phil marxism. excerpts from rojas, v (2011) philippine marxism––vintage debate reloaded. third...

7/28/2019 Phil Marxism. Excerpts from Rojas, V (2011) Philippine MarxismVintage Debate Reloaded. Third Eye Publishers:

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PHILIPPINE MARXISM:Introduction, Chapters I-II inRojas,Virgilio (2011)Philippine Marxism: Vintage Debate

Reloaded. Third Eye Publishers, Stockholm.

Introduction

Twenty-two years ago, Amado Guerrero, chairman of the re-established Communist Party ofthe Philippines (CPP), proclaimed in the first edition ofPhilippine Society and Revolution thatthe Philippine revolution was in essence a bourgeois-democratic revolution that woulddeliver the Fi-lipino masses from the yoke of imperialism and feudalism into the road ofnational liberation and development. The sinister alliance forged between these two forceshad historically ba-nished Philippine society to the underdeveloped purgatory of thesemifeudal-cum-semicolonial mode. Since then, this thesis has become a mainstreammaxim, upheld by cadres of the radical Left. It continues to exercise immense authority overpolitical activists in the streets and among the progressive intelligentsia.

However, this mainstream model's supremacy has recently been challenged by other Marxistintellectuals. In a bid to exorcise radical thought from what appears to these detractors as themonolithic rule of mainstream axioms, they have advanced a myriad of counter models. Theensuing debate has pointed to a host of theoretical and analytical lacunae in mainstreamthought. Although exhibiting a multiplicity of approach and orientation, these critics havecondemned in crescendo the mainstream contention that semifeudalism, semicolonialism isa mode of production sui generis. For most of them, capitalism has de facto dismantled, if notcompletely or decisively subordinated, the old pre-capitalist modes.

This shift in perspective has led to a fundamental re-examination of political strategy andtactics. A socialist and not a proletarian-peasant based bourgeois-democratic revolution shallliberate the Filipino masses from the fetters of monopoly capitalism. With tremendousintensity, the struggle of ideas has progressed throughout the decades of the 80s. It has lockedcontenders in a seemingly hopeless theoretical cul de sac, since a great part of the battle has


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been waged on the high plateau of theory with very weak empirical foundations. Thetheoretical stalemate characterising the mode of production debate in the Philippinesappears to parallel the endemic irreconcilability of positions elsewhere among participants ofthe international debate on the mode problematique.

This brief book is an attempt to systematically sum up and evaluate the lingering debate on

mode of production in order to shed more light on the compound features of societaldevelopment in an underdeveloped country like the Philippines. Specifically, it addresses thefollowing issues and tasks:

1. Locate key points of confluence and cleavage and determine the general status of thedebate.

2. Locate general points of coincidence with and specific contribution to the internationaldebate on the mode of production, i.e., to contextualise the discussion internationally.

The critical evaluation will embrace theoretical arguments advanced by debate participantswho, explicitly or implicitly, entirely or partially, acknowledge the Marxist paradigm.Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this book to include non-Marxist views on s-cdevelopment and underdevelopment. Contending positions included in this paper werededuced from contributions advanced from 1970 to 1987. Due to in-accessibility, the mostrecent contributions cannot be included here. Since empirical studies in the substantiation ofrival views on the mode available during the period under review have been meagre,discussion and evaluation will, therefore, mainly focus on theory.

In order to facilitate discussion and analysis in the succeeding chapters, rival groups aregrouped into either one of two categories or models:

a. Mainstream model: semifeudal, semicolonial mode model

b. Countermodels: neo-industrialisation thesis, dependency and worldsystems model, andarticulation theory.

Although I may be doing debate protagonists an injustice in this categorisation since many ofthem have not admitted "membership" in these "schools of thought," they do, with certainqualifications, echo positions advanced elsewhere. Except for those sorted under thedependency and worldsystems countermodel, other participants aggregate relatively wellaround their respective designations. I have further fragmented the former into three

substreams, namely, political economy, historical and "relative autonomy of the state"approaches because of the relative ambiguities of this category.

In the third chapter, an attempt to dissect the different models will be made on the basis ofselectively identified polarities. These bisecting polarities seem to perpetuate the apparentirreconcilability of contending views and the lingering theoretical stalemate in the modecontroversy in the Philip-pines.

Rival models have polarised in various ways on the following key issues and themes:

a. The "prime mover riddle:" internal versus external factors (production versus marketexchange);


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b. units of analysis: mode versus worldsystem;

c. origins of mode, historical periodisation and phasing of the process of mode succession(contradiction/coexistence or both);

d. capitalist mode: powerful/progressive; powerful/regressive; or weak/progressive;

e. political conclusions and strategies: national democratic versus socialist revolution.

For analytical convenience, comparative analysis and discuss-ion of these contradictions willbe conducted using a three-dimensional matrix:

A. Cognitive dimension: how protagonists perceive society and the categories they employ inobserving that society.

B. Normative dimension: how they judge, evaluate and define society.

C. Conative dimension: what program they prescribe to change and transform society.

On the international debate, I have used a number of critical reviews and summaries, themost crucial of which are Brewer (1980), Barone (1985), Foster-Carter (1978), Hilton (1976),Brenner (1977), Rey (1982), McEachern (1976).

