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

[jonciocon]

[JoRed]

THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM
Contribution of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Philippines
To the International Conference On Socialism in the Twenty-First Century
November 5, 2000
Kathmandu, Nepal
The Communist Party of the Philippines, together with other revolutionary forces of the Filipino people, convey their warmest greetings of comradeship to the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and the Madan-Ahrit Memorial Foundation and to all the participants in this International Conference on Socialism in the 21st Century.

We thank all our Nepalese comrades for inviting us and we congratulate them for successfully convening this conference. We are confident that all participants can learn from each other in the course of exchanging experience, ideas and views.

We have been assigned to present this thematic paper on the struggle for socialism in different countries. We therefore proceed to discuss the history, the current global situation, the struggle for socialism in various types of countries and the prospects of this struggle in the twenty-first century.

I. The History of Socialism

It is a delusion of the monopoly bourgeoisie and its anti-communist petty bourgeois camp followers that history has ended with capitalism and bourgeois liberalism. The epochal struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between capitalism and socialism continues. Ultimately, the proletariat shall fulfill its historic mission of building socialism on a world scale and bring us to the goal of communism upon the global defeat of imperialism.

We must have a clear view of history since the Communist Manifesto of 1848. The revolutionary cause of socialism has advanced and accumulated victories in theory and practice. It has done so by going through twists and turns and ups and downs.

The tremendous odds that socialism faces are posed not only by the frontal enemy in the form of the big bourgeoisie but also the enemy from within in the form of revisionists. But no matter how big is the setback that socialism suffers at one time, it subsequently resurges and advances in an unprecedented way.

So far, the socialist cause of the modern proletariat and the entire people has passed through three major stages. These are the stages of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism.

In the stage of Marxism, Marx and Engels established the theory of scientific socialism against utopian socialism. They formulated such components of Marxism as the philosophy of dialectical materialism, the fundamental critique of capitalism in political economy and scientific socialism.

They studied the material conditions brought about by industrial capitalism and discovered the laws of motion of capitalism. They brought to the fore the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, resulting from the contradiction of the social character of the forces of production and the private character of the mode of appropriation.

They pointed to the need for the forcible overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the revolutionary prerequisite for building socialism. When they spoke of the proletariat as having to win the battle for democracy, they meant upholding and realizing the rights and interests of the proletariat and the rest of the exploited people. In general and essential terms, they defined the way to socialist revolution and construction.

In their lifetime, Marx and Engels devoted their time to research and propagation of the socialist cause. They reached out to the working class through the First International and contended with petty bourgeois radical currents that competed for the adherence of the workers.

They celebrated the Paris Commune of 1871 as the prototype of the proletarian dictatorship and drew lessons from its brief victory and subsequent defeat. They stressed above all that for socialism to triumph the bureaucratic and military apparatuses of the bourgeoisie must be smashed. In their lifetime, they were not able to build a socialist state but they laid the theoretical basis for future proletarian revolutions.

By the last decade of the 19th century, Marxism became the dominant trend in the European working class movement, with the German social democratic party as the largest party. But even so, Bernstein would betray Marxism with his revisionist theory of evolutionary socialism.

For a while, Kautsky was an outstanding defender of Marxism but subsequently he also betrayed it. He was so taken in by the global expansion of capitalism under imperialism and by the rewards of collaboration with the bourgeoisie. He promoted classical revisionism and misdirected the Second International exactly when it was riding high on the strength of the militant workers' movement and the prestige of Marxism. The social democrats would vote for the war budgets of the bourgeois states and supported imperialism. They helped the monopoly bourgeoisie bring about the first inter-imperialist war.

In the stage of Leninism, Lenin further developed Marxism in all its major components and fought for socialism in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. He led the Bolshevik party and the proletariat in seizing political power and established the first socialist state in the history of mankind, in one sixth of the world.

To win victory, Lenin stood and fought for the revolutionary cause of socialism against the Tsarist regime, the bourgeoisie and the revisionists. He paid close attention to the misleading line of the classical revisionists and struggled against it both in the Russian revolution and the Second International. He inspired the Third International in order to struggle against the Second International.

