Marxism in the Philippines: Continuing engagements 9712724123, 9789712724121

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MARXISM IN THE PHILIPPINES: CONTINUING ENGAGEMENTS Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem Laura L. Samson Editors

Anvil Manila

MARXISM IN THE PHILIPPINES: Continuing Engagements

Copyright © 2010 Anvil Publishing, Inc. University of the Philippines

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner and publisher. Published and exclusively distributed by ANVIL PUBLISHING, INC

Cacho Hermanos Building Pines cor. Union Streets Mandaluyong City 1550 Philippines Sales & Marketing: 477-4752, 477-4755 [email protected] Fax: 747-1622 www.anvilpublishing.com

Cover design by Joel F. Ariate Jr.

Cover illustration by Anna Fer, from the cover of Marxism in the Philippines Mors Centennial Lectures (Third World Studies Center, 1984)

ISBN 978-971-27-2412-1

Printed in the Philippines

In Memory of Daniel Boone Schirmer

TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE

vii - xii

Teresos Encarnacion Tastem Introduction

1-7

Armando Malay Jr. Marxism and Ideological Strategies Alice G. Guillermo

8-26

Marxism and ideological Strategies (review) Aurora Roxas Lim

27-30

Notes on Zeus Salazar's Filipino Translation of The Communist Manifesto Ramon G. Guillermo

31-45

Marxism, Nationalism, Globalization, and the Left Kathleen Weekley

46-74

Marxism, Nationalism, Globalization, and the Left (Review) Caroline S. Hau

75-78

Marxism, the Peasantry, and Agrarian Revolution in the Philippines Eduardo C. Todem

79-108

Marxism, the Peasantry, and Agrarian Revolution in the Philippines (Review) Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon Bautista

109-112

Marxism and the Philippine Women's Movement: Reflections on Praxis Aida Santos

113-140

Marxism and Civil Society: The Uneasy Encounter Armando Malay Jr.

141-155

The "Chinese Question" A Marxist interpretation Caroline 5. Hau

156-187

The "Chinese Question": A Marxist Interpretation [Review) Alleen S.P. Boviera

188-190

Marxism and Philippine Theology Joseph Scolice

191-213

Marxism and Philippine Theology (Reviews) Edicio dela Torre Rene Nachura

214-225

NOTES ON THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

226-228 -

Preface

Marxism has left an indelible mark in the hearts and minds of several generations of Filipino intellectuals, scholars, student activists, movement organizers, and revolutionary cadres. Many have grown older and have moved on with their lives, probably mellowed by the years, no longer grim and determined advocates for revolutionary change. From underground work, a substantial number have resurfaced "legally"-reinserting and grounding their radical politics in academe, embracing broader and more diverse issues and concerns in civil society, and negotiating boundaries of the supposedly more open, democratic space in the political arena. However, in the face of deepening crises, many others have also reaffirmed their commitment and loyalty to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the National Democratic Front (NDF) in the continuing struggle for national liberation and human emancipation. Over the past three decades, the Filipino Marxist experience has been the subject of thoroughgoing reflection and analysis. From the ground, countless stories have been told and more complex narratives have been drawn regarding the impact of Marxism on individual and collective lives, with valuable lessons and insights toward a more nuanced understanding of Marxism in Philippine context. Variously formulated and interpreted, Marxism is an open, living, and dynamic theoretical system. As noted by former University of the Philippines (UP) President Francisco Nemenzo (1984, 12), "Marxism as a philosophical tradition is not final and complete." In light of enormous changes in the world that Marx could not have easily imagined in his time, it is understandable "to ask whether Marxism remains valid as a mode of analysis and useful as a guide to action" (Nemenzo 1984, 1). Addressing this question, the UP Third World Studies Center (TWSC) organized the Karl Marx Centennial Lecture Series in 1983. The lectures constituted the first volume of Marxism in the Philippines published by TWSC in 1984. The idea behind the series, according to then TWSC Director Randolf S. David (1984) "was not only to honor that great man's contribution to humanity, but also to provide an opportunity to explore the relevance of his ideas to Philippine society and history." The lecture series examined the usefulness of Marxist theory in the analysis of issues in Philippine political economy as well as the impact of Marxism on the Philippine revolutionary movement in various phases of its development. Against the backdrop of martial rule and "the uninformed hostility to and fear of Marxist ideas," the lectures attracted a huge audience, indicative of "a general awakening of interest in Marxism as a consequence of the... political ferment" in society at that time (David 1984). Considered as one of the most successful lecture

series ever organized in the University of the Philippines, the Karl Marx Centennial Lecture Series was a significant milestone in the first decade of TWSC's existence. In 1988, TWSC launched the second Marxism in the Philippines lecture publication series. The series focused attention on "the resolution of the crisis of the Marcos regime via the February 1986 EDSA uprising-where, how and why the Left erred, and how it was tragically marginalized in the process" (David 1988, vii-vili). The 1988 lectures, which provoked intense discussions and debates within and outside the lecture halls, explored possible answers to this question. The series highlighted echoes of the 1978 debate with regard to the revival of the Philippine government of Republic Act 1700 (the "Anti- Subversion Act" outlawing the Communist Party and penalizing membership therein) on May 5, 1987; the analysis of the Left and other forces in the context of the pre-1986 coalition politics; the debates within the CPP-NPA- NDF on the Marxist-Christian dialogue; and the dilemmas of the Left at the crossroads in light of current debates on strategy and revolution. As explained by Randolf S. David (1988, vii-viii) in the foreword to the book: these papers are unsparing in their critique of the rigidity of party theorizing and practice. The costs of such inflexibility to the progressive movement in general are spelled out. The opportunities and openings that were squandered because of an ingrained dogmatism are assessed from the vantage point of an alternative praxis, whose terms are only now beginning to be made explicit.

The first two volumes of Marxism in the Philippines aptly captured prominent issues and concerns confronted by the Left at the crossroads during the last years of the Marcos dictatorship and in the early years of transition to "cacique democracy" under President Corazon "Cory" Aquino. As the CPP-NPA-NDF grappled with serious challenges under the new political dispensation, the debates on the movement's policies and strategies intensified, which eventually led to the split of the Left into two major factions the "rejectionists" (or the RIs) and the "reaffirmists" (or the RAS) in 1992 because of policy differences with the CPP leadership, among others. Meanwhile, TWSC became more and more institutionalized as a major research and publication unit in the University. And as the Center started to gain academic prominence, the aura of TWSC as a radical hub began to fade. Patricia N. Abinales, former fellow and deputy director of TWSC, shares his observations:

A minor theoretical revival did take place after 1986 when the Party, sidelined by the so-called People's Power Revolution, broke into factions that debated why and where the Party faltered. These eventually expanded to animated exchanges on the continuing validity of the Maoist prescription for revolutionary change and a re-examination of the socialist project This internal debate was resolved by organizational fiat, however; Sison launched an internal coup ousting those he regarded as "renegades" and restoring the Party's Maoist foundations. Outside the Party, the TWSC got caught in the frenzy of the postauthoritarian moment and rather unconsciously began to shift toward contributing to the general effort to defend the fragile regime of President Corazon Aquino and pushing for "deepening" democratization. Having achieved a new status as one of the university's most important research centers, the TWSC also began to draw the attention of big institutional "funders," which further sped its shift from radical theorizing to "broader," "policy-focused" issues like development and neoliberalism, civil society politics, and peace studies. Its publication during this period were not only critical evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of the postauthoritarian state, but also concrete policy recommendations for bolstering "popular democracy." (Abinales 2009, xix-xx)

However, through the years, TWSC stays unwavering in its commitment to promote critical thinking and inquiry into key issues affecting Philippine society. Through various public forums, research, and publications, the Center has provided new grounds for progressive intellectuals and movement activists in search of alternatives to mainstream discourse and relevant models for social analysis and collective action. In recent years, the thrust has been on the study of social movements, in the context of the country's transition to democracy and the advent of globalization. Thus, TWSC publications have focused attention on the role of social movements in localizing and transnationalizing contentious politics on issues such as debt relief and changing trade rules and regulations, the anti-corruption and fair trade movements, and the role of civil society in a period of globalization. Mobilizing for change has been a prominent concern in other projects sponsored by TWSC. These include the lecture-series on Social Movements in the South, the Policy Dialogue Series on Human Security, and the Academe Meets Government series on health, the military, constitutional change, and the economy, among others. In all these, the ideas of Marx continue to find resonance. In search of alternative praxis to address current issues and concerns in Philippine society, progressive academics and public intellectuals continue to draw inspiration from Marx.

In 2004, the idea to revive the Marxism in the Philippines lecture publication series came to life at a gathering of friends and colleagues who were invited to help define the TWSC agenda. Looking back to almost three decades of TWSC's existence, many drew attention to the Marxism series as "defining moments" worth revisiting. The brainstorming session highlighted the need for TWSC to continue to provide venues and opportunities for the revaluation, rethinking, and reformulation of Marxist ideas, in light of current discourse and recent developments in Philippine society. Thus, TWSC organized the third Marxism in the Philippines lecture-publication series in 2005, later renamed as the Daniel Boone Schirmer Memorial Lectures on Marxism in the Philippines in 2006. From the lectures delivered and papers submitted for the series, eight articles were chosen for publication and are included in this book. The articles greatly benefited from the critical comments and reviews delivered or submitted, some of which are presented here for a more nuanced understanding of pertinent issues and concerns. This book is a modest contribution toward enriching and sharpening debate on Marxist theory and practice, given changing particularities of context and situation across boundaries of time and space. The book captures more recent articulations and self-articulations on old and new questions in Marxist discourse, based on years of theoretical and/or political engagements by Filipino Marxist scholars and academic observers within and outside the mainstream Left. The first set of articles (written by Alice G. Guillermo, Ramon G. Guillermo, and Kathleen Weekley) revisit the national question in Marxism, the appropriation of nationalism as an ideological element in various political- ideological discourses, the translation or localization of Marxist ideas, and the problems and challenges in the articulation of nationalism and communist practice. Three articles (contributed by Eduardo C. Tadem, Aida F. Santos, and Armando Malay Jr.) examine Marxism in relation to social forces in old and new movement formations-the peasantry, the women's movement, and civil society. The last two articles (prepared by Caroline S. Hau and Joseph Scalice) highlight issues pertaining to ethnicity and religion that were previously submerged in Marxist discourse. We deeply appreciate the enthusiastic support extended to this project by various groups and individuals. On behalf of the TWSC, we would like to thank the following: The Office of the UP Diliman Chancellor, in collaboration with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development (OVCRD), particularly Vice Chancellor Luis G. Sison and Project Management and Resource Generation Office (PMRGO) Director Henry J. Ramos, for funding support through the Outright Research Grant so the lectures delivered and papers submitted could be reviewed, rewritten, and edited for publication;

Our friends and colleagues, former directors, deputy directors, and research staff of TWSC for their assistance in the birthing of the book as well as for those who participated and shared their thoughts and ideas in the 2005 Marxism in the Philippines lecture-series; Patricio "Jojo" Abinales, in particular, who broached the idea of reprinting the two previous volumes of Marxism in the Philippines to complement the present volume; Karina Bolasco of Anvil Publishing Inc. for believing in this project; an abridged edition of the first two volumes of Marxism in the Philippines was published earlier this year, The reactors and reviewers-Patricio N. Abinales, Filomeno V. Aguilar, Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon Bautista, Saturnino M. Borras Jr, Aileen S.P Baviera, Edicio de la Torre, Maria Serena I. Diokno, Eduardo Gonzalez, Patrick D. Flores, Aurora R. Lim, Ferdinand C. Llanes, Armando Malay Jr, Rene Nachura, Maureen Pagaduan, Nilo S. Ocampo, Zeus A. Salazar, Jorge V. Tigno, Temario C. Rivera, Eduardo C. Tadem, and Erick Villanueva-for their critical comments, reviews, and recommendations in developing the book manuscripts; and TWSC Deputy Director Maria Ela L. Atienza; members of the TWSC research and publication staff: Joel F. Ariate Jr., Rowell G Casaclang, Elinor May Cruz, Miguel Paolo P. Reyes; research assistants Mary Ann Joy R. Quirapas and Christopher Nex Beñas; volunteer-interns Dean Paula Kaneesha B. Paulate and Maree Jhoanna S. Leal; other members of TWSC who helped in the conceptualization of the project: former TWSC Deputy Directors Glenda Lopez Wui and Josephine C. Dionisio, and past TWSC researchers Sharon M. Quinsaat, Zuraida Mae D. Cabilo, Ronald C. Molmisa, Trina Joyce Sajo Agena, and Annabelle Bonje; and the TWSC administrative staff, Macaria Francisco, Bienvenida Lacsamana, Ireneo Francisco and Marites Miano, for their dedicated support in various tasks and responsibilities toward the completion of the project. We dedicate this book to Daniel Boone Schirmer, for his expression of solidarity and support to the TWSC and what it stood for since the 1970s until his recent demise; we treasure his progressive writings and his generous donations of valuable Filipiniana and Marxist library collection to the TWSC library.

Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem Laura L. Samson Co-editors

Note 1. The "RIs" for example, did not agree with the use of the armed struggle in attaining change unlike the "reaffirmists" or "RAs as they are called, who continue to adhere to this as well as to the other basic teachings of the CPP leadership, eg, guerrilla warfare.

References Abinales, Patricio N. 2009. Marxism under Marcos and Beyond. In Revisiting Marxism in the Philippines: Selected essays, ed. Patricio N. Abinales, xi-xxiii, Manila: Anvil Publishing, Inc. David, Randolf S. 1984. Introduction to Marxism in the Philippines: Marx centennial lectures, ed. Third World Studies Center. Quezon City: UP Third World Studies Center 1988. Foreword to Marxism in the Philippines: Second series, ed. Third World Studies Center, vil-viii. Quezon City: UP Third World Studies Center. Nemenzo, Francisco. 1984. The millenarian-populist aspects of Filipino Marxism. In Marxism in the Philippines: Marx centennial lectures, ed. Third World Studies Center, 1-13. Quezon City: UP Third World Studies Center.

Introduction Armando Malay Jr.

IT CERTAINLY GOES without saying that for one to accept to write a "synoptic" piece on the different lectures or papers that make up this Marxism in the Philippines volume, when one is one of the lecturers in the series himself, is most unusual. But I relented after repeated requests to do just that: anything to get a debate going like in the good old days of the Diliman Republic. So, like a bit player who also has to review the same production he has acted in, I'm bashful. It's all very well to be self-deprecating about one's role in the play, but what about the others? In this unenviable position I will prudently confine myself to noting that all the lectures or papers constitute an earnest effort to give words to various understandings of "Marxism" in theory and practice as applied to present Philippine situations. The earnestness is evident in most of the lecturers' or authors' tendency to put Marx in the best possible light, so to speak; their general argument is that his oeuvre still remains relevant and useful to varying degrees, for various purposes. Even my modest contribution, which is about the guarded stance that mainstream Marxists have vis-à-vis civil society, would reinforce that positive outlook. But the question of relevance or irrelevance, in the final analysis, is really all up to the reader to decide. For my part I am loath to preach to the converted, so I take my imaginary audience to be those people who mutter, "Don't tell me, show me." Saying that is my enviable privilege as post-lecture series critic. Let us now take a brief glance at the different takes on the doctrine-as-understood in question, and the uses to which it has been put. In her piece on Marxism and nationalism, Kathleen Weekley enjoins the Philippine Left to drop its stance of non-engagement with respect to the bourgeoisie and the State. In her considered opinion, the Left is not taking these presumed enemies seriously enough. Part of the problem might lie in the fact that, in her own words, "there has been too much Lenin and Mao and not enough Marx" in the local doxology. This unproblematic formula is highly unlikely to get a rise out of the Leninists and Maoists, but it could very well start the debate devoutly wished for if the quantitative scarcity of "Marx" (as one would say "water") in these parts were more explicitly illustrated. The hazy advice to "force the State to play a different role from that of being the executive committee for the bourgeoisie" (emphasis supplied), if seriously taken, just might result in the New People's Army's (NPA) intensification of the "strategic offensive" of the armed struggle. Ramon Guillermo's salutary lecture just might force Filipino Marxists to rethink their basic understanding of the doctrine which presumably defines

and governs their very thought processes. After all, application of the theory was intended by Marx for industrialized Western societies, mostly the ones he had personal knowledge of (but which did not inhibit him from discoursing on the so-called Asiatic mode of production), The German-educated Guillermo's defense of Marxist theory is effected through his respectful critique of Dr. Zeus Salazar's translation, from the original to Filipino, of the Communist Manifesto. As citizens of the Diliman Republic know or should know, the Salazarian discourse would rule out assuming a one-to-one correspondence of terms of European origin like bourgeois and proletarian with the Filipino historical and social experience, not to mention sensibility. But Guillermo just as expectedly stands by his Marx and Engels. Alice Guillermo, professor emeritus in Art Studies, reconnoiters the terrain of bourgeois hegemony and argues that the contextualist approach, so fruitful in the arts, relates very well to "Marxist method." She extends her critique to the bourgeoisie's "ideological strategies" in such problematic domains as nationalism, religion, and civil society. Marx's observation in The German Ideology perfectly sums up Dr. Guillermo's brief: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas... The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production." This is so commonsensical from a Marxist viewpoint that it's surprising why some otherwise thoughtful Marxists don't seem to get it. Not to rub it in, but I used that same passage as the epigraph of my lecture (q.v.). Eduardo Tadem reviews the Marxist literature on the peasantry, that notoriously intractable sector of all human societies beyond the hunter- gatherer stage, and critiques the actual experience of the radical Left among the mostly poor rural population of Central Luzon. A mitigated balance sheet emerges from the communities under study: is the Left only politicizing, or is it instrumentalizing the peasants? It seems that the Marxist (or Marxist- Leninist) formula for improving the lot of the poor peasant and sustaining it under socialist auspices is back on the drawing board, as recent developments in China and Vietnam have shown. This piece should likewise initiate a lively debate on the matter; and the panel had better include real peasants. But then, who was it who said that these people cannot represent themselves, they must be represented? With Aida Santos the tone changes, as she reflects on the impact on her life made by the fraught construct that is Marxist feminism. This is noteworthy in itself, for as far back as memory serves, the Marxism in the Philippines series never took up this topic before. Depending on the level of leftist literacy of the reader, this paper will come across as being either informative, eye-opening, or old hat: but it deserves to be read, if only to be acquainted with the mindset of a member of the female intelligentsia who's gone down that radical road and back. Not "sadder and wiser" now, but simply wised up.

One of the Marxist arguments I can effortlessly accept is that civil society Is coeval with the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois right, which is essentially the right to private property. Before Marx, of course, Rousseau's On the Origin of inequality had said much the same thing Today, the concept of civil society has high market value and non-government organizations (NGOs) that incorporate it in their project proposals have excellent chances of obtaining funding. Given its "pedigree," can civil society be other than an instrument at the disposal of a ruling class which does not want to have to use coercive means to defend the State? My discussion focuses on the practical consequences, for the Left, of Philippine civil society, which is arguably the most developed in Southeast Asia. In so many words Carolyn Hau's lecture advances the proposition that good inter-ethnic relations in a given community are germane to Marxism. This is counter-intuitive on her part, but one is willing to be persuaded otherwise. Racism is no more a Marxist concern than sexism or "ageism" are, if one goes by the foundational texts and discursive practices of the ideology (Marx's own harsh views of the Jews, however, are a different matter altogether, and would come as a spoiler for those who are unaware of them.) To ascribe good Marxist credentials to a given party or group because it takes up the cudgels for an ethnic, or linguistic, or religious minority does not per se make that party or group Marxist, but "humanist" will do perfectly well. Or is the truism "Marxist is as Marxist does" applicable in the case at hand? In any event, given the original "Chinese" inspiration of the CPP, could it have done otherwise than make "efforts to address and resolve the 'Chinese Question""? From a Marxist-humanist viewpoint, Philippine theology in general is found wanting by Joseph Scalice. He would have local practitioners drop their "determinist" outlook which, he contends, stems from a "misreading of Marx and a dependence on Lenin and Mao" and which has ultimately dehumanized Marxist praxis. So far so good (for some, and an earlier lecture prepared others for that ideological dosage), but citing Roger Garaudy in support of a Marxist-Christian meeting of the minds is ill-advised: surely Scalice knows that the man abandoned Marxism and went on to convert to Islam. Representing Antonio Gramsci as an unapologetical justifier of the Tunethical" orientation of the revolution is sure to raise some hackles among the partisans of the Italian philosopher, and thus, it is fervently to be hoped, generate a long-overdue discussion on the profound, not just the surface, meaning of the Gramscian project for the Left. Several categories may be drawn up to distinguish a set of papers from the others. Not necessarily in the order of importance, these are: the papers which address the same thematic; those which "speak to" each other; and those which explicitly promote one approach to Marx or another. For whatever it's worth, here is an attempt to foreground commonalities in the themes and approaches used. Both of the pieces that "speak to" each

other (Hau's and Weekley's) approvingly cite Etienne Balibar as an authority on the delicate locus where nationalism and racism intersect, and like him expose a latent racist strain in nationalism. But interestingly, the two authors part ways on the question of the political correctness of the dominant strand of the Philippine Left on the matter. A pair of lectures that expound on different topics (R. Guillermo's and mine) also touch, if only tangentially, on a common epistemological point, viz. the translatability of period-specific but not necessarily culture-bound denominations and categories of analysis such as "feudal," "bourgeois" and "civil society" in mainstream Philippine society. Are these mere terms that we can bandy about in any cultural and historical context, or do they have a specificity that is anything but innocent? Two well-matched papers (Weekley and Scalice) take a highly prescriptive approach to their respective topics: they are generous with their free advice to the Left, on such key questions as nationalism and liberation theology. The intended audience, one might surmise, will be duly preoccupied with pondering the urgency that impels the expression of the countless "musts," "shoulds," "coulds," that punctuate these prognostications, in keeping with the Left's urgent "tasks" and assigned "roles." The lectures of A. Guillermo (on art) and E. Tadem (on the peasantry) are just as "politically correct" in that they hew to one accepted orthodoxy or another, but they draw that crucial line between the scholar and the commissar. For her part Santos refreshingly lets go of political correctness and allows her personal narrative to take over. This is a position that many Marxists cannot afford to take, for reasons of their own.

… In spite of their occasional divergences, these various readings, registers, and angles of attack, with possibly only one exception, all issue from the same academic-Marxist repertory. There may be no other source of "knowledge production" anymore on the matter, and some would interject that there is actually nothing new to say about Marxism. But it is true that by default, the professional intellectuals have come to represent the interests of the working classes which supposedly constitute the ideology's basic constituency. It is only fair then to ask whether the academic Marxists, or Marxist academics, truly deserve this distinction. As a mitigating circumstance, let us first cite the elective affinity principle. For so many reasons it is only logical for Marxists to gravitate to the groves of academe (if they did not germinate there in the first place). The fractious history of "scientific socialism," the need to demystify the hidden laws of History and the market, the avant-gardiste tendencies of the ideology's adepts, their urge to debate and to rationalize, the power of the "search for truth" and progressive discourses, etc., have converged to designate the

modern campus as the replacement for the workshop or factory in matters of propagating one Marxist orthodoxy or another. All this is in addition to the logic of "proletarian consciousness," possessing which is a matter of subjective attitude rather than objective class condition, and thus is available to any non-proletarian with the will to acquire it: hence a proliferation of the déclassé intelligentsia in the revolutionary movements of yesteryear. But to return to the subject of Marxist knowledge production, it would be useful to remember that it's not proletarian and peasant concerns, or rather problems which should be of utility to those social classes, which interest the new crop of scholars. Far from it; rather, they are "into" identity politics or critical or queer theory, etc. After all, if Marxism is synonymous to intellectual avant-gardism, one can expect Marxists to achieve prominence in the cutting-edge discourses or disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences. Ultimately, however, the question is whether the motivation to self-express today has more to do with tenure or promotion, and less with communicating useful knowledge to the laboring classes. It may be objected that that is so twentieth century, to be sure. The process of articulating "Marxism," and not just a vaguely-imagined socialism, into the academic establishment became increasingly evident in the 1960s, just as the so-called New Leftists were tearing down the ideological strictures of their predecessors. That decade was the high tide of such maîtres à penser as Herbert Marcuse and Louis Althusser, updaters or reinterpreters of the orthodoxy for the benefit, not of the working masses which were a world apart, but of leftist students in prestigious Western schools. Yet Althusser's fashionable reputation might in part be usurped; for his posthumous memoirs included the confession that he actually "knew almost nothing about the history of philosophy or about Marx" in the mid-sixties, except Book I of Capital (Althusser 1994, 148, 165). Knowing how many Althusserians have read each and every line of that weighty book themselves should be just as interesting. Gramsci was also "discovered" in the same ideological moment in the Anglo-Saxon world, at one trans-Atlantic remove and after a lapse of some four decades following his peak of intellectual productivity. Since the phenomenal popularity of the civil-society idea in the late twentieth century he has been quoted almost as often as Marx. Yet he can no more be subjected to a one-dimensional reading than Marx can on the subject of revolutionary change, and his very success as Marxist philosopher in these post-Berlin Wall times inevitably raises questions. These have to do with the problematic meaning that he gave to "hegemony." Gramsci may just possibly have been hinting at the enormity of the conundrum facing the Left in his famous definition of that word," for following his logic, the question summarily resolves itself into the following tautology: the dominant bourgeoisie is hegemonic, because the hegemony of the bourgeoisie is per se constitutive

of its dominant status. Conversely, when the putative successor of the bourgeoisie, the proletarian class, will have achieved dominant status by virtue of its conquest of the commanding function in the relations of production (plus the "prestige" and "trust" that accrue to that position), then that may indeed be taken as proof of its being hegemonic. Assuming that one finds that to be a plausible argument so far, some nagging questions, certainly naïve questions, remain. How will we get there from here, and how will the "war of position" bring that about better than the "war of maneuver"? Will the bourgeoisie as such necessarily have to disappear from the relations of production; and if so, how? How will the presumably new hegemony function when the roles of dominant and dominated are reversed subsequent to the revolution? In this reversal of the old socially-agreed upon roles, will the bourgeoisie spontaneously give their consent to the values, principles, prejudices, in a word, the culture of the proletarian order? The beautiful theory stops at the edge of the water, for there is no formula distilled from "common sense" and humanity's historical experience that begins to indicate a way out of the tautology. It is against the backdrop of this enigma that one perhaps understands- admittedly by second-guessing-Zygmunt Bauman, who declared that his discovery of Gramsci gave him "the opportunity of an honorable discharge from Marxism" (Bunting 2003). Fittingly enough, Gramsci's motto (in reality, formulated by Romain Rolland) was "Pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will." The obscurity of the language used by the non-academic Gramsci is explained, if not exactly condoned, by the experts as his way of getting past the prison censors. What is the excuse for the trademark jargon of those professorial Marxists who don't particularly mind being unread, unheard and un-understood by the uninitiated and the profane? If one may venture an answer, it is because their Western role models long ago abdicated their supposed task of writing (if only occasionally) for the edification of the masses and decided that Marxist discourse resonated better in the confines of the lecture hall or from the pages of university-press tomes. According to the elegant explication of Perry Anderson, the extreme difficulty of language characteristic of much of Western Marxism in the twentieth century was never controlled by the tension of a direct or active relationship to a proletarian audience. On the contrary, its very surplus above the necessary minimum quotient of verbal complexity was the sign of its divorce from any popular practice. virtually none of [the Western theorists] spoke an even or uncontorted language in the major theoretical works for which they are usually remembered. (Anderson 1979, 54)

If that was true of Western societies, what could one expect from nonWestern ones? But all that aside, I think Marxism in the Philippines: Continuing Engagements is a wonderful title for this book, evoking as it does the twin themes of relevance and commitment, both apprehended in a selective sense: in the end, one believes the Marxian truth that best suits one. It should be worthwhile for the reader to return, twenty years or so from now, to the essays gathered here and see if their respective arguments have withstood the test of time (among other tests). This should serve as a sort of gauge of the discursive progress, or the contrary, of the Leftist project. This is as much as to say that all interested readers owe it to themselves to get the whole series. I understand the first two volumes have undergone some cleaning up; well, the whole metanarrative itself could stand the same treatment.

Notes 1. For that matter, what can and should I say about the reviews that inexplicably are included as part of this volume? Full disclosure: I myself was an anonymous reviewer of one of the papers here (to compound the problem, and I beg the reader's indulgence for this long-winded aside, that lecturer in turn was the reviewer of yet another paper). But the daisy chain had to stop somewhere: succeeded in having the review I wrote pulled out. 2. This did not stop Althusser from saying that Sartre "never really understood anything of Hegel, Marx or. Freud" (Althusser 1994, 176). 3. The complete definition is "the 'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the direction imprinted on social life by the fundamental ruling class, a consent which comes into existence 'historically' from the 'prestige' (and hence from the trust) accruing to the ruling class from its position and its function in the world of production" (Gramsci 1983, 124). 4. In this interview, Bauman clarified that he was referring to "orthodox Marxism," and that he did not for all that become anti-Marxist like some of his contemporaries. 5. Anderson does not include Marx in his list of unreadable writers. Gramsci is allegedly the exception to the twentieth century group, but his language (as previously noted) nonetheless was opaque for even his readers among the intelligentsia. As for the later theorists, they were "freer than Gramsci, but remoter from the masses" (Anderson 1979, 55),

References Althusser, Louis. 1994. The future lasts a long time. London: Vintage. Anderson, Perry. 1979. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: Verso. Bunting, Madeleine. 2003. Passion and pessimism (interview with Zygmunt Bauman). The Guardian, April 5. Gramsci, Antonio. 1983. The modern prince and other writings. 9th printing. NY: International Publishers.

Marxism and Ideological Strategies Alice G. Guillermo

This paper will begin with a disciplinal approach in art studies which was originally suggested as the field of inquiry. We will indeed begin with ideologies in art and culture, but culture being such a broad domain, we shall extend the scope of the paper from art to the many ideologies operating in the present in so far as they have a bearing, negative or positive, to the Marxist liberationist project. These have to do with superstructural ways of thinking, personal or institutional, which arise from the political and economic conditions of our place and time.

Ideologies of Art Of the university disciplines, the Marxist approach is eminently applicable to art. This is because art, the visual arts, music, architecture, theater, film, and the popular arts, seem to naturally call for a contextualist approach (those who are wary of Marxism prefer to use the term "contextualist" which implies an orientation and not necessarily a dynamic engagement as Marxism would imply). The base-superstructure, sociological, or contextualist approach situates the work in its historical and social setting. But for Marxism, a cursory acknowledgment of the time and place that surround art and the practices of artmaking do not suffice. For art itself is intrinsically embedded in particular historical and social conditions at the same time that it contains larger significations in an increasingly wider field. Also, the relationship of art and context, far from being inert is dynamic and interactive in a continually multilateral interaction of various mediations that constitute an entire system. As Marx himself would say, in the long run, "There is no art history, there is only the history of man making art." It seems that this dynamic approach is widely acceptable in the humanities. Its obverse would be the formalist approach as in the New Criticism which enjoins the viewer to focus on the work of art alone, its idioms, the process of its creation, its metaphors and motifs, and to see the work as a closed and self-contained system possessing a configuration that is unique to itself. But this would constitute a semiotic system truncated from its referents in the real world, consisting of "an endless play of signifiers." In such a manner, the work of art would float in a vacuum unmoored in the conditions of existence. It is, in fact, an approach which finds an inner signification in the work alone, refusing or deliberately blinding one's eyes to the interactivity of work and world in terms of references,

associations, metaphors and allegories which are regarded as extra-artistic and deserving of no serious attention. It insists solely on the technical constitution of the work and on the artist as a mere skilled technician, a producer of artifice, and incidentally, if at all, a thinker, a philosopher, a humanist, etc. From the side of the formalists, there is always the persistent idea that social and political significations soil the purity of the work. This is parallel to the classical idea that one looks up to the statue, the work of art, on a pedestal, above human struggle and strife. The so-called purity of the work, both on the levels of its creation and its critique, truncates it from its full semantic potential and keeps it isolated and hermetic like an orchidaceous growth so that one goes through a strange museum of works that are neither here nor there, where identity and nationality matter little. As such, this approach fails to realize the full flowering of meaning of the work to which social and historical forces vitally contribute their various inflections. The meaning or content of the work cannot be separate from its signifiers since the latter bear the semantic potentials which in a relational way produce meaning. There should always be a close relationality, if not inevitability, at least to a large extent, of signifier and signification within what Eagleton calls the work's "horizon of meaning." The relation of the work of art to its context is translated in Marxist terms into the heuristic paradigm of the material base and the superstructure, the base being mainly economic, which is the determinant in the last instance, and the superstructure being politics, culture, and ideology. The arts and humanities play a leading role in the superstructure in its dynamic interaction with the base, otherwise the superstructure becomes a mere epiphenomenon lacking a vital force or influence on material life. It is the discipline of art history which necessarily articulates the relation of base and superstructure, a relation which requires problematization in its application to particular examples. Doubtless, the relationship is mutual and dialectic and not a simplistic and unilateral one from base to superstructure but vice versa. Nor is it mechanical and automatic, as in what Frederic Jameson termed a "billiard ball causality." One very common fault in art studies is the discussion of the historical and social background for the first part and the work of art in the second part, so that after the obligatory obeisance to what is called the "historical background" is the discussion privileging the works of art which become the proper and central focus of art history. This is just a step away from formalism and is a purely mechanical approach, one which does not satisfactorily show the intricate relationship between the two. Art simply floats in an ether with no demonstrable links to a material base. At convenient points, elements of the background reappear in a kind of occasional and obligatory footnote to the discussion.

What is called for is to create a sensitive network of mediations and overdeterminations to and from the work so that what results is a web of multidirectional lines that coalesce around nodal points which could be key works of art or significant historical events as pivots of change. Indeed, there is no such thing as King Economy charging down the road. At all points, different factors coalesce, interact, and influence each other. All together, these form a fabric of dense texture with devices that go beyond the simple grid of warp and weft in which works of art, artists, events, and personages existing on several levels or planes interweave to form a complex entity. In present art, likewise, the distinction between high art and low art has been effaced, thus bringing in folk artistic productions which have greatly influenced the course of contemporary art with the use of folk motifs and vernacular materials interacting with contemporary contents. This has become an aspect of postmodernism as it is practiced primarily in advanced capitalist countries, and to some extent in the Philippines. Political art in the Philippines does not require a particular style. Realism, surrealism, expressionism, even cubism (as in Picasso's Guernica), and various individual styles can be vehicles for political content. There is, however, a preference for realism, indeed social realism, a style of representational art related to contemporary issues and concerns, because it can convey its message with greater clarity to a larger number. Such is also the reason why popular forms, such as posters, prints, comics and cartoons, have been encouraged in political art because they can reach more people. However, in the present time, artists no longer need to invoke these turn-of-last- century styles. While their influence has been useful, on the whole, there is now a need to reinvent political art in new forms and styles more congenial to Filipino traditions of material and expression in indigenous and folk art, at the same time drawing out the full potential or radicalizing these forms.

Nationalism In the last two decades, the department of art studies has seen a significant shift from Western to Philippine in art historical courses. This progressive move reflected the upsurge of nationalism that occurred in the 1960s with the founding of the first political organizations that arose from the conditions of the country. The Marcos dictatorship was a time of severe economic crisis, political oppression, and unprecedented graft and corruption, while U.S. military aggression on Vietnam called for widespread protest. Nationalism has constituted an important element in the arts since the mid-sixties. In comparison to the countries of the West, nationalism has a particular meaning in the Philippines because of centuries of Spanish and American colonization. Here, it is not only love of country or patriotism per

se that makes up its content but an active oppositional stance vis-à-vis the colonizers who institutionalized exploitation in the laws of the land and guaranteed continuing colonial advantages even after independence. This is an important consideration in the concept of post-coloniality as particular to the Philippines, because for us, colonialism was not something that was shed behind with the granting of formal independence, but coloniality is, to our realization, even more deeply, indelibly, inscribed in our national life to the present. Thus, for us Filipinos, anti-imperialism is a crucial, in fact, decisive element in our nationalism. Yet one is always aware of the fact that nationalism has occurred in diverse discourses so that one can easily raise one's hands in despair over the meaning of nationalism as inviting more confusion. In itself, nationalism is a free-floating ideological element that can be appropriated by various politico-ideological discourses, from the right-wing and reactionary to the progressive and radical. In its articulation into a particular discourse, the articulating principle operating in all instances is class interest-the contents of nationalism in this case support the needs and meets the goals of the class appropriating it. The discursive structure into which it is appropriated also has other component elements and values which give their particular semantic inflections to nationalism. Nazism, as an extreme example, also contains militarism, racism, authoritarianism, and fascism as its other elements. It is therefore important to distinguish the meaning of nationalism in these various discourses. With Marcos, nationalism served the interests of the ruling class in its Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa (One Nation, One Thought), which sought to unite the entire people under his regime, while the other elements of the discourse was militarism, conjugal dictatorship, and the consumerist and individualist values of American free enterprise. In the 1950s, from the time of Magsaysay, the U.S. tried to propagate the ideology of the "anti-communist left," key elements of which were populism and sympathy for the rural poor. It upheld personal intelligence and effort, as well as higher education, as the keys to the upliftment of one's individual status. At the same time, it propagated the economic and political interests of the United States in the country-it did not, for instance, oppose parity rights nor the military bases. Likewise, it made much ado of the movement's early ties with China, and dismissed local revolutionary leaders as charlatans, thus aiming to spread a general disaffection with revolutionary efforts. In the national democratic discourse, nationalism is articulated with the interest of the masses in its pro-people orientation and with an active anti-imperialism. It strives for political, economic, and cultural independence and the achievement of true sovereignty. Its anti-imperialism is directed against the U.S. and Japan and also against government officials who promote foreign interests, such as bills allowing foreign companies to own and exploit the country's mines and fertile lands.

There is an entire history of nationalism in the Philippines. Perhaps the earliest indication of nationalist consciousness was found in the seventeenth century engravings of Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay and Francisco Suarez, cartographers and printers, who signed "indio tagalo" after their names, proud of their craftsmanship as indios, as the native-born inhabitants were then called. When the Philippine ports were opened to the world market, the ilustrados from the landlord class benefited greatly from the economic change. They built their mansions of wood and stone, furnished it with European furniture and the "civilized" amenities and commissioned the reputed artists of the day to do their portraits for the edification of generations. Pursuing higher studies in Europe, they adopted the Spanish language and culture at the same time that they were exposed to the progressive currents of the time and the ideas of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity. In this political atmosphere, they became reformists, campaigning for the representation of the Philippines in the Spanish Cortes or Parliament and thus aiming for the Philippines to attain the status of province and not colony of Spain. While being Filipinos, they did not wish to relinquish their ties with Madre España. Thus, their nationalism was ilustrado or bourgeois nationalism. Bourgeois or ilustrado nationalism continues to the present. It is professed by members of the big landlord or comprador classes, and their apologists from the intellectual sector, and while expressing love of country and a pro-people orientation, fight their struggles within the narrow and comfortable confines of their class. They give much weight to high positions in the academe and society which they use for personal advancement. History has shown their vacillating and accommodationist character. One can cite the conjuncture between Spanish and American rule when the members of the Federalista Party scrambled for positions in the next colonial dispensation. Or one can refer to the gathering of the ilustrados in the Malolos Republic who celebrated their brief triumph with a French menu, which to them was the model of haute cuisine, to the exclusion of the masses of Katipuneros. Earlier, Andres Bonifacio was publicly scorned by Daniel Tirona for his lack of an educational degree. This is an instance when generic intellectuals who are products of the academe fail to recognize the category of organic intellectuals from the masses who are able to achieve a high level of learning. It is important to acknowlege the achievement of organic intellectuals, otherwise, traditionally-trained generic intellectuals will always have the advantage. Even now, members of the landlord class considered to belong to the national bourgeoisie assume a veneer of nationalism but show their real character when their properties are threatened by protests from their exploited workers. Their bourgeois form of nationalism conveniently deceives

the people into believing them to be their friend and ally. The danger is that they may eventually and gradually water down the revolutionary agenda to serve reformist ends. But even as we refer to the well-known Marxist principle that "social being determines consciousness," one is aware that the political subject does not always align with the economic and the ideological subject. It would be simple class reductionism to assume that landlords per se cannot genuinely identify with the causes of workers and peasants, for although this may be true as a whole, there are some exceptions to the rule. Since the mid-1980s with the downfall of Marcos and the presidency of Corazon Aquino, American conservative strategists flocked to the Philippines and lauded it as a "newly-restored democracy." The political program which they tailor-made for it was the Doctrine of the Third Force, which promoted as model a so-called centrist government which would break away with the Marcos fascist military, on one hand, and did not "play footsies" with the Communist Party of the Philippines or New People's Army, on the other hand. With this it is not surprising that the so-called "rainbow coalition" at the beginning of Cory's presidency was brief in duration, after which there was a significant shift to the right-wing camp with the continual realignment of her cabinet members, many of whom had previously supported Marcos. Part of this strategy was the creation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) and later the so-called government NGOs which targeted the middle class and offered alternative options most of which did away with the armed struggle and replaced it with a non-confrontational way to social change. Some NGOs likewise defined their function as "pressure groups" which contented themselves with a reform agenda. In the foreign press, the peaceful nature of the Edsa I Revolution was greatly lauded and upheld internationally as a model of bourgeois change for similar countries under authoritarian rule. Cory Aquino's stock was greatly boosted by support from the United States. But among local political analysts, it was the subject of debate whether Aquino's presidential widow was situated in the political spectrum as a liberal democrat or as the conservative landlord of Hacienda Luisita. This strategy of the Third Force was also used by the United States as a wedge to topple socialist countries of the Eastern bloc, combined with insistent urgings from radio messages from the Radio Europe. In fact, there was a conference later held in Manila headed by Senator Raul Manglapus to which the "newly emerging democracies" were invited in order to chart their course of governance. With this, the United States was consolidating its power as it relied upon the urban middle class to swing from their fatal attraction with the Left to a course more "friendly to the United States."

The Use of Religion in Politics In the Philippines, religion played an important role in the period leading up to the inauguration of Cory Aquino. For her campaign, the Ayala Museum held the Magnificat Exhibit in which Corazon Aquino was conflated with the Virgin Mary using the words of the Magnificat in which "the Lord has humbled the powerful" (Marcos) and "exalted the lowly" (Aquino). Indeed, the social realist works of Antipas Delotavo, Renato Habulan, and Timmy Barriga portrayed her as a Pieta, in reference to Ninoy Aquino's assassination, and a nurse ministering to the victims of Marcos human rights violations. Of course, at Edsa I, the high point of Cardinal Sin's career, the symbols were predominantly religious, with former Marcos supporters Ramos, Enrile, and Honasan jointly carrying the statue of Our Lady of Fatima who is known especially for her anti-communist messages-a clear instance of the unabashed use of religion for political gain. When Cory Aquino came out of the Carmelite retreat in Davao, she was properly sanctified to assume the presidency. Since then, she has remained a model of religiosity so that it was not surprising for her to say "Let us pray" right after the massacre of Hacienda Luisita workers. For the masses, the strategy was to stir up nativism by resurrecting the mythical power of the babaylans and the precolonial beliefs which coalesced with the millenarist Katipuneros' belief in the power of anting-anting in the war against their enemies. Nationalism dangerously slipped into nativism with the glorification of the precolonial past along with a prescientific and benighted frame of mind which kept the people apart from any progressive directions. This was a component of the low intensity conflict in the countryside which encouraged the most backward religious groups launched in Mindanao and other parts of the country to terrorize the peasants and the NPA. They would hold parades in the town centers with their fearsome costumes, their holy oil and their bolos always ready to make trophies of the heads of suspected rebels. All vestiges of goodwill between Corazon Aquino and the National Democratic Front vanished when she waged a total war against the revolutionary peasants and even awarded the virulently anti- communist General Franco Calida with a medal for his reactionary campaign. It was also at the same time in the sixties that a well-funded organization, the Asian Ecumenical Interfaith Movement, held seminars and activities inviting all these newly-established sects to come together and promote their brand of religion and their conservative agenda. The idea was to band together under the image of the Virgin Mary-Cory Aquino stood for Mary in a pamathalaan in which state and religion became one, or rather, the state was governed by religious precepts. This, in fact, had something in common with the Opus Dei which would wish to restore the unity of the Church and State with a strong capitalist base. The pamathalaan would

promote its prescientific and mythical culture, with some members of the academe providing its legitimation. The influence of this conservative ideology has been widespread, affecting even the academic disciplines including art studies to an extent. Alternatives to the Left include the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy which has a quasi-Asian view of man although mainly Eurocentric in orientation. Inspired by occult theosophy as formulated by Madame Blavatsky and the Rosicrucians at the turn of the last century, Steiner believed man is said to possess seven auras in the relationship of the body to the cosmos. It constructed an esoteric and spiritual philosophy that would show itself in opposition to Marxism. In addition, Steiner specialized in childhood education and theater, as well as biodynamic farming without the use of fertilizers, a seemingly progressive element in our local context. Its adherents demonstrated its perceived parallelism to traditional Asian and indigenous ways of thought. After Edsa 1, the United States, offering substantial funding for new NGOs and fledgling institutions, set an intellectual climate favorable to alternative ways of thinking-that is, alternative to Marxism, on one hand, and to the progressive side of the Catholic Church with a liberationist thrust following Vatican II, on the other hand. Esoteric thought exercises a fascination for the educated and arts- oriented middle class with a penchant for delving into alternative theorizing along uncharted paths. This non-threatening theory, European with Asian elements, was just what they were waiting for to satisfy their intellectual experimentation. The Catholic Church, however, has always been a politically contested terrain. Many religious in the rural areas have espoused revolutionary change as they have daily witnessed the suffering of the poor peasants under militarization. Aside from their task of saying Mass, they are also the peasants' only teachers and defenders against their oppressors. This condition resulted in a widening rift between the institutional Church and the Church for the Poor with its theology of struggle. Now, for instance, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines wants to mediate between the opposing camps at Hacienda Luisita and, so as to deflect an explosive situation, calls upon the landlord family and the starving tenants "to reconcile as brothers and sisters under a dawn of peace." Doubtless, such calls based on emotionalism and traditional family values can only serve to favor the landlord class, continue an exploitative condition and blind the workers to their rights. Meanwhile, a religious culture has been intensifying in recent years, with the appearance of many religious sects such as the Born Again and the El Shaddai with Christian fundamentalist tendencies. This situation adds to the immiseration of the Filipino people who have become accustomed to relying on divine intervention, a deus ex machina, in the direst of economic and political crises.

This widespread promotion of prayer to Mama Mary and Our Lord has irreparably damaged our people's grasp of political and economic realities. Due to long and consistent pressure from some quarters, holy statues and altars have become part of government institutions and offices, not to speak of commercial establishments and malls. First of all, this practice is unconstitutional at the base, given the principle of the separation of Church and State enshrined in the Constitution. Secondly, the Philippines touted as the "only Christian country in Asia" has a sizeable Muslim population. Ideally, the State should treat all religions equally and should not exercise Christian hegemony or dominance. Politicians have always used religion for electioneering purposes or for finding favor with the people whom they hope to hoodwink by invoking God. The Marcoses instituted processions of Santo Niños pampered by couturier fashions and jewelry. Edsa I which attended the downfall of the Marcos regime turned into a festival of piety for opportunistic and dubious political characters. The Philippines got closest to becoming a Catholic State with the presidency of Corazon Aquino-indeed, a situation greatly favorable to her class interests. The country has suffered much from its weak political sense to the point that it has voted into power an academically-challenged politician who did not know the difference between being a king and being a republican president. But, on the other hand, academic degrees and doctorates in economics mean little if there is no real vision of governance, giving primacy to national sovereignty, economic welfare, and production. The large role that religion plays in the present national life and culture is such that there remains little appreciation of the secular state that is constitutive of modern republicanism. Such require an engagement with political and economic forces in the material world that are the object of study of the disciplines of the political and social sciences, and not with divine providence and the vagaries of fate. But the national leaders have instead chosen a politics of opportunism, wooing the votes of large religious groupings with all promise and no principle. Such, too, is the popular optimism for media figures among the electorate that the most popular song-and-dance performers of the day can easily vie for high political office. The recent death of the Pope and the emphasis on his "legacy" has also given rise to a papal ideology, which is of the most conservative strain. For Pope John Paul II, this includes a consistent anti-socialism since he orchestrated the Solidarity group of Poland to trigger the series of collapses of socialist regimes throughout Eastern Europe. An integral part of his papacy was a vigorous opposition to the theology of liberation as practiced in Latin America and to the theology of struggle and the basic Christian communities in the Philippines which grew in response to the bloody dictatorships in the regions, thus strengthening state authoritarianism backed by capital, property and landed estates, and encouraging the violence of paramilitary

vigilantes armed by the ruling classes. He thus sought to erase the movement that gave preferential treatment for the poor by replacing all its bishops, strongly castigating all clergy who espoused its principles. There was his conservative concept of sanctity and his hasty and controversial canonization of right-wing religious personalities. There, too, was his blind and unscientific approach to gender issues, especially the reproductive rights of women, his total rejection of contraceptives, ignoring scientific advances in health care and resulting in the spread of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), as well as a discriminatory attitude to women to which he refused to give a bigger role in the Church and to gays for their sexual orientation. He was a staunch champion of the free market with his positive stance on profit, and therefore ensured continued exploitation by capital (boosted no less by the Vatican's close association with the Opus Dei). His youth programs were organized to ensure the continuity of right-wing Catholicism all over the world since he was the most well-traveled Pope with his deceptive charismatic personality. Of course, he did not support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but his call for peace was only a general call for non-aggression simply to preserve the status quo, the current world order and its unjust relations. During the Pope's funeral rites, the Vatican was not only a religious theater but a political center as well where the conservative ideal of the unity of Church and State was to be realized. Orchestrated by the Vatican's media communications experts, the world was awed by its material power and splendor which through the centuries the Church always struggled to preserve at all costs. But beneath all the pomp and pageantry lay a hidden agenda: to unite the whole world under the strictures of a conservative right-wing economic order. As the Pope had said, "On the level of individual nations and international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs" and recognizing "the legitimate role of profit as an indication that a business is functioning well," although he also made admonitions on social justice to soften basic exploitative relations. It goes without saying that the new right- wing Pope will follow the same course, if not more stringently. Within its narrow and fundamentalist parameters, the papal ideology does not allow for liberal options among Catholics who are obliged under pain of sin to obey these outdated strictures.

Class Politics Class politics stems from the Marxist axiom that "social being determines one's consciousness." This is the opposite of Descartes' saying that "I think therefore I am," an important element of the Age of Enlightenment which upheld rationality as the premium value. But for Marx, it is man's class origin which creates his perspectival way of looking at people and things.

Social class, which is necessarily related to income and property, is also a mindset that molds the subject through the years. It determines his/her concerns, interests, and preoccupations, chooses his/her company, forms of entertainment, even the books one reads. It is an entire lifestyle and a way of presenting oneself to the world. When they may engage in social struggles, the members of the middle bourgeoisie may not pursue a cause with great passion or intensity because they have a wide range of options and safety nets. The progressive bourgeoisie may respond with charitable acts and community service, out of genuine goodwill or out of the desire to win advantage with the people, while the conservative bourgeoisie defends, not hesitating to use violence, its threatened property and traditional privilege which it has obtained through inheritance or exploitative profit- taking. The conservative bourgoisie, following neo-liberal American politics, are those who form the fundamentalist right. They claim their rule as God's mandate and their wars as God's wars. Early on in the Iraq war, Bush, in building an international coalition, drew from the Bible in saying that "he who is not with me is against me" thus creating a dangerous polarization and fueling an atmosphere of war. Samuel Huntington (1996) in his book The Clash of Civilizations was not wrong in saying that Bush was inviting a universal conflagration between the Christians and the Muslims and taking the fiery road to ruin. The United States' invasion of Iraq is funded by billions from their military budget and has cost a rising toll of American, not to speak of Iraqi lives. It has gone beyond revenge for 9/11 as it rides roughshod, launching the horsemen of the Apocalypse over many countries in order to seize their wealth and oil reserves and to bludgeon them into becoming "U.S.-friendly" countries. The Philippine government under MacapagalArroyo is flirting with danger by welcoming American troops to solve internal problems in a climate of increasing economic crisis. Their indiscriminate bombing and their rough treatment of the population can only fuel hostility. They are also here to spy on revolutionary elements and suspected "terrorists" and invite provocation from the guerrillas, thus escalating into a war situation. In the framework of the revolutionary movement, the working class is at the vanguard in association with the peasants, with the petite bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie forming the united front. The dynamism of the working class organizations is crucial here and all support should be lent them. This is important so that the movement does not need to lean too much on the middle class, particularly on academic intellectuals. It is essential to develop organic intellectuals who come from the basic masses and have studied on their own and within mass organizations because they have a long intimate experience of the people's struggles.

A crucial part of Marxism in the Philippines is the grasp of the proletarian consciousness. Necessarily, this comes from the exposure and immersion in the lives of the basic masses, the workers and peasants with their meager resources and day-to-day efforts to eke a living. It is but fitting that the psychological distance between the masses and the progressive bourgeosie be broken down so that there is no sense of alienation between them, much less of hierarchies. Visual artists have gone on exposure to the rural areas with their sketchpads and their cameras. But are the masses mere subjects for art, vulnerable to their scrutiny and gaze of the bourgeoisie? More important is to know them as persons by conversing with them, learning about their conditions in life, and establishing more lasting connections with them. The surrounding consumer culture continually impinges on society in all forms leading to a dependence on creature comforts along with the fulfillment of unnecessary desires. What results is a reification of life, a congealing of experience and the alienation of man from human values and his own humanity. Widespread commodification results in which everything is fetishized from the objects of material culture to one's own bodies. The media itself abets this social disease. Pages and pages of the Lifestyle and the Good Life section have become devoted to fashion models, both male and female, and modeling is upheld as the employment to be desired, rather than the professions which require serious intellectual engagement. In the society pages, premium is placed on ostentatious consumption in clothes and town houses for the rich. Interviews with media personalities focus on objects they can flaunt and their party-revolving lifestyles. Mass culture is at its lowest ebb, what with the widespread adulation for the Sex Bombs and the general degradation of musical production, aside from the fact that these entertainers threaten to be voted into power as though public office was simply a reward for popularity. All these take place in an atmosphere of graft and corruption and violence against journalists. The Philippines has already long since suffered from the commodification of medical services and drugs, as well as the law profession. Along with this is the commodification of education, as in the Revised General Education Program (RGEP), when subjects form part of a market where students, in the spirit of free enterprise, can freely pick the subjects which they perceive as convenient, interesting, undemanding. This obliges departments to advertise their subjects and compete with the other departments and disciplines in attracting students in order to maintain a viable constituency. This does not result in a well-rounded education nor in competency in the various knowledges, and will be to the detriment of certain courses not viewed as necessary to global competitiveness.

Ideology of Globalization In the past decade, it is globalization that has been the leading world economic strategy orchestrated by the United States. It is rooted in the interests of international corporations that make use of inexpensive labor in many countries and depend on overseas markets for their continuance. The Content of "Democracy" In the various instances of U.S. military aggression including its invasion of Iraq, the word "democracy" figures prominently in American discourse. George W. Bush brandishes it like a weapon. Again, like "nationalism," "democracy" is a free-floating element without a fixed class-belonging. As such, it therefore becomes a charged element of contestation. U.S. imperialism wants to define and appropriate the word to exclusive use in its discourse and to wrench it away from socialist discourse. It is important, however, to recall that Marx himself said that democracy is the essence of socialism. As in the term "national democratic revolution," it is important to assert the genuine meaning of democracy which is a humane and just propeople order led by the laboring classes, the workers and peasants who produce the wealth of the land. American ideologists have worked hard to conflate or identify democracy with the capitalist economic system of free trade. But it is important to note that democracy in itself is not a particular system, rather it is an ideological concept or element which can be articulated in one or the other system. Thus, democracy has been articulated both into the socialist and capitalist discourses. Its history in U.S. political discourse goes back to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address referring to democracy as a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" in the context of the success of the American Revolution against British monarchy and the abolition of slavery. His stress on the word "people" implied a prevailing antagonistic contradiction between the elites, such as the big plantation owners and traders, and the working masses of his time. In contemporary U.S. imperialist parlance, "democracy" is tightly articulated with "free trade," with the implication that free trade is a necessary function of democracy. The term "free trade" has a positive ring to it because the word "free" connotes a desirable condition free from restraining shackles and is therefore invested with positive affects. But in practice, free trade, instead of benefiting and improving the large masses of people, serves to favor the big capitalists with their aggressive drive to form monopolies and control the economy. In both discourses, capitalist and socialist, the content of "democracy" is determined by class as the articulating principle. In capitalist discourse,

democracy means that any individual is free to engage in enterprise and free to create as much profit as possible from surplus value through the exploitation of workers. With this as basic premise, the highly competitive nature of capitalism results in the rule of the jungle which is the survival of the fittest, usually the most greedy and unscrupulous in creating profit and swallowing up small industries and trades, while the weaker fall away from the race. One can go further to say that the contents of democracy in capitalism are spurious, deceptive, and untrue because they conceal an unshakable elite class orientation. In progressive, revolutionary discourse, democracy has the meaning of being pro-people and seeking the good of the many, consisting of workers and their allies, the progressive factions of the petite bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. It supports their causes and upholds their means of struggle, such as strikes, against the abuses of traditional power. In popular parlance, the word "democracy" has all but lost its value. Erap, fretting over his detention, uses it like an old dishrag: Ibalik ang demokrasya! (Bring democracy back!)-in a bid to be exempted from the law. From Countries to Economies In the discourse of globalization, the terms "country" and "state" are replaced by "economy" in reference to the member countries of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), thus advancing an economic global order over the national or local. The sense of "country" or "nation-state" is weakened as the state loses its decisive power over the economic life of the people and surrenders to the mechanism of anti-human market forces. The downgrading of country and state to one function, the economic, is linked to globalization which is to create the condition of "porous boundaries" between countries in the fluid and unhampered circulation of capital and commodities in the region and in the world as a whole. Concomitantly, there is a weakening of the sense of nationalism which would shield the economy from the massive uncontrolled influx of transnational commodities which would sabotage the local economy and reduce it to an empty shell. People would lose their sense of national pride, the value of political sovereignty and economic independence, as well as the sense of sharing a common struggle against imperialism and exploitation. The advocates of globalization make it attractive to the middle class by proffering the idea that it is fashionable to go shopping in New York in the morning and have supper in Geneva in the evening, but this appeal holds only to the big bourgeoisie who can realize these international luxuries. This discourse aims to conceal the basic social contradiction between capital and labor. The stress is on cooperation between labor and capital in order to eliminate class antagonism and mask exploitation. The banning of

strikes is a suppression of workers' rights in favor of big capital. Workers themselves must "restrain" their wages in order to be more internationally competitive. If unionism is to be allowed, it is for fostering harmony between workers and company owners. In this context, yellow labor unions will not fight for workers' rights and for labor gains but will be willing to sacrifice workers' welfare and rights for the sake of a spurious harmony. Thus, the idea of a partnership between capital and labor and that the class struggle is dead is a central part of globalist discourse.

From Public Good to Individualism In capitalism in general, the so-called neoliberal globalist discourse plays down the concept of the "public good" and replaces it with "individual responsibility." Thus, the state is no longer responsible for its citizens but is subordinate to market forces. The result is that people and workers simply become fodder to profit-oriented to capitalist production. In the usual tactic of "blaming the victim," the poor are made responsible for their poverty, lack of health care, and education- lacks blamed to laziness and the absence of initiative and enterprise. In this way, public institutions wash their hands of responsibility to the people themselves. The individual has always been a cornerstone of American capitalism which has always projected itself as the defender of the individual against collective forces which are pictured as encroaching on private privilege. It has always pitted individualism as the desirable value against society and the collective which is always made to appear as stifling to individual initiative and enterprise. But the quality of individualism has to be seen in the role of the free market economy. For one thing, it downplays collective interest and, on the contrary, stresses market competitiveness and private accumulation of capital. As the globalist ideologue Rothkopf states: "America's emphasis on the individual ensures that American innovation will continue to outstrip other nations." The stress on individualism has also created corporate heroes such as Bill Gates of Microsoft, or earlier, Tim Turner of Cable News Network (CNN), which has merged with American Online. Susan Armitage (1996) succinctly explains individualism: "Americans think of themselves first as individuals and only second as members of groups such as ethnic groups, social class, local community, and family. This extreme emphasis on individualism reflects the importance of individual rights... It was also reinforced by the concurrent development of industrial capitalism, with its opportunities for individual success and wealth... Closely tied to individualism then is a strong belief in competition and in the free enterprise system. You get ahead by competing with others rather than cooperating with them. The best economy, most Americans believe, is the free enterprise economy, in which companies and individuals compete freely with each other without government interference. Thus, 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness' becomes defined as one's own self-interest rather than wider social goals or even the goals and needs of one's family. The belief that one has control over one's own life is a major value. One of the most admired figures in American life today is the entrepreneur, the man who works for himself." Susan Armitage (1996) continues: "If competition is so valued, what happens to the idea of equality? Americans believe not in absolute equality but in equality of opportunity. Everyone should have an equal chance to succeed. If they do, it will be because of their own hard work, because the system itself is fair. Conversely, those who do poorly in life have only themselves to blame. The oft-called 'American Dream' tells us that if we work we will get ahead. Immigrants today as in the past are some of the strongest believers in the American Dream." Her concluding statement summarizes American imperialism in culture: "They [Americans] view the current spread of American music, fashion, and television throughout the world as confirmation that what is often called the American way of life is suitable for everyone, everywhere."

