Message to the International Congress Against the World Economic Summit

I am deeply pleased to be invited to the International Congress Against the World Economic Summit. And I wish to thank the organizers of the congress

It is regrettable that I cannot come because the Dutch authorities refuse to give me a laissez passer. As an asylum-seeker in the Netherlands, I have experienced what kind of democracy the class rule of the big bourgeoisie allows.

In the bourgeois world, there is so much media hype against the ways of the Stasi. But in fact, my application for political asylum has been denied twice on the basis of intelligence reports that my lawyer final denial in the Netherlands will prompt a further appeal to the European court.

The Manila authorities subjected me to torture, solitary confinement, prolonged illegal detention and other acts of persecution. And they have cancelled my passport without due process since 1988 and have offered the prize money of one million pesos for my head, dead or alive, since 1989. And yet the Dutch authorities claim that I cannot be granted asylum because the Manila authorities want me for prosecution and not for persecution. This is what I call word play against the reality of persecution.

Now, I cannot come to Munich even after applying for a laissez passer long before this congress. There is a wall of official silence against my application for this permit to travel.I am told only informally that the right to travel, free speech and other liberties can be negated to prevent me from attending a congress that opposes a sacred thing like the G-7 Summit.

So much for explaining my inability to come to the congress against my will. However, no one can stop me from sending you this message and from requesting a compatriot to participate in your discussions.

The International Congress

Obviously, the challenge that you are making to the G-7 Summit is seriously being taken in view of the fact that bourgeois governments have been obstructing your work and the participation of people from various countries.

At any rate, you have succeeded in convening the congress. I congratulate you wholeheartedly and wish you further success. I hereby convey my warmest regards to all participants.

The congress is highly significant.The people of the world look up to it as an effort to make a critical comprehension and analysis of and militant opposition to several major events unleashed in this year by the world’s chief exploiters and oppressors for the purpose of making propaganda and further rationalizing the exploitation and oppression of the people of the world.

I refer to the bourgeois celebration of the quintennial anniversary of the Columbus expedition, the attempt of the worst plunderers of the world’s human and natural resources, the main polluters of the world, to misrepresent themselves as the champions of ecology and development and of course the latest G-7 Summit, which is a grand cabal to exact more profits from the blood and sweat of the people.

The congress is made more significant by your determination to promote and help bring about lines of communication and a common understanding among the peoples of the world in the developed countries and in the client-states or neocolonies, against imperialism and neocolonialism and their reactionary agents.

The Filipino people and all progressive forces in the Philippines are in solidarity with you. They share with you the common understanding of the capitalist process of oppression and exploitation; and the common resolve to struggle against these.

They regard the Columbus expedition as the start of the process of bloody conquest and colonization, augmenting the primitive accumulation of capital in Europe and laying the foundation for modern imperialism and neocolonialism. The Filipino people have been subjected to this process and cry out for liberation from the colonial legacy and all the rigors of neocolonial subjugation.

They reject the misrepresentation of the last 500 years as a period of the West civilizing and developing the world. They condemn colonialism, slavery, feudalism, racism, the degradation of entire peoples and the women, clericalism and the destruction of entire cultures and all the current evils of monopoly capitalism and neocolonialism. They celebrate the unceasing resistance of the people of the Americas and farther afield, with whom they have the common experience of suffering and struggle for justice and freedom.

The Filipino people are united with all the peoples in the world in taking a common stand against the capitalist despoliation of the human and natural resources. Inherent to their anti-imperialist stand is the protection and the wise and healthy utilization of the environment. Like all victims of imperialist plunder, the Filipino people have contempt for the crocodile tears of the big bourgeoisie at the Earth Summit.

They are vigilant and opposed to the notion that the issue of ecology is decided by the worst plunderers and destroyers of the environment, that economic development is all decided by these hypocrites and deceivers and that environmental protection is a matter of the poor and underdeveloped countries begging for funds from the unconscionable extractors of superprofits.

The G-7 Summit aims to override the growing contradictions among its members by agreements to widen and intensify the exploitation and oppression of the people of the world. It is therefore appropriate to denounce it where it is held, both through the indoor discussions of the Congress and through a militant mass action.

The Group of Seven

The Group of Seven is the most despicable combination of countries that has plotted and acted against the people in the entire history of mankind. In the last two decades, they have aggravated underdevelopment and poverty in the third world countries as well as directly and indirectly in the bureaucrat capitalist-ruled countries, which labelled themselves as socialist.

Individually and collectively, directly and through multilateral agencies like the IMF and World Bank, they have imposed on other countries economic and political policies which impoverish and humiliate the people.They have propelled the ever deteriorating terms of trade against the producers of raw materials and slightly-processed goods. They have plunged all these into indebtedness and they are now earning more from debt service than from dividends on productive investment.

And now that they are confronted with the problem of a prolonged world recession and are afflicted with internal contradictions and contradictions among themselves, they seek to devise more cruel and more deceptive ways of exploiting the peoples of the world, including those in capitalist countries.

