CZM Rewind: The Japanese Anarchists Part Two

nine twenty four with everyone sort of dead. But the reason that also didn't wipe out the anarchist movement was that does another sort of wing of it, and the other wing of it is in nineteen eighteen, nineteen seventeen, nineteen eighteen, labor movement in Japan re emerges, and it re emerges because there's the war, like Japan fights to over one and there's just like mass inflation and deprivation, and so even though striking is like unbelievably illegal, people

do it anyways because the unhard. It is just starving to death. And so there's this reformist trade union that eventually becomes Japanese Confederation of Labor that swells in numbers about thirty thousand people and actually mentioned like thirty thousand people is like it doesn't sound like that big for a union. I think this is the biggest any union

is going to get in this period. I think this union might get slightly bigger than that, but like, yeah, most of the unions don't crack twenty k because the size of the Japanese diustrial working class isn't that big, and also the amount of oppression is unbelievable. But you know, having thirty thousand people in your union means that your union is now the site of Japanese intro left conflict, which is wonderful.

dating each other. The anarchists, the communists are all dating each other, like the reformists are also dating each other, Like they're all sort of like everyone knows each other, and for like a bit they're sort of able to

get along. But with with the the Japanese Confederation of Labor, this lasts for like one year, and by nineteen twenty one, the anarchists and the Bolsheviks have split over the questions of the USSR after the anarchists published like Emma Goldman writing about how it's bad actually, and suddenly these two factions are like, yeah, these these actions are like fighting tooth and nail for control of like the entire left because like these see, these these groups are like the

anarchists and communists are in every social movement, like they're in They're in labor, they're in the feminist movement, They're in this movement. They're like we haven't really talked about, but it's going on in the background of all of this, which is the uh Burakuman liberation movement. The burk Kumen

are this like they're this like hereditary class. I'm pronouncing that extremely badly and I apologize, but this hereditary class and like the old fuel system, which is like technically abolish in the late teen hundreds, but like discrimination against them continues. It's it's very similar to like the like the untouchable, like the untouchables in India. And so they have this sort of movement and the anarchists back it, and the communists like waffle on it because they're Bolsheviks.

It takes them like a while before they're like no, no, no, nineteen twenty five where we're fully backing this now. And so yeah, I mean that gets wrapped up in this this giant battle for the control of the left, and the battle for the control of the left leads to like one of history's most common alliances, which is Bolsheviks allying with reformists who like also favor like centralized control to fight the anarchists who don't want centralized control. Yeah,

there are new things, ye know, in labor movement. This plays out in this battle over like where power is supposed to be in a union confederation. So you know, the question basically is it supposed to be in the federation bureaucracy like the people are like the sort of high level of the bureaucracy it stuff, or is it supposed to be in the unions who are like the

part of this federation. And this has real consequences, you know, like in a lot of sort of centralized union federations, like the central union bureaucracy, the people who decide if you can strike or not. And you know, this is extremely useful to both reformist bureaucrats who want to make sure nobody goes on strike because they have their deal with the capitalists and they they don't want a revolution

to happen. And it's also very useful for the Bolsheviks who want to make sure they can purge anyone who they don't like, and also want to make sure that the union movement is just like an extension of their politics. And so there's this huge battle and it ends with basically like both the Bolsheviks and the reformists pull out of the union.

is the book that made me an anarchist. Like this is like I checked this book out from my library and I read it and I was like, oh my god, I'm an anarchist now. So yeah, yeah, he has he has like a okay, she has a wild story. He's born in He's born in Japan in December eighth, eighteen eighty six, and he sort of like bounces around like different manual labor jobs in Tokyo, and like at one point he wants to be like a he tries to be like I don't know if it's long, shortly, he

wants to be like a sailor. So he gets on a boat and he's going to be a sailor, and then he, after like one sail ride to Taiwan, he immediately decides he doesn't want to be a sailor anymore. So he just gets off the boat and leaves and doesn't come back.

this guy's career is wild. Uh No, She's always not like a noble pastor. He rapidly starts pissing off like everyone around him because he's like all of his sermons are just him and antagonizing rich people and preaching this like very very left wed in the gospital.

