Amado Guerrero
July 30, 1970

3. Fascism

The bureaucrat capitalists perform the special function of deceiving the people with incantations of national chauvinism and bourgeois populism. They use parliamentarism to dissipate and disrupt any revolutionary movement for national liberation and people's democracy against the evils of U.S. imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. When they become desperate, they resort inevitably to the use of the state as a coercive instrument of class dictatorship. They call for "national discipline" to suppress the people's democratic rights. They hypocritically invoke the glittering generalities of the constitution and the name of the people to suppress the people and justify their most heinous fascist crimes.

Bureaucrat capitalism is the basis of local fascism. The bureaucrat capitalists are too well compensated by U.S. imperialism and the local exploiting classes to change their oppressive character in favor of the people. They will go to every length in protecting the interests of their own clique and in keeping the sources of their graft and corruption. In the face of an opposition coming even from another clique of their own class, the bureaucrat capitalists never hesitate to make use of armed force one way or another to preserve their power.

In the face of a revolutionary mass movement, the bureaucrat capitalists are even more vicious in using their armed power. They are in the first line of defense on behalf of their imperialist and feudal masters. The reactionary armed forces of the Philippines and the local police forces are ever at their disposal for counterrevolutionary purposes. If they themselves cannot subdue the revolutionary mass movement, U.S. aggressor troops are expected to come out of the U.S. military bases and press them further into the frontlines against the people.

The bureaucrat capitalists who turn into barefaced fascists take after their imperialist masters in brutality. For seven decades, U.S. imperialism has taught them how to launch counterrevolutionary violence and has improved their weapons and techniques. Japanese imperialism has also given them three years of training in fascist rule and is again ready to give them some more. There has not been a single decade in Philippine history that is not stained by the blood of the people spilled by imperialism and its running dogs since the beginning of the century.

The present puppet republic is founded on counterrevolutionary violence, that of U.S. imperialism and the local exploiting classes. For the U.S. imperialists and the bureaucrat capitalists of the commonwealth government to return to power, they had to wage a ruthless war of aggression against the Filipino people. This was a repetition of the first U.S. war of aggression at the turn of the century.

Fascism emerged in the Philippines and ravaged the motherland as the bureaucrat-capitalist clique led by Roxas took the main responsibility in combating the revolutionary mass movement. Those who refused resubjugation to U.S. imperialism and the local exploiting classes became the target of fascist attacks. The Counterintelligence Corps, the Military Police Command and the Civilian Guards were unleashed against them.

The military suppression of the broad masses of the people raged on through the puppet regimes of Quirino and Magsaysay. The Philippine Constabulary and tens of battalion combat teams of the Philippine Army conducted the most sanguinary campaigns to uphold the supremacy of their foreign and feudal masters. The counterrevolution was capped by the formal suspension of the writ of habeas corpus (in fact a declaration of martial law) in 1950 which gave the fascist brutes more license to abuse the least semblance of civil liberty. The working class and the peasantry received the hardest blows and even the petty bourgeoisie was subjected to the most despicable white terror. Fascism was inflicted on the people under the direction of U.S. imperialism through such agencies as the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Once more fascism is conspicuously on the rise under the Marcos puppet regime. Massacres, assassinations, kidnappings and arrests on trumped-up charges are being flagrantly committed by the reactionary armed forces and police. Patriotic mass actions are brutally dispersed and demonstrators are murdered, maimed and arrested en masse. Brutal steps are taken to dissolve patriotic mass organizations. Even when the writ of habeas corpus is not formally suspended, an actual state of martial law is enforced. People are detained indefinitely, tortured and killed and homes are searched, looted or even burned without the niceties of reactionary laws. All of these abuses are being perpetrated on an increasingly larger scale.

All the fascist acts of the Marcos puppet regime fall under the U.S. programme of counterinsurgency. Day and night, the C.I.A., the JUSMAG and the A.I.D. Office of Public Safety goad the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Police Commission, the National Bureau of Investigation and the local police forces to launch the most dastardly campaign of suppression against the people. Not satisfied with the regular army, constabulary and police formations, special murder gangs like the "Monkees," "special forces," BSDU's and "provincial strike forces" have been organized to intensify the oppression of the people. Even the Reserve Officers Training Corps (R.O.T.C.) and Preparatory Military Training (P.M.T.) are now being geared for counterinsurgency even as large student masses are attacked in mass demonstrations. More and more youths are being compelled to report to military camps for fascist training. Trainees in "home defense" centers are being used in military operations against the people in Central Luzon and elsewhere.

