Matsueda Yoshihiro
President of the New Socialist Party of Japan


Liberal Democratic Party Must Not Be Sole Winner!


Let them not Destroy the Constitution!


Electoral contentions for the House of Councilors are diverse. Issues relate not only with living and working conditions of workers and citizens, but also with a future course of the nation. They are urgent and serious.


Results of the Upper House election will impact heavily on a direction of the Japanese society. The ruling parties have held over two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives. Prime Minister Abe is eager to win the majority in both of the Houses to bring swift debates and decisions by dissolving discrepancies in both of the houses. If the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) becomes a sole winner in the election, not only that nuclear power plants re-start to work, but also a controversial trend of constitution amendment will be consolidated.


We, members of the New Socialist Party, must exert the maximum ability to let win political forces, including the Social-democratic Party, which defend the Constitution with a prospect to involve in tasks after the July 21 election.


Contradictions pertaining to the neo-liberal policies have burst out, which hits livelihood of workers and citizens. Capitalism was born after it was liberated from the feudal yokes. It has organized competitions for freedom of trade and freedom of contract and engaged in various industries to develop society. But the society it has formed is controlled by a savage philosophy.


Rightly due to this fact workers and citizens have created labor unions, which used to be forbidden on the ground they damage freedom of capital activities, to compel employers to admit the right of unity as well as the right to strike. Various social rights, like the constitutional right for education and up to the right to survive, constitute historic achievements of people's struggles.


In the on-going worldwide mega-competitions, called globalism, the capital cannot afford to make compromise to workers and citizens, clinging to a sole exit to survive. It kicks out the social rights stipulated by the Constitution.


Neo-liberalism has prevailed extensively in the decade of 1980. It is an organized tendency to return to the original point of capitalism. It excludes responsibilities and commitments of the state in terms of economic life, enhances deregulation policies and attributes to responsibility of individuals profits and losses as well as instability and inequality stemming from economic activities. Neo-liberalism is a trend to back to the principle of laissez-faire in which the state and the society are free from responsibilities.


Here, however, you can find a deceit, called a trickle-down theory; if big businesses and supports of the rich activate economy, wealth will flow down to the low-income strata and the nation as a whole will be benefitted by that. In other words, the rich earn the more money, the bigger share will come to the poor. It is a convenient tool of the big business and the rich to advocate the laissez-faire principle.


Consequences from Salvation of the Capital


Employment, education and social service policies are held down to cut budgets on the ground that individuals should take responsibilities and beneficiaries should pay for services rendered. Meanwhile the government commits in public construction works and financial transactions even by mobilizing public funds as urgent steps to cope with the repeated attacks of economic crisis in order to save big business.


Consequently the state owes a tremendous sum of debts, yields gaps between the rich and the poor and deepens social contradictions. This is the situation of today's society, with these phenomena remaining behind.


People condemn social contradictions, learning from every day life and working life. In fact, people cry, demanding No! to nuclear power plants, and commit in struggles to defend lives and the social rights to survive as human beings. Struggles are numerous. Let's continue our efforts until the closing hour of ballot boxes to connect these struggles into a front to defend the constitution.


Such efforts hinder easy victory of the LDP and prepare for a next step of our struggles.


July 16, 2013