The Place of Literary Criticism in The Marxist Leninist Maoist Praxis of The Philippine National Democratic Movement

Espejo / The Place of Literary Criticism in the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Praxis 576
THE PLACE OF LITERARY CRITICISM

IN THE MARXIST-LENINIST-MAOIST
PRAXIS OF THE PHILIPPINE NATIONAL
DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT
Lance Espejo
University of the Philippines Diliman
lfespejo@up.edu.ph
lance.espejo.ph@gmail.com
Abstract
For Marx, “The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material
force must be overthrown by material force” (“A Contribution To The Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right”). Marx also says, “theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has
gripped the masses.” It is this materialization of critical thought as theory which this paper
expounds on. Marx says that this materialization happens in man himself, hence theory—or
thought—is embodied.
This paper, first, strives to expose the underlying class struggle which helps shape the discourse,
which in this case, is literary criticism. Second, it aims to zero in on how literary theory and
criticism places itself in a movement according to the theory and practice of Marx-Lenin-
Mao, and see how these principles were initially theorized and practiced in the context of the
Philippine National Democratic Movement until the present in broad strokes.
From the writings of Marx-Lenin-Mao, to the workshop guides by ARMAS , to the polemical
attacks of Edel E. Garcellano against reactionary “literary shitheads,” and the many organizations
and persons who have followed, this paper seeks to emphasize that the place and method of
critique parallels the class line and development of the revolutionary struggle.
Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 576–610 © Ateneo de Manila University
<https://ajol.ateneo.edu/kk>
Keywords
Class struggle, literary criticism, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, movement, national democracy,
theory
About the Author

Lance Espejo is a writer, activist, and musician who is the founding chairperson of the re-
established Institute for Nationalist Studies. He is currently finishing his Master’s degree in
Araling Pilipino at the University of the Philippines Diliman while teaching arts management at
De La Salle University Integrated School.
INTRODUCTION
The realization of literature and its appraisal as a heterogeneous field built on class
struggle has been stated by Edel Garcellano in his naked militaristic conjecture:
If language is a war zone, then its articulators are combatants engaged in a war of
positions—the basic antinomies creating the difference/differance that allows the stasis
and flux of meaning. (246)
This timely view of language and the literary in militaristic terms is congruent
to Marx’s own position, in which he lists “the legal, political, religious, artistic or
philosophic – in short, ideological forms” as the means in which people “become
conscious of this (pertaining to class struggle) conflict and fight it out” (Marx,
“Preface To A Contribution To The Critique Of Political Economy”).
The importance of struggle in ideological-theoretical matters is something that

another revolutionary, Lenin, emphasized by way of Engels. In “What is To be
Done,” he notes:
Engels recognizes, not two forms of the great struggle of Social Democracy (political and
economic), as is the fashion among us, but three, placing the theoretical struggle on a
par with the first two.
We could already guess that literature and literary theory and criticism play a role in
advancing revolutionary struggle. This should temporarily dissuade a reductionist
reading of Marxist theory as economic determinism1. However, there are also other
sections within Marx’s writings in which theoretical struggle is downplayed vis-à-
vis political struggle. “The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism
of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory
also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses” (Marx, “A
Contribution To The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”).
This contradictory (dialectical) manner of Marxist thought and the praxis of

revolutionaries is something that could easily baffle us, academics, who have been
trained to look for the “one thing”—a certain theoretical anchor to a thinker—or a
one-sided analysis that deals with either absolutes or pure relativism.
The key to understanding practical dialectical thought, which in this case is

particularized in locating critique (specifically of literary criticism) in the myriad
of things a revolutionary movement must do, is to look at the site where critical
thinking and its embodiment intersect. Marx had already alluded to this in the
above quote; that while material force can only be thrown by material force, theory
becomes material when it has “gripped the masses.” Going further, he talks about
how theory only becomes material when it is demonstrated in person, which
requires that firstly, the person be radical in word and deed.
Hence, in this essay, I attempt to locate the position of criticism, particularly of

the literary kind—which seems such a passive topic compared to armed struggle—
in the Marxist thinking of revolutionary struggle, with particular specificity to how
it is theorized and practiced (i.e., embodied and demonstrated) in a real movement.
In this case, I will be choosing the Philippine National Democratic Movement,
which has ideological ties to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Why the Philippine National Democratic Movement? The general political

orientation of national democrats in the Philippines is to oppose (1) the
domination of foreign capital in the nation’s economy, politics, culture, military,
and foreign relations, which have been culpable in; (2) economically retaining the
monopolization of land by landlords in an agricultural country, the stunting of
our progress towards industrialization for the purpose of self-reliance, and; (3)
politically building a state subservient to their interest through the laws and other
repressive measures they enact, all the while illegally using the government to
gain personal wealth. These interlocking problems are the sociological basis for
the suffering of the Filipino people, and have been compressed to the concepts of:
imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism.2
The national democrats historically trace their struggle to the unfinished fight of
the 1896 revolution against Spanish colonialism and feudalism, while recognizing
the limitations of its burgeoning ilustrado-bourgeois leadership, as well as the
changed conditions since the exit of Spanish colonialism. With the advancement
of revolutions in the twentieth century, Filipino activists who aspire for the
Philippines to have national sovereignty, democratic rights, and a higher standard
of living, recognized that the most advanced and consistent form of radical change
can only be led by the working class and the advancement of their interests. This
manifests in how Filipino national democrats of the “new type,” led by the worker-
peasant interests (relative to the 1896 national democrat of the old type led by the
local bourgeois), derive their principles from the analysis and movements led by
or commented on by Marx-Engels, Lenin, and Mao. Of course, while in principle,
Philippine national democrats claim adherence to practicing Marxism-Leninism-
Maoism (MLM ), it should be noted that even this category has variations in different
movements that also claim to be under MLM .3
As to the experience of these revolutions, it is clear for national democrats that

they must first wage a struggle for national liberation in all aspects of social life
and advance society past the stage of capitalist development, whose highest form
is precisely the exploitative imperialism of foreign capital destroying the lives of

others. In order to do this, a people’s democratic revolution must be waged,4 which
entails the need for an organized effort with the workers and peasants tactically and
strategically leading the majority of the populace toward victory until all power is
snatched from the alliance composed of foreign capital, landlords, the comprador
bourgeois for capital, and their fascist henchmen.
While the forms of this struggle are varied, there are organizations which align
themselves and were even influential in the national democratic struggle, such as
the revolutionary underground organizations led by the Communist Party of the
Philippines, its armed wing the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic
Front, who espouse the primary position of armed struggle. For these organizations,
the prospect of armed revolutionary violence is unavoidable due to the irreconcilable
differences between the peasants and workers and the landlords and capitalists, as
well as the historically violent character of class struggle that the ruling classes
use to maintain their position and the masses to defend their victories (especially
land), or weaken their enemies. This point will be important to our discussion of
literary criticism in the revolution because, owing to the experience of twentieth
century revolutions in semi-colonial/colonial and semi-feudal countries like China
and Vietnam, the concept of a protracted people’s war was developed. While we
will add more to this military concept later, it is important to note that it is crucial
in the operation of the underground revolutionary movement in the Philippines
today and has played a role in how the directions and orientations for literary
criticism were developed by national democrat activists in the cities, and guerillas
in the countryside.
It is our goal to hopefully see general traces of continuously effective principles