Lenin defined the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. He pointed to monopoly capitalism as the highest and final stage of the development of capitalism and as a parasitic and moribund kind of capitalism, aggravating and deepening the uneven development of capitalism and the uneven conditions of the world. Monopoly capitalism brings about severe economic crises and inter-imperialist wars which destroy productive forces and generate conditions for revolutionary wars for national liberation and socialism.

The first socialist state arose in the weakest link of the chain of imperialist countries and did so in connection with the first general crisis of monopoly capitalism and the first inter-imperialist war. It was not an easy task to carry forward the socialist cause as the Bolsheviks had to overcome the civil war and interventionist war, the economic and military blockade and eventually the Nazi invasion which threatened the socialist state and wrought terrible destruction on the life and the economy of the Soviet Union.

On the foundation of Leninism, Stalin pursued the work of socialist revolution and construction for decades. He proved conclusively that socialism could be built in one country in a world still dominated by imperialism. He was able to defeat the "Left" and Right opportunists who opposed socialism.

[b]Further in the stage of Leninism, greater victories were won by the proletariat and the people in connection with the second general crisis of monopoly capitalism and the second inter-imperialist war. Several socialist countries arose in one third of the world. And a great wave of national liberation movements and newly-independent states likewise did.

In the aftermath of World War II, it looked like the proletariat and people of the world could proceed to make socialism dominant in the world and defeat imperialism. However, even as communist and workers' parties celebrated their unprecedented victories and expressed the determination to take advantage of the third stage in the general crisis of monopoly capitalism, modern revisionism had already taken hold of the Soviet party and the pro-Soviet parties in Eastern Europe.

For several decades, the Soviet revisionist ruling cliques, from Khruschev through Brezhnev to Gorbachov, gradually restored capitalism until Gorbachov could openly proclaim an undisguised and unbridled kind of capitalism. They consistently proclaimed that the proletariat had already accomplished its historic mission even as they adopted capitalist-oriented reforms.

The stage of Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism arose in connection with Mao's critique of modern revisionist trends in China and the revisionist-ruled countries. Mao thought out how socialism could be kept up and advanced through proletarian class struggle for an entire historical epoch. He put forward the theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship in order to combat modern revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate socialism.

Putting the theory into practice, he launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). This brought up important principles and methods and prevailed in China from 1966 to 1976. It aroused, organized and mobilized hundreds of millions of the Chinese people. It was democracy on the most extensive scale whereby the workers and peasants exercised their democratic right to uphold, defend and advance socialism.

It sought to prevent the bureaucracy and new intelligentsia from becoming petty-bourgeois in mentality and from serving as the social base of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration. It gave revolutionary experience to the youth and trained them to become revolutionary successors.

It established revolutionary organs of political power combining representatives of the Party, the masses and the people's army and balancing the proportions of the young, middle-aged and elders. It also created a new system of factory management which combined representatives of the Party, the workers and the experts and in which managers participated in work on the bench and workers participated in management.

In its own period, the GPCR succeeded in revolutionizing both the social base and the superstructure of Chinese society. It also raised the level of industrial and agricultural production. But it would be reversed and defeated by the Dengist counterrevolution.

The Chinese revisionists preached the dying out of the class struggle and sought modernization through capitalist-oriented reforms and opening up for integration in the world capitalist system. Much faster than the Soviet Union, the revisionists in China have restored capitalism. At this point in time, there should be no more doubt about the capitalist restoration in China. Once more the big comprador and bureaucrat capitalists are dominant in China, despite the communist signboard of the ruling party and socialist label on state enterprises.

The attitude that we take towards the ten-year victory of the GPCR and its subsequent defeat up to the present is the same attitude that Marx took towards the short-lived victory of the Paris Commune and its subsequent defeat. We grasp the essence and significance of the revolutionary phenomenon and we learn lessons from it, including its positive and negative aspects, in order to raise revolutionary theory and practice on a new and higher level.

At this point in history, it is absolutely clear that Mao was correct in posing the problem of modern revisionism in China and the Soviet Union and elsewhere and demanding solution to it. He is vindicated by the actual undisguised restoration of capitalism in the former socialist countries.