celebrate his marriage. Yeah, and you know this like this does not make going around.

like what if we did that here? And like as he's getting like, as he's pissing off more of the church and as like they're they're they're in fighting, gets bigger, he's becoming just more and more of an anarchist, and by the end he just like gets he gets booted out by his church and he's just like, Okay, I'm an anarchist propagandist now. And so nineteen twenty four he just like leaves and he's like, well, I'm an anarchist now, okay,

And Shoozo becomes what's known as a pure anarchist. And this is something that is like entirely unique to Japan that like there's nothing there's this doesn't exist anywhere else, and this is different than like like basically every other anarchist theorist and movement in Japan until this point has been like something you can find parallels with and other anarchist movements around the globe. Like there are nihilists and

lots of countries. There's egoists everywhere, Like there's syndicalists literally in every country that's ever existed, and they mostly sort of believe the same things, you know, and you get some like like oh Czikai's like combination of egoism and syndicalism is like.

But then they go reformists and they like they vote for World War over one and now they're famous for uh there have been like twelve things that probably could have been a revolution in France if the CGT had ever a single time went to the barricades. And they never do, like it's never ever. That's like their whole thing, Like like they they set out Bay sixty eight, like that's yeah, this is a union. Yeah yeah, and they

set out Bay sixty eight. It's like yeah, it's incredible, but you know the but you know, in like nineteen oh six, right, the Japanese are looking at it like cideicos looking at this like, oh my god, this this union has like millions of people in it, like it's enormous. It's a cynical union.

this is the thing. It doesn't exist anywhere else because everywhere, like in the West and in Latin America, like syndicalism and anarchist and in arcal communism just like fuse to the point where like they're not really They're like, but there's not really they're not really separtendency like nobody's written in arco communist theory in like one hundred years, like like they say start you know, they've basically cease to

be separate tendencies. But in Japan, the syndicalists of the an comms like fight it out to the death and this this produces pure anarchism and it rules. Weren't talk about what it is because it's both wonderful and incredibly silly at the same time. So okay, So to understand what they're arguing about, because this is this is this, this causes like a huge fracture in the anexist movements.

I think we need to sort of like go into like the vulgar marxistconception of class structure that's kind of shared by the syndicalists. Okay, So okay, okay, so you're you're you're okay. The important thing about this is that like this doesn't work in Japan, like that the vulgar theory of like mark class structure, right, is that like, okay, so you're supposed to have the great dostro proletariat, Like if that's supposed to become a majority of the population.

It's supposed to be unified and organized by like the discipline of the factory system, and the entire world is supposed to be reduced to two classes, like the burgeoisie and the proletariat, like one class of people who have nothing to sell with their labor. One class of people who exist purely to like extract wealth from people, because

you entirely supports by owning things. And you know, eventually these are supposed to, like if you if you read your communist manifesto, eventually these two classes are supposed to like meet themselves in like a final conflict or the proletariat defeats it's called yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know, the portario defeats them, and then they abolish the conditions of their own existence as a class and you get stateless, classless money in this society. It's like a free association

of workers. And this is what communism is. And famously this never happened. A yeah, what about the mortal science. Yeah,

you know, well the the ordal science. Yeah, this this is the sort of this is the problem with the immortal science is that one, instead of unifying the industrial proletariat, capitalism like divides it and just sort of like like literally spatially like kicks them into suburbs, and you can get this sort of like the system where instead of like unifying everyone into one class, everyone is now this like completely alienated like boomer living in a suburb, even if.

