PHILIPPINE MARXISM:

Introduction, Chapters I-II in Rojas,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 of the Philippines (CPP), proclaimed in the rst edition of Philippine Society and Revolution that the Philippine revolution was in essence a bourgeois-democratic revolution that would deliver the Fi-lipino masses from the yoke of imperialism and feudalism into the road of national liberation and development. The sinister alliance forged between these two forces had historically ba-nished Philippine society to the underdeveloped purgatory of the semifeudal-cum-semicolonial mode. Since then, this thesis has become a mainstream maxim, upheld by cadres of the radical Left. It continues to exercise immense authority over political activists in the streets and among the progressive intelligentsia. However, this mainstream model's supremacy has recently been challenged by other Marxist intellectuals. In a bid to exorcise radical thought from what appears to these detractors as the monolithic rule of mainstream axioms, they have advanced a myriad of counter models. The ensuing debate has pointed to a host of theoretical and analytical lacunae in mainstream thought. Although exhibiting a multiplicity of approach and orientation, these critics have condemned in crescendo the mainstream contention that semifeudalism, semicolonialism is a mode of production sui generis. For most of them, capitalism has de facto dismantled, if not completely or decisively subordinated, the old pre-capitalist modes. This shift in perspective has led to a fundamental re-examination of political strategy and tactics. A socialist and not a proletarian-peasant based bourgeois-democratic revolution shall liberate the Filipino masses from the fetters of monopoly capitalism. With tremendous intensity, the struggle of ideas has progressed throughout the decades of the 80s. It has locked contenders in a seemingly hopeless theoretical cul de sac, since a great part of the battle has

been waged on the high plateau of theory with very weak empirical foundations. The theoretical stalemate characterising the mode of production debate in the Philippines appears to parallel the endemic irreconcilability of positions elsewhere among participants of the 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 societal development in an underdeveloped country like the Philippines. Specically, it addresses the following issues and tasks: 1. Locate key points of conuence and cleavage and determine the general status of the debate. 2. Locate general points of coincidence with and specic contribution to the international debate on the mode of production, i.e., to contextualise the discussion internationally. The critical evaluation will embrace theoretical arguments advanced by debate participants who, 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-c development and underdevelopment. Contending positions included in this paper were deduced from contributions advanced from 1970 to 1987. Due to in-accessibility, the most recent contributions cannot be included here. Since empirical studies in the substantiation of rival 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 are grouped into either one of two categories or models: a. Mainstream model: semifeudal, semicolonial mode model b. Countermodels: neo-industrialisation thesis, dependency and worldsystems model, and articulation theory. Although I may be doing debate protagonists an injustice in this categorisation since many of them have not admitted "membership" in these "schools of thought," they do, with certain qualications, echo positions advanced elsewhere. Except for those sorted under the dependency and worldsystems countermodel, other participants aggregate relatively well around 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 of selectively identied polarities. These bisecting polarities seem to perpetuate the apparent irreconcilability of contending views and the lingering theoretical stalemate in the mode controversy 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 market exchange);

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 will be conducted using a three-dimensional matrix: A. Cognitive dimension: how protagonists perceive society and the categories they employ in observing that society. B. Normative dimension: how they judge, evaluate and dene 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, the most 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 deduced from the following key symposium and seminar documents: Feudalism and Capitalism: Trends and Implications (1982); Marxism in the Philippines (1984) and other research monographs 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 out the struggle of ideas on the mode problematique are two notable publications, viz., Diliman Review and the New Progressive Review.

