I was reading this newspaper this morning of a mother who was put to jail because she left her kid in their house, lock in her room for one week only to know her kid had died inside. She was later found to have this personality disorder by the court was sent to life imprisonment. When I read this news, I noticed that the story was familiar to me. Then I saw that indeed it was. This is the same story that GMA is doing to the 6 congressman. One is locked in the hospital, Crispin Beltran after being jailed and the rest are contained in congress not permitted to go out. In the US, parents abandon or even leave their children unattended are sent to jail. Much more locking their children in there rooms. The worst of this story is that in the case of GMA she had locked her congressmen to rot in their rooms, not for hours, or for days, but months. I would imagine how that kid locked inside her room would say, Mom please help me, Mom I am hungry, Mom I am thirsty, Mom where are you, its dark here. Now you think, is this what GMA is also doing? Do you want your Mom to lock you up until you're dead in your room for months and months, with nothing to eat. You must have a crazy Mom or a killer Mom, a psychotic or neurotic mother who should be sent immediately to the state mental hospital or jail so she can be helped. Now think about what GMA is doing to her congressmen. She has the same personality fit to the Mom described in the newspaper I read. Now like the woman in the story, she even finds happeness in locking her kid ans she’ll make up stories out of her disillusions. That’s so frightening indeed. I hope the people the Filipino people will see what GMA is doing and as early as possible help her by sending her to a mental institution where she can recuperate. The Filipino people can help her. I hope our church people, our Bishops who have trainings in pastoral care education in their ministry will see this. Denying this will make themselves co-dependent, and they know what I am talking about.

The general impact of the contemplative activity for me was enormous. It was disorienting in the sense it got me out of my routine and get to feel my self amid silence and surrounding nature. It was energizing to smell the fresh breeze of the ocean, to hear the rolling roars of sea waves ,see eagles fly freely in the air with much freedom and ardor. It was also a time to feel my silent body rhythm which I do not get to feel because I’m engrossed with busy and hectic schedules of seminary life. It was also a time to see the vastness of God’s creation and how tiny we are in this world. I saw the interconnectedness of things in that scenic view, how aptly it was displayed in our the presence for everybody to freely enjoy and appreciate --, done in celebration and prayer. It was also the unmasking of tedious layers of pretensions collected though, by time through constant engagement and survival, seeing myself as fully loaded with unnecessary stuff, so heavy to carry—and in that occasion I did silently unloaded them casted them away to the deep abyss of the ocean floor. I also recalled of the urgent need to live a simple life amid sophistication of relations and things. I appreciated how eagles where so happy just soaring around feeling the wind, making themselves glide through nature, sustaining them in a rhythmic wind dance . I also recalled my perspective in life, reasons why I came here in the US, in the seminary to study. It was a short session of rereading the road map that I have made and made all the deletion and just trusting God to guide my way. As a ceremony I all wrote my plans left in under the tree, under a big stone. All these came to my mind in that whole days exercise. Contemplation is such a powerful practice indeed and is needed for everybody not just the youth. In our ministry, having that silence is a much needed, and people need it too. Contemplation is not essentially withdrawal at all in this world just what the hemits does but an actual and total engagement to self, of conquering one self. In the Asian culture and in Filipino culture, there is some hidden wisdom of the old that the young have taken for granted. It points on the idea of balance which is basically upholded the Chinese tradition, that in the idea of Yin and Yang. Filipinos especially the old folks have things to say about balance, be it in relations and in even in actual decisions. Though such concepts have been erased amid the growing domestication to use White’s word and disfunctionalism brought about by the continued fast flux and change of social relationship which is influenced mostly the social and cultural milieu. Example in eating, the old folks says “never eat much”, in sleeping, “do not over oversleep”, when exposed to too much heat “do not immediately drink cold water”, when one has a quarrel with one’s wife, always maintain sobriety like the water, never challenge fire with fire” and so on. This is the idea of balance. In a fast paced world I am now, walking beside the sea have slowed down myself, set an equilibrium on its right footing and being with myself. My short experience have privileged me to get out of the well just like the tiny frogs and see the world much more bigger that just the hole opening of the well itself. Jesus in his ministry have done this many times. He had to go on fasting and spending time in a desolate place, with silence with the end of becoming and understanding himself and his relationship with God. Standing in the small paved sand catapulting me to see the vastness made all the negative energies flying out of me. It was indeed a refreshing activity and probably a luxury for many with how things go now in this time of free competition driving people crazy, disfunctioning all the basic senses that used to guide them in having a sense of good judgment and balance.

This is an important lecture of Prof. Jose Maria Sison, Chairman of the International Network for Philippine Studies in Amsterdam in  Netherlands. This was given to a group of Filipino Catholic priests last May 7, 2005.  I have reposted this on the light this will shed light and counter aggresive ideological attacks by reactionary pseudo organizations such as the PDSP, its core leaders Fr. Romeo Intengan and Norberto Gonzales against the national democratic organizations especially those working within the church. I am aware some have been influenced by these ilk and have been confused on the nature and background of  people's organizations. I hope this reading  can be of help in clarrifying things.-  Kalovski Itim

The subject given to me for discussion today is quite general and large. We need to reduce the scope to something more manageable. I propose that we take up the three ideologies that are historically most influential in the Philippines or have demonstrably most affected the Filipino people. These are Christianity, bourgeois liberalism and Marxism.

I use the term ideology, to mean the study of ideas or a system of ideas. For the purpose of our study, I shall make some differentiation of the aforesaid three ideologies at the philosophical level, by referring to their respective basic weltanschauung (world view) and some basic tenets.

We shall not go deep into philosophical questions, like ontology, epistemology, or even ethics as such from any viewpoint. But we shall discuss how each of these three ideologies has taken some material, institutional or social force in the Philippines and how significantly it has influenced and affected the Filipino people.

We may discuss briefly how the ideologies are irreconcilable at the philosophical or theological level and likewise how they are open to dialogue and cooperation. We can discuss how these ideologies have materialized in the Philippines and have resulted in friendly or unfriendly relations among their adherents. The ultimate purpose of the study is to prove that dialogue and cooperation among adherents of different ideologies are possible and desirable, especially at the social level for the common benefit of the people.

I. CHRISTIANITY

Some Christians say that there is a Christian philosophy in several respects but other Christians may say rigorously that Christianity is essentially not an ideology or philosophy but a set of religious beliefs that the best of philosophy cannot totally explain. For instance, how can human reason explain completely the Trinitarian mystery of three persons in one God? At any rate, I think that all Christians hold the view that Christian theology is the rational study of God and related religious questions.

St. Augustine said that it is alright for Christians to avail of philosophy so long as belief in the existence of the Supreme Being is affirmed a priori. Thus, he made use of Platonic philosophy (as interpreted by Plotinus) in order to assert the existence of God prior to all creation and shed light on other fundamental doctrines of the church. Later in the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas in his theological work made use of Aristotle to deal more elaborately with the relations of the divine and the mundane.

From the point of view of Marxists, it is idealism of the objective type to believe in any supernatural being existing objectively and independently of and prior to material reality. Christian believers consider material reality as God's creation. At any rate, they stand for the combination of faith and good works as they follow the first great commandment "to love God above all" and the second great commandment "to love thy neighbor as thyself."

Christianity came to the Philippines with Spanish colonialism in the 16th century. The early Christian fathers acted in the service of the church and the Spanish crown. They served as the chaplains of the expeditionary forces and as missionaries to Christianize the natives and persuade them to accept Spanish colonial rule. In a manner of speaking, it was true that the sword and cross combined to subjugate the people.

The colonialists used divide-and-rule tactics. They recruited native troops from one part of the country to quell the rebellious natives elsewhere. But they also made use of the friars to persuade the natives to submit to the colonial authority. They made use of the catechism, the mass and the confessional box to great effect. They followed the line of reasoning that it was better to colonize and Christianize the natives than to let them be as pagans or as Muslims.

Spanish colonialism could last for so long in the archipelago because of the network of friars in parishes and convents. These provided a widespread base for the development of the central administration in Manila and the galleon trade between Manila and Mexico. The Spanish religious orders gained authority and wealth. A theocracy veritably came to exist.

Within the first century of Spanish colonial rule, the Spanish friars successfully pushed the formal abolition of slavery and the encomienda system. But the feudal system of land ownership by the religious orders and native landlords had already expanded. Serfdom took the place of the pre-colonial system of small scale patriarchal slavery. Corvee labor was required for public works.

