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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| How Now, Brown Maos? Part 2 By Antonio C. Abaya Reprised May 04, 2005 For the Philippines Free Press, May 14 issue It comes two and a half years late, but it had to come, finally. In its May 4 issue, the Philippine Daily Inquirer headlined the story: �Local Reds accuse China of abandoning Maoist cause.� Said the Inquirer: �Local communist rebels, turning from allies to critics of China, yesterday said that Beijing�s shift to a capitalist economy had undermined revolutionary movements in Southeast Asia. �The 8,000-member New People�s Army, armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, drew ideological inspiration from China�s first generation of communist leaders led by Mao Zedong. The NPA has been waging a violent guerilla war for more than 35 years to overthrow the government and establish a Marxist state.� The Inquirer quoted an unnamed source that �the CPP Central Committee accused Beijing of abandoning support for armed struggles in Southeast Asia �in exchange for China�s accommodation by Washington into the world�s capitalist system.��.. �Our revolutionary forces and people resolutely oppose the US-led campaign for neo-liberal globalization, while China has welcomed it and relished membership in the World Trade Organization,� the CPP Central Committee said in a statement.� �Philippine communist leaders, most of whom are living in exile in Western Europe, feel hurt and orphaned by the sweeping changes in China, according to (unnamed) rebel officials.� As well they should. So should some of the editors and columnists of the Inquirer itself who were some of the most committed supporters of and propagandists for Joma�s Maoist revolution, about which more in a future article. Because of its large circulation, the Inquirer�s editorial nod of approval, especially in the late 1980s and 1990s, can be said to have prolonged the Maoist revolution by giving the Maoists an inflated sense of their strength, righteousness and importance. Let me just quote parts of my article �How Now, Brown Maos� (Nov. 28, 2002) which appeared in the Dec. 16, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic and which is archived in whole in the website www.tapatt.org: �All Marxists and Marxist-Leninists of whatever stripe, whether pro-Soviet or pro-Mao, whether they are members of Lava�s PKP, or Sison�s CPP or Lagman�s rejectionists, have certain core beliefs that set them apart from, say, monarchists, republicans, liberals, conservatives, social democrats, etc. Pre-eminent among these core beliefs is one derived from Marx�s theory of surplus value. �The theory of surplus value, in a nutshell, says that when a worker creates a useful product from raw materials, he invests that product with value equal to the labor that he had devoted to it. There is no problem when the worker reaps that full value when he sells that product, as long as he is self-employed. �The problem is when that worker is employed by another person, such as an entrepreneur or a capitalist, who derives a profit from his labor. Marxists believe that a worker working for another does not get paid the full value of his labor, only a part of it. The unpaid part of that value, the surplus value, is pocketed by the entrepreneur or capitalist as profit. Hence the worker is being �exploited,� no matter how high his wages may be and no matter how generous the fringe benefits he may enjoy. �This categorical rejection of profit explains why all enterprises in the late unlamented Soviet Union were owned by the State, even taxis and shoe repair shops. No one was allowed to make a profit from the labor of others. (Similar prohibitions still stand in Cuba and North Korea.) Even the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev did not get around to allowing private enterprises; he allowed co-operatives to operate, starting in 1988, but under strict supervision to make sure that co-ops were not just a cover for (profit-oriented) private enterprises. �It was the visionary Deng Xiaoping who first allowed entrepreneurs in 1979 to hire others for profit, at first only in the rural areas, eventually even in the cities; at first under a limit of only eight workers per entrepreneur, later under a limit of 50 workers, eventually with no limit whatsoever. Thus were capitalism and the profit motive reintroduced into China under pragmatic slogans: �It does not matter if a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.� And most heretical of all to Marx�s theory of surplus value and Maoist egalitarianism: �Get rich through hard work! To get rich is glorious!� �Now the outgoing Supreme Leader Jiang Zemin has decreed through the recently concluded 16th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that the Party should embrace not just the workers but also the managers, the entrepreneurs and the capitalists as �fellow builders of socialism with Chinese characteristics� and that �the elimination of class struggle as an element of what socialism is about is really fundamental.