THE CONQUEST OF POVERTY

 

 

 

“The poignant wish for a tranquil life will find no sanctuary in today’s world. We live in a revolutionary era. It is an era of swift, violent, often disruptive change, and rather than lament this vainly, we have to decide whether we should be the masters or victims of change.”

          – Ferdinand E. Marcos, Today’s Revolution: Democracy (1971), requoted in The Democatic Revolution in the Philippines (1974).

 

        Today’s student activists, in my observations and analyses, seem to be at a lost with regards to socio-eco-political involvements and viewpoints. Their outcries and actions are, to say the least, questionable, and seemingly encourage by oligarchic and fascistic forces.

Victims of the Hacienda Luisita Massacre: Justice has not yet been served!

During the Oligarchic Era (1986-2016)
in the Philippines, the price of galunggong,
the so-called poor man’ fish,
skyrocketed beyond the reach
of the Filipino masses.
The Common Tao could barely afford
the prices of prime commodities brought
about by the monopoly in food production
of the ruling Elitist families.

        No wonder, after the 1986 EDSA Revolt and the ensuing Yellow Regime, the Philippines, for the past three decades (except for the brief Joseph Estrada presidency), had been governed by three oligarchs and a militaristic general. Upon their ascendancy, they immediately took control of the tri-media, vital utilities, public educational institutions, the treasury, the Central Bank and other government-financed industrial corporations and establishments. By “control” I mean not government or state control but oligarchic control – bested interests. They then proceeded to the reprogramming of education; the selling out of vital service utilities and Filipinized corporations that began the rape of the Filipino nation and people; the quashing of institution and regulatory bodies so that they can perpetuate control over all sectors of society; the setting up of partisan media networks to serve their interests; and, through these media, the continuous propagation of layers upon layers of political lies and deceptions to the initially tolerant and compliant populace. Those who raise their voices in the streets seeking justice, reform, and redress became victims of killings and massacres. But as philosophers used to say, “No matter how long a man’s patience endures, it will eventually end.”
 



The picture speaks for itself!
(UNICEF Pamphlet, 1990s).

        That time came during the 2016 Presidential Election. A city mayor from far-South, Rodrigo R. Duterte, was voted overwhelmingly by the people against highly illustrious opponents: Grace Poe, popular senator and daughter of the revered “King of Philippine Movies,” who was cheated in the last presidential election; Mar Roxas, a traditional politician belonging to a powerful oligarchy and had the vast supporting machinery of the outgoing presidency; Jejomar Binay, a shrewd and cunning outgoing vice-president; Miriam Defensor-Santiago, an intelligent senator and law expert.

        The margin of victory was so huge that even the massive cheating machinations of the outgoing government was unable to undermine. A clear and very evident proof that the people had enough of crooked and reactionary wanting-to-be leaders! The yellowist fascist politicians, wanting to still have a strangle-hold on power resorted instead to a “Plan B,” that is putting one among them in the vice-presidency. A sudden “glitch” in the Smartmatic server, and presto, a more than one-million vote lead of the front-running vice-presidential candidate disappeared in a matter of hours.

Pres. Rodrigo R. Duterte,
A leader who is both radical and revolutionary.

        Analyzing the 2016 election outcome, in the beginning, Senator Poe in all probability and expectations was the favorite to win. But she somehow wavered in the end. Mayor Duterte, on the other hand, remained firm from start to election time on his campaign line – to end corruption in government, uplift the lives of the Filipinos, and to end the drug menace in the country.

        Now, the political opposition are riding on the issue that President Duterte failed to accomplish his promises. The people, however, which are the real witnesses and beneficiaries of whatever changes and eventualities happening in the country do not agree to the said issue. They still overwhelmingly supports the president. The surveys, even those commissioned by the political opposition, put him so high in the public approval ratings that even his critics are now rethinking their stands. Why? Because whether those election campaign promises have reached or yet to reach their fulfilment, the people see radical actions; they see far-reaching changes; they see programs and projects take form; they see infrastructures everywhere; they see achievements never before seen since the first years of the Marcos’ Martial Law era, which is in truth the “golden era” of Philippine infrastructure development. They see in President Duterte a genuine hardcore leader, revolutionary, unafraid of the consequences as long as it is for the benefit of the Filipinos, his countrymen, his country. They see in him a leader who is not afraid to say his piece to the global mighty and superpowerful to defend the right of an aggrieve Filipino, whether he or she is a diplomat or an oversea domestic worker. It doesn’t matter if he foul-mouthed the priests and bishops or even the Catholic idiosyncrasies and idolatries, what matters is in the masses’ eyes he’s doing GOD’s work through fighting the evil forces in society and protecting the weak and helpless against the abuses of the influential and powerful. “No longer is the rich getting richer or the poor poorer!”

