April 30, 2008

Need to elevate the issue of race to class discourse - K.I.


The UCC position on race though progressive in nature is wrought with reactionary implications. Why? While the leaders in the UCC have gone to defend itself under ultra-right Christian political attacks, UCC seems to be playing into opportunism by issuing a memo to discuss the race issue short of discussing class or economic justice among churches. While race is a valid issue and is of important concern within the diasporic world it play secondary to the main issue of class. Such handling of issues not relating the issue of class or economic justice creates gaps and spaces for further ideological attacks by the right, neutralizing attempts to broaden mass base following of Obama.

I strongly disagree with Pastor Wright dichotomizing his response "descriptively" differentiating a pastor and a politician's role. In fact his statement is deceptive. He tries to insulate himself rationalizing his continous political highjacking Obama's campaign. What Pastor Wright is doing is political in nature full with  latent  intentions he only knows. Seems to me, he cannot bare himself to sidestep for a while and give full play to the elections. He seems enthusiastic to join the fray. What is disgusting in this controversy is how UCC have handled this issue in the past weeks.

For me, there is a little difference between a pastor and apolitician. The common thing they have in particular is they share the share living quarters. They live to dine and sleep under one roof - the superstructure.. The difference is, pastors operate within the ideological realm, exercises authority in a  persuasive manner ( speaking in pulpits ) while politicians do  work in courts directly having control over the coercive machinery of the state. Nontheless they work within the interstices of the superstructure, a superstructure that is supported by a mode of production that makes sure to protect the elites.


Dr. Jeremiah Wright NAACP speech [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Sen. Barack Obama statement [1]
Bill Moyers Interview with Dr. Jeremiah Wright [1]

Posted by Kalovski at 19:00:33 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Globalization and the Importance of Upholding Class Struggle - K.I.

I will try to discuss what globalization is all about and some notes to it in relations to the importance of class struggle in the mass movement. I intend also trace in this lecture how civil society diverts the struggles of the people cooptation. Later I would highlight the deontological role of the church in the international solidarity movement.

Globalization is nothing but the extension to almost the entire planet the intensification of all construction that has characterized imperialism since its birth in 1900. Far from being a natural and beneficial process for the whole world, globalization stretches exploitation, domination and repression to its limits, thus preparing the emerges of broadest anti imperialist and anti capitalist revolutionary movement on a world scale as never seen before.

With the rise of imperialism, the circuits of money, commodity and productive capital became internationalized under the dominance of finance capital. During the 20 to 25 years there is a substantial increase in the degree of integration of the world economy particularly the integration of international dispersed production activities. This integration are call functional integration, turns on tightly woven production and trade networks, and was facilitated by global financial markets, new production and transport technologies, and leaps in real time communication capabilities. This greater ability to break down and scatter, and link production processes and serve different market, to diversify production worldwide, and seek out least cost locations for specific products and exploit comparative regional advantages—this ability to undertake a kind of global scan and choice in the pursuit of the most profitable deployment and redeployment of capital—is a trend of “qualitative significance” now we can see that this labor processes is integrated, cheapened and transformed on a global scale . One measure is shifting of its center of gravity for production activities of some global industries to oppressed nations. Generation ago, most of the global shifting of manufacturing activity was concentrated in apparel and consumer electronics. Today more shifting is happening in the field of manufacturing, agriculture, and service activities. In the Philippines for example, today is the proliferation of call center wherein these are third level outfits which do the promotion and after sales support for companies throughout the world given the Filipino proficiency to speak the English language. Undoubtedly acceleration of the spread of productive process was to the upfront rise after the collapse of the Soviet Union and has been promoted through treaties agreements and policies through an aggressive push for deregulation and liberalization. These are definitely seen in the intellectual property rights which the monopolist has claimed proprietary claims over everything in sight, be that in technology, agricultural inputs, seed varieties, pharmaceuticals and genetic material. To state the development of globalization today, there are three elements to its process. First, is the intensification of the process in the oppressed nations with the virtual take over of the national management of Third World economist by the IMF and the World Bank and the imposition of neo-liberal policies and restructuring? But globalization is a more recent development than internationalization, which in no other way represents a new stage of capitalist development as imperialism did for capitalism that is the highest stage of monopoly capitalism. It is also not definitely obliterating rivalry between monopolistic firms or between national-imperialist states, or the division of the world into oppressor and the oppressed nations, rather it is a phenomenon of the heightening of the essential features of imperialism. I see a world economy in which the contradiction between the organization of production at the private ownership level and the anarchy of social production overall is intensifying on the global scale which is subject to the conscious control of the transnational corporations.

Some ideas point to the fact that globalization that territorial –national foundation of capital has lost much of its relevance, meaning the capital has no country. Their point of view is that fast flows of capital across national borders, the emergence of the global assembly line and the Tran nationalization of financial markets have led to a footloose of capital whose structures operate outside the grip of authority nation-states.

 In seeking to maximize profits, capital, according to these, theorist has no loyalty to any state and in globalizing its operation , capital has gained leverage over national states and undermined the ability of the national imperialist state to regulate and manage economic affair as basic unites of the imperialist world economy and rendering the nationality of capital less meaningful. Globalization is accelerating, on the average day, the volume of foreign exchange transactions is about USD 1.5 trillion; flows of new foreign direct investment in 1990 were ten times what they were in 1975, and the increased by more than two and a half times between 1990 and 1995; 40% of the total assets of the 20 largest US Transnational corporations are foreign assets. So how are we to answer the idea of the end of nation-state argument represented in the likes of Martin Khor. Typical to the idea example to his argument it states:

"Expanded the economic and political space in the world for transnational corporations and for the Transnationalizing the national systems of production, distribution and trade and consumption. This Tran nationalizing process has been sought to be achieved by dismantling the power of nation states to mange and intervene in their economy, and in particular diminishing the rights and powers of Third World countries in their local communities. ..The raison de etre for all this… is the restrict or dampen the competitive capacity of the enterprise and productive apparatus of the South in the world that is being globalize in the interest of the Northern transnational corporations."

For all its mobility, capital has neither detached itself from its moorings in A home national market; more detached itself from the superstructure and institutional expression of these moorings, the imperialist national state. Why? The most significant portions and operations of individual, internationalized capitals tend to be based in, and they’re profits generated in or repatriated to, their home base, and their respective national market. Huge concentrations of a fixed capital factories, energy and power facilities of example are sunk in national markets. This is not a post-industrial world, or a post physical asset society that capital cannot easily pull up its stakes and dart from country to country. The home market is where research and development and corporate command and control operations of globalize capital are strategically located.

The home base remains s vital to the activity of internationalized capital, more so, in fact, in an era of heightened global competition. This is true even though there is growing trend toward large transnational corporations entering into various cross country alliances. A growing domestic market is a source of strength and international competitive advantage. Key firms in the home market can exploit economies of scale by lowering costs by producing on a large scale for a large market. They develop strategic network of customers, suppliers, and subcontractors. They gain cost saving from complementary clusters of industries and provide inputs and supplies and raise the overall technological capabilities of the national capital. Material existence of an integrated home base lends coherence and competitiveness to national capital in spite of there is both alliance and rivalry among different units of national capital and within these arrangements.

Capital requires that the national imperialist state act economically and super structurally to guarantee the general conditions under which production and exchange can occur. These conditions include physical infrastructure (harbors, communication systems, etc.) and the basic inputs (like energy); education, job training and skills upgrading for the labor force; management of the economy (through budgetary expenditures, deficits policy, etc.); central banking systems; and so forth. Capital could not function as international capital without these supports. For instance, the postwar expansion of Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry and the German Bundesbank. The imperialist state remains the indispensable guarantor production and social relations through coercion, suppression and cooptation. Capital must maintain and falsify itself in its home base. Indeed, stability in the national market is a necessary condition for internationalized activity, which normally entails risk and national capital tends to pay more attention to stability in their home market than elsewhere. At the same time, capital requires state apparatus or imperialist state and the militant industry to secure the international environment within which it can globally thrive. Individual capitals by themselves cannot generally obtain these conditions of domination whether they involve austerity programs , counter revolutionary terror or both or direct engagement in war . The imperialist state is the guardian of the interest of capital as awhile who arrange bailouts from bankruptcy, negotiating treaties like NAFTA. Seeking to resolve dispute, between capitals, and forging class consensus above individual interest. Imperialist states develop strategic trade, industrial and technology policies to enhance or protect the international competitiveness of national capital. Key industries, like aerospace and high technology are promoted and safeguarded. Modern financial institutions , for all their rapid, cross border, electronic money transfer , remain tied to particular national states and their central banking systems like the Federal Reserve Bank for example as lenders of the last resort. The material reality of distinct national markets to which individual capital is anchored has important consequence. National capitalist will seek directly and indirectly to influence policy direction, issues of governance, and so forth within their home national state in qualitatively want than they do in other countries. For the above reasons, national capital formations and states will tend to be reproduced. It is possible for individual capitals to detach themselves from a base in a particular country and national market. But, one, other capitals (newly generated or migrating inward to the national market) will take their place and two, will take their place and third, those detaching themselves from one base and state will, for all reasons cited above, have to seek the umbrella of another national state which is rooted in another national market. Now if the process of the individual capitals detaching themselves forms a national base were to continue ona massive scale, then a particular capital formation might well disintegrate but globalization as such is not dissolving national capitals and national states. There are no global institutions that functioned equivalent of international states with corresponding authority, resources and power. There are no global institutions that are supranational, meaning above imperialist nations. The International Monetary Fun for example does not assume or take over the overall functions of the imperialist state. It performs more limited and specialized functions although as instruments of imperialism. The IMF and World Bank do become what amounts to economic governing boards in many oppressed nations, especially in their capacity to impose sweeping conditions when they grant loans to the Third World countries. The IMF is not in its essence an institution above nations or one in which imperialist capitals have become effectively blended together, rather, it represents and operating fraternity of imperialist in which one national capital, US Imperialism is dominant. The World Trade Organization is a vehicle for forging and regulating imperialist trade and investment rules but it also an arena of inter-imperialist rivalry. The argument being made here is not globalization without significance in relation to national capital formations and states. Production, trade and finance are more footloose. There is a contradiction between national regulations by the imperialist state and the global economic organization of transnational corporations. In a world economy that has grown more globalize and that compels national economies to adjust and reorganize to maintain fitness and competitiveness, imperialist state economic policy is subjected to various global pressured and constraints. Its scope of effectiveness may be reduced but of course, the institutional control exercised by the imperialist state over the national economy is only relative, social production is not truly regulated. On the other hand, the world imperialist economy does not possess regulatory institutions commensurate with and adequate to this scope and complexity. In short, the anarchy bound up with processes of capitalist development creates new problems of “control”.

