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Book Review by Professor Mario A. Fumerton
Volume 3: Crisis of Imperialism and People’s Resistance by Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Amsterdam
15 May 2010
I am delighted and honoured that Professor Joma Sison has asked me to
review today Volume 3 of his selected writings, entitled “Crisis of Imperialism
and People’s Struggle.” My name is Mario Fumerton, and I am a university
professor at the Centre for Conflict Studies, Utrecht University.
Since the ending of the Cold War at the start of the 1990s, Marxist
ideology and Marxist political movements came increasingly to be
seen as quaint and anachronistic expressions of a by-gone era, and
as such gradually lost credibility and appeal throughout much of the
world. As a reflection of this general mood, the Japanese-American
political scholar Francis Fukuyama even declared that the end had
been reached in the history of struggle between ideologies. With
an apparent end to superpower confrontation, people all over the
world looked forward to the prospect of world peace; and for a time
(at least throughout much of the West) there reigned a popular
conviction in the inevitable global triumph of Western liberal democracy
as the final form of universal human political government and economic
organisation.
Yet two decades on—as a new generation is born into a world
where moral and legal abuses are perpetrated in the name of the
“war on terror,” a world where business interests continue to take
precedence over concerns that planet Earth is heading irrevocably
towards massive human-induced environmental disaster, a world
where global economic hardship worsens daily in the wake of
IMF-dictated austerity measures, and repeated cycles of financial
and economic crises (indeed with recent events in Greece, the
very future of the European Union and its currency is said to be
at stake)—proof is all around us that Fukuyama’s end of history
was but a mirage, and that an understanding of the human
condition through the analytic lens of Marxism-Leninism is still
as vitally relevant and valuable today as it ever was in the past.
This is the context in which I will review Professor Sison’s book;
and it is in the light of this setting that its importance becomes
immediately apparent to the reader.
Given a lack of time, I will not discuss each individual essay in
the volume in detail; and in this way I will not ruin for you the
pleasure of reading the book for yourselves. Rather, I will highlight
those works that I feel best encapsulate the central ideas and
arguments of this book. The essays are presented in chronological
order, in a style of writing that combines a holistic historical-materialist
analysis with political commentaries on current affairs throughout
the world, and on Philippine politics and society in particular.
As I see it, the principal purpose of the author for penning these
fine essays has been to educate his readers as to the context
and necessity of people’s armed struggle for national liberation.
He does so in three steps. First, he carefully situates people’s
resistance within a global system of monopoly capitalism, or
modern imperialism. The material contradictions, economic crises,
exploitation, oppression and destitution brought by imperialism
to nations throughout the world—coupled with the intransigent
and violent opposition by imperialist powers and their client-states
to true, meaningful change for social justice and human
development—are the catalysts for the emergence and rise
of armed revolutionary forces. Second, he describes in detail,
with special reference to the experience of the Philippines, the
organisational and mobilisational capacities of revolutionary forces
as they wage a political and moral struggle against imperialism
and neo-colonialism. And third, he offers reasoning and
argumentation as to why the only real solution to the crisis of
imperialism is militant and uncompromising armed struggle for
national liberation, social justice, and socialism.
To this end, one of the early essays in this volume, entitled
“Contradictions in the System and the Necessity of Revolution,”
lays out in detail the fundamental argument that is repeated
throughout the rest of the book. According to Professor Sison,
in the course of the 20th century, imperialism (which is the
highest and final stage of capitalism) managed to penetrate
into every corner of the world. Leading the advance of global
imperialism is the United States. According to the author,
American imperialism has pursued an economic policy shift
from Keynesianism to neoliberalism based on “free market”
globalisation and domestic military production ever since
the end of the Cold War. In the process of expanding and
consolidating itself, however, this global capitalist system
engenders and exacerbates social, political, and economic
contradictions and crises at three levels: (1) between the
proletariat and the monopoly bourgeoisie within individual
imperialist countries, (2) between imperialist countries
themselves, and (3) between the imperialist bloc and the
oppressed nations and peoples of the Third World.
The contradictions and damage caused by the world capitalist
system are much greater than its supposed benefits, and
when and where necessary imperialist powers will manipulate
international institutions and even will resort to military force
in order to safeguard free market globalisation and resource
interests abroad. In response to the contradictions and crises
caused by imperialism, people’s resistance arise in non-imperialist
states, as in the Philippines.
While I was reading this essay, I thought about how suitable it
was for understanding the root causes and dynamics of the
current global economic crisis. I thought about the thousands
of Americans who, during the credit crisis, had lost their jobs
and their homes, and were reduced to living in tent cities in
places like Southern California, Nevada, and Florida. I thought
about how rapacious American military aggression in Iraq and
Afghanistan had inadvertently provoked the multiplication of
insurgent groups in other countries, like Pakistan and Yemen.
Indeed, while it quickly became obvious to me that this essay
can competently frame what is happening in the world today,
what is truly remarkable about it is that it was an essay written
back in May 2001. That his political-economic assessment of
world affairs a decade ago could accurately anticipate future
political, economic, and social developments attests to Professor
Sison’s power of astute observation, and the explanatory potency
of his method of analysis, which is based on historical-materialism.
On 18 September 2001, Professor Sison released a public statement
of sympathy for the victims of 9/11, and in so doing makes it clear
that his fight is not against the ordinary people of America.
“Terrorism from any quarter is reprehensible and must be
combatted and eradicated,” he wrote. He was careful to add,
however, that the state terrorism meted out by US imperialism
is what provokes “…such terrorists as those responsible for the
11 September terrorist attacks to give the US a dose of its own
medicine.” His outspoken criticism of US state terror and its politics
of labelling have undoubtedly played a role in landing him on
various terrorist lists. Such has been the price he has paid for
speaking out against the hypocrisy that underlies the so-called
“global war on terror.”
His long-distance keynote address to the “Conference On Laws,
Labels and Liberation,” at the Université du Montréal in May 2004,
explains the fascinating yet sad details of the process that led to
the addition of himself and the Communist Party of the
Philippines/New People’s Army on various terrorism lists. In
October 2002, the Dutch authorities terminated the basic
social benefits that he had hitherto received as a political
asylum seeker, even though no formal criminal charges existed
against him in the Philippines or anywhere else in the world,
including the Netherlands. “I [was] deprived of the essential
means for human existence,” he tells us. “The seizure of such
means violate my basic right to human life. The deprivations
amount to punishment worse than that imposed on convicted
murderers who are provided in prison with the essential means
for human existence.” The author goes on to describe in vivid
detail how, without delay, the formidable organisational and
mobilisational apparatus of the NDPF was mustered to coordinate
his legal and political defence.
The political and moral hypocrisy of these so-called “terrorist lists”
is made blatantly obvious when we consider that Professor Sison,
who has been living as a political refugee in the Netherlands since
1987, was put on numerous terrorist lists, whereas the late
Velupillai Prabhakaran (founder and paramount leader of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) never was, despite the fact
that up till 9/11 the LTTE had been the world’s leader in suicide
terrorism. Moreover, he correctly points out that terrorist lists
are not only handy tools with which to demonise and justify
the repression of all kinds of internal political dissention; “they
[also] transgress the right of the Filipino people to fight for
national liberation.” Indeed, if such lists existed in his time, it
is likely that even George Washington—father of the American
revolutionary war of national liberation—would have landed on
one.
As is clearly explained in the essay entitled “Socio-Economic
and Political Realities and Peace Negotiations,” if omitting a
group from a terrorist list serves to keep avenues open for
negotiation, then placing a group on the list effectively shuts
the door on the possibility of finding negotiated political solutions
to decades-long conflicts like those in the Philippines and in
Colombia. Indeed, given the resilience and endurance shown
to date by insurgency movements that have existed since as
far back as the height of the Cold War, negotiated settlement
is probably the only realistic final solution to some of the world’s
longest running civil wars.
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