Japan’s Competitive-Communism

Western civilisation has reached its present level through the drive of individuals. The Japanese, in obtaining industrial results the envy of other nations, have shown that communal dependence on the collective will is also capable of very effective twentieth-century achievement. Intimate human relations and group dependence in all aspects of social life, unchanged over a thousand years, and leavened at all levels with competition and the profit incentive, has accommodated itself successfully to modern situations. Japan has long experience in restraining individualism, achieving harmony by compromise, settling conflicts between insiders, and overcoming conflicts with outsiders. Consensus decision making and all aspects of labour relations are even more communal, i.e. communistic, than in countries recognised to be communist. In trade, industry and commerce motivation is spurred by the hope for financial gain and, for the individual, ego may also be inflated by raised status.