Socialism first gained a major foothold in Japan after the revolution and the Meiji restoration of 1868. Against the backdrop of the development of capitalism in Japan, and the emergence of the working class, this study shows how Japanese socialists drew on both Western influences and elements from traditional Japanese culture.

This book provides a history of Nikkeiren (the Japanese Federation of Managers' Organisations) and an account of post-war capitalist development in Japan. The author challenges the principal interpretations of how the economy functions revealing a darker side of Japanese capitalism in his examination of the roles played by class power, manipulation and mystification.

Everyone knows that in socialism private companies are replaced by state enterprises which employ wage-workers in order to produce profits which accrue to the state. 'Not so ' say the authors of this book. In the nineteenth century, socialists as different as Marx and Kropotkin were agreed that socialism means a marketless, moneyless, wageless, classless, stateless world society. Subsequently this vision of non-market socialism has been developed by currents such as the Anarcho-Communists, Impossibilists, Council Communists, Bordigists and Situationists. By tracing this development, this book...