allinson anievas - meiji restoration

8/13/2019 Allinson Anievas - Meiji Restoration

1/22

Capital & Class34(3) 469490

The Author(s) 2010

Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0309816810378723c&c.sagepub.com

The uneven andcombineddevelopment of theMeiji Restoration:A passiverevolutionary road tocapitalist modernity

Jamie C. AllinsonUniversity of Edinburgh

Alexander AnievasUniversity of Cambridge

Abstract

In this article, we examine the utility of Antonio Gramscis concept of passiverevolution and its relation to Leon Trotskys theory of uneven and combineddevelopment in analysing the transformational effects of world economy andinternational relations on late-developing societies transition to capitalism.

Although Gramsci never explicitly linked passive revolution to uneven andcombined development, we argue that Trotskys theory helps make explicitassumptions present in the Prison Notebooks,but never fully thematised. In turn,

we demonstrate that incorporating passive revolution into Trotskys theory furtherilluminates the ontology of class agencies that is often lacking in structuralistapproaches to bourgeois revolutions. In illustrating these arguments, we examinethe case of Japans modern state-formation process, demonstrating how the MeijiRestoration of 1868 can be conceptualised as a passive revolution emerging

within the context of the uneven and combined process of social developmentactivated and generalised through the rise of the capitalist world economy.

Keywords

passive revolution, uneven and combined development, Japanese development,Meiji Restoration

Corresponding author:Jamie C Allinson, University of EdinburghEmail: [email protected]


2/22

470 Capital & Class 34(3)

IntroductionThe arrival of Commodore Perrys black ships on the shores of Yokosuka in 1853sparked a general crisis of Japanese society from which it would not soon recover. Withhardly concealed threats of trade or war, these foreign barbarians shook the foundations

of the Tokugawa regime (bakufu) to its core. Less than fifteen years later, sections of theJapanese warrior aristocracy would overthrow that regime, inaugurating the MeijiRestoration. Amidst the debate that soon erupted among the new ruling class over thescale and depth of the reforms, Ito Hirobumi wrote to fellow Meiji leader Kido Koin, if

we cannot rule at home, we will be unable to set matters to right abroad (quoted inBeasley, 1972: 330). And, one might add, without setting matters right abroad, the newMeiji regime would be unable to rule at home.

Itos sentiments well articulated the Janus-faced logic underlying Japans revolutionfrom above, pressurised from withouta revolution resulting in the paradigmatic case of

a successful catch-up programme of state-driven industrialisation. Japans experiencealso represents an example of Antonio Gramscis passive revolution, a process immanentto the uneven and combined character of capitalist development. While many recentstudies have explored Gramscis passive revolution and Leon Trotskys theory of unevenand combined development

1separately, very few have illuminated their internal relations

(but see Morton, 2007a; 2007b; 2010). In applying these concepts to Japanese develop-ment, we also offer a contribution to recent debates regarding the theoretical standing ofinter-societal relations within historical materialisma subject, until very recently,largely unexplored within Marxism (see Anievas, 2009). As Kees Van der Pijl (2007: viii)

notes, the Marxist legacy as it exists has largely failed to develop its own method in thearea of foreign relations. In Capital, Marx explicitly abstracted from the inter-societalcontext in order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity, free from alldisturbing subsidiary circumstances (Marx, 1990: 727 n2). But when should such sub-sidiary circumstances be raised from historical contingency to be instead conceived astheoretical presupposition? That is: how can the internal (sociological) and external(geopolitical) factors in social development be united into a single, coherent explanatoryapparatus (Rosenberg, 2006)?

In response to these issues, we take up the Japanese case as follows. First, we examinethe concepts of passive revolution and uneven and combined development in Gramsciand Trotskys work respectively, illustrating their theoretically complementary relation-ship. Then, focusing on Japanese development in the longue dure, we demonstrate howthe Meiji Restoration of 1868 can be conceptualised as a passive revolution emergingunder the world-historical conditions of uneven and combined development generalisedthrough the rise of capitalist world economy.

Passive revolution from the perspective of uneven and combineddevelopment

Despite the many socio-historical and political differences between the local milieus inwhich Gramsci and Trotsky wrote, both encountered one very significant issueor moreprecisely, set of issuesprominent in the debates of the Second and Third Internationals. Theseconcerned what the Austro-Marxist turned bourgeois economist Alexander Gerschenkron(1966) called the question of historical backwardness confronting late-developing states such


3/22

Allinson and Anievas 471

as Italy and Russia. The crucial question facing revolutionary socialist praxis in such countrieswas whether they were ready for a strategy of independent proletarian revolutionaryaction: had the country passed through the necessary stage of bourgeois-democratic revo-lution and capitalist development sufficient to provide the material and political bases

for socialist revolution?2The classical position in this debate, taken up by the Mensheviksin Tsarist Russia, was that late-developing states remained unripe for socialist revolution.Thus, the task of the proletariat was to ally itself with the bourgeoisie in its struggleagainst pre-capitalist forms of rule. The minority position, articulated most forcefully byLenin, argued for an independent proletarian strategy of leadership to achieve bourgeois-democratic aims.

The underlying basis of these perspectives is summarised in Marxs famous dictum,directed at then backward Germany: De te fabula narratur!(This story is told of you!).The problem was that in such states as Russia and Italyand more generally any country

of the second, third or tenth cultural class (Trotsky, 1959: 4)the characters of this storywere not playing their assigned roles. For it was clear by the early 20th century that thedevelopment of the more advanced societies was not destined to show the less developedsociety the image of its own future (Marx, 1976: 91). In this sense, the course of historyhad proven Marx mistaken. England in her day revealed the future of France, consider-ably less of Germany, but not in the least of Russia and not of India (Trotsky, 1959: 378).

In their different ways, Trotsky and Gramscis theoretical contributions were the nec-essary critical corollar[ies] (as Gramsci, 1971: 114, Q1562, put it) to Marxs 1859Preface to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,which had stated:

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have

been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the

material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

(Marx, 1970: 21)

In its cruder forms, the two-stage strategy of revolution of the Second Internationaltook Marxs dictumto itsreductio ad absurdum,mechanistically interpreting it throughan internalist social evolutionary schema, with each society conceived as developing inabstraction from the wider international capitalist context. In contrast to this method-ological nationalism, Trotskys permanent revolution began from the recognition of theinternational character of the world capitalist system. It proposed that Russias minority work-ing-class movement could successfully telescope the supposedly indispensable stages of bour-geois democracy and capitalist development into a single uninterrupted or permanent stagefrom which it would necessarily promote socialist revolution internationally.

Two theories: One uniting themeUnderlying Trotskys strategy of permanent revolution was his theory of uneven andcombined development. From this perspective, Trotsky conceived the Bolshevik revolu-

tion as a resultof the internationaldevelopment of capitalism of which its fate was alsobound. Broadly speaking, the theoretical content of uneven and combined developmentcan be summarised as follows. The unevenness of the entire socio-historical processforTrotsky, its most general lawis expressed not only by the varying levels and tempos ofdevelopment within societies, but also between them. At all points of the historical


4/22


process, and across its developmental spectrum, we find the interaction of differentiallydeveloping social temporalities.

It is from within this variegated socio-historical topography that capitalism emerged.Arising late on in the peripheries of backward Europe, capital as a revolutionary social

force inserted itself into this uneven developmental process, gradually gaining masteryover it, breaking and altering it, employing therein its own means and methods (Trotsky,1936: 19). Unifying all development into a single, organic, yet internally differentiated

world totality, capitalism in a certain sense realizes the universality and permanence ofmans development (Trotsky, 1997: 3). It does so in particular by bringing social entitiestogether into a dynamic of coercive comparison (Barker, 2006: 78) through which cap-ital enforces its distinctive disciplining logic of competitive accumulation. A contradic-tory unity of universalising and differentiating tendencies, capitalism simultaneouslyexerts equalising and fragmentary pressures on social development. A whip of external

necessity is thereby inflicted upon backward societies to develop in response to themilitary-geopolitical and economic pressures emanating from more advanced capitalistpowers. Crucially, this mechanism of capitalist development presupposesthe seeminglymundane fact of a multiplicity of interactingand differentially developing societies.