The contradiction between internationalized accumulation and the national character of capital, far from being transcended, is intensified. Thus imperialist world economy is a differentiated unity; it is not homogenous world capitalist economy. Capitalist accumulation is internationalized. Capital export is leading edge of the search for profitability. Capital competes on a global place through the competitive introduction of new technologies into the internationalized branches of production, through the competitive movement of capital from one country to another within the same branch of production, through the competitive movement of capital from one branch of production, through the competitive movement of capital from one branch of production to another branch across national boundaries. As a result, there are tendencies toward global norms of production, to stay competitive; capital has to produce at a certain levels of efficiency and toward the formation of average world values and international prices of production that is toward the universalization of social labor, the establishment of socially necessary labor time on a global scale. But these tendencies are not fully realized. They have not led to the creation of a single, global capital formation, in which national markets have no significant particularities, or to a single value/ price systems although there are complex global processed by which value formation takes place on a world scale. This is because of the qualitative differentiation within the world imperialist economy, because of barriers and divisions that are reproduced, because of the very modes of existence of internationalized capital.

Accumulation proceeds through monopoly, specifically the leading and activating role of finance capital and the existence of global monopolistic power relations in technology, finance, and control of natural resources, communications and armaments. It proceeds through rivalry, among corporations, banks etc., and among national imperialist states. And accumulation proceeds through the division of the world oppressor and oppressed nations. These three proceeds through are not historical leftovers of imperialism‘s or capitalism’s beginnings. They are integral to these structures and functioning of internalized capital even as capitalist production grows more globalize. World accumulation is inseparable from power relations. The world imperialist economy is far from being homogenous through and through. There is significant diversity in national and local conditions. The world’s economy’s production relations are differentiated, semi-feudalism and pre-capitalist relations still exist within the world economy, labor is reproduced under different conditions and productivity, labor conditions and wage payments and so on, vary especially as between the economies of the oppressor and the oppressed nations. These are all reasons why despite the existence of the world market, national imperialist economies have relative cohesion and exhibit significant variation. This is why, despite the circulation of goods and labor itself across the globe, there is no equalization of wages and rates of exploitation. The minimum wage in the Philippines is USD 4 per day while in the US it is over UDS 8 per hour. There is no way to explain the phenomenon of super exploitation in the Third World if globalization, the movement of capital and labor etc. have fattened differences. Globalization has obviously not eradicated these differences. Moreover, the differentiation of national circuits of capital is super structurally reinforced. For instance, privileges are granted to sections of the labor force in the imperialist countries while there is IMF mandated wage cutting in the oppressed countries. The global expansion of capitalism is not simple process of homogenization. It involves equalization of differentiation of production processes and disintegration and preservation. Capital constantly seeks to exploit, while it also engenders differentials, this is part of its dynamism and its violence.

But how his violence and dynamism reflects also how it manipulates its control in the superstructure, particularly the integrative state apparatuses, which props up the system to dialectically complement and economic base of infrastructure. In the offensive of capital accumulation is also the offensive of sophistication in cooptation and preemption. Basic to this is the strategic step to give a human face of imperialist globalization. Every major confab of the global economic elite since Seattle 1999 has been met with massive street demonstrations involving tens of thousands from a diverse range of organizations and nations. In the industrialized countries of the North as well as in the underdeveloped South, there is an upsurge in industrial actions by workers and other mass protests by social movements in opposition to neo-liberal policies and their iniquitous consequences. News tells that there were at least two dozen political general strikes in Europe, Latin America, Asia and North America between 1994 and 1997 – more than any time in the 20th century. In the face of this backlash, the agents of monopoly capitalism in government, multilateral agencies as well as in “civil society” are now keen on giving imperialist globalization a facelift to restore its lost momentum and sidetrack the anti globalization mass movements. As Werner Blenk, director of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for the Philippines, rationalizes, “There is growing recognition that unless questions of fairness and equality are more energetically addressed by the international community, the process of international integration may be rejected by increasing numbers of countries”. Even the World Bank (WB) appears willing to accommodate cosmetic changes. In its recent World Development Report, the WB revisits the problem of poverty in the light of over two decades of neo-liberal restructuring of the global economy. Compared to previous WB policy documents on poverty, the latest WDR places great importance of “governance” and “institutions” (i.e. Non – Market mechanism), on “asset distribution” (i.e. equity) and on the “participation” of “civil society” in addressing the problem of poverty although its still falls far short of acknowledging the patent failure of neo-liberalism in eradicating poverty and easing inequality. In fact, it reasserts the primacy of the capitalist market: all other mechanism is merely instrumental to “making marketing work for the poor”. Presently, as a way of reinvigorating the “liberalization” of trade and investments, the WB and the European Union (EU) have been pushing for a “development round” in the World Trade Organization (WTO). They are using the manifest failures of neo-liberalism – the grossly unequal distribution of gain and pains from trade liberalization – as the very excuse for launching a new round. Third world governments are being lured into a fresh round of commitments by promises that the negotiations would focus on third world development concerns. At the same time, Guy Verhofstadt, president of the European Union (EU), has called for “ethical globalization” to address the valid concerns raised by anti-globalization activist. This is the same thinking behind the Global compact purports to provide a “value-based platform” or norms for globalization’s major players. Multinational corporations (MNCs) who sign up to the compact are expected to abide by nine principles, drawn from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO’s Fundamental principles on Rights and Work and the Rio Principles on Environment and development.

To further this UN secretary General Kofi Annan has encouraged all UN agencies to form “partnerships” with the private sector in order to foster “corporate social responsibility” among the verable corporate giants invited by the UN as “partners” in the Global Compacts are Nike, Royal Dutch Shell, Bayer and Rio tinto-all well known for their appalling labor, human rights and environmental records. These companies and over 50 other TNC “partners” are allowed limited use of the UN logo to seal their status as “good corporate citizens of the world” even as the UN admits that it lacks the capacity to monitor their compliance with the compact’s principles indeed, this comes at the end of three decades wherein the global corporate elite, with the aid of the US government, has consistently and steadfastly undermined the UN’s ability to monitor, regulate or in any way circumscribe the power and influence of TNC’s. They managed to do this, in part, through the threat and actual withholding of the US government’s dues to the UN. This has led to the virtual demise of the UN Center on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC), which was originally set up in the 1970’s to monitor and curb the power of TNC’s in domestic political affairs. In the 1990’s, the UNCTC was downsized, absorbed as a division of the UNCTAD and re-oriented towards promoting TNC interests by matching countries with foreign investments. Consistent with UN’s commitment to promoting “globalization with a human face,” the ILO has adopted the slogan “decent work for all”. In particular, the ILO for example in 1998’s Declaration on the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work seeks to promote core labor standards as universally recognized human rights. As far as toothless agreements go, the ILO is often credited for having the best system of supervision and monitoring implementation of human rights instruments. The ILO addressed governments through periodic reports, dutiful recommendations often go unheeded and it does not utilize any form of pressure that can be applied on recalcitrant governments. For example, as far back as in 1980’s the ILO’s committee of Experts has already “noted with regret” the Philippine government’s “very broad and non limitative” application of assumption of jurisdiction over labor disputes in the name of national interest, practically restricting or negating the effective exercise of trade union rights. Despite these findings, these same provisions are still in force in the Philippine labor code today (article 263) not to mention various other restrictive though “unwritten laws and regulations” enforced by capitalist employers, local governments and export zone authorities. Thus “civil society” groups calling for a labor clause to be inserted in trade agreements and administered by either the WTO or the ILO merely serve to deflect and blunt people’s fundamental opposition to imperialist globalization. The question of choosing between which institutions- the WTO or the ILO- should have jurisdiction over monitoring and “enforcement” of labor standards is moot and academic. It is like choosing between your opponent’s mangers or someone who sits outside the ring to serve as the reference in a brawl against Goliath. But what is the real reason for the creation of human face of globalization? It is merely to preempt and co-opt people’s struggle. But lots of social movements has been co-opted and preempted. Their struggle has been blunted. This goes back to the issue of the concept of state and revolution, which Lenin aptly wrote about. Later this debate of state collaboration with regards to the mass movement had split the two parties the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. This also had long been debated to what extent do integrative approach, that is working within the system of the ruling class do the working class and oppressed class participate on? What is the basis for its participation? For me, with my 20 years in the mass movement in the Philippines, the determinant is how strong the critical mass is and to the level of political organization it has achieved. In my country, we have participated now in the last two elections and catapulted progressive leaders from the ranks of peasants and workers in congress. These however do not mean that we abandon the primacy of building mass organizations and mass movement and bases in the rural areas. Through identifying the primary and secondary forms of struggle we have effective in tactically opposing the rottenness of the semi-colonial and semi feudal system in the country and further strengthened the mass movement, primarily among the peasants who comprise 85% of the total population and the 15 percent urban based industrial workers and the 7 percent middle class. The movement has been critical to the civil society and uploaded the importance of painstaking organizing mass movement and class movements. Civil society is non-class movement, it denies the concept of class struggle and interprets state as devoid of class domination and control, operates in static vacuum. This goes back to the classical political theory, notable from Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America and the work of 18th century “Scottish moralist” such as Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and Francis Hutcheson. Tocqueville, for instance, including neighborhood groups, networks of mutual aid and local structures providing collective service. The aim was to foster civility among citizens in a democratic society. The modern version, as simplified by Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik in the Polish resistance of the 80’s seeks to embody the values and interest of social autonomy in the face of the threats of modern state. In other versions it is an anti-statist and anti modernist in the light of the pro-capitalist state’s tendency to destroy social values and harmonious community relations. Civil society therefore is seen as a “counterweight to the state”. To trace further, in Eastern Europe, the antagonism between civil society and state marked its dramatic return in Poland in the mid-80’s with the advent of the workers’ solidarity in the era of Soviet modern revisionism in Eastern Europe. Rather than launching a revolution to respond it what they believe were failures of “socialism” however, civil society leaders sought structural reforms through organized pressured from below. But the pressure was to come from a plurality of independent groups that coalesced under solidarity. Disorder soon caught up with the civil society groups over whether the autonomy, which they represented, would be preserved once they took over the state, considering too, every state’s tendency to demobilize social forces in its attempt to achieve political governance. Civil society also championed the call for economic individualism and freedoms of property – the very same fabric of capitalist society, which the classic civil society doctrine disdains. In France, civil society theorist disrupted capitalism as totalitarian but also distanced themselves from the left whose links to Soviet Revisionism they saw as deeply connected to the totalitarian state. They then sought to reorient civil and political society by relocating the locus of democratization from the state to society, which is represented, by political forms of solidarity, interaction and group life. They also called for the founding of ideological political parties. Like their Polish counterpart, the French theorist notably Pierre Rosanvallon found a reconciliation with both the bureaucratic state and the capitalist class in a bid to win concessions for civil society: with the first, reducing economic demands in exchange for autonomy; the second, rationalizing capital in exchange for self-management and free time.