The religious orders engaged in works of charity. They used these as the reason and the base for playing a major role in the galleon trade. They made money on the cargo space allocated to them. When agricultural production for export and foreign trade flourished in the 19th century, the religious orders arbitrarily expanded their landed estates and exacted higher rent from the tenants. Thus, the people became outraged.

Before the middle of the 19th century, most of the indios and mestizos that reached the university level studied for the priesthood. But upon the growth of foreign trade, local production and domestic commerce, more students could afford to reach the university to study not only for the priesthood but also for such other professions as law and medicine.

The increase of secular priests among the indios and mestizos eventually led to the secularization movement led by Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora who demanded that the religious orders turn over the parishes to the secular priests. These three priests were garroted in 1872 after having been convicted of the false accusation of masterminding the Cavite mutiny. Their martyrdom ignited an unprecedented wave of national sentiment against the injustice. The moral authority of the colonial authorities, lay and clerical, came into question in the minds of the people.

In the 1880s well-to-do families sent their children to study in Europe for several reasons, like getting a better kind of higher education and avoiding the repressiveness of the state and friar-controlled university. The students who went to Spain started the propaganda movement for reforms within the colonial framework. Although they were reformists, they served as the conveyor of bourgeois liberal ideas from Europe to the Philippines.

In the 1890s the revolutionary current surged in the Philippines. The armed revolution led by the Katipunan of Andres Bonifacio broke out in 1896. It called for separation from Spain. It was inspired by the bourgeois liberal ideas of the French revolution. It stood for national independence, republicanism, separation of church and state, public educational system and the promotion of industry, agriculture and trade.

The Catholic Church hierarchy and the religious orders served Spanish colonialism to the end. But the Filipino secular priests in general were either supportive of or sympathetic to the revolution. Father Gregorio Aglipay joined the Filipino revolutionaries and became the vicar general of the revolution after Bishop Nozaleda sent him as emissary to them.

In both phases of the Philippine bourgeois-democratic revolution, first against Spanish colonialism and then against US imperialism, Filipino priests actively participated by rallying the people to the revolutionary cause and by being the most effective collectors of resources for the revolutionary government and army. After the Malolos constitution was promulgated in 1899, Apolinario Mabini had to propose to the cabinet the suspension of the provision on the separation of church and state for fear that this would prevent the clergy from doing logistical work for the revolutionary movement.

After Spanish authorities surrendered Intramuros (the walled city of Manila) to the US military forces in 1898, the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris under which the US purchased the Philippines from Spain for 20 million US dollars and Spanish corporations and citizens, including the Spanish religious orders, retained their property rights in the Philippines. This was the big compromise between the outgoing and incoming colonial powers.

In the course of the Philippine revolution, the Filipino secular priests came in control of the parishes and the convents abandoned by the friars. After the revolution, the religious orders would recover from their losses by concentrating on their convents and schools and by taking missionaries from the US and Ireland to suit the circumstances of the US colonial rule. The Society of Jesus was quickest at taking in a mix of Spanish, American and Irish Jesuits. The Augustinians and Dominicans were slower in recomposing their religious personnel.

The US colonial administration expropriated large tracts of land from the religious orders for redistribution at a price to the tenants. The religious orders sent a part of their cash income to their Rome headquarters and used another part to invest in big comprador operations run by the rich Spanish families, Roxas, Ayala and Soriano. Thus, the church became a major part of the comprador big bourgeoisie ruling the semifeudal society. To this day the Bank of the Philippine Islands is a major factor of big comprador collaboration between the church and the old Spanish super-rich.

As the US colonial government established the public school system and encouraged Protestant missions to enter the Philippines, the Catholic Church and the religious orders (including new ones from the US) developed their own educational system at various levels. They used both the churches and the schools to retain their role as the dominant church in the Philippines. Through the Catholic schools, they combined in the curricula religious instruction with the subjects of bourgeois liberal education and training.

In the social encyclicals since Rerum Novarum, the Popes present the Church as above Marxism and liberalism or above socialism and capitalism and as being in favor of some idealized medieval guild system. But in Catholic schools in the Philippines, there is in fact a partiality to capitalism and bourgeois liberal ideas, especially in courses in business, accounting, law, economics, political science and other social sciences. The Church believes that the encyclicals would help the members of the exploiting classes to have a social conscience and to cope with the social discontent and mass movements of the working people.

In the second half of the 1930s, the Commonwealth government president Quezon raised the slogan of social justice and offered cooperation to progressive organizations in order to deal with the social discontent and the threat of fascism. Fascist-minded Spanish Dominican friars openly provoked President Quezon when they had the school band play a Spanish fascist march when he visited his Letran alma mater. A fascist-minded American Jesuit also used the Chesterton Guild to make radio broadcasts of anti-Bolshevik propaganda.

During my years in high school at the Ateneo de Manila in the 1950s, the Jesuits there were quite rabid in pushing Cold War propaganda and were proud of the Jesuit-educated Senator Joseph McCarthy of witchhunt notoriety. They called then Senator Claro Mayo Recto a "crazy communist". Jesuit-trained anti-communists like Manuel Manahan and Raul Manglapus were the rah-rah boys of the CIA handpicked President Magsaysay.

I was deeply pleased when Fr. Hilario Lim rebelled against the Jesuit Order and, together with other priests belonging to other religious orders, advocated the Filipinization of the Catholic religious orders. I helped him to speak in the University of the Philippines and other universities. I was very glad to do so because I saw the colleges and universities run by the foreign-controlled religious orders as the hotbeds of the most reactionary ideas, intolerant of patriotic and progressive ideas.

The influence of Catholic thinking extended into the supposedly nonsectarian and liberal University of the Philippines, when I was a student and then a young teacher. The Catholic militants among the faculty and students tended to overreach. At one time, I denounced the authorities in my department for overloading a course on great ideas with the writings of such Catholic thinkers as Cardinal Newman, G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the neo-Thomists Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson, and totally ignoring those of Marx and Engels.

Cardinal Santos and other bishops endorsed the martial law proclamation of Marcos in 1972 and called for giving the latter a chance to undertake "reforms". But I had high hopes that the pro-imperialist and reactionary big comprador-landlord character of the institutional church could be counteracted from within. The Christians for National Liberation (CNL) was then budding forth.

I expected that the CNL could take more courage and strength by availing of the tradition of the revolutionary clergy in the old democratic revolution and the progressive provisions in the social encyclicals of Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. The CNL became a major organization in the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in 1973. By 1974 the progressive clergy was ready to openly support the La Tondeña strike and subsequent strikes and to press Cardinal Sin and other bishops to speak up against the human rights violations being perpetrated by the Marcos fascist regime.

The patriotic and progressive clergy and church people did splendid work in participating in the struggle to expose, oppose, isolate, weaken and overthrow the Marcos fascist dictatorship. They demonstrated that their faith in God is in harmony with their determination and passion to serve the people. After all, the teaching of the church requires that faith and good works must go together.

II. BOURGEOIS LIBERALISM

What Marxists may describe as the philosophy of subjectivist idealism, using the perception or cognition of the individual as the starting point, reached the Philippines mainly in the form of the political philosophy of bourgeois liberalism. This was imbibed by the propagandists of the 1880s and adopted definitively by Andres Bonifacio and other revolutionary leaders in the 1890s through their reading of books about the Enlightenment and the French revolution and liberal constitutions from abroad in order to confront the colonial and feudal situation in the Philippines.

This bourgeois liberalism is more in the tradition of French rational philosophy bannered by Descartes (cogito, ergo sum) than British empiricism. The Cartesian deduction is that God created the world and left it like a clock to function by itself. Whether it is that of John Locke or David Hume, British empiricism is preoccupied with the question of appearance and reality and the aspect of perception in human consciousness. The Lockean type of empiricism presumes a material substratum, while that of the Hume type presumes reality as nothing but the complex of sense data.

At any rate, bourgeois liberalism as it has come to the Philippines upholds the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, science and democracy, freedom of thought and belief, enlightenment and education. Our Filipino revolutionary forefathers drew the ideas of bourgeois liberalism from their original sources in continental Europe. If we look for earlier conveyors of bourgeois ideology other than the reformist propagandists of the 1880s, we can look at the records of the freemasons in the 19th century.