when it comes to literary criticism in and for revolution in the Philippines. By
juxtaposing these practices with the elitist usage of literary criticism to further
certain social interests, we could have a better picture of how theories of text and
society, as expressed in literary criticism, intersect towards embodiment both for
reactionary and revolutionary impetuses.
It goes without saying that in its more than half a century of continuous and
growing struggle, this essay, due to various constraints, could not exhaustively list
and elaborate on the various practices and theorizations of literary criticism that
have been tried and are currently being done and developed from the local, regional,
national, and even international level by the Philippine national democrats. What
we seek to outline here are the general principles and directions of exploration for
literary criticism, developing from both the theoretical and practical engagements
of the national democrats with the past (through MLM ) to their present realities.
But first, we must historically break down how we have come to conceive the
literary, criticism, literary criticism, and their respective roles in society.
LITERARY CRITICISM & CLASS STRUGGLE
The first matter that needs to be laid down is something that is logical and historically
observable, but seems to be lost on some of us. It is the simple fact that the objects
of our study—particularly literature, arts, and literary criticism, were practiced and
conceptualized in various forms throughout history, under different conditions
from those present today. By conceptualizing, I refer to the network-ensemble of
social actors involved (who can speak?), the institutions or formations used (where
is it spoken?), and the language, rituals, and artifacts employed (how is it spoken
and what materials are used?) that constitute the material object of study itself5.
Yes, it is true that with cave paintings, we can surmise that our ancestors had
produced something akin to what we call art. We are also quite sure that even
before the invention of writing beyond record keeping, various human societies
have had storytelling, performance, and poetry that we now call oral literature,
and even their own standards for these practices. However, it should be noted that
these practices and their relationship to society, while containing a continuity that
traverses to the present conception of the said things, have their own qualitative
distinction in conceptualization-operationalization according to their social milieu.
In Lary E. Shiner’s The Invention of Art: A Cultural History, he notes how the
way we conceptualize art did not emerge right until the European enlightenment of
the eighteenth century (3). In spite of most education regarding Western cultural
history beginning with the Greeks, Shiner observed that there really is no direct
translation for fine art (as commonly associated with certain forms and practices)
in their language. The closest term they had was techne6 (τέχνη, tékhnē), which is
more similar to our conception of craft, doing, and practice (19). Shiner even points
out how the artist and the artisan in the West were not entirely distinct social
positions even until the Renaissance, as practices such as painting and sculpting
were activities which were socially conceived as still functional in society, and not
simply exercises in aesthetics (22-23).
Even looking back at literary works from antiquity, Harry Blamires in A History
of Literary Criticism notes how the concern with drama and poetry was more for
the sake of accomplishing a technical-functional requirement, such as convincing
people and making them feel the most sublime experiences from tragedy vis-à-vis
comedy and/or other forms of verse (7-11). In A New History of the Humanities: The
Search for Principles and Patterns From Antiquity to the Present, Rens Bod argues
that the general trend in antiquity was to find out the laws and patterns which are
present in the best cultural works (71). Clearly, the Greco-Roman world’s concerns
vary from how our literary theories are connected with concerns of language,
society, and our capacity to know reality.
Shiner notes how the concept of literature in the modern (read: primarily
Western) sense, had only really begun to hold in the seventeenth to eighteenth
centuries, as there was still a notion of literature as simple “book learning,” which
included even the natural sciences (The Invention of Art 69). The same pattern-
finding and rhetoric-oriented technicality dominated theories on poetry, music,
and other forms that we now subsume under the literary. Further developments
would lead to the separation of geometry and astronomy from poetry and music, as
well as the increasing role of logic over rhetoric, and would combine with politico-
economic transformations which would beget the modern day concepts of literature
and the arts, that would beget literary theory and criticism—appropriating from
the works of the past whose concerns differed in the first place (Bod, A New History
346-50). The possibility for such “appropriation,” or what in other cases could be
perceived as attempts to trace a filiation of practices—a tradition of sorts, lies in the
historical fact that despite the shift in these network-ensembles (which essentially
order-structure knowledge), the practices have always been there.
As mentioned earlier, our ancestors and perhaps our hominid cousins that were
capable of language had probably been telling stories and singing lyrics for a long
time. We can even look fondly at an example found in our history, where, despite
there being no “literary criticism” as network-ensemble existing, the capacity to
appraise a text existed; critique as value judgment itself could be as old as humanity
itself, owing to such decisions’ quite probable effects on survivability. Throughout
the general course of history, both the continuity of practices and the rupturing
toward new developments are observable.7 However, we would be remiss if we
assumed that the dominant manner in which we understand literature is ubiquitous
to all of history—being mindless of the ideological pins which keep intact the who,
what, where, why, and hows of that which we call today as literature.
It is quite clear that the concept of art and art history from the West’s perspective
is largely shaped by seventeenth to eighteenth century Europe. Regardless of which
theory of economic history one subscribes to, the European bourgeoisie was on
the rise in this period, and the aristocracy was on the road to decline, culminating
in a series of bourgeois revolutions all throughout the nineteenth century onwards.
It was from this milieu that art and literary criticism in the modern day began to
form. A slew of names encountered in literature and arts classes can be found in
this era, such as Pope, Addison, and Hume, notwithstanding French and German
canonical heavyweights like Diderot and Kant.
As with Shiner and Bod’s arguments, the “great divide” in the ordering of
knowledge in what we now know as art and literature began. Generally, the
Renaissance project of the “complete man” developed towards further humanist
ideals, centering on the individual—particularly, their “genius.” The sublime and
general aesthetics “returned” to the philosophical concerns of the British, French,
and Germans, which would play a role in the development of further movements
such as romanticism in art, and various theoretical posturings. Of course, the rest
of the succeeding theories, movements, and oeuvres from this period onwards are
something familiar to liberal arts students that we need to spend more words on it.
While most arts and literature students will be vaguely familiar with some of
the names mentioned from the epoch of the shift, it should be noted that affluence
and allowance for speculation were not the only characteristics that defined the
relationship between European imperialism and literary theory. Indeed, we shall
find in the works, especially of the philosophers of art, an investigation of the
“relationship” between great works of art and a “national spirit”8—which in the
Eurocentric lens, is often laden with racism and the justification of the colonial
order. Thinkers like Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, in their triumphalism for
the “modern” (read as: a rising bourgeois liberalism in contradiction to feudalism)
had legitimized (even though in some cases in a self-contradictory manner) the
colonial subjugation of peoples, as well as general capitalist development (like in
Locke’s case, the advocacy for the dissolution of peasant-owned lands, and the
valuing of profiteering out of private property).9
Historically, this entanglement between literary-aesthetic theory-criticism and

political economy stretches way back into antiquity. Plato’s noted discourse on the
nature and function of arts and poetry in The Republic were based on the project to
create the ideal society. The same tradition can be seen in Chinese feudalism, where
Confucius looked at good poetry as tools for education. Dore J. Levy even shows
us how the ability to write good poetry became, for a time, a practical indicator of
one’s ability to serve the state, regardless of how fallacious this line of thinking can
be (918).
What we see here is a general connection between texts, their appraisals (which
are also texts), and social replication, manifested as the reinforcing-negating of
subjectivity from the most insistent didacticism, to markers of skill in statecraft
and general intellect (in the case of say the Confucian Chinese and the Romans
with Cicero), to the structuring of the knowledge about texts themselves. Take for
example that texts be read in reference to the author, which is a social function
needed to mark all sorts of labor as property in a commodity-producing society,

not to mention the colonial curation of taste, which we have already noted. In the
midst of discussions on technicality in writing lies the struggle over the ordering
of knowledge itself through shifts in the aforementioned network-ensembles of
actors-places-words-actions, all of which are concomitant to the reproduction and
negation of social positions, values, and interests (read as: class struggle).
It is no wonder then, that Garcellano sums it up best by saying: “Antagonism in

poetics, in short, is simply antagonism between classes” (“Reportage” 25).
In “Breaking Through and Away,” the late Bienvenido Lumbera notes how literary
criticism as we know it today came to our shores through American colonialism.
The conclusion is easily reached at the beginning:
As such, its concerns and approaches had been directed by the political motives,
ideological rationalization, and cultural assumptions of the colonizer as these were
communicated to Filipino students through the educational system which employed
English as the medium of instruction. (3)
Of course, this is not to say again that literary criticism in the Philippines did not
exist prior to US imperialism. It is very much a fact that the ilustrados of the first
propaganda movement had written essays and studies, and had participated in a
movement to show the “civilized world” that we had our own culture that was not
savage as the West would like to portray it.
However, even to this day, American imperialism holds sway over literary
production, theory, and critique in the Philippines. In Conchitina Cruz’s “The (Mis)
education of the Filipino Writer,” she zeroes in on the Tiempos and the Silliman
University National Writers Workshop as an institution which has served to be a
purveyor of American cultural imperialism disguised as a capacitating of writers
to make better works. She exposes the underlying “colonial and classist ideas about
language and literary production” (7) found in New Criticism. Despite the analysis,
any literature student or writer entering a workshop will still encounter this
imperio-formalist approach in any of the “top” Philippine institutions for writing.
Of course, US imperialism did not come here to “enlighten” their “brown

brothers,” but as a monopoly capitalist state, wanted to extract raw materials
for cheap labor, as well as to expand their direct market for surplus goods,
notwithstanding our strategic location as a node for trade in Asia and the Pacific.
These interests necessitated the maintenance of the existing feudal order, as the
large haciendas remained to the landlords who had held power in the country even
after the Spaniards had been kicked out.
The consequences of (monopoly-capitalism) imperialism’s marriage to feudalism