        I urge today’s youth and studentry to seek out the truth. To study the real history, and not the lies and yellow-tainted propagandas that have been pile-driven in the post-EDSA books; overfocused in the articles written by CIA or oligarchy-funded writers; and repeated and reverberated in commentaries in media networks that owe their existence to the woman they hailed as the “bringer of democracy,” when in fact she destroyed the democratic hope when she unleashed the long-bottled fascist political leeches and put them in positions where they could suck dry the blood of the Filipino people.

        Enough of the commentaries. As a challenge to today’s would-be or claiming-to-be activists, I have below a verbatim Chapter 9 of the book, The Democratic Revolution in the Philippines (1979), written by President Ferdinand E. Marcos. President Marcos, with so many things already said about him, one truth cannot be denied of him, his love of the Filipino nation. For me, he is visionary and his thoughts, near-prophetic. His writings are evident of that. But don’t just take my word outright, read them thoroughly with open mind, without political or philosophical bias. Analyze them, allow your mind to discuss the pros and cons of the matter, before making judgment of the ideology and treatises of the man they branded a “dictator.”

The Democratic Revolution in the Philippines (1974)
by Ferdinand E. Marcos.

 

THE CONQUEST OF POVERTY

          The New Society is, first of all, a community of equals.

          In eleven months of martial law,we have realized civil equality – an equality which means “equal treatment.” To be poor in this society is no longer to be underprivileged. True, there is an element of coercion behind this achievement, at least for those who cling to or who wish to revive their privileged status in the old society. An imperative necessity exists to enforce civil equality: as the basis of the new political bond, it is the precondition for attainment of a greater equality, which is social equality.

          A society in which the majority of the people are poor is, as we experienced, in constant danger of having its political authority corrupted and dominated by the rich minority. This was the essential point of my analysis of the oligarchic society. In these revolutionary times, such a society cannot last long. That society will endure whose member enjoy equality – in other words, a society which has eliminated economic inequality.

          The standard response to economic inequality is economic development. According to the conventional wisdom, economic development reduces mass poverty and enriches human life. But the crucial question is, How is economic development to be achieved? We somehow find ourselves debating “models” of economic development, and the usual options are capitalist development and socialist development.

          The inevitable conclusion is that we should try to avoid the excesses of either, except we are told that this is impossible. That is the risk of trying to solve our problems according to “system.”

          Economic development is formulated in terms of capital accumulation and full use of resources at one end and increasing GNP and per capita income at the other. Capitalism and communism present themselves as alternative roads to economic development, the one by the activities of free entrepreneurs making a profit and the other by the national use of resources for “social ends.” If we take the ideological versions of these economic systems on their face value – that is, perfect capitalism and perfect communism – it does not really matter which way we go: for either way economic development will be attained and mass poverty will be reduced, if not eliminated, and human life will be enriched.

          But there is no perfection on this planet.

          The condemnation of communism, for example, is dramatically presented not by an economist but a poet, Octavio Paz, in The Labyrinth of Solitude:

 

            Our lack of capital could be remedied in another way. As we know, there is a method whose efficacy has been proved. Capital, after all, is simply accumulated human labour, and the extraordinary development of the Soviet Union is nothing but an application of this formula. By means of a controlled economy, which avoids the waste and confusion inherent in the capitalistic system, and the “rational” use of an immense work force, directed to the exploiting of equally vast resources, the Soviet Union has become, in less than half a century, the only rival of the United States. In Mexico, however, we have neither the population nor the natural and technical resources required by an experiment of such proportions (not to mention our proximity to the United States and other historical circumstances). Above all, the “rational” use of workers and a controlled economy signify – among other things – forced labour, concentration camps, the displacing of races and nationalities, the suppression of the workers’ basic rights, and the rule of the bureaucracy. The methods of “socialist accumulation,” to use Stalin’s phrase, have turned out to be much cruel than “primitive accumulation,” which aroused the justified anger of Marx and Engels. No one doubts that totalitarian socialism can change the economy of a nation, what is doubtful is whether it can give men freedom. And this last is all that interests us, and all that can justify a revolution.

