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Friday April 03, 2020 21:51 by Simoun Magsalin - Bandilang Itim bandilangitimph at gmail dot com
The politics in the Philippine archipelago is dominated by hierarchical and alienating politics as represented by reformism and National Democracy. Against these the paper forwards the liberatory politics of anarchism. The paper introduces anarchist concepts such as egalitarian organizing, mutual aid, and direct action for people unfamiliar with these concepts. After situating anarchism in the anti-authoritarian struggles in the archipelago, the paper also argues for a shift in the anarchist politics of the archipelago from an autonomist anarchism towards a revolutionary politics as a social movement. There is a necessity for a liberatory politics in the Archipelago known as the Philippines and as anarchists we think Anarchism has the framework to fill this need. The dominant forms of politics we have now are insufficient for developing a liberatory politics in the archipelago. This liberatory politics becomes a necessity because politics in the Philippines is currently an alienating affair—a politics done to people rather than people doing politics. We are also dominated by domineering structures and institutions like the market, capitalism, and the state. Against these we forward the liberatory politics of anarchism for a world beyond domination.
To add, direct action directly changes the terrain of struggle against capital and domination. Through its interventions, direct action shapes the capacities and agency of the persons doing the action and makes them full subjects in their politics. Through a strike for example, the workers involved learn they have power over their boss and this gives them the capacity to demand more and more concessions. Using direct action instead of relying on mediated forms of struggle like representative politics is a major part in anarchist theory and praxis.[21] Using the unmediated politics of direct action implies a rejection of the mediated politics of states and vanguards. Instead of states or vanguard parties, anarchists would forward the use of horizontal and egalitarian organizing. A reason why anarchists use egalitarian organization is that it prefigures the kind of liberated society we seek to bring about. By prefiguration we mean that the means we use now foreshadows and envisages the future we want to bring about. Prefiguration is a unity of means and ends—in this case, egalitarian means for a liberatory end. Prefigurative politics means building the world we want to see in the here and now.[22] Egalitarian organizing also means eschewing hierarchy in our organizations. This does not necessarily mean eschewing leaders, but rather building the capacities for everyone to lead and cooperate. Some alternatives to leaders in egalitarian organizing is the rotation of tasks that normally leaders do. Instituting egalitarian organizing also does not mean rejecting scaling up our organizations. Rather, scaling up egalitarian organizing means that agency and decision-making flows from the bottom–up rather top–bottom. This can be done with the use of mandated delegates. Mandated delegates cannot decide for the group they represent like representatives in congress do. The group they represent decides the mandate of the delegate and what that delegate can say or do. Alternatively, if the delegate has a mandate for negotiation or representation in a council or assembly, what they do is subject to ratification from the group they came from. If these delegates overstep or fail their mandates, they can be immediately recalled and removed as delegate. Delegates can be chosen through sortition or rotation, though electing or consensus is also used. These methods are few examples of preventing the concentration of power in a position and retaining agency and political subjectivity on the individuals and preventing the concentration of power in positions. Egalitarian organizing helps preserve freedom and individuality of those making decisions. While anarchists believe in freedom, we do not believe in burgis notions of freedom and burgis individuality. Freedom to starve, the freedom to exploit, the freedom to of choosing our boss—these are no freedoms at all! Our freedom is based on the communization of social life, where our freedom is guarded and enhanced by the freedom of those around us. Only when society as a whole is liberated will we be free to fully express our individuality, free from the constraints of domination. Until then, individuality under capitalism would usually be limited to consumption and the demands of capital. Our freedom is bound up together and we will be free when we regard our fellow siblings as equals and free. The possibility for freedom and total liberation opens up in a social revolution. A social revolution is not a simple change of leaders like the EDSA 1/People Power Revolution