Prof. Jose Maria Sison's analysis...Interesting read!

[JoRed]

---

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRADICTIONS IN THE WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM
AND THE NECESSITY OF SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

By Jose Maria Sison, Founding Chairman
Communist Party of the Philippines

My assignment is to analyze the new economic, political and social contradictions that have emerged in the world capitalist system in recent decades and to present the necessity of socialist revolution and the contradictions in the process of realizing socialism.

I propose to give a brief historical background on the stages of the general crisis of monopoly capitalism or imperialism in the 20th century. Then, I concentrate on the last two decades of that century and up to the present. Finally, I deal with the necessity of waging the socialist revolution. In brief, I shall discuss the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.

This era continues and will continue for a long time to come. The epochal struggle between the proletariat and the monopoly bourgeoisie has by no means stopped, despite the revisionist betrayal of socialism and restoration of capitalism in former socialist countries. The general crisis of world capitalism has in fact entered a new stage.

I shall deal with the basic contradictions in the imperialist system: those between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat in imperialist countries, those among the imperialist powers and those between the imperialist powers and the oppressed nations and peoples.

I. The General Crisis of the World Capitalist System

As Lenin pointed out, imperialism is the highest and final stage of capitalism. It is an utterly parasitic and moribund kind of capitalism. The monopoly bourgeoisie is a rentier class. Apart from owning capital, it contributes nothing to the process of social production but reaps profits from the extraction of surplus value and from the export of surplus goods and surplus capital.

In the few countries where monopoly capitalism became dominant after developing from free competition capitalism, industrial capital merged with bank capital to make the ruling bourgeoisie fundamentally a financial oligarchy. On top of the export of surplus manufactures, the export of surplus capital in the form of direct and indirect investments gains importance.

The monopoly firms of each imperialist country look after their own interests. But they combine and compete with those of other imperialist countries for control of the sources of raw materials, fields of investments, markets and positions of strength. The monopoly firms in various imperialist countries have always engaged in global expansion and in various combinations, such as cartels, trusts, syndicates, mergers and alliances. The phenomenon of the so-called multinational corporation is not new. What is new is the magnification and intensification of the phenomenon.

The imperialist states protect and promote the interest of their respective monopoly bourgeoisie and the various international combinations into which it goes. They maintain a power structure between imperialist and client-states in charge of an economic structure by which the monopoly bourgeoisie can exploit the proletariat and the oppressed nations and peoples.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, no part of the world has remained uncovered by one or several imperialist powers. The world has become too small for monopoly capitalism. It is pure nonsense to speak of globalization as if it were a new phenomenon. Monopoly capitalism or modern imperialism has always operated on an international scale, first appropriating the old colonial methods and then using the methods of neocolonialism to nullify the formal independence of former colonies, semicolonies and dependent countries.

The imperialist powers struggle constantly among themselves for economic territory. The struggle for a redivision of the world intensifies when the crisis of overproduction intensifies and at worst breaks out into interimperialist wars.

The aggressive and rapacious character of imperialism made the 20th century the most exploitative and the most violent in the entire history of mankind. But the economic crisis, repression and world wars generated by imperialism have also led to anti-imperialist and class struggles and to proletarian revolution. The general crisis of the world capitalist system has undergone three stages, culminating in social upheavals and revolutionary victories of the proletariat and the rest of the people.

On the way to the first interimperialist war, the monopoly bourgeoisie of the various imperialist countries accelerated the international flow of investments and trade, the concentration of capital and the use of state monopoly capitalism to aid private monopoly capital. It sought to override the domestic crisis of overproduction and the intensifying class struggle between itself and the proletariat by clamoring for a bigger share of the world market.

Imperialist powers that had more colonial possessions raised the anachronistic flag of “free trade� to camouflage their own protectionism while those that had less were blatantly protectionist and demanded to have a greater share of global economic territory. One group of imperialist powers was driven by economic competition and economic rivalry to make war preparations and to collide violently with another group as the struggle for a redivision of the world sharpened.

The first stage of the crisis of the world capitalist system was characterized by crisis leading to interimperialist war and by interimperialist war leading to revolutionary civil war and further on to the triumph of the proletarian revolution in Russia, the weakest link in the chain of imperialist powers. For the proletariat and the people, the happy ending of the first stage of the crisis of the world capitalist system was the establishment of the first socialist state in one-sixth of the globe.

As soon as the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 triumphed, the imperialist powers banded together against the Soviet state and launched a multinational war of intervention. The revolutionary alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry withstood the attacks of the imperialist powers and enabled the Bolsheviks to take advantage of interimperialist contradictions in order to preserve and consolidate the gains of the proletarian revolution.

The Soviet Union faced continuous encirclement, embargo and the threat of intervention. But it succeeded in solving the problems of socialist revolution and construction, going through the period of New Economic Policy and proceeding to a series of five-year plans of socialist industrialization and agricultural collectivization and mechanization.

After World War I, the world capitalist system entered the second stage of its general crisis. Eventually, the Great Depression started in 1929, preceded by the boom years of the “new era�. It was an extended crisis of overproduction and financial collapse. It generated an unprecedentedly intense class struggle between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat in imperialist countries, fierce interimperialist contradictions and renewed war preparations, the rise of fascism and the invigoration of national liberation movements in colonies and semicolonies.

The slogans of “free market� and “free trade� were discredited as all imperialist powers proclaimed the need for state intervention and protectionism in economic affairs. State monopoly capitalism had in fact grown far from its embryonic stage at the advent of the era of modern imperialism. The imperialist state increasingly used public finance to provide contracts and subsidies to the private monopolies and build armies for aggression.

To cope with the Great Depression, the imperialist powers turned to what would be conveniently called Keynesianism. This pertains to the use of state intervention and stress on fiscal policy in order to pump-prime, stabilize and stimulate the domestic economies of the imperialist countries. The state undertook public works to generate employment and raise consumption, provided contracts and subsidies to private monopoly firms or nationalized them for a while in order to justify the delivery of public resources to the monopoly bourgeoisie.

Independently of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, the New Deal economists of US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt devised state intervention through public works projects and so did Schacht of Hitlerite Germany. In Anglo-American economic history, Keynes took credit for providing the conscious theorizing and mathematical formulations for state intervention through a fiscal policy of pump-priming.

Until the 1970s, the US monopoly bourgeoisie cited Keynesianism as the policy for using the state to cope with the crisis of monopoly capitalism, to combat the rise of the working class movement and socialism, to build a strong military machinery and to frustrate the demand of underdeveloped countries for industrial development. But Keynesianism has never succeeded in solving the fundamental crisis of monopoly capitalism.

On the way to the second interimperialist war, as the entire world capitalist system was gripped by a grave economic crisis, the imperialist powers engaged in intense war preparations. Rather than Keynesian public works, war production would revive the depressed US economy during World War II just as war production had buttressed the more aggressive schemes of Germany and other Axis powers.

Hitlerite Germany stood out as the most brutal enemy of the world proletariat as it destroyed the German communist party, promoted fascist counterrevolution on an international scale and proceeded to launch the war of aggression aimed at destroying the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union prevailed. It made heavy sacrifices but delivered the most fatal blows on the German invasionary forces and broke the backbone of the entire lot of Axis Powers.

World War II would be settled in favor of the Allied powers mainly because of the decisive role of the Soviet Union. For the proletariat and people, the happy ending of the second stage of the crisis of the world capitalist system was the emergence of several socialist countries and the great upsurge of national liberation movements.

As a late entrant in the war, whose exports had fed the war production of both Allied and Axis powers, the US emerged from World War II as the strongest economic and military power among the imperialists. US policymakers feared that a grave US economic crisis would follow should its war production end or slow down. The fear was compounded by fear of the unprecedented rise of several socialist countries and the national liberation movements. Thus, the US was in a hurry to declare the Cold War, confront the Soviet Union, intervene in China and launch a war of aggression on Korea.

In the aftermath of World War II, it was quite easy to recognize that the world capitalist system had gone through two stages of its general crisis, each breaking out in an interimperialist war and leading to proletarian revolution. It was also easy to discern that the world capitalist system was moving into the third stage of its general crisis as a consequence of the ravages of war and the continuing rise of revolutionary forces.

In the Moscow meetings of communist and working class parties in 1957 and 1960, there was a general sense that the newly emergent socialist camp would defeat the capitalist camp. There was high optimism that the cause of socialism and national liberation would make further great advances in the rest of the 20th century. Indeed, great advances would be made. The people’s democracies engaged in socialist revolution and construction among one-third of humanity. Many countries in Asia and Africa declared their national independence.

In waging the Cold War, the US maintained military bases and troops abroad and built military alliances like the NATO, the US-Japan security alliance, CENTO and SEATO. It stepped up military research and development, challenged the Soviet Union to an arms race and engaged in bullying, intervention and aggression. By breaking the nuclear monopoly of the US in 1949, the Soviet Union neutralized US nuclear blackmail.

Compelled by its strategy of containing the Soviet Union and the entire socialist camp, the US promoted the reconstruction of Germany and Japan as soon as the Cold War started. Subsequently, the rapid revival of Japanese and German industrial production gave rise to another crisis of overproduction and finance capital. Recessions became more recurrent. The heavy costs of military production and overseas military forces and the market accommodations to its imperialist allies undermined the US economy.

