In a period like this, workers can learn very rapidly. Business Day remarked that "the villagers…would be foes of the armed forces because military intelligence has classified them as a 'mass base' of the NPA." (Civil War in France, our emphasis). They voted solidly "yes" in the plebiscite. But if "food and jobs" are unfortunately not at present in stock, then what happens to "justice and freedom"? It has become the world's biggest debtor nation. At that time a ferment of discussion had opened up in the Communist Party of the Philippines. If the new government insisted on appeasing the relics of the bourgeoisie out of deference to a false dogma, the shadow would begin to regain substance: the "national capitalists" would gradually regain confidence, the balance would swing to the right, world imperialism would attempt a rescue operation, as in Cuba and Nicaragua, and the initiative would pass back into the hands of reaction. Once they felt the initiative beginning to pass back into their hands, a new crisis developed and the state machine, dominated by the Russian military occupation, moved to crush the "national bourgeoisie" which posed the threat of capitalist restoration and counter-revolution. The PKP was corrupted by Stalinist bureaucratic distortions of Marxism, artificially dividing the revolution into watertight "stages", belittling the role of the proletariat in the interests of a "broad popular front" with the "democratic national bourgeoisie". Seduced by Maoist delusions, they took at face value and even fossilised still further the artificial division of the revolution into "stages" and reduced the role of the proletariat still further. As a result of the multinationals' merciless campaign of land-grabbing, landlessness has risen to half the rural population, hunger and unemployment stalk the islands, and the share of the landlords and plantation owners has swollen at the expense of the smallholders who are facing ruin. In the first place, it filled all posts - administrative, judicial and educational - by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the electors. But Ongpin complains that this will only raise P20 billion over twenty years. within the orbit of bourgeois politics. It was 90% theft and 10% ineptitude.". Deals were made with the "national capitalists" in spite of the workers' protests. How can reforms be given within this framework'? The legitimate need for a guerrilla army to exact taxation and enforce harsh punishments can easily decay into extortion and terror. We may also use agencies and/or suppliers to process data on our behalf. Let us remember Taruc's admission that the Huks had fought against the Japanese with the ideal of American democracy on their banners, and that they had been shocked by the Americans' offensive against them when the USA reoccupied the Philippines. In 1983, there was a second general strike there, and in 1984 a third, in the course of which barricades were set up. Capitalism can develop the productive forces no further along this path, and it needs the proletarian revolution to establish transitional societies founded on state ownership to prepare the way for socialism. The state apparatus was rotting and the advance of the NPA was the spectre at the cronies' banquet. It has veered haphazardly from a naive credulity in the pretty pseudo-democratic phrases of Cory and some elements in her government, to an equally misplaced outrage that these unjustifiable illusions have been betrayed. If the proletariat does not succeed in taking its rightful place at the head of the toiling masses in the struggle against imperialism, landlordism and capitalism, then after a protracted and bloody war the NPA will inevitably come to power, and albeit in a halting, spasmodic, zigzag, bureaucratic fashion, landlordism and capitalism will be brought to an end. In these conditions it is natural that they would have little respect for the workers' aspirations for democratic workers' management and control. The gross domestic product fell by 5% in 1984, by 3% in 1985, and by 1.3% in 1986. Philippines: Duterte escalates repression, mass fightback needed! Unfortunately they were poisoned with Stalinist or Maoist distortions. By this Marcos hopes to destroy the growing anti-imperialist movement among all Filipinos in the USNA. (NPA), military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Marxist-Leninist (CPP-ML), which is a Communist organization dedicated to achieving power in the Philippines by means of revolutionary insurrection. Ernest Mandel (1923-95) was the most influential exponent of Marxist economic theory in the Western world during the second half of the 20th century, and is best known for his masterful two-volume work Marxist Economic Theory (1962) and his brilliant Late Capitalism (1972). The 1930s saw new peasant risings in East Pangasinan and South Tagalog. In any case, the objective problems facing the masses will become more acute, more intolerable, in conditions of world recession and a further collapse of the Philippine economy which would inevitably result. General Arthur MacArthur, father of Douglas who became virtual military dictator of the Philippines, wrote: "The finest group of islands in the world. The colonial revolution which has swept the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, especially since the Second World War, has transformed the face of the planet. From a capitalist point of view he is right. That is why the peace talks were a fiasco. That simply doesn't work…As a commander I would hesitate to lead some of the Armed Forces to battle because we'll surely lose.". ", A good example of this theoretical fuzziness - a crude attempt to hoodwink the bourgeois - was given in a speech by Comrade Horacio 'Boy' Morales to the 'Bishops'/Businessmen's Conference Breakfast Dialogue"(!) They are the inevitable realities of a civil war. Any guerrilla army depends upon the sympathy of a mass peasant base. It has