In connection with the French revolution, exponents of bourgeois liberalism divided into two, the Jacobins who were determined to end the ancien regime by armed revolution and the Girondists who wanted to peacefully morph the monarchy into a constitutional one. A similar dichotomy occurred in the Philippines, with Jose Rizal seeking to establish the reformist La Liga de los Compromisarios and Andres Bonifacio the revolutionary Katipunan.

Revolutionary ideology may come from abroad because the revolutionary movement developed there ahead and won power earlier. But it is not only a matter of subjective borrowing from abroad. The ideas must first of all be applicable to the general level of social development and motivate the local revolutionary class and the people to wage revolution. In struggling against the colonial and feudal situation, the nascent bourgeoisie adopted bourgeois liberalism as the guiding ideology rather than Marxism, which then was also available.

It was fine enough that the Filipino people and revolutionary forces pioneered the bourgeois democratic type of revolution in colonial Asia. The Philippine revolution won resoundingly against Spanish colonialism. The revolutionary leaders and government produced political writings and adopted and implemented policies, which reflected the Filipino people's conditions, needs, demands and aspirations for national independence, democracy, social justice and all-round social progress.

But US imperialism intervened and launched a war of aggression against the Philippine republic. To succeed, it used not only superior military power and tremendous economic resources but also ideological and political deception. To justify the aggression, it claimed to bring Christianity and democracy to the Filipino people. It proclaimed a policy of benevolent assimilation. It was monopoly capitalism on the rampage but used the Jeffersonian slogans of liberal democracy to deceive and co-opt the bourgeois leadership of the revolution.

Bourgeois liberalism bifurcated in the Philippines. One was the progressive kind still held onto by those who sought to pursue the revolutionary struggle for national independence. The other was the pro-imperialist kind that became increasingly dominant as the official signboard of the US colonial regime. The false claim to liberalism by the imperialist power had some semblance of truth because it had the leeway to carry out certain changes that appeared to make the Philippines freer and more progressive than under the decrepit colonial and feudal system under Spain.

The US colonial regime established the public school system. It expanded the system of transport and communications. It carried out some amount of land reform, which at first was impressive. It allowed the peasants free movement either to have homesteads in frontier areas or become farm workers in the expanding export-oriented plantations. It opened the mines. Its corporations established some manufacturing enterprises. The US was indeed a modern imperialist power that could make direct investments and impose loans on the Philippines for the purpose of bringing about a semifeudal economy and drawing superprofits from it.

Even after its proclamation of the defeat of the Philippine revolution, the US prohibited the public display of the Philippine flag and suppressed other manifestations of Filipino patriotism. At the same, because the popular demand for immediate, absolute and complete independence could not be silenced, the US kept on promising the grant of national independence on the precondition that the Filipino leaders and people submitted themselves to the new colonial power and fulfilled their training in "democracy".

American teachers came in large numbers to teach in public schools at various levels. The University of the Philippines was proclaimed as a nonsectarian liberal institution of higher learning. In the Philippine Normal School and the regional teacher training schools John Dewey's books were used as textbooks. His utilitarian brand of pragmatist philosophy was thus propagated. It asserts that only through experimentation and practical results can the truth or meaning of a proposition be proven.

The US colonial regime developed the public school system to assure itself of personnel for the expanding bureaucracy and the professions. It also pushed the pensionado system, which involved the sending of Filipino bureaucrats and academics to the US for further education in various professions. Thus, in education, government, politics, professions and other spheres, Filipinos with a pro-US colonial mentality ultimately outnumbered those who held allegiance either to the previous colonial and clerical authorities or to the Philippine revolution.

By 1946 when it granted nominal independence to the Philippines and turned it into a semicolony, the US was confident that it had adequately trained puppets to replicate themselves in the political, economic and cultural fields. A bourgeois liberal constitution had been made since 1935 in the name of a commonwealth government, in preparation for the neocolonial republic. The economy was securely semifeudal, under US hegemony and run by the big compradors and landlords. Politics and the bureaucracy up to the national level could be turned over to the politicians of the big compradors and landlords.

The educational system and mass media spread the ideas, information and entertainment that jibe with the US-controlled semicolonial and semifeudal system. The US uses scholarships and travel grants under US official agencies (e.g. Fulbright, Smith-Mundt, US State Department, AID, etc.) and US private philanthropic foundations (e.g. Ford, Rockefeller, etc.,) in order to influence and control the thinking of the politicians, mass media personnel, academics, cultural workers, the intelligentsia in general and the masses. US commercial films and pop music have a strong impact on the minds of the people.

The "free marketplace of goods and ideas" is the most repeated liberal slogan used by the defenders of the status quo to describe the system. The glorification of the market is founded on bourgeois liberal philosophy and is sustained by the view of Adam Smith that the social good is attained through the invisible hand of self-interest in the market. The semicolonial political system controlled by foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism is called a "liberal democracy". The semifeudal economic system is variably called "free enterprise", "market economy" and the like.

The US and the Filipino puppets play semantical games to deceive the people. From one puppet regime to another, they describe as land reform what amounts to an offer of commercial sale of land at a prohibitive price for the landless poor. They describe as industrialization the establishment of reassembly and repackaging plants to serve domestic consumption as in the 1950s or the export market in current times.

They scoff at the proposal of national industrialization on the basis of local resources as "backward integration" and putting up raw-material mills and sweatshops for low-value added semi-manufacturing for export as "forward integration". Since the neoliberal shift of economic policy stress to "free market' globalization, the puppet regimes have played up the myth of the "free market" to obscure the need for development through national industrialization and land reform.

In the final analysis, the semicolonial and semifeudal system is a system of violence. This includes the daily violence of exploitation in factories, farms and service lines and the conspicuous brutal force for assaulting striking workers and protesting people and for suppressing the people's revolutionary movement. The imperialists and reactionaries justify such violence in various clever ways.

Since the launch of the Cold War after World War II, they have used the spectre of communism as supposedly destructive of freedom in order to justify the anticommunist hysteria and witchhunts and the violent suppression of the patriotic and progressive mass movements. Despite the successful bloody suppression of the people's revolutionary movement in the early 1950s, the US imperialists and reactionaries proceeded to enact the Anti-Subversion Law of 1957 for the purpose of conducting an anticommunist witchhunt. According to its main proponent, Rep. Joaquin Roces, the real main drafters of the law behind the scenes were an American Jesuit priest teaching at the Ateneo de Manila and the political secretary of the US embassy.

As earlier pointed out, a socioeconomic, political and legal compromise or alliance exists between the forces of imperialism and reaction and the institutional church. This partnership provides the widest base for the most effective kind of anticommunist propaganda. In philosophical and theological terms, a close kinship exists between the church and the secular oppressors and exploiters. Of course, the relationship of the ideas and their history need to be examined if we hope for a change of situation or direction for the better.

The anti-communist propaganda of the Cold War and the Anti-Subversion Law prepared the climate for the emergence of the Marcos fascist dictatorship and the persistence of the most reactionary policies against the working people in the post Marcos regimes. Once more in a big way the US-instigated "permanent war on terror" emboldens pro-US bourgeois governments the world over to adopt the open rule of terror under the pretext of antiterrorism and drives the US to unleash preemptive strikes and wars of aggression.

Before, during and after the Cold War, the US imperialists and their puppets have used all forms of anticommunist propaganda, ranging from the crudest military psywar and political rabblerousing to the most sophisticated intellectual and philosophical anticommunist lines of thinking in universities, seminaries and the like. I have mentioned some basic positions and variants in bourgeois subjectivist philosophy. It is not necessary to try mentioning all of them here. They are too many. They are churned out daily by the university presses that publish doctoral dissertations. It is in the nature and method of subjectivist philosophy to be one-sided, fragmentary, self-indulgent, narrow-minded, too shortsighted sometimes and too farsighted at other times.

Certain bourgeois philosophical trends have influenced academics and professionals in the Philippines. They do not spread right away to the mass media and to the masses. But they serve to reinforce the more secular kind of bourgeois subjectivism such as liberalism. They include logical positivism, existentialism, phenomenology, art for art's sake in aesthetics, behaviorism, behavioralism, structuralism, post structuralism, postmodernism and relativism. So much philosophizing has been done in the service of the Cold War and modern revisionism by those who present themselves as Marxists, neo-Marxists or quasi-Marxists but who are actually anti-Marxists.

We can discuss any of the major or minor bourgeois subjectivist philosophies if you can raise the point or question pertinent to our topic today. None of these subjectivist philosophical trends has more influence and effectiveness in Philippine society than the political philosophy of liberalism.