But then like, you know, so there's something weird happens, which is in China, u Stalin managed to get like the entire urb like the entire urban Chinese working class, like miltant working class killed, and so Mao has to like make a revolution with peasants, and so you know, peasants become the sort of like you know, this this sort of like this, this is what the actual revolution subject of communism wants up being, like from like China

to Columbia, it is these peasants. But like, you know, okay, so your theory of the industrial poletariat is already down the toilet, and this is what Shoozo is reacting to you. Like he looks at Japanese society and there's like five people who you wage labor. Mostly there's this enormous like like forty fourteen million people who are tenant farmers who are like trying to suppoil their families on these like

tiny plots of rented land. But you know, and like center Marxist theory is like, well, okay, these people will inevitably be absorbed into capitalism right by they'll be driven by competition or whatever to the market. But like they're not, it's not happening. They're just they're sitting there and they're still just really poor and paying their landlords and yeah, yeah, well, you just gotta wait for all of Japan to be like.

the traditional system or whatever. And then you have the petty bourgeoisie who are like you know, own stores or artisans or whatever. And then you have the bourgeoisi over it. And this just always funny to me because I look at I'm like, well, clearly the only ones that would be worth being would be lump and proletariat or petty boogizzi, like they're the only ones who get to have any fun, Like yeah, you know.

an alternative concept of the proletariat. The property list masses was a wide ranching term which accompassed tenant farmers, small traders, officials, artisans, and even wage laborers. When they are prepared to forsake their preoccupation with narrowly defending advantages that accompany their urban lifestyle, and we're ready to throw in their lot with the other oppressed strata.

no other Japanese anarchists who who has this metaphor. It's like he compares it to like people fighting instead of like a bandit where it's like, okay, so if you have you have like fight, like the bosses of the bandit gang are obviously exploiting like the lower level people in the bandit gang. But you know, even if even if the lower level people in this bandit gang like take over, they're not actually going to stop being a bandit gang, right, It's just that the distribution of where

the bandit gang wealth is going changes. And this is a big thing for for for the pianicists beause the pianarchists are you know, they they're looking at the industrial working classes like this is tiny and they're they're all exploding in the countryside mm hm. And so because of that, like they they look at this, they look at the union movement, and they look at it at like class struggle, like classical TM like class struggle, and they're like, well,

this doesn't cause a revolution. All this does is just like sort of reorients like who's in power inside.

you're fighting for you and the other factory workers. You're not fighting for like, I don't know, like a tenant farmer, you're not you're not even fighting from like for like the guy down the tree who bakes bread. It's like you're you know, the these these things that are like that are what they like instruments of class struggles, like your workers council, your union, your soviets. Like they don't

actually get rid of class. It's just now another class has power, and it doesn't matter if it's sort of

like this is what they're arguing. It is, like it doesn't matter if it's like democratic, it doesn't matter if it's like you know, like there's no difference in how the actual eventually the class and amas will play out it doesn't matter if it's like you know, like Lenin making like Stalin making himself dictator, or you have a bunch of democratic like Soviets, because they're both still intruents in class power. They're both sort of just going to

reproduce this, this whole system. And yeah, and so they have this thing that they counterpose, which is like class struggle is just about what stuff is happening inside the system. But that's different revolution, which is like destroying this the

system entirely. And this is where you get into his stuff about the division of labor, which is I think is really interesting because it I think this this sphere of pure anarchism got to a bunch of critiques of stuff that people have gotten to now, but they got to it in like nineteen twenty where okay, so choose those.

Like one of his big things is that like the division of labor is inherently exploitative because it like it destroys sort of royal communal living and it replaces it with the centralization of expertise and a centralation of power. And he also thinks that like science is like a capitalist engine that's used to like create the division of labor. And then it's used to create like mechanization, and it's used to create like labor exploitation.

including cities. And this sounds a lot like primitivism.

One is that like when you have a division of labor, labor becomes like mechanized industrialized, and when that happens, labor gets reduced to just like a cog you put in a machine mm hm. And they see this is like this is like an inherent like thing that happens with labor specializations. You just end up like being a person who makes one repetitive move in a factory over and

over again, like you're not free because of this. And they also argue that like specialization means that people only care about like the labor that they do, and so this gives you like an identity that that divides workers from one sector, like say, if you're if you're you know, you're like a coal miner, right, your daily experience is so utterly different than a baker. And it's not just like your experience, it's like it's like your knowledge is different.