In the course of the Cold War and the hot local wars after World War II, the imperialists did not defeat the socialist cause in the former socialist countries by economic and military blockade or by war. In fact, the deadliest enemy of socialism has been modern revisionism.

Confidence in the ultimate victory of socialism cannot be assured among the proletariat and people without a reference to the need to combat revisionism before and after the seizure of political power. For an entire historical epoch, socialism has to be consolidated not only through socio-economic progress but through a protracted and persuasive cultural revolution.

The immediate conditions of oppression and exploitation drive the proletariat and the people to make revolution. But the given fact of the restoration of capitalism in former socialist countries requires us to assure the proletariat and the people that we are prepared to face up to the problem of revisionism and capitalist restoration whenever socialism arises and develops.

II. The Current Global Situation

The world is still in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution precisely because of the revisionist betrayal of socialism in several countries and the co-optation of the newly-independent states by neo-colonialism.

Monopoly capitalism with US imperialism at the head is dominant. Under the neoliberal slogan of "free market" globalization, it is taking a vengeance on the proletariat and the oppressed peoples and is escalating oppression and exploitation.

But the proletariat and the oppressed peoples are fighting back and are striving for national liberation, democracy and socialism. They are steadily rising up along the general line of anti-imperialism and are fighting for the socialist cause.

The resurgence of the anti-imperialist movement and the world proletarian revolution is as certain as the intensification of oppression and exploitation by imperialism and local reaction. Our revolutionary optimism has a scientific basis in the recognition of the gravely worsening crisis of monopoly capitalism and the growing resistance of the proletariat and the people.

A new world disorder arose in the last decade of the 20th century, exactly when imperialism was gloating over the fall of "socialism" (meaning to say, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the fall of the revisionist regimes) and was intensifying the exploitation of the proletariat and oppressed peoples under the slogan of "free market" globalization. After so many decades, wars have again broken out inside and in the vicinity of Europe, as in the period before World War I.

All basic contradictions in the world capitalist system are sharpening. The main contradiction is the one between the imperialist countries and the oppressed peoples. Through the use of neocolonialism and wars of aggression, the imperialists are carrying out the most bitter oppression and exploitation and the ruination of the economies in Asia, Africa, Latin America and in the former Soviet bloc countries. The ground for armed revolution is therefore most fertile in these countries.

The contradiction among the imperialist powers is intensifying on economic, political and military issues. But so far, the US-led imperialist alliance is holding insofar as they are united in oppressing and exploiting the people of the world and in trying to contain and engage Russia and China which they fear as imperialist rivals if these two large countries are not further weakened.

In the imperialist countries, the contradiction between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat is intensifying in varying degrees. The polarization between the proletariat and the rest of the people on the one side and the monopoly bourgeoisie on the other side will proceed faster as the struggle of the oppressed peoples and the anti-imperialist contradiction further intensify.

The epochal teaching of Marx remains valid, that the contradictory relationship of the social character of the forces of production and the private method of appropriation leads to class struggle of the proletariat and other exploited classes to fight for emancipation from the chains of capitalism and to aim for socialism.

The current combination of high technology or the rising social productivity in the most advanced capitalist countries and the most rapacious forms of profit-taking under the neoliberal rationale are implosive and explosive.

In the industrial capitalist countries, there is an unprecedented concentration and centralization of capital in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie through the exploitation of the proletariat at home and the oppressed peoples abroad. There is a rapid inflation of financial assets, with profits from financial operations outstripping by unprecedented leaps and bounds those from industrial production.

At the productive base of the economy, the adoption of higher technology is used to cut down regular employment in order to maximize profits. The imperialist state provides more capital to the monopoly bourgeoisie through purchase contracts, tax exemptions, subsidies, bargain sale of public assets and loans. At the same time, it cuts down or eliminates hard-won social benefits and touts private corporate welfare against social welfare.

The profits of the monopoly bourgeoisie have multiplied and the wage income of the proletariat has decreased in inverse proportion. In the industrial capitalist countries, the income of less than one percent of the population is more than the income of more than ninety percent of the population. The drastic decrease of regular employment, wage income and social benefits is generating the chronic crisis of overproduction. It is pushing the class struggle of the proletariat and the monopoly bourgeoisie to the surface.