of 1986 and the EDSA 2 of 2001. It is not a coup by the vanguard party and the takeover of government. A social revolution is the blossoming of possibilities. It is a time when what was previously thought unthinkable enters the realm of possibility. It is a time for a break with the past and a new way of doing things. It is social transformation in the political, social, economic, and interpersonal relations. A social revolution is liberating because the illusions of control by capital and the state have shattered and the people learn that they have their own power to enact change as full subjects in their own right. Social revolutions like those in the past in Russia, Spain, and Cuba are inherently liberatory where people spontaneously develop new forms of social relations that heighten their agency and political subjectivity. Revolutionary anarchists agitate for this social revolution because a break with the past is the best time for the promulgation of libertarian ideas and practices.[23] These anarchist theories and praxis have applications for the archipelago. After all, anarchism is not a foreign western idea being supplemented into Philippine soil, it is an idea about liberation and the universalization of this liberation. Anarchism is universalizable because freedom is universalizable.[24] The ideas that people can and should manage their own affairs, that workers should manage their workplaces, that indigenous peoples are the best managers of their land, and that a community in discussion with its citizens are its best administrators are all universalizable. Just as it is inevitable that the labor under the capitalist process necessarily creates more value than what is paid to the laborer in order to maintain profit margins, anarchism holds that where there is authority, there is tension against it; where there is hierarchy in decision-making, its alienation from the disempowered will be felt. Because of this universalizablity, the principles of anarchism—of opposition to tyranny, to capitalism, to hierarchy, and to the state—are reborn in each and every generation. The ideas of anarchy was born to the ancient Taoists meditating upon the wu-wei and wu-jin, and to ancient Skeptics and Cynics of the Hellenic world. Anarchy was reborn to the anarchist theorists of the 19th century and to the anarchists revolutionaries of 20th century in Shinmin, Ukraine, Spain. The hope for anarchy lives again today in the libertarian revolutionaries of our own time in Rojava, Chiapas, and Kabylia. Where there is tyranny, there will be opposition to it; where there is injustice, a cry for liberation. Anarchism is not its theorists or revolutionists—Bakuninism, Proudhonianism, Kropotkinism, or Makhnovism. Anarchism is an-archos, without rulers. Should all anarchists today be killed by the vilest reaction, should such a reaction burn all the books of anarchist theory and erase the memory of libertarian praxis, anarchism will not die for the very essence of freedom, of opposition to authority, of a liberated society, cannot die. Indeed, anarchism was already wiped out once in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines in the early 20th century yet in these countries anarchism reemerges from its ashes, again ready to rally to cause of liberty and freedom. Thus, we anarchists finding ourselves in this archipelago known as the Philippines have not come to the conclusion of the necessity for an anarchist politics because of what an old writer had to say or what dead revolutionists had done. We have been convinced for the necessity of an anarchist politics because we believe in the necessity of freedom in all things. We believe that this freedom then necessitates an opposition to capitalism, to hierarchy, to the state. We believe in building popular power where people would fulfill themselves as full subjects in their politics rather than mediated by those from above. We believe in the freedom to enjoy the work we want to do rather than being dominated by work. We believe in the freedom to develop our capacities to our fullest abilities for our own sake rather than that of profit. We believe in the freedom to manage our own lives and of the things we hold in common. We believe in freedom and total liberation. Towards an Anarchism in the Archipelago Where does anarchism then situate itself in the archipelago known as the Philippines? Historically, it is plausible that there existed indigenous groups in the archipelago that organized non-hierarchically and therefore anarchically. After all, the Ifugao people carved the very mountains in a monumental effort all without use of governments or states. However it is mistaken to proclaim that anarchy was the mode of governance before colonization as this falls into a romantic notion of a ‘noble savage’ or a ‘pure’ indigeneity unsullied by the state. In reality, indigenous peoples—indeed all peoples—have widely diverse ways of organizing themselves. There have been hunter-gatherers that organize hierarchically and urban people that organize in an egalitarian manner.[25] Where Anarchism can situate itself in the archipelago is in the history of struggle against authority. Anarchism in the archipelago is but a young member in the long line of indigenous opposition to colonial authority and domination. Roger White says it best that anarchism finds itself as part of a family of other anti-authoritarian struggles throughout history:
Thus working within this post-colonial framework we find that the Indokumentado (the undocumented natives) and the rebels of the Dagohoy Rebellion who resisted the efforts of the Spanish colonial authority to constrain them to labor camps to be the natural forebears to an anarchism in the archipelago. Anarchism in the archipelago situates itself in the innumerable acts of resistance against the colonizers and their institutional descendant in the state. While anarchism is a relatively recent phenomenon, anarchistic elements very much already exist in the archipelago for as long as there has been resistance to tyranny and greed. A bookmark in the situating an anarchism in the archipelago is Isabelo de los Reyes. Tutored by anarchists and revolutionary socialists while exiled in Catalonia, Isabelo de los Reyes brought Marxist and Anarchist theories to the Philippines in 1901 during the American colonial period. He used the principles of Marx and Malatesta to set up the Union Obrera Democratica (UOD), the first labor union federation in the Philippines. While not specifically anarchist, the UOD did incorporate mutual aid and direct action into their praxis and was a thorn on the side of the American colonial administration.[27] A later example of anarchistic elements in Philippine history is the Diliman Commune which was a student uprising against the Marcos administration in 1971. While the uprising was ideologically influenced by National Democracy, it contained several anarchistic elements. Being a spontaneous uprising, it was not dominated and directed by a vanguard party. Revolutionary students and faculty used direct action in defense of their commune instead of relying on representatives and mediators. Power was not monopolized by a few select leaders and decisions were made in an egalitarian manner in councils and assemblies using consensus.[28] Anarchistic elements also emerge in more contemporary times. Land and housing struggles in the Philippines are sometimes fought with direct action. The urban housing group Kadamay in 2017 used direct action to occupy and directly expropriate empty homes in Bulacan by occupying them with families in need of a home. They were also able to defend this expropriation through direct action to the point of even President Duterte conceding the issue. Indeed, they were even decried as “anarchists,” much to the chagrin of their national democratic orientation.[29] We also see direct action in the countryside. Peasant groups use direct action to till idle land they do not own in a practice called bungkalan. Instead of relying on the notoriously slow and corrupt Department for Agrarian Reform to expropriate land from landlords and oligarchs, these farmers do it themselves and hurt no-one except property rights in the process. Peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas has called bungkalan a “collective efforts of farmers to assert genuine land reform.”[30] Bungkalan then becomes a form of resistance against feudal landholders who hoard land for themselves. Direct action is also practiced by environmental activists. In Palawan, environmental activists take it upon themselves to confiscate chainsaws and guns from illegal loggers and poachers.[31] These activists understand that if the state cannot protect their environments, they will have to do it themselves, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Direct action also dovetails with mutual aid. After the reemergence of anarchism in the archipelago, Food Not Bombs organizations were set up as systems of mutual aid/bayanihan. Food Not Bombs are networks of mutual aid that freely distribute food among indigent people. These networks are organized along anarchist lines using voluntary association and egalitarian organizing.[32] Rather than waiting for an authority to organize food distribution or lobbying for such a thing in congress, Food Not Bombs does it themselves. They are able to distribute food to people all the while rejecting the use of hierarchical organization. Beyond anarchistic elements in existing movements, it can be argued that anarchy already exists all around us, as the pamphlet Anarki: Akin ang Buhay Ko suggests. For the authors of Anarki, anarchy is mutual cooperation without need of coercion or payment. Anarchy is whenever we relate to each other as equals and peers and whenever we discuss among ourselves the issues we have instead of relying on an authority figure. We already naturally organize ourselves in egalitarian and non-hierarchical lines when we organize among friends. Human cooperation is already natural.