Competitive-Communism

Abstract

Any abbreviation is inadequate as a comprehensive description of a country’s social structure but ‘competitive-communism’ serves as a measuring stick and as a realistic vantage point from which to view the working of Japanese society. The word ‘communism’ has many very different meanings. This book is mainly concerned with one standard dictionary definition, ‘communal living, communalism’, but it cannot overlook the usual, ‘advocacy of a classless society in which private ownership has been abolished and the means of production and subsistence belong to the community’. This book is not political and does not set out to explore the ways that the ideas set out by Marx have been interpreted by theoreticians and practised by the governments of communist countries. To avoid emotional repercussions generated by mention of the word communism, perhaps ‘communalism’ could be substituted or a new word ‘competunism’ coined to incorporate the contradictory element of competition. However, the combination ‘competitive-communism’ seems a more appropriate label. It emphasises that Japan has developed an advanced, bureaucratic, economic and social system that is different from, as well as similar to, ‘capitalism’. The ‘communism’ of ‘competitive-communism’ is spelled with a small ‘c’.