consequently always begun with the development of proletarian cadres, and the raising of the political level of the proletarian vanguard, as the first step towards the winning of the proletariat and through it the non-proletarian toiling masses of town and country. This includes the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes or to be unsubscribed from our email list at any time. The Americans brutally and systematically occupied the islands following their victory over the Spanish, and cynically made war against the infant republic. This serious mistake will make the struggle to overthrow landlordism and capitalism incomparably more bloody and protracted than would otherwise have been the case. Please note that some countries outside of the EEA have a lower standard of protection for personal data, including lower security requirements and fewer rights for individuals. Even if the Cory Government could be compared to the February regime in Russia, even if there were a Kerensky near the helm of power, the position of a Marxist would still have to be unquestionably one of implacable opposition to the new government. His reforms went no further than the imposition of modest taxes on business. At the time it had a limited circulation, but we believe that it will be of interest to Marxist activists internationally. In two recent encounters 37 military were lost with no NPA casualties. He explained that the revolution began by linking the proletariat and its party, the Bolsheviks, "with the whole of the peasantry against the monarchy, against the landlords, against the medieval regime, and to that extent the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic. The talk of disbanding these armies "when appropriate" is sheer cant. But genuine Marxism stands for the programme of workers' democracy. ", The real tactical differences between the military factions were clarified in an interesting exchange over the radio between their leaders. It is precisely a civil war, a war between classes and not a war between armies. You can opt-out of the collection of information for such purposes here: (“PayPal”), a third party payment services provider. These peasant uprisings erupted as a result of the extreme and intolerable crisis of society in the colonial world, at a time when the proletariat - both in the decisive metropolitan countries where there was a temporary respite from the wars and civil wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions which had characterised the previous epoch, and in the colonial countries - remained paralysed or inert. In the barbarous conditions facing Russia at the end of the civil war, with the revolution defeated or betrayed in the more advanced countries of Europe, the revolutionary generation of October, and with it the heritage of workers' democracy, were wiped out by the Stalinist political counter-revolution, which cleared the way for unlimited bureaucratic privilege. A Canadian inter-church report stated that even during the first six months of the Cory government - i.e. If the CPP had begun with a proletarian perspective it could have mobilised the workers on an independent platform. Because a civil war of a national scale is now on hand and the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship will subsequently resort to the use of U,S. That is how it came about that, although it was the Manila proletariat that played the main role in the February days which finally removed Marcos from power, it played this role without a consciousness of its independent class identity. But the officer caste has been brutalised by its experience of repression of the Huks and NPA and by its murderous role under Marcos. One effect of this will be a weakening of the political defences of the civilian administration against increasingly insolent insubordination by the military. Why do we therefore criticise the haziness and ambiguities of the present CPP programme, if we accept that the logic of events will force it empirically to carry through such a sweeping programme? It would be fatal to underestimate this factor or write it off, merely due to a succession of tactical mistakes and a process of defections and disorientation during this strange and confusing period. (10) Audit and/or administer our accounts. Philippines: Partido Lakas ng Masa appeals for help in flood relief, State of Emergency in the Philippines - another step of the bourgeoisie down a blind alley. Among these are: The fate of the Philippine revolution depends on finding the correct answers. If Cory has refused to use the formally absolute powers she has enjoyed for the last fourteen months under the so-called "revolutionary constitution" to solve a problem over which lives are being lost every day; if she has not even been prepared to make a token gesture towards reform in her own vast estate Hacienda Luisita; then what basis is there to expect serious land reforms to be introduced by the new landlord-dominated Congress which will decide the issue? No more eloquent proof could be found of the applicability of this law to all the countries of the colonial world than the history of the Philippines, which provides a classic study. You know me better than that." The shameful record of successive Philippine Governments since independence in 1946 of collusion in imperialist economic and military exploitation needs no further comment. The theology of struggle has bridged Marxism and Christianity in the Philippines. It lies on the flank of what might be called a position of several thousand miles of coastline…The Philippines is in the centre of that position. In spite of the myths it has propagated to prettify its history, the real traditions of the Filipino "national bourgeoisie" are utterly wretched and servile. Hopes that US imperialism will play the same role again are based on ignorance of the current situation. The apparatus was on the verge of disintegration. Even after the Mendiola