Marcos himself as the chief bureaucrat capitalist in the country exercises his role as commander-in-chief in the most callous manner. Day in and day out, he shouts threats of formally declaring martial law and in fact directly plots with his minions not only the perpetration of selective terror against patriots and democrats but also of large-scale military abuses on the people. He encourages the chieftains of the armed forces to threaten the imposition of martial law even while the U.S. imperialists never fail to motivate them with the ambition to replace even their commander-in-chief in case he fails to keep the situation in tow. The butcher officers of the reactionary armed forces have the National Defense College, the Philippine Military Academy, and their fort training in the United States to fall back on for inspiration in fascist leadership.

Under the Pentagon slogan of "civic action," the military appropriations are rapidly increasing and the reactionary armed forces are taking over functions formerly reserved for civilians. Funds appropriated for other branches of the government are being shifted to maintain the fascist machinery. For "humanitarian" purposes, the reactionary armed forces have been involved in U.S. wars of aggression abroad.

The bureaucrat-capitalist cliques and dynasties all over the country have gained more license to kill, burn and loot as a result of Marcos' declaration of war against the Communist Party of the Philippines, patriotic mass organizations and the people in general. The formation of BSDU's and "provincial strike forces" all over the country gives them more power than ever to attack the people. Armed gangs which bureaucrat capitalists formerly camouflaged as authorized bodyguards and security agencies for their haciendas and companies have acquired more authority to extort and make depredations. The bureaucrat capitalists have been given the widest latitude for combining reactionary troops and police with their own private killers and extortionists in order to perpetuate themselves in power. The growth of warlordism is accelerated.

The rise of fascism is not actually a sign of strength. It is in essence a show of despair and weakness by the diehard reactionaries. It shows that they have ceased to fool the people with words. The increased depredations of the reactionary armed forces and the fascist armed gangs will hasten the doom of the present system. Fascism is on the rise precisely because the revolutionary mass movement is surging forward and the split among the reactionaries is becoming more violent. It is to be expected that the puppet elections in the Philippines will become more fraudulent and terroristic.28 The exposure of the violent character of the reactionaries will only teach the masses to defend themselves and assert their own power.

As part of the rise of fascism, the diehard reactionaries in the Catholic Church are helping the present tyrannical government misrepresent and slander the Communist Party and other organizations of a national-democratic character. The Christian Social Movement and its allied organizations are actually more concerned about stopping the people's democratic revolution led by the Communist Party than even about begging for concessions from the tyrants. They are more interested in making the people helpless before the onslaught of U.S. imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. The Opus Dei, the clerical instrument of Franco the Spanish fascist, has been imported into the country and has organized the Cursillo movement which means to arouse old clerical organizations into an anti-communist fanaticism and convert the cross into a dagger for killing people in an anti-communist crusade. Clerico-fascism is definitely an ingredient in the rise of fascism. Fascism, though it may take a priestly garb, is sure to be resisted by the masses of Catholic believers themselves and by the broad masses of the people whose historical experience has taught them the evils of friar domination.

In their moment of despair, the diehard reactionaries turn to the most backward institutions and methods for retaining their oppressive power over the people. But the internal and external conditions for armed opposition to the puppet republic have never been better. The political and economic bankruptcy of the present system is undeniable. Those who seek to defend it can only be the object of popular opprobrium. The main protector of the present rotten system, U.S. imperialism, is increasingly being isolated inside the country and abroad and is the object of the most resolute people's wars.

4. Reformism and Modern Revisionism

The intensification of reformist and revisionist activity is complementary to the intensification of fascist activity. The diehard reactionaries will never cease to employ reformist tricks even while they commit heinous counterrevolutionary deeds. They will go to the extent of consorting with the modem revisionists. Reformism and modern revisionism are the brittle shields of fascism.

It is an absolutely foolish hope that legal possibilities can be exhausted before waging an armed revolution. There can be no end to law-making and parliamentary hocus-pocus if the reactionaries are not opposed by an armed revolution. They can even rewrite their constitution but merely to put more embellishments on it. At this critical stage of Philippine history, the reactionaries find it convenient to rig up another Constitutional Convention 29 and float talks of "peaceful revolution."

Certain laws of the reactionaries can be taken advantage of only for tactical purposes. He is a fool who believes that the reactionary laws could be turned all the time against their own makers, especially when the dividing line between the broad masses of the people and the oppressor minority has been clearly drawn. Any review of history will yield not a single instance when the reactionaries peacefully allowed their class privileges to be written off.