The phenomenon of stagflation (simultaneous stagnation and inflation) afflicted the US economy throughout the decades of the 1970s. The proponents of monetarism and neoliberalism gained favor among US policymakers as they harped on the failure of Keynesianism and blamed the working class for so-called wage inflation and the government for supposedly big social spending. All along they obscured the cost-push effect of military deployment overseas, wars of aggression and the arms race.

The powerful trend of national independence against colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism combined with the world proletarian revolution to challenge US imperialism and the world capitalist system. With the US at the head, the imperialist powers were obliged to increasingly adopt neocolonialism in order to coopt the newly-independent countries. They negated the independence of these countries through control of their economy, finances, security forces and cultural institutions.

They waved the flag of “development� under the auspices of the UN, the IMF and World Bank and used the Eurodollar and then petrodollar surpluses to hook most of the newly-independent countries into heavy foreign borrowing for infrastructure-building and improvement of raw-material production for export. These served to draw the third world countries away from industrial development and frustrate their demands for a new international economic order.

Consequently, the mounting crisis of overproduction in raw materials and foreign debt debilitated these third world countries. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the imperialist powers also used brutal puppet regimes to suppress the people when neocolonial methods of economic and financial manipulation did not suffice.

The world proletarian revolution and the broad anti-imperialist movement reached their peak in the simultaneous advance of the wars of national liberation in Indochina and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China from the 1960s to the 1970s. For the proletariat and people, the victories of these revolutions were the happy ending of the third stage of the crisis of the world capitalist system. However, they overlapped with the continuous deterioration of economic, social and political conditions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe due to the betrayal of socialism by the ruling revisionists since 1956.

From the latter half of the 1970s, the adverse consequences of the betrayal of socialism became conspicuous. In the Soviet Union, the rise of the bureaucrat monopoly bourgeoisie and the arms race led to an all-round deterioration of the Soviet economy, especially agricultural production and civil industrial production. Factors for the disintegration of the Soviet-bloc countries were stimulated by foreign loans and trade concessions from the West, especially West Germany.

In China, the Dengist ruling clique rose to power and reversed the socialist line of Mao soon after his death. Since then, China has openly restored capitalism faster and in a more deepgoing way than had the Soviet Union from the time of Khrushchov. The Dengist line of counterrevolution harped on the big comprador line of modernization through integration into the world capitalist system.

The betrayal of socialism by revisionist ruling cliques is definitely a strategic setback for the socialist cause. But it does not spell the end of the socialist cause. On the contrary, it means the aggravation and deepening of the general crisis of the world capitalist system. This system cannot accommodate too many industrial capitalist countries without aggravating the crisis of overproduction.

The conversion of socialist countries to capitalism does not simply mean more ground for capitalist expansion. Under conditions of monopoly capitalism, the increase in the number of capitalist countries with some industrial base, means the increased recurrence of the crisis of overproduction. This leads to economic stagnation, destruction of productive forces and political turmoil not only in the less developed industrial capitalist countries, but also in the entire capitalist world.

In the latter half of the 1970s, the world capitalist system entered the fourth stage of its general crisis. The imperialist, the revisionist-ruled and the third world countries, were generally afflicted by economic, social and political crisis and proceeded on a course of continuous deterioration.

II. The Current Crisis of Monopoly Capitalism

Under the direction of the US monopoly bourgeoisie, which had adopted the line of the neoliberals and monetarists of the Chicago School, the US Federal Reserve Board under Paul Volcker approached the problem of stagflation by pointing to “wage inflation� (the working class) and big government (social spending)as causes of the problem. Volcker applied the squeeze by tripling interest rates to the level of 19 percent.

In a parallel development, the World Bank was put under restraint from its avowed policy of Keynesian “development� lending to third world countries. The imperialists decried the huge debt and inability of the third world countries to repay these. After all, the World Bank had already accomplished the diversion of the domestic resources of these countries away from industrial development and towards costly infrastructure building and overproduction of raw materials. The new US thrust was to push trade liberalization under the GATT, to promote regional “free trade� agreements under US hegemony and eventually to make WTO the all-encompassing free trade institution and the more active partner of the IMF than the World Bank in a ménage a trois.

By 1981, the ground had been laid for the US and Britain to make a major shift in economic policy from Keynesianism to neoliberalism. This was trumpeted as Reaganism and Thatcherism. It was an all-out attack on the working class and the trade union movement, and on the hard-won social rights of the proletariat and the people.

Growth with inflation under control was set as the objective. The “free market� was supposed to come into full play. Monetary policy was considered as the main instrument for regulating the economy, through control of interest rates and money supply by central banks independent of elected officials. Fiscal policy was biased towards tax cuts for the corporate benefit of the monopoly bourgeoisie on the ground of making more capital available to it for production and job generation. This was called Reaganomics or “supply-side� economics.

Neoliberalism misrepresents and slanders the proletariat, the creator of social wealth, as a parasite on the state. It obscures the cost-push inflationary effect of military spending and the real parasitism of the bureaucratic and coercive apparatuses of the monopoly bourgeoisie. The catchwords of liberalization, privatization and deregulation mean respectively the unbridled flow of imperialist investments and trade, the private appropriation of public assets and funds and the erosion of antitrust laws and removal of social regulations to protect labor, women, children, the aged and the environment.

Under the Reagan administration, US state monopoly capitalism meant pouring huge state resources into overpriced contracts with the military-industrial complex for high-tech weaponry. These did not solve but aggravated the problem of stagnation because they did not increase employment. The budgetary and trade deficits soared.

What actually financed the high-speed high-tech military spending and consumerism of the US was the flow of funds from abroad. This was a result of the “Volcker squeeze� which induced the major imperialist allies of the US to shift their money from their own homegrounds and from the third world to the US. Thus, the US became the biggest debtor in the world.

Throughout the 1980s, third world countries were devastated by the credit squeeze and the crisis of overproduction in raw materials, and they were ordered by the IMF to follow neoliberal prescriptions. Even the few East Asian countries, favored by continuing accommodation in the US market for their consumer manufactures and semimanufactures, were adversely affected by the debt squeeze.

China, recently integrated into the world capitalist system, eventually generated a crisis of overproduction in consumer manufactures and ultimately went into political turmoil. The Soviet-bloc countries, which had been earlier induced in the 1970s to import consumer goods and take loans from abroad, were also squeezed and became desperate for hard currency.

From 1989 to 1991, the touters of neoliberalism were beside themselves with glee when the revisionist rulers of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were casting away their socialist signboards and were openly privatizing public assets and wrecking their already decrepit industrial foundations. The imperialists and their hangers-on proclaimed the end of socialism and the superiority for all time of the “free market� over socialist centralized economic planning.

They obscured the fact that, after abandoning socialism, these countries had plunged from one level of economic and social degradation to another. They also obscured the fact that all imperialist countries were in recession during the 1989-91 period.

In confronting the problem of high US budgetary and trade deficits, the administration of Bush the elder raised taxes at the expense of the people and prated about conducting a trade offensive. But he could not stem the 1990-91 recession in the US and, as a result, lost his bid for reelection despite all the triumphalist propaganda about the “fall of socialism� and the war of aggression against Iraq.

Throughout the 1990s, the Clinton administration pushed further the neoliberal economic policy and laid the stress on US global control of information technology and financial services at the expense of US imperialist allies. In the latter part of the decade, the “new economy� came to be bandied about as an ever-growing economy with no or little inflation and as an economy driven by high technology. Claims were made that high technology guarantees continuous capital expansion and eliminates the cycle of boom and bust.

The real wage incomes and living standards of American workers have continuously gone down since 1973. What is considered as full employment (actually around 4 percent rate of unemployment) has actually involved the massacre of regular jobs and the replacement of these with insecure part-time jobs (so-called labor flexibility). Job security and other hard-won rights of the workers have been eliminated or eroded in a big way. To earn their subsistence, a great mass of American part-timers have to work more than 40 hours per week.

The inflation of income and assets in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie is unrestrained. The after-tax income of the richest one percent of the American population is equivalent to the income of the bottom 100 million people. US multinational corporations rake in huge profits and at the same time use colossal amounts of credit for mergers and speculation. Household credit has also ballooned both for consumption and for speculation, with more than 40 percent of households attracted to buying tech-stocks.

In the bursting of the tech-stock bubble from April 2000 to April 2001, some USD 4 trillion in stock-market value evaporated. The bursting of the bubble is the result of overinvestment and excess capacity in high-tech goods. When the crisis of overproduction hits, production is cut down and massive loss of jobs and savings follows. This is what is happening in the US.

The recessionary trend in the US has an adverse impact on all its imperialist allies and neocolonial client-states. The decrease of their exports to the US is already wreaking havoc to their economies. Upon further decline of the US economy, the Japanese and West European creditors of the US would tend to call back their money.

Capital flight from the US would be disastrous both for the US and the entire world capitalist system, if we consider that US imperialist allies have six trillion USD of investments in the US, against 2.5 trillion USD of US overseas investments. Such is the magnitude of US dependence on its imperialist allies for expanding the US economy and maintaining consumerism in the decade of the 1990s.

Here comes the younger Bush, who is inclined to revive Reaganomics by giving tax cuts to the US corporations and stimulating military production. To push his policy, he utters Cold War slogans, bombs Iraq without consulting his NATO allies, allows the Israeli Zionists to slaughter Palestinians, carries out acts of provocation against China, scoffs at South Korean leaders for the policy of détente with North Korea, and bullies major and minor US allies all over the world.

