The World Socialist Web Site is publishing messages of support for Dr. Joseph Scalice from throughout the world. Dr. Scalice has come under attack from the Philippine Stalinists for his powerful lecture, “First as Tragedy, Second as Farce: Marcos, Duterte and the Communist Parties of the Philippines,” which examined the support given by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the various organizations that follow its political line, to authoritarian Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.
Acutely sensitive to the criticism of the CPP, its founder , Jose Maria Sison, without a shred of evidence, has denounced Dr. Scalice as a paid CIA agent and an informer for Duterte. Dr. Scalice, through the establishment of the historical record about the betrayals of the CPP, has done a service to the working class in the Philippines and internationally.
We urge our readers to come to the defence of Dr. Scalice, including by sending statements of support to the WSWS opposing the slanderous attack on him by the CPP and sharing his lecture widely.
Chris Gordon at Macquarie University, Australia
Dr. Joseph Scalice has done an outstanding job, in the face of significant threats, to present a valuable contribution to an examination of contemporary Stalinism in the Philippines. Presenting the truth, especially in history, is a dangerous activity because it exposes class interests, interests which the ruling class, and its supporters, will defend with all measures.
In examining the history of Stalinism in the Philippines, Scalice has done a tremendous service not only for the workers in the Philippines, but internationally. Workers in many countries, including Australia, have been betrayed by organisations who in word and deed align with the bourgeoisie.
Scalice’s research is meticulous, and demonstrates that the CPP, and Sison in particular, have actively supported Duterte and now lie about that support. Scalice’s research does more than expose the lies but explains why the lies are made: the CPP seeks to form alliances with the ruling class, a perspective that goes back decades, and its current direction, in the interests of US imperialism, is with Robredo to undercut Duterte’s deepening ties with China.
Scalice’s history of the CPP, in the hands of young people and workers in the Philippines, threatens the existing support, to the extent that it exists, of the CPP. That is why the CPP must attack Scalice. And since they cannot attack his content, for which they have no answer, they attack Scalice personally, including with patently absurd allegations of being a CIA spy.
I give my full support to Joseph Scalice’s research and urge all young people and workers to study and promote it, and I also wish him the best in his future work.
Reesa, retiree from Newcastle, Australia
The truth is on the march once again after the last century or so of fairly hard going.
The truth is always central to the struggle for a better world. It was the name chosen by Trotsky for his first newspaper in Vienna in 1908 and used by Lenin for the Bolshevik paper in St Petersburg in 1913. Pravda , the newspaper, along with truth suffered the fate of the first workers’ state, degeneration through the lies and betrayals of Stalin’s school of falsification.
It was Stalin and the communist parties of not only the USSR, but also Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia; the communist parties of the Comintern, the Third International, who have been sending workers into death traps since Stalin’s betrayal of the Chinese revolution of 1925–1927.
Since Stalin, the word “communist” is no longer a reference to the international communism of Marx and Engels. Since Stalin, “communist” now is associated with “socialism in one country,” nationalism, reformism, the two-stage theory, blocs of four classes, Maoism and peasant guerrilla armies. In fact, it is not communism at all, not Marxism, but a treacherous betrayal of it.
According to Stalinism, the working class and poor peasants have to submit to the Chiang Kai-sheks, Macapagals, Marcos and Dutertes, ad nauseum throughout the whole global South and across the decades.
Basing himself on this long and deceitful history, Jose Maria Sison brazenly carries the banner of the Communist Party of the Philippines, and equally brazenly repeats Stalin’s slanders against Trotsky and the Left Opposition, this time directed against Dr. Joseph Scalice and the more recent history of the Philippines.
In this period, fake news has become ubiquitous in media of most varieties; social media, mainstream media, pseudo-left media. Press releases on Russiagate, Syrian gas attacks, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are read by millionaire personalities and turned into memes to be shared widely.
Fortunately, the truth is also making a powerful upsurge and it is bursting out all over the place.
The deterioration of infrastructure, roads, bridges, levees, schools, hospitals; and reduction in social services, staffing for hospitals and schools; privatise everything; drill for fossil fuels everywhere; destroy water sources and watch as forests burn.
Ever increasing numbers are being driven to the truth of the situation by their own precarious living conditions.
The truth that it is the private ownership of the wealth of the planet and the domination of the profit motive over every aspect of society that is the root cause of the terrible state of affairs: The truth that it is the Capitalist class destroying the ability of the Earth to sustain human society, if not life itself.
We have in the WSWS since 1998, and the print newspapers produced by the ICFI sections before then, a constant, ever striving to bring the truth to light.
We have, in Dr. Joseph Scalice meticulously following of the truth in the records of the Communist Party of the Philippines, more light being shed on the terrible betrayals of Stalinism and Maoism in general and Jose Maria Sison in particular.
Jack, university student from Warrnambool, south-eastern Victoria
I would like to publicly support the work of Dr Joseph Scalice and praise his commitment to academic integrity and historical truth. Scalice’s research is grounded by a historical understanding of Stalinism from a Marxist analysis.
His long-term detailed scholarship has laid bare the unabated betrayals of the international working class by the Communist Party of the Philippines, CPP. His critical and clear approach as a researcher, writer and speaker has demonstrated that these betrayals arose not out of isolated decisions and mistakes but from the Stalinist platform of socialism in one country.
As seen throughout the 20th century, the idea of socialism in one country has only served the interests of a privileged bureaucracy and disarmed the working class. In response to his research Sison and the CPP have attempted a campaign of slander, violence and suppression to desperately limit the truth of their collaboration with both fascistic and imperialist forces from reaching the working class in the Philippines and abroad.
More investigative journalism and research work like this should be widely circulated as it is of political significance for humanity.
Brenton, a commercial cleaner from Warrnambool, south-eastern Victoria
The work of Dr. Joseph Scalice stands as a significant achievement in the fight for historical truth in the workers’ movement. In his lecture “First as Tragedy, Second as Farce: Marcos, Duterte and the Communist Parties of the Philippines,” Scalice thoroughly exposed the support of the CPP for the fascistic Duterte and explored, in other examples, the betrayal of the working class by the Philippine Stalinists to a programme of dependence on the national bourgeoisie.
Scalice’s work is of importance to the workers of the Philippines and of the world in understanding both the importance of the independence of the working class to its liberation and the dangers of collaboration with class interests that are irreconcilably opposed to it. All workers should listen to or read Scalice’s lecture and share the lessons it presents with other workers.