The fork in the road

By Artchil B. Fernandez

The 2022 election is the fork in the road for radicals and the progressive movement. The situation that confronts them today is similar to what the mainstream Left, the then monolithic national democratic movement faced in 1986.

One fork is to discard the old, tried (several times) and tired but failed formula of hitching their wagon with one of the factions of the ruling class by supporting its backed candidate and forge their own path albeit “delusional” in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. The other pathway is addressing the existential question of the hour which is preventing the dark side from continuing its rule by forming the broadest anti-authoritarian alliance.

The first path is taken by Laban ng Masa (LnM) and Ka Leody de Guzman, its presidential candidate. They are within their right to pursue this course of action and they may be right in treading this road. The decision is borne from the long history of betrayal of the marginalized sectors by opportunistic and duplicitous politicians who hijacked their program during the campaign but junk the agenda once they win.

Lessons from past elections prove that the above fork appears to be the only option of the masses if they want not only to fight for their agenda but for their agenda to be visible and heard in the 2022 election. In the 2010 election a group of the left allied with the “dilawans” and they won. The agenda of the marginalized sector was set aside if not forgotten. Another group of the left in 2016 aligned with the challengers of the “dilawans” and they emerged victorious. Cabinet seats were given to this left group for backing “dutertismo”, but they only created their Frankenstein monster who murdered many of their prized cadres. The agenda of the masses again is all but forgotten (remember, endo will end in three months). The lesson of history is clear to the oppressed class – only they can liberate themselves, which LnM heeded in this election cycle.

The 2022 election is an opportunity for the masses to carve a new path #manggagawanaman the LnM believes. Winning is the icing but the cake is creating counter-hegemony in every nook and cranny. The 2022 election is an opportunity for the oppressed to build counter-hegemony although the work will not end in the election but will go on and on until the trenches, the fortresses and earthworks of the hegemonic bloc fall and captured. To ridicule this as “delusional” is to declare the women who gathered in Seneca Falls in 1848 were also delusional. Seventy-two years later the “delusion” of those women became a reality. Only history can judge the decision of LnM and Ka Leody. The real delusion is what the two left groups did in 2010 and 2016.

Fielding their own candidate in the 2022 election is also a way of the workers to smash and shatter the symbolic power of the ruling class and end symbolic violence.

Symbolic power is the ability of the hegemonic bloc to make appear as natural and inevitable what it historically invented. In the Philippine setting, the ruling elite naturalized the concept of “making it” within the highly asymmetrical social arrangement. Manny Pacquiao and Isko Moreno are paraded as the best examples – they “made it” through hard work and determination. Workers are made to believe that they too can “make it” within the unjust system obscuring the reality that the problem is the system and only by changing it can the workers find their true emancipation. Pacquiao and Moreno are exceptions and not all workers have their “grit” or “looks.”

Election is also naturalized as the means of changing the unjust social structure and workers cannot win elections on their own unless they ally with a faction of the ruling class or get the backing of billionaires. LnM and the candidacy of Ka Leody is piercing and unmasking the symbolic power of the ruling system, puncturing its myth.

Symbolic violence is “internalized oppression” or making the victims complicit to their victimization. The masses are always used by politicians particularly the populists, from Erap Estrada to Du30 to win then victimize them in the end. LnM and the candidacy of Ka Leody are trying to stop the symbolic violence inflicted on the workers.

The other fork in the road is wrestling with the existential question of the times – defeating the MAD (Marcoses, Arroyos, Dutertes) alliance and their ilk should be the highest priority now. How should the country move forward from dutertismo? Is it by allowing the dark side to continue its rule or forming the broadest alliance to beat it? If this way is taken, ideological positions should be set aside at the moment for the paramount concern.  There are practical and pragmatic considerations to deal with.

Those who contemplate the other fork also believe the elevation of the 2022 electoral battle to the highest ideological plane is admirable even noble, but they are more drawn to the immediate question, the tactical consideration. Preventing the corrupt and authoritarian coalition from retaining power should be the primordial or the most urgent task at hand. Between the tactical and the strategic, the tactical comes first. Progressives can deal with the strategic later once the pressing issue had been addressed. The struggle of the oppressed sectors for liberation, after all, is long and protracted.

The fight for a bright future does not end with the defeat of the MAD bloc in 2022. It is only part of a larger struggle, a small portion of the big picture.

Resolving the quandary of the fork in the road is a Gordian knot or a catch-22 for the progressive movement. The question is not easy to untangle. For historical reference, one can look back at how the Italian progressives/radicals wrestle with their predicament in the 1920s on the eve of the rise of fascism and Mussolini. What they could have done to prevent it? It’s 2021 in the Philippines and the Left (all shades and stripes) are grappling with the same dilemma.