Trump, McKinley, and US Imperialism in Asia
When Trump speaks of his admiration for McKinley, he expresses the desire of the rapacious American oligarchy to return to open colonial rule and the conquest and annexation of territories.
Latest Articles
Jose Ma. Sison, founder of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines, dies aged 83
Jose Ma. Sison, founder and lifelong leader of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), died on December 16 at the age of 83. No figure in the past half-century was more instrumental in the betrayal of the Filipino...
A Sideways Imagining: Revisiting Region in Southeast Asia
Regions are not stable historical phenomena. They are, to draw upon a metaphor from Southeast Asian Studies, expanding and contracting mandalas. The alteration is not fundamentally their geographical scope but their social significance; it is their very existence that waxes...
The adulation for Elizabeth II: The capitalist class celebrates the principle of monarchy
The unreal spectacle has nothing to do with the passing of a slight, hunched-over elderly woman and everything to do with the royal institution that encrusted her and the monarchic principle she embodied.
The election of Marcos in the Philippines and the death rattle of democracy
The election of Marcos is a milestone in a global process. He represents the naked rule of reaction, promising dictatorship and drawing in his wake fascists and political scum.
The Met Gala and the hubris of wealth
On the first Monday in May each year a spectacle of excess is staged in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City – the Met Gala. The red carpet rolls out for the billionaires and their hangers-on, the...
How Ferdinand Marcos 1965 election campaign turned Central Luzon into a war zone
The political machinations of Ferdinand Marcos, who unleashed ex-Huk gangsters and military repression in his quest to be elected president in 1965, transformed Central Luzon into a war zone for the next decade.
Revolutionary politics and the scientific study of history: a response to Boni Ilagan and Teo Marasigan
An essay on historical methodology and revolutionary politics, in response to the arguments of impressionism, empiricism, and pragmatism. How do we study history? How can we understand the martial law regime of Marcos, or the barricades of the Diliman Commune,...
Fifty years since the May Day massacre in the Philippines
On Saturday, May 1 1971, police and military forces in the Philippines, who had been deployed on the roof of Congress buidling as snipers armed with machine guns, opened fire on four thousand protesting workers and students. They mercilessly strafed...
How did Joma Sison become a Stalinist?
Jose Ma. Sison, founder and ideological leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines, developed his fundamental political ideas -- the program of Stalinism -- during his years as a graduate student at the University of the Philippines. His class...
Why did the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) split in 1967 along the lines of the Sino-Soviet dispute?
I demonstrate that a growing radicalization among youth put great pressure on the party which had supported Marcos for president in 1965 and was looking to retain ties with him. Contrary to popular conception, Jose Ma. Sison, a leading member...
What are the real political lessons of the Diliman Commune?
The anniversary of the Commune is thus necessarily less an occasion for celebration and nostalgia, and far more urgently an opportunity to assess the lessons and legacy of the experience, which prove to be of immediate relevance today.
Lessons of the 1969 Student Strikes in the Philippines
1969 opened with an explosion of student strikes in Manila, a bellwether of the brief, heady epoch of storm and dictatorship that followed.
Stalinist apologetics and intellectual charlatanry: a response to Teo Marasigan
In the final analysis, Marasigan’s argument amounts to the claim that Joseph Stalin was right, and the CPP is correct in continuing his political legacy.
Fifty years since the publication of Philippine Society and Revolution
The foundational text of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), written by Jose Ma. Sison, Philippine Society and Revolution, was first published in serialized form in campus newspapers in the latter half of 1970.
Fifty years since the First Quarter Storm: the revolution diffused
An eruption of protests and violence — molotov cocktails and gunfire — in the streets of Manila, launched the heady, charged days of January to March 1970.
55 years since the founding of Kabataang Makabayan (KM)
The Kabataang Makabayan (KM) was founded as a reformist youth organization to carry out pressure politics in the interests of the national bourgeoisie. Immense social struggles would, in less than six years, thrust this small group to the center of...
Mao welcomes Imelda Marcos to China
An odd, unpleasant photograph was taken forty-five years ago today. Imelda Marcos, the conjugal head of a two year old military dictatorship, intimately greeted the aged Chairman Mao who openly ogled the straightcut neckline of her terno.
47 years since the imposition of martial law in the Philippines
The ruling opposition was thus mobilized for a particular reason — to have their hands upon the reins of the inevitable dictatorship. The working class and exploited masses of the Philippines were mobilized for very different reasons: price hikes, runaway...
How the Diliman Commune was part of a coordinated campaign of barricades in February 1971
The famed 1971 seizure of the UP Diliman campus and the formation of the ‘Diliman Commune’ was part of a coordinated campaign of barricades erected by the KM and SDK throughout Manila and beyond.
Ileto’s problematic class categories
Among the criticisms which I raised regarding Ileto's account was the deeply problematic character of the class categories he employed.
Ileto’s Pasyon and Revolution revisited
An examination of the origins of my scholarship revisiting Reynaldo Ileto's classic 1979 work, Pasyon and Revolution.
gusali | building
My cobbled-together English translation of the epigraph to the first chapter of Edgardo M. Reyes’ Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, is a deliberately rough translation, the scaffolding for a later, and more polished, work.