[33] What anarchists want is for all social relations to be organized under egalitarian lines with free association and free from hierarchy and coercion. These examples of anarchistic elements—Mutual aid/bayanihan, direct action and egalitarian organizing—are then not foreign ideas. They already exist today in our lives and in our contexts. These elements—which are already anarchistic—can be reused for an anarchist praxis. What anarchists in the archipelago want is to universalize these anarchistic elements and universalize freedom and liberation. Currently, anarchists in the archipelago have been able to create spaces for autonomy and mutual aid such as infoshops and Foot Not Bombs networks. Infoshops are spaces for the dissemination and propagation of anarchist materials and are sites for autonomous organizing. These Infoshops and Food Not Bombs are embedded in urban communities and conduct community outreach and mutual aid activities. These are spaces where anarchist principles can be practiced and taught. When there is a need for local action such as in resisting evictions, these local anarchist groups mobilize for these tasks. However, while creating spaces for autonomy away from state, capital, and hierarchies are good it is still insufficient for liberation for revolutionary anarchists. We revolutionary anarchists are not content with spaces for autonomy, we desire total liberation for all. More than an autonomous anarchism, we must forward a revolutionary anarchism in the archipelago. Much more than creating autonomous spaces, this revolutionary anarchism aims to challenge capital and the state. By revolutionary we mean a movement to abolish the current state of things, to challenge hierarchy and domination and not merely carve spaces for autonomy. For anarchism to become revolutionary, it must become a social movement. Anarchism as a social movement entails organizing at the point-of-production and organizing communities. We have already established that anarchistic elements already exist in social movements in the archipelago. What anarchists would like are these social movements to consciously organize in non-hierarchical and egalitarian manner and use the tools promoted by anarchism like direct action, solidarity, and mutual aid. By forwarding such a liberatory politics, these social movements have the potential to become spaces for creative deliberation that expands the agency of the people involved to become full subjects in their politics. Such an anarchist social movement ought show people that they have the collective power to emancipate themselves. Such an anarchist social movement would do so not as an authority figure, but as a partner and collaborator in liberation. As the anarchist theorist Errico Malatesta noted,
Thus anarchists are not the kind of revolutionaries who “grant” liberation to others, as we think liberation is a thing that can only be done by those oppressed. As the classic socialist adage goes: the liberation of the worker is the task of the worker alone. Liberation is not granted, it is built, taken and defended. This liberation, as Malatesta also noted, is tied up together and requires the liberty of everybody to be fully enjoyed. As anarchists, we must be in the business of “arousing the sentiment of rebellion” of people and allow them to know they have this power to liberate themselves when organized. By organizing a consciously liberatory politics of anarchism, the people involved would begin to foster the kinds of social relations that prefigures the liberated society we want to create. Engendering the development of social relations based on solidarity and mutuality is then becoming the liberated future we aim for. Such a revolutionary anarchism would value the unity of means and ends, using liberatory means to reach a liberated future.[35] It would reject statecraft and focus a deliberative politics where people would be full subjects in their politics. This anarchist social movement would be the scaling up of anarchist praxis. Groups would federate into larger organizations while keeping political subjectivity and the power over decision-making to the lowest level of the individual. Scaling up does not necessarily mean separating the individuals from decision-making if the scaling up is consciously egalitarian and non-hierarchical. We have mentioned before that mandated delegates can be used and whose positions can be organized in such a way that agency is retained with the individual. Such techniques and similar creative measures can be used to consciously prevent alienation in politics. Being a revolutionary social movement, anarchists aim for these social movements to eventually challenge capital and the state. By this we mean that both erosion of the power of capital and the state