Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 21:28:58 -0500 (EST) From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena) Subject: M-I: Tokyo's casual laborers swell Communist's ranks Recent Communist electoral successes in Tokyo --mirroring similar triumphs throughout most of the rest of the country -- have re-focused attention on the political potential of the city's casual workers. As the "bubble economy" has put paid to the notions of "life-time employment" and corporate paternalism prevalent among Western academics, the structural demand for *yoseba* -- the syndicate-controlled meat-market of day laborers -- has intensified. The casual worker is needed, in the words of one candid government official, "to generate a supply of temporary labor, to keep it centralized and under strict control, and to cut off sustenance to workers who've become expendable". This blithe admission, with its echoes of Marx's reserve army of surplus labor, belies a new phenomenon in neighborhoods like San-ya (where labor union organizers were murdered as recently as 1989); the presence of a strong local Communist party organization, flexing its new muscle and focusing deliberately on the city's heretofore hidden "underclass". This direct organizing, deliberately undertaken among an unstable and socially volatile population of alcoholics, loners, and semi-literates, has produced surprising results; the growth of an orderly, disciplined cadre of temporary workers eager to promote the struggle for socialism not only among their own ranks, but throughout the entire neighborhoods where they are obliged to call home, for the time being. In fact, this new strata are among the most militant in the Communist party, which recently has sought to soften its public persona to that of an ordinary political party , respectful of "market principles" and hankering after a social-democratic persona. The new recruits, like those running the office in San-ya, speak frankly of the demise of the capitalist system, and the expropriation of those wealthy employers who so recently took their services for granted. An interesting, and encouraging, turn of events, culled from the Asian press over the past few weeks. Louis Godena --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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