Other Globalist Buzzwords Part of the neoliberal discourse is made of buzzwords to make globalization attractive and acceptable to all. Among these is "global competitiveness which creates the illusion that products from all countries, rich and poor, can be made globally competitive, but this is hardly possible because of the long historical development of high technology and industry in rich countries. In culture, "global competitiveness" is part of the aspiration to "world class" in artistic performances, a goal that local productions aim for. Such productions overlook the local context in order to make a bid in the international arena viewed as "mainstream" vis-à-vis the local "periphery." Likewise, the myth of the "level playing field" projects the idea that the principles of fairness and equality guide the global market when in fact, from the very outset, the balance is heavily weighted in favor of the transnational corporations vis-à-vis the small and medium industries of poor countries. The globalizing thrust is underlined by the term "transitional countries" applied to those countries which show resistance or a degree of resistance to globalization. Such a term gives the false impression that globalization is the only direction to pursue and that the dictates of U.S. imperialism are universally beneficial if not inescapable.

Cultural Homogeneity and Cultural Diversity The tension between "cultural homogeneity" and "cultural diversity" marks globalist strategy. To be sure, cultural homogeneity arises as a result of

globalization which seeks to erase cultural distinctiveness and assimilate ethnic characteristics in a universal whole. The vehicles of cultural homogeneity are many and only too familiar: Hollywood and TV, computer communications, fashion design, children's toys, such as Barbie dolls and soldiers, computer games, and food. Local and ethnic culinary traditions have been swallowed up by American fast food or American franchises in Asian cuisine. Such cultural homogeneity also serves to facilitate the operations of the free market which will move unchallenged in all parts of the globe. At the same time, globalist ideology pays lip service to cultural diversity so as to give the impression of respect for other cultures. It is also important to note that the value given to cultural diversity gives the impression of fairness, with every cultural group enjoying equal space in the world. But this disguises the reality of unequal power relations, that "some are more equal than others" under U.S. imperialist domination. In economic terms, cultural diversity is accommodated for a clear self-interested purpose. As Rothkopf (1997) wrote: "American cultural diversity gives the U.S. resources and potential links with virtually every market and every major power in the world." In literature and the arts, the use of "cultural diversity" is to unite the different ethnicities as well as to attract nationalities abroad to make common cause with migrants from their country living in the United States. Civil Society Ideology The term "civil society" associated with NGOS or the "non-profit sector" is another current buzzword in globalist discourse. In his 1998 article, J. Brian Atwood, administrator of the USAID, wrote: "Clearly, the role of civil society in advancing reform and modernization of political and economic systems is vital. The role of civil society is mentioned with great frequency in the press and by political leaders around the globe... Governments need to respect the rights of citizens to organize, and citizens must give their institutions the ability to govern effectively." In globalist discourse, the "non-profit" sector consisting of non- governmental institutions or NGOs is regarded as the "cornerstone of civil society" with their role as "champions of democracy." But in an article by Lester Solomon (1971), Director for the Center of Civil Society in Johns Hopkins University, he reveals that NGOs are not as independent of government as they seem, because "government provides substantial financial support to the non-profit sector which it 'contracts' to provide a multitude of social services." And this financial support holds true not only for NGOs within the U.S. but also for NGOs in poor countries which align themselves with U.S. programs.

What is consistently emphasized in this discourse is the "productive collaboration" and cooperation between the civil sector of NGOs and the business and government sectors. Those actively involved in the civil sector of NGO programs are called "citizen activists" who are enjoined to bear in mind that "their goal is to make the government better, not to tear down public institutions" (Atwood 1998). Likewise, civil society can serve as a necessary complement to political parties. The emphasis on civil society is not only a U.S. government policy but it is also an international movement. In the Philippines, it gained ground during the term of Cory Aquino where many NGOS sprang like mushroom patches overnight. In 1995, civic and educational organizations from many countries formed the International Civil Society for Public Deliberation. In an interview with Randa Slim (1996), head of international civil society programs at the Kettering Foundation, the consortium focuses on "increasing women's participation in the political decision-making process; school curricula reforms to enhance citizen participation; redesigning the relationship between government and citizenry, and increasing ethnic and minority group participation in public politics." At the base, the ideological implication of the concept and policy of civil society is that, as formulated by the U.S., it seeks to create a paradigm shift from the labor-and-capital antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as the basic class contradiction to a tripartite relation between government, business, and NGOs brought together into a system of harmony and cooperation, favoring U.S. interests. An important part of U.S. ideological strategy is "democracy promotion" described as "national policy on the world stage." According to Thomas Carothers (2000), vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the areas in which democracy promotion as a core strategy operates are the following: i) election observing which has become more sophisticated, although there is a large amount of assistance to political parties and their development; ii) supporting non-executive bodies which aid the reform of judiciaries, legislatures, and other state institutions to offset top-heavy governments; iii) strengthening civil society by expanding the range of NGO advocacy they are willing to underwrite; iv) giving importance to localism which is working through and with local officials and organizations that more fully understand local conditions. "Democracy building is not something that 'we' do to 'them', but something that people in other countries do, sometimes with our help."

The aggressive U.S. strategy of mobilizing people for democracy linked to free trade involves the program of voluntarism to harness local energies in the service of transnational interests. It takes the form of corporate volunteer programs linked to corporations for their employees or retirees to draw out "the inherent interdependence between business and communities" (Stallings 1998). Voluntarism thus provides a bridge between communities and the business world, which is its primary beneficiary, aside from the fact that it reduces or removes the responsibility of the government toward its citizens-a part of the global reduction of state functions. In an idea attributed to American "management expert" Peter F. Drucker, Husselbein (1998) puts it: "We need to move beyond the walls of the corporation... with the same energy and commitment we invested to build the enterprise within the walls. Moving beyond the walls is not a matter of altruism, it is enlightened self-interest, a business necessity." The U.S. invasion of Iraq to seize the country's oil wealth by unsuccessfully forcing it toward American-style democracy under the initial pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction has engendered worldwide hostility toward the United states with the exception of Tony Blair's Britain and a few remaining countries of the "coalition of the willing." Part of the anti-U.S. reaction is the development of an intense nationalism and protection of sovereignty as in the case of China vis-à-vis the United States and Japan although it has largely deviated from socialism. And since the United States is the only superpower at this point in time, it becomes all the more necessary for countries to guard against the United States' self-assumed role of international bully for capitalist democracy.

References Armitage, Susan. 1996. Teaching American values at home and abroad. US Society and Values 1 (15): 21-25. Atwood, J. Brian, 1998. Strengthening democracy through civil society. Issues of Democracy 3 (1):6-9. Carothers, Thomas. 2000. Democracy promotion: A key focus in a new world order Issues of Democracy 5 (1):23-28. De Oliveira, Miguel Darcy and Rajesh Tandon. 1996. The emergence of global civil society. Issues of Democracy 1 (8):18-21. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Husselbein, Frances. 1998. A traveler along the road. Leader to leader 8:6-7. Rothkopf, David. 1997. In praise of cultural imperialism? Foreign Policy 107: 38-53. Slim, Randa, 1996. Need for citizen activism greater now than ever. Issues of Democracy 1 (8):22-24. Solomon, Lester H. 1971. Mao's revolution and the Chinese political culture. Berkeley: Stallings, Betty B. 1998. Volunteerism and corporate America. US Society and Values University of California Press. 3(2):23-26.

Marxism and Ideological Strategies Review by Aurora Roxas-Lim

Dr. Alice Guillermo deserves our praise for writing a comprehensive and incisive critique of Philippine society and the arts. She raised many important issues usually ignored, avoided and shunned by establishment, political analysts, historians, artists, art historians, and art critics. She dared question the sanctity of the Epifanio delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) "Revolution" now enshrined by historical officialdom as the finest juncture in our national history. She even took up the mighty United States of America and took on President George W. Bush, Jr., who is the best ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Her courageous analysis of the interconnections of politics, economics, and religion and with religious establishments around the world, with the women's movement enamored by the feminist mystique of the Babylon, global economy, politics, and culture that subvert our identity and dignity of our people are some of the vital issues she raised. She began her essay with the concepts and methods of interpretation of the study of the arts that encompasses various art forms, visual arts, music, and architecture and later on in the essay, she includes prints, cartoons, posters, folk art, handicraft, and even riddles and graffiti. That naturally call for what they term as contextualist approach, which is a euphemism, according to her, to those people who are afraid to take Marxism or socialism or taking on a very clearly defined social, political, and moral stance. The method of study looks at works of art, artists, procedures of art making, and the interpretation of art as inextricably linked in the dynamic interaction with the wider historical and social setting. Although she did not say so, I think, she's also interested in the environment-in the protection of our patrimony. Quoting Marx, she gives a summation of these ideas that there is no art history. There is only the history of men, and I think, women, including the gays, making art. Central to Marxist approach is class struggle. There is no equilibrium. There is always constant contradiction from those below, generally oppressed by those in positions of power and ruling elites who monopolize levers of power-natural and human resources. She argues that works of art cannot be dissociated from social conditions in our country. She lays a heavy responsibility on those of us who are teaching art. She requires that we be technically proficient, learned and socially and politically committed to the well-being of our nation.

Her essay should provoke serious evaluation of the priorities and the way we undertake research and teaching in our university. I also hope that the forum will soon stimulate more commitment for the academics to get involved not only in lengthening our curriculum vitae but in helping our less-fortunate brothers and sisters, particularly in the war-torn areas of our country. Dr. Guillermo explains that the Marxist approach to art provides a very powerful conceptual-analytical tool in the interpretation of the arts. Marxist approach demonstrates precise ways the arts are embedded and are affected by, and of course, creating a new situation with the philosophical concepts that is the superstructure. What they call the superstructure is really the process/es by which people's consciousness are molded and it also predisposes people to a certain behavior-the political, economic structures, especially the hierarchy of social classes, which is always asymmetrical. All of these aspects mutually affect each other in the complex web of interrelationships. In other words, the work of art is not static and not finite. Its meaning changes across time depending on the viewer. The same work of art can be many different things to many different people in different times. To obtain further and fuller significance of art, it is not enough to just give the artist biography, and historical background. In the essay, she said that you have to understand that signification and meanings vary depending on the viewer and circumstances. She poses what she believes to be the (adverse) of the Marxist approach called New Criticism, which thinks that there is only pure art-only technical, formalistic and where you only talk about the procedure, the qualities of the paint, the texture of its music, the melody, the rhythm, the harmony, etc. She goes on to say that it is very important to understand that there are many variants of nationalism. What I am more interested in is the idea that if there are no hierarchies in the works of art-in other words, there is no bellas artes-and there is what is folk art, in her view, all art is more or less of importance depending on the function, use, time and circumstances. In other words, the lullaby is not less important than a symphony orchestra because the symphony orchestra may not put your baby to sleep. So that is an example why there is no hierarchy in works of art. In the same manner, a march to motivate the warriors of Bush to fight the Iraqis and to persecute the Palestinians needs a vibrant rhythm but if you use Mater Dolorosa, they will not fight. So the hierarchy of art depends on the function, the motivation of the user of art and the fact that art has many propagandistic values used mainly by advertisers and pornographers and rarely used by the purists in art. There is another dimension I like about the discussion of nationalism and that is on the organic intellectuals. UP tends to breed what I call

intellectual snobs"-if you are not from the Department of Philosophy, you cannot philosophize. What I like about her essay is that she gives value to people who can intellectualize, philosophize from life. She puts there Andres Bonifacio. There are many more like him-there is Sumurey, Zamora, the leaders of Cavite who fought against building the galleon. They do not get PhDs but they change the conditions of life of the working class. What I like about the essay is that she gives importance to these people, not people in the air-conditioned rooms of the Department of Philosophy, etc. She also criticizes curious nationalism usually espoused by the ruling elites, who are also connected to the establishment of the institution- primarily the Catholic Church, the Protestants, and religious sectarian leaders. It is important, I think, for the departments of Sociology and Anthropology to change their priorities-please stop talking about the kinship system of the Igorot in the Batad region. It is about time they study what [Ecleo] is doing to the people in Surigao, Agusan del Norte, and the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association. Do you not know that he extracts so much money from these poor peasants, even killed his former wife and he is there gallivanting around in Cebu? So to our Department of Anthropology, please stop talking about the sexual patterns of the Bugkalot, etc. You should talk about how they are fighting for their ancestral domain now. Their rights have been violated and the most flagrant land-grabbers are there in the House and the Senate. She criticizes not only persons and institutions but also globalization through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. When they talk about globalization and free trade, it is about the hegemony of the United States of America plus its surrogates in Asia, namely the ruling elites of Japan, Taiwan and the world, including our own ruling elites. What is the effect of globalization on our culture? It demeans us and the treadmill of consumerism, individualism, and material gratification. Also, she warns you to be wary of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) because some of them are funded for certain purposes. It is good to be involved, it is good to be volunteers but be wary of certain NGOs. If you want to know which ones, talk to me privately. My conclusion is that we can draw from all of these insights and available information that Dr. Guillermo has given to us. There is a need to formulate a socio-political philosophy suited to our country in our times and we do not have to think in terms of centuries-let us say 2010. Just plan for that, plan our course of action together as a nation. For example, let us extricate ourselves from the tight embrace of the United States, which is going to be very, very difficult because more than forty percent of the Filipino people have relatives in the United States and many of them are lining up in front of the embassy trying to get away.

So this is going to be not only an organizational-structural problem, but a psychological problem. Many of our people do not have faith in the future of our nation. This is bad! The Department of Psychology should study the prevailing disease in our country and that is "Americanitis." Surely, however useful Marxist or socialist philosophy is, what we need is Filipino philosophy. We have to reassess and rethink the suitability of the nineteenth century thinking of Marx, Engels, and even Mao Zedong and maybe, they are not suited to our circumstances. Nationalism, love of country, patriotism, protection of our environment, our patrimony, the well- being, and the majority of our people should be at the core of this philosophy and we have to form this at once. I humbly submit that I am not capable of undertaking this vital endeavor. We need our philosophers, thinkers, religious leaders, and scholars to work together, to craft our national philosophy, if we believe our nation is worthy of our sacrifice and our love.

Notes on Zeus Salazar's Filipino Translation of The Communist Manifesto Ramon G. Guillermo

This paper will discuss an example of annotated translation of a work of European thought which is especially significant for the problem of the interpretation and theoretical comprehension of history. This is a particularly interesting case because the work in question, Marx and Engels' Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), exerted and continues to exert an influence not only in Philippine historiographical practice but also in the unfolding of history itself in contemporary peasant and labor movements. Initially the most striking aspect of Zeus Salazar's translation is its thickness in comparison with the original pamphlet (Salazar 2000). The translation itself is based on the twenty-three-page first edition of 1848 with an estimated print run of 2000 copies by the Bildungs-Gesellschaft für Arbeiter von J.E. Burghard at 46, Liverpool St., Bishopsgate (Kuczynski 1995). Kuczynski found that the first edition in 1848 had at least 895 errors and variants and, therefore, endeavored to make a synthetic version (Leseausgabe) derived from all officially authorized editions of the Manifesto. Basing his work exclusively on this first edition, Salazar ignores subsequent corrections to the text in later officially authorized editions and does away with Engels' important textual revisions and explanatory footnotes in the 1888 English edition which have since been consistently included in succeeding German editions. Though the text of the translation and the original (the facsimile of the 1848 edition with captioned pictures added) on facing-pages make up 112 pages in all, the endnotes added to the translation make thirty six more pages in smaller type. The whole work finally ends with a 128-page explanatory essay on the significance (or lack of it) of the Manifesto in the Philippine historical context.' Curiously, although the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Web site devoted to translational statistics lists 222 translations of the Manifesto from 1979 up to 2003 in dozens of languages, Salazar's translation (2000) does not appear among the entries (UNESCO). It however turns up in the Web site of the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam as one of the more "exotic" and "rare" examples in its collection (ISH). Before this short study delves into the gist of the matter regarding Salazar's translation of what Engels called the "unübersetzbarste aller Dokumente" (most untranslatable of all documents), and found "heillos schwer" (hopelessly difficult) to translate (Sperl 2004), it might be worth beginning with some of the more substantial corrections to Salazar's translation so that these can be swiftly disposed of:

i) There are a number of cases where omissions create difficulties for the reader. The most important example is the following sentence, "Ang presyo ng bilihin, samakatuwid ng trabaho rin, ay katumbas ng halagang iginugol sa produksyon (Produktionskosten)" (The price of commodities and therefore of labor as well, is equivalent to the cost of production) (Marx and Engels 2000, 25), can be compared with the original sentence, "Der Preis einer Waare, also auch der Arbeit ist aber gleich ihren Produktionskosten" (emphasis added). It can be noticed that the translation lacks the possessive pronoun "ihren." The translation should therefore more accurately and clearly be written as "Ang presyo ng bilihin, samakatuwid ng trabaho rin, ay katumbas ng halagang iginugol sa produksyon nito" (The price of commodities, and therefore of labor as well, is equivalent to the cost of its production) (emphasis added). Salazar also completely ignores and does not bring the reader's attention to the fact and the reasons why Engels had changed "Arbeit" (work) throughout the Manifesto to "Arbeitskraft" (labor-power). Another example of an omission is the rendering of "reaktionäre Sekten" [reactionary sects) simply as "sekta" (sect) without the adjective "reactionary" (Marx and Engels 2000, 105). ii) Some cases involve added elements which lend the sentences a completely different meaning. A quite striking example is the following. "Ang nakukuha ng pinasasahurang manggagawa sa pamamagitan ng kanyang paggawa (Thätigkeit) ay sapat lamang upang ang kanyang payak na buhay ay maipagpatuloy sa kanyang supling" (What the wage-laborer receives by means of his/her work is just enough so that his bare life is continued in his offspring) (Marx and Engels 2000, 50). This can be compared with the original text, "Was also der Lohnarbeiter durch seine Thätigkeit sich aneignet, reicht blos dazu hin, um sein nacktes Leben wieder zu erzeugen." The phrase "sein nacktes Leben" translates as "his/ her bare life" while "wieder zu erzeugen" can be written as to "reproduce" but only in the sense of reproducing his/her own bare life rather than that of his/her offspring. This should therefore be translated more accurately as, "Ang nakukuha/natatanggap ng sahurang manggagawa sa pamamagitan ng kanyang paggawa ay sapat lamang upang maipagpatuloy ang kanyang payak na buhay" (What the wage- laborer earns by means of his/her work is just enough for the continuation of her/his bare life) (emphasis added). iii) There is also an example of a complete change in meaning such as in the phrase, "Walang anumang dapat iligtas ang mga proletaryo sa anumang kanila (von dem Ihrigen)..." (The proletariat should not salvage anything which is theirs) (Marx and Engels 2000, 39). The original, "Die

Proletarier haben Nichts von dem Ihrigen zu sichern..." would be better translated as "ang mga proletaryo ay walang anumang sa kanila na ililigtas" (the proletariat have nothing of their own to save). To actually have something that one should not save is quite different from having nothing at all to save. This latter is much closer to the famous declaration that, "Walang anumang mawawala sa mga proletaryo kundi ang kanilang mga tanikala." (The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.) iv) An anachronism in the translation is the use of Tagalog "pamamanginoon" to translate "Herrschaft" (rule) so that "herrschende Klasse" (ruling class) becomes "namamanginoong uri" in contrast to the more consistent use of "naghaharing uri" (ruling class) in contemporary Marxist works and translations (Marx and Engels 2000, 21). "Pamamanginoon," having probably changed its meaning since the nineteenth century when Emilio Jacinto used it in a similar sense to Salazar's, now means the complete opposite, and pertains to submitting oneself or to putting oneself under the power of another, a "panginoon" (master) (Panganiban 1972). These few suggestions for revision and corrections are, however, not as important as looking at the meaning of Salazar's project as a whole in translating the Manifesto. It is in this vein that the particular form chosen by Salazar, namely "annotated translation," needs to be emphasized. This has something to do with the problem of determining the relationship of the commentary of the translator to what may be considered the translation "Itself." Indeed, some theorists of translation object to the inclusion of footnotes or explanatory materials to the text of a translation. Peter Newmark, taking a position against annotations, states that "the text should be self-sufficient" (cf. Koller 2001, 271). Werner Koller, on the contrary, considers the addition of commentary and explanations by the translator as part of the task of translation itself, Assuming that one starts out from an everyday and matter-of- fact understanding of the function of the translator, namely that what has been said in one language should be communicated to readers in another language, it often happens that this function can only be fulfilled by employing an explanatory translation method. By means of this method, cases where there is a lack of corresponding terms or where there is only a partial correspondence between terms, which at first cannot or can only unsatisfactorily be translated, can be made translatable. (Koller 2001, 267)

Koller's balanced position seems to be the most flexible one so that at least in the particular case here being analyzed, Salazar's footnotes will be

considered an integral part of the experience of reading the translated text "Itself." In other words, the footnotes and extended commentary will be considered as part of the body of the translated text rather than as some extraneous and dispensable addition. Salazar's explanatory comments on particular words/concepts in the Manifesto as elaborated in his footnotes and the appended essay are particularly indicative of his attitude toward the translation of this particular text, the Manifesto, and of translation in general. Salazar's explanatory "redefinition" of the terms "bourgeois" and "proletariat" can serve here as initial examples. He begins by reproaching Marx and Engels for allegedly equating "civilization"/"sibilisasyon" (Zivilisation) with "bourgeois culture" and of then implicitly using both as codes/ciphers for "European culture" in general. According to Salazar, Sa lubos na pakatuon ng kaisipan sa "burgis" at sa ekonomiyang pandaigdig na lubusang ipinapalagay na "nilikha" nito, nakaligtan nina Marx at Engel ang pagkakaiba-iba ng mga sibilisasyon, kabihasnan, kultura at kalinangan sa daigdig. Bunga nito, ang "sibilisasyon" at "kultura" ay Burgis at hindi Europeo at Ingles o Pranses. Kung gayon, hindi kataka-taka na mga "barbaro" ang Intsik at ang mga "Burgis" (i.e., Europeo) ay "sibilisado." [In their obsession with the idea of the "bourgeois" and the world economy, which they think was completely a creation of the former, Marx and Engels overlooked the differences between civilizations, kabihasnan, culture and kalinangan in the world. Because of this, "civilization" and "culture" became bourgeois and not European, English or French. Given this, it was not surprising that the Chinese were "barbarians" and the "bourgeois" (i.e., European) was "civilized."] (Marx and Engels 2000, 119-20, n. 23)

Because of their total obsession (lubos na pagkatuon ng isipan) with the "world economy," Marx and Engels simply overlooked (nakaligtaan) the cultural origins in Europe of the "bourgeoisie." However, the real score as Salazar sees it, is that the terms "bourgeois," "European," and "civilized" (as serially juxtaposed by Salazar) are, in his opinion, terms closely related to each other. Salazar then asserts that this series of semi-equivalences give Marx and Engels the opportunity to categorize all non-European cultures as "barbaric" or at best "half-civilized" depending on how "backward" they appear from the European point of view. Though many writers have objected to the Eurocentric and prejudicial use of such words as "civilization" in the Manifesto (and also of their appearance in Engels' Origin of the Family) (cf. Harvey 2001, 376), the criticism is actually somewhat misplaced. It is well known that "Kultur" and "Zivilisation" are quite different concepts in the German language, so different that they are sometimes even pitted against each another. There is much evidence to show, especially in their writings on India, that Marx and Engels employed "Zivilisation" in its conventional

German sense as pertaining only to the level of technical development or "progress." (For instance, the MP3 player can be said to be "more civilized" than the tape recorder. Those still using tape recorders could therefore be dubbed hopeless "barbarians!") It was due to this circumstance that the title of Samuel Huntington's well-known book, Clash of Civilizations (1996). was translated as Kampf der Kulturen (Conflict of Cultures) against the wishes of Huntington himself because Kampf der Zivilisationen had a totally different sense. Salazar's charge that the use of this term in the Manifesto demonstrates that Marx and Engels were proponents of the usual European sense of cultural superiority does not seem to hold water. They may well have indeed been guilty of such an attitude in some other writings but this is certainly not because of the particular usage of "Zivilisation" in the Manifesto. The concept of "technical progress" is certainly not uncontroversial but it has undeniably quite a different sense when compared to the meaning of "civilization" in the English or French languages. A perusal of Marx's studies on pre-capitalist economic formations and Engels' enthusiasm for the anthropological studies of Lewis Henry Morgan would also belie Salazar's speculation in this same endnote that Marx and Engels "knew less" than most Europeans on the civilizations and historical processes of different countries and socio-political totalities. Despite having had no direct acquaintance with these matters (unlike their countrymen explorers Georg Forster [1754-1794] and Alexander von Humboldt [1769-1859]), they had at least what may be considered for their time a well above average knowledge of so-called "non-European" cultures. Setting aside the problem of translating "Zivilisation" without the connotations of "civilization" ("sibilisasyon"), Salazar's main point is that the term "bourgeois" actually refers to and at the same time is exclusively a product of "European culture/civilization" except that it is disguised as a purely economic concept. (It may therefore be fitting to write this here as "culture-bourgeoisie" rather than just "bourgeoisie.") This European "culturebourgeoisie," according to Salazar, provided the conditions necessary within the European context for the subsequent appearance of what may also be termed the European "culture-proletariat" (cf. Marx and Engels 2000, 139 n. 63). "European culture/civilization" therefore produces not only the "culture-bourgeoisie" out of itself but also the antithetical "culture- proletariat" opposing it. These "classes" and the alleged "dialectical contradiction" between them is considered by Salazar to be unique products of the singular development of "European culture/civilization" and therefore can have no meaning/significance outside of it. According to Salazar, this conflict takes place within European civilization (ang tunggaliang ito ay nasa loob ng sibilisasyong Europeo) (Marx and Engels 2000, 120 n. 24). Or to put it in an alternative fashion, these entities could only actually attain universal significance if European culture itself becomes universalized. That is to say, capitalism could only become widespread if the whole world becomes

"Protestant" (Weber), "Jewish" (Sombart) or whatever the case may be, at least Judaeo-Christian (cf. Weber 2001 and Sombart 1997). Given this particular set of assertions, the "replication" of this "culture-bourgeoisie and the accompanying "culture-proletariat" in the different parts of the formerly "barbaric" non-Western world can only imply their thoroughgoing and homogenizing "Europeanization" in the sense of finally attaining "civilization." This is only fitting since the "bourgeoisie" and the "proletariat are conceived of as being historically "progressive" classes. Salazar (2000 151) thinks that it is "implicit in the Manifesto that both the bourgeois and the proletariat are rooted/within/originating from the culture, civilization, and history of Europe or of the whole West' before they are replicated (mareplika) in the other parts of the 'barbarian' world." This whole conceptual system as formulated by Marx and Engels is therefore revealed by Salazar as being only a particularly rigorous intellectual rationalization of the European "civilizing" mission. By means of this chain of reasoning, Salazar could easily draw the conclusion that the application of these two class labels in the Philippine context can only result in the total theoretical and practical negation of the complex internal cultural dynamic within which actual living, breathing Filipino "workers" labor. In his view, once Filipino "workers" are falsely labelled as belonging to the "proletarian" classes, they become symbolically caught up in the all-encompassing Eurocentric narrative and, as such, are apprehended as mere passive instruments/victims in the fulfillment of its unrelenting and unstoppable universal project. These universal class concepts of the West therefore only falsely conflate Filipino "workers" with the European "culture-proletariat," when they actually ought to be understood within a cultural frame from which they cannot so easily be extricated. A "pure cash nexus" (ein reines Geldverhältnis) abstracted from culture and the whole surrounding social ethos as it is portrayed in the Manifesto thus becomes an inconceivable concept or a strange fiction, Bilang "epekto"/bunga ng paglaganap ng Burgesya at ng mga taglay nitong sibilisasyong Europeo, hindi esensyal sa mga "manlulubid" at "sigarera" ang kanilang pagsulong at kaunlaran sa loob ng sariling kalinangan, tanggapin mang mayroon sila nito. Sumusulong lamang sila bilang mga manggagawang ginagamit/ pinagsasamantalahan ng, at samakatuwid ay sumasalungat laban sa, dambuhalang paglaganap ng Kaburgisan sa kanilang piling. Hindi sila umiiral at sumusulong ayon sa maaaring naririyan nang dinamiko/dinamismo ng kanilang sariling kalinangan at kabuuan. [As a mere "effect"/result of the spread of the bourgeoisie and the accompanying European civilization, the development and progress within their own culture, assuming that they do have such a thing, becomes inessential to the "rope makers" and "cigar makers." They move forward only as workers used/exploited by. and therefore also struggling against, the massive dissemination of the bourgeoisness in their midst. They do not exist or progress

according to the already present dynamic/dynamism of their own culture and society.] (Marx and Engels 2000, 151; emphasis in the original)

The words "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat" are therefore, in the particular sense which Salazar understands them, untranslatable since their inextricably European referents simply do not exist, as such, in the Philippine context. These phenomena would thus be much better "explained" in footnotes to a Filipino readership than "translated." It would be useful at this point to contrast Salazar's culturally-bound "thick description" of "bourgeois" and "proletariat" with the "thin descriptions" employed by Engels in precisely one of his notes to the 1888 English edition of the Manifesto, By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. (Marx and Engels 1969, 98-137)

Crucial to Engels clarification of the concept of "class" is therefore the related concept of "Eigenthums-Verhältnisse" (property relations). Salazar himself translates the latter concept as "ugnayan ng pagmamay-ari" (cf. Marx and Engels 2000, 121). Assuming that the concepts "owner" "means of social production," "employer," "wage labor," "labor power" could also be defined "thinly" and with a minimum degree of contentiousness, one could come to the conclusion (at least if one were disposed to do so), that on the one hand, there are such people in the Philippines who "own the means of social production" and "employ wage labor" and that on, the other hand, there are actually people who "do not own any means of social production" and must therefore sell their capacity to labor or "labor power" (or "Arbeitskraft," a newer terminological invention not found in the 1848 edition of the Manifesto itself) in order to survive. In the latter category would indeed fall even the "sigareras" (cigar-makers) and "manlulubid" (rope-makers) of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who seem to epitomize the Filipino "worker" for Salazar. The great majority of Filipinos today in fact does not legally own "means of social production" and must therefore compete to sell their labor in the "labor market" on pain of starvation. It is plain to see, that as a result of the expansion of the world market and the historical process of "primitive accumulation" wherein the laborer is forcibly separated from the means of production, such "de-culturalized" definitions of "bourgeois" and "proletariat" do have material referents in the Philippine context. Such invented terms as "manggagawa" (worker) and "mamumuhunan" (capitalist) originating from the early twentieth century

social lexicon could therefore be introduced and explained to Tagalog speakers with a minimum of difficulty. This process is clarified by the Marxist theorist of translation Otto Kade: Die von der gesellschaftlichen Praxis und vom gesellschaftlichen Kode 'Sprache' her motivierte individuelle Erweiterung des sprachlichen Inventars wird gesselschaftlich akzeptiert und verallgemeinert, wenn dafür die gesselschaftlichen (politischen, ökonomischen, sozialen, kulturellen) Voraussetzungen und der damit verbundene Grad der gessellschaftlichen Erkenntnis (Entwicklung der Wissenschaft) gegeben sind. [The individual expansion of the language inventory which is motivated by social praxis and by the social code "language" will be socially accepted generalized, when the social (political, economic, social, cultural) conditions and the concomitant degree of social knowledge (social development) exist.] (Kade 1971, 21)

He adds that translation itself plays an indispensable and active role in this process of expansion or modification of existing social lexicons. But it must be stressed that the possibility of making such categorizations is not actually Salazar's main point of argument. Indeed, he himself points out that "Proletariat" and "uring manggagawa," the usual Filipino translation of "working class," which originates from the beginning of the twentieth century are actually synonyms (cf. Marx and Engels 2000, 117 n. 8). It is just that, in the first place, he has very great reservations on methodological and philosophical grounds whether such "isolating" and "abstracting" concepts can provide the most essential understanding of the complex and dynamic totality which is Philippine culture. (This of course depends on what is meant by "most essential understanding.") In the second place, it may be presumed that he fears that such a generalizing approach may foreclose a further specification of the historic and cultural determinants which exert their own influences within this totality. In the third place, and most importantly, such universalizing concepts may seem to commit the researcher, whether consciously or unconsciously, to the diffusionist and unilinear predilections of the Eurocentric "Western" social sciences. Regarding this third point, Salazar is obviously reluctant to consider "external" economic factors as providing the primary explanations for the rise of a sizeable segment of Filipino workers who are employed to produce goods for export to the "world market." This third point is actually the gist of this issue of "untranslatability." This "resistance to translation" in fact represents a refusal to be integrated into the history of another. It is an "anti-translational" practice in the midst of translation itself. The central proposition of Salazar's historical outlook is most striking in his vigorous rejection of the utility of the concept of

"feudalism" in the understanding of Philippine history (or at least up until the sixteenth century). However interesting it is in itself, this "claim to historical difference" would actually have been more intelligible had he directed his criticisms against Eurocentrism at the definitions of Marx and Engels of "feudalism," which are to be found, for instance, in their work The German Ideology, rather than confusingly refuting the application to Philippine economic history of Marc Bloch's definition of "feudal society" (who here remains unacknowledged despite the variety of conflicting definitions of "feudalism"). Salazar defines "feudalism" somewhat apodictically as follows, Ang tawag sa lupain o katungkulan ay feudum, kung kaya't ang ugnayan ng naggawad at ginawaran ay piyudof. ito ang "piyudalismo" na tumutukoy sa mga relasyon-higit sa lahat. pulitiko-militar-ng mga panginoon sa isa't isa. Ang relasyon naman ng panginoong ginawaran sa lupain (o panginoong may lupa na talaga, tulad ng hari o alin pa mang malaki at nakatataas na pinuno) at ng mga nagbubungkal ng lupa sa kanyang lupain (na maaaring "nakatali" sa lupa o serf, medyo katulad ng ating "aliping sagigilid") ay tinataguriang "manoryalismo." Mula ito sa katagang "manor," ang tirahan o kuta ng panginoon mismo at ng kanyang buong lupaing gawad na naipamahagi niya sa kanyang mga serf. Mangyari pa, nagkakataon na ang isang panginoon ay magkaroon ng maraming manor. Ang manoryalismo at piyudalismo ang siyang bumubuo ng "sistemang piyudal." [The land or office is called feudum, so that the relationship of the giver to the receiver is feudal. This is the "feudalism" that pertains, above all, to the politico-military relation of the lords to each other. On the other hand, the relationship of the lord who has been awarded land (or a lord who already owns land, like a king or any other leader of high rank) to those who work his land (who may be serfs "tied" to the land similar to our "aliping sagigilid") is called "manorialism." This comes from the word "manor," which refers to the residence or fortress of the lord and the entire land under his supervision that he has parcelled out to his serfs. It may happen that one lord may have many manors. The "feudal system" is made up of manorialism and feudalism.] (Marx and Engels 2000, 116 n. 5)

The above manifestly Blochian definition can be contrasted with a typical Marxist definition of "feudalism,"

hand, the direct producers, the farmers, work single-handedly on the better part of the land. They are made to produce feudal rent by means of extra-economic coercion. Feudalism arose, at first in some parts of Asia, between the third and seventh century, and then in Europe. Most countries in the world have passed through this level of development. (Wunder 1974, 185)

Indeed, the usual Marxist elaborations on the concept of "feudalism" have much more to do with the conceptual pair of "relations" and "forces" of production than with Bloch's combination of "feudalism" and "manorialism" as outlined by Salazar above. Though Bloch (1967) himself also showed much interest in comparative history, his notion of "feudalism," was, unlike that of Marx and Engels' not specifically conceived within the framework of a general, universalizing history but was on the contrary, directed towards explaining the important characteristics of a peculiarly European social organization. According to Bloch (1967, 126), "the social type that is called feudalism was born in Europe of conditions peculiar to the society from which it sprang." Salazar's appeal against the universalizing abuse of concepts, could naturally only make sense when it is rigorously directed at the allegedly empty and useless abstraction of "general concepts" rather than concepts designed to elaborate on the uniqueness of a particular type of historical phenomena such as Bloch's "feudalism." It is true that Salazar has successfully "proven" that Bloch's "feudalism" had never existed in the Philippines. It is therefore also an "untranslatable" concept. But it is doubtful whether he had succeeded in showing the untranslatability along the same lines of Marx's and Engel's fundamentally different conceptualization. This illegitimate conflation of Marx and Bloch leads to the conclusion that, Sa katunayan, ibo ang ating kaayusang panlipunan at pang- ekonomiya noong ika-16 na dantaon, kung kaya't abusado ang alinmang paghahambing nito sa isang di-umano'y baiting na "piyudal" ng pag-unlad patungo sa alinmang "pormasyong" o kaayusang sosyo-pulitikal. [In truth, our social and economic structure was different in the sixteenth century, it is therefore inappropriate to make any kind of comparison with it to any so- called "feudal" stage of development towards whatever "formation" or socio-political order.] (Marx and Engels 2000, 115- 16 n. 3; emphasis in the original)

Had Salazar undertaken such a critique of the Marxist concept of "feudalism" in the Philippine context, it could conceivably have taken the following forms, among others: 1) that it is not general enough (too European) and thus fails as a concept capable of containing multifarious phenomena; 2) that the conceptual pair forces and relations of production

are too general and abstract such that they end up generating platitudes of no or little scientific interest; 3) that such a Marxist concept of feudalism is intrinsically bound up ideologically with an imperialistic and eurocentric narrative of historical evolution; 4) that the writing of a "universal human history" is in itself an impossible, absurd and meaningless task. (In contrast to the last mentioned, the first three criticisms would not necessarily have anything in principle against the legitimacy or future possibility of drafting a "universal human history.") If conceptual "abuse" consisted in illegitimately using particularizing concepts as generalizing concepts, it would be hard to see Bloch being guilty of it. Despite the confusing detour to Bloch, Salazar's main position is clear, and his view is that Philippine history just cannot be translated into the universalizing schemas produced by "Western" scholarship. The positively demystifying intent of this "resistant" position must be recognized. Nevertheless, Salazar's translational as well as general historical approach, faces several unresolved issues relevant to such a position. The emphasis on what has been here called "thick description" of "economic phenomena certainly has much to commend it, but it is highly doubtful if the scientific approach to cultural, historical and societal phenomena could do completely without the "thin descriptions," which would allow for a more general and comparative understanding of human societies (cf. Geertz 1973, 3-30). His attempt to refute the applicability/translatability of such concepts as "bourgeois," "proletariat," and "feudalism" by re-immersing them in Western culture seems to force an interpretation upon the Manifesto that does not recognize its roots in the intellectual tradition of classical political economy which was viewed already in the nineteenth century as being specifically opposed to such a "culturalization" of economic concepts. Indeed, one suspects that Salazar would have done better by translating more likeminded writers like Max Weber or even Pierre-Joseph Proudhon rather than Marx into Filipino. But then he would have lost the opportunity to launch this polemic. Salazar's insistence on the inextricable "embeddedness" of the economy in an encompassing societal ethos indeed bears comparison with the doctrines of Gustav Schmoller (1838-1917), leader of the so-called Historische Schule der Nationalökonomie which dominated German universities until the middle of the twentieth century. The laissez-faire capitalism depicted in the main works of classical political economy from Adam Smith to Marx had appeared to Schmoller so unsatisfactory when applied to the German conditions of his time that he felt able to confidently pronounce these doctrines dead in the famous 1883 controversy on method (Methodenstreit) with Carl Menger of the Austrian school. According to Schmoller, "After the old, abstract political economy attained greatness, the spring of its life ran dry, because its results evaporated in too abstract schemas which dispensed with all reality" (Schmoller 1998, 163). Ironically, the

intellectual legacy of the Historical School itself would be virtually forgotten and erased from the mainstream departments of economics by the ensuing hegemony of the neo-classical Anglo-American perspective. This occurred despite the massive influence it exerted in the universities of Germany for a half century and its international reach, most notably in Japan. The basic premise of Schmoller is that "the basic condition of human culture, of which economy is a part, is a religious and moral system and that economic life cannot be understood without the knowledge of the historical development of three norms: customs, laws and morals" (Shionoya 1995). Heino Heinrich Nau summarizes the general methodological aims of Schmoller's Volkswirtschaftslehre as follows, To sketch the history of formation of different economic institutions (forms of organization), to typologize the societal constellation of these forms of organization (style of economy) in definite economic systems, and finally, to set forth the historical sequence of different economic systems in economic stages. The economist must be able to see the natural givens (e.g., geographical, anthropological and biological) in relation to the cultural realities (e.g., socio-historical, politico-moral and psychological) of different epochs. (Nau 1998, 19)

A recognition of the economy as culturally embedded should not however imply a simple return to Schmoller's nineteenth century position against all contemporary theoretical and generalizing efforts in the social scientific field. This would be neither possible nor desirable. It must be admitted that a rigorous methodological purism intent on abandoning and discrediting investigations into the broader patterns of regularity in economic and other socio-cultural phenomena in the interest of preserving their "concrete individuality" no longer seems a reasonable option in contemporary social scientific practice. Salazar's suggestion that Marxism should just be valued for its "commitment to the oppressed and exploited" and for its contribution to "social investigation" (Salazar 2000, 241) reduces the Marxist position to an unoriginal moralistic one and jettisons its most significant, lasting and universal contribution: the critique of political economy in the age of capital. "Thin" and "thick" descriptions of socioeconomic and cultural phenomena have their indispensable functions in the process of deepening the knowledge and understanding of society and culture. The absolute refusal of "thin descriptions" on the basis of these being inherently "abstracting," "false," and "one-sided," or because these are considered premature do not seem to be compelling. Furthermore, a theoretical and practical impasse would certainly be reached were it to be seriously asserted that all thin descriptions are essentially complicit with universalizing Eurocentric history and rationality and must therefore be abandoned. The two types of description mentioned above would, in turn,

also have their analogues in "thick translation" and "thin translation" (Appiah 2000, 417-29). A thin translation, would not need to foreground the otherness of the originating context but would tend to have a rather transparent and "unproblematic" character in relation to the receiving context. A "thick" translation, on the other hand, would have to transmit as much of the original context of the source text to the target reader and would therefore necessarily take on a "foreignizing" or "alienating" character. One important type of "thick translation" is the annotated translation embodied by Salazar's Manifesto. However, such "thickness" may reflect not so much the "resistance" of the text to translation as it does the willful resistance of the translator/receiver to the text. Like Salazar's translation, in which "quarrelsome" footnotes are used deliberately to disrupt the "fluency" of the translation, it may also take the form of a protest against translation even as translation itself takes place. Despite the reservations regarding Salazar's interpretation and translation of the Manifesto which have been detailed above, its historical and literary significance as the first translation of this important work direct from German into Filipino should not be underestimated. Future translators into Filipino and other Philippine languages of the Manifesto and other important works by Marx and Engels, foremost among them, Das Kapital, would do well to learn as much as they can from Salazar's pioneering effort through an even more detailed study. The author proposes that a new translation effort could also critically use Kuczynski's Leseausgabe (1995) as its base rather than the 1848 edition so that the most recent products of philological and historical scholarship can be integrated into a new Filipino translation.

Acknowledgment This is a translation of an essay originally delivered in Filipino on December 12, 2005 for the Marxism in the Philippines Lecture Series of the Third World Studies Center (TWSC) at the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Notes 1. This part includes the author's e-mail correspondence with Zeus Salazar during the time when the latter was translating the Manifesto. The author had no knowledge that these e-mails, meant for Salazar alone, would be published. Therefore, they are perhaps not quite so well thought out and perhaps of little significance in relation to the matter at hand. 2. Historisches wörterbuch der philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer (Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe and Co. Verlag, 1971), s.v. "Kultur

Kulturphilosophie." Cf. Geschichtliche grundbegriffe: Historisches lexicon zur politisch-sozialen sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, et al. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1973), s.v." Zivilisation, Kultur." 3. Note by the translator Holger Fliessbach in Huntington (1996). 4. This is different from what Venuti (1992, 5) calls a "resistant translation strategy," which focuses rather on the "resistance" of the text. 5. This definition was excerpted from the Sachwörterbuch der Geschichte Deutschlands und der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, vol. 1 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1969). 6. Nau (1998, 19): "In der Volkswirtschaftslehre oder Nationalökonomie sollte sich ein 'socialtheoretisches Grunddogma' mit einem 'socialpraktischen Postulat zu einer Wissenschaft verbinden, die Normen zur Gestaltung des Wirtschaftsleben aufstellte, um den Besonderheiten der kulturellen Individualität eines Volkes oder einer Nation gerecht warden zu können."

References Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 2000. Thick translation. In Translation studies reader, 417. 29. London and New York: Routledge. Bloch, Marc, 1967. Land and work in medieval Europe: Selected papers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Harvey, David. 2001. Spaces of capital: Towards a critical geography. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. Kampf der Kulturen: Die Neugestaltung der Welpolitik im 21. Jahrhurdert [The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order). Trans. Holger Fliessbach. New York: Simon and Schuster. International Institute of Social History. http://www.iisg.nl/index.php (accessed March 21, 2005). Kade, Otto. 1971. Das Problem der Übersetzbarkeit aus der Sicht der marxistisch- leninistischen Erkenntnistheorie, Linguistiche Arbeitsberichte. Leipzig: Universität/Sektion TAS. Koller, Werner. 2001. Einführung in die übersetzungswissenschaft. Wiebelsheim: Quelle and Meyer, Kuczynski, Thomas. 1995. Das kommunistische manifest von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels: Von der erstausgabe zur leseausgabe. Trier: Karl-Marx-Haus. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1969. Manifesto of the communist party. In Marx/ Engels selected works, 1: 98-137. Moscow: Progress Publishers. 2000. Manifesto ng Partido Komunista, trans. Zeus Salazar. Quezon City: Bagong Kasaysayan. Nau, Heino Heinrich. 1998. Politisches ethos sozialökonomisches Telos: Gustav Schmollers und das Konzept einer historisch-ethischen Nationalökonomie als Kulturwissenschaft. In Gustav Schmoller: Historisch-ethische Nationalökonomie als Kulturwissenschaft; Ausgewählte methodologische Schriften (Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Ökonomie 11), ed. Heino Heinrich Nau, 9 65. Marburg: Metropolis.

Panganiban, J. V. 1972. Diksyunaryo-Tesauro Pilipino-Ingles. Quezon City: Manlapaz Publishing Co. Salazar, Zeus A. 2000. Pangkalahatang tala ng tagapagsalin [Translator's note]. In Manifesto ng Partido Komunisto [Manifesto of the Communist Party]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 149-276. Quezon City: Bagong Kasaysayan. Schmoller, Gustav. 1998. Historisch-ethische Nationalökonomie als Kulturwissenschaft; Ausgewählte methodologische Schriften (Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Ökonomie 11). Ed. Heino Heinrich Nau. Marburg: Metropolis Verlag. Shionoya, Yuichi. 1995. A methodological appraisal of Schmoller's research program. In The theory of ethical economy in the historical school: Wilhelm Roscher, Marcus von Stein, Gustav Schmoller, William Dilthey, and contemporary theory, ed. Peter Koslowski, 57-78. Berlin: Springer. Sombart, Werner. 1997. The Jews and modern capitalism, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books. Sperl, Richard. 2004. Die editorische documentation von übersetzungen in der MarxEngels-Gesamtausgabe (2000). In Edition auf hohem niveau: Zu den Grundsätzen der Marx-Engels-Ausgabe (MEGA), 178-9. Hamburg: Argument. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.http:// databases.unesco.org/xtrans/xtra-form.html (accessed March 21, 2005). Venuti, Lawrence. 1992. Rethinking translation: Discourse, subjectivity, ideology. London: Routledge. Weber, Max. 2001. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York and London: Routledge. Wunder, Heide. 1974. Feudalismus: Zehn aufsätze. München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung.

Marxism, Nationalism, Globalization, and the Left Kathleen Weekley

Nationalism's progressive moment-the historical, pragmatic good associated with nationalism as an anti-colonial project-has passed. We understand too much now of the links between the principle of the right of nations to form states and to claim sovereignty, and the violence performed by those states, including ethnic cleansing, mass murder, even genocide (which can include popular violence), to insist on the sacredness of national sovereignty. While the Left must still operate within nation-state structures in order to challenge a status quo that reproduces injustice and terrible înequalities, other collective identities also must be forged in recognition of the diminution of national (though not state) power in the global system. We can neither dismiss the dangers that lurk in the idea of "nation" nor ignore the need for larger arenas of political action demanded by the political economy of globalization. The Left must be engaged in building a national counterhegemony that is also at the same time, extra-or postnational. This is not an argument for an abstract "cosmopolitanism" that ignores the very real differences in experience of globalization that are created by a continuing and often enhanced uneven development, but rather for a real adherence by the Left to universal human rights that necessarily refuses a nationalism that endangers them through the essentializing of "nation" and "national culture" which creates, both outside and within, those who cannot or will not be permitted to "belong." The first part of the chapter briefly reviews the relationship between classical Marxism and nationalism, then that between nationalism and communist practice in the Philippines. Although Marxism has never been simply in favor of nationalism, Marxists have always had to take national realities into account in their analysis of sociopolitical situations and the strategies and tactics of struggle thereby demanded. The question of what attitude to take to the nation-state and the place of nationalism in the struggle for socialism should be, for Marxists, decided on the basis of local and international political realities. The second section of the essay puts two cases against nationalism, roughly divided into "ethical" and "pragmatic" reasons why Marxists (or post-Marxist radicals) can no longer promote or defend a nationalist agenda, even though they must continue to try to build national struggles for justice. It discusses the inherent problems of nationalism and the pressures of a world in which people's daily lives are becoming globalized in ways that challenge the principle of national sovereignty. The third and final section suggests some of the kinds of politics that might be included in a "postnationalist" political project, including

federalism and regionalism. Neither of these is a Marxist or even socialist project, but the argument is that they at least represent a progressive movement toward a less parochial, more tolerant (and dynamic) world-as nationalism once did. In sum, I try to show how Marxist demands that the political struggle be something other than a bid for the triumph of bourgeois values (one of which is "national unity") meshes with an understanding of both the social dangers of nationalism and the realities of a globalizing world.

Nationalist-Marxism Classical Marxism and "The National Question" In 1983, Francisco Nemenzo Jr. (1984, 3, 12) warned of the necessity for a revolutionary Marxist party to maintain theoretical openness, lest it lapse into "resembl[ing] medieval Christian theology-unappealing to the mind and ineffectual in practice." Marxism itself, he reminded everyone, is "a philosophical tradition [which] is not final and complete. To retain relevance and utility for [the] struggle, it has to be continuously enriched by the practical experience of revolutionary movements everywhere." Yet Marxist theory must also be enriched by experiences from outside of revolutionary movements, from those whose suffering tells us something about the world in which we are living that we might not otherwise see through the mists of either bourgeois ideology or mechanical left-wing thinking. As Nemenzo (1984, 2) also remarks, in a slightly different context, "it is not usually knowledge that pushes [someone] into waging a class struggle. It is [their] grievance." Ignoring the specificity of the class struggle he refers to here, the relevance of this remark for the argument that follows in this chapter is that today, there are millions of people around the world whose grievances about their treatment by nation-states and the very system of nation-states that dominates our political and social worlds tell us a great deal about the punishing realities of that system. They include millions of refugees fleeing war, or economic or ecological catastrophe, who are shunted, unwelcome, from one country to another; overseas workers (including millions of Filipinos) who suffer, albeit mostly less dramatically, from the application of rules that seek to control human movement in and out of nation-states; and the other millions, including indigenous peoples, living inside the nation-states into which they were born, whose basic human rights are regularly violated and whose states-usually the direct perpetrators of such violations-resist external pressures to address the problem on the grounds of defending national sovereignty.

There is little point, however, in any "return to the texts" to reasses what Marxism has to tell us about the contemporary place of nationalism in struggles for socialism in the Philippines or any other particular case because Marxist theory has generalized little on "the national question"-its importance has been determined by practical realities. In early Marxism, the nation-state was seen as a "historical phenomenon [in] the era of the ascendance of the bourgeoisie as a hegemonic class [representing) a higher stage of the development of the productive forces" (Nimni 1991, 22). For Marx (and Engels), nationalism was a historically specific development that was desirable when-and only when-it represented progress toward a bourgeois state, such as in the French revolution. Nationalism was a good thing when it was for such "progressive social change," but if it represented a force too weak or backward to throw off feudalism and survive "the upheavals of capitalist formation," then it could not be supported. Nationalist forces seeking a state must be strong enough to form that state and capable of developing a healthy contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (Nimni 1991, 27, 33). Otherwise, following Hegel, they are national communities or peoples "without history," communities that will be left behind by history or wiped out by more "progressive" forces. in the longer term, capitalism itself would destroy nation-states. The Communist Manifesto predicted that the development of the capitalist mode of production would dissolve nation-state borders, spelling trouble for the bourgeoisie that had built these national systems in order to centralis economic and political power for itself. It is the bourgeoisie which organizes the world into nation-states, for its own purposes-nationalism has no meaning for the proletariat except negatively, when it serves at certain historical moments to make false common interest between contending classes: As the proletariat develops strength and consciousness then, national sentiments and aspirations will necessarily disappear-not entirely, but for all historical intents and purposes. However, by now it is clear that the global development of capitalism is not the problem for the bourgeoisie as a whole that early communists thought it would be; rather, the most powerful fractions of capital are now busy successfully transcending national borders. This does not mean that nation-states are no longer needed, but they are rather different from what they were 150 years ago. It is equally clear that "the proletariat" (however defined) is increasingly divided, its identities are multiple in ways that have profound consequences for Marxists and for all theories and practices of socialism. Moreover, variations of nationalism caused extensive misery in the twentieth century and continue to do so." Lenin reversed the earlier view that "the historical expansion of capitalism into the non-capitalist world" was to be welcomed (Warren 1980, 46), arguing that imperialism represented "decaying" and "moribund" monopoly capital, which "retarded the industrial development of the

colonies. Since this meant that capitalism was not playing the role it was supposed to play as a "progressive" force in "the west," revolution could as well come from "the east" and, as we know, with the peasantry central to the task of bringing about the bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolution (Warren 1980, 90). As part of this rewriting of classical Marxist revolutionary theory, Lenin wrote of "the right of nations to self-determination," believing that the development of an advanced capitalist society required the framework of a nation-state (Warren 1980, 89-90). Hobsbawm (1977, 9) reminds us that this is not at all the same thing as supporting "independent statehood" for every nation and that Lenin himself warned socialists not to "paint nationalism red:" even in a colonial setting, nationalism was not necessarily en route to socialism. Despite this warning, however, since Lenin's time, there has been a powerful association between Marxism and national liberation movements, whose effects have included a view that "'progressive' nationalism [is] confined [not] only to the category of movements directed against imperialist exploitation" but has also "made possible and desirable" the leadership by Marxists "in the fight of entire nations for emancipation: in short, movements such as those of the Chinese, Vietnamese, Yugoslavs, etc" (Hobsbawm 1977, 10). Partha Chatterjee has pointed to what happens after the national liberation struggle, when the nationalists take power and form a "nation- state" out of the former colony: the national state now proceeds to find for "the nation" a place in the global order of capital, while striving to keep the contradictions between capital and the people in perpetual suspension. All politics is now sought to be subsumed under the overwhelming requirements of the state-representing-the- nation Protected by the cultural-ideological sway of this identity between the nation and the state, capital continues its passive revolution by assiduously exploring the possibilities of marginal development, using the state as the principal mobiliser, planner, guarantor and legitimator of productive investment. (Chatterjee 1986, 168-9)

Apropos this kind of abandonment of a national liberation struggle's socialist goals (where there are any), Hobsbawm says that while Leninism's achievements were significant, the attitude toward nationalism that his work encouraged in later Marxists "should not go uncriticised," not least because "only in a few cases have Marxists succeeded in establishing or maintaining themselves as the leading force in their national movement." And regardless of the global significance of national liberation movements in which Marxists have been involved, the principal test for Marxists "has always been whether nationalism as such, or any specific case of it, advances the cause of

socialism. “Nationalist demands cannot take priority and "any Marxists who are not, at least in theory, prepared to see the "interests" of their own country or people subordinated to wider interests, had better reconsider their ideological loyalties." One of the main issues that confront "nationalist Marxists, Hobsbawm says, is that "there is no way of turning the formation of national communities into a historic engine for generating socialism" (Hobsbawm 1977, 9-12). So the question of what position to take vis-à-vis nationalism must always be a practical one for Marxists: they cannot be nationalists in principle but they must still "come to terms with the political fact[s] of nationalism" and anyway "most actual Marxist socialist movements" operate within a state system (Hobsbawm 1977, 9) As Marx and Engels (1972, 344) said in 1848, "the proletariat of each country must of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie." The question is how to do that? How similar is the situation in which Marxists operate today to the times of Lenin (or Mao)? Here, Hobsbawm's remarks are worth quoting at length: Firstly... the relation between national states and global capitalist development, internally and internationally, is no longer what it was. Second, the virtual disappearance of formal empires ("colonialism") has snapped the main link between anti- imperialism and the slogan of national self-determination. However real the dependence of neo-colonialism, the struggle against it simply cannot be crystallized round the slogan of establishing independent political statehood, because most territories concerned already have it... In short, the relationship between nationalism and both capitalism and socialism (present or future) is profoundly changed. (Hobsbawm 1977, 11)

Marxist-Nationalists in the Philippines In 1969 Alfredo Saulo (1990, xiii, xiv) wrote that "nationalism is the most overriding imperative for communism in the Philippines today... The 'task of the moment' is to build] a truly independent, strong and viable Filipino nation." In the kind of remark that Hobsbawm might have had in mind when he challenges nationalist-Marxists to remember their Marxism, Saulo said, "Filipino communists... are nationalist by force of necessity. It is precisely their communist ideology that compels them to be sincere and militant nationalists even to the exclusion of all other persuasions and loyalties" (Saulo 1990, xiii, xiv, emphasis added). He noted that the "short-range program" of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) in the 1950s, for example, really had nothing to do "with communism per se." Rather, it was "immediately apparent" that it was of "a nationalistic character." The long-term goal of establishing a communist society lay so far in the future then that it had

"little relevance [or] persuasive value to the party's recruitment" (Saulo 1990, 57). Without debating the truth of that for earlier decades, this remains a problematic theme in Filipino communism even now. For the PKP, "Imperialism and its puppets" had long been the "main enemy." So when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, promising land reform and an aggressive campaign against the corrupt oligarchy whose economic and political stranglehold had held back national development, the PKP took the view that he represented a new class fraction that would usher in national Industrialization. Five years later, a former leader of the party wrote that the "reformist national bourgeoisie" had wrested control of the state from "the feudal lords and compradors" (Weekley 2001, 53). But by then the PKP had become politically unimportant, so it mattered little to anyone what they had to say. While the new Communist Party of the Philippines, the CPP, rightly derided the old party for its capitulation to Marcos and martial rule, its arguments that the dictatorship was to be opposed because it represented a continuation of imperialist bondage rather than genuine nationalism were also less than convincing.' Its active opposition to the increasingly resented regime, however, drew hundreds of thousands of activists to the "nationaldemocratic" forces led by the CPP over the following years. Yet it is by no means clear that the majority of these militants acted in order to rid the country of a tuta (lapdog) of imperialism. There is little evidence to suggest that it was nationalism that drove Marcos' opponents rather than a desire to be rid of a corrupt tyrant who enriched his family and friends while the poor stayed poor, and who was contemptuous of both democracy and human rights. The antidictatorship struggle was, of course, a national one, carried out in the national arena (though also featuring international solidarity work), but it was rarely nationalist beyond the national-democratic slogans. It is perhaps ironic that when the CPP was most successful-that is, when leading this struggle against the dictatorship-its theoretical roots and end goals were the least understood. The CPP proclaimed a national-democratic revolution because, as stated in chapter two of Philippine Society and Revolution, it regarded the economic "backwardness" of the Philippines as "principally determined by U.S. imperialism." Under these conditions, the Philippine state could be nothing other than "a creation and puppet instrument of U.S. imperialism and feudalism" (Guerrero 1979, 64-65). In the long term then, it made no difference whether the national government was tyrannical or democratic, and this was more or less the position that the leadership of the CPP took to the election of Corazon Aquino and the overthrow of Marcos. As we know, this created a great deal of confusion and disappointment among nat-dem activists and supporters.