and by building a counterpower independent of capital and the state. This erosion can be done through direct action like strikes, occupations, and the forcing of concessions, slowly eroding the power of the state and capital while expanding spaces for autonomy and freedom. Challenging capital can be not just going on strike but returning to work in expropriated workplaces by using direct action to occupy workplaces under new management—those of the workers themselves. Building a counterpower would mean creating alternative institutions from the state like creating systems that fulfill needs instead of profits. One way this can be done is through organizing free assemblies among communities where people can discuss what needs and challenges that need addressing and collectively collaborate on how to fulfill these needs. These free assemblies could decide to implement solidarity economies that exchanges goods between urban and rural communities without the use of market or state mechanisms.[36] Gradually people would disengage from the institutions of the state and capital. In a social revolutionary situation these alternative institutions and counterpower would compete with the state and capital for legitimacy, a situation called dual power. In a dual power situation, the two sources of power inevitably clash, forcing one or the other to dissolve.[37] In such a situation, anarchists hope for the victory of the counterpower comprised of social movements and alternative institutions over the forces of capital and the state. As revolutionary anarchists we aim to build a foundations for a social revolution—a mighty confrontation between the people and their social movements versus the state, capital, and the forces of domination. In a social revolution, what was previously thought to be impossible or unthinkable enters into the realm of possibility. In a social revolution, the people find they no longer have to listen to the demands and orders of the oligarchs, of the bosses, or of the cadres. They find a new sense of revolutionary agency to create enact history as full subjects in their own rights, no longer as mere objects where history is done to them. A social revolution makes possible the creation of new social relationships that reject capitalism and hierarchy. It is in this social revolution that the potentiality for a liberatory politics can blossom into liberation. We cannot say when such a social revolution arrives, but we must be resolute in building political consciousness among the working class and dispossessed. Their consciousness must be awakened to realize that they have the power to directly change their own lives if they organize themselves in popular power. For now it is vital that for anarchism to become revolutionary, it must become a social movement in the archipelago. This transition from autonomous anarchist spaces towards a revolutionary anarchist social movement is possible and has been done before in other countries. For example, anarchists in Java, Indonesia started out in a similar position to anarchists in the Philippines. Just as it was in the Philippines, Anarchism was totally wiped out in Indonesia in the early 20th century. Yet the desire for freedom cannot die and anarchism reemerged in Indonesia the 1980s. In its reemergence, anarchists in Indonesia also started with building spaces for autonomy and mutual aid but in time organized a revolutionary workers movement in the Persaudaraan Pekerja Anarko Syndicalis (PPAS).[38] Now Java has a vibrant anarchist scene with links with other international anarchist activities. We think revolutionary anarchism in the Philippines could take a similar road to becoming a social movement. The Tasks of Revolutionary Anarchists in the Archipelago In forwarding a liberatory politics in the archipelago then, the task of the revolutionary anarchist militants in the archipelago would be to move past propagation of anarchist ideas towards building anarchism as a social movement. This liberatory politics becomes urgent in the face of the inutility of reformism and the hierarchical domineering politics of the National Democrats. Being revolutionary anarchists, we aim to build a social movement that can challenge capital and the state, not be merely content with autonomous spaces. Challenging capital and the state would take the form of scaling up our efforts. Rather than atomized and isolated struggles in the workplace and communities, social movements can federate and scale up. What follows is not yet a program, but rather some suggestions for what the tasks of the revolutionary anarchists in the archipelago could be. This this not exhaustive nor definitive, but rather a start of a discussion on what the liberatory politics of anarchism could look like. Thus, what revolutionary anarchists in the archipelago could do is to:
We ask you to join us as our liberation is tied up together. You can start in your own workplace and communities. You can start with kindness and resist with rage. You can scale up your efforts by coordinating with other efforts and then federating. You can reach out to others who also struggle for total liberation and work together for a better world. A better world is possible and is already being built. Against hierarchy and domination there is solidarity and cooperation. Join us in our struggle for a liberated politics, for a world beyond work, beyond the state, beyond capital, beyond hierarchy and domination itself! For a liberatory politics in the archipelago! For freedom and total liberation! Mabuhay ang anarkiya! Mabuhay ang kalayaan! Mabuhay ang rebolusyong sosyal! Bibliography Anarchist Initiative for Direct Democracy Kolektibo; NON-Collective, Anarki: Akin ang Buhay Ko. Quezon City: NON-Collective. n.d. 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November 4, 2014. https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/viewfinder/2014/11/march-progress-philippines-2014112122317640995.html (accessed 2020-02-18). Cuevas-Hewitt, Marco (a.ka. Maryamdeluz). “Sketches of an Archipelagic Poetics of Postcolonial Belonging.” Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 2007. https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/budhi/article/viewFile/438/433 (accessed 2020-02-18). Alternative version: http://libcom.org/blog/sketches-archipelagic-poetics-postcolonial-belonging-25022020 (accessed 2020-02-18). Damier, Vadim; Limano, Kirill. “Anarchism in Indonesia.” libcom.org, 2017. https://libcom.org/library/short-essay-about-history-anarchism-indonesia (accessed 2020-02-18). DSA Libertarian Socialist Caucus, Dual Power: A Strategy To Build Socialism In Our Time. The Anarchist Library, 2019. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dsa-libertarian-socialist-caucus-dual-power (accessed 2020-02-18). de Jong, Alex. “Hunting Specters: A Political History of the Purges in the Communist Party of the Philippines.” Academia.edu. n.d. https://www.academia.edu/7681257/Hunting_Specters._Purges_in_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Philippines (accessed 2020-02-18). Alternative link: http://libcom.org/history/hunting-specters-political-history-purges-communist-party-philippines (accessed 2020-02-18). Douglass, Frederick; BlackPast. “(1857) Fredrick Douglass, ‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress.’” Black Past. Janurary 25, 2007. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle-there-no-progress/ (accessed 2020-02-18). Garcia, Robert Francis. To Suffer Thy Comrades: How the Revolution Decimated its Own, 3rd Ed. Mandaluyong: Anvil, 2001. Gelderloos, Peter. Anarchy Works. The Anarchist Library, 2011. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works (accessed 2020-02-18). Graeber, David. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2004). It is available on the Anarchist Library, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-fragments-of-an-anarchist-anthropology (accessed 2020-02-18). Haraway, Donna J. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science , Technology , and Socialist-Feminism In The Late Twentieth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. See an online version: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fictionnownarrativemediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/manifestly_haraway_---.....pdf (accessed 2020-02-18). Kropotkin, Pëtr. The State: Its Historic Role. The Anarchist Library, 2009. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-state-its-historic-role (accessed 2020-02-18). Kropotkin, Pëtr. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. 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National Democratic Front, “Communiqué: Second Congress Communist Party of the Philippines.” National Democratic Front of the Philippines. March 29, 2017. (Archived at the Internet Archive.) https://web.archive.org/web/20170611031106/https://www.ndfp.org/communique-second-congress-communist-party-of-the-philippines/ (accessed 2020-02-18). NDFP Reciprocal Working Committee on Social and Economic Reforms. “Draft Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER).” National Democratic Front of the Philippines. January 2018. https://ndfp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/NDFP-CASER-2017-Web-version-Ver2.0.pdf (accessed 2020-02-18). Nobleza, Randy; Pairez, Jong. “Ang Potensyal na Anarkistang Tendensiya ng Diliman Commune.” Gasera Journal. n.d. It is also available on libcom: https://libcom.org/blog/ang-potensyal-na-anarkistang-tendensiya-ng-diliman-commune-23022020 (accessed 2020-02-18). Ranada, Pia. “Duterte lets Kadamay have Bulacan housing units” Rappler. April 4. 