Introduction
Many of us will agree that in our context, democracy seems elusive. Until now, a vast number of people are in extreme poverty, deprived of basic needs and are politically marginalized. We know that poverty is caused by the uneven distribution of power where only a few can decide over critical things such as the use of natural resources and distribution of its benefits. Who among us was ever asked or consulted by the government in its program of environmental destruction which has only profited big corporations which are controlled by a few families and foreign corporations? Did the government bother to ask peasants, farmers, fishers, workers, women, youth, gays, consumers and other sectors with regard to the country’s accession to the WTO and its conclusion of various bilateral agreements? Who wants E-VAT and debt payment? The list is overwhelmingly long, proving that the democracy we have today is a farce.
The heart of the struggle of all the revolutionary efforts in our history is about making people participate in power. Part of the movement’s usual rhetoric is people’s participation in decision-making because without people’s participation in the political exercises that directly influence every dimension of their lives, democracy will not be realized.
This document will attempt to discuss an alternative anarchist political structure that will promote people’s direct participation in power and, in broad strokes, discuss the flow of political power from the bottom to the top. It is a concept that is heavily derived from the idea of confederation advanced by libertarian author Murray Bookchin. This idea is of course not detached from traditional anarchist movements and contemporary anarchist activists; and we believe it is significantly relevant to our current political crisis.
A confederation offers an alternative political structure based on a libertarian framework- i.e., non-hierarchical and non-statist, which is doable and applicable. It is doable compared to the 35-year old struggle of the CPP-NPA-NDF which, after taking tens of thousands of lives, delivered no concrete economic and political output to the Filipino people. More so, the alternatives being offered by mainstream leftist groups outside NDF offer no substantial difference, for they all adhere to the state and to capturing political power- an objective that cannot be realised in the near future.
In the light that anarchism is exaggeratedly misunderstood, let us first discuss some fundamental principles of stateless socialism, libertarianism and anarchism.
"Purely utopian!" That’s one of the common reactions of those who do not understand the word anarchy and the alternatives it offers. Another misconception is its affinity to chaos.
These nuisances and misinterpretations are not surprising at all. Historically, anarchism has long opposed oppressive systems and fought monarchy, oligarchy, and the totalitarianism of the state socialists and authoritarian communists alike. It continuous with the struggle to fight new forms of colonialism, capitalism and other exploitative systems that hamper the development of humanity. Every ruling regime has its share in imputing fear and terror on the anarchist movement in order to discredit it.
It is impossible to escape the fact that violence is part of the anarchist movement. Along with nationalists and republicans, anarchists carried out terroristic methods to advance social revolution. The "Propaganda by the Deed" was meant to encourage people to act against the state and the old order by launching violent acts such as the killing of French president Sadi Carnot by Sante Jeronimo Caserio (an Italian anarchist) in 1894. Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo also shot Canovas of Spain in 1987. Luigi Luccheni (another anarchist from Italy) stabbed Empress Elisabeth of Austria to death in 1898, while Polish anarchist Leon Czogolsz killed US president McKinley in 1901. There were also two attempts on the life of Kaiser Wilhelm I, the first by Max Hodel on 11 May 1878, then followed by Karl Nobiling on the June 2 of the same year. The list is long.
These incidents were of course used by the dominant regimes to their own advantage. In order to demonize anarchism, they shrewdly related it to violence and chaos. And this was even reinforced by the state socialists and authoritarian communists when the anarchist movement in Ukraine challenged the Bolshevik regime, the White Army and other foreign invaders.
Nuisances and misinterpretations are bound to occur in situations where power is asymmetrically distributed. The political structure that is controlled by the economic and political elite would not allow anarchism to flourish. Moreover, the country’s revolutionary tradition is highly influenced by red bureaucracy which is historically hostile to anarchism.
Contrary to common misconceptions, anarchism is a theory that firmly upholds the idea of an organized world that is free for all. As Noam Chomsky once stated in an interview, anarchy is a society that is highly organized wherein many different structures are integrated such as the workplace, the community and other myriad forms of free and voluntary associations, with participants directly managing their own affairs.
Unlike the existing order where people are motivated by power, profit, private property, and individualism, anarchy is a society that fosters mutual cooperation, solidarity and freedom from exploitation and oppression and where decisions are made by those who are directly concerned. Any form of political structure that centralizes power is totally unacceptable.
At the same time, the word archipelago recognizes the geographical characteristics of this country and the very essential role of its rich natural resources that strongly influence the lifestyle of its inhabitants. Myriad historical accounts indicate that the bodies of water surrounding the different islands actually connected rather than separated them from each other, and that economic, social and political activities of the inhabitants were developed due to the interconnectedness of their immediate environment.
It is also important to note that the rich natural endowments of the archipelago allow diverse cultures to flourish and develop in heterogeneous ways, yet connected by mutual cooperation.