I
The Mode of Production Controversy
- Disquiet in the International Marxist Front
Karl Marx, employing the historical-dialectical materialist approach, perceived the historical evolution of societies as a series of modes of production, replacing in progressive succession, moribund with dynamic forms. Each succeeding mode corresponds to a higher, more advanced 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, rst emerging from the old mode of production's "economic base," and ultimately being resolved when "superstructural" elements of the mode are dismantled.1 Marx recognised, however, that there were deviant cases to this Eurocentric "evolution-ofstages" map.2 In "backward" countries, where so-called Asiatic modes of production predominated, internal barriers, "Chinese walls" shaped by pre-existing pre-capitalist modes and obstructing the "normal" metamorphosis toward capitalism were in operation. It is only through external intervention, initially via colonialism, that these obstacles could effectively be removed. In other words, capitalism could not be conceived in the womb of the old mode, 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, delivering the underdeveloped countries to a more advanced stage. But as contemporary developments in the backward hinterlands of 20th century capitalism charted a distinctively different course, Marx's prophecy of homologous capitalist development everywhere came under heavy criticism from his descendants. The question of the 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 dened by the mode of production concept. The economic base has two intermeshing components, viz., social relations of production and forces of production. Both are denable in terms of control. The mode of control or the mode of exploitation is anchored on the level of material processes of production and particular property relations attached to them. In essence it implies class control over social surplus, that portion of output generated by producers but appropriated by non-producers. Although the superstructure and the economic base do interact, it is the latter which restricts within broad connes superstructural elements as in-dependent forces.
2 In

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 classless communist society. This is the historically determined normal pattern of modal transition.

of controversy in the 1950s over the transition from feudalism to capitalism in the capitalist homelands, and the subsequent controversy over the "development of underdevelopment" in the capitalist hinterlands. In the landmark Dobb-Sweezy debate in the 1950s3, two contending lines of argument were posited 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, lacking preconditions for transformation and thus bereft of any internal motorforce. The ultimate collapse 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 the cudgels for the primacy of internal factorsthe dynamics provided by the contradiction and struggle of classes inherent in the feudal modeas the key agent in the transition to capitalism. Alternatively, where Sweezy gave eminence to market exchange relations, Dobb elevated productive relations to the prime-mover throne. Another controversy centered on the question of whether capitalism is progressive or regressive. Early 20th century Marxists (Lenin, Bukharin and Luxemburg) broadly agreed that capitalist encroachment on other countries would create conditions for their transition from backwardness to a higher stage of economic development, in effect, upholding Marx's dictum about the progressive nature of capitalism. The expanded reproduction of capital would thus transform all pre-capitalist modes of petty commodity production to full-edged capitalist and generalised commodity production in the colonies, just as it did in the capitalist homelands.4 This view was preponderant until the postwar period, when Marxists had to confront the problem of explaining why the underdeveloped countries of the Third World had not achieved successful capitalist development in the wake of decolonisation and national liberation. A new breed of Marxists, proposing revisions embodied in the proliferating postwar theories on neocolonialism and dependency, started to challenge not so much the legitimacy of Marx's methodo-logy as the obsolescence of the orthodox analysis of capitalist development premised on anachronistic assumptions of perfect competition rather than on the hard realities of contemporary monopoly capitalism.5 In broad outline, they argued that the Third World had become capitalist but industrialisation was blocked by forces which continued to work in negative ways despite the absence of formal colonial rule. Causes of foreign expansion and inter-imperialist rivalries took a backseat to the idea that the predominant feature of imperialism had become aggregate exploitation of the underdeveloped countries by the advanced capitalist centers.6 In a bid to remove the analytical straitjacket on orthodox Marxist analysis and contemporary studies on Third World societies, Frank and, later, Wallerstein, chose to abandon the mode concept altogether. They proposed that the unit of analysis must be the world system and asserted that capitalism could be dened exclusively in this context. Navigating closely along the coordinates earlier charted by Sweezy, they dened this system in terms of production for
3Reproduced 4Barone 5ibid.

in Hilton (1976).

(1985): 14-15.

Architects of the monopoly capitalist school, e.g., Baran & Sweezy and later, dependency school purveyors like Frank & Amin.
6ibid.