US economic policy shifts, like the major one from Keynesianism to neoliberalism, do not mean any fundamental change in the exploitative and aggressive character of US imperialist policy, and certainly do not mean that the US is able to escape the laws of motion of monopoly capitalism and the drive for more capital accumulation. The US imperialist hyperpower can shift one foot any time and still continue to oppress and exploit the people in every possible way at a given time.

Japan and the European Union have followed their leader in pursuing neoliberalism or “free market� globalization. But each has a way of pursuing its imperialist interests and adapting to its circumstances. So far, the common interest and alliance of the US, Japan and European Union still hold against the interest of the third world and former Soviet-bloc countries. But the relationship or balance of imperialist powers is subject to the economic crisis, domestic politics and the global struggle for economic territory.

The Japanese economy, the world’s second largest national economy, has been in a state of prolonged depression since the bursting of its real estate bubble in 1989. It continues to be depressed as a result of its overcapacity to produce cars, steel and consumer electronics. It is hard pressed by the excessive inventories of its overseas plants, South Korea’s overproduction and the US trade offensive.

In Asia and elsewhere in the world, Japan champions neoliberalism. But domestically, in addition to bringing down interest rates to zero or a fraction of one percent, it resorts to Keynesian pump-priming through public works in a futile attempt to revive the Japanese economy. It has financed private and public construction in Southeast Asia and China and has had no hope of recovering the loans since 1997.

Japanese banks are sinking in an ocean of bad debts as a result of excessive lending to ailing corporations. Japan has been pushed by US dictat to buy a huge amount of US securities. At the same time, the US has held back technology licensing agreements, unlike in the 1960s and 1970s. The real unemployment in Japan is the highest among the three global centers of capitalism.

In the European Union, the imperialist governments have adopted the line of “free market� globalization. Socialists, laborites, revisionists and greens in government adopt the so-called neoliberal reforms but try to sugarcoat these with such phrases as “the third way�, the “middle course� or “reforms with a conscience�. At any rate, they carry out an attack on the proletariat and the people and try to reduce or eliminate their hard-won rights.

The European Union and its main engine Germany (accounting for one-third of Euro economy) have been economically stagnant for a decade already. They have a conspicuously high rate of unemployment and suffer from a protracted crisis of overproduction. Higher US profit rates have caused a heavy outflow of capital from Europe to the US. Thus the value of the Euro has sunk.

Russia and Eastern Europe are wide open for exploitation by the European Union. But the Western imperialists prefer dumping surplus products, asset stripping and making spotty investments. The continuous debasement of the economies and the extreme rapacity of the new bourgeoisie in the former Soviet-bloc countries put a brake on the expansion of capital from the West.

All three global centers of capitalism, the US, Japan and the European Union are suffering more than ever before from the crisis of overproduction, as well as from a heavy overhang of fictitious capital and financial speculation. Right now, the average GDP growth rate of the OECD countries is falling to the level of 2 percent.

US GDP growth rate, which used to be above 4 percent in the last decade, is now fluctuating between 2 and 3 percent. That of the European Union is stagnating at 2.6 percent and that of Japan remains depressed at around 1 percent. Declared growth rates are dismal enough but they are more dismal in fact if we consider the bloat in these figures due to financial overvaluation and the most unproductive services.

At any rate, the leading imperialist countries are far better off than the countries that they dominate in the former Soviet-bloc and third world countries. They have profited from the export of surplus goods and surplus capital and have accelerated the concentration and centralization of capital in their hands. More than 85 percent of the world’s foreign direct investments are concentrated on them and tend to be centralized in the US. The top 20 percent of the world’s population monopolize 82 percent of global export trade, while the bottom 20 percent have only one percent share of the market.

Debt service payments of poor debtor countries exceed the amount of current profits on direct investments and new supplies. Capital flight, as during the financial meltdowns in Mexico in 1995, Southeast Asia in 1997 and Brazil and Russia in 1998, has been mainly in the direction of US. In recent years, the US gained 300 to 400 billion dollars a year from these capital flights.

But the devastation of the economies of the dominated countries recoil and impact on the imperialist countries in terms of market constriction and further aggravation of the crisis of overproduction and the financial crisis. Even the few economies that attained newly-industrialized status in the 1970s are now in a dismal situation. South Korea, the most industrialized and strongest among them, has gone awry precisely because its companies have overborrowed from the banks, overexpanded its capacity to produce export manufactures and contributed to the global crisis of overproduction.

The integration of China into the world capitalist system in the 1980s was touted as the signal event for making East Asia and the entire Asia-Pacific region the strongest growth area for capitalism during the rest of the 20th century and onward to the 21st century. But in fact, China’s production and export of low value-added manufactures (garments, consumer electronics, toys, leather products and the like) have aggravated the global overproduction in this type of products and squeezed the Southeast Asian “tigers� of the past.

China itself has destroyed its agricultural commune system and undermined its own industrial foundation, with the ruling comprador big bourgeoisie overconcentrating on seacoast sweatshops, private construction and the overconsumption of luxury goods imported for the benefit of a few. Thus, in 1989, the aggrieved masses rose up in protest in more than 80 cities. Social discontent seethes in urban and rural areas. The entry of China into the WTO will mean the further dismantling of its state-owned industries.

It is important to characterize correctly the socioeconomic and political crisis that caused the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the fall of revisionist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe and the turmoil in China in the period of 1989 to 1991. The crisis in these parts of the world was part of the general crisis of the world capitalist system because earlier they had become part of that system.

State monopoly capitalism, masquerading as socialism, is a tool of the new bourgeoisie for accumulating private capital until this is ready to cast away the socialist disguises and openly privatize the means of production. The frenzy for undisguised capitalism has meant ultimately the destruction of the industrial foundation previously established under socialism. The process of destruction is presided over by the traditional imperialist banks and firms.

The new ruling bourgeoisie in former socialist countries takes the character of the comprador big bourgeoisie as it favors the importation of surplus goods and surplus capital from the imperialist countries. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia has lost its comprehensive industrial foundation and has become more dependent than ever on the export of oil, gas and other raw materials and on foreign credit to run the economy, enrich the ruling class and finance its overconsumption.

The ranks of oppressed and exploited peoples and nations have expanded, with those of former socialist countries joining those of the third world. All of them are crushed by the mounting burden of foreign debt. Most of the poor and backward countries are agrarian and have been reeling from overproduction of raw materials since the late 1970s.

In these parts of the world are the 1.5 billion people who survive on less than one US dollar per day and the 3 billion who subsist on two dollars per day. In the very few countries that produce and export some basic manufactures and low value-added semimanufactures, the workers, including children, toil in sweatshops of subcontractors, or in their own urban slum or rural dwellings. They work more than 14 hours per day just to earn anywhere from 1 to 2 US dollars.

The gap between the poorest 20 percent of the world’s population and the richest 20 percent has increased from 30 times in 1960 to 78 times in 1995. The wealth of the world’s 225 richest individuals is equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the entire world’s population. The three richest individuals have assets larger than the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries.

In the economic policy shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalism, the imperialist-dominated states are required to sell out their national patrimony and economic sovereignty and submit themselves to IMF structural adjustment and austerity programs. The imperialists dictate upon them to give up aspirations for industrial development and to liberalize investments and trade under the WTO.

The debt-stricken client states are required to follow the line of “free market� globalization or else suffer being deprived of new loans, supplies and access to the world market and face the prospects of social and political turmoil and barefaced imperialist intervention and aggression. They are also told to concentrate on collecting tax revenues and giving priority to debt service. They are told that stabilization funds from the IMF and concessional official lending from the World Bank are dwindling, and that they must go to the foreign private banks for credit and finally, that they must attract foreign direct investment by all means.

The neocolonial puppet regimes are actually vulnerable to the wrath of the people because they are culpable for extreme exploitation of the people, corruption and repressiveness. The bureaucrat capitalists augment their theft of domestic public funds by taking foreign commercial loans and making the state ultimately responsible for these.

In the most revolting way, neoliberalism has pushed the harshest measures for exploiting and oppressing the people. It dictates upon the neocolonial puppet states to undertake liberalization, privatization and deregulation and under pain of punishment for disobedience to avoid even only pretenses at industrial development and land reform. But as these states grow more exploitative, corrupt and repressive, they become hated by the people and become vulnerable to overthrow.

In line with the nakedly rapacious character of “free market� globalization, the US and its imperialist allies are building up their high-tech war machines at higher public cost. Using the flags of the UN and the NATO and under the pretext of peacekeeping and humanitarianism, they have grown increasingly aggressive. The political and military strategy of the US is to put its own client states under duress by the threat of declaring them rogue states, depriving them of foreign loans and supplies, or by destroying their fixed structures through precision bombing with long distance high-tech weapons.

Contrary to expectations that the end of the Cold War would bring about peace, the imperialist powers have launched the most brazen wars of aggression, like those against Iraq and against former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. War has come to Europe as in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo. Also in many other parts of the world, especially in the least developed countries, the conflicts among reactionaries have become more violent as a consequence of socioeconomic collapses and austerity policy resulting from the depredations of US neoliberal policy.

Germany has been allowed to deploy its troops and fire its guns overseas and is expected to increase its military role. The NATO has been expanded to the borders of Russia. The social and economic weakness of Russia is an open invitation to the stronger imperialist powers to undertake joint or separate marauding actions within Russia and its vicinity.

