#cover s-m-simoun-magsalin-towards-an-anarchism-in-the-ph-1.png
#title Towards an Anarchism in the Philippine Archipelago
#author Simoun Magsalin
#SORTauthors Simoun Magsalin
#SORTtopics Anarchism, pamphlet
#date March 2020
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-03-30T22:00:00
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*.
** The Necessity for a Liberatory Politics
Let us analyze what kind of politics dominates our lives right now and
why we think these are insufficient for liberation.
At work we are subjected to the tyranny of the boss, who commands a
great deal of power over at least a third of our day. For those blessed
enough to forgo traditional bosses, the impersonal domination of the
market instead dominates their tasks, forcing enough productivity to pay
for daily needs. Under capitalism, we can indeed be our own terrible
boss. Ultimately, boss or no boss, our lives and our days are structured
around the extraction of labor: preparing for work, doing work, and
recovering from work, leaving us exhausted for things we would want to
do.
When not at work, we are assaulted by the scarcity imposed on us by
capitalism. We must pay exorbitant rents or pay back endless debt
because we were not fortunate enough to have the resources to care for
ourselves to begin with.
It is not enough that capitalism mines us for our labor, rent, and debt,
capitalism must literally mine our environment for value. Our very
ecologies are under assault by capitalists who wish to extract as much
as they can from it, leaving whole communities and their surrounding
environs devastated. Oftentimes, extracting wealth from the environment
intersects with colonialism where indigenous peoples are involved, with
capitalists and state bureaucrats conspiring to divorce them from their
homelands. Indeed this was most apparent in Casiguran, Aurora where
indigenous peoples were actively
[[https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/viewfinder/2014/11/march-progress-philippines-2014112122317640995.html][*being
dispossessed*]] of their land to make way for the Aurora Pacific
Economic Zone (APECO), a collaboration between the state, local
political dynasties, and capitalists.[1]
In the sphere of government, we are faced with alienation in the
politics of the state where so-called representatives are only
accountable every other year and who often do the bare minimum between
elections, all the while labour is immiserated, farmers are killed, and
indigenous peoples are dispossessed. And what of the large sections of
the government who are unelected—the bureaucrats, the appointees, the
police? Who are these people accountable to, and how can they be
removed?—if they can even be removed at all! So much of our lives is
decided by people who are effectively not accountable to us—the ballot
box notwithstanding. Ultimately, the politics of the state is
*statecraft*—the management of the state. It is consistently an
*alienated* politics done to people rather than by
people. By *political* *alienation,* we mean the overwhelming
powerlessness individuals have over the political affairs over society
and the meaninglessness of these politics that is engendered into these
individuals.
And what of President Rodrigo Duterte whose populist politics promised a
break in the governance of the archipelago? Has Duterte and Dutertismo
empowered the people of the archipelago? We think not. Dutertismo has
conquered the presidency by mixing reactionary politics with promises to
left groups. Dutertismo has ruled the political landscape since 2016,
yet it has proven itself at once incompetent at providing social
services and at the same time highly effective at maintaining and
reproducing its own power to the point of a
[[https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/02/war-on-drugs-war-on-poor/][*murderous
campaign*]] against the urban poor. The Duterte regime have proven
themselves divorced from the people and indeed outright malignant when
faced with environmental and human rights activism.
Outside Dutertismo, we find that oligarchy and political dynasties
dominate the state and its appendages in local government. Powerful
families use their power to plunder produce from the countryside,
immiserating and dispossessing agricultural workers, peasants, and
indigenous peoples in the process. In the cities these families convert
the capital they plundered from the countryside into capitalist
enterprises that dominate the markets of urban residents. Their economic
power is then translated into political power when the political
dynasties pay their way into government offices through expensive
electoral campaigns that others cannot afford.
Can we pin our hopes on an oppositional politics in the revolution of
the Maoist insurgency and National Democracy?[2] Unfortunately, the
Maoist CPP-NPA[3] and National Democrats have proven themselves content
with conservatively insisting on outdated guerrilla war tactics while
demanding for reform and reconciliation with the national bourgeoisie.
They ultimately have no program for social revolution and are content to
push for “national liberation”—really an attempt at class collaboration
with the national bourgeoisie. We find their vision to be insufficiently
liberatory.
Against the incessant extraction of value from our lives and our
environs and of the alienation and powerlessness felt, the struggle for
a liberatory politics becomes urgent. We think this need for a
liberatory politics can potentially be filled by the theory and praxis
of Anarchism.
