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Draft Dissertation Proposal (PhD Southeast Asian Studies)

Imagine(d) Democracy:

A Marxist-Dependency Theory Critique of the Philippine Development Plan

(2011-2016) Towards an Alternative People-Centered Agenda

David Michael M. San Juan May 2012

More than 100 years after Philippine independence was declared, a great

majority of Filipinos remain poor. According to the National Statistical

Coordination Board (NSCB), the poverty incidence among families in 2003, 2006

and 2009 is as follows: 20%; 21.1%; and 20.9%. In real terms, the magnitude of

poor families is as follows for the said years: 3,293,096; 3,670,791; and

3,855,730. Meanwhile, the number of poor citizens has steadily increased too

from 2003 to 2009: 19,796,954; 22,173,190; and 23,142,481. Arguably, such

poverty figures are too conservative, considering that the official annual per

capita poverty threshold (the yearly income that is purportedly needed to cover

all basic non-food and food expenses of each citizen) of the Philippine

government is surprisingly very low: 10,976 pesos in 2003; 13,348 in 2006 and

16,841 in 2009. These figures translate to merely 30.07 pesos; 36.57 pesos; and

46.14 pesos a day, respectively. Comparing Philippine development to the

progress of other countries, the country’s underdevelopment all the more

becomes obvious. In the past years, the country’s rank in the United Nations’

Human Development Index – a holistic tool for assessing progress in terms of

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income, health and education – has steadily declined. The generally sliding

position of the country in the Human Development Index throughout the decades

is very patent if the following years and ranks are to be scrutinized: 1990 - 66;

1991 – 84; 1992-80; 1993 – 92; 1994 – 99; 1995 – 100; 2000 – 77; 2005 – 95;

2009 – 96; 2010 – 97; 2011 – 112.

While many of our people suffer from extreme destitution, we have at least

six dollar-billionaires and a number of peso-billionaires, according to data from

Forbes.com (2011), “a leading source for reliable business news and financial

information. Read news, politics, economics, business & finance.” The Philippine

government seems to have failed in reversing the unjust status quo. High-quality

education, which can empower the poor, is not a priority in the national budget.

Hence, conservative scions of rich political dynasties (which are by the way

banned under Article II, Section 26 of the Philippine Constitution) are able to

monopolize political power without any strong challenge from the marginalized

sectors. This is why an enabling law for the Constitution’s anti-dynasty provision

gathers dust in the archives of Congress. The elite’s monopoly on political power

cements their dominance of the moribund Philippine economy.

Industrialization schemes have been abandoned since the 1960s and

thus, a great number of its people continue to depend on subsistence farming as

a main source of living, despite the First World facade of some cities such as

Makati, Manila, Davao and Cebu. The economy is kept afloat by billions of

dollars in remittances poured in annually by Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs),

almost literally from Albania to Zimbabwe. The income gaps between the rich

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minority and the poor majority keeps on widening, as attested by the country’s

dismal Gini coefficient figure (the worst in Southeast Asia, in recent years), while

the thin middle class is slowly decimated by the lack of inclusive economic

growth.

Meanwhile, economic pundit Kevin Voigt (2012) in an article posted at the

CNN website predicted that “(b)y 2050, the Philippines will leapfrog 27 places to

become the world’s 16th largest economy.” Currently, the Philippines is plagued

by a relatively weak political system yet it is naturally gifted with bountiful

resources which if effectively harnessed will transform the zone into the new

“rapid growth region,” and eventually fulfill Voigt’s surprising “prophecy.” While

this Southeast Asian country has the potentials to be a zone of rapid progress

and development, it remains one of Asia’s politically unstable and economically

anemic countries. It superficially adheres to republican democracy but a tiny

minority of rich landlords and businessmen controls virtually every institution from

churches to schools and from government agencies to huge corporations,

compelling some academics such as Benedict Anderson (1988) to label the

country’s political system as a “cacique democracy.”