There are rapidly growing differences between the most advanced and the less advanced industrial capitalist countries and among such centers of global capitalism as the United States, the European Union and Japan. The US enjoys the position of hyperpower among the imperialist powers by taking advantage of its accumulated political and military power and its lead in high technology, inducing Japan and the European Union to buy US stocks and bonds and pursue a trade offensive in industrial and agricultural goods.

As a consequence, the domestic economy of Japan has been depressed for more than a decade. It has been hard pressed more than ever to seek the solution of its economic problems by increasing exports and lending funds to other countries, especially in Asia. But these loans have gone sour since 1997 and have conjoined with the domestic bad loans to crush the economies.

The economy of the European Union has been stagnant. Real unemployment is far higher than the official figures. The expansion of the West European capital into Russia and Eastern European countries has been limited by the rapid socio-economic deterioration in these retrogressive countries.

In the entire world capitalist system, real economic growth has gone down but the decline has been camouflaged by the abstract averaging of inflated assets in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie. The overconcentration of finance capital in the US is portentous. Economic crisis in the US will certainly be worse for the world than the Great Depression, which ushered in World War II.

At the base of the global economic and financial crises is the fact that all types of goods and services are now overproduced relative to the shrinking global market. Under these circumstances, the competition among imperialist countries has considerably sharpened.

The lesser industrial countries are squeezed in the current crisis of the world capitalist countries. Even such economies as those of South Korea, which can produce steel, cars, home appliances and consumer electronics, are now distressed by the crisis of overproduction of these products. Thus the workers' strike movement has been stronger in the lesser industrial capitalist countries than in the advanced ones.

The imperialist countries compete with each other but are still united in oppressing and exploiting the overwhelming majority of countries of the world which are underdeveloped. They extract the highest rate of profits by extending commercial and other nonproductive loans to these countries and dumping surplus products on them. In recent times, imperialist war has taken the form of aggression against unwieldy puppet states.

Most of the countries of the world are still agrarian and are dependent on raw material production for export. They have not lifted themselves out of the status of the semicolonial and semifeudal. The countries that are engaged in producing cheap consumer semi-manufactures for the imperialist countries are very few. There is a crisis of overproduction now not only in raw materials but also in semi-manufactures.

The ranks of underdeveloped and impoverished countries are now augmented by the countries whose economies have retrogressed due to the destruction of the industrial base or heavy and basic industries previously established under the auspices of socialism or bourgeois nationalism.

Under the auspices of "free market" globalization, there is unprecedented destruction of productive forces in the third world and former Soviet bloc countries. All of them are being crushed by gigantic amounts of foreign debts and trade deficits. Closure of enterprises is rampant and regular employment is wiped out on a massive scale. At any rate, even according to a recent World Bank report, more than 50 percent of the people of the world live on less than two dollars a day.

The economic and social degradation of most countries of the world has resulted in a political degradation that involves violent conflicts of reactionary factions that use ethno-centrist, racist and religious slogans against each other. Under conditions of turmoil, the imperialists lose market on a long-term basis and proletarian revolutionaries have the opportunity to prepare for revolution. Lenin teaches us that social disorder is the prelude to social revolution.

III. The Struggle for Socialism

The struggle for socialism is carried out in various types of countries according to their concrete conditions. In every case, the modern proletariat is necessarily the leading class. It is the most progressive and productive political force, capable of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and ruling society in lieu of the bourgeoisie. The communist party is the advanced detachment of the working class.

The most favorable objective conditions for making revolution towards the goal of socialism are still in the underdeveloped and retrogressive countries, which are the most oppressed and exploited by imperialism and local reaction. The chronic crisis of the ruling system in these countries provides excellent conditions for armed revolution, especially protracted people's war in many of them.

There are communist parties and national liberation movements in a number of countries. These are still in various stages of development. They are faced with the problem of confronting imperialism, modern revisionism and local reaction. They have to decide for themselves how they can advance the struggle for socialism against imperialism.

As a matter of fact, there is grossly uneven development of the subjective forces of the revolution, even in the countries where objective conditions are similarly excellent for waging revolution. To say the least, there are variations in the preparation of the armed revolution as well as in carrying it out.