Anarchism, whose ethos is inherently suspicious of hierarchies and
concentrated power, has the theoretical tools needed to counteract
alienation and powerlessness and fill the need for a liberatory
politics—indeed, an *unalienated* politics done *by* people where people
are made *subjects* in their own right rather than *objects* of
another’s power. We think Anarchism is suitable as a liberatory politics
for the archipelago that can move past hierarchies and the limitations
of reformism and National Democracy and empower people with the agency
to enact the change they wish to see.
Hereafter we shall refer to an alienating politics done to
people as statecraft, which includes the management of the
state and of power struggles to take state power by elected officials or
by a revolutionary party. Statecraft is mediated by power brokers like
elected politicians, bureaucrats, or party officials. Statecraft is
ultimately the monopoly of power by a few, whether these few are inside
or outside the state. Against statecraft, we forward an unmediated
*politics*, which we situate as the discursive actions between people
interacting with another as equals. *Politics* is us talking with
another discussing the problems we face in our lives and deciding
together how to move forward with the issues we face.[4] Politics is us
becoming *subjects* in our own politics rather than as *objects* of
statecraft and power plays. *Subject* here refers to a person who has
*agency* over their politics rather than as a *passive* observer or
sometime elector.[5] An unmediated politics is then the *unalienated*
politics done *by* people.
Anarchism, being against *hierarchy* and the *concentration of power*
into the hands of a few and for the development of *politics* as
unalienated and unmediated discourse and action, is the perspective that
we believe the archipelago needs for a liberatory politics. Hierarchy
and its consequence the concentration of power is a stupefying force.
The inferiors of the hierarchy learn to rely on their superiors for
guidance instead of relying on their own action. The superiors on the
other hand end up relying on the inferiors for everyday tasks. The two
dominant paradigms in the archipelago of reformism and National
Democracy do not hold these perspectives of opposition to hierarchy and
concentration of power as central to their paradigms and thus suffer for
it in the form of reproducing statecraft and an alienated politics.
** Against Reformism
The ‘unfinished’
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Power_Revolution][revolution
of
]][[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Power_Revolution][*EDSA*]]
that deposed the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was ultimately a revolution
of mere elites rather than a revolution of the whole people. The elites
changed, but social relations and structures of domination remained the
same. The potential for a social revolution in EDSA—a revolution where
the social relations between people are dramatically changed and the
possibility of new liberated social forms becomes palatable—was
apparently stillborn. Rather than new social relations and a
revolutionary new way of doing things, the oligarchs took over again,
replacing a Marcos dictatorship with a mixture of old and new cliques.
Instead of revolution, we merely got reform and more of the same.
The promise of liberal politics has become lost in the competing
interests of various oligarchic cliques. Nothing really changes, or if
there are changes, these are too little too late. Minimum wage,
contractualization, ecological destruction, neoliberal policies, RH Law,
indigenous dispossession, and land stolen from those who work the
land—all are symptomatic of reforms proving themselves inutile against
the issues of the day. Indeed liberal politics is subsumed into
oligarchic rule and even used as a site of plunder—as seen with
neoliberal policies where public services are made into corporate fiefs
like with our water and electricity in Metro Manila. Besides, “never be
deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth,” as
ex-slave[6] and anarchist Lucy Parsons once
[[https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Lucy_Parsons&oldid=2718856][*said*]].[7]
What she said was true for black liberation in the so-called United
States during the 19th century and it is still true for the
liberation from capital and the state in the 21st century.
Dutertismo does not break with the liberalism of past presidents.
Duterte’s populism has resulted in insincere promises and is all talk.
The electoral wing of National Democracy, the Makabayan bloc, shamefully
allied with Duterte back in 2015 and early 2016. Duterte was then an
infamous and controversial figure who was an outspoken murderer of the
urban poor in his home Davao City. The Makabayan bloc allying with an
outspoken murderer shows how congressional progressives betray their
principles in favor of opportunism in the arena of reform—indeed an
opportunism that resulted in almost no gains. The left-wing policies
promised by Duterte such as peace with CPP-NPA-NDF insurgency and an end
to contractualization have both collapsed into nothing—false promises by
Duterte used as a means of capturing power.
The non-National Democratic electoral socialists and social democrats
are equally guilty of opportunism. We have witnessed how the social
democratic Akbayan party-list practically attached themselves as the
left-wing of the Liberal Party during the regime of President Noynoy
Aquino, the predecessor of Duterte.
Congressional politics is fundamentally a politics that removes agency
from the people—it disempowers them by design. There is a hierarchy
between the representative with power and the supposed constituent below
them. Voting for a candidate every few years is not power, it is a mere
*image* of power—indeed a *spectacle*. The voter is merely a passive
spectator in the congressional process *mediated* by parties and
representatives. Voting a politician out of office is not control over
that politician when during their four- or six-year term they cannot be
recalled.[8] After winning, the representatives do not even have to
listen to the concerns of their voters. Meanwhile, the voters who did
not vote for them are simply not represented at all! Voting does not
empower the people; the most voting can do is prevent gains won in
previous skirmishes of class struggle from being rolled back. Indeed any
gains of the class struggle in congressional politics are ultimately
fragile gains, with the ever-present possibility of reaction from
oligarchs and capitalists rolling back gains. Congressional politics and
reformism ultimately renders voters and constituents as *objects* of the
power plays of mediators and representatives. Voters and
constituents—who can only spectate in these power plays of
statecraft—are not full subjects in their politics and are forced into a
passive and mediated role.
We think resources spent on building votes ought to be spent on building
a politics based on popular power instead. Building agency among the
disempowered is more important than providing them a mere image
of agency. Politics is too important to be left to electoral
politicians.
Reforms are the end-goal of reformism; in contrast, we anarchists seek
social revolution. Reformism and electoral politics risk transforming
social movements into defenders of capitalism and the welfare state in
order to defend the gains won through representatives. We are against
reformism because we are for a revolutionary politics that seeks a break
with the state and capital. That does not mean we are against reforms.
On the contrary, we think the best way to win reforms is through
building social movements based on popular power and an unmediated
politics where people become full subjects in their politics. These
social movements would use direct action to force concessions and
reforms from the state and similarly defend those reforms through direct
action as well. Reforms won through militant action are more durable
than those won through representatives alone. “Power concedes nothing
without a demand,” as Frederick Douglass
[[https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle-there-no-progress/][*said*]].[9]
By using direct action instead of relying on representatives, a social
movement builds the conditions of a revolutionary politics when in time
they can challenge the state and capital.
Building popular power is not easy—indeed it is more difficult than
canvassing votes—but if we want to build a liberatory politics that
could develop and defend real gains against reaction and oligarchic
plunderers, organizing a liberatory politics outside and beyond the
ballot box becomes a necessity.
** Beyond National Democracy
We do not doubt that National Democracy has made numerous gains in their
revolutionary struggle. The Maoists of the National Democrats have
created liberated barrios and conducted acts of sabotage against mining
operations. They have armed peasants and indigenous peoples against the
tyranny of landlords and landgrabbers. They have created networks of
*samahans*[10] and people’s organizations and created spaces for
proletarian and peasant democracy. They have unionized workers and
peasants and engaged in class struggle. Yet the politics they forward is
still the hierarchic and mediated politics of the vanguard party and the
potential alienation of a state. Our issues with National Democracy are
too numerous to fully discuss here. We will focus our critique on our
opposition to a vanguard party,the harms of building yet another state,
and aiming to seize state power instead of a liberated society free from
hierarchy and domination.[11] Going beyond National Democracy means
understanding why we need to reject the vanguard party and the state as
disempowering for the vast majority and for building an unmediated and
egalitarian politics.
Anarchists reject a vanguard party because we believe in the
universalization of political power and agency, not in its concentration
in certain party officials. In centralizing power, a vanguard party
concentrates revolutionary agency into a hierarchy within itself. In
contrast we believe revolutionary agency belongs to all the toilers and
dispossessed. The politics of a Leninist vanguard ultimately alienates
the people it tries to liberate—once again politics is something done
*to* the people, not done by the people. Because of its goal of
controlling the revolution, the vanguard party is a stoppage upon the
vitality of the revolutionary movement. Indeed, revolutionary action
done outside the control of the party is even opposed and threatened
with violence by the CPP-NPA. The Party is suspected of being behind the
murders of other revolutionary and social democratic activists after
their publication labeled other revolutionary and social democratic
personalities as “counterrevolutionary,” and those named started turning
up dead.[12] The Party is then hostile to socialist plurality and thus
is hostile to a social revolution which is fundamentally pluralistic.
How much power do rank-and-file communists of the party have on the
machinations of the CPP-NPA cadres? We doubt their influence is
considerable. Indeed, during the second congress of the Communist Party
of the Philippines last October 2016, the youngest delegate was 33 years
old at the time[13]—the CPP is an old boy’s club where the youth
rank-and-file have no sway! Indeed, it was only their second
congress in their 51 years of existence! All decisions are effectively
made by a small cadre, accountable to no-one.
Party officials have immense power—even power over life and death—and
are functionally only accountable to the central committee, which is
practically not accountability at all. This concentration of power has
had violent and fatal consequences for the committed communists cruelly
tortured and murdered during the purge campaigns by the CPP-NPA during
the 1980s.[14] Cadres who were accountable to no-one murdered their own
comrades in a fit of collective paranoia. If even without taking state
power we see the CPP-NPA brutally murdering their own communist
comrades, what more if they take state power? What more tyrannies would
they inflict on non-party folk? It would be state-sanctioned violence
recalling the worst of the Stalinist terrors.
The exclusionary politics of the vanguard party is replicated in the
peace process between the government of the Philippines and the
CPP-NPA-NDF. The peace process is a negotiation between the Philippine
government and the cadre of the CPP-NPA-NDF—essentially negotiations
between the bureaucracy of the state and the bureaucracy of the party.
It is a *collaboration* between erstwhile revolutionaries and sections
of capital and of the national bourgeoisie.[15] Indeed this
collaboration quickly turned into opportunism with figures like the
National Democratic figurehead Joma Sison haphazardly endorsing Duterte
for president. The people are not truly involved in the machinations of
the peace process. We doubt that the denizens of the liberated barrios
and the rank-and-file agitators—who participate in the class struggle
alongside the working class in picket lines—actively participated in the
negotiations as active agents in their own right. We think they are
instead *represented* in a process *mediated* by others. The peace
process is then statecraft and an alienated politics one can only
spectate in. The supposed stakeholders in the peace process are rendered
mere spectators in a process separated from them. Such is the politics
of the vanguard party where agency and power is concentrated on a select
few acting on behalf of the rest. Besides, a peace mediated between the
elites in the state and the elites of a vanguard party is not a durable
peace. We see this with the peace process between sections of the
Bangsamoro revolutionary nationalists and the Philippine government
which historically kept generating splinter groups because these groups
felt excluded from the process.[16]
Ultimately, the party does not have a monopoly over resistance, however
the CPP wants to monopolize the revolution. It cannot dominate
naturally-occurring pockets of resistance that form against greed and
tyranny.
While anarchists may reject the Leninist vanguard party, anarchists are
not opposed to revolutionary organization. Anarchists understand the
necessity of creating networks and structures between movements. Indeed
there have been anarchist and libertarian revolutionary organizations
throughout history and some that still exist today. Historical examples
include the Black Army in Ukraine, the CNT-FAI in Spain, and Korean
Anarchist Communist Federation in Shinmin. Examples of libertarian
revolutionary organizations that exist today are the Zapatistas in
Chiapas, and the YPG-YPJ in Rojava. Another reason for this opposition
to the vanguard party is that anarchists reject their quest for state
power.
We anarchists reject the state and reject seizing state power as a
strategy for liberation because as the preeminent manifestation of
hierarchy, it is acutely insufficient for liberation. This does not mean
we are against organization and institutions, but rather we believe
these ought to be organized in a libertarian and egalitarian manner.
After all, the state is not merely its organization nor its
institutions. Nor is the state its provision of social services nor
merely its prerogative for violence. The state is a *territorial
concentration of power in the hands of a few situated above society*—to
use the definition by anarchist writer Pëtr Kropotkin.[17] The state is
power excluding the society at large. The state is necessarily
a concentration of power, otherwise the institution would not be a
state. The concentration of power in the hands of a few implies a social
relationship where power—particularly its decision-making form—is held
by a minority where the majority is excluded and therefore disempowered
under the state.
Just as the Communist Party concentrates power unto itself, just so
their future state would hoard power into its own structure. The
National Democratic construction of a future proletarian state will
ultimately reproduce statecraft and an alienated politics because of
their continuing use of hierarchies.
While the Marxists-Leninists—and by extension National Democrats—are
absolutely correct in wanting to abolish the capitalist social relations
such as those of bourgeoisie–proletariat, they stop short of wanting to
abolish *hierarchical social relations* altogether. Marxist-Leninist
societies in the former USSR and the Eastern Bloc states abolished the
bourgeoisie, but were still *hierarchical* societies. Going beyond
National Democracy also means understanding why *hierarchy itself* must
be dismantled, not just capitalist social relations. Hierarchy itself
must be opposed and dismantled in order to secure a free and liberated
future.
As we reject the state that the National Democrats aim for, we also
reject their nationalism. Nationalism in socialism is an abomination and
it creates deep contradictions in theory. The very concept of
nationalism is precisely a trans-class solidarity between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie in a particular country. This
trans-class solidarity makes it appear that the bourgeoisie and
proletariat of a particular country have the same interests—they do not.
This thus masks the contradictions and struggles between the two
classes. The toilers and dispossessed have no interests in common with
the class of oligarchs, *hacienderos*, political dynasties, and
warlords. It is the trans-class solidarity of nationalism that leads to
class collaboration and the betrayal of the interests of the
dispossessed.
Make no mistake, we anarchists are not calling for the fragmentation of
struggle or a parochialism of isolated groups. Instead of nationalism
and a unity based on identity, we want unity on the basis of the
affinity of all who struggle for liberation.[18] All those who despise
tyranny and greed are our comrades. We are in solidarity with the
oppressed not because we are both Filipino, but because we understand
that our liberation is tied up together.
The National Democratic program for a state is insufficiently
liberatory. Their project of a vanguard party is stuck in the past and
is led by an entrenched cadre of old men. Relinquishing your agency to
the party bureaucrats of the vanguard does not liberate you. The aim of
capturing state power or setting up a competing revolutionary state
reproduces the mediating and alienating politics that renders people as
objects of statecraft and does not empower them. Going beyond National
Democracy does not necessarily mean rejecting everything the National
Democratic movement does or what they stand for, but understanding that
their praxis is limited by their use of hierarchy and is thus ultimately
insufficient for the goal of liberation. Therefore the politics they
forward is still a continuation of hierarchy and domination and cannot
forward a liberatory politics. National democrats take their poetry from
the past; we must take our poetry from the future.
To revitalize revolutionary politics in the archipelago we need to move
beyond National Democracy, beyond vanguard party form, beyond the state,
and beyond nationalism. This means a commitment to a deliberative
politics and shunning hierarchy and domination in our revolutionary
organizations. We anarchists do not aim to control and dominate a
revolution but to build the capacities of people for direct action,
mutual aid, and revolutionary action to allow a social revolution to
bloom into its fullest potential. The liberation of the working class
and of the dispossessed can only be done by them alone and will never be
done by a state or a mediating party.
** For Anarchism
Against reformism and beyond national democracy, we forward the
liberatory politics of anarchism, a movement for the self-emancipation
of the toilers and dispossessed from all forms of hierarchy and
domination.
A revolutionary anarchism is about spreading freedom and anarchy to all
spheres of life. Anarchy is about social relationships based on consent
and free agreement. It is about treating each other as equals, as
individuals we are interdependent with, and whose freedom is bound up
with ours. Anarchy is freedom from authority and freedom from
hierarchies. Doing anarchy means doing deliberative politics that seeks
to make people full subjects in their politics. Therefore anarchism
shuns mediation and statecraft and seeks to maximize the agency of
people over their own lives and of things held in common.
Anarchism is the fullest conclusion of the desire for freedom because it
is a consistent application of freedom. We cannot use hierarchical means
to create a liberated society. We must take care of what our means are
becoming. Hierarchy can only become domination, not liberation.
Hierarchy engenders an alienated politics where those at the lower rungs
of hierarchy are disempowered and dispossessed. As an egalitarian idea,
anarchism forwards liberatory means to create a liberated society. When
we instead consciously organize in an egalitarian, non-hierarchical
manner, we are building the foundations for social relations based on
freedom. These social relations then can *become* that liberated future.
A revolutionary anarchism has the tools for forwarding a liberatory
politics with tools like mutual aid, direct action and egalitarian
organizing. These tools of anarchism existed in various forms long
before anarchism existed. What anarchism does is unite these in theory
and practice.
Anarchists practice mutual aid which Filipinos already know as
*bayanihan*. Mutual aid or *bayanihan* is a mode of cooperation based on
solidarity. It is us helping each other because it benefits all. The
image of bayanihan is often a village (or a *bayan*) working
together to carry a house. By themselves the villagers could not lift
the house, but all together they can—their toil is minimized with
collective action. What is more is that by participating, they know the
other villagers will similarly assist them when they need it. Thus
mutual aid or *bayanihan* becomes a system of support and collective
action that improves the quality of life for everyone involved. It is
then a safety net that everyone can participate in. These systems of
mutual aid can be found in nature and in human societies throughout
history and today all around the world.[19] What anarchists want to do
is universalize mutual aid over other modes of organization like
competition, profit, or bureaucracy.
Anarchists also practice direct action. Direct action can take the form
of strikes, rent strikes, occupations, expropriation, and blocking
construction. Direct Action, according to libertarian socialist theorist
Murray Bookchin,
is the means whereby each individual awakens to the hidden powers within
herself and himself, to a new sense of self-confidence and
self-competence; it is the means whereby individuals take control of
society directly. … Direct action, in short, is not a ‘tactic’ that can
be adopted or discarded in terms of its ‘effectiveness’ or ‘popularity’;
it is a moral principle, an ideal, indeed, a sensibility. It should
imbue every aspect of our lives and behavior and outlook.[20]
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 foreshadow and envisage 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 than from 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 bourgeois
notions of freedom and bourgeois individuality. Freedom to starve, the
freedom to exploit, the freedom to choose 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 a 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 universalizability, the principles of anarchism—of
opposition to tyranny, to capitalism, to hierarchy, and to the state—are
reborn in each and every generation. The idea 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
anarchist revolutionaries of the 20th century in Shinmin, Ukraine, and
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 the cause of
liberty and freedom.
Thus, we anarchists finding ourselves in this archipelago known as the
Philippines have not come to the conclusion that we need anarchism
because of what an old writer had to say or what dead revolutionaries
have done. We have been convinced of 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 it being 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
[[https://www.britannica.com/place/Banaue-rice-terraces][*carved the
very mountains*]] in a monumental effort all
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/harold-barclay-people-without-government#toc28][*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:
A different way of understanding anarchism in relation to the
centuries-old struggle against arbitrary power is to view it as the
newest member of a global family that includes numerous historical and
present day communal societies and struggles against authority. The
village communalism of the Ibo, and First Nations like the Zuni and the
Hopi are a part of the family. The indigenous autonomist movements for
self determination going on today in West Papua and Chiapas, Mexico with
the EZLN are a part of the family. The international prison abolitionist
movement, perhaps to most coordinated attack on the state’s monopoly of
the administration of justice, has deep anti-authoritarian currents,
just as the numerous stateless hunter and gatherer bands, clans, and
nomadic tribes that have managed to survive centuries without armies,
flags, or money systems do.[26]
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 descendants in the state. While anarchism
is a relatively recent phenomenon, anarchistic elements very much
already existed in the archipelago for as long as there has been
resistance to tyranny and greed.
A bookmark in the situating an anarchist politics 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
[[https://libcom.org/blog/ang-potensyal-na-anarkistang-tendensiya-ng-diliman-commune-23022020][*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
[[https://www.rappler.com/nation/166062-duterte-kadamay-housing-police-soldiers][*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
[[https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/10/29/1864216/closer-look-bungkalan-supposedly-sinister-plot][*called*]]
*bungkalan* a “collective effort 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.
This free distribution of food reappeared again during the height of the
pandemic with the community pantry movement. Starting from a single
community pantry in the Maginhawa neighborhood, suddenly thousands of
community pantries emerged in April of 2021. There were no
self-appointed leaders, only organizers who went out of their way to set
up a free distribution of food and groceries.
Beyond anarchistic elements in existing movements, it can be argued that
*anarchy* already exists all around us, as Bas Umali suggests in his
essay
[[https://sea.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bas-umali-anarki-akin-ang-buhay-ko][*Anarki:
Akin ang Buhay Ko – Sariling Determinasyon at Pagpapasya Tungo sa
Panlipunang Rebolusyon*]].[33] For Umali, 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.[34] 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 Food 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 a 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
to 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,
And when we will have succeeded in arousing the sentiment of rebellion
in the minds of men against the avoidable and unjust evils from which we
suffer in society today, and in getting them to understand how they are
caused and how it depends on human will to rid ourselves of them; and
when we will have created a lively and strong desire in men to transform
society for the good of all, then those who are convinced, will by their
own efforts as well as by the example of those already convinced, unite
and want to as well as be able to act for their common ideals.
As we have already pointed out, it would be ridiculous and contrary to
our objectives to seek to impose freedom, love among men and the radical
development of human faculties, by means of force. One must therefore
rely on the free will of others, and all we can do is to provoke the
development and the expression of the will of the people. But it would
be equally absurd and contrary to our aims to admit that those who do
not share our views should prevent us from expressing our will, so long
as it does not deny them the same freedom.
Freedom for all, therefore, to propagate and to experiment with their
ideas, with no other limitation than that which arises naturally from
the equal liberty of everybody.[35]
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.[36] It would reject statecraft and
focus on deliberative politics where people would be full subjects of
their own 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
both an erosion of the power of capital and the state, and the building
of 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 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.[37] 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.[38] In such a situation, anarchists hope for the victory of
the counterpower consisting of social movements and alternative
institutions over the forces of capital and the state.
As revolutionary anarchists we aim to build a foundation 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 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).[39] 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 would be to propagate anarchist
ideas with the goal of 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 is 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:
- Continue to propagate anarchism and anarchist ideals as liberatory
alternatives; promote a discursive politics that rejects hierarchy
and the alienation that comes with it;
- Continue to develop systems of mutual aid/*bayanihan* that act as
both harm reduction measures against the tyranny of capital and the
state and as spaces to build autonomy from domination and
hierarchies;
- Struggle for a blooming environment with the understanding that we
are interdependent with our ecologies, and the recognition of the
political nature of environmental problems;
- Build an inclusive movement incorporating intersectional perspectives
on gender and struggle against oppression like the
hetero-patriarchical order;
- Organize our workplaces and communities; build subjectivity into our
everyday politics; build the agency and capacities of people for
direct action, mutual aid, and solidarity; create social relations
conducive for a liberated society; build the new liberated society in
the shell of the old;
- Federate our efforts and scale up until we reach a point where our
mass movements can challenge capital and the state; and
- Create systems of popular power with governance structures based on
solidarity rather than hierarchy and forward a deliberative politics
that rejects statecraft.
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! **
[1] Ditsi Carolino & Pabelle Manikan,
[[https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/viewfinder/2014/11/march-progress-philippines-2014112122317640995.html][*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 stands 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] 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,
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-ursula-k-le-guin-the-next-revolution][*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,
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-the-greening-of-politics][*The
Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice*]],
(The Anarchist Library, 2018).
[5] 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.
[6] Lucy Parsons denied this aspect of her life, instead stating that
she was of Indigenous/Mexican ancestry. However, the debate between
her being born to a slave or not is not a settled fact, and
historical record appears to point to the former.
[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 the critique of Filemon Lagman, also known
as Ka Popoy. Selections of his critique are available on the
[[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lagman/index.htm][*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
[[https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article616][*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,
[[https://web.archive.org/web/20170611031106/https://www.ndfp.org/communique-second-congress-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,
[[https://libcom.org/library/suffer-thy-comrades-how-revolution-decimated-its-own-robert-francis-b-garcia][*To
Suffer Thy Comrades: How the Revolution Decimated its Own*]] (2001,
Anvil). For a political history of the purges, read Alex de Jong,
[[https://www.academia.edu/7681257/Hunting_Specters._Purges_in_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Philippines][*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
[[https://www.marxists.org/history/philippines/cpp/guerrero/1970/psr.htm][*Philippine
Society and Revolution*]] (a seminal text of National
Democracy), and the
[[https://ndfp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/NDFP-CASER-2017-Web-version-Ver2.0.pdf][*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 bourgeoisie under a
national democratic framework. This is hardly socialism. Indeed, Ka
Popoy makes similar observations in
[[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lagman/works/ppdr.htm][*PPDR:
Class Line vs. Mass Line*]].
[16] We genuinely hope 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,
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-state-its-historic-role][*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 Loma
Cuevas-Hewitt,
[[https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/budhi/article/viewFile/438/433][*Sketches
of an Archipelagic Poetics of Postcolonial Belonging*]],
(Quezon City, Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 2007).
See also Donna Haraway,
[[https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fictionnownarrativemediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/manifestly_haraway_----_a_cyborg_manifesto_science_technology_and_socialist-feminism_in_the_....pdf][*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,
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution][*Mutual
Aid: A Factor of Evolution*]], (Anarchist Library, 2009),
and Peter Gelderloos,
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works][*Anarchy
Works*]], (Anarchist Library, 2011). Both are available at
the Anarchist Library.
[20] Murray Bookchin,
[[https://archive.org/details/TowardAnEcologicalSociety/][*Toward
an Ecological Society*]], (Montreal, Black Rose Books,
1980) p.48.
[21] To read more on direct action, we would point the reader to
“[[http://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj2][*J.2 What
is direct action?*]]” in Ian McKay,
[[http://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/index.html][*An Anarchist
FAQ*]], (Anarchist Writers, 2019). It is available online.
[22] For an overview of prefigurative politics, see Red Plateaus,
[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkMIVW7znZI][*What is
Prefigurative Politics?*]] (YouTube, 2020).
[23] To read more on social revolution, we would point the reader to
“[[http://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj7][*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,
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-fragments-of-an-anarchist-anthropology][*Fragments
of an Anarchist Anthropology*]] (Prickly Paradigm, 2004).
[26] Roger White,
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/roger-white-post-colonial-anarchism][*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,
[[https://libcom.org/blog/ang-potensyal-na-anarkistang-tendensiya-ng-diliman-commune-23022020][*Ang
Potensyal na Anarkistang Tendensiya ng Diliman Commune*]], (Gasera
Journal, n.d.). It is available on Libcom.
[29] Pia Ranada,
[[https://www.rappler.com/nation/166062-duterte-kadamay-housing-police-soldiers][*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,
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pandi_housing_project_occupation&oldid=931829485][*Pandi
housing project occupation*]], (Wikipedia, n.d.).
[30] Ryan Macasero,
[[https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/10/29/1864216/closer-look-bungkalan-supposedly-sinister-plot][*A
closer look at ‘bungkalan’, the supposedly sinister plot*]],
(Philippine Star, 2018). See also, Anna Bueno,
[[https://cnnphilippines.com/life/culture/2019/4/2/bungkalan.html][*In
bungkalan, organic and sustainable farming is a mass movement*]],
(CNN Philippines, 2019).
[31] Nick
Aspinwall,[[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/threats-raids-murders-stalk-filipino-environment-activists-191128071615516.html][
]][[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/threats-raids-murders-stalk-filipino-environment-activists-191128071615516.html][*Threats,
raids and murders stalk Filipino environment activists*]], (Al
Jazeera, 2019).
[32] For a history of the movement, see Taks A. Barbin,
[[https://www.dropbox.com/s/2cw1eeehwnm6et8/FNB%20nov%2012%20.pdf][*Ang
Food Not Bombs sa Kapuluan*]]*,* (Safehouse Infoshop, 2018).
[33] The title is translated as *Anarchy: My Life is My Own – Self
Determination and Deciding Towards Social Revolution*.
[34] Bas Umali, Anarki:
[[https://sea.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bas-umali-anarki-akin-ang-buhay-ko][*Akin
ang Buhay Ko – Sariling Determinasyon at Pagpapasya Tungo sa
Panlipunang Rebolusyon*]]*,* (AID Kolektibo, NON-Collective, n.d).
[35] Errico Malatesta,
[[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-an-anarchist-programme][*An
Anarchist Programme*]]*,* (The Anarchist Library, 2020).
[36] For a discussion of the unity of means and ends and the social
reproduction of libertarian communism, see Anarchopac,
[[https://blackrosefed.org/anarchopac-critique-of-seizing-state-power][*Means
and Ends: The Anarchist Critique of Seizing State Power*]], (Black
Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation, May 2019).
[37] For an example of a solidarity economy, see Cooperation Jackson. An
introduction to the movement can be found at Sixtine van Outryve,
[[https://roarmag.org/magazine/dual-power-then-and-now-from-the-iroquois-to-cooperation-jackson/][*Cooperation
Jackson: Building a Solidarity Economy in the Deep South*]]*,*
(ROAR Magazine, 2019).
[38] To learn about dual power as a strategy for challenging capital and
the state, see DSA Libertarian Socialist Caucus,
[[http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dsa-libertarian-socialist-caucus-dual-power][*Dual
Power: A Strategy To Build Socialism In Our Time*]], (The Anarchist
Library, 2019).
[39] Vadim Damier and Kirill Limano,
[[https://libcom.org/library/short-essay-about-history-anarchism-indonesia][*Anarchism
in Indonesia*]], (libcom.org, 2017).