[PRWC Party Documents] Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade, April 22, 1972

Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade

A Forest Nightmare

I. The Theme Of Bourgeois Pessimism

Basahin sa Pilipino

Amado Guerrero

April 22, 1972

Revolutionary School of Mao Tse Tung Thought, Communist Party of the Philippines

It is of utmost importance to recall the words of Chairman Mao Tsetung regarding the counter-revolutionary revisionist "theory of human nature":

There is only human nature in the concrete, no human nature in the abstract. In class society there is only human nature of a class character; there is no human nature above classes. We uphold the human nature of the proletariat and of the masses of the people, while the landlord and bourgeois classes uphold the the human nature of their own classes, only they do not say but make it out to be the only human nature in existence.

Pomeroy opposes the proletarian revolutionary class standpoint. In doing so, he cowers behind such pious expressions of bourgeois humanism as "love of man", "dignity of all" and "brotherhood of all". Grandiosely, he babbles:

We stand together in the love of man, enriched by it, adding to it our own little glory;... I have always been guided by the love of man; it is the love of man that beats in my pulse.... I realize that there cannot be mutual respect until the dignity of all is established. The road to the brotherhood of man lies through the struggle for the achievement of the dignity of each.

All this preaching is calculated to slur over and obscure the national and class struggle. It actually leads to a mockery of the Filipino proletariat and people. The scoundrel bleats:

A theory exists that misery breeds revolts, but that is true most often when misery follows from a loss of what one has had. But when on has known nothing for four hundred years, it crushes, subdues, becomes a pattern of life. The few who revolt are butchered; the amok is shot down in the street. The many squat in the floor of a hut look out with lackluster eyes at the will of God.

This bourgeois pessimist view attacks dialectical materialism and denies that the internal law of motion of things impels them to move forward and change. It rejects the ascendance of the new and progressive forces and the obliteration of the old and reactionary forces. It runs counter to the correct view that history is a spiralling process. It dismisses as "nothing" the revolutionary tradition and struggles of the Filipino people. It slanderously compares the revolutionary masses to a crazed fanatic (an "amok") and describes them as too few while those "who look out at the will of God" are too many.

Chairman Mao teaches us: "We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the the people are wrong."

Devoid of any revolutionary class perspective, Pomeroy sinks to the lowest depths of fatalism and defeatism: "Here in the primeval forest, I have never felt so overwhelmingly that human insignificance. Life means nothing in this geological immensity." The anti-communist scoundrels always find it rewarding to make a whine of despair: "... a time of grimness has come into our lives. I have been touched with fatalism. I think I am going to die in the forest,..."

In the entire book, what Pomeroy poses as the main contradiction in the Philippine society is that between man (represented by him) and nature (the forest). He lashes out at the rain: "The rain. It is the enemy that follows us forever, striking upon all the trails and beseiging every hut." Here is a sham revolutionary who hates and does not appreciate tropical forest and rain as advantageous conditions for fighting the real enemy. In the most critical situation, he soliloquizes; "What is the forest now, a friend or an enemy?"

What makes the forest a ghastly enemy for Pomeroy is that the squads balutan (porters) are prevented by the enemy from bringing in canned goods and rice bought from the town market to the camp. Instead of making a political analysis of the plight he is in together with others, he lets loose a ceaseless verbal barrage of abuse against the forest and plays up above all the problem of survival against nature. Yet he is in a tropical forest with a variety of edible flora and fauna and fringed with coconut groves; and he also treads upon rivers which breed fish snails. The primitive Dumagats whom Pomeroy comes across actually have more ingenuity and foresight than the entire Jesus Lava leadership on the problem of physical survival.

Pomeroy contends in keeping with his bourgeois humanism:

The forest is a strange place for freedom to live. Wherever one would turn there is the wall of trees. It is a wall to all sides and a wall above, shutting out the sky. In the open world there were horizons; here the only horizon is in the heart.

He regrets having ever joined the revolutionary struggle and being imprisoned by the forest. He hankers for the enemy bases, "the open world where there are horizons".

Let us scan his kind of "horizon in the heart". Even before he experiences any hardship from an any offensive, he expresses resentment against the forest. As soon as he steps into the forest,he is discomfited by his new shoes getting wet. Subsequently, the most trivial and pathetic resentments are elevated to the level of "tragic grandeur" for the self-centered author. The mud, the tiny leeches and ants and the actual or imagined falling of trees and branches are perennial torture for the sham hero. When he contracts athlete's foot (alipunga), he raises it with stupendous efforts to the level of a major tragedy.