As far as the Philippine debate is concerned, various positions on the mode were deducedfrom the following key symposium and seminar documents: Feudalism and Capitalism:Trends and Implications (1982); Marxism in the Philippines (1984) and other researchmonographs published by the Third World Studies Center of the University of the Philippines;

lectures delivered by Jose Maria Sison at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines(1986). Equally invaluable and conveniently providing a central arena in which to play outthe struggle of ideas on the mode problematique are two notable publications, viz., DilimanReviewand the New Progressive Review.


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I

The Mode of Production Controversy- Disquiet in the International Marxist Front

Karl Marx, employing the historical-dialectical materialist approach, perceived the historicalevolution ofsocieties as a series of modes of production, replacing in progressive succession,moribund with dynamic forms. Each succeeding mode corresponds to a higher, moreadvanced stage of economic development and one mode is linked to the next by transitions.The major force behind these fundamental shifts are antagonistic class contradictions, firstemerging from the old mode of production's "economic base," and ultimately being resolvedwhen "superstructural" elements of the mode are dismantled.1

Marx recognised, however, that there were deviant cases to this Eurocentric "evolution-of-stages" map.2 In "backward" countries, where so-called Asiatic modes of productionpredominated, internal barriers, "Chinese walls" shaped by pre-existing pre-capitalist modesand obstructing the "normal" metamorphosis toward capitalism were in operation. It is onlythrough external intervention, initially via colonialism, that these obstacles could effectivelybe removed. In other words, capitalism could not be conceived in the womb of the oldmode, as in the European idealtype, but had to be implanted from without. The point is clear,Marx perceived capitalist penetration of the "backward areas" as a positive force, deliveringthe underdeveloped countries to a more advanced stage.

But as contemporary developments in the backward hinterlands of 20th century capitalismcharted a distinctively different course, Marx's prophecy of homologous capitalistdevelopment everywhere came under heavy criticism from his descendants. The question ofthe prime-mover, the primeval motor force behind the succession of modes, was at the center

1According to Marx, society consists of a superstructure and economic base. The latter is defined by the mode ofproduction concept. The economic base has two intermeshing components, viz., social relations of production and forcesof production. Both are definable in terms of control. The mode of control or the mode of exploitation is anchored on thelevel of material processes of production and particular property relations attached to them. In essence it implies classcontrol over social surplus, that portion of output generated by producers but appropriated by non-producers. Although thesuperstructure and the economic base do interact, it is the latter which restricts within broad confines superstructural

elements as in-dependent forces.2In the orthodox Marxist stages perspective, society evolves in consecutive order from the primitive communal stage,ancient and feudal to the capitalist mode of production. The terminal stage in this progression of modes is the classlesscommunist society. This is the historically determined normal pattern of modal transition.


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of controversy in the 1950s over the transition from feudalism to capitalism in the capitalisthomelands, and the subsequent controversy over the "development of underdevelopment" inthe capitalist hinterlands.

In the landmark Dobb-Sweezy debate in the 1950s3, two contending lines of argument wereposited on the transition from feudalism to captalism in the West. Sweezy argued that the

European feudal mode of production was essentially static and self-perpetuating, lackingpreconditions for transformation and thus bereft of any internal motorforce. The ultimatecollapse of feudalism could primarily be credited to the impact of the external prime-mover,i.e., long-distance trade, on the feudal structure. Repudiating Sweezy, Dobb took up thecudgels for the primacy of internal factorsthe dynamics provided by the contradiction andstruggle of classes inherent in the feudal modeas the key agent in the transition tocapitalism. Alternatively, where Sweezy gave eminence to market exchange relations, Dobbelevated productive relations to the prime-mover throne.

Another controversy centered on the question of whether capitalism is progressive orregressive. Early 20th century Marxists (Lenin, Bukharin and Luxemburg) broadly agreed thatcapitalist encroachment on other countries would create conditions for their transition frombackwardness to a higher stage of economic development, in effect, upholding Marx'sdictum about the progressive nature of capitalism. The expanded reproduction of capitalwould thus transform all pre-capitalist modes of petty commodity production to full-fledgedcapitalist and generalised commodity production in the colonies, just as it did in thecapitalist homelands.4

This view was preponderant until the postwar period, when Marxists had to confront theproblem of explaining why the underdeveloped countries of the Third World had notachieved successful capitalist development in the wake of decolonisation and national

liberation. A new breed of Marxists, proposing revisions embodied in the proliferatingpostwar theories on neocolonialism and dependency, started to challenge not so much thelegitimacy of Marx's methodo-logy as the obsolescence of the orthodox analysis of capitalistdevelopment premised on anachronistic assumptions of perfect competition rather than onthe hard realities of contemporary monopoly capitalism.5

In broad outline, they argued that the Third World had become capitalist but industrialisationwas blocked by forces which continued to work in negative ways despite the absence offormal colonial rule. Causes of foreign expansion and inter-imperialist rivalries took abackseat to the idea that the predominant feature of imperialism had become aggregateexploitation of the underdeveloped countries by the advanced capitalist centers.6

In a bid to remove the analytical straitjacket on orthodox Marxist analysis and contemporarystudies on Third World societies, Frank and, later, Wallerstein, chose to abandon the modeconcept altogether. They proposed that the unit of analysis must be the world system andasserted that capitalism could be defined exclusively in this context. Navigating closely alongthe coordinates earlier charted by Sweezy, they defined this system in terms of production for

3Reproduced in Hilton (1976).

