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| Photo from MindaNews |
On its 55th
anniversary, the CPP is calling on its ranks to rectify the error of empiricism
which it says is at the root of the serious setbacks that the armed struggle
and the revolutionary movement has suffered. The anniversary statement listed
numerous organizational and political mistakes and weaknesses which it all
subsumes as mere aspects of the error of empiricism.
But a
dialectical and materialist analysis that seeks to uncover the truth behind a phenomenon
has to be thoroughgoing and all-sided. In the CPP’s case, it cannot dismiss
dogmatism and instead blame only empiricism. Such is one-sided and therefore
flawed.
By insisting
on empiricism, the CPP is putting the burden of the problem on the consciousness
of its subjective forces. But why not ask the other possibility: does the CPP’s
dogma still match the objective conditions?
The CPP
dismisses any critical review of its basic principles and offhand refuses
dogmatism as the root causes of the setbacks it admits. It assumed beforehand
that the dogma is correct and thus the only error can be empiricism—the
incorrect application of its principles due to a lack of understanding of its
theory of the Philippine revolution.
The CPP has
put the cart before horse. It has already made a conclusion even before it made
a dialectical and materialist analysis of the problem.
In being
mechanical and idealist in its analysis, the CPP is sidestepping a serious and comprehensive
summing up of its revolutionary experience that may lead to questions about the
validity of its “basic principles”—meaning, its semi-feudal analysis of
Philippines society, the primacy of armed struggle and national democracy as the
political line.
Any honest
appraisal of the 55-year history of the CPP and the revolutionary movement it
leads—of its peak during the Marcos dictatorship and ironically its secular
decline after the transition to trapo democracy—cannot circumvent the challenge
of subjecting its basic principles to criticism.
On the one
hand, after 55 years of armed struggle, the strategy of protracted war remains
at the strategic defensive, and arguably at the early substage characterized by
small-scale ambushes. It is nowhere near advancing to the strategic stalemate, more
so strategic offensive. Since the transition in 1986, the armed strength of the
NPA has steadily declined—not because of the error of empiricism—but because
the armed struggle has gradually lost its erstwhile popular support as a result
of the changed political conditions from dictatorship to bourgeois democracy.
The dogmatic clinging to the primacy of the armed struggle despite
transformation in the political terrain has definitely led to a historic
setback.
On the other
hand, what has sustained the revolutionary movement led by the CPP in recent
years has been its inroads into parliamentary struggle since 2001 that has led
to breakthroughs in organizing, mobilizing, education and propaganda among
other things. However, this pragmatic shift has been without the benefit of any
theoretical clarity nor innovation in its “basic principles.” From boycotting
elections, the CPP made a sudden 180-turn to parliamentary struggle—which it
has always denounced as fostering reformist illusions among the masses. Its pragmatic
adaptation was a response to the positive experience of new radical parties which
from 1998 to 2001 proved in practice that parliamentary struggle led to
revolutionary gains. These parties came out of the historic Reaffirm-Reject
split in the CPP in the early 90’s, and whose theory and practice were
encumbered by dogma of Joma Sison.
The disconnect
between the CPP’s dogma and its practice is transparent. Refusing to let go of
its dogma has led to decline. Yet adaptations in practice to new conditions has
made it survive. Still the CPP insists that its dogma is unassailable and the
only error can be its incorrect application. It is as clear as day that this is
mechanical not dialectical, idealist not materialist.
If the CPP is
to truly rectify its errors then it must begin with a critical assessment of
its “basic principles.” Does its revolutionary theory reflect the objective
conditions?
Is Philippine
society semi-feudal? Is protracted war the correct strategy? Is national
democracy the right political line?
Revolutionaries
who wishes to change Philippine society should come to grips with these
questions and weight the arguments for and against these ideas.
The sharpest
critique of the CPP’s basic principles was put forward by Popoy Lagman—in three
documents called counter-theses—during the split in the 1990’s. If the CPP’s
basic principles are indeed valid then it must be proven in crucible of
theoretical debate with Popoy Lagman’s ideas as well as with its correspondence
to the actual conditions of Philippine society.
Let us examine
then Popoy Lagman’s critique of the CPP’s basic principles.