From this first inter-societal determination (the whip of external necessity) follows asecond, compounding and rearticulating the effects of the first. This Trotsky termed theprivileges of historic backwardness. This was exemplified by the ruling classes of CzaristRussias being compelled by the exigencies of geopolitical-military competition to adoptthe ready-made developmental achievements (technological, sociopolitical, intellectual

etc.) of the more advanced Western European powers. By turning foe into tutor, Russiawas thereby permitted the skipping of a whole series of intermediate historical stages(Trotsky, 1959: 3). Russias development thus necessarily diverged from the unilinearmodel posited by the orthodox Marxisms of the Second International, which took itscue from capitalist society conceived as a single type (Trotsky, 1959: 378). Yet this pos-sibility of skipping stages, Trotsky claimed, was by no means absolute. Rather, itdepended upon the existing levels of cultural and socioeconomic capacities within theborrower societies and, above all, we argue, thehistoricaltiming of these societies politi-cal and economic incorporation into the capitalist world economy (Trotsky, 1959: 3).Dependent upon such capacities and timingas well as the critical factor of socialagencythis skipping process certainly did not automatically take place.

Instead, as often occurred, the assimilation of technological, cultural and economicinnovations by borrower societies resulted in their debasement through the process ofadapting them to less developed social structures. The introduction of certain elementsof Western technique and training, above all military and industrial into absolutistRussia by Peter the Great, for example, led to a strengthening of serfdom as the funda-mental form of labour organization (Trotsky, 1959: 3). Hence, the infusion of Europeanarmaments and finance was a contradictory process, simultaneously strengtheningCzarism whilst undermining its socioeconomic and political foundations. By the late

19th century, this process resulted in a structure distinguished by its peculiar combina-tion of different stages in the historic process; an amalgam of archaic with more con-temporary forms (Trotsky, 1959: 3, 4).

This combined Russian social formation was characterised by the most advancedcapitalist relations and productive techniques interacting with feudal relations in potentially


5/22


socially and geopolitically explosive ways: mass concentrations of technologically advancedcapital (particularly within the state-run military industries) imported from WesternEurope, and a rapidly growing proletariat existing alongside an unreformed absolutistmonarchy and a dominant landowning aristocracy. The result: the rise of a class-conscious

proletariat, joining together with a majority peasant class, capable of overthrowingCzarist power and leading the worlds first socialist revolution. Russias combined devel-opmentthe fusion of dissimilar social structures (or modes of production) within asingle formationwas the composite effect of geopoliticalmilitary pressures openingthe way for an accelerated development resulting in its own unique class of effects,ramifying the Russian social structure (Rosenberg, 2010). These contradictions of soci-ological amalgamation, as we term it, represent a third determination; again derivativeof capitalisms differential development as a multiplicity of interactive societies.

Trotskys theory provides a particularly rich understanding of the complexities of Marxs

much derided basis/superstructure (Basis/berbau) metaphor (see Allinson and Anievas,2010)one complemented by Gramscis writings, specifically in his formulation of passiverevolution. Notwithstanding Gramscis often misunderstood criticisms of the permanentiststrategy,3 he shared much of Trotskys methodological perspective (cf. Morton, 2007a;2007b). For both, the methodological starting point was not the nation-state unit, butcapitalism in its internationally conditioned world-historical development. Like Trotsky,Gramsci viewed capitalism as having united the world into a single causally integrated, butinternally differentiated, ontological whole. Capitalism is a world historical phenomenon,Gramsci (1977: 69) wrote, and its uneven development means that individual nations can-

not be at the same level of economic development at the same time. Exerting pressures,setting limits, and effecting transformational processes, the international dimension of capi-talist development was crucial for Gramsci. International relations intertwine with theinternal relations of nation-states, creating new, unique and historically concrete combina-tions as illustrated by the dissemination of ideologies from advanced to less developedcountries, impinging on the local interplay of combinations (Gramsci, 1971: 182, Q1317).

These international dimensions of capitalist development are particularly significantfor Gramscis notion of passive revolution. Avoiding any mechanistic application of theconcept, Gramsci stressed that passive revolution must be continually related back to thispolitico-military equilibrium moment (Gramsci, 1971: 1067, Q1517). Here andelsewhere, Gramsci uses passive revolution as a political corrective to the economistictendencies of Marxs 1859 basis/superstructure metaphor, offering an interpretive crite-rion to understand the forces blocking the transition from capitalism to socialism. Thisinvolved a molecular process of transformation, progressively modify[ing] the pre-exist-ing composition of forces in the ruling classes gradual but continuous absorption of itsantithesis (the proletariat) (Gramsci, 1971: 58, Q1924; 109, Q1511). Passive revo-lution was, in turn, formulated as a concept in order to understand the specific formsofbourgeois revolution in late-developing capitalist societiesparticularly those occurringin Europe after and in reaction tothe French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. It thusoffers further theoretical content to what had been described by earlier Marxists as revo-lutions from above4; whilst directing attention to the molecularprocessesthrough whichclass demands from below are absorbed from above in periods of organic crisis.

The causes of the change in the form of bourgeois revolutions, distinguishing themfrom an earlier cycle between the 16th and 18th centuries, were two-fold. First, the rise


6/22


of a proletariat as a potentially revolutionary social force opened an unbridgeable chasmbetween labour and capital, impelling the latter to accommodate and form alliances withthe old, aristocratic-absolutist ruling classes. Hence, as Gramsci saw, the Jacobin modelof bourgeois-subaltern class alliance was no longer a viable option. Second, under eco-

nomic, ideological and particularly geopolitical-military pressures from those countriesthat had already undergone bourgeois revolutions, fractions withinthe existing rulingclasses were compelled to effect their own capitalist transformations given the inability ofthe bourgeois to do so themselves (Davidson, 2003: 112). Modern European states

were born through successive waves of class struggle combining social struggles, inter-ventions from above of the enlightened monarchy type, and national warswith thelater two phenomena predominating (Gramsci, 1971: 115, Q10II61). The temporaland spatial sequencingof capitalist transitions were, therefore, central to the form subse-quent revolutions took. They were, as Perry Anderson notes, historically interrelated

the sequence of their connexions entered into the definition of their differences. Theirorder was constitutive of their structure (Anderson, 1992: 116).Gramsci never explicitly linked passive revolution to uneven and combined develop-

ment. Nevertheless, Trotskys theory helps make explicit certain presuppositions neverfully thematised in Gramscis Prison Notebooksassumptions present in a practicalstate, but not a conceptual form.

5Incorporating passive revolution into Trotskys theory

of uneven and combined development, in turn, illuminates the ontology of class agenciesoften lacking in more structuralist accounts of capitalist revolutions.

6The series of pas-

sive revolutions in post-Napoleonic Europe can be thus conceived as emerging internally

from the staggered nature of capitalist industrialisation, developing within the interac-tive context of a European multi-state system, boiling over in a cauldron of revolutionaryclass conflict (Morton, 2007b).

