Classes and the evolution of society

WRITTEN BY PAUL YANG-ED

ILLUSTRATED BY JON BONIFACIO

WHAT DO WE MEAN when we say that a person belongs to a “class”? Does it mean that she is a person who attends a Math 53 class? We humans are definitely of the class Mammalia. What about when your friends say you’re “bourgeois” or a “lowly peasant”? How about buzzwords like “malaking burgesya kumprador” (big comprador bourgeoisie) which you probably have heard from somewhere familiar yet you have shrugged off and forgotten because it is simply too cumbersome for us to understand in one go?

Understanding class is important even for us future scientists because the contradictions that occur between and among social classes shape the formation of our history and with it, the country’s culture, politics, even science and technology. The dismal current state of science and technology of the country can be traced in the historical development of the very society it exists in.

Back to the classics

A social class is defined by the characteristics of its members’ role in societal production: ownership of the forces of production (resources, capital, technology, and knowledge), actual participation in physical production to procure the social necessities needed for members of society to exist and survive, and share of the produced output.

People who belong to the class of bourgeoisie for example own the forces of production, do not have actual participation in the physical production, much less, physical distribution of commodities such as sardines, but they appropriate most of the profit that comes from the production and sale of commodities. That’s what makes them “bourgeois.” On the other hand, the class of workers do not own the factory where they physically produce the can of sardines we eat. Despite having labored for the production of sardines needed by society, they only receive a pittance share of the wealth the factory owner (the “bourgeois”) reaped from the sale of the sardines they themselves produced in the form of wages. Since they do not own the forces of production, they have to sell their labor to the capitalist owner of the factory and work as its wage slaves in order to survive.

Primitive communal

From the very beginning of human history, class did not exist. Everyone had communal ownership of the forces of production: the forests and rivers were communal, participation in hunting and gathering was communal, and sharing the fruits of the labor was also egalitarian. There was no single person or group of persons who owned the forces of production and appropriated most of the fruits of communal labor without participating in actual production. However, the forces of production was relatively backward compared to the present technology our society has. The people were also nomadic.

Semi-slavery, semi-communal

The archipelagic nature of the Philippines allowed for three modes of production to simultaneously exist early in its history: primitive communal, semi-slavery, and feudalism.

The introduction of agriculture as a technology, particularly rice domestication, in the Philippines represented an improvement in the country’s forces of production. Agriculture enabled the production of surplus, which gave the people more

time for other activities aside from engaging in production for subsistence. The people who embraced agriculture adopted a sedentary lifestyle as opposed to the nomadic lifestyle that marked primitive communal society.

But agriculture is very labor-intensive and required lots of water and resources. Conflicts began to arise over questions of control of land, rivers, resources, as well as control over labor. Wars of conquest were carried out to subjugate other peoples and control territory. Those who lost were subjugated and enslaved to carry out production for those who won. Those who won expanded their holdings — the beginnings of the first kingdoms.

Thus, social class emerged, along with the notion of “private property” where forces of production such as land and technology are controlled by a distinct group or individual as opposed to being owned by society as a whole. With that ownership came the monopoly over the fruits of production, something that was absent from the primitive communal stage of history. With private property came the private (as opposed to collective) appropriation of the ownership and benefits of technology and knowledge as well. Even individual human beings became “private property.”

In the Philippines, social mobility in its slave society was more laxed than that of classical slave societies such as the Aztec slave society in Mesoamerica. There was still communal ownership of some forests that coexisted alongside the chieftains’ private properties. As such, the Philippine experience of the slave stage of society can be termed “semi-slavery, semi-communal.”

Moro and Spanish Feudalism

In the feudal mode of production, the class of landlords (or “blue bloods”) own the lands and appropriate most of the surplus crops harvested but do not do actual labor in the lands they own and get their crops from. The class of peasants on the other hand do the actual production from planting to harvesting the crops, yet since they do not own the land, they only get a share of the crops they planted after subtracting the amount of harvest they pay the landlord as rent and taxes to the landlord-controlled government.