In Latin America, the long period of dictatorial rule in many countries gave rise to mass mobilizations and popular upsurge and, later the birth of civil society movements. In the drive for “democratization”, civil society turned to political society, i.e. civil society groups became organized political parties. The result of this radical departure from European version of civil society was to devalue movements and associations by political parties. Just in the same, as political parties shunned revolutionary approach to achieving democratization, it was unavoidable for them to enter into the process of negotiation, bargaining and compromise with the authoritarian rulers, first through elections, then to post-elections state reorganization. Civil society theorist Cardoso proposed the conjunction of civil society self-organization and an acceptable albeit reformed state. This reconciliation saved most dictators and torturers of Latin America from the gallows. No, thanks to civil society, no structural change has taken place in most of Latin America.

In the United States, Robert D. Putnam , who formulated the recent version of civil society as gleaned from the civil society praxis in the United States and Italy, emphasizes the importance of horizontal networks of civil society praxis in the united States and Italy, emphasizes the importance of horizontal networks of civil associations as a counterweight to the state. This network, which sustains cooperation, and “civic engagement” that cut across class cleavages include choral societies and bowling leagues. Because he envisions civil society as being “nonpartisan” and not “polarized” to retain its pluralist character, Putnam does not welcome the participation of social movements, non-profit organizations and most of all political parties. Civil society groups, he say, must bridge social and political divisions and remain autonomous. Critics of Putnam point out that civic engagement is essentially a political act, advances a political or even ideological cause and eventually sharpens social cleavages. They also remind him that in fact, most triumphant social transformations have been the product of ideologically driven political parties and social movements. Another thing, Putnam’s postulate may not simply work in a state of repression and tyranny where citizens will have to raise their struggle to the supreme political act- of a revolution. Recent accounts reveal the fact that the “civil society” democratization that emerged in Eastern Europe was not simply the inevitable result of the historic flaws of modern revisions but was also fanned and secretly backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and conservative institutions and foundations in the United States. Huge funds were funneled to several Eastern European media groups and NGO’s operating in the guise of “democratization” in order to accelerate the disintegration of governments and their economic and social infrastructures. The United States’ long drawn and archaic “policy of containment” in the cold war era called for a combination of arms superiority, military encirclement, economic aggression, the launching of covert and overt operations and support for anti- socialist campaigns in order to undermine the credibility of socialist states thus leading to their fall. In Latin American, the civil society-initiated “democratization” movement was also supported as a third way to replace the long era of authoritarian rule in many countries particularly Chile and Argentina. This had to be done as dictatorial regimes, which had long enjoyed strong U.S. Support became America’s liability and their stay in power only fueled liberationist movements and Maoist-inspired armed struggle. In order to thwart the growth of liberationist movements, the United States government promoted the policy of reconciliation with authoritarian regimes, institutions of bourgeois elections as well as symbolic political and economic reforms. In the end, civil society option failed to address the institutional roots of political and social unrest even as the return of authoritarian rule remains in the shadow today.

In the Philippines, some civil society embodies the influence of the European, Latin and American experience although not in the sharpest interpretations that their foreign counterparts have so far crafted. This is especially so in the case of the now-moribund popular democrats “pluralist” concept and the social democrats’ reformism and moderation. What is crystallized in both political shades in abhorrence to any form of class struggle as well as a counter-revolutionary stance? In the tradition of developing a diversity of interpretations and tendencies in the entire civil society movements where “non-partisanship” and political tendencies are strong, both Philippine groups sow further confusion by their highly partisan, elitist and anti-national democratic biases. Actually, they continue to journey in to the level of compromise and opportunism by opting to join state bureaucracies in the guise of instituting reform from within. They have done so since the regimes of Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and now, the Macapagal Arroyo. And so far, they only became part of the elitist and repressive policies that have aggravated the country’s economic and political crisis and oppression- the same conditions that both classical and modern civil society purports to eliminate. In the current stage of modern globalization, it is the same instrumentalities of globalization that implements civil society. Thus, for the church to be effective, it has to recognize the importance of class definitions and struggle. Non-recognition have entrapped the progressives in the church to the whims of the ruling elites and had them ambivalent of this is seen in the writing of Luis Segundo, the Theology for Artisan of a New Humanity, the transformation of the church to New Humanity, the transformation of the church to serve the poor. Upholding class struggle will unshackle the long-standing onslaught of cooptation and preemption. It is on the connection that solidarity movements must also carry on to be critical. Only then, we can be effective in carrying out an ecumenical movement on a broader sense and effective in addressing the root causes of oppression and exploitation. Only then for activist can we carry a vibrant anti-globalization or anti-imperialist movement.

Posted by Kalovski at 00:59:59 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

April 23, 2008

A revolutionary in the epoch of imperialism does not owe their citizenship to their country but to the oppressed classes.

It is good that Che Guevara renounced his nationality in the last letter he sent to Fidel. He was damned right becuase in the epoch of imperialism revolutionaries are internationalists. They are not bound by a country but owe their allegiance to the oppressed classes. Aptly said by Mao, revolutionaries do not owe allegiance to nationalities but to the oppressed proletarian class. Jesus did say it right too in his time when he said in Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free..."( not to the Israelites but to the poor and oppressed!). Here is the letter from Che Guevarra to Fidel in 1965.

Farewell Letter to Fidel

Though Che returned to Cuba on March 14, 1965, his absence from public functions soon excited comment and, as the months went by, became an international mystery. Finally, on October 3, during the televised ceremony of the presentation of the newly established Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Fidel, in the presence of Che's wife and children, read the following letter. Fidel explained that the letter had been delivered to him back in April and that Che had left the timing of its disclosure to Fidel's discretion. He had delayed so long in making it public out of concern for Che's security and, for the same reason, could not divulge his present whereabouts.
________________________________________

Fidel: At this moment I remember many things -- when I met you in Marfa Antonia's house, when you suggested my coming, all the tensions involved in the preparations.

One day they asked who should be notified in case of death, and the real possibility of that fact affected us all. Later we knew that it was true, that in revolution one wins or dies (if it is a real one). Many comrades fell along the way to victory.

Today everything is less dramatic, because we are more mature. But the fact is repeated. I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban Revolution in its territory, and I say good-bye to you, the comrades, your people, who are already mine.

I formally renounce my positions in the national leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank of major, and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legal binds me to Cuba. The only ties are of another nature -- those which cannot be broken as appointments can.

Recalling my past life, I believe I have worked with sufficient honor and dedication to consolidate the revolutionary triumph. My only serious failing was not having confided more in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and a revolutionary.

I have lived magnificent days, and I felt at your side the pride of belonging to our people in the brilliant yet sad days of the Caribbean crisis.

Seldom has a statesman been more brilliant than you in those days. I am also proud of having followed you without hesitation, identified with your way of thinking and of seeing and appraising dangers and principles. Other nations of the world call for my modest efforts. I can do that which is denied you because of your responsibility as the head of Cuba, and the time has come for us to part.

I want it known that I do it with mixed feelings of joy and sorrow: I leave here the purest of my hopes as a builder, and the dearest of those I love. And I leave a people who received me as a son. That wounds me deeply. I carry to new battlefronts the faith that you taught me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever it may be. This comforts and heals the deepest wounds.

I state once more that I free Cuba from any responsibility, except that which stems from its example. If my final hour finds me under other skies, my last thought will be of this people and especially of you. I am thank- ful for your teaching, your example, and I will try to be faithful to the final consequences of my acts.

I have always been identified with the foreign policy of our revolution, and I will continue to be. Wherever I am, I will feel the responsibility ofbeing a Cuban revolutionary, and as such I shall behave. I am not sorry that I leave my children and my wife nothing material. I am happy it is that way. I ask nothing for them, as I know the state will provide enough for their expenses and education.

I would like to say much to you and to our people, but I feel it is not necessary. Words cannot express what I would want them to, and I don't think it's worth while to banter phrases.

Ever onward to victory! Our country or death! I embrace you with all my revolutionary fervor.