We can speak most competently about the Communist Party of the Philippines as a revolutionary party of the proletariat leading and waging a protracted people's war. In this connection, we are contributing an additional paper on the Philippine example.

The Filipino people and revolutionary forces have persevered in revolutionary war, despite the liquidation of other people's wars in Southeast Asia, which was once in the eye of the global revolutionary storm in the fifties, sixties and seventies. They have proven that they can advance in armed revolution in a country, which US imperialism regards as a strategic base historically and currently, and they are determined to carry forward the armed revolution in the 21st century.

In countries which are semicolonial and semifeudal, where the peasants remain the majority of the people and the land question has to be solved, the revolution has to be carried out in two stages: the new-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution.

The new-democratic revolution has to be carried out in order to do away with the political and economic power of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. In the course of the new-democratic revolution, the prerequisites for the subsequent stage of socialism are developed.

Upon the basic completion of the new-democratic revolution through the nationwide seizure of political power, the socialist revolution can start on the basis of the following: revolutionary leadership of the proletariat through the communist party, the full development of the worker-peasant alliance and the leadership of proletarian party over the people's army as the main component of state power, all organs of the state and the entire economy, especially the commanding heights. At the core of the people's democratic republic is the class dictatorship of the proletariat.

In taking the socialist road after seizing political power, we must be ready for the probable developments, as we have seen in previous socialist revolutions: the transitional measures, the basic socialist transformation, the great leap in socialist revolution and construction and the cultural revolution.

In the very few so-called dependent countries, where previously there were some heavy and basic industries but where there is still a significant proportion of peasants and farm workers, there is also the need for the new-democratic revolution prior to the socialist revolution.

In socio-economic terms, the need for the democratic revolution is increasing in the face of the closure of heavy and basic industries, the general deterioration of the economy and the conversion of the industrial workers into peasants and farm hands. But always in political terms, in the face of a class enemy that never surrenders voluntarily, all must win the battle for democracy in legal and armed struggles.

Under extreme conditions of oppression and exploitation and benefiting from the legacy of socialism in theory and practice, the proletariat and oppressed peoples in the former socialist countries or what we call retrogressive countries, will eventually be among the first where the class struggle between the proletariat and the big bourgeoisie will intensify to the point of armed revolution.

In some of these retrogressive countries, it is possible that the proletariat and oppressed peoples shall run ahead in waging armed revolution for socialism earlier than the proletariat in industrial capitalist countries or even many of the oppressed peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America. But we must not have the illusion that in a country where socialism has been replaced by capitalism there will be a straight return to socialism as a result of the struggle of the proletariat and the rest of the people.

The proletarian revolutionaries have to confront the fact that the revisionists who toppled the proletariat discredited socialism by misrepresenting as socialism the gradual evolution of capitalism for several decades. The blatant anti-communist full restorers of capitalism continue to heap calumny on socialism and the new big bourgeoisie and the imperialists would use all anti-democratic and violent means to combat the return of socialism.

So, in the retrogressive countries, the proletarian revolutionaries and the people have to undertake once more a democratic struggle towards socialism and seize the initiative from the anti-communists and anti-socialists who misappropriate the slogan of democracy and misinterpret it as bourgeois liberalism for the purpose of sugar-coating big bourgeois rule.

Even in the industrial capitalist countries, advanced or lesser ones, there is no straight line from the material conditions of capitalism to socialist revolution. Between the two, there is necessarily a period of some significant duration for a broad democratic struggle, because the monopoly bourgeoisie does not give up its power and wealth voluntarily but unleashes fascism to preempt the seizure of political power by the proletariat.

It is understandable that in the imperialist countries, the communist parties and the revolutionary mass movements are currently small and weak. That is because the imperialists are strongest in their own homegrounds to resist the proletarian struggle for socialism. They can bribe a section of the working class to become labor aristocrats and use an array of big bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties, organizations and institutions to mislead the masses. They are ever ready to use the coercive apparatuses of the state whenever they deem necessary.

