The method of dialectical reasoning is perhaps the most neglected, yet very useful, revolutionary ideological tool of our time. It starts from the proposition that everything changes, except the necessity for change; and that a theory about social change must therefore change with changing times. What Marx wrote over a century ago still holds true today: 'the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and constantly engaged in the process of change'.
Over a month ago, I posted here 'The Nightmare of the Philippine Left: The History of All Dead Generations' as a wake-up call to the Philippine Left, especially to the dominant Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), that suffers not only from the living, but from the dead generations. It is so sad to think that alongside the modern evils of globalising capitalism and increasing elitism in the Philippines, the Left and the people it hopes to liberate are oppressed by the whole series of inherited evils, arising from the endurance of outmoded forms of struggle and thinking. While the CPP continues to bully and threat the groups and individuals it tags as 'counter-revolutionaries', the forces of capital are celebrating their orgies and the political elites having a laugh, and the masses in deep misery.
It is pathetic that the ongoing debate within the Philippine Left has become a discourse that could somehow signify a sense of 'insecurity' among progressive forces -- that is, 'who are the real agents of change?' A statement of concern on the threat of violence in the resolution of political difference has just been issued by the global civil society, World Social Forum (WSF), to which I am in solidarity with:
I could imagine the CPP labeling the WSF as another international 'counter-revolutionary' (reactionary) movement. This thinking is plain and simple dogmatism. Wake up, CPP! The world has changed! The WSF may not have the blueprint for a utopian alternative world order, but we must be united in the essential common task of resisting the inhumanity of capitalist globalisation. Mao may have been right to say that 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun', if and only if political power is understood as coercion, fear, and terror. In the long run, however, it is ideas which are more powerful than guns. Guns may kill people. But ideas can only be killed by a better and an overwhelming one.
While I am aware of the objective and necessity of armed struggle, the CPP however has the history of using its arms a la criminals. An armed struggle, I believe, must be guided by this dictum: 'Peacefully if we can, violently if we must'. Indeed, another Philippine society is possible as much as another world is possible; but this could only be realized through a passionate struggle of organized and unified progressive movements that are founded on the principles of humanism, justice, and democracy.
Over a month ago, I posted here 'The Nightmare of the Philippine Left: The History of All Dead Generations' as a wake-up call to the Philippine Left, especially to the dominant Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), that suffers not only from the living, but from the dead generations. It is so sad to think that alongside the modern evils of globalising capitalism and increasing elitism in the Philippines, the Left and the people it hopes to liberate are oppressed by the whole series of inherited evils, arising from the endurance of outmoded forms of struggle and thinking. While the CPP continues to bully and threat the groups and individuals it tags as 'counter-revolutionaries', the forces of capital are celebrating their orgies and the political elites having a laugh, and the masses in deep misery.
It is pathetic that the ongoing debate within the Philippine Left has become a discourse that could somehow signify a sense of 'insecurity' among progressive forces -- that is, 'who are the real agents of change?' A statement of concern on the threat of violence in the resolution of political difference has just been issued by the global civil society, World Social Forum (WSF), to which I am in solidarity with:
The last few years have seen a very large number of diverse groups and organisations coming together in spite of their differences to confront neo-liberal globalisation. However, we are deeply concerned that there are still some groups in the world today that attempt to deal with political differences using physical attacks and death threats. A recent example of this is the situation which has emerged in the Philippines where a number of individual intellectuals, activists (Walden Bello and Lidy Nacpil) and organisations engaged in various forms of struggle against militarism and globalised capitalism have been listed by the international department of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as 'counter-revolutionary' and as 'agents of imperialism'. Some individuals named on this list have already been assassinated and, based on past experiences, this list constitutes a credible threat of assassination.This statement has been signed by respected left intellectuals and activists around the world such as Alex Callinicos, Leo Panitch, Naomi Klein, Susan George, and Tariq Ali.
Therefore, those of us gathered here in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil and others in the world, inspired by the pluralism and inclusiveness of this global process, believe that when the security of activists is at stake we cannot act as if the problem is a local one. In our efforts to consistently build an international movement for fundamental transformation we strongly reiterate that the resolving of political differences must be done through the struggle of ideas and democratic dialogue and not through the politics of individual assassination.
We call on everyone within the global justice movements to re-assert this principle and express solidarity with all those who are victims of such threats.
