INTERNASYONALISMO

Yes, socialism is a necessary and possible not only for the Philippines but for the entire world. Capitalism is in its decadent stage, in its permanent crisis. It cannot offer any future to humanity other than worsening poverty, hunger, ecological disasters, wars and deaths.

Socialism is the only road for humanity’s total emancipation. But it cannot be realized through reforms, through gradual changes as what our predecessors, the utopian socialists believed.

Our modern-day ‘socialists’ put their stakes in ‘working within’ the capitalist state and from inside, will gradually change the system. For them, socialism is merely a matter of numbers, of more ‘socialists’ than capitalists inside the bourgeois state. Unfortunately, history taught us bitter lessons about reformism and working within the bourgeois state. The so-called ‘socialists’ within the bourgeois parliament became the staunched defenders of capitalist order, spewing poisons of mystifications and distorting the real meaning and essence of socialism.

Capitalism is wage slavery and extracting surplus-value. Capitalism is market and exchange. Any person who claims that he/she is a socialist but defends market, exchange, profits, etc in the name of ‘workers’ interests’ does not really know the ABC of capitalism and socialism.

Socialism is abolition of wage system, exchange value, markets, and national boundaries; abolition of classes and the state. Socialism is an international social relation. Socialism is dictatorship of the proletariat at international level. When we talked about socialism we talked about communism because the former is the transitory stage towards the latter. There is no socialism on its own, it is only a transitory stage from capitalism to communism.

Socialism is international or its nothing: Engels’ Principles of Communism , written in 1847: "The communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilised countries… It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace…It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range".

A socialist revolution of a particular country is only a part of the whole international proletarian revolution: "The Russian revolution is only one of the contingents of the international socialist army, on the action of which the success and triumph of our revolution depends. This is a fact which none of us lose sight of…Aware of the isolation of its revolution, the Russian proletariat clearly realises that an essential condition and prime requisite for its victory is the united action of the workers of the whole world…" Lenin, 24 July 1918 .

Only the proletariat as an international class can liberate the whole of humanity from exploitation and oppression: "the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) cannot liberate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie) without at the same time liberating, once and for all, the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and the class struggle" (Engels, 1883 preface to the Communist Manifesto ).

‘State socialism’ is not socialism but state capitalism. China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, etc are not socialist countries but state capitalist countries in their worst forms. Their so-called development is at the expense of their own proletariat and in other countries. For example, China or Vietnam’s ‘development’ is due to very cheap labor of their workers compare to other countries. And this very cheap labor becomes the policy of all countries competing China or Vietnam for world market. Now, are they models for the Philippines?

Socialism is destroying the bourgeois state. Socialism is revolution.

These are the real meaning and essence of socialism, of Marxism. These are the lessons of more than 200 years of international proletarian struggles. This is the socialism all genuine socialists and communists struggling for.

‘Socialism’ through elections and reforms within the capitalist system is not socialism but CAPITALISM in essence…..