Re: Japan Branch of FI

[ikita@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Iwao Kitamura)]

Dear David,
first, I don't argue that trotskyists assert 'the world simultaneous revolution'
in general. I know most of them do not. And the Japan branch of FI that
I mentioned seems to have no such idea in these 15-20 years.

But I think I have to say more about Japan Revolutionary Communist League
(JRCL).

David wrote:
>The Japan Fourth Internationalists were known as the Japan Revolutionary
>Communist League (JRCL). They were quite active in the anti-Narita airport
>movement in the 70s. They had about 500 members I believe. Inside the the
>USec they never advocated this bizarre "world revolution all at once" idea
>which is the kind of characherization I expect from supporters of Stalinism.

Yes, JRCL was a renamed body of the Trotskyist League which, I believe, was
really the japanese branch of FI and was founded by former student activists of
CPJ in early '50. It split mostly into three factions in '58-'59, the largest
two was Revolutionary Marxist Faction(RM) and the  Zenshin(or Chukaku, =Advance)
Faction and the third the Japan branch of FI. They had 2000-5000 activists each
in '70s. Not small groups like David wrote. But I heard that it is very 
difficult
for their activists to pass the examinations to enter their party body in the 
case
of RM. So it is possible that the number of their party body was around 500. It
is not clear but probably they still maintain more than several hundreds 
activists
each today.
It is true that Zenshin and JBFI have been active in the struggle against the 
narita
airport. But RM left the movement in early '70s, criticizing the movement was
petitte-bourgeois radicalism. Several years back, the movement split into two 
parts,
one (Kitahara-ha) supported by Zenshin and another (Atsuta-ha) by JBFI. To add,
Zenshin killed many RM activists and sympathizers with iron pipes in the  '70s,
calling them 'fascists', since their leader general secretary Honda was 
assasinated
by RM in 1975. They are calling each other puppets of police. JBFI has not been
involved in such terrorism except relatively moderate violent confrontation with
others.

>I remember Scott for the CP had brought this up also. Of course given the
>historical isolation of the JRCL from the rest of the world Trotskyist
>movement it is not impossible they may of advocated something like this.

>The JRCL has split several times. One of the tendencies, the JRCL
>(Revolutionary Marxist Faction) has contacted the Workers International
>Liaison Committee around various campaigns the ILC has initiated. They
>put out a full size newspaper weekly and recently marched in Tahiti against
>French nuclear testing, with banners in French, Japanese and English.

IMO, the worst thing that RM has done is that they suddenly turned to
compromise line at the heat of the struggle against the privatization of
the national railroad. RM was very influential on the engineers union
of the national railroad. The commitee chair was thought to be a member
of RM. They accepted the proposition of labor-management compromise
suddenly in 1986. Then they recruited members from the National Railroad
Union that was still against the privatization. This activity was of course
backed by the management. Thus they founded majority unions in privatized
railroad comapanies with right-wingers in 1987. NRU still maintains more than
30,000 members and supported by left socialists, CP'ers and other leftist
groups including JBFI.

>I haven't heard from the official JRCL recently but it is possible they
>have gone the way of several USec affiliates: into oblivion.

>David Walterss



------------------------------------
Iwao Kitamura
a member of theoretical study group
Japan Socialist Association
E-mail : ikita@xxxxxxxxxxxx
personal web: http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~ikita/


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