Nakamura Tsuyoshi — His Life as a Communist

Last April, Nakamura Tsuyoshi, who had fought as a conscious communist before and during the war, passed away. In July of this year, “Paper Monument: Nakamura Tsuyoshi” was published in memory of Nakamura's life of struggle. The following is a review of Nakamura's achievements written by Comrade Sakai Yoshichi, who was a close friend of Nakamura Tsuyoshi and also contributed an essay to the book. (Editorial Department)

Independent Marxist Thinking

In July of this year, “Paper monument: Nakamura Tsuyoshi,” a memorial to Nakamura Tsuyoshi, who maintained his communist spirit from the late 1930s to the 2000s, was published by Sairyusha by the Memorial Collection Publication Society.

Nakamura Tsuyoshi was born in 1919 and passed away in April 2007 (at the age of 87), but his thoughts and activities spanned about 60 years from the time when he was a high school student (1936-1940) until his collapse due to illness in 1997. From around the time he entered university (1940) to his later years, Nakamura was an independent-thinking Marxist, a man of action true to his own ideology, and from around 1966-67 he broke away from the ideological framework of international Stalinism as a left-wing communist and began to criticize the existing “socialist” nations as "pre-socialism" and advocating a proletarian socialist world revolution, including the overcoming of "pre-socialism" through a new workers' revolution, and his unique position was roughly formulated in the early 1970s.

The book, titled “Paper Monument: Nakamura Tsuyoshi,” was compiled by a group of people who worked with Nakamura Tsuyoshi and his younger brother, Nakamura Nagaya, after a memorial service for Nakamura Tsuyoshi held in July of last year. As a “paper monument,” the book is divided into three parts: (1) a detailed account of Nakamura's life and activities by four people; (2) remarks on his achievements and recollections of his personality by Nakamura's associates, friends, and acquaintances; and (3) an introduction to his many theoretical achievements in the field of economics and in various areas of the communist movement. The subtitle of the book, “Seventy Years from the Communist Party to the New Left,” suggests that the book is intended to provide an insight into Nakamura's life activities and achievements, as well as his personality.

When reading “Paper Monument: Nakamura Tsuyoshi,” it would be helpful to further deepen your understanding of Nakamura Tsuyoshi by reading his own article, “Characteristics of the Japanese Communist Movement” (1975), and his two articles, “My ‘Feudal Debate’” (1983) and “Ritsu Ito in Me” (1991). Nakamura's writings and articles are included in the “Paperback” section of the “The Paperback” series. These articles and writings, along with “Paper Monument: Nakamura Tsuyoshi,” are available from Phoenix-sha (2-2-2 Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Tokyo Sanwa Building. 3F; Fax: 03-3264-2735).

History and Period

Below, we trace Nakamura Tsuyoshi's footsteps as a communist based on this book and other sources.

The course of Nakamura's thinking and activities over a period of about 60 years until he fell ill can be roughly divided into the first 30 years as a communist within the ideological framework of international Stalinism and the second 30 years as an original left-wing communist who broke away from that ideology. The first three decades can be further divided into four periods.

1936-45 [ages 16-25] — the period of the acceptance of Marxism and the primitive formation of the left-wing communists.

In 1936, he entered the high school department of Tokyo Prefectural High School, an old high school system, and accepted “labor-farmer” Marxism, partly due to the influence of his uncle Komaki Omi and others, and turned to the “Lecture Faction” while still in school. In 1940, he entered the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo and “immediately participated in the activities of the Gohi group,” and became involved in the activities of the “University of Tokyo Group of the Preparatory Committee for the Reconstruction of the Japanese Communist Party,” which “organized a total of three digits members into small reading groups,” and was arrested in September of the same year, with charges pending in December (“My ‘Feudal Debate’”).

The Pacific War began in December 1941, and in September 1942, he became a naval chief account officer with “accelerated graduation.” The war ended in Fukuoka in August 1945, and he immediately left the army (Ibid.). During the war, Nakamura kept a diary in which he closely tracked the war situation, which has been published as Nakamura Tsuyoshi's “A War Diary” (Kanjosha, 1977).

1945-1958 [age 25-38]: period of activity as a cadre in the Communist Party apparatus.

In November 1945, he joined the Reconstructed Communist Party immediately after the war and began his activities as a member of the Central Farmers' Department under Ritsu Ito, and the following year he participated in farmers' struggles over rice deliveries in Tochigi, Ibaraki, and other areas. In 1948, as an organizer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Committee, he was in charge of the labor movement in the metal and machinery sector in the Tama region. In 1974, he became a permanent member of the Hokkaido Regional Committee. In November 1950, he entered into illegal activities and continued his activities as a card-carrying member of the Tokuda Kyuichi and Ritsu Ito-affiliated “Shokan Faction” party organization throughout the period of party split and illegal activities. In July 1958, at the Seventh Congress of the Party, he left the position of Party Organization cadre after thirteen years and became a member of the Communist Party Residential Cell.