Japan is also being encouraged by the US to rearm itself and become more aggressive militarily, especially in Asia. The US-Japan Security Treaty, the “new security guidelines� and an array of bilateral military access or visiting agreements of the US with puppet states in East Asia are meant to contain China and North Korea. At the same time, the US tries to engage these countries economically and subvert them politically.

The US prefers to undertake jointly with its imperialist allies acts of economic pressure and aggression against countries that assert their national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and against revolutionary movements. But it tends to undertake unilateral acts of aggression as conflicts of economic and political interests arise among the imperialist powers and it fails to get the prompt collaboration of its imperialist allies.

So far, the imperialist powers seem to be able to keep their alliance in order to control other countries and exploit entire nations and peoples. But as the crisis of the world capitalist system worsens, domestic political forces within imperialist countries can push each of them to adopt conflicting policies. Certain states assertive of their national independence and their people’s social aspirations can also take initiative to take advantage of the growing contradictions among the imperialist powers.

Except for a few, notably Britain, the sidekick and cheerleader of US imperialism, West European countries are wary over the growing unilateral acts of aggression of the US, its consistent attempts to block fuel pipelines to Western Europe and its provocative scheme to build missile defense systems.

The Russian comprador big bourgeoisie wants Russia to be a strategic partner of both the US and the European Union. But the US is bent on pushing further the socioeconomic deterioration of Russia as the way for degrading its scientific and technological capabilities and neutralizing its nuclear and other sophisticated weaponry. Russia has undergone massive de-industrialization, sinking far below economic levels in the period of Brezhnev and then Gorbachov. More than 40 percent of its population now live below the poverty line. In desperation, it is marketing both conventional and highly developed weapons.

The Chinese comprador bourgeoisie likewise wants China to be a strategic partner of the US and other imperialist powers. But the US bullies China over the issue of Taiwan in the yin and yang of containment and engagement. To teach China a lesson for assisting Yugoslavia, as well as to demonstrate the precision of its cruise missiles, the US deliberately targeted the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Now, the new Bush administration is pursuing a policy of making East Asia the priority area for its military buildup and is undertaking provocative acts against China, despite heavy US involvement in the turmoil in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.

As the US overplays its imperialist arrogance and its attempts to swing the US public into supporting further US military buildup, China and Russia tend to draw closer together in their own strategic partnership and seek deals with the monopoly bourgeoisie of Japan and Western Europe. As the most aggressive imperialist power today, the US is stirring up the conditions for war.

Most important of all, the proletariat and the people cannot accept the depredations of “free market� globalization and the new world disorder as their permanent fate. As the crisis of the world capitalist system worsens, they are encouraged to wage anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation, democracy and socialism. They can rely mainly on their own revolutionary strength and at the same time avail of the support of anti-imperialist governments and the growing contradictions among the imperialist powers.

III. Necessity of Socialist Revolution

The moguls of monopoly capitalism and their retinue of executives, think tankers, politicians, academic pedants and publicists have been boasting since the 1989-1991 period that the socialist cause is dead and history has ended with capitalism and liberal democracy as the optimum condition of mankind.

In fact, the fall of the revisionist regimes, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the turmoil in China were a consequence of betraying socialism and of taking the capitalist road. They were part of the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system. In the same period, the centers of the world capitalist system were then in recession and the mass of imperialist-dominated countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America were in a continuous state of depression.

Since then, the former Soviet-bloc and third world countries have plunged further into a state of depression. Japan and the European Union have stagnated. In the entire decade of the 1990s, especially from 1995 to 1999, the US expanded its economy and claimed full employment by taking advantage of its lead in high technology and attracting foreign investments from Japan and the European Union, including the capital flight from the sinking “emergent markets�.

The touters of imperialist globalization and the US-style “new economy� boasted that high-technology in the service of the “free market� had abolished the business cycle of boom and bust and driven the last nail on the coffin of socialism. They also spoke of the information technology as the instrument of democratization against totalitarianism.

Current studies show that the latest commercialized high technology has so far increased only marginally the efficiency in production of durable goods. It has served mainly the service sector, such as finance, trade, communications, entertainment, mass media, the health and legal professions, the military and police and the like.

But let us assume that in due course high technology is adopted to a far greater extent in all sectors of the economy in order to raise productivity. It cannot be but an instrument that drives the monopoly bourgeoisie to raise the organic composition of capital and accelerate the concentration and centralization of capital.

There is nothing new about the owners of capital adopting higher technology in order to increase productivity, maximize profits, accumulate capital and beat competitors within a capitalist country and in other capitalist countries. Marx and Engels said in the Communist Manifesto in 1848, “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.�

The advance from the first stage of technological revolution (spinning jenny and steam engine) to the second (electro-mechanical motors and chemical processes) and further on to the third (computers and microprocessors, the joining of laser and fiber optics and other technologies) has merely served to increase exploitation, accelerate capital accumulation, and make capitalism more mature and more ripe for socialist revolution. Every higher technology that raises social productivity opens the road wider to socialism.

Capitalism is irrational and unjust precisely because the forces of large scale commodity production are social in character but the appropriation of the product in the relations of production is private. Thus socialist revolution is the scientific and moral necessity for socializing the relations of production.

The US itself is now in an economic decline and is pushing the entire world capitalist system into lower levels of economic, social, political and cultural degradation and turmoil. Being exposed are all the lies of “free market� globalization and the “new economy� as ever-growing due to high technology , particularly in the US.

It is clear more than ever that we are in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. By its own laws of motion and its accelerated cycle of boom and bust, monopoly capitalism keeps on accumulating, concentrating and centralizing capital through the exploitation and oppression of the world’s proletariat and people.

The world capitalist system has plunged deeper into the fourth stage of its general crisis since the latter half of the 1970s. The contradictions between imperialism and the oppressed nations and peoples, among the imperialist powers and between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat in that order are intensifying.

The present circumstances of global economic crisis and the new world disorder challenge and require the proletariat and the rest of the people to wage revolutionary struggles against imperialism and for national liberation, democracy and socialism.

To realize its historic mission of building socialism, the proletariat must win the battle for democracy. In the imperialist countries, the proletariat must conjoin with the nonproletarian masses to confront the deteriorating economic and social conditions and the political threats of chauvinism, fascism and racism and prepare for the overthrow of the monopoly bourgeoisie.

In the underdeveloped countries, where the land problem remains the main or major problem , the proletariat must link with the peasantry in order to wage the new-democratic revolution before the socialist revolution can commence. The battle for democracy takes the form of the new-democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat.

The struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is an epochal one. We must therefore take a long view of history. Without this, we cannot have the tenacity to persevere in the historic struggle for socialism and further on to communism, especially when we are confronted with such developments as those in 1989-91 when China was wracked by mass uprisings and the revisionist regimes were disintegrated in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

So far, the most significant periodization in the 153-year revolutionary history of the proletariat is in segments of 40 to 50 years. Each one of such segments is relatively short if we consider that the epochal struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will run probably for some centuries before socialism can defeat imperialism on a world scale and make communism possible.

In every such segment of time, the proletariat has been faced with tremendous odds, suffered great setbacks and scored great victories. We have seen how one level of victories leads to a new and higher level in a cumulative manner. We have also seen how one level of setbacks leads to a lower level, such as modern revisionism running rampant for decades and ultimately leading to the full and open restoration of capitalism.

At this time, the world capitalist system is in grave crisis and yet its supporters ceaselessly try to demoralize the proletariat and the people with the negative examples of socialist countries that have degenerated and become capitalist. In this regard, it is absolutely necessary for us to have a sharp sense of the revolutionary history of the proletariat, grasp the basic principles and learn the positive and negative lessons from experience. With these, we are ready to take advantage of new conditions in order to advance the socialist cause.

In the era of free competition capitalism in the 19th century, Marx and Engels founded scientific socialism in contraposition to utopian socialism. They did so in connection with their development of dialectical materialist philosophy, their critique of the capitalist economy and in their advancement of social science on the basis of historical materialism and the class struggle.

Still valid today is their proposition that the possibility as well as the necessity of socialism arises from the laws of motion of capitalism and from the material conditions of capitalist society. The industrial bourgeoisie needs the proletariat to work on the equipment and raw materials and create new material values from which to extract surplus value. The growth of the social forces of production strains against the integument of the capitalist relations of production.

In the course of competition, one capitalist wins against another capitalist by raising the organic composition of capital and decreasing the variable capital for wages in order to maximize his profits. The result is the crisis of overproduction relative to the decreased market demand.

Recurrent crisis leads to the bankruptcy of the losing capitalists or to their absorption by the winning capitalist, and to the concentration of capital until free competition is transformed into monopoly. It also leads to intensified class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat with the latter moving forward from being a class in itself to being a class for itself through the trade union movement and the building of the revolutionary party of the proletariat.

For the first time in history, here is a class that can liberate itself as well as other exploited classes, establish a socialist society and make the radical rupture from the millennia of private ownership of the means of production. But precisely because of its high revolutionary potential, the proletariat is confronted by the bourgeois state with violence. Therefore, the revolutionary goal of socialism can be realized only with the forcible overthrow of the bourgeois class dictatorship and its replacement by the proletarian class dictatorship.

From the Communist Manifesto and workers’ uprisings of 1848, it took more than 40 years before Marxism became the dominant trend in the European working class movement in the last decade of the 19th century. Within that same period, the most significant armed revolution was undertaken by the proletariat to establish the Paris Commune of 1871. Marx celebrated this as the prototype of the proletarian dictatorship and drew revolutionary principles and lessons from its short-lived victory and its defeat.