 

          But, we ask, is communism essentially repressive and totalitarian?

          On the other hand, capitalism is cynical exploitation of labor, amassing profit in every possible way and with impunity. None, however, that in all the countries where it has been tried (with the exception of the United States), human misery has not diminished. The explanation for this was offered by Paul Sweezy: Underdevelopment and development are two sides of the coin of capitalism, the poverty of one is “necessary” to the wealth of the other. Thus underdeveloped nations will never develop within the capitalist global system. Their heroic efforts will end either by their remaining where they are, or their plunging into deeper and deeper poverty.

          The world economy seems to conform to this trend: The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer.

          If this bleak analysis is correct, then economic development is irrelevant to the condition of the poor masses over a period of time. Whether development be capitalist or commnunist, the people will have to suffer more before they can suffer less. The question is which political elite – fascist or communist – can succeed in imposing its rule on the people. What will count most is the ruthlessness and efficiency of the regime.

          This does not imply that political regimes will be indifferent to economic development, for they need some measure of it to perpetuate themselves in power. The more repressive the regimes are, the more they would push the country to development, since they need it to maintain the infrastructure of power. This is what I meant when I said that economic development will be irrelevant to the condition of the masses. The state becomes, in the words of Salvador Madariaga, the “colonizer” of its own people.

          No decent man can accept this rationalization, although it recommends itself to certain political realists, who may see an opportunity for power and seize it should the rebellion of the poor breaks out in bloody revolution out of sheer frustration. This rationalization aptly is called a vertical view of society, for it is the point of view of a reactionary ruling class manipulating and commanding the poor majority of society. Such regimes are costly to maintain in human terms, for generations will have to be sacrificed through forced labor and concentration camps, or other draconian measures to keep mass consumption at the lowets level, in order to attain the economic development that the regimes require. The instruments of repression – and even terror – are not a monopoly of totalitarian socialist states.

          We arrive now at the so-called “development dilemma.” Economic development is desirable if it increases the welfare and improves the level of life of the poor masses; only in these terms will the pursuit of economic development gain the needed mass support. But the pursuit requires sacrifices from the poor masses – the postponement of consumption, forced savings, etc. – which the masses, were they free to assert themselves, would reject. This would leave the pursuit of development without its needed support. As the “democratic dilemma” states, democracy is indispensible to development, but in a democratic society people will always tend to vote for lower taxes in the same breath that they demand more public services.

          Under these conditions, with the so-called “development dilemma” as a ruling principle, a society in which the rich are too few and the poor too many cannot expect development without repression, and for a very long period of time whatever development it attains cannot benefit the masses. In this case the economic system will be a matter of indifference. Capitalism in a democratic policy will be under increasing pressure from the rebellion of the poor and must therefore resort to repressive measures to save itself. Under the same policy socialism will be similarly pressed. In either case, the way out of the dilemma is the armed, even despotic, exercise of power.

          This harsh conclusion derives, as I said, from the vertical view of society, which assumes that the given is prior to, sometimes even separate from, the individual. Whether capitalist or socialist, society will not change by itself, it is blind to the consequences which demand change. Men alone can change their societies; their perceptions – their perspective – will conceive of and carry out the changes, and not, as we are often told, the play of impersonal forces. If we cannot develop under present conditions governed by the “development dilemma,” then we must either change the conditions, reexamine them, or revise or reappraise our notions of development.

          We are, after all,concerned with an actual, not hypothetical, underdeveloped society – our own. It is important, therefore, that we extricate ourselves from the mental conditioning produced in us by ideologies foreign to our experience. We must start from the ground up.