include the creation of a political structure where a section of the privileged
landlords, middlemen, and bureaucrats would serve and maintain these interests
with whatever means necessary. In the field of cultural production, we arrive at the
types of academics, bureaucrats, and literati whom Garcellano and several others
have criticized. Those writers and critics whom Kris Montañez pejoratively called
the “court poets” were complicit to the feudo-capital-imperialist structure (81). It
is in this light that, as we read from the centered positions of cultural imperialism
in the Philippines, we jump into the serious question of putting some progressive
use to literary criticism, which we have seen to be complicit to the subjugation of
peoples, lest these efforts be “just another slogan spat out in literary conferences
and soirees” (Garcellano, “Reportage” 35).
While this is easy enough to arrive at with historical analysis, what interests us
in all of this is not simply how literary criticism is located within the conditions of
social struggle (a matter of space), but how it is inseparable from the development
of the said conflict (a matter of duration and time). This means that, just as the views
of Marx, Lenin, and Mao on literature and literary criticism were bound to the
developing stages of their respective revolutions, the principles and priorities (in
theory and practice) of Filipino national democrats in terms of literary production
and criticism, will be caught up with the dynamic balance of forces in terms of
overall economic-logistical, political, and cultural influence. This is consistent
with Marx’s analysis of theoretical developments. They come not due to the inner
genius of certain individuals, but through their engagement with their then-present
realities. Thus, developments in theorizing literary criticism in a revolution come
from qualitative leaps or general developments in the struggle itself.
As we shall see later, the advances in literary production and criticism in the
Philippine struggle for national democracy mirror the advances and retreats the
movement has gone through. This view of art and social change can be seen even
in the likes of Lu Xun, who, in “Literature of a Revolutionary Period,” theorized
general qualitative changes to the practice of literature and varying standards
needed, depending on the development of the revolution. He presented this in
1927, more than a decade before Mao Zedong would theorize the development of
the Chinese revolution’s war, or his views on literature.
Thankfully for us, from an analytical standpoint, the theory of the protracted
people’s war in the people’s democratic revolution traces three stages in the course
of the struggle: strategic defensive, strategic stalemate, and strategic offensive.10
Each stage entails certain qualities in the balance of forces. In the Philippines, the
underground revolutionaries have assessed the people’s war to be in the strategic
defensive. While these terms are related to those who choose to take on the armed
struggle, we cannot deny that this balance of armed forces has effects which ripple
through unarmed movements in the cities and the countryside in all its tasks,
including literary production and criticism. It is from this starting point that
we can analyze the thread of revolutionary theory on literary criticism from the
nineteenth century to the present.
LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE REVOLUTION
While our focus is on the principles and vectors of literary criticism among Philippine
national democrats, these cannot be studied without a general examination of the
practices and theories they are based on: Marx, Lenin, and Mao. While Marx and
Engels did have a few scattered notes regarding good literature and arts, the Russian
and Chinese revolutionaries, such as Lenin and Mao, had dedicated some writings
to describe the relationship between these cultural practices and the victory of
the revolution. Of course, the starting point of any Marxist principle for literary
criticism is class struggle. We too have started our discussion on this matter. The
question now is: what are the specifics of this type of struggle and how does it
concretely contribute to an emancipatory project?
For Marx and Engels, there are the points on the location and dynamics of art vis-
à-vis the mode of production through his base-superstructure analysis, as well as
certain musings on why classical art remained somehow relevant, and an example
of art in the chain of production-distribution-consumption in a capitalist society.
Most of these thoughts were written in the second half of the nineteenth century
to supplement analysis, or as letters to various associates as to their opinions
on certain pieces. They were prefigurations on how to produce and appraise art
and literature from the standpoint of revolutionary organization. As working-
class revolutionary movements were still young at this time (e.g., the European
revolutions of 1848-1850 until the Paris Commune of 1871 being a short span of
revolutionary experience relative to human history), greater burden was on Marx
and Engels to release texts to unshroud capitalism, and to use scientific investigation
to debunk all sorts of rhetoric from reactionaries, reformists, and anarchists. Thus,
more emphasis was put on finishing the publication of Capital and Marx’s other
works on political economy, as these directly gave the workers the theoretical tools
to wage their struggle, more so than Marx and Engels’ theoretical-philosophical
works (especially the early ones). However, from the critic’s perspective, the crucial
takeaway from Marx and Engels’ sporadic writings and letters on the subject is to
have a clear grasp of reality.
Engels, in a letter to Margaret Harkness, gives a critique of the text “City Girl”
based on the concept of realism. As Engels says: “Realism, to my mind, implies,
besides truth of detail, the truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical
circumstances” (“Engels to Margaret Harkness in London”).
He goes on to further explain that by realism and typicality, he does not mean
the type of naturalism of Émile Zola. Engels, like Marx, exemplifies Honoré de
Balzac here. Curious, because as both revolutionaries would note, Balzac was far
from being a radical; he was a supporter of French aristocracy. However, despite
his admiration for the nobles, his accurate description of French society in the first
half of the nineteenth century captured the downfall of the aristocracy and the
ascension of the bourgeoisie.
While one could hastily read typicality and Marxist realism as factual and
accurate, (which is no laughing matter for a class of writers who barely immerse
themselves in the heat of social struggles), the standard is much higher than this,
as even naturalism can capture observable events and phenomena on the surface.
What separates this type of realism from others is its sensitivity to the contradiction
of classes and how this plays out in society. Going back to Balzac, despite his
sympathy for the aristocracy, Engels was keenly aware that their struggle with the
republicans and “vulgar monied upstarts” was going poorly:
That Balzac thus was compelled to go against his own class sympathies and political
prejudices, that he saw the necessity of the downfall of his favourite nobles, and
described them as people deserving no better fate; and that he saw the real men of the
future where, for the time being, they alone were to be found-that I consider one of the
greatest triumphs of Realism, and one of the grandest features in old Balzac. (“Engels to
Margaret Harkness in London”)
Not only did he note the struggle, but also the economic movements at the core of
it all. Engels says:
...he groups a complete history of French Society from which, even in economic details
(for instance the rearrangement of real and personal property after the Revolution) I
have learned more than from all the professed historians, economists, and statisticians
of the period together. (“Engels to Margaret Harkness in London”)
This keen sensitivity-awareness to the class contradictions of the times, which could
be harnessed through deep social investigation, was the main point for Engels. In
fact, he even prefers if a text needn’t say its politics outright but its analysis is still
clear. In two passages, he repeats the same idea:
I am by no means opposed to partisan poetry as such...I think however that the purpose
must become manifest from the situation and the action themselves without being
expressly pointed out and that the author does not have to serve the reader on a platter —
the future historical resolution of the social conflicts which he describes. To this must be
added that under our conditions novels are mostly addressed to readers from bourgeois
circles, i.e., circles which are not directly ours. Thus the socialist problem novel in my
opinion fully carries out its mission if by a faithful portrayal of the real conditions it
dispels the dominant conventional illusions concerning them, shakes the optimism of
the bourgeois world, and inevitably instils doubt as to the eternal validity of that which
exists, without itself offering a direct solution of the problem involved, even without at
times ostensibly taking sides. (“Engels to Minna Kautsky”)
Namely, that part of having a “faithful portrayal of the real conditions” is to

emphasize the ephemeral nature of this world. This is dialectics applied to history.
The world is a composite of contradictions resolving each other to more developed
contradictions and phenomena. The world will not forever be in the hands and
minds of the bourgeoisie. Even if the text does not cry for socialist revolution,
the facts will speak for themselves. Like Balzac, one does not even have to be a
professed Marxist to create works like this. That even those who profess their anti-
capitalism and radicalism in their works can still fall short of this is very much true.
This idea from Marx and Engels, which is essentially the commitment to learning
concrete social conditions and the dialectical/historical materialist outlook in a
text, is what I would call an objective partisanship in writing. It is a partisanship to
the facts, regardless of one’s own political sympathies.
Lenin, as well, had also praised another author whose politics he deemed
reactionary: Tolstoy, in that this great Russian author has masterfully captured the
class dynamics of pre-revolutionary Russia. Lenin, however, having led the first
nation to construct socialism, has his own contributions to literary theory and
criticism in conjunction with a revolutionary movement.
Having struggled to settle theoretical and practical issues in organizing a

revolutionary party and movement in late nineteenth to early twentieth century
Russia, Lenin’s notion of “party literature” or literature as “cog and screw” of the
movement is sure to rub the ears of most institutionalized literati. Of course, this is
written in the context wherein Lenin criticizes party members who do not ground
the thrust of their literary work to the concrete objectives of the party and the
movement.11 Lenin formulates the position in a politicized dialectical manner:
There is no question, either, that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed
for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy, form and content.
All this is undeniable; but all this simply shows that the literary side of the proletarian
party cannot be mechanically identified with its other sides. This, however, does not
in the least refute the proposition, alien and strange to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois
democracy, that literature must by all means and necessarily become an element of
Social-Democratic Party work, inseparably bound up with the other elements. (“Party
Organization and Party Literature”).
In the text, he argues that the bourgeois intellectuals should rid themselves of the
idea that literature, though mostly an individual endeavor, is “free.” Lenin argued
that literary production is always constrained by society. In the present age, we
are not free from the publishers, the reviewers, the censors, among other things—
all of which are elements of the bourgeois literary industry, whether in academia
or otherwise. Hence, his argument is that party members ought to embrace the
political economy of literary production and be thoroughly partisan, not just
in what they write, but in how and where they write it. What, however, does it
mean for the majority of us who are not part of a revolutionary party? The key
elements here are the questions of literature, reality, political education, and the
transformation of consciousness in the general context of organization.
We segue to Lenin’s views on religion and his stance on advancing militant atheism.
He states that breaking the hold of religion on the masses requires the production
and distribution of atheist literature.12 Here, we see that for Lenin, literature (and
books in general) are important elements in importing political education to the
masses. This is something he had been consistent with since he wrote “What is
to be done?” in which he says that the social-democratic consciousness can only
come from outside the working class. Lenin states his argument through the facts:

We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the
workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries
shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade
union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight
the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation,
etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and
economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by
intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and
Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. (“What Is To Be Done?”)
The general idea of this can also be gleaned from Marx himself. Both Marx and
Lenin believe that the working class was objectively in the position such that
only they were of the class that was consistently diametrically opposed to the
rule of capital. However, they were against romanticizing and relying on the
spontaneous and sporadic nature of the worker’s struggle (hence, left on their own,
they understandably only see economic fights without understanding the whole
interconnectedness of society). Truly radical philosophy and theory—these are

things that Marx and Lenin believed would arm the proletariat to advance. Marx
says:

As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds
its spiritual weapon in philosophy...Philosophy cannot realize itself without the
transcendence (Aufhebung) of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot transcend itself
without the realization (Verwirklichung) of philosophy. (“A Contribution to A Critique
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”)
Here, we find the bridge between theory and revolutionary practice. As Marx also
says, “theory is fulfilled in a people only insofar as it is the fulfilment of the needs
of that people (“A Contribution to A Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”).
The connection can be drawn much clearer when we go back to Marx and Engels’
propositions of consciousness as social, and that ideas do not exist separately
from language. Consciousness, as socially-determined, is concretized through
language.13 Objects like literary texts are crucial in molding a radical consciousness.
From here, it is not difficult to see why there is a place for literature and literary
criticism as ideally objective typical depictions of social reality, in the spreading
and deepening of (taking root in) the ideas of the masses in order to advance the
revolution. The problem lies in the instances in which we do not take the actual
demands of the work seriously enough. It is either that we are not producing good
texts, or that they are not being distributed adequately enough to reach those they
are supposed to, or that we are not being mindful of the class struggle in the political
economy of textual production-distribution-consumption itself—satisfied that our
intent is revolutionary and that we have made the text. It is in this juncture that
Mao Zedong comes in.
Mao’s “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art” has been treated like
a sacred text to national democratic cultural activists since the inception of the
movement. He was addressing the issue at a time when the Chinese revolutionaries
were still building up their strength in the face of Japanese invasion and an uneasy
relationship with the reactionary but ruling Kuomintang. The general direction of
these writings (and even those after their 1949 victory) pointed to expanding the
range and saturation of socialist discourse. Hence, the questions of standards and
method were addressed in the same way they usually were with assessing political
and military campaigns.
In the Yenan forum, Mao contributed several practical points to consider in

cultural work that activists still invoke today: unity of form and content, separation
of political and artistic criteria, effect over intent, popularization and the raising of
standards, and that all art has a class mark (where there is no such thing as art for
art’s sake), among others. Put simply, and not to rob the reader the opportunity to
read or re-read the Yenan forum, the essential point for Mao is the firm grasp of
the revolutionary class line (meaning, knowing who are the friends, enemies, and
reliable and unreliable allies of the revolution) when doing and appraising literary
work.
All of the dialectical formulations raised above would only make sense when
one is aware of the class struggle in all facets of literary production-distribution-
consumption. This works when we strip ourselves of the notion that class equates
to caste, or simply how much one earns. Marx left notes in the third volume of
Capital that class is not simply one’s career, but the holistic view of someone’s
place in the relations of production, their (political) attitude to the current social
setup, and the accompanying universal-particularized consciousness (as it is
social) characteristic of a class and its localized groups. A class position, including
the historical particularities of the entire situation (political, cultural history, for
example), are part of what constitutes a certain mode of consciousness (Marx,
Capital Vol. 3).
When taken in this light, it makes sense that Mao, like his predecessors,
emphasized the need for really knowing the situation. For practicality’s sake,
he asked mostly petty bourgeois writers to really know the masses and capture
how they speak and think about things, and not simply rely on their personal
revolutionary convictions coming from the middle class. Questions on unity of
form and content, and popularization and the raising of standards, all boil down
to matter of “for whom” these serve. If it is for the masses, the people’s army, and
the cadres, then it should masterfully know them and uplift them. Garcellano even
makes a similar statement by reverse:
Would not Derridean traces be gleaned from his discourse inasmuch as, bewails a critic,
a poem written by a bureaucrat who fictionalizes himself as an NPA squad leader no
less cannot be theorised as an authentic articulation of a subversive because a reader
who actually lived an underground life would find the texture of its imagined truth false,
misdirected, invalid? (“Post-EDSA Literature and Marxist Discourse” 9)
The same case goes for the petty bourgeois who need to feel-know that their fate
is better by staking their lives on the proletarian revolution than clinging on to
fascist regimes. With the landlords and the big compradors, they need to feel their
impending doom from the writings on the walls—blood debts will be settled. This
notion of feeling-knowing returns us to the pedagogical aspect of literature and the
importance of literary criticism.
The relationship between sensing and making sense of something towards

the formation of knowledge is something alluded to by all revolutionaries. True
revolutionaries know that the masses are not dumb, that they do know things—
oftentimes even more deeply than intellectuals do. From Marx to Mao, they have
this practical understanding that the basic masses know certain things more deeply
than we, schooled academics do. A butcher knows from how heavy their hand
feels if the meat has reached a kilo or not. A common cook knows how different
ingredients react to each other without knowing the formal chemical names for
ingredients and reactions. The glass worker knows the good quality glass just from
the sound of its ringing and its refraction of light.
This ties in with the importance of political education for a revolution. Education
or the gaining of knowledge is not limited to educational discussions, fora, and
lectures about revolution. Marx’s second thesis on Feuerbach14 reiterates this as
well. Knowledge is gained through engaging reality in order to know it. This is
something which occurs to revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries alike, but it is
this expanded view of knowledge as embodied in thoughts, actions, and emotions,
that literature and literary criticism come in. One can read this as literature simply
being didactic, but it is more than that. It is the site for encountering a crystalized
(but mediated) reality constructed by various class forces; thus, returning to our
point of the text as a site for reinforcing-negating subjectivity.
The notion of the embodiment of political education towards the remolding of

consciousness ties back to Lenin’s practical proposal to subsume literary works
under a political organization’s daily marching orders, while simultaneously
recognizing the individual initiative that characterizes textual production,
especially with the forms available. If consciousness is social and materializes as
language, then the question of literature becomes a matter of understanding texts
of all kinds, proliferated in society through mass media, films, music, etc. Without
fully-subscribing to the textualization of all life, one can find a new appreciation for
Lenin’s call for the fully-organized partisanship in literary production in terms of its
effects in expanding-consolidating the real bodies of the revolutionary movement.
In returning to Lenin’s “On Party Organization and Party Literature” by dispelling

the illusion of literary production as detached from the dynamics of the class struggle,
it was of paramount importance that as the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party
(RSDLP ) gained more and more members (which increased the uneven distribution
of political consciousness to carry out the revolution), that the production of texts
which play a role in reinforcing the construction of a revolutionary proletarian
subject, was supervised collectively by the organization that saw political education
as extremely needed in order for the movement to advance. In fact, Lenin repeated
this line when Proletkult attempted to become autonomous from the party.15 It was
not Lenin’s intention to supplant and censor the literary initiative of the comrades
in cultural work, but rather to safeguard against ideological mistakes that could
lead to political opportunism and organizational trouble.
By maintaining political unity and consolidation in the realm of literary

production, the effects towards expansive organizing will be seen. For Lenin,
textual avenues, especially popular ones like the newspapers of his day, were
crucial organizing tools, and by putting textual production-distribution under the
guidance of a revolutionary organization, the quality of texts embodied by both
the consolidated members and the target masses for expansion should match
expectations of being highly effective and politically sharp. This is why Mao took
the technical aspects of literary production and its appraisal seriously, as made
evident in the way he studied the technical aspects of military affairs, because both
of these are sites of class struggle that the proletariat needs to win. His words are
very clear: “To defeat the enemy we must rely primarily on the army with guns. But
this army alone is not enough; we must also have a cultural army, which is absolutely
indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the enemy” (“Talks at the
Yenan Forum on Literature and Art”).
One conclusion from this is that, precisely because texts (which were understood
then as only including the literary) are sites for class struggle and political education,
that they needed to be taken seriously; we must gather a rich amount of data,
grasp the objective condition of the class struggle, use literature and other textual
productions for raising political consciousness, and have a firm understanding of
how there are different orientations to literature in various classes and situations.
Hence, we see a more or less general picture of the interlocking principles on the
place of literature and its appraisal through the experiences of Marx, Lenin, and
Mao. Now it is time to briefly see how this is continued and elucidated upon by the
comrades in the Philippines.
Now, as stated previously, for the Philippine national democratic movement’s