Semi-feudal alibi for protracted war
Citing Philippine
Society and Revolution (PSR), Popoy clarifies that what Joma actually means is that
feudalism is the mode of production of Philippine society.
Sison’s “semifeudalism” is not a mode of production
but a mode of description of what is basically to him is a feudal system of
economy maintained and preserved through an interactive and symbiotic
relationship with imperialism. Even his concept of “semicolonialism” is nothing
but a pseudonym of what is virtually a colonial status of the Philippines,
because, in Sison’s view of imperialism, it is really an omnipotent superpower
that puts everything under its will.
Popoy then compares and contrasts Joma’s explanation
of what constitutes feudalism with Marx and Lenin’s characterization.
Sison failed to mention any of the four
basic features and foundations of feudalism as a mode of production because
they no longer exist and have already been undermined in Philippine reality.
Sison arbitrarily defines feudalism the way he wants it, minus its essential
character as an independent, historical mode of production.
(1) Natural economy, the self-contained
and the self-sufficient character of the feudal estate, has been eroded,
dissolved and replaced by commodity economy. (2) An economy that required “the
direct producer be allotted the means of production in general, and land in particular,”
no longer prevails. (3) A system of economy that requires “the personal
dependence of the peasant on the landlord” so the latter can appropriate the
surplus product of the former through “non-economic means” no longer
predominates. (4) Feudal bondage, in the true and original sense of the
word—the peasant as being tied to the land, is not a reality in our
countryside.
Commodity production, cash and market
economy, has conquered the entire countryside, even the most remote villages.
The overwhelming majority of the toiling people in the countryside have been
dispossessed of the land and the means of production. The landlord is not
obliged to provide land to the peasant to till. Feudal bondage, in
the true sense of the word—the peasant as being tied to the soil—no
longer exist. The peasant, if he wants, is free to leave the land that he tills
and to venture to other means of livelihood. The overwhelming majority of the
tillers have been transformed into “free agents,” into proletarians and semiproletarians
in the open market of a commodity economy.
Even present-day “tenancy” is no
longer “feudal bondage in the true sense of the word”. The peasant
as being tied to the soil, his personal dependence on the landlord, his lack of
personal freedom, the landlord’s direct power over the person of the peasant—no
longer prevails. The peasant’s surplus product is no longer appropriated by
means “other than economic pressure” but precisely through economic
pressure—his uprootment from the means of subsistence, his economic dependence
on the landlord who controls the means of productions. Personal dependence on
the landlord on the basis of natural economy has been replaced by economic
dependence on the landlord, “the renting of land because of dire need” on the basis
of
commodity production.
The main foundations of feudalism as a
mode of production have been substantially undermined in the Philippines in its
socio-economic evolution. Yet, Sison insists that feudalism as an economic
system persists and predominate in Philippine society because he has reduced
feudalism as a mode of production into “landlordism” and “tenancy.”
Popoy
insists that semifeudalism can be understood as the survival of feudal forms
of exploitation within a capitalism mode of production that
animates Philippine society.
But this is not feudalism—as an
independent, historical mode of production—but the survivals, the vestiges, the
remnants of its forms, i.e., landlordism, tenancy, etc., under present-day
society. And no matter how rampant, how prevalent, how pervasive are these
feudal forms, they are nevertheless but the survivals of feudalism, not the
feudal mode of production itself.
The mode of describing this persistence and
pervasiveness of old feudal forms under present-day Philippine society which is
essentially bourgeois and capitalistic in character, and in the context of
present-day world capitalist system dominated by imperialism, is what should
properly be called “semifeudalism.”
Popoy rebuts
as lacking an understanding of Marxism that very common argument by CPP activists
that the presence of a small minority of factory workers prove the absence of a
capitalist mode of production.
The argument runs like this: “The
share of the industrial proletariat in the population is very small, while the
great majority are peasants, so how can the prevailing mode of production in
the Philippines be considered capitalist? How can this be capitalism when it is
very slow in increasing the number of factory workers, its number very low in
proportion to the entire population?”
