KARL MARX TUESDAYS"

PHILIPPINE SOCIETY AND THE REVOLUTION AGAINST THE PHILIPPINE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

By: Comrade Mark Cua

THE BASIC PROBLEMS OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE

II. U.S. imperialism

1. The Meaning of Imperialism

At the time that the United States decided to seize the Philippines together with other colonial possessions of Spain towards the beginning of the 20th century. American capitalism had already reached what Lenin called the final stage of capitalism which is monopoly capitalism or imperialism. Free competition had given rise to the concentration of production and capital in the hands of a few. Unless it engaged in imperialist expansion, the American ruling class of monopoly capitalists would not be able to cope even temporarily with the crisis of overproduction. Imperialism is the last way out for the monopoly capitalists to postpone their revolutionary overthrow. It means the extension of the class oppression and exploitation within the United States into the oppression and exploitation of other nations and peoples abroad through the export of surplus products and surplus capital.

Lenin gave the most precise definition of modern imperialism when he described it as the monopoly stage of capitalism and pointed out five of its basic features: namely, 1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; 2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation on the basis of this capital œfinance â €, â € ?? of a financial oligarchy; 3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; 4) the formation of international monopoly capitalist combines which share the world among themselves; and 5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 was inevitable as colonial Spain stood in the path of US imperialist expansion. US imperialism had already spread its hegemony over the northern part of South America and all of Central America. It was determined to grab Puerto Rico and Cuba from colonial Spain and monopolize the whole of Latin America as its backyard. US imperialism found it convenient to declare war on a decadent colonial power so as to get the excuse for seizing the Philippines and getting an important stronghold for long-term aggression against China and the whole of Asia. As a newly-risen imperialist power then, the United States found its enemy an easy pushover.

Imperialism means war. Wars of expansion are in themselves profitable big business for the US monopoly capitalists although these are disastrous for them upon failure in the end. These unjust wars constitute the worst kind of oppression and exploitation for the American people and also for other peoples abroad. The imperialist state pretending to pursue a â € œmanifest destinyâ € ?? or, in later parlance, defend the world œfree â €, â € ?? forces millions of American workers to intensify monopoly production and conscripts them to fight in foreign lands. The imperialist objective is to widen the field for monopoly investments abroad, make possible the disposal of huge amounts of manufactured commodities and seize sources of raw materials. It is to exact a higher rate of profit abroad in colonies and semicolonies.

Contrary to the idealist-view that the United States became a reluctant guardian of the Philippines by some â € œquirk of fate, â € ?? such as the explosion of the Maine that supposedly ignited the Spanish-American War, the American conquest of the Philippines - directed not only against the Spanish colonialists but also against the Filipino revolutionaries - had long been determined by the internal laws of motion of US capitalism . The imperialist appetite for superprofits brought the US aggressors to the Philippines and to Asia. The expansion of US imperialism was a cold-bloodedly policy decided by the monopoly capitalist interest behind the American state.

It was principally with the use of counterrevolutionary violence and secondarily with deception that US imperialism managed to impose its power on the Filipino people. At first, it insinuated itself into Philippine affairs by pretending to assist the Filipino liberal-bourgeois leadership in fighting Spain. At the next turn, it suppressed the Philippine revolutionary government and the revolutionary masses by military force. Never abandoning its counterrevolutionary dual tactics, it offered negotiations, peace, wealth and a share of power to the leadership of the old bourgeois democratic revolution even while unleashing the full force of its imperialist might to attack the revolutionary masses.

Only after succeeding in its war of aggression imperialism was able to hold the Philippines under its direct colonial rule. During the period of its direct colonial rule, US imperialism took a firm hold of the material base of Philippine society. It saw to it that sugar mills, refineries coconut, cordage shops and mines were established to tie down the country to raw material production for US monopoly firms. It did not develop local manufacturing extensively because it was already able to draw superprofits from direct investments in colonial trade and in a few slight factories engaged in processing of local raw materials and also from the disposition of loan capital and local taxes mainly for public works to facilitate the colonial exchange of raw materials from the Philippines and finished products from the United States. The free trade formalized by the Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909 and the Underwood Tariff Act of 1913 made the Philippines thoroughly dependent on raw material exports and manufactured imports.

US imperialism took a firm hold of the superstructure correspondent to its control of the material mode of production in Philippine society. The Political activity of its Filipino puppets was governed by a series of laws enacted it abroad, like the Philippine Bill of 1902, the Jones Law of 1916 and the Tydings-McDuffie Law of 1934. It extended its administrative responsibilities to local underlings in the colonial government only insofar as it had succeeded in training them under its cultural and educational system. It was always alert with its guns to quell any movement genuinely fighting for national independence and democracy. In the whole society, it relied on the collaboration of the comprador big bourgeoisie, the landlord class and the bureaucrat capitalists.

By the time that US imperialism bogus considered granting independence to the Philippines during the 1930 € ™ s, it anticipated the resurgence of the revolutionary mass movement for national independence and democracy in the Philippines. The crisis of imperialism that eventually led to a global war and the rapid spread of Marxism-Leninism as the beacon light for the liberation of all oppressed peoples clearly imperiled the very existence of US imperialism. Thus, it had to make a pretentious pledge of granting independence that only the sovereign Filipino people could actually fight for.

After World War II, it was even more clear to US imperialism to make no delay in granting sham independence to the Philippines. Otherwise, it would risk being buried under the tidal wave of a national liberation movement as was already the case with other colonial powers in other countries. At any rate, though the world capitalist system as a whole had weakened due to the interimperialist war, the growing strength of the first socialist state and the prairie fire of national liberation movements, US imperialism emerged as relatively the strongest power among the imperialist powers which had fallen into shambles in the course of World War II. In dealing with the peopleâ € ™ s demand for independence in the Philippines, therefore, US imperialism could still cleverly employ dual tactics of coercion and chicanery. Besides, it had long gotten the commitment of the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs to support the sham independence it was willing to grant. In that case, it had its saboteurs in the revolutionary mass movement.