Bisig: an openly
PHILIPPINES writings of Luis Taruc. It is just an appeal to populist sentiments. So that socialist party was easily absorbed in the Stalinist tradition that was introduced also around the same time.
In 1966, there was a second attempt to set up a socialist party. But this time the program was a nationalist program. It was no different from the socialist force
Advancement of Nationalism (MAN).
felt that socialism has never been explained to our people.
Socialism has been caricatured and yet people who see themselves as being
IN THE RANGE of the Philippine revolutionary left, the movement
Bisig occupies a distinct place. It is neither a party nor a coalition.
It regroups militants coming from different politico-cultural traditions who openly identify with socialism.
In this interview, Francisco "Dodong" Nemenzo and Randolfo
"Randy" David, respectively chair and vice-chair of Bisig, explain its origins and character as well as its role in the Philippine revolutionary movement.
Question. Last May Bisig was set up. So, what is this new organization?
"Randy"
Randolf
David.
Bisig is an acronym for Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa. But Bisig as a word also means arm, the arm of a person. In Tagalog, it is the symbolic word for labor.
Bukluran means alliance or union. So: union for the development of socialist theory and practice. That is Bisig.
Q.
"Union"? It is neither a party, nor a coalition...
Bukluran in our language
Randy.
can be translated as unity, or a venue for a unity. It is definitely not yet a party. But it's more than just a movement because it is not a loose organization.
Bisig is an aggregation of socialists coming from different ideological positions.
There are Marxist socialists, but there are also socialists who discovered socialism on account of their faith, their Christian faith.
a result of
Others discovered it as small-scale work in comorganizing munities and realized that they could not do community organizing without ultimately going towards structures that were basically socialist.
What unites these socialists together,
I think, is a shared revulsion against bureaucratism and authoritarian socistate-centered socialism.
alism, or
Because if you examine the backgrounds of the people who are participating in Bisig, you will find that some of them emerged from the old Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP), some of them from the new Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and some of them from the tradition of populist organizing at the community level who probably started their activism inspired by the ideas of
Saul Alinsky. Furthermore, some of
10 them come from the tradition of Christian social democracy. But all share a firm conviction that the kind of socialism that is appropriate to the Philippines should be one that departs radically from state-centered socialism. In short, a socialism that is clearly popular in character, which a crucial role to popular organizations rather than to one central omnipotent
It is also one reason why a number of those who have joined Bisig have been quite reluctant to go directly into party building, mainly because they feel that there should be alternatives to the way of the party. These are continuing questions in our organi-
Would you say that Bisig is the product of the February Revolution?
Francisco "Dodong" Definitely not. It's true that Bisig was set up in the last week of May 1986, after the February revolution. But our was basically finalized in December 1985. We had our prein January. Before overthrow of Marcos we already planned to launch Bisig. So it is not one of these things that emerged only as a result of the February affair. It would have been formally established even if Marcos was still with us. In fact, our program, known as the "blue paper" which presents our socialist vision still presupposes that Marcos was around. So we'll have to update it. But we did not want to touch the program anymore, then.
There have been two previous attempts to set up a socialist party in the Philippines. In both cases, the socialist party was set up just capitalizing on the millenarian tradition in Central Luzon. You see it in the socialist or even communist never tried to defend socialism per se. So this time we are reversing the process. We are going to conduct a socialist education campaign, to explain what socialism is, to defend it against the distortions, to propagate scientific socialism. The idea here is to prepare for the setting up of a real socialist party of the Philippines. Even the Communist Party of the munism or socialism openly in the Philippine situation. It's always under the guise of nationalism. And there was really no attempt to adapt it to the situation in the Philippines.
We in Bisig come from at least four ideological traditions: the old Lavaite communism, the Maoist version, the Christian social-democratic tradition and those who were never part of any of these currents. In Bisig we are not only trying to link the drop-outs from these four traditions together. We are tying to work out a synthesis.
Are you building a pluralistic organization?