4Barone (1985): 14-15.

5ibid. Architects of the monopoly capitalist school, e.g., Baran & Sweezy and later, dependency school purveyors like Frank& Amin.

6ibid.


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exchange on the world market regardless of whether or not wage labor is engaged. Indeed,different forms of wage labor control systems may be used for global capitalist accumulation.The class structure of different nations and particular forms of exploitation are only results ofthe specific position they occupy in the hierarchy of the world system, rather than being keydetermining factors.

Capitalist accumulation is not a precondition for genuine qualitative advance in the level andmethod of production, but rather as a redivision of a fixed magnitude, a transfer of resourcesfrom the exploited periphery to the center. Capitalist development is viewed as selectivelyprogressive: a boon for some (center or developed capitalist countries) and a bane for others(periphery or underdeveloped Third World countries), operating as it were in the"development of underdevelop-ment." For Frank, the capitalist world consists of a "uniformhierarchy of metropolis/satellite expropriating and appropriating surplus upwards andoutwards, nationally and internationally."7 In similar vein, Wallerstein concludes that there isa single world system which is entirely capitalist, one which has basically existed since the16th century.8

Frank and Wallerstein's provocative insights drew an extensive volley of criticism from anumber of Marxists who sought to resurrect the mode of production approach. Laclau agreedthat the "economic system" is capitalist. But he insisted that relations of production in LatinAmerican societies illustrate the existence of substantial elements of feudalism that functionas structural components of a wider capitalist system. The impact exerted by the externalworld market, far from dissolving, intensified or even "invented" or preserved feudal andother pre-capitalist modes.9 He alluded to the possibility of multiple modes of productioncoexisting within a single society (abandoning in effect the "contradiction-between-modes"thinking implied in the orthodox Marxist perspective) either permanently or over a protractedtransitional period.10

In an incisive critique of Frank and Wallerstein, Brenner maintained that capitalist economicdevelopment is a function of the tendency toward capital accumulation via innovation builtinto historically developed structures and class relations of free wage labor. Developmentand underdevelopment are products of the specific evolution of class relations, in partdetermined historically "outside" capitalism in relation with non-capitalist modes.11 In manycases, capitalist penetration actually enhanced pre-capitalist modes of surplus extraction. It isthese class structures and modes of exploitation which acted as decisive brakes to theprogressive development of capital.

Against the Frank-Wallerstein duo's sweeping assumption that capitalism had already fully

matured everywhere into a world system, containing both developed and underdevelopedversions, Rey and the disciples of the so-called "articulation school" claimed that capitalismin the neocolonies "articulated" or intermeshed with pre-capitalist modes and that thetransition to capitalism ipso facto remained incomplete. Both Brenner and Rey trod oncommon ground in insisting that the survival of pre-capitalist modes, determined at least

7Foster-Carter (1978): 49.

8For an elaborate survey see Hettne (1981, 1988).

9Foster-Carter, op.cit.: 50.

10Brewer (1980): 21.

11Brenner (1977): 60-61.


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partially by causes internal to neocolonial societies, is a key factor in underdevelopment.Articulation between feudalism and capitalism in the homelands, one wherein feudalismserved as umbilical chord supplying the capitalist fetus with its initial reproductive wher-withal (i.e., agricultural provisions and labor power), was not antagonistic.

Transition in the hinterlands, although replicating in broad outline the homeland pattern,

differed in that capitalism had been externally introduced and was articulated not withfeudalism but with other pre-capitalist modes of production. 12

What accounted for the discrepancy between homeland and hinterland development in thetransitional stage were the internal features of the dominant mode prior to capitalist intrusion.They were in essence subject to a double history, i.e., on the one hand the "history ofcapitalism whose essentials are found outside the social formation, on the other hand, thehistory of transition specific to the mode of production with which capitalism articulates." 13However, the articulation model implicitly contains the assumption that although transitionalforms may vary elsewhere, the end product will ultimately be capitalism a la homeland.

Rejecting the articulation model, other Marxists pointed at the possibility of variant forms ofcapitalism evolving in the Third World. For instance, Amin provocatively suggested that notonly was capitalism blocked in these areas, the process of capitalist penetration hadproduced a "disarticulated, extraverted peripheral capitalist mode"possessing its ownlogicin contradistinction to the pure "autocentric" capitalism of the homelands.14

Alavi categorically denounced the concept of articulation and invented, in the course ofparticipating in an important debate on the proper categorisation of agriculture in India, theconcept of colonial mode of production. While recognising that a social formation maycontain more than one mode, the relationship between these modes is defined bycontradiction. Alavi reformulated concepts like Laclau's indissoluble unity of feudalism andcapitalism as a hierarchical relationship within a single mode of production, viz., thecolonial mode of production.15

This particular mode assumes in Alavi the proverbial status of mode sui generisa mode ofproduction which is neither pre-capitalist nor capitalist, albeit the result of imperialism andthe"disarticulation" of pre-capitalist modes.

McEachern admitted in principle the possibility of coexistence and combination of multiplemodes. Yet, he asserted that India today could neither be characterised by articulation of

modes nor by an exclusive colonial mode, but by a particularly restricted form of capitalismderiving from international connection.16

Overall, the ubiquitous "level-reductionism" infecting the international debate on the modescontinues to lock contenders in a theoretical "suspended animation." Foster-Carter,

12Rey (1982): 10.

