"The desire to Uplift" or "The desire to Retain"?

"The desire to Uplift" 
or "The desire to Maintain"?

(Notes on the "Revolt of the Poor"
and the System's means to turn the phrase as if as theirs
in pursuit of maintaining interests)

"The new Republic is in response to the rebellion of the poor. This is a rebellion over which the might of government can have no avail, for the poor are, in many ways, the people for whom the government exists..."

These are the words former president Ferdinand Marcos said, justifying his authoritarian regime as a response to a so-called crisis that encompasses economic and social affairs, serving as a basis for a series of "reorganisations" and be described itself a "revolution" through a series of "reforms" enough to appease a disgruntled majority.

At first, it may sound optimistic though to quote Marcos, given that his written works, and even his "developmental" projects smacks of stressing the need to respond from the people, especially that he's been synonymous to roads, bridges, schools, various forms of infrastructures that were made during his 20-year rule supported by militarisation and of interests.

And to think that those times, as in its past and in the present, having a system, in its desperate to retain the status quo has trying to appeal to the people, that in case of Marcos, with his "revolt of the poor" and of the "new republic" has to do with justifying Martial Rule as "populist" in nature, trying to heed the call of the majority, a new form of "Nationalism" in case of Gunnar Myrdal that also defines it as a "desire of poor nations for economic and social development".

That even until today, his successors followed the same brand of "developmentalism" whose intention is to consolidate the status quo than to uplift the basic sectors of the society. True that the numerous infrastructures were being meant to respond the needs of the people, but to use Marx's term. these actions meant like "holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat."

But on the other hand, for the fact that the "rebellion of the poor" tries to reverse the traditional situation, it is obvious that the system uses such militant or progressive terms, undergoing reforms, programs, means enough to "lessen the situation" and to "win hearts and minds" in favour of a "consolidated" order, noticing that the society rests in the judgement of the poor with the latter tries to sit in the judgement of the society in pursuit of shaping societies according to their desires and aspirations. 

Imagine, Tsarist Russia had undergone development under Witte and Stolypin, with the latter's reforms produced astounding results from 1906 to 1915, yet the elite opposed his policies especially in regards to agrarian and political reforms, while the masses getting tired of reactionary politics Russia was known for. In the Philippines, despite numerous projects and several actions trying to put reforms into practise, Semifeudal/Semicolonial "traditions" remain at large as compradores and landlords trying to stop people's demand for a decent living wage and calls for genuine agrarian reform.

In case of the latter, from Quezon's "Social Justice" program, Macapagal's "Agrarian Reform Code", Marcos's "P.D. 21" that declared the entire country under Agrarian Reform", and its successor's "Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program" with its amended version known as "Extended with Reforms", how come farmers still demanding genuine agrarian reform and aid especially in case of famine-stricken communities like in Kidapawan? The system has afforded to babble "self sufficiency" yet it failed, that somehow the concerned would say that "is this dream ever realistic at all to begin with? History says no." 

Hence, these meant to appease the international markets, the elite stubbornly trying to keep their lands, the multinational companies willing to engage in "agribusiness", while sugarcoating it with something that applies to the people in general, but having the fact that these tillers demanding land and serious forms of aid, is the system who tried to be like Stolypin really trying to be like Stolypin whose thought of saving the monarchy requires a "radical solution"?

Sounds strange if not illusory or even delusional so to speak, that as times gone by, of seeing different leaders, having various "laws", and forms of so-called "social actions", and yet seeing a same old social order synonymous with injustice and repression, of mismanagement and negligence, the intention made by the system "in pursuit of change" and "in response to the call of times" is all but a means to sneer people through eyes and ears; while the people themselves, still seeing the realities that failed to be curbed by the so-called "self-righteous", may deem it as hoaxes. If the system afforded to babble progress and development? How come unemployment remained increasing as it stood at 5.8 percent in January of 2016, down from 6.6 percent a year earlier but slightly up from 5.7 percent reported in October 2015? If not pressing the workers’ wages further down to "pitiful levels" as in Metro Manila, the highest in the country, increased by only P17.06 ($0.37)?  

Such realities has made the "Revolt of the Poor" inevitable. The poor has turned Nationalism into a social type as it reawakens the ethnos into a productive-creative force different from its romantic beginnings, that makes Patriotism includes class consciousness as the labouring masses insist both National and Social Liberation. The system, both then and in the present, has tried to negate if not to stop the intention of the masses knowing that the latter demands something radical in a form of revolution.

And since Myrdal has afforded to say that the "Revolt of the Poor" is a new kind of Nationalism, is the revolt all about just economic development? Can be, but its intention is more than that as what Myrdal said, and perhaps more of Garbiele D'Annunzio's, Ramiro Ledesma's, or Mao Zedong's. Furthermore, the system whom afforded to babble as such is the same system that hold everyone in bondage, discharge on the slightest pretext, arrest and exile anyone offering resistance to oppression, and forbid everyone to struggle against policies that benefits vested interests and not those of the people.