TOWARDS A NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC TEACHER'S MOVEMENT
by Jose Maria Sison
 

(Delivered at the National Teachers' College Recognition Day, March 30, 1968.)

TO SPEAK before the fellow teachers and future teachers is always a welcome opportunity for one involved in what has come to be called the Second Propaganda Movement, a movement that takes after the first efforts of the anti-colonial patriots to establish a national democratic regime.

We are in the midst of renewed efforts to push forward the national democratic revolution to its completion and fulfillment in accordance with the terms and requirements of our exploited masses in the present era.

The first propagandists like Rizal, Del Pilar and Lopez Jaena were the first teachers of the nation. Beyond the walls of the churches and clerical schools, they tried to spread enlightenment among their own people. Being good teachers in their own time, they learned at the later stages of their movement that the first reformist demands that they had made had to be transformed into revolutionary and separatist demands. Thus the sense of nationhood ultimately gave form and direction to their movement for public enlightenment.

The propagandists that followed, like Bonifacio and Jacinto, combined their ideas of independent nationhood and freedom with revolutionary practice and directed their movement against the colonial enemy. They drew their wisdom from social practice and from familiarity with the problems of the masses and tested their knowledge in the struggle against the enemy.

The mobilization of the Philippine revolution was a process of converting political ideas into a material force against the colonial power structure whose oppressiveness had stimulated national democratic enlightenment.

The process of awakening the masses from centuries of frustrations and suffering was basically a process of education. To be more precise, it was a process of re-education. The colonial system had held the mind of the indio through a system of "brainwashing" performed mainly by a theocracy under conditions of feudal stress and with the pedagogic principles of the rod and rote.

Against colonial mis-education, a national democratic re- education movement had to be waged under the extreme dangers of being called "Communists" and "subversive" that today national democrats are harassed and restricted in their present movement of enlightenment.

A whole system of thought and prejudices induced by the colonialists was based on the material foundation of a feudal society. For this system of thought regimentation to persist and prevail, there had to be a system of educational institutions and processes, which were increasingly parasitic as their teachings became more and more irrelevant to the actual needs of the masses of the people. There were the Church and its catechetical and higher schools which were limited by the scope opportunity that could be provided by a feudal mode of production. The literacy achieved by a feudal mode of production. The literacy achieved by a few was needed chiefly for religious purposes -- for reading prayers, novenas and hagiographies. Higher courses were available to the children of the principalia so that they may be endowed with enough apologetics, Latinized pedantry and fluency in the Hispanic language that would set them apart form the native masses. The colonial feudal system was
merely in need of a thin buffer line between the foreign elite and the colonized peasantry. As an all-encompassing instrument, comparable in scope to the mass media of today, the pulpit and the confessional box were used to keep the masses of the people in a feudal grip.

As rebels of their own time, the first propagandists disputed the system of thought control that put up mental blocks rather than taught scientific knowledge. The intellectual rebellion sought new content and new methods of education that suited the needs of the people. The Noli and the Fili and the essays of Dr. Rizal exposed principally the mis-education and brutalization of the Filipino masses, dispelled misconceptions about the supposedly natural indolence of the indio and advocated a system of public education free from the control of the friars. It was through the prism of liberalism that the first propagandists perceived the people's needs and aspirations. The most progressive educational outlook and methods that they were able to grasp at the time was of a liberal frame which concurred with their own middle class aspirations in the historical period of old type colonialism and feudalism. Unable to merge themselves right away with the masses in a practical revolutionary
way, they were under extreme dangers from the Padre Damasos and Padre Salvis and so they sought the freer atmosphere of Europe.

It was men like Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto, men closer to the Filipino masses, who would bring the national democratic movement to a higher stage that sought the realization of national freedom through revolutionary struggle. It was the higher stage of combining the concepts of sovereignty and freedom with revolutionary practice, necessitated by popular demand and by the intransigence of the oppressor. It was the higher stage of using both the sword and the pen in confrontation with an enemy that had long been using his sword and pen.

The revolution of 1896 continued to issue pamphlets and manifestos and hold mass meetings to arouse the masses. Under the aegis of a revolutionary government, they set up the Academia Literaria as the spearhead of formal educational system.

The national democratic objectives and the educational plans of the Philippine revolution of 1896 were to be frustrated, however, by the successful aggression against Filipino sovereignty perpetrated by U.S. imperialism. Using the gun to defeat the Filipino revolutionaries, they subsequently used to pen that wrote the slogan of "benevolent assimilation". A public school system was deliberately wet up by the Thomasites and the alien soldiers who turned teachers, not so much to endow the local people unilaterally with the boons of science and democracy, but to convert the Philippines into an Asian outpost in America's "manifest destiny" of achieving world hegemony.

There are the simple-minded among us who restrict educational history to a static comparison of the Spanish record and the U.S. record in setting up public schools. To cultivate a pro- imperialist mentality, they deliberately discount the plans of the Philippine revolutionary government to set up a public school system as a necessary instrument for citizenship training and progress. They obscure the fact that the imperialist conquest of the Philippines was not so much directed against a colonial power that was already losing out to the forces of national liberation but mainly against the national sovereignty of the Filipino people; and whatever educational system the U.S. imperialists would establish would have to serve and "justify" the purposes of their imperialism.

For the thought-control of a colonized people, U.S. imperialism is not exclusively reliant on a system of churches and cleric-run schools. On the other hand, it is mainly reliant on a widespread educational system and on the modern mass media to achieve its capitalist purposes. Concretely, in a country like the Philippines which has come to be semi-colonial and semi-feudal, U.S. imperialism has its own system of thought-control and it also compromises with the old paraphernalia of colonial thought- control. Here, feudal culture and education have served as the base for the super-imposition of imperialist culture and education. The integration of feudal and imperialist culture and education is best demonstrated by sectarian schools run by foreign clerics who defend both feudal and imperialist values; these are schools that serve the native oligarchy and their children -- an extension of the privileged schooling of the stalwarts of the colonial principalia.

It is not enough to have schools and to have literacy. What is even more important is that these must be made to serve the purposes of the nation and the masses. It is not enough to have the bottle; it is more important to determine its content. If the Philippine revolution had triumphed, we would have had the bottle and we would have also determined its content.

U.S. imperialism is fond of making the condescending assertion that it taught us self-government and democracy. That is a big lie that actually denies the value of the revolutionary efforts of our people. When the U.S. imperialists came, it was precisely to suppress the revolutionary national democratic regime that had been made possible by the struggle of the masses.

U.S. monopoly-capitalism, it its functions of exporting surplus products and surplus capital, has been compelled to train a more extensive local bureaucracy and technocracy in the Philippines unlike the old colonial system which was bases on a lower form of social development and which needed a thinner layer educated puppets. The illusion of free exchange is maintained under imperialism, say free trade relations in raw materials from the colony and finished products from the capitalist metropolis or free wage contracts between capitalists and workers within a society. This structure or relations requires a more extensive local bureaucracy and technocracy.

In our educational system today, students are indoctrinated in the concepts and methods of an imperialist culture and feudal culture. The typical student in the present educational system at every level has a sophisticated split personality that suffers from a double constriction of outlook. A docile feudal mentality is mixed up with the avaricious mechanical mentality of the bourgeoisie so typical of career men in every field.

The national democratic movement, as a movement for re-educating those who have been mis-educated, is now twice difficult. If the First Propaganda Movement had to contend with a clerical structure of thinking, the Second Propaganda Movement still has to contend with it and, in addition, with an imperialist-oriented system of education. And yet we are already in the era of the global triumph of national democratic and socialist revolutions.

Asserting the true purposes of education, asserting its national and social purposes, is now a challenge that all of us must face. This is no longer just the time for stating hypocritically that we are already free and independent as a nation. This is now the era when the underpinnings of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal Philippine society and also the underpinnings of the master state in the "free world", U.S. imperialism, are disintegrating. Revolutionary forces here and abroad are arising so rapidly to replace the old with the new. The toiling masses and the intelligentsia in our country are definitely clamoring for a national democratic revolution to free them from foreign and feudal domination.

The movement of events in this nation and in the whole world is so rapid. We who presume to be teachers must be constantly alert students or else our schools will become isolated purveyors of outmoded thoughts and illusions. If the teacher fails to update the content and quality of his teaching, he will surely fail to prepare his students for a fruitful and practical struggle. The surge of the national democratic revolution will certainly expose their ineptitude and inadequacies. The teacher who doggedly allows himself to be bound by traditional relations, methods and illusions becomes an instrument of reaction. It is now our duty to re-examine and repudiate the structure of thinking that exploiting nations and exploiting classes have built into our educational system.

