NOTE: Recto's cited examples were of his time, of course; but realities in our homeland in the present and the foreseeable future are/expectedly much, much worse. Though I am tempted to update them with current issues, it's best to leave them as they are since Recto's paradigms about our much deepened national predicament still ring relevant, valid and true. In short, Recto saw the forest and never got lost in the trees.
THE RECTO READER is presented in several postings.This is the fifth posting. Click below for previous posts:
THE RECTO READER: Nationalism,Internationalism,Ultra-Nationalism, Part 1A of 6
THE RECTO READER: Mission of Nationalism, Part 1B of 6
THE RECTO READER: Economic Independence,Economic Nationalism,Part 2A of 6
THE RECTO READER: Economic Nationalism Means Industrialization,Part 2B of 6
THE RECTO READER: The Fallacy of "Philippines First,"Part 2D of 6
WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: (Note: Bold and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posting/article. Forwarding the postings to relatives and friends, especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated).
“ Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man." - Bertrand Russell
"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime” - Aristotle, 335 BC
“They do not easily rise whose abilities are repressed by poverty at home.” - Decimus Juvenalis, 120 AD (CE)
“To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.” - William Corbett, 1830
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Hi All,
In Part 1(A&B), Recto defined and clarified for us what Filipino Nationalism is and what it is not.
In Part 2(A&B), he elucidated the need for economic independence: the "what, why, how, where and when" of economic independence characterized by a nationalistic outlook. He reminded us that economic independence propelled by nationalism is the sine qua non for political independence, domestically and internationally; and clarified what real industrialization ought to be.
In this Part 2C Recto stressed the need to shift from being an agricultural country to an industrial country, if we were to free the native Filipino majority from perpetual impoverishment.
In Part 2D, Recto strongly differentiates between "Philippines First" policy and "Filipino First" policy. In the first policy slogan, the GNP or other econometric/statistical data for the Philippines as a territory may be great but mostly benefiting foreigners, while the native Filipino majority (common tao) still continue to be mired in dire poverty; In the latter slogan, the "Filipino First" policy was designed to alter this historical/perennially distorted economic conditions and results and instead, to make the native Filipino majority the controller of and main beneficiaries of the national wealth.
- Bert
"...there are the enslaved human beings who must accomplish their own liberation. To develop their own liberation. To develop their consciousness and conscience, to make them aware of what is going on, top prepare the precarious ground for the future alternatives....This is our task: our not only as Marxists but as intellectuals, and that means all those who are still free and able to think by themselves and against indoctrination, communist as well as anticommunist." - Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)
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Industrialization: The Alternative to Poverty
In the present age, economic development is, for all practical purposes, equivalent to industrialization. Stagnation and poverty are the alternative to industrialization.(22)
The clues to a correct and clear understanding of what industrialism means are, first, the circumstance that the finished products consumed are of local manufacture and the conveniences enjoyed are also locally produced, and in factories and plants predominantly owned by the citizens themselves; and second, the fact that most of the people, not just a minority enjoy these finished products and modern conveniences of life. (23)
An agricultural economy, as that term is today universally understood, is an economy where the major, though not the exclusive, economic efforts of a nation, in terms of labor and investments, are directed to agriculture and other extractive pursuits. In such an economy, there are also a few manufacturing and service industries, but these constitute only the minor part and are mere adjuncts of the main economy.
In an industrial economy, on the other hand, the case is the other way around. While there must necessarily be extractive production, the major, though again not exclusive, economic efforts of the nation are directed to manufacturing. In both, all the various sectors of production are therefore present, but they differ in the proportion of economic efforts directed to the extraction of raw materials and to the processing of these raw materials into finished products.
Since raw materials, whether in the world market or in the various national markets, are always of much lower value than the products into which they are processed, it follows that the producers of raw materials always receive much less income than producers of finished products. This is likewise true among nations: an industrial nation is a prosperous and, hence, a strong and dominant nation; while an agricultural nation is a poor and, consequently, a weak and dependent nation. Industrial nations have never wanted other nations that are raw-material producers to industrialize. England tried to prevent or hamper manufacturing in America. This was one of the major causes of the American Revolution.
Because of our rich mineral resources which include petroleum, iron, coal, copper, nickel, manganese, chromite, and other important raw materials -which today are being taken away from our land for the use and benefit of foreign industries- we assuredly can industrialize, despite foreign advice to the contrary. The prosperity of the Filipino people will always be an impossibility if we do not industrialize.(24)
The policy of industrializing the country should be pursued vigorously and sincerely. Many of the industries to which our administrations, past and present, point with pride as achievements of their so-called industrialization programs are nothing more than assembling, bottling, or packaging plants or concerns which import an almost finished product and merely perform the last stage of manufacturing before placing it on the selling counter.
When we refer to these enterprises as "industries," we are deceiving ourselves. We are contenting ourselves with spreading a thin veneer of industrialism on a backward agricultural economy. Such industries import the almost finished products of foreign labor so that only an infinitesimal amount of labor is utilized here to complete the manufacturing process. This, as I said, is subsidizing foreign labor at the expense of local labor.(25)
Nationalist Industrialization - Not Just "Industrialization"
I need not stress the point that when I speak of industrialization I mean nationalist industrialization, that is, the industrialization of our own economy, the Filipino economy, not merely the industrialization of the Philippines in a territorial sense. As I once pointed out in a Senate speech, foreign direct investments, as distinguished from foreign loans, not only will channel the nation's wealth into foreign lands, but will fail to promote the industrialization of the Filipino economy because it will not help in the formation of Filipino capital.
....We are rich in natural resources, and with such an ample source of readily available labor from which to draw for our industries, having in mind the principle of shift from occupations of lower marginal productivity to occupations of higher marginal productivity, we have every reason to expect that it is within our own capability to develop the national economy at an accelerated pace in the next few decades. The decision is for us alone to make. If we leave it to others because we admit our lack of political authority or of will power to decide on our own economic policy and act accordingly; if we leave it to others because we believe that we cannot refuse their insistence on a joint economic program which can only mean a program geared to their own national interest, then indeed our task of seeking prosperity and strength for our country and people is futile.(26)
When I advocate industrialization I do not have in mind, as certain supposed economic saviors of the country do, only an industrialization incidental to a general concept of economic development based on a rural economy. This concept is diametrically opposed to the views I have espoused the last five years. I advocate a real industrialization program, not one where industry would occupy a minor place in an economy still devoted to the production of raw materials for export, not a plan where industry is merely concerned with the assembly of parts or the bottling or packaging of imported products. I advocate an industrialization which would include heavy industry and from which would emanate progress in all directions, including the agricultural sectors of our country.
Those who would camouflage the colonial nature of their economic thinking advocate industrialization but visualize this only as a result of agricultural development. I stand on the proposition that industrialization is and should be the starting point of our progress and development....
A predominantly agricultural economy garnished with a few minor industries spells poverty, unemployment, and the continuation of our colonial status, whereas industrialization and the eradication of the vestiges of a predominantly colonial agricultural economy is the only way out from underproduction, unemployment and poverty.(27)
....Again and again, we meet with fellow Filipinos pr read remarks of Filipino commentators, that reveal an unclear understanding of the true meaning of industrialization and economic nationalism.
...When some countrymen of ours argue, and I have met many who so argue, that it would be impractical for our country to industrialize because we are by nature an agricultural country, and that anyway we do not have the wherewithal nor the technological know-how to industrialize, we who have been ardently advocating industrialism are naturally pained at such misconceptions.
Industrialism of course roughly refers to a state of culture and manner of producing and consuming goods of a national society wherein industries and industrial processes predominate. To give a simple illustration of the several parts of the definition just made, one may say that if in a nation the general level of living is such that most of the people eat, say puff rice and cream for breakfast, and both the puff rice and cream are finished products of the country, and when heated just before serving, these are placed on an electric range all parts of which are of local manufacture, and the majority of grown-ups who eat the breakfast earn their livelihood working in factories owned mostly by their fellow citizens or in business enterprises that are also mostly owned by fellow countrymen, then that nation may be said to have attained a failry high degree of industrialization. It is already living in a culture of industrialization.(28)
From the early days of the American occupation up to July 1946, it was inevitable that America should control the economic policy of our country. The American Tariff Act of 1909 establishing a so-called "free trade" between the United States and the Philippine, was a bilateral preferential free trade intended to protect American business interests in this country. Its net effect, as everybody now knows, was that, because of the immediate profits it derived from certain privileged export articles like sugar, hemp and copra, the Philippines has to this day remained a producer of primary or raw materials for export to the United States, depending entirely on the American market for said export products. Whatever thoughts of industrialization cropped up now and then were soon discouraged. That policy, whatever the intention behind it might have been, has proved disastrous to our economy.
The proclamation of independence did not alter the chartered course. On the contrary, more effective measures to implement the existing policy were adopted. The Bell Act, which the American Congress passed in 1946, not only continued gearing the agricultural economy of the Philippines to the industrial economy of the United States, but it gave parity to American citizens in the nation's natural resources and public utilities as a condition sine qua non to entitle Filipino war sufferers to receive war damage payments, and deprived us of the power of independent action in sundry economic matters. The Agreement has been revised and certain restrictions affecting our sovereignty have been removed, but parity rights for the Americans were not only maintained but extended to all fields of business activity.(29)
A distinguished American writer said, in the course of a general discussion of Philippine-American relations, that "as the economies of the United States and the Philippines are largely complementary, and not competitive, both countries profited but especially the Philippines." It is true that the two economies are complementary in the sense that the United States is essentially a manufacturer of finished products a portion of which is exported to the Philippines, while our country is in the main a producer of raw materials which she exports mostly to the United States.
But to say that the two economies are complementary is not to say that the relationship has been beneficial to both in the same degree. In such a situation, the United States, as the manufacturing nation, has been always the gainer and the Philippines, the agricultural nation, always the loser. That is an unassailable postulate. Indeed, there is no case in history where an industrial nation was ever a colony of, or subject to, or even on the same footing economically with an agricultural country. The industrial nation has always been the dominant nation and the agricultural, the subservient.
"No economist would say," according to that American writer,"that free trade with the United States for half a century has not been enormously profitable to the Philippines and of permanent benefit because it made the past progress possible." Of course what he meant was that no American economist would say such a thing.
