It looks like I will be posting even less material on this blog because of a not-so-unexpected development in my “other” life. But before I sink back into oblivion for a while (not that I have actual readers, and thanks if you happen to be one. Cheers.), I thought of posting my general notes on the Philippine Left.
Two questions: Why do I think anyone cares? And who the hell am I in the first place?
On the first question, which is partly rhetorical, my answer is, I don't. But this blog is of course written for those who do care. Political commentaries are not for everyone (people have different interests), Left-leaning ones even more so. On the second question, I have to admit that I am a nobody. As I said in my charming About page, I am a mere office guy. My immediate reason for keeping this blog is that I was once a student activist. I was drawn to Left politics in college. Like many that came from a struggling lower middle class family, the Left's language articulated the world to me – the poverty and its twin, social inequality; the ruling class and the power they hold over everyone; the what we often called “bankruptcy” of “bourgeois” culture; and the hope that all of it could be ended.
The other reason is that, for those who actually get absorbed by studies on society when they stare at it in all its frustrating existence, Leftist politics in its broadest sense remains the best hope humanity has for making things better. For two hundred years, it is the Left that has grappled with questions such as, “How does society really work” and “What can we do to change it?”
I would also like to think that my lack of a “Who's Who”-fitting identity supports one of the points I'm trying to make. One of the hopes of a new Left is that anyone can have a say in politics. As someone once said, politics is too important to be left to politicians, or in the case of the Left to academics and full-time activists, no matter how brilliant their insights. It is among my hopes that more and more people say out loud what they feel about issues such as social inequality and what they think should be done against it. Or, if they were self-proclaimed Leftists as I am, to speak out their own opinions on issues close to the Left – such as issues of strategy and organization.
The following points make up my account of things on precisely these issues.
1. The Philippines needs a new form because the Old Left no longer works.
What is the current status of the Philippine Left? Today it is dominated of course by the Communist Party and the organizations that, let's say, draw inspiration from it. Then there is the “broad Left” made up of all the other Leftist formations that split from the Party in 1992 in a debate over strategy. One thing they all have in common is their desire to be able to take over the state at some point, in a violent overthrow – a “revolution,” in keeping with the ideas of Karl Marx. I call them the Old Left (for purposes of simplification, I am obviously leaving out here the group Akbayan which supported the economically conservative Aquino administration in its entire duration. Akbayan was also formed after the 1992-1993 CPP split, but over the years it has become less and less critical of Capitalism, and more and more supportive of traditional politicians).
Did the Old Left work? Is it working now? In a way, the CPP, or the “NDs” as they are also called (for “National Democracy,” a programmatic term which is essentially their alternative to Socialism, a period of “socialist construction”), did get a taste of state power even if they didn't manage to capture the state (and perhaps thankfully so) in the manner they prefer, which is by building farmer armies in the countryside through a “protracted” guerilla war. They did it by being an ally of Rodrigo Duterte, another economically conservative politician and a mass murderer by command. Meanwhile, the other groups continue to exist as a marginal force in Philippine politics. How they intend to win – and what their criteria for winning are – are anybody's guess. But, again in keeping with Marxism, Leftist parties start with ideas around arousing and organizing if not the "peasants" then in particular the workers for the upcoming momentous war with the establishment.
The result? Fifty years since the CPP's founding, and 25 years after the split, there exists no genuine debate at all about anti-capitalism nor socialism in the Philippine political mainstream – in the minds of even the most educated ordinary Filipinos (groups like the Socialist Circle are very new entrants, and still have little activity). People associate the word “Left” with “ism” slogans and rallies in the streets that for them cause nothing more than traffic. The Left thus exists in the popular mind more as a method of protest, not an intelligent and necessary critique of capitalism and of the collective process of imagining alternatives to it.
I personally don't blame them. Perhaps during the 60s down to the 70s, the prospect of succeeding in a violent revolution was very real, and so all political strategies were tailored toward that end. This was after all a period of student revolt and the hippie culture. People, especially the youth, were asking questions and for many of them the ideas of the Left offered answers. So what they did was come up with a political strategy that seemed reasonable at the time. They had a different set of objectives, but those objectives continue to be their objectives now. And so their strategy based on that have not changed. Except that now, after half a century of sticking to the original plan, the unexpected happened – they managed to build well-established organizations whose survival in and of itself has become another main priority, and which committed them further to their original modes of operation.