In 2008, the CPP (2007) still says that "the main determinant of the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society is us imperialism" and that "military control is the alpha and omega of us hegemony over the Philippines." Although in analyses of current conditions it now refers more often to "foreign monopoly capitalism" than simply United States capitalism, the party rejects suggestions that the state and the international system of states are somehow structured differently now from the late 1960s and that therefore political strategies must change. Yet, it has become active and quite successfully so (insofar as the electoral rules allow it) in parliamentary politics via the party-list system. However, if the state is but the executive committee of the (comprador) bourgeoisie, then what is the point of engaging in, of all things, this electoral struggle? While the CPP has long claimed that first, it is waging a struggle for a nationalist revolution, because that is the correct strategy according to "MarxismLeninism-Mao Zedong Thought," it neither explains how this will lead to socialism nor how the tactics that it engages in meanwhile lead to "genuine national democracy." The CPP is important in the context of this volume because it has been by far the most important explicitly Marxist force in the Philippines for nearly four decades, but there is insufficient space here to analyze the party's failures either to mount a persuasive argument that the "most important enemy" is imperialism or to convince a majority of active democrats that its analysis of the relationship between the nation and imperialism is the correct one. Patricio Abinales (2001, 197-207) argues that Filipino communists have always had problems with nationalism because neither party made the ideological break with their noncommunist nationalist forebears that was required. For the early leaders of the CPP, he says, "the national question was... framed not by radicals but by bourgeois nationalists like Recto" and over the years, the party "failed to see the ideological resilience of the bourgeois nationalist viewpoint." In the apparent belief that Philippine Society and Revolution had sufficiently explained the position of the "national bourgeoisie" in the struggle, the CPP seemed to think that this social class required little more consideration than its relationship to the party in organizational terms: "the CPP remained convinced that the national bourgeoisie and its allies were tactical coalition enigmas, not ideological challengers" (Abinales 2001, 196-7, 209-10). Of course, the CPP well knew the political limitations of the national bourgeoisie who, after all, were not socialists and it had analyzed the specific, limited roles that nationalist allies could play at certain historical junctures. But the party's attitude to the nationalism that it shared with the bourgeois nationalist was not analyzed with the same rigor and it was surprised then by the role that this political fraction played in the eventual closure of the U.S. military bases, which the national-democrats had long asserted presented "the clearest evidence that

the Philippines is still a colony" (Guerrero 1979, 64). The crux of Abinales' argument (2001, 196-223) is that the CPP's mistakes in the anti-bases movement and its "near-absence," as a mass movement, at the "decisive moment" when the bases were finally forced out were not simply organizational ones but derived from its failure to develop a Marxist critique of nationalism (to offer "a clear proletarian explication of the national question")." Because of the CPP's economic determinist position that imperialists have not permitted "genuine" nationalism in the Philippines, it has not engaged in substantial discussion of how a healthy nation-state might be built in the Philippines. For a long time, the Left had little to say about the role of the state in people's daily lives, or its own role in forcing the state to change. Even the field of specifically nationalist (as distinct from simply anti- imperialist) political discourse has largely been occupied by non-Marxist forces, including both conservatives and radical nationalists who bemoan a lack of nationalist consciousness among Filipinos and whose solutions have included such strategies as teaching Filipinos more history to overcome a "neocolonial consciousness." But making "national" consciousness is about national practices, not simply abstract ideas. The remedy for failures of a nationalist identity project cannot be to intensify efforts at the ideological or symbolic level. Ideological hegemony is not the reproduction simply of ideas, which are largely meaningless unless confirmed and reconfirmed in material form. National citizens must know their imagined community in a positive, material way. The materiality of the reproduction of national ideology in the Philippines has never been as strong as the symbolic aspects.10 As Raul Pertierra says, "the nexus in the nation-state is insufficiently linked [N]otions of nationhood are not adequately expressed in the structures of the state. For many Filipinos, ideas of the nation are not reflected in their experiences of the state" (Pertierra 1999, 301). This brings us to a crucial question: if the Filipino state is not playing its historical role in building this thing called the nation-state, a "genuine" version of which Filipino nationalist- Marxists assert is essential for justice and equality, then is it not the Left's responsibility to try to force it to do so? I believe it is and it requires tackling the realities of Filipino actually-existing capitalism, not just the specter of a distant imperialist power.

For a Postnationalist National-Popular To summarize the argument made here so far: the Marxist Left in the Philippines has not taken seriously its historical task of "settling matters with its own bourgeoisie" because it has viewed the national state as little more than a puppet of imperialism and therefore unworthy of political engagement. For the most part, Filipino nationalist-Marxists have vaulted

over, in theoretical terms, the supposedly dependent (and therefore largely powerless) national bourgeoisie to engage in a struggle that first tries to break the power of semi-feudalism through a protracted war in the countryside. Political organizing is intended to support this basic struggle and is, in the final analysis, subordinate to it. In other words, from a certain point of view, there has been too much Lenin and Mao and not enough Marx. Taking up the challenge of dealing with the Filipino bourgeoisie requires calling national capitalists to account. This means calling the state to account and while at certain moments some fractions of national capital may ally themselves even with left forces, a Marxist analysis cannot treat "the national bourgeoisie" differently, as if it were obvious who they are and that they have some putative interest in "nationalist industrialization" (Guerrero 1979, 136), rather than in seeking "the nation['s] place in the global order of capital" and trying to ensure that the Left does not exploit the social contradictions that this entails. Since "the working class" must first "win the battle of democracy" (Marx and Engels 1972, 352), one of the most important tasks of the Left is to force the state to play a different role from that of executive committee for the bourgeoisie, ie, one that instead gives structural support to democracy and rights, redistributes social wealth and protects the weak. This, we know, the state will only do when forced to; it is the role of Marxists to leave it no choice. It is only as a well-organized force (party or otherwise) committed to building the general pressure for such a state-a counterhegemony, in Gramscian terms-that the Left can succeed in overturning the outcomes of the passive revolution. To concur with Joel Rocamora's call (1994, 219) of more than a decade ago, it must build what Gramsci called a "national- popular struggle. Parts of the Filipino Left decided in favor of similar strategies some years ago-as is evident by their changed approaches to political work-but I want to stress here that such a project must also go beyond Gramsci in certain ways. The national-popular project can no longer be simply "national" but must also be extranational(ist). First, because of the problems inherent in nationalist thought, including its tendency to encourage bigotry; and second, in practical terms, because global contemporary realities call for theories and actions more broadly based than nationalism. So, while we must agree with Rocamora when he says that "the only way we [Filipinos] can [relorganize our relations with the capitalist world is by creating a government capable of negotiating on the basis of national interest" (Rocamora 1994, 219), it is not simply a matter of training negotiators to stand up to global bullies-the Left's role is to build popular active commitment to the creation of functionaries who would not dare to do otherwise for fear of popular outrage against the state. We cannot leave international reorganization to gifted bureaucrats; they must go into their negotiations with positions formed by a government that has understood

that it must play a particular role or be called to "explain itself" by the populace. From a left point of view, government's role is to behave in ways that serve not "the national interest" per se but the interests of the majority of people in the country and not just the rich few. (What's good for Ford is not always good for the United States.) In other words, this national issue is not a nationalist one so much as it is an issue of open, democratic government and just distribution of economic goods. The struggles to create such a responsive state must be waged around those socialist, sometimes social democratic, issues, not nationalist slogans that tend to mask the very divisions within national and international society that lie at the heart of the systemic problems. This second section of the essay puts the case against nationalism- though not against a national struggle for, as has been noted often, "although contemporary globalization has complicated the nation-state form, it has not rendered it obsolete as a form of political organization" (Cheah 1997, 159)-from two perspectives: first, what we might loosely think of as the ethical perspective (what is wrong with nationalism?), then the pragmatic one (how has globalization superseded national perspectives?). Finally, in the context of discussing what a post-national Marxist politics might look like, the issues of federalism and regionalism are raised. This latter part is necessarily sketchy for as always the details of political projects can only be decided by those working "on the ground." Inherent Contradictions of "The Nation" Nationalism may have originated as an ideology of liberation and tolerance; in our century it is drenched in blood. What Mazzini began, Il Duce ended. (Luban 1980, 393)"

There is much debate and disagreement about nationalism-whether it precedes or postdates the state, whether it invents nations or appeals to primordially already-constituted ones; whether it is chiefly a political or cultural phenomenon; and whether it is inherently expansive and democratic or by its very nature ultimately restricted and parochial-none of which need be repeated here. However, a few key points of interest in the debates will help to clarify the discussion about what kind of nationalism should be superseded. Nationalism is hollow and can be filled with variant ideologies, from a progressive, i.e, forward-looking variety that encourages people living in certain territories with few other connections to think of themselves as fellow-members of a "nation-state" that both protects them from external threats and contracts them to protect each other from want, to a fascism that declares a certain nation-race to be superior to others and that has the right to deal with the others in the manner it sees fit. The latter we have

seen in cases too numerous to mention since the beginning of the twentieth century and not only in "the North," so the salient question is whether we can still believe that "good" nationalism is possible. Anderson (1991, 145, 149) rejects the notion that racism is inherent to nationalism, arguing that "the nation was conceived in language, not in blood" and it "thinks in terms of historical destinies, while racism dreams of eternal contaminations." Others agree, arguing that "tribal feeling" and "xenophobia" can be "mobilized for nationalist purposes but...nationalism is [rather] the demand that every community must constitute itself politically, in the form of a state" (Seth 1993, 10). Elie Kedourie (1966, 73) has argued that the "linguistic" variety of nationalism is not the only one and that in reality, "there is no definite clear-cut distinction" between it and the "racial" variety. We must distinguish between nationalism, patriotism and xenophobia, Kedourie says, because the latter two "sentiments" defend neither "a particular doctrine of the state" nor "the individual's relation to it," while nationalism is "a comprehensive doctrine which leads to a distinctive style of politics." However, if the three categories are sometimes confused, he says, "it is because nationalist doctrine has annexed these universally held sentiments to the service of a specific anthropology and metaphysic" (Kedourie 1966, 73-4). Etienne Balibar (1991, 12) believes that as a political ideology, and nationalism is inextricably linked to racism, noting that "at least in already constituted national states, the organization of nationalism has racism underlying it." His argument is that there is a "new racism," especially in Europe, which claims that it is not racist, or pretends not to be (because racism is "impermissible" in this age), wrapping its distaste for those it does not like or want inside its community in talk of unbridgeable cultural differences and the like. We are no longer living in the epoch of the creation of expansive, progressive nation-states and there is much nationalist language that is indeed racist and in Balibar's view, there is no doubt that today, there is a correlation between nationalism and racism. "The evidence" he says, "is all too striking when, at the two ends of Europe, in France and the ex-socialist countries, the intensification of nationalism is accompanied by the reconstitution of overt anti-Semitism." Racism, even in sophisticated clobber, is not necessarily a good thing for the democratic nation-state system, but it is popular: Most of the time, racism is not at all functional from the point of view of nationalism; on the contrary, it sets up divisions within it that are at once superfluous and cumbersome. And yet there is virtually no historical example of nationalism without a racist supplement... racism is an elaboration and forward rush of the contradictions of nationalism... But this forward rush would not be possible if it were not at the same time a rush backwards-

that is to say, if racist schemas of thought were not deposited in the past of nationalism. Ideological efficacy is the efficacy of the past. (Balibar 1991, 12)

There can be little doubt that "racist schemas" were "deposited in the past" in the variations of nationalism across the old and new worlds, including in France, whose "universal mission to educate the human race" was accompanied by a mission to "assimilat[e] dominated populations" and measure others according to "their greater or lesser aptitude for... assimilation" (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991, 24). But this racism in nationalism is by no means confined to the "developed world." In the Philippines, traces of this kind of "past" require attention from those who assert that the nation-state is a political project rather than simply a state of cultural being. One is the continuing difficult status of "Chinese-Filipinos," who as internal "outsiders" are from time to time held responsible for economic and political woes, and who have alternately been marginalized or included in Philippine society for more than 400 years (Wickberg 1997, 154). Even the Marxist Left was not immune to anti-Chinese campaigns in the past. The other places where such "traces" of racism can be found are in the inferior place long accorded to indigenous peoples, and the problematic place of Muslim Mindanao in the imaginary of the Filipino nation. As well, there is a continued adherence to a ius sanguinis definition of citizenship, which includes, for example, the stipulation in the Constitution that certain elected political representatives be "natural-born Filipinos." This is a small detail in a country so devastated by poverty, corruption and more than its share of natural disasters, yet it is an important one for the left to be aware of, especially in the context of supporting legitimate claims that Filipinos abroad be afforded universal rights in order to participate in controlling their destinies no matter where they live and work.. The "rush backwards" to racism in older, established democratic polities, as Balibar puts it, is supported by populism by citizens apparently troubled by the constant change that seems to drive contemporary societies and whose political leaders, busy with their projects of neoliberalism, resort to or encourage exclusionary discourses that lay the blame for the stresses and threats of modern life on "outsiders." This cannot be explained reductively as divide and rule tactics by an omniscient and omnipotent bourgeoisie-citizens are not to be excused so readily their intolerance and violence toward others who have done them no harm-but it does raise the problem of the limits of (national) democracy and thereby, the inherent conservatism of the principle of national sovereignty. Racism also appears in newer, post-colonial democracies (and dictatorships) of "the South," and while there it is not necessarily a clawing back of the past as in "the North," it can be just as popular, as illustrated by, for example, the Hindu

fundamentalist movement of "Saffron politics" in India, and the anti-Indian- Fijian politics of the kai viti movement in Fiji since 1987. To state the case as simply as possible: at a time when we see, almost everywhere we look, a retreat from an inclusive, political kind of nationalism-the kind that analysts like Anderson want to protect-to a narrow, exclusivist politics that more closely resembles patriotism and xenophobia, the Left's responsibility is to defend a universalism that rejects such prejudicial sentiment. This universalism is not fought for simply from inside global organizations and U.N. structures, but rather in the process of trying to change national cultures-this is what I mean by the struggle for a national-popular hegemony that is extra-nationalist. But it also means defending universal human rights, for example, against the "right" of a nation-state alone to determine what goes on within its own borders. It is instructive that the demand for recognition of universal human rights is understood as an impingement on national sovereignty by the worst violators of rights-whether that is Burma being called upon to allow its citizens political freedom or the United States being called upon to stop torturing prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere. Without an overriding universal principle of protection of individuals from the murderous behavior of states, the "national sovereignty" principle allows a state to do as it pleases so long as no other state's sovereignty is threatened. progressives must reject the sacredness of national sovereignty Democracy does not protect those who live within a state's borders from the violent actions of that state-as so many minorities know to their grave cost, in Nazi Germany, in fascist Italy, in Muslim Bosnia and Indonesia in the 1990s, or in the world of Australian refugee prisons or neglected Aboriginal communities. There simply is no moral force behind the principle of national sovereignty. There are clearly strong arguments for states not to interfere in the business of other polities, but this is a matter of pragmatics. Even in extreme cases, f.e., armed intervention, the basis for criticism cannot be the principle of national sovereignty but rather whether such intervention is plausible, made in good faith and apparently the best solution to the problem at the time. (Our good sense and historical knowledge, rather than the principle of national sovereignty, tell us that it usually is not the best solution.) Were this type of calculation itself made in good faith, then we would deem the 2003 invasion of Iraq to be quite without merit (though we might have judged differently an international intervention force had it moved a few years earlier to protect thousands of Kurds from being gassed) and on the other hand, the world might have decided that something should be done in Rwanda as millions were being murdered with axes by their neighbors. The point is that there is no undiluted good to national sovereignty and it cannot be accepted, by Marxists above all, as an inviolable right. There

was never anything self-evident about the principle of national sovereignty and today, it can clash directly with human rights. The radical Left everywhere today must address the question of the relationship between nationalism, populism, racism and human rights. A populist nationalism is subject to the same danger as all populisms because it is an ideology that both glosses over important social divisions within political communities and also is easily turned into racism or other forms of discrimination against "others" at both popular and state levels. In a world of increasing legal rights for individuals regardless of their nationality or where they reside, and increasing abuses of those rights in reality, it is incumbent upon those of us claiming to be progressive, no matter where we are, to explain how our goals support rather than undermine those rights. Hobsbawm again: the political project of the Left is universalist: it is for all human beings. However we interpret the words, it isn't liberty for shareholders or blacks, but for everybody... The nationalist claim that they are for everyone's right to self-determination is bogus. That is why the Left cannot base itself on identity politics. It has a wider agenda. (Hobsbawm 1996, 43, emphasis added)

The Realities of the Global Era Substantial changes in the world of economy and politics of the last few decades force us to think beyond the nation-state in the practice of radical politics today. The most obvious is the expansion of global production and distribution, facilitated by the free movement of finance capital thanks to the communications technology revolution. There are no national economies any more, insofar as autarky is an impossibility. An anatomy of almost any manufactured product today reveals the story of a complex economy spread over several countries and even several continents. There is no disentangling the national and global aspects of economy. However, while capital and goods move ever more freely around the globe, implicating the smallest farmer and manufacturer, the largest transnational companies and all consumers in the same system, capital does not move evenly around the globe and labor does not move freely. On the contrary, some countries are becoming more impoverished as others grow richer (in both "North" and "South"); and for political reasons related to popular demands to stem perceived incoming "tides" of foreigners, there are increasing attempts to control people's movements, sometimes to devastating effect. As many states pretend that they can do nothing to fight the steady push for neoliberal transformations either macro or micro, calling this "globalization" rather than the specific ideological form of globalization that it is, they insist that they can and will control the movement of people in and out of the country.

The economic realities, however, often dictate that while states declare a nearly-closed-door policy in principle, they leave the door wide open in practice. In Malaysia, for example, Indonesian construction workers are deported from time to time when public opinion against them grows, but are quietly let back in by the back door when construction companies demand their labor back. One profound consequence of the globalization of production and reproduction is that "the nation" is no longer (if it ever were) coterminous with a national territory. The numbers of people moving around the world are greater than ever before and many of them take their nationality with them, taking up dual citizenship where they can (increasingly an option around the world, including in the Philippines), but increasingly they also continue to practice their original cultural and social habits. The decline of assimilation policies (until recently anyway) in traditional immigration countries and a widespread, visceral understanding of a "right to difference" mean that forms and experiences of migration are changing profoundly. Experiences of "transnational" forms of being are changing attitudes to the nation. This does not mean that the framework of the nation-state has been superseded; on the contrary, precisely because of the enduring hegemony of the nation-state idea and its practices, the language of "nation" is still used to make sense of transnationalism or diaspora, i.e., the disruptions of to nation-statehood or national identities. We are all, migrants and refugees included, still "living in a world in which discourses about identity continue to be framed in terms of loyalty to nations and nation-states" (Basch, Schiller, and Blanc 1994, 33, 8). Yet those nation-states must come to terms with changing realities. In their study of emigrants from the Caribbean and the Philippines (into the United States), Basch, Schiller, and Blanc analyze how "deterritorializing" nation-states are responding to large numbers of their citizens leaving for work and often not coming back. The governments of these countries have taken up a new form of nation-state building. Sometimes through specific public policies, as in the case of the balikbayan regulations.... but often through the use of symbols, language, and political rituals, migrants and political leaders in the country of origin are engaged in constructing an ideology that envisions migrants as loyal citizens of their ancestral nation-state. This ideology recognizes and encourages the continuing and multiple ties that immigrants maintain with their society of origin. (Basch, Schiller, and Blanc 1994, 3)

The moment at which the "deterritorialized nation-state is being forcefully articulated can best be conceived as the moment of a new nationalism" (Basch, Schiller, and Blanc 1994, 30). While this phenomenon is more obvious in some countries of the world than others, the Philippines' experience of the rupture between territory and "nationality" is profound because of the high proportion of its nationals working abroad at any one time; given the importance of migrant remittances to the national economy, the state has been very active in encouraging Filipinos to remain part of the "national family," through new cultural practices such as the awarding of "new national hero" honors to overseas workers and through legal means such as the right to absentee votes in Philippine elections. As migration further threatens the integrity of the connection between territory and "national belonging," these practices allow the state to embrace certain aspects of globalization and deregulation without relinquishing a rhetorical (and, it hopes, material) commitment to the national family. In some quarters, there is consternation at this apparent bursting of the boundaries of the old political nationalism. Anderson (1996, 9) is one of those bothered by what he calls "portable nationality" because it breaks the connection between nation and state that was crucial to the modern notion of nationalism. It is a matter of concern for some nationalists that this model of the nation(-state) is apparently being superseded by a cultural or "racial" model by people who participate in national(ist) politics beyond "their" territorial space. It can lead to what Anderson calls "long-distance nationalism," where people who identify themselves as belonging to a certain nation live outside that nation-state (if one exists, which is not always the case-for Kurds, for example), but who use the resources and safety of another nation-state to carry on their nationalist political project. The perceived problem is that such people do not participate directly-or solely- in the political life of the territory in which they live, because their first loyalty lies outside that state. His concern is that this kind of nationalism creates "a serious politics that is radically unaccountable" (Anderson 1998, 74). Dominique Schnapper (1999, 246), a theorist of French democratic republicanism, is another who fears that active commitment to a far-off nationalism, particularly via the Internet, lessens "the social connection that creates direct exchange between concrete individuals," and hence threatens democracy itself. The problem here is that neither of these authors is willing to acknowledge the extent to which this kind of "bad" nationalism is connected to "good" nationalism. What is not given sufficient attention is that it is a core principle of nationalism itself-the principle of self- determination-that is employed in the increasing, open assertion of other nationalisms. Moreover, it is precisely the nervousness of even open, republican democracy about the existence of multiple emotional and political

allegiances, together with the growing awareness of the universality of human rights, that contributes to a proliferation of "ethnic" and diasporic consciousness and politics. That is to say, the more the majority society insists, by convention or law, that people give up their "original" identities in order to "belong," the more the latter feel as though they are being told that they can never belong. At this point, we are back to Balibar's argument about the inextricable connections between racism and nationalism. It appears to be too late to assert that the only "true" nationalism is a certain twentieth century democratic version that transcends a narrow definition of "nation." Ideas about the "rights" of nationalities are loose in the world and they will not be put back in a modernist box too easily. This is not the place to debate the myths and realities surrounding immigrants who refuse to "belong" and to "participate" in ways sanctioned by the democratic nation-state who, like the army of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong, dare to "take over" spaces that "belong" to the older citizens of the city, instead of remaining invisible. However, we might at least note in passing that there is little evidence that migrants of multiple identities and even those practicing "long-distance nationalism" create any more problems for democracy than is being created by the widespread growth of political apathy in established democracies. Moreover, we would do well to remember, given democracy's already-existing troubles, that the democratic nation-state is a historical creature; the European Union (EU) model at least suggests that the nation-state is not necessarily democracy's only possible form. Nederveen Pieterse (2004, 34, 109) reminds us that the nation-state system is "a grid that has been temporarily superimposed upon a deep and ongoing stratum of human migrations and diasporas." It is not the end of political history. Migrant workers as well as refugees are aware of how difficult national is not rules and regulations can make their lives and Filipino workers figure highly among the world's experts on how national migration restrictions and lack of protection by labor laws render them vulnerable to human rights abuses Marxists and non-Marxist radicals alike can and must criticize the Filipino state for its self-serving attitude toward overseas workers, but they must also take positions in favor of a truly postnational solution to their predicaments, for example, by declaring themselves for the real implementation of the United Nations Convention on Migrants' Rights. As long and difficult a struggle as that will be, for the left there is no alternative, for there can be no joining reactionary elements in their idea that the real solution to the "problem" of migration-for-work is to get everyone to stay "at home" where they "really" belong. In the final analysis, any such policy rests on the implicit assumption that coercive state power will be used if necessary in order to prevent people from reasonable pursuit of a better life for their children. It also rests on an idea that, ultimately, some people Migrant workers as well as refugees are aware of how difficult national rules and regulations can make their lives and Filipino workers figure highly among the world's experts on how national migration restrictions and lack of protection by labor laws render them vulnerable to human rights abuses. Marxists and non-Marxist radicals alike can and must criticize the Filipino state for its self-serving attitude toward overseas workers, but they must also take positions in favor of a truly postnational solution to their predicaments, for example, by declaring themselves for the real Implementation of the United Nations Convention on Migrants' Rights. As long and difficult a struggle as that will be, for the left there is no alternative, for there can be no joining reactionary elements in their idea that the real solution to the "problem" of migration-for-work is to get everyone to stay "at home" where they "really"

belong. In the final analysis, any such policy rests on the implicit assumption that coercive state power will be used if necessary in order to prevent people from reasonable pursuit of a better life for their children. It also rests on an idea that, ultimately, some people

are more worthy of holding down certain jobs at certain rates of pay, with certain living conditions, simply because they had the good luck to be born in an advanced economy, for example. As Gavin Kitching (2001) asks in his recent challenging work, what is the moral basis for saying that an Australian deserves a job in a shoe factory more than the Thai who will get such a job when the factory moves offshore? This is a provocative question of course, to which the answer is that there is no moral basis at all to such a claim, while the political answer is not as simple as all that; however, it forces us to think about the question in all its complexity, rather than simply to assume that it is our duty to think of our fellow-nationals before all others. In any case, given that the economies of the world are so globalized, and many people's horizons are changing because of this, any strategy whose aim is a kind of national development that will keep people "at home" is misplaced and threatens to ignore some of the issues most central to the well-being of migrant workers. There is not likely to be a great deal less "economic" migration in the foreseeable future, which means that progressive political action by and on behalf of migrant workers should be directed principally toward protecting and extending their rights no matter where they are and no matter who they are. This requires cross-national organization toward ultimately supranational goals rather than national ones. The question then becomes what aims and strategies might lead towards rights for all migrant workers.16 One of the left-wing groups working with migrant Filipino workers in Hong Kong believes that the struggle for migrants' rights can only address "the short-term needs of our compatriots." But this is not so; as Heyzer and Wee argue, Because of the ineluctable feedback relationship between macro and micro processes, any improvement of the [foreign domestic] workers' situation at the micro level will, in turn, engender long- term social gains at the macro level. (Heyzer and Wee 1994, 35)

Political advocacy groups must think about migrant workers as workers and as people with universal human rights, not simply as misplaced nationals. 17 National and Postnationalist Politics This is not the place to go into detail about how to conduct left-wing post nationalist politics, but some basic contours of the field might be sketched. "Settling matters" with actually-existing capitalism means first of all, working for a political culture in which people know their rights and fight for them. As Maria Serena Diokno (1997) has argued, the dominant model of citizenship in the Philippines is a passive one in which citizens appear as people who

obey state laws; what is required instead is a model of an active citizen who has rights and will break the law if necessary to defend those rights, i.e., in defense of higher goals. It is a struggle not only for civil and political rights, though that is the basis on which other rights such as to water, shelter, health, and education are won, which requires taking on the private sector, the bourgeoisie as it appears-hiring and firing and underpaying-nationally. The problem for Marxists is that the revolution is not just around the corner- after years of hard struggle by the left to overthrow the state, half of all Filipinos live in poverty and even those who do not, all live in a world of chaos, with public services that scarcely function, unacceptable levels of danger in everyday life and worse. These are symptoms of a state that is not operating for all its citizens and they present opportunities for progressives to help to form an active civic culture that demands that it do so. Campaigning for basic services entails calling on everyone in the country to recognize that they accrue to all Filipinos, that there is no democracy without them; it also entails alliances with all those with interests-personal and economic- in improved standards of living. The struggles for such citizenship occur at local, national and international levels, for they constitute struggles to wrest control not only at the center, but just as importantly, away from the center. Only Filipinos can wrest power from the Philippine state to return it to the citizens, and especially since the passing of the Local Government Code, many organized groups-often made up of former Marxist activists-have been attempting to do just that. This is not the place to focus on what so many are already doing, so, in the final part of this chapter, I want to discuss how these struggles are, in the final analysis, for universalist goals and will finally also involve both alliances outside the nation-state and recourse to international law principles. Postnationalism as Federalism One of the first things that must be recognized is that a struggle to build an active citizenry on the basis of universal human rights involves understanding that some Filipinos might demand the right to be less emotionally involved in the national element of the project than others would like. This is where the left must be prepared to think about political forms such as federalism, as a pragmatic step in the resolution of substantial human rights problems. Talking in Indonesia in the late 1990s, after having been kept out of the country for years, Anderson remarked that he was dismayed to see nobody there working on the question of rights for all Indonesians, their rights to participate voluntarily, enthusiastically, equally, and without fear in the common project of Indonesian nationalism. Put conversely, their right not to be treated as animals, devils, serfs, or the property of other Indonesians... Unless this struggle is

carried on sincerely and on a very wide scale, the future of the project is dark. If one starts with, "Too bad there are Acehnese in Aceh," it is easy enough to move on to, "Too bad there are Catholics in Flores," "Too bad there are Chinese in Semarang," "Too bad there are Dayaks in Kalimantan." (Anderson 1999)

He goes on to argue for a real federalism in Indonesia, which he says, is "completely normal. Almost all the large countries in the world have federal institutions of various kinds: Canada, Brazil, the United States, India, Nigeria, Germany, Russia, and so on" (Anderson 1999, 16, 10). The Philippines is also a culturally diverse nation-state (indeed, as they all are) and some abiding problems of diversity appear to be insoluble within the old national framework. The problem of the ongoing political violence in Mindanao, for example, is inextricably and negatively linked to nationalist projects, both historical and current. The question of resistance to "national identity" by some minorities cannot be avoided. The Muslims of Mindanao do not necessarily feel "Filipino" in the ways that the state and nationalists want them to be. A perhaps painful truth for nationalists is that some Mindanao Muslims want to assert their right not to be "Filipino" or not to be Filipino in the way/s demanded by the central state. Federalism might be a pragmatic way out of one of the thorny problems of contemporary nationalism for progressive Filipinos; it would involve abandoning state claims to authority over daily life in Mindanao (so often patently accompanied by the thought, "too bad there are Muslims/Moros in Mindanao"). Federalism would certainly be a step forward if it would stop the current state-sponsored atrocities against and humiliations of hundreds of thousands of people in the civil war. It is a project that would necessarily involve declaring that all people within the territory of the Philippines have equal rights and deserve equal treatment in law, but one that recognizes that the form of the nation-state that guarantees them is quite different from the existing one. None of this is to suggest that the creation of a federated state/province of "Muslim Mindanao" (or any other kind of Mindanao) is a simple matter, but it is to suggest that a different political space and set of attitudes for negotiation might be thus created-with which the citizens of the country's south can decide how to envisage their political future. It would also be a useful reminder of Anderson's conviction that nationalism is a project whose "fulfilment is never finally complete... the 'continuity' of a nation is fundamentally an open question." Its form is not given by ancestors: too many Indonesians [are] still inclined to think of Indonesia as an "inheritance"... Where one has inheritances, one has inheritors, and, too often, bitter quarrels among them as to who has "rights" to the inheritance. Sometimes to the point of great

violence. People who think that the "abstract" Indonesia is an "inheritance" to be preserved at all costs may end up doing terrible damage to the living citizens of that abstract geographical space. (Anderson 1999, 7-8)

Postnationalism as Regionalism So much for a possible resolution of certain political problems inside national boundaries-if federalism is a progressive and even plausible post-nationalist project, then democratic regionalism is more of an "impossible dream." Yet it deserves a serious place on the Left's political agenda because the call to transform, say, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) into a functioning, truly regional (rather than international) organization presents opportunities to raise many progressive political and economic issues. Building such a regional organization requires the serious diminution of the principle of national sovereignty in order to strengthen its member states vis-à-vis stronger national and regional economies. The Left can present this as a practical necessity as well as an ethical one in a world where small countries are not only being forced to play the global economy game according to unfair rules already set by the powerful, but are also being "picked off" one by one by those stronger economies in bilateral processes of economic "negotiation." Stronger nation-states or stronger nationalisms are simply not sufficient in this context. Pheng Cheah defends nationalism (against a kind of idealist cosmopolitanism that I am not propagating) as necessary in the face of "first world" economic depredation: in the absence of a world-state capable of ensuring an equitable international political and economic order, the unevenness of political and economic globalization makes the nation-state necessary as a political agent for defending the peoples of the South from the shortfalls of neocolonial capitalist global restructuring. Contra Bhabha, it is the defense against neocolonial globalization that makes national formation through negative identification both historically unavoidable and ethically imperative. (Cheah 1997, 170)

Cheah is correct that nationalism arises as a reaction to a negative construction of identity imposed from the outside by global structures over which less powerful economies have little control. However, there are two problems with his argument, the first of which is that we know that state nationalism may draw attention to the inequalities of global trade and consumption but it usually does nothing about the distribution of national wealth. For every Venezuela and its Hugo Chavez who claims a commitment to democratic-socialist policies, there are several resource-rich countries, large proportions of whose populations live in dire poverty while massive

profits are made and whose political leadership benefits from either direct interests in or corrupt dealings with the barons of privatized resources companies. So, here we run into the old problem outlined earlier: nationalism is no guarantee of better conditions for the majority of the inhabitants of a country of "the South." Second, even nationalism with a socialist character is not a sufficient strategy in a globalising economy-socialism-in-one- country is always flawed and never more than now. Chavez is not merely indulging in fantasies of "exporting revolution" when he works to draw other Latin American countries into closer economic ties with Venezuela and each other; he knows that economic cooperation is a necessity for the region. It is somewhat strange then that Cheah (1997 and 1999, 225-252) does not even mention regionalism in his critique of the idealism and political inadequacies of the "cosmopolitical" and "hybridity," for it is an increasingly visible and necessary element of the global economy. Structures of regional cooperation are both a fact of globalization, i.e., are a form of extra-national collective for economic production and distribution, and a response to globalization, by states that know that such arrangements offer greater protection and strength vis-à-vis the global economy than standing alone. While there are by now several regional arrangements dealing with security and economics, so far, the only model we have of a regional organization really functioning as a region (for all its neoliberal faults) is the European Union-probably because it was based on a political dream, not an economic one (which means that there have always been forces inside it pushing for a Union-level human rights regime, for example). The dream of the European Union was to transcend nationalism so that the horrors of war, in particular expansionist imperialist wars and fascist extermination projects would not be repeated in Europe." It was a practical and an ethical response to the carnage of World War II. Just as nationalism was an answer to colonialism or other forms of oppression and discrimination by larger powers and as such was progressive in the sense that it broadened people's horizons, so regionalism was a broadening of sights that had been blinkered by nationalism. The authors of the radical Ventotene Manifesto of 1941, considered one of the original historical statements behind the European Union, declared, [historically] the ideology of national independence was a powerful stimulus to progress. It helped overcome narrow- minded parochialism and created a much wider feeling of solidarity against foreign oppression... But with this ideology came the seeds of capitalist imperialism which our own generation has seen mushroom to the point where totalitarian states have grown up and world wars have been unleashed. Thus the nation is no longer viewed as the historical product of co- existence between men who... have acquired greater unity in

their customs and aspirations and who see their state as being the most effective means of organizing collective life within the context of all human society. Rather the nation has become a divine entity, an organism which must only consider its own existence, its own development, without the least regard for the damage that others may suffer from this... [F]rom being the guardian of citizens' freedom, the state has been turned into a master of vassals bound into servitude. (Spinelli and Rossi 1941)

Arguing that the revolutionary movement must transcend the old struggle that was "restricted within the traditional boundaries," the Manifesto authors warned that reactionary forces would use the restoration of nation-states for their own ends and would do so by channelling that "most widespread of popular feelings," patriotism, toward those ends. For revolutionaries then, "the question which must be resolved first, failing which progress is no more than appearance, is the definitive abolition of the division of Europe into national, sovereign states" (Spinelli and Rossi 1941). Even Balibar (1991, 8), profoundly skeptical of the future of Europe and the "exacerbated nationalisms" he sees in it, says that "the ending of the political division of Europe is a progressive development of immense historical significance... accompanied by a certain enthusiasm among intellectuals for the idea of "European culture"... which is productive of new ideas and projects." One of his concerns is what he calls "the advance of the American' model of consumption and social communication" within the European Union. The task of socialists in the era of regionalism is to insist on a model of regionalism that is not neoliberal-a task that, we need to note now, has become even more pressing since the rate of planetary environmental destruction is becoming obvious even to obstinate political leaders. These are also some of the tasks of socialists and radical democrats in Asia, too, whose challenge is to steer the growing "sentiments of Asianess (brotherhood and sisterhood among Asians)" (Guerrero 1998) toward forming a regional integration that puts democracy, human rights and economic justice before the abstract claims of the free market. The obstacles are legion, as has been pointed out many times before now, not least because while the European Union was inspired by a political dream, structures such as ASEAN and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation have had narrower, more pragmatic motivations and arose out of state interests rather than popular ones. One of the great weaknesses of ASEAN has been the refusal of member states to relinquish national sovereignty in the interests of larger goals, but such refusals will be unsustainable in the long run, because increased cooperation for capital means increased laws to enshrine the rules of that cooperation, and where there is a "rule of law" for capital/the state/the rich, there can also be a "rule of law" for labor/the poor/the politically

marginalized. Nongovernment organizations in this region have been vocal for some time in their criticisms of Asian states in the field of human rights; in their reply to the official "Bangkok Declaration," they stated that while "a precondition to genuine development is national liberation and self- determination of the peoples of the region," "human rights are of universal concern and are universal in value," and committed themselves to "international solidarity [which] transcends the national order to refute daims of state sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of a state" (Bangkok NGO Declaration on Human Rights 1993). Walden Bello (1995, 47-8, 65) pointed out over ten years ago that regionalism in the Asia-Pacific was more competitive than cooperative and that its elites were authoritarian and anti-democratic, motivated by fear of "the great democratic wave that has been sweeping Asia since 1986." The latter part was perhaps more optimistic than analytical, and it is not yet clear whether regional cooperation is a real possibility for the future. If it is, then Bello would not recommend looking to the United States or European countries for inspiration on how to solve the problems of democracy, political and economic equality elsewhere. While there is no space here to debate the very real social differences between European countries and the United States, we can agree that all too often, "democratic mechanisms become the vehicles for reactionary social and economic ends" (Bello 1995, 69). However, when it comes to the Left's search for a sketch of a supra national vision, it could do worse than begin with what the EU stands for in principle.

Conclusion The argument here is that nationalism's progressive moment has passed. Where once the sovereign, democratic nation-state represented a movement beyond absolutism and parochialism, the realities of the global world are now transforming human life so that modernist nationalism is itself limiting. The ascendancy of universal human rights means that the principle of national sovereignty has been superseded both ethically and practically. The challenge for socialists, whose task is to defend universalism Hobsbawm reminds us, is to transcend the limits of the old model of a world of sovereign nation-states. While projects such as federalism and regionalism are themselves politically limited and are not Marxist projects, they do represent a move beyond nationalism toward greater fraternities and broader horizons. None of this is to suggest that the Left can abandon national struggles- far from it. Democratic politics still take place mostly within nation-state boundaries and it is there that the left must wage its counterhegemonic campaigns against neoliberal interpretations of democracy, human rights and environmental sustainability. Yet increasingly, in order to do so, the Left

must forge supranational ties and make use of supra-, inter- and trans national ideals and structures. It also must push for changes to those institutions that already exist because for a post-national world to administer itself justly, the whole United Nations system-or something like it-must be transformed. It is simply not acceptable that the greatest powers can ignore world opinion and carry out self-serving actions around the globe, killing and maiming, and endangering us all through reckless abuse of the planet's resources. Yet however great and intractable the challenge of such transformation appears, is it really any greater or less attainable than the traditional goals of nationalism seemed two centuries ago?

Acknowledgment Many thanks to my anonymous reviewers, whose constructive criticism forced me to tighten (and, I hope, strengthen) the arguments in this essay.

Notes 1. For the sake of argument, I use the term "Marxist" as shorthand for radical counter-capitalist thought and practice, whether or not there is still much use value in the term, or power left in it as a guide to social change. At the very least, a Marxist analysis is one that recognizes that the basic contradictions of capitalism cannot be overcome without revolutionary change (though their effects may well be ameliorated by social policy). 2. For a critique of the problems that nationalism has caused in Africa, for example, see Davidson (1992). 3. Warren (1980, 48, 71) reminds us that Lenin's work on imperialism "paid little attention to [its] effects on the underdeveloped countries, because he was almost entirely concerned with its sources and repercussions in the advanced capitalist world." Yet this did not prevent the development of the view among the left that "the expansion of capital into Asia, Africa and Latin America could have only reactionary implications." 4. Moreover, as Benedict Anderson (1996, 5) points out, the new Soviet Union did not think of itself as a "nation-state" as it is defined today, but rather as having "transcend[ed] the problem of nationalism by formal recognition of the terrains and cultures of its major nationalities while subordinating them fully to a universal project." 5. Benedict Anderson (1991, 3-4) correctly notes that they did not define what they meant by the national bourgeoisie, so this is another political "detail" that later Marxists have had to figure out for themselves, to better or worse effect. 6. He does not go on to explain what he means by this. 7. On the political sterility of the mode of production debate in the Philippines, through which most of the discussions about the nature of the Marcos regime were filtered among the Marxist Left, see Rojas (1992).

8. This is not to deny that there were people on the Left who were very active in lobbying the Senate, including then-Senator Estrada, but rather that the CPP was not present in any of its organizational forms. As with the overthrow of Marcos, the national democratic movement had fought for a similar end in the years prior to the decisive event, but at the final moment, its thunder had been stolen by more conservative forces. Indeed, I remember well that until the last moment, much of the communist Left simply did not believe that the U.S. would "allow" the Philippine Senate to refuse to ratify the bases agreement. 9. Many Filipinos have known their state in negative material ways but naked state power is not the "deep horizontal comradeship" of the nation-state imagined in Anderson (1991, 7). 10. For a more detailed discussion, Bankoff and Weekley (2001). 11. I came to this article via Seth (1993). 12. In parts of the "new world" (and in Europe) strong discourses have (re)appeared about the right of those who live there already to choose who will be "let in" and what behaviors they should manifest in public, and complaints about certain "communities" (chiefly Arabs and or Muslims) being irreducibly different from the majority and hence unacceptable on cultural grounds. 13. Phil. Const. of 1987 Art. IV, § 1. 14. There are other questions to be asked about the principle of national sovereignty, which cannot be discussed here due to space limitations, but they include, to whom should this supposed right finally accrue? To the government of the day? Only if that government has been deemed (by whom?) to be duly constituted and representative of the majority of an enfranchised people who were properly informed and free to participate in politics? Or if that government has been deemed (by whom?) also to be protecting the rights of minorities in the country according to international law (assuming that state has signed the appropriate human rights conventions and become party to relevant treaties?)? 15. For arguments about how globalization does not have to mean the end of all government intervention in economy or of welfare state provisions, see Woods (2000). 16. Much has been written about the causes and consequences of Filipino economic migration, about substandard to subhuman wages and conditions in "host" economies and about the mobilization of nationalist sentiment (or the need for it) to protest maltreatment of Filipinos abroad. However, Pertierra (1999) and Pinches (2002) have pointed out that such indignation on behalf of overseas domestic workers is not matched by concern for their experiences as domestic workers in the Philippines. 17. This does not mean that we should be thinking about a kind of new international working class-that is a notion fraught with difficulties of its own, not least of which is that traditional trade union ideologies and structures will not be adequate to the task of extending and protecting migrant workers' rights. Still, there are substantial difficulties getting the United Nations Coalition for Migrants' Rights (UN CMR) ratified and implemented, especially around the Asia-Pacific region. Unsurprisingly, the main "sending" countries have signed, but not the "receiving" ones, indicating that progressives in the latter must also be pushed into supporting the former.

18. For a detailed argument about how "the democratic space" in Asia might be "expanded... so as to challenge the negative implications of globalization and regionalism," Guerrero (1998). 19. The political dream behind what has become the European Union is what most alarms anti-European Union conservatives and reactionaries. See for example, Jenkins (n.d.).

References Abinales, Patricio N. 2001. Fellow traveler: Essays on Filipino communism. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined communities. 2nd ed. London: Verso. 1996. Introduction. In Mapping the nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan, 1-16. London: Verso. 1998. The spectre of comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the world. London: Verso. 1999. Nationalism in Indonesia today and in the future. New Left Review, no. 235: 3-17. Balibar, Etienne. 1991. Es gibt keinen staat in Europa: Racism and politics in Europe today. New Left Review, no. 186: 5-19. Balibar, Etienne, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1991. Race, nation, class: Ambiguous identities, London: Verso. Bankoff, Gregg, and Kathleen Weekley. 2001. Celebrating the centennial of independence: Postcolonial national identity in the Philippines. Manila: De La Salle University Press. Bangkok NGO declaration on human rights. 1993. World conference on human rights. Geneva. http://hei.unige.ch/~clapham/hrdoc/docs/bangkokNGO.pdf (accessed March 17, 2008). Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations unbound: Transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments, and deterritorialized nation states. Langhorne, Pennsylvania: Gordon and Breach. Bello, Walden. 1995, Growth, crisis and opportunity in East Asia. Kasarinlan: A Philippine Quarterly of Third World Studies 11 (1-2): 19-76. Chatterjee, Partha, 1986. Nationalist thought and the colonial world: A derivative discourse? London: Zed Press. Cheah, Pheng, 1997, Given culture: Rethinking cosmopolitical freedom in transnationalism. Boundary 2 24 (2): 157-197. 1998. Introduction Part II: The Cosmopolitical-Today. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and feeling beyond the nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 20-41. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press. 1999. Spectral nationality: The living on [sur-vie] of the postcolonial nation in neocolonial globalization. Boundary 2 26 (3): 225-252. 2006. Inhuman conditions. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Communist Party of the Philippines. 2007. Why the New People's Army is invincible and victorious and how the people's war can rise to a new and higher level.

English edition. Special issue. Ang Bayan, March 29, 2007. http:// www.philippinerevolution.net/angbayan/archives/2007/20070329en.pdf (accessed August 4, 2007).

Davidson, Basil. 1992. The black man's burden: Africa and the curse of the nationstate. New York: Times Books. Diokno, Maria Serena. 1997, Why a democracy agenda. In Democracy and citizenship In Filipino political culture. Vol. 1, Philippine democracy agenda, ed. Maria Serena Diokno, 1-4. Quezon City: Third World Studies Center. Guerrero, Amado. 1979. Philippine society and revolution. Oakland, California: International Association of Filipino Patriots. Guerrero, Dorothy. 1998. Regionalism and transnational democratization in the Asia and the Pacific basin. Occasional Paper no. 9, Work in Progress, Institute for Popular Democracy at Diliman, Quezon City. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1977. Some reflections on "the break-up of Britain." New Left Review, no. 105: 3-24. 1996. Identity politics and the left. New Left Review, no. 217: 38-47. Heyzer, Noeleen, and Vivienne Wee. 1994. Domestic workers in transient overseas employment: Who benefits, who profits? In The trade in domestic workers: Causes, mechanisms and consequences of international migration, ed. Noeleen Heyzer, Geertje Lycklama à Nijeholt, and Nedra Weerakoon, 31-101. Kuala Lumpur: Asian and Pacific Development Centre. Jenkins, Lindsay. n.d. Godfather of the European Union Altiero Spinelli. http:// www.brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/index.live?article=104 (accessed April 3, 2007). Kedourie, Elie. 1966. Nationalism. 3rd ed. London: Hutchinson University Library. Kitching, Gavin. 2001. Seeking social justice through globalization. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Luban, David. 1980. The romance of the nation-state. Philosophy and Public Affairs 9(4): 392-397. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1972. The communist manifesto. In The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, 469-500. New York: W. W. Norton. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. 2004. Globalization and culture: Global mélange. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Nemenzo Jr., Francisco. 1984. The millenarian-populist aspects of Filipino Marxism. In Marxism in the Philippines: Marx centennial lectures, ed. Third World Studies Center, 1-40. Quezon City: Third World Studies Center. Nimni, Ephraim. 1991. Marxism and nationalism: Theoretical origins of a political crisis. London: Pluto. Pertierra, Raul. 1999. The relevance of the Philippine state for the state of Philippine studies. Asian Studies Review, no. 23: 293-306. Pinches, Michael. 2002. Migrant workers and the reconstitution of class and international relations in East Asia. In East Asian capitalism: Conflicts, growth and crisis, ed. Luigi Tomba, 479-508. Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Rocamora, Joel. 1994. Breaking through: The struggle within the communist party of the Philippines. Pasig: Anvil. Rojas, Virgilio. 1992. The mode of production controversy in the Philippines: Anatomy of a lingering stalemate. Debate: Philippine Left Review, no. 4: 3-43. Saulo, Alfredo B. 1990. Communism in the Philippines: An introduction. Enl. ed.

Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Schnapper, Dominique. 1999. From the nation-state to the transnational world: On the meaning and usefulness of diaspora as a concept. Diaspora 8 (3): 225-254.

Seth, Sanjay. 1993. Political theory in the age of nationalism. Paper presented at the State in Transition conference, La Trobe University, Melbourne. Spinelli, Altiero, and Ernesto Rossi. 1941. The Ventotene manifesto: Towards a free and united Europe - A draft manifesto. http://www.federalunion.org.uk/ archives/ventotene.shtml (accessed April 3, 2007). Warren, Bill, 1980. Imperialism: Pioneer of capitalism. London: Verso. Weekley, Kathleen. 2001. The communist party of the Philippines, 1968-1993. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Wickberg, Edgar. 1997. Anti-sinicism and Chinese identity options in the Philippines. In Essential outsiders, ed. Chirot, Daniel and Anthony Reid. Seattle / London: University of Washington Press. Woods, Ngaire, ed. 2000. The political economy of globalization. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Marxism, Nationalism, Globalization, and the Left Review by Caroline S. Hau

This article presents a good overview of some of the problems and challenges of articulating Marxism and nationalism in a "post-national" world. While I have no problems with the main thrust of the argument, I encourage the author to address the following points: i) While the essay is careful to qualify its use of European scholarship (notably Balibar's) on nationalism by suggesting that the theorizing of nationalism in the Old World is largely colored by Europe's experience of fascism and the devastating world war, and more recently the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the essay itself does little to address seriously the question of how nationalism, at least in its anticolonial form, was articulated in Asia, and how this articulation-particularly, as the author rightly notes, its valorizing of nationalism as a virtueinfluenced nationalism's specific trajectory in the postcolonial Third World. ii) The above point is important when we consider the debate concerning the relationship between, for example, nationalism and racism, which in some formulations is really a debate about the state and its role in the formation of European nationalism. In Southeast Asia, anticolonial nationalism was articulated prior to the "capture" of the state, so it retained the positive promise that survived nationalism's deployment by the state for its agenda and the abuses committed in the name of the nation. The essay needs to directly engage with this differential experience of nationalism, rather than simply alluding to it. iii) On the Communist Party of the Philippines' (CPP) history of engagement with nationalism: again it bears keeping in mind that the history of communism in Asia has been one that from its inception had an intimate-though by no means harmonious-relationship with nationalism. While I agree with the author's general argument regarding the CPP's failure to take into account the changing character of the state in its overall analysis, the history of communism's articulation with nationalism in Asia seems to suggest that nationalism largely took the form of what was taken for granted rather than something that needed to be explicitly foregrounded and theorized-in this sense, for example, it is arguable that while the opposition against Marcos was indeed a revolt against the tyranny of the dictator and his family, this discourse itself was always-already "nationalist" in the sense that the arena of

action (and putative transformation) was assumed to be "national" and the activism had for its goal that of freeing "the Philippines" from tyranny (even though Edsa would no doubt have been perceived differently by the Muslims in Mindanao)-eyewitness accounts and testimonies suggest that no one involved was talking about authoritarianism "in principle" nor much concerned with calling for the overturning of tyranny elsewhere in the world. Perhaps the formulations of the Left also took the "national question" as a given-an unsaid starting point- rather than something that had to be problematized. iv) The essay contains a short discussion of integration but does not seem to be aware of how the specific history of regionalization and regionalism in East Asia (ie., Northeast and Southeast Asia) relates to nationalism in the region. The term "postnational"-which this essay uses-in fact reflects a specifically European concern that is not universalizable: Habermas's influential formulation was largely rooted in the problems and challenges of European integration. But the experience of European integration is quite different from the regional integration now going on in the name of "East Asia Community." In Europe, integration began with efforts to forge lasting peace between France and Germany and to create a security framework for the region. France made the decision to seek reconciliation with its former enemy, Germany (West Germany at the time) sought security as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; in areas other than security, it looked to the long process of European integration as a way to pursue its national interests. In this way regional integration in Europe was propelled by a broadly held political will with France and Germany at its core. Beginning with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952 and leading up to the launch of the European Union forty years later, this integration progressed via institutional development. This has brought about something of a federal arrangement in Europe, with the E.U. apparatus exercising a degree of control over the member states. By becoming a member of the group these members sign over some of their sovereign authority to the central organization. By contrast, regional integration in East Asia is a very different sort of process. Until recent years there was very little common political will to advance this sort of integration. Following the 1985 Plaza accord that sent the yen's value climbing, Japanese companies boosted their direct investment and their business presence throughout East Asia to increase their international competitiveness. Companies from South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong were quick to follow suit, and ethnic Chinese businesspeople living in Southeast Asia were not far behind in this trend. By the end of the 1980s these waves of cross-border investment had integrated the economies

of Japan, South Korea, the coastal regions of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. as well as those of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand-the five original members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This brought the region together as a somewhat coherent whole. In short, it has been market forces-the broadening and deepening of regional networks of industry in Japan and elsewhere-that have propelled integration in East Asia. The regional ties that have formed to date are due in part to the twin factors of the so-called Pax Americana and Japan's economic cooperation. While market forces and the U.S. hub-and-spokes security system in Asia have laid the grounds for regional economic integration, the excesses of capitalism also laid the foundation for regionalism. Initiatives for multinational cooperation began taking shape in the region in the 1990s. One example of these developments was the East Asian Economic Caucus proposed by Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad early in the decade. Faced with American opposition, this scheme made little headway (for after all, Asian leaders saw no need to go against Washington's wishes and cobble together such a framework when market forces were doing the job of knitting the region together in any case). But this thinking changed with the financial and currency crisis that struck East Asian countries in 1997 and 1998, when Americans took advantage of the crisis to force certain "conditionalities" on South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia that exacerbated the social and political crises in these countries. This actually sparked anti-American nationalism in those countries which led to the institutionalization of the ASEAN-plus-Three processes. The region's leaders saw the need for a system that could function properly even when markets failed. It was this recognition that gave rise to the political determination in Japan, and throughout East Asia, to rethink the need for greater integration. This historical difference again explains why it is not particularly useful to generalize from the European experience when talking about Asia and the Philippines. If you try to measure Asian regional integration by the yardstick of European integration, Asian regional integration will always fall short (hence all the media lamentations on how ASEAN is slow-moving, not fully institutionalized, or lacks the political will to force, for example, Myanmar to "democratize"). v) I mention the need to ground the essay in the Asian regional integration experience and historical context because Asian regional integration differs from E.U.-style integration precisely on the question of nationalism and national sovereignty. Network-style integration in East Asia with ASEAN as hub is fundamentally based on the reality that nationalism is still understood to be an engine for moving history forward. As the hub of East Asian integration, ASEAN is not meant to

restrict national freedom of action but rather is a mechanism to leverage national capability to expand its freedom of action in the international arena. Nationalism remains the most important principle for giving existential meaning to the state and for shoring up state legitimacy. While the author is correct to argue in favor of national-popular mobilization that also factors in the "extra-national," this argument is better served by a direct engagement with nationalism in the light of its continuing relevance in Asia rather than simply retailing its "reduction" to exclusivism and citing European scholarship as if that scholarship were not itself also shaped by the particularities (and particularism) of European historical experience. vi) Arguing in favor of the Left's defense of universalism raises a tricky question: who will enforce the universal norms extranationally? As of now, there exists no world federation or international organization capable of enforcing norms on an extranational scale. How would the Left go about building a global movement when history has shown that, for example workers all over the world did not necessarily unite even on the same issues? For this reason, nation-states remain important agents of social transformation and redistributive justice because there is as yet no regional and global institution with executory force to defend universalism. The essay seems to equate nationalism with particularism and implicitly opposes it to universalism (hence its call, in some sense, for the Left to go beyond the nation)-this equation is by no means a proven fact, and there are scholars like Pheng Cheah (1998, 2006) who would argue that this opposition is a spurious one.

References Cheah, Pheng, 1998. Introduction Part II: The Cosmopolitical-Today. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and feeling beyond the nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 20-41. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press. 2006. Inhuman conditions. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Marxism, the Peasantry, and Agrarian Revolution in the Philippines Eduardo C. Tadem

Peasant communities are often characterized by recurring poverty, debilitating powerlessness, precarious productive systems, constant subjection to impositions and exactions from external forces, and persistent threat of extinction. In response, they engage in various actions geared toward mitigating the impact of the above conditions or, at the extreme, radically transforming their lives. On one hand, peasants have been described as passive and willing to endure and adapt to the most unequal of relations with outsiders. When their backs are against the wall, they either cut down on their consumption or intensify their farm work. In many cases, they simply leave the countryside and take on work in the urban areas or in other countries. In many cases, as a popular branch of peasant studies illustrates, they engage in "everyday forms of resistance" by employing what has been termed "weapons of the weak" (Scott 1985, Kerkvliet 1986).2 At the other end of the spectrum of peasant responses to external impositions and oppression are major acts of resistance such as rebellions and revolutions requiring collective action on the part of peasant communities. There are various theories on peasant participation either as main protagonists or adjunct players in revolutionary movements. One stems from placing "the subsistence ethic at the center of the analysis of peasant politics" and where recurring violations of a "moral economy" based on a "notion of economic justice and (a) working definition of exploitation" are thought to trigger spontaneous outbursts of uprisings and insurrections (Scott 1976). Skocpol (1994) compares the arguments in the works of Wolf, Migdal, Paige, Scott, and Moore. She raises three questions concerning the issue of what makes peasants revolutionary and examines each author's responses. On the question of "which peasants are most prone to revolution," Wolf and Scott declare that landholding peasants fit this category while Paige points to propertyless shareholders and landless farmworkers. On the role of political and military organizations, Moore, Scott, and Paige view them as external to the peasantry's autonomous mobilizations while Migdal asserts that peasantries have been largely propelled by revolutionary parties. Finally, as to whether capitalist imperialist development leads to peasant revolution, Wolf, Migdal, Paige, and Moore agree that this has indeed been the case with the roots to be found in the modernization, commercialization, and industrialization of agriculture set in motion by globalizing forces.

This paper is concerned primarily with the tradition that is rooted in various Marxist analyses of peasant participation in revolutionary agrarian social movements. It starts by looking at the questions that have informed Marxist studies on peasant revolutions and how writers from this school of inquiry have attempted to answer them. To show how Marxists have in practice related to peasant societies, the paper then looks at an actual peasant community consisting of three villages in the provinces of Tarlac and Pampanga in Central Luzon, Philippines, which have been the targets of organizing activities by armed Marxist guerrilla movements. As a way of further localizing and focusing encounters between Marxists and peasants, the third part presents a brief life story of an individual peasant from one of these communities who directly participated in the agrarian armed struggle. The fourth part brings the three previous sections together to see how Marxist theories on peasant revolutionary activities compare with actual experiences on the ground. A principal argument of this study is that Marxist theories on peasant revolutions seem far removed from reality and that practitioners often find themselves pragmatically adjusting and revising the former to conform to the situation in the field. On the part of peasant societies and their members, on the other hand, the findings from the field show that different motivations (including personal considerations) in joining the armed struggle are at work and that participation in revolutionary struggles is only one of the options that individual peasants consider in responding to their abject conditions and improving their lives. While the experiences of three peasant communities may not provide sufficient information to generalize on how Filipino Marxists related to the peasantry, these case studies nevertheless provide glimpses of reality that could very well have been replicated in other parts of the country. Indeed, scholarly studies at the macro level on Communist-led agrarian rebellions in the Philippines appear to validate (to a significant extent) the findings from the field.

Peasants and Revolutionary Movements From a Marxist point of view, class analysis forms an important component of the notion of peasant revolutions. A primary question deals with the attitude of the peasant class toward revolutionary change. Corollary to this is the question of when and how peasants actually engage in revolutionary activities, A secondary issue is how peasants relate to what Marxists assume is the only innately revolutionary vanguard class-the urban proletariat, which in practice is invariably represented by a communist or socialist party or similar-type organizations.

