A few years prior to the 1992 split within the Communist Party, the organization BISIG -- Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa (roughly "Union for Socialist Thought and Action") -- came up with its main document, The Socialist Vision.
The year was 1987. Cory Aquino had just been installed in power. This was a time when the Left struggled with the question of whether to support the new "liberal" regime and meanwhile bring the Leftist cause to the political mainstream -- or to stick to the old framework of the Communist Party of "encircling the cities from the countryside" with the aim of a state overthrow by force.
BISIG appears to have chosen the former path. Did they succeed? That is a question for another time. But what's significant here is that they were among the very first organizations to clearly talk about Socialism, and laid out a strategy founded on democratic principles. Because today, as Jacobin Magazine wrote, the Philippines is in the "paradoxical situation" for being "a country with a mass movement led by a Communist party where few people discuss socialism or Marxism." And today, that same party has allied with a self-proclaimed human rights violator in its quest for power (although this might change very soon).
The Socialist Vision, like Partido Lakas ng Masa's socialism primer, is an accessible, sound and enlightening read for people interested in socialist politics.
The full text is here.
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