III. MARXISM

As a system of ideas established by Marx and Engels, Marxism has three basic components: the philosophy of dialectical materialism, political economy as critique of the capitalist system and social science revolving around the concepts of class struggle and the class dictatorship of the proletariat. Each component is supposed to have come from the best sources at the time of Marx and Engels.

To develop dialectical materialism, Marx and Engels studied German philosophy, particularly the works of Hegel and Feuerbach. Hegelian dialectics was the best of idealist philosophy as it sought to explicate development, even if through the thought process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, which is to be realized subsequently in history. The problem with this concept of the self-development of thought was that it does not originate from material reality and it ends with a "final perfection" in the form of the "transcendental state".

With the help of the materialist ideas of Feuerbach, Marx turned Hegel upside down to establish the philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism, which recognizes matter as the starting point and which explains development through the contradictions within matter as well as contradictions between matter and consciousness. Engels tried to explain the laws of contradiction in terms of the natural sciences. Marx thoroughly applied the law of contradiction (materialist dialectics) in his works.

To develop Marxist political economy, Marx studied British political economy, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo who recognized labor as the source of value. The labor theory of value is not original with Marx. What is original with him is the penetrating study of the commodity as the basic cell of the capitalist economy and the definition of the theory of surplus value. The surplus value is the unpaid labor from which the industrial capitalist gets his profit and pays interest to the bank and rent to the landowner.

To develop the Marxist social science, Marx and Engels studied French social science (particularly the democratic-minded historians and writers) from which they drew the concept of the class struggle. They developed this further to the level of the concept of the class dictatorship of the proletariat. They asserted that the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (the bourgeois state) must first be overthrown in order to establish the class dictatorship of the proletariat (the socialist state).

According to a labor historian, the acclaimed founder of the Philippine trade union movement Isabelo de los Reyes came back to the Philippines at the beginning of the 20th century from his imprisonment in Barcelona, bringing with him the works of Marx and the anarcho-syndicalists. At that time, Marxism was already the dominant trend in the European trade union movement. But it would take some decades before Marxism came to be adopted by a definite Philippine organization as the ideological guide to action.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was first established by Crisanto Evangelista and other working class leaders in 1930. It categorically adopted Marxism as the revolutionary guide to action. It was inspired by the Bolshevik revolution and the Third International. At the same time, it was well founded on the circumstances of the Filipino people and achievements of the Philippine working class movement. It directed the proletariat and the people to fight for their rights and interests.

Like the early Christians persecuted by imperial Rome, the Filipino communists were persecuted by the colonial regime of US imperialism. A few months after the founding of the CPP, the colonial authorities disrupted a peaceful mass rally of the workers and urban poor. Then, they falsely accused the CPP leaders of sedition and had them arrested, imprisoned and convicted for sedition. They banned the CPP until President Quezon of the Commonwealth government agreed, for the sake of promoting his call for social justice and supporting the international popular front against fascism, to release the CPP leaders and allowed the CPP to operate legally in 1937.

Even when it was banned, the CPP did everything it could to develop the mass movement of the workers and peasants. It continued to do so after regaining legality in 1937 and going into a merger in 1938 with the Socialist Party headed by Pedro Abad Santos. When they occupied Manila in 1942, the Japanese fascists arrested and murdered Evangelista and Abad Santos, respectively chairman and general secretary of the merger party of the CPP and SPP.

The people's army led by the merger party was patriotic and independent of the other guerrilla forces who had sworn allegiance to the US within the USAFFE framework and who were ordered by MacArthur to wait for the return of US military forces. It fought the Japanese occupation fiercely. It carried out land reform. It established democratic organs of political power up to the provincial level in Central Luzon.

But upon US reconquest of the Philippines, the US puppet troops viciously attacked the revolutionary forces and people, despite the declared policy of the merger party to welcome the return of the Commonwealth government and participate in the neocolonial republic to be established. The US imperialists were hell-bent on retaining and expanding economic, political, military and cultural control over the Philippines under the cover of the nominal grant of independence.

The merger party launched what it called an all-out armed struggle to win power in two year's time. The US-propped puppet government broke the backbone of the armed revolutionary movement in the first two years of the 1950s. In 1957 it enacted the Anti-Subversion Law in order to destroy every trace of Marxist ideology, politics and organization by penalizing any vestige, substitute, extension or successor of the CPP. But conditions in the Philippines continued to deteriorate at the expense of the working people and broad masses due to the oppression and exploitation perpetrated by foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

The patriotic and progressive mass movement, generated by the forces of the workers, peasants, youth, women, professionals, religious and others, became resurgent in the 1960s. In 1968 the Communist Party of the Philippines was reestablished under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and on the basis of opposing modern revisionism, rectifying errors in the history of the merger party and setting forth the tasks for waging revolution.

The reestablished CPP is of the view that it has benefited from the three basic components of Marxism and from the contributions of Lenin, Stalin and Mao to develop them. It has learned from the lessons of carrying out socialist revolution and socialism under Lenin, Stalin and Mao as well as from the negative lessons of revisionist betrayal. It considers as matters of the utmost importance Mao's penetrating analysis of the law of contradiction, epistemology and social practice and his theory of continuing revolution under proletarian class dictatorship to consolidate socialism, combat revisionism and prevent the restoration of capitalism. .

However, in terms of the class analysis of Philippine history and current circumstances, the reestablished CPP considers as an advance on its predecessor CPP and the merger party of the CPP and SPP its explication of the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions, the need of a new type of national democratic revolution led by the proletariat, the friends of the revolution such as the toiling masses and the middle social strata, the enemies such as the exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords, the basic tasks of struggling for national liberation and democracy and the socialist perspective.

The CPP has been able to strengthen itself ideologically by upholding and applying Marxism-Leninism, politically by pursuing the general line of new democratic revolution through protracted peoples war and organizationally by adhering to the principle of democratic centralism. It has overcome errors and shortcomings through rectification movements and criticism and self-criticism. It has also surmounted tremendous odds through hard work, arduous struggle and sacrifices.

It has succeeded in building its own nationwide organization among the toiling masses, the people's army, the democratic organs of political power, the mass organizations and various types of alliances. It has prevailed over a 14-year fascist dictatorship that aimed to destroy it as well as over succeeding regimes. It has prevailed over the ideological, political and military attacks unleashed by all these puppet regimes under US direction.

Sometime ago, the imperialists, their puppets and other camp followers have claimed that the history of humankind has reached its end in capitalism and liberal democracy and cannot go any further towards socialism. They have obscured the work of the modern revisionists in undermining and destroying socialism for decades and exaggerated the role of Reagan and the Pope in this regard.

They have gone so far as to claim that the success of neocolonialism in undermining and negating the national independence of the backward countries has rendered futile the struggle for national independence against imperialism, its neoliberal pretence of "free market globalization" and its neoconservative drive for wars of aggression in a bid to impose a Pax Americana on the people of the world in the entire 21st century.

Let me say with scientific certitude and revolutionary optimism that so long as the people are oppressed and exploited they will resist and fight for a new and better world. They will fight for national liberation, democracy and socialism. Indeed, as oppression and exploitation are now worsening, the people's resistance is steadily spreading and intensifying throughout the world.

IV. RELATIONS OF MARXISM, CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERALISM

In this concluding part of my presentation, let me discuss how Marxism, Christianity and liberalism can be related to each other in certain terms. To facilitate my discussion, let me proceed from the viewpoint of Marxism. I think that you expect that from me.

Marxists recognize that Christianity, liberalism and Marxism have appeared on the high road of civilization in that historical sequence in the world and in the Philippines. Each of these is supposed to offer something radically new and progressive relative to something old and reactionary in a certain period of history.

Christianity asserts the dignity of the human person, freedom of conscience and love of and service to others. These are principles that made Christianity radically new and progressive relative to those of the period of slavery. But Christendom and its theocratic presumptions became suffocating relative to the advance of science and the Enlightenment, the rising aspirations of the bourgeoisie and the common people who began to demand a new society, the separation of church and state and a comprehensive definition of rights, including the freedom of thought and belief.

In Philippine history, Christianity has had its positive and negative manifestations. Marxists acclaim the secularization movement and the Gomburza martyrdom, the partisanship of the Filipino secular priests to the Philippine revolution, the Christians for National Liberation, the outstanding resistance of the priests, nuns and church people against the Marcos fascist dictatorship and their continuing participation in the struggle for national liberation and democracy. These are in contrast to the long colonial history of the Catholic Church and its continuing institutional service and attachment to the secular powers of the semicolonial and semifeudal society.