Fast forward to 2018. Only more than year a ago, Filipinos elected a confessed murderer and rapist-wannabe. After more than 10,000 Filipinos died in the drug war – that mostly eliminated the poor – they kept silent. Support for Duterte is rising among the middle class. Meanwhile, membership in unions have declined over the years since the early 1990s. More and more Filipinos, a lot of them the so-called millennials, are getting suckered into investing in the stock market, perhaps not too oblivious to the notion that it is exactly a tool for wealth concentration into the upper and upper middle class more than anything else. Self-reported poverty is still hovering within the 40-50% level (i.e. half of the population identifying as poor). Yet in global surveys, Filipinos are found to be among the most “happy.”
Is this really a good time to think about building an army and taking over the state? Has not the period for this kind of strategy ended when the communists missed the chance to take over government during the political vacuum of the post-Snap Election Marcos years?
In our current state, it is becoming more and more obvious that the Left will never be able to overthrow government in a violent revolution. And even if they could, such a revolution will only end up being violent toward the people because a great part of them will be against it, for whatever reason. This is not mentioning the tragedy of the countless deaths of our best and brightest who devote their lives to their organizations' cause along the way. The strategy of a long-term force build-up in anticipation of a great rupture against the state, led by a group of ideologically correct super-activists believing in a singular ideology just no longer seems to work.
2. The task of the new Left is to disseminate and propagate the anti-Capitalist critique and the alternatives to it.
Capitalism is an economic and social system based on the private ownership of society's productive assets. Its end result has become, on the one hand, the concentration of wealth in the top section of society, and on the other the massive poverty of the masses of people below. Marx observed that value is really something that only the workers can generate through their labor, and it is this value from worker labor that the entire “ruling class” expropriates in the form, ultimately, of money. The overall end result is massive social inequality – the very few live very well, while the greatest majority suffer in unspeakable conditions.
Its ideological defense is safely enshrined in society's legal “superstructure” (i.e. private property) but also finds expression in all other human cultural activities (especially religion and formal education). A deeply unsustainable system, it was supposed to already have disintegrated. However, human technological achievements, in my opinion, just keeps delaying its demise. As technology advances, humans find more and more ways to produce goods cheaply, resulting in a situation where even ordinary workers can afford smart phones and feel somehow part of the community and its material and cultural “progress.” Of course, that stability is guaranteed by the people's default, pro-capitalist mentality.
Or at least, all of the above is just one version of it. There should be many more, and if there are it should be upon all members of society to talk about it and eventually do something about what they've agreed upon.
The problem here is that “What do Filipinos think about these concepts,” is not the next question. The next question really is, how come there exists practically no discussion of these issues in our daily lives? And given this, how can Philippine society suddenly become socialist-oriented when we don't even have open socialists in mainstream politics (don't count Risa, she has barely criticized Capitalism in the Senate, which is understandable) or, and more telling of our situation, even just in social media that will articulate the anti-capitalist critique and the alternatives to it? Surely, a society that has boasted one of the longest running Leftist revolutionary movements in Asia should by now have had the most conscious people when it comes to socialism and anti-capitalism? Surely in places like Facebook we would even now be having many groups whose sole discussion point is capitalism vs. socialism, say? Surely we would even now have a single NGO, out of the hundreds of NGO's out there, called the Center for Alternative Economies, generously funded by open-minded donors, with scholars devoted to the study of our non-capitalist future? Or surely even just one decent, well-cited and loved Socialist newspaper/website that's not tied to the NDs?
Alas, nada. It is because this part was specifically left out. One of the consequences of an Old Left being obsessed with the violent state overthrow is the treatment of discussions around our problems as secondary to taking over the state. It's as if the Left never cared about the long term. All it wanted was Power. To handle the levers of government. And they will go as far as being allies with a potential dictator just to be able to taste some of it. But over the decades, I think we have learned that more important than the anticipation of the imagined final rupture with the state is the even more important question of what to do in the here and now.