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 of the specic position they occupy in the hierarchy of the world system, rather than being key determining factors. Capitalist accumulation is not a precondition for genuine qualitative advance in the level and method of production, but rather as a redivision of a xed magnitude, a transfer of resources from the exploited periphery to the center. Capitalist development is viewed as selectively progressive: 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 "uniform hierarchy of metropolis/satellite expropriating and appropriating surplus upwards and outwards, nationally and internationally."7 In similar vein, Wallerstein concludes that there is a single world system which is entirely capitalist, one which has basically existed since the 16th century.8 Frank and Wallerstein's provocative insights drew an extensive volley of criticism from a number of Marxists who sought to resurrect the mode of production approach. Laclau agreed that the "economic system" is capitalist. But he insisted that relations of production in Latin American societies illustrate the existence of substantial elements of feudalism that function as structural components of a wider capitalist system. The impact exerted by the external world market, far from dissolving, intensied or even "invented" or preserved feudal and other pre-capitalist modes.9 He alluded to the possibility of multiple modes of production coexisting within a single society (abandoning in effect the "contradiction-between-modes" thinking implied in the orthodox Marxist perspective) either permanently or over a protracted transitional period.10 In an incisive critique of Frank and Wallerstein, Brenner maintained that capitalist economic development is a function of the tendency toward capital accumulation via innovation built into historically developed structures and class relations of free wage labor. Development and underdevelopment are products of the specic evolution of class relations, in part determined historically "outside" capitalism in relation with non-capitalist modes.11 In many cases, capitalist penetration actually enhanced pre-capitalist modes of surplus extraction. It is these class structures and modes of exploitation which acted as decisive brakes to the progressive 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 underdeveloped versions, Rey and the disciples of the so-called "articulation school" claimed that capitalism in the neocolonies "articulated" or intermeshed with pre-capitalist modes and that the transition to capitalism ipso facto remained incomplete. Both Brenner and Rey trod on common ground in insisting that the survival of pre-capitalist modes, determined at least
7Foster-Carter 8For

(1978): 49.

an elaborate survey see Hettne (1981, 1988). op.cit.: 50.

9Foster-Carter, 10Brewer

(1980): 21. (1977): 60-61.

11Brenner

partially by causes internal to neocolonial societies, is a key factor in underdevelopment. Articulation between feudalism and capitalism in the homelands, one wherein feudalism served as umbilical chord supplying the capitalist fetus with its initial reproductive wherwithal (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 with feudalism but with other pre-capitalist modes of production. 12 What accounted for the discrepancy between homeland and hinterland development in the transitional 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 of capitalism whose essentials are found outside the social formation, on the other hand, the history of transition specic to the mode of production with which capitalism articulates."13 However, the articulation model implicitly contains the assumption that although transitional forms 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 of capitalism evolving in the Third World. For instance, Amin provocatively suggested that not only was capitalism blocked in these areas, the process of capitalist penetration had produced a "disarticulated, extraverted peripheral capitalist mode"possessing its own logicin contradistinction to the pure "autocentric" capitalism of the homelands.14 Alavi categorically denounced the concept of articulation and invented, in the course of participating in an important debate on the proper categorisation of agriculture in India, the concept of colonial mode of production. While recognising that a social formation may contain more than one mode, the relationship between these modes is dened by contradiction. Alavi reformulated concepts like Laclau's indissoluble unity of feudalism and capitalism as a hierarchical relationship within a single mode of production, viz., the colonial mode of production.15 This particular mode assumes in Alavi the proverbial status of mode sui generisa mode of production which is neither pre-capitalist nor capitalist, albeit the result of imperialism and the "disarticulation" of pre-capitalist modes. McEachern admitted in principle the possibility of coexistence and combination of multiple modes. 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 capitalism deriving from international connection.16 Overall, the ubiquitous "level-reductionism" infecting the international debate on the modes continues to lock contenders in a theoretical "suspended animation." Foster-Carter,
12Rey

(1982): 10. op.cit.: 157. op.cit.: 58.

13Barone,

14Foster-Carter, 15ibid.:

70-73. (1976): 453.

16McEachern

concluding his survey of the controversy with specic reference to Wallerstein's sweeping assertions, said that it was "doubtful whether the complex issue discussed can be so drastically reduced into a level-reductionism, and that while Wallerstein is right to assert the existence 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 been semantic."18 Both authors emphasised the necessity of synthesising valid elements from the contending approaches in order to eradicate myopic tend-encies haunting current Marxist analysis.

17Foster-Carter, 18Brewer,

op.cit.: 74-77.

op.cit.: 273.

