Amado Guerrero
July 30, 1970

All the classes and strata presented above comprehensively cover Philippine society. It is impossible for any person in the Philippines today to claim that he does not belong to any class or to any stratum within a class. Every person belongs to a definite class and carries the brand of that class.

If the basic structure of Philippine society is to be presented graphically, a pyramid would have to be drawn with the big bourgeoisie and the landlord class, together with their biggest political agents -- the big bureaucrat capitalists -- at the smallest tip representing not even one per cent of the national population. Immediately below this tip is an extremely thin slice representing the national bourgeoisie. This is followed by another relatively thicker slice representing what amounts to about seven per cent -- the share of the petty bourgeoisie (excluding the middle peasants) in the population. In the parlance of bourgeois sociology, both the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, including the middle peasants, are called the middle class. More than 90 per cent of the pyramid from the base up represents the toiling masses -- the proletariat and the peasantry.

According to the Philippine Joint Legislative-Executive Tax Commission in 1960, 88.3 per cent of Philippine families earned below P2,500; 8.0 per cent earned P2,500 to P4,999; 2.6 per cent earned P5,000 to P9,999 and 1.1 per cent earned P10,000 and over. Those who earned P100,000 and above were estimated to comprise one-tenth of one per cent of Philippine families and they were known to hold the lion's share of the national income and assets. By its own figures, the reactionary government cannot cover up the great disparity of income between the exploiting and exploited classes. This disparity means the emptiness of reactionary claims to democracy. Since 1960, considering the ongoing inflation and two abrupt devaluations, the people's livelihood has worsened a great deal. The people's income has fallen far behind the rise in the prices of basic commodities.

It might occur that a certain person can be classified under two class categories or more. Because of the semicolonial and semi-feudal character of the economy, one who belongs to the landlord class may belong at the same time to the big bourgeoisie or middle bourgeoisie. The principal class character of this person can be determined on the basis of his principal source of income. When it occurs that a landlord is at the same time a national bourgeois, his landlord interests and industrial or commercial interests are dealt with separately and properly. A member of the intelligentsia may come from a landlord, national bourgeois or rich peasant family and yet he may in fact earn his livelihood as an urban petty bourgeois. He is essentially recognized as a member of the urban petty bourgeoisie.

However, it is not only the economic criterion that must be used in classifying individuals. The revolutionary or counterrevolutionary character of an individual is developed in the course of struggle, especially when it comes to the question of becoming a proletarian revolutionary. No one is born Red even among the toiling people. Among the oppressed and exploited, there can be a handful of scabs whose counterrevolutionary attitude puts them on the side of the people's enemies. Among the members of the petty bourgeoisie, there may be those who can become advanced elements in the revolutionary struggle. Even among members of the exploiting classes, there may be exceptional cases of individuals who become remolded and join the ranks of the revolutionaries. Due importance must therefore be given to the criterion of political standpoint and the process of ideological remolding.

We must have a comprehensive view of the dialectical relationship between the economic base and the superstructure. In terms of classes and strata, we also need repeated class analysis in order to have a correct grasp of changes in political attitudes due to new material conditions, and vice-versa. Concrete analysis of concrete conditions is the soul of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.

Special Social Groups

There is no social group in the Philippines that can be excluded from class analysis. When the Party gives special attention to such social groups as the fishermen, national minorities, settlers, women and youth, it is not to obscure or discount the class content but to give due attention to certain common conditions that each social group peculiarly has or is in need of.

1. The fishermen are a peculiarly large social group because of the archipelagic character of the Philippines. Aside from sea fishermen, there are also inland fishermen along big rivers and lakes. Fishing is not only a supplementary means of livelihood for the peasantry. There are full-time fishermen and these can be divided into three sections: namely, the rich, middle and poor fishermen.

The rich fishermen fish with their own motorized boats, big nets and fishing gears, buy the labor power of poor fishermen and earn more than what is enough for their respective families. The middle fishermen fish with their own non-motorized boats, medium-sized nets and fishing gears of poorer quality than those of the rich fishermen, engage solely in municipal fishing and earn just enough for their respective families. The poor fishermen either fish with their own inferior boats and fishing gears, engage mainly in shore-fishing and do not earn enough for their respective families but have to resort to other means of livelihood, most often by tilling the land as a side occupation, or they sell their labor power to rich fishermen and fishing capitalists.

The fishermen are directly exploited by U.S. and Japanese deep-sea fishing capitalists with their large fishing trawlers and fleets (including storage and factory ships) which deplete fishing grounds by landlords who fence them off from fishing grounds, by local fishing capitalists and merchants who dictate prices, and by abusive government officials who arbitrarily tax them in kind or in cash. The fishermen, especially the poor and middle fishermen, can support the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle. They are very important in linking up and defending the islands and in providing food for the people. They can enrich the theory and practice of people's war by developing sea warfare and warfare in rivers, lakes and estuaries.

2. Special recognition must be given to the need for autonomous government among the national minorities numbering about five million or about 14 per cent of the population. The so-called Muslim tribes (it is more accurate to speak of them as Maguindanaos, Maranaos, Tausogs, etc.) compose the largest minority, numbering 3.5 million. They are followed by the Igorot tribes numbering half a million.

