JAPAN: Sundered Socialists

In the manner of Socialists everywhere these days, Japan's out-of-power Socialists spend as much time and energy fighting one another as they do fighting the opposition. Right-wing Japanese Socialists dream of a "responsible" Socialist Party along the lines of the British Labor Party; left-wingers prefer brawls to ballots, and take their cues from the Communist-lining leaders of Japan's biggest labor federation, the 3,500,000-man Sohyo.

Last week the party came apart. Accusing the left-wingers of being "proCommunist and anti-American while pretending to be neutralist," Right-Wing Leader Sue-hiro Nishio took 30 Socialist Diet members...

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