13Barone, op.cit.: 157.

14Foster-Carter, op.cit.: 58.

15ibid.: 70-73.

16McEachern (1976): 453.


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concluding his survey of the controversy with specific reference to Wallerstein's sweepingassertions, said that it was "doubtful whether the complex issue discussed can be sodrastically reduced into a level-reductionism, and that while Wallerstein is right to assert theexistence of a world system, this is likely to be a complex whole, containing multiple modes,and perhaps not linking them at the level of production, but rather of exchange."17

Brewer was more blunt in his appraisal of the subject: "The debate has essentially beensemantic."18 Both authors emphasised the necessity of synthesising valid elements from thecontending approaches in order to eradicate myopic tend-encies haunting current Marxistanalysis.

17Foster-Carter, op.cit.: 74-77.

18Brewer, op.cit.: 273.


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II

The PhilippineMode of Production Controversy

- Mainstream and Counter Models

Mainstream ModelThe Semifeudal, Semicolonial Mode

Proponents of the mainstream model maintain that despite the historical integration ofPhilippine society into the ambit of global capitalism, its essential and defining features arenot that of the capitalist mode. Rather, capitalist penetration, mutually through theintercession of mercantile capitalism and, later, monopoly capitalism interacting with pre-existing non-capitalist modes, has historically conceived a sort of hybrid semifeudal,semicolonialmode equipped with an internal logic of its own.

Sison's metaphorical description captures the essence of what mainstream exponents view asperverted capitalist develop-ment:

"US monopoly capitalism has assimilated the seed of capitalism that is within the womb of

domestic feudalism, but at the same time it has prevented the full growth of this seed into anational capitalism."19

What seems to be implied here is that while foreign monopoly capitalist penetration hasindeed punctured the self-sufficient natural economy of the old feudal mode and expandedgeneral commodity production, the commodity economy archetype produced, operatesagainst or restricts the complete germination of indigenous capitalism.20 In the blueprint ofimperialist domination, the Philippine economy is tragically consigned to the role of rawmaterial resource base and a captive market for imported capital and consumer goods fromthe industrial capitalist homelands.

19Guerrero (1979): 89.

20ibid.: 64.


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Far from junking the old feudal mode, it has been "encouraged and retained" as the socialbase of US monopoly capitalism. The symbiosis between these two entities has transformedsociety into a semifeudal, semicolonial mode banished to the limbo of bastard identities, onewhich is neither capitalist nor feudal. US monopoly capitalism has retained andsuperimposed itself on feudalism, smashing local handicrafts and arresting the development

of comprehensive local manufacturing. It has subordinated feudalism to the unequalexchange of manufactured imports and raw material exports. Justifying this point, Sisoninvokes Lenin's assertion that "modern imperialism allies itself with feudalism in colonies andsemicolonies." Transitions between modes take on specific forms in these areas as opposed tothe classic idealt-type obtained in the homelands.21

Translated in class terms, the specific nature of capitalist penetration of Philippine economyhas paved the way for the ascendancy of a surrogate classthe comprador bourgeoisiewhose key role has been the intermediation of imperialist and feudal interests. Its base ofoperation can be located in the lucrative import-export trade and other "antediluvian" orrentier forms such as moneylending, where it accumulates and concentrates capital in theform of profit and interest, largely through the commodity exchange medium. As such, itsmode of surplus extraction and appropriation is more akin to mercantile capitalism, whichfor mainstream theory is basically a feudal (or in this context a semifeudal) phenomenon andmitigates against any fundamental development of productive forces.

This modern "merchant" class is historically and currently linked more to feudalism (or againmore specifically to semifeudalism) than to industrial capitalist development, which in turn isblocked so long as the economy remains an appendage of US imperialism and operateswithin the orbit of global capitalism.22 However, its landlord originsmakes it justified tospeak of a comprador-landlord class, a hybrid class if you like, which illustrates the

contradictory and asymmetrical character of the semifeudal, semicolonial mode.

Genuine capitalist development is, in other words, obviated by the triple class alliance of USmonopoly capitalist-cum-comprador-bourgeoisie-cum-big-landlords. Progressive capitalismhas not been given a chance. Indeed, without colonial and imperialist intervention, pre-colonial societies contained forms of social organisations and distinct classes whose strugglewas bound to bring about social development.23

In recent years, there have been attempts from mainstream quarters toward theoreticalrefinement as a response to the growing chorus of critics who are in broad agreement thatPhilippine society has definitely entered the capitalist trajectory and is now dictated by its

laws of motion. Mainstream maverick Ferrer retorts that despite the preponderance ofgeneralised commodity production, capital-wage labor relations and market economy, it isthe expanded reproduction of capital, i.e., conversion of financial to productive industrialcapital, which qualifies a mode of production as genuinely capitalist.24 In the Philippinecontext, this is problematic, if not impossible, since the basic logic of unequal exchangeinherent in monopoly capitalist extraction militates against the process of conversion.

21Sison-De Lima a (1984): 62.

22Sison-De Lima b (1984): 30.

23Guerrero, op.cit.: 5.

24Ferrer c (1984): 44.