But surely, no true Filipino economist will admit that a reciprocal free trade between an industrial and an agricultural nation has ever been beneficial to the latter as to the former. Such arrangement, in effect, prevents the industrialization of the nation that exports raw materials and imports processed goods, and will keep it poor and backward indefinitely.(30)
References:
22. Nationalism and Industrialization, July 30, 1957.
23. Ibid.
24. Short-Sighted Economic Goals, September 3, 1957.
25. The Role of Labor In Our Economic Emancipation, September 9, 1957.
26. Industrialization, the Only Cure for Our Economic and Social Ills, June 24, 1955.
27. Nationalism and Industrialization, July 30, 1957.
28. Industrialism and Economic Nationalism, October 3, 1959.
29. A Realistic Foreign Policy for the Philippines, August 18, 1956.
30. Our Raw Material-Export Economy, June 26, 1957.
"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." - Bertrand Russell
"...there are the enslaved human beings who must accomplish their own liberation. To develop their own liberation. To develop their consciousness and conscience, to make them aware of what is going on, top prepare the precarious ground for the future alternatives....This is our task: our not only as Marxists but as intellectuals, and that means all those who are still free and able to think by themselves and against indoctrination, communist as well as anticommunist." - Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)
"This, his message, valid as it was in his lifetime, is even more timely now. For there are still those among us, devoid of sufficient faith in our potentialities, who would in their attitude and thinking, in effect reject the gospel of national dignity, national pride, and the national responsibility of self-reliance. The words of Claro M. Recto may, it is fervently hoped, occasion a change of mind and of heart."
- Justice Jesus G. Barrera.
TO BE CONTINUED........Next ..THE FALLACY OF "PHILIPPINES FIRST" (versus "FILIPINO FIRST").. Part 2D of 6
MISSION: To foster FILIPINO NATIONALISM. "Shake the foundations." Seek knowledge/understand/think critically about roots of socioeconomic-political predicaments in our homeland; educate ourselves, expose lies/hidden truths and fight IGNORANCE of our true history. Learn from: our nationalist heroes/intellectuals/Asian neighbors/other nations;therefrom to plan/decide/act for the "common good" of the native [Malay/indio] Filipino majority. THIS BLOG IS NOT FOR PROFIT.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
THE RECTO READER - Industrialization: The Alternative to Poverty, Part 2C of 6
FILIPINO NATIONALISM -is the bottom line;sine-qua-non for the common good of the native (Malay/Indio)Filipino majority. Nationalism must precede any plan/action in dealing with globalization.
EDUCATION- being educated is beyond just being schooled towards a profession or practical vocation; we need the Humanities/liberal arts to develop/apply CRITICAL ANALYSIS/THINKING to understand, identify, plan, act & safeguard the needed fundamental and/or systemic changes towards economic/political progress, social justice, and social transformation.
GOVERNMENT - its raison d'etre is to lead/serve the native majority, foster nationalism via its institutions, ensure the masses are critically literate to have real democracy.
FREEDOM & DISSENT - free thought is necessarily aggressive and critical; we protect the freedom to discover truth; we encourage dissent, not for sentimental reasons, but because we cannot live without it. PATRIOTISM is NOT: " My country, right or wrong;" but " if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right!"
RELIGION/BELIEFS: No Deus ex Machina. No established religion. Humanism/Existentialism.
Monday, September 24, 2007
THE RECTO READER: Economic Nationalism Means Industrialization, Part 2B of 6
"A certain kind of progress and material development can be achieved by economic activity that is not nationalistic in orientation but it can not solve any of the major social, economic and cultural problems of that large community which we call a nation." - Claro M. Recto
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Economic Nationalism Means Industrialization
All things considered, what should then be our economic policy?
It must be industrialization in its fullest sense. The goal is an economy of prosperity, that is, an ever growing national production. It is an economy where the major economic activities and efforts of the people are increasingly directed towards non-rural pursuits. That has been the way of all industrial nations.That is where I envision our people.
We should, therefore, oppose the maintenance here of a rural economy and the adoption of any policy or program that tends to perpetuate it. I do not mean that our agriculture should be abandoned altogether or that we should not improve on present methods.
What I do mean is that, if we want to prosper, we should concentrate less on agriculture and not regards it as the main basis of our national economy. It is an error --a grievous error-- to identify or equate economic development with rural development.
It is for this reason that I view the foreign-inspired rural development program in this country with deep concern and suspicion. As a positive program, it was conceived in 1950, found expression in the Bell Mission Report and the Quirino-Foster Agreement, was later dramatized in the Hardie Report and the MacMillan Report.
The word "rural" has found its way into every slogan, as if it were a word of magic power. Every community throughout the length and breadth of the land is being fed with rural propaganda. Foreign-financed organizations mushroomed all around:
The movement has not even spared even the schools. agricultural schools have been expanded and have become pet projects of the government, although you can not find a job in any government office for a Los Banos graduate.
Community schools, according to our representatives at the World Assembly of teachers and Educators held here recently, should have checked the drift of our people from the land. All I can say is that, if they do they shall have succeeded in pegging our economy to its present agricultural structure, that is, to poverty.
From the experience of all industrial countries, we have learned that economic progress requires the shifting of the major part of the people from the land to industrial pursuits.
The demagogue may paint the rural development program as attractively as he can. He may raise high hopes among the people in the rural areas as an effective vote-getting technique. But whatever may be his intentions in foisting the rural development program on the people, he does a disservice to them. The increase in agricultural productivity and in agricultural production can never hope to keep up with the growth of the population.
For their own benefit, they should turn to industry for it is there that they will find deliverance from an occupation which, according to a UN Report, for the greatest efforts gives the least returns to the worker, outside of domestic servants.
It is disheartening to note that this is not yet fully understood amongst our people. It is only fair that they know the truth, and it is for this reason that I have decided to expose the defects of an agricultural economy and the evils of a program designed to tie us down to such an economy.(15)
But we can not close our eyes to the fact that for several years we have been misled into following the agricultural or rural orientation. I would be the last to ignore the role of agriculture in any economy, or to advocate less concerns for the rural population of the country which still forms the bulk of our total population.
Not only am I not opposed to the land tenure reform but I believe the adoption of such reform and any other social and economic reforms imperative. I advocate these measures not only as measures of social justice but --and this is more important-- as economic measures to help increase the purchasing power of our people which must go hand in hand with our effort to increase the national output through industrialization.
We are today one of the poorest nations in the world, judging from the statistics of the United Nations. Under the present circumstances, the need for increasing the national produce is even more pressing than the need for making a more just distribution of the same, which is what is meant by social justice.
But a real concern for social justice should not blind us to our main objective, that of increased production, which can only be attained if industrialization is given top priority in our economic planning.(16)
The Plight of Agricultural Economics
Now, let us take a look at the peculiar realities of the Philippine situation. Our colonial economy, being an agricultural, export-import, alien-dominated one, is necessarily poor. Since the time economic imperialism was developed, that is, since the time the domestic markets of the developing capitalist industrial countries became glutted and the need for outside markets for their surplus arose, nations with agricultural economies were absorbed by the industrial nations, to become agricultural adjuncts of the latter's industrial economies.
Being agricultural, we do not manufacture most of the finished or manufactured goods that we need for our consumption, and therefore we have to import them. Being agricultural, we must export solely or mostly raw materials in order to pay for our imports.
Our own post-war experience reveals that as years go by we have to export more units of our raw products to pay for a given unit of the manufactured products that we import. Thus, no matter how much harder and longer we work to produce more raw material exports, we are always on the losing end in our foreign trade.
That is the fate of all agricultural economies today. Being agricultural and being poor, and being a people suffering from a colonial mentality, our economy is susceptible to alien economic infiltration, penetration or invasion. Before the war, alien ownership of production and exchange facilities in important sectors of our economy was acquired mostly by resident aliens through investments from accumulated profits made in our country.
After the war, alien ownership and control of our economy were considerably increased through foreign, mostly American, private investments. The extent of combined alien ownership and control in our economy has reached dangerous proportions.
As of 1938, according to the report of the Joint US-PI Finance Commission of 1947, about 1/4 of the national wealth was already owned by aliens. (17)
Industrialization as a Solution to Agricultural Problems
What are the main problems of Philippine agriculture? Unemployment and disguised unemployment, low per capita income, and caciquism. We all know that there is a lot of unemployment in our rural areas. Rural folk go to urban centers in search of jobs only to go back to the farm because the towns have no employment opportunities for them.
Industrialization will create jobs and will, therefore, absorb surplus rural labor. In addition to those whom statistics list down as unemployed, there are many more who stay and help their relatives till a small patch of land, not because their labor is needed, but because they have nowhere else to go. Industry could use this wasted manpower.
Then too the farmers themselves have their slack seasons which they could make use of by joining the industrial force as occasional workers in processing plants near the farms. Such increased opportunities for employment would help solve the second rural problem; namely, low per capita income.
But the biggest boost to rural income will be the increased demand for diversified agricultural products and by-products which local industries will need for raw materials. Furthermore, local industries could produce more modern farming equipment which, with fertilizers and more scientific methods of farming, would greatly increase the yield per hectare.
One of the sources of discontent in our rural areas in caciquism. The feudal relations which weigh so heavily on the shoulders of our peasantry will be changed under the impact of industrialization.
In the United States, England, West Germany, and other industrialized countries, there is no caciquism; first, because the fact that agricultural workers can shift from rural to urban employment acts as a restraining factor on the rural employer and second, because the typical-employer-employee relationship in industry permeates the agricultural field and finally supplants the old feudal one. In the same way, industrialization will spell the end of caciquism in our rural areas.
Thus you see how industrialization will accelerate agricultural development. The resulting benefits will be general and permanent. They will not be merely the palliative which hitherto have been masquerading as rural development programs.(18)
The Negative Attitude of Advanced Nations To Our Industrialization Objectives
Centuries of colonialism had closed our eyes to our own economic potentials and made us believe that an industrial economy is the prerogative of western society and is beyond the skill and competence of Asians. This was the grand deception which the colonial powers succeeded in impressing upon the great majority of Asians.(19)
Indeed the lessons of Japan is that Orientals have within themselves the capacity to industrialize if only they would put their minds and hearts to it. Impressed by Western industrial progress, Japan decided to beat the West at her own game, and in this she is succeeding admirably. We have in Japan's economic achievement a great lesson to learn and a great example to emulate.