Marx (1969, 478-80) has two notions on these problems. First, he distinguishes between the revolutionary peasant and the nonrevolutionary peasant. Briefly, the peasant who remains isolated from other peasants and forms no collective spirit either within or with other marginalized classes of society is a nonrevolutionary peasant. This is the peasant who will cling at all costs to his smallholding even when it is no longer a viable undertaking and will resist socialist-oriented changes, e.g., collectivization. Worse, this peasant will often ally with reactionary forces against the revolutionary proletariat. On the other hand, the peasantry who attains a consciousness toward collective action, correctly identifies their class enemies, and unites with other oppressed classes is a revolutionary peasant. Marx went on to declare that the nonrevolutionary peasantry "consequently (are) incapable of enforcing their class interests in their own name," and being unable to represent themselves "must be represented." And that this "representative must at the same time appear as their master, an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power that protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above." In such a situation, the peasantry becomes hostage to another political regime that would in Marx's colorful language represent not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant that strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather the peasant who wants to consolidate this holding; not the country folk who... want to overthrow the old order... but on the contrary those who, in stupefied seclusion within this old order, want to see themselves and their small holdings saved and favored... It represents not the enlightenment, but the superstition of the peasant, not his judgment, but his prejudice; not his future, but his past. (Marx 1969)

The conservative position of the peasantry toward revolutionary change is rooted in the family-based village economy, a "natural economy most unalloyed" which "produced everything it needed" and where "almost no money was necessary" (Engels 1970, 460). "Each individual peasant family is (therefore) almost self-sufficient... produces... its consumption... and thus acquires its means of life through exchange with nature rather than in intercourse with society" (Marx 1969, 478). Moreover, "their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse" while their "field of production, the small holding, admits of no division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science, and therefore no diversity of development, no variety of talent, no wealth of social relationships" (Marx 1969, 478).

Capitalism, with "its money economy and large-scale industry," puts an end to the natural economy and thereby dooms the peasant mode of smallholder production (Engels 1970, 460). But rather than going over to the side of the proletariat, the peasantry stubbornly clings to the land and is distrustful of socialist calls for nationalization of the land, which appear to them as nothing more than outright expropriation of their small farms. As such they are often susceptible to the designs of the bourgeoisie with its call for protection and preservation of private property. What then should be the attitude of the revolutionary forces to the peasantry? On the eve of the October Bolshevik revolution, Lenin (1977a, 217) wrote: "the attitude of the proletariat to the peasants... confirms the old Bolshevik concept, correspondingly modifying it, that the peasants must be wrested from the influence of the bourgeoisie. That is the sole guarantee of salvation of the revolution." Marxist theory asserts that in both backward agrarian societies and capitalist societies with large peasant populations, an alliance between the working class and the peasantry is a necessary strategy. But this will not be an alliance between equals. The peasantry is to be under the leadership of the proletariat class which, in the struggle against capitalism, is alone a really revolutionary class (Marx and Engels 1973, 77). Once the peasantry realizes that their smallholding has been "enslaved by capital" and is the principal cause of their ruin, they will gravitate to their "natural ally and leader," the urban proletariat (Marx 1969, 480-82). Lenin (1977b, 269) echoed the above views as he pointed out that in "every capitalist country where there are peasants" the overthrow of an oppressive government "can only be accomplished by the proletariat." The peasantry, being an isolated and amorphous mass of independent producers, "much as potatoes in a sack forms a sack of potatoes" (Marx 1969, 479), is to be organized by an outside force, the party of the proletariat. Notwithstanding these iterations of the politically conservative nature of the peasant class, the practice of revolutionary Marxist movements showed considerable flexibility and adjustments. Before the outbreak of the October insurrection in the cities, a peasant revolt broke out spontaneously in the Russian countryside and Lenin immediately called on his Bolshevik party to support the peasants' struggle. When the 1917 insurrection brought the Bolsheviks into power, Lenin declared a "Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Russian Republic," cancelled all landlords' titles and ordered the transfer of the land to the peasant committees without compensation (Reed 1966, 264, 350)." In China, whose ancient and modern history has been replete with large- scale peasant revolts, widespread agrarian unrest and peasant movements were enveloping the countryside in the 1920s led by the Peasant Associations (Chesneaux 1973, 82-100). The Chinese Communist Party, under cover of its

tenuous alliance with the Kuomintang Party, provided political leadership as well as an agrarian program to these associations who had become the de facto local governing bodies in the rural areas. In 1927, Mao Tsetung wrote about such associations and the role of the poor peasants in the This great mass of poor peasants. are the backbone of the peasant associations, the vanguard in the overthrow of the feudal forces... Without the poor peasant class... it would have been impossible to bring about the present revolutionary situation in the countryside, or to overthrow the local tyrants and evil gentry and complete the democratic revolution. The poor peasants, being the most revolutionary group, have gained the leadership of the peasant associations. (Mao 1971a, 35)

Mao waxed effusive by declaring that "leadership by the poor peasants is absolutely necessary" and that "without the poor peasants there would be no revolution." To deny their role is to deny the revolution. To attack them is to attack the revolution. They have never been wrong on the general direction of the revolution. (Mao 1971a, 36)

Despite Mao's profuse celebration of the peasantry, the ongoing Kuomintang-Communist alliance served to moderate the demands of the peasant associations. The two parties' agrarian program to which the associations adhered was limited to the reduction of land rents and usurious interest rates and provision of basic political liberties (Chesneaux 1973, 89- 100). More radical measures such as land seizures and establishment of peasant cooperatives were discouraged and even criticized as "excesses." When the Kuomintang broke with the Communists in late 1927 and killed thousands of their former allies (thus decimating the Communist ranks), the landed gentry resurrected their armed militias, which then conducted massacres of leaders and members of the peasant associations. Consequently, the peasant movement went into a hiatus. In accordance with the prevailing balance of class forces in China and breaking with Marxist (and Soviet) orthodoxy on the subject, Mao would henceforth elevate the role of the peasantry in the Chinese revolution. Writing in 1939, he called the armed struggle in China as essentially a "peasant war" saying that the Communist Party's "relations with the peasantry and its close relations with the peasant war are one and the same thing" (Mao 1971b, 166). In place of the traditional Marxist stance that the peasantry is a vacillating partner of the workers' movement, Mao posited the view that "the peasantry is the firm ally of the proletariat."

At the launching of the "Cultural Revolution" in the late sixties, Mao would reiterate his idealization of the peasantry by emphasizing "learning from the peasants, rather than from the workers" (Schram 1974, 29). By doing so he practically debunked the thesis that the proletariat was the only truly revolutionary class. It can fairly be argued that Mao has never completely accepted the Marxist postulate of a sharp qualitative difference between the political attitudes and capacities of the urban workers on the one hand, and the peasants, sunk in "rural idiocy," on the other. Indeed he went so far in 1926 to state that the peasants were more uncompromisingly revolutionary than the workers. (Schram 1974, 29-30)

After China, two other major peasant-based revolutionary movements that ended in victory were the Cuban revolution (1956-1958) and the Vietnamese revolution, which spanned four decades from the 1930s to 1975. As is well known, the peasant masses (the campesinos in Cuba and the landless and tenant farmers in Vietnam) provided the main support for these two movements and the agrarian question and its resolution were primary mobilizing elements as well as major government programs in the reconstruction and post-revolutionary period (Selden 1969, 357-358, 372- 380; Chaliand 1976, 89-98; Kerkvliet 1979; Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars 1970; Gonzales 1988; Alexandre 1968; and Castro 1969). Commenting on the role of the peasantry in the making of the modern world, Moore concludes that: No longer is it possible to take seriously the view that the peasant is an "object of history," a form of social life over which historical changes pass but which contributes nothing to the impetus to these changes. For those who savor historical irony it is indeed curious that the peasant in the modern era has been as much an agent of revolution as the machine, that he has come into his own as an effective historical actor along with the conquests of the machine. (Moore 1966, 453)

Moore (1966, 504) also notes that "the wellsprings of freedom" need not lie exclusively in social forces and classes "about to take power," as Marxist theory would put it, "but perhaps even more in the dying wail of a class over whom the wave of progress is about to roll." Writing in 1966, he however (like many scholars on peasant studies) prematurely sounds the death knell for the peasantry in the context of the global spread of industrial society, which he sees as rendering anachronistic revolutionary radicalism. While the actual role that peasants have played in contemporary revolutionary movements have far exceeded the limitations placed on it by

classical Marxist analysis, the latter's view that the peasantry by themselves would be unable to overthrow the existing order has also seen its validation in the above instances. In the case of China, Chesneaux (1973, 151-152) observed that the "external stimulation" that "set the peasantry in motion" was through the media of "ideas, men, and organizational forms" that came from the cities and industrialized towns. The same could be said of the Cuban and Vietnamese experiences whose principal leaders grew up in urban areas and were of middle class origin with some even arising from the upper class. In other words, the peasant movements were, for all intents and purposes, basically led by nonpeasants.

Marxism and the Peasantry in the Philippines To situate the above issues and concerns in the context of the Philippine situation, this study has chosen to focus on the direct experiences of three rural villages in the Central Luzon as case studies, the region being regarded as the traditional hotbed of peasant unrest. In doing so, the author deviates from the usual practice of radical scholars that looks at the peasant question from a larger national and aggregate perspective. While useful and necessary in providing a wider view of an important social phenomenon, national studies often marginalize the principal players in the struggle-the peasant masses themselves, how they have been affected by revolutionary activities and how they themselves relate to radical groups attempting to change their lives. In addition, this paper also adopts the tradition of social historians who look at the experiences in struggle of the common people and argue that their history is not the same as, and cannot be replaced by, the history of social movements and mass organizations whether these be peasant-or worker-based. This is an all too often mistaken assumption that Marxist historians make (Hobsbawm 1997, 203-204). The Study Area The villages (barangays) of San Vicente and Santo Niño in Bamban, Tarlac and Calumpang in Mabalacat, Pampanga comprise 5,612 hectares of rolling hills and mountains in the Central Luzon region in the Philippines. They were part of 41,000 hectares of American military baselands that reverted to the Philippine government in 1979. Prior to the Mount Pinatubo eruptions in 1991-1992, the communities could be reached through a 5-kilometer-long uphill and winding road at the western end of the 300-meter-long Bamban Bridge across the Sacobia-Bamban River, which marks the boundary between the provinces of Pampanga and Tarlac.

The 4,795-foot Mount Pinatubo defined the area's southwestern boundaries. To the southeast and across the Sacobia River had sprawled the famous American military complex, Clark Air Base, home of the U.S. Thirteenth Air Force (until it was forced to close down in 1992). A strategic characteristic of the study area's location was that it straddled the boundaries of three provinces-Pampanga, Tarlac, and Zambales. Mount Pinatubo and the Cabusilan mountain range loomed over the triangle formed by the confluence of these three boundary lines. To the northwest was the controversial Crow Valley, the 17,854-hectare bombing and air firing practice range of the Thirteenth U.S. Air Force. Further north was the site of the sophisticated transmitter facilities of Clark as well as its Camp O'Donnell, which was turned over to the Philippine government only in 1991. Government surveys in the seventies had described the area as "generally characterized by rugged terrain, high elevation, and steep slopes (with) elevations ranging from 100 meters above sea level to 670 meters above sea level in its western portion." The three villages are relatively newly-established peasant communities Farmer-settler families from lowland areas moved here during the late 1940s and early 1950s due to the deteriorating economic and political conditions brought about by the destruction wrought by the war years, the return of landlordism, and the outbreak of a major armed peasant rebellion. The communities' population ranged from a low of 1,760 persons in the seventies to a high of 2,700 in the late nineties. The area, however, was under the jurisdiction of the American-run Clark Air Base and the land itself was classified as a military reservation and thus was inalienable and indisposable. Thus, the settlers were disqualified from owning the lands they tilled or the houses they built. Informal land and housing market mechanisms were resorted to in order to get around these legal impediments. Technically however, the farmer-settlers were squatters and the situation has remained unchanged till today. The scarce cultivable land area limited farm sizes and created a relatively egalitarian distribution of land while precluding the growth of a full-blown landlord class. The three villages' relatively inaccessible location and the vulnerability of the established farm households to government expropriation at any time created feelings of solidarity and collectivity among the residents that were probably greater than what can be found in other peasant communities in the lowland areas. The small farm-households were also relatively self-sufficient and to a large extent production was subsistence-oriented. In short, it was a community that hewed closely to the essential features of a typical peasant society in the Chayanovian tradition (Bernstein and Byres 2001) comprising of "(a) household farming organized for simple reproduction ('subsistence'); (b) the solidarities, reciprocities and

egalitarianism of (village) community; and, (c) commitment to the values of a way of life based on household and community, kin, and locale (and harmony some with nature)." As the communities grew over the years, they shed of their isolation and, as anticipated by Shanin (1987), also engaged in the "daily exchange of goods and in labor markets." Impositions and harassments, and later, expropriations of the surplus came from forces outside the villages: (a) the American-controlled Clark Air Base, (b) sugar capitalists who intruded into the area in the sixties, (c) a major state-initiated and high profile rural development project from 1979 to 1991, (d) a government rehabilitation and relocation program in the wake of the 1991-1992 Mount Pinatubo eruptions, and (e) a special economic zone established in the mid-1990s. In addition two generations of left-wing guerrillas tried to exert a political influence on the villages with interestingly mixed results, as the discussion that follows shows. Dealing with Huk Insurgents Conditions of the peasantry during the late forties and early fifties were becoming more oppressive. The end of the Second World War and liberation from Japanese rule did not translate into emancipation from the yoke of landlordism (Constantino 1975, Kerkvliet 1979). Coming in the wake of the devastation caused by the war, peasants felt unduly burdened by the reimposed sharing arrangements where one-half of expenses were borne by the tenant who in turn kept only half of the harvest. Political repression (including killings) aimed at members of peasant organizations and their leaders was also rampant. Agrarian unrest soon escalated in the countryside with a full-scale peasant rebellion centered in the Central Luzon provinces. To a significant extent, it was led and guided by the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP, Communist Party of the Philippines) and its armed wing, the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB, People's Liberation Army), or "Huks" for short. Other peasant mass organizations also rose to confront the big landowners, the Philippine government and their military allies.13 The armed rebellion erupted in 1946 and was at its peak between 1949 and 1951 when rebel guerrillas reached 22,000 men.¹4 In the plains and hills of Tarlac and Pampanga provinces, the armed insurgency found fertile ground and this included the three villages in this study. The HMB actively operated in this upland area. In an interview, former PKP-HMB leader Bartolome Pasion, who hails from Mabalacat, claimed that almost all the villages of Bamban and Mabalacat towns were organized by or came under the influence of the party. Bart Pasion, who became a PKP Central Committee member, had his baptism of fire in the forests of the Sapang Cauayan area (in what became San Vicente) in late 1949. He was a young political officer of an HMB unit

that was scouting the area when they were surprised by a Philippine Constabulary group that happened to be doing the same thing in the same place. They were immediately fired upon and unable to retaliate, scattered in all directions and left everything-their guns, ammunition, and documents. Luckily, no one was killed. Bart says it was the scariest moment of his life. The attitude among the residents was "live and let live" with the rebels San Vicente resident Zacarias "Apo Carias" Catli says that the HMB used to come and appropriate part of his crop harvest. He remembers offering them newly harvested eggplants and soon regretting it when they started picking out the best ones (pinipili pa iyong magaganda). Some settlers had relatives who were active in the HMB and PKP. Lucio Pasion, who settled in the area in 1951, is the younger brother of Bart Pasion and other brothers were also with the guerrillas. In the sixties, Apo Lucio would himself join MASAKA (Malayang Samahang Magsasaka), the PKP's legal peasant organization. San Vicente founder Vicente "Apo Bising" Narciso had nephews who were HMB commanders and instructors. Despite this, being the settlers' acknowledged leader, he was often under pressure by the guerrillas who once captured and threatened to shoot him. His negotiating skills saved his life. Later, a right wing death squad nicknamed the "Monkees" also sent him threatening notes, this time because of his family ties with the HMB. Calumpang barrio captain Emiliano Mendoza talked of an important conference held in his village between the two rival HMB groups of Kumander Alibasbas and Kumander Sumulong. Bernabe "Kumander Dante" Buscayno (later to found the New People's Army, or the NPA) was then identified with the Alibasbas group and he operated in the Bamban-Capas area. Lucio Pasion recalled that as late as 1964, there was an armed encounter between the Philippine Constabulary (PC) and the HMB in Sitio Balacbac. According to Bart Pasion, whose area of command included the three villages in this study, the PKP's bloody conflict with the renegade Sumulong group in the early sixties distracted their cadres from more intensive organizing work. Thus the HMB never really made substantial and long lasting inroads in the place. Of course by the time more permanent settlements in the three barrios had been established in the area in the mid-fifties, the HMB-PKP insurgency had already declined considerably (Kerkvliet 1979, Lava 2002). From 1952 to 1956, the armed rebellion had practically petered out and PKP-HMB cadres had to struggle simply to survive and avoid getting caught by government troops. Bart Pasion was captured in 1956 and released a year later. He said he tried to resume organizing activities in Sitio Balacbac and in what is now the Sto. Niño area in Bamban all the way to Capas, Tarlac but his progress was slow and hampered by the fact that he was already identified as a Huk

leader and therefore closely monitored by the police. He was initially able to bring an armed group into Balacbac but its presence was short-lived. From HMB to NPA After 1956, the PKP-HMB rapidly declined as an effective revolutionary group, its ranks decimated by an intensive and brutal government counter- insurgency campaign heavily funded by the U.S. government, which saw the capture of its Communist leaders and surrender or death in combat of many rank and file and general demoralization of its once formidable peasant mass base (Kerkvliet 1979, Lava 2002). 16 Many also died of illness or hunger and some top cadres were the victims of betrayal and treachery. To make matters worse, in the sixties, the remaining HMB armed group split into two factions-the Alibasbas group headed by Cesario "Kumander Alibasbas" Manarang and the Sumulong group headed by Faustino "Kumander Sumulong" del Mundo. The former maintained a principled political struggle while the latter soon degenerated into a criminal underworld syndicate operating in Angeles City (Dizon 2003).¹7 Within the PKP, a major split occurred in 1966-1967, which saw the establishment in December 1967 of a rival party calling itself the Communist Party of the Philippines Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought (CPP-ML- MTT) under the leadership of former University of the Philippines English instructor Jose Ma. Sison (Weekley 2001, 20-41; Abinales 2001, 117-25). Dante Buscayno, who joined Sumulong's group following Kumander Alibasbas' death in 1966, broke away soon after and formed his own armed band which, upon linking up with Sison's fledgling CPP, became the NPA, the new party's military wing.18 During the late sixties and early seventies, the Bamban-Mabalacat- Angeles area was the scene of intense and sometimes bloody confrontations between four armed groups-(1) the government troops (PC, the Army, and Civilian Home Defense Force) and a notorious right wing paramilitary death squad nicknamed the "Monkees"; (2) the Sumulong Group, which had degenerated into an underworld criminal syndicate nicknamed the "Beatles"; (3) the Maoist CPP-NPA under Kumander Dante; and (4) the remnants of the old PKP-HMB group under Mariano "Kumander Diwa" de Guzman. These rivalries were characterized by constant surveillance, street gun battles, assassinations, harassments, beatings, and kidnappings. Apo Lucio Pasion's PKP-HMB brothers had been identified with the Alibasbas group and later with Kumander Diwa and were thus on the hit list of Sumulong's "Beatles" group. Apo Lucio would sometimes be captured and beaten up by Sumulong henchmen who were looking for his brothers. He recounted that he was once locked up in a closet in order to lure his brothers into a trap. The people feared the "Beatles" and "Monkees" death squads the most for they did not appear to be accountable to anyone for their actions. Many

town residents wishing to escape the conflicts and avoid being caught in the crossfire moved to the interior barrios of San Vicente, Calumpang, and Sto Niño. But as the conflicts spread, even these barangays were not spared. Within this socially volatile situation, unrest in the three villages of this study entered a period of resurgence with the NPA gaining adherents among the peasant-producers. The NPA had by this time gained the upper hand over its rival groups in the area and in the eyes of the Tarlac and Pampanga peasantry, would subsequently take the place of the HMB as the primary radical armed group operating in Central Luzon. The NPA saw the relatively inaccessible barrios of San Vicente, Calumpang, and Sto. Niño as natural sanctuaries.20 The absence of large and wealthy landowners who would feel threatened by their presence also facilitated their entry into the area. Still another reason for the NPA's interest 21 in the place was that, in case of military pursuits, it provided them a westward escape route across the mountains toward less-turbulent towns and villages in Zambales province. According to Apo Lucio Pasion, Dante Buscayno's group first entered the villages in 1968. Both Apo Bising Narciso and his wife, Marcelina "Apo Celing" Soriano Narciso vividly recall Dante's frequent visits to their farm beside Sapang Cauayan in Sitio Balacbac, San Vicente. The NPA leader would arrive with group of men and women as often as two or three times a month. Sometimes, they would stop for a whole week. Apo Celing was pleased to note that they would help around the house, scrub the floor, cook meals, and work in the fields. They were also so self-assured that they sometimes engaged in target shooting practice. They never asked for anything and took only what was offered to them explaining that "we are forbidden to ask for anything" (bawal po sa amin ang manghingi). Nevertheless whatever they took, they paid for. One time, fifty guerrillas showed up and stayed for a few hours. The couple had to slaughter several chickens to feed the famished rebels. Apo Celing recalls that Dante looked so small and so thin that she was astonished to learn that this was the legendary NPA chief. His men however were tall and fair-skinned (matatangkad at mapuputi) and the women, "pretty" (magaganda). She would also see him being carried on the shoulders of his men when crossing Sapang Cauayan. For his part, Apo Bising remembers the guerrilla leader as a "kind person" (mabait na bata). During one of Dante's visits, Apo Celing learned that her sister had met a vehicular accident and was in an Angeles City hospital. As the couple prepared to leave for the city, Dante offered some money to help defray the medical expenses. Apo Celing refused to take the proffered amount however, saying she had enough for her needs. When they came back a week later, the NPAs were still around but the house was clean and well-kept. Ruben Sison, an Ayta resident of Calumpang, says the NPAs dressed better than the government soldiers (daig pa ang mga sundalo kung

magbihis). Rodolfo David, a Sto. Niño resident who first came to the area in 1954, said that the NPA practically functioned as the local government cum police (Ang NPA ang military namin dito). The residents seemed to appreciate the way the rebels managed affairs. What impressed Rodolfo the most was that when the NPAs were in control, the farmers could leave their houses for days, even weeks, and nothing would be missing when they returned. The farm tools and sacks of stored palay (unhusked rice) would be intact and not a single chicken, egg, pig, goat, or work animal would be lost. He contrasted this with the past and after the NPAs left when you could not leave your house for even a single night without finding your chickens gone. The rebels were young, of college-student age and Rodolfo describes them as "good, like lawyers" (mga estudyante, magagaling, parang mga abogado). They organized regular three-day live-in seminars in Angeles City where San Vicente residents would attend. As many as 200 persons from different barangays and towns would be in the closed-door sessions listening to lecturers on topics that "would drive you crazy" (masisira ang ulo mo) such as an intensive course on Philippine history. Romance also bloomed in the midst of the unrest. I met two San Vicente women residents who had fallen in love with and married NPA guerrillas. One of them described her husband as a former student from the University 22 of the Philippines (UP). They had three children. Dante explained to the farmers that the NPA was a movement for equality and aimed at ending all oppression (magkakapantay-pantay, walang mang-aapi at walang inaapi). He also described a society where there would be no rich and no poor (walang mahirap, walang mayaman). A strong sense of voluntarism was imparted among the people as represented by slogans like "Strengthen Our Resolve" and "Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win." On the more practical side, the NPAs also campaigned for rent reduction-from 70- 30 in favor of the landowner to 60-40 in the tenant's favor. The NPA was able to recruit members from among the peasant-settlers. One of Apo Celing Narciso's sons became a high-ranking NPA commander. Apo Sinang Gomez Catli's only brother, Zoilo "llong" Gomez, was also an NPA commander and the object of a manhunt by PC troops. She herself was often asked to hand carry underground messages for her brother to and from his comrades. Members of an indigenous ethnic community, the Aytas, also joined the rebel army and took such noms de guerre as "Kumander Tricycle" and Che Guevara," Armed Encounters in San Vicente Roberto Gonzales, former San Vicente barangay captain, says that there was an encounter in 1977 between the military and the NPA where a certain Kumander Roger Buscayno was killed along with two others. Other residents

volunteered this same information but could not agree on whether Roger was Dante's brother, nephew, or just another NPA leader, The story I was able to piece together was that what took place was more of an ambush rather than an encounter. It appears that Roger and his group were having breakfast and mending their clothes when they were surprised by a PC unit that immediately fired on them. Roger and one other guerrilla were killed on the spot. The others managed to escape. An immediate reaction of the PC to this incident was to call the barangay officials to an "emergency meeting." However, only Apo Sinang Catli and 24 Roberto Gonzales showed up. The others (including the barangay captain) were too scared to appear. A PC lieutenant demanded to know why the other officials were not present and was simply told that they were not available. The angry PC officer questioned why the barangay officials never reported the presence of the NPA guerrillas in their barrio even if they knew who they were. Apo Sinang replied that if they did that, they would surely be killed. She later realized that the PC had an informer in the village since the soldiers obviously knew what was going on when their backs were turned. Another incident took place in 1979 and this was recounted by a member of the PC military unit that took part in it. Edgar Frente,25 was part of a PC battalion assigned to the three villages. His superiors told them that it was a "critical area" thus their presence was required. Their orders were that if they see anyone carrying unauthorized firearms, looked different or acted suspiciously (kakaibang itsura at kilos), they were to fire on them (babanatan daw namin). of The battalion had received information about an armed group that was spotted in Sitio Batson between San Vicente and Sto. Niño (padaan-daan daw diyan). Edgar was part of a twelve-man unit headed by a sergeant that was sent to the area. On a quiet evening with a bright moon, they situated themselves behind the bushes by the riverbank and prepared a "stay-in- ambush." At about 11 p.m., they spotted six armed guerrillas crossing the shallow river only a few meters from where the soldiers lay in wait. The soldiers immediately opened fire causing the guerrillas to split into two- four had moved further from them while the other two unknowingly moved closer. Gunfire was concentrated on these two closest who had no chance to retaliate and were immediately killed. The four on the other side returned sporadic fire and were able to escape. The PC unit suffered no casualties. Edgar says they never bothered to find out the identities of the slain NPAS, only that the guerrilla group was composed of outsiders (mga taga- labas) and that at least two were Aytas (mga kulot). After the successful mission, the Sergeant was given a promotion but everyone else, including Edgar, got nothing. Not all encounters had the guerrillas at the receiving end. Ruben Sison recounted a spectacular NPA operation where twenty guerrillas disguised

in government military uniforms showed up in Calumpang and disarmed the local paramilitary unit Civilian Home Defense Forces (CHDF) of its armory of twenty-two rifles. The residents later learned that this was part of simultaneous disarming operations in five other Mabalacat barangays. Walking the Tightrope Despite the generally positive attitude the settlers had of the NPA, they were often caught between the two contending forces in the struggle and frequently had to walk a tightrope. Apo Celing Narciso narrated an incident when an NPA unit happened to be resting inside the family's farmhouse. Suddenly, a neighbor came to warn that a PC unit was heading their way after raiding a nearby village. The NPAs hurriedly left by wading through the shallow river. To cover their tracks, and showing remarkable presence of mind, she took the carabao (water buffalo) to wallow in the river. When the government troops arrived, they started interrogating Apo Celing who stubbornly denied that the NPAs had just been there. When the soldiers inquired about the muddied waters, she answered that it was because she had just bathed the carabao. Determined not to lose her composure, she argued with the PC saying that she feeds everyone, so long as they were people (basta tao). The soldiers were initially suspicious and, talking among themselves in Ilocano, called her "untrustworthy and a liar." But Apo Celing, who originally hails from Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija, understood them and adamantly defended herself in the same language. Realizing that she was after all a fellow Ilocano (kababayan) and obviously intimidated by her aggressiveness, the soldiers apologized and left. Emiliano Mendoza recounted an incident in either 1973 or 1974 when four NPA guerrillas spent the night in his Calumpang farmhouse. In the morning, while the rebel soldiers were still resting, a platoon of Philippine Army soldiers suddenly appeared and surrounded his house. The platoon lieutenant told the farmer that an NPA group had been sighted in the vicinity. Mendoza admitted seeing the rebels pass through but that they had already gone. To show he was sincere, he invited them inside for coffee. Fortunately for him, the soldiers declined and soon left. Back inside the house, the relieved NPAs told him: "For a moment, we thought your balls had risen to your throat" (Akala namin, umakyat na ang bayag mo sa lalamunan). Once when Apo Sinang's NPA brother was visiting, PC troops swooped down on Sitio Balacbac accompanied by two helicopters. The soldiers, some of whom were known to Sinang, told her that they received information that her brother, Kumander Gomez, was in the village. She of course denied this but challenged them to look for him in their house. Since she showed no fear or hesitation, the PC believed her and did not proceed upstairs. In

fact her brother was really hiding in a closet upstairs. Upon leaving, the soldiers offered her a .45 caliber pistol which she refused, saying that having a gun would just provoke others and that this would only shorten her life. When Apo Bising Narciso was barrio captain, the PC offered him ten rifles to fight the NPA. He asked for thirty rifles instead and reasoned that the barrio folk needed more guns to resist their oppressors, whether they are PC or the "hukbo." Word however got around that Apong Bising was preparing to fight the NPA. A guerrilla unit confronted him but the old man explained his side and pointed out that he had always helped the guerrillas with food, shelter, and other things. Convinced of his sincerity, the NPA let him go free. But the harassments did not stop. After receiving a handwritten note from the dreaded "Monkees" death squad accusing him of pretending to discipline the barrio people while secretly aiding the NPA, he and his wife moved to Angeles City and stayed there for one year. Apo Sinang's NPA brother was eventually captured and detained at the PC stockade in Camp Olivas, San Fernando. She naturally visited him frequently and these would soon arouse suspicions among the NPA about her loyalty particularly when it became known that she had made friends with PC officers and enlisted men. She was then suspected by the NPA of being the informant who had tipped the PC of the presence of Roger Buscayno's group. Apparently, based on this mere suspicion, a decision was made to kill her and this was relayed to her by a relative who told her she was being given a grace period of two weeks to set her personal affairs in order. Sinang however relayed the message that whoever it was that wanted her killed should first confront and investigate (litisin) her to determine whether she was really guilty. Apo Sinang declared to the messenger that she only serves the people, and was not a turncoat (balimbing). She added that she was not afraid to die but requested that the sentence be carried out in her house so her family would not have a problem locating her body. Luckily for Sinang, within the two-week period, the alleged informer was discovered and killed. It was an Ayta woman who was incidentally also a godmother to one of Sinang's children. Toward the late seventies, the CPP-NPA had suffered several reversals in Central Luzon and Northern Luzon (Weekley 2001, 83). Aside from military setbacks that killed several of the first generation of cadres, prominent leaders were captured such as Sison and Dante in 1977. Expansion, however, was going on in other regions of the country including the Visayas and Mindanao provinces. In the villages of San Vicente, Sto. Niño, and Calumpang, a new crop of CPP-NPA cadres had appeared. Details are somewhat hazy but some settlers have intimated to me that this new batch was different in that they were more militaristic in their approach and paid less attention to political work,

not to mention economic reforms. From villagers' accounts, I gathered that sympathies among them for the rebel forces were considerably reduced as a result. Summarizing the years of insurgency and disquiet in the area, Ruben Sison remarked: "It was an infernal season. For the fainthearted this was not the place to live in" (Kainit-initan ng panahon. Kung mahina ang loob mo, hindi ka titira dito). The "infernal season" came to an end in 1979 when the Philippine government initiated an integrated rural development and resettlement project that exclusively covered the three villages." Aware of the presence of the left wing rebels in the area, the first item on the project implementors' agenda was a massive counter-insurgency campaign with the objective of purging the area of the NPA and neutralizing its mass base. All known NPAs and their sympathizers were rounded up and many were tortured and jailed. The whole area was fenced in and countless military checkpoints were set up. As many as three army battalions were stationed in the area with a combined strength of 2,000 men. The soldiers' camps and the checkpoints dotted the area all the way up to the mountainous parts. The overbearing presence of the state's military forces made the area look more like a military camp than a rural development project. Faced with the massive show of military strength and the now lukewarm attitude of the residents, the NPA soon found the area less hospitable to its forces and significantly scaled down its presence.2 It was at this point that the three villages became collectively known as Sacobia, after the major river that flows along the area's southern flank.

Marciano Guevara, A Life Story The locally specific and unique characteristics of interactions between Marxist rebels and peasant communities are further reflected in the life stories of village residents who participated in the movement. Given the dearth of documentary evidence of the history of the community, these life stories serve as alternative sources for describing and explaining the motivations and the dynamics of the encounters. At the same time, they also lend a more human and compelling face to the analysis. Finally, the life stories combine to recount a perspective of history from below as distinct from a history based on the actions of the privileged and powerful (lleto 1979; Hobsbawm 1997). One such life story is briefly presented below. Marciano "Marcing" Guevara" was an eighteen-year-old farmer in San Vicente and a first-year high school dropout when he joined the NPA in 1972. He claims to have been personally recruited by Dante Buscayno himself. He also says that he had met prominent leftist leaders such as Jose Ma.

Sison (from whom he got his political education), Rodolfo Salas, and many others. At first Marcing was placed under the command of Juanito Rivera (Kumander Juaning). Then he was assigned as one of Dante's personal bodyguards. He was with the NPA chief in Sto. Rosario, Mexico, Pampanga as part of a ten-man security squad when Dante was captured in January 1977. Marcing says the movie version of the NPA leader's arrest was wrong. According to him, soldiers led by General Gatan first entered the house where Dante, his wife, and newly born child were staying but did not recognize the rebel chief. Dante then went out the back disguised as a woman but an informer, an ice cream vendor, recognized him and pointed him out to the military. Marcing says they did not engage the troops in a firefight because they were badly outnumbered. Having taken Dante, the troops did not bother with the other NPAs and immediately left. Marcing was next sent to Nueva Ecija where he was promoted to the rank of "Kumander" and took the nom de guerre of "Celdran." He says that he once led company-sized (one hundred two persons) and platoon-sized (thirty-six persons) guerrilla units while operating in the province. His exploits soon earned him a place in the military's "order of battle" and the government put out an PhP80,000.00 reward for his capture dead or alive. In 1982, he was visiting his sister in Pangasinan when she contacted a neighbor-friend who was an Army lieutenant. The sister urged this friend to talk Marcing into giving up. Instead, the lieutenant contacted his unit in Baguio City. When the reinforcements came, Marcing offered no resistance and went with them peacefully. He says that at that moment, he felt a sense of relief that his days as a hunted man were over. He was tired of running and hiding and wanted to live a peaceful life once again. He adds that he bears no ill feelings toward his sister who turned him in. Marcing was brought to Camp Olivas in San Fernando, Pampanga where he was detained for one month. He said that he was treated well and did not suffer any torture. He even got to talk to then President Marcos on the phone who offered him amnesty, which he accepted. Shortly after, Marcos paid a visit to the Sacobia development project and the military took Marcing along on the same trip. While at the project site, he was given a loaded gun and brought to the house of one of the residents where he was asked to point out who among the villagers were NPAS or sympathizers. This was the first time it dawned on him that he was being utilized as a government informer. He strongly maintained, however, that he never informed on anyone and that he has not turned against his former comrades. In 1983, Marcing married his long-time sweetheart and went back to live in San Vicente. He first worked for two months with a seed farm managed by the Bureau of Plant Industry before being hired by the rural development project as an emergency laborer.

Given his good grasp of issues of the day, Marcing must have had an intensive political education, which he internalized well. During my interview with him in 1991, he frequently repeated slogans of the revolution and Marxist terms such as "imperialism," "petty bourgeois," "lumpen proletariat," etc. He also tried to explain to me the foreign debt issue as a context of the then Cory Aquino government's economic problems. He said that Cory was finished and would not win in San Vicente if she should run again. In 1986, she won by a landslide in the village only because people then perceived Marcos to be corrupt. Marcing seemed to be resigned to his present situation and the consequences of his decision to leave behind the life of a guerrilla leader. He was also aware of the corresponding constraints on his everyday life. He said that he knew what and why things were wrong but he could not do anything about it for fear of losing his job. For example, he realized that something had to be done about the low wages of emergency laborers like himself but he hesitated to act as he should. Otherwise, he may as well go back to the hills, he reasoned. While he has never denounced his former comrades, he also appeared to have cut off all ties with them and simply wanted to be left alone in peace.

Peasants and the Agrarian Revolution One prominent feature of the peasant movement in Central Luzon under both the old communist party (PKP-HMB) and the later Maoist group (CPP. NPA) was the leadership role played by nonpeasants. In short the theories and the main leaders of the agrarian revolution originated from outside peasant society and representation was being made on its behalf by outsiders bearing the ideology of the proletariat even if these outsiders actually came mostly from other social classes, including the middle and upper classes. Pedro Abad Santos, founder and chairman of the peasant-based Socialist Party of the Philippines (SPP) organized in 1932 and later PKP Vice Chairman in 1938, was a member of the landed aristocracy and had been elected twice to the legislature." Other known leaders were Mateo del Castillo, a businessman son of a Spanish landowner who was at the same time a Protestant minister (Kerkvliet 1979, 142 and Allen 1985, 9); Casto Alejandrino and Vivencio Cuyugan, both of whom came from the landlord class and were former town mayors; the popular Juan Feleo, former teacher and son of a small landowner (Kerkvliet 1979, 51); Jose de Leon, also from a small landowning family; and Luis Taruc, who, despite his immediate humble beginnings, was actually descended from a prominent family in the nineteenth century who happened to fall upon hard times (Larkin 1993, 310).

There were, however, other top leaders who came from the peasant and lower classes such as Jacinto Manahan and Mariano Franco. Furthermore, Kerkvliet (1979) and Constantino (1975) both point to the spontaneity and grassroots origins of many of the peasant organizations as well as the autonomy exercised and independent actions often undertaken by grassroots members and cadres including more radical and violent actions which were reportedly frowned upon by their organization's national leaders. The particular Marxist theory that views peasants as incapable of self- organization for a revolutionary (as compared to a reformist) purpose also seemed to have been validated among the second generation of communist rebels represented by the CPP-NPA group. All the thirteen original founding members of the CPP in December 1968 came from the middle classintellectuals and students. Five months later, Bernabe "Kumander Dante" Buscayno and seven of his peasant guerrilla leaders were included in the party's central committee (Caouette 2004, 120). But Buscayno, who reached third-year high school in Angeles City and attained proletarian (and later intellectual) consciousness as a worker in Manila, may have had already transcended his peasant roots at this time. Furthermore, he later developed a patronizing attitude toward the peasantry. The weak presence of the PKP-HMB in the three villages had been attributed by a former leading cadre to the distractions posed by the internal conflicts with a renegade faction (the Sumulong group). With respect to this, it should however also be noted that many of the settlers had moved to the area in the late forties and early fifties to avoid being involved in the peasant rebellion that had broken out in the lowland areas of Pampanga and Tarlac. But if one searches for ideological factors, Nemenzo (1984) offers such an explanation. He argues that the PKP-HMB organization (especially in the rural areas) was heavily permeated by what he calls a "millenarian- populist syndrome" brought about by the merger of the SPP of Pedro Abad Santos with the original PKP in 1938. While the PKP was grounded in the working class and had firm trade union roots, the SPP was peasant-based and exhibited tendencies and practices anathema to Marxism.33 But since the experience of peasant revolutions in other countries shows that successes were achieved mainly by setting aside Marxist orthodoxies, it is highly questionable whether a more rigorous grounding in and faithful adherence to Marxist theory would have helped the PKP-HMB's revolutionary undertaking in Central Luzon. The years of CPP-NPA activities in the villages of San Vicente, Sto. Niño, and Calumpang did heighten the political consciousness of the peasant settlers compared to previous encounters with the PKP-HMB group. This was achieved through intensive political education seminars as well as by the exemplary behavior and ethical conduct exhibited by the guerrillas and their leaders.

It could be said, however, that different motivations were also at work that made barrio residents lend assistance to the NPAs. Certainly many were genuinely attracted to the NPA's vision of an egalitarian and just society. For those with relatives in the guerrilla movement or had been involved in past agrarian struggles, the motivations were clear. But even those who expressed admiration for the rebels' high ethical standards also say they knew they would be killed if they did not cooperate. They did, however, compare and contrast the NPA's behavior with that of government troops whom they would also feed but would never pay for what they would take. The ambivalent attitude of the settlers toward the NPA was perhaps manifested subconsciously by their reference to the guerrillas as "people from the outside" (taong labas) or simply the "armed group" (hukbo). Rodolfo David thought that the promised equality was unattainable because the rich and powerful would always be what they are (Ang mayaman, mayaman. talaga; ang may kapangyarihan, may kapangyarihan talaga). By all accounts, the CPP-NPA units that operated in the three villages addressed only political concerns and did not substantially take on pressing economic concerns such as the land issue. Thus a form of local administration was put in place that took care of peace and order issues while political education through intensive seminars was undertaken as well. Although the issues of rent reduction and more equitable tenant sharing arrangements were discussed, these could not be implemented in the areas. For one, landlordism per se did not exist in the villages and the relatively well-off settlers (middle peasants) who employed seasonal labor or had "tenants" were also supportive of the NPA and thus were exempted from coverage of these programs." A second possible reason was that, based on the settler-peasants' accounts, the NPA also regarded the three villages as a "rest and recuperation" place or as a passageway to their Zambales field of operations and therefore the implementation of revolutionary economic programs would attract unwanted government attention. This point became moot however because the mere NPA presence did attract the Philippine military's attention and the place before long became a critical hotspot. Thus the opportunity for a sustainable and lasting left-wing influence among the villagers was passed by. This concentration on law and order issues in areas under the NPA influence appeared to have been widespread enough to generate a pointed criticism in a major CPP strategy document, "Our Urgent Tasks," (OUT) written by Sison in 1975 (Weekley 2001, 86-87). In the OUT document, not enough attention was paid to undertaking minimum land reform programs such as rent reduction, elimination of usury, and establishing peasant associations. The document thus called on their cadres to do more than "punishing cattle rustlers and disturbers of local peace." The dilemma for the CPP-NPA as well as for the legal mass organizations influenced by it however is that the principal form of struggle of their

"national democratic revolution" has always been the armed struggle with all other forms (legal and electoral) subordinated to it (Borras 2004, 223, 225). Thus the stress was on developing political and military cadres, not development workers who could carry out economic programs such as rent reduction. This was starkly shown during the unilateral land occupations of 1986-87 conducted by CPP influenced peasant groups where an estimated 75,000 hectares of land were seized and yet only 10 percent of it was made productive." Experiences such as these have led Putzel (1996, 136) to conclude that an instrumentalist policy toward the peasantry has long characterized the CPP's work and that such a policy, which to him "is rooted in the very foundations of Marxist-Leninist theory and historical practice... sets severe limitations on the extent to which the party... can contribute to, on the one hand, the promotion of the long term interests of the rural poor and, on the other, the process of creating a more just, equitable and democratic society." Putzel claims that such a policy led to a CPP strategy of "managing the peasantry rather than empowering them. That being said, the fact was, conditions in the three villages in the seventies were not exactly conducive to the development of a revolutionary situation much less an upheaval. Being a peasant village in the essentialist Chayanovian sense, solidarity rather than conflict characterized the existing organization of society. In this situation, no blatantly oppressive classes arose within the villages that unjustly extracted the agricultural surplus or engaged in abusive behavior. In addition, family and kinship ties strengthened the "feeling of community." Whatever resentment of a class nature the villagers exhibited was reserved for outsiders. There was, as Engels characterized it, a "stubborn" attachment to the land and obsession with its control and ownership. Whether this trait makes for a conservative and nonrevolutionary peasant is open to question although it was possible for them to be receptive to any bourgeois blandishments on private property, as Lenin's theory foretold. However, no such form of agitation and advocacy by propertied classes took place in the three villages as they did in other areas of the country. In the current field study's case, there was no clear dichotomy between revolutionary peasants and nonrevolutionary peasants as Marxist theories would have it. Attitudes and responses to the rebel group were varied, multiple, and flexible. The peasant settlers did not display any open hostility or antagonism to the two revolutionary movements that came their way but, except in rare cases, neither have they gone out of their way to extend unqualified support for them. It would thus be difficult to ascribe to them a "vanguard" role from whom one would learn the rudiments of class struggle (as Mao put it) or identify them as Moore's "agent of revolution." What the peasants had instead was the ability to creatively and spontaneously undertake "everyday forms of resistance" to impositions and

exactions from outsiders. To the more common list of everyday resistance forms, one might add excuses made by those who were hesitant about formally joining the CPP-NPA. A typical excuse was to point to a large family to support and feed but that they would readily sign on if the rebel organization would take on this responsibility. As cleverly anticipated by the prospective recruit, the guerrillas were unable to give such an assurance, thus letting the potential peasant cadre off the hook. One however can only speculate on a link between certain everyday forms of resistance and participation in armed insurgencies. The political consciousness raising that the CPP-NPA conducted among residents of the three villages through live-in seminars, community meetings, and individual encounters may have somehow emboldened and inspired them to resist exactions imposed later on by government authorities tasked with implementing a high-profile integrated rural development (IRD) project's confiscatory policies and projects. But that is another story.

Conclusion It would of course be presumptuous to generalize from the experiences of three villages and form definite conclusions about the issues and concerns that inform encounters between Filipino Marxist revolutionaries and peasant communities. Nevertheless other studies at the macro level cited in this paper indicate that what transpired in the villages of San Vicente, Sto. Niño, and Calumpang during two generations of Marxist proselytizations were not altogether unique and far removed from comparative experiences in other areas in the country despite the exceptional socio-economic characteristics of the said communities. The agrarian-based revolutions waged by the PKP-HMB and the CPP- NPA affected large sections of the Philippine population, exacted a heavy human toll in terms of lives lost, incarcerated, and disabled, necessitated the use of the most potent weapons in the state's repressive arsenal to contain them, and consequently forced an otherwise insensitive ruling class to initiate programs to reform the countryside. At the same time, these insurgencies were heroic and passionate attempts by sincere and idealistic individuals and groups to change rural societies and bring a lasting end to poverty, human suffering, and social injustice. As such these peasant-based revolutions constitute important and critical chapters in Philippine history that deserve more study and analysis than what is currently available. Most of the literature on the two rural rebellions have been studies that utilize a "broad canvas"-painting a bigger picture and providing a longer view of social phenomena. Without abandoning such macrostudies, it is also necessary and essential that more attention be paid to the local and direct experiences of peasant communities

and peasant individuals and families and their roles in the struggle. In a small way, this study is meant to contribute to such an endeavor.

Acknowledgment This article is excerpted (with revisions and additions) from the author's PhD dissertation (final draft) submitted for examination to the National University of Singapore, Southeast Asian Studies Program in December 2005. The author is Professor of Asian Studies, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City.

Notes 1. Based on discussions in various literature, I use the term "peasant" to refer primarily to small and lower middle-sized cultivators who are either share tenants, indentured serfs, leaseholders, owner-cultivators, or any other similar classification. In some cases, it can also refer to those rural wage workers or rural semi-proletariat who either still maintain their small farm holdings or their ties (kinship or otherwise) with small scale rural production units or a rural community in general. 2. Everyday forms of resistance "stop short of collective outright defiance" and included "foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, evasion, flight, false or passive compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, subtle sabotage, squatting and encroachment, and so on" (Scott 1985, 29). 3. The works referred to are Wolf (1969); Migdal (1974); Paige (1975); Scott (1976): and Moore (1966). 4. Nevertheless, Lenin had earlier declared that support for the peasant movement was contingent on its being a "revolutionary democratic movement" but that the moment it becomes "reactionary and anti-proletarian," the workers' party would fight it. (Wolf 1969, 92-93). He further warned that upon reaching its goal of land acquisition through land reform and redistribution (i.e., the bourgeois democratic revolution), it will cease to be a revolutionary class. 5. The Communists later adopted a more radical "land to the tiller" policy, but this exempted many officers in the Kuomintang Army who were big landowners (Chesneaux 1973, 99). 6. For a detailed account of cadre and peasant relations in China during the revolution, see Hinton (1972) and Selden (1969). 7. Belving his practice and some of his own assertions, Mao would in his writings nevertheless continue to pay lip service to the dictum that the proletariat is the leading force in the Chinese revolution. But within the party, he would continually struggle against traditionalists who, based in the cities, adhered strictly to the letter of the Marxist orthodoxy of workers' leadership and control. 8. After the volcanic disaster, this road became impassable and access to the villages is now through the Clark Special Economic Zone (site of the dismantled Clark Air Base) managed by the Clark Development Corporation (CDC).

9. The Sacobia River, after whom the settlement site was collectively named when a government rural development project was initiated in 1979, is a major Pampanga river system flowing northeastward from the slopes of Mount Pinatubo. 10. Farm sizes ranged from one to three hectares each. A few landholders however had bigger farms and employed seasonal farm labor and occasionally had "tenants." But these were not landlords but middle peasants as they also did farm work, engaged in productive activities, and did not rely on rent for their livelihood. 11. Alexander V. Chayanov's The theory of peasant economy (first published in English in 1966) utilized rural surveys gathered from 1870 to 1911 in Russia to develop "a theory of peasant behaviour at the level of the individual family farm" that gives rise to an economy "with its own growth dynamic and economic system" and driven by subsistence needs rather than by profit (Kerblay 1987, 177 and Bryceson 2000, 11). Chayanov's approach was to claim for the peasant economy the characteristics of "a general (and generic) 'type,' akin to a mode of production" the core elements of which "produce (or express) a distinctive internal logic or dynamic, whether cultural, sociological, economic, or in some combination" (Bernstein and Byres 2001). Furthermore, subordinate relations with "external groups such as landlords, large capitalist farms, merchants, the state and urban forces..... lie outside the sphere of the essence of peasant society." Peasants therefore form an "an independent class" with the logic of their "peasantness" unchanging while the forms of their "external relations are variable and contingent." By centering the peasant economy in the family household where both production and reproduction take place, Chayanov takes issue with orthodox Marxist views that the peasant economy is "a form of incipient capitalism, represented by petty commodity production" (Kerblay 1987, 177). 12. The HMB was actually a reorganized and reconceptualized version of a war-time guerrilla outfit also organized by the PKP that fought the Japanese. It was called the Hukbalahap (Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon, or People's Anti-Japanese Army), also called "Huks" for short. 13. These included the PKM (Pambansang Kaisahan ng mga Magbubukid or, National Peasants Union) whose membership reached 500,000 by 1945, the KPMP (Katipunang Pambansa ng mga Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, National Confederation of Peasants in the Philippines), and other peasant groups of pre-war origins (Kerkvliet 1979, 121). 14. Henson (1963) estimated the HMB strength in 1951 at 21,800 composed of 9,000 active combatants and 12,800 reserve forces. He also claimed that the HMB troops were supplied with arms and ammunition by the truckload from Clark Air Base through collusion with corrupt American Gls and Filipino employees. This is somewhat confirmed by former Clark employee and San Vicente resident Zacarias Catli who spoke of rampant theft going on inside the base. 15. In January 2003, Bart Pasion accompanied me to San Vicente. Though he had not been in the area since the fifties, some older residents, including Carias Catli, immediately recognized him as the former Huk political officer who did organizing work in their village half a century earlier. 16. Kapampangan historian Mariano N. Henson (1963) reports on the intensity of the rebellion in Pampanga by citing government reports of Huk "atrocities" in

1948-49 as follows: "326 raids on barrios and towns, 215 kidnappings, 122 ambuscades, 51 murders, 4 rapes, 3 arson cases and 571 civilians killed." Government abuses in the form of kidnappings, summary executions, massacres, and illegal imprisonment. Bodies of "liquidated" Huk suspects were not returned to their families. Anyone found dead was automatically labeled a Huk. Paramilitary civilian guards perpetrated the infamous Maliwalu, Bacolor massacre on 15 April 1949. Shalom (1986, 68-95) for an account of American-funded and American- directed operations against the Huks. 17. Kumander Alibasbas, with nine of his men and relatives, would soon be trapped and massacred allegedly by Sumulong's men in February 1966 in Concepcion, Tarlac (Dizon 2003). The peasantry in the area where he operated mourned his death as he was viewed as a Robin Hood-type of rebel "who gave help to poor families... in the form of clothing, food, and even money" and defended them against their class and state oppressors and common criminals. 18. Weekley (2001, 26-27), quoting CPP leader Rodolfo Salas, describes this linkage between the CPP and Dante's armed group as "some kind of a merger" for which the latter secured "substantial representation in the Central Committee." The initial meeting between Dante and Sison was also said to have been arranged by then Tarlac opposition Congressman Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. 19. Interview with Bartolome Pasion, 7 January 2003. The people named the armed groups after the two most popular and rival rock groups of the day because just like the singers, members of the former also wore their hair long. 20. On the inaccessibility of the area, there was a dirt road to Calumpang from the MacArthur Highway in Dolores, Mabalacat, which crossed the Bamban River at its shallowest point. This was difficult to negotiate and would be washed away by rising waters during the rainy months. There was another route from the Bamban part of the highway to Sitio Balacbac, San Vicente. Built at a time when sugar commercial crops were introduced, it was also rough and negotiable only during the dry season by four-wheel vehicles or heavy duty trucks carrying harvested cane from the fields to the mills. 21. Judging from their personal accounts of the NPA years, even the few "well-off farmer-settlers were not exactly hostile to the NPA. 22. I was unable to verify this claim but the state university's reputation as the breeding ground for left-wing radicalism preceded it everywhere so that rural folk often assume that students-turned-guerrillas had to come from UP. 23. The Aytas, the area's original inhabitants, comprised approximately one-fourth of the population of the three villages. 24. As was the usual practice, in this "meeting," the PC soldiers were also fed by the villagers. 25. Not his real name. 26. For example, some older settlers reported that arbitrary killings of suspected government informers or rebel-returnees were taking place without the usual social investigation being undertaken. The experience of Apo Sinang Catli, however, shows that tendencies toward such abuses were not altogether rare in the past (see above). 27. This project was known as the Sacobia Integrated Rural Development Project and was directly under the Ministry of Human Settlements (MHS) headed by Imelda R. Marcos.

28. From all indications, the CPP-NPA never totally abandoned the area. Six years later, the "peace and order situation" remained "rather critical" and the Philippine Army continued to provide "necessary security measures" (Alferez 1983). In the mid-eighties, the Philippine Army's "Task Force Dalan" stationed its headquarters in the area. This military presence was maintained until the late eighties with the stationing in Sacobia of the Seventieth Infantry Battalion under Lt. Col. Jovencio Mendoza. In 1991, some CPP-NPA presence continued to be felt in the villages. 29. Not his real name. 30. Rodolfo Salas, also known as Kumander Bilog, took over as CPP Chairman when Sison was captured in 1976. 31. For brief biographical sketches of Pedro Abad Santos, Larkin (1993), Tan (1985), Kerkvliet (1979), and Allen (1985). 32. Years later Dante Buscayno would criticize peasant consciousness and practices as backward, conservative, patronage-dependent and religion-obsessed (Encarnacion 1997, 1993). 33. Among these millenarian-populist traits Nemeno attributes to the SPP influence within the merged PKP were 1) "transposition rather than negation of feudal relationships" and blurring of class differences, 2) role of superstition and use of religious rituals, 3) "distaste for book learning and penchant for direct action," 4) "emphasis on group solidarity," and 5) "an apocalyptic view of history." 34. The CPP-NPA's "Revolutionary Guide for Land Reform" (RGLR), produced in 1972 and revised in 1977, has provisions for minimum and maximum goals (Padilla 1988, 34). The minimum goals are the reduction of land rent and the end of usury while the maximum goals are the expropriation of large estates and their free distribution to landless tenants and farmworkers (Morales 1986, 65, Padilla 1988, 34; and Weekley 2001, 56). 35. The CPP's RGLR notes that "landlords who helped the revolutionary movement, are not exploitative, and who participate in the production process" will be granted concessions and privileges by the revolutionary forces (Padilla 1988, 34- 35). In a similar vein, CPP Chair Sison (writing as Amado Guerrero) wrote: "in opposing and overthrowing the landlords,... we give special consideration... to the enlightened gentry who endorse and follow our policies and support our revolutionary war" (Borras 2004, 52). 36. When the armed conflicts escalated, some settler-peasants who could not take the heat moved back to the towns, thus depriving the NPA of some of their mass support. 37. These land occupations came in the aftermath of the ouster of President Marcos in a popular uprising. Aside from the lack of competent cadres, there were other reasons for the non-productivity of the occupied lands-militarization, inability to access government credit, and unsuitability for agriculture (Borras 2004, 225). In the end, the lands were reoccupied by the legal owners with the aid of private armies and the military and the peasants made no effort to stay on. 38. That is, solidarity mainly in the face of outside interventions that were seen as expropriatory. This does not imply that there were no internal conflicts. Such internal divisions however did not stem from issues that would have precipitated class-based and therefore revolutionary action.

Reference Abinales, Patricio N. 2001. Fellow traveler: Essays on Filipino communism. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Alexandre, Marianne, ed. 1968. Viva Che! New York: E.P. Dutton. Alferez, Marilu, 1983. Sacobia resettlement project. Graduate studies paper presented to the University of the Philippines School of Urban and Regional Planning Typescript Allen, James S. (Sol Auerbach). 1985. The radical left on the eve of the war: A political memoir. Quezon City: Foundation for Nationalist Studies. Bernstein, Henry, and Terence J. Byres. 2001. From peasant studies to agrarian change. Journal of Agrarian Change 1 (1): 1-56. Borras, Saturnino M., Jr. 2004. Rethinking redistributive land reform: Struggles for land and power in the Philippines. The Hague: Institute of Social Studies. Bryceson, Deborah. 2000. Peasant theories and smallholder policies: Past and present. In Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America, ed. D.F. Bryceson, C. Kay, and J. Mooij, 1-36. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Caouette, Dominique. 2004. Persevering revolutionaries: Armed struggle in the twenty-first century, exploring the revolution of the Communist Party of the Philippines. PhD dissertation, Cornell University. Castro, Fidel. 1969. Overview: Economic problems confronting Cuba and the underdeveloped world. In Fidel Castro speaks, ed. M. Kenner and J. Petras, 3-36. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. Challand, Gérard. 1976. Revolution in the third world. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Chesneaux, Jean, 1973. Peasant revolts in China, 1840-1949. London: Thames and Hudson. Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. 1970. The Indochina story. New York: Bantam Books. Constantino, Renato. 1975. The Philippines: A past revisited. Manila: Renato Constantino. Dizon, Lino L. 2003. Balitucan as Dalan-Sinukuan. Singsing 2(3): 51-54. Encarnacion, Teresa S. 1993. Structures, processes and mechanisms of relief and rehabilitation. In in the shadow of the lingering Mt. Pinatubo disaster, ed. Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon Bautista, 165-188. Quezon City and Amsterdam: College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines and Center for Asian Studies Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam. 1997. Non-governmental organization approaches to cooperative development. PhD dissertation, University of Hongkong. Engels, Frederich. 1970. The peasant question in France and Germany. Vol. 3 of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected works. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Gonzales, Ana Maria. 1988. Agrarian reform in Cuba. In Agrarian reform country models: Proceedings of the Conference Seminar-Workshop on Agrarian Reform Models, 26-29. Quezon City: Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs, Ateneo

de Manila University. Monograph. Henson, Mariano A. 1963. The province of Pampanga and its towns (A.D. 1300-1962). Angeles, Pampanga.

Hinton, William, 1972. Fanshen: A documentary of revolution in a Chinese village. Middlesex, England: Pelican Books. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1997. On history from below. In On history, 201-216, New York: The New Press. lleto, Reynaldo Clemeña. 1979. Pasyon and revolution: Popular movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Kerblay, Basile. 1987. Chayanov and the theory of peasant economics. In Peasants and peasant societies: Selected readings, ed. Teodor Shanin, 150-160. 2nd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kerkvliet, Benedict J. Tria. 1979. The Huk rebellion: A study of peasant revolt in the Philippines. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. 1986. Everyday forms of peasant resistance in Southeast Asia. Journal of Peasant Studies 13 (2): 107-123. Larkin, John. 1993. The Pampangans: Colonial society in a Philippine province. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. Lava, Jesus B. 2002. Memoirs of a communist. Pasig City, Philippines: Anvil Publishing. Lenin, Vladimir Illyich. 1977a. The impending catastrophe and how to combat it. Vol. 2 of Selected works. Moscow: Progress Publishers. 1977b. The state and revolution. Vol. 2 of Selected works. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mao Tsetung, 1971a. Report of an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan. Part One of Selected readings from the works of Mao Tsetung. London: AngloChinese Educational Institute. 1971b. Introducing the Communist. Part One of Selected readings from the works of Mao Tsetung. London: Anglo-Chinese Educational Institute. Marx, Karl. 1969. The eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Vol. 1 of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected works. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. 1973. Manifesto of the communist party. In Karl Marx: The revolutions of 1848, ed. David Fernbach, 67-98. London: Penguin Books. Migdal, Joel S. 1974. Peasants, politics, and revolutions: Pressure towards political and social change in the third world. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Morales, Horacio R. 1986. The agrarian reform program of the left: Major thrusts and basic components. Solidarity, nos. 106-107: 63-67. Moore, Barrington Jr. 1966. Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. Boston: Beacon Press. Nemenzo, Francisco. 1984. The millenarian-populist aspects of Filipino Marxism. In Marxism in the Philippines: Marx centennial lectures, ed. Third World Studies Center, 1-40. Quezon City, Philippines: Third World Studies Center. Padilla, Sabino G., Jr. 1988. The agrarian reform program of the national democratic front. Philippine Development Forum. 4 (4). Paige, Jeffery M. 1975. Agrarian revolution: Social movements and export agriculture in the underdeveloped world. New York: The Free Press.