Marxism appreciates the progressive role of the bourgeoisie against feudalism in world history. It honors the revolutionary bourgeois liberalism that guided the old democratic revolution. It continues to consider as a basic force of the revolution the urban petty bourgeoisie, which advocates a patriotic and progressive kind of liberalism. However, it upholds the leading role of the proletariat in the new democratic revolution. It condemns the pro-imperialist and reactionary kind of liberalism. It criticizes and repudiates bourgeois rule and the bourgeois concept of freedom.

In bourgeois liberalism, the democratic rights and freedoms are attributed to the individual in the abstract. The difference between exploited and exploiting classes is glossed over. The difference between the ownership of the means of production and the ownership of the means of subsistence is obscured by the generalized right to own property as means to pursue happiness. The difference between oppressor countries, as colonialists and imperialists, and the oppressed peoples and nations, is not at all taken into account in the bourgeois bill of rights.

What Marxism requires is that aside from guarantees for the rights of the individuals and groups there must be guarantees for the rights of the exploited class of individuals against the class of exploiters. Further there must be guarantees for the rights of the entire people or nation against imperialism, neocolonialism and colonialism. Marxists fight for a new state and new constitution that guarantees freedom from oppression by a class, state and foreign oppressors.

It is already well proven in history that Christians, liberals and Marxists can live together, dialogue and cooperate with others for the common good of the people. They can enjoy in common the freedom of thought and belief. They can coexist without giving up their distinctive philosophies and beliefs. In the course of the new democratic revolution, the CPP has been leading the process of building various revolutionary forces (people's army, organs of political power, mass organizations, alliances etc.) in which Marxists, Christians, liberals and people of other persuasions live in harmony and cooperate. They can stand on the same common social ground and negotiate and agree on social, economic, political and cultural guiding principles and policies that are beneficial to all.

In recent times, they were able to unite against the Marcos fascist dictatorship, oppose its grave human rights violations and overthrow it in 1986. Once more they were able to unite against the corrupt Estrada regime and removed it from power in 2001. Right now, they are considering how to oust the Arroyo regime. They can agree on the most resolute and militant course of action for the good of the entire people. They can go as far as overthrow the current unjust ruling system and replace it with a patriotic and democratic government.

It is possible, desirable and necessary for Marxists, Christians and liberal to dialogue, cooperate and work together in the struggle for national liberation, democracy, social justice and all-round development. Those who do not comprehend or who lag behind in comprehending this proposition can be persuaded through patient reasoning. There are no other methods than information, education and well-reasoned persuasion for raising the level of common understanding and cooperation.

But of course there are rabid anti-communists, pro-imperialists and die-hard reactionaries. If their position is a matter of conviction or opinion, they have the right to hold on to it and there is no other way to deal with them but through debate or dialogue. It is an entirely different matter if they wield and use state power to suppress the Marxists and other people. The problem of armed counterrevolution is different from counterrevolutionary thinking and has to be dealt with differently.

But even when there is already a clash of arms, peace negotiations are possible. Thus, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) has agreed to undertake peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). The substantive agenda includes respect for human rights and international humanitarian law, social and economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms and the end of hostilities and disposition of forces.

If the pro-imperialists and die-hard reactionaries succeed in scuttling the peace negotiations, it only means that they want to settle the civil war through the application of the so-called purely military solution. They are carried away by the Bush line of permanent "war on terror". The revolutionary forces and people have to prepare against the worst in order to be able to hope for the best. ###

Note:Pao Yu will be visiting the Philippines on May 9 to give an update on the situation in China. She will be reading her paper re: Mao's Legacy in China's Current Development sponsored by the International League of People's Struggle (ILPS) - Kalovski Itim

A Chinese worker said, "This is not socialism with Chinese characteristics as Deng Xiaoping told us. Instead, what we have here is capitalism with Chinese characteristics."

A Chinese peasant said, "When Chairman Mao warned us about the restoration of capitalism, we really did not understand what he was talking about. Now we do."

In China & Socialism -- Market Reforms and Class Struggle , Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett argued successfully why the so-called "market socialism" in China is in fact the restoration of capitalism, and that China's economic Reform of the past twenty-five years can not serve as a socialist model of development for other less developed countries. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett's research on this topic in current literature (in English) is very thorough and includes perspectives from the Left liberals and some progressives, who had mistaken China's economic development since the Reform as socialist. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett also give a detailed and accurate account of the Reform itself from 1979 to the present.

Hart-Landsberg and Burkett give credible reports on how the capitalist restoration in China has dismantled the social welfare system and other protections the working population enjoyed before the Reform, and thus resulting their tremendous hardships and sufferings. They also report how workers and peasants in China have resisted the Reform, and the different ways by which they have fought back.

Hart-Landsberg and Burkett's book and other studies listed in their references give us an overview on the West's (mostly the US) current debates on China's Reform. These debates are timely, because workers, peasants, and intellectuals in China have themselves been actively engaging in similar debates.

However, I do not agree with Hart-Landsberg and Burkett on their view expressed in the "Historical Context for Post-Mao Economic Reform" (27-30);this view is inaccurate and inconsistent with the rest of their analysis. The reasons Hart-Landsberg and Burkett state in the "historical context" for the post-Mao Reform, are the very same excuses that Deng and his supporters used to embark on their capitalist restoration. If we were to agree with Hart-Landsberg and Burkett's negative evaluation of the socialist period (1949-1979), why would it even matter to those on the Left, whether the current development in China is socialist or capitalist? And more importantly, why would workers and peasants in China fight so heroically in the last twenty-five years against the Reform that has deconstructed socialism?

Capitalism, as it has developed in China in the two and half decades, has its distinguished characteristics and is a product of China's past: – the long feudal history, over a century of foreign domination that condemned China to a semi-feudal and semi-colonial status - and the 1949 revolution. The radical changes in post-revolution society and the legacy of Mao stand out as the most important factors affecting China's current development. It was the suffering endured and struggle engaged by the Chinese people from 1840 on that made the revolution of 1949 a reality. It is the legacy of those years between 1949 and 1979 that has played a determinate role in shaping China's current development. Without an understanding of this time period and the legacy it has left, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to understand the current class struggle taking place in China. China'ssocialist past and Mao's legacy makes its current situation different from other less developed countries, and I believe it will continue to have a dominant influence on its future development.

While Hart-Landsberg and Burkett contribute much to our understanding of China's development in the past two and half decades, I believe they are mistaken in their evaluation of China's past. In response, this essay will discuss the following: I) the origin of Deng's Reform-using labor reform as an example, II) Mao's legacy, and III) the relevance of China from the Left perspective.

I) The Origin of Deng's Reform

Deng Xiaoping seized power after Mao's death and formally began his Reform after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in December of 1978. When Hart-Landsberg and Burkett explain how Deng began the Reform and how the capitalist restoration has continued for the past twenty-five years, they searched for reasons beyond personal greed and explained that the capitalist restoration, once started, generated "structural contradictions" that have kept it going. We, of course, have to look for reasons other than personal greed to explain the political, economic, and social development in China or in any other countries; however, Hart-Landsberg and Burkett seemed to imply that the Reformers did not have a clear idea about their Reform programs and that they indeed have been "crossing the river by touching the stones" – a famous saying of Deng Xiaoping and – and once the Reform got started it seemed to generate enough contradictions to keep it going.

However, if we look into the history of struggle in China, we would reach a very different conclusion. Deng's Reform programs--the dismantling of the Commune, the privatizing of state-owned enterprises, the Labor Reform, the opening up of the economy to foreign investment, and many others--all have their origins long before 1979. Deng and his predecessor and mentor, Liu Shaoqi, tried repeatedly to institute these programs since the 1950's. Therefore, contrary to what Deng openly said, the Reform that began in 1979 not only had a clear direction but also a well-planned road map.

