On Communism

I've lost count of the times I've gotten into squabbles with my significant after whenever the topic of justifying our local version of communist revolution. it's like every time, my rage meter just keeps on spiking to degrees associated with issues of calculated stupidity and epic disregard for common sense.

Don't get me wrong. Once upon a time I really thought communism could be the key to improving our country. I was fourteen. I loved the Che Guevarra spirit, the revolution, the idea of the masses not having to put up with a parasitic upper crust of society. And then I kinda just grew out of it. There are just some things that work on paper, or in small scale cases, but just won't work in a national level for one sole reason: the anthrocultural factor.

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Filipinos are the worst communists of all.

1. Communism requires equality on all levels, without regard of the family unit. Filipinos regard their family ties sacrosanct, equality in treating nonfamily members be damned. Just try asking a family to give the same aguinaldo to both nephews and random carolers, I dare you.

2. Communism requires people willing to fall in line, willing to know their place in society and accept it. The mechanical pragmatism of communism relies on people moving in a uniform, automaton way, which goes directly against the "Wais" cultural tenet of the Filipino people, which states that if you can get ahead of others, you should.

3. Communism, while a social structure that favors the masses, is a very intellectual concept hardly understood even by the well educated. Its principles require consistent study, and being all-encompassing from the dogmatic beliefs of a country to the trivial activities of an individual person, cannot be fully understood without comprehensive reeducation.

40 years ago, maybe, just maybe, we had a chance of being communist. We had the resources, we were just coming out of the American clutch, and support for communism all over the world was big. But the 40 years came and went. The founder of the local revolution spends his time in Amsterdam making youtube videos filled with comments from bashers and armchair communist 14year olds not too different from me 10 years ago. The major composition of the armed struggled is now of three types of people:

1. Students
2. People who have beef with the establishments, government-based or otherwise
3. Lazy people in general who can't be bothered to get real work.

Revolution of the proletariat, as preached by the communist heads tell us of workers rising up against the elite of society, and none of the three types fall under the "proletariat" category. Shit, I can't even trust students to do my accounting for me. Theory aside, what do they know? As for the vendetta-driven people, I doubt they'd even know the difference between communism and socialism, not that it ever matters to them as long as they can shoot people. The last type? I wouldn't really be taking my say on these things if it were not true and seen in our province. Too lazy to get a job or finish your education? Go live off the revolutionary tax. It gives communism the bad name it has in this country. Meanwhile, the original proponents of the communist thrust are either exiled, dead, in jail, or simple too old to carry on whatever the hell it is they set out for, while the rest are left to just make shit up as they go about their revolution.

In that sense, the communist parties in our country has totally dropped the ball.

I had a recent discussion with a Chinese friend of mine, who happens to admire the system in their country. At the very end, we had to conclude the reason why Filipinos have a hard time accepting communism: Filipinos don't want to be controlled. Matter of fact, they are reverse control freaks. Any semblance of authority is treated with disdain if not outright resistance. Socialism at its earliest phase requires a pseudo totalitarian control over citizens, good luck with that buddy.

And it's not like our communist parties are still communist. Most communist units in our country has turned into simply anti-establishment hate machines that range from pro-democracy advocates to electioneers. Whatever happened to wiping out the current system instead of fitting into its numerous proletariat-murdering cogs? Why is the Communist Party condemning the VFA as a violation of the democratic constitution that it shouldn't even bother recognizing? Why are they struggling to get their parties elected to the congress when they're supposed to be making their own?

Meanwhile, the rest of the world has started ditching the dead carcass of socialism into a pit to be covered up and pretended as nonexistent. China's revisionist system is moving more and more away from Mao's dream. Russia's junked theirs totally. North Korea's being stubborn and will probably get themselves into more trouble. Cuba, the sole surviving communist state that still seemingly thrives is now moving away as well, with Fidel's successor starting to open up foreign relations that kept their ideology safe for the past few decades. Armed communist movements in other countries have given up, if not totally, save for our country.

Communism is dead, plain and simple. Such an extremist idea will never have worked anyway and the best we can do is be intellectually objective about it and try to apply what can be applied (state-sponsored social services is one of them). There is no romance in this article, only tragedy.

Apparently, some people just can't get over the hype of communism. 40 years on and the communist party of the Philippines is still all the rage, like a Macarena fad that just won't die out despite the fact that it's grown irrelevant, at the very least.

Today I read the inquirer again and saw a heavily opinionated, bias bullshit of an article in the news section, which might as well pass as propaganda, about how glorious it was for a promising intelligent, beautiful girl joined the communist bloc in Mindanao, who died late last year.

You can read the article here.


No, idiots, she didn't die for the masses she thought she was helping. Yes, she did her share of helping other people, but her death was basically meaningless. She died because she was hanging around with people who extort money from poor and rich people alike, kill people, and drag down our nation's stability in general. She died because she was also aiding the people who perpetrate these crimes, masked as revolutionary activities. There is no glory in that, considering she could have helped more people if she finished her studies, got a real job, and used her position in society to instigate change.

People will probably assail me for my beliefs in this post, but I don't really care. For as long as communist/socialist advocates in our society continue acting like they're a bunch of intellectuals who assert their belief system superiority at the cost of general disgust from the rest of the population, they will never get the support of the mass they need. Or me.

If ever we should learn something about communism, it's that at the end of things, it's how we openly we treat and accept our brothers and sisters that counts, not what we want to happen, or how we want to go about it.