In 1894, the factory workers in Russia
were only about 1% of the entire population. Yet Lenin declared the “indisputable
domination and development of capitalism in all branches of national labor” in
Russia! But here in the Philippines, what Sison considers the Filipino
industrial proletariat include, in 1968, about 15% of the total manpower in the
country or 1.8-2 million out of a population of 37 million.
Even in England and Wales in 1861,
according to Lenin (based on Marx’s figures in Capital), there were only 1.6 million employed in the main
branches of factory industry, a mere 8% of a population of 20 million. And
there were 1.2 million servants—representing a dead loss of “national labor”—whose
number was growing more rapidly than the number of factory workers! Yet this
country was the most advanced capitalist country at that time!!
Lenin criticizes those who reduce the
working class to factory workers. “This is repeating (and even aggravating),” according
to Lenin, “the error of the Russian petty-bourgeois economists who make
large-scale machine industry the very beginning of capitalism. Are not the
millions of Russian handicraftsmen who work for merchants, with the latter’s
material and for ordinary wages, engaged in capitalist production? Do the
regular farm laborers and day laborers in agriculture not receive wages from
their employers, and do they not surrender surplus-value to them? Are not the
workers in the building industry (which has rapidly developed in our country
since the Reform) subjected to capitalist exploitation? And so on.”
The point is, according to Lenin: “Why
judge the ‘mission of capitalism’ by the number of factory workers, when the
‘mission’ is fulfilled by the development of capitalism and the socialization
of labor in general, by the development of a proletariat in general, in
relation to which the factory workers play the role only of front-rankers, the
vanguard. There is of course, no doubt that the revolutionary movement of the
proletariat depends on the number of these workers, on their concentration, on
the degree of their development, etc.; but all these does not give us the
slightest right to equate the ‘unifying significance’ of capitalism with the number
of factory workers. To do so would be to narrow down Marx’s idea impossibly.”
Popoy
recapitulates his argument that Philippine society is capitalist but backward
due to the persistence of feudal forms of exploitation and accuses Joma of
using the semi-feudal thesis as an alibi for the strategy of a protracted war.
The basic bourgeois, capitalist
economic process has emerged and has gained ascendancy in almost a century of
socio-economic evolution since the unfinished revolution of 1896. But
capitalism in the Philippines remains extremely undeveloped, backward,
deformed, stagnant, etc. We do not have any illusions that if it develops,
advances and gets rid of its deformities and stagnancy, the sufferings of the
proletariat and the toiling masses will be solved.
Imperialist domination not only in the
country but in the entire world economy, and the persistence of feudal
survivals not only in the economic but in the political life of society are the
causes of this underdevelopment. It is in this sense—and only in this
sense—that the “semicolonial and semifeudal” status of the Philippines should
be understood. Imperialist domination in the country and the persistence of
feudal survivals in society are the impediments to social and bourgeois
progress and the development of the class struggle in the Philippines towards
socialism.
After bringing into the forefront and
emphasizing more strongly the bourgeois, capitalist basic economic process in
the socio-economic evolution of Philippine society, does it mean that the
necessity for a people’s democratic revolution is henceforth undermined,
bypassed and sublimated, and a socialist revolution proposed as the immediate
historical task? Nothing of this sort. Lenin analyzed Russian society as
basically capitalist in its mode of production. But did he push into the
forefront and emphasize more strongly that the immediate political task is a
socialist revolution? Never. It was Lenin, based on his analysis of Russian
society and application of the fundamental theories of Marxism, who insisted
that the immediate task of the proletariat is the completion of the bourgeois
revolution, and who first formulated a democratic revolution of a new type, a
democratic revolution with the proletariat assuming the leading role.
What then is the significance of a
correct analysis of Philippine society? It is not only a question of
consistency in theory but a question of correct tactics. We will come to this
when we discuss the “war revolution” strategy of Sison. Suffice it to say, up to
this point, that this dogmatic and absolute fixation on his “semicolonial and
semifeudal” analysis is but an alibi of Sison to justify his protracted war
strategy of revolution.
These arguments raised by Popoy against the
semi-feudal analysis of Philippines society must be addressed by adherents of
the CPP. And beyond the theoretical debate, the empirical evidence for the
assertion that the Philippines is semi-feudal is sorely lacking—such as the
contention that 75% of the Philippine population is comprised of peasants as
mentioned in PSR, an assertion that CPP activists repeat till today but in no
way can be substantiated.