One example of this plan is the history of the post 1979 Labor Reform that Hart-Landsberg and Burkett documented. Contract Labor instituted in 1986 was part of the overall Labor Reform that abolished the permanent employment system in State-owned enterprises, and it has its origin in the 1950's. My co-author and I wrote the following in "Labor Reform - Mao vs. Liu – Deng" in 1993: … The Labor Contract System, implemented since the beginning of the Reform, did not originate with the current reformers. As early as the 1950's Liu Shaoqi began advocating the advantages of the Contract Labor System. An essay from the recently published Labor Contract System Handbook revealed the history of Liu's attempts to institute temporary contract workers in state owned factories. The essay stated that in 1956, Liu sent a team to the Soviet Union tostudy their labor system. Upon its return, the team proposed the adoption of the Contract Labor System modeled after what the Soviet Union had adopted. However, when the changes were about to take place, the Great Leap Forward started, thus interrupting its implementation. The essay continued in stating that in the early 1960's Liu again attempted to change the permanent employment status by adopting a "two-track system," enterprises were to employ more temporary and fewer permanent workers, and the mines were to employ peasants as temporary workers. Then, in 1965, the State Council announced a new regulation on the employment of temporary workers, indicating that, instead of permanent workers, more temporary workers should be hired. The regulation also gave individual enterprises the authority to use allocated wage funds to replace permanent workers with temporary workers. Again, according to the author of this essay, the Cultural Revolution interrupted Liu's effort to reform the labor system, and, in 1971, large numbers of temporary workers were given permanent status. Although Liu could not fully implement his labor reform, he had "experimental projects" going on here and there, and before the Cultural Revolution began, large numbers of temporary workers had been hired. The author of Labor Contract System Handbook expressed his regrets that these earlier efforts to institute labor reform failed, and he stated that if there had not been the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, it would have been possible to carry out these Labor Reform long before the current time.

In fact, Liu-Deng and their allies had a plan to develop capitalism in China since the 1950's. The afore-mentioned Labor Reform was only one of the many projects they prepared to carry out. Their plan to develop capitalism in China before 1979 consisted of projects to be implemented in every economic, political, social, and cultural sphere. This short essay only allows a brief discussion of one of many projects. The purpose of this discussion is to show the current class struggle in China so carefully documented by Hart-Landsberg and Burkett has its origin. From what to be discussed below, it is not difficult to understand from this one example of Labor Reform how Deng's Reform was diametrically opposed to that of Mao's. That was and is the precise reason for the past and current class struggles in China.

II. Mao's Legacy

As Deng and his supporters began their 1979 Reform, they denounce, China's mass movements in general and the Cultural Revolution in particular. The Reformers attributed, though not openly, what they called the "calamity" of the Cultural Revolution to Mao's declining years, implying that the aging Mao could no longer think clearly. At that time, they were not yet questioning Mao's many other contributions before 1966. As the Reform gathered steam in the later part of 1980s, Deng and his supporters began attacking the Great Leap Forward, the formation of Communes, as well as the 1956 transfer of ownership of the means of production in industries to the State. Their attacks also included the permanent employment system in State-owned enterprises. For awhile, the attack , though not openly, went as far back as the Land Reform (1949-1953); therefore, limiting Mao's contribution solely to his role in winning the Chinese Revolution in 1949.

What has been most interesting, however, is that while denouncing all the major achievements during the socialist period, and eagerly demonstrating how they had hurt China's economic development, to this day, they have never been able to publicly denounce Mao. Mao's portrait still hangs in the most prominent place in Tiananmen Square,in all public offices, schools, and in workers' and peasants' homes. Recently, more and more people, including some lower level government officials, are wearing Mao's button to show their allegiance to Mao. So what exactly is Mao's legacy, and why has Mao become more popular today after two and half decades of Reform? Why have the Reformers been so eager to denounce all mass movements, particularly the Cultural Revolution? These questions can be answered by going back to examine how class struggles played out in China before 1979. In the example shown above, Liu's Labor Reform was blocked more than once by the mass movements. In addition to mass movements, there were also other positive steps taken to resist Liu's effort to institute changes in employment policies of State enterprises. The positive steps taken were to reform the labor system in State enterprises, so that wage labor could eventually be phased out, and labor power would cease to be a commodity. Here again, in "Labor Reform - Mao vs. Liu – Deng": As opposed to Liu's attempts to institute contract labor, the Anshan Constitution was the most serious attempt made to change the organization of work and the labor process in the work place. The workers of the Anshan Metallurgical Combine took the initiative to lay out new rules to change the existing operation of their work place. On March 22, 1960, Mao proclaimed that these new rules should be used as guidelines for the operation of state enterprises, and named them the Anshan Constitution. The Anshan Constitution contains the most fundamental elements as well as concrete steps in revolutionizing work organization and the labor process of state owned enterprises. There are five principles in the Anshan Constitution: (1) put politics in command, (2) strengthen the party leadership, (3) launch vigorous mass movement, (4) systematically promote the participation of cadres in productive labor and of workers in management, and (5) reform any unreasonable rules, assure close cooperation among workers, cadres, and technicians, and energetically promote technical revolution. The principles in the Anshan Constitution represent a spirit, which lead toward the direction of eventually phasing out the wage labor. In the essay, we went on to say that before the Cultural Revolution began, factories only paid lip service to the Anshan Constitution. Management in State-owned factories did not see any need to change and workers were rather passive; they were content with their State endowed privileges and benefits and assumed that the conditions of their employment were there to stay. In addition, we stated that the political struggle within the Chinese Communist Party during this period over the direction of the transition was reflected in the factory by changes in wage and employment policies: At times, policies issued from above pushed the implementation of the piece wage rate and expanded the employment of temporary workers. Then, often during mass movements, these policies were criticized and reversed. Before the Cultural Revolution, however, workers did not comprehend the reasons behind these reversals of policies. They were not aware that Liu had made numerous attempts to abolish permanent employment status. Without the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Liu and his supporters might have succeeded in their attempts to repeal the laws that protected the state employees. If that had been the case, permanent employment status and other benefits endowed to state employees might have become history decades ago. When workers participated in the mass movements in the 1950's and 60's, their class consciousness was gradually raised; but workers did not realize, until the Cultural Revolution, that class struggle continued after the judicial transfer of the ownership of the means of production to the state. It was during the Cultural Revolution -- a period of intensive political struggle in the factory and in society at large -- that many crucial issues were raised. Workers and cadres openly discussed and debated many other important issues relating to wages and benefits and labor processes in factories, such as material incentives, cadres' participation in production work, workers' participation in management, and what constituted unreasonable rules and regulations. Through these debates, State enterprise workers grasped the meaning of "putting politics in command" and other principles in the Anshan Constitution. The kind of labor system a socialist country adopts is only one of many major issues regarding the direction and nature of a socialist vs. capitalist transition. Questions regarding the transition's direction existed before 1979 and they still exist in all political, economic, social, and cultural spheres in China today. While this short essay does not allow a more comprehensive overall analysis, we can understand how programs in transition toward socialism are diametrically opposed to programs in transition toward capitalism from the example of the labor reform. Programs, or projects, in transition toward socialism are completely different from the programs in transition toward capitalism, as are the methods of implementing them. During the socialist period, programs were carried out by mass line and often through mass movements. The meaning of mass line is rather simple. It means involving those who are directly affected by the program. When policies were formulated, cadres were urged to talk to the masses, take surveys, or even live with them for periods of time. When policies were implemented, cadres engaged the masses in discussions, debates, campaigns, and protests. All major changes in China during 1949-1979, including the Land Reform, were accomplished through mass campaigns/movements. In the past, mass movements provided the only opportunity for the masses to validate government policies. Policies so validated by the masses had a better chance to succeed. Clearly, however, there were plenty of cases, when "mass line" in practice did not match the ideal described. Instead of soliciting opinions and ideas from the masses, cadres often saw themselves as carrying out orders from above. Whenever cadres failed to follow the mass line, commandism and bureaucracy inevitably occurred. In the past, mass movement was also a vehicle for the appropriation of new ideology. During Land Reform the new appropriated ideology was: "It is wrong for landlords to take rent (the product of the peasants' labor) from the peasants. Rent is a form of exploitation." Using mass movements to appropriate new ideology helped turn the logic of exploitation upside down and gave moral validity to policies that would right past wrongs. It is not unlike what anti-war demonstrations have done in the past three years to undo the logic of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The only difference is that the ideology appropriated during China's past mass movements came directly from the center of power while the ideology of the anti-war demonstration came from the protesters themselves. Critics charge that during mass movements, ideas were often imposed from the top, and that such ideas had little relevance to the problems and concerns of the masses. It is a valid criticism in that workers and peasants oftentimes had a difficult time grasping the meaning of ideas, if they were detached from their reality, let alone adopting or owning them. This happened during the latter part of the Cultural Revolution and possibly happened in other mass movements as well. When it did happen, open discussion and debate disappeared and indoctrination set in, discarding the practice of the "mass line". However, overall, mass movements during 1949-78 politicized the Chinese population. One of the most important legacies of Mao is that he believed that mass participation is the only way to prevent the party bureaucrats from hijacking the transition and turning it to capitalist without workers' and peasants' knowledge and resistance. With the practice of initiating mass movements, Mao was able to communicate his beliefs to the masses at large in the process. In contrast, all of the Reform programs since 1979 were implemented by passing laws and issuing decrees/regulations strictly from above. In the early stages of the Reform, the Reformers introduced material incentives, such as piece wage rate and bonuses, because Deng and other Reformers believed that material incentive would increase competition among workers, thus promoting efficiency and productivity. Workers in State enterprises, however, were very suspicious, because using piece wage rate and bonuses to increase the pace and intensity of work were not new to them. They decided to resist the piece wage rate and, instead of competing for the bonuses, they shared this the extra pay more or less equally (allowing for small differences based on seniority). They used the bonus money instead to compensate for the loss of purchasing power due to inflation. Deng and other Reformers could not, as long as the workers were able to resist, change the culture of cooperation to the cultural of competition by simply issuing decrees and passing laws from above. Workers knew enough not to take the bribe. Obviously, the Reformers would not dream of getting workers' support through discussion and debates; clearly the programs they wanted to implement would take away workers' rights to work, wages and benefits, and to make decisions about work rules and voice their opinions in the factories. How could any worker be expected to support programs that are designed to intensify their own exploitation and lower their political, economic, and social status to that of wage labor? While workers and cadres discussed and debated issues such as material incentives, employing temporary workers, and the Anshan constitution in factories, in the countryside, commune members discussed and debated other issues, such as breaking up the Communes by contracting land to individual peasants. Through these discussions and debates, major issues regarding the direction of the transition became clear. These debates reflected the contradictions of the time, and those contradictions reached a new height during the Cultural Revolution, when the class struggle became fierce, resulting occasionally in fights and even violence. Any evaluation of the Cultural Revolution must be grounded in this reality. If the Cultural Revolution had not taken place, Liu-Deng and their supporters would have been able to carry out their capitalist programs in the 1960's instead of the 1980's. Attempt to evaluate the Cultural Revolution without recognizing the fierce struggle at that juncture of China's post revolution society would mistakenly lead us to the Right's assertion, that it was a political move by Mao based on a personal vendetta against his opponents in the Chinese Party out of sheer madness and desperation. An increasing number of people in China are now rejecting the authority's interpretation of the Cultural Revolution, and many have come to understand that, although the Cultural Revolution had its excesses and mistakes (all of which require careful investigation) it was, as Mao said and now many in China have come to agree, a practice or an exercise to prepare for the real struggle that was to come. The transformation of China's proletariat and peasants in the previous three decades before the Reform, although still in its beginning stages, was significant. When the Reform began, although workers and peasants did not have a good understanding of what a full pledged capitalist restoration would be like, they did not face Deng's Reform with total ignorance. They understood the issues and were equipped with the experiences accumulated from past struggles. The class struggles described by Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, are in fact a continuation of the struggles of the past. The Reformers have good reason to denounce all past mass movements and prohibit any new ones from taking place. Deng and his supporters firmly believed that the demonstrations in major cities all over China in the spring 1989 had to be suppressed by any means necessary. The bloody suppression sent a chilling message to those who thought that open demonstration, like mass movements of the past, could be an avenue to express their frustrations and vent their anger. As stated above, one of Mao's most important legacies is that through mass movements, people become politicized. People of all walks of life had and still have much to say about government polices. But China's current regime has gathered tight control over the press and other forms of mass media; unlike the past, where people could freely express their opinions in big character posters (dazibao) the Chinese people in the past two and half decades have not had means of open expression. Without any means to openly express themselves, people have found ingenious ways to let voices be heard. One popular method is making up verses and sayings and circulating them privately. Most of these verses/sayings creatively speak the minds of those who made them up, as well as those who pass them on so they can be widely circulated. Some of them are very long and complex – here are two short ones that have remained popular: On corrupted government officials: "If you were to line up all the high level government officials and shoot every other one you would still let many guilty ones go free." On smashing the iron rice bowl: "Chairman Mao gave us a rice bowl, Deng Xiaoping drilled a hole in it, the capitalists connected a siphoning tube to the hole, and Jiang Zemin shattered the bowl into pieces." When Deng said that the Reformers were "crossing the river by touching the stones," he tried to impress on those who clearly remembered Deng's line in the past, and how it had been criticized. It seemed to be a deliberate effort on Deng's part to imply that the Reformers did not have a set of well thought out programs to implement. Thus, there was no need for people to be alarmed. Another saying of Deng's is "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black of white. If it catches mice, it's a good cat." The black cat vs. white cat saying sent the message that politics does not really matter what `s important is that the Reform will develop the productive forces and raise people' standard of living. The Reformers used these sayings as a ploy to deemphasize "politics in command" and "class struggle is the key link". At the same time, they have carried out the fiercest whole scale class struggle against the workers and peasants. I think it is rather interesting to observe how the Left in the United States in recent years has tried many ways to politicize the general public without much success, while the current regime in China has tried their best to de-politicize the Chinese population – their efforts have not been very successful either.