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Given the limitations on expanded capital accumulation, preservation and reproduction ofcapital will assume non-economic coercive forms. Ferrer contrasts this from the competetivecapitalist ideal-type where preservation of capital is mainly mediated by an ensemble ofeconomic mechanisms such as technological innovation and productive reinvestment ofcapital. If capitalism finds it difficult to expand, its natural tendency is to monopolise.Something like theguild system in pre-industrial and mercantilist Europe is reproduced.25

In as much as the condition for the reproduction of capital-wage relations rests oninternational trade, merchant capital can find a lasting sanctuary in the control of this trade.Ferrer vindicates this position on a controversial orthodox Marxist assertion that there are twoalternative paths in the transition from feudalism to capitalism: the revolutionary path,wherein the direct producer becomes merchant and capitalist, versus the conservative road,where themerchant establishes direct sway over production. The latter26 tends to retain theold mode.

In the case of agriculture and landed property, penetration by both market and wage-laborrelations of previously existing feudal sectors may have in fact led to the intensification offeudal surplus extraction, the seeming capitalist embellishments of the modenotwithstanding.

Insofar as these monopoly elements are predicated upon modern imperialism and the oldfeudal mode order, a scientific name to the mode of production may be the term semifeudalsemicolonial. It captures the fact that the capitalist mode has penetrated Philippine economy,but cannot free itself from the shackles of the old feudal mode and the modern guild systemwhich is US imperialism.27

Less ambitious attempts to validate the mainstream model can be found in a number of

empirical studies. Lim, investigating the impact of the Green Revolution and land reformprogram in the 1970s noted that far from liquidating semifeudal relations in the rice growingareas and creating a progressive kulak class, these modernisation schemes have in effectexpanded the role of conservative forces marshalled by comprador traders.28 These classactors facilitated the penetration not of progressive capitalism, but rather the fortification ofconservative comprador capitalism.

CountermodelsNeo-industrialisation Thesis

One of the most controversial cornerstones of the mainstream modelthat feudalism is thesocial base of imperialism in the Philippinesdrew initial attack from Lava and cadres fromthe pro-Moscow Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP). They contended that monopoly

25ibid.: 45.

26See Marx, K., Das Kapital, Vol. III (1974): 791.

27Ferrer c, op.cit.: 46.

28Lim (1987): 35-42 (cf) Valencia in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines (1982): 60-80.


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capitalist penetration of the economy in the 1960s and 1970s was progressively liquidatingthe vestiges of the old order.

At this historical juncture, monopoly capitalism's structural constraints have compelled it toshift strategy towards pushing the industrialisation process in the Third World to its finalconclusion. It has, in other words, already taken an anti-feudal position. The concrete

political manifestation of this thesis can be found in the ascendancy of the progressivenational bourgeoisie to state power, represented by the authoritarian regime of Marcos whosepolicies have steamrollered the fuller offensive of capitalist development across all economicsectors, strategically, thus, opening up the possibilities for a non-capitalist path todevelopment. It is here that one should locate the social base. These early critics apparentlytook their cue from the CPSU-sanctioned theory of peaceful transition to socialism in ThirdWorld countries circulating at that time.

Following in the footsteps of Lava, contemporary exponents (Magallona, 1982; Capa, 1983;Ofreneo-Pineda, 1983) have expanded on this position by adopting central concepts foundin a recent Marxist stream of thought, the so-called inter-nationalisation of capital and thenew international division of labor school.29 Magallona (1982) categorically relegated theexistence of a semifeudal, semicolonial mode to the historical dustbin and argued thatalthough the uneven development of society may provide room for the "interpenetration andoverlapping" of different forms of production, pre-capitalist remnants no longer operate as asystem. The content and function of feudal forms of relations are now shaped by theoperation of economic laws specific to the capitalist mode.30

In the neo-industrialisation model, a crucial distinction is drawn between two historicallyspecific modes of capitalist penetration in and surplus extraction from the underdevelopedThird World. In the first phase of the "internationalisation of capital," the integration of pre-

capitalist Philippine society into the initial phase of global capitalist development viacolonial intervention expressed itself through feudal forms. Or alternatively putting it, surplusextraction was conducted on a feudal basis through the mediation of land which hadbecome capitalist private property and had profound effects on pre-capitalist relations ofproduction leading to the latter's disintegration.

The colonial system imposed by North American capital at the end of the 19th century is, incontrast to the mercantilist basis of the previous Spanish colonial hegemony, the specificmanifestation of the expansion of an already developed capitalism in its monopoly stage. Atthis juncture, colonialism ceased to be merely a mercantilist venture. It became a vehicle forcapital's seizure of the colonial economy's productive processes and resources.

Colonialism at the early stage of monopoly capitalism promoted the "old internationaldivision of labor (OIDL)" which consigned colonies and semicolonies to monoculturespecialisation and to being captive markets for the manufactured goods of the colonialpowers, thus arresting industrial growth in these areas until the end of the 1960s. By thistime, a marked shift in the world capitalist economy from export of commodities to export ofcapital had taken place.

In this watershed phase of the industrialisation of capital, a new international division oflabor (NIDL) had emerged, converting many Third World countries into international

29For a brief summary, see Marcussen (1982): 145-51.

30Magallona in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.: 16.


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adjuncts of the leading capitalist coutries. Their economies were deliberately being tailoredto correspond to a new type of specialisation, i.e., production of labor-intensive commoditiesfor export.