cultural workers, the main reference for the technicalities of culture and artistic
production has been Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and
Art”. It is, however, not to say that this has been the only material produced. There
are many national democratic scholars who have written pieces on committed
writing and the need for a cultural revolution, and we will also cite some who have
contributed significant work to the development of a nationalist (anti-imperialist),
scientific (anti-feudal), and mass-oriented culture, not to mention the army of red
fighters doubling as writers for various journalistic and literary publications from
the countryside.
In terms of general goals, one thing to note about the national democratic
movement in the Philippines is that it does have a program for culture and the arts.
Most organizations’ cultural programs fall along the lines of forwarding a “nationalist,
scientific, and mass-oriented” culture. There are, of course, organizations aligned
with this program that have more concrete points. Interestingly, in the 2016
constitution of one the largest underground organizations which align with the
goals of National Democracy and the Communist Party of the Philippines, there
are ten points pertaining to the cultural field.16
In fact, early in the development of the National Democratic Movement, the

cadres of Kabataang Makabayan had already grasped the importance of culture
and literature on the advancing of the movement. Julieta de Lima, in her essay “On
the Pen and the Gun” detailing the CPP and the parallel cultural achievements of
other national democratic organizations for the past 50 years (1968-2018), says:
Our experience shows that we must first arouse before we can organize and then mobilize
people, whether it is in taking up the pen, or the gun, or further, the gun and the pen...
The CPP takes the stand that even before wielding the gun, it must start wielding the pen.
Aside from this, many national democratic activists have formed a multitude of
cultural organizations, alliances, and committees within organizations nation-
wide since the 60’s, that are too many to even mention here. We can read this as
the movement’s recognition of the partisanship of cultural-literary work through
the creation of various formations of different orientations. Some were united
politically as cultural committees or propaganda teams to the masses. Others were
founded on common interests such as literary organizations, but were headed or
largely influenced by national democratic activists. Such was the case especially in
“above-ground” literary organizations and publications that developed when many
more politically consolidated writers and activists went underground during the
Marcos years, such as the Galian sa Arte at Tula17 (Torres-Yu).
What is important to note here is that the theories and practices related to literary
production and criticism were bound up with the general demands in organizing
the masses. Going back to a previous point in relation to warfare, the armed
struggle is still in the strategic defensive stage until now—a stage preoccupied with
massive expansion despite the more dominant strength of reaction. This is why the
theories derived from the practices of early organizers way back from the 70’s such
as Lumbera, Sison, and the Guillermos, are still relevant today, because the current
demands in organizing are qualitatively the same.
However, this does not mean that nothing has been achieved, or that this
movement is running around in circles. In spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union
and China’s capitulation to capital, the movement persists and is still expanding,
despite repeated claims of the Philippine military to end it by a certain year. This
reflects even in the field of literary production and criticism; there are all sorts
of publications from the local, national, and international scales. There are also
several essays and books already giving surveys to various forms of cultural works
which I will not further list here.18
However, if we were to boil down the general directions for literary production
and criticism by Philippine national democrats based on the given circumstances
and demands of the struggle, these would concern themselves with (1) how to
engage social reality and the class struggle, (2) the widening of range and saturation
of progressive literature among the masses, and (3) the countering of the literature
of reaction.
As it pertains to engaging social reality and the class struggle, one interesting
theoretical contribution is, of course, Alice Guillermo’s preference for highlighting
social realism at a time when what was then left was mostly split between those
holding on to the tight socialist realism, or some form of avant garde art struggling
to bridge to the working class. Guillermo, following the line from Marx and Engels
to Mao, emphasizes the capturing of reality itself, no matter the form, through
the capturing of the class struggle itself. As she says: “social realism…is essentially
based on a keen awareness of conflict” (Social Realism in the Philippines 43).
This widening of the scope of politically relevant art, to the simple principle of
capturing or “crystallizing” the class struggle, regardless of form, corresponds to
the objective requirements of a struggle in the stage of massive expansion among
all progressive classes. Case in point is the answer to the question of developing
national literature. Of course, the project of a national literature is something that
even reactionaries are concerned with. However, the nationalism which national
democrats aspire to is anything which serves the interests of the majority of the
Filipino people. This is contrasted with and yet can intersect with a nation-building
project, “looking for what makes something Filipino,” which may devolve into to a
form of token-nationalism resulting in an abstract vision of “Filipino-ness,” which
obscures real, contemporary, and relevant Filipino realities (which has served the
interests of say, for example, the Marcosian project).
There are many ways to approach the nationalist and national literature issue,
which include the literati aligned with national democracy, but approach the issue
from other angles. Regardless of theoretical persuasions on the manner, practically
speaking, owing to the spread of national democratic forces in various forms of
struggle in different localities, a multitude of texts in multiple languages have been
published (some have been noted in an endnote), and this only refers to releases
of materials traditionally viewed as literature and literary criticism, and does not
even count all the texts being released, especially those coming from far flung
and underground places. If one seriously takes to work the necessity to expand
and saturate, the project of a literature with a national (beyond geopolitics but
pertaining to the people) and nationalist character could almost be said to be
immanent to a movement waging national liberation in an archipelago, amid the
late capitalist stage we find ourselves in.
But the most interesting aspect that pertains to the previous discussions is the
two-pronged approach when it comes to literary work and criticism in the city and
the countryside—something I call the revolutionary dual tactics in literary criticism.
It is the essence of applying the revolutionary class line in textual warfare, with the
orientation to raise the political consciousness of the masses through the grasping
of their realities. In gist, there is no universal standard for literary criticism aside
from the objective conditions and political goals which face the movement when
dealing with various social classes.
In the backward countryside of a semi-feudal country like the Philippines,

wherein majority of the population consists of a stratified peasantry (which includes
fisherfolk, national minorities, and settlers) who mostly have limited access to
higher education (read as: not as subject the academe’s canons and ideological
underpinnings), there is a wide space to create-fester a genuinely national, scientific,
and mass culture. Kris Montañez remarks:
From the backward countryside which in the course of the people’s war will be
transformed into revolutionary cultural bastions, the new poetry is being created by
peasant mass activists, cadres and Red fighters.19 (12)
Alongside the revolutionary literary production done in the countryside, there

have been underground cultural organizations such as Artista at Manunulat
ng Sambayanan (ARMAS ), which have produced modules on how to workshop
literature and theater, among others. In the literature module of ARMAS released
in 2005, they address the concept of revolutionary mass criticism, which is the
praxis and guiding principle to literary criticism among the masses and progressive
forces. It is primarily directed at “cadres, red fighters and cultural teams/squads of
the New People’s Army, Party elements, mass activists, and local cultural activists...
for the (literary) workshop of any national democratic cultural group in the cities
or the countryside.”20 The concept of revolutionary mass criticism (which we will
abbreviate into RMC ) pertains to the mass-oriented protocols for the criticism of
art and literature, based on the principles Mao had laid out in the Yenan forum (i.e.,
political and artistic criteria, effect over intent, and of course, serving the needs of
the people’s revolution by grasping the revolutionary class line and having a clear
view of the class struggle).
The heart of revolutionary mass criticism is the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist tool

of criticism-and-self-criticism. In ARMAS ’s words, this means that the critique of
texts produced by revolutionaries must be approached on principled, comradely,
and constructive grounds. It emphasized collective participation in the production
and appraisal of the texts, and combats noted petty bourgeois attitudes such as
individualism, careerism, one-upmanship, and having a “star complex.”
Through the heart of criticism-and-self-criticism, as well as mass participation,

the stated partisan objectives of Philippine revolutionary literature as that which
objectively helps the masses in their fight against imperialism, feudalism, and the
bureaucrats who gain from the system, becomes much more reiterated. Questions
in the workshop are not so insistent on a particular style or poetics. They do not
even require that the workshop moderators be “experts” in literature; being familiar
with certain forms, conventions, and examples is deemed sufficient. Just as for
Mao, criticism-and-self-criticism should be based on political and organizational
matters, and the primary emphasis seems to be based on the objective grip of the
class struggle, the lives of the masses and the class enemies, the ideas the readers
derived from it, and the ability of the text to complement mobilization.21 These
emphasize points laid out by Marx, Engels, and Lenin on partisan objectivity and
production towards the heightening of political consciousness to advance the
struggle.
As criticism is a double-sided appraisal, the type of criticism flourishing among