The Spaniards brought with them the feudal mode of production which was more technologically advanced compared to the semi-slave and primitive communal societies they encountered and subjugated forcefully. They also implemented an edict made by King Philip II banning slavery in Spanish colonies. Islamic Arab missionaries who went to Mindanao even before the Spaniard came also brought with them their feudal mode of production. Other areas however, such as Sulu and Maguindanao, had hybrid socio-economic systems that combined elements of outright slavery and feudalism.

The shift from the feudal mode of production from the earlier semi-slave and primitive communal systems marked another development in the forces of production as well as changes in the relations of production. The ruling class was no longer the slave-owning nobles but the landlords, whereas the subjugated class was the peasantry. Unlike slaves of the old system, the peasants are not themselves private property but their harvests and tools for production are.

Feudalism under Spanish colonization brought technology such as those used to construct the Baroque churches, coastal forts, and brick bridges. Formal learning and research institutions such as the University of Sto. Tomas, and later, the Manila Observatory, were established. Scientific expeditions such as the Malaspina expedition were undertaken to understand the biodiversity and ethnography of the country. By the 1860s, the Philippines had a small dedicated group of Jesuits engaged in seismological and meteorological studies.

Yet the advancements were at best superficial. For the majority of the population, superstitious thoughts and technological backwardness remain abound, thanks to centuries of cultural control by the landlord-friars and the recalcitrance of landlords towards innovation.

The opening up of the Spanish colony to world trade after the collapse of the Galleon Trade in the 1800s led to increased demand for raw materials and expansion of hacienda-plantations but not to considerable industrialization in the countryside. The peasantry remained impoverished and tied to the lands they till but never own. On the other hand, the nuclei of the Philippine working class emerged in the piers, railroads, and factories that partially process the raw materials from the plantations for eventual export.

Only the members of the better-off sections of society, the middle merchant classes of mestisos and indios, were able to send their children to formal institutions of learning here and abroad. That group of people, the Ilustrados, were exposed to modern science and bourgeois

liberal thought in capitalist Europe and brought back these ideas that the conservative feudalists considered too radical.

Some of these ilustrados became among the Philippines’ earliest modern scientists, some of whose names are not known popularly: Antonio Luna (chemistry), Anacleto del Rosario (chemistry and mineralogy), Francisco Liongson (medicine), and Jose Rizal (medicine and zoology). Nationalism, a French invention, was also brought by these ilustrados to the country and became the leading ideology of the Katipunero revolutionaries who employed armed struggle to rid the country of the Spanish feudalists and the theocracy it upheld.

The revolution was led by workers such as Andres Bonifacio who were exposed to bourgeois liberal thought and nationalism. Peasants in the countryside also participated in the war waged by Katipunan. But segments of the emergent bourgeoisie that also led the Katipunan betrayed the revolution by capitulating to the American invaders. That emergent bourgeoisie is best personified by Emilio Aguinaldo and Pedro Paterno among others.

Semi-feudalism, semi-colonialism

Despite being a capitalist country, the United States did not do away with the feudal mode of production that had been in place in the country. As an imperialist country, it was more interested in finding new markets where it can invest its surplus capital and sell its excess products. Industrializing the Philippines would have deprived the US the raw materials it needed for its own industries and would run counter to its economic interests.

Instead, it transformed the feudal system into a “semi-feudal” one by infusing finance capital into the hacienda-plantations without actual industrialization and without changing the ruling feudal relations of production characterized by landlord dominance and oppression of the peasantry. In some large cities and trading ports, capitalist enterprises were also established, but they had a limited role in the overall economic system still dominated by feudal forces and relations of production. Hence the term “semi-feudal,” to emphasize the fact that Philippine society had not reached capitalism as a stage of societal evolution.