� �This is heresy, pure and simple, enough to make the dear departed comrades rise up from their graves and hound the capitalist-roader Jiang to his. If the profit motive is now ideologically acceptable and respectable, then there is no surplus value, there is no exploitation in the Marxist sense, there is no need for (liberation and) socialist revolution, the triumph of Communism is not inevitable, and the Oliver Twists of the world are best liberated by the Fabian Society or the social democrats of Western Europe (who do not espouse the overthrow of capitalism), rather than by the fire-breathing revolutionaries of Lenin, Fidel Castro and Joma Sison. �How now, brown Maos? I have been waiting for Joma to issue a statement in reaction to this ultimate rejection of his Marxist-Maoist ideals. But not a peep from Utrecht. I have also been monitoring the columns of the most avid defenders of the Maoist revolution of Sison and Lagman � Luis Teodoro in Today, Argee Guevara in BusinessWorld, and Conrado de Quiros in the Inquirer � but, unless I missed an issue or two, nothing from them either. �This silence constitutes intellectual dishonesty. Having misled thousands of young minds down the path of socialist revolution, they now say nothing when no less than the direct inheritor of the mantle of Mao Zedong, in effect, says: �It was all a mistake and we had it all wrong, comrades���� ***** Reactions to [email protected] or fax 824-7642. Other articles in www.tapatt.org. |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to "How Now Brown Maos?" Tony -- Bingo! Right on the button. Johnny Mercado, [email protected] Philippine Daily Inquirer May 08, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww To Mr. Abaya Salamat. Maganda. Of all the "ismos" like communismo and relativismo, "tayo mismo" is the most oppressive. "Tayo Mismo" is the main reason why leaders like GMA is making Filipinos live like hell in their own country. What we need is not change of men but change in men. All the best. Oscar Landicho, [email protected] Sydney, Australia, May 08, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww It is great to see that China is veering away from Marxist-Maoist philosophy and letting people live a free life as well as rewarding those who work (even if they give a bit of that reward to the lazy incompetents). This does not mean that I agree with the present ideology of Philippine Society that allow the RICH (Rich from the period of the 'Illustrados") to run amok over the poor and keep the poor, poor in the Philippines. The same Families have been in power for 400 years. That is more than enough and a democratic change is in order no matter who gets hurt. Eventually we will have a strong DEMOCRATIC Middle East to Buffer all Democracies against the potential Eastern Plague that may have Tartar (Genghis Khan) intentions . I know many people who do not envision this. Charles B. �Guy� Rodriguez, [email protected] Australia, May 08, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww I am a socialist by party affiliation, but I'm no communist, and I do not adhere to the teachings of Mao or Karl Marx. Never really got to understand their confusing doctrines that I believe they themselves did not know whether or not they would work in their countries' system. Under Mao, for example, the Chinese in fact remained ill-disciplined according to my Chinese friends from the Mainland, and no parading of criminals the way Arroyo's government display criminals on TV has lessened the number of robbers and thieves in China. In 1988, I visited China and it was 40 years behind most countries of Asia until the successors of Mao Tse Tung decided to revert to capitalism with the help of Japan and the USA. Now it is a big giant trying now to kick its Japanese benefactors capitalizing on Japan's war sins that have been duly paid with lives of Japanese leaders, who thought they were being great and patriotic retaliating against the American giant that was stepping on the Japanese ants prior to WWII, and with blood money fixed by the US and its allies, for which I believe the Chinese should blame the Americans instead for not getting a share of the booty given to their leaders. Anyway, why should Filipino communists feel betrayed by the Maoists whose only similarity I guess to the Filipinos is their being ill-disciplined. When I told a Chinese friend how I used to always get late for my classes in the morning at UP when I was a student there long time ago because I could not get on the overcrowded buses through the window as many male passengers did and could, she told me that it was/is worse in China where the commuters would try to get on the bus stepping on the heads of the people in front of them. If that is not being ill-disciplined, what is? Just my one yen, Yuko Takei, [email protected] Tokyo, Japan, May 08, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww And why some psychopaths want to kill and behead Samarnons and dumping their headless bodies on the Pan Philippine Highway, and why many Samarnons are surviving on garbage in Payatas, and residing on their caritons in Metro Manila and under the bridges and squatting by the side of the concrete walls of housing enclaves. We would like to share with you some thoughts