2017. https://www.rappler.com/nation/166062-duterte-kadamay-housing-police-soldiers (accessed 2020-02-18). Red Plateaus. “What is Prefigurative Politics?” YouTube. February 14, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkMIVW7znZI (accessed 2020-02-18). Rousset, Pierre. “The CPP-NPA-NDF ‘Hit List’—a preliminary report.” International Viewpoint. March 2005. http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article616 (accessed 2020-02-18). Alternative link: http://libcom.org/history/cpp-npa-ndf-hit-list-preliminary-report (accessed 2020-02-18). Scott, William Henry. The Union Obrera Democratica: First Filipino Labor Union. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1992. van Outryve, Sixtine. “Cooperation Jackson: Building a Solidarity Economy in the Deep South.” ROAR Magazine, 2019. https://roarmag.org/magazine/dual-power-then-and-now-from-the-iroquois-to-cooperation-jackson/ (accessed 2020-02-18). White, Roger. “Post Colonial Anarchism.” The Anarchist Library. 2016. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/roger-white-post-colonial-anarchism (accessed 2020-02-18). Wikipedia contributors. “Pandi housing project occupation.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pandi_housing_project_occupation&oldid=931829485 (accessed 2020-02-18). Wikiquote contributors, “Lucy Parsons.” Wikiquote. n.d. https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Lucy_Parsons&oldid=2718856 (accessed 2020-02-18). Endnotes [1] Ditsi Carolino & Pabelle Manikan, The March to Progress in the Philippines, (Al Jazeera, 2014). [2] The National Democratic movement (often abbreviated as NatDem) dominates the Philippine Left. The largest National Democratic organization, the National Democratic Front (NDF) is officially led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). As a movement, National Democracy also has an electoral wing in the Makabayan Bloc which is not officially connected to the NDF and the CPP but clearly share ideological foundations as National Democratic Mass Organizations (NDMOs). [3] CPP-NPA stand for “Communist Party of the Philippines” and its armed component “New People’s Army.” An alternative acronym also used is CPP-NPA-NDF when referring to the movement as a bloc. [4] National burgis is the same as National bourgeoisie for our international readers. Burgis is a Filipino and Philippine English form for bourgeoisie. This article will prefer to use the Philippine English form of burgis. [5] This distinction between statecraft and politics is borrowed from Murray Bookchin. See for example “The Ecological Crisis and the Need to Remake Society” in Murray Bookchin, The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy, (Verso, 2015) pg 39–40. It is also available on the Anarchist Library. See also Murray Bookchin, The Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice, (The Anarchist Library, 2018). [6] This usage of subject and object in terms of agency is entirely different from subjectivity and objectivity when talking about opinions and facts. This usage of subject is also different from subjected to a thing, like subjects of a crown, or subject of ridicule. [7] Lucy Parsons, Lucy Parsons, (Wikiquote, quoted from Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity – Writings & Speeches, 1878–1937). [8] Article X, Section 3 of the Philippine 1987 Constitution enshrines the power of recall, but only against local officials. In practice, recall is a difficult and long drawn-out process that is rarely invoked despite recurring outrage against local officials. An anarchist system of recall of delegates given executive mandates has—in theory and practice—prevented the concentration of power into particular offices. The libertarian organization of governance in Zapatista Chiapas and in Rojava similarly offers an alternative system that counteracts the concentration of power that we think can work in the archipelago. [9] Frederick douglass, (1857) Frederick Douglass, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress,” (Black Past, 2007). [10] A samahan is a people’s association for our international readers. [11] We will be, of course, presenting an anarchist critique of National Democracy. For a Marxist-Leninist critique of National Democracy we would point the reader towards the critique of Filemon Lagman, also known as Ka Popoy. Selections of his critique are available on the Marxist Internet Archive. A critique of the so-called Rejectionist factions among the Philippine Left will be dealt with another time. [12] There is evidence that the CPP-NPA-NDF has a hit-list for socialist groups and personalities outside their sphere of influence. Cadres and activists from both revolutionary and social democratic groups have already been murdered with the CPP-NPA-NDF being suspect. See The CPP-NPA-NDF “Hit List”—a preliminary report, (International Viewpoint, 2005). [13] “The Second Congress was composed of 120 delegates, both attending and non-attending. Of those who attended, around 30% were above 60 years old, while around 60% were in the 45–59 years age bracket, while 15% were 44 years and younger. The oldest delegate was 70 years old. The youngest delegate was 