💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › bas-umali-dialectical-historical-materialism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:16:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Dialectical Historical Materialism Author: Bas Umali Date: June 2017 Language: en Topics: critique, marxism, indigenous solidarity, dialectics, Philippines, anarcho-primitivism, post-left Source: Retrieved on 2019-08-15 from https://onsiteinfoshopphilippines.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/dialectical-historical-materialism-an-effective-tool-for-authoritarian-politics-dominance-and-control-in-the-archipelago/
For many years Marxism has been the dominant ideology among dissent in
the archipelago. It is a convenient tool utilized by social movements,
civil society, scholars, academics and even a few government agents.
This framework deeply influenced the way we view our history and
alternatives. Its evolutionary logic provides certain analysis and
proposes sets of actions and alternatives.
Historical accounts showed that resistance is not new to indigenous
communities in the archipelago. Our ancestors were not dumb; indigenous
people do not need to borrow ideas from the west to realize their own
situation. Indigenous communities have mechanisms designed to protect
and sustain their existence, culture and well-being.
Resistance that led to violent confrontation and war in different
regions of the archipelago was complex. Every resistance has a
peculiarity based on its context, culture and time. But statist politics
became the dominant framework among those who have challenged the status
quo. Because dominance is the very nature of the state. This kind of
politics greatly affected the conduct of local dissent which led to the
establishment of republican and leftist institutions.
Marxism in the archipelago, which you today refer to as the
“Philippines”, has many variations. Like the dominant religions, Marxism
produced a variety of thinkers, ideologues, politicians, activists and
even faith-based groups and individuals. Dialectical historical
materialism (DHM) is one of Marxism’s fundamentals to analyze a society.
This is widely criticized for putting heavy emphasis on economy. It
reduces the societies through a focus on economic progress and sets the
bench mark of development with the system and scale of production and
accumulation of material wealth. It inevitably disregards other
essential aspects of society by elevating some class into the pedestal
of revolution.
It is said that capitalism will prepare the material and social capital
for the establishment of socialist society. Since workers are the
primary force of production of a capitalist society, Marxists believe
that the proletariat will lead the revolution with the aim to establish
a “dictatorship”.
Social revolution is a process of overhauling social relationships that
reinforce inequality, social injustice, environmental destruction and
patriarchy. This process can only be realized if heterogeneous agents of
society participate. The workers’ role is to liberate themselves from
the chains of capitalism; women should act against patriarchy; other
sectors and classes must do their share for social change by acting
directly in their interests. Social revolution will not take place if
the people’s mode of thinking is generally respectful to the
institutions that reproduce and reinforce rules that define property,
ownership, privileges, roles and power. Putting a particular class or
group into a pedestal of power is another form of hierarchy and
therefore invites privilege and the centralization of power.
In relation to this criticism, I would like to reiterate that the
dialectical process is hierarchical. It is no different from the
band-tribe-chiefdom-state model pioneered by the archeologist Elman
Service, which refers to the hierarchical progression of society. It
presents an evolutionary process of community from simple stateless
egalitarian indigenous organizations like bands and tribes into
chiefdoms and states, which are generally characterized by central
power, uniformity and non-egalitarianism. The Marxist evolutionary model
of the authoritarian left in the Philippines is consistent with this
model. To apply this in our context, the indigenous communities
“discovered” by Magellan in Leyte were supposedly primitive, inferior,
savage, wild, ignorant and in need to be tamed.
Spain, according to the DHM model, was a feudal society governed by a
King. Based on historical accounts, Philip had no intention of
conquering the archipelago, it was an enterprise and he was in business
with Magellan. They had a contract that defined every party’s
obligations and shares.
The word “primitive” is in most cases used with prejudice by referring
to traditional cultures as underdeveloped. There are hosts of
communities that maintained their indigenous ways of life because they
chose to protect and defend their culture by practicing it, by
reproducing, innovating and improving it. They sustained their existence
not because they were left out of social progression, as presented in
the chiefdom model or the dialectical historical tool. Their resilience
is attributed to their love of freedom and self-determination. Most of
indigenous communities consciously maintained their cultures. Like any
organization, they had mechanisms to protect their well-being by
continuously doing things based on their customs and indigenous ways.
Like the indicator of a healthy ecology, they were highly diverse and
their systems myriad. Their commonality was a decentralized pattern of
politics and of managing resources. Communities were autonomous and
generally have horizontal social relations. The indigenous communities
of the archipelago still live according to these principles.
Electricity, gadgets, cars, groceries, malls, appliances, bombs,
cannons, nuclear power and arms, churches, guns and bullets do not exist
in the remaining stateless societies. They lack sophisticated technology
and material culture in the same way they lack hunger, poverty, crime,
ecological destruction, forced labor and different kinds of abuse and
exploitation and social issues attributed to large-scale, centralized
power, to authoritarian, consumerist and patriarchal modern societies.
For sure, indigenous communities are not perfect, but the imperfections
are far less destructive than systems of states, corporations and
churches that instigate war, exploitation, environmental destruction,
hunger and poverty through the control of centralized political power.
Since the common interest of organisms is to secure their existence, I
could say indigenous communities are more developed and advanced because
they are more sustainable than modern institutions, which are in
constant struggle for dominance and aiming for infinite growth, which is
totally inconsistent to ecological systems and the self-determination of
communities.
I heard several times that what Marx did in his DHM was to interpret
history. I agree. But you and me, we can also have our own reading. I
would say that the evolutionary approach is not suitable to analyze our
local context. Based on historical accounts, the indigenous
organizations did not evolve into states but were rather coerced to
adopt centralized patterns of organization such as states, churches and
corporations.
Autonomous/indigenous resistance was the resistance staged by different
communities and tribes throughout the archipelago. These were
anti-colonial in nature and aimed to re-install their indigenous ways of
life. Among them were Magat Salamat, Tamblot, Tapar, Bancao, the
Mandayas, the Ifugao, Zambal, and others. In the perspective of
statists, their initiatives will be labeled “primitive”.
DHM’s hierarchical process downplayed societies they considered part of
a “lower” evolutionary process and treated them as underdeveloped and in
need of evolving into higher form. I am not really sure whether they
treated poverty, environmental degradation and social injustice as
pre-requisites for their imagined perfect society.
Diversity, horizontality and spontaneity are the very foundation of
life; ergo, life on earth will not flourish through singularity but
rather through a multitude of systems that are interdependent, directly
and indirectly connected to one another. No life on earth is guided by a
systematic plan and a singular direction. Life on earth thrives due to
an ending process of evolution of conflict and cooperation.
Our modern age is characterized by centralized politics; an approach
that is seeking an absolute truth which aims to establish uniformity and
singularity; a framework that is totally opposite to the foundation of
life, i.e., diversity, heterogeneity and tolerance.
Institutions such as states, markets and churches exist due to a
particular objective. They are designed to ensure obedience, submission
and control.
You may observe that we are experiencing environmental destruction,
discrimination, war and exploitation. It occurred due to
anthropocentrism. Humanity’s domination and control over one another and
the earth resulted in the destruction not only of our diverse systems
and cultures but also of our very own habitat.
One will notice that DHM’s logic is not only hierarchical but also
reinforces uniformity. It is supposed to promote freedom, and many
leftist revolutionaries believe this. But its singular and hierarchical
direction inevitably discriminates societies that are not Eurocentric
and that oppose systems of industry, market, democracy and one-God-based
spirituality. DHM replicates oppressive systems. We have seen this in
various places that have adopted Marxism.