All teachers and future teachers who place themselves on the side of truth, justice and progress should band themselves into the Second Propaganda Movement and become a definite force in the national democratic movement. They should reject every kind of nonsense taught in school; grasp the theory resolutely in concrete Philippine conditions. It is not enough for them to consider their walled-in classrooms as the incubators of revolutionary movement. It is also necessary for them to exert without delay efforts to convert the entire country into a huge classroom for revolution. In the Second Propaganda Movement, teachers and future teachers should join the workers, peasants, the urban petty bourgeoisie and other revolutionary elements in their mass activities of self-education.

 

THE TASKS OF THE SECOND PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT
by Jose Maria Sision
 

(Speech delivered at the St. Louis University, Baguio City, on October 12, 1966; sponsored by the St. Louis University Student Council.)

The Second Propaganda Movement

IT WAS Senator Claro Mayo Recto who first expressed the need for a second propaganda movement. It was his intention in 1960 to engage in an intensive and extensive anti-imperialist campaign tour after coming from his journey abroad. He was never able to do what he intended, but his anti-imperialists legacy remains with us.

This anti-imperialist legacy consists of the body of ideas and principles which he defined in the course of his nationalist crusade which he launched in the early 1950's. There was really no need for him to make any formal announcement that he and other patriots would embark on the Second Propaganda Movement. He started it the moment he began to relate the struggle of the present to the struggle of those who had successfully fought and isolated the first colonial tyranny, but who did not quite succeed in preventing the coming of a new foreign tyranny, U.S. imperialism.

It is important to speak of the Second Propaganda Movement because we need to recall the unfinished tasks of the Philippine revolution. The Second Propaganda movement is required to arouse our nation anew to the struggle for the fulfillment of the national democratic tasks of the Philippine revolution.

This Second Propaganda Movement occurs as a resumption of the First Propaganda Movement and of the Philippine revolution even as conditions are far different from those obtaining during the time of the first nationalist propagandists. While odd problems have been carried over to the present, new ones have also arisen to make our national struggle more difficult and more complicated.

The Second Propaganda Movement must therefore be more vigorous and resolute. It should be a propaganda movement of a new type, with a new class leadership and a new alignment of forces and with a new ideological and political orientation more advanced and more progressive, if we are to be on the tide of a higher stage of historical development and if we are to win the struggle against an enemy far stronger and far more clever than the old type of colonialism. In other words, the Second Propaganda Movement, are strategically weak as these are confronted with the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal unity of the people under the leadership of the working class. Furthermore, on a world scale, U.S. imperialism and feudalism are fast losing out before the surging forces of national democratic and socialist revolutions. The present tasks of the Second Propaganda Movement are huge but conditions for its success are also good.

The Second Propaganda Movement is first of all a political movement. It is an educational movement with political aims; for after all there is not type of education or culture that is detached from politics. It aims to replace the old type of education and culture while retaining only its progressive elements. It aims to prepare and guide the people for struggle against their foreign and feudal exploiters. It aims to effect results and it proceeds from a particular political standpoint. Class interests, whether of the exploited or of the exploiters, generate political ideas, values and attitudes that inspire and guide men to action.

Learn from the Masses

In order to move the people to obtain certain results by their collective action, one must first determine their motives based on their concrete conditions and class interests. It is necessary for the Second Propaganda Movement to learn from the masses their conditions, problems, interests and aspirations before it dares tech them what to do. The Second Propaganda Movement is a mass movement in the most genuine sense with the mobilization and victory of the masses as the main objective.

The principle of learning from the masses should never be forgotten even if at this point we are able to take advantage of a fund of general knowledge gathered from past experience.

General or second-hand knowledge is important but what is always most important is the first-hand knowledge of the masses or learning from the masses because it assumes being constantly with them and merging with them. Learning from the masses and being with them will make our generalizations for action and formulation of solutions more correct and more dynamic. We become immediately one with the masses in their mobilization.

The Second Propaganda Movement should never be a campaign to command or dictate above the heads of the masses. One should not throw big theories and big slogans without first learning the concrete conditions and problems of the people. A knowledge of these from first-hand observation, from practice with the masses and from listening to the masses, would enable us to test and verify theories, enrich them and explain them to the people in the most concrete terms that they immediately understand.

We must advance from the behavior and performance of the First Propaganda Movement which unfolded as a movement of exiles in a foreign city while it was supposed to be concerned with Philippine conditions and problems. It will not also do now for the ilustrados or the petty bourgeoisie to assume leadership by simply brandishing their formal or artificial classroom knowledge, or by impressing the people with their bourgeois education.

The agents of U.S. imperialism, the landlords and religious sectarians themselves are trying to mingle with the masses, under the cover of the powerful mass media that they own and control and under the cover of many pretexts with the sole objective of confusing and deceiving the people.

The activists of the Second Propaganda Movement have no alternative but to take the mass line, merge with the masses and learn from the masses. It does not suffice now even to issue manifestoes and proclamations from the cities and big towns where the lazy "leaders" are fond of sitting out a revolution. The success of the Second Movement will be determined by those who choose to go to the masses and be with them.

In the Second Propaganda Movement, it is necessary to determine whose politics or ideology should lead the people.

There is a presumption on the part of the bourgeoisie and the landlords that only those with high formal schooling are fit to lead the people. They talk of the people disdainfully as illiterate and uneducated. By asserting that only those educated in the bourgeois or conservative fashion are fit to lead, they wish to entrap the masses within the system of exploitation.

The Second Propaganda Movement should reject this dangerous and undemocratic presumption as a lie intended to mislead the masses. We have given to the products of colonial and neo-colonial education more than three centuries and many more decades to solve the problems of the masses. But what have they done? We have given the bright boys or the technocrats of the bourgeoisie and the landlord class more than enough time and yet they are either too dull or too dishonest to see the basic problems that are U.S. imperialism and feudalism.

What a pity that educated elite does not see clearly the basic problems that are U.S. imperialism and feudalism which the masses, with lesser formal education, can see and feel most acutely as they are the ones most adversely affected. The masses are in a position to perceive not only their own sufferings but also the benefits that accrue to a new from U.S. imperialism and feudalism.

What the masses experience they can immediately grasp. They can also easily grasp the correct solutions based on the correct analysis of their problems. It is the self-satisfied statesmen, educated men and publicists of the bourgeoisie and the landlords who will consider such terms as imperialism and feudalism too high above their heads, not so much because they are dull but because they are dishonest and are afraid of exposing the negative character of the system that benefits them.

The national and social liberation of the masses will come only from the masses themselves. Only they themselves can understand their problems most profoundly. The activists of the Second Propaganda Movement can only generalize and formulate solutions from the experience of the masses.

The Scientific and Democratic World Outlook

Reliance on the masses and rejection of bourgeois and egotistic education can be understood only if one has a scientific and democratic world outlook.

This scientific and democratic world outlook should be even more advance than the liberal-democratic outlook that the First Propaganda Movement has as a matter of political posture. The proletarian world outlook is today the most scientific and democratic outlook. It is superior to the narrow viewpoint of the "enlightened" liberal bourgeoisie. It sees clearly the entire range of the opposing class forces operating in society today with their respective viewpoints. It comprehends their basic relations and contradictions and it so masters the situation as to be able to change it through revolutionary practice.

It recognizes the progressive force in any contradiction and at this stage of world history it recognizes the proletariat as the progressive class in the struggle between the U.S. monopolists and the proletariat going on all over the world and in our country. It does not only recognize every progressive force but it takes sides as a matter of commitment. A man who has a scientific and proletarian outlook knows that no man or no small group of men can be detached or excluded from basic social struggles. Outside of one's consciousness, this class struggle is objectively occurring; one can only side with the progressive or the reactionary force in the moment of crisis. To assume the posture of neutrality is actually to become an appendage of the stronger force.

The class struggle is objectively going on in the Philippines but it has taken the form of a national struggle, with patriotic classes -- the working class, peasantry, intelligentsia and the national bourgeoisie -- aligned against the U.S. imperialists, compradors, landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists. The working class is the leading class, with the peasantry as its most reliable ally, and it conducts its struggle against the U.S. monopoly capitalists and the local comprador bourgeoisie, supported by the landlord class.

The Second Propaganda Movement should advance a modern scientific and democratic world outlook that rejects the religio-sectarian culture of feudal times, the decadent imperialist culture and the egotistic petty-bourgeois mentality. The schools as they are now in the Philippines are the purveyors of these that we must reject.

Alienation in the Present Culture

There has to be a complete overhaul of the entire educational system. But the initial necessary step to be taken is to advance a national democratic culture of a new type. This national democratic culture is a part of our political struggle to achieve national democracy.

Education must serve our national struggle to gain independence and self-reliance in every field of endeavor, whether political, economic, social, cultural, military and diplomatic.