Che
Posted by Kalovski at 04:25:46 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

April 22, 2008

Financial Meltdown and the Madness of Imperialism

I am publishing Raymond's analysis on the the financial meltdown in the US. I spent time with Raymond L. in the Philippines way back in 2001 when I was working with Bayan's national education department with Allan T.

by Raymond Lotta

The past 10 days will be remembered as the time the U.S. government discarded a half-century of rules to save American financial capitalism from collapse.” - David Wessel, economics editor, Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2008

“Be greedy when others are fearful.” - Warren Buffet, leading investment capitalist, quoted by The Economist, April 5, 2008

[To the possessor of money capital] “the process of production appears merely as an unavoidable intermediate link, as a necessary evil for the sake of money-making. All nations with a capitalist mode of production are therefore seized periodically by a feverish attempt to make money without the intervention of the process of production.” - Karl Marx, Capital, Volume II, “The Circuit of Money Capital”

The U.S. economy is experiencing the most wrenching financial turmoil since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Global markets have been reeling—as massive loans have turned bad, speculative bubbles have popped, and giant financial institutions have tottered.

Financial turbulence originating in the U.S. has slowly expanded and worsened. There is now a global credit crisis. Banks and financial institutions are weighed down by huge losses caused by “non-performing loans.” Lending channels are choked up, as lenders are being called to pay back their loans, to clean up their balance sheets, and fearful that they are “throwing good money after bad” and won’t be paid back. There is real danger of a breakdown of the financial system. The new president of the International Monetary Fund has stated that the current turmoil poses the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s.1

The U.S. has been at the center of what is now a global financial storm. Bear Stearns, one of the largest and oldest investment banks in the U.S., collapsed in mid-March. The Federal Reserve Bank—which regulates and lubricates the U.S. banking system, and which also plays a special role in the world capitalist economy—has stepped in on an unprecedented scale.

The Federal Reserve took responsibility for $30 billion of basically worthless assets held by Bear Stearns. This paved the way for another financial titan, JP Morgan Chase, to take over the firm. In addition, the Federal Reserve has injected huge amounts of funds into the financial system to ward off additional bank failures and to restore international confidence in the U.S. economy…and to prevent the financial crisis from becoming a total financial breakdown.

Fortune magazine in its April 14 issue analyzes the stakes this way:

“The fear—a justifiable one—is that if one big financial firm fails, it will lead to cascading failures throughout the world. Big firms are so interlinked with one another and with other market players that the failure of one large counterparty, as they’re called, can drag down counterparties all over the globe. And if the counterparties fail, it could down the counterparties’ counterparties, and so on.”2

PART I. A FIRST CUT: UNFOLDING OF THE CRISIS

The financial tornado gathered force in the spring of 2007, starting in the housing sector. The housing boom of the last few years was a boom in mortgage finance. Lenders, and these were not neighborhood finance companies or street-corner usurers but big corporate financial giants, were seeking to make big profits from their ability to tap into foreign capital flooding into the U.S. over the last decade. The Federal Reserve accommodated and encouraged this by keeping interest rates low.

A. Subprime Lending

Enter the world of subprime lending. Subprime loans are loans made to borrowers who would not qualify for a prime mortgage—because they might have “bad credit histories,” etc. And these loans were aggressively marketed, pushed on people through all kinds of deceitful means, with Black and Latino households disproportionately targeted and victimized (see Revolution, “Subprime Mortgage Crisis,” April 13, 2008).

The originators of these subprime loans, along with various financial middle-men, then “securitized” these loans. This means they combined these loans into larger groups of loans, turned them into complex financial products, and then sold them on financial markets. They sought to maximize fees and to “transfer risk” by quickly selling off these loans to other banks and institutional investors (like mutual and pension funds, university endowments, etc.).

But as housing prices turned down and as interest rates went up, homeowners (or those who thought they were homeowners) found themselves strapped with adjustable mortgages requiring larger payments. And many could not afford payments. This triggered a wave of defaults. Investors and institutions that had purchased these mortgage securities (loans that had been grouped into bonds returning interest) found themselves with billions of dollars of near worthless assets. The financial insurers of these loans, yet another layer of “financial middle-men,” could not cover the risks and damage.

B. Global Financial Shocks

In the summer of 2007, fears of big financial losses caused stock market indexes around the world to plummet, including those in the rapidly growing regions of the Third World.

A financial contagion was taking hold.

Over a trillion dollars of funds from around the globe—with much of this from Asia and oil-exporting countries—were invested in the U.S. subprime market. The collapse in the value of mortgage and credit instruments originating in the U.S. weakened the financial balance sheets of banks and other overseas holders of these investments and set off tremors. For instance, in Great Britain, there was a run on the Northern Rock bank; a German bank required a bailout; and a leading French bank was hit hard.

At the same time, financial institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere holding securities of crumbling or dubious value sought to strengthen their overall financial positions. They not only had to “write down,” that is, greatly reduce the value of the bad (“nonperforming”) loans they held. They also had to sell off “healthier” holdings in other parts of the world (investments unrelated to the subprime activities) in order to meet immediate financial commitments. And these sell-offs have had their own destabilizing global repercussions. This was especially the case last year in the stock markets of the Third World.

C. New Dangers and New Risks

By March 2008, the prices of stock of the big Wall Street players involved in this investment activity, firms like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, had fallen by some 40 percent. And since the onset of the credit crisis, financial institutions in the U.S. have “written down” more than $230 billion in mortgage loans and other assets.3

The Federal Reserve has moved to head off financial panic and to stimulate growth. But these moves have aroused new fears in the still unsettled world financial markets. Why?

There are concerns about the Federal Reserve’s and U.S. Treasury’s ability to absorb what might amount to be hundreds of billions of dollars in bad investments. There are concerns about the ability of the Federal Reserve to pump huge amounts of funds into the U.S. financial system to keep it afloat. There are concerns that short-term and ad hoc efforts to slash interest rates and bail out financial firms may stoke inflation and further weaken the dollar.

This dimension of the crisis, the fragility of the dollar, looms large. It has everything to do with empire. The international role of the dollar—as the world’s leading currency for settling transactions, clearing debts, and holding foreign exchange reserves—is a linchpin of U.S. global supremacy. It is also a linchpin of the whole current global economic order.

But the dollar has been battered in international currency markets. In the last few months, it has sunk to new lows against the euro (the currency used in most of Western Europe), against the Japanese yen, and against the Swiss franc.

Now the dollar has declined considerably in value relative to other major currencies since 2000. But this has been cushioned, managed, and kept functional by the ability of the U.S. economy to attract huge amounts of foreign exchange and foreign capital into financial markets, especially to finance U.S. Treasury debt.

And one of the “disaster scenarios” most worrisome to U.S. imperialist policy makers is the danger of a global run on the dollar: private investors and central banks of other countries unloading their dollar holdings for stronger currencies.

D. A Reflection: Transparency and Anarchy

In early April, on the eve of a gathering of the world’s finance ministers and treasury officials, the International Monetary Fund issued a report on the financial damage caused by the collapse of the housing and credit markets. It warned that financial institutions worldwide might face losses approaching $1 trillion over the next two years.4 This calculation is far above what had been previously estimated. And according to some financial analysts, even this is a gross understatement.

The free market is extolled by bourgeois ideologues for its “transparency.” This is the idea that markets, prices, and interest rates convey all necessary information: about supply, efficiency, choice, and reward.

But one of the distinguishing features of this crisis is the incredible and pervasive lack of knowledge among lenders, borrowers, traders, and insurers about the quality and backing of what they borrow from others…and even of what they lend to others! Things are obscured, covered up, and very opaque.

* There is the anarchy of capitalism, as giant agglomerations of capital battle others for market share and profits, and pursue competitive strategies that have unforeseen effects on the larger system.

* There is the emergence of a newer banking system operating parallel to the older commercial banks. These are the so-called hedge funds, private equity firms, and investment banks. They move huge amounts of capital in and out of financial markets to take advantage of momentary and slight changes in bond prices, interest rates, and currency exchange rates. They borrow against assets that have a shadow existence, far removed from the actual production of value. They have led in creating new financial instruments, in which all kinds of loans of varying risk are bundled together into interest-yielding bonds and the like. And this newer banking system operates in a more unregulated environment than do the commercial banks.

* This is a highly competitive, turbo-charged financial world, where huge blocks of capital seek quick gains at the expense of others. In this setting, speculation, fraud, and deception become part of survival strategies. One example of this in the unfolding of the financial crisis: financial agencies that rate the risk of things like mortgage-backed securities earn higher fees for providing favorable ratings on these new “financial products.” So they lied and deceived investors about real risk. This led to mis-pricing and to baseless expectations of return on investments.

E. A Reflection: A House…Is Not Always a House

As we descend from the skyscrapers of finance to ground level, the human toll comes into clearer view. At the start of 2008, nearly 1.3 million homes in the U.S were in some phase of foreclosure. That works out to more than one in every 100 U.S. households. According to Moody’s Economy.com : “not since the Depression has a larger share of Americans owed more on their homes than they are worth.”5

Think about it. Something as basic and essential as shelter is commodified. A house becomes an investment; its purchase underwritten by tradable financial instruments; and the lure of homeownership then engulfed by the devastating trade winds of the market. And what happens? People’s savings are wiped out. Their creditworthiness is damaged if not destroyed. And many face the prospect of homelessness.

The problem is not that people don’t need houses. Nor is it that society doesn’t have the resources or knowledge to build houses. The problem is that capital stands as a barrier to meeting human need.

PART II: A SECOND CUT:

DEEPER CAUSES AND IMPLICATIONS

Where all this financial turmoil might lead cannot be predicted. A gigantic, speculative credit bubble has burst. Problems in U.S. lending markets and the U.S. banking system have brought on an economic slowdown in the U.S. This in turn is triggering a global slowdown. Consumer goods exporters of Asia that have relied heavily on trade with the U.S. are especially vulnerable. And so too are countries in Eastern Europe that have borrowed heavily to finance growth.