Protracted war as vulgarization of Marxist-Leninist
theory and even Maoist strategy
Popoy’s first
point is to immediately differentiate “people’s war” from “protracted war” as
the former is really synonymous with revolution while the latter is a specific
strategy. What the CPP really insists upon as a revolutionary strategy is
protracted war.
All revolutions are people's war, it's
but another name for revolution. As Engels said: "All revolution,
whatever form it may take, is a form of violence." And
Lenin said: "Revolution is war". Both
are referring to the violent character of revolution, to the necessity of
revolutionary violence. But what specific form or combination of forms this
revolutionary violence will take is a different question and is beyond the
generic category of the term "people's war".
Mao's protracted war is a people's war,
but a specific type of people's war. What distinguishes it from other forms of
people's war? On two counts: Mao's concept of the three strategic stages
of protracted war and his strategic line of encircling the cities from the
countryside.
Popoy reviews
the history of the Chinese revolution and Mao’s writings to reveal that Mao
himself never asserted the universality of protracted war for semi-feudal and
semi-colonial countries. Mao did not even prescribe protracted war as a
strategy for the Chinese revolution until specific conditions arose in the
latter period of their revolutionary struggle.
It belies the universality and
absoluteness of the protracted war strategy even in China and stresses the
historical context and particular conditions from which it arose in the
development of the Chinese revolution.
At that time, China was already
semicolonial and semifeudal. There as no unified reactionary rule, various
warlords across China were engaged in incessant wars, imperialist powers
contended for spheres of influence. The broad masses of the Chinese people were
in revolt. In short all the factors for protracted war were present. But Mao
never insisted that they should have pursued the line of protracted war even as
early as the first period of the revolution.
Mao, in all his writings, never condemned this
first period and the tactics pursued as "Left" adventurism, or in the
words of Sison, as "urban insurrectionism". He even hailed the three armed
uprisings in the latter period of 1927 as glorious revolutionary struggles of
the Chinese working class.
Popoy asserts
that Mao’s concept of building Red political bases was based on the peculiar
characteristics of the Chinese situation after the defeat of the first period
of the revolution. Again, it was not because China was semi-feudal and
semi-colonial.
Mao's concept of the emergence and
long-term survival of rural Red political power depends on very concrete and
peculiar conditions then prevailing in China. His concept of building rural Red
areas is not simply the product of a general analysis of the semicolonial and
semifeudal character of Chinese society but the product of a particular
analysis of its peculiar features which he calls "special reasons" or
"certain conditions" for the emergence and long-term survival of Red
political power in the countryside.
Mao's particular analysis of the
peculiar features of semicolonial and semifeudal China at given historical
junctures determined the tactics (or what we usually call strategy) in
conducting revolutionary struggle. In the first period, the revolutionary war
was conducted through a united front with the Guomintang against the warlords
and the imperialist powers. In the second period, under conditions brought
about by the defeat in the first period, it was conducted through an agrarian
revolutionary war, building rural Red areas and building a rural-based Red army
in anticipation of a revolutionary high tide which will culminate in urban
armed insurrections and the Red army advancing from the countryside. In both
periods, the "strategy" or what should properly be called tactics was
not protracted people's war and Mao supported the Party line as correct.
Popoy argues,
based on a reading of Mao’s writings, that protracted war as a strategy
developed in response to the concrete conditions of the Chinese revolution in
the war against Japanese invasion during the Second World War.
But it was really during the last years
of the second period at the time that Japan began its war of aggression against
China that Mao was able to systematize his protracted war theory into an
integral strategy of revolutionary struggle. And its was only then that he was
able to conceptualize such a strategy not because it was only at that time that
he became "aware" of the correctness of such a strategy but because
it was only then, during the impending war of aggression of Japan, that the
conditions for such a strategy in China arose and become dominant. In the
second period, Mao was more concerned on how the armed revolutionary forces can
survive and develop in rural Red bases through an agrarian war towards a
nationwide revolutionary high tide, while in the third period, it was already a
question of how the armed revolutionary forces can succeed from the strategic
defensive to the strategic offensive, from the countryside to the cities
through a strategy of protracted people's war.