Pomeroy is obsessed with interpreting all things of the forest as symbols of death and decay. He flies into a fantasy:

Behind our hut is an ancient leaning tree, covered with the pustules of decay. Some of its limbs have broken off, the hollow stumps lifted in mute agony. It leans so far, there above us, that one would think that it is in the very act of falling upon us and smothering us in its black limbs and in its crawling moist dust.

Pomeroy always strains to create an atmosphere of gloom. He bleats:

We lie there in the damp darkness, with the odor of dank vegetation in our nostrils, hearing legions of frogs singing the elegy of the night, and we are filled for the first time with the quiet despair of the lost.

The forest is filled with mist and the bushes loom around me, loom out of it with the arms of the drowning.... I think that we are all ghosts in a phantom forest.

These are the words of dilirium that the anti-communist Pomeroy uses to misrepresent revolutionary thinking in the face of hardship. These serve nothing but to whip up fear of revolution.

The jeremiads of Pomeroy are a ceaseless and utterly sickening. He chatters: "I do not think of a destination; I only think of the next spot to place a foot." He weeps: "On what circle of hell are we doomed to wander?"

We find no relief in the author's few moments of euphoria such as when he compares himself to Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest or when he paints a love scene between him and Celia in a creek. There is also no relief in his bourgeois comparisons, say, between the womenfolk in the forest with James Joyce's washerwomen in the twilight by the River Liffy. All these serve to reinforce his theme of bourgeois pessimism.

When an expansion group leaves the forest camp, Pomeroy feels that "something has somehow gone out of our lives". Such can only be the feeling of a hidden traitor who does not consider expansion as an extension of the revolutionary struggle. At the first alarm for evacuation that he experiences, he confesses that the mere sight of the emergency packs make him feel more helpless and more helpless and more impotent than the report of the danger. "The first thin wire of uncertainty has been touched in our hearts", he wails. At the sight of the enemy observation plane, he shakes in his pants and makes a craven report: "As long as it is there we lie and hold our breaths, as if our breathing could be heard." This is taking melodrama too far.

When he asks a Red fighter why he has joined the revolution, he leads the discussion into how one's selfish interest can be served. He plays up the spirit of self-interest rather than the revolutionary spirit serving the people. In trying to draw a picture of discipline in the camps, he lays emphasis on the coercive administrative measures against misdemeanors he is extremely proud of the fact that for minor infractions of rules comrades are treated like enemies and subjected to needless humiliation or even the death penalty. He completely assails the idea that rectification is essentially class education. In too many sections of the book, he sharps on the "unrealiability" of the Red fighters and people in the face of the enemy offensive.

Pomeroy has absolutely no faith in the victory of the Philippine revolution. At parting with comrades, he readily refers darkly to them: "The lit faces of all those whom we may never see again." And he is too proud to claim: "See you in Muntinglupa, we call to each other." This is the extreme reverse of previous "Left" opportunist words of parting among the Lavaites: "See you in Malacanang."

Summing up his kind of participation in the Philippines revolutionary movement, he declares:

When Celia and I passed beyond the open and comprehended world to enter the unknown forest, it was without any sense of being cut adrift, because we felt part of a great movement that had direction and goal, and every trails and the goal began to be blocked that we felt the forest loom around us and had the sensation that we were cutting paths blindly through it.

Now in this remote and unknown region, where every intersection of rivers poses an unanswered question, this group of ours is the epitome of our struggle, lost and driven into unknown courses.

Surrender to the enemy is the end of Pomeroy's bourgeois pessimism. He reports on his own craven surrender to the enemy:

I give a great shout from behind the tree. The firing above slackens and I hear voices calling me to come out. I do not know what will happen but I step out from behind the tree. It is the last tree in the forest for me.

He curses the revolutionary armed struggle: "Strange blind struggle in the forest." And he commends the enemy; "The army men come to watch me curiously. "It is odd: most of them are friendly and decent, officers and enlisted men alike." Here Pomeroy gives himself away.

Against bourgeois pessimism, Chairman Mao teaches us: "Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to win victory." We must maintain our revolutionary optimism and our will to fight and win. Chairman Mao combats capitulationism in the following terms:

This army has an indomitable spirit and is determind to vanguish all enemies and never to yield. No matter what the difficulties and hardships are, so long as a single man remains, he will fight on.