II
The Philippine Mode of Production Controversy
- Mainstream and Counter Models Mainstream Model
The Semifeudal, Semicolonial Mode Proponents of the mainstream model maintain that despite the historical integration of Philippine society into the ambit of global capitalism, its essential and dening features are not that of the capitalist mode. Rather, capitalist penetration, mutually through the intercession of mercantile capitalism and, later, monopoly capitalism interacting with preexisting non-capitalist modes, has historically conceived a sort of hybrid semifeudal, semicolonial mode equipped with an internal logic of its own. Sison's metaphorical description captures the essence of what mainstream exponents view as perverted 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 a national capitalism." 19

What seems to be implied here is that while foreign monopoly capitalist penetration has indeed punctured the self-sufcient natural economy of the old feudal mode and expanded general commodity production, the commodity economy archetype produced, operates against or restricts the complete germination of indigenous capitalism.20 In the blueprint of imperialist domination, the Philippine economy is tragically consigned to the role of raw material resource base and a captive market for imported capital and consumer goods from the industrial capitalist homelands.
19Guerrero 20ibid.:

(1979): 89.

64.

Far from junking the old feudal mode, it has been "encouraged and retained" as the social base of US monopoly capitalism. The symbiosis between these two entities has transformed society into a semifeudal, semicolonial mode banished to the limbo of bastard identities, one which is neither capitalist nor feudal. US monopoly capitalism has retained and superimposed itself on feudalism, smashing local handicrafts and arresting the development of comprehensive local manufacturing. It has subordinated feudalism to the unequal exchange of manufactured imports and raw material exports. Justifying this point, Sison invokes Lenin's assertion that "modern imperialism allies itself with feudalism in colonies and semicolonies." Transitions between modes take on specic forms in these areas as opposed to the classic idealt-type obtained in the homelands.21 Translated in class terms, the specic nature of capitalist penetration of Philippine economy has paved the way for the ascendancy of a surrogate classthe comprador bourgeoisie whose key role has been the intermediation of imperialist and feudal interests. Its base of operation can be located in the lucrative import-export trade and other "antediluvian" or rentier forms such as moneylending, where it accumulates and concentrates capital in the form of prot and interest, largely through the commodity exchange medium. As such, its mode of surplus extraction and appropriation is more akin to mercantile capitalism, which for mainstream theory is basically a feudal (or in this context a semifeudal) phenomenon and mitigates against any fundamental development of productive forces. This modern "merchant" class is historically and currently linked more to feudalism (or again more specically to semifeudalism) than to industrial capitalist development, which in turn is blocked so long as the economy remains an appendage of US imperialism and operates within the orbit of global capitalism.22 However, its landlord origins makes it justied to speak 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 US monopoly capitalist-cum-comprador-bourgeoisie-cum-big-landlords. Progressive capitalism has not been given a chance. Indeed, without colonial and imperialist intervention, precolonial societies contained forms of social organisations and distinct classes whose struggle was bound to bring about social development.23 In recent years, there have been attempts from mainstream quarters toward theoretical renement as a response to the growing chorus of critics who are in broad agreement that Philippine society has denitely entered the capitalist trajectory and is now dictated by its laws of motion. Mainstream maverick Ferrer retorts that despite the preponderance of generalised commodity production, capital-wage labor relations and market economy, it is the expanded reproduction of capital, i.e., conversion of nancial to productive industrial capital, which qualies a mode of production as genuinely capitalist.24 In the Philippine context, this is problematic, if not impossible, since the basic logic of unequal exchange inherent in monopoly capitalist extraction militates against the process of conversion.

21Sison-De 22Sison-De 23Guerrero, 24Ferrer

Lima a (1984): 62. Lima b (1984): 30. op.cit.: 5.

c (1984): 44.