Capitalism grew into monopoly capitalism or modern imperialism. Lenin took the leading role to further develop the theory and practice of Marxism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. He was unwavering in his view that the wave of armed revolutions, which could be led by the proletariat, had moved to the East. Going by the theory of uneven development, he was certain that proletarian revolution could win victory in Russia, the weakest link in the chain of imperialist powers, especially under conditions of interimperialist war which could be turned into a revolutionary civil war.

In the Second International, he contended with the classical revisionists, headed by Kautsky, who tried to purge Marxism of its revolutionary essence and act as the parliamentary tail of the bourgeoisie by whipping up social chauvinism and social pacifism, supporting colonialism and imperialism and voting for the war budget.

Forty-six years after the Paris Commune, the Bolsheviks carried out the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 and established the first sustained socialist state. Soon enough, the imperialist powers banded together in an attempt to destroy the newly established socialist state. But the revolutionary proletariat, in alliance with the peasantry, prevailed.

Under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, the Bolsheviks and the Soviet people proved that socialism could be built in one country. After the transitional New Economic Policy served the purpose of reviving the economy, Stalin successfully engaged in a series of five-year plans to build socialist industry, collectivize and mechanize agriculture, educate and train a huge number of experts in various fields and raise the material and cultural standards of living and change the urban-rural ratio of the population from 25-75 percent to 75-25 percent.

In the process of socialist revolution and construction in the Soviet Union, class struggle continued in the society at large, in the institutions and organs of state and party leadership. As Lenin had pointed out, the bourgeoisie multiplies its resistance ten thousandfold after being deprived of its power and property. It uses every possible way to oppose socialism and avails of reactionary traditions and its connections with the international bourgeoisie. Antagonistic contradictions existed between the people and the enemy as well as nonantagonistic ones among the people. Some of these contradictions were handled well, others were not.

Under the leadership of Lenin and then of Stalin, the Third International inspired the international working class movement and resulted in the establishment of communist parties in scores of countries. The socialist example of the Soviet Union and the work of the Third International promoted the world proletarian revolution and struck fear in the hearts of the imperialists.

With one hand, the monopoly bourgeoisie used social democracy in a scheme to discredit the communists and split the working class movement and with the other hand it used the open rule of terror through fascism to attack the communists on an international scale and attempted to destroy the Soviet Union. But economic crisis and the second interimperialist war provided the favorable conditions for the rise of several socialist countries and the vigorous advance of national liberation movements.

For so long as the countries pioneering in socialism remained socialist, they could withstand, confront and defeat the threats and acts of aggression launched by the US and other imperialist countries in the course of the Cold War. They could also take advantage of the contradictions within and among imperialist countries as well as between the imperialists and the oppressed nations and people.

No socialist country has ever been defeated by any imperialist war of aggression. What has proven to be the most lethal to socialism is the rise to power of modern revisionists as a consequence of degeneration within socialist countries. This involves the liquidation of the proletarian class stand, the abandonment of class struggle, the mishandling of contradictions, the persistence of unproletarian customs and habits, the covert opposition and sabotage by reactionary diehards, complacency and degeneration of party cadres and members, the rise of new corrosive bourgeois trends and forces, the misallocation of resources and unchecked corruption of bureaucrats.

To build socialism, it is necessary to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialize the means of production, raise the level of material, technical and cultural conditions of society and have adequate national defense that relies mainly on mass mobilization and secondarily on weapons. But all these are not enough.

A continuous and protracted proletarian cultural revolution, on top of scientific and technological revolution which is also cultural, is needed. Otherwise, the victories in the overthrow of the old system, the liberation and development of productive forces and the improvement of material and cultural conditions are not sufficient for keeping alive the proletarian revolutionary spirit and preventing the rise of modern revisionism.

The proletarian cultural revolution must promote class struggle as the key link, put revolutionary politics in command of production, strengthen the socialist relations of production and revolutionize the superstructure. The point is to carry out the cultural revolution under proletarian dictatorship in order to combat revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate socialism.

The big mass of professionals, technicians and students produced by the socialist system can easily acquire a petty-bourgeois outlook if they are not steeped in the proletarian stand, viewpoint and method through their experience in proletarian cultural revolution and proletarian internationalism.

Without the proletarian cultural revolution, they become the initial social base for the rise of modern revisionism. As they enter the bureaucracy of the state, party, economic enterprises and cultural institutions, they promote contempt for the proletariat, worship the imperialist countries and conjoin with the vacillators and degenerates among the older crop of bureaucrats.

In the case of China, before the Dengist counterrevolution started to adulate the US, a considerable number of the new intelligentsia and bureaucrats had gone to the Soviet Union for training. Many of them worshipped everything that carried the Soviet brand, including the revisionist trend. They openly did so in the 1950s and covertly after the Sino-Soviet ideological debate broke out into the open in the early 1960’s.

Revisionism starts to gain ascendance as soon as the communist party in a socialist country proclaims the end of the class struggle. In the Soviet Union, the revisionist mantra was that the proletariat had “accomplished its historic mission�. In China, it was the “dying out of the class struggle�.

The liquidation of the proletarian class stand and denial of the class struggle are the prologue to the flood of ideas and policies that breach the principles of socialism, restore capitalism in the guise of developing the productive forces (actually economism and productionism), bring in the tentacles of imperialism and revive the monsters of the old society. Increasingly, ahistorical comparisons are made with regard to levels of development between the socialist and imperialist countries in order to denigrate socialism and develop contempt for it.

We must grasp the basic principle that the building of socialism takes a long historical period. This means that the dictatorship of the proletariat is needed for a long time in building socialism, until socialism prevails over imperialism on a world scale and thereby gives way to communism. Socialism is possible in one or several countries but communism is possible only upon the global defeat of imperialism.

Mao developed Marxism-Leninism to a new and higher stage by confronting the problem of modern revisionism centered in the Soviet Union, criticizing it and then putting forward the theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). On the whole, the GPCR succeeded for 10 years, 1966 to 1976. But so soon after the death of Mao, the Dengist counterrevolution reversed it. This can only mean that the theory and practice of proletarian cultural revolution must be further studied and developed.

The proletarian cultural revolution correctly targeted modern revisionism. It was the weapon that averted an earlier defeat of Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line. This was vindicated and proven correct as undisguised restoration of capitalism occurred in the revisionist ruled countries. Mao is correct in teaching that when the revisionists take power they overthrow the proletarian dictatorship and begin to restore capitalism.

The theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship through the cultural revolution is a crucial weapon for analyzing what went wrong with the former socialist countries, for holding our ground against the taunt of the enemy that socialism is hopeless, and for anticipating problems in establishing and consolidating socialism.

As a result of the betrayal of socialism by revisionist ruling cliques, we are now in a world situation similar to that period before World War I in the sense that no formidable socialist power confronts the imperialist powers, and that monopoly capitalism once again waves the anachronistic flag of “free market� or “free trade� while exploiting and oppressing the proletariat and the people of the world in the most retrogressive and ruthless ways.

But the proletarian revolutionary parties can avail themselves of the rich historical experience of the proletariat in socialist revolution, construction and cultural revolution. They can learn both the positive and negative lessons in order to strengthen themselves in ideology, politics and organization, be in a position to take advantage of the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and advance the world proletarian revolution through revolutionary mass struggles.

Within the current decade, the class struggle can be expected to intensify in the imperialist countries, especially in those that have most stagnated in the previous decade. The current recessionary trend in the US will cause collapses in finance and production in other countries. As in previous times, the monopoly bourgeoisie can be expected to turn to fascism to oppose the mass movement of the proletariat and nonproletarian masses. At the sa

[Sun Solaris]

His brilliant neurons are not useful enough. He's a plain coward.

he shoudn't make Netherlands as his hiding place. he's making a fool out of his followers. Sya gaharuhay samtang iyang mga kabig nga buta gasakit sa pilipinas.


- end -

[tolstoi]

he is more of a puppeteer than a leader......

[JoRed]

Socio-economic and political realities and need for peace negotiations
Prof. Jose Ma. Sison
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Chief Political Consultant
June 01, 2005

(Delivered at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway)

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Greetings of solidarity!

Thank you for inviting me to speak at your well-known institution. I am delighted and honored by your invitation. I have long appreciated your work in peace research and in providing support to peace negotiations.


I wish to describe the socio-economic and political realities in the Philippines and proceed to a discussion of the need for peace negotiations between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP).


Socio-Economic Realities


Many people, including Filipinos, think that the Philippines is a small country. In fact, it has a population of 84 million, which is the 12th largest or within the top 6 per cent of national populations. It has an area of 300,000 square kilometers, which is the 73rd largest land area or within the top 38 per cent of the 191 member-states of the United Nations. At nominal prices, the gross domestic product for 2004 is PhP 4.843 trillion or USD 86.482 billion. It includes a lot of overvaluation in the industrial sector and a lot of false estimates in the agriculture and service sectors.


The estimated output value share of agriculture is 14.8 percent, industry, 31.9 percent and services, 53.2 percent. The output value share of agriculture is understated. It does not cover the considerable part of the agricultural product which the peasants consume. The estimated employment share of agriculture is 36 percent, of industry 16 percent and of services 48 percent. Based on this, the peasants are responsible for more than 69 percent of the basic production of goods and the industrial workers for nearly 31 percent.