As a whole, the present educational system in the Philippines is in the hands of forces inimical to the principles of national democracy. its control is shared by the agents of an imperialist culture and those of a regressive feudal-sectarian culture.

Its an educational system which actually shields the ruling class and alienates the formally educated from the masses. it does not at all propagate a healthy scientific and democratic viewpoint; even the exceptional children of the poor who manage to acquire a high degree of education inevitably adopt the decadent and corrupt values of the ruling class and abandon the cause of national and social liberation. This kind of education is a device by which the betrayal of the masses by a few of its own children is assured.

In a period where the ruling class has stability of power, the educated middle class serves as the transmission belt of the ideas and values of the ruling class to the lower classes. Before it is won over or neutralized by the organized masses, the middle class functions as the instrument of the exploiting classes.

As clear manifestation of the alienation of our educational system from the cause of national democracy, it does not perform the function of teaching the students to merge with and mobilize the people for, say, national independence, land reform, national industrialization or any such urgent tasks.

The activists of the Second Propaganda Movement should patiently arouse and mobilize the masses, win over the intelligentsia and develop an alliance with the national bourgeoisie, on the basis of its self-interest, under the banner of national democracy.

Filipinization of the Educational System

One immediate step that can be taken with regard to the present educational system is its Filipinization. This should be taken with the view of replacing foreign ownership, control and influence over the schools with that of Filipinos imbued with the spirit of national democracy.

Teachers educated in the old way should themselves be re- educated. The process of their education will accelerate as the political situation consistently develops in favor of the revolutionary masses.

The adoption of textbooks and other study materials that are Filipino oriented and progressive should be used to counteract the hundreds of years of our colonial, imperialist and neo- colonial mental subjugation. Filipino authors should struggle to replace the materials and textbooks now being used which are alienated from the conditions and problems of the masses.

The Filipino students and the people should be alerted to the foreign agencies and devices by which the colonial and feudal mentality is meant to be perpetuated. The imperialist and subversive character of the activities and influence of the AID, USIS, the Peace Corps, U.S. scholarships and grants, the ALEC, IEDR, the research grants extended by U.S. corporations, Asia Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation and the Congress for Cultural Freedom should be thoroughly exposed. These agencies have been exposed before as imperialist agencies or as CIA fronts and conduits.

When your enemy makes you think the way he does, he becomes your friend superficially even if he takes advantage of your interests and exploits you. As Senator Recto said in a message addressed to the youth, a "brainwashed" generation followed the military defeat of the Philippine revolution. The result has been the abandonment of national democratic tasks.

As proof of the abandonment of the historical tasks of the nation and the betrayal of the Philippine revolution, it has been deemed "subversive" for the youth and the people now to recall the Philippine revolution and to strive for national democracy.

The Second Propaganda Movement should likewise be alert to the friar enemies of the First Propaganda Movement. They are now, in collaboration with the imperialists, fast expanding their ownership and control of the educational establishments. The religious hypocrisy of a Padre Salvi and a Padre Damaso should not deceive the people again.

As we all believe in the freedom of religion, they are free to preach in their churches, but they should not oppose the struggle for national democracy and try to discredit us as heretics and filibusters by abusing the credibility that they have among their faithful. religion should not be used as a cover for the people's enemies. Both the church and those striving for social change should avoid the conversion of a national and social struggle into a religious one. Otherwise, those who claim to be concerned with the spiritual welfare of their faithful will only be exposed as tools of those who want to perpetuate the political power of the exploiting classes. It is the prevalent imperialist culture and the decadent feudal values of the exploiting classes which create the monsters and demons of this society.

A scientific and democratic type of education should be fostered by all means and should not be run down by the expanding schools of foreign friars. The national democratic movement, that is, the Second Propaganda Movement, should demand that the clerical type of education should not be allowed to prevail over a scientific and democratic type of education. Clerical schools have only become bastions of class discrimination, authoritarianism and anti-secularism.

National Democratic Scholarship

Within and outside the schools, progressive scholars and researchers who consider themselves part of the Second Propaganda Movement should work assiduously for the replacement of those historical writings and social researches which unilaterally misrepresent the colonial and imperialist aggressors as great conscious benefactors of the Filipino people.

There should be an objective presentation of our historical development as a nation. The struggle of social opposites must be objectively presented with a clear appreciation of our national efforts and with the clear understanding that the revolutionary masses make history.

Our colonial-minded and bourgeois historians and scientists have even gone to the extend of obscuring the most important historical documents of the Philippine revolution in their attempt to play up their colonial heroes and their intellectual subservience.

The step taken by an increasing number of scholars in taking the Filipino orientation in the writing of Philippine history is a positive step which does credit to the national democratic efforts of our people.

The most progressive step to be taken by our Filipino scholars now is to present objectively the struggle of the nation and of the various patriotic classes in our society for democracy and progress.

A National Language and Revolutionary Arts and Letters

In language, literature and the arts, vigorous efforts should be exerted for these to serve the interests of the masses.

While we should preserve the culture of localities and minorities as part of our cultural heritage, we should develop a new and truly national culture by propagating and making use of a national language that is a cognate to all our local languages and can therefore, unlike English, be easily grasped by the masses everywhere. Vigorous steps must be taken to make Pilipino a language ascendant over English. The main reason for this is to have a medium for the rapid promotion of national democratic understanding among the people of the entire archipelago. The educated elite has made use of a foreign language as a language of conceit over the heads of the masses. The laws are still in Spanish and English; this is one sign of how alienated are the laws of the ruling class from the masses.

In literature and the arts, the process of raising aesthetic standards and popularization should go hand in hand. For the masses who constitute our biggest audience can appreciate our literature and art only if our writers and artists make use of the life and struggles of our masses as raw material. If we adopt this raw material, it can be given the form that our artistic talents are capable of making.

Our heroes and values must change if we are truly for revolutionary progress. The workers, peasants and revolutionary fighters should prevail in our representation of life. the content and themes of our literary and artistic efforts must shift from a pseudo-aristocratic and petty bourgeois concern over a narrow and limited portion of our national reality. The task of our writers and artists now is to turn to the great drama of the struggle of the masses for national and social liberation.

Those creative writers and artists who fail to use the life of more than 90 per cent of our people for their raw material must be pretty narrow-minded. Or, they are too misled by or absorbed with getting travel grants and other concessions from the Rockefeller Foundation, the USIS and other imperialist institutions which have calculatedly planned to make our writers and artists flighty and escapist.

The petty bourgeois writer or artist should realize once and for all that there is no such thing as being declasse, above classes, apolitical or detached from politics. An honest analysis of the work of the people who take this presumption will show their real objective partisanship on the side of the ruling classes which give them the crumbs and the plums. They are actually reactionary through and through, either praising the regressive values of the primitive or feudal life or presenting the helpless or the self-indulgent individual who is trapped by a system which he does not care to understand or which he deliberately mystifies.

Those who write for the proletariat or the masses and for their cause are regarded by the imperialist, feudal or petty-bourgeois writer as being gross and utilitarian. But look at the works of our supposedly refined and arty writers or artists: the presentation of their egotistic obscure concerns actually represent a narrow-minded grossness and incapability to grasp the basic tensions of life. They are capable only of presenting a narrow part of reality, the alienation and psychology of the individual alienated from the more dynamic forces of society.

The Second Propaganda Movement should be pushed forward by cultural workers who can surpass even the tradition of critical realism of Dr. Jose Rizal in his novels, the Noli and the Fili, and Juan Luna in his painting, La Spolarium.

Literature and the arts are a concentrated expression of reality. In the present era, one must unswervingly take the proletarian standpoint in order to achieve the greatest progress in art and literature. Literature and the arts would reflect the revolutionary struggle and point towards its triumph.

Science and Technology for National Industrialization

Let us consider science and technology. It is not true that science and technology are free from political or class dictation. The feudalists and imperialists have a particular way of using them or restricting them and for definite reasons.

The feudalists wanted to restrict science and technology because they did not want their religious dogmas to be challenged, and exposed. today, imperialists use science and technology to make weapons of destruction for their wars of aggression and they also restrict production for the sake of maximizing their rate of profit.

In the Philippines, we wish to make use of science and technology for our industrial progress and for producing more for our people. In intellectual perspective, we have advanced far from that period when the friars opposed scientific knowledge as "heretical" and mishandled "A Class in Physics" in order to subvert our intellectual development. When U.S. imperialism took over the Philippines, it first showed, in comparison with the friars, some desire to share science and technology to pursue national industrialization and effect economic emancipation, we find the American capitalist society, with its own scientific and technological progress, inimical to our progress.