Given the limitations on expanded capital accumulation, preservation and reproduction of capital will assume non-economic coercive forms. Ferrer contrasts this from the competetive capitalist ideal-type where preservation of capital is mainly mediated by an ensemble of economic mechanisms such as technological innovation and productive reinvestment of capital. If capitalism nds it difcult to expand, its natural tendency is to monopolise. Something like the guild system in pre-industrial and mercantilist Europe is reproduced.25 In as much as the condition for the reproduction of capital-wage relations rests on international trade, merchant capital can nd a lasting sanctuary in the control of this trade. Ferrer vindicates this position on a controversial orthodox Marxist assertion that there are two alternative paths in the transition from feudalism to capitalism: the revolutionary path, wherein the direct producer becomes merchant and capitalist, versus the conservative road, where the merchant establishes direct sway over production. The latter26 tends to retain the old mode. In the case of agriculture and landed property, penetration by both market and wage-labor relations of previously existing feudal sectors may have in fact led to the intensication of feudal surplus extraction, the seeming capitalist embellishments of the mode notwithstanding. Insofar as these monopoly elements are predicated upon modern imperialism and the old feudal mode order, a scientic name to the mode of production may be the term semifeudal semicolonial. 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 system which 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 reform program in the 1970s noted that far from liquidating semifeudal relations in the rice growing areas and creating a progressive kulak class, these modernisation schemes have in effect expanded the role of conservative forces marshalled by comprador traders.28 These class actors facilitated the penetration not of progressive capitalism, but rather the fortication of conservative comprador capitalism.

Countermodels
Neo-industrialisation Thesis One of the most controversial cornerstones of the mainstream modelthat feudalism is the social base of imperialism in the Philippinesdrew initial attack from Lava and cadres from the pro-Moscow Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP). They contended that monopoly
25ibid.: 26See

45.

Marx, K., Das Kapital, Vol. III (1974): 791. c, op.cit.: 46.

27Ferrer 28Lim

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

capitalist penetration of the economy in the 1960s and 1970s was progressively liquidating the vestiges of the old order. At this historical juncture, monopoly capitalism's structural constraints have compelled it to shift strategy towards pushing the industrialisation process in the Third World to its nal conclusion. 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 progressive national bourgeoisie to state power, represented by the authoritarian regime of Marcos whose policies have steamrollered the fuller offensive of capitalist development across all economic sectors, strategically, thus, opening up the possibilities for a non-capitalist path to development. It is here that one should locate the social base. These early critics apparently took their cue from the CPSU-sanctioned theory of peaceful transition to socialism in Third World 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 found in a recent Marxist stream of thought, the so-called inter-nationalisation of capital and the new international division of labor school.29 Magallona (1982) categorically relegated the existence of a semifeudal, semicolonial mode to the historical dustbin and argued that although the uneven development of society may provide room for the "interpenetration and overlapping" of different forms of production, pre-capitalist remnants no longer operate as a system. The content and function of feudal forms of relations are now shaped by the operation of economic laws specic to the capitalist mode.30 In the neo-industrialisation model, a crucial distinction is drawn between two historically specic modes of capitalist penetration in and surplus extraction from the underdeveloped Third World. In the rst phase of the "internationalisation of capital," the integration of precapitalist Philippine society into the initial phase of global capitalist development via colonial intervention expressed itself through feudal forms. Or alternatively putting it, surplus extraction was conducted on a feudal basis through the mediation of land which had become capitalist private property and had profound effects on pre-capitalist relations of production leading to the latter's disintegration. The colonial system imposed by North American capital at the end of the 19th century is, in contrast to the mercantilist basis of the previous Spanish colonial hegemony, the specic manifestation of the expansion of an already developed capitalism in its monopoly stage. At this juncture, colonialism ceased to be merely a mercantilist venture. It became a vehicle for capital's seizure of the colonial economy's productive processes and resources. Colonialism at the early stage of monopoly capitalism promoted the "old international division of labor (OIDL)" which consigned colonies and semicolonies to monoculture specialisation and to being captive markets for the manufactured goods of the colonial powers, thus arresting industrial growth in these areas until the end of the 1960s. By this time, a marked shift in the world capitalist economy from export of commodities to export of capital had taken place. In this watershed phase of the industrialisation of capital, a new international division of labor (NIDL) had emerged, converting many Third World countries into international
29For

a brief summary, see Marcussen (1982): 145-51. in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.: 16.