The Philippine social economy remains underdeveloped, despite all previous official rhetoric about development. It is still basically agrarian and pre-industrial in terms of the development of the productive forces. The principal means of production is still agricultural land, which is mainly for domestic food consumption and secondarily for export crops (coconut, sugar, bananas, pineapple, etc.).


The degree of mechanization in agriculture is limited and is concentrated on estates for export crops. In 2001, only some 11,500 tractors and 700 powered harvester-threshers were available for over 13 million hectares of agricultural land. Only 30 percent of the country's total farm area is irrigated as of 2002. Land ownership is heavily concentrated with less than 1/3 of landowners owning more than 80 percent of all agricultural land.


The Philippines has rich natural resources and most of the minerals for industrialization. But after extraction, the mineral ores do not go beyond the primary stage of processing and are exported as raw materials. There is a certain amount of modern industry but this is based on equipment, fuel and other inputs from abroad. The industrial sector produces neither capital goods nor basic metals and chemicals.


Export-oriented low-value added semi-manufacturing, which have come into favor with policymakers and investors since the late 1970s, is far more import-dependent and provides less regular employment than the repackaging and reassembly for import-substitution and domestic consumption in the 1950s and 1960s. It has reduced output value and employment since the 1997 economic and financial crisis in Southeast Asia.


The crisis of overproduction of semi-manufactures for reexport since the middle of the 1990s (1994 for garments and 1996 for electronic assembly) has come on top of the earlier crisis of overproduction of raw materials since the late 1970s. However, despite the continuing global oversupply of low value-added semi-manufactures, the Philippines has continued to stick to electronic assembly and garments. These account for 75 per cent of gross export earnings. However, the high imported content of the semi-manufactures – up to 85-95 percent in the case of electronic equipment – yield a very small

amount of net export earnings.


The Philippine economy is a neocolonial adjunct of the US and world capitalist system. It is exceedingly dependent on direct investments, loans and trade with the global centers of capitalism. It is bound by policies dictated by major capitalist countries bilaterally or through multilateral agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).


Despite its external linkages, the Philippines retains a distinct system of socio-economic relations. These are precisely called semi-feudal. The comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class are the basic exploiting classes and together constitute a fraction of one per cent of the population. The basic exploited classes of workers and peasants are 15 and 75 per cent of the population, respectively. The intermediate social strata are the middle bourgeoisie and the far more

numerous urban petty bourgeoisie.


The Filipino people have long clamored for genuine land reform and national industrialization as integral factors for breaking the persistence of large feudal holdings and realizing Filipino-owned industrialization in order to raise the level of economic development and change social relations for the better. But one reactionary regime after another has done nothing more than to pay lip service to land reform and national industrialization.


After the US and other capitalist powers shifted policy stress from Keynesianism to "free market" globalization, the reactionary regimes in the Philippines have obscured the need for land reform and national industrialization by harping on the need for raising productivity for the global market. In this regard, the real drive has been to further allow the foreign monopolies to take over natural resources, privatize public assets, get more tax exemptions and tariff cuts, and dump their surplus goods on the Philippines.


The Philippine economy is in a chronic state of crisis. This has rapidly deepened and aggravated under the current policy regime of unbridled "free market" globalization under which foreign monopoly capitalism is actually on a rampage. The semi-feudal economy is incurring huge foreign trade deficits faster than ever from the unequal exchange of its raw-material exports and consumption-driven manufactured imports. The foreign trade deficits have not been relieved but in fact been aggravated by the export-oriented low-value added semi-manufacturing because this involves a high amount of overvalued imported content.


The huge trade deficits and rising debt service result in chronic current accounts deficits and unfavorable balance of payments. But the deficits are often covered by new debts at more onerous terms, including short-term portfolio investments and the flotation of bonds by state corporations in the capital market. These render the economy more vulnerable. The foreign debt is ever mounting. The foreign exchange remittances of overseas contract workers are in fact used for further import-dependent consumption but are often cited as a resource for paying a major part of the foreign debt.


The high level of government budgetary deficit is due to economic depression, the sale of income-generating state assets, reduction of tariffs, tax evasion by the exploiting classes including tax holidays and exemptions, bureaucratic corruption and high military expenditures. Moreover, the reactionary government and its various corporations enter into onerous loan and supply contracts with foreign banks and companies that aggravate the deficits to be covered by local public and foreign borrowing.


The Philippine economy and the reactionary government in particular are bankrupt. But they are kept afloat by exporting ever larger volumes of certain goods whose prices keep on sinking, by rescheduling of old debts and incurring new debts at ever more onerous terms under various programs dictated by the IMF and the World Bank, by privatization of government assets and by capturing the foreign exchange remittances of Filipino overseas contract workers who now constitute 10 per cent of the population and whose annual remittances have grown to USD 8.5 billion in 2004.


We can trace the deterioration of the Philippine economy by looking at the growth and uses of foreign and domestic borrowing, from one regime to another. The Marcos regime was the very first one to dramatically raise the level of foreign borrowing from the level of USD 600 million in 1965 to USD 27.2 billion in 1986.. The regime used the foreign funds to finance the graft-ridden construction of sugar, coconut, copper and nickel mills, irrigation systems, roads and bridges and

tourist facilities. This was mainly under the auspices of the Keynesian policy stress of the World Bank before 1980.


But at the onset of the 1980s, economic policy stress would shift to monetarism and neoliberalism in the US and in the world capitalist system. Supposedly the time had come to act decisively against so-called wage inflation and social spending by the state. Both were blamed as the cause of the stagflation problem. While the US sought to attract funds from abroad by offering high interest rates in the market, the World Bank was made to cut down on concessionary official lending and the IMF was made to whip up trade and investment liberalization, privatization and deregulation as payback from the third world debtors.


The tight international credit situation in the 1980s compelled the Aquino regime to raise the level of local public debt from PhP 144.4 billion in 1986 to PhP 521 billion in 1992. The Aquino regime restricted imports and brought the level of foreign debt to USD 29.9 billion in 1992. To countervail depressed prices in the global market, the raw material exports of the Philippines had to be increased.. Still the financial crisis sharpened in the early 1990s.


The Ramos regime harped on "free market" globalization. It outstripped the Marcos regime in foreign borrowing and the Aquino regime in local borrowing. It brought the level of the country's foreign debt to USD 46.2 billion and total domestic public sector debt to PhP 922 billion in 1998. These borrowings were made in order to cover foreign trade and budgetary deficits, respectively. The deficits grew as the regime promoted the export-oriented low-value added semi-manufacturing and

private construction of high-rise office buildings, residential towers, hotels, golf courses and other recreational facilities. The economic and financial collapse came as a major part of the 1997 Southeast Asia crisis.


The bankruptcy of the Philippine economy and state was conspicuous when the Estrada regime took over. Government expenditures went too far ahead of tax revenues. The IMF kept on pressing the regime to reduce government expenditures, adopt new tax measures and give priority to debt service. To pursue its bureaucrat capitalist purposes, the regime engaged in scams by raiding the pension funds of state and private employees and collecting money from the underworld. The Estrada regime raised the level of the country's foreign debt to USD 51.2 billion and local public debt to PhP 1.068 trillion by year end 2000.


The Arroyo regime raised the level of the country's foreign debt to USD 56.3 billion and the local public debt to PhP 1.833 trillion in June 2004. The compounded foreign and local public debt is PhP 6 trillion. In fact, the foreign debt has gone beyond USD 60 billion and the local public debt beyond PhP 2.5 trillion. In terms of the size of the total public debt, the Philippines is in a worse situation than Argentina. The Philippine public debt/GDP ratio has risen from 56 per cent in 1997 to 80 per cent in 2004. Last year, the reactionary government paid 81 per cent of its revenues for both interest and principal amortization. This year it is allocating 94 per cent of revenues for debt service.


Since 2001, the Arroyo regime has overborrowed from the private capital market, mainly US, by floating bonds. It is now given a low credit rating and is being forced by the IMF to raise taxes amid a depressed economy. The value added tax is being raised by 20 percent. Other measures for raising taxes are being implemented. Under conditions of deregulation, the oil companies are allowed to freely raise their prices and so are the power, water and other public utilities, their service rates. The reactionary government is raising the fees for services it provides.


The IMF and WTO require the regime to undertake further denationalization, liberalization, privatization and deregulation.

State assets such as those in the National Power Corporation are being bargained away. Debts of state corporations being auctioned off remain as sovereign debt and do not become the liability of the new private owners. The mineral, forest and water resources of the country are further being opened up for unrestricted exploitation by the foreign monopolies. Mimicking the Bush regime, the Arroyo regime is planning to privatize the social security agencies of the state.


Major official statistical data in the Philippines are falsified to conjure the illusion of achievement. The Arroyo regime claims that the GDP grew by 6.1 percent in 2004. The Employers Confederation of the Philippines describes this as jobless and industry-less growth. The regime pretends to surpass by so many times the stagnant growth rates in the most advanced capitalist countries. It absurdly cites the heavy electoral spending last year, the proliferation of international call

centers and false estimates of production rises in agriculture and service sectors of the economy as major items in the GDP growth.