The Left parties and the progressive mass movements in the lesser industrial capitalist countries are currently bigger in size than in the advanced ones. However, they are under the heavy influence of modern revisionism and social democracy. At present, there are communist and workers' parties striving to lead the workers and the semiproletarian masses as the crisis of monopoly capitalism is worsening and the labor aristocrats are becoming discredited.

There have been significant outbursts of sector-wide strikes of workers and broad protests against the bourgeois states and their multilateral agencies. The proletariat and the rest of the people decry the oppressiveness and exploitativeness of capitalism and call for socialism.

In industrial capitalist countries, the proletarian revolutionaries wage legal struggle as the main form of struggle for a long period of time in order to build a powerful mass movement. At the same time, it must build a strong underground in preparation for the workers' uprisings in the future. They cannot play with insurrection when the crisis of the ruling system does not yet render the bourgeoisie incapable of ruling in the old way, when the people are not yet desirous of overthrowing the state and when the party of the proletariat is not yet strong enough to lead a successful revolution.

The conditions are becoming ever more favorable for genuine Marxist-Leninist parties to emerge and gain strength. They have to work hard to develop the subjective forces of the revolution. They have to overcome the stupor from previous relatively better times, the widespread petty bourgeois mentality subservient to the big bourgeoisie and the reformist, social democratic and revisionist ideological and political currents among the workers. They must consciously develop and intensify the militant political actions directed against the reactionary state and the monopoly bourgeoisie.

IV. Conclusion: Prospects of Socialism in the 21st Century

We might say that at the end of the 20th century a period of revolutionary struggles for socialism has passed. But a new period has ensued, with sufficient seeds for burgeoning in the 21st century.

The struggle for socialism in various types of countries will rise and win great victories in the forthcoming decades as surely as monopoly capitalism and state monopoly capitalism will intensify the oppression and exploitation of the proletariat and the rest of the people.

We have seen the bankruptcy of neoliberal "globalization" coming faster from its beginnings as official policy in the early eighties than the longer-lived Keynesianism of the thirties to the end of the seventies. Some of the bourgeois economic and political leaders are now so distressed that they pretend to step back from the worst manifestations of the so-called free market and misrepresent themselves as advocates of the "third way".

Whatever tack the imperialists will take in seeking stability for their national and global systems, the crisis of monopoly capitalism will proceed and inflict terrible suffering on the proletariat and the people.

The sequence of new-democratic and socialist revolutions will burst out on an unprecedented scale in the third world and in the former Soviet bloc countries. They will run ahead of the proletariat in the imperialist countries in building the subjective forces of the revolution, in waging democratic revolutions and in reaching the goal of socialism.

The proletariat in the industrial capitalist countries can strengthen themselves and carry out successful uprisings upon the worsening of the crisis of the world capitalist system, the intensification of the class struggle, the spread of armed revolutions in the third world and in the former Soviet bloc countries, and the escalation of inter-imperialist contradictions.

The proletarian revolutionaries and people in the industrial capitalist countries can intensify the workers' strikes and the broad mass protests, use the cheap and fast new mass media for propaganda and agitation and develop the capability of unleashing motor vehicle blockades, occupying or shutting down the offices of the political and economic magnates and disrupting the computer systems of the monopoly bourgeoisie not just by hidden outside hackers but by the white collars in the system.

In all types of countries, the proletariat and the people must not only wait on the crisis of the system but engage in ideological, political and organizational building and wage a revolutionary mass movement in order to render the current enemy incapable of ruling and making the system unstable from one regime to another until it becomes possible to overturn the system and install the socialist system.

The relationship of the struggles for socialism in the underdeveloped, retrogressive and overdeveloped countries are interactive and help each other in advancing the world proletarian revolution. The earlier advance of armed revolution in the underdeveloped and retrogressive countries paves the way for that in the overdeveloped countries.

Under conditions when the major imperialist powers are still sufficiently united to oppress and exploit the people of the world, the proletariat and people of the third world and the former Soviet bloc countries can be expected to be at the forefront of waging armed revolutions.

But the crisis of the monopoly capitalist system can become so severe that the extremest reactionary forces arise in the imperialist countries and consequently the major imperialist powers align and realign against each other and carry out wars against each other, as in the preludes of World War I and II. Under such conditions, the imperialist wars can be turned into revolutionary wars on an unprecedented scale never before seen in history in the various types of countries.