Objective systemic contradictions of modern monopoly capitalism, inter alia theintensification of inter-capitalist rivalries in which variable capital or wage labor costs have

become crucial in maintaining competetive edge, and broadening class militancy of theproletariat in the capitalist homelands generating high labor costs, have compelledimperialism to restructure the global capitalist economy in the NIDL-silhouette.31

Marcos' martial law regime in the 1970s was the political bulldozer by which a radical shiftto this streamlined imperialist strategy of NIDL could be carried out.

The main substance of this change was the reorientation of the national economy from itscolonial structure into an industrial neocolony, entailing the expansion of the manufacturingsector, the massive build-up of industrial productive forces to meet the requirements oftransnational corporations and major capitalist countries for low-cost, labor-intensivedurables.

The "gravitational pull" exerted by burgeoning labor-intensive manufacturing industries,32would eventually demolish what-ever was left of the feudal integument.

The Dependency & Worldsystems Model

The authors sorted under this category engage variant methodological approaches anddisciplinary frames of reference. However, in broad terms, they all cohere in one way or theother around key postulates which had been advanced elsewhere by the s-c dependency andworld systems "school."

Thus, they all agree that the insertion of the Philippine economy into the world capitalistsystem has transformed society into an underdeveloped and dependent peripheral capitalistmode evolving inversely with the dynamic capitalist development of the industrial corecountries.

In the Philippine debate and critical literature, three substreams displaying kinship with this

general approach may be distinguished:political economyapproach, historicalapproach and"relative-autonomy-of-the-state" approach.

Political Economy Approach

Tiglao (1981, 1982) refutes as gross misreading mainstream corroboration of thesemifeudalism thesis on the basis of tenancy relations in contemporary agriculture. Aproblematic view which seems to stem from the assumption that unpaid surplus labor

31ibid.: 27.

32Other authors, like Magallona, paying tribute to the internationalisation of capital theory are Ofreneo-Pineda & Capa(1983) in Nordlund (1983): 347-76.


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mobilised by tenancy relations expresses itself directly as ground rent and, therefore,obviously feudal.

Rather than being a certifying feature of feudalism, tenancy is a "derived" or secondary"economic formation." It is a "conjunctural" system of production resulting from theimposition of a capitalist mode on a small peasant system of production. The tenants' unpaid

surplus labor is not articulated in the form of land rent. Rather, it is extracted by the landlordclass essentially via capitalistic mechanisms and based on the bourgeois institution of privateownership of the means of production.33

On the basis of his empirical investigations of the coconut industry,34 Tiglao concludes thatPhilippine agriculture is basic-ally a small peasant system of commodity production,operating within a type of capitalism which remains underdeveloped because of itssubordination to imperialism. In this context, the peasant is in effect a semi-proletarian. He isa proletarian in that he expends his labor in a system of generalised commodity production,wherein he derives wages equivalent at best to the reproduction of his labor power. Unlikethe wage worker, he is not liberated from the means of production, enabling him to rely for apart of his subsistence on production for immediate consumption.35 Semi-proletarianisationdemonstrates quint-essentially the contradictory nature of dependent capitalist development.

Although Tiglao, like mainstream exponents, also confirms the absence of expandedreproduction of capital and the pervasiveness of tenancy in the agricultural sector, he never-theless contends that these apparently feudal relations of production are in fact capitalist.Landlords stick to tenancy for rational reasons. Facing low capital requirements of productionbased on backward technology and erratic natural conditions, he tries to minimise risks toinvestible capital by channeling generated surplus value into non-agricultural enterprises,where the average rate of profit is at least equal to or higher than that in the coconut sector. It

is thus a profit-maximising response by the landlord class drawn into a distinctive type of"backward capitalism" subordinated by imperialism.

Historical Approach

The 1970s was marked by a conjunctural upswing of socio-historical research amongscholars who wanted to comprehensively analyse the impact of world trade on the socialhistory of agricultural export economies of the various regions of Southeast Asia, and localsocial transformations evolving in the wake of their integration into the capitalist worldeconomy. Fortuitously, the scholarly debate over the impact of world trade on Third world

societies, in which Frank and Wallerstein were prime protagonists, coincided with Philippineregional researches in noted decade. Although relatively isolated from the internationaldebate, these studies raised similar questions and eventually assimilated and extendedcertain key concepts originated by the debate.

These historiographic studies, according to McCoy (1982), endorsed the position that thePhilippines "did not develop as a unitary colonialeconomy oriented towards a single satelliteentrept in Manila. It emerged as a series of separate societies that entered the world

33Tiglao in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.:45.

34Tiglao (1981).

35Tiglao in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.: 48.


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economic system at different times under different terms of trade, and with different systemsof production."36

Although highly appreciative of Wallerstein's more refined world systems model, McCoypointed at a lacunahis failure to elaborate the "process of change that accompanied theexternal areas' integration into the world system."37

Extending Wallerstein's model of diverse labor systems in the core-semiperiphery-peripheryworld system complex, he argued that a similar range of labor control systems was evidentwithin the archipelago. Local elites used the most appropriate and economical labor controlstrategy historically determined by the specific needs of each region. The picture derivedfrom McCoy's palette projects a series of separate local enclave economies lorded over bythe capitalist core countries via external linkages to the world capitalist system.

In the wake of productive specialisations in various regions, brought about by the externalstimuli provided by international trade, commercially sovereign entrept cities maintainingindependent links to external trading networks emerged.38 These logistical networks

intermeshed country-side, regional entrepot, and global market complexes. It is theseexternal linkages which created the conditions for the emergence of the native bourgeoisiewhose class unity had been compounded and fragmented precisely by the complex andshifting nature of the global integration process.