The current regime seems to be the epitome of such “elite-led

democracy.” The current president, Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Cojuangco Aquino

III, comes from the powerful Cojuangco clan that includes billionaire-

businessmen. The president’s running mate in the 2010 elections, Manuel “Mar”

Roxas II comes from the Araneta-Roxas clan. All senators are multi-millionaires.

The House of Representatives is also a virtual millionaires’ club: only seven

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members are not millionaires. Even the current cabinet of the Aquino

administration is a millionaires’ club, with Bro. Armin Luistro, FSC, of the

Department of Education as the only non-millionaire! To cement the “marriage”

of politics and the economy, rich businessmen usually donate money to political

parties. Once in power, elected officials usually become subservient to those who

gave them campaign funds.

Ironically, these elite clans have failed to craft and implement a feasible

development agenda that would bring progress to all or at least, most Filipinos.

They have perpetuated the neocolonial status of the Philippine economy by

refusing to engage in industrialization and genuine land reform and agricultural

modernization. Regime after regime, officials have implemented deregulation,

privatization, labor flexibilization and trade liberalization, as prescribed by large

multinational financial agencies that seem to call the shots in the country, behind

the scenes (Lichauco, 1988 and 2005; Bello, 2006; Constantino, 1995; Salgado,

1985, 1997 and 2009; Pomeroy, 1992; Sison, 2006). To prevent the academe

from mounting a strong challenge to these schemes which hamper Philippine

development, the education sector has been molded in accordance with the

interests of the ruling class in cahoots with the country’s neocolonial masters

(Villegas, 2007). To stop the people from seriously taking up the path of armed

rebellion, “Band-aid” solutions such as the conditional cash transfer (CCT)

program have become the government’s trademark in the past decades.

In the meantime, millions of Filipinos endure hunger and poverty. Data

from the 2009 Official Poverty Statistics released by the National Statistical

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Coordination Board (NSCB) gives us an idea on such wide disparity between the

richest and the poorest sectors of our society. According to the NSCB’s 2009

Official Poverty Statistics, people in the poorest sector had an average monthly

per capita income of P9,681 while people in the richest segment had an average

monthly per capita income of P184,997 pesos (more than 19 times the poorest

sector’s average income)! Comparing 2006 and 2009 data, there has been no

significant change.

Such lack of progress for all citizens is a symptom of the country’s

dependence on foreign loans and investments. The country’s vast natural

resources are not utilized for local industrialization to provide jobs for Filipinos.

Instead, foreign firms and their local subsidiaries monopolize these rich

resources, most of the times exporting our resources at terribly cheap prices. As

a result, unemployment and underemployment rates in the country remain high.

Those who have skills and talents are compelled by the circumstances to seek

overseas employment. Progress becomes even more elusive. Amidst these

troubled times, common folks clamor for genuine social transformation.

In response to the people’s clamor for sweeping socio-economic reforms,

the Aquino regime has presented the Philippine Development Plan (2011-2016)

as the supposed final remedy to the country’s festering problems. Unfortunately,

this early, various non-government organizations and even progressive think

tanks such as Ibon Foundation (2012), have criticized the PDP 2011-2016 as a

rehashed version of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime’s Medium-Term Philippine

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Development Plan (2004-2010) which apparently failed to ameliorate the over-all

socio-economic status of the majority.

Nevertheless, hope springs eternal. Progressive non-government

organizations and party list groups formed by those among the marginalized

sectors are in the forefront of the endeavors to transform Philippine society.

These groups, such as the Makabayang Koalisyon ng Mga Mamamayan

(Makabayan) espouse alternative socio-economic programs first disseminated in

2010 which aim to democratize the political institutions and economic processes

so as to provide genuine progress to all citizens. They campaign for a

comprehensive debt audit and moratorium on automatic debt appropriation that

depletes the country’s national budget. A comprehensive debt audit would

provide the necessary proof on the huge amounts of onerous loans acquired by

corrupt leaders — loans which need not be paid. Meanwhile, debt moratorium

will enable the country to have huge savings which could be invested to

jumpstart land reform and industrialization.