In contrast, the bourgeoisie in the capitalist countries ended feudalism and began capitalism in their countries by enacting land reform, defeating and suppressing the recalcitrant landlord classes, and undertaking industrialization. The US did not do this in the country, and instead, entrenched the export orientation of the economy that had been begun by the Spaniards in the early 1800s.

By not completely doing away with feudalism, the US gained the political support of the landlord traitors as well as the elements of the emergent bourgeoisie who were willing to make business with the new, ruling colonial power. Some of the landlords and the emergent bourgeoisie who profited from the business of exporting raw materials from the US and importing finished goods served as the ancestors of the modern day class of big comprador bourgeoisie that serve as today’s ruling class along with the landlords.

The Americans did introduce superficial technological and scientific improvements such as the establishment of research institutes like the Bureau of Sciences and the Bureau of Mines. But the primary purpose of these institutions was the pacification of the Filipinos by depriving rebels the access to medical advances and the exploitation of the Philippines’ natural resources for the imperialists’ benefit respectively.

Education was also part and parcel of its control of the Filipino people. The US established a public school system relatively more accessible to more people than the same one established by the Spaniards in the 1860s. It established state universities like UP and sent pensionados, or Filipino scholars, to study in US institutes, in order to form its pool of salaried technocrats.

Nothing has changed

Seven decades after the United States granted the Philippines its so-called “independence,” the semifeudal mode of production still characterizes Philippine society. The Philippines still remains primarily an exporter of cheap, raw materials and importer of value-added, finished products that made use of the very same raw materials it exported. It remains bereft of basic heavy industries that characterize most of the advanced, capitalist countries such as steel and petrochemicals.

Economic and military treaties, laws, and policies that had been enacted by various administrations since “independence” in 1946 served to only entrench American and transnational companies’ interests in the country. Thus the semi-colonial tag to characterize the currently prevailing socio-economic system.

Some of the younger generations of landlords sold their land and used that income to put up enterprises. They are to become the modern-day national bourgeoisie who are interested in actual industrialization and innovation for profit. But they face great competition and bankruptcy as the volume of imported goods depress prices. With no government support and the support of that same government for foreign investments, they ply their trade in a severely uneven field.

What kind of science of technology is to be expected in a backward socio-economic system characterized by pallid government support for industrialization; dependence on advanced countries to process our raw materials to make the everyday items such as the gadgets we use and need; continuing plunder and export of our natural resources; continuing political control of the pro-US and US elements in the powerful bodies such as the Congress and the military; and continuing landlessness and poverty?

It is unsurprising that since the Philippines was arrested from developing into a more developed mode of production, the current state of its Science and Technology remained backward and stunted. Why innovate when we can simply import the technology we lack and we are unable to produce? Why study STEM when I can be better off working as a domestic helper or barista in some posh country?

Despite our country’s richness in resources and the talents and skills of the Filipino people, including its scientists, for as long as the prevailing socio-economic system remains in place, there could only be hope for economic amelioration and purposeful utilization of our scientific skills if we go abroad in search of greener pastures and advanced research institutes, such as what scientists like former PAGASA administrator Nathaniel Servando and countless others did.

Another alternative is to do what other societies in history have done: embark on changing their mode of production by doing away with the old relations of production and ushering in a new, more progressive one. ● $19.1 B TRADE DEFICIT 1st Quarter 2018 Worst in PH history >$70 B FOREIGN DEBT

1% LANDLORDS BIG COMPRADOR BOURGOISE

9% NATIONAL BOURGEOISIE PETTY BOURGEOISIE

15% INDUSTRY WORKERS

75% FARMERS AGRI WORKERS

Realites educational discussion,, Agham Youth

Not to scale. Adapted from Philippine Social 7/10 FARMERS ARE LANDLESS

October 2018 June 2018

LACK OF BASIC INDUSTRIES

Sources: AGHAM, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, IBON Foundation, NNARA Youth