PHILIPPINES Which way forward for the Philippine revolution? THE FOLLOWING article is reprinted from the August 1986 edition of Socialist Action, a monthly newspaper produced by supporters of the Fourth International in the United States.
It presents some different points of view from International Viewpoint's coverage of the political debate on the left. (1) SEAN FLYNN
"People's power" in the Philippines mobilized millions of workers, displaced farmers and elements of the middle-class against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. But the fruit of the "February revolution" is a capitalist government. The anti-Marcos "elite opposition" and the army headed by Juan Ponce Enrile, Marcos former defence minister, are the key elements in the new regime.
The Philippine events demonstrate the ability of the local ruling classes to rebound from a seemingly hopeless political situation. But more important, they show that the ruling classes can do so only on the coat-tails of the mass movement.
Several left-wing erganizations, including "democratic socialist" and "independent Marxist" groups, gave their support to Cory Aquino's pro-capitalist slate in the February presi dential elections. These groups limited their electoral program to removing Marcos and saw their action as helping to "push Aquino to the left."
The bulk of the left, including the nationalist coalition BAYAN and the mass organizations under the influence of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), opted for a boycott of the elections. The CPP pointed out that the electoral process was fraudulent and that Aquino was a capitalist candidate.
Unfortunately, the forces advocating boycott failed to gauge correctly the rising mobilization of the masses, who saw the electoral process as an opportunity to voice their longsimmering hatred of the Marcos regime. Fighting for the right to freely participate in political action became the momentary focal point of the mass struggle.
Failing to pose a viable working-class alternative to both Marcos and process in the Philippines and the Aquino, the boycott yielded leadership of the democratic struggle to Aquino and the elite opposition without a fight. In the wake of the elections, left-wing political organizations have taken a critical look at the boycott. The CPP now calls the boycott "major political blunder." The national council of Kadena, a large youth group within the BAYAN coalition, terms the boycott a "tragic error."
Unfortunately, the leaders of these groups appear to be drawing the wrong conclusions, reasoning that "critical participation, ," that is voting for Aquino, was the only altemative. Today, this view extends to politically supporting Aquino against the more right-wing figures in the government.
Thus, Leandro Alejandro, secretarygeneral of BAYAN, stated, "There's a great potential for the Aquino government to evolve into a more representative government. She's no nationalist, but she's a sincere liberal and will stand up for what she's said already." (San Francisco Examiner, March 3, 1986).
The CPP, for its part, calls for "constructive criticism" of the Aquino regime. "In our propaganda we agreed on no attacks on her [Aquino]," a CPP official told the Examiner on July 18. "We like her ... And it
1. See the following articles by Paul Petitjean: "After the election: reassessment in the revolutionary left", 'International Viewpoint' No. 100, June 2, 1986; "Communist Party makes a self-criticism", IV' No. 102, June 30, 1986; "The trajectory of Aquino's campaign" 'IV' No. 103, July 14, 1986.
See also the following issues of IV this year which have published material on the Philippines: issue numbers 92, 93, 94, 95, 97 and 98.
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becomes a public relations problem for her if the left supports her and she doesn't negotiate with us."
The CPP puts forward the view that there are "liberals and progressives" within the Aquino government that "recognize the legitimacy of fighting an unjust social system." In the May 1986 issue of the CPP journal, Ang Bayan, the party leadership advocates a friendly stance toward the liberal wing of the government, stressing that it "can be drawn to support the people's demands or can be neutralized."
The CPP states that one of its major goals is to be accepted as part of a "transitional coalition government" on an equal footing with the pro-capitalist parties and groupings. So far, however, Aquino has emphasized that she will never appoint communists to her government.
The CPP's current conciliatory attitude toward Aquino highlights the holdovers of the Maoist variety of Stalinism on the CPP. The CPP originated in a 1968 Maoist break with the pro-Moscow Philippine CP, the PKP. Initially oriented to rural guerrilla warfare, it distanced itself from China in the mid-1970s and has expanded its work to a variety of arenas including semi-legal activity in the urban centers.
The Maoist "people's war" strategy distorted the Marxist view of the role of armed struggle in the revolutionary process. Rather than seeing it Filipino soldier joins anti-Marcos protests (DR)
as an organic development arising out of the need to defend the mobiliza." tions of the workers and peasants around concrete demands, Maoist military practice was employed as a long-term strategy based on peasant armies divorced from the urban centers. "Bloc of four classes"
This strategy was combined with political alliances with the "national bourgeois" component of the capitalist class, which was considered a potential partner in what the Maoists called the "bloc of four classes."
