海燕の歌
The Song of the Stormy Petrel

13 January 1985   Issue No. 33 of ‘Henkaku,’  the official newspaper of the Socialist Workers' Party The following is the full text of a lecture given by Hiroyoshi Hayashi at a symposium titled ‘Thinking About Socialism Today’ held in Osaka on 16 December 1984. The concept of state capitalism and the systems of the Soviet Union and China 1. The fundamental issue was whether it was Socialism or not. After listening to the various presentations by other speakers, I feel somewhat confused, but I would like to proceed at my own pace. I joined the Japanese Communist Party in the early 1960s, prior to the protests against the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty ( ANPO Struggle ). I experienced criticism of Stalinism within the party, and when the Communist League was formed, I enthusiastically joined it. At the time, there were about 50 Communist Party (JCP) members at Komaba Campus of the University of Tokyo, but roughly one-third remained in the Communist Party, one-third grew di...

Hayashi Hiroyoshi   17 July 1983      Marxist Workers' Alliance  Official Newspaper “Spark” No. 598 A hundred years have passed since Marx's death, and 135 years since the publication of The Communist Manifesto. However, the struggle for the liberation of the working class and the revolutionary communist movement have not led to a global victory but, on the contrary, have entered a period of deep crisis over the past half-century. It is clear that this crisis was brought about by the transformation of Marxism into ‘Stalinism.’ We will now discuss why and how this transformation occurred, and what its significance is. The Application of Marxism to ‘Backward Countries’ The transformation of Marxism into ‘Stalinism’—this is a historical phenomenon that is more significant than the transformation of Marxism into opportunism and revisionism at the turn of the century, yet it is also far more complex. Without a proper understanding of this fact, the working class...