A brief reply on the urban insurrection line in the Philippines: the nature of "semi-feudalism"

Someone asked us our reply to an article by some people who split from the Communist Party of the Philippines. They claim that Filemon "Popoy" Lagman wrote it. After splitting from the Communist Party of the Philippines, Popoy campaigned for U.$.-puppet Estrada and then turned against him. Someone assassinated Popoy in 2001.

Comrade:

We have seen this topic addressed a number of times and in a number of locales of the Philippines. http://rebolusyon.250free.com/

Regarding the topics strictly contained in: http://www.geocities.com/manggagawa2001/psr.htm

If that was all that was involved in the split with Sison, then it would be a question of how much capitalist style "freedom" the peasants and urban people have. (They had their other reasons for splitting.)

On this topic, we have said this: "There is too much difference between MIM's line and RCP=U$A's line to call it a 'two-line struggle,' this controversy. Two-line struggles are of life and death importance, because they involve establishing the fastest road out of exploitation and oppression, but for MIM, this conflict with the RCP=U$A is more and less than a two-line struggle. It is less than a two-line struggle, because we cannot fundamentally be going through a process of unity-struggle-unity with an organization that sees 200+ million exploited people within U.$. borders instead of 200+ million exploiters. That has to be dealt with by a 'break' and not unity-struggle-unity.

"The conflict between Mao and Wang Ming or among the Indian Maoists or between the protracted People's War outlook and the ultra-left/urban insurrections deviation in the Philippines are fortunately, much lesser conflicts, though they may at times involve more urgent tasks for the People's Wars. We could add the conflict within Maoism about the urban-rural split in Latin America as not really approaching this question in a qualitative sense. The bottom line is that all of those conflicts really were or are potential two-line struggles, because they were about how best to move forward with the exploited and oppressed. They are arguments within the camp of the exploited and oppressed.

"Two-line struggles in MIM's view of parties out of state power revolve around strategy questions based in the oppressed and exploited. RCP=U$A is basing itself in an enemy class we Maoists call the imperialist country petty-bourgeoisie." http://www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/wim/wyl/text.php?mimfile=crypto/awippolicy.txt

Briefly, we would add in our criticism of that Popoy article that imperialist super-exploitation IS a relevant part of the Filipino relations of production--the mode of production. There are external exploiters as well as internal ones. Popoy shows no knowledge of super-exploitation in that article and that accounts for his mystery on "semi-feudalism." At MIM, we consider it one of our top four missions to clarify, expose and make concrete the global super-exploitation of imperialism. It is mainly for this reason that we reply to this article, because most of the topics discussed would be covered by Mao already.

If the Philippines is commodified it was on behalf of the imperialist country bourgeoisie using a puppet-state (extra-economic coercion) to stunt the development of the national bourgeoisie. Unlike Popoy, we believe there is no comparison between French domination of Russia in Lenin's day and U.$. domination of the Philippines today. It's not just a question of relative development but who is in charge of that development, domestic or foreign exploiters. Even so, the bourgeoisie in Russia was not strong enough to complete democratic revolution without unleashing a process that led to Lenin. Nor was the Russian bourgeoisie strong enough to create a majority-exploiter country. From subsequent developments in political economy we can see that Russia "barely made it" into the ranks of imperialists. Since that time, it would be tough to say that any other new countries made it into the ranks of the imperialists. The other 200 countries were "too late," because the existing imperialists made their weight felt increasingly in the whole world. If Popoy has the dynamics of the Philippines down correctly and the 1968 Philippines was more advanced than Lenin's 1890s Russia, then why is not the Philippines an imperialist country by now? Clearly Popoy missed something, because according to Lenin, Russia went through the capitalist ranks and became imperialist.

What Popoy does is take the achievements of u.$. imperialism in the Philippines and call them "capitalism." And certainly from a U.$. point-of-view, it is capitalism. But it is a relationship of super-exploitation because of local conditions in the Philippines called semi-feudalism. Calling the Philippines "capitalist" risks unnecessarily simplifying analysis and leaving the impression of a dynamic Filipino bourgeoisie. In contrast, Mao saw that at times the struggle against the foreign exploiters was principal while at other times the domestic class struggle could come to first place.

We did not see any convincing proof that there is no extra-economic coercion in the Philippines, though obviously the people there would know better than us. From what we have seen, the ownership of land is still a more or less coercive matter depending on ties to bureaucratic officials, not exchange and we've also seen Dole corporation go to the regime and get help in evicting land owners. What Marxism means by capitalist logic is economic processes--exchange between buyers and sellers on a free market. It does not mean a comprador decides who owns something.

Popoy tries to quote Lenin at length against Mao, but if we read Lenin carefully he admits fully that they made little headway in their peasant organizing. Lenin did not win on the strength of his agricultural analysis. It was Mao who spent many decades organizing peasants.

If we read Lenin carefully in "Imperialism" it's clear that he saw imperialism as decadent and that what Popoy is doing is more consonant with Trotskyism. Popoy is saying that imperialism succeeded in the Philippines in bringing bourgeois-style freedoms--that imperialism is not decadent because it smashed feudalism without help from Sison & company. It is Trotsky (often hiding behind Lenin) who saw imperialism as progressive in the then colonies. So we do not think Popoy reflects Leninism. We should not discard Popoy just because he disagrees with Lenin, but we should look into this more deeply whether Lenin or Trotsky was correct. We'd say subsequent history has proved Lenin right, not Trotsky.

Nonetheless, if that is all the disagreements were in Manila, then we would say that the two camps are talking about exploited and oppressed peoples and should try to unite behind a scientific line arrived at by two-line struggle. If they united behind the line in that article to leave Sison's party, then it was a deviation that turned into something worse. In the end, the topic of contention between the CPP and "Popoy" was misappropriation of funds and gangsterism against poor people--something MIM makes no claims to have investigated independently.

Notes:
1. http://www.philippinerevolution.org/cpp/astm/2000/2000e03.shtml
2. http://www.philippinerevolution.org/cgi-bin/statements/releases.pl?date=030208b;refer=kr;language=eng