that could form part of our "paradigm" (excuse me for this nauseating term) for Philippine political, economic, social, and cultural transformation. Our thinker here (also a tinkerer) is Mr. Adlebert Batica. He has imbibed all revolutionary literature, including Pope Paul VI's "Populorum Progressio", Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth", Our Pride of the Malay Race, Jose Rizal; The Sublime Paralytic, Apolinario Mabini (Johnny Pecayo and Jay Caedo's fellow Batangueno, etc. He is not some armchair or steak commando in America (actually because he has lots of cholesterol, he would rather have kinilaw na swordfish or tuna or tangigue and boiled Japanese camote, like Jay Caedo, and for panghimagas ng lalamunan at pangtulak ng kinilaw, bahal na tuba, we call that "Siete Biernes" mixed with an imperialist product, Pepsi Cola. This is "development" among us in Samar and Leyte not champagne or California wine or Carlos III.) Addi had his share of revolutionary romance before when he wanted to hurl himself -- hopefully not after egging on the thousands of hoi poloi and the lumpens and the peasants and the obradores and the chimays from Samar to charge the Metrocom first, then he would follow -- at the oppressive system because of all the "ismos" especially "Tayo Mismo". Somehow, God, if there is God which our "dialectical materialists" don't think exists but Mang Senyong and Descartes think otherwise, saved Addi. He is one of the pillars of a Filipino respectable and relevant group in Minnesota. Not the fiestas that we Samarnons are fond of. But before that he went to work with the Incas in the highlands of Peru. You would cry at the stories he tells, especially when the Incas in the highlands of Peru were wiping their eyes and the women were crying -- we say, "nagbabakho, nagngongoyngoy" in "Klasikal Samarnon Binisay", "humihikbi, nananangis" in the language of the "Imperialistang Taga-ilog" -- when he was reciting Jose Rizal's "Mi Ultimo Adios" around a campfire with the stars shining brightly from the Andes skies. He assures us that his listeners who were around the campfire were not members of the Sendero Luminoso or Tupac Amaru. He was there as a development worker sent by an NGO based in Chicago. Addi wants to go back to Samar in the immediate future to help our people, if he can. He knows he might be beheaded. But being student of Spanish literature (he writes and speaks impeccable Spanish and chats with a Latin American cyberspace group) who has memorized El Cid and Don Quijote, he shrugs his shoulders: "Can a man live without honor? Especially the true-blooded Samarnons and Filipinos?" Not the Tagasikwat. Please read on. Let us learn from other models of "Kagiosan", of "Liberation Struggles". We could avoid thousands of rotting corpses, rivulets of blood and rivers with floating corpses, headless bodies along the roadsides, orphans, widows, and the lamentation all over the 7,100 islands. Cesar Torres, [email protected] May 08, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya: The economic system in China may not conform anymore to Karl Marx's "Communism" (or "Socialism") as contrasted with Adam Smith's "Capitalism" and his "Invisible Hand". The important thing is that the economy in China is serving the 1.2 billion Chinese, which is is theoretically the purpose of any and all national economic systems. But the rise of multinationals and globalization has impacted this otherwise ideal concept. China during the time of Mao was a fascinating experiment on the remaking of man on a massive scale, a "new man", as distinguished from the greedy, selfish, and self-centered man created by "capitalist" economic systems. And then it went through massive and bloody upheavals -- the Red Guards, the Gang of Four, and Deng Xiaoping, and the Massacre in Tiananmen Square. The image of that young Chinese standing in front of a line of tanks is forever etched in my mind. But despite these upheavals, the leadership in China has not forgotten that it is not America, Britain, the chaotic post-socialist, post-USSR Russia, Japan and the European Union which will feed the Chinese multitude and provide them with their basic needs. It is still the responsibility of the Chinese leadership, and no one else. For almost 20 years, I did not read any book on China. But somehow it is extremely necessary that we have to know what happened there after Mao, what is happening there now. So I have finished one book, Ross Terrill's "The New Chinese Empire: And What it Means for the United States". I am starting on another one, Ted C. Fishman's "China Inc." The "Atlantic Monthly" entitled its June 2005 issue "How we would fight China". Then there is the article of Robert D. Kaplan, "The Next Cold War" and Benjamin Schwarz's "Managing China's Rise". (Of course, we are not forgetting Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations" and a terrible, terrible book, Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg's "The Road to Martyrs' Squre", a scary study of the mindset of the suicide bombers in Palestine and Israel. The suicide bombers have been killing themselves to kill their enemies, including the innocents. This