民主主義・平和主義・社会主義 : 日本共産主義運動史研究の最近の一〇年 (特集 : 歴史学の現在 2006)

Abstract

The demise of socialism in the form of political regimes has broken old political taboos, and made hitherto sealed documents available to the public. As a result, we have come to the point where we are now able to 'historicize' the Communist movement. The twentieth century was widely understood as a 'century of wars and revolutions' that constituted a part of larger transitional process from capitalism to socialism. However, as socialism is being 'historicized', new perspectives towards the twentieth century and its achievements have emerged. The view that understands the Declaration of Social Democratic Party (1901) as an origin of the Japanese Constitution (1947) emphasizes contributions of socialism to the advancement of 'political' democracy in Japan. On the other hand, many Japanese accepted socialism primarily as a set of economic rather than political ideas. In this context, socialism was considered as an agent that would bring about 'economic' democracy that the Japanese bourgeois revolution had failed to attain. Socialism as a body of thought will allow a still wider array of reinterpretation. It may also be re-evaluated as an offspring of modernity along with other values such as 'freedom, equality, and fraternity'. The way and extent to which socialism was associated with other social thoughts such as democracy and pacifism should also present a profitable field of research that has not yet been sufficiently cultivated.