Activism is not communism

BERLIN—The death of two university students, a journalist, and other civilians in a Philippine Army operation in Toboso, Negros Occidental, has once again exposed the pervasive perception of many Filipinos that if you’re an activist, you are a communist who supports armed rebellion.

On April 19, the government reported that as a result of a clash between government forces and suspected communist rebels, 19 people were killed in the town of Toboso. Netizens and journalists, who called for an independent probe of the deaths, reported that their online posts were peppered with comments directly accusing and scoffing at the two students and the journalist as armed communists who deserved the tragic fate that they suffered.

Even outside the Toboso tragedy, there has long been a widespread misconception among Filipinos that if you are keenly interested in the plight of the poor, if you are vocal about uplifting the lives of laborers and farmers, and if you express your support for the impoverished through protest actions or immersions in their communities, you are a communist rebel.

This association between having a heart for the poor and communism is a vestige of the Cold War years, when countries were divided in their allegiance between the United States as the leader of the democratic world on one hand, and the Soviet Union as the bastion of communism on the other hand. If you are pro-business, you are pro-democracy, and if you are pro-labor, you are pro-communism, went the brainwashing propaganda of the pro-American side of the political divide.

The Philippines should learn from European countries, which embraced some of the socialist features of communism, even as they thrived as democratic states. This is true, for example, for the Federal Republic of Germany, which used to be divided between democratic West Germany and communist East Germany. Reunified Germany honors the father of communism, the German philosopher Karl Marx, by continuing to name one of its major thoroughfares in the capital city of Berlin after him. In fact, there are 550 streets, alleys, and squares still named after Marx in current-day Germany. In the Philippines, even merely uttering the word Karl Marx would get one branded as a communist; what more if a town or city names one of its roads after Marx.

The socialist features of Germany, which are also true for many other European countries, are some of the attributes that are envied by Third-World countries. Education is free from nursery to university, and lunch is free for all grade schoolers and for kids of low-income families in high school. Health care, pension, and unemployment benefits receive subsidies from the government. The government also supports childcare from age 0 to the time the child goes to school. Public transport is additionally subsidized by the government, allowing passengers to have unlimited use of all regional and local public transport across the country for the fixed price of 63 euros per month because “(m)obility should not be a luxury—it must be universally accessible so that everyone can participate in society.”

To fund its welfare state features, Germany heavily imposes taxes with as much as a 45 percent tax rate for the rich. The government also collects substantial social security contributions from employers and employees. Even foreigners temporarily staying in Germany can feel and benefit from the extensive governmental services financed by heavy taxation.

If we listen intently to the so-called leftist groups that are active in our Congress, in universities, and among activist organizations, we will recognize the welfare state features of European countries as among those that they have long been fighting for. In particular, the Makabayan bloc of congresspersons has been articulating these welfare state aspirations since they started sending members to Congress. However, they are drowned out and smeared by accusations that they have ties to and are extensions of the Communist Party of the Philippines—New People’s Army, which seeks to overthrow our republican government and replace it with a communist form of government.

Whether the accusations are true or not, the merits of the Makabayan bloc’s advocacies (and all activist groups espousing the same aspirations for that matter) for the Philippines to incorporate socialist features in our country’s governance must be assessed on their merits and examined from the experiences of other countries. Besides, what better way to render their revolutionary ambitions moot than by integrating their social and economic prescriptions into our current governmental system.

The neoliberal model of free-market capitalism, trickle-down economics, privatization, and minimal government intervention that piggybacked on our democratic system of government, has led to the seriously failing society that we have today, where the rich are getting ridiculously richer, while the poor are insanely getting poorer. It’s time we shed the Cold War propaganda that has blinded us to perdition and look to the European model of social democracy.