Reflecting the influence of these views, the CPP could call for nationalizing foreign and monopolyowned concerns while simultaneously stating: "Part of the workers' anti-imperialist struggle is an alliance with national capitalists. In concrete terms, the workers seek protection for local capital over those of foreign monopoly. The workers support a bigger voice for the national bourgeoisie in the economy and in the formulation of economic policies." (Ang Bayan, May 1986).
The ruling classes of the world are not at all unfamiliar with the phenomenon of mass mobilizations which threaten their rule. Wherever possible they seek to channel the anger and frustration of the masses into reformist electoral schemes designed to give the appearance of offering solutions to the problems of capitalist rule. History has recorded the tragic consequences resulting from the failure of the workers organizations to maintain their political independence from these pro-capitalist formations and leaders.
The best example from recent history is the political support given by most of the Iranian workers' organizations to the "anti-imperialist" government of Khomeini. In the name of fighting against the "fascist" forces of the Shah of Iran and US imperialism, the Iranian left aided Khomeini in reconsolidating the rule of Iranian capital. In time, the workers' movement was beheaded, disoriented, and finally demobilized.
In the Philippines, the uneasy truce between the different components of the capitalist class within the new government results from the common need to re-establish their control over a mobilized people.
This job is made easier so long as the workers and peasants retain illusions in Aquino's ability to fundamentally change the country's social and economic structures. To the extent that the CPP and the mass organizations it influences support Aquino, these illusions are deepened and the potential for the independent mobilization of the massesis weakened and ultimately crushed.
It is the power of the mass movement itself which compels Aquino to announce the reforms affecting the labor movement and political prisoners. The same is true for her advocacy of negotiations with the CPP's New People's Army.
Removing Marcos was not the only goal of the Philippine revolution.
The liberation of the Philippine people from foreign political and economic domination was and remains a central aspect of the struggle.
The Marcos dictatorship represented a choice made by the Philippine capitalists to accept the economic development strategy foisted on the country by the World Bank. This included the massive penetration of imperialist capital and the imposition of austerity measures and military rule to guarantee profit.
Today, Aquino's finance minister, Jaime Ongpin, is reluctant to substantially break with this strategy. Breaking los with i the economic stranglehold of imperialism would require the mobilization of the Philippine masses, placing the Philippine government in direct opposition to the US government.
This struggle, in turn, would set into motion a radical dynamic whose logic would go further than opposition to foreign rule. It is this anticapitalist dynamic that the native ruling classes fear first and foremost.
Land reform is another key aspect of the struggle. It concerns not only a peasantry crushed by debt, depressed prices, and the encroachment of the multinationals, but also vast numbers of dispossessed farmers who constitute a miserably poor strata in the cities. Agriculture Minister Ramon Mitra, himself a landlord, has been incapable of going beyond the inadequate reform introduced by Marcos.
All of these tasks- political democracy, national liberation, and land reform - have historically been the purview of a "national democratic revolution." In the advanced industrial countries, all were achieved, to one degree or another, in the course of establishing the economic rule of capital.
However, with the advent of the modern imperialist era at the close of the 19th century and the corresponding imposition of capitalist market relations throughout underdeveloped world, the previous possibilities for balanced growth and social progress were cut off. A dependent capitalism emerged in the former colonial world as imperialise
required the subordination of the local bourgeois-landlord classes to a global economie network dominated by the industrialized West.
Due to this warped development, and because the working classes of the semi-colonial countries ultimately pose a greater threat than does foreign capital, even the most "nationalist" factions of the ruling class have been incapable of accomplishing the democratic tasks previously associated with the rise of capitalism.
This job has instead passed onto the workers and poor peasants of the underdeveloped countries, requiring the seizure of state power for a radical transformation of society in the interests of the majority of the population.
The resolution of these unfinished democratic tasks in predominantly peasant societies such as the Philippines where 60 percent of the population live in rural districts -requires the creation of a strong worker-peasant alliance.
The loss of capitalism's original progressive dynamic was emphasized by the Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky in its early conferences. "The long-drawn-out struggle with world imperialism. will demand the mobilization of all revolutionary elements. This is made all the more necessary by the tendency of the indigenous ruling classes to make compromises with foreign capital directed against the fundamental interests of the mass of the people.