The urgency of the socialist cause is clear because monopoly capitalism fetters the tremendously higher social productivity and because imperialist globalization inflicts the most terrible suffering and damage on the proletariat and people of the world.

The bankruptcy of "free market" globalization engenders excellent conditions for proletarian revolutionaries to advance the cause of socialism. The ground is well laid out for the resurgence and advance of the world proletarian revolution and the broad anti-imperialist movement.

The victory of socialism over monopoly capitalism is inevitable on the scale of a whole historical epoch. The revolutionary party of the proletariat and the broad masses of the people must master the concrete circumstances in various countries, pursue the correct strategy and tactics, defeat the imperialists and the reactionaries in one country after another and build socialism until it prevails over imperialism on a global scale. #

[jonciocon]

Social Illusionism... hehehe.

[cerebus]

THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM
The victory of socialism over monopoly capitalism is inevitable on the scale of a whole historical epoch. The revolutionary party of the proletariat and the broad masses of the people must master the concrete circumstances in various countries, pursue the correct strategy and tactics, defeat the imperialists and the reactionaries in one country after another and build socialism until it prevails over imperialism on a global scale. #

you press officer of the cpp-npa? if you are, got no problem with that and i would consider all your post as press release. i/ we can take it or leave it.

ahh. . . freedom of speech. taken for granted by most of us. taken advantage by some of us. will be taken by them, the communist.

[[DSX]]

daghana anang mga press release uy, kapoy basa.. whatever he writes in it.. communism/revolution is never an option

[JoRed]

PROF. SISON IS A REVOLUTIONARY, NOT A TERRORIST
A Review: Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World, Portrait of a Revolutionary , Ninotchka Rosca. 2004. Greensboro, North Carolina: Open Hand Publishing,LLC. 260 pp. ISBN 0-940880-72-5, U.S.$16.00.

By Prof. Ligaya Lindio-McGovern*

To understand the contemporary Philippine revolutionary movement with a human face is to understand it from its shakers and movers and the victims of counter revolutionaries. Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World, Portrait of a Revolutionary leads the reader to do just that. When read with a sociological imagination—seeing the connection between biography and history or individual experience and the larger society— one vividly sees the intricate connection between the lives of visionary activists and revolutionaries and the society that produces them.

In this book one gets a glimpse of the revolutionary movement in the Philippines from an insider’s view. From the subject’s (Jose Maria Sison) narratives, as responses to Ninotchka Rosca’s well-chosen and appropriately sequenced interview questions, one gets a picture of the human person, the intellectual activist, and the revolutionary as well as the Philippine national liberation movement that he has helped shape and sustain. Sison has played a significant role in providing an ideology for the revolutionary movement that gives it direction and basis for action and strategy. Foremost in his vision is the importance of organizing the peasants and workers that comprise the bulk of the Philippine population in the national liberation movement. It is in the painstaking organizing of the collective power of these sectors that will provide the life-blood of the revolutionary movement as well as ensure they become the beneficiaries of change. He firmly believes that armed struggle alone without the mass organization of peasants and workers will not create a successful revolutionary movement that will bring fundamental structural change of Philippine society. This is an ideology that he infused in the New People’s Army, the revolutionary army of the national liberation movement in the Philippines, which he has helped come into existence. This is what makes the New People’s Army different from the Philippine Armed Forces or the American imperial army that is used as a violent instrument of imperial plunder and wars of conquest and control.

Although Sison had a landlord-class origin, his grassroots orientation is a product both of his intellectual awakening and his personal witness of the exploitation, repression, and oppression in Philippine society that shaped his political consciousness. He himself was a victim of state repression: he was a political prisoner under the Marcos dictatorship which was supported by the U.S. government. As an intellectual activist he immersed himself in the revolutionary movement and inspired so many young people, especially students, to challenge the repressive government, nurture nationalist sentiments, and seriously study the fundamental contradictions in Philippine society which intricately intertwine in the national structures and global dynamics of imperialism and neocolonialism. He gives importance to the role of the “subjective forces” — referring to the people who are oppressed and exploited by the objective material conditions— in beginning and sustaining a movement. The Philippine revolutionary and national liberation movements experienced some gains as well as setbacks. His emphasis on criticism and self-criticism—to be able to humbly reflect on one’s mistakes, pruning one’s ego in the service of the larger movement—played a role in the rectification moments in the Philippine movement.

