In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

9 Between State and Revolution autobiographical notes on Radical Scholarship during the Marcos dictatorship Patricio N. Abinales At middle age, Filipino intellectuals who matured politically as part of the student protests of the 1960s and the remarkable revival of communism, have elided from a posture of unswerving militancy to more deliberative, less passionate, and self-critical encounters with power in society. Growing old, combined with the safety of some tenured post (a member of the professoriate, a pundit’s niche in media, the NGO “sector”, or a corporate boardroom) are frequently the most immediate reasons for this political “moderation”. In certain cases, it is the fact that one is simply getting old, and this, combined with the debilitating allures of petit bourgeois comforts, have a way of tempering one’s militancy. Yet, there are also the profound changes in the political scene, especially after the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) lost its morally hegemonic position in 1986 and soon afterwards, despite its “reaffirmation” of Maoist principles, started acquiring the same vices that its class enemies have been notoriously known for. Lastly, on the broader social canvas, the diminution of one’s political passion can likewise be the result of one’s disappointment with “the masses” as they refuse to rally to the red flag, but instead gave their whole to conservative religiosity, and who, instead of acting as the makers of history, have decided to work abroad. Writing about 208 Patricio N. Abinales one’s present without taking these multiple contexts into consideration can thus be difficult and disheartening. The likely tendency for a lot of ageing former activists and progressive intellectuals is to minimize their radical past or not talk about it so as to avoid justifying contemporary compromises. A few even go to the deep end, disavowing any connections with that past and going to the extreme of becoming rabid defenders of reaction and conservatism. Then there are those who embellish the radical past as if to say that having “done my fair share” in the struggle, they now deserve to “slow down” or even “retire” from active politics.1 This is what has made this autobiographical essay profoundly difficult to write. Will one simply list his/her contributions to the revolution and then accept the risk that, at middle age, he/she could be labelled a compromiser or, worse, an opportunist? Or can one detach the political experiences that made possible the development of one’s ideas and evaluate the latter on their own terms? This predicament becomes more evident once we factor in the Marcos dictatorship. For under authoritarian rule, the political choices were said to be starkly simple: you were either for the state or for the revolution, for the “fascistic few” or the “nation/people”. While the fall of Marcos and the near-breakdown of the CPP after 1986 had complicated this dichotomy, a lot of intellectuals of that period continue to cling to this binary as the measure of political commitment. And today, there appears no way that one can avoid this “either/or” choice that the Marcos era bequeathed on those who lived under it. But perhaps a way out of this dilemma is to view the authoritarian period as a spectrum where between state and revolution are found different shades of political choices. These hues were constantly pressured by these extremes, but managed to keep their distinctiveness. By recognizing this nuanced spectrum it is possible to explore a terrain that is fraught with complexities of exegeses, choices, and praxis, far different from the polarized portrait of state and revolution that has become the standard feature of the martial law era. This chapter explores this “third way” by looking at progressive/radical writings which were critical of both state and revolution. While these writings never precipitated a “revolution within the revolution”, they revealed important major flaws in the CPP’s perspectives and strategy that prompted senior Party leaders to recognize them as a threat to Maoist ideological purity.The “debates” that ensued, however, never bore fruit, and some of the issues raised continue to haunt the Left to this very day.This chapter is also autobiographical in form in part to conform to the overall theme of this edited volume, and in part because I want to situate my personal, political, and intellectual journey in this intra–left wing struggle of ideas. I begin with an overview of the contexts [3.128.203.143] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 16:14...

Share