The internationalization of capital has limits after all. These have been obvious since more than a decade ago when there was a shift from neo-Keynesianism to monetarist policy. The large shift of policy and all the economic restructuring done have only deepened the capitalist crisis of overproduction.The more the Group of Seven strains to solve the fundamental problems of capitalism at the greater expense of the people, the greater is the resistance that can arise.

There has been no end to the fact that all the client-states of the Group of Seven have been overburdened by foreign debt, the most conspicuous manifestation of their economic travail. Coming on top of the utter bankruptcy of most third world and East European countries at the end of the seventies has been the continued abuse of the international credit system by no less than the United States and by further lending to such new loan-clients as China, India and the Soviet Union in that chronological order in the eighties.

But from 1989 to 1991, the Group of Seven and the entire world capitalist system appeared to be triumphant over so-called socialism. So long as bureaucrat capitalism is misconstrued as socialism, capitalism can make the empty boast that it has prevailed over socialism and seems to make a big gain through an ideological offensive against revolutionary forces.

But in fact, the restoration of capitalism had gone on since the fifties in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Now that the socialist mask is off the face of bureaucrat capitalism, the Group of Seven is expected to assume full responsibility for all the economic mess in the aforementioned countries and to ante up the loans with no certainty of payback. But driven by its obsessive greed, the Group of Seven prefers to dump finished goods on the client-states and de-industrialize them.

Also in the 1989-91 period, specifically in the year of 1991, the US-led global capitalist alliance was able to demonstrate its hightech military power, murder 300,000 Iraqi people and devastate Iraq. Since then, there has been much gloating over the supposedly unchallenged hegemony of the US and over the supposed overcoming of the Vietnam syndrome.

But in fact, the Gulf war has exposed the limits of the neocolonialist techniques of economic and financial manipulation and political dictation as well as the persistence of the violent and aggressive nature of imperialism which comes to the fore whenever necessary. A client-state like Iraq became unwieldy in the hands of the US because of the high costs of the Iran-Iraq war and Iraq’s own assertion of national interest against the imperialist oil interests. Consequently, the US and other capitalist powers shifted from the superficial civility of neocolonialism to the violence of imperialism.

Major Contradictions in the World

In this year, we are in full view of several major contradictions in the world which are becoming more and more conspicuous.

First, all major capitalist powers like the US, Germany and Japan are individually in serious economic trouble.

The US continues to be overburdened by its huge budgetary and trade deficits due to military overspending and by overconsumption. Germany has a serious case of indigestion; the costs for absorbing East Germany are exceedingly heavy. The recent bursting of the financial bubble in the Tokyo stock market shows how Japan is so vulnerable to shifts in US economic policy.

In each capitalist country, the tax burden is increasing, the wage level is always being pressed down and social benefits are being cut back. The big bourgeoisie is already springing out racism and neo-fascism in order to augment the traditional bourgeois parties in the attempt to confuse the people.

Second, the contradictions within the Group of Seven and among all the capitalist countries are intensifying. The controversial issues are in all fields: industrial policy, finance, trade, spheres of influence and security matters.The continuing strategic decline of the US is being taken advantage of by its capitalist competitors.

The US wants to reduce the costs of its war machinery and revive its industrial competitiveness.Thus, both Germany and Japan are being pushed to build up their war machineries and aggressive capability and to engage in overseas military involvement under the banners of the UN and the old as well as new regional and bilateral alliances.

The emergence of new armed conflicts, the continuance of old ones and, of course, the inevitable rise of the people’s armed resistance to imperialism and client-states on a widescale are now the main concern of the strategic planning by the capitalist powers which are cooking up various forms of military combinations in the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Third, the contradictions between the capitalist powers and the client-states exist even as for the time being it looks like the hegemony of the US as well as that of the US-led alliance is difficult or impossible for any country to challenge.

As the crisis of the world capitalist system worsens and social unrest and resistance of the people are engendered, every reactionary ruling clique in the client-states is unstable and is vulnerable to an armed opposition even within the ruling system.

In fact, we see the ever increasing use of violence in the change of regimes in Asia, Africa, and LatinAmerica.And we will see more and more of this in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. The illusion of democratization and peace under the aegis of imperialism and with the drumbeating by the pro-imperialist petty bourgeoisie is already giving way to more repressive regimes and further on to popular resistance.

Fourth, the contradictions between the people of all the client-states and the capitalist powers are bound to intensify because the basic social problems are being aggravated and the domestic ruling classes are increasingly afflicted by the violent competition for power on the basis of a dwindling socio-economic base for mutual accommodation.

The increasing possibility of successful armed revolutions led by the working class party arises from the widespread social unrest and turmoil that continue to occur in several countries and continents at the same time.

There are still proletarian revolutionary parties like the Communist Party of the Philippines, which are determined to win an armed revolution and carry out socialist revolution as the consequences of a new democratic revolution.The former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are not getting as much manna as previously expected from the gods of capitalism and are in fact being de-industrialized.They are in social turmoil and have become hotbeds of ethnic conflicts, coup d’etats and civil wars. The political and economic chaos can ultimately lead to the reemergence of armed revolution.

Fifth, the contradiction between the big bourgeoisie on the one hand and the proletariat and people on the other is bound to intensify as the competition among the capitalist powers intensify upon a dwindling world capitalist market.