The peculiarities of Japanese development: Taking the passiverevolutionary hyper-route to capitalist modernityThe interwar debate

As the only Asian country to escape subaltern status while making the transition tocapitalism in the 19th century, the question of Japans development has generated anenormous body of literature. Among the first and most vital of these debates were theinter-war Symposium on the Development of Japanese Capitalismand responses to it.7Inthis period, Marxists such as Fukumoto Kazuo, Yamakawa Hitoshi, Noro Eitaro, YamadaMoritaro and Hani Goro all sought to understand a social formation founded upon asimilar legacy to that of Italy and Russia (Nakumara, 1992: 4). One finds striking paral-lels between the Nihon shihonshugi ronso (Japanese capitalism debate) and the centralquestion addressed by Trotsky and Gramscithat of revolutionary strategy in a societysimultaneously backward and advanced. Indeed, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP)split around the question of whether to pursue an independent proletarian revolution.

The Rono-ha (worker-peasant faction) developed an analysis that, at first sight,appears similar to Trotsky and Gramsci. They argued that a bourgeois revolution was notnecessary in Japan, as the Meiji Restoration was in essence a bourgeois revolution thathad established in the Taisho and Showa periods a democracy on the basis of capitalistsocial relations. In response, leading Koza-ha (symposium faction) theorist Noro Hani


7/22


argued that the Meiji Restoration was no bourgeois revolution, but rather the installationof an absolutist regime which merely accomplished the removal of pure feudal landhold-ing relations and in its place put unified landownership under the sovereignty of theabsolute monarch (Hani, quoted in Hoston, 1986: 212). The Koza-ha maintained that

the 1875 replacement of (feudal) dues with a land tax did not abolish such relationships:rather, they persisted in semi-servile forms of tenure such as labour service, sharecrop-ping and the overall extremely high level of rents in the Japanese countryside. Theseconditions provided Japanese capital with its peculiar half-feudal and militaristic charac-ter (Hirano, 1948: 4, 67). The task of the JCP was therefore to abolish the absolutistelements of the Japanese state and encourage agrarian reform, only then moving on tothe business of workers revolution (Hoston, 1991: 567).

The weaknesses of the arguments in this debate reveal almost as much as the enor-mously productive research it generated. Both the Rono-ha and the Koza-ha acknowl-

edged the decisive impact of international pressures on the course of the Meiji Restorationand subsequent transformation of Japanese social relations and its divergence from anymodel of bourgeois revolution (Takahashi, 1930: 7; Hirano, 1948: 153155). Yet nei-ther group integrated these insights into its theories, as Gramsci and particularly Trotskyhad. Both were in fact committed to a stagist view of historythe difference being thatthe Rono-ha thought that Meiji Restoration constituted the bourgeois stage, and theKoza-hathat it constituted the absolutist or semi-feudal one. We suggest that a readingof the Meiji Restoration as a passive revolution within the context of capitalisms unevenand combined development helps us move beyond some of these limitations.

In analyses of the Meiji Restoration, we can broadly delineate three key intertwinedthemes of these debates: (1) the extent to which the Japanese developmental case refutes orreinforces classical social theories of development; (2) the relative weighting of internaland external factors, and the relationship between these spheres, in explaining the originsand trajectory of the transition to capitalism and (3) the precise nature of this transitionthat is, whether the Meiji Restoration can be defined as a bourgeois revolution. The unify-ing question here is the extent to which the causes and pattern of Japanese developmentfollowed or deviated from the classic transition from feudalism to capitalism pioneered in

Western Europe. It was precisely to this classical developmental model that both theRono-ha and Koza-ha sought to fit the Japanese casean attempt followed by subsequentgenerations of scholars in explaining the Japanese economic miracle. Tokugawa Japan isconceived as a form of European feudalism, thus explaining the Meiji reformers ability topromote such a rapid, successful transition to capitalist modernity (e.g. Norman, 1940;Landes, 1965; Moore, 1966; Anderson, 1974; Halliday, 1975; Howell, 1995; Brenner inHarman and Brenner, 2006). Yet here we see the limits of endogenous models of socialdevelopment, since the contrasts between Tokugawa Japan and Europe were more signifi-cant than their similarities. In order to adequately understand these differences, we need tofirst trace the more general uneven and combined process of Japans development.

Japanese development in the longue dureJapans pre-modern history illustrates well both the presence of elements of uneven andcombined development and the difference between those elements and the later geopo-litical pressures of the capitalist era that led to the Meiji passive revolution. The geo-graphical position of the Japanese archipelago placed it at the edge of the China-centered


8/22


tributary trade system, as Giovanni Arrighi (2007: 314) calls it, somewhat insulatedfrom intensive incorporation into that system (Hall, 1970: 7). As an imperial frontiersociety of sorts (Van der Pijl, 2007: 767; on Japan as frontier, see 1023), the Japanese

were able to selectively borrow and improve upon the innovations of Chinese civiliza-

tion, which had subsequent consequential effects on Japanese development (cf. Totman,2004: 3144). In these ways, Japan fits Justin Rosenbergs (2006) expanded conceptu-alisation of uneven and combined development, capturing the multilinear and interactivedimension of social development.8Yet this combined inter-societal development greatlydiffered from the endemic warfare and military expansionism of the European multi-state system.

This contrast is all the more instructive because of the initial apparent similarity of thestarting points of Europe and Japan. Japanese social structure of the Kamakura andMuromachi periods (11851573 CE), can be viewed as a form of feudalism. By the end

of the 12th century, statesociety relations were characterised by the emergence of anincreasingly powerful provincial military aristocracy (the bushi or samurai), the creationof a military establishment with broad civil powers (the shogunate), and an increaseddependence upon lordvassal relations in the exercise of power (see Hall, 1970: 756;Mason and Caiger, 1997: 7480). The dynamics of Japanese development thus wit-nessed a process similar to the political accumulation of feudal Europe (Brenner, 1986).In the absence of capitalist production relations, the evolving samurai class had littleincentive to systematically develop labour-saving technologies. In order to increase theirincomes, the samurai, as an exploiting class like the European lords, had little choice but

to do so by redistributing the wealth and income away from their peasants or from othermembers of the exploiting classes (Brenner, 1986: 31). Consequently, Japanese politicsalternated between more and less severe periods of civil war, as samurai sought to extendtheir domains and seize the decaying remnants of imperial tax lands (see Totman, 1993:1521). This period eventually issued in the rule of a supreme military commander

9at

the apex of a shifting pattern of competitive political accumulation.However, the rise of the Tokugawa shogunatewas no mere analogue of the European

experience. The near-absence of intra-systemic military competition and extra-systemicgeographical expansion on the Chinese periphery for over five hundred years (14001900) (Arrighi, 2007: 314, 316) contributed to this trajectory. If Arrighi is incorrect inhis reasoning for Chinas peaceful relations with its East Asian neighbors (cf. Van der Pijl,2007: 89109), he nevertheless elucidates a key factor in explaining the divergent devel-opmental patterns between Europe and Japanspecifically the absence of centralisedstate formation. Japan was Europe in microcosm, James Fulcher notes (1988: 232), theimperatives of internal inter-state competition produced local absolute states but theinternational isolation of Japan made a national absolute state unnecessary. While illu-minating, Fulchers argument must be qualified.

By the end of the Muromachi era, Japanese society was in the midst of the highlydestructive period of warring states (sengokujidai), which eventuated in the consolida-tion of power in the hands of the Tokugawa house by 1600. The closed country(sakokou) policy of the Tokugawas was a response to the early mercantilist overtures ofthe Portuguese and the Dutch. The success (never total) of that policy depended in parton Japans geographical isolation from these European powers, but also required a mea-sure of coercive centralisation. Hence, under the transformed bakufu-han system, the


9/22


Tokugawa shoguns came to exert a central authority over regional lords (daimyo), courtaristocracy and its strategically placed allies (Havens, 1998: 234). There emerged a hier-archy of sovereignty, from shogunateto intermediary domains whose acknowledgmentof Tokugawa legitimacy ensured that different interests would be resolved within broad

strictures stipulated by the shogunate. Consequently, Japan could safely maintain amultiplicity of states within the state (Howell, 1998: 120, 119, emphasis added).