"Just as in the West the slogan of the workers' united front has helped and is helping to expose the social democrats' sell-out of proletarian interests, so the slogan of an anti-imperialist united front will help to expose the vacillations of the various bourgeois-nationalist groups [and] help the working masses to develop their revolutionary will and to increase their class consciousness... " (Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Communist International, Pathfinder Press, p. 415).
The tactic of the anti-imperialist united front and its relation to solving the democratic tasks of the revolution was distorted in the wake of the bureaucratic degeneration of the communist movement under Stalin in the 1920s. It was transformed from a tactic designed to mobilize the masses in their own class interest, to a strategy to subjugate the masses in favor of a programmatic alliance with the so-called anti-imperialist bourgeoisie.
Under this scheme, the nationaldemocratic revolution was to be led by a "people's front" coalition, which included the capitalist class. Keeping the bourgeoisie in the alliance required the soft-peddling of worker and peasant logic challenges the capitalist system.
Rather than a tactic for discrediting the bourgeoisie, the Stalinist version of the anti-imperialist united front became a noose which subordinated the mass movement to the interests of the capitalist class, resulting in no revolution whatsoever.
Given the inability of the workers' movement to pose a political alternative representing the fundamental interests of the Philippine workers and farmers, the vacuum was filled by Cory Aquino.
A call for an electoral boycott is a statement that the cards are so stacked against you that participation only gives credence to a rigged game. The success of any boycott is measured by the degree to which the electorate accepts this premise and abstains from voting. Fraudulent elections
The February boycott was a failure not because there was no fraud, but because the people believed their intervention could force a change in Marcos' script.
The "February revolution" itself arose out of the concentrated indignation resulting from Marcos' attempt to steal the election, a situation aided by Aquino being the dictator's only opponent. Yet to suggest, as the CPP and others have done, that this justified a vote for Aquino ignores the very nature of elections for public office.
Not simply a public opinion poll, elections pose the issues of which class interests will be represented by the government. In the Philippines, consideration of the merits of a united front against the dictator for the purpose of boycotting fraudulent elections is one thing. It is quite another when this cross-class unity is expressed in favor of the candidate of the capitalist class. Such collaboration with the oppressor class makes the construction of an independent movement of the workers and peasants impossible.
Aquino's inability to represent the interests of the working people was underscored by her agreement to run under the banner of Salvador Laurel's conservative UNIDO party. The price for electoral unity was to play down the US presence and the need for land reform.
BAYAN called a boycott only afer Aquino refused to endorse a series of demands. But by this time, it would have been too late to request ballot status. Believing that only armed struggle could topple the dictator, leaders of the two million-member organization professed that the elections would merely be a "noisy game."
But BAYAN's hesitiation to call for an alternative to Aquino also stemmed from its failure to recognize the importance of politically organizing the workers and farmers independently of the pro-capitalist electoral bloc.
If the mass organizations had explored the possibility of running a trade union or farmworkers' leader early on, they could have avoided leaving the field entirely to the capitalist opposition. The potential base for such an independent campaign was certainly present, given the millions who adhere to the trade union, farmers and poor people's community groups.
A mass action-oriented electoral campaign would have called for closing the US bases, repudiating the foreign debt, genuine land reform, an elected constituent assembly, and other demands of the workers and farmers for democracy and social change.
The masses could have been mobilized in rallies, marches, petition campaigns, and other tactics around the fight for a place on the ballot. The refusal of ballot status under these conditions, when the masses were mobilized, would have then provided the basis for an active boycott.
The CPP's approach to the boycott stemmed from a view that elevates the role of rural armed struggle over that of urban mobilization. Thus, even after the February election, the CPP could write that "armed struggle is the principal form of struggle in overthrowing reactionary and fascist rule." (Ang Bayan, March 1986).
The CPP-influenced left believed that the Marcos dictatorship could only fall through armed revolution. Hence, elections could only be a diversion. The real showdown, according to the CPP, would come in three to five years when the New People's Army (NPA) had accumulated sufficent forces to launch the "strategic offensive."
As much as the workers and urban poor might sympathize with the NPA, they retain illusions in the ability of the Aquino regime to grant reforms. Their fight for everyday survival precludes rural guerrilla warfare as a viable course for them at this time at least. The formation and consolidation of their revolutionary movement will begin with independent mobilizations in their own workplaces and communities around their own demands.