And what of Russia and China? In these countries, scientists have now acquired a position of prominence and constitute a class which may well be considered as the elite.You and I may have no taste for the totalitarian or the communist order, but we cannot close our eyes to the fact that these countries owe, in a large measure, their industrial might to scientists and the spirit of discipline of their peoples.(20)
The policy of some nations which have the capability to lend assistance to nations like ours which desire to industrialize has not been encouraging. It remains obvious to any student that that policy has been opposed to the industrialization of underdeveloped countries
And when the nationalist movements, which inevitably call for rapid industrialization, could no longer be ignored, these wealthy nations would channel the industrialization of the underdeveloped ones to their benefit by manipulating loans and credits in order to assure the outflow of their direct investments into the borrowing countries. (21)
References
8. Our Raw Material-export Economy, June 26, 1957.
9. The Role of Labor in Our Economic Emancipation, September 8, 1957.
10. Ibid.
11. Filipinism and the Coming Elections, August 10, 1957.
12. A Realistic Economic Policy for the Philippines, September 26, 1956.
13. Ibid,
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Industrialization, the Only Cure for Our Economic and Social Ills, June 24, 1955.
17. A Realistic Foreign Policy for the Philippines, August 18, 1956.
18. Nationalism and Industrialization, July 30, 1957.
19.A New Deal for Filipino Scientists, May 14, 1960.
20.Matters of Concern Between Indonesia and the Philippines, September 23, 1959.
21. Ibid.
TO BE CONTINUED .....NEXT: Industrialization: The Alternative To Poverty
“To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.” - William Corbett, 1830
This, his message, valid as it was in his lifetime, is even more timely now. For there are still those among us, devoid of sufficient faith in our potentialities, who would in their attitude and thinking, in effect reject the gospel of national dignity, national pride, and the national responsibility of self-reliance. The words of Claro M. Recto may, it is fervently hoped, occasion a change of mind and of heart." - Justice Jesus G. Barrera.
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population.... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction.... We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." - George Kennan,U.S. Secretary of State Memo, 1948
“The true Filipino is a decolonized Filipino.” – Prof. Renato Constantino (1919-1999)
"Upang maitindig natin ang bantayog ng ating lipunan, kailangang radikal nating baguhin hindi lamang ang ating mga institusyon kundi maging ang ating pag-iisip at pamumuhay. Kailangan ang rebolusyon, hindi lamang sa panlabas, kundi lalo na sa panloob!" --Apolinario Mabini, La Revolucion Filipina (1898)
"Let us not ask for miracles...let us not ask that he who comes as an outsider to make his fortune and go away afterwards should interest himself in the welfare of the country. What matters to him the gratitude or the curses of a people whom he does not know, in a country where he has no associations, where he has no affections? Fame to be sweet must resound in the ears of those we love, in the atmosphere of our home or of the land that will guard our ashes; we wish that fame should hover over our tomb to warm its breath the chill of death, so that we may not be completely reduced to nothingness, that something of us may survive. Naught of this can we offer those who come to watch over our destinies."..- filosofo Tasio to Ibarra (NOLI ME TANGERE.), quoted in Hernando J. Abaya's THE UNTOLD PHILIPPINE STORY, 1967
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PLEASE DONATE CORE SUBJECT BOOKS TO OUR HOMELAND (i.e. your hometown public schools, Alma Mater, etc.). Those books that you and/or your children do not need or want; or buy books from your local library during its cheap Book Sales. Also, cargo/door-to-door shipment is best. It is a small sacrifice. [clean up your closets or garage - donate books.THANKS!]
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Of 533 previous posts, the following selected posts and the RECTO READER are essential about us native, Malay Filipinos and are therefore always presented in each new post. Click each to open/read
OUR FILIPINO CULTURE:
- WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW:
- WHAT IS NATIONALISM [Filipino Nationalism]?
- Our Colonial Mentality and Its Roots
- The Miseducation of the Filipino (Formation of our Americanized Mind)
- Jose Rizal - Reformist or Revolutionary?
- The Purpose of Our Past, Why Study (Our) History?
- Studying and Rethinking Our Philippine History
- Our Filipino Kind of Religion
- Our Filipino Christianity and Our God-concept
- When Our Religion Becomes Evil
- Understanding Our Filipino Value System
OUR PHILIPPINE ECONOMY and MILITARY: (Post-WW2 Agreements)
- Bell Trade Act-1946 (Parity Rights)
- US Military Bases & Military Assistance Agreements (1947)
- President Roxas Railroaded the Approval of Bell Trade Act (Philippine Trade Act),1946 & Military Bases Agreements
- US Bilateral Immunity Agreement (BIA) aka Article 98 Agreement
- Globalization (Neoliberalism) – The Road to Perdition in Our Homeland
- Resisting Globalization (WTO Agreements)
- Virtues of De-Globalization
THE RECTO READER (Book) is presented in several postings. Click each to open/read:
- THE RECTO READER: Nationalism,Internationalism,Ultra-Nationalism, Part 1A of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Mission of Nationalism, Part 1B of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Economic Independence,Economic Nationalism,Part 2A of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Economic Nationalism Means Industrialization,Part 2B of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Industrialization: The Alternative to Poverty, Part 2C of 6
- THE RECTO READER: The Fallacy of "Philippines First," Part 2D of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Parity Rights, Currency Dependence, Foreign Loans versus Foreign Investments, Part 2E of 6
- MORE TO FOLLOW
NOTE: Recto's cited cases, examples or issues were of his time, of course; but realities in our homeland in the present and the foreseeable future are/expectedly much, much worse. Though I am tempted to update them with current issues, it's best to leave them as they are since Recto's paradigms about our much deepened national predicament still ring relevant, valid and true. In short, Recto saw the forest and never got lost in the trees.- Bert
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Hi All,
In Part 1(A&B), Recto defined and clarified for us what Filipino Nationalism is and what it is not.
In Part 2, Recto elucidated the need for economic independence: the"what, why, how, where and when" of economic independence characterized by a nationalistic outlook and drive for industrialization.
He reminded us that economic independence propelled by nationalism is the sine qua non for political independence, domestically and internationally.
Unfortunately for us native Filipinos, economic independence never materialized as all our so-called national leadership -- all traitorous to the native Filipino majority-- have continued to pursue an economic policy, which has been and is destructive to the common good, as practically dictated by America via the IMF-WB/WTO Agreements.
- Bert
In Part 1(A&B), Recto defined and clarified for us what Filipino Nationalism is and what it is not.
In Part 2, Recto elucidated the need for economic independence: the"what, why, how, where and when" of economic independence characterized by a nationalistic outlook and drive for industrialization.
He reminded us that economic independence propelled by nationalism is the sine qua non for political independence, domestically and internationally.
Unfortunately for us native Filipinos, economic independence never materialized as all our so-called national leadership -- all traitorous to the native Filipino majority-- have continued to pursue an economic policy, which has been and is destructive to the common good, as practically dictated by America via the IMF-WB/WTO Agreements.
- Bert
"The truth of the matter is that most of the people, outside of the Filipinos, who favor this bill are fundamentally opposed to Philippine Independence. Many of them have told me so. Their whole philosophy is to keep the Philippines economically even though we lose them politically." - U.S. Senator Millard Tydings, U.S. Congressional Record on Public Hearing of the Bell Trade Act, March 1946
All things considered, what should then be our economic policy?
It must be industrialization in its fullest sense. The goal is an economy of prosperity, that is, an ever growing national production. It is an economy where the major economic activities and efforts of the people are increasingly directed towards non-rural pursuits. That has been the way of all industrial nations.That is where I envision our people.
We should, therefore, oppose the maintenance here of a rural economy and the adoption of any policy or program that tends to perpetuate it. I do not mean that our agriculture should be abandoned altogether or that we should not improve on present methods.
What I do mean is that, if we want to prosper, we should concentrate less on agriculture and not regards it as the main basis of our national economy. It is an error --a grievous error-- to identify or equate economic development with rural development.
It is for this reason that I view the foreign-inspired rural development program in this country with deep concern and suspicion. As a positive program, it was conceived in 1950, found expression in the Bell Mission Report and the Quirino-Foster Agreement, was later dramatized in the Hardie Report and the MacMillan Report.
The word "rural" has found its way into every slogan, as if it were a word of magic power. Every community throughout the length and breadth of the land is being fed with rural propaganda. Foreign-financed organizations mushroomed all around:
- PRRM (Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement),
- PRUCIS )Philippine Rural Improvement Service),
- 4-H Clubs (Hearts, Hands, Head and Health).
The movement has not even spared even the schools. agricultural schools have been expanded and have become pet projects of the government, although you can not find a job in any government office for a Los Banos graduate.
Community schools, according to our representatives at the World Assembly of teachers and Educators held here recently, should have checked the drift of our people from the land. All I can say is that, if they do they shall have succeeded in pegging our economy to its present agricultural structure, that is, to poverty.
From the experience of all industrial countries, we have learned that economic progress requires the shifting of the major part of the people from the land to industrial pursuits.
The demagogue may paint the rural development program as attractively as he can. He may raise high hopes among the people in the rural areas as an effective vote-getting technique. But whatever may be his intentions in foisting the rural development program on the people, he does a disservice to them. The increase in agricultural productivity and in agricultural production can never hope to keep up with the growth of the population.
For their own benefit, they should turn to industry for it is there that they will find deliverance from an occupation which, according to a UN Report, for the greatest efforts gives the least returns to the worker, outside of domestic servants.
It is disheartening to note that this is not yet fully understood amongst our people. It is only fair that they know the truth, and it is for this reason that I have decided to expose the defects of an agricultural economy and the evils of a program designed to tie us down to such an economy.(15)
But we can not close our eyes to the fact that for several years we have been misled into following the agricultural or rural orientation. I would be the last to ignore the role of agriculture in any economy, or to advocate less concerns for the rural population of the country which still forms the bulk of our total population.
Not only am I not opposed to the land tenure reform but I believe the adoption of such reform and any other social and economic reforms imperative. I advocate these measures not only as measures of social justice but --and this is more important-- as economic measures to help increase the purchasing power of our people which must go hand in hand with our effort to increase the national output through industrialization.
We are today one of the poorest nations in the world, judging from the statistics of the United Nations. Under the present circumstances, the need for increasing the national produce is even more pressing than the need for making a more just distribution of the same, which is what is meant by social justice.
But a real concern for social justice should not blind us to our main objective, that of increased production, which can only be attained if industrialization is given top priority in our economic planning.(16)
The Plight of Agricultural Economics
Now, let us take a look at the peculiar realities of the Philippine situation. Our colonial economy, being an agricultural, export-import, alien-dominated one, is necessarily poor. Since the time economic imperialism was developed, that is, since the time the domestic markets of the developing capitalist industrial countries became glutted and the need for outside markets for their surplus arose, nations with agricultural economies were absorbed by the industrial nations, to become agricultural adjuncts of the latter's industrial economies.