Thus, the Japanese experience diverged significantly from that of feudal and absolut-ist Europe. Tokugawa rule never developed into the redeployed and recharged apparatus of

feudal domination of the absolutist statecharacterized by the displacement of politico-legal coercion upwards towards a centralized, militarized summit (Brenner, 1982: 81;

Anderson, 1974b: 18, 19). Rather, the Tokugawa system is best understood as constitut-ing a distinct tributary mode of production (Trimberger, 1977), combining certaincharacteristics attributed to both feudalism and the absolutist state, but not reducible to

either. The Tokugawas ruled through an economical system of indirect control throughthe daimyo (Fulcher, 1988: 231). Each hanrepresented an economic unit, in which thesamurai were transformed from feudal retainers to bureaucratic stipendiaries, but tribu-tary control was institutionalised in practices such as the restriction of daimyos militaryforces and the sankin kotai,whereby the daimyo had to leave their wives and children per-manently in Edo whilst bi-annually attending the shoguns court there (Halliday 1975: 4).

This clarification is necessary in order to delineate the trajectory behind the Meiji pas-sive revolution. The ultimate foundation of the Tokugawa system remainedthe exercise ofsamurai control over the land. Organised under the go-nin-kumisystem, groups of five

peasant households were responsible for the payment of a rice tribute collected by thesamurai. This tribute was then transferred upward to the daimyowho, in turn, gave a por-tion of rice to the shogun. The samurai and daimyowere not, however, equivalent to feudallords exercising direct personal control over cultivators working and living on the lordslands. Rather, they most approximated a state class utilising centralised political apparatusto extract surplusesas tax or labour servicesfrom a peasantry it did not personallycontrol (Trimberger, 1977: 878). These two different methods of surplus-extractionentail distinct dynamics of social (re-)production as characterised by Chris Wickham(1985) in terms of the contrasts between a feudal coercive rent-taking system and a tribu-tary state tax-raising one. A key difference between the ruling classes of these two systems

was theirproximity to the production processthe relative separation of the former andthe near-total separation of the latter from the production process. Since the tributary statedid not need to control the economic and social lives of its subjectsinstead simplyrequiring the funding that enables it to pursue its chosen objectivesthe exploitingclasses more often lived in the urban centres from where they impersonally ruled the peas-antry (Wickham, 1985: 1867, 1856). This was exemplified in the Japanese case by thedaimyoand their samurai retainers, who resided in the highly urbanised castle towns (Hall,1955). After 250 years of Tokugawa rulepremised upon a particular inter-societal con-text in the early mercantile period of capitalismthe dynamics of this system produced a

crisis which, in an altered inter-societal context, led to the Meiji Restoration.Tokugawa Japan was anything but economically and technologically stagnant.10

Instead, the institutionalisation of tributary relations opened space for new economicforces to develop (Barker, 1982: 13).The Tokugawa system witnessed a gradual increasein wage labour, the yielding of subsistence to commercial agriculture, new agricultural


10/22


techniques (though few mechanical), expansion of rural industry, the growth of com-mercial networks independent of the state, and the growth of existing markets and theemergence of new ones (Crawcour, 1974; Smith, 1959). Yet, notwithstanding these eco-nomic transformations and the relatively high growth rates of the Tokugawa era, only

isolated regions developed distinctly capitalist relations (see Howell, 1995). In Japan,there was no functional equivalent to the English enclosures, which forced the peasantsoff the land thereby creating the reserve army of labour needed to establish the free labourmarket necessary for the development of capitalist social relations. Instead, the lateTokugawa period actually witnessed a shortage of labour (Trimberger, 1977: 92, 91).

Nonetheless, the commercialisation of tributary social relations led to increased socialstratificationwithin and between classesthereby intensifying class conflict, as exem-plified in the recurrent waves of peasant uprisings and protests from the 1840s onwards(see Bix, 1986; White, 1995). Commercialisation was in part stimulated by the luxuri-

ous urban lifestyle maintained by the daimyoand samurai, in turn, partly causing indebt-edness to the merchant classes (chonin) and internal differentiation within the aristocracythat undermined the samurais economic position.As the sankin kotai (alternate resi-dence) system required the daimyo to spend time in the capital of Edo, they had tomaintain permanent residences both at home and in Edo. In these ways and others, theshogunatepurposely encouragedfor reasons of political controlvarious forms of lux-urious displays of wealth by the aristocratic classes. Though these effects were spreadthroughout the entire aristocrat class, the samurai were hardest hit (see Hall, 1970: 199213; Norman, 1975: 165168).

These creeping molecular transformations to inter-ruling class relations within theTokugawa tributary modecoupled with the subsequent external pressures from theWest (see below)account for the apparently odd class behavior (Smith, 1960: 371) ofthe samurai during the Meiji Restoration. In order to maintain internal stability, theTokugawa rulers had deliberately separated the samurai from the means of production(land ownership), eliminating their fiscal and military autonomy (Landes, 1965: 170; seeIkegami, 1995: 150157, 184). Consequently, samuraidaimyorelations became steadilymore impersonalised, breaking down the strong bonds of loyalty that had existed inearlier eras (Howland, 2001: 361). These changes also cut the final thread linking thesamurais aristocrat warrior privileges to the traditional requirement of property owner-ship. Hence, to restrict or even abolish these rights did not arouse fears for the safety ofproperty since the power of the samurai class had become almost exclusively based onoffice-holding, and this monopoly was not immediately in danger because no other classhad yet the experience, education, and, confidence to displace warriors in administra-tion (Smith, 1960: 3789).

The interests of the samurai became intertwined with that of the state bureaucracywhich they sought to preservethrough political and ultimately revolutionary means. Thesamurais transformation into a bureaucratic state classwas thus fundamental to its abilityto function as relatively autonomous agents in the transition from one mode of produc-

tion to another. Detached from the means of production, these bureaucrats could oper-ate as an independent social forcethe leading agents of what Ellen Trimberger termeda dynamically autonomous state apparatus emerging in periods of economic transitioncharacterised by a constitutive absence of consolidated class controlusing their controlover state resources to promote a new mode of production (Trimberger, 1977: 867).


11/22


The motive for such revolutionary transformation was supplied by the increasinglydiminished economic position of the samurai. As an urban consumer class whose mem-bers were already living beyond its means, large swathes of samurai fell into poverty,producing a lumpen aristocracy worse off than most commoners (Hall, 1970: 200;

Moore, 1966: 236; Howland, 2001: 362). This was a class, then, lacking any political orsocioeconomic stake in the prevailing tributary mode of production, or the emergingrelations of petty-commodity production.

Thus most of the Meiji Restoration leaders were mostly lower-class samurai from theSatsuma and Choshuregions, financially backed by sections of the merchant classes ofOsaka and Kyoto (notably Mitsui) whostill lacking the agrarian massesplayed littleactive role in overthrowing the bakufu. Hence Meiji was a radical upheaval, but withina very limited circle of Japanese society (Akamatsu, 1972: 295, 287, 295). In power, therestorationist samurai not only abandoned their historic aristocratic class privileges, but

actively abolished them through the liquidation of the class-like status system of theshimin in promoting the construction of a new social structure (i.e. capitalism). Bydegrees, the Meiji officials decided to overthrow the Bakufu and supplant thedaimyoclass. In that sense, their action really did have a revolutionary charactereven while itrepresented a certain continuity of class rule from feudal to modern times (Akamatsu,1972: 304; Norman, 1975: 358). While peasant conflict and protest both revealed andfurther accelerated the disintegration of the Tokugawa regime (Bix, 1986), during theevents of the revolutionary period proper, the peasants role was very minor. The centralagents of the Restoration were clearly the samurai. The Meiji Restoration thus repre-

sented a passive revolution in which the state replaced the local social groups in leadinga struggle for renewal, becoming a policy whereby social struggles find sufficiently elas-tic frameworks to allow the bourgeoisie to gain power without dramatic upheavals(Gramsci, 1971: 115, Q10II61).

While the Tokugawa regime was beset by internal contradictions and crises, it is nev-ertheless curious that the samurai ended up orchestrating the development of capitalistsocial relations. If anything, the dynamics of the late Tokugawa society era reveal a ten-dency towards a re-feudalisation of society, were it not for the encroachments of theadvanced capitalist states (see Moore, 1966: 236; Anderson, 1974: 4156; Moulder,1977: 48, 8889; Trimberger, 1977: 86; Barker, 1982: 29). For no clearly capitalist socialforces to push the samurai in such direction had developed. As the problematic 11inter-

war intellectual Takahashi Kamekichi put it (1930: 4), the Tokugawa feudal system wasdragged from the hothouse of its development by the pressure of Euro-American capital-isms. In order to understand the specifically capitalist nature of the Meiji Restoration, wemust then go beyond internalist accounts and examine the inter-societal determinationsof Japans transition.

The Meiji Restoration as passive revolution under conditions ofuneven and combined developmentWith the theory of uneven and combined development, Trotsky articulated three causalfactors derivative of the international constitutionof the capitalist world system: (1) thewhip of external necessity; (2) the privileges of backwardness; and (3) what we call the


12/22


contradictions of sociological amalgamation. All three can be used in explaining theJapanese developmental process. As Germaine Hoston writes, Much as Russian TsarAlexander did in response to the Crimean War of 185456, the oligarchs ruling in thename of the Meiji emperor launched the Meiji reforms in the 1870s to strengthen Japan

militarily enough to oppose external pressures from more advanced Western capitalistsocieties. Consequently, both Russia and Japan shared a pattern of backwardness andaccelerated economic development from above yielding a combination of aspects of dif-ferent modes of production in both cases (Hoston, 1986: 5, 63). How could such differ-ent countries as Russia and Japan have undergone such a similar developmental process?

The necessary starting point to answer this question lies in the shared timing of Russiaand Japans industrialisation drives and modernstate-formation processes in relation tothe interactive development of world capitalism. This recalls Phillip McMichaels (1990)methodology of incorporated comparison, whereby specific instances of state formation

processes are dialectically related as constitutive moments in a single world-historicalprocess. The whole thereby crystallises via comparative analysis of its parts as momentsof a differentially developing, interactive self-forming whole (McMichael, 1990, 386;cf. Morton, 2009). Hence, variations in the actual process whereby the same historicaldevelopment manifests itself in different countries have to be related not only to the dif-fering combinations of internal relations with the different countries, but also to thediffering international relations (Gramsci, 1971, 84, Q1924).

For two-and-a-half centuries, Japan remained on the margins of the developing worldcapitalist order, thereby maintaining its independence from Western colonisation. Yet,

by the mid-19th century, the external environment from which the ruling class hadsought to isolate itself was being radically transformed. By the mid-19th century, PerryAnderson (1974: 392) remarks, the advent of the industrial revolution in WesternEurope had created a capitalist world market of a type that had never existed in the 16thand 17th centuries, with a pulling power that could transform backward agrarian regions

within a few decades. This pulling power of the world economy and the historicallyunprecedented developmental gulf that opened between capitalist and non-capitalistregions radically transformed the intensity of the geopolitical-military forces now facingthe Tokugawa bakufu.

The original European challenge to Japan was posed by Portuguese and Spanish trad-ing networks linking distant nodes in non-capitalist societies to provide goods that werenot locally available. The source of their profit was in buying low and selling high, ratherthan in the exploitation of labour at the point of production (Rosenberg, 1994: 107).These were not yet capitalist empires, and their economic and military capacities wererelatively meagre. The Portuguese and Spanish who ventured to the Orient in the six-teenth century were stretching their capacities to the limit... their staying power rested asmuch on the weakness of the people they conquered as on their special military superior-ity (Hall, 1970: 135). The determined resistance of the Tokugawa shogunatewas thusenough to deter such adventurers, as the Japanese social structure represented a level of

development more or less similar to those of the Portuguese and Spanish mercantilistempires. When the Dutch and English later entered Asian waters in the 17th century,they too still lacked the will and material backing to exert any major effort to open upthe Chinese and Japanese markets. After a century-and-a-half, then, both China and

Japan were able to control the Westerners (Hall, 1970: 136). Again, the reason was the


13/22


comparative developmental closeness between these early agrarian capitalisms and thetributary structures of Japan and China. The great divergence, as Kenneth Pomeranz(2000) terms it, between the two would only come in the early 19 thcentury and after

with the emergence of an industrialising world capitalist economy, somewhat overcom-

ing the barrier of sheer geographical distance.Emerging from societies in which competition on the basis of exploited wage labour

had become predominant, the Europeans and Americans competing to open Japan inthe 19th century were of a different sort. As industrial capitalist societies, they had boththe technologyin the form of the steam ships and arms produced by industrialisa-tionand the imperative to conquer Japan. Whichever group of nationally based capi-talists could conquer Japan would, it was hoped, reap the windfall profits that accrue toindustrialised commodities sold in pre-industrial markets. Britains crushing success inreducing India and China to de-industrialised colonies provided an example to be emu-

lated and feared. Indeed, the fate of China in the Opium Wars of 183842 made a last-ing impression on the best minds in Japan whose writings despite censorship andsuppression sounded a clarion call for national defense and even the adoption of Westernindustry and military science (Norman, 1940: 38; See Jansen, 2002: 2702). This dem-onstration effect of the Chinese defeat was further compounded by the arrival ofCommodore Perry in 1853, and soon followed by European intruders. The question

with which Japans traditional ruling class was soon confronted was no longer that ofwhetherJapan should enter the world system, but how, on what termsandunder whose

power (Barker, 1982: 38).

In a 1858 memorandum, bakufu official Hotta Masayoshi summarised and dismissedas worse than useless two of the most widely recommended policies of the time: apolicy of resistance by force and a policy of grudging accommodation (Totman, 1980:10). Instead, noting the vast changes in world conditions in general of recent times,including the concluding of treaties and open trade, Japan should act accordingly asmilitary power always springs from national wealth, and means of enriching a countryare principally to be found in trade and commerce. Thus, Hotta concluded, the correctpolicy

should be to stake everything on the present opportunity, to conclude friendly alliances, to

send ships to foreign countries everywhere and conduct trade, to copy the foreigners where

they are at their best and so repair our own shortcomings, to foster our national strength and

complete our armaments, and so gradually subject the foreigners to our influences until in the

end all the countries of the world know the blessing of perfect tranquility and our hegemony is

acknowledged throughout the globe. (quoted in Totman, 1980: 11)

What were the likely results of the two courses Hotta dismissed? The bakufuseemedat first incapable of anything but grudging accommodation. After Perrys arrival, theTokugawa house publicly admitted its weakness by consulting the daimyo on how torespond. This was a major blow to theshogunate, whose legitimacy was founded onmilitary supremacy (Hoston, 1991: 558). The impression of incoherence was com-pounded when the shogun sought the backing of the (hitherto symbolic) emperor,thereby opening the discursive ground later used by the Meiji Restorationists. Furthermore,the Tokugawa house was itself divided and the eventual seizure of power by its ruthless


14/22


scion, Ii Naosuke led only to the further imposition of unequal treaties at the hands ofWestern powers. This path seemed to lead unambiguously to colonial subjugation, andhence the loss of the samurais material basis in the prebendal state apparatus.

Most of the daimyooffered a different response to the shoguns consultation: outright

defiance. The lumpen aristocracy of the samurai were particularly inclined to thiscourse. They violently opposed the Western presence, using their martial skills to cutdown the hapless foreign interlopers. Their slogan was sonnou-joui: revere the Emperor,expel the barbarians. As revere the Emperor implied, this course would lead to armedconfrontation with the bakufuitself. Even were such a confrontation to be successful (as,in a sense the Meiji Restoration was), the victors would be without the resources to expelthe barbarians as they wished. The eventual outcome was a third course, somewhat sim-ilar to Hottas proposal and favoured by a propitious international conjuncture. Themiddle-ranking samurai of the tozama (distant) han of Choushuand Satsuma moved

from a position of defiant opposition to the foreign presence to emulation of its tech-niques, in order to overthrow the internally fractured bakufu. Incapable of militarilybeating the barbarians, Choushu leaders such as Saigo Takamori sought earnestly to jointhem. The imperial succession following the death of the Komei emperor in January1867 provided the opportunity for these restorationists to strike. In November of thatyear, the last Tokugawa shogun, Yoshinobu, placed his prerogatives at the disposal of theEmperor representing a transfer of power to the Choushu-Satsuma coalition. Thevictory of the Choushu-Satsuma coalition in the ensuing Boshin warwon by a con-scripted army with British aidsealed its position as the Piedmont of Japan.

Even before the Restoration, then, it had become evident that maintaining Japanesesovereignty required the development of military capabilities equivalent to those of theadvanced Western powers. This meant borrowing Western military technologies andorganisational forms. Given the institutional underpinnings of what William McNeill(1984) termed the industrialization of war, the Meiji leaders were compelledoftenbeyond their original intentionsto institute reforms promoting capitalist social rela-tions and national identity (cf. Westney, 1987). These included the creation of a literateand patriotic citizenry shaped by a common educational system; a strong industrial base;improved communications and transport networks; and state structures that couldextract the necessary resources to build all these. These organisational forms were allinnovatively borrowed from Western Europe and the USA. By the end of the Meijiperiod, Eleanor Westney (1987: 5) writes, there were few organizations in the major

Western industrial societies that did not have their counterparts in Japan.Lacking other suitable agencies and under military threat from the West, the primary

task of reconstituting state and society along capitalist lines fell to the Meiji bureaucraticstate class. The involvement of the Japanese State in industrialization is the clearest andmost graphic illustration of international political competition motivating strenuousefforts to industrialize (Sen, 1984: 125). The Meiji state came effectively to function ascapital (see Barker, 1978). Taking on the role of capital accumulator, state agencies

sought to embed the value relation throughout Japanese society. To this end, the Meijioligarchs launched a series of land and tax reforms in the 1870s, including the abolitionof hanjurisdictions and caste distinctions; the permitting of the commutation of duesand right to buy, sell and leave land; and the introduction of universal conscription. Such

was Japans mimetic process of state-led combined development as the primary channel


15/22


of primitive accumulation engendered under the conditions of capitalisms uneven andinteractive development (Morton, 2007a: 47).

The particularly rapid pace of Japans transition to capitalism was indeed a consciousdecision taken by Meiji leaders. The new Meiji regime undertook massive industrializa-

tion under the sloganfukoku kyohei (enrich the country, strengthen the military), itsgoal to match in a few decades the achievements that England and France had requiredmore than a century to produce (Hoston, 1986: 5). Like other late industrialisers devel-oping under the impetus of geopoliticalmilitary forces, Japans ability to do so wasengendered first by the privileges of backwardness, as well as the precise timingof itsindustrialisation in relation to the historical development of the capitalist world econ-omy and states system.

This timing of the international conjuncture of the Meiji restoration, on the cuspof free trade and imperialism in the development of capitalism, was recognised as

crucial by the inter-war historians (see e.g. Hirano, 1948: 3) and subsequent scholars.As Francis Moulder argues (1977: 92), during the free trade era of imperialism(approx 1800s1880s), Japan was shielded from full incorporation into an expanding

world capitalist economy by those Asian regions in closer geographic proximity toWestern Europe. During this period, the advanced capitalist countries were busyexploiting the large, resource-rich areas of India, Indonesia and especially China.These regions formed buffer zones shielding Japan from Western imperialism.Crucial here was the absorption of the British Empire in China and India, and asimultaneous drastic rise in imperial defence costsanother result of the industrialisa-

tion of war. Consequently, the admiralty sought to reduce naval expenditures throughcutting the size of naval stations overseas, thereby diminishing their presence in theFar East. British policymakers were thus less inclined to extensively intervene in

Japanese affairs of the time (Sugiyama, 1988: 289). Further, since it was viewed asbeing relatively resource poor, and lacking in articles of interest for trade, Europeanstatesmen saw opening Japan as more trouble than it was worth (Moulder, 1977:9293, 12829). Although the US and European powers began signing trade treatiesand establishing diplomatic ties with the Tokugawa regime during the 1850s, theircentral economic and strategic interests lay elsewhereparticularly in China, which

would bear the brunt of imperial assault.During the crucial transition years from the era of free trade imperialism to the new

imperialism (18481875) industrial capitalism became a genuine world economy(Hobsbawn, 1975: 47). This was accompanied by a number of extra-European colonial

wars and rivalries, along with the successive waves of interventions from above of theenlightened monarchy type, and national wars that Gramsci noted (1971: 115,Q10II61) within Europe and the USA. These included the Piedmont-Austrian War(18489), the German-Danish War (184850), the Anglo-Persian War (18567), theSecond Opium War (185660), the Crimean War (18536), the Russian war inCircassia (185964), the Italian Civil War (18619), the American Civil War (18615),

the Franco-Mexican War (18623), the Italian-Austrian War (1866), and the Franco-Prussian War (18701). It was this fortuitous balance of international forces, as E. H.Norman termed it (1940: 46), that provided the vital necessary breathing-space for

Japan to shake off the restricting fetters of feudalism relatively free from Westernencroachment.


16/22


Yet this fortuitous conjuncture of international forces seems less contingent whenviewed from the perspective of capitalisms uneven and combined development. Fromthis approach, the conjuncture of wars for national unification and revolutions fromabove within Europe emerge from the chain of interconnected industrial revolutions,

staggered in space and time, stretched across northern Europes long nineteenth century(ibid.). This East-West plane of unevenness, as Justin Rosenberg (2010: 25) argues,elicited rapid alterations in the Continental balance of power, themselves attendantupon the dynamic historical unevenness of industrialisation across Europe, undermin[ing]established geopolitical configurations. This was witnessed in the period of the NewImperialism (1880s onwards), which saw the emergence of new industrialising capitalistpowers in the Westparticularly the newly unified German and American states, along

with Russiachallenging British hegemony. The result was a sharpening of the com-petitive struggle among the Western capitalist powers for energy resources and new mar-

kets, leading to a vast expansion of colonial acquisitions and informal modes ofimperialism. Had the Western nations reached Japan at thistime, Moulder (1977: 93)

writes, rather than in the 1850s, Japan, though smaller and poorer than China or India,might today be burdened by a colonial heritage.

By the 1880s, however, Japan had built a new army and navy, having already begunits state-led transformation into an industrial capitalist power. Unlikely to withstanda serious European military engagement, the Japanese state was nevertheless strongenough to make any such effort relatively costly. For very different reasons, Europeanstatesmen now again turned their attention to the easier and more traditional targets

of imperialist plundering such as India and China, as well as annexing new swathes ofland in Africa and the Middle East. And, having demonstrated its newly acquiredmilitary power in its surprise victory against China (18945), Japan proved a likelycandidate as ally or junior partner for British policymakers whom, in the face ofmultiple geopolitical challengers, were desperately looking for strategic partners.Thus, instead of being conquered or relegated to subaltern status, Japanese sover-eignty and power was enhanced through the formation of the Anglo-Japanese alliancein 1902 (Moulder, 1977: 93).