The other person is not gonna like the baker is not going to understand what you're doing. And you know, keep wanting to argue against this political position that I know, old. I keep trying to be like no, no, no, that misunderstands the nature of specialization at all.

like specialization, you have branches of labor. And their argument is that, okay, so well the Synacus way you do this. You have coordinated committees, right, you like elect a person you like, send them to a coordinating council, and the coordinating council like coordinates stuff.

like the structure of the old world. Because if you're a cyndicalist and your your society is based on unions running their workplaces, then you've maintained the division of labor, but you've also maintained like the basic like geographic, physical, technological, and organizational structure of capitalism, like all of the like all of that stuff is still in the same place, and you're still sort of like going there to do

your job. And I think they're they're is an interesting sort of like like I think there was a genuinely interesting critique there of yeah, like how how do you make sure that you aren't just sort of reproducing that stuff?

to create a society. But but if syndiclusts were like everyone must wake up and go to their work job and then make eight widgets, but it's collectively determined which widgets that you make, right, Like fuck that. But also if it was like everyone goes and wakes up and goes to their collective farm and maybe we use reaping machines and maybe we don't, And it's just like I get so unexcited by It's like one of the reasons that like a lot of the like nitpicky branches of anarchism.

Don't they interest me? But I don't like subscribe to any of them. Is because I'm like, well, what if some people like this shit, some people like this shit, like you know, maybe they're gonna be fucking different. Imagine that we could have a plurality of economic models systems. But you know whatever, I'm now arguing with dead people who I probably would like this is interesting, Like, well, I don't know, because these guys, like.

It's just like a tendency the labor movement. And they also think that like it's basically like a bastardized form of Marxism, because they're.

It's like, yeah, it's incredibly silly, but like like this, you know, I like on the one hand, like they are kind of inventing a lot of the sort of like like they're they're inventing a lot of the sort of like some okay, some bad arguments about uh uh like specialization and stuff like and like some anti work stuff too that like it is going to be around later. Yeah, they're also inventing a lot of stuff that's like and you know, initially this kind of like new theory doesn't

have this doesn't have an enormous effect. In nineteen twenty six, the the Federation of Black Youth or Cocada and has its first public meeting and they have a bunch of cool slogans. There's the slogan's role they have the emancipation of workers must be carried out by the workers themselves. We insist on libertarian federation, destroy the political movement, get rid of reject the prolitarian party, get rid of professional activists,

down with all oppressive laws and ordinances that entirely based platform. Yeah, all right, sweet, all right, it's it's good. Yeah, and you know the other things. Despite the fact that it's called the Federation of Black Youth, this is like not a youth I mean, I mean there's like youth in it, but like it's it's this thing's backed by like remember those those printers unions that I was talking about last

episode that aside Psychai you had like set up. So they're all heavily involved in this, and they do a bunch of cool labor stuff, Like they get involved in like, uh, there's a bunch of tram worker strikes to get involved in.

They're in this, uh, the Japanese Musical instrument company strike, which is like there's like over a thousand people on strike for like over one hundred days, and there's there's this great split where like so the leadership of the union is Bolshevik, but like a bunch of the like a bunch of the ordinary people in the union are anarchists, and so you have that there's there's like there's this fun.

There's a bunch of like rubber unions, and it grows to like fifteen thousand workers almost immediately, and yeah, they're doing a lot of cool stuff, like they have they have these huge demonstrations in support of socaqu and Vinzetti to the US is killing for being anarchists and also Italians just like yeah, the one time anti Italian racism was real and a hundred years ago, shit was real different than it is now and it doesn't.

and the pure anarchists breakout. This gets so bad so fast that like the International working Man's Association, which is the like like the giant international like Federation of Syndicalist Movements like sends them a letter that are like, hey, syndicalists and arco communists get along every literally everywhere else on earth. They're chill, you guys like chill and the

Archer communists in Cocador. And their response is we are fighting quote the betrayer's opportunists and union imperialists in Zengoku Juran's ranks.