So where I sit, the task is really to disseminate and struggle to popularize ideas that are critical of capitalism, exposing it in new, creative ways as a system that has brought so much misery to most of the people in our country, and that makes us all live collectively more depressing lives. For now I won't even go rah-rah for the S word – there will be a separate time for that. Right now, what we can do is attract politically interested individuals to this simple cause. We need something in the Philippines that will keep the discourse on anti-Capitalism and the alternatives to it alive and burning. Whether we succeed in forming a new organization or not, this should at least be our minimum aim before all really becomes lost.
3. The new Left has to try to do things differently this time.
Just by observing the Old Left, we can know instinctively the things we ought not to repeat if we are to form a new one. First of all, the commitment to a single ideology seems passe. History is a witness to the mistakes and heartbreaking waste that have resulted from the fanatical commitment to a specific set of beliefs – beliefs that are interpreted faultlessly by a supposedly enlighted few. “Question everything,” is a dictum that's sometimes mentioned by the Old Left's youth groups. Everything – except the ideology of your own organization, and the methods it employs.
When it comes to politics and social life, none of us really are experts. All we can ever do is hope that somehow we agree to certain values such as social justice, and proceed from there. And this is because no amount of theorizing can really accommodate a world that is fundamentally mysterious and many times unrecognizable. Randy David, in a recent piece, is said to have mentioned that the best minds of his generation were so busy with structural debates in the 70's to the 80's. As a result, the single phenomenon that would define Philippine society over the next decades – Overseas Filipino Workers – was largely left unstudied, its full impacts not appreciated until it was a bit too late.
I think the single reason many Leftist parties the world over insist on a violent revolution is simply this – because 170 years ago, Marx said it. It was really his word, above all else. All the things they ever did were in strict observance with canonical Marxism. They treated Marxism as religion, only they shrouded it in scientific rigor. They are never wrong, and all those who oppose them deserve to be ridiculed and more, being the non-believers that they are. And incidentally this is also the reason for the triteness of the language that much of the Philippine Left still uses – calls and ways of saying them that make the only occasionally political cringe. “Ibagsak ang Imperyalismo! Labanan ang pasismo ng Estado!” These are great ideas, but they somehow feel so boring, so suffocating in the hands of the Old Left.
The anti-Capitalist position is not an ideological position. It is a position of common sense. Or, where is the sense in privatizing basic social services? Or in protecting absolute inheritance rights? Where is the sense in depressing wages in a calculated way just so the owning class retains profits? Where is the sense in dismantling all our local industries to take on the role of manual labor suppliers all over the world? And where is the sense in crafting a tax law that limits taxes from the rich while imposing a consumption tax on the millions of families that live hand-to-mouth? (Don't believe the bourgeois economist bigotry that states that the rich “reinvest” their profits and thus make jobs. Sure, they reinvest some of it, but they keep a disproportionate amount for themselves.) All of these questions require a reasonably non-capitalist solution – solutions not even whose shadows hover in mainstream political discourse. Yet we commit to these positions because they are simply reasonable, especially after decades and decades of capitalist failure.
Would it be too much to ask for new Left movements that they be ideologically open? That they make their positions based on nothing more than a reasoned argument?
Also based on what we've seen with the Old Left, it appears that the era of being a full-time cadre in a self-sustaining ideological party is past. Of course we want to be self-sustaining. We want our organization to have its own finances. But there will be many pitfalls here. The moment we become a self-sustaining organization, automatically issues of bureaucratization will arise.
I personally think that an activist's source of income must not be completely tied to her politics. That way, if you find out the politics was wrong all along, you'll still have the courage step out of it and not cower in fear at the prospect of losing what by then would have practically become your livelihood, your financial source for feeding you and your family. (This is not to mention the perks – and they are many – of working in an organization that's often a recipient of funding from international donors.)
In a sense, this is what some NGO's are. The Philippine NGO scene is one other distant cousin of the broad Left following the CPP split. As the “rejectionist” faction crumbled over their inability to match the rigor of ND ideology (Marxism-Leninism-Mao thought), many of their old cadres, still infused with social values, turned to the NGO institutions. NGOs became a good way to engage the ruling class, while at the same time maintaining a job for people who did not want to be a sell-out to the corporate world.
NGO's are nice. However, without a radical infusion (read: one that states that Capitalism in the final analysis will be a dead end for humanity), all they ever will become is at best a proposer of palliative measures. At worst, they will become handmaidens of the ruling class – helping delay the inevitable destruction of humanity, but not attempting to stop it in any way.