U.S. imperialist politics do not permit us to make full use of the science and technology within the grasp of our scientists, technologists, and our people because the economic development we would create will set us free and cut down the market and profits of U.S. industries.

It is wishful thinking, therefore, to consider that sciences and technology have no necessary connection with politics and with class dictation.

Science and technology and production in socialist countries are within the realm of politics, that is to say, of satisfying the needs of the people. But, in capitalist countries, despite the high level of development in science, technology and the forces of production, altogether these are made to serve the profit- making and political power of the monopolies against the interests of the masses and nations abroad.

In the Philippines, we should pursue a thoroughgoing program of increasing our scientific and technological knowledge for political and economic purposes; that is, for our political emancipation and economic welfare. We want to have the skills for national industrialization and agricultural development. In order to ensure the participation of the masses of our people in production and in accelerated social development, we should popularize the most advanced skills; but, before we can put these to use, the masses must first arm themselves politically, liberate the nation and themselves from the political forces that restrict our economic growth and our scientific and technological progress.

Filipinization of the Mass Media

Let us consider the newspapers, radio, TV, movies and other like media of information, opinion and entertainment which are now powerful instruments of either progress or reaction in this era of the Second Propaganda Movement.

We know that these are not controlled by the masses. The masses on the other hand, are reduced to passivity in relation to the emissions of these mass media.

Because of the fact that most of the corporations owning these media or sponsoring the programs are imperialist and imperialist- oriented, our mass media at present cannot be used for propagating national democracy, on the other hand, it is through the mass media that the glorification of sex and violence, characteristic of imperialist culture, is propagated to the detriment of our youth and people. Just take note of the James Bond cult and the cowboy fare and the rat-race mercenary kind of justice dished up by the imperialist-controlled mass media. They are the vehicle for imperialist propaganda and likewise for anti- Filipino and anti-democratic prejudices. Because of commercial advertising the tastes, attitudes and consumption habits of the Filipino people are anchored on the products of U.S. imperialism.

As a whole, foreign control of the mass media their content (ranging from local sensationalism and slanted reports of U.S. press agencies like AP and UPI) constitutes intervention in our political life; and in the most subtle way, it actually conditions the minds of the people to accept not only the commercial products in the form of political agreements and fair- haired boys of U.S. imperialism

In the field of mass media, let us recall the glorious tradition of Kalayaan and La Independencia, which were the genuine journalistic instruments of the national democratic movement. In the spirit of these publications, let us convince our journalist that the truth does not lie only within the framework of imperialist and landlord political power. Many of them have realized this; and they are bound to widen their freedom of expression more and more.

There is no such thing as freedom of the press in the abstract. Only a liar or a dull person would make that claim. The reporters are bound by editorial policy; the editorial policy is in turn bound by the publisher's policy or that of the company board of directors; the publisher or the board is in turn bound by the advertisers' policy. It is foolish to make the liberal argument that by having different or several advertisers, none of them would be able to control the paper. The advertisers are well- organized in their chambers of commerce and national advertisers' association and in many more business groupings. If the press depends on them for survival, it is bound never to violate the basic class "truths" of their interests.

It is common knowledge how U.S. companies have tried to quell the expression of national democratic vies in the press. The patriotic and progressive members of the press should struggle for greater press freedom by siding in so many ways with the forces of national democracy.

Professionalism in the service of the exploiters means political subservience to them; inasmuch as it serves to shape and foster opinions in the service of the exploiters.

One concrete step that can be taken by the Second Propaganda Movement is to fight for the Filipinization of the press so that direct ownership by foreigners of such anti-national and anti- democratic media like Philippines Herald, Manila Daily Bulletin, DZBB, DZHP, DZBU and others can be removed. If we succeed in Filipinizing the press, the popular support we shall have generated will automatically serve to back up national democratic publications. At present, we should consistently expose and isolate all those anti-national and anti-democratic media directly owned, supported or controlled by foreign monopolies and compradors.

If our newsmen should wish to play a role in the national democratic tradition of Jose Rizal, Lopez Jaena, Del Pilar, Jacinto and Luna they should organize themselves as militantly progressive journalists and workingmen who wish to broaden their freedom of expression. Their unity should serve to counter the power of decision of the publisher who is tightly bound by financial compromises with the anti-national and anti-democratic advertisers and stockholders.

Within and outside the field of journalism, the Second Propaganda Movement can vigorously call for the nationalization of the economy and for national industrialization so that ultimately the foreign advertisers can no longer have the press at their mercy.

What the Second Propaganda Movement can do now by itself in widening press freedom is to establish a publication where there is the untrammeled freedom to express and advocate national democratic views.

This publication, as was envisioned by Sen. Claro Mayo Recto, should articulate and organize the resurgent forces of the Philippine revolution. It should therefore be guided by the patriotic style of our revolutionary forefathers and the true revolutionaries of the present.

The Second Propaganda Movement should use this publication to help break down old ideas, old customs, old habits and old attitudes and help the Philippine revolution advance.

The Second Propaganda Movement should be a thoroughgoing cultural revolution. It should shatter the present semi-colonial and semi-feudal superstructure. A new national and democratic culture is crying out to be born. Mass organizations, especially of the youth play a great role in promoting this new culture under the leadership of the proletariat.

 

KABATAANG MAKABAYAN FOUNDING SPEECH
by Jose Maria Sison

(Speech delivered before the Founding Congress of Kabataang Makabayan at the YMCA Youth Forum Hall on November 30, 1964)

x x x Itinuturo ng katwiran ang tayo'y umasa sa ating sarili at huwag antayin sa iba ang ating kabuhayan. Itinuturo ng katwiran ang tayo'y maglakas na maihapag ang naghaharing kasamaan sa ating bayan.

Panahon na ngayon x x x dapat nating ipakilala na tayo'y may sariling pagdaramdam, may puri, may hiya at pagdadamayan. Ngayon ay panahong dapat simulan ang pagsisiwalat ng mga mahal at dakilang aral na magwawasak sa masinsing tabing na bumubulag sa ating kaisipan; panahon na ngayong dapat makilala ng mga Pilipino ang pinagbuhatan ng kanilang mga kahirapan. x x x

Kaya, mga kababayan, ating idilat ang bulag na kaisipan at kusang igugol sa kagalingan ang ating lakas sa tunay at lubos na pag-asa na magtagumpay sa nilalayong kaginhawahan ng bayang tinubuan.

Andres Bonifacio

NO MORE PROPITIOUS day than this can be chosen to found Kabataang Makabayan. Today is the 101st birth anniversary of Andres Bonifacio, a great hero from the proletariat, who in the vigor of his youth led the secret society of Katipunan and mobilized the patriotic forces that generated the Philippine revolution of 1896 - the revolution which smashed Spanish colonialism throughout the archipelago.

Andres Bonifacio was the disciplined revolutionary activist who sought and found in revolution the only process that could give full expression to the national and social aspirations of our people which had so long been suppressed by a foreign power prettified by the soft and evasive terms of liberal reformers.

Andres Bonifacio was the uncompromising leader who was not only inspired by the cogitations and formulations of the Propaganda Movement but was also ready to act in concert with his people in armed struggle against tyranny the moment peaceful and legal struggle reached the white wall of futility.

Thus, Andres Bonifacio today stands as a model of revolutionary militance among the Filipino youth and among the advocates of national democracy. His revolutionary courage is a beacon to us all. If Kabataang Makabayan succeeds in its patriotic mission, one important requirement it shall have met is to be imbued with the revolutionary courage of Andres Bonifacio, the courage that gives life and force to the principles that we now uphold in this epoch.

We recall the memory of Andres Bonifacio not only because we happen to meet on this day but more because we understand his continuing historical relevance to our present situation and we perceive the leading role of his class in this epoch during which our national efforts at basic industrialization and overthrowing feudalism are constantly frustrated by U.S. imperialism and its local reactionary allies.

We remember that, after the death of Bonifacio, the revolutionary initiative of the peasants and the workers in the Katipunan and the anti-colonialist struggle in general was undermined and debilitated by the liberal compromises made by the ilustrado leadership. The compromises came one after the other: the Pact of Biak-na-Bato, Aguinaldo's trust in Yankee confidence-men in Hongkong, the bourgeois-landlord upper hand in the Malolos Congress, and the ultimate surrender of the ilustrados and collaboration with the U.S. imperialist regime.

Though we are aggrieved by the fact that the Philippine revolution has been interrupted and that U.S. imperialism has grabbed the triumph of revolution from our hands, we must take a scientific view of our national history. We recognize such objective historical conditions as that no matter how sharply anti-colonial and anti-clerical were the ilustrados they did not yet have the ability to comprehend fully modern imperialism; that the working class was still in the embryo stage of its development; that the peasants in the provinces were misled by the equivocating demagoguery of both native landlords and liberals; and that U.S. imperialism was not only superior in industrial might but also well-versed in a liberal jargon which could easily deceive the newly-emerged Filipino bourgeoisie.