is now happening in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan. This has already happened in Bali, where the Balinese are the same as us, Malays. But this is not yet happening in other Muslim societies of the world, Allah forbid.) But whatever China maybe doing, whatever the ruling class in America and the Pentagon might be doing, we are still left with the terrible reality of the massive poverty in the Philippines, the corruption and the incompetence in the Philippine military and the political and administrative system, the continued intransigence of the group of Jose Maria Sison and the psychopathic compulsion of some powerful armed groups in the Philippines to cut off the heads of their "enemies", which could include the CBCP, the UCCP, the PCIJ, and the NUJP. These are urgent and critical concerns that are not the responsibility of the People's Liberation Army or the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China or the Republican Party or the Pentagon or the National Security Council in America. These are urgent and critical concerns of the leadership of the Filipino people and not just the responsibility of my favorite Senator, Senator Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr., and my favorite Consul General, Maria Rowena Mendoza Sanchez. Cesar Torres, [email protected] May 08, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww (Copy furnished) To [email protected] I believe utopia is somewhere in between capitalism and socialism, so the faster capitalism go east and socialism go west, a happy compromise fertilized by each country's nuances and watchful against any form of oppression, is reachable. Adolfo Paglinawan, [email protected] May 08, 2005 MY REPLY. You may be about 70 years behind the times. As early as 1936, Sweden was already being touted as �The Middle Way� (the title of a book by an American academic, Marquis Childs), as a happy compromise between American-style capitalism and Soviet-style socialism. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya, " It was all a mistake comrades..." yes, but what a humongous mistake ! thousands , maybe even millions of lives were lost worldwide, including our own killing fields here in the Philippines in pursuit of a utopia based on a flawed surplus-value theory. It was not only Joma and his comrades that were orphaned by the Chinese politburo's turn-around, but also the Shining Path of Peru and the Maoists of Nepal who doesn't give a damn whether Marxism/Maoism is still relevant, but revolution for the hell of it. But what amazes me about Marx is his attractiveness to young, brilliant and intelligent men and women intellectuals worldwide. Did Marx also attract you in your young idealistic phase ? When did you realize that his theory is egregiously flawed ? Auggie Surtida, [email protected] Iloilo, May 09, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww The communist party in the Philippines is a lost sheep in the world created and shaped by the economic and foreign policies of the United States. The capitalistic or free enterprise system has eroded the faith of many Chinese on communism; nothing is better than having a fat wallet than being hungry under a communist rule. The NPA should no longer seek guidance from China. Local Maoists should give up their arm struggle, start joining the mainstream, make their money by the "sweat of their brows" and not by the power of their rifles; wait for another tomorrow to fight. Dr. Nestor P. Baylan, [email protected] New York, May 09, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony, I wouldn't call it a "mistake" or "it was wrong", but it was an idea or a concept that was overtaken by time, much like the "karitela ride". "Kutseros" during my younger times always believed that the "karitela" was the best means of transportation because it is not dependent on gas and as long the the "kutsero" sees to it that there is ample supply of "damo for the kabayo", then one is assured a reliable transport. Nowadays, you can;t see these "karitelas" anymore. Even our remotest barrio uses tricycles for transportation. The value of the "karitela ride" is now just for the sentimental/romantic tourists. Rey Abella, [email protected] Tarlac, May 09, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww REQUIEM TO AN OLD WARRIOR: LUIS TARUC The peasant farmer depends on the fruit of his labor to the land he toils to support a family. But even when fertile fields become fertile grounds for discontent, there is incongruity between the basic needs he yearns and the impossible demands from the landlord. Pity the poor abused sharecroppers for they shall inherit bloody agrarian revolution. One man understood the plight of hapless farmers. He witnessed the abuses of absentee landlords and incensed on the inept and often biased government army soldiers who were supposed to protect them. He saw the birth and demise of the Sakdalista movement and its peasant origin. He also witnessed the litany of abuses temporarily halted during the Japanese occupation but not the occupiers' brutal treatment to the citizens deserted by Quezon and MacArthur. That man's vision started an effective answer to