Land reform will ensure self-sufficiency in rice and other food crops, which

of course is necessary for the well-being of the country’s labor force and other

citizens. Land reform will produce huge agricultural surplus which can be utilized

in providing raw materials for Philippine industries. Everything that is needed for

industrialization, from minerals to raw food materials are in the country. Hence,

industrialization is a must. It would instantly wipe out unemployment in the

country. Acquiring capital to industrialize is the only problem, and a temporary

moratorium on debt payments, which lots of formerly developing countries have

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adopted and helped them achieve First World status in just a few years, is the

only feasible option.

Unfortunately, few academic endeavors put emphasis on the merits of

these alternative development plans. Most of the times, the top echelons of the

academe serve as the prophets and protectors of the current neocolonial set up.

Indeed, in recent decades, very few theses and dissertations in the Philippines

have been written to explicitly critique the prevailing economic model and to

propose a radically different framework. Hence, there is a pressing need to

produce new research that would shed light on the feasibility of alternative

development programs which might wipe out poverty in the Philippines without

much foreign intervention and elite control that have characterized the country’s

system in the past decades.

This proposed dissertation is aimed at producing a critique of the

Philippine Development Plan (2011-2016) towards crafting an alternative people-

centered agenda. Through the aid of documentary analysis, comprehensive

literature review and secondary data analysis, the current study will conduct a

Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats/SWOT analysis towards crafting

an alternative post-neocolonial socio-economic program for the country relevant

and responsive to the needs of the common folks. In a nutshell, this study will

prove that the country’s past decades under capitalist-neoliberal globalization –

which are replicated by the vision laid out in the Philippine Development Plan

(2011-2016) – are scenes in an “imagined democracy” which failed in its promise

to bring progress to everyone, and that hope springs eternal for it is still possible

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to “imagine democracy” as it should be by crafting an alternative people-centered

development agenda for the country.

Conceptually, this research is guided by the Marxist theory of capitalist

exploitation, and the Dependency Theory of neocolonialism which originated in

Latin America and gained prominence in the Third World in the past decades.

Marxist theorists assert that the current capitalist system exploits majority of

mankind and thus it is responsible for the marginalization of the masses,

especially the proletarian class in industrialized countries and including the

peasant class in semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries such as the Philippines.

Meanwhile, ideologues of the Dependency Theory hold that industrialized

countries in the Global North oppress and exploit the countries in the Global

South through economic neocolonialism. Hence, the strengths and weaknesses

of the Philippine Development Plan (2011-2016) will be scrutinized as to how it

contributed to or reduced the marginalization of the common folks in particular,

and how it strengthened or weakened the economic hegemony of big foreign

corporations and their local partners in the Philippines.

In view of the current international crisis of capitalism and its ideological

framework labeled as “neoliberalism,” there is a pressing need to veer away from

traditional frameworks and go back to more progressive research frameworks

that challenge the prevailing (yet fast-crumbling) world views that constitute

capitalism and neoliberalism. As social critic and Prof. Slavoj Žižek (2012) says,

there are “…signs that the capitalist system itself is no longer able to find any

level of self-regulated stability…” Thus, the use of Marxist Theory and

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Dependency Theory – despite the seeming academic boycott of researchers in

neocolonial countries such as the Philippines against such radical theories – for

this particular research, in this particular time frame is necessary.

Indeed, even First World academics are now arguing in favor of reviving

Marxist Theory and Dependency Theory as tools of analysis. In a popular article

titled “Thoroughly Modern Marx: Lights. Camera. Action. Das Kapital. Now.,”

York University in Toronto Prof. Leo Panitch (2009) asserts that “(t)he economic

crisis has spawned a resurgence of interest in Karl Marx. Worldwide sales of Das

Kapital have shot up (one lone German publisher sold thousands of copies in

2008, compared with 100 the year before), a measure of a crisis so broad in

scope and devastation that it has global capitalism -- and its high priests -- in an

ideological tailspin.” Meanwhile, Jonathan Glennie (2012), a research fellow in

the United Kingdom-based Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure (CAPE) says

that “…whether or not one believes the (Dependency) (T)heory to be relevant to

today's globalised economy, it is an important lens when trying to understand our

collective history. The fact that some countries seem to be breaking out of the

dependency trap does not mean that a trap never existed…It is worth noting that

the shining stars of mobility, China and India, maintain significant levels of

protection and market distortions and have never engaged in the kind of shock

liberalization, cuts in public spending and generalized privatization that have left

less fortunate countries, including most of sub-Saharan Africa, in such dire

straits.”