As of August 15, 1945, Nakamura Tsuyoshi was 25 years old, Ritsu Ito 32, Kenji Miyamoto 36, Yoshio Shiga 44, Kyuichi Tokuda 50, and Sanzo Nosaka 53.

Around 1947-48, Nakamura personally shifted to a "socialist revolution" position, and he was critical of Moscow's criticism of the JCP in 1951 — the "Criticism of the Cominform" — from a "socialist revolution" perspective, and was critical of the party's mainstream Shida faction regime and its "military policy" after 1951.

The 6th Party Congress of 1955 was the product of a bureaucratic compromise between the party's mainstream Shida faction and the international Miyamoto group. After this, Nakamura opposed the Miyamoto faction, which would become the new mainstream, from a socialist revolution standpoint, but the criticism and conflict from a socialist revolution standpoint continued from the Shida faction before the 6th Party Congress to the Miyamoto faction after it.

Nakamura describes the Communist Party of the late 1950s and early 1960s as “the JCP when it was reckless but militant and even revolutionary,” and points out the “historical incompetence of the leadership of the reconstructed Communist Party” as follows:

The JCP leadership of the late 1940s and early 1950s was tormented by a lame duck situation, unable to cope with the upheavals of the postwar occupation, Cold War, and hot war, without being able to summarize the history of the JCP, which did not have its own prewar platform and could not guarantee human unity and continuity due to the short-term cycle of repression, destruction, and reconstruction. They must have been tormented by the situation. In fact, apart from Tokukyu's natural realism, the mass cadres that had been active in the world up until the Popular Front period... intervened in or jumped on the bandwagon of a natural-growth movement. I think it was truly tragic that Tokukyu and his new aides, such as Ritsu Ito, who was selected for the position, were completely immersed in Japanese organizational traditions such as collective belonging and patriarchy. ("Ritsu Ito in Me," 1991).

1958-1966 [ages 38-47]: Period of activity as a member of the “socialist revolution” faction that broke away from the Communist Party structure and opposed the Miyamoto faction of the party bureaucracy after the 6th Congress of the Communist Party of Japan.

In 1958, Nakamura resigned from the Party's central organization cadre and joined the movement of the “Anti-Monopoly Socialist Revolution” faction, which opposed the re-organization of the Party bureaucracy as the Miyamoto faction at the 6th Party Congress. In 1961, at the 8th Party Congress, he refused to renew his party membership and was expelled from the party. He joined the formation of the “Socialist Revolutionary Movement” by the broadly defined “Anti-Monopoly Socialist Revolution” and “Structural Reform” factions.

In the mid-1960s, the initial signs of a new radical and militant tendency among young workers and student movements became apparent, while at the same time, there was a movement within the Socialist Revolution Movement to merge with the "Voice of Japan" group, which had left the Communist Party to form the Soviet faction. Nakamura opposed this move and led the opposition to merger in Tokyo, going on to form the "Socialist Workers' League" (Sharōdō) in 1967 as a "New Left" political organization.

This marked the end of the first half of Nakamura Tsuyoshi's 30-year career within the ideological framework of international Stalinism, but the period from 1958 to 1966 (age 38 to 47) can also be seen as a transitional period from his time as a member of the Communist Party apparatus from 1945 to 1958 (age 25 to 38) to his period from 1967 to 1997 (age 47 to 77) when he broke away from Stalinism and became a left-wing communist.

1967-97 [ages 47-77]: Escape from the framework of international Stalinism and the transition to a left-wing communist.

The Socialist Workers' League, formed in 1967 by a Tokyo group led by Nakamura within the Socialist Revolutionary Movement, was a political organization primarily for workers. Although Ms. Nakamura played a central role in the Socialist Workers' League, this organization split in 1970. After teaching at a university from around 1970, Nakamura's direct organizational involvement in the political group to which he belonged became relatively small, and his own independent theoretical and research activities took on a greater weight. From around 1970 to the 1990s, Nakamura's thought activities were encyclopedic.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Nakamura was actively involved in mass movements such as the minority labor movement, Okinawa Solidarity for Self-Determination, the April 27 Rebel Soldiers' Trial, Polish Solidarity, etc. He also engaged in diverse theoretical activities in the fields of Marxist military theory, Clausewitzian military theory, the early Third International and “Council Communism,” and economics centering on Kondratchev's long-term economic wave theory.