Putzel, James. 1996. Managing the "main force": The Communist Party and the peasantry in the Philippines. Kasarinlan: A Philippine Quarterly of Third World Studies 11 (3-4): 135-166. Reed, John, 1966. Ten days that shook the world. London: Penguin Books. Scott, James C. 1976. The moral economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

1985. Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Schram, Stuart, ed. 1974. Mao Tsetung unrehearsed. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Selden, Mark, 1969. People's war and the transformation of peasant society: China and Vietnam. In America's Asia: Dissenting essays on Asian-American relations, ed. Edward Friedman and Mark Selden, 357-392. New York: Pantheon Books, Shalom, Stephen Rosskamm. 1986. The United States and the Philippines: A study of neocolonialism. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. Shanin, Teodor, ed. 1987. Peasants and peasant societies: Selected readings. 2nd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Skocpol, Theda. 1994. Social revolutions in the modern world. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Tan, Antonio S. 1985. The ideology of Pedro Abad Santos. Solidarity, no. 102: 28-38. Weekley, Kathleen. 2001. The Communist Party of the Philippines, 1968-1993: A story of its theory and practice. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Wolf, Eric R. 1969. Peasant wars of the twentieth century. New York: Harper and Row.

Marxism, the Peasantry, and Agrarian Revolution in the Philippines Review by Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon Bautista

I would like to thank the Third World Studies Center (TWSC) and Eduardo Tadem for the opportunity to revisit the issues I reviewed for my dissertation on the social differentiation of the Philippine peasantry almost three decades ago.

On the Motor Force of History In his background, Ed provides a succinct summary of the classical Marxist- Leninist position on the peasantry. He notes that historically, the Marxist attitude has generally been dismissive of the role of the peasantry in revolution. Accordingly, the isolation of peasants from each other renders them incapable of organizing themselves, thereby requiring the intervention of the "party of the proletariat." Their isolation and conditions of work also make peasants vulnerable to what former University of the Philippines (UP) President Francisco Nemenzo called the "millenarian-populist syndrome," which he considered anathema to Marxism in its classical interpretation. Yet, Ed correctly points out that in practice, Marxist movements "showed considerable flexibility and adjustments." The more successful socialist revolutions in the post-World War II era-in China, Cuba, and Vietnam- were peasant-based and the resolution of agrarian issues was a major mobilizing point. Mao himself celebrated the peasantry by asserting the necessity of poor peasant leadership of the Chinese revolution. The primacy of the proletariat over the peasantry at the theoretical level flows logically from classical Marxist class analysis and its framing within a "subject-object dialectic." This dialectic asserts that the proletariat, being the producer of commodities and wealth under capitalism, is the subject of history. Alienated from the fruits of their labor and from their humanity by capitalist processes that appropriate their product, workers are exploited and objectified. However, the proletariat would become conscious of itself as a class and its role as the subject of history. Against this theoretical backdrop, peasants, who produce their subsistence and crops for exchange outside the capitalist logic and who would, by virtue of their conditions of production, tend to be conservative, could not possibly be the "subject of history." At best they could only play a supporting role to the proletariat. It is important, however, to note differences among Marxists regarding the idea of the proletarian class as "motor force of history." While structuralist

Marxists at the ideological and practical levels of engagement might work to strengthen the proletariat, they would argue that there is an epistemological break between the young Marx who operated within a "subject-object dialectic" and the more mature Marx for whom history was a "process without a subject." From this perspective, the revolutionary class or classes would have to constitute themselves ideologically as the subjects of history to enable them to engage fervently in the revolution but they could not determine the outcomes. The outcomes instead would result from the interplay of economic, ideological and political structures and practices, which, in turn, presuppose an understanding of the conditions and contradictions in particular geographic spaces/environments and historical conjunctures. This perspective within Marxism seems to be more open to the pivotal role of the peasantry vis-à-vis the proletariat. The plea for conjunctural analysis implies the possibility of other subordinate classes playing an important role in revolutionary struggles. It seems consistent with empirical findings that run counter to Marx's earlier projections. This comment, however, is a marginal note, because Ed's review of the Marxist positions was meant to provide a background to his paper and to its link to the theme of the Marxism in the Philippines series.

On the Actors in the Agrarian Transition Ed's paper focuses on the "peasant masses" in three villages in Tarlac and Pampanga and "how they have been affected by revolutionary activities and how they themselves relate to radical groups ... "Consistent with the established literature-both Marxist and non-Marxist-he assumes that the key actors in social transformation are the state, class-based actors, and the revolutionary movement. He looks in particular at how the peasant masses as class-based actors look at and relate to the movement. Compared to the established Marxist literature with very strong structuralist or instrumentalist undertones, Ed incorporates elements of social theory that problematize human agency. In particular, he takes the point of view of the peasants and their reconstruction of their life stories including their involvement in the movement. As he himself noted in the paper, Ed adopts the tradition of the "social historian who looks at the experiences in struggle of the common people and argue that their history is not the same as, and cannot be replaced by the history of social movements and mass organizations." In a sense, Ed is among the Marxist-inspired academics, who have tried to fill a yawning gap in classical Marxist writings-the neglect of human agency. This is laudable considering that in the last twenty-five years, there

have been remarkable attempts to nuance Marxism by infusing ideas emanating from theoretical traditions that bring in agency, culture and identity e.g., the Marx-Weber model; Giddens structuration; and the critical theorists. If Ed were to do a study of the peasantry and their revolutionary potential at this time, his analysis will have to take into account recent developments in social theorizing of agency, actor-oriented development theory, and actor network theory. He will have to consider the displacement of revolutionary movements by a wide range of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and the decentralization of the state apparatus. His analysis would also include looking into the displacement of the categories of class by those of community in some areas. This would not mean abandoning the notion of class-based agents. It would mean contextualizing class-based agents in networks of actors including corporations, NGOs, communities, farmers, workers, consumers, development agencies, etc. It is important to know how actors like communities, farmers, women, ethnic minorities, and migrants mobilize to become collective actors participating in their shaping of the agrarian transition with unpredictable outcomes. In other words, Ed will be analyzing social movements on the ground, while engaging Marxism and development discourses, many of which have underlying philosophical assumptions that depart radically from Marxist or non-Marxist but structuralist notions of development as externally determined. Such engagement will enrich Marxism and adapt it to the times.

On Peasant Studies Two weeks ago, I participated in a roundtable discussion aimed at resurrecting interest in agrarian issues. Admittedly, scholarly interest in the peasantry waned in the last two decades. However, there seems to be a revival of interest in agrarian transitions-or the transformation of societies into market-based societies. In this regard, it would be exciting for thinkers who have contributed or can potentially contribute to the development of Marxism in the country to theorize about the peasantry and agrarian-based movements in the intersection of global developments on the one hand, and human agency at the local level, on the other. We could start with the challenges of the agrarian transition in developing societies that emanate from key processes that are changing today's rural landscape: agricultural intensification and territorial expansion, market integration, urbanization and industrialization in rural areas, population dynamics such as the internal and overseas migration, the intensification of regulation, and environmental change.

Conclusion In conclusion, allow me to address the theme of this series. Like Ed (Eduardo Tadem), Roland (Roland Simbulan) and Pancho (Francisco Lara Jr.) and a number of colleagues in the audience, I belong to the generation of Filipinos who were profoundly influenced by Marxist ideas in the 1970s. While I had moved out a long time ago from studies of agrarian transformation because of a confluence of circumstances and personal involvements, and while my views may be labeled pejoratively as liberal in my time, I nevertheless value the continuing relevance and value of Marxist ideas in sensitizing various actors to issues of inequality and injustice. Through circumstances beyond my control, I very recently inherited the basic education reform work of a colleague who died in a freak car accident. Hers was the lifelong mission of empowering schools and their communities, many of them agrarian communities, to take education into their own hands. She was blessed with the rare opportunity to translate her wild ideas, which were born in the Education Forum of the 1970s and nurtured in the 1980s and 1990s when we worked together at the Center for Integrative and Development Studies (CIDS), to inputs for the largest social experiment in education reform that the Department of Education has ever undertaken. The outcomes of a large-scale experiment involving 8,000 schools are changing the landscape of basic education in twenty-three poor provinces. In many conversations about the current discourse on development and education before she died, we would talk about the legacy of Marxism in our thinking and marvel at the continuing the relevance of class analysis in strategizing about change in very poor areas of our country. Many of the ideas that have been mainstreamed are actually inspired by Marxism. However, our conversations would also revolve around the need for Marxists in the Philippines to grow with the changes at the global level and on the ground as well as the development discourses that have evolved in the last twenty years. To my mind, the Marxism in the Philippines series is to contribute toward this end.

Marxism and the Philippine Women's Movement: Reflections on Praxis Aida F. Santos

Marxism does not accept the existence of any "Eternal Truths" All "truths" and "errors" are relative. What is true in one time and context becomes false in another: truth and error pass into each other.

I spent my young adult life in the 1970s with Marxism, having entered the University of the Philippines at the height of what would eventually be called the First Quarter Storm (popularly known as FQS). My understanding of Marxism consisted of several things, some of which were: one, that class struggle and particularly the struggle of the working class is primary for any radical social transformation to happen; two, that the working class would have to lead the revolution toward socialism; three, that the ruling class, i.e., the bourgeoisie needs to be overthrown along with its lackeys and minions; four, that capitalism would reach a point of decay, and that its overthrow is the only way for the masses to be liberated from the different yokes of oppression; five, that the way to explain the world is to use "dialectical materialism" based on concrete social conditions; and six, that women's emancipation would follow the emancipation of the working class. I also learned that we have to pass through the national democratic struggle to attain socialism and eventually communism. Marx, Lenin, and Mao were my political "bibles." For every "revolutionary sin" I committed, my comrades would read a passage from Mao's Red Book. I was to "atone" for my "sin" by quoting Mao and reading passages that would be equivalent to my revolutionary learning. One of the things that reinforced my already strong Catholic sense of guilt is the principle that one lives-and dies-for the masses of the downtrodden, and this means shedding off all my petit bourgeois lifestyle/ habits/affectations, and living as simple as possible. I joined rallies and mass protests. I went to pickets with workers in factories and in front of Malacañang and other places where the powers sat smug and complacent. At one point, I served as educator for women workers. When martial law was declared, I joined the "underground" and continued my political work. It has been more than two decades since then. Most of the activists of the sixties are now in their sixties, some more ahead in years; some have passed away, and some have left the "movement" to begin a more "normal" life.

Since the split in the national democratic movement in the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the once solid Left has become fractious movements, holding on to Marxism as a common denominator. But what was Marxism then? What is Marxism now to the feminists? Grappling with these questions, I talked to some friends and colleagues, across sexual orientations and ideological moorings, on how Marxism affected their lives, or if Marxism affected their feminism. I also read some of their works. Being a co-founder of a feminist collective, I have intimate knowledge of "herstory" in the national democratic movement. Allow me to share individual and collective reflections on our journey into feminism.

Breaking Grounds: Women's National Democratic Movement

Struggle

for

Autonomous

Space

in

the

The articulation of a women's perspective in social movements, particularly of the Left, emerged from the actual engagements of key leaders and articulators with radical social movements, such as the old Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), the social democratic and national democratic movements and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which sprung from the old PKP. Of all these major social movements, the national democratic movement, an arm of the CPP was considered the largest and most significant political formation in the country until it splintered into various factions in late 1980s to early 1990s. Through the years, however, the divide between class and feminism remains a contentious point for many of these formations (Santos and Parreño 2007). While the history of the women's movement(s) can be traced as far back as the Philippine Revolution in the 1800s and the Suffragist Movement in the 1900s, feminist discourses began to be more sharply articulated with the emergence of women's formations, such as the Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (Free Movement of New Women) or MAKIBAKA (1970), Katipunan ng Bagong Pilipina (League of New Filipina) or KaBaPa (1974), Pilipina (1981), Katipunan ng Kababaihan para sa Kalayaan (Women's League for Liberation) or KALAYAAN (1983), and GABRIELA (originally stood for General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action) (1984). These formations stood out in their attempts to expand the purview of social movements, emphasizing the equal importance of women's liberation struggles and incorporating women's issues into class analysis in progressive discourse. MAKIBAKA: Foremother of Feminist Ideals Organizing within the Left has traditionally been and continues to be along sectoral groups-labor/workers, peasant, indigenous, Moro people, and

church people/religious, to mention the most significant sectors. The women's movement in its early years was also organized along sectoral formations, and often within the influence of bigger formations (Santos and Parreño 2007). The birthing of KaBaPa in 1974 illustrates the nexus of social movement and women's organizing. Its charter members were part of the defunct Samahan ng Progresibong Kababaihan (League of Progressive Women) founded in 1970. KaBaPa leaders were former members of the Huk movement and the original Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (old Communist Party of the Philippines), which was established on November 7, 1930, following the anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia. KaBaPa's mass members came mostly from the peasant and urban poor workers sectors. Many of them were relatives of male members who belonged to the peasant organization Aniban ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura, or AMA (Organization of Agricultural Workers). KaBaPa's basic thrust was the education of grassroots women, training them on how to become good community leaders and organizers and how to manage cooperatives and other livelihood projects for women. However, KaBaPa did not identify itself as a feminist organization. It was MAKIBAKA that provided the nascent articulation of what was then broadly referred to as the "Woman's Question" within the national democratic movement. MAKIBAKA established itself "with an explicitly feminist agenda, as manifested by its initial activity-an all-women picket of the Binibining Pilipinas coronation night on April 18, 1970" (Abao and Yang n.d.). Its position on the role of women in the progressive movement became a catalyst for subsequent women's organizing. MAKIBAKA (struggle) was born with the fundamental task of advancing the struggle for national democracy. MAKIBAKA pointed out the four authorities from which women suffer- political, clan, religious, and male-which were all seen as expressions of feudal-patriarchal ideology and related systems. The organization sought to stimulate the formation of other women's organizations in both rural and urban areas. It would be the first time in the history of women's movements that an ideological framework would guide women as they struggled for their rights within the cause of nationalism. (Santos 1984)

MAKIBAKA defined the context in which women's subordinated status was concentrated: class, clan, and imperialism. Class was the fundamental problem and the "enemy" was not patriarchy. By liberating the working class, women would be emancipated. When martial law was declared in 1972, the struggle against the dictatorship took center stage. MAKIBAKA went underground and merged with the CPP in the struggle for national liberation. From this time up to 1983, there were no stirrings of feminism within the Marxist agenda of the

revolutionary movement. A feminist scholar articulated the problem for feminists in the revolutionary struggle: For much of the period from the 1970s through the 1980s I was quite concerned with the way in which Third World movements for national liberation were sidelining women's issues and relegating these to the background... It wasn't that women were ignored or were not considered important for the revolution, because they could be found in organizations of various kinds and proved to be dependable and committed workers. It also was not that the platform for national liberation failed to articulate a position on women, because it did. But I think it is fair to say that women's oppression was conceptualized almost exclusively along productivist lines so that male chauvinism-or the everyday conduct of men, both as individuals and as a group-could easily escape scrutiny or criticism and, therefore, correction or redress. (Aguilar 2006)

The productivist position could be gleaned from many revolutionary literature of that time, where there was ubiquitous silence on the more "private" and "intimate" concerns regarding sexual relations between women and men. Sexual relations within the national democratic movement were governed by a strict moral code, and personal concerns were subsumed under the more important ideological concerns. Women and men's emotional needs that go beyond the strict parameters of political tasks and ideological goals were deemed secondary, as the rule was "politics in command." MAKIBAKA members, in a rare interview held somewhere in Quezon City sometime in 2006, shared their assessment of the level of appreciation of women within the national democratic movement.2 In those early years we didn't talk about gender issues but the problems of unequal relations were already beginning to manifest. One of us said, look at those men, even if we (women) are being harmed by the exploding Molotov³ bombs, they still expect us to do their coffee. They still assigned us to this women's role. There were still strains of machismo, even if they were already in the movement and supposedly already politically enlightened. Looking back, we were still emphasizing the political rights, and we thought that our political rights were respected then... there will be no more discrimination against women once the political rights for the country as a whole are respected and won. Then everything will fall into place so women will not have to complain about gender issues. Of course the reality was not like that because within the movement men expect us to prepare the food while they were enjoying their Molotov.

It was this obvious stereotyped gender role expectation and gender division of labor even within the social movements that drove women in the next coming years to assert some forms of autonomy from their Marxist- led "father" organizations. GABRIELA: The Second Wave of Feminist Activism The story of GABRIELA attests to the growing strength and increasing militancy of feminist activism during what may be considered as the second- wave of feminist organizing in the national democratic movement (Center for History and New Media n.d.). The Marcos years dramatically changed the options for many women activists, particularly those who were involved in the youth movement, labor sector, church sector, and those in the academe who were not left untouched by the authoritarian and fascist nature of the martial law years. Women actively participated in protest actions against the Marcos dictatorship, and some joined underground movements. Given that the national democratic movement, and its allied organizations such as the CPP and its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), then constituted the largest and most effective opposition to the Marcos government, many women joined these organizations. GABRIELA was established in 1984 primarily as a broad united front against the Marcos dictatorship. During its founding congress, there were forty-two organizations that belonged to the network. In subsequent years, GABRIELA would take under its umbrella more than two hundred women's groups from different sectors and ideological leanings (i.e., liberal and leftist). The strength of this united front was put to a test in 1986 when GABRIELA's member organizations took different positions in the debate over the snap elections, GABRIELA also had to confront the issue of whether or not to support Corazon Aquino's candidacy. Member organizations, unfortunately, were not able to reach a consensus. Many of its members opted to participate in the snap elections and support Corazon Aquino who at that time was gaining popular support as an opposition candidate. Women's groups identified with the national democrats, on the other hand, wanted a boycott position. Some argue that it was not the lack of consensus that broke GABRIELA's unity, but more the manner by which the national democrats within the alliance allegedly maneuvered decision-making processes in favor of the boycott stance (Abao and Yang n.d.). Despite such criticisms, many women see GABRIELA as their baptism of fire into Marxism. One student leader- feminist noted: I discovered Marxism when we set up the Center for Nationalist Studies (CNS) and I was in the University of the Philippines' (UP) Collegian. I joined the student movement in UP, and then joined

the core group that founded SAMAKA Kababaihan (Samahan ng Mag-aaral Kabataang Kababaihan or SMK), a youth and student women's sectoral organization. I have always thought of myself as a feminist, and mainly because of my upbringing. I come from a family of really strong women. Working with SMK and other women's organizations in Gabriela deepened my appreciation of feminist theory and praxis. I saw GABRIELA as enriching my appreciation of Marxism. Marxism has helped deepen my activism. It helped develop my way of thinking (i.e., dialectical materialism) and standpoint (i.e., class).*

Apart from the reported maneuverings underlying the crises that became manifest during the early years of GABRIELA was the struggle between Marxist/Maoist ideological principles versus women's growing clamor for autonomy, with the earliest feminist stirrings in the broader movement brought in by some of GABRIELA's network members. Yet the words "feminist," "Marxist feminist," and "socialist feminist" were absent in the formative discourse of GABRIELA. It would be fair, however, to say that the majority of the core founders of the network would be at the very least Marxists in their political orientation. In the early 1990s, the national democratic movement began to split literally at its seams, as the internal debates that had been going on for some years prior to the 1990s streamed out of the much-guarded compartments of the movement. GABRIELA, having been strongly identified with the Marxist-Maoist section of the national democratic movement, stayed close to what would be referred to as "reaffirmist" (those who aligned with the Maoist belief that victory could be achieved by encircling the cities from the countryside- one of the basic tenets of Mao's revolutionary strategy); those who questioned the contemporary validity and application of the classic Maoist line are referred to as "rejectionists." GABRIELA states that it is a movement dealing distinctly with the problems of women as women, working to free women from all forms of economic and political oppression and discrimination, sexual violence and abuse, neglect and denial of their health and reproductive rights; a movement integral to the national liberation struggle for sovereignty, a democratic and representative government and equality between women and men in all aspects of life; and a vital movement to harness the power of half of the country's population towards liberation. (Santos, Parreño, and Fabros 2007)

However, in light of the continuing fractiousness of the Left, a number of women moved away from what has been called the "larger movement"

precisely because they felt that they did not want to be intimately and directly involved with the factionalism of the dominant Left. A woman leader who has been involved as a Marxist since the 1970s said: When you have so little energy left as a result of the long years of struggle, when your domestic situation changes over time, and in my case, I have children to take care of, when you need to begin to worry about your financial needs, and then have to continue your activism, being in social movements that keep fighting with each other was simply a bit too much, in light of many things that needed my attention as a woman, mother, wife, organizer, activist, etc. The movement then was my safe haven, comrades were my best friends-now you don't know who are really your friends and your enemies. Before, to me, the "enemy" was clear-the anti-people institutions and policies."

Some feminists across political colors charted their own agenda. They created their own spaces, and claimed these spaces as their safe haven away from what was perceived to be the intractable position of some male leaders who doubted the political logic and ideological correctness of having a women's movement that had a feminist agenda. As sections of the women's movement(s) emphasize more feminist issues than others, there was a perception among some older cadres of the national democratic movement that the women's movement(s) has been depoliticized. More and more women, especially younger generations, averred from joining markedly ideological events, debates, and mobilizations. This moving away has been perceived by some as a "depoliticization" of the women's agenda and consequently of the women's movement. Interrogating Marxism: Tensions and Dilemmas Marxism takes the view that, along with class society, private property, and the state, the bourgeois family has not always existed, and that the oppression of women is only as old as the division of society into classes. The abolition of the family is hence a central revolutionary task, and particular to women, a task that needs to be fought alongside class-based issues in the context of imperialism. Marxism is firm in its analysis that the abolition of the bourgeois family is dependent on the abolition of classes, that is, on the socialist revolution. Marxism is clear that class primarily accounts for women's role and status and that women's oppression is a result of political, social, and economic structures associated with capitalism. But what it did not discuss was the nature of a women's condition that seems to affect more women than men.

This blind spot-the neglect of the role of sexuality and reproduction by classical Marxists-has made Marxists feminists a bit awkward with their Marxism: Yet even with the recognition by other political blocs that the reproductive sphere is just as important as the productive sphere in determining social conditions much is yet to be done. Class remains the most dominant discourse and women's issues are still generally considered "soft" issues. Production remains the fulcrum on which the discourse on the need for social transformation revolves. Sexuality, a core issue interrogated by feminists, remains to be a marginalized concern, if not altogether misunderstood as a political arena for social transformation. Even Left parties that have accepted the need for an agenda around reproductive rights, abortion and divorce are forced to deal with the conservative moralism of its mass members who have inherited the legacy of the Left's neglect on these issues. (Estrada-Claudio and Santos 2006)

For feminists, women in bourgeois families still partake in, and get oppressed by patriarchy within their own class. Violence against women and reproductive rights issues are not exclusive to working class women, or the violence and issues of reproduction-often controlled by patriarchal males-are not part of the Marxist socialist revolution, as the working class must take upon itself the task of fighting against all forms of oppression and exploitation, and place itself at the head of all the oppressed layers of society, and on the other, must decisively reject all attempts to divide it-even when these attempts are made by sections of the oppressed themselves. (Woods 2001)

Many Marxists clearly did not share the feminists' view of their struggles. While there has been no written articulation of this antifeminist stance from male comrades in the social movements, there had been many meetings, formal and informal discussions where feminists or their feminist ideas and inputs were vehemently challenged, marginalized, accepted for the sake of tokenism, or worse, parodied or simply ignored. Then and now, the feminists have continued to struggle for their appropriate place in social movement." This antifeminist stance could be summed up in the following comments: For many feminists, on the other hand, the oppression of women is rooted in the nature of men. It is not a social but a biological phenomenon. This is an entirely static, unscientific and undialectical conception of the human race. It is an unhistorical

vision of the human condition, from which profoundly pessimistic conclusions must flow. For if we accept that there is something inherent in men which causes them to oppress women, it is difficult to see how the present situation will ever be remedied. The conclusion must be that the oppression of women by men has always existed and therefore, presumably, will always exist. In order to bring about the socialist revolution, it is necessary to unite the working class and its organisations, cutting across all lines of language, nationality, race, religion and sex. This implies, on the one hand, that the working class must take upon itself the task of fighting against all forms of oppression and exploitation, and place itself at the head of all the oppressed layers of society, and on the other, must decisively reject all attempts to divide it-even when these attempts are made by sections of the oppressed themselves. (Woods 2001, 1)

Marxism helped many feminists understand feminism, but as one said: I read female Marxist authors and their experiences in Marxist movements. I had deep discussions on the class struggle and women's struggle-it was this that sharpened my understanding of the women's liberation movement. But I had more heartache because I was told that the feminist analyses and methods of research were not scientific enough. Male and female comrades who were dogmatic in their Marxism pooh-poohed feminist analyses.'

Aguilar sums up the dilemmas of Marxist feminists during the early years: The theorizing and politics of the women's movement in the Philippines have been influenced by Western feminism. Without denying such influences, the progressive women's movement in the Philippines also looks up to experiences of women's movements in other countries. It recognizes that women in the Philippines have more in common with their sisters in other countries plagued by foreign domination and economic underdevelopment, than with their counterparts in affluent, industrialized countries... Nationalist and class politics, therefore, determine to a great extent the contours of the discourse on the woman question and the politics of the local women's movement. It is the presence of a larger social liberation movement in the Philippines that provides the matrix for the theory and practice of the women's movement. (Aguilar 2006)

Feminism Unveiled in the National Democratic Struggle: A Closer Look at KALAYAAN's Story In the early years of the women's movement, women asserted that issue- based organizing was a necessary strategy since women's issues cut across classes. However, some feminists had questioned the sectoral organizing strategy, i.e., limiting the key roles that women play in both the "public" and "private" spheres. By organizing women as workers, peasants, urban poor, etc., the strategy tended to hide or diminish the often-universal experiences of the different forms of violence against women, or of their subordinate status in many cultures, and gave major emphasis on their "public" lives, i.e., such issues as working condition, wage, and similar concerns. Feminists had argued that the working conditions and similar concerns that women face across sectoral lines are also a function of their being women. The struggle for "autonomy" coincided with a struggle to break away from the domination of the male-led party discourse and structure. The assertion of a distinct feminist agenda integral to national liberation was a response to the limitations of prevailing tendencies and perspectives within the male-dominated social movements. Although the main call was for national liberation, women also slowly began to organize themselves around women-specific issues. Women activists saw, in many ways, the structures and the workings of patriarchy even within their own revolutionary organizations. The debate on how best to formulate the feminist agenda in the context of a national democratic struggle is best exemplified by the case of KALAYAAN. Founded in 1983, KALAYAAN's story is often cited in the sparse literature on the Philippine women's movement as a classic embodiment of the tensions between Marxism and feminism. It can be said that KALAYAAN was an experiment at broad coalition building. It accepted members from various political streams (socdem, natdem, socialists) and women who had come from neutral political positions. There were three main criteria for being accepted as a full-fledged member: one, she has to be anti-bases; two, she has to be pro-choice; and, three, she has to be nonhomophobic. There was also an acceptance that to be able to meet those criteria, sustained education sessions had to be conducted. Freewheeling exchange of ideas characterized especially the formative years of KALAYAAN. Those who had come from the national democratic movement shared their feelings, experiences, and observations of other women comrades-of being treated as secondary comrades in the movement, many were considered as mere appendages of their husbands particularly of those in position of power. KALAYAAN in particular took note of the national democratic movement's lack of understanding of what it

initially called The Woman Question, which fundamentally translated into their sense of emptiness as women despite their revolutionary commitments. KALAYAAN also drew up a set of what it called feminist politics that could be best summed up as "the personal is political." Essentially this means that the personal experiences of its members could constitute a body of political understanding of discrimination against women, women's oppression and sexism-political problems that feminism has to address (Estrada-Claudio and Santos 2006). The core members of KALAYAAN stood their ground as socialist feminists since the group's inception, but without direct organizational membership to any ideological parties. While the term "socialist feminist" was not held with some kind of neon lights in the literature of KALAYAAN, it was clear at the very least to its founders that the basis for its formation was the need to go beyond Marxism and imbue its organizing dynamics with feminism. KALAYAAN was one of the organizations that questioned what can be termed as "utilitarian" politics that dominated the early years of the alliance. While acknowledging the necessity of class as a dominant category within the Marxist-Maoist ideological discourse on the women's movement, KALAYAAN insisted on an autonomous position within the national democratic movement. However, it made sure that this was understood, by asking no less than the founder of the CPP who was in jail then, to send a message of solidarity during KALAYAAN's founding. However, it made sure that this was understood, by asking no less than the founder of the CPP who was in jail then, to send a message of solidarity during KALAYAAN's founding. For the first time, the message is quoted in toto: I wish to express my warmest greetings and congratulations to all the members and would-be members of KALAYAAN. I am confident that as you strive to enhance the activation of women, you will be able to make significant contribution to the people's struggles for freedom and democracy. I learned that you have conducted research and study sessions connecting women's issues to basic national and social problems, in preparation for expanding your organization and defining its thrust. And so I am confident that you will be successful in this meeting and in your future work. The importance and necessity of the women's movement in the national democratic struggle cannot be underestimated. The conscious and militant participation of the female half of the people accelerates the growth in strength of the national democratic movement and guarantees its total victory. It is also through the national democratic struggle that the women can best assert and exercise their rights pertaining to them, overcome the age-old current obstacles and prejudices against them, develop and demonstrate their strength and capabilities, and attain the basic conditions for women's liberation and equality of the sexes.

In the national democratic struggle, women can perform all major functions-political, economic, and cultural-men are capable of. The women's movement is needed to pay special attention to arousing, organizing and mobilizing the women because in addition to the same exploitation and oppression that they suffer with the men in the present society, they suffer injustices and disadvantages due to male authority bred by various exploiting societies in thousands of years. You can work for equal status and utmost cooperation with men in all major social functions. At the same time, you have special rights due to biological differences (men do not become pregnant and give birth). Also, like men, you have individual and collective abilities and preferences for certain special functions. But of course, there are so-called special functions of women due essentially to a system of discrimination that must be broken up. The struggle for women's liberation is a protracted one. The new democratic revolution gives you the opportunity for achieving the basic conditions for your liberation and equality with men. But even in the socialist society of the future, you will still have a lot of work to do in order to expand your freedom and achieve full equality with men. As the crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal society rapidly worsens, KALAYAAN and other women's organizations must hurry up to strengthen themselves. In the Philippine history there has never been a better time than now for advancing the cause of women's liberation. In fact, women in urban and rural areas are already rising up so heroically together with men. To build the strength of the women's movement, you must work for the fullest participation of women in the working class, peasantry, urban petty bourgeoisie and the middle bourgeoisie in the national democratic struggle against U.S. imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism. These evils have become most acute in the form of the fascist dictatorial regime of the U.S.-Marcos clique. In the course of struggling against this tyranny, the national democratic movement is gaining the strength to advance further and with total victory against foreign and feudal domination.

Undoubtedly Sison's address to KALAYAAN offered hope to the feminist group that somewhere, sometime, the road of feminism within the national democratic movement had been opened. However, Sison also made clear that class politics was the basis for which the women's liberation was going to happen, at least within the national democratic movement. It should be noted that among the founders of KALAYAAN were seasoned natdem activists. Understandably, KALAYAAN's request for Sison to send a message to its founding meeting was a calculated move: KALAYAAN wanted

to signal that it did not want to break ties with the national democratic ideals and vision, even as it was asserting its organizational autonomy. In some ways, though unpremeditatedly, KALAYAAN wanted the "blessings" from the founder of no less than the CPP. This duality though seemingly contradictory was reflective of the internal uneasiness among the founding members. While seeking their own autonomous space, they did not want to be totally rejected by the national democratic movement, and their Marxist comrades. However, KALAYAAN's autonomous stance, i.e., insisting on its feminist agenda in the existing natdem discourse and analysis, and resisting the national democratic movement's demand for organizational centralism, opened it to severe criticisms from natdem hardliners. Hardliners frowned on KALAYAAN's major call, "Kalayaan ng bayan, kalayaan ng kababaihan, sabay nating ipaglaban!" Roughly translated, it says that people's liberation and women's liberation should be fought for side by side. Along with the works of nationalist Renato Constantino, ideologue Jose Ma. Sison, Marx, Lenin, and Mao, the founders of KALAYAAN added on to their reading fare, Marxist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin; Kate Millet (known for her sharp-edged feminist writing), Mary Daly (whose discourses on sexuality are so dense and difficult), Laura Lederer (known for her writings on rape and pornography), Emma Goldman (labeled as an anarchist-feminist), among others. Perhaps it is this deviation from the norm of natdem political education that earned KALAYAAN the moniker "western feminists." One contribution of KALAYAAN was the merging of its Marxist politics with feminism. It developed the nuancing of Marxism from a feminist lens. 10 KALAYAAN women had critiqued the nature of patriarchal institutions within Philippine society, as it began to study the realities of male domination; but it went beyond the general picture of the mainstream, and also brought in their criticism of the ways that the national democratic movement, and other social movements, had sidelined women. Soon after its formation in 1983, the founders started to restudy Marxism and came to a conclusion that it did not fully articulate the specific conditions of women. Echoing KALAYAAN's sentiment, years after its formation, feminist scholar Delia D. Aguilar wrote: Stated theoretically, my critique was lodged at an economistic stance that could not take into sufficient account the social relations of gender, or the distinct and separate character of female subordination; indeed, this was a protest similarly expressed by women against their revolutionary parties in other parts of the Third World (Davies 1983 cited in Aguilar 2006). Filipinos writing at the time situated women's subjugation in their roles as factory workers, as prostitutes, and as domestic workers deployed overseas, all of which were presented, accurately

enough, as a consequence of the Philippines' neocolonial status. Overall, the aim was to highlight class-to be precise, the extraction of surplus value constitutive of labor/capital relations, and the marginalization of practically all else. (Aguilar 2006)

Reformulating the "Woman Question" As early as 1984, in a seminal work, KALAYAAN presented its position: To expose the various exploitative mechanisms that render women second-class citizens wherever we find ourselves, in developed or developing economies, is one thing; and it is another thing to develop an alternative consciousness and structure for women that enables us to realize our own potential, both individually and collectively. Somehow along the way, we have managed to segmentize our view of women's oppression, thus diverting ourselves from the core of the problem: women are exploited through class and gender. To attack only one of the two is to solve only half of the problem. At this crucial point of our history as a nation, we have no need for half-solutions to a problem that is disarmingly simple and yet so complex in its implications. Do women really hold up half the sky, as the Chinese philosopher so wistfully says, or are we actually only half the human being that the member of the Other Sex are? To confront this question is to take a step towards genuine women's liberation. (Santos 1984)

It is this understanding of the limitations of the Marxist-Leninist point of view regarding the Women Question that KALAYAAN women and other feminists wanted to problematize the "private" arena of women's lives- sexuality, family, and the "private" sphere, precisely the arenas that Marxism thought were unimportant in its goal to dismantle imperialism and the withering away of the State. Women's oppression cuts across classes and stages of the revolution, feminists asserted. The argument for this concern is best summed up by Dr. Sylvia Estrada- Claudio:11 The call for a new theory and practice was made as early as 1988 from within the Sison-led communist party itself: All class societies are also gendered societies. The socialist conception of complete freedom through the absolute democratization of the means of production is incompatible with continuing exploitation in the area of reproduction. To allow the continuation of patriarchal attitudes and practices among our ranks, is to oppose imperialism and feudalism with our right hand only to caress it with our left. Norms of heterosexuality within the bonds of state and religious sanctions have contributed to the subjugation of women

and children in Filipino families as well as the subjugation of the Filipino family itself to the demands of colonial expansion. It has ensured a passive and long-suffering Filipino family based on women's ability for self-sacrifice; it has ensured the reproduction of this subservient and gendered ideology. It has assured that women's (and men's) reproductive labor power is tied to a system easily exploitable by feudal, colonial, and neocolonial interests. (Estrada-Claudio 1991, 46)

Back in the early 1980s KALAYAAN popularized the slogan "women's rights are human rights," something that was unheard of in those days in social movements or even in the fledgling human rights organizations. It was no surprise then to KALAYAAN that it was eventually identified in some natdem circles as being "socdem" (short for "socialist democrat"), KALAYAAN was criticized as western, bourgeois, and middle-class bra-burning feminists. As the history of the Left in the country suggests, to be called "socdem" was not exactly an acceptable political position for hardline "natdems," most especially during those years. Educating Women: The Feminist Foundation In the early 1990s, KALAYAAN established the first nondegree feminist school called the Ma. Lorena Barros and Estrella Consolacion Feminist Foundation- in commemoration of one of the key founders of MAKIBAKA and a national democratic revolutionary activist-founder of KALAYAAN. The choice of the name for the school clearly signaled the ideological moorings of KALAYAAN. Barros, Lorie to her comrades, joined the NPA and became a commander She was killed in 1976 after an encounter with the military in Quezon Province. Consolacion, called Strel by her friends and comrades, died of cancer in her early 30s after a long battle with the disease; she cofounded a support group of cancer patients/survivors with Adul de Leon and Raquel Edralin-Tiglao.12 The Feminist Foundation explored the merging of Marxist thoughts and the personal experiences of women activists. While not using the jargon that often are associated with Marxism-to be able to entice the School participants to consider the ideological underpinnings of Marxism-it promoted what could be termed socialist feminism where class is given prominence alongside such "private" issues such as sex and sexuality/ reproductive issues. The formators of the Feminist Foundation (or Feminist School, as some of us referred to it) wanted to provide a space for the sharing of experiences as activists, actively encourage younger generations of women to broaden their understanding of feminism, and hone their knowledge of feminism's historical and ideological underpinnings in the Philippines. Many younger feminists graduated from the Feminist Foundation and became activists in their own right.

Rethinking Marxism For women who first became Marxists before discovering feminism, the term "feminism" would not necessarily be in their vocabulary. Feminism was not in my vocabulary when I co-founded KALAYAAN in 1983. For all my long years in the national democratic movement, I only sensed that something was wrong or missing in my turbulent life. Before that year, I thought that total self-sacrifice for the Cause and "changing the world" would lead to my personal freedom. In hindsight, feminism was a seed imbedded in my inner life (as distinguished from political activism), only it had no name until we women collectively uttered it. At the time, our Leftist comrades criticized us as bourgeois man-haters, but that only made our pioneering work among women more exciting. Dialectical and historical materialism, particularly the idea of class exploitation, made a lot of sense during my conscientization in the mid-sixties. I had been exposed to existentialism during my college years, that European worldview was intellectually provoking but it didn't resonate with my experience of material and emotional hardships. Marxism did. Over my activist years, Marxist influence led to studies in Philippine history and to social analysis from a nationalist perspective. In the early '70s, our "bibles" were the works of historian Renato Constantino, Jose Ma. Sison's Struggle for National Democracy, and Mao Tse-Tung's (Mao Zedong) writings. aside from classical Marx and Lenin. Marxism as discourse and activist practice (mass organizing, united front, cultural work, rallies) was most creative-and powerful-in the '60s and '70s, the heyday of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front/ Movement. It thrived in a political climate of open democratic struggle. Tragically, historical events played a joke on the grim. and determined Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong leadership in the next decades and they failed to apply "historical and dialectical materialism" on concrete (and changing) conditions.14

KALAYAAN founders see Marxism as having anchored their values as human beings and citizens; class politics made them sensitive to the plight of the underprivileged. Marxism helped anchor my personal values and political beliefs- justice, equality, human rights; even atheism (but no longer). Frederick Engels' writing on women being treated by society as public and private property was a good start. But the views of Simone de Beauvoir, Zillah Eisenstein, Rosa Luxemburg and other

socialist writers who refined Engels' premise on women and critiqued Marxism's "gender blindness" influenced our discourse in KALAYAAN to a great extent. We were also attracted to the views of anarchists like Emma Goldman and Mary Daly. So, Marxism was really a good launching pad for further explorations on gender oppression and women's rights. But its class analysis had limits. "The personal is political" became our rallying cry. I believe it remains a good principle in the continuing fight against patriarchy, specifically sexism and violence against women and children. I still value Marxism for its emphasis on the inextricable link between theory and practice (praxis), on the power of people's collective action, and its impact on Filipino nationalism. In KALAYAAN we embodied these concepts in the organization's signature slogan, "Kalayaan ng bayan, kalayaan ng kababaihan, sabay nating ipaglaban." Today I see Marxist ideology as only one among many contending worldviews. Its monolithic days are long over. Going back to the basics, like an analysis of class oppression and exploitation, requires winning the people's hearts and minds in new creative ways of organizing, use of language, and communication.15

However, KALAYAAN saw the blindness of Marxism to the personal oppression that women face-across class and ethnic differences. For example, precious little was observed or remarked about the home or family and the gender inequality spawned by the division of labor occurring within this site. Nor was there any questioning of male authority and male privilege, or attention to quotidian gender interactions. My point was that without the necessary interrogation, gender asymmetry would remain naturalized, accepted as the normal state of affairs, and continue to place women in a materially and psychologically disadvantaged position. (Aguilar 2006)

While the Marxist movement has championed female equality and women's rights, it insisted on class struggle as the primary revolutionary task. Marxists assert that women's liberation is bound up with the struggle against capitalism. KALAYAAN women challenged the assumption that with class victory will automatically come women's liberation. The history of other revolutionary movements, according to them, did not sufficiently address the Woman Question-as it was called then. Patriarchy does not wither away automatically when the proletariat wins the revolution, KALAYAAN argued. The struggle for economic liberation from the clutches of imperialism does not assure women that their personal issues are going to also wither away

Economism assumed the emancipation of women (note that "feminism" during this period was anathema) to more or less mechanically transpire with a change in the mode of production. Yet the experience of women in then existing socialist countries contradicted the naivete of this belief (Kruks et al 1989 cited in Aguilar 2006). Moreover, the subsumption of the interpersonal or cultural to the economic made the movement's interest in women appear as purely instrumental; that is, it caused one to wonder whether in fact the movement's consideration of women was based chiefly on its perfectly understandable need for recruits. My queries were waived aside through references to women who were "red fighters" (i.e., in the New People's Army) in a move by comrades to invalidate my complaints. These were offered to me as proof that women were now liberated, catapulted as they were into what was regarded as the most esteemed form of struggle. What better evidence than this of their having breached gender convention? I was also told in not so many words that, because of my location and long-term residence in the United States, I had been afflicted with the ills of Western feminism, which from a revolutionary perspective by definition was individualist, bourgeois, and divisive. (Aguilar 2006)

Others who would eventually identify themselves as feminists did not have to go through any Marxist education. They simply stood on what they felt were wrong in the system, some kind of a gut-feel, and an inexorable disgust over the situation of women. When I became a member of KALAYAAN, I didn't know I was even undergoing the process of being a member! No, I didn't see myself as a feminist. I just had certain principles I believed in, which apparently were principles upheld by feminists. I'm not a "joiner" by nature, but what pulled me to connect was the cause for women's right to choose and the right to know, be respected and have the right to become who they want to be. Marxism had no influence over me at all. My search before for a political affiliation did not bring about any result. Thus I didn't join any political group, but at heart I remain a nationalist. I simply was listening to the many discourses on political or ideological affiliations. What resonated with me. For me, it's not the color of the political affiliation, it all boils down to living your principles and values-respect for the self and the others, being non-judgmental, belief and supporting the transformative process wherein individuals/groups/nations are respected and supported in their development needs. Many individuals, groups, nations violate this fundamental rule. It manifests in the way we lead our personal lives, the kind of

political dynamics we work in, and the kind of power dynamics we play, 16

Younger generation of feminists would not see Marxism as a key influence in their growth as feminists. Generational gaps challenge the influence of Marxism in the formation of feminists: I would consider myself a feminist before I joined any of the political organizations. My feminism was largely derived and shaped by personal experiences having grown up in a matrilineal family set-up. Women (mother, older sisters, aunts, grandmother) were dominant in raising a big family of children. The men were mostly absent. The couples in my family usually broke up because of the philandering ways of the men and the women stayed behind to raise the kids... I had a very happy childhood. Marxism didn't influence me in matters of feminism ... But Marxism helped me in my feminism in the sense that my feminism developed a class dimension as well. As such, my feminism interacts with the notion of class.17

Many women found themselves drawn to feminism even without a keen background, approval, or sense of belongingness to Marxism. Young women are joining social movements by the sheer desire to contribute to strategic social change. They see the need to address the inequality between women and men, alongside other more personal issues that are not necessarily simply class-bound, such as homophobia, sexism, violence against women, women's subordinated role in the national democratic movement. For many years, KALAYAAN was at the forefront of feminist politics; it played a critical role in shaping the formative years of feminism in the country. Unfortunately, in broadening its reach, KALAYAAN also started to lose key members as they became more involved in the formation of other women's groups with strong moorings on feminism. KALAYAAN went moribund, but its founding members remain active in many fronts including the academe. KALAYAAN never officially belonged to any ideological formations that did not acknowledge at the very least the "Woman Question." However, its role in the formation of the feminist discourse within the national democratic movement is widely acknowledged. While it is no longer as active an organization as it were in the 1990s, its founding and core members believe that its role in bridging Marxism and feminism has been a crucial one. KALAYAAN articulated the gaps and challenges that Marxism had to face. It also highlighted the interconnectedness of class, sex/gender, and ethnicity in formulating the agenda of Marxist organizations

Moving Boundaries: Continuing Issues and Concerns There has been increased interest in feminist advocacy in recent years. However, the singularity of the women's movement-as it was conceptualized in the 1970s and as a result of women's engagements in the anti-Marcos years-has now been redefined, at least in the conversations, as women's movements, rather than as women's movement, thus moving away from the traditional monolithic conception and practice among those active in groups, organizations, institutions, and other formations that promote women's empowerment. This renewed attention to women's organizing can be linked to a growing realization of its unique role within social movements, in particular, in the critical and potent role it can play in political and social projects, in revitalizing social movements, and in deepening democracy in society at large. There are at least two related reasons for this revaluation, as culled from the conversations. First, the women's movement(s) forwards an encompassing conception of political engagement that spans "the personal and the political," which confronts the question of power in both the reproductive and the productive spheres, underscoring the need to intervene in private and public arenas of political contention. Second, the women's movement(s) cuts across and straddles various social movements, political blocs, sector-based organizations, and ideological formations. As such, the women's movement(s) is able to capture a wide range of issues and struggles, which makes it well placed, theoretically speaking, to generate a sharper, more textured view of power inequalities and present a more comprehensive, holistic, and inclusive framing of progressive political projects. In this respect, the women's movement(s) has the potential to become a pivotal force for broadening and deepening democracy and transformative politics, with significant implications, not only for social movements but also, and more importantly, for society at large. However, alongside such recognition is a need for critical reflections on nagging issues and concerns, and the kinds of political projects that can be agreed on. New Spaces: Legislative Advocacy The postdictatorship years became fertile ground for women's movements and organizations to flourish as larger spaces were created for women's participation in local and national politics. KAIBA ("Kababaihan para sa Inang Bayan" or Woman for the Mother Country), an all-women's party, was formed in 1986. Although it was short-lived, it is a historically important formation because it was the very first attempt, in a highly male-dominated political arena, to establish an all-women's political party, for women's direct and

active participation in governance, and to advocate for a clear and sharply articulated women's political agenda. It was KAIBA's vision that may well have served as inspiration to later formations such as Abanse! Pinay and Gabriela Women's Party. Women slid into another space: legislative advocacy. What followed were years of intense work in drafting women-friendly bills that addressed the "private" arena that feminists thought were not given due importance- violence against women that include rape, prostitution, and sex trafficking, and reproductive health rights, among others. Class issues such as land ownership was re-examined and the "gender lens" was applied onto what was classically a Marxist issue of production. The early to mid-1990s was marked with significant achievements at the policy level for women. Republic Act 7192 or the Women in Nation Building Act provided the legal basis for equal opportunity for women and men in political and civic life. It also laid the foundation for the establishment of a Gender and Development (GAD) Budget to address gender inequality within the bureaucracy and its programs and services. While there are gaps in the implementation of the GAD mainstreaming policy, it is generally acknowledged that the GAD policy provides the frame in which women in particular could demand accountability from the State. Despite these collaborative efforts between women's groups and government, many women remain critical of the government's GAD mainstreaming efforts (Santos and Parreño, 2007).18 GABRIELA, along with other known Marxist-Leninist inspired political groups, by this time had moved actively in the legislative arena, setting up party list groups and campaigning for seats in the House of Representatives. PILIPINA like GABRIELA fielded candidates and won seats in the Lower House. PILIPINA has a nationwide base of member organizations active in social development endeavors. Some of its known members had become part of the bureaucracy and eventually served as leaders in the anti-corruption advocacy. Feminisms and Gender Mainstreaming By around late 1980s, other women's groups began to emerge, mostly independently initiated from any social blocs or movements. Most of these groups took an issue-focus mandate. Three general observations can be raised to understand why women-only women's groups decided to focus on these issues: 1) there was a need to translate feminist theoretical understanding into concrete programmatic actions; 2) the issue-focus approach was a necessity since there was a felt need to put emphasis on feminist issues, e.g., sexual violence/rape, reproductive rights, sexuality, legislative reforms for women-issues that social movements would usually consider as being outside of the broad national concerns; and 3) interest of

donors to address gender issues also propelled a number of women's groups to set up programs addressing these issues, propelled and inspired by the declaration of United Nations (UN) Decade of Women in 1975, and the massively attended Beijing Conference in 1995 (Estrada-Claudio and Santos 2006). When Corazon C. Aquino came into power in 1986, women non- government organizations (NGOS) proliferated, and some women who fought the Marcos dictatorship joined her government. This gave rise to what eventually was called "gender mainstreaming." International events such as the Nairobi Conference, the Beijing Conference in 1995 and several others permeated the discourse of feminisms, and Marxism muted in the background. By this time, women and gender studies have been mainstreamed in the academe. The NGO-ization of the women's movement also has an impact on women's groups and feminist organizing. Post structuralism also provided impetus in the redefining of ideological lines. Identity politics have become an organizing mechanism for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Gender mainstreaming made women's issues acceptable to some sections of society, including the State. The once solid women's movement has now become women's movements, and feminism, feminisms (Santos, Parreño, and Fabros 2007). The lobby for gender-responsive governance helped give birth to the Philippine Development Plan for Women (PDPW), the document that articulated the need for development programs to take heed of women's concerns and brought gender into the policy arena. Other key documents followed, such as the Philippine Plan for Gender-Responsive Development (PPGD) 1995-2025. Key players in the development of the PDPW noted that women's groups were involved in the creation of the Plan through various consultative meetings that were conducted by the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW). KALAYAAN's original call of women's liberation movement has dimmed into the past, and women's movements have been claimed even by right- wing, conservative groups of women who also mouthed the words equality and empowerment. Government officials have been gender sensitized with the mandate of gender and development mainstreaming, and women's desks in the police were set up-amid the background of the continuing animosities within social movements and particularly in the national democratic movement and the CPP. Some feminists noted this period as a form of retreat from what appeared to be a bitter quarrel among Marxist patriarchs. Whether these "mainstreaming" efforts by feminists detract from class struggle as a Marxist agenda is still to be seen. In doing "gender mainstreaming" work, what is obvious is that many feminists have imbued it with a structural framework that brings in a definitive class analysis, a deeper understanding of feminisms that permeate the public and private lives of women.

Unity Versus Diversity: Charting New Directions There has been a rethinking on many issues about and within the social movement. One issue is the impact of the fragmentations that has obviously weakened not only the various sections of the Left but also women's movements. Women activists who were involved in social movements in the martial law years were particularly concerned with the issue of unity versus diversity in women's movements. Very marked were the changes in the political and social landscapes in which the women's movement is situated. When before there was a real need to unite in a broad antifascist/anti-authoritarian movement, the reinstitution of democratic institutions after 1986 opened new avenues for other advocacies, including human rights and its practice within the Left. Strategies necessarily changed, for which there are distinctly divergent views and practices. After decades of struggle for empowerment and having been a part of the antidictatorship movement, the Philippine women's movement(s) today finds itself in a state of disorientation, a situation shared by other sections of the broad social movements. The progressive movements have generally accepted that the disorientation is largely a result of the fragmentation of the Left, the shifts in analysis not only of Philippine society but also of the strategies needed in a postdictatorship era. There is an argument that such diversity may present to women a dividing line rather than a point of convergence that may underscore what divides women rather than what unites them. For instance, such divisions have become stark in various debates and dynamics among different groups, particularly those that associate themselves with respect to the ideological divergence of women's formation. Some value the presence of such a diverse set of groups, which makes any "unity" project not only futile but also unnecessary. On the other hand there are those who acknowledge the weight of historical, ideological baggages, but nonetheless consider the possibility of women overcoming their differences, and at the very least coming together on specific concerns and issues. At the same time, there are opinions that a very basic network may and should be set up, especially in view of the need for an alternative community for women activists who are also struggling within their own multi-sectoral formations, political parties and blocs. The dilemma of the women's movement, i.e., of permeating mainstream discourses on gender and politics, is echoed in the experiences of women in other social movements who are in a precarious position of balancing their sectoral/ideological agenda with their assertions as women activists. That the women's movement is weak is an assertion that is saddled with expectations. The women's movement is said to have failed to "consolidate a constituency because of its sporadic and sparse organizing

and its low capacity to permeate the discourses of the wider social movements, in effect resulting in the marginalization of the women's agenda." #19 This is shown in the divisions within the once solid, concentric women's movement of the national democratic movement. Women are dispersed across different formations, sectors and blocs, making it difficult to locate and distinguish a discrete formation that may be considered as the women's movement" (Santos, Parreño, and Fabros 2007). This uneven development of the women's movement's theoretical understanding of the woman question was clearly reflected in its political practice and relationship with heterogeneous sectoral organizations and the nationalist movement as a whole, which has been changing through time. The unevenness of this development was due to a host of factors internal and external to the women's movement. The internal factors were (1) the varying degrees of political and feminist consciousness among the women active in the movement, and (2) the differing ideological tendencies among the various women's group formation. The external factors were (1) the variety of ideological tendencies and tradition within the Philippine left movement itself, and (2) the specific political conjuncture that shaped the direction of both the nationalist movement and the women's movement. (Angeles 1989)

There is indeed that persistent danger that the women's agenda would remain marginal and subsumed under the so-called hard, pressing, larger political issues. This kind of bind is reminiscent of the emergence of the women's movement and the conditions that prompted the assertion of a feminist stance in the face of then dominant party and movement discourses on political struggles.

Concluding Reflections So, here I am reflecting on herstory as a feminist, but more important, on the journeys that many women like me, have taken since the '60s and '70s The evolution of our feminisms and the development of the women's movements is to my mind, a mirror of the current state of the Left and other progressive social movements in the country. As feminist theorizing evolved, the various streams either converged or contradicted each other. The entry of postmodern theory and postfeminist discourse from the West has also affected the way that women in general (or at least those in the academe) and feminists in particular look at the world. One of the central arguments in postmodern theory is the supposed dispersed and fragmented centers of power, which in some ways counter

the Marxist tenet of capitalism as an overarching power center. While indeed women's experiences are shaped by race, class, ethnicity, religion, and even by the environment, there are seeming "universal" experiences that are felt by women across these dimensions of differences-violence in all its myriad forms and reproductive health problems, even if the concrete manifestations are specific to one's culture. I want to believe that I am still a Marxist at heart. But I have moved beyond its classic tenets, and along the way, have in fact questioned a number of its premises about labor value, surplus value, and liberation of women in a socialist state, among others. Like many women, young and old, I am still journeying, believing that women's situation all over the world, and especially in my own country, will change, and must change. History has shown that feminism alone will not change the world. But class struggle, as history has also shown, will not necessarily liberate women from the yokes of patriarchal oppression. I would like to end with a quote that sums up some of the dilemmas and challenges that Marxists and feminists face in the Philippines-and I suppose anywhere else where the need to understand Marxism and feminism is a necessity for a genuine and strategic social revolution: For those of us who have not given up on the grand narrative that is the socialist project, it is clear that the initial frameworks cannot simply be reaffirmed. Feminism offers a reformulation that makes sense of people's daily experience in the intimacy of their lives within the complex hegemonic structures of global oppression. Because feminists have posited the deeply intimate as an area for political action they bring new cogency to an evaluation of personal/individual failures. Contrary to hegemonic sexual morality, feminists refuse the policing of sexual behavior that is consensual and brings no harm to other intimate relations. Instead, they bring greater attention to behavior that feeds systems of capitalist and patriarchal oppression-elitist and sexist language, hooliganism, financial opportunism and all forms of human rights violations.20 Long accused of being "divisive" feminists invest in a politics of diversity that does not require strict faithfulness to ideological lines and a central command structure to achieve mutually agreed upon and discrete political ends. This further argues for a more inclusive view of what constitutes transformative practice. Another interpretation of the "personal is political" is that we must revalue individual practice when done in contestation of hegemonic power... Large numbers and unified organizational structures do not necessarily ensure the validity of a particular organization or activity. Socialist feminism views the capacity to break away from

References Abao, Carmel V., and Elizabeth U. Yang, n.d. Brief history of the Filipino women's struggle for participation in politics. http://library.fes.de/fulltext/iez/ 01109004.htm (retrieved March 6, 2008). Aguilar, Delia D. 2006. Current challenges to feminism: theory and practice. http:// mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aguilar181006.html (accessed October 8, 2009). Angeles, Leonora. 1989. Feminism and nationalism: The discourse on the women question and politics of the women's movement in the Philippines. MA thesis, Department of Political Science, University of the Philippines. Center for History and New Media. n.d. Women in world history. http:// chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/p/122.html (accessed October 9, 2009). Davies, Miranda, ed. 1983. Third world, second sex: Women's struggles and national liberation. Quoted in D. Aguilar, Current challenges to feminism: theory and practice. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aguilar181006.html (accessed October 8, 2009). Estrada-Claudio, Sylvia (Sunny Lansang]. 1991. Gender issues in revolutionary praxis. Debate: Philippine Left Review (September): 46. Estrada-Claudio, Sylvia, and Aida Santos. 2006. The women's movement(s) and social movements: Conjunctures and divergences. Paper presented at a Broad Left Conference, National Capital Region, Cavite. Kruks, Sonia, Rayna Rapp, and Marilyn B. Young, ed. 1989. Promissory notes: Women in the transition to Socialism. Quoted in D. Aguilar, Current challenges to feminism: theory and practice. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ aguilar181006.html (accessed October 8, 2009). Santos, Aida. 1984. Do women really hold up half the sky? Notes on the women's movement in the Philippines. Manila, Philippines: GABRIELA Proceedings, First National Assembly. Santos, Aida, and Nancy Endrinal Parreño. 2007. Women in politics in the Philippines an overview. A report by the Women's Education, Development, Productivity and Research Organization (WEDPRO) in collaboration with the Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD). Santos, Aida F., Nancy Endrinal Parreño, and Alinaya Fabros. 2007. Strengthening women's participation in politics and governance- "Bringing back politics into the Philippine women's engagement." Reflection and insights on the status and directions of women's political participation: Re-imagining women's movements and struggles in conversations with women. A collaborative project of WEDPRO and IPD.http://ipdprojects. org/cplg/pdf/women%20in%20politics_ with%20case%20studies_final%20report.pdf (accessed October 8, 2009). Sison, Jose Maria. 2008. Uphold the militant tradition of international women's movement. http://twincities.indymedia.org/2008/aug/uphold-militanttradition-international-womens-movement (accessed October 9, 2009). Woods, Alan. 2001. Marxism versus feminism-The class struggle and the emancipation of women. http://www.marxist.com/marxism-feminism-classstruggle-emancipation-women.htm (accessed October 9, 2009).

