Notes on Life and Learning Lessons Chapter 19

A Few More Reflections

On the National Democratic Movement

I felt like writing a few more things about the “New National Democratic Movement.” After all, I spent more than 10 years of my life in that movement. It left it only in the late 1980’s. Like all things that we go through in life there are positive as well as negative aspects of the experiences. There are lessons one has to find and more importantly, to learn from.

Not too long ago, I met a very old comrade who came back here from abroad. The last time I saw him was in 1975. For reasons of survival, he exiled himself. As he had other important schedules to attend to, we were only able to talk for an hour. The few things he shared with me were unexpected but very enlightening.

After the initial greetings, warm handshakes and what-has-happened-to-you-since-the-last-time, I learned that he had been very close to the top leaders of the radical movement abroad. I asked him to share a few opinions and insights about those top leaders for after all he was with them for a few years.

He smiled with a tinge of bitterness and said, “My friend, I guess we were idealists. In one meeting I had with the top leaders abroad, one of them suggested that the movement use women to get vital information from top officials of the enemy side. These women were supposed to do anything to get information. What do you think of such an idea?”

I laughed and said, “Well, it’s just like in espionage movies. I think that leader was just joking.”

But he quickly answered back and said, “Perhaps. But that leader said that we should be good at tactics and that many tactics were not written in the book.”

I then said, “It is not right to use women who will sacrifice even their morals to get information. These women should not be treated like mechanical gadgets or objects the movement could use. They are human beings we must serve and help by raising their social consciousness. ‘The end justifies the means’ is not a Marxist principle. We should not use people like pawns. We should always use the right means toward the right and noble end.”

He slightly nodded and continued, “That leader also is quite liberal with his relationships with women but I guess, in modern capitalist countries, that is not a big issue.”

I said, “A real Marxist who fights for his vision of a classless society where there is no longer any poor class or rich class, where there is no longer any kind of institutionalized exploitation, must also be against the exploitation of women. I once had a research paper on the lives of the old Filipino communists in the 1930’s and 1940’s. They were mostly poor workers and peasants. At that time, comrades who felt they could not live the principled way of life of Marxists, as in no womanizing and no excessive drinking, voluntarily resigned. The man we are talking about is one of the top leaders and he thinks that his liberties with women is not a big issue.

I believe he should humbly criticize himself for his weaknesses and voluntarily resign if he could not control his liberties.

He smiled and said, “It has been twenty years since I last saw you and you are still an idealist.”

I also smiled and said, “Nobody is perfect. We all have strengths and weaknesses. But it is one thing to try hard to be honest with yourself and with people and still fail once in a while as compared to continuously and consciously pretend what you are not.”

After another warm comrade handshake, he left hurriedly.

Alone, my mind wandered on the many small errors I saw in that new radical political movement towards the beginning of the 1980’s. I thought then that those small errors were isolated cases although they seemed to have become more and more common. These small errors involved malversation of funds, unequal lifestyles between the leaders and ordinary members, poor peasants supporting the people’s army, lack of respect and warmth for the masses, making up people in organized areas attend rallies and issues of which they do not understand so well yet, receiving “bribe-money” from big-time loggers while pretending to fight for environmental issues, etc.

I remembered a few radical women telling me that one of the leaders of the united front organization, who was also married, had a few cases of sexual opportunism. One justification given was this: the young women approached him. This was no different from one so-called spiritual leader I knew who sexually abused young recruits and then justified it saying, palay na ang lumalapit sa manok.(translation: it is already the rice grains going to the chicken, i.e., it is the women offering themselves to the leader.) Such twisted reasoning! It is the duty of those supposedly more ideologically and politically aware to precisely change the backward, leader-oriented, feudal and/or decadent outlook and values of these young women by raising their social consciousness and telling them what is right and what is wrong.

Surely, there are still those in the movement who are very honest, sincere and noble in their intentions. But such errors mean that there is something seriously wrong with the organization. Such errors must be studied carefully. Its roots must be traced. There is much that has to be studied and learned from the time the USSR came under the undemocratic icon rule of one man in the mid-1920’s to the collapse of the so-called socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the former USSR.

These radical leaders were once thought of as the new political messiahs of the new generation of Marxists and national democrats. Indeed, there are no political messiahs who can solve deep social problems. Only the working people themselves can solve the basic problems of society. This historical truth is the key to our social liberation.

As a student of life here in this world and as a practitioner of the sacred knowledge of the Inner Wisdom, I thought about many people whose lives are full of troubles and are dependent on religious leaders who claim to have special knowledge and powers to save them. The truth is, there are no spiritual messiahs to save us. It is only us who can save ourselves. The only way to save ourselves is by learning the lessons of life so as not to make the same mistakes again. As we become more and more enlightened we make less and less mistakes. That kind of enlightenment is the key to our personal and spiritual liberation.