Between Marxism and the Kyoto School. Kakehashi Akihide's political-economic theory as a development of Lenin's and Nishida's thought

Abstract

Japanese is the language that has produced the gratest amount of Marxist theory after English, German, and French. However, Eurocentric tendencies still prevail in the intellectual circuits of this field, relegating the theory of important Japanese Marxist thinkers to a secondary plane or even rendering them invisible. This article aims to contribute to countering this intellectually impoverishing Eurocentric tendency by exploring the political-economic theory of Kakehashi Akihide, whose life and work represent an ideal bridge for traversing the transition from the most internationally well-known Japanese thought, that of the Kyote School circle, to Marxism. Kakehashi believed that the Marxist system of thought should be refined through the incorporation of Nishida Kitaro's philosophy, and that Nishida's philosophy should be refined by providing it with a Marxist foundation mediated by Lenin's philosophy. The originality of Kakehashi's theory made him a prominent figure in the fisrt decades after World War II, contributing to the emergence of a political movement, the Japanese New Left, articulated around the valorization of subjectivity, direct action, and the goal of revolution as an alternative to the objectivism and economism of the institutional left, especially the Communist Party.