Marxism and Civil Society: The Uneasy Encounter Armando Malay Jr.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. Marx: The German Ideology

Viewed against the backdrop of the exalted events that are the nineteenth century Philippine Revolution and the two Edsa uprisings, the present impasse between the incumbent regime and its various adversaries seems to be an episode that is singularly out of place, if not frankly antithetical to the codified discourse. To be sure, the closure to the conflict still has to negotiate its way to its more or less final form (if at all: and by then it might be anticlimactic), but already clouds of doubt are looming across the still blank page of the national narrative-in-progress. One of these spoiler questions is "Whatever happened to so-called People Power?," the subtext being, "It worked wonderfully in 1986 and in 2001; why can't it now?" Others would be: "What would yet another Edsa say about the Filipinos' understanding of democracy?" and last but not least "Doesn't that perpetual call for an uprising make us the most revolutionary people on earth?" Ironic interpellations of the glorious narrative such as these are a specialty, it seems, of those who remain "Marxist," even if nominally so. Class analysis applied to concrete situations is an acquired reflex that is not so easy to shake off, even after the devaluation of one's preferred ideology. For those who still have that reflex, the revenge of civil society on the Marcos and Estrada regimes meant the reassertion of bourgeois hegemony at the expense of all other sociopolitical forces. Ideologues of the Edsa events are loath to highlight the class element, of course. Yet the evidence is clear: it was the withdrawal of allegiance of the armed forces from the incumbent regime, not civil society's indignant multitudes, which constituted the crucial factor in the events of 1986 and again in 2000. And today, ironically enough, the conventional knowledge is that a third Edsa in the series would create such anarchic conditions as to provoke a direct military takeover. Indeed, it is a perplexing situation for civil society's leaders to be in: to initiate reforms and to end up being sidetracked by the consequences of these same reforms. This discussion is thus a welcome opportunity to subject the Philippine civil society movement to a critical second look twenty years after its "shining moment." In keeping with the theme of the series, I will approach the subject from a monographic perspective, that of Marxism as conventionally

understood (although I might make a disclaimer here as to the representativity or authoritativeness of my own views), thus the importance of the nineteenth-century foundational texts bearing on the subject, and known to be of Marxian provenance. These are admittedly few and far between, but admit of no equivocation in their signification for their intended audience (it is important to note here that Filipino society, such as it was in the nineteenth century, was very presumably not on Marx's radar). For brevity's sake let us dispense with a review of the various meanings that the concept "civil society" has acquired or that have been assigned to it through the ages; thus I leave out the relevant theorizing of Rousseau, Burke, or the Scottish philosophers David Hume, Adam Ferguson, and Adam Smith. I wish to get straight to the point with Marx, his attitude toward the subject, and the consequences of this attitude on today's Left movement. But first let me call your attention to the fact that the German term equivalent to it, the term bürgerliche Gesselschaft as used by Marx, comes with a red flag for the English-speaking among us: "When the context is modern times, and therefore the bourgeois society of modern times, it inevitably tends to connote bourgeois society even when it is properly translated 'civil society"" (Draper 1977, 33). Germanophone readers of The Communist Manifesto, coming upon the term several times in the text, presumably knew what Marx and Engels were referring to. But times do change, words and names take on other significations, and to paraphrase Roland Barthes, the bourgeoisie is the class that hates to be identified by its given name (I will return to this later). Whatever be the reason, the newer term zivilgesellschaft was crafted in Germany, circa the 1990s: perhaps for the sake of clarity and unequivocation, or in any case less ideological ambiguity for those who consciously use it. Now for the mandatory quotes from Marx himself. His stand on civil society may (or may not) be responsible for certain of his present-day followers' prejudice, but in any event there is continuity in his antagonistic stance and theirs. Marx saw particular significance in a phenomenon which his contemporaries took for granted, viz. the coeval relationship between the evolution of "civil society and a particular European social class, hence with the relations of production germane to that social class": The term bürgerliche Gesselschaft emerged in the eighteenth century, when property relationships had already extricated themselves from the ancient and medieval communal society. Bürgerliche Gesselschaft as such only develops with the bourgeoisie; the social organization evolving directly out of production and commerce, which in all ages forms the basis of the state and of the rest of the ideological superstructure, has however always been designated by the same name¹ (German Ideology quoted in Draper 1977; my emphasis).

In a letter to Paul Annenkov, we have a determinist Marx who insists that there is no escape from the logic of historical materialism: Are men free to choose this or that form of society? By no means. Assume a particular level of development of men's productive forces and you will get a particular form of commerce, and consumption. Assume particular stages of development in production, commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social system, a corresponding organization of the family, of social estates, or of classes, in a word a corresponding civil society. Assume such a civil society and you will get a political system appropriate to it, a system which is only the official expression of civil society. (quoted in Conway 1987, 68)

Reflecting on an unrelated (on the face of it) subject such as the "Jewish question," Marx appears singularly obsessed with the linkage between the historical rise of the bourgeoisie and the genesis of civil society; the latter is repeatedly referred to as the "egoistic" and "individualistic" domain of business (Draper 1977, 32, 35, 115-19, 123-24). The twentieth-century philosopher Ralf Dahrendorf seconds Marx's opinion: the civil society project is constitutive of the world of the well-off, "well-integrated" bourgeoisie. Voluntary activities are not taken seriously by social outcasts. On the contrary, the well-educated and successful ones are those who actively participate in the life of civil society ("Die Zivilgesselschaft der Intergrierten": "Freiwillige Tagitkeiten warden von sozial Augeschlossenen nicht ernst genommen. Im Gegenteil:...sind es die dut Ausgebildeten und Erfolgreichen, die aktiv am Leben der Burgerlich gesselschaft teilnehmen"). (Dahrendorf 2000)

In much the same vein, the sociologist Robert Bellah has established that the correlation between participation in "voluntary community organizations" and higher income levels is higher in the United States than in other countries (Bellah et al. 1985, 167-95). So-called "corporate social responsibility" or "capitalism with a conscience" and similar slogans may strike the fancy of mainstream society, but the Marxists' bias-either acquired or instinctive-remains against the embedded class origins of bürgerlich Gesselschaft. The leading role of the country's biggest businesses in the League of Corporate Foundations and in the Philippine Business for Social Progress naturally only reinforces this prejudice. Indeed there is basis for the Scottish philosophers' view that civil society is inconceivable without the market-even though it is not exactly a creature of the market (Ignatieff 1995, 130). But more significant than the congenial relations between civil society and the market (one might even argue that today the latter is part and parcel

of the former) is the basic yin-yang pairing of civil society and the State, and the possible subordination of the latter to the former. Thus could Engels view "modern history," characterized by the economic emancipation of the bourgeoisie, as the era when civil society-"the realm of economic relations"-now figured as the decisive or determinant element over the State, which is the subordinate "political order" (Engels 1941, 52-53). Today, as the pace of globalization accelerates we witness the irrepressible urge of nascent civil societies-for example those of China and Vietnam-to adopt one version or another of the hegemonic economic system and its promise of individual freedoms, and we see the enthusiasm with which their respective States implement those free-market policies that will satisfy that urge; traditional or hard-line Marxists in such transitional societies must not feel very comfortable. In this regard, I wish to cite the perceptive observation of Gellner that the "central intuition" of Marxism is to say that civil society is a "fraud," which would, perhaps redundantly, explain why it remains a delicate issue in the two Asian countries I have just named, and why it is problematic for Latin American leftist regimes as we shall shortly see: The idea of a plurality of institutions-both opposing and balancing the state, and in turn controlled and protected by the state-is, in the Marxist view, merely the provision of a façade for a hidden and maleficent domination. It helps to reinforce such a domination by coercive institutions masquerading as benign, neutral or divinely ordained. (Gellner 1994, 1-2)

Roland Barthes, a non-Marxist like Gellner, stated the problematic of domination more accurately than did the Marxists (if at all): he defined the bourgeoisie as "the social class which does not want to be named" (Barthes 1982, 126). If it is to perpetuate its transparency, its innocence vis-à-vis its own power in political society (i.e., the State), the bourgeoisie would need an ideological camouflage so opaque as to be unnoticed in everyday life; the dense web that is civil society in liberal democracies fortuitously provides this cover. But obviously it takes a Marxist to notice the camouflage; whether he does something about it is another matter altogether.

Loaded Significations Since the eighteenth century the basic concept has remained the same in that civil society retains its status as that sphere of modern society which theoretically lies beyond, and in any case is not the sphere of political society (this latter being embodied by the State), but with a perceptible difference in praxis at the present time: on the one hand, the self-consciousness of its constituent parts, e.g., the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), to take

the latest and most prominent example, of "being" or "representing" civil society; and on the other, the trend for the corporate and philanthropic sectors, plus international finance agencies and Western governments, to institutionalize their participation as a "support group" in the civil society domain. The ideological motivation is apparent enough: the concept's latest resurgence stems from the Eastern European peoples' generally negative experience with the Soviet system, and among other things which explains their yearning for a space of thought and activity that is free, and distinct from, the totalitarian State machineries that had been imposed on their respective social formations. In short, what Marx and Engels rejected the Eastern Europeans desired; and this desire remained strong even if it meant the concomitant restoration of the capitalist system. Definitions of the term in question abound today, and as may be expected a number of these manifest the "spin" imparted to it by the definer For instance, a typical Philippine perspective is obvious in this: "[T]he totality of these self-conscious organizations that are accountable to a defined constituency, that contest the power of the State, and insist on a culture of involvement" (Constantino-David 1997, 21). A Singaporean definition wishes to inflect a "civic society" significance to the term: "Private, voluntary energy expended toward social and political development, for the public good" (Lee Tsao Yan 2000). For my part, I find the following definition useful in the modern Philippine setting: [T]hat set of diverse non-governmental institutions which is strong enough to counterbalance the State and, while not preventing the State from fulfilling its role of keeper of the peace and arbitrator between major interests, can nevertheless prevent it from dominating and atomizing the rest of society. (Gellner 1994, 5)

But a couple of normative qualifications to Gellner's definition need to be made in the interest of accuracy: a) In today's Philippine setting, these "nongovernmental institutions" must include the media, publishing houses, the churches and church organizations, the school system (including the University of the Philippines), the civic clubs, trade and professional organizations, volunteer organizations, legal political parties, trade unions, cooperatives and consumer groups, international solidarity groups, social movements, the so-called nonprofit organizations, the NGOs, the peoples' organizations (POS), as well as the business sector and last but not the least, individual intellectuals, with no visible institutional identity but exerting considerable influence on public opinion through their writings or utterances; b) The concept of "civil society" cannot be limited, as some well-meaning but uninformed quarters have done, to the self-styled anti-State sector alone, and in particular not to the NGO-PO sector alone in spite of the prominence accorded by Gellner to the "nongovernmental institutions." The function of

"counterbalancing the State, preventing it from dominating and a the rest of society," has not in any way implied an obligation for civil society atomizing to take an anti-State or even antigovernment stance. For example, as developments over the past several years have shown, Philippine civil society has either refused, or failed, to take a monolithically articulated position over the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) regime's different policies (or absence of policy). In the wake of the 2005 electoral scandal, GMA's highly. placed female supporters appropriated for themselves the fashionable term "women of civil society" in their full-page manifestoes of support for her beleaguered presidency. The term was neither inappropriate nor inaccurate; and to its credit the opposite camp of civil society did not raise the issue of infringement of copyright. Some centrist NGOs promote the idea of "engaging with the State," even if only tactically, and acquiesce to the broad objectives of State development plans (all post-martial law visions of progress being given the benefit of the doubt by mainstream society). Controversial deals such as the Poverty Eradication and Alleviation Certificates (PEACE) Bonds issue in 2001 only serve to illustrate, from the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint, the basic meeting of the minds between the State and civil society. It is also a well-known fact since Edsa1986 that leaders of NGOs and other civil society organizations (CSOs) are co-opted by the State, and thereafter have rejoined the ranks of civil society; their "values" before, during, and after their stint as cabinet members surely did not undergo a sea change. Otherwise, Gellner's "neutral" definition would not be found objectionable by fair-minded Marxists. But the difficulty for them, and in particular for the Leninist variety, is not the epistemological aspect of civil society; it is what its consequences portend for their revolutionary project. Civil society is at best, for the Marxist-Leninist Left, a shield against a repressive State; at worst, a fraud according to Gellner as we have seen, in other words a counter-revolutionary buffer objectively protecting the State, whether it be repressive or liberal. In this regard, it would probably suffice to recall Louis Althusser's famous concept of Ideological State Apparatuses (family, media, churches, schools, in short an abbreviated version of civil society), which may be taken as his grudging acknowledgment of the bourgeois State's control of the cultural superstructure, but which the Left must therefore contest and challenge. Antonio Gramsci's (1971, 238) celebrated quotation on the matter reaffirms the Marxist perspective on the state-civil society dialectic as refurbished by Gellner: In Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between the State and civil society... when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks.

The warfare metaphor is perhaps unavoidable, but Gramsci's point is precisely not about the use of military coercion: civil society has to do with the persuasive cultural structures, norms, and principles of the "soft power," of the "common sense" bestowed by the dominant class on the rest of society. The solid defenses protecting the supreme class authority and claim to legitimacy of a given social formation are in reality the ensemble of the institutions whose cultural values are consensually and unquestioningly accepted by the dominated classes; this is tied up to Gramsci's other key idea, hegemony. Bolshevik-style revolution, in effect, is next to impossible in a social formation that happens to have a civil society, and the more highly developed the latter is, as a function of its bourgeois armature's consensus-building power, the less feasible that revolution becomes. On the other hand, an "Edsa revolution" (if this is not an oxymoron) is possible in a social formation where civil society's ideological fortresses and earthworks are robust enough to protect, not the government whose corruption, abuse of power, ineptitude, etc., are precisely endangering the State, but the State itself. But in reality, as documented evidence has shown, it has been the military and police forces' position (whether of support, of neutrality, or of hostility) vis-à-vis the regime that has been the determinant in the final resolution of the crisis. In 1986 and again in 2001, the accretive actions of civil society provided the impetus, but it generated no critical tipping point until the last ramparts of the State-its mandated instruments of coercion, to be precise- took upon themselves the responsibility of protecting the State from violence, anarchy, and civil war. Each time, the "Edsa revolutions" have left the radical Leftists holding the bag; thus their guarded, if not outright, hostile attitude toward the nonmilitary guardians of the fortresses and earthworks. In Latin America, the same hostility is manifested by radical parties or movements toward their respective civil societies, even if the latter may include centrists or left-of-center elements. It is not accidental that these moderate oppositionists constitute natural targets of Western philanthropic programs, or more or less covert assistance. Thus, there is the populist Hugo Chávez regime's crackdown on Venezuela's sociedad civil, which he has accused of, among other alleged crimes, accepting funds from the American organization National Endowment for Democracy for the purpose of educating the citizenry on electoral reforms. The case of Cuba's sociedad civil is more complicated, because the Castro regime both scorns and recuperates the concept. This it does by a) distinguishing the "point of view of the old materialism," allegedly being that of civil society, from "the new materialism" which has a discursively different approach, that of "human society or humanized socialization," while b) affirming that there is a Cuban civil society, but one which is redefined to suit the regime's tastes, i.e., being

a complement, and not counteracting the State... Where can anyone find a written or oral statement that tells (sic) in order for organizations of a civil society to be independent, they should confront or oppose the government of their country? This is of course necessary, in the case of plutocratic societies as the North American, but not needed in the scene (sic) of a popular democracy as the Cuban society. (Fornieles 2004, 2, 7-8)

However, the author's representation of congenial State-civil society relations in communist Cuba relies on the existence of such oxymoronic State-organized CSOs as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the José Marti Pioneers, the Cuban Women's Federation, the Petty Farmers Association, etc., totaling some 2,000 "nongovernment organizations" in all (Fornieles 2004, 5-6). This claim obviously aims to refute that of the anti- Castro exiles in Miami, who identify themselves as the real Cuban civil society-albeit one functioning in the North American state; and also that of the few dissidents either imprisoned or effectively muzzled in Cuba.

Mass Media's Role Civil society's twin discourses are a public relation man's dream: the first is the verbal arena where the "clash" or "free market of ideas," "democratic debate," pluralism, diversity, responsible citizenship, and other discursive practices of liberal democracy (1 include rallies, marches, hunger strikes) regularly and even routinely take place, all in the spirit of gentlemanly t cacophonous give-and-take; in the process defusing political tensions and accessorily upholding the superiority of peaceful struggle. The second is the do-gooder sphere where nongovernmental or private initiatives for specific sectors or for the general community's welfare are undertaken; this privileges the ethic of "social capital," self-help and autonomous community action (but this could be per se reflective of the State sector's incapacity to guarantee basic social services). Activities here include all sorts of cause advocacy; lobbying in government ministries; providing shelter and medical care to street children, battered women, etc.; helping in disaster relief, and so on. Especially in turbulent times the first aspect gets more public attention, for obvious reasons. The second aspect, which is about the humdrum activity of community service, livelihood projects, networking, fundraising, etc., is paid attention to only as "human interest" stories, or as written up by a columnist or an editorial writer, when the press wishes to prove that it is not always in search of sensationalism. Rightly or wrongly, this bias indicates how our idea of "significant" or "relevant" is shaped by the mass media. But the latter also happens to be the integrative factor, arguably even the

bedrock, of Philippine civil society: whether execrated or adored, the mass media are indispensable to the democratic order that most literate Filipinos seem to prefer. Indeed it epitomizes the very spirit of civil society: the glowing terms with which Philippine civil society is described also apply to the press, which has the flattering reputation of being the "freest in Asia, if not the world." Whether that is true or not, there is little doubt about the fact that without the media networks there would be no civil society at all in this country. There would be lacking the public-service ethos, the stance of "speaking truth to power," and above all the information function that is the oxygen of an enlightened citizenry. In the larger scheme of things, the mass media function as the all-around communications grid for the civil society that it both serves and is served by. Through the media, CSOs and opinion makers transmit their messages to the State, to the public at large and to each other, and often these messages are magnified, diminished, or distorted by the very media that are their vehicle; in turn the media are the screen on which the strengths or weaknesses of civil society's actors are projected. In any event, "making a statement" for good or for ill (and it is axiomatic in show business that there is no such thing as bad publicity) is impossible without the media, especially in the context of cut-throat competition among media outlets. This has certain consequences for the civil society movement. The opposition's frequent use of expensive full-or half-page ads in the bigger broadsheets to publicize a stand (e.g., against charter change; corruption, etc.) which the media would play up anyway as a matter of course, indicates that there is a sentiment that the mere act of speaking out against real or perceived wrongdoing, injustice, etc., no longer suffices to catch the public's attention. The progovernment sector itself has no qualms about taking out full-page ads to drum up support for charter change, for instance. In a related development, opposition groups, whether of the anti- regime, or antipollution, or anti-International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank policies variety, etc., are increasingly resorting to catchy gimmicks like costumes, masks, body paint, parodies of beauty contests, etc., in the service of their respective causes, which ensure better media coverage, and, it is assumed, the public's attention, than a mere press conference does. This obsession with novelty reflects the local media's general preference for the sensational and the colorful, and insofar as the media also contribute to the public discourse, this relationship may be said to be self-sustaining. But the ever-rising levels of mediatization, and of the popular-culture variety at that, may also have neutralized the consciousness-raising effect of these activities. In the "society of the spectacle" that is now ours, where the State propaganda machine itself resorts to well-choreographed and stylized representations of the rulers' benevolent caring for each and every citizen, and, on the part of the media, a quasi-mandatory coverage of these displays of paternalism, there has been a blurring of Left, Right, and Center social discourses. But a

discernible pattern emerges from a larger view of the mosaic: it is the consensual acceptance of the necessity for a public airing of differences and contradictions among the "stakeholders" of the social order. In a society like the Philippines where nonconfrontational arrangements constitute the norm, the mainstream media and popular forms of mass culture render the "clash of ideas" less acrimonious, more palatable. Popular entertainment's anesthetic effects desensitize the population to the myriad problems besetting the society. Indeed the mass culture itself is part of civil society to the extent that its cumulative effects influence mass opinion and behavior vis-à-vis the established order. But it will not do for a Marxist group or movement to shun or ignore the so-called masses' tastes, thus the Left's quasi-obligation to "go down to their level" and only at that point attempt to demonstrate that theirs is only a "false consciousness," if at all. There is also the need, felt in some circles, to demonstrate that being Marxist-Leninist need not be synonymous to being "grim and determined." If the objective is to win over or at least catch the attention of the uncommitted, there is no question that such gimmicks have to be used (and in fact there was never any doubt in the Left, starting in the 1970s, about this). In the process, the question of "who is co-opting whom?" may legitimately be asked; for unlike the literary arts, show business in the Philippines only rarely has to do with raising political consciousness or exposing uncomfortable truths. The point is that, from a Marxist-Leninist point of view, engaging with contemporary civil society and its praxis entails recuperation of the same ideological tools as those used by the supposed class enemy; and the cultural hegemony of the latter, in a market-driven setting, is such that there can be no illusions about media-oriented civil society's revolutionary potential. The Frankfurt School theoreticians are not part of the local radicals' required reading that I know of, but the "attitude" of the latter betrays a gut instinct for the issues raised by Adorno, et al. If the mass media sector constitutes the invisible, but no less ideological, armature of the ruling class, what about the so-called serious media which is still embedded therein-the no-frills reporting, sober editorials, and columnists' think pieces, even the letters to the editor that afford every literate Filipino a free tribune to hold forth on issues of the day; and certain talk shows where all shades of the sociopolitical spectrum are given their chance to air their views, no matter how contrary to that of the mainstream? The serious media certainly exists, and it is surely to the society's credit, but in its overall impact it too plays second fiddle to the infotainment and showbiz ethos that permeates the hegemonic culture. Certainly no-nonsense papers (e.g., BusinessWorld) have no way of making it to the broadsheets' top five list; and the tabloidization of the news (or what passes as news) as purveyed by the biggest-circulation daily, sends the clear message that it's not anymore what happens that counts, but how it's said to have happened, and to whom.

In the overheated atmosphere of post-EDSA national politics, there is an obligation to broadcast or print everything that the president or the presidency says or does; the same is not always true for the utterances or acts of the opposition, thus the necessity to sensationalize the news, which in the final analysis seems to suit both parties (opposition and media) concerned. In short, the mainstream media as hub and integrative element of civil society wield great political and cultural power, but any initiative in their power to institute radical sociopolitical change is neutralized by the entertainment values that they must perforce purvey in order to retain their practitioners' respective shares of the market. This is not even to mention the twin problems of the shortening attention span of the public and the increasing trivialization of information, thanks largely to the proliferation of mobile communications technologies (especially the cellular phone) and the telecom networks' endless purveyance of marketing gimmicks. And inasmuch as the civil society movement itself is an active participant in (at times, even the promoter of) the "society of the spectacle," beyond its own ranks it can only play to that segment of the public that notices serious issues only if these are packaged in an eye-catching manner.

Unchanging Discourse The local Marxist-Leninists themselves have settled for an attitude of wary acceptance of the need to engage with civil society, but have drawn the line at wholeheartedly engaging the State (except in military encounters of course). This stance of pragmatism about the first and intransigence about the second is in keeping with the unchanging Marxist-Leninist discourse about the semi-colonial, semi-feudal society; but also because in the final analysis they have no choice but to "deal with" and "get over" the existence of this more-than-a-century old sociopolitical movement which is even older than the Marxist-Leninist tradition. However, "dealing with" civil society in a serious way entails playing down the class struggle, revising the surrounding-the-cities strategy, and in general adopting a less adversarial approach to the established order. That this change of pace came about in a contingent manner-i.e., via the Aquino assassination-makes its future direction less certain for the Left. As one might expect, any encounter between radical and bourgeois discourses is an uneasy one; the unease is more keenly felt on the side of the stranger to legal or parliamentary struggle. The acid test for the Left's united front came in the wake of the Aquino assassination, with the revival of civil society. Unused, through the years of martial law, to striking deals with a bourgeois opposition that was growing more and more self-confident, the radical movement could only cling to the received knowledge of Leninist

and Maoist united-front praxis. The mistrust of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois leadership in the tactical alliance against the Marcos regime was already apparent when the Left was strong, but became unmanageable when the "allies" started to dominate the braintrust of the open urban struggle. For its part the press now paid as much if not more attention to the ad hoc organizations put up by the mediagenic bourgeois opposition (Manindigan, Bishops and Businessmen's Conference, Justice for Aquino Justice for All, Kongreso ng Mamamayang Pilipino, Radio Veritas, etc.) than to the Left's groups, more at home with guerilla tactics of the propaganda war. A sudden surge of middle-roaders' interest in and sympathy for the Left could not prevent the persistence of hardline reflexes. The eventual breakup of the united front, even before Edsa, precipitated a further cleavage between radicals and moderates (later baptized, for convenience, "RAs" for reaffirmationists and "RJS" for rejectionists, respectively). Not coincidentally, the RJS banner their pro-civil society position as an ideological marker. During the post-Edsa fallout in the ranks of the Left, the RAS still had a kind but patronizing word for certain NGOS outside of their ambit: those which specialized in lobbying and monitoring congressmen were considered as having "some value" but were warned against the "pitfalls of reformism and parliamentarism" (Banaag 1988, 20, 28). But the RJs' increasingly active role in "engaging with the State," denouncing the RAS and lobbying to limit or cut off funding to RA-connected NGOs infuriated the CPP leadership. When the buzzword "civil society" could no longer be ignored by activist circles in the 1990s, the party press dismissed it as so much "jargon" (exactly like the terms "sustainable development, democratization, environmentalism, genderism, ethnicism") allegedly favored by the party's adversaries situated left-of-center, the latter being defined as "an array of anti-communist petty bourgeois grouplets that describe themselves as Trotskyites, urban insurrectionists, popular democrats, social democrats, Gorbachovites and so on" (Liwanag 1992). Later in the polemic, civil society was assigned a more specific nomenclature: a "reformist slogan," promoted by NGOS "funded by imperialist governments, UN agencies and private firms or charities of the monopoly capitalists, bourgeois parties and religious institutions" (Communist Party of the Philippines 2005a). In particular the party has demonized the World Social Forum, which is allegedly "imperialist- funded" and "dedicated to reformism and improving the imperialist system" (Communist Party of the Philippines 2005b). Ideologically-anchored critiques of NGOs are not unique to the Philippines, to be sure (Chabal and Daloz 1999; Petras 1999; Morris-Suzuki 2000).

Several questions remain to be posed about the civil society-Left nexus, the answers to which should provide a clue to the character of future vicissitudes within the Left. Assuming that for Marxists, civil society is but a "façade for a hidden and maleficent domination" (Gellner 1994); a counter-revolutionary machination inspired or invented by the ruling class; assuming further that the movement hiding behind this "reformist slogan" is not going to disappear on its own volition; then, in the Philippines, what could the future hold for the revolutionary project? Over the past twenty years or so we have seen the famed voluntarism of the radical Left standing up pretty well against the odds, and has even probably grown stronger now that its ranks have been rid of the dissident reformists. But there are limits to what a voluntarist urge to power can accomplish in the face of the post-Edsa society's objective conditions: the restoration of the formal institutions of democratic representation, a vigorous press largely left alone, a multiplicity of anesthetizing forms of popular and mass culture, increased integration into the hegemonic economic system, even the frustration with Edsa uprisings, etc.; the list is practically endless. The very fact that the Left engages with civil society at all indicates a desire not to be excluded from the national discourse; and yet, in any event, is it not part of civil society to the extent that it contributes (even through its dissenting views) to that discourse? A way out of this dilemma is martial law again, of course. But martial law is not for the Left to declare, and it would not be politic for it to be perceived as hoping for this convenient solution. Moreover, in that case there is a trick up the State's sleeve: it is to enforce martial law, selectively, gradually but exploiting the element of surprise, fielding assassins or kidnappers in civilian attire, refraining from closing down parliament or muzzling the media, religious institutions, etc., and above all refraining from officially imposing it. According to the media commentators, this is precisely what is happening at present. The uncertain nature of a de facto but undeclared martial law situation could be the reason why civil society has largely failed to register its indignation. From this one might infer that it would probably take another, this time real, experience of martial law to rouse civil society to action. Assuming it will be so roused, why would it take such extreme circumstances for it to move? What about that segment of the Left which acquiesces to the idea and the discursive practices of civil society, but does not at all construe it as a fraud, and instead prescribes it as a panacea for virtually all problems of the moment? We might have here material for an update of cognitive-dissonance theory: either unaware, or more astutely, aware of Marx's ideas on the matter but sending the message that they no longer subscribe or never did subscribe to Marxism, these Leftists now endorse the same formula that the IMF, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, United States Agency

for International Development, etc., are endorsing. Is it possible, however, that these financial institutions (for that matter, the Philippine State) do not know what they are doing when they underwrite the civil society project, usually bundling it with the adoption of free-trade policies, in such a concerted manner? In the same vein, are civil society's objectives always skewed in favor of the bourgeoisie, or can they be subverted in favor of the Left's programme? If so, under what conditions? Finally, there is the matter of the "weak State," which allegedly accounts for the poor performance of our democratic institutions. When NGOs and other civil society organizations supplement or replace the delivery of basic services to the population, functions which are supposed to be discharged by the State, do not they in effect weaken the prerogatives of the latter? The present fetishization of "strong civil society" not only fosters the illusion that the Arroyo regime can be forced to give more concessions to the "masses" than previous regimes already have. It could in fact lead to the de facto abdication by State organs of their respective mandates, in favor of foreign volunteer organizations or what is essentially the same thing, Philippine NGOs which, having no official mandate either, feel neither responsibility nor desire to substitute for the State machinery in its vital functions; whereas the urgent need, it seems to me, is for a responsive and accountable State that the citizenry can identify with. Civil society can put off its further growth for later, having outpaced the government's performance for so long. But if it inhibits the growth process of the State through unchecked colonization of the latter's prerogatives, the result could very well be a permanent disequilibrium between an underdeveloped State and an overdeveloped private sector. In which case, why does one need a State for, and why pay taxes at all?

Notes 1. Incidentally, Engels differs from his collaborator, but on the minor matter of "dating" the advent (and not the emergence of the term) of civil society-in Engel's words, "the social order that came in with the sixteenth century" (Engels 1967, 193). 2. Cf. Engels 1941, 84, which says: "The standpoint of the old materialism is 'civil society'; the standpoint of the new is human society or socialized humanity" (emphasis in original).

References Banaag, Julian. 1988. Questions concerning analysis of the situation and the party's tactics. In The Filipino people will triumph!: Conversations with Filipino revolutionary leaders. Manila: Central Publishing House.

Barthes, Roland. 1982. Myth today. In A Barthes rader, ed. Susan Sontag, 93-149. New York: Hill and Wang. Bellah, Robert, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swindler, and Steven M. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. New York: Harper and Row. Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). 2005a. Continue to Intensify Nationwide Tactical Offensives and Further Strengthen All Revolutionary Forces, December 26. http://www.philippine revolution.net/cgi-bin/statements/stmts.pl? date=051226;author=cc;lang=eng. 2005b. Our Current International Work and Internationalist Tasks, May 2.http://ndfp.net/joomla/index.php option=com_content&task=view&id =473&Itemid=73 & limit=1&l imitstart=2. Chabal, Patrick and Jean Pascal Daloz. 1999. L'Afrique est partie! Du désordre comme instrument politique. Paris: Editions Economica. Constantino-David, Karina. 1997. Intra-civil society relations: An overview. In Civil society making civil society. Vol 3 of Philippine democracy agenda, ed. Miriam Coronel Ferrer, 21-50. Quezor /: Third World Studies Center. Conway, David, 1987. A farewell to Marx. New York: Penguin Books. Dahrendorf, Ralf. 2000. Die zivilgesselschaft der intergrierten. Merkur H, November. S.1065. Draper, Hal. 1977. State and bureaucracy. Vol. 1 of Karl Marx's theory of revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press. Engels, Friedrich. 1941. Dialectical materialism. In Ludwig Feuerbach and the outcome of classical German philosophy, ed. Clemens Palme Dutt, 42-62. New York: International Publishers. 1967. Socialism: Utopian and scientific. In Engels: Selected writings, ed. William Otto Henderson. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Fornieles, Luz Marina. M. 2004. Is there a civil society in Cuba? yes... and it is a socialist one! National Information Agency, May. http://www.cuba nembassy.org.gy/docs/cuba/ls%20there%20a%20Civil%20Society%20in%20 Cuba.pdf Gellner, Ernest. 1994. Conditions of liberty: Civil society and its rival. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. State and civil society. In Selections from prison notebooks. Trans, and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers. Ignatieff, Michael. 1995. On civil society. Foreign Affairs, March-April. Lee Tsao Yan. 2000. Foreword. In State-society relations in Singapore. Ed. Gillian Koh and Ooi Giok Ling, v. USA: Oxford University Press. Liwanag, Armando. 1992. Reaffirm our basic principles and rectify errors. Kasarinlan: A Philippine Quarterly of Third World Studies 8 (1): 96-157. Morris-Suzuki, Teresa. 2000. For and against NGOs: The politics of the lived world. New Left Peview (March-April): 63-84. Petras, James. 1999. NGOs: In the service of imperialism. Journal of Contemporary Asia 29 (4): 429-40.

The"Chinese Question": A Marxist Interpretation Caroline S. Hau

If Marxism's principal legacy to the intellectual debates and political struggles of the twentieth century consists of its two-pronged analysis of capitalism and advocacy of revolution, no study can afford to overlook the role played by the "Chinese" in the history, theory, and practice of Marxism¹ in the Philippines. On the one hand, the highly visible position of the "Chinese" in the economy makes the "Chinese" the personification of capital in the Philippines, effectively conflating ethnicity and class and thereby complicating class-based approaches to understanding and transforming Filipino society. On the other hand, "Chinese" historical participation in the Filipino revolutionary movement and the contested place of Maoism and China in the development of Filipino communism are integral aspects of the Philippine Marxist experience. Capitalist or communist, "Chinese" is above all a category marking a long history of social divisions. Because terms like sangley, chino, intsik, huaqiao, huayi, huaren, lanlang, Filipino Chinese, Chinese Filipino, ethnic Chinese, and Tsinoy are rooted in specific political, economic, social, discursive, and ideological contexts and encompass a broad, heterogeneous range of politico-legal, economic, and cultural references (from dynastic to national to local identification, from sojourners to permanent residents to citizens to "illegal aliens," from traders to laborers, from immigrants to second- and third-generation Filipinos, from derogatory to positive connotations), they are neither interchangeable nor unchanging. "Chinese" and its corollary term "Chineseness" are not essential signifiers of identity, but historically contingent (self-)inscriptions of bodies by state policies and ideologies, by institutions, rituals, languages, ideas, initiatives, adaptations, and strategies of survival. What concerns this essay is not the question of what or who counts as "Chinese," but how it is that a specific social terrain enabled specific individuals or groups at specific moments in history to be marked, and to claim themselves, as specifically "Chinese." In this terrain, colonialism and nationalism have been instrumental in attempting to fix the "Chinese" as a problematic "foreign" element in Philippine life (Hau 2000, 133-76). The "Chinese Question" is, therefore, nothing but the ensemble of social practices-institutionally entrenched as well as everyday patterns of thought, behavior, organization, and action-that construct the "Chinese," whether concept or social reality, as alien to the Filipino community.

Philippine Marxism's productive dialogue with anticolonial nationalism has involved grappling with exclusivist nationalist constructions-not all of them emanating only from the state-of the "Chinese" as aliens, as alienating capital, and as alien revolutionaries located outside the bounds of the national-popular community. Although characterized by a variety of responses to and positions on this issue, Marxist approaches to the "Chinese Question" have generally been progressive and at least one of the communist parties has explicitly theorized and repudiated anti-Chinese racism in its key documents. The internationalism advocated by Marxism not only has the potential to interrogate some of the basic assumptions of nationalist discourse and open the nation to revaluation and reinvention (Hau 2004, 15-62). It can also provide a cogent critique of contemporary state, academic, and popular reliance on cultural-essentialist and ahistorical explanations in accounting for the place of the "Chinese" in Philippine society. At the same time, a materialist reframing of the "Chinese Question" can potentially enrich Philippine Marxism by refining key debates on base and superstructure through an analysis of the fraught relationship between ethnicity and class. It can also help write a more nuanced history of the communist movement by illuminating some of the tensions that underlie the intellectual and organizational divisions within the Philippine Left.

"Jews of the Orient" Attempts at a materialist reframing of the "Chinese Question" must contend with the fact that there is a centuries-long history of overlapping representations of the Jews in Europe and the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Direct and indirect comparisons of Jews and Chinese occur in western philosophy, literature, and psychology (Geller 1994, 508). Not all representations of Jews and Chinese draw on analogies in their circumstances and characteristics. Voltaire for example viewed the money-loving Jewish middleman as the opposite, in civilizational terms, of the enlightened Chinese mandarin official while Herder argued that Chinese culture was still in its "boyhood" and was therefore incompatible with advanced western culture (Geller 1994, 508-09). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, western comparisons of Jewish and Chinese dwelled on their inherited "national character," physical features, and commercial functions (Geller 1994, 508). Western colonialism in Asia framed the "Chinese Question" in terms of the Chinese's problematic position within the colonial economies by way of analogy with the situation of the Jews in Europe. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Dutch and English travelers to Bantam (West Java in the East Indies, or what is now Indonesia) were already claiming that Chinese were "almost exactly like Jews... liking to pay close attention to

any profit" and "rob[bing] them [the local population] of their wealth and send[ing] it for China" (Geller 1994, 512-13). But by far the most systematic attempt at framing the "Chinese Question" via the "Jewish Question" would be undertaken by a "native" of Southeast Asia. Anti-Semitism and anti-Sinicism converged in the essay "The Jews of the Orient" (1914) by the Western-educated Vajiravudh of Siam (later King Rama VI, reigned 1916-1925). In the familiar language of exclusionary nationalism, Vajiravudh denounced Chinese "allegiance to their race, taking advantage of all the benefits of foreign citizenship but giving no loyalty in return," sense of "racial superiority" and refusal of assimilation, "acute... moneymaking instinct" and "devotion to money," and declared that the Chinese, "no more Buddhist than are the Jews Christian," are "aliens by birth, by nature, by sympathy, by language, and finally by choice" and "bound one day to come into bloody conflict with the inhabitants" (quoted in Geller 1994, 514-15; Tejapira 1997, 77). Vajiravudh laid down the conditionality of Chinese assimilation: One is either a Chinaman or a Siamese; no one could be both at the same time, and people who pretend that they are so are apt to be found to be neither. Such people, like the Chameleon, change their colour to suit their surrounding; when they come among us they are Siamese, but when they go among the Chinese they become Chinese, while many of them also owe their allegiance to some European Power.... We can only count as Siamese those who have definitely decided to adopt the Siamese nationality, cutting themselves quite completely from all Chinese association. They must throw their lots in with us absolutely before we accept them as one of us. We cannot accept those who call themselves "Chino-Siamese" as Genuine Siamese. (Tejapira 1997, 77, 78)

Spanish treatment of the Chinese paralleled their methods of dealing with "alien" minorities in Spain, such as the Jews and, later, the Moors (Horsley 1950, 7-8). Viewed as infidels who performed crucial economic functions in the China trade and provisioning of Spanish settlements, Chinese merchants and artisans were hispanized, segregated, expulsed, and massacred, alternately favored and mistrusted, and subjected to economic and political regulations that restricted their residence and movement. Nevertheless, what is noteworthy about Spanish colonial attitudes toward the Chinese is that while the Spanish used their practical experience with the Jews and Moors to deal with the Chinese, and while their verbal characterizations of the Chinese echoed their representations of Jews and Moors (accusing these groups, among other things, of sodomy, religious contamination, political conspiracy, breeding in large numbers, and eating too much!) (Horsley 1950, 216), they did not for the most part establish

explicit and systematic conceptual linkages and differentiations between the aliens in their colony and aliens in their own country. This theoretical missing link accounts for the ambiguous status of the Chinese in the Spanish colonial system: depending on the interests of particular administrations, the Spanish in some matters (such as right to movable property and subject to Spanish commercial courts) treated the Chinese as foreigners and in others (such as taxation) as a "national minority" (Wickberg 1965, 157). The "Chinese Question" is to an important extent underpinned by this fundamental ambiguity. The most important parallels between the Chinese and Jewish Questions, particularly as institutional and ideological anti-Semitism intensified in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe alongside the rise of nationalist anti-Chinese sentiments in Southeast Asia, center on three points: economic visibility, political vulnerability, and cultural "difference." However, crucial differences exist in the historical situation and position of Chinese and Jews. Unlike the "Chinese Question," the "Jewish Question" had often been conceived as a religious opposition between Christianity and Judaism. Moreover, unlike China, until the mid-twentieth century, no extant territorial, proximate state acted as a frame of intellectual and practical reference for the Jewish diaspora. The Asian experience of neo/colonialism constructs the Chinese, like the Jews, as an object of class resentment because, as those who have benefited economically from the system, they come to stand in for the evils of the present social system. Like the Jews, they are objects of nationalist distrust because they are seen to be "different" and to resist being integrated into the state project of creating a "national culture." They are, like the Jews, viewed as purveyors of socialist ideas and activism. But the Chinese also embody, by virtue of their history of interactions with the neo/colonial state, the familiar but "foreign" trace of the colonial history of the nation-state. Notwithstanding these differences in the history of the Chinese and Jews, Marxist engagements with the Jewish Question-however few and scattered-offer a perspective from which to examine some of the key assumptions that underlie the "Chinese Question" by showing the extent to which economic issues underpin the construction of "race" and racism. Though race and racism cannot be reduced to economics, the articulation of racial (and ethnic) identity and economics nevertheless constitutes the paradigm within or against which the Chinese Question has been posed (albeit in different historical contexts), and with which any discussion of the Chinese Question must perforce engage. Marx's "On the Jewish Question" (1843) intervenes in the debate on the clamor for acquisition of civic and political rights by European Jews. Criticizing Bruno Bauer's argument that the religion of the Jew constitutes the paramount obstacle to Jewish emancipation, Marx shows that Bauer confuses political and human emancipation because Bauer focuses

exclusively on religion, particularly the religious opposition between the Jews and the Christian state. Calling on the Jews to give up their religion and on everyone else to renounce all religion in general leaves the fundamental issue of the Jewish Question untouched. Citing the American case, Marx notes that there are states that have resolved the religious issue by making religion a private rather than public concern. Yet this secularizing of the religious question does not at all question the problematic nature of the state itself, in particular the fact that "the state can liberate itself from a constraint [for example, religion] without man being really liberated; that a state may be a free state without man himself being a free man" (Marx 1978, 32). As long as the state is founded on the presupposition of private property, even when it consigns issues of "birth, social rank, education, [and] occupation" to the nonpolitical domain of civil society, its formal recogni- tion of equality in law does not at all subject civil society and the "egoistic" individual to critique and transformation. Marx banishes the issue of religion by showing that Jews and Christians are in fact equivalent in their enthusiastic embrace of commercial values. If anything, the Jew's "distinctive place in civil society" serves only to "manifest in a distinctive way the Judaism of civil society" (Marx 1978, 50). In a move that has rendered Marx (himself Jewish) vulnerable to charges of anti- Semitism (Draper 1977, 591-608), he takes as his object the "everyday Jew" and deduces from it the "profane basis" of "practical" Judaism: "practical need," "self-interest," "huckstering," and "money" (Marx 1978, 48). Marx's identification of Judaism with what he would later call capitalism is aided by the fact that the German word for Judaism, Judentum, in nineteenth-century usage also denoted "commerce." His conclusion: "In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism" (Marx 1978, 49). If, as Etienne Balibar (1991b, 41) has argued, "[r]acism is a social relation, not the mere ravings of racist subjects," and racism combines both "misrecognition" and "a violent desire for immediate knowledge of social relations" (Balibar 1991a, 19), what needs to be analyzed is the structural position of Jews in Europe that accounts not only for the concentration of Jews in particular occupations (usury, trade, finance) but also their economic as well as cultural visibility. In a series of notebooks, collected and published under the title Grundrisse (1857-58) a century later, Marx himself provides a short but provocative discussion of "trading peoples" who occupy interstitial positions within precapitalist societies: "In antiquity, exchange value was not the nexus rerum; it appears as such only among the mercantile peoples, who had, however, no more than a carrying trade and did not, themselves, produce. At least this was the case with the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, etc. But this is a peripheral matter. They could live just as well in the interstices of the ancient world, as the Jews in Poland or in the Middle Ages. Rather, this world

itself was the precondition for such trading peoples. That is why they fall apart every time they come into serious conflicts with the ancient communities" (Marx 1973, 223). "Like the Jews within old Polish society or within medieval society in general, entire trading peoples, as in antiquity (and later on, the Lombards), can take up this position between peoples whose mode of production is not yet determined by exchange value as the fundamental presupposition" (Marx 1973, 253). It was the Polish Marxist Abram Leon's "The Jewish Question" (c. 1942, published 1946), written in the midst of the Holocaust, which sought an explanation for the current plight of the Jews in their historical past. Like Marx, he refused to make religion the central issue in analyzing the Jewish Question, advocating instead the "continuous interdependence between racial or national and class characteristics": the "preservation of the Jewish religion or nationality can be explained only by the 'real Jew, that is to say, by the Jew in his economic and social role." In his stringent critique of race theories, Leon argues that Jews "constitute historically a social group with a specific economic function. They are a class, or more precisely, a people- class" (emphasis in the original): The concept of class does not at all contradict the concept of people. It is because the Jews have preserved themselves as a social class that they have likewise retained certain of their religious, ethnic, and linguistic traits. (Leon 1946)

This identification of a class with a people is by no means unique to the Jews. "Social classes were then frequently distinguished by a more or less national or racial character." The advent of capitalism, however, not only dislodged the Jews from the "pores" of the feudal society, but also resulted in the social differentiation of the Jews. Moreover, capitalist expansion entailed not just conquest of foreign markets, but also struggle over the domination of the domestic market: Whereas the big bourgeoisie struggles furiously against its competitors on the foreign market, the petty bourgeoisie combats its competitors on the domestic market not a whit less fiercely. 'Racism' abroad is consequently accompanied by 'racism' at home... The primarily commercial and artisan character of Judaism, heritage of a long historical past, makes it Enemy Number One of the petty bourgeoisie on the domestic market [Racism] reflects the expansionist will of big capital. It expresses the hatred of the petty bourgeoisie for 'foreign' elements within the domestic market as well as its anticapitalist tendencies. (Leon 1946)

Leon addresses the issue of popular racism by theorizing it as a form of displacement, a deflection of social conflict away from their origins in exploitative capitalist relations onto the Jew as a people-class: [h]istorically, the success of racism means that capitalism has managed to channel the anticapitalist consciousness of the masses into a form that antedates capitalism and which no longer exists except in a vestigial state; this vestige is nevertheless still sufficiently great to give a certain appearance of reality to the myth. (Leon 1946; emphasis in the original)

The Alienation of the "Chinese" Merchant How useful are Marxist analyses for understanding the history of the Chinese in the Philippines? Chinese immigration was a direct consequence of colonialism and subject to colonial regulation. Spanish colonizers encouraged Chinese immigration in their effort to establish a colonial economy in the Philippines Edgar Wickberg (1965, 24) notes that patterns of immigration (mainly from Fujian Province) had "established certain occupations as 'Chinese' and made gravitation to them the line of least resistance." This cementing of occupation and ethnicity was characteristic of the three distinct economic systems in the colony-a "Western" one relying on the galleon commodity trade, a "native" one based on subsistence, provisioning, and the import of Chinese cloth and silver, and a "Chinese" one, which mediated the maritime trade between China and the Philippines, but was also involved in artisanry and provisioning within the Philippines. Wickberg argues that the "Chinese economy" acted as a link between the other two systems. The "Chinese" during this time was less a community than a group "with as much ties to non-Chinese as to Chinese" (Wickberg 1965, 41). The transformation of colonial Philippines into an exporter of raw materials and importer of foreign manufactures in the shadow of British hegemonic presence in the region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries forced the Spanish to ease some of their restrictions on Chinese residence and mobility. No longer confined to Manila, the Chinese scattered throughout the colony as part of a newly integrated, single economic system under which they functioned as wholesalers of imported goods, processors of Philippine produce, monopoly contractors and coolie brokers, laborers, provisioners, and direct importers and exporters (Wickberg 1965, 63). For most of the Spanish colonial period, Chinese traders could not be called "compradors" in the strict sense of the word because they operated on personal credit in their dealings with westerners, Spanish, and Filipinos, and were advanced cash or credit without security by Western business

firms (Wickberg 1965, 80). As late as the 1850s, the scarcity of money forced abaca traders to rely on the barter system to exchange goods (Wickberg 1965, 97). Moreover, the capital base of the Chinese was smaller than that of Americans and Europeans in the Philippines (Cariño 2001, 104). Although Chinese dominated the retail trade, opposition to their "control" (though there is no reliable measure of the size of the Chinese share in the colonial economy, nor in contemporary economy) became a colony-wide issue only in the last fifty years of the Spanish rule. It was largely in reaction to this rising tide of anti-Sinicism, fanned by the Spanish to channel popular dissatisfaction away from Spanish rule onto a more pliable scapegoat, that made the Chinese conscious of themselves as a "foreign" community and as "national minority" (Wickberg 1965, 148-52). Drawing on their experience in regulating Chinese labor immigration in their own country, the Americans applied the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Philippines, restricting Chinese immigration to merchants and their immediate relatives. This served to drive the Chinese even more deeply into the mercantile niche (in 1930, Chinese controlled 90 percent of the retail trade) while creating the legal fiction that "all" Chinese immigrants were merchants. Operating mainly in the domestic market at a time when the Philippine economy was becoming increasingly tied to the U.S. market on a preferential basis (Wong 1999, 36, 53), Chinese merchants with their limited capital outlay, intensive labor input, small employment, and high liquidity faced rising competition from foreign (especially Japanese) and Filipino entrepreneurs and became visible targets of nationalist legislation. Far more crucially, their visibility as merchants also provoked popular nationalist opposition. What accounts for the visibility of the merchant?⁷ The merchant represents the point at which money appears and disappears in the presence of ordinary people. He mediates between the process of transforming money into commodities and vice versa and thus fulfills one specific function within the social division of labor that characterizes the socioeconomic relationships within the capitalist system. But because the merchant operates exclusively within the sphere of circulation, which is the most visibly public and accessible field for the majority of the population, the most obvious form in which capital makes its appearance is in the money and wealth of the merchant. The quotidian character of the relationship between the merchant and his customers- the daily exchange that is crucial for meeting individual needs-may account for why, to most people, the everyday interaction with the merchant is likely to be the "pure" form taken by capitalist relations. As Marx (1981, 382) has stated, "[c]ommercial capital, therefore, is absolutely nothing more than the commodity capital of the producer which has to go through the process of transformation into money, to perform its function as commodity capital on the market; only instead of being an incidental operation carried out by

the producer himself, this function now appears as the exclusive operation of a particular species of capitalist, the merchant, and acquires independence as a business of a particular capital investment." The visibility of the merchant and his exclusive confinement to the equally visible public sphere of circulation means that even though the merchant performs only one among many functions in the capitalist system, capital itself appears prima facie in "his" sphere and comes to be associated with, and is taken at face value as the exclusive function of, the merchant as a specific agent of circulation distinct from the producer. This may explain why the merchant and his shop are often the first and favorite targets of mass action during moments of crisis. The "alienness" of the Chinese cements, and is cemented by, this association of the "alien" merchant with alienating capital, so that the merchant takes the place of the industrial capitalist in the public imagination as the personification of capital with a consciousness and will. The conflation of ethnicity and class therefore owes something not just to colonial policy and practice, but to the nature of mercantile operation, or more specifically to the racialized segmentation of labor that mercantile capitalism allows. The historical association of the Chinese as an ethnic minority playing the economic role of merchant capitalists within the colonial economy may have been cemented by the "elastic" nature of the space of mercantile trade: its potentially limitless capacity for expansion can accommodate people from the "outside," so to speak, who need not necessarily belong to the group that controls the means of production. Marx's Capital, in fact, as mentioned in the previous section, hints at the same formulation in his discussion of the mercantile operations of the Jews in Europe. The displacement of the producer by the merchant is crucial to the operation of racial discourse. While the position of the middlemen opens up new relations that confer upon the merchant a degree of influence and leverage vis-a-vis both labor and capital, it also renders the merchant particularly vulnerable not just because the tension between labor and capital is deflected onto them, so that antagonism is directed against the middleman by the frustrated worker, but because the middlemen work within a force field of relations that they do not dominate, whose preconditions they do not create. Moreover, it is not just that merchants signify money, but what the merchants sell, i.e., commodities, that renders them vulnerable to public hostility and protest. The commodity is the externalized product of labor, and is therefore the principal index to the alienation of the laborer from the product of his labor. As a crucial liaison between commodities and money. the merchant, whether or not he is actually guilty of it, becomes the object of public paranoia about hoarding. This paranoia about hoarding-the public

fear that the merchant is withdrawing money or goods from circulation or delaying it, and making a profit out of the delaying of the circulation-exists side by side with public hostility to the merchant's act of consumption-the anger directed at the merchant's "conspicuous" consumption of that which is the condition of the worker's labor and subsistence. The contradictions and tensions inherent in social relations are thus evident in the character of money relations, since money, too, mediates between production and consumption and, as an object of exchange as well as an object of desire, it is the tangible form through which social relations between individuals are realized and, just as important, rendered visible. But how rich does a merchant have to be to count as a merchant? Marx has noted that if "his business and his capital are small, he may himself be the only worker employed" and "if the capital advanced by the merchant is small, the profit he realizes may not be any greater than the wage of a better-paid skilled worker; it may even be less than this" (Marx 1981, 403-4). The merchant-owned, family-operated, intensive-labor- and low-capital-input small business typically involves the merchant's self-exploitation as well as exploitation of family members (especially women and children). Yet what distinguishes the merchant from the worker is that, for Marx, the labor of the merchant "is not value-creating labor" (Marx 1981, 408). Since merchants themselves are not seen as taking part in the making of value-an important feature of the production process involving laborer and producer-they are viewed as "parasites" who insert themselves within the process of exchange and initiate a perpetual process of buying and selling, or reselling at a more expensive price. They are held to derive their livelihood from the prolongation of class exploitation but are themselves not considered producers of value. Marx did not consider the fact that surplus value can be extracted not only from price differences, but from differences in space and time of circulation, that is, the time it takes to transport commodities over distances and the speed with which goods can be moved from place to place. There is also some debate within Marxist theory on what kind of labor is valueproducing, and whether labor that produces commodities is the only labor that counts as productive. If labor is defined this narrowly, then state employees, clerical workers, and those in distribution (such as merchants) would in effect be considered parasitical on labor (Worsley 2002, 35). Marx himself left answering the question for another time; he simply noted that more investigation was needed to determine the law of necessary labor in the circulation sphere, how the work of the merchant maintains the value of constant capital, and the role of commercial capital in the overall reproduction process (Marx 1981, 408). Marx's discussion of the merchant assumes the relative downplaying of mercantile capital in favor of industrial capital. The "old" form of mercantile

capital is spotlighted in the European colonies precisely because the colony is thought of in terms of an old-fashioned notion of the market rather than a sophisticated distribution system where the middleman may eventually be eliminated or minimized. Colonialism was crucial to the development of capitalism in Europe. The colonies were constructed and treated either as sources of raw materials and unskilled labor power or as markets for European manufacturing. This comprador condition of the colony/neocolony was displaced onto the Chinese in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, a displacement that has persisted to this day even though changes in the economic conditions of the country in the mid- to late twentieth century have permutated the concept of "Chineseness" to accommodate the idea of the Chinese as consummate professionals, as lawyers, doctors, business managers, artists; as manufacturers and real-estate developers; and as agents of finance capital by the end of the twentieth century.⁹ How did the Chinese get there? Philippine economic legislation such as the 1939 naturalization law had barred Chinese from professional jobs such as architects, pharmacists, doctors, engineers, and public servants, and made the acquisition of citizenship a difficult and expensive process that effectively blocked all but the richest Chinese from becoming Filipino citizens. Changes in state policies and prevailing economic conditions have been instrumental in determining the specific nature of Chinese economic activities at a given period in Philippine history (Cariño 2001, 101): for example, it was the Retail Nationalization Act of 1954 that forced Chinese merchants out of the retail trade and into manufacturing. John Omohundro (1981, 84) has used the term "merchant society" in his study of Chinese business families in Iloilo to describe the way in which Chinese have historically defended their position in Philippine life by being "successful merchants" even as "their mercantile success is maintained by being ethnically Chinese. So the occupation and the ethnic group have become nearly one." If Chinese cultural features that are conducive for business are preserved, while others are dropped, "Chineseness" itself is not an artifact that is simply "transported" to and replicated in the Philippines, but is rather reworked and reinvented according to the demands and conditions of Philippine life. Contingent cultural reinvention explains the fact that "pure Chinese who marry each other resemble their ancestors less each decade and Filipinos more" (Omohundro 1981, 132). But Omohundro's argument that "Chinese ethnicity owes much to the fact that all Chinese are merchants. Until recently, to cease to be a merchant is to leave the ethnic group"10 (1981, 187) needs to be qualified in the wake of the mass naturalization act in 1975, which allowed younger generation Chinese Filipinos to move out of the business niche into other professions. While scholars are quick to point out that the Chinese regained their "dominance" over the retail trade in the 1980s, the idea of "dominance" by

an ethnic minority papers over the most important development in that field, namely, the rise of large-scale retailing most visibly embodied by the SM and Robinsons Malls and concentrated in the hands of a small group of upper-stratum "Chinese Filipino" individuals. This suggests a widening of the gap between rich and poor Chinese. Although scholars like Omohundro do not believe that the Chinese are divided into classes, they nevertheless note imbalances in power and prestige relationships that "bear similarity to class relationships" (Omohundro 1981, 85). In fact, the enormous wealth attributed to the Chinese is controlled by only six major Chinese-Filipino businessmen (Lucio Tan, George Ty, John Gokongwei, Henry Sy, Alfonso Yuchengco, and Andrew Gotianun). Generalizing about "all" Chinese from a few individuals erases the differences in power and status among the Chinese; after all, large-scale retailing has pushed out as many small Chinese traders as Filipino ones. Moreover, it is not the "pure Chinese" but the socially dominant and politically powerful class of Filipino, Chinese-mestizo¹¹ and Spanish-mestizo families that owns and controls the biggest companies in the Philippines (Cariño 2001, 108; Rivera 1995, 9). Small- and medium-size enterprises have had to contend with the challenges of fierce competition among themselves and from non- Chinese Filipinos and foreigners, and the threat of "trade concentrization" (Dannhaeuser 2004, 2) in areas such as the retail trade sector. In addition, the much touted "Chinese networks" across the Asian region do not really hold conceptual and empirical water. Chinese-Filipino investments in China do not rely on preexisting ethnic-based linkages with Filipino-Chinese, other overseas Chinese, or even Mainland Chinese capital, but on the fact that the Chinese government had formulated policies specifically to make investment attractive for overseas Chinese (Gomez and Hsiao 2001, 15).¹² Neither is there anything essentially "Chinese" about Chinese business practices, given the heterogeneity of business styles employed by the largest Chinese companies. No research has ascertained whether small- and medium-scale "Chinese" enterprises share a "cultural style" of business management (Gomez and Hsiao 2001, 23),¹³ When posed alongside questions of assimilation, references to "overseas Chinese" networks overlook the fact that all but one of the Chinese-Filipino tycoons (all of whom were already Filipino citizens well before the 1975 mass naturalization of Chinese) are not members of the Chinese Chambers of Commerce and the most successful Chinese-Filipino firms are precisely the ones that relied least on "Chinese" ties (Cariño 2001, 114). The more upper-class a "Chinese" is, the more he or she is able to move in the highest Filipino social circles. Arguments about the exclusivity of Chinese upbringing ignore the reality that, as early as the 1970s, Filipinized Chinese schools were already experiencing a major crisis of Chinese-language education, producing students who could neither read nor write nor speak in Mandarin and Hokkien.