the basic masses and the revolutionaries (particularly in the countryside), is
contrasted with a more sharp-tongued critique in the urban centers—a praxis of
“counter-critique” that must develop. Situated in the heart where the ills of the nation
coincide, literary criticism here takes a less encouraging and creative approach, but
a more challenging and sometimes scathing one. This parallels Mao’s principles
(in the Yenan forum) of upholding the revolutionary class line in that progressive
literature must extol the masses and cadres sacrificing for the struggle, challenge
the relatively aligned, and expose-oppose-isolate the class enemies. Compared to
the more limited resources and accessibility issues of actual documents of literary
criticism in the countryside, there are scattered forms of criticism of texts by
national democrats in the cities (which is expanded if our understanding of text
extends beyond what is typically deemed “literary”).
There are many pieces of counter-critique exposing the limits, or in some cases,
the downright reactionary character of literature catered to the bourgeoisie. There
are ones coming out in official channels such as essays released in anthologies, but
also informal ones through social media. Of course, one cannot discount here the
works of Gelacio Guillermo (aka Kris Montañez), who was able to concurrently
give us a bird’s eye view of cultural production in the countryside, while also
sparring with the “court poets” (of the Marcos regime onwards), and other cultural
appendages of the people’s enemy. Of course, there is also Alice Guillermo, whose
work not only gives a nationalist direction in the field of art studies, but like the late
great Bienvenido Lumbera, puts into the spotlight (to appraise and or give value to)
Filipino artists and writers in the context of a historical movement of class struggle,
that bourgeois historiography in the service of the elite would have conversely
turned a blind eye to. Then, there is, of course, Edel Garcellano, who has written
much to expose the class struggle in text and theory, as well as the reactionary
character of the kingpins and “literary shitheads” of academia. These two, along
with their contemporaries, were not only able to spar with institutionalized literati
in the theoretical field, but more importantly, ground these onslaughts in concrete
political and practical consequences.22
This is especially important during the Post-EDSA period which fully erupted
in the 90’s, when some sections of the national democratic movement had clearly
splintered off into various politically irreconcilable positions, resulting in all sorts
of ideological debates.23 In the field of theory, this was a period of summing-up
experiences, assessment, engaging the emerging post-structuralist/neo-Marxist
trends, and re-affirming/rejecting the basic analysis and principles which the
Philippine left had more or less consolidated in the 60’s to 70’s. As for Garcellano’s
work, Caroline Hau said it best in her introduction to Knife’s Edge:
Garcellano is at pains to show how political discourse and practice are ideological is
the sense that they rest on naturalized assumptions about the way things are and the
way things ought to be, assumptions which actually encode ‘behaviors of interests’
specific to recognizable classes of people...This overarching concern with the ideological
underpinnings of public discourse runs through Garcellano’s essays on literature, the one
discipline that, in the hands of its mainstream “formalist” practitioners, has repeatedly
circumscribed the reach of the political through its denial of the contamination of the
literary by the political. (xv)
The dialectic of Garcellano’s work and position as a national democratic critic

within the confines of bourgeois academia (not without its tensions and “drama”)
highlights the difficult terrain of struggle, both practically in its economic and
interpersonal repercussions, as well as in the theoretical toughness required. This
toughness is not simply just to “know more” than the reactionaries, who just
so happen to be your colleagues as well, but in the acknowledgement that the
trading blows in the home court of the enemy is tiring and important work, but is
secondary to the more strategic need (yet also challenging in its own right) to build
up a proletarian culture in the state-abandoned but heavily militarized countryside

while fighting in a stage of mobile warfare.
In a dialectic turn, the importance of critique in and directed towards the center,
given the escalation of other conditions, has historically played the role of reversing
the flow of the population in concentrating in the cities by clarifying precisely that
the way onward is actually to go the countryside. In the seemingly aloof literary
field, the counter-critique demonstrated by Garcellano, his contemporaries, and
those who continue to follow suit, has been instrumental in drawing the line
between revolution, reaction, and those who spout democracy and change while at
the same time being agents of reaction. The double-use of criticism is the ability to
build up the masses’ strength and destroy the enemy’s. This is counter-posed to the
image of a critic who simply reviews texts which are essentially seen from the point
of view of a commodity for consumption by the “popular” (read as: the middle class
upwards) and the canonizing forces in the academe.
As mentioned, the art and literature tied to reactionary power are critiqued
not only formally by academics through their essays and books, but also through
various meme pages that have been relatively active in the past years. These pages
do not openly espouse national democratic goals based on their activity, nor do
they openly claim to be a part of the movement, but they are consistent in attacking
institutional literati for their reactionary stances and actions. As of the time of
writing, Pan Pil 101 Memes is one of the few remaining semi-active pages engaged
in this type activity.
This dual tactic of building up the basic masses’ capacity to produce and appraise
their revolutionized textual production, as well as the challenging (in both a non-
antagonistic and antagonistic manner) of the bourgeois assumptions and interests
in the appraisal of texts—which are already viewed in Lenin and Mao’s light as not
mere aestheticism but as matters of value to political education—synthesizes into
practice the major points discussed above.
As stated above, generally, the conditions of the struggle for national democracy
are observed to be still at the stage of building more strength, and thus the directions
and priorities that were set by the leading activists half a century ago retain their
relevance. While the general emphasis in producing and appraising works are in
(1) capturing the reality of class struggle, (2) increasing the range and saturation
of progressive and revolutionary works, and (3) counter-critique- all with the
Leninist-Maoist notion of literary work being crucial in the political education of
the masses and the movement, it is not as if no developments have happened to
fulfill these goals.
On the question of capturing the reality of the class struggle as how Engels
envisioned it, all the way to how Alice Guillermo wrote on social realism and
Mao’s revolutionary aesthetics for national liberation, there has been scholarship
revisiting and emphasizing the marching orders of the past half-century. Among
these we can count a few examples, such as Patrick Flores’ “Social Realism: The
Turns of a Term in the Philippines” (2013), Lisa Ito-Tapang’s “Visual Arts and
Activism in the Philippines: Notes on a New Season of Discontent” (2017), and
even the 2021 release of Jose Maria Sison’s Collected Writings on Culture (2021). No
more is this direction more fulfilled than the practical progress in the publishing of
a multitude of forms of literary, artistic, and overall cultural works and critiques by
national democrats and persons or publications leaning to it. Most of these have
already been listed in Sison’s overview of national democratic artistic production
from the 60’s to the present. Various sides of the social condition of the Philippines
are presented in various anthologies, films, and other more accessible forms for the
masses.
This brings us to the second concern: the expansion of range and saturation, not
just of literary works, but in Leninist fashion, in how it relates back to organizing.
It would be accurate to say that despite the internal splits and external repressions
which the various organizations espousing different forms of struggle for national
democracy have experienced, majority of the sectors, occupations, and interests
of the Filipino people have some national democratic organization targeted
toward them. However, when it comes to cultural and literary works, there are
both advancements and clear areas for improvement. In 2019, various cultural
organizations, national democrats among them, launched the Surian ng Sining
(SUSI ) as a non-government cultural institution for the development of arts and
literature for the development of society. Various alternative media outlets like
AlterMidya, Bulatlat, and Pinoy Weekly would still occasionally publish articles
giving cultural and literary critiques. SUSI is just one of the many new organizations,
alliances, and networks of artists formed in the crux of the national democratic
struggle during the Duterte regime. Among them are Sama-samang Artista para
sa Kilusang Agraryo (SAKA ), Artist Forces of the Philippines (AFP ), Respond
and Break the Silence Against the Killings (RESBAK ), Artista ng Rebolusyong
Pangkultura (ARPAK ), among the many other organizations that persisted such as
Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP ) , or have been revived such as Panday
Sining (which initially formed in the Marcos years but has been revived in the past
decade). One can clearly see the place of literary criticism in the more vibrant of
the organizations who utilize workshops in many genres in order to not only boost
the technical capacities of its members, but also to enjoin more to their ranks.
As for the underground revolutionary movement, social media accounts of