I could imagine the CPP labeling the WSF as another international 'counter-revolutionary' (reactionary) movement. This thinking is plain and simple dogmatism. Wake up, CPP! The world has changed! The WSF may not have the blueprint for a utopian alternative world order, but we must be united in the essential common task of resisting the inhumanity of capitalist globalisation. Mao may have been right to say that 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun', if and only if political power is understood as coercion, fear, and terror. In the long run, however, it is ideas which are more powerful than guns. Guns may kill people. But ideas can only be killed by a better and an overwhelming one.
While I am aware of the objective and necessity of armed struggle, the CPP however has the history of using its arms a la criminals. An armed struggle, I believe, must be guided by this dictum: 'Peacefully if we can, violently if we must'. Indeed, another Philippine society is possible as much as another world is possible; but this could only be realized through a passionate struggle of organized and unified progressive movements that are founded on the principles of humanism, justice, and democracy.
7 comments:
Dear Bonn,
Thank you for such a straighforward insight. Your entry is heart-breakingly true. I recall my own understanding of being in the 'left' not so long ago. It just saddens me now, that a lot, I mean a lot of young (and old maybe) minds have had a very narrow notion of what it means to belong to the left (or to be leftist, for that matter) given its history in the Philippines (and in the world, as well).
If I recall it right, Quasimaita commented in her blog 'Imagery and Isolation' (I've been meaning to comment on her posts, but maybe it is now) about how her lack of political activism is confused with where resistance should come from, something like a hollow ground. She even mentioned how decadess ago, there were clear enemies -- dictatorship, state repression. In short, there was something solid the first quarter storm activists have something to fight for -- a kind of freedom demanded during that particular time and space. I'd like to relate those issues and questions she raised to the way things are now and to the thoughts you have fleshed out here.
Times have changed and so thus enemies have changed, in color, form and what-have-you. And that is the question for me, how does one resist when one is being immobiled by an enemy one couldn't see? When one couldn't even feel because one is deeply being desensitised by the very environment without one's knowing it? When the enemy is bigger and the task is greater? When the enemy is also the cradle? Violence, left and right in the Phililippines has left nothing for peace-loving Filipinos but to fight for democracy alone, without regard to the kind of democracy it advocates.
I believe in what you said that another Philippine society is possible. But there is a void -- a cavity. And we must find that void. More than the debates between left and left, egos and egos, a large number of wandering minds are lost and lost, and don't know where to take a grip. Floating in a real world, succumbing to apathy, cynicism, selfishness under the guise of a so-called individuality), or ending up in sickening discourse, or to another, everything is just another program to be staged, as if a genuine revolution can be done through a PR program.
Is this generation battling mainly over hegemony of thoughts and ideas? Tell me one thing, ask a man on the street what he really wanted in life -- he doesn't care about democracy, it's something he could never eat, nor development, he could never drink. There are just too many contradictions, dilemmas for those of us who can get our own breads, and are still well.
MMM
Bonn,
Agree with you that the CPP-NPA has become a monster capable of running amok. You're an unfortunate soul who was brainwashed by their ideologues and you joined the armed struggle. You realize the defects of their philosophies and advocacies, you plan to get out, and you happen to be a "higher up leader", flipside of misfortune upon you -- you know many things within their organization that you must be erased from the face of the earth.
The CPP-NPA are particularly angry at 2 party-list groups: Akbayan and Sanlakas/BMP. Some of the leaders of these 2 groups were former CPP leaders, or leaders of their front organizations. "Splitting" from the clutches of Joma Sison and his minions is a criminal act that deserve utmost punishment.
Re. "evils of global capitalism" -- man, even rabid and jet-setting anti-corporate globalization activists are beneficiaries of global capitalism. The airlines (usually alliance of various international airlines) they take are operated by global capitalists. The hotels they're staying, the cars and buses they're riding, many restaurants and bars they hang up, the banks where they receive donations from abroad, the computers/PDA/cellphones including the softwares they're using, the clothes and shoes they're wearing, etc. etc., are in way or another, produced by global capitalists. Even exports of communist china are manufactured by global capitalists doing business in that country.
The companies that finance the private foundations and universities that support the scholarships and studies of international students like you in Malaysia and anywhere else in the world for all you know, are global capitalists.
Why so? Only "profit-hungry" entrepreneurs and capitalists, as well as savings by employees of those businessmen, create surplus. Governments do not create surplus. Governments have nothing to give except what they take from the taxpayers. The traditional NGOs do not create surplus. They rely mostly on donations and funding by the owners/stockholders, managers, and employees of those corporations.