Here is one tiny snapshot of the fallout and pain from the financial crisis. The U.S. housing slump has led to the loss of some 100,000 construction jobs, many that had been filled by undocumented immigrants. That has dramatically slowed the growth of money sent back home by these workers. After nearly quadrupling to $24 billion in 2006 from $6.6 billion in 2000, these earnings sent home grew only 3 percent in 2007, the slowest rate of growth in 20 years.6 Families in Mexico have come to depend on these remittances for food and clothing and other basic essentials.

The buildup and collapse of this latest speculative bubble, and intensifying financial fragility that could lead to massive breakdown, are in fact outward expressions of deeper processes and transformations at work in the world capitalist economy.

We need to take a step back.

A. Globalization and Financialization

For the last 15 years, world capitalist expansion has pivoted on a particular international dynamic and structure. This has involved heightened financialization and parasitism in the advanced capitalist countries —with the United States at the epicenter of this process; and the fuller integration of low-cost, export-producing countries of the Third World into the world capitalist market —with China at the epicenter of this process.

The turning point in this process was the collapse of the social-imperialist Soviet Union in 1990-91. With the implosion of the Soviet bloc, the main geopolitical obstacle to U.S. imperialist freedom of action was removed. At the same time, and very much in connection with this, imperialist globalization accelerated. (This is analyzed in considerable depth in Notes on Political Economy: Our Analysis of the 1980s, Issues of Methodology, and the Current World Situation, 2000, RCP Publications.)

Over the last 15 years, a globally integrated cheap-labor manufacturing economy, with huge labor reserves from China, India, and other parts of the Third World, along with labor from the former Soviet bloc, has been forged. The globalization of production has had enormous effects on world accumulation: raising profitability for imperialist capital, acting to compress wages, and lowering inflationary pressures. The integration of cheap-labor manufacturing into world production is now so deep that in the U.S., fully half of imports (mostly consumer goods) come from the Third World.

A revealing statistic: a University of California study looked into who gains when an iPod manufactured by national firms in China is sold in America for $299. Only $4 stays in China with the firms that assemble the devices, while $160 goes to American companies that design, transport, and retail iPods.7

When we speak of capitalist accumulation, we are referring to the competitive production of surplus value (the source of profit) based on the exploitation of wage labor; and the investment and reinvestment of profit on an expanding, cost-cheapening, and technologically more productive basis.

When we speak of “financialization,” we are referring to three particular features of the larger structure of capitalist accumulation in this period of imperialist globalization: a) the growing political and economic power of the financial layers of the capitalist class; b) the vast expansion of financial activities and of financial services, like organizing and financing corporate takeovers, insuring investments against risk, creating new financial instruments, etc.—activities in which profit-making involves the siphoning, centralization, and reinvestment of surplus value through financial channels; and c) the increasing separation of finance from production.

This process of financialization has gone the furthest in the United States, and it is a major factor in U.S. imperialism’s ability to preserve and extend its dominance in international financial markets.8

Financialization is also a means through which wealth, and effective control over productive forces, is centralized by the imperialist countries—even as production has grown more geographically dispersed and increasingly carried out within subcontractural networks in the Third World.

Financialization involves efforts to squeeze out more “value” from already created value. One measure of this is that in 2006, the daily volume of trading in foreign exchange markets and in derivatives (financial instruments) added up to $11.4 trillion—which almost equals the annual value of global merchandise exports that year. In terms of the shifts in the structure of the U.S. economy, the financial sector’s share of total corporate profits has risen from 8 percent in 1950 to 31 percent last year.9

B. Financialization and Production

As far removed as finance may be from processes of production, and as elaborate and multi-layered as its operations have become, finance cannot break free of the sphere of production. Even as it objectively seeks to do so—and even as the disjuncture between the two spheres (production and finance) grows—it is the underlying conditions and profitability of production that set the overall conditions for the accumulation of capital.

Imperialism is a worldwide system of production and exchange. It is the structure of social production—it is the global production of surplus value based on exploitation of people—that is at the foundation of this whole system. And in relation to the production of surplus value, “financialization” is both parasitic and functional. It is parasitic in the sense that financialization drains value from production.

But financialization is functional to the workings of global capitalism in the sense that it facilitates the gathering of money capital into ever-larger agglomerations of capital and finds new profit-yielding channels in which to rapidly invest it…and just as quickly to withdraw it! Global capital faces all kinds of financial uncertainties and risks on its competitive global playing field as it moves through different channels, or circuits, of production. And the “risk-management” techniques provided by the global financial system are actually vital to the accumulation of capital, to the success of “risk-taking,” in the turbo-charged globalized economy.10 That’s why, for example, money jumps into Thai real estate markets one day, and pulls out and goes into ethanol production in Brazil the next… and then back to mortgage securities.

And there is something else: the inflows and outflows of short-term and speculative capital also act as a perverse means of imposing discipline on and restructuring capitals—a major manufacturing firm can be starved of credit or threatened with a leveraged buyout. And this kind of “financial discipline” has been imposed on whole countries in the Third World—aided, abetted, and orchestrated by the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund.

All this is part of the reason that financial instability is a constant feature of capitalism in its more globalized and financialized forms of existence.

Financialization and the globalization of production have been tightly bound up with each other. It can be put this way: there is a relationship between sweatshop labor in Guangdong province in China, the recycling of China’s export earnings into the U.S. Treasury and U.S. financial markets, and the credit-financed expansion in the U.S. of the last decade. Or, to put it more graphically, there is a link between the agony of superexploited labor in the bowels of the new industrial zones of the Third World, the feverish search for high and quick returns at the top of the financial pyramids, and the chaos of the housing markets with people losing their homes in the U.S.

This is an extreme concentration of the nature of world capitalism. This world is highly bound together by production, trade, and finance. The requirements of life (consumer goods) and the requirements of production (machines and raw materials, etc.) are socially produced, that is, they involve the collective and interconnected efforts of wage-laborers in factories, warehouses, and so forth. But this wealth, the technology and means of producing it, and knowledge itself—all this is privately controlled and deployed by a small capitalist class.

C. Barriers, Contradictions, and Shifting Tectonic Plates

What we are witnessing now is that a particular dynamic of growth, marked by intensified financialization, is generating new contradictions and new barriers to sustained accumulation.

The level of debt to economic output in the U.S. is at an all-time high. The financing of the trade and government deficits of U.S. imperialism (that is, providing credit for purchases of imports and having investors buy Treasury debt) depends on a steady and growing inflow of capital from abroad. But the weakening of the dollar and the emergence of competitor currencies, like the euro, increasingly threatens these mechanisms. And very crucial to this has been the process where dollars earned by countries like China through trade with the U.S., are then recycled back into the U.S. economy through purchase of Treasury bonds and other investments.

In the U.S., the financial sector is seriously strained and is a flashpoint of heightened global financial instability, if not breakdown, leading to a major economic slump.

Here we come to a basic point of this analysis: A financial crisis has broken out because of the severe imbalances built up between the financial system—and its expectations of future profits—and the accumulation of capital, that is, the structures and actual production of profit based on exploitation of wage-labor.

The imperialist state is intervening to head off further damage and to discipline and restructure the financial system. But the very complexity of the “financial packages” created during the speculative boom—with their bundled-up loans and long strings of finance—are producing new challenges for policy-makers. As one Yale economist put it, perhaps unintentionally echoing a phrase from Marx: “like the sorcerer’s apprentice, we have created things we do not understand and cannot easily control.”11

This explosive uncertainty is developing against a larger international canvas. Major shifts are taking place in the world capitalist economy. The European market recently eclipsed the U.S. market in size. China’s growing demand for raw materials to fuel its export economy is making it a new player in the scramble for resources and control over them. And China’s increasing importance as a supplier of capital to the U.S. is giving it new leverage. Russia is reemerging as a world imperialist player, owing in part to its vast energy reserves and rising oil and gas prices.

At the same time, and at this very moment of financial crisis, U.S. imperialism’s freedom of maneuver is severely hobbled—and this includes its ability to stimulate the economy through fiscal and monetary policy. The United States has never run such large current account deficits and no single country’s deficit has ever bulked as large relative to the global economy.

D. The Military Fix

Which brings us to one of the “dirty little secrets” of the financial crisis: the military needs and the military costs of empire…and “greater empire.”

There is a brute fact of imperialist accumulation. The whole imperialist system rests on the domination of vast swaths of the globe through savage force, with the U.S. military colossus playing a special role. The U.S. military helps “create the conditions” for U.S. domination, pro-U.S. client regimes in the Third World, and conditions for investment by U.S. corporations.

In the Bush era, U.S. imperialism has been attempting to parlay its military might into a new world order. This involves a restructuring of global political and production relations that will enable it to resolve or mitigate some of the problems and tensions it faces—and to lock in its global supremacy over rivals and potential rivals for decades to come.

The U.S. share of world production has declined to about 20 percent, down from 30 percent forty years ago. But U.S. imperialism is compensating for this by pressing its military advantage as sole imperialist “superpower” (since the collapse of the Soviet Union).

In a recent study, Chalmers Johnson has calculated that defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. Leaving out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s.12

Militarization is also embedded in the U.S. economy. It is a key structural component of growth, scientific research, and technological prowess of U.S. imperialism. And because of its sheer size, it also plays a role in the attempts of the U.S. imperialist state to “manage” and stimulate the economy.

But the recent wave of militarization has put enormous financial strains on U.S. imperialism. It has produced huge deficits that cannot be sustained without the inflow of capital into the U.S. And the wars for “greater empire” are incurring astronomically greater costs than military and government planners had anticipated. Not least because of the setbacks and difficulties U.S. imperialism has encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is a sharp contradiction for U.S. imperialism—because in many ways it is staking the future of empire on these wars; but these wars have become more costly to wage. And it is the height of hypocrisy for Democrats to now blame the Iraq war for financial crisis—as they consistently voted for war-spending authorizations, to the tune of $500 billion.

PART III: CONCLUSION

This is a financial crisis of historic proportions. And like many other events in the world, this crisis points to the fundamental irrationality and cruelty of the system. It also shows the vulnerability of imperialism to sharp turns that could open up new possibilities for revolutionary advance.