Being agricultural, we do not manufacture most of the finished or manufactured goods that we need for our consumption, and therefore we have to import them. Being agricultural, we must export solely or mostly raw materials in order to pay for our imports.
Our own post-war experience reveals that as years go by we have to export more units of our raw products to pay for a given unit of the manufactured products that we import. Thus, no matter how much harder and longer we work to produce more raw material exports, we are always on the losing end in our foreign trade.
That is the fate of all agricultural economies today. Being agricultural and being poor, and being a people suffering from a colonial mentality, our economy is susceptible to alien economic infiltration, penetration or invasion. Before the war, alien ownership of production and exchange facilities in important sectors of our economy was acquired mostly by resident aliens through investments from accumulated profits made in our country.
After the war, alien ownership and control of our economy were considerably increased through foreign, mostly American, private investments. The extent of combined alien ownership and control in our economy has reached dangerous proportions.
As of 1938, according to the report of the Joint US-PI Finance Commission of 1947, about 1/4 of the national wealth was already owned by aliens. (17)
Industrialization as a Solution to Agricultural Problems
What are the main problems of Philippine agriculture? Unemployment and disguised unemployment, low per capita income, and caciquism. We all know that there is a lot of unemployment in our rural areas. Rural folk go to urban centers in search of jobs only to go back to the farm because the towns have no employment opportunities for them.
Industrialization will create jobs and will, therefore, absorb surplus rural labor. In addition to those whom statistics list down as unemployed, there are many more who stay and help their relatives till a small patch of land, not because their labor is needed, but because they have nowhere else to go. Industry could use this wasted manpower.
Then too the farmers themselves have their slack seasons which they could make use of by joining the industrial force as occasional workers in processing plants near the farms. Such increased opportunities for employment would help solve the second rural problem; namely, low per capita income.
But the biggest boost to rural income will be the increased demand for diversified agricultural products and by-products which local industries will need for raw materials. Furthermore, local industries could produce more modern farming equipment which, with fertilizers and more scientific methods of farming, would greatly increase the yield per hectare.
One of the sources of discontent in our rural areas in caciquism. The feudal relations which weigh so heavily on the shoulders of our peasantry will be changed under the impact of industrialization.
In the United States, England, West Germany, and other industrialized countries, there is no caciquism; first, because the fact that agricultural workers can shift from rural to urban employment acts as a restraining factor on the rural employer and second, because the typical-employer-employee relationship in industry permeates the agricultural field and finally supplants the old feudal one. In the same way, industrialization will spell the end of caciquism in our rural areas.
Thus you see how industrialization will accelerate agricultural development. The resulting benefits will be general and permanent. They will not be merely the palliative which hitherto have been masquerading as rural development programs.(18)
The Negative Attitude of Advanced Nations To Our Industrialization Objectives
Centuries of colonialism had closed our eyes to our own economic potentials and made us believe that an industrial economy is the prerogative of western society and is beyond the skill and competence of Asians. This was the grand deception which the colonial powers succeeded in impressing upon the great majority of Asians.(19)
Indeed the lessons of Japan is that Orientals have within themselves the capacity to industrialize if only they would put their minds and hearts to it. Impressed by Western industrial progress, Japan decided to beat the West at her own game, and in this she is succeeding admirably. We have in Japan's economic achievement a great lesson to learn and a great example to emulate.
And what of Russia and China? In these countries, scientists have now acquired a position of prominence and constitute a class which may well be considered as the elite.You and I may have no taste for the totalitarian or the communist order, but we cannot close our eyes to the fact that these countries owe, in a large measure, their industrial might to scientists and the spirit of discipline of their peoples.(20)
The policy of some nations which have the capability to lend assistance to nations like ours which desire to industrialize has not been encouraging. It remains obvious to any student that that policy has been opposed to the industrialization of underdeveloped countries
And when the nationalist movements, which inevitably call for rapid industrialization, could no longer be ignored, these wealthy nations would channel the industrialization of the underdeveloped ones to their benefit by manipulating loans and credits in order to assure the outflow of their direct investments into the borrowing countries. (21)
References
8. Our Raw Material-export Economy, June 26, 1957.
9. The Role of Labor in Our Economic Emancipation, September 8, 1957.
10. Ibid.
11. Filipinism and the Coming Elections, August 10, 1957.
12. A Realistic Economic Policy for the Philippines, September 26, 1956.
13. Ibid,
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Industrialization, the Only Cure for Our Economic and Social Ills, June 24, 1955.
17. A Realistic Foreign Policy for the Philippines, August 18, 1956.
18. Nationalism and Industrialization, July 30, 1957.
19.A New Deal for Filipino Scientists, May 14, 1960.
20.Matters of Concern Between Indonesia and the Philippines, September 23, 1959.
21. Ibid.
TO BE CONTINUED .....NEXT: Industrialization: The Alternative To Poverty
“To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.” - William Corbett, 1830
This, his message, valid as it was in his lifetime, is even more timely now. For there are still those among us, devoid of sufficient faith in our potentialities, who would in their attitude and thinking, in effect reject the gospel of national dignity, national pride, and the national responsibility of self-reliance. The words of Claro M. Recto may, it is fervently hoped, occasion a change of mind and of heart." - Justice Jesus G. Barrera.
“Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent” – Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1804-1881)
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population.... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction.... We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." - George Kennan,U.S. Secretary of State Memo, 1948
"Upang maitindig natin ang bantayog ng ating lipunan, kailangang radikal nating baguhin hindi lamang ang ating mga institusyon kundi maging ang ating pag-iisip at pamumuhay. Kailangan ang rebolusyon, hindi lamang sa panlabas, kundi lalo na sa panloob!" --Apolinario Mabini, La Revolucion Filipina (1898)
FILIPINO NATIONALISM -is the bottom line;sine-qua-non for the common good of the native (Malay/Indio)Filipino majority. Nationalism must precede any plan/action in dealing with globalization.
EDUCATION- being educated is beyond just being schooled towards a profession or practical vocation; we need the Humanities/liberal arts to develop/apply CRITICAL ANALYSIS/THINKING to understand, identify, plan, act & safeguard the needed fundamental and/or systemic changes towards economic/political progress, social justice, and social transformation.
GOVERNMENT - its raison d'etre is to lead/serve the native majority, foster nationalism via its institutions, ensure the masses are critically literate to have real democracy.
FREEDOM & DISSENT - free thought is necessarily aggressive and critical; we protect the freedom to discover truth; we encourage dissent, not for sentimental reasons, but because we cannot live without it. PATRIOTISM is NOT: " My country, right or wrong;" but " if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right!"
RELIGION/BELIEFS: No Deus ex Machina. No established religion. Humanism/Existentialism.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
The Politics of Economic Chaos in the Philippines
The Politics of Economic Chaos in the Philippines
by Robert Weissman - The Multinational Monitor, January/February, 1994
by Robert Weissman - The Multinational Monitor, January/February, 1994
MANILA - Philippine President Fidel Ramos fears the future may be slipping away.
The gap between the booming economies of the Asian tigers (Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore) and the emerging tigers (Malaysia, Thailand), and the Philippines is huge and growing. While the 1991 Philippine per capita gross national product was $730, the per capita GNP in Thailand was $1,570 and S6,330 in South Korea. These countries grew rapidly in the 1980s, but the Philippine economy constricted; the Philippines' average growth ate from 1980 to 1991 was negative 1.2 percent, while Thailand achieved a 5.9 percent annual growth rate and South Korea 8.7 percent. And the disparity shows no sign of narrowing; all of its regional competitors registered significantly higher growth rates in 1993 than the Philippines' estimated rate of approximately 1 percent. Even nearby competitor Indonesia is preparing to pass the Philippines in per capita income.
Signs of the economic chaos besetting the Philippines are apparent to even the most casual observer in Manila.
Poor families, mostly immigrants from the countryside, have established squatter communities throughout the Philippine capital. Virtually every Manila neighborhood is now dotted with shanties; the only exceptions are the most exclusive, guarded enclaves, which stand as a testament to the country's extreme concentration of wealth. In neighborhoods with names like Forbes Park and Bel Air, streets are blocked and guarded, the mansions within accessible only to residents and authorized visitors.
Thousands of Filipinos support themselves by sifting through huge garbage dumps in Manila, pulling scrap metal and other items for recycling or reuse out of people's trash. The scene is repeated in other big Philippine cities, though on a smaller scale. Dump-site residents are among the poorest of the huge numbers of Filipinos living below the poverty line. The government's official statistics show 40 percent of the nation's 66 million citizens living in poverty, but the actual percentage is undoubtedly far higher.
At crowded intersections all over the city, vendors rush to cars and buses caught in Manila's paralyzing traffic, offering to sell cigarettes, gum, candy, newspapers or trinkets. The cigarettes are sold individually, not by the pack, to accommodate the tiny budgets of most Filipinos. Some of the vendors are adults, but many are children, 10 or 11 years old. An estimated two-thirds of Philippine children work.
Taxi drivers explain to foreign passengers that their dream is to improve their English so they can get a job abroad. People throughout the city - even those with steady jobs - echo the sentiment. They have given up hope of succeeding economically in their own country; instead, women aspire to work as foreign domestics, and men hope for shipping or construction jobs with foreign companies.
Ear-shattering noise plagues the streets in office districts of downtown Manila, the result of small, private electricity generators operated by individual stores and office buildings during the city's daily brownouts. For more than a year, the energy shortage on the main island of Luzon has caused daily brownouts lasting 4 to 12 hours. The resulting loss to industrial and commercial output has been immense; the difficulties imposed on individuals in the form of lost wages, wasted time - much of it literally spent in the dark - and discomfort are incalculable.
Despite his worries and the economic and social misery so pervasive in Manila - and equally apparent in the desperately poor countryside - Ramos is optimistic about the future. He expects to go down in history as the man who transformed the Philippines from an economic basket case to an eco nomic powerhouse similar to the Asian tigers.
Ramos' vision
Ramos's plan for economic rejuvenation, known as the Philippines 2000 program, aims to have the country join the NIC (newly industrializing country) family by the year 2000. Its ambitious outlines are contained in the Philippine Medium-Term Development Plan (MTDP) for the years 1993-1998. Ramos says the MTDP "embodies the vision of a nation empowered, its human resources stretched to optimal capacity, and its industries, products and services of world-class standard."