various CPP -NPA offices have sprung up to give direct news of incidents from
their respective areas. An issue of Ulos was released in 2016, made by underground
revolutionary cadres from the peasant and working classes of the Southern Tagalog
area. Films about the anti-fascist struggle of national minorities such as Tu Pug
Imatuy and other documentaries, film showing activities, and theater productions
(such as the musical version of Dekada ’70), among others, have popped up to bring
back to contemporary memory this nation’s history of revolutionary struggle. The
CPP Information Bureau has even developed its own video production unit in Sine
Proletaryo. However, as noted by De Lima herself in ”On the Pen and the Gun”:
There are more media channels available now and their use must be maximized. I
visited a lot of websites of mass organizations and discovered that the majority are not
updated, have scarce significant educational and propaganda materials, tend to be rather
parochial in their coverage of issues, and insipid and uninteresting. Even major NDF
member organizations only have Facebook pages with scarce content. We would expect
KM having millennials for its members to be internet savvy in reaching out to the youth
but it is not. Only some of its regional chapters have facebook accounts.
This leads us now to counter-critique and political education. On the general level,
most of the points of debate have technically been answered in the past, however,
the recent political situation has made these debates relevant again. One particular
instance of this is the notion of vandalism vis-à-vis protest art that began to re-
emerge online in 2018 but fully erupted again in 2019 with the arrest of members of
Panday Sining. Of course, even as early as Alice Guillermo, the category of protest
art has been a point which reactionaries have always fought back with the discourse
of vandalism.
In terms of counter-critique at institutional literature and its complicit nature

with the fascist state in recent times, there are the essays of Angelo Suarez in which
he shows that for art and poetry to serve the masses and rejuvenate itself, it must
“dismantle itself ” in the process of the revolution, in order to do away with the
bourgeois baggage which has plagued the craft since capital dominated social life.
Tilde Acuña keeps things in perspective by noting how in the grand scheme of
things, national democrats know that takedowns against bourgeois academia is
important, yet is a secondary task in achieving the decisive victory of the working-
class led masses. This maintains the same line of thought from Mao Zedong
elucidated by Kris Montañez in the need to prioritize the development of mass
culture in the struggle, while still engaging institutions of reaction.
SOME REMARKS MOVING FORWARD
While “political power grows from the barrel of a gun” and “the weapon of criticism
cannot replace the criticism of weapons,” we see literary theory and criticism as
important to the revolution not from the perspective of aestheticism, but for the
remolding and mobilizing of the masses. Matters of literature are not simply matters
of poetics, but the politics of the text itself, and how it factors in the reinforcing-
negating of certain subjectivities towards the advancement of revolution.
When we look at the national democratic movement, both with its activists
who advance the movement through parliamentarian democratic struggles, and
those who have embraced the people’s war, and how the enterprise of literature
(its production and appraisal) are connected to real embodied mobilization—
surpassing the view that it is sufficient to write progressively in order to enact
social change, we can see how the National Democratic Movement’s practice has,
in some ways, prefigured the theoretical positioning in literary theory, which calls
for the surpassing of analyzing a “work” and onto the myriad of texts that surround
us.
Of course, there are improvements that can be implemented in the fields of

both theorizing and actually practicing the general principles we have been
discussing thus far. But these can only be developed, assessed, and resolved by
the particular persons, organizations, and formations themselves in the process of
actual organizing and struggling. Just as Lu Xun’s notion of revolutionary literature
generally morphing as a movement seemed to be proven correct in light of China’s
experience, we can generally say that the theoretical and practical principles and
directions of Filipino national democrats will change as the struggle qualitatively
leaps to new conditions in the balance of forces. This does not mean to say that
all that is left is for national democrats in different fields of struggle to do is to
just “apply” what has already been said, for the fact that certain discourses which
were addressed in some fashion before retain their relevancy and mean that there
is reason to re-examine the past—to be able to see what problems continue today,
which can be resolved with their wisdom, and which are particular developments
in the present that will require ingenuity in theoretical investigation, research, and
practical work.
Just as Marx, Lenin, and Mao treated their writings not as the words of a god,
but as thought-out scientific prescriptions addressing social problems, the guiding
principles and directions in which literary criticism and the critic situate themselves
in a revolutionary movement will continue to develop throughout the course of the
struggle. It is not the finished doctrine of activists from the first quarter storm.
If anything, and in true dialectical spirit, the true task which confronts national
democrats is to advance theory and practical work to the point at which the work
of the past is rendered less relevant. True completion happens when it is negated
to a higher stage of development.
The task of radical writers and critics does not simply revolve around the planting
of ideas in its readers. The crucial points which revolutionary experience from Marx
to the Filipinos of the present are: (1) for texts to objectively condense and affect
the reader with the real class struggle, (2) the solitary process of writing-reading
must be incorporated in more collective processes towards the embodiment of
the radical ideals and the struggle against reactionary-liberal trends, (3) the need
to have a correct class standpoint which answers the question of how to posture
textual production and criticism vis-à-vis various elements (uplifting, challenging,
or opposing?). In the current context of the Philippine struggle, there is of course,
the added impetus of expanding the reach and saturation of literature and other
revolutionary texts towards the organizing and mobilizing of Filipinos until strategic
victory has been reached over imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism.
However, to achieve any of these, the critic must first embrace a partisanship in the
class struggle which grounds the basis for critical discourse in the first place.
Hence, it is fitting to end this in the same way it began, with Garcellano’s
uncovering of the belligerent conditions in which Filipino critics, especially those
who espouse liberation and democracy, find themselves in: “In a time of war,
criticism partakes of the urgency of partisan deployment” (“The Filipino as Critic”
249).
The revolutionary critic/writer/artist is first a revolutionary whose arsenal just