U.S. imperialism came to the Philippines and succeeded in imposing its sovereignty upon our people by military violence and by liberal guile. Whereas our people were already capable of crushing Spanish colonialism within the archipelago, they were still incapable of crushing a new type of colonialism, the imperialism of the United States of America.

Dr. Jose Rizal himself in his essay, "The Philippines A Century Hence", had predicted that the United States of America would come to conquer us. It was a necessity for a capitalist system, reaching its final stage of development - monopoly capital - to seek colonies for its sources of raw materials and a dumping ground for surplus products and surplus capital and to pass on to other peoples the exploitation and disequilibrium that would otherwise be suffered by its own people alone.

Rizal saw the United States of America as a covetous and expansionist power, no different from Great Britain, Germany, France, Czarist Russia and Japan. It was out to rob the world, especially the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. A newly-risen imperialist power with its ultra-national capitalist objectives, the Unites States would be determined to take over the colonial possessions of a decrepit Spanish power in Latin America, in the Pacific and in the Philippines.

The Philippines was specially important to the imperialist planners of the United States as it could very well serve as the staging area for the U.S. venture to participate with the other Western powers in the despoliation of China. Until now, the Philippines serves as a staging area for U.S. imperialism to attack and subvert Southeast Asia and the rest of Asia.

By all means, therefore, as a matter of "manifest destiny", the United States would beguile the credulous Emilio Aguinaldo in a maneuver to capture Manila and arrange the Treaty of Paris whereby Spanish colonialism ceded the Philippines to U.S. imperialism upon the payment of $20 million, and thus provoked the Filipino people into a war where 250,000 Filipino lives were snuffed out as the cost of trusting imperialism.

U.S. imperialism is deceptive and violent. The violence it unleashed against our people was justified in terms of Christianity and democracy. U.S. imperialism wanted to "Christianize" the Philippines after 350 years of Spanish clerical rule and to teach us "democracy" even after it had crushed the national democratic movement tested in the fire of the revolution of 1896 and which bore the first Philippine republic.

After suppressing the first Philippine Republic through the most brutal military operations, the U.S. government started to employ a semantical cover for its scheme of domination and put up such hypocritical slogans as "benevolent assimilation" and "education for self-government" to justify its unwanted presence. During a full decade of the most damnable suppression of any public expression of nationalism and bribery of the native bourgeoisie, U.S. imperialism started to glamorize certain political figures as "nationalists". These were the nationalists who comprised and accepted the U.S.-imposed limitation that they go to Washington and beg for Philippine independence. The Americans conveniently used these figures to prove their self-proclaimed benevolence and to steal the fire from the revolutionary anti-imperialists who preferred to take to the hills and prepare for a more meaningful struggle for national independence.

Until now, the Americans try to misrepresent Filipino nationalism. They would rather have what they call "positive" nationalism - a positive force in the "special relationship" between the Philippines and the United States. Compromise with U.S. imperialism is what is called positive nationalism.

There is only one nationalism that we appreciate. It is that which refers to the national democratic revolution, the Philippine revolution, whose main tasks now are the liquidation of imperialism and feudalism in order to achieve full national freedom and democratic reforms.

The Filipino nation has been formed through struggle against Spanish colonialism and, soon after, U.S. imperialism. As U.S. imperialism triumphed by brute force in the Filipino-American War, it must be vanquished by the resumption of the Philippine revolution of 1896. There can be no genuine national democracy in the Philippines without U.S. imperialism being done away with first.

There is a constant attempt of imperialist propaganda to impugn Filipino nationalism and communism together. The communist bogey has always been raised with the view of frightening our people. But, little do the reactionary propagandists realize that through their own efforts the people are getting to know that it is the imperialist strategy to destroy communists first to destroy the nationalists. In the strategic thinking of the U.S. imperialists which has been tested in their counter-revolutionary practices in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the most relentless anti- imperialists - whether communists or leftwing nationalists - must first be destroyed for any imperialist scheme of exploitation to succeed.

Thus, in the Philippines, we have seen the communists as the main target of massive attacks against civil liberties by the U.S. colonial government in 1931, by the Japanese after their successful landing in 1942, and again by the U.S. imperialists in their attempt after the Pacific War to recapture us.

If we study closely the ratification of the Bell Trade Act and the Parity Amendment, we will discover that the communists had first to be harassed, imprisoned, assassinated and provoked before the bourgeois nationalist leaders in the Nacionalista Party and in the Democratic alliance could be discouraged and would compromise.

What the U.S. imperialists and their local cohorts, the compradors and big landlords, do not want to happen is the alliance of all anti-imperialists as has oftentimes happened in many Asian countries with fatal effectiveness against imperialism.

With the continuing triumph of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines and the stability of its control, it is the chief task of the Filipino youth to resume and complete the unfinished revolution under the banner of national democracy, to expose and oppose the national and social iniquities caused by U.S. imperialism and its local reactionary allies.

If the Filipino youth should relent in this task, then their people shall continue to suffer the direct impositions of U.S. imperialism as well as feudalism which the former protects for its own selfish profit.

The youth today face two basic problems: U.S. imperialism and feudalism. These two are the principal causes of poverty, unemployment, inadequate education, ill-health, crime and immorality which afflict the entire nation and the youth. The youth do not only suffer with their people the iniquities of U.S. imperialism and feudalism but are also the first ones to suffer them.

It is the task of the Filipino youth to study carefully the large confrontation of forces between U.S. imperialism and feudalism on one side and national democracy on the other side. To know the nature of this contradiction of forces is to know the dynamism and internal motion of our semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.

For the youth to know so much as for them to act more effectively and cooperate more thoroughly on the side of progress in the historical process of change.

Kabataang Makabayan, in its historic role as the vanguard organization of Filipino youth, should know the balance of forces between imperialism and feudalism on the one hand and national democracy on the other. On the other side of U.S. imperialism are the compradors and the big landlords. On the side of national democracy are the broad masses of our people, composed of the working class and peasantry to which the vast majority of the Filipino youth today belong; the petty bourgeoisie, composed of small property-owners, students, intellectuals and professionals; and the national bourgeoisie, composed of Filipino entrepreneurs and traders.

From the present scheme of social classes in the Philippines today, we can easily observe that the forces of national democracy - the motive forces of the Philippine revolution - are now far stronger in the 1960's than they were in 1899-1902 when U.S. imperialism first trampled upon our national freedom with the most brutal success.

From the same scheme of social classes, we can derive a new and powerful combination of youth - the students, young professionals, labor youth and the peasant youth. Above all, the Filipino youth should integrate themselves with the masses in order to achieve victory in the fight for national freedom and democracy.

Kabataang Makabayan, as the vanguard organization of the Filipino youth, should assist in the achievement of an invincible unity of all national classes and forces and to push further the struggle for national and social liberation in all fields - economic, political, cultural and military - against the leading enemy, landlordism, both of which have frustrated the national democratic aspirations of the Philippine revolution of 1896 and have made the suffering and exploitation of our people more complex and more severe.

This generation of Filipino youth are lucky to be at this point of history when U.S. imperialism is fast weakening at all significant levels of conflict; that between capitalism and socialism: that between the capitalist class and the working class; and that between imperialism and national independence movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Even as the Philippines today is the scene of frantic U.S. imperialist re-adjustment and it appears that U.S. imperialism would succeed in controlling the country more thoroughly by destroying our national industrial base and by shifting it back to a plantation economy dominated by the U.S. agro-corporations, the Filipino youth would find it easier than they expect to overthrow U.S. imperialism provided they are inspired and guided by the new national democratic objectives of the Philippine revolution.

The October 2nd demonstrations against U.S.imperialism in front of the U.S. embassy and Malaca¤ang Palace, whose participants and sympathizers Kabataang Makabayan should now consolidate, has already manifested the rising wave of national democracy among our people. Such a mass action has shown to us the changing balance of forces in our country.

The objective national and world-wide conditions favor a national democratic movement of the Filipino youth. It is high time for the Filipino youth to raise and carry forward the red banner of Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan, with the new emblem of the worker-peasant alliance.

http://www.dailymirror.ph/Apr-2010/Apr2210/front3.html
 

UP Min students, faculty
rally against Roman
 

Kabataan Party-list yesterday said students and faculty members of the University of the Philippines Mindanao (UPMin) met the arrival of UP President Emerlinda Roman and other Board of Regent officials with a lightning protest during the 13th commencement exercise.

