Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Japanese Lesson for the Iranian Left
The wind of populism blows in Japan, in rhetoric if not in policy, raising the hope of finally putting an end to the world's longest-standing one-party state. Alas, the wind has not filled the sail of the Communist Party, but that of the social liberal party on the center left. Still and all, it ought to be an object lesson to leftists in Iran, the only leftists in the world to line up behind a loser upholding an anti-Keynesian banner in the midst of a global economic crisis.
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I believe that you really can't call the DPJ 'centre left'. For one thing, they are far too infiltrated by ex-LDP people. For a second, originally, even before the wave of LDPers got there, they were actually more NEOLIBERAL than the LDP. For example, their initial positions--they often lacked disciplined unity--were for the most part more 'free market' and 'neoliberal' than what the LDP favored. It was their ideas Koizumi stole and then used to run against his own party. After he purged his party, many went on over to the DPJ.
It would seem some now in the DPJ are, for example, anti-Japan Post privatization simply because they associate it with Koizumi's LDP. And some of the others are people who were purged from the LDP over the issue.
I think people are going to have a hard time noticing any difference between the policies of the old LDP and the current ruling DPJ. The analogy with Obama's Demoncrats instead of Bush Repugnicans is the strong analogy here.
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