Against the Counter-revolutionary Ideology of Maoism in the Philippines
Marxism is the theoretical weapon of the proletariat against capitalism. From the point of view of class struggle, this is not a theoretical weapon of the other classes against capitalism. While it is true that there are ideologies of the peasantry, petty-bourgeoisie or national bourgeoisie, none of them are Marxist.
“Workers of the world, unite!.” This is the gist of the Communist Manifesto written by Marx and Engels in 1848. This is not simply an agitational slogan but an expression of one of the fundamental principles of Marxism against capitalism. This means that the class interests of the workers world-wide is not divided between nations, race or gender; workers have no country, no races or gender. Filipino, American, white, black, male, female or any categorization, all workers in the world are brothers and comrades in struggle against capitalism.
The standpoint of INTERNATIONALISM is the gauge if an individual or group is really a Marxist or not.
Proletariat is a class under capitalism that has no means of production and live by selling their labor power to those who own the instruments of labor (the capitalist class). Thus, proletarians are called the wage-slaves of capital. Proletariat is in the cities and towns; in all countries, 3rd world and 1st world.
Workers are exploited through free labor (surplus value). In surplus value the profits of the capitalist class come from. This is one of the fundamental points of the dynamics of capitalism stated in Das Capital of Marx.
The world bourgeoisie is the enemy of the world working class (including their own bourgeoisies). This is what Marxism teaches us from the more than 200 years of the experience of the international workers movement.
While it is true that there are non-proletarian exploited classes/sectors under capitalism, generally these classes are remnants of the past societies. They are exploited by capitalism and push to be proletarians but owing to the deepening crisis of world capitalism, increasingly many of them are not absorb in the capitalist relations as industrial workers. Many of them are categorize as “informal sector”. As a class, they are against capitalism because they don’t want to become proletarians and they want to turn back the wheel of history in lost societies that once they were decisive productive forces. They only become revolutionary when this class or individuals inside them uphold or defend the class interests of the proletariat as an international class against capital.
From the above we can say that wherever country they are living and working, they are exploited by their own national bourgeoisies and by the world capitalist system. It means, for example, the American workers and immigrant workers are exploited by the American capitalists. This is also true for the Filipino workers, exploited by the Filipino capitalists. It is absurd to say and even think that the workers in the 1st world are not exploited and oppress by their own bourgeoisies. And stupidity if one would say that there is no progressive or revolutionary to the workers’ strikes in the 1st world to defend their class interests (i.e., wage increase, pensions, health care, etc.) and that the “only revolutionary or progressive” are the actions of the workers there to support “national liberation struggles” of the 3rd world. There is no Marxism in this thinking but petty-bourgeois radicalism.
Imperialism is the highest and last stage of capitalism. It means that capitalism already finished its historical mission: conquer the world and all countries have been put under capitalist relations including the remotest parts. World capitalism is in its permanent crisis, in its decadent stage.
In the epoch of decaying imperialism capital becomes completely reactionary as far as the development of productive forces is concern. In the international and national levels, the objective conditions are ripe to overthrow capitalism. If we can still call capitalism as progressive in 19th century, since 20th century it is completely a hindrance to the further development of productive forces and ALL factions of the bourgeoisie are reactionary. If in 19th century it was an effective tactic to have an alliance or to support certain faction of the capitalist class against the reactionary one, since 20th century this became a counter-revolutionary tactic.
Lenin condemned labor aristocracy in the epoch of imperialism. Labor aristocracy is a section or layer within the working class that the capitalists bought to create chaos and deviates the proletarian struggles from socialism. In the epoch of a rotten system in its death agony, bourgeoisie is so desperate to thwart the development of proletarian consciousness and unity to overthrow the decomposing system. Thus, it is not only from the outside but more importantly from inside, through labor aristocracy that the capitalist class tried to prevent the proletarian revolution.
Concretely, what is this?
Contrary to what the Maoists said, not the whole working class in the 1st world (or worse, as what their racist term “white workers”) belongs to labor aristocracy but the unions and its leaders. And it’s not only in the 1st world there is labor aristocracy but in any countries including the 3rd world because all countries have imperialistic characteristics.
Because of the simplistic statement of Lenin that labor aristocracy has been bought by the profits from the 3rd world countries, the self-proclaim “Leninists” distorted this by spewing lies and implying that the internationalist Lenin was a “thirdworldist”!