Hence, in two historical periods of the
Chinese revolution, Mao never advocated protracted war as the
"strategy" for the Chinese revolution in the conditions prevailing in
China in those times.
Only by 1936-38, during the end of the second
period and the beginning of the third period, during the transition and
strategic repositioning from the second to the third period highlighted by the
Long March, did Mao push forward the complete and comprehensive line of
protracted war into an integral strategy as presented in his four basic
military writings ("Problems Of Strategy in China's
Revolutionary War," "Problems
Of Strategy In The Guerilla War Against Japan", "On Protracted War," and "Problems Of War And Strategy").
Even as Popoy takes
Mao’s interpretation of the twist and turns of the Chinese revolution
seriously, the former critically interrogates the failure of the latter in
explaining the causes of the defeat of the Red Army in the fifth campaign of
encirclement and suppression by Chiang Kai-shek which directly led to the
strategic retreat of the Long March. Still what is clear is that the rudiments
of “protracted war” in the form of the building Red political power on the
basis of an agrarian war ended in failure and defeat. This fact reinforces the
specificity of the success of protracted war in the next stage, during the
national war against Japanese invasion.
We now return to our main point—the
universality and absoluteness of protracted war in a semicolonial and
semifeudal country. What caused the defeat of China's second revolutionary
civil war is beside the point and highly debatable as Mao's account and the
available materials regarding the fifth "encirclement and
suppression" campaign are quite inadequate. The essential point is this:
There is no positive revolutionary practice that proves that an agrarian civil
war can succeed along the path of protracted war even in China for the second
revolutionary war ended in defeat!
But the Maoists will argue: The Chinese
national democratic revolution or Mao's protracted people's war succeeded in
the fourth period which was a revolutionary civil war!
The basic point, however, is this: Could it have succeeded
without the victorious national war of liberation, the heroic war of resistance
against Japan?
This is Popoy’s crucial argument: Protracted war in
China succeeded only under the conditions of a national war against foreign
invasion. Moreover, in no other country did revolutionary movements that
attempted protracted war as a strategy triumph.
The real and essential historical
practice of protracted people's war was the War of Resistance Against Japan in
the third period of the Chinese revolution (1937-45). It must be stressed that
this was a national war and not a civil war. The total victory achieved by the
three years of civil war in the fourth period (1945-49) cannot be detached and
cannot be understood apart from the victorious eight years of national war in
the third period.
The historical validity of protracted
war based on the Chinese experience is essentially a question of national war.
If we are to consider the Vietnamese experience as a validation of a protracted
war strategy, it is also essentially a national war of liberation. These two
revolutions are the only historical experiences in protracted war strategy and
both succeed on the basis of successful national wars of liberation.
Revolutionary movements, proletarian
led or influenced, in several countries throughout the world have assumed
political power through democratic revolutions and they succeeded by various
means peculiar to their national conditions. In all these people's revolutions,
only China succeeded by means of a strategy of protracted war. Even Vietnam
refuses to call its revolution a protracted war strategy and prefer to call it
a political-military strategy.
So many Maoist revolutionary movements
in Third World countries have attempted to duplicate the Chinese experience.
Not a single one has so far succeeded for the past 44 years since the Chinese
victory. Most have suffered terrible defeats. Only three major Maoist parties
are persevering in protracted war: the Shining Path in Peru, the Khmer Rouge in
Kampuchea, and our very own the New People's Army. And all are engaged, not
only in a vulgarized type of Marxist-Leninist revolution, but a vulgarized type
of Maoist protracted war and all are in the decline after decades of bloody
warfare. Their ideological leaders are all like Mao's "frog in the
well". To them, the universe is no bigger than the mouth of the well, and
that universe is their Chinese paradigm of protracted war.
Popoy insists,
and a review of Mao’s writings on revolutionary strategy bears this out as
well, that the question of strategy and tactics are dependent on concrete
historical and political circumstances.
The more essential point is to insist
that neither tactics nor strategy are universal formulas or unchanging
absolutes based on general categories of socio-economic conditions. They are
but forms of struggle concretely determined by the confluence and totality of
factors in the historical development of a revolutionary struggle.