The MTDP is a comprehensive plan covering all aspects of the Philippine economy. Plan policy goals range from deregulating the financial sector and removing investment restrictions on foreign banks to improving scholastic physical education programs.
The plan establishes formidable targets. By 1998, it calls for: achieving a growth rate of 10 percent; lowering the number of families in poverty by 10 percent; increasing the national investment rate by one-half; and more than doubling the annual rate of export growth to a level of 27.1 percent.
The soaring rhetoric of the plan offers something for everyone. The MTDP promises free market disciples, for example, that the Philippines will "reduce government intervention in the production, marketing and processing of agricultural inputs and outputs," and "discard traditional trade and industrial policies that dispense protection to domestic industries." At the same time, it assures environmentalists that the government will "play its role as custodian of the environment for future unborn generations and give the attention needed to rehabilitating and preserving the country's environmental stock."
The central prongs of the MTDP, however, are much narrower than the plan's rhetorical aspirations. Attracting foreign investment - in manufacturing, in resource-extractive industries such as mining and logging and in the energy sector - is the key element of plan. New foreign and domestic investment in the manufacturing sector will be directed into 15 Regional Industrial Centers (RICs). Geographically dispersed throughout the country, the RICs will function as expanded export processing zones, offering tax breaks and other government incentives and sound infrastructure support (telephone, roads, ports, etc.). The other, complimentary emphases of the plan are to orient both the manufacturing and agricultural sectors toward exports, and to increase government investment in infrastructure.
While Ramos touts Philippines 2000 as representing a bold, new start for the Philippines, grassroots critics of the plan label it nothing more than failed, free-market, foreign-investment-reliant poli cies presented in new packaging. As Ramos begins to put the program into place, opposition to Philippines 2000 is intensifying among a wide variety of popular sectors.
Militarized "development"
Throughout the Philippines, land and labor conflicts are emerging in areas newly scheduled for "development" under the MTDP, and are continuing and intensifying in areas where the MTDP proposes building on existing projects and developments. With all social conflict in the Philippines taking place against the backdrop of the government's war against the two decade-long rebel insurgency of the leftist New People's Army (NPA), opposition to Philippines 2000 projects often evokes a violent response from the military.
The Regional Industrial Centers are quickly establishing themselves as a focal point for the battles engendered by the Philippines 2000 program. The Calabarzon RIC, which will build on the economic processing zones, industrial estates and industrial parks established under Marcos and Aquino, is illustrative.
The announcement of plans to create an RIC in Calabarzon - an area combining pieces of five provinces south of Manila - led to rampant land speculation and the expulsion of poor farmers from their land, says Rafael Mariano, former acting chair of the peasant association KMP. Large landowners successfully circumvented the land reform program by converting their lands from agricultural to industrial purposes; the landowners got even richer, and the tenant farmers who had previously worked these lands were evicted.
Labor abuses in the factories established in Calabarzon have been rife, according to Norma Binas, assistant secretary of the KMU labor center's international department. The provincial governments in these areas are stridently anti-union; the governor of Cavite province, Juanito Remulla, has even pledged to enforce a "no union, no strike" policy. (The 'U.S. Department of Commerce, in a Philippines "Investment Climate Summary," notes that Cavite "enjoy[s] a reputation for being actively 'pro-business,' and has reaped the rewards of new investments.") Companies already operating in the Calabarzon economic zones - mostly Japanese, Taiwanese, South Korean, Hong Kong or Singaporean garment and light manufacturers - aggressively deny their employees' right to organize and commonly abuse their workers, particularly women, who are frequently sexually harassed. The KMU reports that employers routinely fire workers engaged in union organizing activity, and carefully question potential employees about their attitudes toward unions in an attempt to screen out any union sympathizers. Armed guards - from the local police, special economic zone police, a special Calabarzon-wide police force or private security forces - stand at the gates of the economic zones, preventing organizers from entering and intimidating the workers within.
The entire Calabarzon region itself has in fact been militarized, according to Reynaldo Quindara, deputy secretary general for internal affairs of the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace. He says that the government has deployed large number of troops both to protect foreign and domestic investments from sabotage by the NPA and to discourage independent civilian activists from challenging Philippines 2000 projects and developments.
Generally, Quindara says, the RICs and Philippines 2000 projects are becoming a magnet for mass troop deployments, with many new or ongoing military operations being carried out in close proximity to areas planned to be used for RICs, agrarian export projects connected to the MTDP or development projects tied to the MTDP. Examples include military action in Agusan del Sur in Northern Mindanao, targeted to develop tree and palm oil plantations, and in Western Mindanao, where the government is encouraging resort development and growing vegetables for export. In the Philippines, large-scale deployments like those in Calabarzon, Agusan del Sur and Western Mindanao are often accompanied by widespread harassment of civilians, as well as arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings.
MTDP-relatcd violence has also wracked the island of Cebu, the other province which the U.S. Department of Commerce denotes as having a pro-business reputation. At least four peasants were killed on Cebu in the first six months of 1993, apparently because of their efforts to prevent landlords from taking advantage of the opportunities offered by Ramos's Philippines 2000 plan by converting agricultural land into residential and tourist properties. In the case of scenic Cebu, Ramos's commitment to expanding tourism provides a special incentive for such conversion. There is suspicion that two of the murdered peasants were killed by thugs employed by a real estate company, a third by a city councillor associated with a local vigilante group and the fourth by unknown assailants.
Philippines 2000 and indigenous communities
Indigenous peoples' communities are likely to be particularly affected by the large infrastructure projects and major resource-extractive activities proposed in Ramos's economic plan.
The conflict over the Chico Dam, a massive hydroelectric project called off in the mid-1980s, may well be a prototype of the disputes likely to proliferate with the pursuit of the MTDP. The giant hydro project would have dammed the Chico River and displaced thousands of indigenous people in the mountainous five-province Cordillera region in Northern Luzon. Local opposition was intense, and included large demonstrations, civil disobedience (such as lying in front of bulldozers) and a world-famous event at which protesting women bared their chests to shame soldiers in a civilian face-off with the military - as well as armed resistance in collaboration with the NPA. The unprecedented local resistance, combined with international opposition from environmentalists and solidarity organizations, eventually led the World Bank, which had sponsored the project, to call it off. But leaders of the anti-dam struggle were killed during the conflict, and the military committed widespread human rights violations against the mobilized villages.
The Cordillera has remained a hotbed of opposition to the government since the Chico Dam struggle, supporting both civilian and guerrilla resistance movements. Consequently, the region has been a prime target of the military's counterinsurgency program. With new unrest expected as a result of the MTDP, military action against Cordillera civilians is not likely to end any time soon.
The government is now planning a series of 17 so-called mini-dams for the Cordillera region as part of the MTDP. While "mini" connotes the idea oflow-impact and sustainability, Dr. Contancio Claver, executive director of the Community Health Concerns for Kalinga-Apayao, a community health center serving residents of the Cordillera, points out that the rivers which the government has proposed damming are substantial rivers with significant currents. "It is hard to imagine how there can be `mini-dams' in relatively large rivers," he says. Local residents and outside environmentalists alike fear the new dams will still be large, even if they are not as huge as the originally proposed Chico Dam, and will displace hundreds or thousands of local indigenous people.
For the time being, says Claver, "the people are suspicious but have not yet made up their minds to totally oppose" the dam projects. However, if their fears about the size of the dams are realized, massive resistance is almost guaranteed, and the government's response may well be to further militarize the region and intensify its repression of the indigenous population.
The root problem in the Cordillera, says Father Eddie Balicao of the Office for Cordillera Peoples' Concerns, is longstanding "laws which have made the Cordillera a resource base for exploitation without even considering what the Cordillera people think." Development projects undertaken as part of the MTDP are likely to exacerbate this enduring problem.
Pushing past the ecological limits
Despite its rhetorical promises to the contrary, the Philippines 2000 program is likely to further devastate the country's already battered environment. As they have in other initiatives over the last several decades, government and private investment in infrastructure projects and resource-extractive activities are likely to have severe environmental effects. The mini-dams and other energy projects may submerge large land areas and create dangerous local pollution problems; and if the government decides to press ahead with opening the Bataan nuclear power plant, the country will be burdened with an immense environmental and public health hazard. New or expanded mining projects are likely to pollute rivers and thousands of people's water supplies with waste-rock and treatment chemicals; the timber industry is likely to continue overlogging of the country's fast-diminishing forests; foreign and domestic fishing companies are likely to overharvest local fisheries.
However, the most significant ecological damage may stem from the increasing inequity of the country's land distribution scheme. The Ramos administration is exhibiting virtually no political will to push through a land reform program. (The KMP's Mariano says that "while the Aquino administration made many empty promises, the Ramos government just sides with the big landlords. ") Many landowners are eagerly converting their land to non-agricultural uses or export crop production in order to take advantage of the opportunities posed by the MTDP, and increasing numbers of poor farmers are becoming landless [see "Land Scam: Agrarian `Reform,' Ramos Style"]. These displaced rural people have few options but to encroach on forests and other marginal public lands.
Recent Philippine history demonstrates how harmful the ecological consequences of rural displacement can be. Rural uprootedness and increasing landlessness were the proximate causes of the worst environmental effects of the structural adjustment program implemented in the 1980s at the behest of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, according to a recent World Resources Institute study. As unemployment rose, the study found, "only the marginal resources in the public domain - forest lands, mangroves and fisheries - remained available to a rapidly growing pool of landless workers." Many unemployed and landless people in the countryside migrated, not on the traditional path to Manila, but from lowland to upland rural and coastal areas - from the lowlands of Central Luzon to the mountain provinces of the Cordillera and from the lowlands of the central Philippine islands to the uplands of the southern island of Mindanao. As these workers "migrated to the open access resources of the uplands and coastal areas, deforestation, soil erosion, the destruction of coastal habitats and the depiction of fisheries increased," the World Resources Institute report concluded.
A blurry vision
Perhaps the worst indictment of the Philippines 2000 program is that despite its social and environmental costs, it is not likely to deliver the benefits which it is designed to produce. Critics denounce the program as unrealistic and based on a misreading of the success of the East Asian tigers, and they say it fails to grapple seriously with the central Philippine political and economic problem - the highly stratified distribution of land.
The first problem identified by critics is that the MTDP aims too high and stretches too far. They say that it really is no more than an arbitrary and exhortory political wish list. One financial analyst comments that the MTDP "is more of a declaration of intent than a plan as such," A plan, he says, would imply the imposition of a concrete schedule, detailed policies to achieve specified goals and a means to finance agreed-upon programs.