Global capitalism is particularly ruthless and "heartless" when their owners and government leaders connive to create monopolies or oligopolies, to restrict competition by other capitalists. Imagine McDonald being a monopoly hamburger chain in this country -- no Jollibbee, no Burger King, no Mang Donald's burger, no competiton. Mcdo can probably give you bad quality burger at current price, or current quality food at 2x their current price, and people will lambast global monopoly capitalism. That is why competitive capitalism is good, and participation by global capitalists will check the behavior of domestic capitalists who would otherwise behave like monopolists.
yeebbaa!!
Nonoy
My point of view is that the remaining members of the CPP-NPA are just bullies and power-hungry murderers with a pseudo-intellectual bent. They want to become dictators and tyrants so they can order people around and shoot those who protest. However, they know that any sane individual will automatically protest and fight them if they become so criminally obvious.
Thus they searched around for a pseudo-scientific or somewhat-logical piece of gobbledygook to cloak their hunger for power -- and they found it in such far-fetched and unrealistic philosophies and ideologies as the Marxist and Communist and Socialist agendas. They become good at justifying the murders, arsons, robberies, kidnappings, terrorism, extortion, and all sorts of assorted violence -- however, they are still murderers, arsonists, thieves, kidnappers, terrorists, and extortionists deep down inside. And most people know it.
They think they can fool most people, scare them off, buy them off, or kill them wholesale. Their propaganda manages to recruit a number of dissatisfied or angry would-be warriors who are willing to do their dirty work for them. However, when these foot soldiers and henchmen become tired and disillusioned to fight any longer, the CPP-NPA leadership decides to have them killed so they can't point any evidence against their masterminds. Thus they end up targetting their own proteges who fail to toe the line.
Joma Sison and his ilk are selfish, rabid wanna-be dictators who have caused over thirty years of suffering for the entire Filipino nation (millions of lives) without getting close to their professed goal of transforming the Philippines into a Communist state. That should already have proven their incompetence to most people, but there are suckers born every minute. These Communist bosses have no chance of taking power in the country and also no intention of sharing it with anyone else but they are ready and willing to rack up an endless body count just to keep their seats at the head of a gang of assassins and fake freedom fighters.
They've become so inured and used to ordering attacks and assassinations but don't have any training at all in production and management of resources at the macro and institution level. This is like putting a bouncer or bully boy with a gun in charge of a factory or bank -- he won't know how to run it so most likely it will be run into the ground. Just like the carpenter whose only tool is a hammer (and who thinks that all problems can be solved by pounding on them), the assassin placed in charge of a factory would automatically start killing people in the hope of making them more productive. This is proven by the way the CPP-NPA-NDF leadership is so quick in issuing condemnations of former Party-mates who have left the fold -- their automatic method of solving an employee problem is to put them on a hitlist.
The CPP-NPA-NDF is a group of smart and streetwise thugs who can talk high-faluting but meaningless discourses on impractical pseudo-scientific theories but have no capabilities at all of running a profitable and productive enterprise. These are the people who are so ready to kill just to become leaders of a our country?
In short, they're all just a bunch of crooks and thugs out to steal power from the ordinary people. It's just too bad nobody raised them properly when they were young or recognized how psychotic and antisocial they were before they became so trigger-happy.
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Every generalization is false, including this one.
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Selwyn Clyde M. Alojipan; Quezon City, Philippines
It amazes me to no end that there are still people in the world that think that communism or socialism can still work, when in every case that it has been tried, it has resulted in millions of deaths (50M from communism alone in the 20th century), untold grinding poverty (as in former USSR, eastern Europe), brutal genocides (all over communist Africa), etc. It inevitably ends in total financial collapse, for reasons built in to their very philosophy. Today, North Korea is unraveling before our eyes. Cuba shows what a socialist worker's paradise becomes when it is no longer propped up by a USSR that itself failed. Nazi Germany was a socialist state run amok (NAZI translates as the "National Socialist Worker's Party").
If you want to understand what is inherently, organically wrong with the whole idea behind it, see "Socialism" by Ludwig von Mises (founder of the Austrian school of economics). It was written not long after Marx and Engles concocted their deadly nonsense, and beautifully refutes each of their claims point by point. All of his predictions of ruin and collapse have been proven correct in places where it was tried. He was amazingly prescient, although few recognized it at the time.