The upshot of these specifically inter-societal determinations on Japans transition tocapitalism was a near-classic case of combined development: an amalgamated socialstructure fusing different stages of developmentin this case, an intertwining of tribu-tary and capitalist social relations. Given the exigencies of the historical situation, E. H.Norman wrote,

Japan skipped from feudalism into capitalism omitting the laissez-faire stage and its political

counterpart. Thus speed was a determining element in the form which modern Japanese gov-

ernment and society assumed. The speed with which Japan had simultaneously to establish a

modern state, to build an up-to-date defense force in order to ward off the dangers of invasion

(which the favorable balance of world force and the barrier of China could not forever post-

pone), to create an industry on which to base this armed force, to fashion an educational system

suitable to an industrial modernized nation, dictated that these important changes be accom-

plished by a group of autocratic bureaucrats rather than by the mass of the people working

through democratic organs of representation. (Norman, 1940: 47)


17/22


This combined formation is not, however, to be grasped in a mechanical way but ratheras emerging in the crises and responses of the actors in Japanese society. The Meijireforms abolished the legal and economic basis of the samurai class and prebendal powerover the direct producers. However, the abolition of the dues of the samurai class was

achieved at the expense of the peasants, rendered notionally free but in fact still subjectto semi-servile agrarian relations (Hirano, 1948: 4). By this time, Japans uneven devel-opment had produced a highly concentrated urban capitalist sector, contrasting sharply

with conditions in the countryside that many Marxists came to see as vestiges of feudal-ism (Hoston, 1986: 9). The origins of Japans agrarian class crisis, which intertwined

with industrial class struggle in the 1920s and to which imperial fascism was a response,lay in this ramified social structure.

A consequence of this combined development, as seen elsewhere in interwar Europe,was an increasingly radicalised anti-capitalist movement on both the right and leftthe

former finding its class origins in a perpetually crisis-ridden agrarian sector, along withan economically squeezed petty-bourgeois (see Moore, 1966; Halliday, 1975). The massright-wing movement of agrarian nationalism (Nohonshugi) was nevertheless, accordingto Havens, sufficiently compatible with the prevailing statist outlook to provide at leasttacit support for Japans military rulers, in its racial and national myths, its idolizsationof the rural Gemeinschaft, and its predisposition to conflict with the Western sources ofcultural degeneracy (Havens, 1974: 319). The inherent instabilities resulting from

Japans combined development would act as a geopolitical feedback loop throughJapanese imperialism of the early 20th century and inter-war years, which was (in part)

an externalisation of domestic crises. In the context of the fragmented world economy ofthe 1930s, Japanese policymakers embarked upon an aggressively expansionist foreignpolicy in search of much needed raw materials and secure markets for Japanese surpluscapital (see Holston, 1986: 247250; Matin 1995: Part II; LaFeber, 1997).

ConclusionErnest Gellner (1991: 20) once wrote of the industrial (and Neolithic) revolution,

the new social order, due to be ushered in by history, was so radically discontinuous and different

from its predecessor that it simply could not be anticipated or planned or willed This point

in no way applies to the subsequent diffusion of a new social order, once established and suc-

cessful in one location. On the contrary: once a new and visibly more powerful order is in exis-

tence, it can be, and commonly is, consciously and deliberately emulated. Those who emulate

may also end up with more than they intended and bargained for, but that is another story.

We have attempted to tell the story of the Meiji Restoration as the pre-eminent caseof such emulation. We argued that in order to understand Japans hyper-route to moder-nity, Trotsky and Gramscis concepts of uneven and combined development and passive

revolution are indispensible. Throughout its history, the Japanese archipelago was thesite of a diffusion of productive, cultural and governmental techniques from the Sino-centric system of greater North-East Asia. From these inter-societal dynamics and therelated whip of internal necessity within the Japanese archipelago itself emerged the


18/22


peculiar tributary system of the Tokugawa shogunate, and its enormous, well armed, welltrained and under-employed aristocratic class. Tendencies towards the dissolution of thatsystem were already evident in the two centuries after the founding of the Tokugawa bakufu.

Yet we cannot understand the impact of those tendencies and the resolutions of the

crises they caused without looking at the inter-societal determinations involvedandthese must be taken at the level of the internal relationsbetween uneven and combineddevelopment and passive revolution. At the beginning of its rule, the Tokugawa houseshrewdly and effectively closed the country to foreign influence. By the mid-19th cen-tury, however, the epochal social changes wrought by industrialisation had produced adifferent international context, one that both compelled and allowed the introduction ofindustrialisation and capitalist social relations in Japan. It was by no means inevitable that

Japanese society would take this course. The decay of the tributary system and the exam-ple of China provided the motivated and trained men who were able to respond to the

challenge of the West, but only by restructuring the state to undermine the privileges ofthe very class from which they came. In doing so, they exemplified the process of passiverevolution under conditions of uneven and combined development, or, as Trotsky put it,the curious historical twist by which the tasks of one class are carried out by another.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Colin Barker, Katsuhiko Endo, Harry Harootunian, KenKawashima, Kamran Matin, Adam Morton, Justin Rosenberg, Peter Thomas, OwenMiller and two anonymous reviewers for their very insightful comments on earlier drafts

of this paper. Of course, all omissions and errors are our own. Alex Anievas would alsolike to thank the Cambridge Political Economy Trust Fund for their generous financialsupport.

Endnotes

1 See e.g.Rosenberg (2006, 2007); Matin (2007); Allinson and Anievas (2009, 2010); Davidson(2009); Ashman (2009); Shilliam (2009).

2 For an anthology of these early debates sketching the origins of Trotskys strategy of permanentrevolution, see Day and Gaido (2009).

3 Gramsci rejected Trotskys specific reformulation of permanent revolution. Yet ChristineBuci-Glucksmanns (1979: 211) and Frank Rosengartens (19845: 92) explanations of thisin terms of a contrast between Gramscis national approach and Trotskys internationalismare off the mark, as Thomas (2009) lucidly demonstrates.

4 The two terms are not, however, synonymous: passive revolution refers to a much widerdimension of processes, as other contributions to this volume demonstrate (cf. Morton,2007a).

5 We would like to thank Peter Thomas for helping us clarify this important point.6 In the specific Meiji case, class agency primarily took the form of an intra-ruling class conflict

played out in the context of a more generalised societal crisis entailing elements of intensified

inter-class struggle throughout 19th-century Tokugawa society (pp. 910 below). We wouldlike thank one anonymous review for pushing us to clarify this. 7 Here, we build on Germaine Hostons (1986) excellent study of the interwar debate, which

also points to the recurrent problem of uni-linearity facing Japanese Marxists.8 But see our criticisms of potential concept over-extension in Allinson and Anievas (2009).

See also the related arguments in intellectual history by Andrew E. Barshay (2004).


19/22


9 Hence shogungeneralissimo.10 Recent scholarship confirms this picture of a dynamic Tokugawa economya far cry from

the perpetually stagnant Asiatic mode of production (e.g.Howell, 1995; Francks, 2002).11 Takahashi went onto drift into proto-fascism, a position we clearly do not endorse.

References

Abu-Lughod JL (1989) Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 12501350. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Akamatsu P (1972)Meiji 1868. London: Allen & Unwin.Allinson JC, Anievas A (2009) The uses and misuses of uneven and combined development: An

anatomy of a concept. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 22(1): 4767.Allinson JC, Anievas A (2010) Approaching the international: Beyond political Marxism.

In Anievas A (ed.) Marxism and World Politics: Contesting Global Capitalism. London:

Routledge.Anderson P (1974) Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso.Anderson P (1992) English Questions. London: Verso.Anderson P (1996 [1974]) Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: Verso.Anievas A (2010) The renaissance of historical materialism in international relations: An

Introduction. I Alexander Anievas (ed) Marxism and World Politics: Contesting GlobalCapitalism. London: Routledge.