The money used to buy the unions and its leaders are from the surplus value created by the workers themselves. Thus, these union leaders have many privileges especially from the big corporations. One of these is the “full-time” union president in which he/she is not working but continues to receive “salaries”. And let us remind our Maoists that these are not only happening in the 1st world!
Unions were organizations of the workers in 19th century but became an instrument of the state since the 20th century. The first crime of the unions especially those under the 2nd International was supporting the first inter-imperialist world war under the slogan of patriotism. This was also what happened in WW 2: under the slogan of “defend the socialist fatherland” unions controlled and influenced by Stalinist imperialist USSR (including the CPP-1930) called the workers to sacrifice their lives for the inter-imperialist war. While the unions controlled by Nazis in Germany, fascists in Italy and the Emperor in Japan called also for the superiority of their countries and race. The result: workers kill each other because of love of country, which no other meaning than defend national capitalism; more than 50 million died in WW 2 in the name of nationalism and patriotism of warring imperialist powers.
After WW 2, unions again divided the working class under the conflicts of two most powerful imperialist powers in the world: USSR and USA. In the 60s, China tried to compete as imperialist power with the two which divided more the proletariat. Thus, unions divided into pro-USA, pro-USSR and pro-China. In the end, Chine entered the US imperialist orbit in 1971 against USSR.
Another character of labor aristocracy is the full-time “labor leaders” (labor dealers) and union staffs who lived from the union dues of the workers. They are the bureaucrats within the labor movement. They are in the federations, labor centers and even in the international labor federations whether from the Right or Left of the bourgeoisie. They conspire with the management to oblige the workers to pay union dues by automatically deducting it in their salaries and the close shop clause in the CBAs.
Thus, wildcats are increasing now in the Western countries, strikes that are not controlled and outside the unions but the workers themselves. Here in the Philippines in the late ‘70s and early 80s there were many strikes not controlled by the official unions. These are the concrete expressions of the workers resisting labor aristocracy.
Destroying labor aristocracy is equivalent to destroying the unions. They are not anymore the organizations of the class today. The only organizations of the class for struggle, which the workers showed in the 1st revolutionary wave in 1917-1923, in Italy in the early 70s, in Poland in 1980-81, in Vigo, Spain in 2006 and in France in 2006-2007 are the workers’ councils and assemblies.
“Here in the Philippines in the late ‘70s and early 80s there were many strikes not controlled by the official unions. These are the concrete expressions of the workers resisting labor aristocracy.”
Interestingly, most of these labor struggles were led by the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines and its satellite organizations, which at that time were the only real opposition to the venal US-Marcos regime.
Comment by Anonymous Historian — February 5, 2008 @ 6:15 am
The workers struggles in the Philippines in the ’70s and ’80s were part of the international resurgence of workers movement. Observing Philippine movement outside or independent of the international framework is distorting reality. The Filipino workers are not robots. They struggled because they are exploited by the capitalists and the state. The Maoist CPP only deviate the developing militancy of the Filipino proletariat at that time into the abyss of anti-fascist movement reminiscent of what happened in Spain in the ’30s.
What the Maoist CPP did was to derail the development of the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat by dragooning the most militant workers into the counter-revolutionary guerilla war in the countryside. What happened to Alex Boncayao, a militant worker and all like him was he abandoned the proletariat class terrain and died believing that what he did is for the working class. Thanks to the mystifications of nationalism, Alex Boncayao became a patriot.
Comment by internasyonalista — February 5, 2008 @ 10:56 am
The workers’ struggle in the Philippines in 1970s and 1980s are the concrete manifestations of the development of their revolutionary struggle as a class that is tempered by their struggle as an exploited class. Workers fought against the attacks of the capital, and what the Maoist CPP did was just to manipulate this development to serve their own abstract and mystifying concept of revolution.
Internasyonalista is right. To observe the “…Philippine movement outside or independent of the international framework is distorting reality”. It is actually un-marxist and downright an anti-proletarian outlook. The potential for class struggle after all is not fundamentally determine by the situation of a country as Maoists insist but by the world situation of the proletariat. Workers have no countries. Their class interest have no boundaries.
Comment by d.worker — February 6, 2008 @ 10:44 am