Reviewing
Joma’s Specific Characteristics of Our People’s War and the CPP’s actual
practice, Popoy contends that protracted war in the Philippines was a
vulgarized version of the Maoist revolutionary strategy.
Sison
knows Mao's theory by rote and he tried to dogmatically apply it in Isabela
during the early years of our people's war. But he got burned in his early
baptism of fire. And because he does not have the grit and the wit of a
military strategist and tactician and only the flair and fancy of a petty
bourgeois pseudo-theoretician, he was confused by the complicated and peculiar
circumstances of our war and began to grope and improvise pointing to the
archipelagic character of the country as an excuse. What is despicable with
Sison is he does not even have the intellectual honesty to admit his complete
rupture with Mao's protracted war, and instead continued to use Mao's mantle to
give credence to his contraband type of vulgarized protracted war.
Further, Popoy slams Joma for waging a vulgarized
revolution that contradicts the Marxist conception of revolution as the outcome
of class struggle.
To
equate war with revolution, to treat war as the revolution is to negate the
theory of the class struggle and vulgarize a Marxist-Leninist revolution. The
basic law of revolution is the class struggle, it develops, advances,
intensifies and triumphs on the basis of the development of the class struggle.
Popoy ended
his critique of Joma’s vulgarized war strategy with words that still ring true
today, after 55 years of protracted war that remains stuck in the stage of
ambushes and nowhere near achieving the strategic offensive and military
victory.
We
started a war in 1969 without a revolution. By 1986, because of this war
strategy, we missed a revolution. And now, after two and half decades, what
Sison wants us to reaffirm is this same, old vulgarized war and vulgarized
revolution.
National democracy as mass line versus socialism as class
line
For Popoy, and
this is his key point, Joma’s Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution
(PPDR) exposes the latter’s abandonment of the proletarian class struggle for
socialism.
In
the Party program, he substituted the Maoist “mass line” for the
Marxist-Leninist “class line.” He completely obscured and glossed over the
struggle for socialism in his obsession for national democracy.
To
substantiate this argument, Popoy explains, with the ideas of Marx and Lenin as
basis, what is a party program and what should its content.
What is a Party program?
It must principally be a statement and a
formulation of the most basic views of the party of the proletariat, which
serves as a fundamental premise of all the remaining parts of the program—its
political and practical tasks, including its minimum program.
What should be the essence of the program of a
proletarian revolutionary party?
It can not have any other essence but to organize
the class struggle of the proletariat and to lead this struggle, the ultimate
aim of which is the conquest of political power by the proletariat and the
establishment of a socialist society. This class struggle of the proletariat,
this emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself.
Hence,
the need for an independent class party of the proletariat, the need for an
independent class program of the proletariat.
Popoy insists
that from a Leninist conception, the role of the democratic revolution can only
be understood from a proletarian perspective once the place of socialism as the
ultimate aim is fundamentally laid down. In contrast, with Joma, national
democracy is front and center while socialism is consigned to the far
background. For Popoy, the proletariat leads the democratic revolution because
it paves the way for the socialist revolution. But for Joma, CPP activists
should fight for national democracy since they are pro-people, pro-peasant and
pro-Filipino.
Here lies the fundamental error of Sison's
presentation of the necessity for a “people's democratic revolution.” He
presented it from a national democratic viewpoint not from the socialist
viewpoint, from the class struggle of the revolutionary proletariat.
The Filipino proletariat stands for a national
democratic revolution, which is bourgeois in character whether it is of the old
or new “type,” not precisely because the proletariat is pro-"peasant” (as
a class) and pro-"people” (beyond class), not because the proletariat is a
“democrat” and a “patriot” (in the bourgeois democratic sense).
We are for a national democratic revolution—and
this we should teach to the Filipino working class with all clarity—because it
clears the way for the free development of the class struggle of the
proletariat which is directed towards the attainment of its ultimate aim. We
are for an agrarian revolution, for the complete abolition of all feudal
remnants because it clears the way for the free development of the class
struggle in the countryside. We are for a national revolution, for
self-determination because only through political democracy can we attain the
free and full development of the proletariat as a class.