4. Direct participation in mainstream politics will be necessary at some point and when we already have the strength to do it.
Finally, another way we can do things differently in the future is by once and for all tackling intently the question that has stared us in the face for the longest time – do we, as Socialists, actively participate in mainstream political processes?
This is the part I am most unsure of. It is standard knowledge in the Left that we just cannot fight the ruling class on their own turf. You fight them there, you lose. You won't be able to match their resources. But more than that, the game operates by their rules, and it can always be rigged for their sake if they want to.
And yet it seems very obvious that participation in the political process is a must. Leftists who miss out on electoral participation forego a great opportunity – if not the only one – to appeal to ears willing to listen. And whether we like it or not, the Philippine political mainstream has come to be accepted as a legitimate institution and a legitimate source of political power. The best time to be political is during the electoral season.
By “participation as Socialists,” I mean running in elective posts (at the most) with a clearly, openly, matter-of-factly Socialist platform. Active and serious participation in the electoral process, of course, has huge implications, one of which is central to the debate in the entire Left – it implies that we believe that society progresses and reaches more humane aims, if not socialism itself, via elections. Or put bluntly, that the state can be “reformed.” And so, “Reformists!,” will cry the extreme Leftists. Luckily, we now have an answer to the latter. I would borrow Bhaskar Sunkara's reference to “non-reformist reforms” for the content that a Socialist platform may include. You may read about it here.
But again, I do not know. What do I know is what I feel. And what I feel is that the more we do not come in there openly, with new ideas as Socialists, the more we get literally “Left” out.
Of course we won't do it tomorrow. Or next year. Or maybe we can do it small by small, although not necessarily at the barangay level. These are questions that all of us can settle once we have already have the organization that is even willing to entertain the idea. And perhaps substantial participation in the political/electoral process is not limited to actually running for certain seats. What is clear is that we will not do it unthinkingly, and we will do it together.
Even the question of how the political Leftist party will be funded is a question for the organization. As individuals, we can do little. But as a single unit acting as one, maybe some things can be achieved. We may not be able to put out a 30-second spot in the major TV channels, but during the last elections, even the party-less Walden Bello was able to push some of it.
And in the end maybe this is where our faith in the people comes in. Maybe if there were masses of people with an anti-Capitalist politics, even the ruling class will have to concede things every now and then. Incidentally it is this same mass of people – all of us – that will be decisive in winning the "final rupture" if ever that scenario appears on the horizon.
And what a horizon we face. As I finish this, Rodrigo Duterte has just managed to revoke the legal right to exist of the online news website Rappler which has been critical of its regime. That is scary by itself. But if we'll look around, pretty much the same thing is happening everywhere. Duterte and his syndicate have launched a full-scale attack on every single official that has stood her (an apt pronoun as many of them are women) ground against the excesses of the regime. It started with Leila de Lima in the Senate. Then it was Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales -- a woman whose feet Duterte is not fit to kiss. Then Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, in Congress Duterte's allies are concocting all sorts of schemes either to extend his power some more, if not make him ruler for life.
Why is he doing this? Because as sure as the sun rises each day, eventually the massive social problems that Filipinos suffer from day by day will come crashing down on even the most euphoric of his supporters. Let us make one thing very clear here: Duterte will not be able to halt poverty, and he knows it. His economic policies are no different from that of all past administrations that the people have come to hate. There is nothing fundamentally different in his approach. And if the Left is to be believed, the recent tax intervention will do more harm for the common people than good. At the end of the day, it is the empty stomachs of those living in poverty that will disabuse people from the belief that change will finally come. It looks like Duterte is already trying to anticipate where this is all headed.
And yet, for the Old Left, before it even thinks of painting the streets red again in protest, it would do well to remember -- the Duterte Phenomenon is also partly a result of the Left's failures over the last half century of our nation's political life. When you show the public that protests are actually just a pretext for toppling regimes, which changes the faces in government but does not change its underlying terms, you teach them not to trust you in the future. The Left exists in the popular mind as a method of protest, true. But these are protests that have only led, for them, in failure.
The Philippine Left has always been a beacon of the Left in Asia. Perhaps it is time for us to return to form.
Makati, January 2018
xxx
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