Escape from Stalinism

What is particularly noteworthy about Nakamura Tsuyoshi during this period is that from around 1966-1967 he broke away from the ideological framework of international Stalinism as a left-wing communist, defined himself as a "New Left" and criticized the existing "socialist" nations as being "pre-socialist" that had reached an impasse from which it was impossible to escape.In the early 1970s, he formulated his own unique political position, based on the idea of ​​"council communism," which advocated a proletarian socialist world revolution, including the overcoming of "pre-socialism" through a new workers' revolution.

When Nakamura defined his new position as the "New Left," it was meant to express "revolutionary because it is new, and a new left because it is revolutionary," and also to imply criticism of the structural reformists who had fallen into "new but reformism" and the militant groups (Bund, Chukaku-ha, etc.) that "strive to be revolutionary but cannot adapt to the structure of today's capitalism"(Paper Document: Nakamura Tsuyoshi, p. 65). However, Nakamura's self-definition of the "New Left" should be understood as an attempt to break away from international Stalinism, which had been the ideological framework of his own thinking and actions for almost thirty years, and to aim for a new revolutionary foothold for left communism.

The left's break away from the ideological framework of international Stalinism that had existed since the 1930s would not have been possible without criticism from a Marxist-communist standpoint of the Soviet Union, the first "socialist" state that began with the October Revolution in Russia, and the existing "socialist" states after World War II.

In 1969, Nakamura made clear his critical stance towards existing "socialist" countries as "pre-socialism." Nakamura Tsuyoshi explains this in the following way:The concept of 'pre-socialism' was Nakamura's definition of all existing socialist countries...[it] was a 'dead-end socialism' with no future development and only two ways of breaking through: a breakthrough transition to capitalism or a breakthrough change through a 'second socialist revolution' (ibid., pp. 189-90). Thus, the conclusion was drawn that the corrupt and deformed transitional workers' countries had completely fallen into the logic of individual bourgeois nationalism, and that the only options were either a "second socialist revolution" — which, from the standpoint of the Fourth International Trotskyism, would be an anti-bureaucratic, political revolution — or bourgeois retreat and dissolution. The "second socialist revolution," which aims to overcome "pre-socialism" and put it on the path of renewal, was envisioned as part of the international struggle for a socialist revolution against imperialism and capitalism. However, when it came to situations in which the "pre-socialist" countries were in conflict with imperialism and capitalism, Nakamura made clear his "defeatist" attitude toward that conflict — a position that denied any particular commitment to the "pre-socialist" countries ("Introduction to Pre-Socialism" written in 1979), which was, so to speak, "anti-imperialist, anti-stastocratic," and in this respect was clearly different from the method of the Fourth International Trotskyism.

His unique political stance, which advocated a proletarian socialist world revolution, including the overcoming of "pre-socialism" through a new workers' revolution, was built around the concept of "council communism." The concept of council communism, which Nakamura put together in 1976, included the following: (1) the realization of proletarian dictatorship through workers' councils (workers' soviets) as the autonomous power organization of the working class, and the elimination of all bureaucratic proxy-ism; (2) the rejection of nationalistic "socialism in one country" and mutual cooperation with the vision of forming a democratic "international community" through the power of workers' councils in various countries; and (3) the current realization of the process of the vision of the "extinction of the state" through the power of workers' councils as "transitional semi-states" ("Paper Document: Nakamura Tsuyoshi," pp. 190-2).

The Theory of Council Communism

It can be said that the systematization of this idea of ​​"council communism" was the final confirmation of Nakamura's criticism of the "Popular Front" line and the clarification of his proletarian revolutionary stance, which began around 1967-68. In his essay "Characteristics of the Japanese Communist Movement" written in 1975, Nakamura wrote,

"Under the leadership of Dimitrov and Togliatti, Comintern shifted to post-socialist Popular Front tactics, and Stalin also approved it after seeing its effectiveness in defending the Soviet Union (7th Congress, 1935)."

Nakamura also pointed out in "My 'Feudal Debate'" (1983) that "The Popular Front was nothing more than an ode to democracy on a post-proletarian revolutionary level."

An important step in formulating the theory of council communism was "Lenin and the Third International" (1975), which Nakamura wrote as a commentary for "The Third International and the European Revolution" (History of the Debate on Marxist Revolution, Volume 3, Kinokuniya Shoten). In this essay, the position of the early Comintern was duly evaluated, and the united front tactics of the Third Congress of Comintern were interpreted as the position of the workers' united front → workers' council (soviet) revolution, thus clearly and consistently advocating proletarian revolution.

By the way, was there anyone other than Nakamura who was an older generation supporter of the "Anti-Monopoly Socialist Revolution and Structural Reform" who claimed that "the Popular Front was nothing more than an adoration of democracy in a de-progressive revolutionary dimension"? On this point, Norio Yukawa of the Trotsky Institute stated the following in a speech at the Society for Socialist Theory (December 2007):

"Ishido... rejects the position of the Third Congress of Comintern and takes the position of further promoting the Popular Front line since 1936... As far as I know, almost all of the older generation of Gramsci researchers, except for Tsuyoshi Nakamura, are not supporters of the Third Congress of Comintern but are supporters of the Popular Front."