But things unfold in complex, unpredictable, and historically conditioned ways. And as serious and potentially destabilizing as this crisis may become, it is also possible that U.S. imperialism could turn this crisis to its advantage.

We live in an age of “endless war” and environmental devastation. We live in an ever-more globalized capitalist system that thrives on the toil and agony of the great bulk of humanity but that cannot escape the anarchy that lies at its very foundations.

There is necessity and freedom for the imperialists. And so too for the people.

Footnotes

1. Quoted in Steven R. Weisman, “Financial Regulators Suggest Tighter Controls,” The New York Times, April 12, 2008. [back]

2. Allan Sloan, “On the Brink of Disaster,” Fortune, April 14, 2008, p. 82. A useful discussion of derivatives, hedge funds, and the like is found in “The Predators’ Ball Resumes: Financial Mania and Systemic Risk,” Interview with Damon Silvers, Multinational Monitor, May-June 2007. [back]

3. S. Tully, “What’s Wrong With Wall St. and How to Fix It,” Fortune, April 14, 2008, p. 72; Reed Abelson and Louise Story, “G.E. Earnings Drop, Raising Broader Fears,” The New York Times, April 12, 2008. [back]

4. Sean Farrell, “Financial turmoil could cost $1trn, warns IMF as global growth comes under threat,” Independent.co.uk, 9 April 2008. [back]

5. Data from RealityTrac.com, January 29, 2008; Moody’s Economy.com, February 21, 2008. [back]

6. The New York Times, January 24, 2008. [back]

7. Cited in Charlemagne, “Winners and losers,” The Economist, March 1, 2008, p. 56. [back]

8. Among informative studies of financialization, neoliberalism, and dollar hegemony are David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (London: Oxford, 2005); Andrew Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed (London: Oxford, 2006); Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy (New York: Viking, 2006); Ramaa Vasudevan, “Finance, Imperialism, and the Hegemony of the Dollar,” Monthly Review, April 2008; and C.P. Chandrasekhar, “Continuity or Change? Finance Capital in Developing Countries a Decade after the Asian Crisis,” Economic and Political Weekly, December 15, 2007. [back]

9. See Chandrasekhar, “Continuity or Change,” pp. 37-38; The New York Times, December 11, 2007. [back]

10. On financialization as a means to contain financial disorder and to impose neoliberal discipline, see Christopher Rude, “The Role of Financial Discipline in Imperial Strategy,” in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, eds., Socialist Register 2005: The Empire Reloaded (London: Merlin Press, 2004). [back]

11. David Dapice, “Bad Spell on Wall Street,” Policyinnovations.org, January 24, 2008. [back]

12. Chalmers Johnson, “Why the US has really gone broke,” mondediplo.com (English edition), February 5, 2008.

Posted by Kalovski at 20:56:05 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Notes on Peoples War in Southeast Asia - K.I.


This is a write-up to give friends a comprehensive understanding of the revolutionary movement in Southeast Asia as well as a historical bacground of the proletarian leadership in the people's movement. Sharing this write-up hopes to situate the overall international work comrades are doing carrying out an ideological counter offensive, with the end goal of consolidating and strengthening political work in all fronts - K.I.

by JOSE MARIA SISON
Founding Chairman
Communist Party of the Philippines

19 May 2007

Introduction

The subject of people's war in Southeast Asia is quite large. It would take at least a book to answer many of your possible questions. In a short discourse, I can only try to give you an outline of the subject, some important facts and ideas. Of course, I do so from my viewpoint. Thus, I prefer to describe my contribution as "notes" to signal that there is plenty of room for discussion.

Let me present to you the armed struggles led by communist parties in Southeast Asia before, during and immediately after World War II, focus on the people's war when Southeast Asia developed into the storm center of the world proletarian revolution from 1960 to 1975, evaluate the post-Mao China policy against people's war in the region, describe the people's war in the Philippines and explore the prospects of people's war in Southeast Asia.

Arranged chronologically according to their order of establishment were the following communist parties that led armed struggles at one time or another in Southeast Asia:

1. Communist Party of Indonesia (organized as the Communist Association of the Indies in 1920 under the auspices of the Communist International and renamed Communist Party of Indonesia in 1924)
2. Communist Party of the Philippines (Communist Party of the Philippine Islands in 1930, the Communist Party of the Philippines as merger party of the Communist and Socialist parties in 1938 and the Communist of the Party of the Philippines as reestablished in 1968)
3. Communist Party of Vietnam (Communist Party of Indochina in 1930, Vietnam Workers' Party in 1951 and Communist Party of Vietnam in 1976)
4. Malayan Communist Party (1930)
5. Burmese Communist Party (1939)
6. Communist Party of Thailand (Communist Party of Siam in 1942)
7. Party of Democratic Kampuchea (Kampuchea People's Revolutionary Party in 1951, Cambodian Communist Party in 1960 and Party of Democratic Kampuchea in 1981)
8. Lao People's Revolutionary Party (Lao People's Party in 1955 and Lao People's Revolutionary Party in 1975)
9. North Kalimantan Communist Party (1971)

1. Before World War II, 1926 to 1941

Under the auspices of the Third Communist International (Comintern), communist parties were established in Southeast Asia before World War II. The earliest to be established was the Communist Party of the East Indies in 1920. It had the distinction of being the first communist party in the whole of Asia. It led an armed uprising for national liberation against Dutch colonialism in 1926, the first armed struggle in the region led by a communist party. The armed uprising was brutally suppressed by the Dutch colonialists but gave the Communist Party of Indonesia the highest prestige as the fighter for the national liberation of the Indonesian people.

Under the shadow of the Great Depression and upon the intensified work of the Comintern, the Communist Party of the Philippine Islands, the Communist Party of Indochina and the Communist Party of Malaya were organized in quick succession in 1930. The Vietnamese communists launched in 1930 and 1940 uprisings against French colonial rule. Both failed but raised the prestige of the communists as fighters for national and social liberation. The Communist Party of the Philippine Islands was suppressed by the US colonial authorities a few months after its founding. The exile and imprisonment of the principal leaders served to pressure the legal cadres to stay within the bounds of legalism with regard to the questions of national liberation and agrarian revolution.

The peasant masses were severely exploited in these countries. Thus, there were spontaneous peasant uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s in Southeast Asia. But in general the communist parties were not able to systematically arouse, organize and mobilize the peasants for the purpose of waging a protracted people's war against colonialism and feudalism through the encirclement of the cities from the countryside until the accumulation of armed strength made possible the seizure of political power in the cities.

The main thrust of the political work of the communist parties in the 1930s was to oppose the Western colonial powers and seek national liberation through all forms of struggle. Like the Filipino, Indonesian and Indochinese communists against US, Dutch and French colonialism respectively, the Malayan and Burmese communists were so focused on opposing British colonialism that it took sometime for them to accept entirely the decision of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935 to focus the revolutionary struggle against the fascism of Germany, Italy and Japan and develop the popular front with forces associated with the Western colonial powers but were opposed to fascism.

The Southeast Asian communist parties gradually took the anti-fascist position and more quickly after Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937. However, in the case of the newly-established Communist Party of Burma, principal party leaders Thakin Aung San went to Japan in 1939 for military training against British colonialism and came back to form the Burmese National Army. Japanese fascism had been using the slogans of nationalism and Asian economic co-prosperity sphere to oppose the Western colonial powers in Southeast Asia.

2. In the Course of World War II, 1941 to 1945

Immediately following its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japan invaded the Southeast Asian countries. The communist parties of Southeast Asia exposed the phenomenon of fascism and the inter-imperialist war as the result of the rotten character and crisis of the world capitalist system, called for the national unity of all anti-fascist forces and the building of the people's armies and other revolutionary forces against Japan.

The inter-imperialist war created the excellent conditions for the communist parties and the people to build their revolutionary strength in fighting the Japanese invasion and occupation. The communist parties organized people's armies against Japan mainly among the peasant masses, engaged in land reform and built organs of political power in Indochina, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya and Burma.

The Communist Party of Indochina had organized the Revolutionary League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh) since 1941 to unite the communist and other anti-fascist forces to engage in guerilla warfare against the Japanese invaders and occupiers. It succeeded in building a powerful people's army based in the countryside and in building organs of political power and mass organizations. Ultimately, it defeated the Japanese aggressors, launched the uprising of August 1945 to seize political power, proclaim the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and suppress the pro-Japanese collaborators and made preparations to fight the plan of the French colonialists to reconquer Vietnam in 1946 and thus to ignite the First Indochina War.

The Communist Party of Indonesia was able to build guerrilla forces during the resistance against Japan and an alliance of the left wing and youth section of the Indonesian Socialist Party. These were the most reliable forces for upholding the proclamation of national independence by Sukarno in August 1945, frustrating the British military intervention and continued use of Japanese military units and fighting the return of Dutch colonialism to Indonesia. The US also began to intervene in Indonesian affairs.

The merger party of the Communist and Socialist parties in the Philippines organized the People's Army Against Japan (Hukbalahap) in 1942, independently of the US Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). Despite Right opportunist errors in strategy, it was able to build units of the people's army and organs of political power and carry out land reform. But it overconcentrated in only one region close to the national capital region and was unable to expand the revolutionary movement on a nationwide scale.

US imperialism took tremendous special efforts to reconquer the Philippines as a colony because of its strategic importance in the US counteroffensive against Japan and the US plan to impose its hegemony over the whole of Southeast Asia even at the expense of its imperialist allies. As early as September 1943 the US had started its bombing operations in the Philippines to destroy Japanese forces and to prepare for massive US troop landings in 1944.

Right opportunism persisted in undermining the merger party of the Communist and Socialist parties because of the leadership's decision to welcome the return of the US imperialist military forces and the puppet Commonwealth government. Subsequently, the Browderite line of peace and democracy blew in from the Communist Party of the USA, which had had a long relationship with the merger party.