Arrighi G (2007)Adam Smith in Beijing. Verso: London.Ashman S (2009) Capitalism, uneven and combined development and the transhistoric. Cambridge

Review of International Affairs22(1): 2946.Barker C (1978) The state as capital. International Socialism2(1): 1642.Barker C (1982) Origins and significance of the Meiji Restoration, online at ,

accessed 4 November 2008.

Barker C (2006) Extending combined and uneven development. In Dunn B, Radice H (eds.)100Years of Permanent Revolution: Results and Prospects. London: Pluto Press, pp. 7287.

Barshay AE (2004) The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modernist Traditions(2004) Berkeley: University of California, esp. pp 3135 and pp.7291.

Beasley WG (1972) The Meiji Restoration. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Bix H (1986) Peasant Protest in Japan, 15901884. New Haven: Yale.Brenner R (1982) The agrarian roots of European capitalism. Past & Present97: 16113.Buci-Glucksmann C (1979) State, transition and passive revolution. In Mouffe C (ed.) Gramsci

and Marxist Theory. London: Routledge.Crawcour S (1974) The Tokugawa period and Japans preparation for modern economic growth.

Journal of Japanese Studies1(1): 113125.Day R, Gaido D (eds.) (2009) Witnesses to the Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record.

Leiden: Brill.

Davidson N (2009) Putting the nation back into the international. Cambridge Review ofInternational Affairs 22:1: 928.

Francks P (2002) Rural industry, growth linkages, and economic development in nineteenth-

century Japan.Journal of Asian Studies61: 3356.Fulcher J (1988) The bureaucratization of the state and the rise of Japan. British Journal of Sociology

39(2): 228254.

Gellner E (1991) Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History. London: Palladin.


20/22


Gramsci A (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Hoare Q, Nowell-Smith G.London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Gramsci A (1977) Selections from Political Writings, 19101920, ed. Hoare Q, transl, Matthews J.London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Halliday J (1975)A Political History of Japanese Capitalism. New York: Pantheon.Hall JW (1955) The castle town and Japans modern urbanization. Far Eastern Quarterly15(1):

3756.

Hall JW (1970)Japan from Prehistory to Modern Times. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson.Harman C, Brenner R (2006) The origins of capitalism. International Socialism 2(111): 127162.Havens T (1974) Farm and Nation in Modern Japan:Agrarian Nationalism, 18701940. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Hirano Y(1948) Nihon shihon-shugi-shakai no kiko [The Structure of Japanese Capitalist Society].Tokyo: Iwaba Shoten.

Hobsbawm E (1975) The Age of Capital, 18481875. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Hoston GA (1991) Conceptualizing bourgeois revolution: The prewar Japanese left and the Meiji

Restoration. Comparative Studies in Society and History33(3): 53981.Hoston GA (1986)Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Pre-War Japan. Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

Howell DL (1995)Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery.University of California Press, Berkeley.

Howell DL (1998) Territoriality and collective identity in Tokugawa Japan. Daedalus127(3):105132.

Howland DR (2001) Samurai status, class, and bureaucracy: A historiographical essay. Journal ofAsian Studies60(2): 353380.Ikegami E (1995) The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern

Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Jansen MB (2002) The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Landes D (1965) Japan and Europe: Contrasts in industrialization. In Lockwood W (ed.) The

State and Economic Enterprise in Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 93182.LaFeber W (1997) The Clash. London: WW Norton.Marx K (1970 [1859]) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress

Publishers.

Marx K (1976 [1867]) Capital, Volume I. Harmondsworth: Penguin.McNeill W (1984) The Pursuit of Power. Oxford: Blackwell.Moore Jr. B (1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon.Morton AD (2007a) Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political

Economy. London: Pluto.Morton AD (2007b) Disputing the geopolitics of the states system and global capitalism.

Cambridge Review of International Affairs20(4): 599617.Morton AD (2010) Reflections on uneven development: Mexican Revolution, primitive accumu-

lation, passive revolution. Latin American Perspectives37(1): 734.

Moulder FV (1977) Japan, China, and the Modern World Economy. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity.

Nakamura M (1992) Meiji Isshin no sekaishiteki ichii in Masanori Nakamura (ed.) Nihonno Kindai to Shihonshugi: Kokusaika to Chiiki[The world historical location of the MeijiRestoration: Capitalism and modern Japan]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo.


21/22


Norman EH (1940)Japans Emergence as a Modern State. Institute of Pacific Relations.Norman EH (1975) Origins of the Modern Japanese State. New York: Pantheon.Pomeranz K (2000) The Great Divergence. New Jersey: Princeton.Reischauer EO, Craig AM (1989)Japan: Tradition and transformation, 2nd edition. London: Allen

& Unwin.Rosenberg J (1994) The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International

Relations. London: Verso.Rosenberg J (2006) Why is there no international historical sociology? European Journal of

International Relations12(3): 307340.Rosenberg J (2007) International Relationsthe Higher Bullshit: A response to the globalization

theory debate. International Politics44(4): 450482.Rosenberg J (forthcoming, 2010) Anarchy in the mirror of uneven and combined development:

An open letter to Kenneth Waltz, International Politics 46.

Rosengarten F (19841985) The Gramsci-Trotsky question (19221932).Social Text11: 6595.Sen G (1984)The Military Origins of Industrialization and International Trade Rivalry. New York:

St. Martins Press.

Shilliam R (2009) The Atlantic as a vector of uneven and combined development. CambridgeReview of International Affairs22(1): 6988.

Smith TC (1959) The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan. Stanford: Stanford University.Smith TC (1960) Japans aristocratic revolution. The Yale Review50.Sugiyama S (1988)Japans Industrialization in the World Economy, 18591899. London: Athlone

Press.

Takahashi K (1930) Saikin no Nihon Keizai-shi [Japans Recent Economic History]. Tokyo:Heibonsh.Thomas P (2009) The Gramscian Moment. Leiden: Brill.Totman C (1980) From Sakoku to Kaikoku: The transformation of foreign-policy attitudes,

18531868.Monumenta Nipponica35(1): 119.Totman C(2004) Pre-industrial Korea and Japan in Environmental Perspective. Leiden: Brill.Trimberger EK (1977) State power and modes of production: Implications of the Japanese transi-

tion to capitalism. Insurgent Sociologist 7(2): 8599.Trotsky L (1936) The Third International after Lenin. New York: Pathfinder.Trotsky L (1959) History of the Russian Revolution, transl. Eastman M. Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan.

Van der Pijl K (2007) Nomads, Empires, States: Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy,Vol. I. London: Pluto Press.

Westney DE (1987) Imitation and Innovation: The Transfer of Western Organizational Patterns inMeiji Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

White JW (1995) Ikki: Social Conflict and Political Protest in Early Modern Japan. Cornell: CornellUniversity.

Wickham C (1985) The uniqueness of the East.Journal of Peasant Studies12(23): 166196.Yamada M (1934) Nihon shihon-shugi bunseki [An Analysis of Japanese capitalism]. Tokyo.

Author biography

Jamie C. Allinsonis a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics and InternationalRelations, University of Edinburgh. His dissertation is provisionally entitled Uneven


22/22


and combined development and Arab nationalism: The social origins of Jordanianforeign policy from the Baghdad Pact to the Iraqi Revolution. He is a correspondingeditor of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory.

Alexander Anievasis a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics and InternationalStudies, University of Cambridge. His dissertation is entitled Capitals, states, and con-flicts: International Political Economy and Crisis, 19141945. He is on the editorialboards of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theoryand the CambridgeReview of International Affairs, and has recently edited a book collection, Marxism andWorld Politics: Contesting Global Capitalism.

allinson anievas - meiji restoration

Documents