Thus, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, Nakamura Tsuyoshi was among the broadly defined "Anti-Monopoly Socialist Revolution and Structural Reform" faction, but as a former Communist Party member who broke away from the "Popular Front" line to a left-wing direction and committed to a proletarian revolutionary stance, he was a truly rare person, and it was the ideological framework of international Stalinism that Nakamura escaped from as a left-wing communist.

In this way, Nakamura Tsuyoshi was our forerunner in the Japanese Communist movement and must be remembered as such in our movement.

"The Ideological Structure of Jacobinism"

Finally, I would like to conclude this introduction to "Paper Monument: Nakamura Tsuyoshi" with the following quote from the section "The Ideological Structure of Jacobinism" in Nakamura's "Characteristics of the Japanese Communist Movement" (1975):

"As is well known, the Japanese proletarian revolutionary movement was characterized from the beginning by the lack of a union between the labor movement and socialism. In the case of the two great stars of Meiji socialism, Kotoku Shusui and Katayama Sen, the former's left-wing civil rights movement → social democracy (left wing of the Second International) → direct action ideology overwhelmed the latter's occupational trade unionism → social democracy (central faction of the Second International) → parliamentary omnipotence in terms of revolutionary nature. Kotoku's anti-national ideology went beyond the Freedom and People's Rights Movement of the 1870s, which was absorbed and integrated into the theory of national sovereignty under the Imperial Constitutional System while ignoring the Jacobin uprisings for the poor, such as the Gunma, Chichibu, and Iida incidents, and developed the revolutionary democracy of the left-wing civil rights movement through anti-war → anti-imperialist ideology. The theory of revolution and resistance by Emori Ueki, considered the pinnacle of left-wing civil rights ideology ("When the government uses its power to exert arbitrary and tyrannical control, the Japanese people can resist it with weapons") was still limited by his understanding of the situation, which was that "if national sovereignty is not solidified, then civil rights will also be unstable," and he was forced to remain stuck with the dream of "accelerating the abolition of the state" under "superficial law" (international public law) and "universal deliberative government" (world federation). However, inspired by Marxism, Kotoku was able to refine what was called absolute liberalism and absolute pacifism into a sharp idea of ​​social change, even though he did not have the opportunity to join the labor movement. His anti-emperor system and anti-constitutional system viewpoint stands in contrast to that of Katayama, who was closely involved in the Meiji labor movement from the Labor Union Promotion Association to the Tokyo Municipal Tram strike, but was never able to escape reformism and legalism and, up until World War I, sought to realize socialism through parliament under the emperor system ('Our imperial constitution is perfect when it comes to implementing parliamentary policy'). It is said that Katayama, who was based in the United States, became a Leninist in 1919, after the Russian Revolution."

"In later years, Katayama criticized this unfortunate discrepancy, the lack of connection between proletarian revolutionary ideology and the mass base of the labor movement, as 'intellectualism' (meaning an intellectual bias), and because Kotoku was biased toward 'anarcho-communism', the assessment that 'Katayama was superior in terms of understanding social revolution' seems to be dominant even today. However, considering that Leninism politically has its origins in the implementation of 'twentieth century Jacobinism' centered on the formation of workers' power, to inherit it on such a level would be ahistorical."

"Rather, it must be emphasized that this discrepancy was repeated even amid the full-scale rise of the labor movement that came about after World War I. It was the Kotoku school that externalized revolutionary class consciousness to the spontaneous development of the movement that followed the Yūaikai Society, a reprint of the Labor Union Promotion Association. Furthermore, the person who was more closely associated with the movement was Osugi, who sought to make the "revolution part of everyday life" within the working class through his unique anarcho-syndicalism, rather than Yamakawa Kin, who accepted the Russian Revolution as the dictatorship of the proletariat and intellectually led "Bolshevism" with the aim of mass political action. It was Sakae. The "ANA-Bol Debate" ended in the victory of the "Bol" (the victory of Sōdōmei over the Labor Union League) along with the monopoly capitalist re-organization of production relations into Japanese-style seniority-based labor-management relations and corporate unions, but within Sōdōmei, which was the "Bol", the reformist right wing prevailed. Considering that after the first Sōdōmei split, the revolutionary nature of the left wing — the Council — Zenkyo, apart from the early period when they were able to lead strikes at large factories such as Kyodo Printing and Nippon Gakki, was dominated by syndicalist radicalism such as an elite few and direct action, it may actually have been essentially ANA that was victorious." (From Young Communist Committee Educational Pamphlet 2, "The Communist Movement in Japan — Its Historical Characteristics")