so happens to include critique/writing/art. It is a trick of the bourgeoisie, which
they repeat in their institutions, that one assumes the role of critic before posturing
to be a revolutionary.
Notes
1. While the struggle of Lenin and Mao against the one-sided emphasis on
economic struggle and technical development is spread throughout their works,
we could drive the point against economic determinism further in Engels:
Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is
based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also
upon the economic base. It is not that the economic position is the cause and alone
active, while everything else only has a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on
the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself...So it is not...
that the economic position produces an automatic effect. Men make their history
themselves, only in given surroundings which condition it and on the basis of actual
relations already existing, among which the economic relations, however much they
may be influenced by the other political and ideological ones, are still ultimately the
decisive ones... (“Engels to Borgius”)
2. For a more detailed analysis, see Guerrero’s Philippine Society and Revolution
part 3 (1970).
3. One could read Joshua Moufawad-Paul’s Critique of Maoist Reason to get a
general survey of this (Moufawad-Paul).
4. See the Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution (CPP , 1968) as well as
Part 4 of Guerrero’s Philippine Society and Revolution (1970).
5. This notion of network-ensembles closely resembles the way Foucault uses
the word “discourse” and “episteme.” However, these terms are things which
I cannot fully operationalize on the grounds that I don’t fully subscribe to the
Foucaldian baggage that these discourses and epistemes develop contingently
and discontinuously in a one-sided fashion. I think it is a series of chaos-order
and continuity-rupture, a thought which needs further elaboration in itself, but
I believe this not to be the present task at the moment.
6. A similar line of argument can be found in Penelope Murray and Peter Wilson’s
Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City (2009),
wherein they expand on how the Greek concept of Mousike which included
song, dance, performance, and rituals from the personal to the communal;
which varies from that which we now conceptualize as music..
7. There are arguments as made by Rens Bod in the previously referenced A New
History of the Humanities, in which one can see similarities in the concerns or
problems per discipline from Western antiquity to the early modern period
(such as determining word forms/sentence structures in linguistics, how to
compose a poetic work in poetics, or constructing convincing argumentation
in rhetoric). Whether one chooses to believe this or not (seeing that it can
sound a bit too general), Bod still thinks that there was a development (which
he calls “progress” with reservations) in terms of the latter period’s capacity to
solve problems in that particular field (Bod 352-63).
8. Even in fields like music theory, scholars have begun to uncover how the writings
of Heinrich Schenker, an Austrian music theorist influential to Western music
theory itself, had used the German “greats,” which was tied to his vision of
evoking the greatness of the German people, notwithstanding his racist views
and justification of colonialism (Neely).
9. See Ellen Meiksins Wood’s discussion on Locke, the discourse of improvement,
and agrarian capitalism in Wood’s The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View
(2002).
10. In “On Protracted War”, Mao Zedong outlines these three major strategic
stages for revolutionary warfare in a semi-feudal society. In simple terms, the
strategic defensive stage is qualitatively characterized by the relative weakness
of revolutionaries compared to the reactionary state. The goal here is for
revolutionaries to continue to expand while avoiding unfavorable engagements
with the enemy, instead opting for mobile/guerrilla warfare and tactical
offensives. This is generally the longest stage of the three stages. At a certain
point, a relative equilibrium of forces will be reached, entering the strategic
stalemate stage, wherein revolutionaries must assess whether to retreat to an
advanced substage of strategic defense or forward to the last stage, strategic
offensive. In the last stage, the revolutionary army engages in decisive combat
against the reactionary armed forces, capturing strategic areas and liberating
cities along the way until victory (Mao, “On Protracted War”).
11. Lenin says in the same text: “Calm yourselves, gentlemen! First of all, we are
discussing party literature and its subordination to party control. Everyone
is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions” (“Party
Organization and Party Literature”).
12. Two quotes will suffice here:
“Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism; the publication
of the appropriate scientific literature, which the autocratic feudal government has
hitherto strictly forbidden and persecuted, must now form one of the fields of our
Party work. We shall now probably have to follow the advice Engels once gave to the
German Socialists: to translate and widely disseminate the literature of the eighteenth-
century French Enlighteners and atheists” (Lenin, “Socialism and Religion”).
“It is particularly important to utilise books and pamphlets which contain many
concrete facts and comparisons showing how the class interests and class
organisations of the modern bourgeoisie are connected with the organisations of
religious institutions and religious propaganda” (Lenin, “On the Significance of
Militant Materialism”).
13. “Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and
remains so as long as men exist at all” (Marx, “The German Ideology”).
“Ideas do not exist outside of language” (Marx, “Grundrisse”).
14. “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is
not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth
— i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The
dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice
is a purely scholastic question” (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”).
15. See Lenin On Proletarian Culture (1920).
16. The CPP ’s program for the cultural field as per the 2016 constitution:
01. Wage mass campaigns to develop a national, scientific, and mass culture responsive
to the needs and aspirations of Filipino people and against imperialist and feudal
control and influence over the educational system, mass media and other cultural
institutions
02. Cherish the national heritage and propagate Filipino or Pilipino as the national
language and principal medium of instruction and official communications and the
local languages for the benefit of the masses
03. Build a new democratic system of education and mass media and reorient and
reeducate the teachers and students, the professionals and the entire people on the
need to develop Philippine society in (an) all-around way.
04. Promote the people’s democratic line in the study and practice of the social sciences,
natural sciences, arts and letters, law, medicine, engineering and other fields
of study and stress the need for harnessing science and technology for national
industrialization, agricultural modernization and development and balanced
development of the Philippine economy and protection of the environment. Develop
of the spirit of cooperativism among the peasantry.
05. Respect the freedom of thought and belief, use patient persuasion in gathering
support for the people’s democratic revolution and promote the united front of
proletarian revolutionaries and progressive liberals in the intellectual field.
06. Support the progressive movements and actions among students, teachers, and all
intellectuals for better study, creative and living conditions, for a higher educational
and cultural level, and for greater intellectual freedom.
07. Wage mass campaigns to fight for free education at all levels and to wipe out illiteracy
and superstition among the masses and promote the scientific and revolutionary
spirit among them.
08. Encourage the development of progressives within the religious institutions, prevent
such institutions (especially the dominant church) from becoming an effective tool
of US imperialism and big comprador-landlord interests and combat Christian
chauvinism against the Bangsamoro and other national minorities.
09. Wage relentless mass campaigns to expose and oppose every scheme of the US to
use its direct agencies, US -controlled multilateral agencies and third countries to
perpetuate and aggravate US imperialist dominance in Philippine education and
culture.
10. Develop scientific health care through the promotion of health education, general
sanitation, prevention of illnesses, sports, physical education and activity especially
among the youth. (CPP , 2016)
17. GAT ’s history would be quite controversial for some who are aware of the
history of some of its members such as national artist Virgilio Almario, who
despite his calls for literature for the people since his PAKSA days, had flipped
over to the Marcos regime when he joined the Coalition of Writers and Artists
for Freedom and Democracy (Tan 2018).
18. Jose Maria Sison delivered a speech entitled Revolutionary Literature
and Art in the Philippines, From the 1960’s to the Present, which devotes
a section to the various cultural productions and anthologies born from
the National Democratic Movement, either by national democratic
activists, or from unaffiliated artists who engaged the movement to some
degree. The transcript can be accessed here: https://josemariasison.org/
revolutionary-literature-and-art-in-the-philippines-from-the-1960s-to-the-
present.
19. Moñtanez’s The New Mass Art and Literature is a much more detailed survey
into the types of revolutionary artistic and literary productions done especially
in the countryside.
20. Translation is mine. The original is: “Ito’y para sa mga kadre, Pulang
mandirigma at tim o iskwad-pangkultura ng Bagong Hukbong Bayan; mga
elemento ng Partido, aktibistang masa, at yunit ng mga aktibista sa kultura
sa lokalidad. Ang mga modyul ay maaari ring iangkop para sa palihan ng
mga pambansa-demokratikong grupong pangkultura sa kanayunan man o
kalunsuran” (ARMAS 5).
21. The main questions are as follows:
01 Ano ang paksa? Sinasalamin ba ng likha ang ating paninindigan hinggil sa partikular
na paksa o isyu? Sino ang target na awdyens sa likha? Angkop ba ang paksa sa
awdyens?
02 Kung ipinapakita ng likha ang tunggalian sa pagitan ng naghahari at
pinagsasamantalahang uri, wasto ba ang pagsasalarawan sa masa (bilang tagapaglikha
at bayani)? Paano isinalarawan ang naghaharing uri?
03 Kung ipinapakita nito ang tunggalian sa hanay ng mamamayan, paano nasasalamin ng
likha ang ating makauring linya? Mapagkaisa at diantagonisko ba ang pagsasalarawan
sa relasyon ng mga aping uri?
04 Anu-ano ang mga ideya na iniiwan nito sa awdyens? May mga maling ideya o
kaisipan bang matatagpuan sa likha? Inilalantad ba o kinukunsinti ang mga maling
ideyang ito?
05 Nakakatulong ba ang likha upang pagkaisahin at pakilusin ang sambayanan (o ang
awdyens na target o pinatutungkulan ng likha) (ARMAS 53).
22. To do a close reading of these various essays that spread in out many publications
and collections would take up more space than needed to get to the general
orientation of these works, but it should not take away the fact that these works
are, in fact, more than worth reading for how they were able to clarify positions
at the time.
23. Of course there are more scholars, writers, and activists who have contributed
directly and indirectly to discourses on language, literature, society, and social
change in the Philippines. Among these are Elmer A. Ordoñez and Monico
Atienza, among others.
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The Place of Literary Criticism in The Marxist Leninist Maoist Praxis of The Philippine National Democratic Movement

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The Place of Literary Criticism in The Marxist Leninist Maoist Praxis of The Philippine National Democratic Movement

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Espejo / The Place of Literary Criticism in the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Praxis 576

THE PLACE OF LITERARY CRITICISM

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 576–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

About the Author

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 577–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

The importance of struggle in ideological-theoretical matters is something that

This contradictory (dialectical) manner of Marxist thought and the praxis of

The key to understanding practical dialectical thought, which in this case is

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 578–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

Hence, in this essay, I attempt to locate the position of criticism, particularly of

Why the Philippine National Democratic Movement? The general political

As to the experience of these revolutions, it is clear for national democrats that

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 579–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

is precisely the exploitative imperialism of foreign capital destroying the lives of

It is our goal to hopefully see general traces of continuously effective principles

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 580–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

LITERARY CRITICISM & CLASS STRUGGLE

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 581–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 582–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

Historically, this entanglement between literary-aesthetic theory-criticism and

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 583–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

needed to mark all sorts of labor as property in a commodity-producing society,

It is no wonder then, that Garcellano sums it up best by saying: “Antagonism in

Of course, US imperialism did not come here to “enlighten” their “brown

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 584–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

The consequences of (monopoly-capitalism) imperialism’s marriage to feudalism

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LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE REVOLUTION

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 586–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

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Namely, that part of having a “faithful portrayal of the real conditions” is to

Having struggled to settle theoretical and practical issues in organizing a

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 588–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 589–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

interconnectedness of society). Truly radical philosophy and theory—these are

In the Yenan forum, Mao contributed several practical points to consider in

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 590–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 591–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

The relationship between sensing and making sense of something towards

The notion of the embodiment of political education towards the remolding of

In returning to Lenin’s “On Party Organization and Party Literature” by dispelling

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By maintaining political unity and consolidation in the realm of literary

Now, as stated previously, for the Philippine national democratic movement’s

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In fact, early in the development of the National Democratic Movement, the

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In the backward countryside of a semi-feudal country like the Philippines,

Alongside the revolutionary literary production done in the countryside, there

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The heart of revolutionary mass criticism is the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist tool

Through the heart of criticism-and-self-criticism, as well as mass participation,

As criticism is a double-sided appraisal, the type of criticism flourishing among

Kritika Kultura 39 (2022): 597–610 © Ateneo de Manila University

The dialectic of Garcellano’s work and position as a national democratic critic

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up a proletarian culture in the state-abandoned but heavily militarized countryside

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As for the underground revolutionary movement, social media accounts of

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In terms of counter-critique at institutional literature and its complicit nature

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Espejo / The Place of Literary Criticism in the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Praxis 576

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