By REGLETTO ALDRICH IMBONG
I WOULD rather read the notion of the “have-nots” from its original Marxist interpretation, which meant a class of people dispossessed with the means of production. They are the Filipino people who, through long colonial and neocolonial subjugation, have been robbed off their lands, resources, and capacities to accumulate small capital. Surely, these “have-nots” include the people living in urban poor slums in the “imperial Manila,” the underpaid, contractualized, and overworked working class in the industrial centers of Southern Tagalog, and the landless peasants of Central Luzon. Of course, these also include the Lumad people of Mindanao who through what the sociologist Arnold Alamon described as the “Wars of Extinction” have been literally wiped out away from their lands in favor of big and foreign capital in collusion with their comprador and landlord Filipino partners, that is, the “haves.” This Marxist reading escapes the identitarian reading of Maboloc yet is more substantial in giving sense to the “haves” and “have-nots” distinction he employed. In failing to consider how the problem of dispossession extends to include not only the people of Mindanao but also of Luzon, Maboloc’s rhetoric obscures the real fundamental problem of Philippine society: capital (and its ownership and control). Capital not in its geographical but in its political-economic sense.
The identity politics discussed above connects with crony politics. To express in an inverse manner what I just stated above, the problem of capitalist possession extends to include not only the elites of Luzon but also of Mindanao. Now, what Duterte is essentially doing is to favor one oligarch over another. And this is no different to what Ferdinand Marcos did during his dictatorial regime, when he simply favored one faction of crony oligarchs over another faction of non-crony oligarchs. This, for example, was expounded by the political scientist Paul Hutchcroft. Undeniably, Duterte himself admitted to being “helpful” with “helpful friends.” Furthermore, he continues to be helpful and to give concessions not only to friendly but also to unfriendly oligarchs. This is the case, for example, when Duterte signed into law the CREATE Bill, which lowers corporate income tax from 30 percent to 25 percent. Likewise, he perpetuates the anti-worker and notorious contractualization schemes of work. Lastly, from a macroeconomic perspective, he simply continues the neoliberal policies initiated and maintained by his predecessors. This invites us to reflect of just how Duterte’s pro-neoliberal capitalist agenda is clothed under anti-capitalist garments, a rhetoric not so unusual among fascists of the past (remember the Nazi’s rhetoric against the “rich exploiting Jew”).
It escaped Maboloc’s analysis that the cause of misery of the Filipino people – not only the Bisaya – is the continued economic and political rule of the “haves” – regardless of their cultural identity – to the detriment of the “have-nots” – still regardless of their cultural identity. It is not so much the identity as the access to economic power and its consequent political power that determine a subjectivity’s hegemonic character. And such a hegemony spares no particular identity. For example, the miserable conditions of the Lumad in Mindanao are largely due to the landlord and comprador elites of the same region who are in collusion with foreign capitalists owning large plantation, logging, and mining industries. They pollute and destroy the Lumad people’s ancestral lands in their unhampered pursuit of capital. But one should not see this as a mere contradiction within and between the peoples of Mindanao. Rather, it should be seen fundamentally as a case where class rule exterminates with impunity a subjugated class, despite their supposed identity. While Maboloc sees through the supposed lens of (identitarian) contradiction, his perspective rendered him incapable of seeing the real and more fundamental (class) contradiction between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in their relation to capital.
Radical politics can only be rooted in the overcoming of the politics of class rule. And Duterte has not even moved an inch to even think of such a radical agenda. On the contrary, he has provided the economic and political conditions for the unhampered economic and political flourishing of not only his preferred faction of the ruling class but the ruling class of compradors and landlords themselves. There is no radicalization of Philippine politics today. There is only the repetition of the old and the same. (Bulatlat.com)