I don't like the pluralistic in this context because it presupposes that different tendencies are just allowed to operate more or less autonomously within a common structure. In Bisig we are trying to forge a coherent ideology but learning from the experience of these four
We are trying to keep the usable qualities of each of these, based on our own practical experiences. So it is not as if in our discussions you find a Maoist arguing still as a Maoist, or a social democrat as a social democrat, and so on. That's why it took us such a long time to decide that we were organization. A year of weekly dis-
Those discussions, I must tell you, were very educational for all of us. Because sometimes, those of us who were coming from a more Marxist tradition would assume that every one started from Marxist premises. Just to point out one example, one of us from the university would often argue necessity for socialism from an almost purely scientific point of view. He International Viewpoint 8 December 1986
argued that under socialism alone it is possible to assure the continuous progress and development of productive forces. Now, many of our friends from the Christian social-democratic tradition found this to be a rather narrow view of socialism. They felt that equal attention must be paid to the ethical superiority of socialism. This is not entirely alien to the Marxist tradition, of course, especially if you look at the writings of the young Marx: he spoke of alienation, and so on. So there were intense discussions certain that at one point or another European Marxists watching this beautiful experiment will remark that this is nothing but eclecticism.
Well, be that as it may, I think it is an attempt - and we say so very clearly — this is an attempt to weave a Filipino socialism that we feel appropriate to our circumstances. There is a very conscious attempt to get away from any dogmatic tendency.
There is so much openness that sometimes I feel that those of us who come from the university begin to sound like Christians and indeed our friends who are coming from the faith dimension begin to sound like Marx-
Dodong. When we keep on talking about Filipino socialism, I do not like to give the impression that we have a very partial point of view. As a matter of fact, I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that in the Philip. pines today we are the most internationalist in perspective. the CPP for instance, since China dropped Mao Zedong, has been very reluctant in making any stand on any international issue. The social democrats also.
The PKP is internationalist only in the sense that they keep on echoing the Moscow line. When we talk about Filipino socialism, we are saying that we reject such a policy, but we are not indifferent to events taking place in the world! We are very much interested in the global economy, in processes in the socialist countries, in the struggle of third world peoples. And we try to inform ourselves of the struggles of the working class in the capitalist countries. Our constant use of the word Filipino socialism should be interpreted in that light.
The formation of Bisig is the product of a long process...
Randy. If we go years back, there have been existing groups: the PKP, the CPP, the National Democratic Front (NDF), the SocialDemocrats, and so on. But there have always been people who have found that they could not agree with certain perspectives as well as methods of work in these parties. And also people who, because of their own
International Viewpoint 8 December 1986 that put in left-wing activists.
(CORD).
When for Bayan.
were, various attempts toward felt that attempts at sitional points.
For certain other the socialist
(NDs),
The especially non-aligned for with that existed. So part of actively set of small organizations?
Randy Originally the Independent
Caucus was formed by organizations and a lew individuals. But, concerning Bisig, we decided to be less grand.
iose in our plans. We refuse to assume that, just because the leadership of particular organizations was already
IC, the whole membership should join the launching of Bisig.
Since we were not talking about a workers
(D
)R)
s sugar
Communist guerrillas have recently agreed to a cease-fire (DR)
International Viewpoint 8 December 1986 specific socialist vision, we decided to set up an initial transitional organization open only to individual membership. It left more time to get down to the last member of each of the concerned organizations and talk of the socialist vision. We did not want joining Bisig to be a simple organizational decision to be taken by leaderships, but a decision that should involve the entire membership of each of these organizations.
Right now about 50 per cent of these organizations have already gone through that full process of dealing with the basic documents, and are now willing to join collectively. are looking towards that point in time, hopefully by the end of the first year of Bisig, when we can start to convert Bisig into a unity, but a unity on a higher level than the initial 200 or so individuals who formed Bisig formally last May.