Analyzing the historical conflation of class and ethnicity is not the same as saying that this is what "Chinese" itself has always been about. This conflation is a historical articulation that shapes the everyday lives of Chinese, but it is also in part an artifact of scholarship, state, and popular imagination For this reason, it can and has become part of the ideological mechanism by which a monolithic or homogenized "Chineseness" inferred from the self- identification and behavior of an upper-class segment of the "Chinese" is generalized to "all Chinese." This conflation would assume its most virulent form in the highly publicized spate of kidnappings that victimized mostly Chinese Filipinos in the early seventies, but more spectacularly in the late eighties to most of the nineties. Kidnapping foregrounds aspects of commodity relations specific to capitalism in a spectacular way. Like any industry, kidnapping is premised on the power of a commodity to command other commodities in exchange, a power of exchangeability that Karl Marx calls value. In this case, the commodity happens to be a body, the body of the capitalist or of someone related to the capitalist. The act of kidnapping transforms the body of the victim into an object of exchange, thereby instituting a logic of commodification, which treats the commodity, whether capitalist or kindred as qualitatively equal but quantitatively differential: All kidnap victims are alike except in terms of the amount of value that they "contain." Value here is determined by the victim's net worth, that is, by the victim's access to accumulated capital in the form of money. Kidnapping transforms the body of the capitalist into a commodity, the value of which is based on the capitalist's access to money, which, in turn, comprises the accumulation of unpaid surplus labor of the past that is appropriated by the capitalist in the present. The capitalist's body is thus a commodity the value of which is a calibration of the capitalist's accumulation of unpaid surplus labor. There is a certain irony, then, in the fact that kidnapping does to the capitalist what capitalism does to the laborer." If capitalism institutes a circuit in which the capitalist buys the labor power that the laborer sells for a price, the wage, kidnapping institutes a circuit in which the capitalist buys himself back for a price, a fraction of his total net worth, which, it must be remembered, represents his accumulation in the present of unpaid surplus labor in the past. Kidnapping, therefore, imagines and realizes a subjectivity- often experienced as a loss of subjectivity-that inexorably links the objective movement of capital and the subjective purpose of the capitalist. That is, kidnapping makes the capitalist an almost literal personification of capital, in the same sense that capitalism makes the laborer the personification of his own labor power. In kidnapping, both the kidnapper and the kidnap victim are constituted by-and both realize-social relations that mimic capitalist relations. Perhaps the real irony lies in the fact that, by making the capitalist its primary source of extraction, kidnapping trains the lens of inequality

Inherent in the capitalist relation onto those who control the means to sustain this inequality. Although kidnapping targets specific Chinese capitalists, it nevertheless functions ideologically to cement the conflation of ethnicity and class in the public imagination, so that when a University of the Philippines student was asked whether she was bothered by the kidnappings, she answered: "No, because I am not Chinese and I am not rich" (quoted in Co 1995, 7). Scholarship also plays a part in reproducing this conflation. This is evident in a recent attempt at theorizing "Chinese" by Hedman and Sidel (2000, 81), who argue that "Chinese" is "a form of private capital whose relationship to the state is mediated neither by the social and political power afforded by landownership, nor by personal loyalties and advantage of a 'crony, but by money and what James Scott calls 'market corruption." Although avowedly anti-essentialist, this formulation rests on a confusion of capital with money and the mistaken assumption that the "Chinese" have always been synonymous with capital-as-money: "It was ever thus" (Hedman and Sidel 2000, 79). The mere existence and circulation of money do not necessarily imply the existence of capitalism, since money and exchange value can be found in precapitalist societies. Commodity exchange relations encoded as Commodity-Money-Commodity are different from capitalist economic relations rendered as Money-Commodity-Money. In the latter case, people become dependent on commodity exchange for survival, and money itself comes to define social relations, which are now based on the mobilization and accumulation of capital (in the form of money) and the generalization across society of money values. As mentioned before, money itself was still scarce as late as 1850 (barter and personal credit being the preferred means of exchange in a situation in which money for paying the head tax had to be bought), so the "Chinese" did not become identified with capital-as-money until well into the nineteenth century, and only after the Philippine colony's full insertion into the global capitalist system and market. More crucially, such analysis of the "Chinese" solely in terms of the identification of "Chinese" with money erases the heterogeneity of "Chinese" as a historically specific and politically and culturally negotiated and contested term, and the history of Chinese labor and Left activism. It is unable to anticipate the rise of Estrada cronies like Atong Ang, and overlooks the fact that many Filipino businessmen and women's connections to the state are also mediated by money in the form of financial contributions to electoral campaigns and contacts with influential social or political elite.

Revolutionary Flows In other words, the historical conflation of ethnicity with class does not exhaust the politics of the "Chinese Question" and the realities of "Chinese"

life in the Philippines. Not all "Chinese" were or are capitalists. Leftist elements, which constituted the organized working class in the Chinese community in the early twentieth century may have appeared as "alien in the eyes of the Chinese" (Yung Li 1996, 66)¹7 as they did in the eyes of Filipinos, but at a specific moment in Philippine history-from the 1920s to the 1960s-their visibility as political revolutionaries rivaled that of the Chinese merchant. Chinese workers in the Philippines were already organizing in the late 1910s and early 1920s." Tracking the activities of a key Chinese labor leader provides a telling microcosm of Philippine-Chinese radical history. Xu Jingcheng (1905-1971) (Ko Keng Seng, original name Xu Jingbiao but also known by a number of aliases, the most important being Xu Li or Ko Li) was born in Jinjiang, Fujian Province, China, on January 8, 1905, and at the age of 12, went to Hong Kong where he was taught English (he first read Marx in English translation). He made short trips to the Philippines in 1919 and 1921 before settling here in 1925, working as a store employee and a teacher. He led the Workers Association (Gongren Xiehui), which counted shopkeepers, teachers, and store clerks among its members and was responsible for helping to set up other occupation-based Chinese unions. In 1926, a Young Communist League member, Li Xingqiu, visited the Philippines" and initiated contact with Xu, who became a member and would assume leadership of the Manila branch." Ko would eventually serve as a member of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) Central Committee in 1930 (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas [PKP] 1996, 93-94) and sixty out of eighty of the YCL members would join the newly established PKP (1996, 114-15). The political conflict in China extended to the Philippines as local Chinese communists clashed with Guomindang (KMT) groups. After the December 1927 uprising in China, Philippine-born Chinese Communist Party member, Li Bingxiang (Li Yongxiao)," returned to the Philippines and established contact with Ko and Li Xingqiu, and helped organize the Philippine Chinese Labor Association (PCLA, Huaqiao Gonghui/Hua Chiao Kong Hue, Overseas Chinese Workers' Union). These three men would be instrumental in forging ties with the Filipino communist movement. The PCLA first established ties with the Congreso Obrero de Filipinas and the Partido Obrero but, owing to the racial politics practised by the COF, were kept at a "segregated distance" (PKP 1996, 93). It was Crisanto Evangelista's group that actively advocated the integration of the PCLA into the Filipino labor movement and worked closely with the PCLA. The PCLA later renamed itself the Philippine Chinese Labor Federation (PCLF, Feihua Gelaogongtuanti) as its member unions expanded to thirty with a total membership of 5000 (PKP 1996, 94).24 The PCLF's links with Profitern were coursed through Crisanto Evangelista (founder of the PKP) and PCLF joined Evangelista in walking out of the COF convention in 1929. Three of its members would join the board of the newly established Left organization

Katipunan ng Anak-Pawis ng Pilipinas on May 5, 1929 (PKP 1996, 99, 102). Close links between Chinese and Filipino communists can be seen in the fact that three25 out of thirty five members of the newly established PKP Central Committee in 1930 were Chinese: Co Sing Liat, Ko Keng Seng (Hsu), and Sun Ping. One of them, code-named "Comrade C" (probably Ko himself) would be a member of the Politburo (PKP 1996, 125). A Manila Chinese Left leader, a certain "Li,"26 and an alternate, "Koo" (Ko?), were elected members of the Central Committee in 1938 (PKP 1996, 291). Of particular importance to the history of the Chinese Left in the Philippines was the Wha Chi (Hua Zhi, short for Feilubin Huaqiao Kangri Zhidui, Philippine-Chinese Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Forces)," arguably the best-known organization of the Chinese guerrilla resistance movement in the Philippines. The Wha Chi's founding members were drawn from the ranks of the Philippine Chinese United Workers Union (PCUWU, Feilubin Huaqiao Gelaogongtuanti Lianhehui, shortened name Lao Lian Hui in pinyin or Lo Lien Hui in Hokkien), the name adopted by the PCLF in 1938 after several more Chinese Philippine labor unions joined the federation. Both Ko and Li played a role in establishing the organization. Initially organized on May 19, 1942, as a squadron under the Hukbalahap (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon,28 People's Anti-Japanese Army, renamed Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan or People's Liberation Army after the war), Squadron 48, named after China's New Fourth and Eighth Route Armies, formally adopted the name "Wha Chi" after it negotiated with the Huks to assume an independent and neutral status as a guerrilla unit. The Wha Chi grew from fifty-two fighters to a 1944 peak of 700 members forming five squadrons. From February 1942 to the end of the Japanese occupation in August 1945, it was active in Manila and fourteen other provinces in the Philippines, fought in 260 battles and skirmishes, killed more than 2000 enemy soldiers (mostly Filipino constabulary troops under the Japan-sponsored Philippine government), and lost seventy-seven of its own members (see Wha Chi 1982; Liang and Cai 1980, 1996; Tan 1981, 116-27; Yung Li 1996, 75-114; Gong 2001, 2002). Since some members of the PCUWU had spent time in Yenan (the base of the Chinese Communist Party) and had even served in the Fourth Army (Yung Li 1996, 63), those who returned to the Philippines on the eve of the Pacific War helped "inspire and train" and set up Huk squadrons and became "a model organization for the rest of the Huk" (Taruc 1953, 76). Luis Taruc talks about the Wha Chi guerrillas' achievements, which helped countervail the powerful Filipino stereotype of the Chinese as exploitative capitalists: The presence of Squadron 48 [Hua Zhi] among the peasants shattered an old and disreputable custom, that of treating Chinese people insultingly, and in general using them as the scapegoat in the blind reaction of Filipinos to evils that lie much deeper in our society. The members of Squadron 48 became

much beloved by the people of Central Luzon, who often went out of their way to give them special consideration in billeting, feeding, and assistance. (Taruc 1953, 76)

Not everything about the Chinese-Philippine relations was rosy, of course. Taruc's second book speaks of conflicts of interest between the Wha Chi and the Huks: When the Japanese war broke out, four of their [Chinese Communist] high-ranking officials joined us in the field. Two of them claimed to have already been given training, one in politics, the other in guerrilla warfare, on the Chinese mainland. They were attached to our Politburo as advisers and acted as liaison officers between ourselves and their own anti-Japanese resistance movement. Their advice was often resisted by Vicente Lava, who was then our general secretary, and by myself. It seemed to us that their advice was always related to Chinese mainland activities rather than Philippine interests. First they advised us to attack the Japanese relentlessly. Although we did so, we suspected that their motives were chauvinistic, that their main concern was with the battle then going on in China. It seemed to us that they viewed our struggle only as a diversionary action. When our fight resulted in a fierce Japanese counter-attack, and we suffered heavy casualties, they switched to a defensive strategy, urging us to hide our guns and return to our barrios. They sent most of the members of their own organization home to China. They called this policy "retreat for defense." But the Filipinos in the field refused to put it into action. We had great respect for the Chinese comrades. But when we realized the extent of their chauvinism and self-interest, our respect quickly diminished. (Taruc 1967, 33-34)

There were, in fact, deep internal divisions and heated debates within Chinese Left organizations over the "Retreat for Defense" policy (Liang and Cai 1996, 28-29; 1998, 37-38). In their memoirs, Wha Chi officers Liang Shang Wan and Cai Jian Hua claim that officers of the Hua Chiao Committee, a leading organization of the Chinese United Front, had used the "Retreat for Defense" policy as a pretext to curtail the activities and argue for the disbanding of the Wha Chi. Only one Wha Chi commander took the policy seriously, while the rest of the officers and members ignored the directive and continued fighting, as did the Huks. Liang and Cai (1996, 10-13) also offer a detailed account of the day-to-day cooperation between Hukbalahap and Wha Chi guerrillas, an account that, despite its taking an "outsider" or "foreigner" position in its depiction of the anti-Japanese struggle in the

Philippines, points to a number of important collaborative efforts among Chinese and Filipinos in engaging the enemy forces.

China, the "Chinese Question," and the Polycentric Left The controversial "Retreat for Defense" policy not only marked a crucial episode in the history of the Left struggle during World War II. It would be elevated from historical episode to element of theoretical critique which indexed the deepening divisions within the Filipino communist movement after the war. The "Retreat for Defense" policy was one of the main issues used by the breakaway Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) to criticize PKP "errors and weaknesses." In the document, "Brief Review of the History of the Communist Party of the Philippines: On the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of its Reestablishment," CPP's Amado Guerrero (1988) repeats the critique thus: There was no clear program of anti-imperialist and antifeudal struggle going beyond the antifascist struggle against Japan and no plan to expand the revolutionary forces beyond Manila and Central Luzon. The line of the people's struggle was narrowed to armed resistance against the Japanese occupation forces and their Filipino collaborators. Even with regards to armed struggle, the leadership of the merger party with Vicente Lava as general secretary adopted the line of "retreat for defense," a policy of reducing guerrilla units into impotent teams of three to five persons and avoiding armed combat with the enemy. This line was proclaimed after the Japanese fascist troops attacked the main base of the Hukbalahap at the foot of a small vulnerable mountain, Mount Arayat in the middle of the Central Luzon plains. However, the people's army made significant strides in armed struggle mainly because several platoon-size and company-size units disregarded the policy and spontaneously fought the enemy; and because finally in September 1944 a Party conference declared the "retreat for defense" policy erroneous. But soon after, the US military forces landed to reoccupy the Philippines and arm their puppets.

Jesus Lava's (2002, 64) version puts it this way: "It was only late in the 1960s, when the Maoist Chinese Communist Party decided to organize and field its own Maoist Party in the Philippines under the leadership of Joe Sison, that the matter was revived with much fanfare and venom to maliciously discredit the PKP, its leaders and its whole history of struggle and sacrifice, but conveniently without any mention of the key role in policy formulation played by the Chinese Maoists themselves."

Lava's account reveals the extent to which the acrimonious nature of PKP-CPP relations was informed by the Sino-Soviet split in the mid-sixties, as other communist parties all over the world found themselves under pressure to "choose" which country they would side with. With communism now devolving into a "polycentric" movement (Worsley 2002, 4), internal tensions within the Philippine Left resulted in the "re-establishment" of the Communist Party of the Philippines in the late sixties. Part of the tensions and divisions within the Philippine Left at the time came to be articulated with the question of China. The "growing dissidence of the pro-Chinese faction resurrected fears among the old party leadership of the Chinese Communist Party's interference in the Philippine left's internal affairs" (Malay 1984, 59). This can be gleaned from a series of charges and countercharges aired in party publications, with the PKP accusing the CPP of being "local- bred parrots of Peking" (Ang Komunista 1971, 1). PKP articles denounced "Maoist splittism" (Siklab 1971, 2) for sowing "imperialist-inspired disunity" (Tiongson 1971, 6) within the international socialist movement and seeking to isolate the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and establish "Maoist Chinese hegemony" (Ang Komunista 1971; 1972). ³³ Reacting defensively to the specter of the "alienness" of Maoist ("Chinese") thought raised by the PKP, "nat-dems, unlike their Maoist counterparts in Western countries have consistently refused the label 'Maoist,' arguing that it connotes allegiance to an alien, hence sinister ideology"; to be "Maoist" was to be "subservient to a foreign power" (Malay 1984, 50), Malay argues that the "objective tension thus created between the desire to assuage local Sinophobic sentiments and the simultaneous necessity of establishing Marxist-Leninist legitimacy, for domestic and international consumption, was partially resolved in favor of selective deMaoization" (Malay 1984, 50). As part of the effort to Filipinize Maoism, the 1974 party document "Specific Characteristic of Our People's War" sought to identify the specificity of the Philippine context of struggle (for instance, the formation of mobile guerrilla bases and the "centralized leadership, decentralized operations" strategy in keeping with the country's archipelagic and mountainous geography), even though the overall strategy adopted was not "substantially different from the 'protracted people's war" formulated by Mao Zedong (Malay 1984, 51). On the international front, the CPP had been supportive of China before Deng Xiaoping assumed power and initiated the economic transformation of China along capitalist lines in the late seventies (see "Specific Characteristics of Our People's War" in Guerrero 1979, 212-15). Articles in Ang Bayan had reported positively on China's entry into the United Nations (Ang Bayan 1972), on the PRC friendship tour (Ang Bayan 1977), on Chinese intervention in Vietnam in 1979 (Ang Bayan 1979), and on the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China's (Ang Bayan 1980).

The CPP's efforts to propagate positive views of revolutionary China among the Filipino people, however, were overshadowed by the entente between China and the United States and China's advocacy of the "Three Worlds Theory," which not only resulted in the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Philippines and China under the Marcos regime in 1975, but also decisively unraveled the symbolic identification of socialist China with revolution." Post-Cultural Revolution China has since come under heavy criticism by the CPP for its "revisionist leadership and bourgeois state" (Ang Bayan 2005), and for being a "neocolony of the U.S." (CPP 1989). The question of Chinese Communist Party support for the CPP is taken up in Gregg Jones' (1989, 71-83, 322-23) account of the "China Project." CPP member Jose Luneta was sent to China in 1968 to establish a supply line. The Chinese government had insisted on secrecy, so that Sison was unable to publicly announce the Filipino mission to China. A team was sent to Japan to buy a boat to transport a shipment of arms. In late June 1972, Karagatan set sail from Fujian Province, but poor planning and coordination resulted in a missed rendezvous and the boat running aground (Jones 1989, 75-76). Another shipment aboard the Andrea was sent in January 1974 but bad weather left the boat stuck among coral reefs in the northwest coast (Jones 1989, 79). Infighting among the Filipino communists who remained in China for ten years spawned bitterness against the CPP leadership; some members of the delegation would denounce the China project as an "adventurist blunder," which "did more harm than good to the Philippine Revolution" (Jones 1989, 83). To this date, the CPP has not officially disclosed the full details of the China project. For all the secrecy attending the question of China's support for the CPP, what is indubitable is that the CPP has made efforts to address and resolve the "Chinese Question." This is not to say that all revolutionary discourse is free from the tenets of the "Chinese Question."" PKP thinking about the Chinese, though not monolithic, evinces some ambiguity about the Chinese. While careful to qualify that the great majority of the Filipino- Chinese community "belong to the working and petty-bourgeois classes, with the bulk of the assimilated Filipino-Chinese being service workers, artisans and small shopkeepers," the PKP Eight Congress (1980, 20-23) nevertheless goes on to raise the specter of the ascendant, unassimilated Chinese "big bourgeoisie" following mass naturalization in 1975. Charged with remitting their profits overseas, these Filipino-Chinese groups are also seen as having "close affiliations" among themselves and an "exclusivist culture," promoted by "allegedly Filipinized Chinese schools." The PKP (1996, 23) holds that The inordinate hold of the Filipino-Chinese bourgeoisie on the economy has therefore become a real problem but it is not the primary one. In the overall struggle of the Filipino people against

imperialism, the Filipino-Chinese community can still play a positive role, provided they are integrated into Philippine society and recognize the primacy of national interest. Integration, however, can only result from a long process which begins with the realization that the Filipino-Chinese have a real stake in the overall progress of their country of residence and should cease cultivating feelings of loyalty to China or Taiwan.

The PKP statement elides a number of important counterfacts: first, that the Chinese big bourgeoisie have been the most "integrated" into Philippine elite society and, as already mentioned in the previous section their ties with Filipinos and non-Chinese have been much more instrumental to their business success than their ties to other Chinese; second, that the Chinese-language educational system had already entered into crisis by the 1970s, and was no longer producing the kind of "Chinese" (or rather, "Chinatown Chinese") imagined by the PKP; third, that the capital sent abroad are not "profit remittances" but investment, and stashing money abroad is something Filipino big bourgeoisie also do especially in uncertain times; and finally, the ascendancy of the big bourgeoisie threatens not only the livelihood of Filipinos, but of Chinese as well. These counterfacts cast doubt on the usefulness of ethnicity as the primary explanatory factor in examining the position of the Chinese in Philippine society. What they expose, rather, is the way in which the construction of the "Chinese" as a foreign/alien leaves unexamined the question of what counts as "Filipino," how much Filipinos and Chinese have in common, or how different the political and economic behavior of Filipino bourgeoisie is from that of the Chinese. The CPP has adopted a less ambivalent theoretical assessment of the Chinese. The Ang Bayan article on Lucio Tan's empire, for example, does not mention at all or make an issue of Tan's ethnicity. Far more crucially, Amado Guerrero's Philippine Society and Revolution (1979, 3, 41, 154-55) provides a scathing account of "Malay racism bred by foreign and feudal exploiters of the people" and directed against "the Chinese and the Aetas" (Guerrero 1979, 3). He criticizes the Magsaysay and Garcia administrations for resorting to "the old colonial and chauvinist trick of attacking Chinese retailers" while "mak[ing] it difficult and expensive for foreign nationals of Chinese descent to become Filipino citizens" (Guerrero 1979, 41; cf 154-55). At the same time, Guerrero has pointed out how economic legislation against Chinese retailers actually was politically motivated: "Though the Garcia puppet regime was conspicuously encouraging Filipino merchants to push out merchants of Chinese nationality from the retail business, especially in the rice and corn trade, it allowed the big Kuomintang compradors to have a big share in the import-export and wholesale business and to bring their capital to Taiwan. All Chinese residents in the Philippines were coerced to manifest their allegiance to the Chiang bandit gang or else face reprisal" (Guerrero 1979, 44).

The CPP's "Programme for a People's Democratic Revolution in the Philippines" advocates a "class approach" in dealing with naturalized Filipinos and foreign nationals in order to "do away with 'Malay racism and chauvinism" (see text in Saulo 1990, 203): Residents or citizens of Chinese ancestry are very often the target of racist and chauvinist attacks launched by US imperialists, modern revisionists, and other local reactionaries in line with their anti-China, anti-communist and anti-people policy. The Kuomintang comprador bourgeoisie should be thoroughly exposed and attacked for its class position and for the fact that it is an accomplice of U.S. imperialism, modern revisionism and all reactionaries. (Saulo 1990, 203-04)

The Chinese are coded as an ethnic minority alongside the national minorities (Aetas), both of whom are subject to the racism and discriminatory policies of the state. Moreover, Guerrero gestures toward the implication of the "Chinese Question" in the internal Guomindang-dominated politics of the Chinese community and the anti-Communist policies of the government during the 50s and 60s, the faultlines of which were exposed in the early 1970s by the media furor surrounding the Yuyitung deportation case (see the documents in Yuyitung 2000). In Guerrero's denunciation of the "big Kuomintang compradors," he is careful not to racialize the compradors as "Chinese." These compradors are, instead, political collaborators who benefited from the anti-Chinese legislation of the Magsaysay and Garcia administrations. There are many factors that account for the sympathetic treatment of the Chinese within a text like Philippine Society and Revolution.¹⁶ The new left movement's Maoist orientation and emphasis on class analysis are two important factors that have reframed the Chinese Question and attempted to disentangle its identification with money and citizenship. This revaluation of the Chinese in the early 70s opened up the possibility of reformulating the articulation between nationalism and communism along nonracist lines. This can be seen in the public articulation by the movement-even after splits within the CPP in the early 1990s further deepened the polycentrism of the Philippine Left-of an inclusive framework for thinking the "Chinese Question." Public statements on kidnapping and on the plight of the Indonesian Chinese in 1998 released by different leftist organizations parallel a major shift in the stance of the Philippine official nationalist state-increasingly under pressure from globalizing and regionalizing forces-since the mid- seventies toward inclusion of the Chinese in the national imaginary." On Chinese New Year in 1995, for example, the Alex Boncayao Brigade, a breakaway faction of the Communist New People's Army, faxed a letter to

the media urging Chinese Filipinos to never again allow themselves to be "milking cows" of corrupt government officials. The ABB also threatened to execute more "corrupt police officers involved in kidnapping," and vowed to "hunt down... officials and other notorious elements in the bureaucracy who victimize the Chinese community." The ABB said that it was not against economic development as long as it "benefits our country and people." As long as the workers' welfare is assured, the ABB promised to "foster industrial peace." Finally, the ABB stated that the Chinese Filipinos were "integral parts of the nation who should not be treated as second-class citizens," and declared that "there can be unity of purpose despite the cultural diversity" (Tulay 1995). Within mainstream politics, other left organizations have actively courted "Chinese" support. Bayan Muna (2001) placed an ad in the Chinese Commercial News (January 7) during the 2001 electoral campaign seeking Chinese "solidarity with us in our struggle" and citing "kababayang Tsinoy" contributions to the economic development of "our country" and the great sacrifices of "Filipino-Chinese brothers who fought hand-in-hand with other patriotic Pinoys to resist Japanese invasion." A class-based approach that historicizes ethnicity provides a useful counterpoint to the currently ongoing essentializing of "Chinese" and "Chineseness" by popular media, by scholarship on so-called "Chinese business networks" and families/kinship system as engines of Asian regional economic development (Gomez and Hsiao 2001), and most of all by state- backed democratic "pluralism," which seeks to instrumentalize the "Chinese Question" through selective inclusion and exclusion of "Chinese" (Hau 1999). Recent Chinese demand for political representation and their deployment of a discourse of citizenship and rights that counterposes the body of citizens to the state echo the state's proclamation of its separation from "civil society" while being unable to resist the state's intensified deployment of an extractive policy toward the Chinese on the issue of permanent residency and citizenship. Further study of how the "Chinese" became historically susceptible to particular oppressive articulations of racism and commodity-fetishism (to the extent that a "Chineseness" identified with business success and talent comes to be embraced by the "Chinese" as a constituent element of their individual and communal identity and by Filipinos as a signifier of their economic alienation) is needed. Kidnapping, for example, highlights the ways in which capitalists, in order to survive, actively/passively take on the conflation of ethnicity and class as "second nature" and become "Chinese." But more than simply accounting for the persistence of the truism about the Chinese as alien, "material men" whose "chimerical nationality" within the Philippine neo/colonial state remains a politically charged and contested issue, it is necessary to debunk this truism by exposing its ideological underpinnings.

A Marxist interpretation of the "Chinese Question" serves to historicize the process by which ethnicity and class come to be conflated by focusing attention on the socioeconomic and political relations obtaining across the broader Philippine terrain and beyond. Philippine Marxism in its polycentric forms reframes the "national question" through its own history and practice of articulating nationalism and internationalism, which show that nationalism is not merely about boundedness, exclusivity, rivalry, and enmity, but possesses the capacity for openness, linkages, dialogue, bridges, networks, mutuality, reciprocity, complementarity, and friendship in shared survival and struggle." The kind of "double nationalism" arising from the revolutionary cosmopolitanism embodied by Chinese left activism (Hau 2004, 15-64; 2005a, 95-113) in turn shows how the making and remaking of both Filipino and Chinese national communities depend in part on a historically situated, constitutive experience of the "outside" and of "foreignness," a potentially radical openness to the foreign other that is often ignored, if not repressed by the assertion of an unnecessarily monolithic and exclusionary "Filipino" or "Chinese" identity. Above all, Marxism's advocacy of activism shows that there can be no class struggle that is not also, and necessarily, antiracist.

Acknowledgment I thank Tesa Encarnacion Tadem and the staff of the Third World Studies Center, as well as Jojo Abinales, Aileen Baviera, Takashi Shiraishi, and the anonymous reviewer of this article for their great help.

Notes 1. Here, "Marxism" is used loosely to refer to social movements and political parties, and to individuals and organizations, that claim the influence or inspiration not just of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but a broad range of thinking associated (again loosely) with so-called "Marxist thought." This usage highlights the fact that there may be different and even conflicting appropriations of Marxist theory and practice that do not strictly square with those propounded by Marx and other leading figures in this field. 2. This article covers only the role played by the Chinese in the leftist revolutionary movement. For an account of Chinese contribution to the Philippine Revolution, see See and Go (1996). Further research also needs to be undertaken to extend the account provided by this article to cover the role played by the Chinese in the anti-Marcos, Edsa, and post-Edsa movements. 3. For an example of Marxist attempts at grappling with the relationship between nationalism and internationalism, see Löwy (1998). 4. The attempt at comparison between the Chinese and Jews in this essay is not meant to suggest that the common characteristics shared by Chinese and Jews

are unique only to these peoples, and does not preclude comparison with other groups in both the East and the West. 5. A search of the index of Blair and Robertson's translation of Spanish colonial documents (1903-1909), for example, yields no entry explicitly comparing Chinese and Jews; Chinese are compared to the local Philippine inhabitants, and to Germans, Japanese, "Malabars," and women, but not to Jews. It has been argued that Spanish discourse on the Jews was used in representations of New World (American) peoples, but no definitive genealogy of representations has yet been established (Geller 1994, 527). 6. Cf. Kautsky's (1914) attempt to historicize so-called "natural trait[s] of the Jewish race" as the "necessary outcome of the social and political situation of Judaism." 7. The following discussion is indebted to (Marx 1981, 382-451). 8. A formulation already evident in early writings such as The German Ideology (1845-1846) in (Marx and Engels 1998, 78-9). 9. My thanks to Pheng Cheah for helping to draw out this point in my argument. 10. Omohundro's fieldwork was done in Iloilo City, which had a smaller and relatively homogeneous Chinese population. His statement cannot be uniformly applied to other Chinese populations in the Philippines, especially to Manila, and awaits qualifications by further research. 11. "Chinese mestizo" is a sliding signifier that can disappear into either "Chinese" or "Filipino." The transformation of the Chinese mestizo into a sliding signifier and the concomitant alienation of the "Chinese" were crucial to the development of Philippine nationalism (Hau 2000, 133-76). The mestizo's capacity to mediate the social hierarchy of the colonizer and colonized, of "insiders" and "outsiders," is characteristically viewed as its most important historical attribute (Rafael 2000). what is interesting about mestizoness is its subsequent delinking from "Chinese," so that "mestizo" nowadays signifies mainly "white" (American and European) rather than "Chinese" ancestry. With East Asian regional economic development and the rise of China over the past few decades, however, bicultural "Chinese" now appear to take on the mediating attribute of the Chinese mestizos (cf. Wickberg 1997, 177) because the term "Chinese" is no longer defined solely by its problematic position vis-à-vis the nation, but by its revaluing as a signifier of regional and global capitalist development. This means that even though the "Chinese" can now be viewed in a positive light and even as objects of desire (as evident in the current public clamor for generic "East Asian"-looking [i.e., chinito features and a different shade of "white" skin] Taiwanese and Korean telenovela actors who play rich, successful, and/or powerful men and foreground the attractions of affluent East Asia as the leading growth center of the global capitalist world economy), "Chinese" ethnicity remains deeply entangled with the issue of class, which had hitherto defined the "Chinese's" fraught relationship with the Filipino nation and which can potentially reactivate deep-seated ambivalence about, if not resentment of, alien capital/ists. 12. Cariño (2001, 111) said that among Chinese big business, there is more evidence of competition than cooperation, and joint ventures with Hong Kong or Taiwanese companies are based on considerations of expertise, technology, and capital rather than common ethnic ties. She also argued that the diversification of Chinese-Filipino business is not a "method of

rationalizing business, but of hedging against economic downturns or vulnerabilities in situations of high economic and political volatility" (Cariño 2001, 117).

13. If anything, "Chinese" cultural traits and factors that are said to operate in the form of xinyong (trust), mionzi (face), guanxi (connections), family-centered kinship, identification with "Greater China," "Cultural China," or "Confucian" capitalism, and ethnic-based social, business, and transnational networks are not uniquely "Chinese." Not only are they produced and reinvented in specific histories and societies and not only are their "ethnic" origins uncertain, they have been reified so as to serve as ideological justifications for authoritarianism and against socialism. In this formulation, so-called "Confucian" values and practices are said to ground a historical form of capitalism, which had hitherto been constrained by socialism but which allowed to flourish in nonsocialist "Greater China" (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and "overseas Chinese" communities in Southeast Asia) and in a post-Maoist China now undergoing capitalist transformation, allegedly constitutes a superior capitalism to that which developed in the West because of the former's communitarian (as opposed to individualist) ethos (see Dirlik 1997; Cheah 2001). The problem with using cultural explanations to account for Chinese economic success in East Asia is that these explanations rely on simplistic, homogeneous notions of "Chinese culture" or "values" transmitted unproblematically over time rather than show exactly how cultural factors take shape and function (or fail to function) under conditions marked by contingency to mediate entrepreneurship by investing the "making of business" (zuo shengyi) with social and existential meaning (Yao 2002, 99). 14. The seeds to this idea were planted by Vicente Rafael. 15 The assumption that the identification of Chinese and capital has remained fixed 15. The assumption that the identification of Chinese and capital has remained fixed and unchanging throughout the history of the Chinese in the Philippines is negated by the fact that the term sangley was not in the beginning equated with capital-as-money, but with commerce (sengdi), which is structured differently in different historical periods (so that commerce in the nineteenth century is different from commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). Furthermore, William Henry Scott (1994, 190, 279), citing the Boxer Codex (1590), has argued that sangley could have also been derived from changlai (sionglai in Hokkien), meaning "regularly coming." These regular comers were also called langlang, probably derived from lanlang ("our people"), the term by which inhabitants of Quanzhou-the cosmopolitan port city in Southeast Fujian Province of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta fame-and their descendants in the Philippines still call themselves now (note that the term did not originally have a national/ "Chinese" inflection), and which in Spanish usage also meant "corsair." It has been suggested that sangley referred not to a "class" but to individuals (Laufer 1967, 23). Far more important, violence against and expulsions of sangleyes in the early period of Spanish colonial rule were mainly rooted not in Spanish resentment of Chinese economic "dominance," but in Spanish paranoia about the "threat" posed by the neighboring Chinese dynastic state (ruled by Ming and subsequently Qing emperors) and compounded by the presence in the region and territorial incursions of "corsairs" like Limahong and Koxinga. In the eighteenth century, sangleyes were expulsed for siding with and aiding the British during their two-year occupation of the Philippines. 16. Assertions of Chinese wealth and poverty are largely anecdotal or rely on a small sampling of the population. It is popularly believed that Chinese are overwhelmingly middle-class, so that the Chinese do not count among the very

rich or the very poor, but Wickberg (1992) estimates conservatively that in the early 1990s, more than twenty percent of the Chinese live below the poverty line. The reason that poor Chinese are invisible in the eyes of the "Chinese community" is that poor Chinese tend not to participate in Chinese community activities and disappear instead into the Filipino masses. 17. The boundary between merchant and revolutionary is not rigid, however. For a deconstruction of the opposition, see my discussion of the merchant as doppelganger of the patriot-revolutionary (Hau 2004, 29-30). 18. Laborers constituted 11.6 percent of all Chinese in 1903 (Wong 1999, 73) and worked in the garment, furniture, lumber, laundry, restaurant, sugar, printing, shoe, bakery, paper, construction, and other industries. Small-scale shopkeepers, teachers, clerks, and store employees were also invited in labor organizing. 19. The earliest labor union was the Overseas Chinese Labor Party (Huaqiao Gongdan), which counted clerks, teachers, and shopkeepers among its members and published a newspaper, the Common People's Daily (Pingmin Ribao) from 1919 to 1922, but was not known to have any connection with the Chinese Community Party (Yung Li 1996, 60). 20. Unless otherwise indicated, the following details are culled from Xu, Xu, and Xu (2001). 21. There is no direct evidence to suggest that the central leadership of the Chinese Community Party had a systematic program for promoting organizational work in the Philippines, but the argument that Chinese communist elements in the Philippines were basically "uncoordinated actions of individuals to seek refuge abroad" (Yung Li 1996, 65) may not strictly apply to all initiatives either. 22. The Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas' official history (1996, 93-94) records the formation in 1926 of the Manila nucleus of the Young Communist League (YCL) of the Communist Party of China led by a Co Sing Liat, who would later be a member of the Central Committee of the PKP. The biographical account of Xu Jingcheng by his sons (Xu, Xu, and Xu 2001, 6), however, states that Xu (Ko Keng Seng) was the head of the YCL Manila branch. Are Co Sing Liat and Ko Keng Seng the same person? 23. Felipe Lee Yung Shaw (1905-1957), who would later become the Chinese guerrilla Wha Chi's liaison officer, was born in Manila (Li 2001, 14-19; see also Antonio Tan's account (1981) exerpted in [Liang and Cai 1998, 116]). He spoke Tagalog and studied English and Spanish. After completing elementary education at the Anglo-Chinese School (the oldest Chinese school in the Philippines), he went to Shanghai for high school education. From there, he went on to Shanghai University, where he was exposed to Marx and Lenin. He was involved in the May Fourth movement, and became a member of the communist party in 1924. He moved to Beijing, but was forced to flee to South China to avoid arrest by the warlord government, and ended up in Guangdong where he worked as an interpreter for Mikhail Borodin, the Comintern adviser to Sun Yat-sen during the Goumindang-Communist united front of 1924-1927. In 1927, when Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek) turned against the Communists, Lee Yung Shaw fled to the Shanghai Internationals Concessions, then escaped to Manila. 24. Membership stood at 1,500 as of 1930, along with 200 more members belonging to the Chinese Young Workers' Club (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas 1996, 114) 25. See footnote 18.

26. Probably Li Bingxiang. 27. Wha Chi, the historical spelling adopted by the group in the Philippines, is also known by other spelling variants such as Wah Chi and Hua Chi. 28. The Wha Chi leaders are credited with having suggested the name "Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon." Huk leader Luis Taruc had initially favored the name "Philippine Army of Liberation" (Tan 1981, 125). 29. Statistics on casualties-ranging from seventy six or seventy seven to one hundred-differ according to sources. 30. The internal politics of this conflict are recounted in fictional form in Chapters 89 and 94 of Du Ai (2002, 3: 907-9, 966-7). During the early years of the war, the Wha Chi uphold the United Front by creating a special commission headed by the United Front representative Liu Yiming. Liu advocates the retreat-for-defense policy and, when faced with opposition from Wha Chi leaders, threatens to dissolve the Wha Chi. The turning point comes when the Wha Chi decide to abolish Liu's position within their organization and carry put their own strategy, in the process forming squadrons in Central and Southern Luzon as well as Manila. 31. Lava (2002, 64) alleges that conversations with those involved, especially Casto Alejandrino, revealed that the policy had been first suggested by a Chinese comrade. Though not put into practice even after it reached lower organs, the policy was judged to be erroneous by the Central Committee in September 1944. Vicente Lava was replaced by a troika, which actually included the Chinese member who had originally been involved in the formulation of the policy. 32. Lava's memoirs recount the visit to the Huk camp in 195 of a representative from the Chinese Bureau: "Our conversation was fruitful, conducted in an atmosphere of friendship. There was no arrogance on the part of the Chinese Bureau representative. Compared to early representatives during the Japanese occupation, this one was unassuming, humble, and soft-spoken" (Lava 2002, 169- 70). Owing to intense governmental repression, the Huks lost contact with the Chinese for some years. Lava also hints at the rift between the PKP and the "Maoist Chinese Party" in the early years of the Sino-Soviet split: "Perhaps the Maoist Chinese Party did not appreciate our position that the Chinese Bureau in the Philippines should be under the jurisdiction of the Philippine party. Perhaps the Chinese comrades also resented our decision to accept the Chinese Bureau's inclusion into the overseas Chinese committee on condition that it did not interfere with purely internal problems of Filipinos" (Lava 2002, 322). 33. Lava (2002, 322) argues that the PKP was "neither anti-Chinese or pro-Soviet" and "not beholden to and certainly not under instructions from any foreign party." In the early years of the split, "due to meager knowledge of real cause of Soviet- Chinese conflict," the PKP was "inclined to take more positions on various issues that coincided with Chinese side... Perhaps we felt some kind of kinship with the underdeveloped Chinese nation. Indeed, we were influenced by some Maoist perspectives on Marxism-Leninism." 34. I thank the anonymous reviewer of this essay for raising this issue, and for pointing out that the CPP "in the early 1970s was simultaneously promoting the Chinese model of revolution as one 'of, by, and for the masses' while seeking to reassure the middle and even upper Philippine classes about this admittedly attractive 'socialist China, which had already started to water down any revolutionary (as this word was then understood) content left in it. The second aspect of this

balancing act was accomplished largely through the Association for Philippine China Understanding (APCU), launched sometime in 1971 with rather prominent personalities from the intellectual, artistic, and religious sectors as its officers The APCU may have succeeded all too well in its reassuring discourse, and soon enough bourgeois personalities like the present president of the republic, and SSS Chairman A. Cristobal (among many others) came to embody the association's 'friendship' objectives even during the martial-law period." 35. "Overstaying Chinese" and the "alien labor force" have been targets of student protests (notably the Kilusang Makabansa ng Kabataan) in the 1960s and viewed as constituting threats to the "peace and security of the nation" (Santiago 1972, 57, 120-1). 36. The fact that at least one Chinese Filipino was among the high-ranking cadres in the early years of the CPP may account for the CPP's progressive stance on the Chinese Question. Although the nonracist portrayal of the Chinese in Philippine Society and Revolution is laudable, even the revolutionary movement has not been uncontaminated by the popular association of the Chinese with money. During the late eighties, so-called renegade groups like the Red Scorpion Gang turned to kidnapping the Chinese for ransom as a way of raising funds for their activities. 37. For a discussion of the changing demographic profile of the Chinese in the postwar period and changes in the state policy on the Chinese Question, see Hau 2005b. 38. I thank Kasian Tejapira for allowing me to incorporate his astute reading of, and commentary on "The Question of Foreigners: Nanyang Piaoliuji and the Re Making of Chinese and Filipino Nationness," my analysis of Philippine guiqiao (returnee) Bai Ren's novel. Kasian presented his comments at the Core University Program workshop at Kyoto University on March 25, 2002.

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The "Chinese Question": A Marxist Interpretation Review by Aileen S.P. Baviera

The paper covers different dimensions of the Chinese question in relation to Marxism. Caroline Hau looks through the prism of political economy in her discussion of the Chinese as merchants in Philippine society, of sociology in her insights on the questions of difference and identity; of history and politics in her account of the role of the Chinese in the Philippine revolution and in nation-building; and the confluences among these as she discusses the conflation of ethnicity and class. I think she is correct to locate the role of the Chinese as merchants in what she calls the social terrain and its historical materialist frame. Without these contexts, views and attitudes toward the Chinese are at risk of being perceived as mere prejudice. But one cannot separate the issue of "Chineseness" from its history, or give ethnic identity primacy over the economic, social, and political forces that also shape the identity of the Chinese. I was struck by the 1914 statement of King Rama VI of Siam that she cited, indicating suspicion and resentment of the Chinese in then Siamese society as not just being different but as being disloyal, opportunist, isolationist, and being racist themselves. These negative perceptions of the Chinese continue to hold true in many Southeast Asian societies today, including the Philippines, especially in periods of economic hardship when the relative affluence of many ethnic Chinese stands out, in contrast to the lower living standards of the majority of the population. Such perceptions may help explain why UP students mentioned in the paper reported not being bothered at all that Chinese Filipinos were being targeted by kidnapfor-ransom gangs. They may also indicate why in 1998, as the increasing social, political, and economic problems in Indonesia boiled over, the greatest damage was unleashed against the ethnic Chinese who became the prime targets of looting, rioting, arson, rape, and other forms of violence. By looking at the historical context as Caroline does, we realize that the Chinese were physically separate, culturally alienated, and tended to keep to themselves not necessarily by their own design but because the Spanish and American colonialists chose to isolate them early on. With the passing of generations, perhaps it was not so much their desire to preserve their Chineseness vis-à-vis the native cultures that kept some of them separate, but their political and economic alienation. They are predominantly merchants because that was the role and function that the colonial economy and later, nationalist economic policies of the young Philippine Republic,

encouraged. The 1939 Naturalization Law and the Retail Trade Nationalization are important milestones. The chicken-and-egg question is: Are many Chinese persons traders by occupation, because they are by some cultural predilection "opportunists" and "money-loving," or did they become to be perceived as opportunists because they had become predominantly traders? For some who take a more global view, the word "Chinese" as an identity marker has nearly lost its meaning. For instance, if you go to an international conference or gathering and you see a Chinese-looking person with a Chinese-sounding surname then you ask that person, "Where are you from?" That would be the start of the long story. More and more, we see hyphenated Chinese all around us. To what extent is a China-born, Hong Kong-bred, Oxford-educated Singaporean Chinese, for instance, the same as an Iloilo-born, Manila-bred, Jesuit-educated Filipino Chinese? For that matter, to what extent is the low-income Chinese family who lives in a rented apartment in some alleyway near a public market in Tondo able to identify with the high-income family from Greenhills who take their annual vacation in Europe? This is also important to us as Filipinos because as a consequence of globalization, Filipinos-like the Chinese-have become diasporic peoples in a major sense. Increasingly, we are also becoming a hyphenated people. If you meet a Filipino or somebody who appears to be a Filipino elsewhere in the world and ask about his background, we might expect to hear the same kind of story. The issue of identity is indeed becoming much more complex. In her paper, Carol Hau extensively talks about the role of the Chinese in the revolutionary movement in the Philippines-both in the Marxist and non-Marxist revolutions. They were involved in early labor movements in the Philippines as well as the resistance against Japan. The Filipino guerilla war was taking place contemporaneously with parallel events in China, and there in fact was some coordination between the respective movements. Even prior to the 1920s, Aguinaldo and his revolutionary forces and their counterparts in China were drawing inspiration from each other. At one point prior to the establishment of the Chinese republic, Sun Yat Sen expressed his admiration for the struggle of the Filipino people. There was reportedly an agreement that if the Philippine revolution was to achieve victory first, the Filipinos would help the Chinese win their own revolution. However, the Chinese were the first to achieve victory. More recently, the influence of the Chinese revolution on a whole generation of Filipino activists and revolutionaries from the 1960s to the 1980s was also quite significant. An even earlier reformer, Liang Qichao, is known to have said: "the Philippines is such a small country and yet the people are so brave that they will fight a giant enemy while China is such a big country and yet we are so submissive and fearful of the smaller enemy."

Another dimension that connects Marxism to the Chinese has to do with the Chinese in China rather than the Chinese in the Philippines, China has formally been under Communist Party leadership since 1949. But has Marxism had any major impact on the traditional worldview of the Chinese in the mainland, at any level below the core of the Communist Party elite? The Communist Party in China has around twenty nine million members out of a population of 1.3 billion yet the extent to which Marxism been internalized and now forms part of the contemporary worldview of the Chinese is not really very clear. Mao himself, as Dr. Guillermo might say, was an organic intellectual. Yes, he was schooled. He started his political career when he was recruited to the Communist Party and became an assistant librarian at Beijing University. It was from there that he became a revolutionary. Whenever there are biographies of Mao, almost nothing is written about the influence of Marx on his thinking, although it is quite common to read that he had been influenced by traditional Chinese classics-the Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the writings of Sun Zi. A basic question is: if eighty years of Marxism in China may have failed to plant very firmly the seeds of this philosophy given that there were reversals in Chinese communism in the last thirty years, what are the chances of it moving forward in the Philippine setting? Considering our own varied cultural and intellectual traditions, our tendency of parochialism, our inability to draw upon our own past and to look toward the far future, and our apparent resistance to civic ideals?

Marxism and Philippine Theology Joseph Scalice

Liberation theology in general, and the Philippine theology of struggle in particular, has frequently employed Marxist tools of social analysis in its criticisms of contemporary society.' I intend to examine briefly the relationship of theology and theory that exists between Philippine theology and Marxism. I will argue that this relationship has the potential to be constructive and mutually beneficial. I will separate this interaction between Marxism and Philippine theology into two sections, (1) the contribution of Philippine Theology to Marxism: a reconstruction/reinvigoration, and (2) the contribution of Marxism to Philippine Theology: a criticism of its Biblical hermeneutic.

Reconstruction/Reinvigoration What I term the reconstruction and reinvigoration of Marxism and the Marxist tradition will address three separate topics. First, and most extensively, I will discuss how the Philippine theology of struggle can respond concretely to Marx's notion of religion as opium. This concrete demonstration, I will argue, can result from a constructive internal critique of the theory used by Philippine theology. Second, a Philippine theology of struggle can ably address the counterrevolutionary function of religion as a divisive agent between faiths and confessions, a function that inhibits the formation of a broad class consciousness. Finally, I will argue that a Philippine theology of struggle can mediate, by its praxis, between two contradictory poles in Marxist thought: a largely determinist, and frankly unethical, Marxist tradition, and an effete, uncommitted, academic Marxist tradition. I shall begin with a short survey of the theoretical field and then proceed to the concrete response of a Philippine theology of struggle. Since the point of this paper is not to conduct an analysis of Marxism writ large but of Philippine theology and its interaction with Marxism, I shall limit myself to a necessarily brief examination of the position of Marxism on this point and then show at greater length how a Philippine theology of struggle may concretely respond to these Marxist claims. There have been many attempts to elaborate upon the intersection of religion and Marxist thought and I do not intend to add to their number. I shall only discuss this theme as much as what is necessary to provide a framework for our discussion of the horizons of a Philippine Theology of Struggle:

Religion and Liberation? At this point, the objection will surely be raised: what point of contact can there be between Marxism and religion? As even those who are relatively unversed in Marxism are aware, Marx in his Introduction to a Contribution to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right in 1844, wrote, "Religion is the opium of the people" (Tucker 1978, 54). Is not Marx's thought, and later Marxist elaboration of that thought, dedicated to the principle that belief in God is a projection of alienated humanity? That religion is a mystification of genuine social relations of exploitation? That religious beliefs and practices are, ultimately, an attempt to squelch protest against existing injustice with promises of a happier afterlife? Marx's well-known assertion of religion as "the opium of the people" can best be addressed by a quotation from the French Marxist Roger Garaudy. The thesis that religion always and everywhere turns man away from action, from struggle and from work is in flagrant contradiction to the facts of history. What is more, this was never Marx's thesis. In the very text in which we find the famous formula, "Religion is the opium of the people," Marx emphasizes, several lines further on, that "religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering." We have here an initial dialectical approach to the religious fact.

This dialectical conception alone permits an understanding of the history of Christianity by distinguishing, at each stage along the way, the reflection and the protest, the opium and the leaven, the faith and the ideology, the Constantinian and the apocalyptic, the existential exigency and the alienation from it (Garaudy 1968, 100). Garaudy's dialectical conception of religion, religion with the potential to be either opium or leaven, either agent of exploitation or agent of liberation, opens up the possibility of a positive interaction between Marxism and religion. But is this statement truly reflective of Marx and Engel's thought? Let us examine one instance of the analysis of religion in their writing in answer to this question. As in all of Marx and Engels writings, we can best understand their theories if we analyze the concrete embodiment, the practice, of these theories in their historical and political analyses. In 1850, Frederick Engels, in his The Peasant War in Germany, wrote that the political program of Thomas Münzer, the Anabaptist German revolutionary, demanded the immediate establishment of the kingdom of God, of the prophesied millennium on earth. "This was to be accomplished by the return of the church to its origins and the abolition of all institutions that were in conflict with what Münzer conceived as original Christianity... by the Kingdom of

God, Münzer understood nothing less than a state of society without class differences, without private property, and without Superimposed state powers opposed to the members of society." (Engels 1967, 47) In his 1870 introduction to this work, Engels (1850) states, This book, while giving the historic course of the struggle only in its outlines, undertakes to explain the origin of the peasant wars, the attitude of the various parties which appear in the war, the political and religious theories through which those parties strove to make clear to themselves their position (emphasis added).

The revolutionary activity of the German peasantry, according to Engels, made use of "religious theories through which those parties strove to make clear to themselves their position." Religion here clearly functioned, not as opium, but as "protest against real suffering." That Engels' opinion in this matter was shared by Marx (1870) is clearly demonstrated by a letter from Marx dated February 12, 1870, "Your introduction [to the Peasant War in Germany, 1870] is very good. I know of nothing which should be altered or added." We have allowed the Marxist Roger Garaudy to defend religion from the sweeping accusation of being solely "the opium of the people." Perhaps we should allow the theologian Hans Küng to respond. However effectively we prove that religion is not simply opium of the people, when this is the way it works in practice all arguments are of little use. However clear our exposition that religion does not simply reflect the conditions of earthly domination, when it does so in fact all exposition is of little help. However well we establish the principle that God cannot be understood as guarantor of existing social injustice, when he is in fact invoked as such all theology to the contrary is of little use. Positively this means - and according to Marx, this, too, is a matter of theology - that the truth of belief in God must be proved, tested, verified in practice. It must be proved in practice that religion is not opium, that it does not serve earthly power or sanction injustice. (Küng 1981a, 260)

History has shown all too frequently that religion can serve as a justification for an unjust status quo, as a mystification of exploitative social relations and as the alienation of all that is most human. Religion in our contemporary society is no different. Relations of social inequality and exploitation often receive the sanctimonious stamp of divine approval; protest against inhuman conditions is regularly redirected into longing for a

beneficent afterlife; religion frequently mystifies and obscures the concrete reality of existing oppression and misery. A Philippine theology of struggle, therefore, has the task of practically demonstrating the liberating potential of religion. Jose Miranda and Aloysius Pieris: A Theological Confrontation In order for a theology of struggle to concretely attempt this demonstration, certain foundational issues must be addressed. Primary among these is a little noticed, but profoundly important disagreement within liberation theology: the disagreement between the Mexican theologian and biblical scholar, Jose Porfirio Miranda, and the Sri Lankan theologian, Aloysius Pieris (1988), over the nature of religion. Miranda cogently and passionately writes against all religion, seeing it as oppressive and contrary to the heart of the Biblical message. Jesus and the prophets, according to Miranda, were all part of a tradition of anticultic polemic, and were staunchly opposed to religion as both the alienation of humans and the agent for their oppression. He writes Perhaps the greatest disaster of history was the reabsorption of Christianity by the framework of religion. It is difficult to imagine a greater falsification of Christianity; and the masters of this world could not have invented a more effective stratagem for preventing the revolution of oppressed humanity. Religion does not alter the prevailing order; it has always had an accepted place in society... Religion lubricates the cycles of eternal return in history. Rebellion against religion is mandatory for anyone convinced that justice must be achieved, because persons of moral conscience cannot resign themselves to the eternal return of all things. (Miranda 1977, 40-41)

Miranda's work has a tremendous appeal to Protestants, resonating as it does with Karl Barth's ideas on religion, although Barth's ideas are never directly addressed in Miranda's writings. Barth, particularly the young Barth, saw religion as a blasphemous human attempt to manipulate God, and, therefore, as antithetical to faith. It is worth noting that grappling with Barth's position on this point is of vital importance for an ecumenical dialogue ad intram for Philippine Christianity. Miranda's opinions on religion have been especially influential in the Philippines, the only country in Asia in which a majority of the population is Christian. Miranda's work has a tremendous appeal to Protestants, resonating as it does with Karl Barth's ideas on religion, although Barth's ideas are never directly addressed in Miranda's writings. Barth, particularly the young Barth saw religion as a blasphemous human attempt to manipulate God, and therefore, as antithetical to faith. It is worth noting that grappling with Barth's position on this point is of vital importance for an ecumenical dialogue ad intram for Philippine Christianity. Miranda's opinions on religion have been especially influential in the Philippines, the only country in Asia in which a majority of the population is Christian. Aloysius Pieris (1988, 88) sharply criticizes Miranda's conception of religion, calling it "crypto-colonialist." Pieris succinctly and accurately sums up Miranda's perspective,

The best exponent of this [unilateral theory of religion] is Jose Miranda, a Latin American biblicist avidly read in Asia. For him religion is an evil to be destroyed, because it is an escapist objectification of the Absolute, a projection of one's own self, a justification of the status quo, a total alienation of the human person, an alibi for interpersonal justice, a cyclic view of life that stifles the voice of the Absolute in suffering humanity-and, therefore, something that negates Christian commitment. (Pieris 1988, 90)

This he contrasts to his own opinion, My analysis of this question presumes that every religion, Christianity included, is at once a sign and countersign of the kingdom of God; that the revolutionary impetus launching a religion into existence is both fettered and fostered by the need for an ideological formulation; that its institutionalization both constrains and conserves its liberating force; that religion, therefore, is a potential means of either emancipation or enslavement. (Pieris 1988, 88)

The wholesale rejection of religion, according to Pieris, is a product of Western thought, which separates religion from culture and from the rest of human existence. No such dichotomy exists in Asia, Pieris argues. Further, this rejection is colonialist-a colonialism carried, ironically, by Marxism- specifically by Marxist Occidentalism. Marx's staunch Occidentalism is notorious. In the interest of the globalization of the proletariat, Marx welcomed as necessary England's colonial conquest of India. While Pieris never mentions Miranda's book on Marx, Marx Against the Marxists, it gives considerable substantiation to Pieris's interpretation of Miranda. In the chapter Conscious Continuation of Christianity, Miranda explains at length how Marx's and Engels's insistent Occidentalism was born of their recognition of the values of "civilization." Barbarism is the conduct of ruffians and swindlers, the assertion of the right of the strongest. Civilization is what stands opposed to the barbarism... The moral import of what Marx understands by "civilization" is clear-cut. If it is Christianity that has been the promoter of civilization in that sense and has struck deeper roots in Europe, it is not Marx's fault. (Miranda 1980, 253)

If Pieris desired any further textual justification for his assertion that Miranda's interpretation of religion is "crypto-colonialist," he need not look further than this passage. His charges against Miranda, obtained by a perceptive statement of the logical consequences of Miranda's arguments, here find explicit and cogent proof.

While Miranda is the most outspoken supporter of this rejection of religion within liberation theology, he is by no means the only one. Within both Catholic and Protestant liberation circles, opposition to the notion of religion is widespread.? This strand of thought, I argue, must be rejected by the Philippine theology of struggle if it is to succeed in its liberative task in the Philippine context. As I have discussed at length elsewhere (Scalice n.d.), in order for the theology of struggle to fruitfully labor to create a more human society it must do so in a profoundly ecumenical manner. Miranda's interpretation of religion as consistently alienating and oppressive will not only impair but, ultimately, destroy any possibility of ecumenical dialogue. The encounter of Christianity with other religions, and in the Philippines specifically with Islam, cannot be conducted on these terms. Revolutionary Ecumenism This brings us to the second point in the theological encounter with Marxism. Religion has frequently played the role of counterrevolutionary force, of inhibitor to people's movements, not merely by its mystification of reality, but also by its ability to divide sect from sect, group from group, religion from religion. The development of class consciousness, the ability to struggle together for the collective realization of our full humanity, is often tremendously hindered by the stigmatizing and dividing power of religious difference. Rather than the abolition of religion, the genuine solution to this dilemma is ecumenical dialogue and interreligious labor. We must recognize the liberating potential in each religion in order for this dialogue to be considered worthwhile. The attempt to overcome religious difference and to labor together to realize the liberating trajectory of the various religions can play a crucial role in the reconstruction/reinvigoration of Marxism. Not only will it provide needed balance to the notion of religion as opium and to Marx's atheism, it will confront one of the deepest divides in Marxism, the divide between humanism and determinism. Ethical Regrounding While there are almost innumerable divisions and factions within what is called Marxism, there are two dominant strands into which these various factions often fall. The first may be called revolutionary Marxism, and can generally be characterized as determinist in its outlook and unethical in its tactics. The second may be variously called "humanist" Marxism or cultural Marxism, which concerns itself with humans as subjects, but generally disregards class analysis and is more concerned with "alienation" than exploitation. I will argue that a Philippine theology of struggle can by its

praxis mediate between these two camps and achieve a dialectical synthesis of what is positive in both sides and the sublation of all that is negative. Revolutionary Marxism, as I have tentatively called it, concerns itself with revolution, with class, and with economic exploitation. However, based on what I argue is a misreading of Marx and a dependence on Lenin or Mao, revolutionary Marxism has tended to be very determinist in its outlook. This determinism has meant that it is believed that social and economic conditions make humans, but humans do not make these social and economic conditions. This position directly contradicts Marx as he expressed himself in his third thesis on Feuerbach, "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator himself" (Tucker 1978, 144). Further, revolutionary Marxism with its concern for revolution, has abandoned as "bourgeois" Marx's concern for ethics. Any tactics that further the interest of the revolution are considered acceptable. This unethical orientation is spelled out unapologetically in Gramsci's prison notebooks, The Modern Prince [i.e., the Communist party), as it develops, revolutionizes the whole system of intellectual and moral relations, in that its development means precisely that any given act is seen as useful or harmful, as virtuous or wicked, only in so far as it has as its point of reference the Modern Prince itself, and helps to strengthen or oppose it. In men's consciences, the Prince takes the place of the divinity or the categorical imperative. and becomes the basis for a modern laicism and a complete laicization of all aspects of life and of all customary relationships. (Gramsci 1977, 133; emphasis added)

A Philippine theology of struggle with its focus on the centrality of human well-being and on human responsibility and agency, can aptly correct the deterministic orientation of "revolutionary" Marxism. Further, Philippine theology, with its ethical praxis grounded in the Absolute, i.e., in God's self- revelation in Jesus Christ, can sharply criticize any purportedly revolutionary tactic that would treat humans as means rather than as ends. "Humanist" Marxism is in many ways a paltry Western response to "revolutionary" Marxism. Deeply troubled by the determinism of revolutionary Marxism, this strand of Marxism emphasizes human alienation as elaborated in Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Tucker 1978, 66-126). Alienation, in all of its aspects, whether cultural, psychological, or artistic, is what must be stressed, and not exploitation, "humanist" Marxists argue. The idea of revolution led by the proletariat was an unfortunate mistake of Marx, who believed the proletariat was somehow the agent of social change. Sadly, this is not so, they argue, and

the best that we can hope for is an intellectual dialectical critique of existing society and of the alienation of humans. This Western "humanist" Marxism is the disembodied product of elite western intellectuals and has little or nothing to say to the majority of the world's suffering and struggling poor. In the end, this "Marxism" has so little conscience and is so tepid in its demands that it withers away to nothing but an almost unintelligible ivory-tower playing at words, replete with vacuous, trendy jargons, and insipid conclusions. A Philippine theology can rightly appropriate as its own the concern for human agency and alienation, but will swiftly bring judgment upon the conscienceless orientation of this group of Marxists. With its call for the abandonment of privilege and for the deliberate assumption of the lot of the struggling poor, Philippine theology can demonstrate what genuine conscience would dictate were it paid heed to. Thus, by its absolute ethical criteria and concern with concrete exploited humanity, by its insistence upon human agency and its personal conscience- driven commitment to the poor, Philippine theology can hope to reinvigorate and provide an ethical regrounding for what has in many ways become a vitiated tradition.