“Graduates waved black ribbons in clenched fists as students and members of the Student Council flashed streamers against the tyranny of the UP President and Chancellor Gilda Rivero while singing the ‘UP naming mahal,’” Kabataan coordinator Karlos Manlupig said in a statement.

Manlupig said Roman “ran in her attempt to evade the protesters. She was chased by angry students who eventually blocked her car.”

Manlupig also quoted Student Council chair Rosel Susan Serrano as saying the intention of the lightning rally was “not to disrupt the graduation exercise but to condemn the ‘Roman Empire’ particularly on the issue of unseating Student Regent Charisse Bernadine Banez in the Board of Regents last January 2010 and to reaffirm the struggle in upholding the democratic rights and welfare of every student in the fight for free and quality UP education.”

The protesters also condemned the 200-300 percent tuition fee increase initiated by Roman in 2006.

Manlupig said students and the Kabataan Party-list will intensify their struggle “to attain higher budget allocation for education.”

The group also challenged the graduates, students, and faculty members to “uphold the patriotic tradition of the university.”

From a UP Tacloban graduate who was part of the red shoes protest

"We decided to wear red shoes as a sign of protest against the degrading UP Educational System (specifically our case against Abolencia) and against Roman's Administration including the issue about TOFI.

Sa pamamagitan ng maliit na protestang ito, ipinapa-alam naming hindi bulag ang ibang taga UP Tacloban sa baluktot ng systema na pinangungunahan ni Roman..Nais naming mabuhay ang dugo ng mga tunay na Iskolar ng Bayan. Makialam tayo!

We stand for fair and high quality education. Ibalik ang dating UP!"
 

THE ROLE OF RECTO
by Jose Maria Sison
 

(Speech delivered at the 11th Claro M. Recto Lecture-Dinner sponsored by the Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines on February 21, 1969, at Eugene's, Cubao, Quezon City.)

We pay our respects to the memory of Recto, that is to say, his anti-imperialist memory. We accord him the proper honor by recapitulating the value of his political thinking as used principally by the SCAUP at a time that we were making the initial breach on the conservative walls of the state university.

When we founded the SCAUP early in 1961, it was then our obsession to leave behind the fifties as a period of reaction. In doing this, we carried over to the period of the sixties Recto's political thinking but at the same time resolved not to be restricted by its limitations. It was then our clear intention of utilizing the ideas of Recto to attract the intellectual constituents of the university to what was then derided as the side of "subversion". It was then our goal to translate the narrow debate between the liberals and the religious bigots into a more comprehensive struggle between Left and Right, between the forces of pro-imperialist liberalism and regressive medievalism on one side and the forces of a revolutionary national democracy which is both anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist on the other side.

The political thinking of Recto on the problem of U.S. imperialism has since then helped polarize the university anew. It served as the effective medium for bringing a significant number of young intellectuals to the progressive side at a new level of intellectual and political confrontation that emerged in the campus at the beginning of these stormy sixties.

Barely two months after the establishment of the SCAUP, accusations were flung by reactionary quarters inside and outside the university at faculty members and students for studying and discussing not only Recto but also Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung as allegedly manifested by progressive articles appearing in campus publications. On March 14, 1961, the SCAUP had already a hard core of militants who could spearhead a 4,000 strong demonstration of students that literally stormed the halls of Congress and broke up the comedy of errors that was the witch- hunt initiated by the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities (CAFA). While the campus liberals feebly raised the banner of academic freedom in the abstract, the SCAUP found the conditions of ferment favorable for utilizing academic freedom to espouse the ideas of Recto and of others previously tabooed. After all, the controversial articles were being sniffed at for their Marxist-Leninist content, and much to the delight of
campus progressives it was proving futile for the reactionaries to stop the intellectual rebellion.

After so long, we can assess how much we have achieved in the propagation of new and progressive ideas. We find that these have been transformed into a material force to some extent, in the form of nationwide mass organizations and bigger and more frequent urban mass actions on a wide range of issues. Within the university, as far as we have spoken out and acted during the last nine years, we have come to be known most prominently as opponents of U.S. imperialism through our publications, conferences, seminars, teach-ins, reading assignments and other forms of instruction. The mass media have not failed to take notice of our demonstrations against the U.S. embassy and what it stands for. Our exposure of the Americanization of the University of the Philippines has also caught the national attention it deserves. We have also succeeded in achieving something as dramatic and unprecedented as the shut-down of the university for about a week and attempts on the part of the reactionary
authorities to stop and then co-opt the student strike could not succeed completely. Yet while it seems that power among students themselves is rising to some extent, we find ourselves short of some stable power. That is because a lot has yet to be done in terms of building up the correct orientation and engaging in political action towards our integration with the broad masses of the people in more significant confrontations with the semi- colonial and semi-feudal order. It is becoming more urgent for us to re-examine the general influence of Recto among our ranks and to recognize the limitations of anti-imperialist activity which is exclusive of anti-feudal activity.

If we are truly and comprehensively committed to the struggle for national democracy, for that is the pressing need in our semi- colonial and semi-feudal society, we have to be anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist in our words and deeds.

Was Claro Mayo Recto an anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist to make himself a well-rounded national democrat? He was not, Recto was essentially a mouthpiece of the progressive anti-imperialist wing of the national bourgeoisie. Without a proletarian standpoint which could have given him a vantage view of all social classes involved in the struggle for national democracy, he underestimated the value of a peasantry revolutionized by the working class and overestimated the self-willed programme and actions of the national bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia in what he assumed to be a peaceful constitutionalist process of progressive change. He spoke of nationalist industrialization and the riddance of U.S. imperialism but failed to see the necessity of agrarian revolution as the basis of a movement towards the achievement of a self-reliant economy which is in turn the basis of genuine political independence.

He was quite naive in assuming that nationalist industrialization by itself would result in agricultural development. As a matter of fact, he believed that nationalist industrialization is the starting point of rural development and every other kind of development. In his well-meaning endeavor to discredit the particular kind of rural development advocated by U.S. imperialist agents like Ramon Magsaysay, he went to the extent of dismissing the general question of rural development, which should include the matter of agrarian revolution as a prerequisite for genuine rural development, as being of secondary importance to nationalist industrialization. If Recto were a revolutionary, he could have debunked Magsaysay's rural development programme as false and pretentious in that it could not actually disturb the landlord's stranglehold over the lives of the peasant masses. Instead, Recto did admit that he was not actually opposed to Magsaysay's rural development programme per se but that
he was against it only in so far as it was a measure to deflect national efforts at Filipino-owned industrialization.

Yet in the same breath Recto cited the classic example of industrial development in capitalist countries as the optimum course that the Filipino nationalist movement should take. Ironically, he did not put much importance on the anti-feudal upheavals of old that inaugurated capitalist development in the West and the fact that the creation of agricultural surpluses played a vital role in the primitive accumulation of capital. Recto scoffed at the general idea of making agriculture the basis and industrialization the leading factor in economic development. He simply batted for nationalist industrialization one-sidedly.

If we in the new type of national democratic struggle were to limit ourselves to a strict adherence to the Recto line that national industrialization without a corresponding agrarian revolution at the social base would result in a well-rounded economic development and the realization of real political independence, we would encounter two serious pitfalls:

First, we fail to arouse and mobilize the most numerous oppressed class in this semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, the peasantry, as the main force in the national democratic struggle; and

Second, we fail to achieve the transformation of the present state into one that is truly national democratic and that makes possible a self-reliant programme of industrialization.

By overlooking the question of agrarian revolution, which is actually the main content of our struggle for national democracy, we would not acquire the massive support of the peasantry and as a result we would fail to create a big fighting force against U.S. imperialism and its local reactionary cohorts and we would also fail to bind all progressive classes into an effective national front against the same. Either or both the working class and the national bourgeoisie cannot free themselves from the clutches of U.S. imperialism and from the mire of feudalism without the peasantry under proletarian leadership being engaged in a revolutionary movement against their own exploiters.

U.S. imperialism can persist in this country because feudalism also persists as its social base and as the cause of our internal weaknesses. A passive peasantry bogged down in feudalism can only be manipulated by the exploiting classes until such time that the working class can arouse it and provide it with revolutionary leadership. It has been precisely the objective of Magsaysay's palliative of land tenure security and resettlement programme and Macapagal's inadequate and multi-loopholed Agricultural Land Reform Code to assuage the peasant masses and keep them passive. It will not do the peasant masses any good to obscure their crying need for agrarian revolution.

One reason that makes the national bourgeoisie in the Philippines vacillate so much in the national democratic struggle is its attachment to feudalism. The national bourgeoisie has been able to borrow capital from the banks because it is wont to use land as collateral. Furthermore, its credit and other business connections actually tie it up directly or indirectly with U.S. monopoly capitalism. The weaknesses of the national bourgeoisie here in the Philippines are due to the fact that Spanish colonialism and U.S. imperialism have profoundly disrupted what should have been a normal pattern of capitalist development.