          Having thus liberated ourselves, we should be able to find that the “development dilemma” is the inevitable product of the vertical view of society, which regards the rebellion of the poor as a force merely to be “reckoned with.” At best, society will be reordered according to the calculations and anxieties of those who dominates it. But it should be obvious that nothing less than a new society can come to terms with the rebellion of the poor.

          If we abandon – as we must – the vertical view of society and think upwards instead of downwards, we perceive that a society in which the many are poor and only a few are rich is not only an underdeveloped society but it is not an authentic human society.

          Men’s moral sense and historical experience irrevocably deny authenticity to such a community: Firstly, because it is not inevitable; secondly, because it is the product of an undeveloped moral sense; and thirdly, because in the long run it is socially suicidal.

          How then do we proceed after repudiating the “development dilemma?”

 

A Progressive Society

          Gunnar Myrdal, in Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, made a brief but cogent observation that hits the cloud in much of our thinking about economic development. He observed that

 

..... in a progressive society, the improvement of the lot of the people can often be won without substantial sacrifices from those who are better off and is sometimes not only compatible with, but a condition for, the attainment of higher levels in all income brackets, including the higher ones.

 

            This observation is pregnant with implications:

 

1. “Tainted” but not influenced by the vertical view of society, the statement dispels the capitalist-conservative nightmare of the rich minority being impoverished and brought down to the level of the poor.

2. The statement implies that the pursuit of economic development will be successful because the poor will support it, having a stake in it.

3. The statement implies that this feat can be managed by a progressive society.

 

          “But we are not a progressive society, we are economically underdeveloped.”

          The objection is not valid because it assumes that only an economically developed society can be progressive. One has only to read the critiques of Herbert Marcuse (and others) of the American and Russian societies, the world’s most developed nations, to know that under certain criteria material progress does not necessarily make a society progressive. Crucial is the general intellectual and moral receptiveness to new ideas, to progressive change. “Progressiveness” leads to development, though economic development may, but not necessarily, spur progressive thinking. All too often rich societies, like rich people, become complacent about the existing order of things without satiating their appetite for “more of the same.”

          Social scientists tell us that the attainment of collective goals depends on any number of conditions, but the monumental achievements of mankind were made by men and women spurred by burning visions, unshackled by “inhibiting factors.” On the other hand, civilizations have died not because of “conditions” but from the complacency of those who inherited them. A favorite paradigm of the past was that the “Philippines was a beggar sitting on a mountain of gold.” In plain words, in terms of resources and capability, the country had no excuse for being a beggar, what was really lacking was the vision and the will.

          As has been pointed out, the great task of economic development involves the energies of the many. For the many who are poor, any involvement must meet the test of sincerity; they must participate in whatever boons there are now so that they will freely offer their brain and brawn to achieve collective ends.

          Are we to take from the rich to give to the poor?

          If the proposition is stated in these terms, the poor do not deserve the contempt of our charity. I might say that only the disabled poor deserve it, but that would be a misguided statement. Unless a man be totally disabled, he is capable of some useful work for society. Moreover, the question whether to take from the rich to give to the poor is simplistic. Very few taxpayer ask it when their taxes go to schools, hospitals, roads, and bridges that they probably will have no opportunity to use. In this respect, they are parting with their hard-earned money, or unearned increment, or in the strictest sense, “sharing their wealth.” Again the perspective is important: the millionaire who “parts” with three-quarters of his income still has a quarter of a million left while the poor wage earner, even if he pays only a fraction, will nonetheless have but a few pesos left.

          No one – that is, no one except cranks – has seriously suggested that taxes should be abolished so that everyone can keep his money and pay only for the goods he uses: food, clothes, shelter, roads, power, police, telephones, bridges, medical care, etc. This is so because no one is wealthy enough to afford all these goods and conveniences individually. Socially and economically speaking, collectivity – pooling resources in the everyday sense – is man’s fate. In society every man is his brother’s keeper. As Bernard Shaw once wrote in a telling passage:

 

            ..... St Paul said, “He that will not work, neither shall he eat,” but as he was only a man with a low opinion of women, he forgot the babies. Babies cannot work, and are shockingly greedy; but if they are not fed there would soon be nobody left alive in the world.

