By Anthony Gregory

After decades in power, the Liberal Democratic party in Japan was whalloped in the last election. This is particularly inspiring because the winning party promotes a relatively consistent package of saner policies: Free-market decentralism and tax cuts to reduce unemployment, and withdrawing from Afghanistan. The winners are also known for generally wanting less U.S. military influence over Japanese affairs, and are expected even to prohibit the U.S. from stationing nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. Good for them.

It would be nice if in America either major party stood on the side of freer markets and less foreign intervention. That would be real change to believe in, even change worth voting for.

Update: Some commenters point out that the new party is further to the left than the Liberal Democrats. They propose more spending and more UN internationalism. But on the other hand, they do seem to favor tax cuts and military restraint. In the WSJ article posted below, there is talk of more power to the regional governments. This would mean the outcome, like with most elections, a mixed bag.

I was perhaps to quick to hail this election — as I have been in the past (like when Bush won in 2000!) — as a step in the right direction. We’ll see. But it’s not clear to me that being on “the far left” is the same as being for bigger government. After all, the “socialist” who won in Spain in 2004 famously said, “I want a government that does not intervene in the economy.”

And wikipedia has an interesting section on the philosophy of the Democratic Party of Japan. Unlike the WSJ, which, as a pro-war newspaper, wants to emphasize the “socialist” leanings of DPJ since the party is also less militaristic—and such leanings to exist—wikipedia indicates there might be some things to cheer:

The Democratic Party claim themselves to be revolutionary in that they are against the current status quo and the governing establishment. The Democratic Party argues that the bureaucracy of the Japanese government size is too large, inefficient, and saturated with cronies and that the Japanese state is too conservative and stiff. The Democratic Party wants to “overthrow the ancient régime locked in old thinking and vested interests, solve the problems at hand, and create a new, flexible, affluent society which values people’s individuality and vitality.”[6]

The Democratic Party argues that a free market economic system is favourable for Japanese people’s welfare. The claim is that they represent “citizens, taxpayers and consumers”,[6] not seeking to favour either free market or the welfare state and see the government’s role as limited to building the necessary system for self-reliant and independent individuals.

The Democratic Party seeks to introduce transparency of government and a decentralization of government agencies to local organizational structures including to let citizens themselves provide former government services and have a society with more just and fair rules. The Democratic party proclaims to hold the values in the meaning of the constitution to “embody the fundamental principles of the Constitution: popular sovereignty, respect for fundamental human rights, and pacifism”,[6] having an international-policy of non-intervention and mutual coexistence and to restore the world’s trust in Japan.[6

For a treatment of how a “conservative” state is not necessarily more pro-liberty, and how the “far left” was, historically, against the ancient régime of big government, corporatism, war and centralism, see Murray Rothbard’s “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty.”