The vast majority of the national minorities live in the hinterlands and in areas most neglected and abused by the reactionary government. The national minorities have long been subjected to Christian chauvinism and oppression by the reactionaries. It will never do to impose or give the impression of imposing something beyond their autonomous needs. The Party recognizes their right to self-determination. They can be united with the rest of the Filipino people only on the basis of equality and respect for their culture or race.

The national minorities in the Philippines carry a heavier burden than the rest of the Filipino people. Until now, most of the Negritos live a primitive communal life and are the victims of racial discrimination. The Christian and Malay chauvinists have grabbed their lands in the plains and valleys and even the mountains to which they have been pushed. These aborigines are abused and killed at will. Even the national minorities in Mindanao who have attained a stage of social development which is not at all inferior to that attained by the rest of the Filipino people have been subjected to the most criminal abuses by the Christian chauvinists and the reactionary government. Ancestral minority lands have been taken away by the imperialists, compradors, landlords and bureaucrat capitalists by sheer manipulation of land titles and with utter disregard for indigenous customs and laws. Landgrabbing is the evil that has been viciously inflicted on all indigenous cultural minorities in the Philippines by big land speculators, loggers, ranchers, mining companies and landlords. Invariably, they have been forced out of their lands with armed power. Many of them have been pushed to the remotest areas and these can be turned into powerful bases for revolutionary warfare.

The Chinese minority is also subject to Malay chauvinism in the Philippines. Compared to the Chinese minority in other Southeast Asian countries, that in the Philippines is the smallest with barely 120 thousand.32 The reactionary government deliberately makes it difficult for Chinese nationals to be naturalized so that the Chiang bandit gang and Filipino bureaucrat capitalists can extort heavily from them and use them as a ready target for chauvinist attacks to divert attention from U.S. imperialism and Japanese militarism. This is underscored by the fact that the reactionary government suppresses the people's clamor for the nationalization of all foreign enterprises, American and otherwise. The U.S. imperialists, the Filipino reactionaries, the big bourgeois agents of the Chiang bandit gang and the modem revisionists are in cahoots with each other in the fascist plot to serve up the majority of Chinese nationals who belong to the middle and petty bourgeoisie, semiproletariat and proletariat to the chauvinist hatred of hooligans who will take up the war cry of "nationalism" to cover up their puppetry to U.S. imperialism.

The correct policy toward all the national minorities is always to take a proletarian standpoint and make the necessary class analysis. This is the only way by which the Party can most profoundly integrate with them. By developing Party cadres and Red fighters among the national minorities, the Party can overthrow not only the entire puppet state but also the local tyrants in the territories of the national minorities.

3. Settlers on the hilly regions and forest zones of the country are a major phenomenon due to the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society. They are important because they are oppressed, are of large number and occupy terrain favorable for armed struggle. It is safe to estimate that those who have resided in their new settlements for not more than twenty years are no less than ten per cent of the peasant population in the entire country. In several provinces, settlers in general compose the majority of the local population. The settlers on hilly regions and forest zones are dispossessed peasants who find neither agricultural nor industrial employment in places from which they have migrated. Though they at first hold small pieces of land which they till and call their own, they ordinarily live as poor peasants or as lower-middle peasants and are prevented from gaining formal title over their land by the reactionary government and various local exploiters. They are often victims of landgrabbing, government neglect, usury, merchant manipulation, special levies by local bureaucrats and bullies, and banditry. For their own benefit, landlords and officials of the reactionary government often foment communal conflicts between the settlers and the original inhabitants.

4. The women compose about one-half of the Philippine population and they cut through classes. The vast majority of Filipino women, therefore, belong to the oppressed and exploited classes. But in addition to class oppression, they suffer male oppression. The revolutionaries of the opposite sex should exert extra efforts to make possible the widest participation of women in the people's democratic revolution. They should not take the attitude that it is enough for the men in the family to be in the revolutionary movement. This attitude is actually feudal and it would be to aggravate the old clan and clerical influence on women if they were to be kept out of the revolutionary movement. Women can perform general as well as special tasks in the revolution. This is an effective method for liberating them from the clutches of feudal conservatism and also from the decadent bourgeois misrepresentation of women as mere objects of pleasure.

5. The youth compose the majority of the Philippine population. We have already discussed at length the student youth as in the main belonging to the petty bourgeoisie. We must keep in mind that the majority of the youth belong to the working class and the peasantry. The majority of the Party cadres and regular fighters in the people's army are as a matter of course youth. Elder people should not be arrogant to the youth and the latter should not be insolent to the former. The revolutionary experience of the elder people should be well combined with revolutionary vitality and keenness of the youth. It is important to rely on the youth in a protracted revolutionary struggle. The mobilization of the youth ensures the continuous flow of successors in the revolutionary movement.

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32 This figure is taken from the records of the Bureau of Immigration and other records of the reactionary government. To magnify the so-called Chinese problem, chauvinists usually claim the number of Chinese nationals in the Philippines to be 600,000 or even as high as three million. They try to count in the children of Filipino-Chinese intermarriages as Chinese nationals, though most of these have elected Filipino citizenship in accordance with Philippine laws.

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