 

          Therefore we should realize we are not doing anyone a favor by contributing our share – the share proportionate to our capabilities – to the sustenance, or, in this case, the remaking of society. To understand this is to be progressive.

          This, the poor seem to contribute less – in the monetary terms but not in terms of labor. I said “seem,” for in the aggregate, the contribution of the many who are poor does not sustain society and also subsidizes the opportunities and comforts of the rich minority.



The mission of building a Nation
on a foundation of concrete and steel.

          The solution is not to dispossess the rich in order to elevate the poor. At least at this stage the elimination of economic inequality does not mean that the dockworker is going to reside in an exclusive village, dine on china, ride in an air-conditioned Cadillac, send his children to a private school, and wear imported suits. Equality in the sense of our progressive society does not mean, however, that the dockworker will have his three square meals, a roof over his head, efficient public transfort, schooling for his children, and medical care for his family. Without these things, he is trapped in a vicious cycle: unproductiveness keeps him poor and poverty keeps him unproductive.

          Over a period of time this same stevedore will learn in the pursuit of economic development to aspire to what are called “comfort, leisure and culture,” which go with economic development in a progressive society.

          Sad to say there is now a “worker aristocracy”: a minority in the labor force can obtain adequate food, clothing, and shelter, and a tinier minority can claim to have obtained some amount of comfort, leisure and culture. We can choose to call this an improvement for a segment of the poor masses. But again, due to the fact that its number is so small as to constitute an exception, the same problem of social inequality prevails.

          Therefore we must review thoroughly and in depth our various existing welfare schemes, the structure of income distribution, in order to strenthen the egalitarian base of the New Society. I am sure that this is what many of our people want: they must lose themselves in the great enterprise of conquering mass poverty.

          Our experience with welfare schemes taught us that the “principle of universality” – the indiscriminate distribution of welfare benefits without regard to need – actually works against the egalitarian principle. This form of “equality” dissipates scarce resources without substantially alleviating the condition of the actually needy. There are schools in areas where there are not enough students and from which students may conveniently ride or walk to another place which needed schools; medical benefits for those who could well afford their own physicians simply because they have been “taxed” for the purpose; or, from recent experience, rice for areas which did not actually want it.

          It is time that we understood welfare. The common misconcption is that welfare is merely a more respectable word for charity since it is “dispensed” by the state. The truth is that welfare is well-being. The promotion of the well-being of members and citizens is the reason for the existence of society and the state. For example, when the state puts the building of monuments before the production and provision of food for its citizens, that state has no allegiance to reason. Monuments are important but they do not come ahead of food. Similarly, when the wealth of a society, a great portion of which is in the hands of a few, is dissipated on magnificent mansions, luxurious cars, exotic foods, and other extravagances of “high life,” while the majority of the people are virtually homeless, ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-educated, that society is a sham because it is outrageously indifferent to the welfare of its members. And this is the inevitable result of social or economic inequality.

          Many explanations and justifications have been offered for economic inequality – from the idleness of the poor, the industry of ancestors, and the demands of civilizations – but all of them have been refuted by progressive thought. The most recent of these is that of the rich, for all their extravagances and frivolities, do provide employment. I had always suspected something spurious about this argument, but before I could probe deeper into it my efforts were spared by a striking paragraph which with wit and wisdom exposed the fallacy, “There is,” snapped G. Bernard Shaw,

 

no merit in giving employment: a murderer gives employment to the hangman; and a motorist who runs over a child gives employment to an ambulance porter, a doctor, an undertaker, a clergyman, a mourning-dressmaker, a hearse-driver, a gravedigger, in short, to so many worthy people that when he ends by killing himself it seems ungrateful not to erect a statue to him as a public benefactor. The money with which the rich give the wrong sort of employment would give the right sort of employment if it were equally distributed, for then there would be no money offered for motor cars and diamonds until everyone was fed, clothed, and lodged, nor any wages offered to men and women to leave useful employments and become servants to idlers. There would be less ostentation, less idleness, less wastefulness, less uselessness; but there will be more food, more clothing, better houses, more security, more health, more virtue; in a word, more real prosperity.