While researchers like McCoy suggest that internal social transformations in peripheralcountries like the Philippines were by and large dictated by the external stimuli generated byglobal capitalism, others (McLennan, 1982; Fegan, 1981) advance bolder conclusions. Thelatter find intimate identification with and draw heavily from Hans Bobek's insights into aphenomenon he termed rent capitalism.39 Fegan argued that "there was no prior feudal stage

here (in the Philippines), but that the colonial period is marked by 'rent capitalist' relations ofextraction of surplus product,"40 irrespective of the local details of production arrangements.They condemn "feudalist "interpretations of the colonial economy advanced by mainstreamexponents for being pathetically parochial as a result of the rigid application of orthodoxEurocentric stages' theory.

Echoing Bobek, McLennan and Fegan postulated that rent capitalism is distinctively anauthentic form of capitalism, insofar as its raison d'tre is found in commodity production formonetary sale and predicated on a profit-maximising logic. However, its accumulative andexpansive logic seems to be confined at the level of market exchange, whereupon capitaldoes not enter and improve the productive process itself, leaving the petty scale of

production, old native technologies and the internal organisation of the productive unitbasically untouched. The rent capitalist expands operation by using money to gain claims onthe product of more petty units of production via mortgages, purchases and loans.41

36McCoy (1982): 8.

37ibid.: 5.

38ibid.: 12

39Fegan (1981): 1.

40ibid: 6.

41Apart from Fegan, see also McLennan in McCoy, op.cit.: 72-73.


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But while the theoretical pioneer Bobek was quite sceptical about the potency of rentcapitalism, Fegan on the contrary exuded optimismrent capitalism in the Philippines andthe Southeast Asian region did transform these societies radically. Pre-capitalist producerswere drawn by the rent capitalist merchant broker to the world trade system by advancingcommodities from the world market on credit. It was through the rent-debt (production fordebt repayment) and not the wage-capital-nexus that labor and land of the local non-

capitalist system were hooked up to the global economy.

The specific form of consciousness spawned by rent capitalism stems working class solidarity.Direct producers see themselves as "dependent petty entrepreneur" clients of their rentcapitalist patrons, mystifying these relationships as one of "partnership," thereby maskingexploitative relations as benevolent.

Other economic historians predisposed to the dependency thesis (Fast/Richardson/Limqueco,1977, 1980) concur that mainstream apologists' "tendency to label as feudal, regressive andexploitative, indeed often brutish social relations of production which existed in every sectorincluding the most advance sectors of the colonial economy should in fact be credited tocapitalist penetration."42

Transformation of the agricultural sector from subsistence to cash crop economy should notbe equated to the process of feudalisation, but rather to the penetration of Western capitalismand the integrationof the Philippine economy to world commodity markets. Well in the orbitof global capitalism, the mode of production, albeit dependent and underdeveloped,inevitably and decisively crossed the Rubicon into capitalism.

"Relative-Autonomy-of-the-State" Approach

Eschewing the economic determinism of the mainstream model, Magno (1985) sought tofocus theoretical pre-occupation on the terra incognita of the mode's superstructure. Like hisother dependency colleagues, he asserted that Philippine society was capitalist, or, at least,one where the trajectory of development was set by the logic of capitalist accumulationwithin the framework of neocolonial dependence.43

Historically, pre-colonial social structures in those areas of society effectively subordinatedby the colonial state were dismantled with finality. Colonialism was an external force thatoverwhelmed the separate historic identity of the subject society through the principalmedium of the colonial state apparatus.44

The state overdetermined all social forces and had two major effects: a) surplus extraction tomeet its reproductive require-ments eroded pre-colonial subsistence economies, and b)created dependent social hierarchies.

42Fast/Richardson (1980): 56.

43Magno (1985): 19.

44ibid.: 20.


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In this context, elite class formations outside the state were prevented. These elites werefragmented and underdeveloped classes restricted from dominating the "overdeveloped"political apparatus by the constricted nature of their economic bases.45

Ergo, the state was never under the full command of a single, distinct "class-in-formation." Inthe present era, this relative autonomy is only overdetermined by monopoly capital, which

plays an eminent role in the formation of the social mode largely because of theunderdeveloped nature of internal class forces.46

The "Articulation" Theory

While admitting that in the succession of modes, capital eventually dominates andtransforms old production and property forms, advocates of articulation theory47 argue thatthe process of integration of pre-capitalist to capitalist can no longer be simply conceived asone of succession, evolution, nor even as an unproblematic case of transition.

Although capitalism may be a formidable force, its particular form of reproduction inunderdeveloped societies will, under certain historical conditions, be partially contingentupon the internal specificities of pre-capitalist modes in those areas. A modus vivendibetween non-capitalist and capitalist modes can and will be forged until capitalism is strongenough to completely annihilate the old mode. The "disarticulated" genre of capitalistdevelopment in the peripheral countries attests to the paradoxical situation of coexistenceand contradiction of modesthe coexistence of contradictions and the contradict-ions ofcoexistence.

