Akbayan and its place in the political spectrum: If they are not "reds", then what is Akbayan?

Still hot was the heated fight between Akbayan and Anakbayan, two groups pushing for change in the country. Seriously, these two groups have been at it for years, yet, the "heckling" incident during the Akbayan presscon was just a sample of how these groups treat each other--one accusing the other of betraying the "cause". 

It could have been a "usual, ordinary" thing if Akbayan representative Walden Bello did not lose his cool and had stopped himself from calling Anakbayan "reds". Red-baiting is a tactic by a military mind and surely, the 70 year old Bello is an activist-intellectual. And I'm sure, Walden also suffered being tagged himself as a "red" before he became an Amerikana-wearing legislator.

Surprising though why Bello called his former colleagues, "reds". What is so bad with being "red"? 

Bello's remarks clearly show that his group, Akbayan, has definitely morphed into something "not red", since he considers being "red", a bad thing.

So, what do you then call members of Akbayan? 

A colleague described Akbayan as "queso de bola"---red in the exterior, yellow inside.

Seriously, what is the place of Akbayan in the political scheme of things? If we are to situate Akbayan in the political spectrum, where are they?

Politically speaking, they are now part of government, with their key senior leaders serving under the behest of a President running a bourgeois capitalist state. They are part of the Right in the political spectrum, although claiming to be "towards change".

So then, can we say that Akbayan is right now, the left of the Right? In terms of the spectrum, they are now "yellow, with a tinge of red" or "orange"? Wow.  

One of my friends described Akbayan as "social democrats"--a strand of the Left that considers parliamentary struggle as a necessary strategy towards change. Is Akbayan really, social democrats?

Several analysts describe social democracy as a political ideology which espouses for a parliamentary solution to the ills of society. Bernard of Columbia University distinguishes social democracy as a cross breed between Marxism and Liberalism. Meaning, social democracy is an attempt to be a Marxist while believing the fine tenets of liberalism. 

Lenin in his critique of social democracy by Bernstein, says that social democrats tried to sully Socialism with that of "bourgeois Liberalism". True Socialists, Lenin says, has a clear understanding of the anti-thesis of bourgeois liberalism with Socialism (from "What is to be done?").

Meaning, social democracy is a lukewarm acceptance of both Socialism and Liberalism and tries to create a "compromise"---which compromise, I should say, negates both Socialism and bourgeois liberalism.

As a Marxist and Socialism, you can be one and never the other. You cannot espouse structural change while recognizing the importance of changing society "from the center". 

A true Marxist recognizes the inevitability of structural change as a necessary answer and solution to the ills of capitalist society. There is no way a capitalist state can change into a "socialist" one without armed struggle. Those who tried the parliamentary road failed because there is simply no other way but the revolutionary path.  

That explains why Bello accused his fellow activists in the other side as "reds", simply because Akbayan considers itself not socialists, but "social democrats".

As Social democrats, Akbayan already abandoned the Marxist prescription of change which is structural change. Akbayan believes in change within the superstructure, a bourgeois liberal socialist concept. 

Change Blogging

DJB wrote a poem entitled, " Why do we blog?" over at FilipinoVoices.com. Most of the things he wrote there are personal. What is substantial is, DJB recognizes the contagious nature of blog entries. For him, "meme" is like a gene to our bodies. " Only the fittest survive, and no one gets alive."

Let me add more---blogging is an effective weapon of the Revolutionist. It changes perceptions. It suggests acts that, in the long haul, effects attitudal changes. People, especially Filipinos, are fairly cognizant of the effects of reading blogs in their views. Ideas from blogs are akin to spores that fly out from a virtual field of sunflowers.

War and Revolutions are dictated by desires for change. One can't launch a Revolution by just paying for the jeepney fares or food of those who'll go there. It is simply thru an entire mass of like minded individuals that wars and revolutions are fought for and won. When the entire mass of the disfranchised and the dispossessed unite and form themselves into a movement can change be imminent. There is no change thru formulaic methods, no revolutionary formula that applies to every political situation since there are different variables that form part of the entire picture.

The Revolutionist should therefore, identify the causes for effective transformation and use these learnings to develop spores that would infect the minds of the Filipino people. When people presume that New Media is not an apt weapon for the workers to unite, they are NOT really cognizant of the ways of the proletariat.

The New Media, like its predecessors can be the Iskra of the New Generation! If Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Ulyanov formed the paper Iskra during his time or Fidel Castro's Granma or that La Solidaridad in our patriot's milieu, we, the Patriots of the New Generation, can also form ours, using the latest innovation in change blogging.

IN the next few days, the entire Filipino People will see the dawning of a New Revolutionary Weapon that seeks to destroy the darkness and usher the New Morning.