The Malayan Communist Party built the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army and cooperated with British military forces in fighting against the Japanese occupation. But it maintained its initiative and independence. It demanded the independence of Malaya from British colonialism upon the defeat of Japan, thus incurring the hostility of British imperialism which was determined to recolonize Malaya and secure British interests in Southeast Asia.

The Burmese Communist Party took a major role in organizing the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL) to fight the Japanese occupation which began in 1941-42. The AFPFL cooperated with the British military forces to expel the Japanese in 1945. Later on, it came under the control of military officers who increasingly became anti-communist, chauvinist and militarist. The Burmese Communist Party and the national minorities resisted the military regime.

3. Aftermath of World War II, 1946 to 1959

After proclaiming the independence of Vietnam in 1945, the Viet Minh formed the National Assembly in January 1946. The French government recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a free state of the French Union in March 1946 but declared war against it in November of the same year and began the First Indochina War. It set up the puppet government of Bao Dai in Saigon in 1948. The people's army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam strengthened its bases in northern Vietnam and gained support from the victorious Chinese Communist Party in 1949.

In 1951 the Indochinese Communist Party decided to divide into three parties in to order let them focus on the problems in their respective countries. The kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos were recognized by France as "independent states" of the French Union in 1953. In the name of the Cold War, the US started to give substantial political and financial support to the French war effort in 1949 and at the same time increased its influence among prospective Vietnamese puppets. The Vietnamese people's army defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 on the eve of the Geneva Conference.

The Geneva Conference of 1954 agreed to divide Vietnam into North and South temporarily and to reunite it after elections in 1956. But the US-supported Ngo Dinh Diem regime that had deposed the Bao Dai regime in 1955 refused to hold elections. Following orders from the US, it declared South Vietnam a republic. A Filipino lawyer asset of the US Central Intelligence Agency drafted the constitution of the phoney republic.

The Ngo regime unleashed a reign of terror against the Viet Minh, the people and all opposition forces, including patriotic religious organizations. Local revolts occurred in 1957. A full scale civil war developed in 1959. This began the Second Indochina War, in which the US increased its military intervention until this became a full-scale war of aggression.

Following the declaration of Indonesian national independence in 1945, Indonesian president Sukarno proceeded to call for national unity to fight against the British military forces and thereafter the Dutch military forces who sought to reconquer Indonesia. At first, he relied mainly on the disciplined and battle-tested guerrilla forces of the Communist Party of Indonesia and on the left-wing and youth section of the Partai Sosialis Indonesia. But he and his vice president Hatta increasingly relied on the pro-US and pro-Western military officers, including those who had served in the Japanese occupation army. The communists were massacred in Madiun in 1948 to make way for the neocolonial compromise in the Round Table Conference Agreement.

Challenged by the US and pro-US forces and ultra-reactionary forces in Indonesia represented by Hatta and the right wing forces of the Masjumi and Socialist Party, Sukarno sought once more the alliance of the Communist Party of Indonesia in 1951. The Communist Party of Indonesia ordered its remaining armed units to disband and appeared to thrive politically by pursuing the peaceful and parliamentary road of struggle and by keeping an anti-imperialist alliance with Sukarno and his nationalist following.

It was able to increase its party membership, rapidly build large mass organizations and won 16.4 per cent of the votes in the 1955 elections. It was able to stand up against the US military intervention and armed rebellions of the pro-US ultra-reactionary forces in 1958. In this connection, it was able to build militia units and gain followers and influence within the military and police of the Sukarno government. But subsequently, it agreed to relinquish leadership over its armed units and submit them for integration in the Indonesian army. The Communist Party of Indonesia became bound to the Right opportunist and revisionist line of legalism and parliamentarism and wishing to enlarge the "pro-people aspect" of the Indonesian semi-colonial state of the big compradors and landlords.

The old merger party of the Communist and Socialist parties pushed for and welcomed the grant of nominal national independence to the Philippines by the US in 1946. It agreed with the reactionary authorities to demobilize the people's army and surrender its arms despite the rising brutal acts of the US and local reactionary forces against units of the people's army and the peasants who had undertaken land reform during the Japanese occupation. It was heavily influenced by the Browderite line of peace and democracy. It formed the Democratic Alliance to compete in the electoral struggle.

The Democratic Alliance won enough seats in Congress in 1946 to prevent the passage of an amendment in the 1935 Constitution for the purpose of allowing US corporations and citizens to have rights at par with the Filipinos in exploiting Philippine natural resources and operating public utilities. The puppet government ousted from Congress the progressive members on false charges of electoral fraud and terrorism. Moreover, the brutal attacks on the people in the revolutionary areas escalated. Thus, the ground was laid for a decision of the old merger party in 1948 to start revolutionary armed struggle. But only in the latter half of 1950 was the people's army able to launch some relatively large offensives on a wide scale along the Sierra Madre mountain range.

The "Left" opportunist line of seeking to win complete victory in two years' time without painstaking mass work, without land reform and without building the people's army in stages but relying on the growth of the spontaneous uprising of the people due to the severe crisis of the system and violent contradictions among the reactionaries proved disastrous. The enemy was able to launch a sustained counter-attack against the forest-based camps of the people's army and capture most of the city-based principal leaders in 1950-52. Since then, the old merger party swung back to Right opportunism, including the orders to liquidate the people's army in 1955 and the party in 1957, and caused the party to become moribund, until efforts were made to revive it from 1959 onwards.

The British colonialists legalized the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army but banned it in 1948 and declared a state of emergency in order to suppress it. Peace talks between the Malayan communist leaders and the chief ministers of Malaya and Singapore broke down as the latter officials demanded the dissolution of the Malayan Communist Party. The state of emergency was ended in 1960 after the authorities estimated that they had virtually crushed the people's army. But in fact this continued to fight from a relatively secure area along the Thailand-Malaya border area.

After being expelled from the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League in 1946, the Burmese Communist Party launched an armed revolution in 1948. It operated mainly in Central Burma and the in the Arakan mountains and Irrawaddy delta. It engaged in alliances with the minority nationalities that were also waging armed struggle against the Burmese reactionary government. It engaged in peace negotiations withn this government in 1958 but these did not stop the people's war.

The people's armies led by communist parties in Southeast Asia stood their ground against the attempts of the old Western colonial powers to reconquer and reimpose their rule on their former colonies. The people's armies were also resolutely and vigorously against the attempts of the US to expand its hegemony. The resounding victories of China against the US-Guomindang tandem inspired the communist parties of Southeast Asia to engage in people's war. The US became more aggressive in carrying out the Cold War in Asia from 1948 onwards as well as in unleashing the wars of aggression against Korea in 1951-53 and in the next decade in Vietnam.

4. People's Wars in Southeast Asia, 1960 to 1975

The communist and noncommunist forces in the armed struggle against the US-supported Ngo Din Diem regime united to form the South Vietnam National Liberation Front in 1960. In 1961 the US began to deploy large numbers of "advisors" in the South Vietnamese military and bureaucracy and in 1964 it began to launch military operations against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam by land, sea and air.

The US war of aggression against the people of Vietnam became indubitably clear with the rapid deployment of hundreds of thousands of US troops and with large military operations from US military bases inside and outside of Vietnam. The Vietnamese communists and people were determined to carry out a war of national liberation against the US war of aggression through the strategy of protracted people's war.

At that time, the Vietnam Workers Party was close to the Communist Party of China under Comrade Mao Zedong. It was disappointed that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Khrushchov was hyping the general line of peaceful coexistence and the road of peaceful transition and was not interested in assisting the Vietnamese communists in people's war. It was only after the overthrow of Khrushchov that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Brezhnev extended support to the Vietnamese war of national liberation. Consequently, the Vietnam Workers' Party took a centrist position in the Sino-Soviet ideological debate.

The US escalated its military intervention through military advisors and military supplies to the level of a full-scale war of aggression involving hundreds of thousands of troops, huge US military bases and US fire bases all over South Vietnam. It engaged in all types of vicious military campaigns in South Vietnam and made frequent bombing raids on North Vietnam. The Vietnamese people intensified their resistance and inflicted heavy casualties on US and puppet troops on the ground, shot down thousands of US planes and destroyed convoys of enemy vehicles.

The US instigated the military coup in Cambodia against Sihanouk by Lon Nol in 1970 in the vain hope of disrupting and preventing the passage of supplies for the South Vietnam National Liberation Front through either the so-called Ho Chi Minh trail or ports of Cambodia. Earlier in 1968 the Communist Party of Kampuchea had launched the armed revolution against the Sihanouk government. But the overthrow of Sihanouk by Lon Nol brought about the conditions for the alliance between the Communist Party of Kampuchea and the forces of Sihanouk with the support of the Communist Party of China.

The people's war led by the Communist Party of Cambodia advanced very rapidly. The alliance of patriotic forces formed the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea. The Vietnamese, Kampuchean and Laotian revolutionary parties and peoples united in waging people's war against US imperialism and its puppet forces. Their intensified people's wars compelled the US to negotiate towards the Paris Peace Accord of 1973 and paved the way for the total victories of their revolutionary struggle for national liberation against US imperialism

From 1960 onward, the calls for people's war in Southeast Asia resounded against the continuing aggressiveness of the US in expanding its hegemony. In the growing Sino-Soviet ideological debate the revisionist line of Khrushchov did not dull but sharpened the resolve of the communist parties to wage armed revolution. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China further sharpened such resolve and the Communist Party of China under the leadership of Chairman Mao was enthusiastic in supporting the communist parties that decided to wage people's war in Indochina, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Kalimantan Utara and the Philippines. All these had long been inspired by the victories of the Chinese people in the new democratic and socialist revolutions and in making a great breach on the imperialist front in the East.

Even the Communist Party of Indonesia, which had become the biggest communist party among those in nonsocialist states by pursuing the line of peaceful and legal struggle from 1951 to 1965, began from 1963 onwards to consider the necessity of armed revolution against armed counterrevolution. It was then categorically expressing support for the Marxiist-Leninist line of the Chinese Communist Party in the ideological debate against the line of modern revisionism espoused by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union headed by Khrushchov. But it also wanted to retain friendly relations with the Soviet party.

