeiren’s leaders were resolved to consolidate
the power and privileges of the existing ruling class, whereas the
Communist Party sought to supplant them and become the dominant and
privileged class itself.
The 1960s saw an economic “boom”, with sizeable wage rises (though
lagging behind the growth in productivity). Nikkeiren urged employers
to keep wage increases as low as possible - not that they needed much
encouragement. Inter-union rivalries, and the growth of unions prepared
to stop their members from ‘disrupting’ production, helped in this.
Strikes continued to occur, of course, though on the whole employers
were less confrontational than previously. But 1974 saw an economic
crisis, resulting from a massive rise in oil prices, with a growth in
unemployment. Nikkeiren supported increased resistance to wage demands,
so that workers rather than capitalists should pay for the economic
difficulties. This hard line continued through the 1980s, a period
further marked by cooperation between Nikkeiren and the trade unions.
Then in 1992 a drastic economic downturn arrived, essentially caused by
‘overcapacity’ (e.g. Nissan had the capacity to produce 2.3 million
cars a year, but could only sell 1.5 million). There were now fewer
industrial disputes but increased unemployment, and greater insecurity
for those in work. In 2002 Nikkeiren merged with another employers’
organisation, partly because there was no longer such a need for a
capitalist club that dealt specifically with ‘labour problems’.
Besides its narrative of a half-century of Japanese capitalism, Crump’s
book is concerned to examine how capitalist dominance is maintained. He
identifies coercion, manipulation and mystification as three techniques
employed at various times. Coercion was particularly to the fore in the
1948-60 period, when militant unions were deliberately smashed.
Manipulation involved the promotion of compliant unions, setting worker
against worker, and playing on their sense of insecurity. Mystification
included the claim that there was a distinctively Japanese way of
running capitalism, and hence pushing the view that workers had a stake
in ‘their’ country. In fact, as this book amply demonstrates,
capitalism in Japan has run on lines little different from those
elsewhere.
There is one noteworthy aspect of Japanese capitalism: despite its
relative poverty of natural resources, it has (as noted above) often
been plagued by overcapacity - a sign that it is just part of global
capitalism. And as Crump says:
“the productive resources located in the poorly endowed corner of the
globe called Japan illustrate that there are no technical impediments
to the world as a whole equipping itself with the means to satisfy the
needs of all people.”
While his book does not itself present a case for Socialism, it
certainly reveals a lot of what is objectionable about capitalism.
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