Another good book is "The Other Path" by Hernando de Soto, an economist from Peru, whose capitalist ideas really did defeat those of the Shining Path (a Maoist group). His later book, "The Mystery of Capital" is of particular interest in the Philippines, as it shows why capitalism is still not working very well here - not a problem with capitalism, but with corruption, "crony capitalism" (which is not really capitalism at all), excessive red tape at all levels, incompetent recording
of private property ownership and intellectual property rights (private property is sacred and must be protected strongly for capitalism to be possible - "land reform" is anathema to real financial freedom and growth).
If we could reform the government here (at all levels), institute the ONLY gold standard in the world, eliminate trade barriers, strongly protect private property and deal harshly with criminals who try to exact "revolutionary taxes" on those trying to escape from poverty, perhaps we could become the only truly free and capitalist society on earth - and raise the standard of living here dramatically. Look at what economic freedom and some of the lowest taxes in the world did for Hong Kong - and how things are starting to fail there now that it is controlled by communists (it has already dropped from number one port in favor of Singapore). The financial success of a country is DIRECTLY proportional to the amount of individual and financial freedom in a country. Only a capitalist system can provide that.
If you really want to understand how capitalism works, see "Capitalism - the Unknown Ideal" by Ayn Rand, or "Captialism - A Treatise on Economics" by George Reisman. Another good book is "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. I will be glad to get copies of these to any serious student of capitalism (e.g. economics professors, investors, holders of political office, etc).
I know capitalism works - I have personally seen it work for others, and now it has worked for me. I have managed to help create an enormous amount of wealth for myself and others in a capitalist venture in the US (a Silicon Valley style startup). I am now using some of that wealth to make a real difference here in PI - starting yet another venture here - teaching locals how it really works - empowering them to create world class products for export - doing technology transfer. THIS is capitalism. I'm not exploiting ANYONE - I'm directly fighting poverty here with the only tools that actually work. No one is being coerced or forced at gunpoint to interact with me - in capitalism, every interaction is entered into voluntarily by equals. The Silicon Valley business model (as revolutionary as the technology) takes capitalism to its most extreme form with aggressive Incentive Stock Options, where EVERYONE becomes part owner of the venture, and benefits enormously when it succeeds - this leads to the opposite effect from socialism, where no one is willing to be productive because effort is punished with confiscation and sloth is rewarded with support. It also does away with the false dichotomy between "management/owners" and "workers". We all own part of the company through stock, and everyone wins when it succeeds.
Lawrence Hughes
"Inhumanity of capitalism"...
I am reminded by one adage popularized by Isaac Asimov: "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!"
Yup, I'd rather be wrong by following everyone else - the lunchroom being better wages, more opportunities, and innovation. We have to differentitate "institutionalized" capitalism from the capitalism that relies on individual initiative.
I like the idea of putting a human face to development - but just like the Three Laws of Robotics, what kind of "human" are we talking about? Is it back-to-nature (a utopian and hardly realistic scenario), a grayish mass of homogeneity of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," or "truth, justice, and the American way"?
Each of these, among other scenarios, has its own limitations. The new terrible orthodoxy that will soon come upon us is the orthodoxy of the Corporation - it's beautiful in theory to have free markets et al but all a different matter when meaningful activities in society become more and more sucked up by the centrifuge.
But still, I'd rather live in this kind of world than to be stultified by the tyranny of equality.
Otep
bonn, reading this entry, i am reminded of what camus said in one of his essays (i think)--something like man must exalt justice in order to fight against external injustice; create happiness in order to protest against the universe of unhappiness...(sigh). i suddenly fancy the guy, i think it was in "plague" where he also talked about ignorance being the source of evil in this world; more ironically so, 'the ignorance that fancies it knows everything'...
Walden Bello is lying.
There is no "death list" and it's unconscienable that he uses this trick to shore up his foundation funding from American groups and "democratic" bonafides as a participant in the Phils. state.
It is not mentioned that Ric Reyes is a part of Bello's party and what HIS history is. You also do not mention Bello's equation of the CPP with Al-Qaeda, a bs statement if there ever was one. What it means is that while communist activists are cut down and murdered by the "democratic" government that Bello supports, he says nothing and equates the victims with the perpetrators.
Collaboration with the Phils. military is not acceptable. If you think it is, then say so bluntly and let your choices be clear. Left-wing rhetoric is cheap when facts are always on the ground.
Which side are you on?
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