Communism on the Rise

By Selwyn Duke

It may be clichéd to quote George Santayana and say that those who forget the mistakes of the past are damned to repeat them, but truer words were never spoken. Although it may be hard for those who remember Soviet bread lines to believe – and even harder for the well-versed in history who learned of Soviet mass starvation – workers of the world are once again uniting under the red banner. In Japan, for instance, economic stagnation, depressed wages, and a workforce that is 44 percent part-time only has created fertile ground for the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), now the nation’s fourth largest political party. Treating this at Telegraph.co.uk, Danielle Demetriou writes:

New recruits [for the JCP] are signing up at the rate of 1,000 a month, swelling its ranks to more than 415,000. Meanwhile a classic proletarian novel is at the top of the best-seller lists, and communist-themed ‘manga’ comics [200,000 copies sold a year] are enjoying soaring success.

A further sign of disaffection among young Japanese . . . is the increasing frequency of rallies by workers on the streets of the capital.

Earlier this month, crowds of up to 5,000 young Japanese workers marched through the streets of central Tokyo to express their growing discontent with the government over working conditions.

Read the rest here.