Posted to the National Democratic Front Philippines (NDFP or NDF) Website (Mar 29, 2022): “The struggle of the Filipino people led by the CPP is truly incredible” (By Fred Engst, Professor, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing)
Review: “Imperialism in Turmoil and Socialism in Prospect” by Jose Maria Sison; Julieta de Lima (editor), INPS, 2022
It is a great honor for me to present a review of professor Sison’s latest book: “Imperialism in Turmoil and Socialism in Prospect”.
This huge volume of writings in front of us was just one year’s work! It is impressive indeed. I wish I have 10% of professor Sison’s energy, and he is 83 years old.
Perhaps we should thank Covid, which made a lot of people stay at home, and some of them did a lot of writing and teaching online, instead of attending too many endless meetings! (Just kidding.)
Since the book is too thick for me to go through in a short time, I will focus mainly on parts that are related to China.
It is clear from his writings that as a young revolutionary in his 20’s, professor Sison was inspired greatly by the Chinese revolution and by the GPCR
1.
He took home Mao’s teachings to heart and lead a revolutionary movement that is getting stronger every day.
The revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people in the last 50 plus years is conducted, frankly, in one of the most difficult periods in the world history, from a revolutionary perspective.
From Pairs commune to the October Revolution there was a nearly 50 years of lull in people’s struggle, and from the 1970’s to recently, there was also nearly a 50-year lull of worldwide revolutionary struggle, with the proclamation of the “end of history” at its peak.
So, the struggle of the Filipino people led by the CPP is truly incredible when looking from this perspective. It started just at the end of the last tidal wave of worldwide revolutionary struggle, and it persisted all the way to the next tidal wave of uprising of the worldwide revolutionary struggle that we can see clearly on the horizon.
Hardly any other people’s revolutionary struggle that combines underground and above ground lasted that long. It’s experience in armed struggle as well as in mass work in the labor movement, the peasants’ movement, the women’s movement, the students’ movement, the urban poor, etc. will make it well prepared to take the opportunity presented by the current worldwide crisis of capitalism.
In contrast, the history of the Chinese revolution was predominantly a history of armed struggle. Their experience in doing mass work in the urban setting was somewhat limited, for the communist working in the so call “white area” was more or less wipe out with an ultra-left line. Thus, after the revolution, the issue of how to conduct mass work under socialism suffered from the lack of that experience, and as a consequence, the emergence of elitism, sectarianism, commandism, if that is a word that I can use, proliferated. How to be sure that the vanguards stay as vanguards became acute. This was the main focus of the GPCR.
On the contrary, the Filipino revolution has been a long history of combining armed struggle with the mass work in the urban settings. With over 5 decades of experience doing work in both areas, the prospect of continuing the revolution under socialism will be much brighter, if the lessons of the GPCR is learned correctly.
That is where Sison’s new book comes into play.
We can see a tremendous wealth of experience in leading the Filipino struggle during the last 50 years expressed in this volume. It has strategies in conducting underground guerilla warfare, conducting above ground mass movements, works in the unite front, etc.
Beside his writings on the Filipino struggle, there is also a host of writing on the current international situation. In particular, the role of the newly rising imperialist power is also very much present in professor Sison’s current writings.
This part on page 201 is so true, that I want to read it out loud:
After congratulating itself for a long time for helping China restore capitalism and integrate itself in the world capitalist system and become its main partner in carrying out the neoliberal policy of imperialist globalization, the US is now resentful about China having maintained a two-tiered economy of state and private monopoly capitalism and is regretful about having outsourced manufacturing to China in a big way and allowed it to earn large export surpluses and about having given to China all the opportunities to acquire higher technology from the US through direct investments on US plants in China and through Chinese academics gaining access to US research laboratories and R & D facilities of US companies.
Condemning the Duterte regime for catering to the newly emerging imperialist power is a constant theme in this book, as it should be.
There are so many other high points in the book that I don’t have the time to read them thoroughly. I want to share just a few points that caught my eyes.
I agree with the points raised in his statement “On Semifeudalism”. To judge the nature of a society, the key is to analyze the nature of the ruling class. If the ruling class is mostly made up with industrial capitalist, then it is a capitalist society. Otherwise, if the “ruling classes are big comprador capitalists and landlords, not yet the industrial capitalists”, then it is not a capitalist society, which clearly is the case for the Philippines.
This line of reasoning is also the key in understanding the nature of the Soviet Union from 1950’s to 1991, and for China after 1976.
Capitalist societies don’t all ware the same clothes. Those that emerged from feudal societies looked more or less one way, and those that emerged from restoring capitalism from former socialist societies looked very much different. In particular, they might maintain planned economies for the interest of the respective ruling class, the ruling parties might still claim to be communist parties, and there might not be open labor markets, etc. But the relationship between the working class and the ruling class is the same as those that in an openly capitalist society. In particular, the working-class masses don’t have any say in running the society, have no right to organize, etc. The implosion of the Soviet Union made this point clear, for the ruling class didn’t change before or after the implosion, whereas the nature of the Chinese ruling class is a bit harder for outsider to see through.
In this light, I might not understand the reasonings behind all of professor Sison’s statements about some of the so-called socialist countries. Some places he gives in-depth analysis of his point of view, while other places he tends to make statement without explaining the reasoning behind it, at least I have not seen his reasonings. For example, the analysis of the nature of PDRK as a socialist country is puzzling. True, PDRK is a staunch fighter against imperialism. But to classify it as a socialist society is somewhat bewildering. The reference on controlling the spread of Covid where he attributed the success of countries like Cuba, DPRK, and Vietnam, etc. for having socialist characteristics makes one wonder what is the definition of socialism, and how China is not under such a definition.
Nevertheless, the spirit of a revolutionary that is determined to change this world that we suffer under is very clear and inspiring in this book.#
https://ndfp.org/the-struggle-of-the-filipino-people-led-by-the-cpp-is-truly-incredible/
