The Gardener gave the following address at the July 1, 2014 Seminar Session(8 a.m. to 12 noon) at the NCCP Building, Edsa, Quezon City
Brothers and Sisters in the National Council of Churches of Korea, and Brothers and sisters all in the National Council of Churches of the Philippines:
PART IV
The Development of Underdevelopment
In the world today, the countries of the Industrial North (including the “Trilateral Countries” of North America, Japan and Europe) tend to dominate, exploit, and actively underdevelop and, therefore, impoverish the Agricultural and Primitive South through global corporate economic and political interference. This is clearly a case of actively pursuing the very negative part of Matthew Chapter 25.
In present-day Philippines, the massive poverty keenly felt by the majority populace is essentially traceable to the arrested development or, to use another phrase, the underdevelopment of the Philippine economy, i.e. its dependence on a backward kind of agricultural mode that fails to provide a strong basis for genuine industrial development – starting with rural industrialization.
In the Philippines, the word “underdeveloped” is not a mere adjective; it is, quite accurately, the past tense of an active verb.
This is in fact one major reason why many of our people fail to become richer or less poor: the absence of conditions for economic development and for the creation of new wealth. These conditions include the necessary infrastructure, access to credit or capital, technology and markets. They are conditions that must encourage or even push a leap from a purely primitive agricultural to a rural industrial mode of production (from First to Second Wave, in our vocabulary in this essay) and even link up further to a still newer mode of production which we will discuss briefly in a while (the Third Wave).
But let it be clear right now: Absent growth with equity, (and equity, remember, is the moral dimension of it all –) in short, absent just concepts, practices and institutions – all the social programs one can think of will merely redound to a tragicomic socialism of poverty and inevitably fail to bring about prosperity for the many.
Our culture is terribly damaged. Deleterious traits ranging from personal individualism to family-centered exclusivism hinder the attainment of the common good. And at the core of our multi-systemic malaise is the political system of our present world that has become extremely dysfunctional. Seemingly unchangeable on account of its being the tradition of the decades, this “traditional politics” of our particular world merely worsens our economic, social, cultural and environmental ills. In our most desperate moments people could only pray ever so hard for better and more sincere leaders. It becomes very tempting just to pray like the people of old, “Oh, Yahweh! Give us a King, a very good King.”
But it has been the same down the decades the past century: given the ownership structures of the means of production, the wealthy and socially influential always end up gaining direct or indirect control of state power and holding captive the branches and agencies of government to further their private individual or family interests with very little or no regard for the common good. Often they do this with effective collaboration and assistance of merely profiteering foreign interests, and just as often with justifications from the religio-cultural leaders of society in the churches and academia.
So, our mission is clear. It has been the same for quite a while now. It is quite a challenge to perseverance and tenacity, reminding one of the biblical line: “only they who persevere to the end will be saved.”
Quo vadis, Philippines? We can’t go on in the same direction where each time we need political change we have to either shoot our self in the foot with protracted parliaments of the street or wait even longer for the next election now made even more dubious by “Hocus PCOS”[1] – when most other competitor countries simply make a motion of no confidence and bring about regime change – as often as possible, if need be.
Public trust in both administration and opposition has hit rock bottom. How, then, can Tweedledum or Tweedledee ever hope for real public support? And now it’s not only they but the very media that report on them which are perceived and denounced as corrupt and untrustworthy. What a problem we’ve got – one historically designed for the most dedicated Christian-inspired change-makers.[2]
Organize!
Everybody knows that democracy is nothing if the many do not assert themselves. Of course. The ruling and rich few never part with their privileges voluntarily. Whenever they’ve done so, they did so because of pressures coming from the power of the many – from social democracy.
Therefore, to achieve social democracy, and abrogate any semblance of a master-slave relationship in a given society and thus eliminate oligarchy and mass poverty, it is not the exploiters but, rather the exploited, the poor and the disadvantaged who, ironically, must bear the greater challenge for the liberation of both sides from the existing unjust structures. To achieve a new order from out of the old, it is the power of the poor which is the bearer of the new. Hence, the Christian formula: organize! Enliven the living body of Christ, cell by cell, tissue by tissue, organ by organ till we truly become one feeling organism moving together in pursuit of God’s will and His kingdom of justice and peace.
The myriad numbers of small farmers and labourers have one clear advantage in the society’s power equation – there are so many of them. In society which is founded on and maintained by the principle of democracy, the social sector which has the most numbers should be the most heard and followed. But is it? Not necessarily – because the advantage of numbers is clearly a conditional advantage. And the condition is social organization.
If the many remain divided, isolated from one another, and disorganized, the following will continue to happen: the ruling few will dominate the many, use them as cheap labor, exploit them in benefits-sharing, transmute them into a bought army of voters who constitute the silenced majority of a formal democracy, systematically deny them access to the capital and patrimony of the nation, and then mis-represent them in all the affairs of state, effectively to pursue policies and programs which militate against their welfare and interests.
Needed: A New Christian Social Initiative
We need a social initiative, a team of leaders or change makers, and a program that concretely expresses and pursues the vision of a morally upright, frugally prosperous, healthy and educated country.
This initiative must draw out participants from all parts of the country and from all sectors of the population: the Christian churches, the Islamic communities, other faith communities, the indigenous peoples, the democratic political and social groups and movements, government bureaucracy, academia, the scientific community, business, the professions, civic organizations, the media, artists, the military and police forces.
We do not only need a new leader but a team of leaders of a new kind, who will embody and elicit the conscience, character and competence of our people and facilitate their consensus to pursue a common vision and program. We need a team of leaders who will help us overcome our weaknesses and build up and apply our strengths.
The formation of this new breed of leaders should be rooted in the life and aspirations of our people, particularly of the farmer, fisher folk and worker masses, the middle class, patriotic businesspersons, bureaucrats and the uniformed services. They will emerge from or be linked with authentically democratic political parties and social movements.
They must seek to imbue people with love of country, patriotism as shown in their proven readiness to risk life, health, and property so that our nation may survive and our people may enjoy freedom, justice, security and prosperity.
This new breed will be guided and inspired by an authentically humanist world view and embody the religiously plural character of Philippine society.
They/we should build a national consensus, based on the people’s deep and widespread desire for change, to affirm the novum as our shared vision, and mobilize the various areas and sectors towards a non-violent, democratic struggle to pursue all manner of reforms anchored on the primacy of an informed conscience and thus enable our people to freely build the Next Economy, a New Politics and a New Philippine culture based on the values of the Good Samaritan and Matthew 25.
This has been a long disquisition. Thanks so very much and good day!
[1] What many consider the electronic cheating machines of the Commission on elections…
[2] This is a big topic in itself which we will not go into in-depth right now.