Global Strategy to 1980: Focus on Asia

The movement abroad by Japanese capital is essentially the extension of a social relation, in which the Japanese bourgeoisie forms alliances with foreign ruling classes against both the Japanese and foreign working classes. There are thus two general types of assistance which the imperialist move provides: first, access to extra workers (or rent earning raw materials), who can be played off against one another and who help ensure that somewhere or other the conditions which Japanese capital has to offer are accepted; and secondly, the opportunity to bring the weight of the foreign ruling classes to bear on Japanese workers, as occurs when cheap imports are brought into Japan. If the movement is to an underdeveloped country, the neo-colonial ruling classes do not get the same benefits in return from the alliance, since while they do receive help from Japanese capital in their domestic struggles, they do not get an equal crack at Japanese workers. Only when two imperialist powers come together, such as Japan and the US, are the benefits of the alliance more reciprocal. However, there is often a lot of conflict before the spoils are evenly divided, although eventually both sides do normally get equal access to each other’s domain.