While maintaining a defensive posture and refusing to surrender its arms, the CP has nonetheless agreed to negotiations regarding its inclusion
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Anti-government protestors burn the US flag (DR)
in the Aquino-Laurel-Enrile government as a key item to be discussed in cease-fire talks. This again reveals the CPP's mistaken confidence in the liberal wing of the capitalist class.
Only muted criticism has thus far been directed by the CPP toward the "progressive" Aquino wing of the government. The CPP's focus is to denounce those who are blocking the president's moves to "dismantle fascist rule." Slogan of "democratic elections"
The CPP did not criticize Aquino's call for an appointed, rather than elected, body to draft a new constitution - thus allowing the Marcos forces to demagogically raise the slogan of "democratic elections."
Every reform that the Aquino government undertakes under pressure of the mass movement - such as the freeing of political prisoners, restoring the writ of habeas corpus, and removing some Marcos-appointed officials - should be welcomed.
But this hardly warrants any political confidence in the ability of the liberal wing of the government to solve the ongoing problems of the Philippine people. And where the government already enjoys wide support, building an alternative political pole becomes all the more critical.
Though the dictator is gone, the key structures and institutions of oppressive rule still remain. The continuing struggle for political democracy can be advanced not only by supporting the abolition of martial law institutions and the removal of Marcos appointees from the government, but also by calling for elections to local offices and to a constituent assembly.
Aquino says that elections would be too expensive. This is an excuse to 22
Hide the central government's shaky hold on the provinces, barely touched by the "February revolution" and where the mass organizations retain broad influence.
The call for land reform retains its urgency and can be coupled with demands by agricultural workers -particularly in the depressed sugar industry - for jobs and decent wages, and workers' control to safeguard these gains.
Given the weight of the multinational corporations in the plantation economy and agribusiness, and the domination of the peasant economy by the imperialist-controlled world market, such demands are directly linked to the struggle for national liberation.
The main symbols of the Philippine government's subordination to imperialism are the 26 billion US dollar national debt and the presence of US military bases. Repudiation of the debt and the expulsion of the bases are central demands and can be tied to calls for the nationalization of foreign enterprises under workers' control.
The pressing need for jobs, housing, and medical care throughout the country links farmers and the urban poor with a workers' movement struggling to maintain its living standards and working conditions. And as the most concentrated social force in society, the workers in city and plantation can become the social axis for all of these movements.
But these and other demands must be concretized in a strategic focus, in the call for true people's power, a government of workers and farmers -without bosses, rich landowners, and generals.
The prospects for such a campaign are good. The May issue of Ang Bayan reports that twice as many workers went out on strike in the first four months of 1986 as in the same period in 1985. This indicates not only demands pent up by over a decade of dictatorship, but more important, widespread confidence born of the mass mobilizations that overthrew the Marcos dictatorship.
The Aquino government has failed to seriously purge the government and army. Aquino's handling of the July 6-8 coup attempt by Marcos' vicepresidential running mate, Arturo Tolentino, should forever eliminate any doubts as to the class nature of her government. The pro-Marcos rebels were greeted by Aquino's representative, Defence Minister Enrile, with handshakes and pardons.
After the rebels surrendered, General Jose Maria Zumel, a military leader loyal to Aquino, was quoted by the July 8, 1986, New York Times from a radio interview broadcast in the Philippines: "We are appealing to citizens to unite so that we can fight communism together."
For the moment, the capitalists have decided to rely on the moral authority of the Aquino govern. ment to mollify the anger of the masses. But as the government's reform image wears thin, the capitalists will turn to increased repression to defeat the mass movement.
Over 1000 people have already died in skirmishes with Aquino's army. The Task Force Detainees defence organization reports that nearly 500 political prisoners remain in provincial jails.
With an independent orientation, the mass movement of workers, farmers, and urban poor can once again seize the initiative. As Agriculture Minister Ramon Mitra admitted, the regime "will enjoy a honeymoon, maybe another six months. But within that time we'll have to deliver or else people will be out on the streets again." (San Francisco Examiner, March 3, 1986).
A successful movement to achieve the unsatisfied demands of the "February revolution" requires a firm resolve to maintain its independence from any section of the ruling class.
First and foremost, this process necessitates the building of a revolutionary socialist party which strives to strengthen the struggles of the workers and farmers and helps give them an independent expression at every juncture.
As the masses become conscious of their own power and confident that their own mass organizations constitute the basis for democratic rule, the socialist revolution will be posed in the Philippines. The oppres sive rule of the tiny minority will be challenged by an organized people ready to rule in their own name.