The chronic rate of mass unemployment in the Philippines goes beyond 40 per cent. One can arrive at this rate by compounding the officially admitted unemployment and underemployment rates (the latter is actually unemployed). Unemployment has increased conspicuously since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, with the formal sector shrinking fast. The claimed unemployment rate of 11.7 per cent in 2004, which is comparable to that of Germany, is simply unbelievable. Supposedly "employed" by some specious definition are 30.635 million workers out of a total labor force of 34.571 million. But only 18.62 percent (5.067 million) are verifiably employed in the formal sector, while 67.47 per cent (20.670 million) are in the informal sector, which is a realm of random surveys and false estimates.


The real value of nominal wages has drastically gone down due to the rapidly soaring prices of basic commodities and services. Inflation has been pushed by the peso devaluation, the scarcities in import-dependent basic producer and consumer goods and the heavy electoral spending by the regime. The inflation rate of 5.4 per cent for 2004 in IMF and government statistics is simply unbelievable.


The peso has been devalued vis-Ã*-vis the US dollar and is now less than half its value in 1996 and only a third its value in 1985. Funds for essential producer and consumer imports have become scarce because of superprofit-taking by the monopoly firms, the huge amounts of debt service, spending for foreign-made luxuries and weapons and salting away of dollars by big Filipino businessmen and high bureaucrats.


The broad masses of the people suffer the rising costs of basic commodities and such services as transport, water and electricity. Since the privatization and deregulation of public utilities in the 1990s, the price of oil products has increased on average by 160 percent, of electricity by 175 percent, and of water services by 450 percent. The social infrastructure is breaking down and the allocations for such social services as health, education, unemployment relief and housing are being cut back. The Arroyo regime has drastically slashed real spending on education by 3.2 percent, on health by 24.5 percent and on housing by 61.0 percent from 2001-2004.


Contrary to absurd government claims that poverty has fallen from 40 per cent to just 30.4 percent of the population in 2003, some 90 percent of the population live on the equivalent of around USD 3 a day. A recent report by the Asian Development Bank points out that the Philippine government achieved the reduction of the poverty level not by raising the people's income but by lowering the poverty line. Indeed, while the general price level supposedly rose by some 15 percent between 2000 and 2003, the government raised the poverty line by just 7 percent – to just PhP 33.60 or some USD 0.60 a day.


Millions of children are subjected to forced labor, malnutrition, deprivation of education, military assaults on rural communities and forced evacuation. Women are degraded and forced to leave their families in order to earn a living abroad. Large numbers of women and children are forced into prostitution. The environment is being damaged by logging for export and foreign mining pesticide-dependent plantations and other pollutant enterprises.


Social discontent is acute and widespread among the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata of entrepreneurs, traders and intelligentsia. They are increasingly engaged in strikes, protest rallies and other forms of concerted action. But the regime always tries to intimidate the people and orders the military and police to attack them. Human rights violations are rampant. There is more than enough of socio-economic exploitation and political oppression to drive so many people to wage revolutionary resistance.


The Filipino people demand such bourgeois democratic measures as land reform and national industrialization in order to break the agrarian, pre-industrial and semi-feudal character of the economy. They demand measures to be undertaken to uphold national sovereignty, conserve and use wisely the rich natural resources of the country and make sure that the social wealth created serves the material and spiritual well-being of the current and future generations.


Political Realities


The Philippine ruling system is semi-colonial. It has been so since the US formally ended its colonial rule, granted nominal independence on 4 July 1946 to the Philippines and turned over the reins of national administration to Filipino bureaucrats and politicians from the exploiting classes. At the same time, it has retained strategic control over the Philippines in the economic, financial, security and other fields.


Unequal treaties have ensured the subservience of the Philippine ruling system to the US. The Treaty of General Relations of 1946 guaranteed that US corporations and citizens retained their property rights and that US military forces kept their military bases and their radar and loran stations. A series of bilateral economic and trade agreements gave US corporations and citizens so-called parity rights to exploit natural resources and operate public utilities. The predecessor agencies of the USAID started the practice of planting agents in key agencies of the puppet government.


A series of bilateral military agreements on US military bases, military assistance and mutual defense has bound the Philippines to US military power. Even after the dismantling of the US military bases in 1992, following the nonrenewal of the military bases agreement by the Philippine Senate in 1991, the US continues to exercise military control over the Philippines through control of military logistics, planning, indoctrination and training of military officers.


It continues to encroach on Philippine territory and use Philippine military facilities under the Visiting Forces Agreement ratified by the Philippine Senate in May 1999 and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement signed by US and RP defense officials in November 2002. It uses various general pretexts such as mutual defense, regional security and war on terrorism and more specific pretexts like joint military training exercises, civic action, humanitarian mission and the like.


The key binding factor of the Philippine ruling system is US hegemony. But the politicians and bureaucrats of the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords have their relative autonomy from the neocolonial master. They feed on the common trough of bureaucrat capitalism and compete in pretending to be for public service. They are divided into factional parties of the same dominant classes.


From 1946 to 1972, a two party system or a duopoly existed, patterned after that of the US. In this system, the political factions of the exploiting classes engaged in political and electoral struggle in an increasingly violent way. Subsequently, the Marcos ruling clique usurped all powers of government through a fascist dictatorship from

1972 to 1986. Since the fall of the Marcos regime, there has been a proliferation of reactionary political parties and coalitions. There is not a single reactionary party or coalition that can claim a majority of the electoral votes at the national level.


The instability of the ruling system has worsened from the period of 1946 to 1972 through the Marcos fascist dictatorship and further on to the period of the post-Marcos regimes. The political crisis is chronic and it involves the contradictions within the ruling system becoming more violent. It is a reflection of the ever worsening socio-economic crisis. As the pie for bureaucrat capitalist looting decreases, the struggle over it becomes more bitter and more conspicuous.


There is of course a semblance of civility and noblesse oblige among the reactionary political factions in the ruling system when they utter platitudes to the public and try to show good behavior to the US, the chambers of commerce and the dominant church. But they do have their own violent factional strife. To consolidate and expand their

power and wealth against their rivals, they cultivate links with groups of military and police officers and they operate armed groups and private security agencies.


The coercive apparatuses of the state, the military and police, are themselves divided into factions. These reflect the major political factions whose patronage is necessary to ensure promotions in rank and assignments to lucrative posts. They also arise from rivalries in operating or taking payoffs from criminal syndicates of various types, including those engaged in the numbers game (jueteng), illegal logging, drugs, kidnapping for ransom, bank heists, smuggling and so on.


At this moment, the Arroyo regime is extremely unstable and isolated. The sentiment is widespread that Arroyo was not really elected as president last year. She is widely perceived to have bought the votes and cheated in the counting. But what is really most damaging about the regime is the crudity and conspicuousness of its puppetry to the US and the colossal multinationals, the corruption of gargantuan proportions, the imposition of a heavier tax burden on the people in a depressed economy, the soaring prices of basic commodities and services and the escalation of human rights violations in the urban and rural areas under the pretext of counterterrorism.


A broad united front of opposition forces is growing against the Arroyo regime. The key forces in this broad united front are the political parties and groups that have demonstrated significant electoral following, military and police officers that dissociate themselves from rampant corruption and other criminality of their colleagues and the patriotic and progressive forces with the organized masses willing to confront the regime and cause its downfall, as in the case of Marcos in 1986 and Estrada in 2001.


The broad united front is reportedly trying to form a revolutionary council of patriotic and progressive forces to succeed the Arroyo regime and to lay the basis for the election of a new government in six months to one year after the ouster of Arroyo. It seeks to unite the military and police officers in upholding the principle of civilian supremacy, withdrawing their support from the regime, letting the masses rise up in protest and causing the regime to resign.


In reaction, the Arroyo regime has become even more servile to the US, more corrupt, more arrogant and more ruthless in the face of the developing broad united front. It believes that it can continue borrowing from abroad by complying with the demands of the IMF for increasing the tax burden and giving priority to debt service and that it can receive huge amounts of US military and financial assistance in exchange for its support for the Bush "war on terrorism", the rise of US military intervention, the reestablishment of US military bases and the inflow of foreign investments.


There is a trend towards an unbridled rule of open terror, without any proclamation of martial law. The minions of the regime are now busy pushing the enactment of an anti-terrorism law and the removal from the 1987 constitution of the provisions that put limitations on the declaration of martial law, that guarantee the basic rights of a criminal suspect under the Miranda doctrine, that assert economic sovereignty and limit foreign investments, that protect the national

patrimony and that prohibit foreign military bases and foreign troops.


To say the least, the extremely pro-imperialist and reactionary elements in the Arroyo regime wish to prevent the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law and the negotiation of social, economic and political reforms and would rather scuttle the peace negotiations than address the roots of the civil war in the Philippines. The terrorist-listing is calculated to extort from the NDFP the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary forces either under the guise of a "final peace agreement" of empty generalities and a

prolonged ceasefire without the substance of a just and lasting peace.


Relatedly, the most vicious kinds of pressure are being exerted on the NDFP. Under the direction of US psywar experts, the military and police have unleashed a campaign vilifying the most respectable institutions, organizations and personages as "terrorists" and then telling them to clear themselves by denouncing the revolutionary forces. This psywar campaign is combined with a campaign of assassinations and abductions directed against patriotic and progressive religious, lawyers, human rights activists, journalists, leaders of the party list parties (like Bayan Muna, Anakpawis and Gabriela) and leaders and members of the mass organizations of workers, peasants, urban poor, women, youth and others.


It is reprehensible that the Arroyo regime has collaborated with the US government in demonizing and listing as terrorists" the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People's Army and the chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. In the current wave of assassinations and abductions, the NDFP senior legal adviser Justice Romeo T. Capulong has been clearly targeted for assassination. NDFP consultants residing in Philippines

are experiencing increased surveillance and intimidating actions from armed agents of the GRP.