massacre, which should have been answered with a massive general strike, the turnout on the protest demonstration was modest. It was not by accident or mistake that Marxism developed on the basis of insistence on the crucial and decisive role of the proletariat in modern revolutions. As a result the opportunity was lost and the initiative passed back to the military. The fact of the rapid growth of the KMU to half a million members since 1980, despite the low priority accorded to this task by the CPP, is a sign of the workers' readiness to identify with revolutionary activity. A RAM officer sneered: "Ramos knuckled under. Bonifacio was a revolutionary worker comparable to the Irish revolutionary James Connolly, who also gave his life in a struggle for national liberation and was betrayed by the bourgeoisie, but he preceded Connolly by twenty years. Revolutions are measured in years. They imagined that the peasantry could overthrow Tsarism and establish a kind of rural Communism based on the peasant commune. prior to effecting any transactions with us through GoCardless. As a result of the passive role of the proletariat, as we shall see, the colonial revolution suffered peculiar distortions. Or one can have "human rights". They grossly aggravated the existing confusion. Marx examined society from many different angles. It reduced the tasks of the revolution to a simple military question. The non-sovereign nations and colonies cannot be emancipated without the overthrow of the power of capital. The massive mobilisations of 1970-72 ended with the declaration of martial law. Later, the PKP, in the search for the chimera of a "democratic popular front", and even more so the CPP, under the influence of Maoist delusions, relegated the proletariat to a minor and even a negligible role. Marxist theory This theory was basically ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. But it is necessary to understand the special circumstances in which these events took place, if misleading conclusions are not to be drawn. The failure of the left to win influence among the Armed Forces, composed overwhelmingly of young peasants - who are demoralised at the military failures and the arrogance and corruption of the officer caste, and showed great sympathy with the anti-Marcos crowds at EDSA - is itself a serious indictment of the CPP's concentration on the "armed struggle" to the neglect of general political propaganda work. These principles apply to the Philippines and the revolutionary movement in the USNA. However, we may request other information where it is appropriate and relevant, for example: (2) any communication preferences you give; (3) information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website including your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and number of page views; and/or. by a socialist overturn. before the breakdown of peace talks, the expiry of the cease-fire, and the intensification of the war - there were 238 reported cases of torture, 43 disappearances, 38 cases of salvaging and 58 massacres resulting in 160 deaths and 78 wounded, 34 mass evacuations involving tens of thousands of people and seven incidents of hamletting including a total population of 32 villages. The Philippines: Duterte shifts blame, but what is the way forward for revolutionaries? Ma. But if a mistake is persisted in over a long period, "it ceases to be a mistake and becomes a tendency." 1982 witnessed the world's first ever general strike in a free trade zone - the heavily-militarised Bataan Export Processing Zone - which brought 15,000 workers on to the streets. Those factions excluded by the dominant clique articulated the fears of the ruling class over their future. We will not deny that it is necessary to take into account the current state of public opinion and level of consciousness of the masses and that one's ideas must be carefully formulated. Reforms are of course possible although as a socialist I believe that the sort of reforms that can be undertaken within the framework of liberal democracy cannot fully root out the problems the people are facing. The landlords will dictate the terms which they find acceptable. The economy as a whole had shrunk by nearly 12% in two years. Its successes in the field did indirectly lead to his downfall. Comrade Morales' argument is the classic one of reformism throughout the decades: that socialism is a dream and that socialists are therefore unrealistic and immature. History would relentlessly crush it between its millstones. There is a tremendous cry amongst the Philippine people for liberation and national independence and it is absolutely imperative that the proletariat of the USNA support this just struggle. Enrile was of course one of the principal millionaire cronies of Marcos, his snout deep in the trough of state plunder, especially of US military aid; he had been Marcos' principal accomplice in the series of frame-ups which provided the excuse for martial law, including the staging of a mock ambush on himself, and the massacre of opposition leaders at a party rally. In addition there is the even bigger army NAKASAKA. Not like now where our troops only mount two-day or four-day operations. With the development of the economy and industry, the proletariat too will grow…and inevitably at a future date it will have to rise against the crystallised bureaucratic elite - as the workers of East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia have all at various times begun - for workers' democracy. Once again however, ferocious resistance continued up to 1916, by which time up to 600,000 Filipinos had laid down their lives in the struggle for national liberation. Our emphasis). What can the new government offer to end this nightmare facing the majority of the population? Chaotic capitalism hampers COVID-19 vaccination campaigns COM_CONTENT_ARTICLE_INFO Joe Attard 06 January 2021 . 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