As a person with a flair for poetry, he also had an influence in the shaping of cultural forms of resistance in the people’s movement — which have a role in constructing Philippine national identity in the world of nations where imperialism subverts poor nations’ self-determination and wrecks terror in its conquests for economic plunder under monopoly capitalism. As a nationalist and an internationalist, he has not only shaped a national movement in the Philippines but also brought to life international solidarity among struggling peoples of other nations.

This book also gives insights into the workings of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. Under the guise of its war on terror, George W. Bush, Jr. had labeled ,Jose Maria Sison, the National Democratic Front, and the New Peoples’ Army as “terrorists” and placed them as targets. This labeling erases the US historical record of terrorism — such as the massacre of nearly 10% of the Filipino people in the course of the Filipino-American war, massive massacre of Japanese civilians in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in Korea, Indonesia, Indochina during the course of the Cold War, and thousands of civilian casualties in the recent occupation of Iraq.

Revolutionary activists are not terrorists. Professor Jose Maria Sison is not a terrorist. The National Democratic Front consisting of a broad national coalition of progressive forces leading the national liberation movement in the Philippines is not a terrorist. The Philippine revolutionary New People’s Army is not a terrorist. This is the counter discursive resistance of Filipino activists and others around the world. The National Democratic Front, the leading organization of the national liberation movement in the Philippines, has conducted peace negotiations with the Philippine government. Its demands for just peace in the Philippines is for the Philippine government to implement genuine land reform, nationalist industrialization, end military repression, and seek alternative policies to alter the negative impact of the neo-liberal structural adjustment policies imposed on Philippine development. Under the pressure of American influence these demands have not been heeded, thus the failure of the peace negotiations. By labeling the revolutionary movement in the Philippines as a “terrorist” clearly reveals the intention of US imperial design: to suppress dissent anywhere in the world that challenges American economic and military dominance in the global dynamics of monopoly capitalism and neoliberal globalization.

Intended for general readership, this book is an important contribution in the literature on social movements, Asian studies, and Philippine studies. The academic reader is left to shift the narratives for theoretical threads and conceptual themes that will stimulate his/her sociological imagination.


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[adminroot]

hala komonista pa mo....ihimplo sa work nga inyo makuha...awa nang tawhana sigi lang ug post via.....

CUT and PASTE!

HAAAA HAAAA

[Spec-V]

[agoroy]

wa jud ayo ang mga raket aning communist party of the philippines diri sa pilipinas.

gi-ilad lang sila ni joma.

instead makatabang, makatabang nuon ug du-ot. tan-awa gud na ninyo ang ga rally ... mo syagit ug "DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM! DOWN WITH CAPITALISM" after rally mosulod ug McDo kay gigutom .. moinom ug pepsi/coke kay gi uhaw. they don't practice even their own principle.

they're merely cowards trying to convince other by preaching them with sugar-laden words.

look at labor unions, members are obliged to pay a membership fee per month ..asa na padulong? .. sa ila rang abogado; ang factory workers nuon luoy kaayo .. pugson pa jud paapilon welga.


it was degrading also to the looks and the wellbeing of a company. they're forcing them to sign a CBA w/c is detrimental to the survival of a company; if they won't, unions member will strike.

at the time of strike? .. naa ba ang leader? .. wala kay init kaayo .. uncomportable ang lugar. mugawas ra kung naa ang media. and some are replace of those panablahay ug nawong ug ambot asa nila gipunit.

naa ba koy facts? .. adto sa Holiday Plaza Hotel sa ramos ... ang mga ga rally didto bisan bagger sa SM di pwede dawaton ..panablahay kaayo


in short .. ang madani aning JOMA and company kay mga panablahay ra .. dreamers who dreams of fruitful nations achieved by merely talking. if i were you.. GET A LIFE!!!


mga talawan.

[darkwing]

lost cause period USSR tried it,failed miserably...