The essential problem with Sison's PPDR is that
what it understands and presents is a democratic revolution “with” a socialist
perspective—meaning, a socialist “future.” Not a democratic revolution “from” a
socialist perspective”—meaning, a socialist starting point, a socialist
framework, a socialist viewpoint. In short, from the class position of the
revolutionary proletariat.
Popoy explains
that Joma was able to evade talking about socialism and to relegate the
socialist revolution to the backburner by pushing the semi-feudal analysis of
Philippine society and refusing to grasp its capitalist development.
In its program, the revolutionary party of the
proletariat is expected to formulate in the most unambiguous manner its
indictment of Philippine capitalism and the world capitalist system. To
dispense with this question by simply describing Philippine society as
“semicolonial and semifeudal” and obscuring its capitalist basic process of
socio-economic evolution is to evade a cardinal question in a working class
program.
What is the programmatic significance of this
insistence on the correct characterization of the economic developments in the
country from the point of view of the proletariat?
It is of utmost importance because it “determines”
our ultimate aim, it provides a concrete, historical basis in our country for a
socialist maximum program and a clear framework for the development of the
class struggle of the proletariat from the democratic to the socialist stage of
struggle which is our paramount concern side by side with social progress. The
Party of the proletariat cannot proceed to the democratic revolution and aspire
to lead it in the real meaning of class leadership and advance it to its
completion without going through this process.
Relatedly,
Popoy underscores that the rationale for proletarian leadership in the
democratic revolution is so that the revolution continues on to the next stage,
the socialist struggle. This implies that the working class should first of all
be conscious that its real aim is socialism, and on the basis of this
understanding, be the vanguard of the democratic revolution.
This is a new-type of democratic revolution
because, with the leading role of the proletariat in the people's revolution,
it will be a continuing revolution towards the transition to socialism. It will
and it must smash all the remnants of feudal and colonial rule to facilitate
the free development of the class struggle.
Its difference from the old type is not in its
content but in its form and direction, in the role the proletariat must take in
the interest of its socialist revolution. Sison cannot explain this essential
difference because he forgot his socialism, his starting point is not socialism
and social progress but merely the injustice of feudal and foreign rule just
like a true-blooded democrat and patriot.
In line with
the national democratic orientation and mass line, the CPP deserted its task of
principally
organizing the class struggle of the proletariat. Instead it dispersed
its cadres and members to organize the struggle of the democratic classes and
the whole people. As a consequence, proletarian leadership of the democratic
revolution has been reduced to leadership of the Party not the working class itself.
How can the Filipino working class assume their
historic role, when its vanguard, the CPP, instead of “concentrating” its
attention and activities upon them, opted to “concentrate” its attention and activities
on the peasantry as the main force of the revolution, opted to concentrate its
forces in the countryside building its peasant base areas, calling upon urban
forces to continuously shift to the countryside, and branding those who stress
urban work as “reformists” and “insurrectionists.”
How can the Filipino working class assume their
historic role, when its vanguard, the CPP, instead of teaching them socialism
and the class struggle instill on them the bourgeois spirit of “national
democracy” and insist that their working class movement is “national democratic
in orientation” and not socialist, and those that teach them otherwise are
deviationists from the Party line!
For Sison, and this is categorically clear in PPDR,
and also by virtue of his sins of theoretical omission—proletarian class
leadership is reduced and equated to the party leadership of the supposed
proletarian vanguard, the CPP. For Sison, it is the party assuming the role of
the class, and that's all there is to it. This is Sison's Stalinist and Maoist
reductionism in all its vulgarity on the question of class leadership.
As final
point, Popoy tackles the agrarian program of a proletarian revolutionary party,
which is important in general but most specially for a backward capitalist society
like the Philippines.
What is an agrarian program of a Communist Party?
It is a definition of the guiding principles of the
policy of the party of the class conscious proletariat on the agrarian
question, i.e., policy in relation to agriculture and the various classes,
sections and groups of the rural population.
Big landowners, agricultural wage-workers, and
peasants—these are the three main components of our rural population. But since
ours is a “peasant” country, the Party's agrarian program is chiefly a
proletarian program defining our attitude towards the peasant question, a
proletarian program in a peasant revolution that is directed against the
survivals of feudalism, against all that is feudal in our agrarian system.