30Magallona

adjuncts of the leading capitalist coutries. Their economies were deliberately being tailored to correspond to a new type of specialisation, i.e., production of labor-intensive commodities for export. Objective systemic contradictions of modern monopoly capitalism, inter alia the intensication of inter-capitalist rivalries in which variable capital or wage labor costs have become crucial in maintaining competetive edge, and broadening class militancy of the proletariat in the capitalist homelands generating high labor costs, have compelled imperialism 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 shift to this streamlined imperialist strategy of NIDL could be carried out. The main substance of this change was the reorientation of the national economy from its colonial structure into an industrial neocolony, entailing the expansion of the manufacturing sector, the massive build-up of industrial productive forces to meet the requirements of transnational corporations and major capitalist countries for low-cost, labor-intensive durables. The "gravitational pull" exerted by burgeoning labor-intensive manufacturing industries,32 would eventually demolish what-ever was left of the feudal integument.

The Dependency & Worldsystems Model The authors sorted under this category engage variant methodological approaches and disciplinary frames of reference. However, in broad terms, they all cohere in one way or the other around key postulates which had been advanced elsewhere by the s-c dependency and world systems "school." Thus, they all agree that the insertion of the Philippine economy into the world capitalist system has transformed society into an underdeveloped and dependent peripheral capitalist mode evolving inversely with the dynamic capitalist development of the industrial core countries. In the Philippine debate and critical literature, three substreams displaying kinship with this general approach may be distinguished: political economy approach, historical approach and "relative-autonomy-of-the-state" approach. Political Economy Approach Tiglao (1981, 1982) refutes as gross misreading mainstream corroboration of the semifeudalism thesis on the basis of tenancy relations in contemporary agriculture. A problematic 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.

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 the imposition 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 landlord class essentially via capitalistic mechanisms and based on the bourgeois institution of private ownership of the means of production.33 On the basis of his empirical investigations of the coconut industry,34 Tiglao concludes that Philippine agriculture is basic-ally a small peasant system of commodity production, operating within a type of capitalism which remains underdeveloped because of its subordination to imperialism. In this context, the peasant is in effect a semi-proletarian. He is a 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. Unlike the wage worker, he is not liberated from the means of production, enabling him to rely for a part of his subsistence on production for immediate consumption.35 Semi-proletarianisation demonstrates quint-essentially the contradictory nature of dependent capitalist development. Although Tiglao, like mainstream exponents, also conrms the absence of expanded reproduction of capital and the pervasiveness of tenancy in the agricultural sector, he nevertheless contends that these apparently feudal relations of production are in fact capitalist. Landlords stick to tenancy for rational reasons. Facing low capital requirements of production based on backward technology and erratic natural conditions, he tries to minimise risks to investible capital by channeling generated surplus value into non-agricultural enterprises, where the average rate of prot is at least equal to or higher than that in the coconut sector. It is thus a prot-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 among scholars who wanted to comprehensively analyse the impact of world trade on the social history of agricultural export economies of the various regions of Southeast Asia, and local social transformations evolving in the wake of their integration into the capitalist world economy. Fortuitously, the scholarly debate over the impact of world trade on Third world societies, in which Frank and Wallerstein were prime protagonists, coincided with Philippine regional researches in noted decade. Although relatively isolated from the international debate, these studies raised similar questions and eventually assimilated and extended certain key concepts originated by the debate. These historiographic studies, according to McCoy (1982), endorsed the position that the Philippines "did not develop as a unitary colonial economy oriented towards a single satellite entrept in Manila. It emerged as a series of separate societies that entered the world

33Tiglao 34Tiglao 35Tiglao

in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.:45. (1981). in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.: 48.