Specifically, this research aims to answer the following questions:

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1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Philippine Development

Plan (2011-2016), using the Marxist Theory of capitalist exploitation and

the Dependency Theory of neocolonialism as lenses?

2. What opportunities for social transformation do the Philippine

Development Plan (2011-2016) brings to the country?

3. Within the context of the aforementioned analysis, what parts of the

Philippine Development Agenda must be retained; what parts must be

scrapped; what other reforms must be adopted to formulate an alternative

people-centered development agenda?

4. What are the threats or hindrances to the implementation of this

alternative people-centered development agenda?

Preliminary Bibliography:

Anderson, Benedict. “Cacique Democracy and the Philippines: Origins and

Dreams.”New Left Review 169 (May–June 1988): 3–33.

Bello, Walden et al. The Anti-development state: the political economy of

permanent crisis in the Philippines. 2009. Pasig City: Anvil.

Constantino, Renato. The Nationalist Alternative. 1984. Foundation For

Nationalist Studies.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. 2001. London: Penguin.

Forbes Magazine Online. Philippines’ 40 Richest. 22 June 2011. Web. 08

May 2012.

< http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/86/philippines-billionaires-11_land.html>

Glennie, Jonathan. “Dependency theory – is it all over now?” The Guardian. 01

March 2012. Web. 08 May 2012.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/mar/01/do-not-

drop-dependency-theory>

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Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Quintin Hoare and

Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds. and trans.). 1971. New York: International

Publishers.

Ibon Foundation. “Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016: A Social Contract

With Whom?” Ibon Foundation Online. 22 June 2011. Web. 08 May 2012.

Lichauco, Alejandro. Hunger, Corruption and Betrayal: A Primer on U.S.

Neocolonialism and the Philippine Crisis. 2005. Manila: Citizen’s

Commitee on the National Crisis. 13-15; 71

________________. Nationalist Economics. 1988. Quezon City: Institute for

Rural Industrialization, Inc. 250-268; 127-129

________________. Towards A New Economic Order and The Conquest of

Mass Poverty. 1986. Quezon City.

Marx, Karl at Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1998. London:

ElecBook.

Panitch, Leo. “Thoroughly Modern Marx: Lights. Camera. Action. Das Kapital.

Now.” Foreign Policy. 15 April 2009. Web. 08 May 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/mar/01/do-not-drop-dependency-theory>

Pomeroy, William. The Philippines: colonialism, collaboration, and resistance.

1992. USA: International Publishers Co., Inc. 91-93

Salgado, Pedro. Second Edition: Social Encyclicals: Commentary and Critique.

1997. Manila: Lucky Press, Inc. 132; 384-385

_____________. The Philippine Economy: History and Analysis. 1985. R.P.

Garcia Pub. Co

_____________. The Social Problem and Revolution. 2009.

Sison, Jose Maria. Philippine Society and Revolution. 2006. Manila: Aklatang

Bayan.

Villegas, Edberto. “Liberalism, Neoliberalism and the Rise of Consumerist

Education.” Mula Tore Patungong Palengke: Neoliberal Education in the

Philippines. Eds. Bienvenido Lumbera, Ramon Guillermo and Arnold

Alamon. 2007. Quezon City: Ibon Philippines. 19-30.

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Voigt, Kevin. “World’s top economies in 2050 will be...” CNN International

Edition. 12 January 2012. Web. 14 January 2012. <http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/12/worlds-top-economies-in-2050-will-be/>

Žižek, Slavoj. “The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie.” London Review of Books

Online. 11 January 2012. Web. 14 January 2012. <http://www.lrb.co.uk/2012/01/11/slavoj-zizek/the-revolt-of-the-salaried-bourgeoisie>