So the Goka Juran which is the Union federation, like they have that, they have conference, they have the yearly conference that's in twenty eight, and there's just like giant battle over like what the organization's platform is going to be a thing that doesn't matter at all, except it's a proxy ideological fight, and both sides just start screaming at each other. And I'm going to read this description from Hanotchriso and Puranicism into Ward Japan. Uh huh.

like all the other ones don't because they're not. And you get this period that there's like they have like the Cyndicalists and that the Perianarchists of dueling magazines, this one called Black Flag, this one called Black Battle, and like so Cocuran, which is like the youth u mid thing, like the Cyneicalis and the anarchists are still in it together, and they like they start just like fighting each other in the street when they run into each other, because.

after the earthquake, not the geniside incredible anarchists killing part. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, it's it's like it's incredible, you know, and like yeah they What's interesting about this though, is that like the inercal Communists, like when the union splits, like almost all of the people stay with the arcical Communists, even though the NCER Communists are like explicitly saying we're not fighting for like wage increases, we're just fighting for revolution,

which fine, I'm all right with that. Yeah.

like turn it the other way around. They think that like the workers and the tenant farmers just work together to like make the oppression go away, which is like a reasonable stance on it. Yeah, but it means that you know, they're interested in, like they're interested in the rural movement in a way that like the other Japanese

left stoopings aren't. But unfortunately, you know, Okay, there's a big debate as to whether this split like actually like like how big a role this split had in the collapse of anarchism because like by by by, like by like nineteen thirty one, like the fascists have just straight up taken over Manchuria. Like I think things have gotten so fascist that it's like it's unclear whether the split mattered at all.

the fascists are just sort different power. And yeah, the anarchists they do, they do one last whirl uprising, okay, and they fight a lot of cops and then all of them get arrested and anarchism just sort of dies until the end of World War two, okay, And yeah it's you know, okay, anarchism does re emerge after the war, but that's like that, that's a whole another story entirely.

What I will say about is if you see those those construction hats from the nineteen sixty eight protests, and you see one that's just all black, it doesn't have like a name written on it, like those are the anarchists.

them because it heavily influenced. Like the people who wrote the Lying Flat Manifesto, We're like, we're very heavily influenced by this stuff. Oh okay, Okay, So we did the episode about this a while back, but Lying Flat was this thing in China, I guess a little going on, but like people were just like, it's kind of it was kind of the version of anti work or a lot of people like discovered diogenies and were like, what

if I just didn't work all right? What if I just like lived on, like I worked like one day a month and then lived on like nothing so I didn't have to work, Or if I just quit. What if I just like stop doing all of this capitalist stuff, and what if I like stop having to deal with this patriarchy, and what if I just like, you know, yeah, and it takes kind of like yeah, yeah, they're they're great.

They had lots of fun diogenies quotes, lots of like the manifesto they released is like very it's like very anarchist and yeah, like that whole thing. And that was like like this, this is a big enough social movement that like like Xi Jinping like mentioned it in a speech, okay, and so yeah, like Jeffi's anechism to the.

that seemed kind of cool. But yeah, the not the systemic kick out all the people who have this minor I mean, it's really funny to me because I'm like, I'm like huge anti infighting, and then people are like, don't you spend all your time fighting tankies on the internet, And I'm like, they want to make a state. That's different. Yeah, they believe that they everyone should be thrown in jail. That is a different thing. Also, I don't like, you've

got to manage to polycule drama. Like you gotta manage it's got to be kept under control. You cannot allow your retire scene to be factionalized over rival polydools and.

So I'm much more eloquent on my podcast, which you can catch every Monday and Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. Probably wherever you got this podcast is where you can

find it. And the trailer is out now, so you can go and you can listen to the trailer where I talk about some anarchist bank robbers who broke out of prison, because why would you be in prison when you could be outside of prison, which is generally the preferable position to be in, with the exception of like every now and then, like people break out of jail by like someone goes to jail on purpose, but they have like hacksaw blades in their shoes and shit, that

would be cool too. So more breaking your friends out of jail and less chasing them out of the room jeering at them is my general rule. I hate to make rules, but if I were to make one, it would be that. And you can hear me talk about those kinds of stories on the podcast.