economic system at different times under different terms of trade, and with different systems of production."36 Although highly appreciative of Wallerstein's more rened world systems model, McCoy pointed at a lacunahis failure to elaborate the "process of change that accompanied the external areas' integration into the world system."37 Extending Wallerstein's model of diverse labor systems in the core-semiperiphery-periphery world system complex, he argued that a similar range of labor control systems was evident within the archipelago. Local elites used the most appropriate and economical labor control strategy historically determined by the specic needs of each region. The picture derived from McCoy's palette projects a series of separate local enclave economies lorded over by the capitalist core countries via external linkages to the world capitalist system. In the wake of productive specialisations in various regions, brought about by the external stimuli provided by international trade, commercially sovereign entrept cities maintaining independent links to external trading networks emerged.38 These logistical networks intermeshed country-side, regional entrepot, and global market complexes. It is these external linkages which created the conditions for the emergence of the native bourgeoisie whose class unity had been compounded and fragmented precisely by the complex and shifting nature of the global integration process. While researchers like McCoy suggest that internal social transformations in peripheral countries like the Philippines were by and large dictated by the external stimuli generated by global capitalism, others (McLennan, 1982; Fegan, 1981) advance bolder conclusions. The latter nd intimate identication with and draw heavily from Hans Bobek's insights into a phenomenon 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 of extraction of surplus product,"40 irrespective of the local details of production arrangements. They condemn "feudalist "interpretations of the colonial economy advanced by mainstream exponents for being pathetically parochial as a result of the rigid application of orthodox Eurocentric stages' theory. Echoing Bobek, McLennan and Fegan postulated that rent capitalism is distinctively an authentic form of capitalism, insofar as its raison d'tre is found in commodity production for monetary sale and predicated on a prot-maximising logic. However, its accumulative and expansive logic seems to be conned at the level of market exchange, whereupon capital does not enter and improve the productive process itself, leaving the petty scale of production, old native technologies and the internal organisation of the productive unit basically untouched. The rent capitalist expands operation by using money to gain claims on the product of more petty units of production via mortgages, purchases and loans.41

36McCoy 37ibid.: 38ibid.:

(1982): 8.

5. 12 (1981): 1.

39Fegan 40ibid:

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

41Apart

But while the theoretical pioneer Bobek was quite sceptical about the potency of rent capitalism, Fegan on the contrary exuded optimismrent capitalism in the Philippines and the Southeast Asian region did transform these societies radically. Pre-capitalist producers were drawn by the rent capitalist merchant broker to the world trade system by advancing commodities from the world market on credit. It was through the rent-debt (production for debt repayment) and not the wage-capital-nexus that labor and land of the local noncapitalist system were hooked up to the global economy. The specic form of consciousness spawned by rent capitalism stems working class solidarity. Direct producers see themselves as "dependent petty entrepreneur" clients of their rent capitalist patrons, mystifying these relationships as one of "partnership," thereby masking exploitative 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 and exploitative, indeed often brutish social relations of production which existed in every sector including the most advance sectors of the colonial economy should in fact be credited to capitalist penetration."42 Transformation of the agricultural sector from subsistence to cash crop economy should not be equated to the process of feudalisation, but rather to the penetration of Western capitalism and the integration of the Philippine economy to world commodity markets. Well in the orbit of 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 to focus theoretical pre-occupation on the terra incognita of the mode's superstructure. Like his other 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 accumulation within the framework of neocolonial dependence.43 Historically, pre-colonial social structures in those areas of society effectively subordinated by the colonial state were dismantled with nality. Colonialism was an external force that overwhelmed the separate historic identity of the subject society through the principal medium of the colonial state apparatus.44 The state overdetermined all social forces and had two major effects: a) surplus extraction to meet its reproductive require-ments eroded pre-colonial subsistence economies, and b) created dependent social hierarchies.

42Fast/Richardson 43Magno 44ibid.:

(1980): 56.

(1985): 19.

20.

In this context, elite class formations outside the state were prevented. These elites were fragmented 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." In the 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 the underdeveloped nature of internal class forces.46 The "Articulation" Theory While admitting that in the succession of modes, capital eventually dominates and transforms old production and property forms, advocates of articulation theory47 argue that the process of integration of pre-capitalist to capitalist can no longer be simply conceived as one of succession, evolution, nor even as an unproblematic case of transition. Although capitalism may be a formidable force, its particular form of reproduction in underdeveloped societies will, under certain historical conditions, be partially contingent upon the internal specicities of pre-capitalist modes in those areas. A modus vivendi between non-capitalist and capitalist modes can and will be forged until capitalism is strong enough to completely annihilate the old mode. The "disarticulated" genre of capitalist development in the peripheral countries attests to the paradoxical situation of coexistence and contradiction of modesthe coexistence of contradictions and the contradict-ions of coexistence. The persistence, and, in fact, entrenchment of tenancy long after capitalism has taken root in the economyviewed by articulation advocates as the one of the most concentrated and visible expressions of pre-capitalist or "semifeudal" relations of productiongraphically illustrates this contradiction. Indeed, empirical evidence indicate that entrenchment and intensication of non-capitalist relations occurred during periods marked by accelerating commercialisation of agri-culture.48 In similar vein, Banzon-Bautista (1984), probing into the impact of capitalist penetration in agriculture and the process of social differentiation in rural society, points specically at the process of semi-proletarianisation (reproduced by capitalist wages and peasant subsistence production) as a clear testimony at micro-level of the contradictions between the tendency to restructure 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 the dissolution of the peasant class, nor has it speeded up the process of polarisation in rural society.