The persistence, and, in fact, entrenchment of tenancy long after capitalism has taken root inthe economyviewed by articulation advocates as the one of the most concentrated andvisible expressions of pre-capitalist or "semifeudal" relations of productiongraphicallyillustrates this contradiction. Indeed, empirical evidence indicate that entrenchment andintensification of non-capitalist relations occurred during periods marked by acceleratingcommercialisation of agri-culture.48

In similar vein, Banzon-Bautista (1984), probing into the impact of capitalist penetration inagriculture and the process of social differentiation in rural society, points specifically at theprocess of semi-proletarianisation (reproduced by capitalist wages and peasant subsistenceproduction) as a clear testimony at micro-level of the contradictions between the tendency torestructure and dissolve pre-capitalist systems, on the one hand, and countervailing forces

which tend to conserve traditional structures, on the other.49 Capitalism has not led to thedissolution of the peasant class, nor has it speeded up the process of polarisation in ruralsociety.

45ibid.: 21.

46Cf. Alavi (1975).

47Rivera in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.:1.

48Rivera b (1982): 50.

49Banzon-Bautista in Marxism in the Philippines (1984): 176.


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Advocates of the articulation model indict both mainstream and other counter-models.Although the capitalist mode is a decisive and transformative entity, non-capitalist modes areby no means passive and static complexes. They are actors in their own right and maypartially determine and shape the form of capitalist penetration.

Articulationists disavow the myth of the "almighty" juggernaut capitalist mode which other

countermodels appear to foster. On the other hand, while seemingly validating thesemifeudal and distorted features of capitalist development in the Philippines, they seek totranscend the descriptive character of the mainstream model.

Mainstream tendency to politically rarify the elaboration of non-capitalist relations' long lifeexpectancy in Philippine society, i.e., imperialism sealing a durable partnership with non-capitalist elite classes to ensure political stability, reduces the potency of explanatoryenterprise. What remains unravelled is the process by which the newly emerging capitalistmode over a protracted interval reinforces existing non-capitalist relations of production inthe neocolony in order to initially satisfy the former's reproductive requirements by way ofgoods and labor organised by the latter mode.50

Articulationists argue that these requirements do change over time and note that in the "lateimperialist stage" the structural crisis of monopoly capitalism has necessitated strategicadjustments and rectifications such as changes in the specialisation of the international laborprocess and intensification of capitalist attempts to streamline and rationalise accumulation.Changes that thereby step up capitalist inroads into the non-capitalist sectors. In thebackwater of this refurbished offensive, conservative semifeudal labor processes aredramtically being decimated, accelerating in effect social differentiation andproletarianisation of rural society.

Counteroffensive - Combatting Countermodels

Mainstream intellectuals returned fire against their aggresive adversaries in an all-outcounteroffensive which finds its most comprehensive and ambitious expression in Ferrer(1987). He trained his guns directly against one of the main theoretical armouries from whichmainstream iconoclasts have secured their weapons, i.e.,dependency and worldsystems, andarticulation theories.

Both "schools" generally agree that the laws of motion of capitalism, specifically monopoly

capitalism, absolutely or at least primarily, determine societal development in the peripheralcountries of the Third World.

But why, asks Ferrer, can't the capitalist mode, if indeed it is dominant, overwhelm the oldorder?

Capitalism, whether externally imposed or indigenously evolved, has never played adominant role in the under-developed countries. While there is certainly articulation, pre-capitalist, specially feudal, modes are nonetheless the eminent protagonists.

It is not the capitalist but rather the feudal law of motion that is determinant. From this

assumption, Ferrer draws a most provocative and sensational conclusion: even monopoly

50Rivera in Feudalism and Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.: 5.


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capitalism now operates de facto on the basis of feudal laws of motion! Its expansion andreproduction, like in the guild system of the feudal Middle Ages, rests principally on the non-economic and coercive mechanisms of surplus extraction. Monopoly capitalism precludesany progressive development of productive forces in the periphery.

Whereas under competetive capitalism the dynamics of the market economy were primarily

the result of reinvestment and innovation, under monopoly capitalism the driving forceoriginates from "changes or forecast changes" in the market. It is the inversion in the causalchain that accounts for the qualitative change in the laws of motion of capitalism.51

In the periphery, it is the feudal colonial mode that maintains a subjugated capitalist mode toproduce the surplus that it appropriates via extra-economic means. It is not that capitalismhas lost its vitality as a mode, rather, it is the feudal colonial mode that hinders it.

In the metropolitan or capitalist core countries, qualifies Ferrer, the process of "feudalisation"has yet to be consummated. Here, there are still unconquered "economic spaces" (Ferrer isreferring to room for economic competition based on innovation and reinvestments). When

all metropolitan centers shall have reached the same level of maturity, growth ratedifferentials eventually disappear and their advance will merely follow a feudal law ofmotion! Competition over economic space among capitalists accounts for realignments inrank and position in the core-semiperiphery-periphery hierarchy.

Putting Frank and Wallerstein on their heads, Ferrer argues that the world capitalist systemwas historically propelled by the feudal laws of motion of mercantilism. It was on the crest offeudal infrastructures, developed by mercantilism in the periphery, that homeland capitalistdevelopment rode. Even in its progressive competitive stage, capitalism on a world scaledeveloped feudalism in its satellites to complete the mecha-nism of transfer from periphery to

core.52

51Ferrer e (1987): 6.

52ibid.: 16.

phil marxism. excerpts from rojas, v (2011) philippine marxism––vintage debate reloaded. third...

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