PERHAPS the irony of all ironies is that the “withering away of the state” envisioned by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto never happened. What happened instead is the withering away of communism.
It is no surprise as it was supposed to remedy the Industrial Revolution’s exploitation of labor during the early part of the 20th century. Today, communism is obsolete and irrelevant, no longer in tune with the modern world.
The countries that embraced communism then did a complete turn around and now embrace capitalism as the most profitable ideology; they remain communist in name but capitalist in real practice.
After more than 50 years of nonsense, atrocities/death, the communist insurgency in the Philippines is now in its final death throes.
What’s left is a quaint romantic memory for the septuagenarian pseudo-communist professors in the universities still dreaming of the “First Quarter Storm” and a fashion statement for the “wokes” and “useful idiots”.
And speaking of atrocities, are you aware that the regimes that committed mass genocide among its people are the ones that embraced communism?
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a sociopolitical movement in the People’s Republic of China launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 till his death in 1976. It was supposed to preserve Chinese communism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society.
The Cultural Revolution was characterized by violence/chaos across Chinese society, a massacre in Guangxi with acts of cannibalism, as well as massacres in Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Guangdong, Yunnan, and Hunan. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, ranging from one to two million. The country’s schools and universities were closed, the National College Entrance Examination were cancelled. Over 10 million youth from urban areas were relocated down to the countryside.
The Great Purge, was Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin’s campaign to consolidate power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly between 700,000 to 1.2 million.
The Killing Fields are sites in Cambodia where collectively more than 1,300,000 people were killed and buried by the Communist Party of Kampuchea during the Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970–75). The mass killings were part of the broad, state-sponsored Cambodian genocide. After five years of researching 20,000 grave sites, analysis indicates at least 1,386,734 victims of execution. Estimates of total deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including from disease and starvation, range from 1.7 million to 2.2 million, out of a 1975 population of roughly eight million.
Of course, in the Philippines we also have our own purge courtesy of the CPP/NPA/NDF albeit not in the same magnitude as the ones above but nevertheless just as inhumane.
According to the CPP Anniversary Statements (1992-2017) posted in their website, more than 9,000 were killed by their own comrades in the CPP/NPA/NDF during the “purging” in the 1980s.
In 1985 in the absence of a comprehensive assessment/analysis of the increasing setbacks, suspicion grew that these were due to enemy deep penetration agents. Panic rapidly ensued after arrests and torture of DPA suspects “confirmed” the worst fears about a large-scale enemy infiltration network. This gave way to Kampanyang AHOS, resulting in the prejudgment, torture, and murder of more than 950 DPA suspects.
Thousands were reported to have been brutally tortured, summarily executed and buried in shallow graves in various parts of the country as a result of those paranoid purges.”
Fortunately for us, this happened – the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) was formed on December 4, 2018, pursuant to Executive Order No. 70 issued by President Rodrigo Duterte which institutionalized the government’s “Whole-of-Nation Approach” to respond to and raise awareness about ongoing communist armed conflicts in the Philippines, in tackling the ongoing communist rebellion.
Through a comprehensive approach that integrates community development, enhanced public safety, and inclusive governance, the NTF-ELCAC aims to address the root causes of insurgency.
This proved to be successful as the more than 50 years communist insurgency in the Philippines is now gasping for breath in its final death throes.
Well played, indeed./PN
