Workers in the Philippines Need Communism
Youth in the Philippines protest Duterte’s move to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 9 years old.
SANTA MONICA (US), February 16— “All the bosses—in China, the US and the Philippines—are the enemy of the workers. We do not demand that our enemy respect our human rights. We organize to get rid of them, and to build a system based on human need.”
A comrade said this at a recent church meeting about an international campaign for human rights in the Philippines. The organizers had provided postcards to send to Congress, urging a cut-off of US funding to the Philippines military. Our comrades engaged in fruitful and wide-ranging discussions and exchanged contact information with two young activists.
Growing Resistance to Fascism
The ongoing crisis in the Philippines means that the masses can no longer live in the old way.
Mass unemployment and economic hardship drive an estimated 10% of Filipinos to work overseas. This includes a million in Saudi Arabia, hundreds of thousands elsewhere in the Middle East, 2.3 million in the US. A million of them are undocumented.
The Philippine government has encouraged this migration for forty years. The goal of this policy is partly for the money migrant workers send home and partly to avoid unrest.
Meanwhile drug dealers and gangs attack the poorest communities. The government’s response has been brutal official and semi-official murder. President Duterte came to office in July 2016 promising to kill drug dealers. Since then more than 23,000 people have been murdered in his “drug war.”
Duterte has responded to mass protests against his death squads with continued repression. At least 540 people are jailed as political prisoners.
At the same time, guerillas are organizing in the southern island of Mindanao. Martial law was declared in the fall of 2017. More than 400,000 residents were forcibly evacuated. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines hopes for peace talks with the government, but peace consultant Randy Malayao was murdered in January in an obvious attempt to intimidate and crush all resistance.
Trump has called the Philippines the “most prime piece of real estate from a military standpoint.”
Spain colonized the Philippine Islands in the 1500s. Four hundred years later, Spain was a declining power and the US was on the rise. In the Spanish-American War (1898) the US defeated both Spain and an insurgent independence movement. It seized the Philippines as a US colony.
US politicians at the time referred to the Philippines’ strategic position near China and its rich potential for agriculture, raw materials and minerals.
The Philippines were occupied by Japan during World War II. A Communist-led resistance movement, the Hukbalahap, fought the Japanese. It continued the struggle against US colonialism after the war. The US granted the Philippines independence in 1947 and signed a Cold War-era Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippine government in 1951. It continued to support the government’s fight against the Huks.
Now the US is a declining power, facing a rising rival China. This competition is especially sharp in the South China Sea. Recently China attempted to block Philippine efforts to repair strategic facilities on Thitu Island, an island there claimed by the Philippines. These repairs are financed by hundreds of millions in US aid.
On the other hand, there is evidence that Duterte’s government is hedging its bets. One example is that the Philippine Defense Secretary called in December 2018 for a review of the 1951 treaty. Another is Duterte’s 2016 trip to China, where he was promised $24 billion in aid and business deals.
As the comrade said, all bosses are the enemy of the workers. And as a party leaflet distributed at this event concluded:
As both sides increase their military preparations, the Philippines, because of its strategic location, will inevitably be drawn into the conflict. Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog system where rival imperialists constantly compete for markets, resources and labor to maximize their profits. This inevitably leads to crises, wars and world war.
As they move towards war, they increasingly attack the masses. At the same time, they promote patriotism to try to win us to kill and die for their empire and their profits.
The war we need is to get rid of capitalism and build communism—a system based not on mass murder for the profits of a few, but on the unity of workers to produce collectively to meet our needs. A world without money, markets, profits or competition. A communist world where we live mutually as one global family will eliminate all wars.
Working people in the Philippines, in China and in the US, all have the same need—to end this murderous system. Join the International Communist Workers’ Party to fight for that world!
Coming Soon:
Fight for the Day When No Worker Will be Called Foreigner
—a new pamphlet by the International Communist Workers’ Party
Front page of this issue