Dodong. One of the advantages of deciding first to go small scale, in terms of individual membership, was to ensure that we considered ourselves as one organization rather than as different tendencies put together into a coalition. And although most of these people were in the leadership of various organizations, by starting in such a way, it would allow us to really break down the labels and the walls that people usually attach to all of us.
When Bisig integrates various organizations, while each organization would still retain its autonomy, we would not be a coalition of different tendencies but a coalition of various sectoral organizations that basically adhere to the same vision. So that it 12 becomes really a union rather than a simple alliance or a movement. It's a fusion of various tendencies rather than a coalition. sectors of Bisig's implantation?
We give utmost priority to work in the labor movement as well as community organizing. Community work is also a form of organizing labor. In the Philippine context, sometimes you cannot organize labor in trade unions in the places of work, but in the places of residence. So that urban community work is an essentially an organization (University of the Philippines)-based intellectuals. But in the organization, the biggest single bloc are the urban poor and the community organizers, followed by trade unionists, students, and then only the academics - the fifth bloe in number. We are not ashamed of the fact that we have, think, more influence in the academic community than the other tendencies, especially here in UP. But the reality is that in our are just a small minority.
We countryside. One of the groups that form Bisig is from Central Luzon. But the ones who already joined us are not really from the rural areas. They are from the urban areas of Central Luzon. So we don't have at the moment many peasant cadres. We really see this as a weakness..
Randy. Among the organizers, the bulk of them work in the rural areas. In terms of long-term work there are members of Bisig who are working with peasants and fishermen's organizations. however, very strict about not claiming the groups that we either work with or even groups that we lead, as automatically members of Bisig. Not until they subscribe to the Bisig principles will they be considered as members. Because of the individual character at this point of Bisig membership, the peasants and the fishermen are not as numerous as we want them. That holds as unions and urban poor groups.
Dodong. There is one other explanation why there were few peasants in the Bisig congress. Actually, there were peasants in Central Luzon who attended the pre-congress seminars. It is simply that they did not have the money to come to Manila. But we chapters in their areas. There is a commitment to join. Give us a year or so, we will have a broader peasant mem-
Geographically, we are also related with groups in Southern Luzon, in Quezon, in Mindanao and the Visayas.
Q. What are the principal tasks for the coming period that Bisig assigned itself at the time of its founding congress?
Randy. Many things have been said about the government that arose from the February revolution. But I think that there is a common understanding that the most important feature of this government is that it has opened up a democratic conjuncture. It is a perfect atmosphere for organizing, political organizing.
TUDE
We particular ether, without cess of united front united reflected vious building.
Randy.
They nothing should from them always surfaced education.
felt, we a very towards the of a united we think are
You are a single party, society.
establish
I
DO existence of ibe progressive forces
Aquino
So we problem
Since we come tion.
different tom sig is in serve disig our
Q.
The experience of diverse coalitions and united fronts, especially
1983-84, played a major role in
Can you go e formation of Bisig.
country, er some of the lessons that you by the drew from this.
it will be since the 1950s
Dodong.
Ever the
Philippines have had we a series of efforts at building a united
But all of them presupposed related
Iront.
a united front behind a single van-
You operating guard. This has never worked.
have the mass organizations of the party forming a semblance of united front with a sprinkling of naive liberals or some opportunistic politicians who ranted the backing of the to get hidden agenda.
But, it was party.
never, properly has been to speaking, a united front.
the differences
We were hoping that Bayan would battle be a united front of the kind you have in El Salvador, or even Nicaragua:
International Viewpoint 8 December 1986 conlike JAJA.
Q.
months?
there are again about the pre-
The third perspective.
her set up
People participate, the elections.
mission, because the time, shape of the be tuion, are unhampered legal level, but
But the tendency of the Marcos seize state see exactly what which led to the
Six will be the issue
Ms
Aquino will electoral party, in which manner within the next what is so on.
fore-
13
International Viewpoint 8 December 1986
USA
In Vermont, the governor must be elected by a majority, not merely before the a plurality. Just days election, a number of liberal Demo-