Japan in the age of globalizing capitalism

Capital & Class, 2010

In this article, we examine the utility of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution and its relation to Leon Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development in analysing the transformational effects of world economy and international relations on ‘late-developing’ societies’ transition to capitalism. Although Gramsci never explicitly linked passive revolution to uneven and combined development, we argue that Trotsky’s theory helps make explicit assumptions present in the Prison Notebooks, but never fully thematised. In turn, we demonstrate that incorporating passive revolution into Trotsky’s theory further illuminates the ontology of class agencies that is often lacking in structuralist approaches to bourgeois revolutions. In illustrating these arguments, we examine the case of Japan’s modern state-formation process, demonstrating how the Meiji Restoration of 1868 can be conceptualised as a passive revolution emerging within the context of the uneven and combined process of social development activated and generalised through the rise of the capitalist world economy.

Analele Universitatii din Timisoara. Seria Stiinte Filologice, 2022

Analele Universităţii de Vest din Timişoara, 2023

The study of modern Japan, in all its aspects, is in constant evolution. From the "re-discovery" of Japan by the United States and the Western European powers during the time known as the Bakumatsu period in the middle of the 19th century to the present day, the field of Japanese studies amassed over 150 years of research on the language, culture, history, and society of the archipelago. A body of scholarship far from limited to what we now define as "modern Japan" has come to be embraced and enriched not only by scholars from the "West", but also by Japanese researchers, alongside others from all over the world. Certainly, defining "Japan" and "modern" poses challenges. For this special issue I opted for a wide view of the "Japan" concept as we came to define it in postwar scholarship: the geopolitical space of the country named Japan today in its borders as set after its defeat in World War II (including some, but not all of the territories and colonies occupied by the Empire of Japan after 1868, the point in time that we identify as its launching into modernity), and populated by ethnic Japanese together with Ainu populations, as well as with Korean, Chinese, and other non-Japanese ethnic groups. "Modern" and "modernity" in turn have also be generously defined here as the period started in the Bakumatsu period (1853-1867, the end of the

In the majority of cases, modern democracy, first conceived in Western Europe, is a consequence of the rise of the bourgeoisie. Whether in alliance with a substantial portion of the aristocracy or with the help of peasants, this merchant, manufacturing and finance class had a decisive hand in the formation of the modern state. Barrington Moore Jr., in his book The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), attempts to clarify this by comparing the history of Britain, France, and the USA to the history of Germany, Japan, China, and Russia. In the absence of a strong, upward-moving bourgeoisie, either feudal lords or the peasant classes wield power in a position antithetical to parliamentary democracy, with its crucial antecedents in an independent civil society. Moore argues that in Japan in particular, industrialization and urbanization proceeded along undemocratic lines, relying heavily on the ‘revolution from above’ thesis elaborated by E. Herbert Norman two decades prior. This essay begins with E.H. Norman’s account of transition, comparing it to the account in Moore’s (very similar) argument, in order, ultimately, to evaluate Moore’s contribution to a theory of class struggle and nation-state.

Journal of Japanese Studies, 2008

2017