Rev Left Radio - Guerrilla History: Joma Maria Sison & Communism in the Philippines

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Listen to the full episode of Guerrilla History here: https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/joma ----- In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Professor Jose Maria Sison, better known as Comrade Joma, to talk about his life, how it impacted his ideology, the history of the Communist Party of the Philippines, and more!  Comrade Joma is an absolute legendary figure, and it was a pleasure and an honor to be able to talk with him.  A must listen conversation for anyone interested in proletarian struggles and People's War in the Global South, especially the Philippines! Jose Maria Sison is the Founding Chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Chair Emeritus of the International League of People's Struggle, and the Chief Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.  He's written extensively, a great place to find some of his works is via our friends at Foreign Languages Press.  They have several of his works available for free as pdfs or for affordable print copies on their website https://foreignlanguages.press/. 

We previously noted that you founded the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968, and we wondered if you could talk about what it was like building the new party and what were the biggest triumphs or victories of it and the mistakes that you can tell us about from your perspective in its early organizational days. Well, after joining the party, the old Communist Party in 1962, I was almost immediately put in the executive committee. And I would find out that the old party had no more mass following. Jesus Lava, the general secretary, was just hiding himself in Manila. He was already isolated even from the remnant roving bands of the hooks in central Luzon.

And with me, joining the executive committee was the labor leader Ignacio Laksina. Only the two of us in the committee had connections, had connection with the Amas movement, with labor as well as youth. Now, two other members of the committee were nephews of Jesus Lava. So it's a nepotistic kind of setup, no? With one nephew being a high executive in the Colgate Palmoli, an American company. And the other one was the clerk of course.

of the Court of Appeals. And the fifth member was the circulation manager of the biggest, then the biggest newspaper, Bufuwa newspaper, and he happened to be a close friend of one of the two, two lavas. So it was a lava-dominated committee. And they were presuming,

they were actually appointed by their uncle, Lesuzlava. So, but, you know, we, I still had high respect for the family then, no. And I don't regret joining the old party, you know. It was part of my experience and learning trajectory. And but, you know, by 1965, the committee appointed. me to draft a general report. The first report to be made after so long.

And I made a drop which looked into the background of the old party, why it has gone, why it has become so weak and small. And one of the lava cousins said, one of the lover cousins in the committee said, No, that is just a memorandum, the drop of a memorandum. I will write this general report. He never did. After that, he spread the word to some peasant and worker leaders that I require high school diploma

for anyone to become a party member. They made me appear as a pedantic fool. requiring this high school diploma for membership in the communist part of the Philippines. So that sort of intrigue was spread. Ah, but then we were prepared. Our groups of proletarian revolutionaries in the youth movement, in the workers' movement, in the PESA movement already. So by 1966, when the Lava group revisionists,

When the Lava Revisionist group decided to expel us, we also expelled them. And we started the rectification, the first rectification movement. And that would start in 1966, and that prepared the founding, the reestablishment of the communist part of the Philippines under the guidance of Marxism, Lenism, Muslim thought in 1968, December 268. 1968. We had the mass following. But of course, you know, you will be surprised, why

we were so why we were so concerned about quality, no? So we had 12 delegates represented 80

80 communist members already well-schooled and trained under the guidance of Marxism, Lennism, Muslim thought. When we established the communist part of the Philippines, the figures are better.

Of course, the number of 12 is similar to that in the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, but they represented only some 54 communist, and we represented 80, with a mass following of about 35,000, 15,000 youth, and 20,000 workers. So the mass following was bigger. The present following would come later when we would link up with the better of the better part of the remnants of the old people's army, the hoops. We linked up with the hoop units under the

leadership of Bernabe Buscino in January, 1969. And by March, we were, March 29, we founded the new people's army. Well, I just wanted to follow up with a question that brings a little bit to today from your earlier experiences and analysis, wondering about what you think are the legacies and processes currently of U.S. colonialism and imperialism on the politics of the Philippines today. Well, the United States has made very lasting legacies, which you can only undo. with the People's Democratic Revolution. Nominal independence was granted in 1936, and the Philippines became semi-colonial.

The United States, before it granted nominal independence, made sure that it had the U.S. Philippine Treaty of General Relations, by which the U.S. property rights, military bases, and so on. would be maintained. So up to now, the U.S. would have overall economic, political, military, and cultural control over the Philippines. And before that, from the beginning of the American conquest in 192, the U.S. started to develop a semi-fudal economy. The elements of that were already there in the later part of the Spanish colonialism. But semi-fudalism meant allowing peasants to go to the frontier areas, to go to the mining

areas. The mines were open. The roads and bridges were in Peru for transport to woods and so on. So the feudal structures were removed. And you have the Comprador big bourgeoisie arising from the landlord class. It is distinct as the trading and financial agent of the U.S. monopoly firms. That's the semi-feudal setup. and it continues.

It has continued since then. But the biggest legacy of the U.S., it is the murder of 1.5 million Filipinos. And so far, the Filipinos have not exacted compensation in any way. So the blood deaths of the U.S. imperialism are still to be paid, no? It's the Vietnamese people who succeeded in defeating U.S. imperialism. The Filipinos can be proud of being the first to fight U.S. aggression in Asia. And being the first country to kick out a Western power from Asia.

and despite colonialism was kicked out in 1898 and so and the independence that came about came well ahead of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 very much ahead of those nominal grants of independence even in Indonesia of Indonesia, there was some amount of armed support for Socarlo from the people. But she benefited from Japanese collaboration against the Western powers.

And of course, we Filipinos are very much ahead in terms of real independence from colonialism or in terms of granted nominal independence, The Philippines are ahead. India got its nominal independence from the British rulers. Only in 1947. The Philippines were ahead by one year, not getting from the U.S. This semi-colonial republic status. So next question.

Mao famously said that reactionaries are paper tigers. What has waging people's war? and leading a Communist Party taught you personally about the nature of reaction in general. Well, Mao is saying reactionary is a paper tiger. It's a nice literary way of expressing how divisible is a monster into its parts. You can tear it apart easily, just a piece of paper you can tear it apart. That's a simple way of expressing dialectical materialism. Materialism teaches us that things are constituted by contradictory parts, by parts that are in contradiction.

So if you are the oppressed people and you have a well-armed, you have a well-armed enemy, that well-armed enemy is so small, in fact, but it has the power in terms of arms, and in terms of control over the means of production. Okay. You may be impressed with the wholeness. Someone who will just be downfounded by the wholeness of something, you know, like a Philistine, you know, being impressed by, you know, by big state, but a big, or let's say, someone who doesn't know any better is impressed with a car.

car but then you open up the hood of the car and you see it's parts you can tear apart the dominant card so that's the same thing you can you can you can you can you divide you study the part the something and consider the parts and then you learn how to tear it up now and then just another way putting this if your enemy has the strength what kind of strength shall you get from him? You engage in guerrilla warfare, concentrate a superior strength against a small part of the enemy, and you get the arms of the enemy unit that you hit. Strategically, the enemy may be ten times stronger than you, but at the tactical level,

because you have the support of the people, like a guerrilla unit can hit any small part, any small, vulnerable part of the big enemy. And in due course, through protracted people's war, you build your strength. And you must choose the battlefield. You must, the battlefield must be widened up, must be widened up for maneuver. You cannot be, you cannot, you can, you can, you can have all the flexible tactics. If the superior enemy force comes, you retreat, man. And you lay landmines on the path.

You have sniper teams and you have ambushes while you move away your main force. And if the superior force of the enemy is even bigger, it is capable of encircling your force. And you better ship position. And at any rate, when the end of the end, enemy deploys, no matter how big, an enemy force, be it a battalion or a regiment. It deploys its parts, eventually. It is a command post. It has peripheral posts.

It has patrols. You can hit the peripheral post as well as the patrols one by one. And that's the way how guerrilla warfare is carried up. So, this simple expression of Mao expresses in a single phrase what you can do with an enemy that looks so invincible, you can tear it apart.