This lays the foundation
for carefully crafting the program of the proletarian party with regard to the
peasantry. Taking off from Lenin, Popoy argues that the proletarian party makes
a distinction in formulating demands for the workers—which it defends as a
class in present society—and the peasantry—which it cannot promote as a class
of small producers in capitalism.
According to Lenin: “We make the legitimacy of ‘peasant demands’ in a Social-Democratic
program dependent, firstly, on the condition that they lead to the eradication
of remnants of the serf-owning system, and secondly, that they facilitate the
free development of the class struggle in the countryside.”
According to Lenin: “For the workers, we demand such reforms as would 'safeguard them from
physical and moral degeneration and raise their fighting capacity'; for the
peasants, however, we seek only such changes as would help 'to eradicate the
remnants of the old serf-owning system and facilitate the free development of
the class struggle in the countryside'. Hence, it follows that our demands in
favor of the peasants are far more restricted, that their terms are much more
moderate and presented in a smaller framework.”
Why this class difference, why this “class bias”?
Here is Lenin's explanation: “With
regard to the wage-workers, we undertake to defend their interests as a class
in present-day society. We do this because we consider their class movement as
the only truly revolutionary movement... and strive to organize this particular
movement, to direct it, and bring the light of socialist consciousness into it.”
How about the peasantry, do we defend them as a
class? According to Lenin, no, “we do
not by any means undertake to defend its interest as a class of small
landowners and farmers in present-day society. Nothing of the kind.”
Popoy asserts that
Joma’s “basic principles”—that the peasantry is the main force of the
revolution and that land to the tiller is the main content of the democratic
revolution—are contradictory to Lenin’s analysis of the agrarian question.
In the light of all these guiding principles of
Marxism-Leninism, and most specially the last point cited from Lenin, how
should we now evaluate Sison's platform on the peasant question? How should we
now understand in terms of consistency in principle and political expediency
Sison's formulation that the “peasantry is the main force of the people's
democratic revolution,” the “peasant struggle for land is the main content of
the people's democratic revolution,” and his preaching, his advocacy (and not
only “support”) of the “Land to the Landless” peasant slogan in our program?
So, this is Sison's agrarian revolution—reverting
the rural propertyless masses into property owners. The party of the class
conscious proletariat is concentrating its forces and attention in the
countryside, abandoning the industrial proletariat in the cities, enduring
extreme sacrifices in a bloody protracted war to advance a “struggle for land”
as the “main content” of the revolution that seeks to revert the propertyless
semiproletarian and proletarian masses in the countryside into petty bourgeois
property owners and commodity producers! So, this is Sison's idea of social progress,
of developing the productive forces in the countryside and developing the class
struggle of the proletariat in the democratic revolution—the bourgeoisification
of the countryside.
Popoy sums up
his critique of Joma’s political line of national democracy as nothing more
than advocacy for a type of national capitalism that thoroughly vulgarizes the
Marxist-Leninist standpoint on the continuing revolution from the democratic to
the socialist.
But for Sison, in the supposed proletarian program
of the supposed working class revolutionary party, what he offers to the
Filipino proletariat is nothing more than national democracy—the overthrow of
foreign and feudal rule. To the industrial working class, he offers them “national
industrialization.” To the agricultural working class, he offers them a “parcel
of land” which they can call their very own, a promise to revert them from
miserable propertyless masses into aspiring property owners in a generalized
system of small commodity production. This is Sison's program for a people's
democratic revolution of the working class party—a program of revolution for
bourgeois rule.
In conclusion,
no Filipino revolutionary cannot but salute the CPP for its steadfastness and
sacrifices in waging the struggle to overturn the rotten system in the country.
But waging the protracted war for more than half a century with little prospect
for victory should be a wake-up call for any revolutionary organization.
It is
incumbent upon the CPP leadership and membership to seriously and judiciously
examine its theory and practice to truly rectify errors. And this involves interrogating
the critiques that revolutionaries such as Popoy Lagman have brought to bear on
the “basic principles” laid down by Joma Sison which cannot be treated as dogma
that are unquestionable.
Asa Proletaryo
Partido ng Manggagawang
Pilipino
January 2024