What made Recto a non-revolutionary and, indeed a bourgeois constitutionalist and parliamentarian, was the fact that the logic of his advocacy of nationalist industrialization exclusive of agrarian revolution made him fail to see the necessity of a revolutionary transformation of state power. He spoke of the need for state economic planning without questioning the nature and character of the incumbent state which had so far failed to assume the task of economic planning and which he impliedly expected to do so.

The thinking that the nationalist industrialization can be achieved and genuine land reform can follow under the present state leads some degenerates of the so-called Old Left, together with their bourgeois masters, to pontificate that the use of the powers of the present state for purposes of pooling and allocating resources through planning is a common ground for political agreement between the working class and the national bourgeoisie. So they want a nationalist government without the joint revolutionary mobilization of the masses of workers and peasants. This line has actually been propagated for quite sometime in Indonesia, India, Burma, Pakistan and other underdeveloped countries. Prematurely, this line is even described by muddle-headed and opportunist elements as the "socialist" line or the "non-capitalist" line applied on semi- feudal conditions. But what has actually occurred in these places is the perpetuation of the rule of the imperialists, the compradors, the landlords,
and the bureaucrat capitalists. The phenomenon of bureaucrat capitalists or corrupt government officials is a striking feature of regimes that pretend to undertake "socialist" planning without the actual transformation of state power and ascendance of the masses of the people. What the modern revisionists have supported as "non-capitalist" development in a number of Asian and African countries provide us plenty of negative lessons.

Though in such countries, foreign direct investments are already under some amount of restraint, U.S. Imperialism can still manipulate loan capital to keep them as puppet-states and keep open the paths for a significant amount of direct investments. Recto expressed preference for foreign loans to foreign direct investments but he himself still cautioned that when these are put under restraint the foreign monopolies may still manipulate foreign loans to get their profits.

There is nothing better than to grasp agrarian revolution as the key to the radical transformation of political power and the deposition of U.S. monopoly capitalism and landlordism in our country by all progressive classes. It is narrow-minded economism to consider the line of nationalist industrialization as the key to the achievement of economic development and subsequently of genuine political independence. Politically, it can only mean constant begging for peace and civil liberties for harassed city radicals which at most is for the benefit of an anemic national bourgeoisie, Economically, it can only mean begging for crumbs from the table of the big bourgeoisie and the landlord class. Militarily, it can only mean arguing feebly that since there is no automatic retaliation clause in the military treaties with U.S. imperialism these should be abrogated at the mutual pleasure of the master government and the puppet government. Culturally, it can only mean postures of anger about hurt
pride and lost dignity between acts of self-flagellation and unjust expressions of contempt for the masses.

It is agrarian revolution, on the other hand, that can agitate and release the most massive support for that revolutionary leadership which only the working class is capable of providing in this era of imperialism or more precisely, the era of its total collapse. If agrarian revolution is left out or obscured in what purports to be a national democratic programme, nationalist industrialization itself would not grow amply and genuine political independence with a sound democratic basis in the revolutionary unity of the working class and peasantry would not be realized. Agrarian revolution is the process that can set into motion tens of millions of the Filipino people as the main force of the national liberation and national democratic movement.

The reason why the late Claro Mayo Recto was described as the political aristocrat, either to place him above his vulgar colleagues or to denigrate him, was that he did not or he never had the chance to merge himself with the masses of the people in a revolutionary movement. At this late, it would be unfair to demand of him the achievement of a Mao Tsetung or a Ho Chi Minh. It is fair enough for us to recognize the limitations of his political thinking and of his class standpoint. We, the youth who have extremely favorable chances in this era of the total collapse of imperialism, should maintain a critical respect for Recto while we strive to surpass his achievements. A national democratic revolution is still to be won in our country.

Recto when alive was our ally. Even now, his political thinking is still allied to our thinking in certain respects and to some extent. But those who can surpass Recto's political thinking should do so now as we find ourselves in a rapidly developing situation. Those who honestly hold on to Recto's line because of their actual class basis we may still consider our allies. It is anomalous, though, for some persons to think that they are the most revolutionary even as they continue to limit themselves to being mere echoes of Recto or being mere shadows of the national bourgeoisie.

The need to surpass the political thinking of Recto is made even more urgent by the fact that now the reactionaries are trying to cover up their basic allegiance to a system of foreign and feudal exploitation by using the language of Recto. Take note of the latest official verbal progress about the "New Filipino" being made by Ferdinand E. Marcos and Carlos P. Romulo.

What is beginning to develop in the political scene in the Philippines is mildly reminiscent of Sukarno's heyday of oratorical anti-imperialism. However, the high pitch of a relatively safe anti-imperialism, will still have to be reached in some future year in the country. For more than ten years already, every administration has found it suitable to use such slogans as "Filipino First", "Unfinished Revolution" and "New Filipino", with a seemingly national democratic content but actually devoid of any determination to achieve national democracy. This charade that has not at all affected the essence of the incumbent reactionary state power is going to be played until the people get tired of the local versions of Sukarno, Nehru, Ne Win and other such "anti-imperialists" in the same way that they are already getting tired of bare-faced puppets of U.S. imperialism and domestic feudalism.

At a time that the United States is trying to save itself from its own crisis and is shifting the burden to its puppet governments, those at the helm of the Philippine government would increasingly assume a false posture of independence in a repeat performance of Quezon's asininely begrudging oratory made during the American Depression about the Philippine government run like hell (by puppets) being better than one run like heaven by American themselves.

 

RIZAL THE SOCIAL CRITIC
by Jose Maria Sison

DR. JOSE RIZAL was the outstanding representative of a numerically small middle class that developed during the nineteenth century. A complex of historical circumstances, such as the marked acceleration of commerce and intellectual contact between the Philippines and Europe and a certain amount of concessions made by the colonial regime to the principalia, made it possible for that small middle class to develop under the shadow of the white colonial elite composed of friars and lay officials, which simultaneously exploited the masses more. In other words, while the colonial regime gave some concessions to some indios through such objective processes as limited participation in trade, leasehold grants on friar estates, a limited amount of university education available locally and travel and study in Europe which pro-colonial historians readily admit as signs of good intentions on the part of Madrid for its colony, the vast majority of the colonized people were increasingly exploited
and politically repressed. These were the futile attempts of Spain to accelerate its capital accumulation in a fast modernizing and competitive Europe, to contain the rapid advances and expansionism of modern imperialist powers which had succeeded in developing capitalist societies and to frustrate the raging revolutionary movement of continental scope. In other words, Spain found its basic foundations irrevocably weak while being over-extended, its anti-democratic authoritarianism unable to contain the rise of modern imperialism in Europe and the national independence movements in the colonies. The situation of Spanish colonialism then parallels that of U.S. imperialism today, over-extended and unable to cope with the advance of the world socialist revolution and the more vigorous national independence movements of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

As a leading representative of the enlightened stratum or "left wing" of the middle class, Rizal easily adopted the liberal point of view and developed his own national sentiment and consciousness. What actually made him a progressive and a radical of his own time was his ultimate recognition that the liberties of the individual could be realized only if the nation as a whole, particularly the masses whom he spontaneously observed, would be uplifted and enjoy more freedom from an overwhelming system of clerical authoritarians and anti-liberals who represented what had long been considered backward in the northern parts of Europe. He saw in the European development that the nation-states arose with the concept of popular sovereignty and republicanism. He pointed out that if no better colonial policies were to serve the Philippines there would be the increased likelihood of a movement for separation from Spain. For this suggestion of Filipino nationhood, he was called a filibuster or a
subversive in the same manner that the advocates of national democracy today are being witch-hunted for asserting the sovereignty of their people.

Rizal belonged to a middle class family that could provide him with a university education here and abroad. But he had seen that where colonial authoritarian rule existed even the native middle class was insecure and subject to arbitrariness and racial discrimination. The fate suffered by Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora profoundly influenced his thinking. The humiliation of his mother at the hands of the colonizers came to signify the colonial injustices done to the motherland. The Calamba Affair in which both the middle class and peasantry suffered as a result of their just petition against the increased land rent and other arbitrary impositions of the friars had the most profound effect on him as a Filipino. In retaliation for the petition penned by the youth Rizal himself seeking justice for the tenants of Calamba, General Weyler burnt their homes and effected their imprisonment and deportation. Here was a concrete yet symbolic instance of colonial oppression of the masses
ultimately resulting in oppression of the middle class.