This "terrorist" listing violates the mutually acceptable principle of national sovereignty and the noncapitulation principle in The Hague Joint Declaration, the safety and immunity guarantees for all duly-authorized persons in the peace negotiations under the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees and the basic democratic rights and the Hernandez political offense doctrine as affirmed by the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International

Humanitarian Law.


Since August last year, when the US renewed the "terrorist" label and listing of the CPP, NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant, the NDFP has expected the GRP to join it in condemning the unjust act of the US and to comply with all the aforesaid agreements as well as with the related agreements in the Oslo Joint Statements I and II. The GRP must comply with existing agreements or else the NDFP sees no point in negotiating with it.


At whatever rate the GRP complies with mutual agreements or whether the formal talks in the peace negotiations will resume sooner or later or never, the NDFP is committed to upholding, defending and promoting the national sovereignty of the Filipino people. This is the main guiding principle of the NDFP in seeking political and constitutional reforms through the peace negotiations.


The NDFP can consider the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations worthwhile and useful only if these can become the way for asserting the national sovereignty and empowering the workers and peasants who comprise ninety per cent of the Filipino people. The toiling masses should have all the conditions and possibilities for expressing and realizing their national and democratic rights and interests.


Need for Peace Negotiations


The two contending and negotiating parties, the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) have in their respective ways recognized the need for peace negotiations and have set forth the objectives they wish to achieve.


According to the stalwarts of the national security division of the Arroyo cabinet, the maximum objective of the GRP in pursuing the peace negotiations is to cause the capitulation of the NDFP or facilitate the military victory of GRP and the minimum objective is to conjure false illusions, befuddle the consciousness of the revolutionary forces and people and split the ranks of the revolutionary movement.


The NDFP has been quite open in declaring that the line of struggle for national liberation and democracy is the same line that it pursues in the negotiations for a just and lasting peace. This is the maximum objective of the NDFP in the peace negotiations. The NDFP also has the minimum objective of propagating the national democratic line on issues, arousing the people in their millions to raise the level of revolutionary struggle and seeking allies within the ruling system for

the purpose of isolating and defeating the intractable foe.


Since the time of the Marcos fascist dictatorship, I have been privileged to be involved in discreet and public discussions about the question of peace negotiations. I can use the historical method to demonstrate clearly the development of the position and attitude of both the GRP and NDFP about the question of peace negotiations. But such an approach might only ignite a speculative debate about the motivations and calculations of the contending parties. We are on more solid ground if we look at the existing agreements of the two negotiating parties.


Since 1992 the GRP and NDFP have forged twelve agreements. We can use these agreements to determine and measure what the two parties are willing to consider and agree upon as matters in the interest of the Filipino people. The preliminary stage of 1992 to1995 yielded serious agreements that paved the way for the stage of formal talks from 1995 to the present.


The Hague Joint Declaration was mutually approved by the principals of the GRP and NDFP negotiating panels in 1992. It proclaims the need for peace negotiations in order to address the roots of the armed conflict and arrive at reforms for laying the stable foundation for a just and lasting peace.


It declares the mutually acceptable principles of national sovereignty, democracy and social justice as the guiding principles for the negotiations. It is against any precondition that negates the inherent character and purpose of peace negotiations. It sets the substantive agenda, to include respect for human rights and international humanitarian law, social and economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms.


The Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) was mutually approved in 1995 by the principals of the GRP and NDFP negotiating panels. It protects the panelists, consultants and all other persons duly-authorized in the peace negotiations and provides the mechanism for terminating the peace negotiations by any of the two parties and for allowing persons duly-authorized to participate in the peace negotiation to go to their safe positions within 30 days after the date of the notice of termination.


The Joint Agreement on the Formation, Sequence and Operationalization of the Reciprocal Working Committees was mutually approved in 1995 to guide the drafting of the tentative comprehensive agreements one after the other in accordance with the substantive agenda as set forth by The Hague Joint Declaration. A supplementary agreement was mutually approved in 1997 to require mutual approval by the principals of the comprehensive agreement on social and economic reforms before there can be a negotiation of political and constitutional reforms.


The Comprehensive Agreement of Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) was approved by the

principals of the NDFP and GRP in 1998. This is the first of the four comprehensive agreements in accordance with the substantive agenda. Since 2004, the GRP and NDFP have agreed on the operating guidelines of the Joint Monitoring Committee and has fully constituted it, together with its Joint Secretariat in Manila, to monitor the joint and separate implementation of the CARHRIHL.


At the opening session of the resumption of formal talks in Oslo in April 2001, the NDFP Negotiating Panel and the GRP Negotiating Panel agreed to cooperate in trying to finish the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms within six months from June 2001. Had the GRP cooperated with NDFP, this comprehensive agreement would have been finished a long time ago. There would have been a chance to finish the comprehensive agreement on political and constitutional reforms in

2002 and that on the end of hostilities and disposition of forces in 2003.


Unfortunately, in June 2001 the GRP suspended indefinitely the formal talks until 2004 avowedly in protest to the killing of Colonel Rodolfo Aguinaldo by the New People's Army. He was one among the most notorious torturers and murderers of the Marcos fascist dictatorship. Even while in civilian office, he continued to participate in military operations against the NPA and the people in Cagayan province. The NPA therefore had long regarded him as an armed combatant with abundant blood debts.


To further complicate matters, the GRP agreed with the US government in November 2001 to put the CPP/NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant in the "terrorist" list in a bid to pressure the NDFP to capitulate by signing the so-called final peace agreement which the GRP had unilaterally drafted. The US made the "terrorist" listing in August 2002, followed by various other governments (Netherlands, Britain, Australia and Canada) and by the European Council.


There are now two major obstacles blocking the resumption of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations:



The "terrorist" listing. It is a malicious act which seeks to blackmail and pressure the NDFP to capitulate. It violates the principles of national sovereignty and non-capitulation in The Hague Joint Declaration; the protection to persons duly-authorized to participate in the peace negotiations under the JASIG and the basic democratic rights and the Hernandez political offense doctrine in the CARHRIHL.

The GRP has made the resumption of the formal talks impossible by failing to end its complicity with the US in labeling and listing the CPP, NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant as "terrorist." It has also failed to join the NDFP in upholding the Oslo Statements I and II against the "terrorist" listing. Worst of all, it has repeatedly dueted with the US on the line that the NDFP must capitulate in order to have the names of revolutionary forces removed from the list. It must join the NDFP in complying with the existing agreements to pave the way for the resumption of the formal talks.



The demand for capitulation. The NDFP rejects the demand for capitulation carried by the so-called final peace agreement drafted by the GRP. This violates the noncapitulation and substantive agenda provisions in The Hague Joint Declaration and the Joint Agreement on the Formation, Sequence and Operationalization of the Reciprocal Working Committees. The NDFP also rejects any attempt to convert the peace negotiations into ceasefire negotiations that lay aside the principle of addressing the root causes of the armed conflict through the negotiations on social, economic and political reforms.

The GRP must comply with the existing agreements. If it does not, how can the NDFP expect that the GRP will ever comply with the comprehensive agreements on the substantive agenda? But it is highly probable that the GRP is already looking for a way to prevent the negotiation of social and economic reforms and to scuttle the peace negotiations. It is trying to make the NDFP capitulate and, if the latter does not capitulate, to subsequently escalate the war against the revolutionary forces and people.


It should be realistic and reasonable for the Arroyo regime to agree to the resumption of the formal talks on social and economic reforms. The broad masses of the people expect this; they are looking for way out of the current social, economic and political crisis. After resumption of the formal talks, conversations between special representatives of the GRP and NDFP principals on how to accelerate negotiations and agreements are possible, without violating the existing agreements.


But the problem of the Arroyo regime might be the false illusion that the US can provide it with economic and military assistance sufficient for buoying up the ruling system and defeating the revolutionary forces and people. In the meantime, the regime is becoming more and more isolated, weak and vulnerable to the rising resistance of the people and broad united front of opposition forces. This is the worst time for the Arroyo regime to be arrogant and shun the peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. ###

[Spec-V]

@JoRed - your undying crusade is fruitless!! After the Berlin Wall; communism is dead!

[dawn runner]

Go on Jored. lets unite!

[hala tindak jud]

@JoRed - your undying crusade is fruitless!! After the Berlin Wall; communism is dead!

i don't think so...

sa akong pagsabot sa pagkahugno sa Berlin Wall wala kini nagapasabot nga nahuman na ang Komyunismo, kinsa man nga nasud ang nakatung-tong sa Estado nga Komyunismo?

Ug maghimo na lang ta ug lain nga thread kabahin ani!

[PissKhanXXX]

"let us fight! i mean, you all fight while i sip on vodka!" - sison

[dawn runner]

Jored, let us unite fighting the corrupt Arroyo government. United, we shall win!

[jonciocon]

Sa reality lisod na ang komonista kay ang tawo naa man gyud mga pangandoy. May lang na ang kommunista kong wala nay pagasa ang tawo sama sa mga tawo nga panablahay na lang... Hehe. Nag-toon sab ko ug Sociology oi. (May pa nag-sulat na si Sison ug sugilanon kay magamit pa iyang otok sa maayo nga botang) Sayang ka Joma, matod pa sa iyang mama...