III. The Relevance of China from the Left Perspective.

The representatives of international monopoly capital obviously think China is relevant. They set China up as, in the words of Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, their "poster country" for good reasons. In an era of global crisis and economic stagnation, China has become one country where the economic growth rates have stayed high. Multinational corporations have profited from China by investing their surplus capital and exploiting its cheap labor. Deng's Reform to open up China to foreign goods and investments, and China further liberalizing its economy since its accession into the WTO, came at an opportune time for global monopoly capital. They seized the time to expand to this large piece of virgin land and into what they see as a gargantuan market for their surplus products.

Moreover, the development in China in the past two and half decades has been relevant ideologically to the representatives of the global capital and the ruling class in imperialist countries. The scholars on the Right regard China as one more piece of evidence in their argument that capitalism has won and that history has indeed come to an end. They argue that China abandoned socialism and embraced capitalism to save itself from its turbulent past that left its economy in ruins. Since the Right conveniently possesses the power to interpret freedom and democracy, they have further asserted that capitalism will eventually bring freedom and democracy to the Chinese people.

The question then is: Why should China be relevant to the Left?

After China was on its way to restore capitalism and the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries collapsed, many on the Left lost their confidence that socialism would one day replace capitalism. The Right, on the other hand, had a well-planned strategy to aggressively attack and discredit socialism and proclaimed the triumph of capitalism at a moment when capitalism itself was in deep crisis. In the West, most on the Left had a difficult time defending those former socialist countries; they also had trouble explaining why attempts to institute socialism ended so disastrously. Some on the Left, however, did offer some explanations.

In May 1998 the Monthly Review published a special issue commemorating the 150 year anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, which included an article written by Ellen Meiksins Wood --"The Communist Manifesto After 150 Years." In her article Wood returned to Marx's manifesto to explain the historic "failures" of socialism. She said, "...[W]e should not underestimate the significance of his [Marx's] assumption that a socialist revolution would be most likely to succeed in the context of a more advanced capitalism. In that sense, it could be argued that the ultimate failure of the Russian revolution, which occurred in the absence of those preconditions, fulfilled his predictions all too well" . (Note: Three of us disagreed with her analysis and conclusions and we responded by writing a letter to the Monthly Review editors. I am integrating portions of that letter below.)

What Wood's article represented a good number of people on the Left, who were at a loss to defend the former socialist countries. Since they felt defenseless from the vicious attacks of the Right, they tried to disassociate and unburden themselves from the histories and realities of those countries. In making that choice, they also disassociated themselves from the heroic struggles of the Russian people in winning the revolution, the liberation of Russian people after the revolution, and the achievements made in the early decades of the Soviet Union. They relieved themselves of the burden of explaining or understanding how and why so called communist leaders betrayed the revolution, why a country that began with such great hopes, degenerated into the conditions that we all witnessed, until its final collapse.