Many elements of the MTDP reflect the personal interests of Ramos and the imperatives of Philippine politics rather than sound economic planning, confirms Maria Rina Rosales, a senior economic development specialist with the Philippine National Economic Development Agency (NEDA) . For example, says Rosales, NEDA economists recognized the goal of achieving a 10 percent growth rate by 1998 as being wholly unrealistic - hut it was included in the MTDP because Ramos insisted on setting a target of double digit growth. The country has already failed to meet the 1993 goal of a4.5 percent growth rate, indicating that there is little chance of achieving the MTDP's overall goal of a five-year 7.5 percent growth rate. Similarly, Rosales says, NEDA economists acknowledge that the goal of establishing a RIC in each region of the country is unrealistic, but it was included to avoid criticisms from excepted regions.
More generally, there is virtually no chance of the government achieving its goal of turning the Philippines into a NIC by 2000. As Filomeno Sta. Ana, secretary general of the Manila-based Freedom From Debt Coalition, notes, "The NIC goal of the Ramos administration has no long-term vision." He explains, "fulfilling the vision of NIC is not an overnight affair. A giant leap towards industrialization begins with many small steps. ... And the whole process spans decades, involving a complex but coherent and comprehensive set of measures for reform and transformation."
A second major criticism is that the MTDP's emphasis on recycled policies of export-oriented industrialization and foreign investment is not likely to help the economy escape from the rut in which it lies. In 1979, Ferdinand Marcos said, "Industrialization for exports-this is what we in government ... proclaim and I think by and large we accept this as the fundamental thrust of our national economy today. There is a natural and necessary correlation between our new industrialization program and our export expansion program which stands at the forefront of our national economic goals today. Marcos' words could have been spoken by Ramos in 1993. There is very little substantive difference between Marcos' export processing zones and Ramos's regional industrial centers, except perhaps that Ramos is promising companies bigger tax breaks and subsidies. What failed under Marcos is not likely to succeed under Ramos.
A third criticism voiced by economists like Sta. Ana is that Ramos is making a crucial error in his attempt to mimic the success of the Asian tigers. In the early stages of industrialization, the tigers did not open their economies to foreign investment and trade and pursue an export-oriented strategy, Sta. Ana notes. Instead, they devoted attention to building up their internal markets; they protected domestic producers; and they limited foreign investment.
A fourth point of contention is the bankruptcy of the notion of "competitiveness" which underlies Ramos's foreign-investment-dependent, export-oriented strategy. As an Asian country with a poorly developed infrastructure and little history of domestically controlled high-tech production, the Philippines has little to offer foreign investors besides low wages, a point conceded by NEDA economist Rosales. But the Philippines is not especially well positioned to compete on the basis of low wages; the country's four-dollar-a-day minimum wage rate is not low enough to compete with Vietnam, China or Indonesia, countries where wages range as low as a dollar a day or less.
"Can we compete with China in the export market?" asks Sta. Ana. "Their labor is much cheaper than ours. The distorted logic, of course, is for us to cheapen our labor further. And that is not the way."
A final - and probably the most important - criticism of the MTDP is that it fails to deal seriously with the country's overriding political and economic problem: land reform. In 1988, according to Department of Agrarian Reform statistics reported by researcher James Putzel, 3,235 land owners (about .2 percent of a total of more than L 5 million), owned almost one-quarter of the agricultural land in the Philippines, and land ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated.
"Unless the problem of landlessness is addressed first, a `NIC-hood' development strategy could not only fail but lead to economic disaster," says the KMP's Mariano, noting the dangers of pushing more farmers off the land without providing any jobs for them to fill.
The refusal to confront the powerful agrarian elite and force through a genuine land reform may be sufficient to doom Ramos's Philippines 2000 program to failure, even on its own terms. The achievement of a relatively egalitarian land distribution regime has been a prerequisite to the successes of the Asian tigers. "Study of the industrial transformation of previously agrarian economies - from Japan to the NICs - shows that agrarian reform plays a key role in breaking down the social base, releasing the energies of the peasantry and opening up the possibility for transformation from a feudal to industrial economy," says Satur Ocampo, spokesperson for the National Democratic Front, the political wing of the rebel New People's Army.
Ocampo and others emphasize that land reforms in the Asian tigers helped jumpstart the domestic market by creating a significant market of rural consumers for both agricultural inputs and some consumer goods; reduced the pressure on the rural poor to migrate to the cities by giving them a base to support themselves; and helped equalize labor market conditions in the manufacturing sector by strengthening the bargaining position of workers for whom the option of returning to the countryside became more viable.
Who benefits?
For the last few decades, "Development for whom?" has been the virtual mantra of Filipino activists as they confront one development scheme after another. At first hearing, their question sounds like a demand that the costs and benefits of development be widely and fairly distributed. It is that, but it is a more profound challenge as well.
Sustainable development activists - whether they come out of the labor, environmental, indigenous rights or underground movement - are challenging conventional top-down, foreign-dependent economic development models as inherently unable to improve the well-being of most Filipinos. In the context of recent Philippine experience, "Development for whom?" is an incisive critique of development programs that promise to benefit the elite while hurting the majority and, on balance, worsening the country's economic, environmental and social conditions.
Relentless in their efforts, these activists continue to pose their troubling question, now about Ramos's Philippines 2000 program - and their answer remains disturbing. As Ocampo succinctly says, the Philippines 2000 program is another in a long line of government programs that "fail to consider a lot of factors. It is always the people who are left suffering the consequences of neglect and skewed priorities. "M
Economic Shocks
OLONGAPO, PHILIPPINES - The last few years have been viciously cruel to the people of central Luzon. They have had to absorb not only the economic recession that has struck the whole country, but the twin blows of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and the closing of the economic centerpieces of the region, the U.S. -operated Clark Air Field and Subic Bay Naval Base.
Food or free trade zones
The desperation of the region's situation is apparent at the foot of Mt. Pinatubo, within the confines of the fence encircling what used to be the U.S. military outpost at Clark. Of the thousands of families who had their homes destroyed by the Pinatubo blast, hundreds now live at Clark, many of them in overcrowded, leaky tents.
"Food is our number one problem here," says one leader of the resettlement community. "We get some from non-governmental organizations, but we often eat only a couple meals a day, and the kids often go hungry." He adds, "Sickness is a major problem because of the tight living conditions," poor sanitation and difficulty in acquiring medicine. The refugees have little money, since virtually all of them are unemployed.
The refugees are demanding that they be allowed to establish permanent dwellings on the base, and that they be allowed to grow crops on its extensive open fields. The government opposes the idea; it wants to turn Clark into a free trade zone or an international airport, and government officials believe having a poor community in close proximity is not likely to be appreciated either by foreign investors or visitors.
Unfortunately for residents of the area, the Pinatubo problem is an ongoing one. The rainy season causes massive mud and volcanic ash flows that are expected to continue for years. A government project to build a 20-kilometer-long dike has run behind schedule, resulting in the burial of still more communities during the past rainy season.
A baseless economy
The closure of Clark and Subic has hit the region as hard as the Pinatubo eruption.
In September 1991, three months after Mount Pinatubo erupted, the Philippine Senate, in a rare display of independent nationalism, voted not to renew the U.S. bases agreement. The U.S. Air Force withdrew from Clarke in 1991 and the Navy completed its pull-out from Subic in November 1992.
Progressive forces in the Philippines had long demanded the withdrawal of the U.S. forces, but no one was ready for a sudden pullout. The closure threw 70,000 base workers out of work, according to Manuel Torres, chair of the Workers' Alliance of Region III, a Central Luzon labor alliance affiliated with the KMU labor center. Twenty-two thousand of these workers were direct employees on the bases; the rest worked as subcontractors, domestics for U.S. soldiers or in similar positions. Today, Torres reports, the region's unemployment rate stands at 18 percent.
The thousands of sex workers who had served U.S. soldiers at the bases were particularly hard hit by the closings. Ten thousand women worked in 300 to 500 bars when the bases were open, says Pearly Bulawan of the Buklod Center, a community center serving women sex workers. Now there are only 1,000 sex workers, catering primarily to Taiwanese, Japanese and Filipino tourists.
Buklod conducts a variety of skills training and livelihood programs, to teach and provide work for sex workers who want to opt out of the business or who can no longer support themselves, but the organization's small soapmaking and dressmaking projects are hardly enough to meet the needs of most of the unemployed women.
The post-bases transition has been particularly difficult for the generally poorly educated and low-skilled unemployed sex workers, the majority of whom came from the provinces in search of a means to make money. A large number have returned to their homes in the countryside, where jobs are scarce and where many, as former prostitutes, will be stigmatized. Others have moved to Manila, seeking sex work or jobs as domestics. Some of the women have remained in the region, working as laundresses or in odd jobs.
A lost opportunity
Much of the tragedy which has befallen Central Luzon could have been averted. The volcano eruption could not have been prevented, but a more efficient handling of the dike-building would have saved many communities, and a more humane assistance package could have been offered to volcano refugees. More significantly, if the U.S. withdrawal from the bases had not been so sudden, and had the government put in place a sound conversion plan, the economic shock of the closure would have been mostly alleviated.
Economic conversion of the bases was a viable option, contends Torres. "The Americans were just overseers; it was Filipinos who were operating the [civilian side] of the base," he says. "All the work was done by Philippine personnel."
Torres points to the example of ship building, an area in which Philippine workers had accumulated important skills. "All that we needed to do was change customers, from the U.S. military to commercial buyers," he says. "That would have spawned so many local industries' and enabled the country to build up a deep-sea fishing industry and otherwise take advantage of the surrounding sea.
But the Philippine authorities, under the leadership of Richard Gordon, head of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, have a different vision - one that calls for integrating the bases into the Ramos administration's Philippines 2000 program. To much international acclaim, Gordon is pressing ahead with plans to convert Subic into a free trade port; plans for Clark remain uncertain.
Many local residents are pinning their hopes on Gordon's project. Bonje, who works in one of the remaining clubs in Olongapo, near Subic, says she hopes that unemployed former sex workers will be able to find work as employees of the new Subic businesses, and maybe even given preferred hiring status. The Philippine experience with free trade zones, however, suggests that the Subic free port - even if it succeeds in attracting foreign investment - will not do much to improve the lives of workers or nearby communities.