It intended to "prepare" for the armed struggle by waging the campaign of rural investigation and intensified peasant organizing, the campaign to nationalize foreign enterprises and the "crush Malaysia" campaign. It called on the Sukarno government for arming the people, especially the militia. But it remained unclear on whether to wage armed struggle against the semi-colonial state and was vacillating about what form of armed revolution it would undertake, even as the US, British and Dutch imperialists and their puppets headed by Suharto were feverishly preparing to massacre the Indonesian communists, their mass following and sympathizers in 1965-66.

The debacle of the Indonesian communists was in sharp contrast to the growing victories and ultimate victory of the Indochinese communists against US imperialism in the period of 1965 to 1975. But the communists of Indonesia were still expected to fight back and recover their debacle through people's war. However, they did not succeed in their initial efforts at people's war in Blitar and Kalimantan in 1967 and 1968. Their further defeat allowed the US, British, Dutch and Japanese imperialists to take advantage of the oil and other natural resources of Indonesia. The North Kalimantan Communist Party was founded only in 1971 and had some armed units. It was unable to sustain and develop its revolutionary armed struggle.

Since 1961, the Communist Party of Thailand had taken a strong Marxist-Leninist position in the Sino-Soviet ideological debate and decided to adopt the strategic line of protracted people's war. It started guerrilla warfare in 1965 in the northeastern provinces of Thailand along the border with Laos, where they won the support of the Meo tribesmen, and subsequently spread to the northern provinces and to the extreme south, where the Malayan Communist Party and people's army were based. The Thai People's Liberation Army received considerable support after 1970 from China and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It was able to carry out major offensives, including raids on US air force bomber bases in Thailand.

In the early 1960s the Burmese Communist Party also took a strong Marxist-Leninist position in the Sino-Soviet ideological debate. In 1967 the Communist Party of China openly declared its support for the Burmese communists and their people's war. The Burmese Communist Party transferred its headquarters to the Chinese border area and received substantial military assistance from China. However, in 1967-68, it mishandled a rectification movement and committed grave errors which undermined the revolutionary integrity, strength and prestige of the party in the short and long term.

As early as 1959 the proletarian revolutionaries in the Philippines were already desirous of resuming the armed revolution along the general line of the people's democratic revolution through protracted people's war. They were also enlightened by the international debate between the Marxist-Leninists and modern revisionists in the early 1960s and inspired by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966 onwards. But they were also desirous of summing up and analyzing the concrete conditions and revolutionary experience in the Philippines, rectifying errors and rebuilding the revolutionary party of the proletariat and the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal mass movement for a certain period of time before launching the people's war.

The rectification movement under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought began in 1967. The Communist Party of the Philippines was reestablished on December 26, 1968 and in a few months' time founded the New People's Army on March 29, 1969. The enemy tried to nip the armed revolutionary movement in the bud from 1969 to 1971, pitting a full division against a few squads of the NPA, but failed. Then in 1972 the Marcos regime began to impose a fourteen-year fascist dictatorship on the Filipino people. The revolutionary forces and people grew even stronger through people's war.

The period of 1960 to 1975 may be described as the period when the whole of Southeast Asia was the focus of the storm of the world proletarian revolution through people's war and the eye of the storm was in Vietnam and then the whole of Indochina, when the people's war completely triumphed in 1975. In view of this great victory, there were bright hopes for the peoples of Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines to persevere in people's war and win their own great victories.

5. Post-Mao Policy of China, 1976 to the present

In the last five years of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1971-1976, the Rightist and Centrists in the Communist Party of China had gained so much ground in weakening the Left, in devaluing the need for people's war in Southeast Asia, in giving priority to developing rapprochement with the US under the guise of opposing the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, after the demise of Comrade Mao Zedong, the alliance of Centrists and Rightists paved the way for a counterrevolutionary coup and the restoration of capitalism, under the slogans of "reforms" (capitalist-oriented reforms), "opening up to the world" (integration into the world capitalist system) and "promoting peace, stability and economic development in the region" (including the withdrawal of support from the Southeast Asian communist parties, the dissolution of Central Committee delegations of fraternal parties in China and wherever possible the liquidation of people's war).

What obfuscated China's policy of liquidating people's war in Southeast Asia was its conspicuous support for Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 onwards and in the entire duration of the Third Indochina War from 1979 onwards, its opposition to the invasion of Kampuchea by Vietnam and its counter-invasion of Vietnam also in 1979 and its support for the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CDGK) based on the three-way alliance of the Party for Democratic Kampuchea (the erstwhile Communist Party of Kampuchea), the Sihanouk forces and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front led by Son Sann in 1982, extending up to 1991.

But the Party of Democratic Kampuchea was put in the position of being cornered by its two major allies in the coalition government. It was supported by China but it was also required to collaborate with the US and Thai governments to allow all allies in the coalition government to have bases along the Thai border and free passage of personnel and materiel to and from Kampuchea across Thailand. Democratic Kampuchea retained the UN seat of Kampuchea until 1982. Then this was passed on to the CGDK until 1993.

The Party of Democratic Kampuchea became bound to agreements in 1991 under the auspices of the UN to liquidate the people's war and attain national reconciliation among all political forces through elections in the 1993 under the supervision of the UN peacekeeping mission. The Party of Democratic Kampuchea was outmaneuvered by the other political forces, including its allies in the CGDK, and by the US, Chinese and Thai governments. It backed out of the agreements and resumed the people's war after realizing that it had been outmaneuvered. But by then, it had become isolated and deprived of the support of its former foreign supporters. The Party of Democratic Kampuchea went into a process of rapid disintegration from 1996 to 1998.

The war between Vietnam and Kampuchea disrupted the previous important relations and arrangements of the Communist Party of Thailand with the Communist Party of Kampuchea and the People's Revolutionary Party of Laos. China also used its support for the Party of Democratic Kampuchea and its allies in the coalition government to advise the Communist Party of Thailand to refrain from revolutionary radio broadcasts against the Thai government and finally to close down its Yunnan-based radio broadcasting station.

In connection with its policy of peace, stability and economic development and policy of supporting the resistance in Kampuchea, the Chinese authorities had advised, pressured and induced the Communist Party of Malaya to make a peace agreement with both the governments of Malaysia and Thailand since the early 1980s. The peace agreement was done in 1989. Subsequently, the Malayan Communist Party liquidated itself, surrendered its arms to the Thai authorities and converted the former revolutionary base at the Thai-Malaysian border into a tourist spot.

There are reports that upon Deng Xiaoping's return to power, the Chinese authorities prevented the leaders of the communist parties of Thailand and Burma from promptly communicating and meeting with their forces across the border. It may be true that these parties suffered setbacks due to external factors. But in the first place there are internal factors to consider. A communist party has to develop on its initiative and be self-reliant. Otherwise it becomes dependent on another party and becomes vulnerable to dictation from the outside.

The leadership of the Communist Party of Thailand based in Northeast Thailand was predominantly Chinese and failed to expand towards the non-Chinese communities in the plains and to handle correctly the thousands of Thai students who had joined the revolution after the military coup of 1976. The Thai government succeeded in attracting back these students with an amnesty proclamation in 1982. From that time on, it was able to make military advances on the armed base of the people's army and to arrest cadres of the communist party in urban and rural areas. There is no open manifestation of the current existence and activities of the Communist Party of Thailand.

Nearly all members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Burma were outside of Burma. Unable to cross the border from China, they could not have a handle on the people's army which increasingly came under the control of localist commanders. But the Communist Party of Burma still shows some signs of life, such as a website and statements by a prominent communist general who was one of the major founders of the Burmese National Army but who joined the Burmese Communist Party. The Burmese military regime had rebuffed previous proposals of the Burmese Communist Party to retain its armed units and some territory in exchange for a truce.

6. Perseverance and Development of the Communist Party of the Philippines

By virtue of its own history and circumstances, the Communist Party of the Philippines could be reestablished in 1968 and could resume the revolutionary armed struggle in 1969. A series of major Right and "Left" opportunist errors had afflicted the old merger party of the Communist and Socialist parties and needed to be rectified in the light of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.

The Right opportunist line of reducing the units of the people's army to small teams of three to five members and refraining from tactical offensives from 1942 to 1943 and welcoming the return of the US from 1943 to 1945 limited the development of the people's army in the course of World War II and subsequently derailed the revolutionary mass movement towards legalism from 1946 to 1948. It shifted to "Left" opportunism when the party decided in 1948 to wage armed struggle and win in two year's time, without developing the people's army in stages, implementing land reform and carrying out painstaking mass work. After the arrest of the principal cadres in 1950, Right opportunism came back with a vengeance and continued until the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968.

The CPP was among the parties least expected to succeed in people's war, supposedly because the Philippines was an archipelagic country, without the advantage of having a common land border with China. That is not the only disadvantage. The Philippines is the favorite secure base from which US imperialism launches all kinds of intervention and military aggression in Asia. The ruling classes of big comprador and landlords are well schooled and trained in counterrevolution. Moreover, the US-Marcos regime imposed a 14-year long fascist dictatorship on the people. But it failed to destroy the CPP and the revolutionary movement. Instead, these grew from small to big and from weak to strong.

The CPP has proven that under correct leadership it can preserve and develop the people's army and other revolutionary forces, such as the organs of political power and the mass organizations. It has generated powerful mass movements in the economic, social, political and cultural fields for the benefit of the people along the line of national democratic revolution. The people's army has been waging people's war for more than 38 years, far longer than it took China to win the people's democratic revolution. The CPP has learned much from the teachings of Comrade Mao about protracted people's war and has successfully applied these on the concrete conditions of the Philippines.

But there are those who might say that the people's war has been extremely protracted in the Philippines. If this is said to demoralize the people and the revolutionary forces, the riposte is: how much more successful at social revolution or basic reforms are those who have engaged mainly o