33 years old.” From Communist Party of the Philippines, Communiqué: Second Congress Communist Party of the Philippines (NDFP.org, 2017). It is archived on the Internet Archive. [14] For an account of the purges committed by the CPP-NPA, read former NPA militant and purge survivor Robert Francis Garcia, To Suffer Thy Comrades: How the Revolution Decimated its Own (2001, Anvil). For a political history of the purges, read Alex de Jong, Hunting Specters: A Political History of the Purges in the Communist Party of the Philippines (academia.edu). [15] This class collaboration is made more apparent if we review Philippine Society and Revolution (a seminal text of National Democracy), and the Draft Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER) (drafted in January 2017). Space precludes us from quoting in full, but it suffices for our needs to say that there are references in these texts that suggests that the party can collaborate with sections of the national burgis under a national democratic framework. This is hardly socialism. Indeed, Ka Popoy makes similar observations in PPDR: Class Line vs. Mass Line. [16] We genuinely hopes that the current peace accord in the Bangsamoro holds up, but as we saw in the Marawi Siege of 2017, having a peace accord is not a guarantee for peace. [17] The definition is outlined in Pëtr Kropotkin, The State: Its Historic Role, (The Anarchist Library, 1896), Part I. [18] For reading on uniting on the basis of affinity rather than identity, we would point the reader to maryamdeluz a.k.a Marco Cuevas-Hewitt, Sketches of an Archipelagic Poetics of Postcolonial Belonging, (Quezon City, Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 2007). See also Donna Harroway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism In The Late Twentieth Century, (Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2016) pg 15–20. [19] For examples of mutual aid, see Pëtr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, (Anarchist Library, 2009), and Peter Gelderloos, Anarchy Works, (Anarchist Library, 2011). Both are available on the Anarchist Library. [20] Murray Bookchin, Toward an Ecological Society, (Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1980) p.48. [21] To read more on direct action, we would point the reader to “J.2 What is direct action?” in Ian McKay, An Anarchist FAQ, (Anarchist Writers, 2019). It is available online. [22] For an overview of prefigurative politics, see Red Plateaus, What is Prefigurative Politics? (YouTube, 2020). [23] To read more on social revolution, we would point the reader to “J.7 What do anarchists mean by ‘social revolution’?” in Ian McKay, An Anarchist FAQ, (Anarchist Writers, 2019). It is available online. [24] By extension, socialism is also universalizable. [25] See examples in David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Prickly Paradigm, 2004). [26] Roger White, Post Colonial Anarchism, (The Anarchist Library, 2016). [27] William Henry Scott, The Union Obrera Democratica: First Filipino Labor Union, (Quezon City, New Day, 1992), pg 13–18. [28] Randy Nobleza & Jong Pairez, Ang Potensyal na Anarkistang Tendensiya ng Diliman Commune, (Gasera Journal, n.d.). It is available on Libcom. [29] Pia Ranada, Duterte lets Kadamay have Bulacan housing units, (Rappler, 2017). For a timeline of the events, see also the well-cited Wikipedia article on the event, Wikipedia Editors, Pandi housing project occupation, (Wikipedia, n.d.). [30] Ryan Macasero, A closer look at ‘bungkalan’, the supposedly sinister plot, (Philippine Star, 2018). See also, Anna Bueno, In bungkalan, organic and sustainable farming is a mass movement, (CNN Philippines, 2019). [31] Nick Aspinwall, Threats, raids and murders stalk Filipino environment activists, (Al Jazeera, 2019). [32] For a history of the movement, see Taks A. Barbin, Ang Food Not Bombs sa Kapuluan, (Safehouse Infoshop, 2018). [33] Anarchist Initiative for Direct Democracy (AID) Kolektibo; NON-Collective, Anarki: Akin ang Buhay Ko, (AID Kolektibo, NON-Collective, n.d). [34] Errico Malatesta, An Anarchist Programme, (The Anarchist Library, 2020). [35] For a discussion of the unity of means and ends and the social reproduction of libertarian communism, see Anarchopac, Means and Ends: The Anarchist Critique of Seizing State Power, (Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation, May 2019). [36] For an example of a solidarity economy, see Cooperation Jackson. An introduction to the movement can be found at Sixtine van Outryve, Cooperation Jackson: Building a Solidarity Economy in the Deep South, (ROAR Magazine, 2019). [37] To learn about dual power as a strategy for challenging capital and the state, see DSA Libertarian Socialist Caucus, Dual Power: A Strategy To Build Socialism In Our Time, (The Anarchist Library, 2019). [38] Vadim Damier and Kirill Limano, Anarchism in Indonesia, (libcom.org, 2017). |
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