As Spanish colonialism could no longer hold back the advancing forces of liberalism and nationalism and it became wracked with the internal struggle between the friars and the liberal quarters, it became more and more despicable to the Filipino people; and religion could no longer be used as an ideological weapon of the ruling elite of friar and lay absolutists. The argument that the Filipino people should be perpetually indebted to colonialism for Christianity was answered effectively by the more powerful argument of social reality and its revolutionary forces. Dr. Jose Rizal had so well exposed the fact that during the previous more than three centuries the friars failed to uplift the people spiritually but only succeeded in causing the brutalization of the people. In scientific terms, we say that Christianity through the unity of church and state had had its day in the feudal regime.

When we consider the anti-colonial and anti-clerical writings of Rizal, we immediately perceive that national democracy of the old type, that is to say, of the now outmoded liberal cast, developed in the process of struggle. The struggle was in the direct personal experience of Rizal as well as in the collective life of his people. The Propaganda Movement was reflective of the struggle of the Filipino nation; and the Philippine Revolution of 1896 that followed it was the irrepressible continuation of social reality and the people's struggle even if Rizal's life had already been extirpated.

When as a small boy Rizal wrote a poem advocating a national language, he was spontaneously struggling against the Spanish language as a tool of foreign domination. When he felt compelled to annotate Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, he wanted to fight racial discrimination by asserting that a national culture could develop without colonial culture. In writing his satirical essays against the friars and their absolutist cohorts, he was expressing the collective will of his people against authoritarianism, arbitrariness and brutality. He was thereby asserting the democratic capacity of man to solve his problems without the intervention or mediation of the clerics and other alien powers.

When he wrote "The Indolence of the Filipinos", he debunked the colonial argument that Filipinos were inherently lazy and exposed the fact the the colonizers lived gloriously on the labor and blood of his people. When he wrote "The Philippines A Century Hence", he demonstrated in full the vicious process used by the colonizers to subjugate the people by corrupting them and taking advantage of their virtues. Furthermore, he indicated the direction that events would take in favor of the Filipinos if they were to achieve national consciousness and national unity. For writing these two major essays, Rizal was called a "subversive: and, in the phrase of today's defenders of U.S. imperialism, a "negative" thinker. Yes, he negated colonialism. He contributed a certain share to anti-colonial propaganda and incited the people to mobilize themselves for their own welfare.

When Rizal wrote his masterworks, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, he explored the possibility of reform first and, upon exhausting that possibility within the colonial framework, he also explored the possibility of revolution.

In the Noli, he presented Crisostomo Ibarra as an extremely well- intentioned reformer who thinks that the solution to the suffering of the motherland, signified by Sisa, would be a new type of education for her children along the lines worked out by the Schoolteacher, the anti-thesis to the brutalizing system of thought control maintained by the friars.

But what is done to him, the well-intentioned reformer who does not even hold a grudge for the persecution of his own father? He is attacked from all sides and by various means by the hypocritical Padre Salvi and the crude Padre Damaso, who represent the basic institutional aspects of the most numerous church. In the end he is framed up by the clerical conspirator, Padre Salvi, as the "mastermind" of a foolish attack on the barracks. And who are the tools of this foreigner, this source of violence and corruption? Indios, like the sacristan who is chief executor, and petty mercenaries like Lucas and Bruno?

What social system are the enemies of Crisostomo Ibarra in defense of? A friar-dominated society signified by the weakling and hybrid Maria Clara, the colonial product of a questionable relationship which makes of Capitan Tiago, the symbol of the newly-risen corrupt Filipino bourgeoisie, a cuckold of colonial power. The bastard culture is further signified by Sister Rufa and Sister Pute, whose thinking consists of a systematization of superstition which includes airy stocks of plenary indulgencies, bundles of candles and sacks of girdles and scapularies. In clearer secular terms, the social system being defended is one dominated by the curate and the alferez, assisted by a docile and stupid gobernadorcillo and principalia, whose main activities are holding fiestas, and by the corrupt trader, contract-maker, influence peddler and cuckold Capitan Tiago and by Do¤a Consolacion, the vicious symbol of the Civil Guards' mentality, and by Do¤a Victorina, the paragon of a colonial mentality
which always manages to adopt what limps in the alien culture.

What alternative is left after the vicious frustration of Don Crisostomo's hopes for reform? Pablo tells Elias in the forests that the oppressed are ready to fight the oppressors. Pilosopong Tasio, the idealist cynic, has told Crisostomo Ibarra that change will ultimately come with the coming in of fresh ideas from abroad.

In El Filibusterismo, Crisostomo Ibarra reappears in the guise of Simuon the jeweler. His character is a clear study of the liberal reformer who swings to being an anarchist. The author frustrates him at every decisive step of his plot but succeeds in presenting him as the symbol of desperation and personal vengeance. Simuon is the archetype of putschism and contravenes the Marxist- Leninist concept of a revolutionary; he thinks of the masses as a mere manipulator and conspirator would, commanding them from the city. He hold the illusion that by one blow at the palace the whole structure would crunmble.

Nevertheless, Rizal presents Cabesang Tales as the peasant victim of feudal oppression and he transforms him into a peasant rebel with a mass following, waging guerrilla warfare, after finding out that the redress of grievances and justice are not possible in the system. The development of Cabesang Tales as a character indicates Rizal's own recognition that the question of land was of basic importance in the colonial question. The Calamba incident was unquestionably a big matter to Rizal. What is most engaging about the story of Cabesang Tales or Matanglawin is that it was left unfinished by Rizal. It is an unfinished story in the sense that Simoun's story is finished or, equivalently, in the sense that the class leadership of the ilustrado in the Philippine Revolution is incapable and frustrated. Did Rizal leave the story unfinished because he, as a liberal thinker, was incapable of following it through? Nevertheless, by keeping the story unfinished he merely left it to be continued
like the Philippine revolution.

The story of Crisostomo Ibarra as a reformer is actually continued in the attempt of Isagani, together with many other students, to establish the Castillian Academy. This student reform project is frustrated by the hypocritical friars after giving them false hopes. What is worse, they suffer persecution and brutal reaction afterwards. They hold a pancit party at a restaurant in mock honor of Don Custodio who has been entrusted by the authorities with the duty of making a sham investigation and study of the project of the students and of disapproving it. As it is being done today by our intelligence agencies and by the agents of American imperialism, the government authorities misconstrue the pancit party of the students as conspiratorial meeting where subversive matters have been taken up. The authorities are agog over the pasquinades posted on the university walls against the friars' system of education and these are linked with the pancit party. The students are arrested and
imprisoned and the university is closed in reprisal.

Even Basilio, the son of Sisa, who has always refused to join student groups, is implicated by the authorities. His arrest leads to a series of misfortunes for him and his sweetheart Juli whom Padre Camorra tries to rape when she seeks his help for Basilio's release. The misfortunes of Basilio serve as a lesson that opportunism does not always pay in critical times. It has been foolish for Basilio to think that the business of a student is only to earn a diploma and become a prosperous man afterwards. He has been thinking only of personal advancement without thinking of the oppression of the masses from which he comes.. And, thinking that he would inherit Capitan Tiago's property, he feeds him opium even against the code of the medical profession for which he is studying. The careerism and amoral technocracy represented by Se¤or Pasta, are a bane to the masses along the lines of Capitan Tiago's corrupt money-grabbing activities. The evil source of these weaknesses of the middle class
is the colonial ruling class and its exploitative system.

In the Fili, Rizal exposes thoroughly and systematically the decadence of the system as the beginning of a revolutionary situation. He exposes the rotting body of the corrupt Capitan Tiago, the sham character of Se¤or Pasta and the devilish viciousness of Padre Irene and Padre Camorra, Don Custodio and many ugly features of the colonial domination, including Don Tiburcio de Espada¤a's misery.

After writing the Noli alone, Rizal was already a marked man. His novel was immediately denounced as subversive and heretical. The foreign rulers of his native land started to slander him and call him an agent of another alien power. After the more forward novel, Fili, he was practically bound for Bagumbayan. But just the same he came back to the Philippines from abroad with the naive hope that he would work for the cause of his nation in the open and in the city.

Upon arriving at the port of Manila, his baggage was thoroughly inspected and all written materials were confiscated from him. Nevertheless, Rizal persisted in his efforts to seek reforms in the open and in the city. He visited some provinces and subsequently organized La Liga Filipina. That was the last straw, the colonialists said, and they apprehended him.

On December 30, 1896, after his exile in Dapitan and after the Cry of Pugad Lawin had been made, he was led like a lamb to Bagumbayan to be killed.

 

UP Visayas Opening Exercise Protest
Iskolars ng Bayan welcome the new school year by protesting

the continued commercialization of UP and the entire education sector.
Photos by By:Karlo Mikhail Mongaya