Torres sees Gordon's plans as a tragically lost opportunity to pursue a development path different than the one represented by the free trade zones. Proposals for developing self-reliant Philippine industry and harnessing the talents of the former base workers are of little relevance in the context of Gordon's efforts. Torres says, "All those conversion ideas are now difficult even to suggest because of the whole framework of Ramos's Philippines 2000 and the foreign-oriented scheme of Gordon."
- Robert Weissman and Stephanie Donne
Staying the Course
From the perspective of the international financial community, the Philippine economy is already on the right track. They applaud the Aquino government's decision to honor the country' s foreign debt; the Foreign Investments Act of 1991, which permits up to 100 percent ownership of companies engaged in all but a few sectors, as well as in firms exporting at least 60 percent of production; and government steps taken in 1992 to liberalize the exchange rate. "The government has already done a serious job" of undertaking reforms, says one international financial analyst. He points to the country's build-up of foreign exchange reserves over the last two years and its recent rapid export-earning growth (11 percent in 1992 and 15 percent in 1993) as signs of the country's upswing.
The financial community is concerned that the government has operated without a formal agreement with the International Monetary Fund since April 1993, a condition which prevents the government from obtaining new foreign loans and forces it to pay in full interest and principal on maturing obligations. However, analysts note with satisfaction, the single issue preventing consummation of a new IMF standing agreement is the government' s chronic budget deficit- not the basic structure of the economy.
An economic turnaround driven by foreign investment will slowly come to the Philippines is the position of financial analysts. Building credibility with foreign investors will take time; the Philippines should maintain its present course and stay patient.
Patience, however, is not a viable option for Fidel Ramos.
- R. W.
FILIPINO NATIONALISM -is the bottom line;sine-qua-non for the common good of the native (Malay/Indio)Filipino majority. Nationalism must precede any plan/action in dealing with globalization.
EDUCATION- being educated is beyond just being schooled towards a profession or practical vocation; we need the Humanities/liberal arts to develop/apply CRITICAL ANALYSIS/THINKING to understand, identify, plan, act & safeguard the needed fundamental and/or systemic changes towards economic/political progress, social justice, and social transformation.
GOVERNMENT - its raison d'etre is to lead/serve the native majority, foster nationalism via its institutions, ensure the masses are critically literate to have real democracy.
FREEDOM & DISSENT - free thought is necessarily aggressive and critical; we protect the freedom to discover truth; we encourage dissent, not for sentimental reasons, but because we cannot live without it. PATRIOTISM is NOT: " My country, right or wrong;" but " if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right!"
RELIGION/BELIEFS: No Deus ex Machina. No established religion. Humanism/Existentialism.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
THE RECTO READER: Economic Nationalism, Part 2A of 6
"Let us not ask for miracles...let us not ask that he who comes as an outsider to make his fortune and go away afterwards should interest himself in the welfare of the country. What matters to him the gratitude or the curses of a people whom he does not know, in a country where he has no associations, where he has no affections? Fame to be sweet must resound in the ears of those we love, in the atmosphere of our home or of the land that will guard our ashes; we wish that fame should hover over our tomb to warm its breath the chill of death, so that we may not be completely reduced to nothingness, that something of us may survive. Naught of this can we offer those who come to watch over our destinies."..- filosofo Tasio to Ibarra (NOLI ME TANGERE.), quoted in Hernando J. Abaya's THE UNTOLD PHILIPPINE STORY, 1967
"A certain kind of progress and material development can be achieved by economic activity that is not nationalistic in orientation but it can not solve any of the major social, economic and cultural problems of that large community which we call a nation." - Claro M. Recto
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PLEASE DONATE CORE SUBJECT BOOKS TO OUR HOMELAND (i.e. your hometown public schools, Alma Mater, etc.). Those books that you and/or your children do not need or want; or buy books from your local library during its cheap Book Sales. Also, cargo/door-to-door shipment is best. It is a small sacrifice. [clean up your closets or garage - donate books.THANKS!]
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Of 533 previous posts, the following selected posts and the RECTO READER are essential about us native, Malay Filipinos and are therefore always presented in each new post. Click each to open/read
OUR FILIPINO CULTURE:
- WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW:
- WHAT IS NATIONALISM [Filipino Nationalism]?
- Our Colonial Mentality and Its Roots
- The Miseducation of the Filipino (Formation of our Americanized Mind)
- Jose Rizal - Reformist or Revolutionary?
- The Purpose of Our Past, Why Study (Our) History?
- Studying and Rethinking Our Philippine History
- Our Filipino Kind of Religion
- Our Filipino Christianity and Our God-concept
- When Our Religion Becomes Evil
- Understanding Our Filipino Value System
OUR PHILIPPINE ECONOMY and MILITARY: (Post-WW2 Agreements)
- Bell Trade Act-1946 (Parity Rights)
- US Military Bases & Military Assistance Agreements (1947)
- President Roxas Railroaded the Approval of Bell Trade Act (Philippine Trade Act),1946 & Military Bases Agreements
- US Bilateral Immunity Agreement (BIA) aka Article 98 Agreement
- Globalization (Neoliberalism) – The Road to Perdition in Our Homeland
- Resisting Globalization (WTO Agreements)
- Virtues of De-Globalization
THE RECTO READER (Book) is presented in several postings. Click each to open/read:
- THE RECTO READER: Nationalism,Internationalism,Ultra-Nationalism, Part 1A of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Mission of Nationalism, Part 1B of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Economic Independence,Economic Nationalism,Part 2A of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Economic Nationalism Means Industrialization,Part 2B of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Industrialization: The Alternative to Poverty, Part 2C of 6
- THE RECTO READER: The Fallacy of "Philippines First," Part 2D of 6
- THE RECTO READER: Parity Rights, Currency Dependence, Foreign Loans versus Foreign Investments, Part 2E of 6
- MORE TO FOLLOW
NOTE: Recto's cited cases, examples or issues were of his time, of course; but realities in our homeland in the present and the foreseeable future are/expectedly much, much worse. Though I am tempted to update them with current issues, it's best to leave them as they are since Recto's paradigms about our much deepened national predicament still ring relevant, valid and true. In short, Recto saw the forest and never got lost in the trees.- Bert
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In Part 1(A&B), Recto defined and clarified for us what Filipino Nationalism is and what it is not.
In Part 2, Recto elucidated the need for economic independence: the "what, why, how, where and when" of economic independence characterized by a nationalistic outlook and drive for industrialization.
He reminded us that economic independence propelled by nationalism is the sine qua non for political independence, domestically and internationally.
Unfortunately for us native Filipinos, economic independence never materialized as all our so-called national leadership -- all traitorous to the native Filipino majority-- have continued to pursue an economic policy, which has been and is destructive to the common good, as practically dictated by America via the IMF-WB/WTO Agreements.
- Bert
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THE RECTO READER (1965): PART 2 - ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE
- Selected and Edited by Prof. Renato Constantino
For our country today, industrialization and nationalism are twin goals. Indeed, they are two sides of the same coin. Nationalism cannot be realized and brought to full flowering without a thorough-going industrialization of our economy by the Filipinos themselves. And you can not have an industrialized Philippine economy controlled and managed by Filipinos without the propulsive force of a deep and abiding spirit of nationalism. (1)
Economic Nationalism
The propulsive force that will take us to our economic goal is nationalism. We achieved political independence, or the restoration of our sovereignty as a people, by asserting consciously, fearlessly, and unceasingly, our aspiration to become a free and independent nation, until the foreign sovereign power, America, finally agreed to the restoration of our independent political status. In other words, we asserted the prerogatives of our nationalism.
Today we are politically, but we are far from free economically. A nation that has been a colony for a long time cannot and does not, on the day of its political independence, achieve simultaneously its economic independence.
But we have had ample time to be well past the first stages of transformation, and we would be so now were it not for the stubborn insistence of past administrations to cling to the old system.
That transformation can still be worked out by the people themselves, under the guidance and inspiration of their leaders, through the stimulus of wise and farsighted policies, perhaps with calculated sacrifices, and perhaps also with the advice and suggestions of disinterested foreign friends.
It is people, through their leaders, who must achieve economic freedom, or the change from a colonial pattern of economy into an independent one. Only economic nationalism will enable us to achieve basic and lasting solutions to our problems of mass poverty, unemployment, underproduction, perennial trade imbalance, and misery and backwardness in the midst of rich natural resources and abundant manpower.(2)
My program of industrialization is a logical outgrowth of my stand on Philippine nationalism. Nationalism in the economic field is the control of the resources of a country by its own people to insure its utilization primarily for their own interest and enjoyment.
Its political expression is independence and sovereignty, the desire to be treated with respect by all nations, and to decide, without bowing to outside pressure, the most advantageous course of action for a country vis-a-vis these powers.
The political aspect of nationalism becomes a dynamic mobilizing force which insures the realization of the economic objectives. In turn, the economic objectives lend practical reality to the fight for sovereignty.
What does economic nationalism mean for us Filipinos? Economic nationalism means the control of the resources of the Philippines so that they may be utilized primarily in the interest of the Filipinos. What course does this economic self-interest indicate for the Philippines at the present time? I have demonstrated by means of facts and figures that a raw-material exporting nation, that is, an agricultural nation, is always dependent on a manufacturing nation.
In any relation between the two, the industrial nation is the gainer, the agricultural nation, the loser.This is implicit in the fact that we export our raw material cheaply, because we can not use them as such; and we import the finished products at high prices, because we need them in our daily lives. Clearly under this setup, we are not in control of our natural resources for our best interest.
But if we industrialize, we shall no longer be at the mercy of manufacturing nations, and, in more and more instances, as we thoroughly industrialize, our own people shall become the beneficiaries of the values added to the raw materials by the manufacturing process. There is no question, therefore, that economic self-interest demands that we industrialize.(3)
The simple meaning that may be given to economic nationalism is a nation's aspiration, desire, and willingness to improve its material and cultural conditions through its own talents, resources, and sustained labor, and for the benefit of the whole national community.
Its mainspring is a strong sense of togetherness of the people in a common desire to progress, to improve livelihood, to achieve worthy and noble things, to enhance the good name, even the glory, of the national community, of the country which is the homeland, of the flag that symbolizes country,nation and the nation's history and ideals.
Without that dominant and ever-present will to achieve the enhanced well-being of the large community, rather than merely one's own selfish interest, any economic effort or activity, however large or impressive, is not nationalistic in character.
