Hirata Kiyoaki and His Thoughts on Civil Society

Abstract

Abstract: Hirata Kiyoaki is a representative historian of economic thought in postwar Japan, a renova-tor of Marxism, and, above all, a theoretician vis-à-vis civil society. The thinkers he principal-ly examined were Quesnay, Marx, and Gramsci. Through the study of these three theoreti-cians, his thinking on civil society germinated, fully developed, and finally experienced a sort of change. In this essay, I will follow the development of and changes in his theory, as well as his original and fundamental analytical approach with regard to economic society; in so do-ing, I wish to elucidate the contemporary significance and limits of his civil society theory. 　　The original nature of Hirataʼs theory resides in the fact that he analyzes economic soci-ety from a “process and structure” approach. In early Hirataʼs study of Quesnay, this was ex-pressed in terms of the methodological pivot of the “circuit of productive capital and structure of reproduction,” leading to a solution of the so-called enigma of the Tableau économique. In middle-aged Hirataʼs study of Marx, he began to place the greatest analytical emphasis on the “capital circuit” or “process,” rather than on “structure.” This resulted in an exploration of problems pertaining to property: the inversion of the law of appropriation and the re-estab-lishment of individual property. Here we see the full development of his theory of civil socie-ty, which addressed many pressing questions posed with respect to actual issues of the times: civil society and community, civil society and capitalism, and civil society and socialism. Later-years Hirata adopted the Gramscian theory of hegemony, thus shifting his attention to a civil society theory that differed from that of his younger years. By stressing the Gramscian genealogy of the word régulation of the French régulation school, it seems that he had found in this concept his own approach to “process.” 　　In other words, his initial approach to “structure,” another one in his younger days, may have gradually faded away, or his death may have hindered him from the active development of this approach. However, as a cost of it having not been developed, his thoughts on the “re-establishment of individual property”-which he substantiated as part of his approach to “process”-have become something that does retain universal value even today. JEL classification numbers: B 14, B 31, B 52.