The capitalist crisis of overproduction is actually being accelerated by high technology and by the shrinkage of the world market due to the penury and indebtedness of the client states. In the rush to become more efficient and more profitable, the monopoly capitalist firms are now disemploying both blue collars and white collar, with the latter becoming more and more vulnerable to replacement by computers, and are forcing smaller firms into mergers and bankruptcies.

At the moment, the crisis within the advanced capitalist countries is not yet acute enough to cause any uprising. That is because the monopoly bourgeoisie can still exploit the client-states. Widespread discontent can arise if the recession becomes a depression and the depression that has long been with most client-states generates armed resistance and social upheavals.

The Philippine Revolutionary Struggle

There can be no debate whatsoever that the chronic domestic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal society in the Philippines is ever worsening and providing the fertile ground for the protracted people’s war during the last twenty three years.

This domestic crisis arises from the exploitative nature of the economy and the joint class dictatorship of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class and is of course generated by the world crisis of capitalism.

The extraction of superprofits from the Philippines by the US, Japanese, German and other multinational firms, the huge budgetary and trade deficits and the crushing foreign and domestic public debt are ceaseless in impoverishing the people and making their lives miserable.These incite the people to join the armed revolution.

In their ideological offensive, the imperialists have been trying to demoralize the people and the revolutionary forces in the Philippines by insisting that the movement for national liberation and democracy is hopeless because the world capitalist system is now without any strong socialist challenge and that the collapse of so-called socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have made anti-imperialist and socialist movements helpless and pointless.

The response of the Filipino people and the revolutionary forces is as follows:

1. Like the rest of the people of the third world, the Filipino people have always been under capitalist domination since a long time ago. They have no choice but to fight imperialism and all reaction if they are to hope for any better life.
2. It has been demonstrated in history that genuine revolutionary parties of the proletariat have successfully carried out new democratic revolutions and undertaken a socialist revolutions. The great theoretical challenge for proletarian revolutionaries is how to prevent the undermining and betrayal of socialism and continue the socialist revolution after some decades.
3. The ruling parties and regimes that disintegrated in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have been anti-socialist for several decades even as they masqueraded as communist and socialist. In fact, the nomenclatura and apparatchiks continue to prey on the people as barefaced bourgeois, using bureaucratic privileges and doing more private business than ever.
4. In those countries, where bureaucrat capitalism has sought to further strengthen private capitalism by privatizing public assets, the economy and social life in all other respects have further deteriorated.The current conditions of these unabashed client-states of the Group of Seven are a further indictment of capitalism.
5. The ever worsening crisis of the world capitalist system is now clearly pointing to the rise of revolutionary resistance on an unprecedentedly wide scale sooner than later.

The domestic crisis in the Philippines is not all there is to favor the armed revolution. The crisis of the world capitalist system continues to worsen and favor the armed revolution in the Philippines.

A new element in the crisis in the Philippines is the current ascendance of a military figure (General Ramos) to the presidency of the Manila government on the basis of a fraudulent claim on less than a quarter of the electoral vote. He is a notorious puppet of the US and butcher of the Filipino people.

Under the Marcos regime he was the chief planner and implementor of repression. And under theAquino regime he pushed the US-instigated total war policy. He has represented the continuity of the the fascist military organization and he now represents the militarization of the ruling political system, from top to bottom. This is a manifestation of the deterioration and desperation of the ruling system.

As Filipino revolutionaries say, “This fascist brute has a long record of trying and failing to suppress the revolutionary movement.It is easier to fight and beat such an enemy with his fangs immediately showing than one with lipstick.” The new regime is expected to escalate armed counterrevolution and human rights violations but it shall have a lesser capability to deceive the people than Mrs. Aquino even as he is also known as a psywar expert.

The perseverance of the revolutionary forces in armed struggle guarantees the continuance of the general tendency of the ruling system to disintegrate. Economic and political resources of the reactionaries from within and from outside the Philippines for maintaining bureaucratic operations and suppressing the armed revolution are dwindling.The very obstinacy of every ruling clique in carrying out armed counterrevolution has become self-defeating.

The factionalization of the ruling classes and the reactionary armed forces is continuing.The resources for accommodation among political and military factions of the ruling system are more than ever limited. In fact, the entire ruling system has no way to solve its all-round bankruptcy.

The Filipino people are more than ever determined to strengthen their revolutionary forces. They are building their leading proletarian party, their people’s army, their mass organizations, their united front and their organs of political power.These forces are growing in strength and advancing through the rhythm of expansion and consolidation; and are in the process of steadily supplanting the power of the imperialists and reactionaries in more and more areas in the Philippines.

At present, the armed revolution that is now going on in the Philippines is in the forefront of the revolutionary movement of the peoples of the world. The Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front are holding high the torch of armed revolution as social turmoil is now spreading in the world and the people are urged by the ever deteriorating conditions to take the road of revolutionary resistance.

I hope that the Filipino compatriot who will participate in the discussions in the forum will be able to shed more light on the content of this message and learn from the exchange of information and views with the other participants in the congress. Thank you.