Interim Conclusions In the light of what was said above, we can now state that i) Religion can be liberating rather than enslaving, can be "leaven" rather than "opium." ii) Religion has the possibility of no longer acting as a divisive inhibitor to the formation of class consciousness and to the shaping of revolutionary struggles, but rather, can provide a unifying ethical foundation for these struggles. iii) Religion can even hope to provide an antidote to many of the stultifying doctrinaire rigidities in Marxist camps by its concrete ethical orientation and its unswerving commitment to sharing the sufferings of the poor. With Pieris, we must assert, "that religion, therefore, is a potential means of either emancipation or enslavement" (Pieris 1988, 88). This conclusion to the dialogue between Miranda and Pieris is crucial for Philippine theology and must be acknowledged in any attempts to formulate or examine a theology of struggle. And yet, for all its importance, we find ourselves not much further than before we embarked on this brief exchange. Religion can be emancipating or enslaving, can be opium or protest. We have yet to take up Küng's challenge of practically demonstrating the liberating potential of religion. To do so, we must examine several foundational issues.

Critical Hermeneutics We have outlined above the possible contributions of a Philippine theology of struggle to Marxism, but we have yet to examine the contributions that Marxism could make to Philippine Theology in their mutual encounter and dialogue. I will argue that a Marxist criticism of Philippine theology's approach to its text and tradition, its hermeneutic, is one of the most beneficial contributions that this dialogue can foster. Biblical Text It is a remarkable fact, one glaringly obvious but seldom examined, that, despite the willingness of the theology of struggle, indeed the entirety of liberation theology, to employ Marxist analysis to the current social context, this theology's approach to the biblical text is stunningly traditional (Gottwald 1985b). The Bible is treated as a non-ideological document, as a text with a universal proclamation of the message of justice and liberation, as the Word of God. More than simply the Word of God, it is specifically the word of a god who intervenes continually on behalf of the poor and oppressed. The biblical text in the exegetical methodology of liberation theology is frequently read with what may be called a selective, or pick-and-choose, hermeneutic. Verses that particularly support the message of liberation proclaimed by liberation theology are extracted from their context and then by an almost montage exegesis, are extrapolated as the message of the Bible. The apparent assumption is that since this is the message of God and the Bible is uniformly the Word of God, any passage pertaining to justice reflects the heart of the entirety of the text. Other exegetes have approached the text with the bourgeois tools of historical criticism,⁸ fully familiar with the different textual strands and narratives; they can adequately break the text down into J, D, E, and P and know their Isaiah from their deutero-Isaiah. Yet, the assumption of a universally liberating message persists, as does the interpretation of the Bible as the Word of God. In just what sense the Bible, of obvious human provenance given the exegetical techniques employed, can be considered the Word of God is unexamined. Another exegetical method used may be termed the exodus paradigm. Based on a reading of Gerhard von Rad's Old Testament Theology,¹₀ liberation theologians have allowed the exodus event to be the defining event for the entirety of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and even of the New Testament.¹¹ The exodus, a sociopolitical liberation of those in slavery in this reading, is the paradigmatic biblical event; it is God's moment of self- revelation and therefore the heart of God's word. All other passages are interpreted in the light of the revelation of the exodus, i.e., the revelation

that God takes the side of the poor and the oppressed in their struggles for liberation. Finally, there are a few exegetes, Jose Porfirio Miranda being most representative, who have attempted a systematic investigation of the entire canon, employing bourgeois historico-critical methodology, and who have attempted to prove that in all texts, in all books, the biblical message is one of social justice and liberation. We will briefly return to Miranda's biblical interpretation below. In short, liberation theology has, without exception, approached the text as canonically unanimous, as universally liberating, and of unquestioned divine provenance, i.e., it is the word of God. I argue that the hermeneutical techniques employed by liberation theologians are inimical to the genuine aims that they profess, i.e., the liberation of the poor and oppressed. I will examine a brilliant, and much overlooked, voice of dissent from South Africa, Itumeleng J. Mosala and his book Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (1989). With Mosala, I will advocate a radically different approach to the biblical text. Finally, in a brief theological excursus, I will return to the important notion of the Bible as the Word of God and present what I believe to be an attractive and viable solution that respects both the theological and the ideological nature of the biblical text. I. J. Mosala and Critical Hermeneutics Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa is a passionate but respectful critique of the hermeneutical techniques employed by leading black theologians in South Africa, particularly by Allan Boesak and Desmond Tutu. Black theologians, Mosala argues, "maintain a view of Scripture as the absolute, nonideological Word of God that can be made ideological only by being applied to the situation of oppression" (Mosala 1989, 16). Several pages on, Mosala adds, The insistence on the Bible as the Word of God must be seen for what it is: an ideological maneuver whereby ruling class interests evident in the Bible are converted into a faith that transcends social, political, racial, sexual, and economic divisions. In this way the Bible becomes an ahistorical, interclassist document. (Mosala 1989, 18)

He further states, "It is a tragedy that rebel theologies like black theology and liberation theology should uncritically adopt the biblical hermeneutics of bourgeois interests" (Mosala 1989, 19). It is not the use of the Bible as a liberating document that Mosala finds inappropriate, but rather the failure to subject the biblical text to criticism. Black theologians, and this is true of

liberation theologians as well, have treated the Bible as a nonideological document. While the notion of the human origin of scripture may receive lip service in much of liberation theology, the implications of this are not developed. The Bible as a human product, as a text shaped by communities in the midst of social, political, and economic struggle, is ignored. The contentious testimonies of different class interests and the various assertions about God made by diverse communities are read by most liberation theologians as parts of a canonically uniform text. Mosala clearly states this in his book, The point therefore, is not that Boesak and other black theologians are mistaken in finding a liberating message in the Bible. Rather, I contend that the category of the Word of God does not help to bring out the real nature of the biblical liberation because it presumes that liberation exists everywhere and unproblematically in the Bible. (Mosala 1989, 20)

The concrete implications of these criticisms can perhaps best be understood should we examine a text published in the Philippines by Claretian Publications, under Nagliliyab, their series specifically dedicated to liberation literature. This book is Bernard Hurault's Ang Banal na Kasaysayan (Holy History) (1988). Ang Banal na Kasaysayan is a translation of a work written by Hurault, a French priest working in slums in Chile. The sincere intention of this book is to make the Bible accessible to working- class and peasant readers. However, the text is a representative example of the hermeneutic Mosala is criticizing, and it assumes a uniformly liberative message throughout the Bible. This results in convoluted arguments and glaring lacunae. A sample passage on the Israelite monarchy should make this clear. Pagkatapos ni David, sumunod naman ang kanyang anak na si Solomon; at nagkaroon ng 40 pang taon ng kapayapaan at kasaganaan. Pero ang pangarap para sa isang ginintuang panahon, ng paghahari ni Yawe sa lupain ng Israel, ay bahagyang naglaho sa pagkamatay ni Solomon. Nahati ang kanyang kaharian... Ang bahaging hilaga ay humirang ng mga haring hindi mula sa mga anak ni David, at mula nooý tinawag na kaharian ng Israel. Samantala, ang kaharian ng Juda naman sa timog, na nasa Jerusalem ang kapitolyo at ang bantog na Templo ni Solomon, ay nanatiling tapat sa alaala ni David. Pagkaraan ng 70 taon ng kasaganaan at kadakilaan, sa panahon ni David at Solomon, nagsimula naman ang kanilang unti-unting pagbagsak. (Hurault 1988, 32)

[After David, his son Solomon followed; and there were forty more years of peace (kapayapaan) and prosperity (kasaganaan). But the dream of a golden age (ginintuang panahon), of the kingship of Yahweh in the land of Israel, was partly lost with the death of Solomon. His kingdom was divided... The northern portion chose kings that were not from the children of David, and from then on was called the kingdom of Israel. However, the kingdom of Judah in the south, that in Jerusalem had its capitol and the famous temple of Solomon, remained faithful to the memory of David. After seventy years of prosperity (kasagaanan) and greatness (kadakilaan), in the time of David and Solomon, they began their slow downfall. (Author's translation)]

One does not have to delve very deep into the biblical narrative to find passages that give the lie to arguments of peace and prosperity during the monarchy. Both in its origins and its operation, one finds that the Israelite monarchy was, for the vast majority of the population, an oppressive reality. "Norman Gottwald has proposed... that the impetus for monarchy came from those who had monopolized wealth and who wanted a strong central government in order to protect and legitimate their considerable economic and political advantage" (Brueggemann 1997, 601). The monarchy, even under David and Solomon, was characterized by an excess of luxury for the elite, the forced labor of the population on royal construction projects, the centralization of power and the end of the old tribal federation, the creation of a large state military with chariots and horses, the "latifundialization" of peasant land, and the increased expropriation of surplus from the population, through both taxation and the now centralized Temple worship.¹² This is not to assert that Hurault's interpretation of the monarchy is unbiblical.¹³ Hurault very accurately conveys the spirit of the deuteronomistic history." The departure of the Northern Kingdom from Davidic rule and memory, and its failure to worship at the temple in Jerusalem are the prime concern of the deuteronomist. For the deuteronomist, the monarchy of David and Solomon was blessed by God with peace, prosperity and greatness; it subsequently suffered a slow downfall in the wake of the split between Jeroboam and Rehoboam. All of this is written in the context of the Josianic cultic reforms and the attempt to centralize power.¹⁴ Simply put, the deuteronomist is voicing a particular class interest, that of the Jerusalem elite with their ties to the southern monarchy. The deuteronomist's historical account of peace, prosperity, and decline is contradicted by numerous other biblical narratives, among these are the many scathing prophetic criticisms of the actions of the monarchy, Samuel's prophetic injunction against the founding of the monarchy (1 Sam. 10:18- 19), and Hosea's absolute rejection of the existence of any king (Hos 8:4). To

treat the deuteronomist's interpretation of the monarchy as the unproblematic and uniform Word of God, would be to ignore the communities of struggle behind the text and their contentious testimonies embodied in the text. It would be to mystify, to obscure, the relations of power and exploitation in and behind the biblical text. This is merely an example of the well-intentioned but shoddy exegesis that frequently undergirds attempts at providing biblical foundations for a theology of liberation or struggle,¹⁵ Perhaps the most famous attempt in all of liberation theology to grapple with the purportedly universal biblical message of justice is that of Jose Porfirio Miranda. His biblical work has been important not only for third world liberation theologians but for biblical exegetes throughout the world. Miranda's writing, particularly in Marx and the Bible, served as a wake-up call to the biblical studies world that exegesis could not be a disinterested profession, but that there must be commitment on the part of the exegete to the struggles of the oppressed. To refuse to take sides was to side with the oppressor. Miranda's biblical analysis relies heavily on bourgeois exegetical techniques. He ably isolates passages and employs detailed grammatical analyses. Throughout his work he is a brilliant and passionate textual expositor. Miranda particularly studies textual structure; sentences and words are minutely analyzed.¹⁶ He attempts to find the genuine import of various Hebrew phrases and then to demonstrate their universal biblical significance. His argument is that the entirety of the Biblical message from the patriarchs to the prophets and from Jesus to Paul to Revelation, is one of distributive justice and social liberation. For all this Miranda makes no comment on the productive communities behind, and embodied in, the text. It is intensely ironic that an avowed Marxist approach to the Bible should find the text so disembodied, so "unproduced," if you would. While Miranda is a far better exegete than Hurault, the underlying error is the same: they both assume a uniform message in a canonical scripture that is nonideological in composition. This message, this text, is the Word of God. This criticism is not only important for the sake of exegetical accuracy; indeed, that is not the ultimate concern at all. Rather, it is the immediate effect upon the readers that this interpretation has that is so important for Mosala. He writes, "The false notion of the Bible as nonideological...can cause political paralysis in the oppressed people who read it" (Mosala 1989, 6). In the same vein, Mosala states, "[i]t is fatal to mistake oppression for liberation and an oppressor for a liberator" (Mosala 1989, 26). Inasmuch as the Bible is interpreted as nonideological, it can be read directly. It can, without any criticism, be taken as the absolute framework for ethics and the motivation for all praxis. With this lens of interpretation,

when one reads such passages as those pertaining to God's sanction of the oppressive tactics of the Solomonic monarchy, the ethical framework founders and praxis is paralyzed. Mosala presents us with an alternative hermeneutic, one grounded in "the category of struggle," The category of "struggle" at all levels and through various phases of black history should be taken as the key hermeneutical factor. Thus this study seeks to probe the nature of the struggles behind and beneath the text; the struggles in the pages, the lines, and the vocabulary of the text; the struggles that take place when readers engage the text by way of reading it; and the struggles that the completed text represents. (Mosala 1989, 6-7)

Liberation theologians must, using sociohistorical techniques, examine the struggles behind and in the biblical text; they must recognize the contentions made by different parties in different texts. This is not the space to concretely demonstrate the effective application of this technique, but there have been many recent attempts.¹₇ Not only does Mosala provide a desperately needed criticism of black theology and, indirectly, of liberation theologies in general, but his hermeneutic resonates tremendously with the Philippine theology of struggle. His choice of struggle as the decisive category for analysis could not be more appropriate for the Philippine situation and for its incipient theology. The category of struggle becomes an important hermeneutical factor not only in one's reading of his or her history and culture but also in one's understanding of the history, nature and agenda of biblical texts. (Mosala 1989, 9)

And yet, despite, or perhaps because of, our positive appropriation of Mosala's criticisms, we must raise a few criticisms in response to his work as well. Mosala does not really provide us with a pedagogical tool, with a way in which to make this analysis concrete. His approach to the biblical text is at times difficult and yet, he claims, it must become the tool of the wider black struggle for liberation, of the black working class (Mosala, 191-2). Homiletics? Exposition? How do the working class appropriate this socio-historical hermeneutic of struggle? This question must be addressed elsewhere (Scalice n.d.). It must be said, however, that the answer to this question is not to be found in Mosala. He offers no program or suggestion for the dissemination or explication of this reading on a mass scale. Further, Mosala points out that theology is ideology and that its practitioners must make their class stance explicit, but he fails to explicate

that this ideology is specifically theology. His criticism of the notion of the Bible as the nonideological Word of God is needed and important, yet he does not present an alternative. If it is not the Word of God, why should Christians continue to read it? While Mosala argues that in the text we encounter kindred communities of struggle, might we not also encounter kindred struggles in Dickens, or Hugo, or in Sionil José? Do we merely read because Christians have always read? Why not abandon biblical hermeneutics entirely? Obviously, further explication is needed. The Word of God? An Excursus I believe that an attractive and viable solution to this impasse can be reached by an encounter between Mosala and the Catholic theologian Hans Küng. Kung in his famous work, On Being A Christian, grapples with the notion of the Bible as the Word of God. He pithily summarizes his findings in three points, The Bible is not simply God's word: it is first of all and in its whole extent man's word, the word of quite definite individuals. The Bible does not simply contain God's word: there are not certain propositions which are God's word, while the rest are man's. The Bible becomes God's word: it becomes God's word for anyone who submits trustfully and in faith to its testimony and so to the God revealed in it and to Jesus Christ. (Küng 1976, 467)

There are remarkable points of contact between the thought of Küng and Mosala that I will briefly elaborate. "The Bible is not simply God's Word." This statement is a point of perfect unanimity between Mosala and Küng. The notion of the Bible as an uncreated given, as God's Word of nonhuman provenance, and distant from ideological critique-it is this notion precisely that Mosala has been criticizing. "The Bible does not simply contain God's word." This assertion likewise finds its counterpart in Mosala, who criticizes black theologians for their selective reading of the text, as though the portions that supported their cause could be extracted from the canonical whole and read as God's word. He writes, The concept of struggle as a hermeneutical appropriation of the text also avoids the escapist option of textual selectivity, an option that simply rejects as irrelevant those parts of the text that seem unsupportive of one's cause. (Mosala 1989, 10-11; emphasis added).

This charge of textual selectivity can be leveled against most liberation readings of the Biblical text, however unintentional the author's use of this technique may be. "The Bible becomes God's Word: it becomes God's word for anyone who submits trustfully and in faith to its testimony and so to the God revealed in it and to Jesus Christ." This point does not find a direct corollary in Mosala's writing and it is this statement, that I believe, presents us with the possibility of reconciling the genuinely theological and the inherently ideological nature of the text. Mosala writes of the necessity of appropriating the struggles of kindred struggling communities found within the biblical text. The biblical texts do not suddenly become politically supportive of the black struggle just because they are being appropriated from its perspective. The relevance of the Bible in the black liberation struggle may be as much a negative factor as it is often a positive one. To engage a biblical text in the light of the black struggle of liberation may be to take sides in and to connect with kindred struggles that were being waged in very ancient communities. Doing this however, maybe one way of taking sides in and connecting with contemporary struggles. For this reason it is liberating to recognize that not every God of the biblical text is on the side of the poor; nor is it desirable that this should be so. (Mosala 1989, 8; emphasis added)

If we draw a correlation between taking sides in kindred struggles (Mosala) and discipleship (Küng) we can achieve a remarkable synthesis between Küng and Mosala and can reach a point of mutual clarification between our two theorists. For Mosala, we take sides in the struggles of kindred struggle groups. For Küng we submit to the testimony of the text through discipleship. To be a disciple is to take up these struggles. For Küng, the Bible becomes God's word, when readers trustingly submit their lives to the human testimony embodied in the text. The practical moment of the text's becoming is that of the discipleship of the reader. Küng, however, is only concerned with human fallibility and potential for error. He fails to appreciate that these human testimonies not only show the potential for error but are also contentious, shaped by class interests and struggles. Further, Küng's notion of discipleship, in this text at any rate, is an individual one. With Mosala, we must insist that the appropriation of the text is primarily a community act-discipleship is the praxis of a community of believers. Mosala, clearly and accurately states the texts ideological and contentious moment; he misses the text's theological moment. He fails to appreciate that these testimonies from kindred struggling communities are not merely ideological; they are normative statements about God and about

God's relationship with human beings. Further, Mosala never states that the appropriation of the struggles of kindred communities is, in theological terms, discipleship. It is the moment, for Küng, of the text's becoming God's word. In the light of this encounter between Küng and Mosala, let us formulate a tentative synthesis: With Mosala, we must insist upon a class-based reading of theological testimony. There can be no going back to a dishonestly naïve perspective on the biblical text. This entails the recognition of the struggles behind and in the text. Concretelyi) At times, the message is a counterrevolutionary text. This lesson from Mosala cannot be ignored. Passages such as those on the forced labor practices under Solomon must be interpreted and appropriated negatively. We identify with the oppressed and struggling community behind the text and must, therefore, oppose the text's stated practice. ii) Often, we see the insufficiency of certain theological formulations and the need for complementation by other biblical texts. These texts correspond to Küng's notion of peripheral traditions, which must be interpreted in the light of the core of theological understanding¹⁸ and to Mosala's understanding of B texts.¹⁹ iii) And, far more often than Mosala admits, we see a genuinely revolutionary manifestation of the struggle behind and in the text. These are the direct statements of our kindred communities of struggle (Mosala) and our core theological testimony (Küng). With Küng we insist that this core/kindred testimony allows the appropriation of the biblical text in discipleship as the Word of God. In the discipleship of the struggling community, the contentious testimonies of the Bible become, for the community, the Word of God. This discipleship of the present struggling community to the biblical testimonies is also, and above all, a discipleship to the person that they narrate, that they claim to follow. For the Christian community, in the midst of all the ideological contentions there is a following of, a discipleship to, Jesus Christ. In what will now be familiar terms, Mosala concludes, The Bible is the product, the record, the site, and the weapon of class, cultural, gender and racial struggles. And a biblical hermeneutics of liberation that does not take this fact seriously can only falter in its project to emancipate the poor and the exploited of the world. Once more, the simple truth rings out that the poor and exploited must liberate the Bible so that the Bible may liberate them. (Mosala 1989, 193)

And yet, should we stop there? Theology not only interacts with the biblical text but also with church history and tradition. Tradition: Extending Mosala In its attempt to shape theological self-understanding and in its hopes of honestly stating core beliefs in an ecumenical dialogue, it is critical that a Philippine theology of struggle grapple not only with the normative character of the biblical text, but also with the interpretive lens of tradition. Theology does not exist in a vacuum nor is the contemporary church without a history. In order to coherently shape theological struggle, as well as a theology of struggle, there must be a critical coming-to-terms with theological tradition and church history. In keeping with Mosala's argument, we insist that, as in the field of biblical exegesis, there must be a critical reading of the context of both tradition and of our present situation. But now, with Küng, we also must insist on a third point of interaction: fidelity to the core testimony. Inasmuch as this theology desires to be Christian theology, all tradition must be dramatically relativized in the light of the core biblical testimony to Jesus Christ. All tradition must be weighed on the basis of its fidelity to this, the core Christian principle. These three points of interaction may be termed coherence (i.e., fidelity to the core testimony), contingency²⁰ (i.e., the socio-historic factors that shaped the tradition), and applicability (to present struggles). I will argue that for contemporary theology to be both faithful to its roots and to be genuinely ecumenical, it must employ diachronic rather than merely synchronic analyses. What is needed is not a systematization of contemporary theological perspectives, localized into a variety of circumstances, but a clear-eyed recognition of the historical shaping and origins of theology. I cannot concretely develop this attempt here; I will let an exceedingly brief schematization suffice. For ecumenical theological development and church history, the moment of greatest importance is the ecumenical councils. Employing our three points of analysis we may tersely state: Coherence. The councils of Nicaea and Constantinople (homo-ousios and the three hypostases) and of Chalcedon (vere homo-vere deus) with their concern for a Hellenistic philosophical understanding of theological principles, to a vast extent depart from the intent of early biblical triadic formulations and from the New Testament understanding of "Son of God." The struggle over "orthodox" theology abandoned much biblical credibility with its complex and convoluted arguments. The point of coherence is here, to put it kindly, tenuous. Contingency. It must not be overlooked that the quest for a uniform, orthodox theology was guided and motivated not by a quest for accuracy or

authenticity, but rather by the imperial desire for a uniform church. Imperial power believed that "[i]t needed a uniform 'ecumenical creed'... [to] ensure the unity of the empire under the slogan 'one God-one emperor-one kingdom-one church-one faith"" (Küng 1994a, 181). The councils were convened, directed, adjourned and concluded by the emperor. The councils adapted the Christian churches into a uniform imperial religion, supporting and validating imperial rule. Applicability. Many of the council's theological statements are incomprehensible to modern readers. The trinitarian speculations of these councils present a tremendous hurdle to ecumenical dialogue ad extram as well. We find these principles when examined in the light of their coherence and contingency to be sorely in need of reformulation. This is not to say abandonment; the theological history of Christianity cannot be tossed aside. Rather, what is called for is a critical revaluation of these statements, a return to the authentic concerns of the core biblical testimony and a constant awareness of the imperial origin of the later theological creedal statements. This must be examined in detail for any genuine dialogue between Christianity and Islam in the Philippines to be effective.²¹ These three analytical moments, I argue, can be used fruitfully in the study of any moment in church history and theology.²²

Conclusions We have seen that Marxism and religion can interact compatibly, and that a dialogue between the two can be mutually beneficial. Religion can be protest against injustice, rather than merely an "opium of the people." Religion can even, by its ethical commitment, provide a needed critique of much of contemporary Marxist thought. Marxism can provide religion, specifically, Christianity not only with a lens for interpreting contemporary society but also with a critical hermeneutic for recognizing the contentious nature of both its scriptures and its tradition. This mutually beneficial and dynamic interaction can provide a foundation for ecumenical dialogue and for grassroots struggles against oppression and injustice. What emerges from the encounter between Philippine theology and Marxism is a critical and profound ethical commitment to the creation of a world in which "in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (Tucker 1978, 491).

Notes 1. For a wonderful example of this, Dussel (1988). 2. For background on the "theology of struggle:" Battung et al. (1988); Asedillo and Williams (1989); Elwood (1988); Apilado (2000); Nadeau (2002); Fernandez

(1994); De la Torre (1986). The term "theology of struggle" was first coined by Hechanova (1986). James Whelchel's The Path to Liberation: Theology of Struggle in the Philippines (1995) is a fundamentalist Christian critique of the theology of struggle. 3. An interesting analysis of the relationship between Marxism and Christianity from a Philippine perspective is Ojoy (2001). 4. In a letter to Joseph Bloch, dated September 21-22, 1890, Engels, in an effort to refute the supposed economic determinism of Marx and Engel's thought, wrote that, in contradistinction to the potential for misunderstanding in their statements of main principles, "when it was a case of presenting a section of history, that is of a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was possible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have mastered its main principles and even those not always correctly" (Tucker 1978, 762). In other words, to grasp Marx and Engels understanding of their theories one must look to their works of historical analysis, to their practical application of theory, and not merely to their more famous treatises. 5. Available English translations of Miranda's work are the following, Marx and the Bible, 1974; Being and the Messiah, 1977; Marx Against the Marxists, 1980; and Communism in the Bible, 1982. Miranda's work will play a key role at several points in this paper, at each point being criticized for a crucial shortcoming. I would like, therefore, to stress my deep indebtedness to Miranda's work. Despite my sharp criticisms of several aspects of his thought, his work has been foundational for much of my understanding of both Marx and of liberation theology 6. Pieris (1988, 91) employs a wonderful turn of phrase, when he claims that Liberation Theology in Asia must grapple with the "two Karls," Marx and Barth. Marx opposes religion to revolution while Barth opposes religion to revelation. 7. Another work with a similar interpretation is Sobrino (1978). 8. On the bourgeois origin and character of historical criticism, Eagleton (1984). 9. For a basic discussion of these and other terms of Biblical historical criticism, Friedman (1997). 10. Von Rad's work (1962-5) was at the time of publication quite revolutionary, but is now dated. For a wonderful recent reading, cf. Brueggemann (1997). 11. Best representative of this tradition is Croatto (1981). 12. Cf. Ceresko (2001); Gottwald (1985a); Coote (1981); and Mosala (1989). 13. For background on the deuteronomistic history (DH), McKenzie's "Deuteronomistic History" in Freedman (1992). 14. For a simple explanation of Josiah's practice of centralization, (Ceresko 2001, 123-135); for a detailed account, Nakanose (2000). 15. We see this not only in the case of the monarchy, but also throughout Old and New Testament exegesis. 16. He does not do this in the later spirit of rhetorical criticism, letting each passage stand on its own. I am not arguing here that he should have employed rhetorical criticism, I am merely indicating that he does not. For a feminist example of the use of rhetorical criticism, Trible (1984).

17. In addition to the works already cited in this section, I have found these books particularly helpful: Gottwald (1979 and 1983); Elliott (1994); Myers (1988). 18. Throughout his work, but particularly in On Being a Christian (1976) and Christianity: Essence, History and Future (1994a), Küng develops the dual notion of the core of biblical testimony-specifically the historical figure of Jesus- and the peripheral interpretations of that testimony which must be interpreted and evaluated in light of their fidelity to the core testimony. 19. Mosala expands upon Robert Coote's work (1981). Coote develops a three strand trajectory of the formation of the book of Amos: the original prophetic texts (A), an exilic, restorative redaction (B) and a post-exilic redaction and completion (C), Coote insists upon the authorial role of each phase and refuses to see any of the textual strands as merely "editorial" or redactive in the pejorative sense. Mosala heightens Coote's class based interpretation of these texts, in Mosala's two chapter investigation of the book of Micah. The B texts, Mosala and Coote argue have weakened the class criticism of the A texts, using words like good and evil in place of justice and oppression. 20. I am indebted to J. Christiaan Beker for his ideas on coherence and contingency in Paul's writings. I have adapted these categories for a far broader analysis and added the notion of applicability. Cf. Beker (1980). 21. For a brief example of this, Scalice (n.d.). 22. Examples: the Protestant notion of secular authority. Coherence - a contextual reading of Romans 13:1-7, deliberate ignoring of the examples of Jesus and the Prophets. Contingency Luther's relations to the German princes, suppression of Münzer and the peasant revolt. Applicability-grossly counter-revolutionary. Papal infallibility. Coherence - There is no point of biblical coherence; even coherence within tradition is largely built upon forgeries. Contingency-Vatican 1, Joseph de Maistre and the origins of fascism. Applicability - this doctrine is the primary hurdle to Protestant and Catholic dialogue and reunion. On these statements, Elliot (1994); Engels (1967); Küng (1994b); and Berlin (1998). References Apilado, Mariano. 2000. The dream need not die: Revolutionary spirituality 2. Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers. Asedillo, Rebecca, and B. David Williams, ed. 1989. Rice in the storm: Faith in struggle in the Philippines. New York: Friendship Press. Battung, Mary Rosario B., Liberato C. Bautista, Sophia Lizares-Bodegon, and Alice G. Guillermo, ed. 1988. Religion and society: Towards a theology of struggle, Book 1. Manila: Forum for Interdisciplinary Endeavors and Studies. Beker, Johan Christiaan. 1980. Paul the apostle: The triumph of God in life and thought. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Berlin, Isaiah. 1998. The crooked timber of humanity: Chapters on the history of ideas. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Brueggemann, Walter. 1997. Theology of the old testament. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press. Ceresko, Anthony. 2001. An introduction to the old testament: A liberation perspective. Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications.

Coote, Robert. 1981. Amos among the prophets. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Croatto, Jose. 1981. Exodus: a hermeneutics of freedom. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. De la Torre, Edicio. 1986. Touching ground, taking root: Theological and political reflections on the Philippine struggle. Quezon City, Philippines: Socio-Pastoral Institute. Dussel, Enrique. 1988. Ethics and community. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Eagleton, Terry. 1984. The function of criticism. London: Verso. Elliott, Neil. 1994. Liberating Paul: The justice of God and the politics of the apostle. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Elwood, Douglas, ed. 1988. Toward a theology of people power: Reflections on the Philippine February phenomenon. Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers. Engels, Frederich. 1850. Preface to the second edition of the peasant war in Germany. Marxist Internet Archive: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/ peasant-war-germany/ch0a.htm (accessed October 18, 2009). 1967. The German revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fernandez, Eleazar. 1994. Toward a theology of struggle. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Freedman, David, ed., 1992. Anchor bible dictionary. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday. Friedman, Richard. 1997. Who wrote the bible? San Francisco: Harper Books. Garaudy, Roger. 1968. From anathema to dialogue: A Marxist challenge to the Christian churches. New York: Vintage Books. Gottwald, Norman. 1979. The tribes of Yahweh: A sociology of the religion of liberated Israel, 1250-1050 BCE. Maryknoll: Orbis. ed., 1983. The Bible and liberation: Political and social hermeneutics. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. 1985a. The Hebrew bible: A socio-literary introduction. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1985b. Socio-historical precision in the biblical grounding of liberation theologies. An address presented at Catholic Biblical Association of America, San Francisco. Gramsci, Antonio. 1977. Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Hechanova, Louie. 1986. The gospel and struggle. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. Hurault, Bernardo. 1988. Ang banal na kasaysayan. Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications. Küng, Hans. 1976. On being a Christian. New York: Doubleday and Company. 1981a. Does God exist? New York: Vintage Books. 1981b. Justification: The doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic reflection. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 1994a. Christianity: Essence, history and future. New York: Continuum. 1994b. Infallible? An unresolved Inquiry. New York: Continuum. Marx, Karl. Marx to Engels in Manchester. Marxist Internet Archive: http:// marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_02_12.htm (accessed April 19, 2004). Miranda, Jose. 1974. Marx and the bible: a critique of the philosophy of oppression.

Maryknoll: Orbis Books. 1977. Being and the Messiah: the message of St. John. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

1980. Marx against the Marxists: The Christian humanism of Karl Marx. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Mosala, Itumeleng. 1989. Biblical hermeneutics and black theology in South Africa. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Myers, Ched. 1988. Binding the strong man: A political reading of Mark's story of Jesus. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Nadeau, Kathleen. 2002. Liberation theology in the Philippines: Faith in a revolution. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. Nakanose, Shigeyuki. 2000. Josiah's passover: sociology and the liberating bible. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Ojoy, Virgilio. 2001. Marxism and religion: A fusion of horizons. Manila, Philippines: UST Publishing House. Pieris, Aloysius. 1988. An Asian theology of liberation. Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications. Scalice, Joseph. n.d. Horizons of struggle in Philippine theology: A programmatic synthesis. http://atdpweb.soe.berkeley.edu/pepe/philippinetheology.pdf (accessed October 18, 2009). Sobrino, Jon. 1978. Christology at the crossroads. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Trible, Phyllis. 1984. Texts of terror. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Tucker, Robert. 1978. The Marx-Engels reader. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Von Rad, Gerhard. 1962-5. Old testament theology. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Row. Whelchel, James. 1995. The path to liberation: Theology of struggle in the Philippines. Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers.

Marxism and Philippine Theology Reviews by Edicio dela Torre and Rene Nachura

Review by Edicio de la Torre My comments on the article take note of the author's statements (in his e- mail) about the essay and its intentions: 1) It is a work of Marxist theory and Philippine theology, and not a history of recent religious and political praxis. 2) A work of theory must precede a work of historical analysis. 3) The unexamined role of theology/hermeneutics and a focus on textually unsituated praxis leads to the proximity of radical political involvement and Christian fundamentalism. In the text itself, he writes "I intend to examine briefly the relationship of theology and theory that exists between Philippine theology and Marxism. I will argue that this relationship has the potential to be constructive and mutually beneficial." I agree that the relationship has such potential, and encourage the author to pursue his studies into this. But since he wants to do theory, 1 would like to point out some issues of sprecision and methodology. i) Titles tend to be general, like "Marxism and Philippine Theology," but some precision is called for in the text. Philippine theology that seeks to address social issues and social change includes different sorts of theologies, including those influenced by Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Joe de Mesa, Dionisio Miranda). If in fact the focus is on the "Philippine theology of struggle" why not say so? But then, see later the distinction among professional, pastoral, and popular theologies. As for Marxism, he writes that it is not his intention to discuss Marxism as such but "Philippine theology (of struggle) and its interaction with Marxism." With what Marxism? Marx and Engels, obviously, since he quotes them. What about Marxism in the Philippines, with which progressive Christians (and their theology) interact? It is mediated via Lenin and Mao, since the PKP and CPP, the two communist parties in the Philippines, have the Russian revolution and party and the Chinese revolution and party as references. Of course Philippine Marxists also cite Marx and Engels, but the texts and transmitted attitudes about religion from the Russian and Chinese revolutions and Lenin and Mao are relevant. This is one explanation I have for some of the difficulties in Christian-Marxist dialogue in the Philippines, since the Marxist texts that inform Philippine Marxists have the more immediate contexts of Russia and China where there were little or no positive

experiences of Marxists with progressive religious individuals and organizations, compared to the Latin American context. Until the recent decades (and until historical research was incorporated into the consciousness of Marxists in the Philippines) the same holds for the Philippine context. I can understand that his sources may be limited, since theoretical writing by Philippine Marxists and theologians are not abundant/accessible. It is of course valid to use authors and their ideas from other settings to examine and critique practices and ideas in the Philippines. But the text does not give enough weight to the self-understanding and articulation of Philippine Marxists and Christians. In an article that focuses on theory, Philippine theology of struggle and Philippine Marxism may be critiqued as inadequate or even unfaithful to the "original (authentic?)" Christian theology and Marxist theory, but the self-articulation of the actual people and organizations living out their commitments should be examined in their social and intellectual settings. That is the method he advocates for biblical texts; the same applies to other texts. Otherwise, there can be a subtle version of the notion of true and false consciousness in comparing the more theoretically coherent writings with the writings that are available from the field. ii) On the "two contradictory poles in Marxist thought: a largely determinist, and frankly unethical, Marxist tradition, and an effete, uncommitted, academic Marxist tradition" that a Philippine theology of struggle can mediate through its praxis. I can understand the purpose of the distinction, but it may be doing Marxism a disservice in arguing for a "reinvigorating role" for a Philippine theology of struggle. I may add that it does not reflect my personal experience and readings about Marxism in the Philippines. Are there determinist and frankly unethical Marxists and Marxist traditions? Of course. Are there effete academic Marxists and Marxists traditions? Of course. Are these the dominant poles in our Philippine experience? I don't think so. And if these two poles provide the challenge for the mediating potential of a theology of struggle (more precisely, of Christians in the revolution who are reflexively conscious and articulate about the roots of their commitment), we make the task too easy... The theology of struggle and Christians in the revolution need to address themselves to the strongest features of Marxist theory and practice, if we are to test our belief in the potential of Christian faith and theology (embodied in individuals and groups of Christians who live out their commitment to revolutionary change). We should not concentrate on two extreme and weak flanks of Marxism and its traditions. The same applies of course to Marxists who believe in the explanatory and persuasive power of

their theory and practice. They should not focus on the easy targets of fundamentalist and conservative, even reactionary, religions and Christianity on the one hand and academic theology that is unrelated to practice, but on the phenomena and self-articulation of Christians who demonstrate their commitment in the struggle. I know that this is more difficult, not the least because the written sources may not be adequate or available. Unlike Latin America, there is little interaction between professional theologians (usually based in seminaries and universities) and the groups of Christians in the revolutionary and progressive movements. I like Boff's distinction of professional, pastoral, and popular theology. These are not distinctions based on cogency and authenticity, but differences in functions and settings, and therefore literary forms. Theology of struggle, like most theologies that arise from engaged activists and communities, tends to be mainly popular and pastoral in form. It takes a difficult combination of trained theologians with access to other literature and to the action-reflection of field activists, and field-activists who have an inclination and ability to write their reflections. The form of theology that is considered "serious" theology (and studied in universities) is still the book with footnotes, preferably in more than one language! (This is my running banter with sympathetic German theologians.) Ironically, there may be benefit for us in the Philippines if we had more academic Marxist scholars and Christian scholars. It will be up to the activists to make use of their research and reflections to help clarify and guide our practice, and also to test their validity. Unfortunately, most Christians and Marxists in the struggle may not have the time, inclination or discipline to do theory or even raise the immediate observations and reflections to needed levels of abstraction. Bloch makes a distinction between "cold" and "warm" currents of Marxism, and Marx did say he was not a Marxist. But knowing the Philippine Marxists, even though I disagree with many of them about their practice and theory, I think that ethics, however understood (I presume as referring to values and moral standards) is not absent. The debate is on universality and inclusiveness versus partisan and restricted conceptions, e.g., one set of standards for those who are in, and another for those who are out, comrades and friends versus enemies and rivals. But that is not peculiar to Marxism. In fact evolutionary psychologists argue that the larger narrative that human history reveals is the gradual expansion of our sense of community within which we practice ethical reciprocity and even self- sacrifice. iii) What about the less than scientific interpretation of the biblical texts? That is happening all over, and yet people struggle, even sacrifice. Should they be taught how to better interpret the texts? Yes. But I can imagine

the difficulty. I read and appreciated the Tribes of Yahweh, but only because I had lots of time in prison. There is a divide between what we may call an "effete" theology that goes into informed practice and the practice of Christians that is not sufficiently informed by good theology. Or more accurately, informed by a mixture of many ideas both Christian and Marxist. I must add that there are other ideas and theories, like those related to nationalism, ethnicity, race, and gender, that challenge both Marxist theory and Christian theology. Even though the ChristianMarxist dialogue is of immediate interest, this cannot be pursued without reference to these other challenging dialogue partners. "Theory without practice is sterile; practice without theory is blind." The Marxist aphorism is elegant; real life is fuzzier. There are different mixes of some practice and some theory; we are not talking of total sterility (or effeteness) or of total blindness. Even understanding without practice is important. Sometimes I like to reverse the oft quoted Theses on Feuerbach about philosophers having only interpreted the world; the point is to change it. Activists have tried to change the world; but it is important to understand it. Not just the world, but ourselves, since we see the world often not as it is, but as we are. iv) This next point may be more sociological than theoretical, but greater care must be given to the interchangeable use of religion, Christianity, and theology. While I agree on rejecting Miranda's absolutist critique of religion, we should be more accurate and fair in not arrogating to Christianity all assertions about religion's potentials and weaknesses. While the Philippines is considered majority Christian, there is Islam, and underlying both, there is indigenous animism. It is not just ecumenism among different Christian denominations that is called for, but a proper respect from Christians for other religious traditions. Also, the more relevant distinction is not just between conservative and progressive Christianity, but in relation to Marxism, with revolution. Marxism claims to provide scientific guidance to the project of revolutionary transformation of society. In the Kairos project, we denounced those who invoke Christianity to oppose liberation and kill activists in the name of anti- communism. But we are also aware that there are different "political incarnations" of the liberating potential of Christianity. In addition to Christian revolutionaries who work in alliance with Marxist revolutionaries, there are Christian reformers (to use standard political categories: social democrats, Christian democrats, probably qualified with "left wing"). A further distinction can be made between Christians and churches. I recall the long discussions we had with Marxists about dealing with the

category "Christian" since it refers primarily to consciousness, and can describe peasants, workers, middle class, indigenous people, etc. We ended up agreeing on using "church people" as one more precise category, even though it doesn't cover all Christians, just those that have a definite organization and institutional location, and usually, greater need for an explicitly articulated theology, not just for themselves, but for their institutions. Theology privileges systematic reflection and interpretation. Gutierrez calls it a "second act," after commitment and action. Fides quaerens intellectum. Faith seeking understanding. I think that the practice of Philippine Christians is richer than its theoretical/theological interpretation, and that is a continuing challenge. In interacting with Marxist theory we can't help address the framework of the "unity" or better the dialectic of theory and practice. v) I end with various comments/reflections that do not hang together. I had originally written them in between the paragraphs of the article, as immediate comments: I heartily agree with the different passages on the importance of "practical" refutation and affirmation. The theological interpretation comes next, but is of course integral. And the living witness may not be the one who can explain most coherently. I remember the mutual delight I experienced with my professor in fundamental theology when my insights from the field matched his findings from the writings of the church fathers. Not practical demonstration. But theoretical interpretation of the actual revolutionary and progressive practice of Christians. Are they so in spite of their faith or are they so because of their faith? Do we take their self-consciousness and articulation, or do we say they are victims of false consciousness. Marxist comrades would ask me (and other Christians in the movement) "Why do you insist on interpreting your commitment as based on your interpretation of your faith? Is it mainly to save your faith?" A Marxist who is not revolutionary is considered a "heretic" and treated as such, revisionists, reformists, counter-revolutionaries. A Christian who is a revolutionary is considered the heretic and is treated as such.

Most of the writings referred to are not that well discussed in the Philippines. Not his fault. You have to use what sources are available. But when I was doing research into Christians in the struggle, it was always difficult to pin down which books were read and which had an influence on individuals and groups. We cannot presume a direct relationship between the cogency and elegance of a theory and its actual influence on activists.

Regarding South Africa and Itumeleng, I recommend looking into the effort of Albert Nolan (Jesus Before Christianity and God in South Africa) both because they are a worthy effort to grapple with the Bible, theology, and the South African struggle, and because they have informed the practice and theory of quite a number of activists inside and outside the churches these. How do we judge any theory? On the basis of the praxis of its adherents even if they are a minority, or should they be a majority? There are revolutionary (and using a broader category, progressive Christians). But they are minorities in the Christian community, both at the leadership and membership levels. Majority of Christians are conservative, or uninvolved, or consciously invoke Christianity against revolution (oftentimes even against substantial reforms) and Marxism. On the other hand, majority of those who call themselves Marxists are in revolutionary movements and organizations. Marxists who argue for reform are considered "heretical" or reformists and revisionists. Are we heretics or the holy remnant the faithful? There is a challenge to us to convince others and to struggle with other dominant interpretations of Christianity, and that is not a merely academic task.

The relationship has the potential to be constructive and mutually beneficial? Yes! We can initially derive the argument for potential from the actual-the experience of Christians and Marxists in a shared struggle/ movement, e.g., Christians for National Liberation (CNL) members and Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) members in the national democratic revolution. The second step is to trace if the mutually beneficial practical relationship has roots in their respective theology/theory. There is still another issue of the self-understanding of Christians who are revolutionaries but organizationally outside the party and not accountable to Marxism as such, only to the common political program formulated by Marxists, i.e., the national democratic line. The attitude toward religion can be mirrored in the answer (reconstructed) of a party leader to the query of CNL when we put forward the thesis that the task of Christians in the revolution is the (national democratic) transformation of the churches. He said there are three ways to look at the churches. We tolerate them as they are; that is unacceptable. We try to destroy them; that is impossible. So we should transform them, but that is the task of Christians, not Marxists. There is really no strategy for church transformation. There can be utopian critiques or the illusion that all churches need are data and theology. What about interests and power?

The Marxists are presumed to be revolutionary because of their Marxism unless proven otherwise. The Christians have to prove that they are revolutionaries because of their faith, rather than in spite of it. And if they assert that it is because, we should take seriously their interpretation of their faith even if we can respectfully probe if their use of the texts or their interpretation of their commitment and faith is inconsistent not just with Marxist hermeneutics but even biblical scholarship.

Review by Rene Nachura In the 1970s and 1980s, a significant number of Christians in the Philippines joined hands with Marxists. These Christians, while upholding their faith and identity, embraced the armed revolution led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The CPP, in its turn, gave a prominent place to the Christians for National Liberation (CNL) in the National Democratic Front (NDF). In this regard, the question was often asked, "How would this partnership affect the beliefs and practices of the two parties?" Marxism and theology The present article seeks to address an aspect of this question. It examines the relationship between Marxism and the (inchoate) theological articulation of these revolutionary Christians, known as the Theology of Struggle (TS),' and offers an interesting theoretical framework for Marxist-TS interaction and mutual enrichment. It treats this relationship in two sections: (a) the contribution of TS to Marxism and (b) the contribution of Marxism to Philippine theology. In the first section, it tries to show how TS can contribute to the "reconstruction/reinvigorization" of Marxism by mediating through its praxis between two contradictory interpretations of Marxism, namely, the determinist/revolutionary (held as orthodoxy by Marxist-Leninist parties, including the CPP) and the "humanist" or Western Marxism (viewed by orthodox Marxists as effete and revisionist). The TS can bridge the divide by demonstrating in its practice the revolutionary potential of its Christian faith while holding fast to its belief in the centrality of human well-being and in human responsibility and agency. A theology equally engaged in the struggle for social transformation and dedicated to human values/well-being can be an example for Marxists that humanism and revolution can go together. In the second section, the author argues that a Marxist (or "materialist") reading (hermeneutics) of the Bible and the history (tradition) of Christianity will help the theology of struggle to be more consistent and effective. The uncompromising Marxist class standpoint and its concretist ("materialist")

viewpoint may help Filipino theologians adopt a reading of the Bible and of Church history in a more nuanced way and from the definite perspective of the people's struggle. The work of African theologian, I.J. Mosala (1989), is adduced as an example of a biblical interpretation that takes seriously the category of "struggle" as the "key hermeneutical (interpretive) factor" and thus able to discern the different "ideological" currents present even in the sacred texts. Thus, the article concludes, the dynamic interaction between Marxism and TS (religion) can be mutually beneficial and enriching. The Question The paper presents an interesting and largely valid framework for an interaction between Philippine Theology of Struggle and Marxism. The discussion, however, remains in the realm of the academic and the possible: "How a Philippine theology of struggle may concretely respond to (these) Marxist claims" and "the contributions that Marxism could make to Philippine theology." In fact, the prescriptions can easily apply to similar relationships outside of the Philippines. Considering, however, the long history of interaction and even partnership between Philippine proponents of the theology of struggle and Filipino Marxists, the more interesting question would seem to be how this relationship was in fact carried on and what in fact were its mutual effect on the parties.2 This is a question that, though often raised, has (to my knowledge) not yet been addressed by serious research. Can this article open the door to this enterprise? Sharpening the Status Quaestionis The concrete encounter between Marxism and the Philippine TS takes place between the Maoist-oriented CPP and the Christians who "did theology" in the context of the struggle for radical social transformation especially during the Martial Law period. Clarifying who these Christians/" theologians" are and what they understand by "theology of struggle" will help sharpen the issues raised by our question and this paper. Theology of Struggle The Philippine TS is not a fully articulated or systematized theology. In fact, the main concern of its practitioners is not to produce a theological system. "Doing theology in the Philippines," says Carlos Abesamis, "is not a systematic programmed activity of producing theology... Our objective is committed action, not theological renewal or theological re-education" (Abesamis 1980a). For "theologians of struggle" what is foremost is "the sharpening of

the Philippine struggle itself and how Christians can participate and contribute fully to the struggle" (Cariño 1988). While sharing in some basic orientation (which too is shared with other theologies of liberation) (cf. Abesamis 1980b; Fernandez 1994), these "theologians" vary widely in their theological approaches and have generally little time for theological niceties. It is in this sense that the TS may be said to be "inchoate." The "Theologians of Struggle" In terms of the relationship with the Marxists, the Christians who in one way or the other share in the basic orientation of TS, may be classified into three groups:³ i) Those who maintain some positive relationship with the Marxist NDF, esp. those associated with or close to CNL.⁴ ii) Those who are associated with the Soc-Dems (the organized Social Democrats), especially the Jesuits, who are seen as anti-Communist (Marxist).⁵ iii) The socially progressive Christians who are independent from both, like some "activist" bishops.⁶ Of these, it is only with the first (1) that one can historically speak of an interaction or "dialogue" between Philippine Marxists and TS. It is on this that the study must focus. What kind of a "theology of struggle" did this group develop? How was this TS affected by its proponents' association with the Marxists and their revolution? Did it, in turn, exercise any influence or effect on the theory and practice of Marxists? How? Marxism's Effect on TS The basic concern of TS is the participation of Christians in the struggle of the poor and the oppressed. It is in this area that the Marxists through its "National Democratic Revolution" (NDR) deeply influence the Philippine TS. Its theory and practice of "class struggle" sharpens the Christians' sensitivity to the plight of the PDO (the poor, deprived and oppressed) and makes concrete the necessary "option for the poor." The Marxian tools of analysis, especially the "structural analysis" that was widely used in social action work,⁷ help them understand the situations of oppression and facilitate their line of response. These are no mean contributions. Both the standpoint for the poor and social analysis are central presuppositions of TS. Furthermore, they foster a critical sense not only towards state and civil society, but also toward the institutions of the churches. While the centrality of "praxis" calls for heightened attention to the materially concrete ("the concrete analysis of concrete situations"), TS was

never at tracted to the so-called "materialist reading" of the Bible (as in Mosala).⁸ In general, its interpretation of the sacred texts and of Christian tradition revolves around two core biblical themes: the theme of "total salvation" especially as exemplified in the Exodus paradigm and that of the "Reign of God" as the central message of the Gospel (Abesamis 1978, 1980). These themes are in turn read consistently from the perspective of the struggling poor and in view of greater participation in that struggle. To my mind, this approach and use of the Bible served TS well, both in its practical objective and in its theological reflection. Mention must be made of the flip-side of this Marxist contribution to TS. Throughout their relationship, there was an underlying current in the Marxist movement that discouraged "churchiness" among the Christians within its ranks. In fact, many of the church people who got most deeply involved in the movement gave up religious practice (and faith) altogether. "Doing serious theology" was not really encouraged, and, it was generally left to those in the periphery of the movement (and, of course, to the professional theologians) to engage in theologizing.⁹ This is one reason why TS did not develop in the Philippines the way Liberation Theology did in Latin America. Influence of TS on Philippine Marxism Did the presence of Christians with their TS exercise any influence on Philippine Marxism? It would be totally unnatural if the involvement of so many Christians in the revolutionary would not have any effect at all on the movement. Indeed, on the micro level-on the level of the day-to-day interactions and in particular group collectives-many instances of the positive influence of the Christian presence may be cited. It is when one goes up to the broader realm of Marxist theory and party policy that the issue becomes more problematic. For one, no study has been attempted on this question and very little documentation is available to facilitate such a study. More importantly, some important happenings in the history of the revolutionary movement put in serious doubt whether Christians in the movement do in fact exercise any significant influence on the Marxist party. One is the sad experience of the internal purges in the movement that was repeated again and again in the second half of the 1980s, and allegedly claimed thousands of lives. It is now recognized by the CPP as a colossal mistake and how it happened is still a mystery. But, where then was the humanizing influence of CNL and the Christians in the movement? How is it that not a single call for reason, humanity, and human rights was heard from the "influential" CNL?¹⁰ By Way of Conclusion The article concludes hopefully. Dialogue between Marxism and religion (TS) can be mutually beneficial. Is this borne out by the three-decade-long experience of interaction and partnership between the Christian bearers of the Theology of Struggle and the CPP/NDF? The interaction has been close and very alive. And surely CNL and many other Christians in the struggle have aptly proven their worth in revolutionary practice. Why, then, were they not able to "reconstruct" the CPP/NDF, to correct its deterministic bias, and to provide for its "ethical

re-grounding?" Is it because, while being worthy revolutionaries, they did not assert enough the values of humanity and human well-being that they stand for? The Theology of Struggle learned a lot about "struggling with the poor" in partnership with the revolutionary movement. But, did the partnership help TS to deepen the living out and understanding of the faith "in the midst of struggle?" Why, then, has the TS stagnated since the 1990s? (Where is it now? The "poor" are still in struggle.) Why is it that the eclipse of the political Left seemed to have led to the decline of TS? The merit of the article is that it addresses a question that has long been raised and that needs to be more deeply reviewed and revisited. Full answers may not be forthcoming.¹² But if the article provokes more pointed questions on the Christian-Marxist relations in the Philippines, then it will have served its purpose.

Notes 1. It must be noted that the term "Theology of Struggle" may be applied to the "doing of theology" by Filipino Christians and theologians who, though engaged in social activism, are not associated with CNL or the CPP. Its provenance, though, is from what may be called the CNL tradition. See below. 2. It is recognized that this is not the issue that the article decides to address. But perhaps some important facts of the actual relationship could sharpen the arguments advanced by the paper. Some of these relevant "facts" will be raised below.

3. It must be noted that not all of them would classify themselves as adherents of the Theology of Struggle. In fact, some of them would protest at being labeled as one. 4. Theologians among them are Edicio de la Torre, Julio Labayen, Carlos Abesamis, Feliciano Cariño, Helen Graham, Noriel Capulong, Elizabeth Dominguez, etc. 5. Eg, Francisco Claver, Catalino Arevalo, Romeo Intengan, Antonio Lambino, etc. For example, the Loyola Papers Series published by the Loyola School of Theology in the mid-1970s. 6. The likes of Jesus Varela, Carmelo Morelos, Teodoro Bacani, etc. 7. This was introduced by F. Houtart at the month-long Asian Seminar in Baguio City, conducted by FERES in September 1975. Its use spread like wildfire immediately after. Eventually the socdems called for caution in the use of these "Marxist" tools. 8. Some interest was shown to Miranda (1974); Clevenot (1985) and Belo (1981), though known to some, did not arouse interest among TS proponents. 9. Apart from the continuing ideological position of the CPP toward religion (of which see below), there is the everyday fact that the Christians (churchpeople), who are most involved in the struggle, are given political tasks that either keep them away from religious work or leave them very little time for theological activities. 10. This question was raised by columnist Ceres Doyo in an interview with the Chairperson of CNL in 1993. 11. This position is maintained by the 1991 Draft of the CPP Orientation of the Work in the Church Sector. 12. Perhaps the events are too recent to allow definite answers to historically and politically sensitive questions. Much of the story of the CPP/NDF-CNL relations cannot be told yet.

References Abesamis, Carlos H. 1978. Salvation: Historical and total towards a faith-life that is biblical, historical, indigenous. Quezon City: JMC Press. 1980a. Theology of the people. NASSA News (April). 1980b. Doing theological reflection in Philippine context. In Asian theology: Emerging themes, ed., Douglas Elwood, 89-99. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 2001. The third look of Christ. Quezon City: Claretian Publications. Belo, Fernando. 1981. A materialist reading on the gospel of Mark. New York: Orbis. Cariño, Feliciano. 1988. What about the theology of struggle? In Religion and society. Book 2 of Towards a theology of struggle, ed. Mary Rosario Battung et al., v-xv. Manila: FIDES. Clevenot, Michel. 1985. Materialist approaches to the bible. New York: Orbis. Fernandez, Eleazar S. 1994. Toward a theology of struggle. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis. Miranda, Jose. 1974. Marx and the bible. New York: Orbis. Mosala, Itumeleng. 1989. Biblical hermeneutics and black theology in South Africa. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Notes on the Editors and Contributors

The Editors Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem is professor of political science, former chair, Department of Political Science, and former director, Third World Studies Center, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is currently a visiting research fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University doing work on the Philippine technocracy. Her most recent publications include "Philippine Civil Society and WTO Negotiations: Opportunities and Challenges," published in Philippine Political Science Journal 31(54) (2010). She is editor of Localizing and Transnationalizing Contentious Politics: Global Civil Society Movements in the Philippines (Lexington Books, 2009). Laura L. Samson is professor of sociology, former chair of the Department of Sociology, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines, Diliman and former director of the University of the Philippines Press where she undertook the "100 Taon, 100 Akda" Project, which was UP's contribution to the commemoration of the Centennial of the Philippine Revolution in 1996-1998. Professor Samson has been doing research and has published works in the areas of popular culture, mass media, and cultural studies. She is known for her contributions to Philippine academic publishing. The Contributors Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon Bautista is professor of sociology, former Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines, Diliman, and former executive director, Center for Integrative and Development Studies, University of the Philippines. Aileen S.P. Baviera is professor of Asian studies at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, Diliman where she has been teaching since 1998 and where she served as dean from 2003-2009. She has authored, edited, and co-edited several books, monographs, and scholarly articles on contemporary China, international relations, Asia-Pacific security, and Asian civil society. Alice G. Guillermo is a renowned art critic, researcher, author, and professor. She is professor emeritus of the College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines, Diliman.

Ramon G. Guillermo is an associate professor at the Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature, University of the Philippines, Diliman. His recent publications includes Pook at Paninindigan: Kritika ng Pantayong Pananaw (University of the Philippines Press, 2009) and Translation and Revolution: A Study of Jose Rizal's Guillermo Tell (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2009). Caroline S. Hau is associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. She is the author of Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980 (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000) and On the Subject of the Nation: Filipino Writings from the Margins, 1980-2004 (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2004), and editor of Intsik: An Anthology of Chinese Filipino Writings (Anvil Publishing, 2000). Armando Malay Jr. is professorial lecturer of Asian studies and former dean of the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, Diliman. He is the editor of Going Global: Asian Societies on the Cusp of Change (Asian Center, University of the Philippines, 2001). Rene Nachura was board chair of the Philippine Network of Rural Development Institutes, Inc. until his retirement in 2009. He is coauthor of O, Catbalogan! (Katbalaoganon Foundation, 2006). Aurora Roxas-Lim is former dean of the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is currently a lecturer of the Chinese Studies Program in Ateneo de Manila University. Aida F. Santos has been a women's rights/gender advocate since the early 1980s. She is the country coordinator of the Philippine Women's Network on Peace and Security, which is affiliated with the international network of Women for Genuine Security. She is also chair of the board of directors of Women's Education, Development, and Productivity, Research and Advocacy Organization. Her publications include three anthologies of award-winning poems. Joseph Scalice is a graduate student at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, University of California Berkeley. His research interests include Philippine history and Marxism. Eduardo C. Tadem is professor of Asian studies at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, Diliman. He earned his PhD in Southeast Asian studies at the National University of Singapore. Among his latest works are "Development and Distress in Mindanao: A Political Economy Overview,"

published in UP Forum 11(1) (2010); and "The Filipino Peasant in the Modern World: Tradition, Change and Resilience," published in Philippine Political Science Journal 30(53) (2010). Edicio dela Torre is president of the Education for Life Foundation in the Philippines. He is former director-general of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. He was once a political prisoner, having been part of the underground resistance to Ferdinand Marcos's authoritarian regime. Kathleen Weekley was previously senior research fellow, Centre for Asia- Pacic Transformation Studies, University of Wollongong, and honorary research fellow at the Philippine Australia Studies Center, La Trobe University. She is the author of The Communist Party of the Philippines, 1968-1993: A Story of its Theory and Practice (University of the Philippines Press, 2001) and coauthor of Celebrating the Centennial of Independence: Postcolonial National Identity in the Philippines (Ashgate Publishing 2002; De La Salle University Press, 2004).