50 Years Ago: Rise of Japanese Capitalism
[The Countess of Warwick had appealed to the British aristocracy to emulate the Japanese nobility by voluntarily handing over their estates to the government as an act of restitution to the workers].
How the latter can benefit in any way from the proposed surrender of lands is made no clearer by the Countess than by any of the Fabian or I.LP. treatises on the same subject. State ownership of land, or indeed, of any of the means of wealth production, solves no problem for the working class. Only common ownership and democratic control can do that. State ownership, that is collective ownership by the capitalist class, as with the Post Office, for instance, leaves the workers still wage-slaves.
The fallacy of state ownership, however, has been so often dealt with that we can afford to leave it for the present and deal with the fallacy . . . that a ruling class has never in the past renounced, or is likely in the future to renounce its privileges and power unless compelled to do so by superior force. There is no record in history of a ruling class abdicating in favour of a class weaker than itself.
Take the case of Japan. In that country the system of society previous to 1868 was similar in its essential features to the Feudal system of European countries. The Samurai were the military class, composed of territorial nobles, called Daimios, and their vassals and retainers. Strictly speaking, however, the term Samurai applied to these latter only. They and their families were kept by the Daimios, or had lands assigned to them for which they drew the rent, as under the Feudal system in Europe. This applied to the Daimios as well, who numbered about 255, and whose incomes varied between 10,000 and 1,027,000 Koku of rice per annum.
The revolution that abolished this system was not of the same sanguinary revolution character as the bourgeois revolution in France in 1789, or the English revolution in the time of Charles the First. “The Two Parties”, says Arthur Diosy, “were too evenly matched for the struggle to become a severe one”. Therein lies the secret of this relatively peaceful consummation. The Daimios were between the devil and the deep sea; they submitted to the inevitable—on the best terms they could obtain. They received from the State an annual income equal to one-tenth of their former income, and were relieved of the responsibility of maintaining the Samurai, who were taken over by the government to form the nucleus of the Army and Navy. Those who held hereditary incomes were given the opportunity to sell their rights to the government for half cash and half government bonds . . . The Mikardo and his nobles were forced to recognise that they must establish their rule on Western lines or they would speedily become a vassal state to one or other of the great powers who with increasing impatience knocked at her gates.
From the SOCIALIST STANDARD June 1917