Wood chose to explain the failure of socialism by asserting that the former socialist countries did not meet what she called "Marx's prerequisites for a transition from capitalism to socialism..." – an assertion with some rather serious implications. One of these implications is that all former attempts to develop socialism were doomed to fail from the beginning, because those countries did not meet the prerequisites set forth by Marx. It's unfortunate then, that people in the past did not understand Marx's prerequisites, and as a consequence sacrificed their lives for an unattainable goal. It also implies that oppressed people living in less developed countries today, would do well to learn from the mistakes made by revolutionaries in the past and not to engage in any revolutionary struggles lest they repeat them. If we were to believe her analysis and conclusions, then this argument would have the same impact as arguments made by the Right, who debunk Marxism and socialism as utopian dreams.

We responded in our letter:

What Marx did not foresee was the emergence of imperialism. Its dominance changed the landscape… For the most part, imperialism does not develop the productive forces in its "client" countries. In countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Mexico (to name a few), there is no illusion that the exploitation of their labor forces and natural resources will lead to any kind of advanced capitalist development. They are merely pools of disposable workers for low skill, low pay jobs in factories and in fertile fields that agribusiness seized and converted from sustainable agriculture to huge cash crops. The factories manufacture goods and the plantations grow food for export that the native people cannot use or afford. They are environmental dumping grounds that are destroying the land, water, and air. Marx's prediction about capitalism developing productive forces can only be taken in context of the time in which he wrote, and reexamined in the context of the world today. But, as it is laid out in the context of his other work, culminating in his masterpiece Das Capital, his overall analysis of capitalism is still dead on.

Why then, did theSoviet Union collapse? Why is China restoring capitalism? These are heavy questions, ones that require further study of concrete history. The lack of advanced capitalist development in those countries may well have been a factor. It is not, however, the only or most important one.

If the Left in the West indeed believe that the development of productive forces is the precondition for socialism, what should the Left tell people in the less developed world who have suffered even more severely in the past two and half decades when the imperialist countries with the help of the international financial and trade organizations shifted the burden of global crisis to them through the so called globalization? Should the Left in the West tell them not to move forward even when the conditions for revolution are already there? Should they be warned to hold everything in place because according to Marx they have not yet met the preconditions for socialist transition and so they should wait for their brothers and sisters in the advanced countries to take the lead?

Later we were encouraged to read Harry Magdoff write -- "A Note on the Communist Manifesto " in the same issue: ...in view of the way capitalism has spread throughout the world... it is essential that the vision of socialism focus on a social transformation which will put first and foremost: the empowerment and meeting the basic human needs of the poorest, the most oppressed, and disadvantaged. The Chinese people, before the 1949 revolution were among the poorest, the most oppressed, and disadvantaged. Chinese peasants suffered thousands of years under the cruel land tenure system of feudalism, that entitled landlords to take all (if not more) of the agricultural surpluses through exorbitant rent on their land and usury interests on their loans. In more recent history, the Chinese people suffered more than one hundred years of war imposed upon them by imperialist aggressors. The 1911 revolution, led by the bourgeoisie, did not terminate the land tenure system, nor did it lead to any economic development. China remained weak and defenseless against foreign aggression. The founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 brought hope to the China. The Chinese people, under the leadership of CCP in a coalition with the Kuomingtang (KMT), fought eight long years against Japanese invasion and occupation and finally won the war against Japan in 1945.

In June 1945, on the eve of the victory against Japan, Mao wrote "The Foolish Old Man who Moved the Mountains." He used an old Chinese folklore as a metaphor, showing the Chinese people that the two big mountains blocking their way and pressing down upon them were imperialism and feudalism. He urged the Chinese people to learn from the foolish old man who proved that he could move the two mountains, one shovelful at a time, to work as diligently to dig their way out from under the oppression of these two big mountains.

In the next four years, the Chinese people, under the leadership of the CCP, won the revolution. And during the 30 years of socialist construction that followed, China was able to achieve rapid development in agriculture, industry, transport, and construction. The annual growth rate for agriculture, industry and transport, and construction grew at the average rates of 3.4%, 9.4% and 10.7%, respectively during the period of 1952 and 1978.

China was able to develop both its heavy and light industries and lay the foundation for long-term and sustainable growth. It achieved in those thirty years, a balanced growth between industry and agriculture, so that the peasants' standard of living in the countryside, though still behind urban residents, improved, narrowing the gap between the two. The peasants worked extremely hard to build the foundation of agriculture, including irrigation and drainage systems, basic infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and land conservation and improvement. The State also gradually reduced agricultural taxes, improving the terms of trade in favor of the agricultural sector, and increased State investment in large agricultural infrastructure, such as the Red Flag Canal and Yellow River Project among many others.

One of the most important accomplishments in those 30 years, was that by the end of the 1970's, even though China was still a poor country, it was able to raise the welfare of its population at large. In that relatively short span of time, indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality, nutrition levels, and literacy rates in China, were closer to those of developed countries than of the underdeveloped countries. China was able to make those accomplishments in the most unfavorable and hostile international environment. China developed its economy by relying on its internal savings, without any outside help. During those years, China was under an economic embargo by the United States and other Western countries. Moreover, China had to spend a lot of its scarce resources to build its military defenses, as it faced constant military threats during the twenty years between the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Hart-Landsberg and Burkett accurately stated that China's development since the Reform cannot serve as a model for other less developed countries. But China's revolutionary victory against imperialism and the socialist development in the thirty years that followed, served and still serves as a model of development for other third World countries. The Chinese people under Mao's leadership did remove the two big mountains pressing down on them, and in the process they empowered themselves. Workers who have been laid-off or forced into retirement in China today still say with full knowledge and confidence, "We built this country. We have a glorious past. No one can deny that." For these reasons China's socialist development is relevant to the poorest, the most oppressed, and disadvantaged people of the world and, therefore, should be relevant to the Left.

In conclusion, Deng's Reform programs implemented since 1979, have their origins in the previous socialist period. The legacies from the socialist period have not only shaped China's current development - they will continue to play a dominant role in China's future, as well as the futures of many other countries, where the poorest, most oppressed and disadvantaged people are engaging in their struggles against imperialism and capitalism. It has been in Marx's name and with Marx's teaching, the workers and peasants in China and elsewhere brought about and will continue to bring great changes and progress. It is their achievements that have made the Communist Manifesto worth celebrating after 157 years. As Mao said, "The road has many twists and turns but the future is bright."

GMA must have been shocked after students to stage a lightning protest calling for her ouster in the midst of the graduation rites at the Cavite State University. GMA reportedly took her composure only to throw her tantrums after it with anger. The governor was apologized for not taking precautionary measures. On the youth part this was seen as a victory in that it got its message across. Of course this is a daring act on the part of Central Student Government of the university and its president Maria Theresa Pangilinan. These was just appropriate since they have just confronted the highest official in the country who insures that anti-people policies are imposed, insures that the country’s economy remain an import oriented, export dependent and debt driven one.

To the graduates, you have many battles to see and experience ahead of you. The most challenging and heroic thing is to join the peasants in the countryside’s. I think it high time for the youth in  urban centers to go enmasse and join them  in their  struggle for land. As summer time comes you have all the time to immerse with them. It is a liberating experience to be with them that cannot be paid by money. Doing integration is indeed a transforming event which we in our student days look for just as going in summer camps. Peasants struggle epitomizes the democratic content of the Filipino aspirations and joining and journeying with is a big contribution indeed. But as of the moment when your parents oppose to such exposure, integration or immersion you can still furthe the peoples cause by garnering huge following among the masses, win over the broadest to oust GMA while continually working among the masses strengthen their ranks. It may be good to visit your relatives, cousins and former  lovers and explain painstakinly the urgency to oust her. We have all the facts to prove it and it would be easy as they will see what's going on now, high prices, high cost of living and many more.

Kalovski Itim Sermon delivered in his class taking into consideration the Gospel of Mark 16:1-8 this afternoon, April 20, 2006

In Mark chapter 16 verses one to eight describes Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James going to the tomb with Salome. There they saw a white man with the stone rolled telling them that Jesus was raised and told them to tell the disciples that Jesus was going ahead of Peter in Galilee. So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, so they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

In our present time, Christians have not really understood what Mark gospel conveys in the resurrection story of Jesus – that saying Go to Galilee / wherein the crucified Jesus iswaiting and even ahead of us! As a matter of fact it has been a debate either to proceed to Galilee or Jerusalem by many until now ,probably by the fact that the two symbolizes peoples option, symbolizes two poles. Many Christians would want to remain in Jerusalem, a symbol of power, of convenience and of luxury.Galilee on the other hand, a symbol of hardship, of a desolate place, of poor people of injustice and unfreedom..