oppressive regimes of what we now know and what it spawned other violent groups by their acronyms, HUKBALAHAP, primarly against ther Japanese, HUK (those urban and rural guerillas during Roxas, Quirino and Magsaysay) and HMB Hukbong Magpalaya ng Bayan of the Garcia and early Marcos administration. Now NPA is getting its share in the struggle. Like Andres Bonifacio of the 1896 revolution, this man can also speak the language of the masses. He even adopted the title Supremo. If I remember correctly, while the first supremo has the equivalent of second grade elementary education, this other supremo attended two years at the University of the Philippines. Call him Bonifacio Re-incarnate! During those years of Huk insurgency, whenever he showed up in the countryside of partisan crowd he likened the gathering like Balintawak or Pugad Lawin to address and dispense PILL hopes for better or bitter tomorrow. He tried to represent their interest in the halls of congress, elected in 1946 but unseated year after that ushered a long drawn civil war known as the Huk Insurgency and again democratically elected to take their cause in the New Society years under Marcos. In the niche of deserving Filipinos, Ka LUIS TARUC who died last week at 89 will be remembered as AUTHENTIC NATIONALIST of peasant origin who understood, cared and worked for the abused, dispossessed and neglected peasants. An ordinary man with an extraordinary heart. Jose Sison Luzadas, [email protected] May 9, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww My dear Abaya, How Brown are Maoists?? Their time has passed. Russia had Stalinism (as Communism) which was a far cry from Trotsky's intellectual ideas of what it should have been. China had Maoism (as Communism) which nearly tried Trotskyism but they could not work together. Mao was not in the same intellectual league as Trotsky and created his Communism much more pragmatically. Mao's actions created the China-Powerhouse we have today. Without Mao, China may have just become another Failed Russia. Mao's Cultural Revolution got rid of all the old dynastic dead-wood, all the way down to anybody who could even read or write, so he would not have to watch his back all the time. He made sure there were no Brutus's remaining who wanted to go back to the "Old" ways. (Maoism did not create the �China Powerhouse we have today.� If Maoism had persisted, as the Gang of Four tried to, China would have been another failed Soviet Union, aggravated by a much larger population. China�s success began with the reintroduction of capitalism and the profit motive starting in 1979, and that was due to Deng Xiaoping, not Mao Zedung. More than 50% of China�s GDP is now created by the capitalist sector, which Mao Zedung would never have allowed. So how can you say that Maoism created the China Powerhouse? You should stop making sweeping statements without facts and figures to back those statements. ACA) The three social systems of Communism, Socialism and Democracy; were less of an ideology than a practical way of distributing available resources. Usually, "Very little among very many people". "A little more among too many people". Or "a great deal among, not too many people". (Actually, socialists believed they were working towards the inevitable triumph of Communism. So Socialism and Communism did not and do not exist on the same time plane. And socialists believe their system is the only democratic way. So Communism, Socialism and Democracy are not mutually exclusive concepts. ACA) Maoism (as non-Communism) has not failed, on the contrary, it is about to be a World-Triumph. Marxism has failed, Stalinism has failed and all Communisms have failed because all humans were not created equal, (thank God). (But how do you separate Maoism from Communism? Mao believed in Marx and Lenin, with the difference that Mao sought to bring about the victory of Communism using the politicized peasantry, not the industrial proletariat [which China did not have] as taught by Marx and Lenin. ACA)��. Graham Reinders, [email protected] May 09, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww The problem of our country is not the type or form of government. It is us filipinos. I admire china and former u.s.s.r. They start changing now because they know it is not revolutionary government the solution of a country to progress, it is the people. They are not ashame to correct things. We want always to change the form of government but we dont want to change within ourselves. We lies always pointing others to our failure, we are not admitting our mistakes so we can correct it. We are like barbarian in a modern era. Filipinos always claiming these, "we are proud to be a filipinos". We love our identity even we been tag as corrupt and poor country but we are not Patriotic People. Filipinos love their egos and protect personal interest. Our politics goes like this, if the administration goes to left side the opposition goes on the right track. If the administration goes on the right the other will go on left tract. We never walk side by side Alexander Carranceja, [email protected] Kuwait, May 09, 2005 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |