Oppose US Imperialism in the Philippines

America has had de facto control over the Philippines for over 100 years. Its financial bourgeoisie—the group of industrial and bank monopoly capitalists merged as the ruling clique of the bourgeoisie—exploited and still exploits the Philippines by both exporting surplus capital to the country to get high rates of profit and by unequally exchanging resources. America gained power over the Philippines after the latter revolted against Spanish colonialism. The United States gave itself an “anti-colonial” look by supporting the short Philippine revolution; after its victory, the US proceeded to exploit the country, causing an attempt at continuing the Philippine bourgeois revolution in an anti-American direction. America subdued the revolution and maintained legal ownership of the islands until 1946. Since 1946, though, the Philippines has remained a semi-colony, particularly of US imperialists.

The Communist Party of the Philippines noted this in the “Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution”, a document it created during its reconstitution.

The basic condition of the Philippines today is that of a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country dominated by the U.S. imperialists, the comprador bourgeoisie, the landlords and the bureaucrat capitalists. These vested interests mercilessly exploit the broad masses of the people. …

The Philippine revolution against Spanish colonialism failed to achieve the goals of national liberation and the elimination of feudalism. The flabby leadership of the ilustrados (liberal bourgeoisie) failed to win the revolution by playing into the hands of U.S. imperialism which brutally massacred the Filipino people and deprived them of their national independence and democratic rights in the course of the Filipino-American war and thereafter. …

The combined oppression of US imperialism and feudalism involves the inequitable colonial exchange of cheap local raw materials (sugar, coconut, abaca, logs and mineral ore) and finished products imported chiefly from the United States and the investment of US surplus capital in the Philippines chiefly to foster the semicolonial and semifeudal type of economy that exploits the toiling masses of workers and peasants.

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The Philippine people have waged a war of national liberation for the past 54 years. With the Communist Party at its head, the New People’s Army being the main organ of new power, and the National Democratic Front uniting them all, the masses have been fighting for People’s Democracy or New Democracy, a form of proletarian rule that allows capitalist development and limited political power for national capitalists. This program does not allow bureaucratic-comprador capitalists or landlords to exploit the people, but it still lets national capitalists operate because they can develop productive forces and create the proper relations of production for socialist construction. This system was and is far more democratic than the sham of “democracy” in the old state of the Philippines. While the old state enacted martial law to ban opposition parties and labor unions, the new state in development was built on democratic bodies of government, mass organizations, and overall the rule of the proletariat and its allies.

The US imperialists chose to side with the former for its role in facilitating exploitation. They have supported the old regime ever since the people’s war began. Here is what Sison said on the US’s support for Ferdinand Marcos in Chapter Five of Specific Charatceristics of Our People’s War:

The mastermind behind the fascist dictatorship is US imperialism. The fascist dictatorship has been set up to make sure that under a “new constitution” the privileges and interests of US imperialism under the 1935 Constitution, the Parity Amendment and the Laurel-Langley Agreement are not only preserved but even enlarged in the face of the growing anti-imperialist struggle of the broad masses of the people and furthermore to harden the Philippines as a base of US imperialism in the western rim of the Pacific and in Asia and in the face of the failed US war of aggression in Indochina. As a reward, Marcos is allowed to remain in power indefinitely for as long as he can be useful to US imperialism and, of course, for as long as his ambition does not go beyond being the general representative of and even becoming the wealthiest by far of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the big landlord class.

The fascist dictator Marcos keeps on prating about his unjust regime being a “new society.” But in fact its monstrous abuses have only served to stress that it is but the worsening of the old semicolonial and semifeudal society. We are witness today to unbridled puppetry, brutality, corruption and bankruptcy. Among the local reactionaries, the fascist chieftain, his family and his closest subalterns in the military and civil bureaucracy are the most outstanding beneficiaries of the puppet, brutal, corrupt and bankrupt “new society.”

In essence, the fascist dictatorship is the open terrorist rule of a reactionary clique with big comprador and big landlord interests. The longer it continues in power the more fertile the ground becomes for our people’s war. By negative example, Marcos has stood as the best teacher of the people on the state and revolution. In this sense, he is our best propagandist. He has superbly exposed every evil in this semicolonial and semifeudal society by his own lies and misdeeds. His usurpation of all governmental powers; elimination of all legal political parties; monopolization of the press; and the brutal repression of all democratic liberties by such methods as massacre, assassination, zoning, forced mass evacuation, bombardment and arson, blackmail, extortion, illegal arrest, illegal detention and torture have proven beyond doubt the necessity and justness of armed revolution against armed counterrevolution.

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That itself is enough proof that American imperialism has never been for the democratization of the Philippines. America’s bourgeoisie supported a fascist dictatorship against the fight for genuine democracy; they never had the interests of the Philippine masses their hearts, but they had their minds occupied with the exploitation of the Philippines’s natural resources, especially its cheap labor-power. But there is more proof, for the US’s disregard for human rights continued after Marcos’s rule. During Marcos’s rule, economic conditions worsened for the broad masses of people; with the ban on labor-unions, the support for landlords’ crimes against their tenant peasants, the worst recession in Philippine history, and the leader’s fraudulent practices in the 1986 revolution sparked a mass movement for the democratization of the Philippines. Though the struggle was inherently reformist and did not really call for the country’s national liberation, the National Democratic Front was heavily involved in organizing the masses in this fight; without the mobilization of the workers and peasants, the bourgeois-led movement would not have had much, if any, success in seizing power from Marcos.

While certain private American outlets praised the Philippines’s “democratization”, the state let Marcos and his family flee to Hawaii; he fled with, according to bourgeois media, “22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of assorted jewelry with undetermined value, $4 million worth of unset precious gems contained in Pampers diaper boxes, 65 Seiko and Cartier watches, a 12 by 4 ft box crammed full of real pearls, a 3 ft solid gold statue covered in diamonds and other precious stones, $200,000 in gold bullion and nearly $1 million in Philippine pesos, and deposit slips to banks in the US, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands worth $124 million” [Source]. Yet again, US imperialism sided against the Philippine people’s interests by letting their oppressor escape justice. At the same time, the US never lost its imperialist control of the country; while the new president, Corazon Aquino, initially may have represented the national bourgeoisie’s interests, she simply became a new representative of the old comprador bourgeoisie. That way, the US maintained its exploitative relationship with the Philippines. Sison writes on this in “Let Aquino Regime and its US Imperialist Masters Answer for their Gross Crimes Against the Filipino People”:

In its almost five years in office, the Aquino regime, in connivance with its U.S. imperialist principals, has deliberately and treacherously committed one serious crime after another against the Filipino people. These have been highlighted all the more by developments related to the war in the Gulf.

Among its principal crimes is its total, treasonous puppetry to U.S. imperialism at the expense of national welfare. It has acquiesced to the use of U.S. military bases in the Philippines in imperialism’s war of aggression and genocide in the Gulf. It has agreed to extend the stay of these military bases beyond September 1991 to further enable the U.S. to intervene in the Philippines and other parts of the world. It insists upon paying the foreign debt of almost $30 billion to imperialist institutions even in the face of a grave economic crisis that has reduced 80 percent of the national population — or almost 50,000,000 out of more than 60,000,000 Filipinos — to hunger and starvation. And it now contemplates to dispatch Filipino troops, disguised as an engineering battalion, to this unjust war on the insistence of the U.S. …

In early December 1990, the Aquino regime abided by one of the latest dictates of the imperialist institution International Monetary Fund (IMF) by imposing previously unheard of price increases of gasoline and other oil products, sending the prices of all basic commodities and services skyrocketing. These price increases are now spelling further misery for a people who have long been leading a hand-to-mouth existence.

The regime gave further evidence of its subservience to U.S. imperialism by endorsing “without reservation” imperialism’s war of aggression in the Gulf whose ultimate objective, as spelled out by U.S. President Bush, is the establishment of a “new world order.” This means a world under the tighter and unrestrained domination and control of the U.S. and other imperialist countries.

Her puppet regime virtually involved the Philippines in the war by allowing without challenge the use of U.S. military bases in the Philippines in support of that war of aggression. It also sent a so-called medical mission and, on the prodding of its U.S. imperialist principals, was preparing to send a so-called military engineering contingent.

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We could go on and on regarding the US’s support for the authoritarian state that exists in the Philippines. We could show how it represses LGBT+ people while the Philippine communists and the people they lead have allowed and supported those people’s rights to express their sexuality and gender identity safely. We could discuss the role of patriarchy in the Philippines’s semi-feudal society, the US’s support for its maintenance, and how the communists are actively destroying it. We could explain the CPP’s support for the Moro people’s national liberation, and the Philippine state’s repression of it via their “anti-Islamist” bombing attacks. There are many more examples, but we have made it clear enough that the Philippine state and the classes controlling it (the feudal lords and bureaucratic-comprador capitalists).

American imperialists have been doing something in and near the Philippines that is also worthy of condemnation; this series of actions they took and still take are only in the financial capitalists’ interests, not in the interests of the people of the world. Specifically, using the military bases they maintain in the country, they seek to control the South China Sea. This conflicts with China’s interests, for China, as a rival imperialist power, seeks control over the region as well. American and Chinese imperialism have similar conflicts all across the third world (Asia, Africa, and Latin America) since Chinese capitalist-imperialism is developing at a fast rate while American imperialism’s growth is slow or even reversing. Revisionists claim China’s success is “good for socialism”, but that is simply not the case. Still, as the Red Herald said, “Chinese social-imperialism appears to be more peaceful,” in contrast to American imperialist warmongering and the bloodshed it caused and still causes [Source]. While China’s rulers have been more rational in their conflict with America, that can definitely change with further American provocations in the area. We cannot ignore China’s role in this conflict and the threats of nuclear war the inter-imperialist contradiction causes, but American imperialism is the main oppressor of the Philippines, and it is the side more likely to cause such a dire scenario. That is why the CPP says this on the heightening tensions between America and China:

In addition to US military build up in the Philippines, the US has been increasing its military presence in Japan, Korea, and other countries surrounding China. Its aircraft carriers also maintain permanent presence in the west and eastern seas of the Philippines, the Japanese sea and in the waters around the Taiwan strait. It has sold two nuclear-powered submarines to Australia that aim further expand the military presence of US and its subalterns in the South China Sea.

The US claims that all these are part of its “military deterrence” strategy, but are in fact, calculated to provoke China to take military action. It is constantly stoking Taiwan secession to push China to unleash its military might, and in turn, use the pretext of defending Taiwan to justify US armed intervention. …

Amid rising inter-imperialist tensions, the Party calls on the Filipino people to condemn US and Chinese saber-rattling, denounce their war preparations involving Philippine territory, uphold Philippine sovereignty and fight for genuine national independence and non-alignment in the rivalries of imperialist powers.

The Filipino people must demand the imperialist US and China to put an end to their saber-rattling, denounce their war preparations involving Philippine territory, oppose plans to build more US military bases and facilities in the Philippines, call for the pull-out of all US troops in the country, call for the pull-out of all Chinese warships that transgress in the country’s maritime territory and take away the source of livelihood of Filipino fisherfolk, oppose plans to hold large scale war exercises, and demand the dismantling of all foreign military bases, whether American and Chinese.

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The American elite’s flagrant actions and China’s equally-brazen responses show the world that neither side is for the masses of the world. Since America is firmly established in the Philippines while China has only started to gain influence and export capital to it, however, we principally oppose US imperialism. That is why we urge the workers of the world, especially here in the belly of the American imperialist beast, to oppose imperialist actions and dominance in the region! The US spends their tax dollars on moves that threaten to destroy life on Earth as we know it; before they ruin our lives, we must stop them, and that is only possible with people’s war! We shall reconstitute the communist party in America, and we support the Philippine people’s war while we struggle to create a front for the revolution in this land!

Down with the old Philippine state! Down with its backers, China and principally America! The people of the world will surely be victorious!