45ibid.: 46Cf.

21.

Alavi (1975). in Feudalism & Capitalism in the Philippines, op.cit.:1. b (1982): 50. in Marxism in the Philippines (1984): 176.

47Rivera 48Rivera

49Banzon-Bautista

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 are by no means passive and static complexes. They are actors in their own right and may partially 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 the semifeudal and distorted features of capitalist development in the Philippines, they seek to transcend the descriptive character of the mainstream model. Mainstream tendency to politically rarify the elaboration of non-capitalist relations' long life expectancy in Philippine society, i.e., imperialism sealing a durable partnership with noncapitalist elite classes to ensure political stability, reduces the potency of explanatory enterprise. What remains unravelled is the process by which the newly emerging capitalist mode over a protracted interval reinforces existing non-capitalist relations of production in the neocolony in order to initially satisfy the former's reproductive requirements by way of goods and labor organised by the latter mode.50 Articulationists argue that these requirements do change over time and note that in the "late imperialist stage" the structural crisis of monopoly capitalism has necessitated strategic adjustments and rectications such as changes in the specialisation of the international labor process and intensication of capitalist attempts to streamline and rationalise accumulation. Changes that thereby step up capitalist inroads into the non-capitalist sectors. In the backwater of this refurbished offensive, conservative semifeudal labor processes are dramtically being decimated, accelerating in effect social differentiation and proletarianisation of rural society.

Counteroffensive - Combatting Countermodels

Mainstream intellectuals returned re against their aggresive adversaries in an all-out counteroffensive which nds its most comprehensive and ambitious expression in Ferrer (1987). He trained his guns directly against one of the main theoretical armouries from which mainstream iconoclasts have secured their weapons, i.e., dependency and worldsystems, and articulation theories. Both "schools" generally agree that the laws of motion of capitalism, specically monopoly capitalism, absolutely or at least primarily, determine societal development in the peripheral countries of the Third World. But why, asks Ferrer, can't the capitalist mode, if indeed it is dominant, overwhelm the old order? Capitalism, whether externally imposed or indigenously evolved, has never played a dominant role in the under-developed countries. While there is certainly articulation, precapitalist, 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.

capitalism now operates de facto on the basis of feudal laws of motion! Its expansion and reproduction, like in the guild system of the feudal Middle Ages, rests principally on the noneconomic and coercive mechanisms of surplus extraction. Monopoly capitalism precludes any 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 force originates from "changes or forecast changes" in the market. It is the inversion in the causal chain 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 to produce the surplus that it appropriates via extra-economic means. It is not that capitalism has lost its vitality as a mode, rather, it is the feudal colonial mode that hinders it. In the metropolitan or capitalist core countries, qualies Ferrer, the process of "feudalisation" has yet to be consummated. Here, there are still unconquered "economic spaces" (Ferrer is referring to room for economic competition based on innovation and reinvestments). When all metropolitan centers shall have reached the same level of maturity, growth rate differentials eventually disappear and their advance will merely follow a feudal law of motion! Competition over economic space among capitalists accounts for realignments in rank and position in the core-semiperiphery-periphery hierarchy. Putting Frank and Wallerstein on their heads, Ferrer argues that the world capitalist system was historically propelled by the feudal laws of motion of mercantilism. It was on the crest of feudal infrastructures, developed by mercantilism in the periphery, that homeland capitalist development rode. Even in its progressive competitive stage, capitalism on a world scale developed feudalism in its satellites to complete the mecha-nism of transfer from periphery to core.52

51Ferrer 52ibid.:

e (1987): 6. 16.