At a time when the people are clamoring for people's war to oppose the daily violence of foreign and feudal exploitation, there is an increasing use of "revolutionary" phrases even among diehard counterrevolutionaries. The spokesmen of comprador and landlord organizations and the bureaucrat capitalists in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the reactionary government talk of making "structural reforms" in every conceivable forum. All of a sudden, it seems that everyone is becoming revolutionary, including the counterrevolutionaries. But by a mere analysis of the words of the reactionaries, we can clearly see that they will permit a "revolution" only "from the top" or merely "in the heart of the individual." They reserve the bitterest words of damnation for the real revolutionaries among the broad masses of the people. They talk of "revolution" mainly to justify or slur over the fascist barbarities inflicted on the people. To prove this point, one has only to examine the pronouncements of such counterrevolutionary entities as Marcos and his minions, the Christian Social Movement and other clerical organizations, and so on and so forth.

When the most violent means are already being employed against the revolutionary masses, the reactionaries resort to the sweetest words of concern. There is more talk of "civic work," "community development," "philanthropy," "social action," "welfare state," "constitutional reform" and "profit-sharing." At the moment, there is clearly a proliferation of organizations spouting so many lies. The C.I.A. and the American Jesuits are today extremely active in putting up and running reformist organizations.30 What needs only to be done is to expose the class character of the organizers and supporters behind them.

The Marcos "nationalists" and the Lava revisionist renegades are also busy nowadays trying to soften up the harsh fascist picture of the Marcos puppet regime and are collaborating to facilitate the aggravation of imperialist domination. They are working hand-in-glove in the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism, the Congressional Economic Planning Office, the U.P. Law Center and so many other organizations pretending to be anti-imperialist but always insisting that only concessions can be asked from U.S. imperialism and the local exploiting classes and that the struggle be limited to parliamentary struggle.

The Lava revisionist renegades are being given all the liberty that they need to sabotage the revolutionary mass movement. They are at their old game, with the support of U.S. imperialism, the Marcos puppet regime and Soviet social-imperialism. They specialize in spreading slander through the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism and committing bloody acts of intrigue through the Monkees-Armeng Bayan-Masaka (Lava) gang against the revolutionary masses. Like its social-imperialist masters, the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas is shifting from the "peaceful" talk of Khruschev to the undisguised deeds of violence of Brezhnev against the proletarian revolutionaries and the people.

The Marcos puppet regime and the Lava revisionist renegades are steadily moving towards diplomatic and trade relations with Soviet social-imperialism under the guarantees provided by U.S. imperialism and Japanese militarism. The false hope is being dangled before the national bourgeoisie and before those who take the viewpoint of the national bourgeoisie that Soviet social-imperialism can provide anti-imperialist assistance to them.

It is all a lie that Soviet social-imperialism can extend support to the nation or even only to the national bourgeoisie. More than it can assist any section of the Philippine Revolution, Soviet social-imperialism will only be able to reinforce to some extent the presently tottering puppet state and connive with the comprador big bourgeoisie in cheating the Filipino people in the exchange of overpriced and shoddy Soviet commodities and Philippine raw materials. U.S. imperialism is interested in allowing Soviet social-imperialism some share in the exploitation of the Philippines only because they are allied in opposing the people, revolution, communism and China.

Diplomatic and trade relations with Soviet social-imperialism is very attractive to the Marcos puppet regime. It is because Soviet social-imperialism and the Marcos puppet regime have one thing in common: they both have a bureaucrat-capitalist character. The only difference between them is that one is monopoly bureaucrat-capitalist and the other is puppet bureaucrat-capitalist. Bureaucrat capitalists can always come into relations with each other so long as there are people for them to exploit.

Bureaucrat capitalism today is trying to prolong its existence with the assistance of U.S. imperialism, Japanese militarism and Soviet social-imperialism. It is also trying to cover up its evil deeds with the reformist endorsement of the most reactionary feudal institution in the country. But the Filipino people have learned enough of their own history and problems to be deceived.

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28 The second Plaza Miranda massacre, which almost wiped out the entire national leadership of the Liberal Party, brought to a new high the ever growing violence in the contradictions of the reactionaries. Nine people were instantly killed and hundreds of people were seriously injured by the blasts of two fragmentation grenades thrown obviously by goons of the U.S.- Marcos clique. In a matter of three hours, Marcos made an official proclamation suspending the writ of habeas corpus and launched white terror not only against Communists but also against leaders of the Liberal Party and various democratic organizations.

29 The delegates of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the big landlord class are in the overwhelming majority in this convention.

30 The U.S. imperialists still continue to put up out-and-out traitor organizations. For instance, as late as 1972, the C.I.A. has put up the "Philippine Statehood-U.S.A. Movement" which calls for annexation of the Philippines to the United States.

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