 

          Our society is not so poor that it cannot provide for the well-being of all its members; we have only to accept what must be done in order to reduce social inequality. This certainly does not involve dispossessing the rich, or at the other extreme, appealing to their social conscience alone. An economist has disposed of the fallacy that economic development alone reduces poverty and enrich human life. These aims can be accomplihed only through the intervention of the state, regarded, in this instance, as the collective conscience of society.

          There was a time when the rich would maintain themselves against the poverty of the rest, but the rebellion of the poor has reduced this to an illusion. We are moving toward a social order in which before anyone can have more than enough, everyone must have enough.

          The determination of what is enough can be a vexing question. A truism states that one man’s enough is another man’s penury. With the exercise of human reason, determined to be progressive rather than utopian, we can judge what poverty is according to the circumstances of our time. At the minimum, no one must starve. Many of us can still say that “no one starves in the Philippines.” We cannot say realistically, however, that no one must be without gainful employment, for in the next few years, we can only reduce unemployment – though substantially, we hope. But we can say: “No Filipino shall be without sustenance.”

          There are prerequisites in order for the New Society to remain an authentic society. The political authority will establish the priorities and provide the mechanisms of equalization. But the entire citizenry must provide the work and in some cases accept the sacrifices. We are determined that these sacrifices shall not be in vain. This is our social contract.

 

The Economic Society

 

          The question arises, What kind of economic system shall we have?

          Again, the tyranny of “systems.” When I say economic society, the emphasis is on society. We must, therefore, arrive at whatever system will make the kind of society we want – the New Society – work.

          Capitalism and socialism have so many nuances and definitions that the layman is served best by eidetic definition – that is, by just pointing to the country which represents them, American capitalism or Russian socialism. No two capitalist countries or socialist countries are exactly alike. Within the Communist world itself accusations of revisionism and Stalinism are often heard.

          Much of the debate between capitalism and socialism is polemical, and although some of the points are enlightening, nothing is more useful to us than our own experience.

          Few people refer to our economic system as capitalist. The most allowed is that our base is private enterprise, which is to say that the economic activities of society are carried out mainly by businessmen, industrialists, traders, and merchants. In the old society, however, it was not unusual that certain businessman were in politics and certain politicians were in business. Further, the government itself was involved in certain economic activities, especially those of a scale which private business could not manage. In a rather simplistic sense, there are also “communist” features in our society, for roads, bridges, parks, museums and such things are “held” and enjoyed in common. The proper question to ask of this system was whether it worked. I think that we can answer this in the affirmative, although we are not exactly clear what it worked for. Eventually we found that it worked only for the few oligarchs who, in accordance with the old style, were capitalist when business was good but who demanded assistance from the government when business was in distress. They were thus sometimes anticapitalists.

          Now we are trying to build a society in which economic activity promotes the interest of the individual and the welfare of the whole. Necessarily, the authority of government must be exerted whenever these ends are not being served. Obviously individual enterprise and initiative will play a significant role in the economic society. The distinction between the public and private sectors is formal, since each has its particular duties to the people and their society. But this should not prevent the two sectors from joining together in a common cause. What made the old economic system unacceptable was that the so-called partnership between government and private business resulted in an oligarchy rather than an egalitarian economic society.

          This partnership should have resulted in the conquest of mass poverty, for that was its only justification. But the values of the old society were such that the partnership between the public and the private sectors was, in many instances, a conspiracy to enrich and increase the power of the few. This is certainly not capitalist, according to the tenet that it is the most efficient and liberal way of making society prosperous. Neither is the solution to this necessarily socialistic.

          The solution lies in the moral commitment to the aim of the New Society, the conquest of mass poverty, and in the political will to carry it out.

Anything can be achieved if there is political will!

 

          Having said my piece and posted the above texts, allow me to add a few more thoughts. Most of today's students, especially those who are under the pretension that they are activists, sad to say, are not even a minute speck of those that carry the torch of activism some 4 to 6 decades ago. They don't know what they are talking about; they lack the discipline to seek the truth and rely on hearsay; and have the tendency to become sycophants and oligarchic puppets.