A certain kind of progress and material development can be achieved by economic activity that is not nationalistic in orientation but it can not solve any of the major social, economic and cultural problems of that large community which we call a nation.(4)
Why Filipino Ownership is Necessary
Now you may ask, why the insistence on Filipino ownership or control of such variegated industries? The answer is: unless it were so, it would be impossible to place the benefits to be derived from these industries within the means of enjoyment of the largest majority of the Filipinos. We must remember that if industries of such variety and scope were actually existing, they would be creating enormous amount of wealth annually.
If the wealth created were to remain in the Philippines and be reinvested again and again in other productive enterprises which would create, in turn, new wealth, then all that wealth could sustain an ever-spreading and rising standard of living.
But if the industries were alien or foreign-owned, then much of the wealth created would have to leave the country, what remains would never be enough to cope with the ever-increasing needs of an expanding Filipino population --and this is precisely the circumstance in which we have found ourselves through many decades-- the few rich would merely continue becoming richer, and most of them would be aliens and foreigners, and an ever-increasing number of the poor would be getting poorer. It is a similar circumstance, we may note, which brought about the Fidel Castro revolution in Cuba not long ago.(5)
To expect non-Filipinos engaged in large-scale enterprises in our country to have a nationalistic orientation in their economic activities is, as they say in Indonesia, like expecting lizards to grow feathers. We have no choice; it has to be Filipinos themselves, through the nationalistic aspiration of their economic endeavors, who must bring about a truly industrialized Philippines.(6)
Alien Control of our Economy
Our economy is heavily dominated by aliens. They have, per capita, more income than our own people. This is so because capital, which here is to a large extent foreign, begets profits, whereas salaries and wages, which constitute the share of the people in a colonial economy, are never high enough to allow their recipients much beyond their needs for daily living; consequently, there is almost nothing left for savings. If therefore, we mean to develop an economy that will bring welfare to our people, we must reverse this trend.(7)
As late as 1951, raw material sources and channels of distribution were in alien hands, according to F. Rodriguez, erstwhile chairman of our National Economic Council. Other officials at that time revealed that 80% of our retail trade was alien-controlled; that 78% of our foreign trade was in the hands of aliens; that sugar, and trade in rice, copra, tobacco and lumber was also alien-controlled; that 68% of our foreign exchange was bought by aliens.
There is urgent need for study and adoption of measures calculated to eliminate this alien stranglehold on our economy. Will our friends and advisers help us succeed in this great endeavor? Will they assist us in the study and adoption of the needed measures? Can we expect this kind of assistance from them? They, too, have their economic welfare to think of and protect. That is in the nature of things.
We will have to depend, therefore, on our own resources, on our own ingenuity, on our own judgment which, right or wrong, shall at least be guided by the consideration that the national interest is supreme and that the common patrimony must always be defended and safeguarded with all the care, awareness, dedication and vigilance to which every Filipino must be regarded as having pledged his honor from the cradle to the grave.(8)
The Cause of Our Poverty
Why is the Filipino worker poor under the present feudalistic regime? Although underproduction, unemployment and poverty are the three principal problems of the working class, the truth is that these are only the natural consequence of the two dominant facts in our economic system:
- that we are predominantly an agricultural country, and
- that we have a colonial economy characterized by foreign denomination in many important areas.
In wartime, the workingmen suffer most at the hands of foreign invaders. In peace time, it is still the workingmen who suffer from the alien control of our economy. This is true because of the very nature of foreign denomination, whether in peace or in war.
Foreigners who go to any country for conquest, or to set up businesses, do not do so to serve the interest of their host-nation. They go because they are attracted by abundant natural resources and cheap labor, both of which guarantee higher and easier profits than in their home country.
If this were not the case, no foreigner would leave his country to seek his fortune elsewhere; no foreigner would fight to conquer another people without expectations of profit or a better life than he has at home.
A country dominated by foreigners enriches the foreigners, a few of the nationals, but seldom its workingmen. Our country therefore is poor, its workingmen are poor, and many thousands are jobless, mainly because we have had an alien dominated economy and political life for more than four centuries now.
If Filipinos had been independent from foreign domination in these four centuries, with the tremendous natural resources in their homeland, they would surely have found better ways of developing their economic assets to achieve a high standard of living and prosperity for all elements of the population, including the class of workingmen.
The workingmen of the Philippines are poor for still other reasons besides alien control of our economy.Throughout the more than four decades of American regime, the emphasis of our educational system was on the training of our people in democratic principles and in public administration. This emphasis was well-placed, for the high literacy of our people and their better understanding of the workings of the democratic processes have been beneficial results of that policy.
But commendable as that educational orientation was, it left a gaping void in the integrated education of the Filipinos.The educational system fired our people's desire for political liberty, but it purposely neglected to develop economic nationalism among the citizens, and instead insidiously inculcated in them ideas of economic dependence on America.
The literacy of our people, their awareness of the high standards of living of the West, so temptingly shown in movies, televisions, books, magazines, and other forms of advertisement, merely made the Filipinos more vulnerable and readily susceptible to the sales appeal of promoters of American trade and commerce.
The Filipinos, ill-prepared to develop their country economically in order to attain a standard of living comparable to the West, were nevertheless thoroughly conditioned to become avid and insatiable consumers of Western finished products, from canned milk to flashy cars and televisions sets.
Thus developed the preponderance in our national economy of a merchant class composed mostly of aliens, leaving the native producer class to shift for itself as best it could in an economy that is thoroughly colonial in nature.
To meet the needs of the merchants, especially import tycoons, there must be a continuous supply of foreign exchange. The native producers were thus encouraged to concentrate production on a few export products, mainly raw materials, that earn a foreign exchange with which to pay for ever-increasing imports of foreign goods, from lipstick to automobiles.
Importation and distribution of foreign goods, however, create few opportunities for mass employment; and the production of raw materials for exports requires less manpower than the processing of those raw materials into finished goods. (10)
We must have the courage to face the true problems of our nation so that we may succeed in raising the standard of living of our millions of poor and unemployed. We must have the honesty of mind to tell them the truth, as Rizal in his time had to do, so that they may free themselves from their empty illusions, so that their minds may be awakened to the real solutions to their difficulties.
We must have the integrity of patriotism to tell our people that they are poor because of economy is unbalanced, and therefore, unable to give them the opportunities to use in their interest the tremendous potentialities of the country's natural resources.
We should have the courage to tell our masses and make them understand that our economy as a whole is poor and underdeveloped because it is colonial in pattern, and that all the hand-shaking and back-patting of the men they elect to office will not improve their lot if these leaders are not nationalistic enough to change the character of our economy.(11)
The Need for Economic Planning
Economic planning is, therefore, a "must" for us. For without such planning, either the greedy few will despoil the nation of its resources or those resources will remain unexploited to the detriment of national interest.
Ours is an underdeveloped country and has been so for centuries. While our economy has stagnated, our population has increased. Mass poverty and mass unemployment have been the inevitable results. It cannot be doubted that if we let things continue drifting, we will soon prey to communism, for the decisive battle against this enemy shall be fought not on the legal and parliamentary stage, as some people want us to believe, but on the economic.
And this planning should be the government's special concern. Some will call this socialism. Be it so. But it has been our sad experience that private Filipino entrepreneurs, without government initiative and intervention in the form of incentives or aid, have not been able to take advantage of opportunities for increasing the national wealth that would provide employment and bring welfare and economic security for all the people.
Only a bold leadership and decisive action by the government can produce the break-through that will set us moving away from the present poverty and national unemployment.(12)
The Colonial Pattern of our Economy
There is, of course, an economic policy in the Philippines, but it is not one made by Filipinos nor is it intended for the welfare of Filipinos. it was conceived and formulated by others and introduced and implemented here for purposes other than the nation's interest.This economic policy has for its objectives:
- to keep the Philippines the agricultural country that it always has been;
- to attract to the Philippines foreign investments.
For the realization of these objectives, appropriate measures have been devised:
- economic aid, to be dispensed through officers and economic advisers who are alert to the above objectives;
- advisory assistance in all sectors of activity, both public, including practically all government offices and agencies, and private, including labor and peasant organizations, and in all fields --political, economic, military, social, and cultural;
- military protection, or more accurately, token military protection, through a so-called alliance loose in terms and terminable in one year's notice, and a lease of bases for 99 years with no provision for its earlier termination; and
- parity rights for the Americans with respect to all business activities and public utilities and the exploitation of the country's natural resources.(13)
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- the kind of economy that the nation must have, and
- the proper approach to the question of foreign investments and financing.
We have not settled these basic issues.(14)
References:
1. Nationalism and Industrialization, July 30, 1957
2. The Role of labor in our Economic Emancipation, September 8, 1957.
3. Nationalism and Industrialization, July 30, 1957
4. Industrialization and Economic Nationalism, October 3, 1959.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. A Realistic Economic Policy for the Philippines, September 26, 1956.
8. Our Raw-Material-Export Economy, June 26, 1957.
9. The Role of labor in our Economic Emancipation, September 8, 1957.
10.Ibid.
11. Filipinism and the Coming Elections, August 10, 1957.
12. A Realistic Economic Policy for the Philippines, September 26, 1956.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
....TO BE CONTINUED...Economic Nationalism Means Industrialization, Part 2B of 6
"This, his message, valid as it was in his lifetime, is even more timely now. For there are still those among us, devoid of sufficient faith in our potentialities, who would in their attitude and thinking, in effect reject the gospel of national dignity, national pride, and the national responsibility of self-reliance. The words of Claro M. Recto may, it is fervently hoped, occasion a change of mind and of heart." - Justice Jesus G. Barrera.
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FILIPINO NATIONALISM -is the bottom line;sine-qua-non for the common good of the native (Malay/Indio)Filipino majority. Nationalism must precede any plan/action in dealing with globalization.
EDUCATION- being educated is beyond just being schooled towards a profession or practical vocation; we need the Humanities/liberal arts to develop/apply CRITICAL ANALYSIS/THINKING to understand, identify, plan, act & safeguard the needed fundamental and/or systemic changes towards economic/political progress, social justice, and social transformation.
GOVERNMENT - its raison d'etre is to lead/serve the native majority, foster nationalism via its institutions, ensure the masses are critically literate to have real democracy.
FREEDOM & DISSENT - free thought is necessarily aggressive and critical; we protect the freedom to discover truth; we encourage dissent, not for sentimental reasons, but because we cannot live without it. PATRIOTISM is NOT: " My country, right or wrong;" but " if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right!"
RELIGION/BELIEFS: No Deus ex Machina. No established religion. Humanism/Existentialism.
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