BRIEF MESSAGE OF PROF. JOSE MARIA SISON AT LAUNCHING OF VOLUMES 3 &4
10 February 2010

Dear Friends,

I thank all of you for your solidarity and support by participating in this launching of the books, Crisis of Imperialism and People’s Resistance and People’s Struggle against Imperialist Plunder and Terror. These are volumes three and four, respectively, of the four-volume selection of my writings covering 1991-2009. I hope that you enjoy the showing of the DVD of the musical play “Makata’y Mandirigma, Mandirigma’y Makata”, featuring songs based on some of my poems.

I thank and congratulate Aklat ng Bayan for publishing the four volumes in the span of one year. I appreciate the fact that Aklat ng Bayan was able to surmount sudden and unforeseen obstacles, including the Ondoy floods that victimized some of its key members and that damaged at least eighty percent of its book inventories.

I am elated that Aklat ng Bayan has persevered in publishing my written contributions to the Filipino people's struggle for national liberation and democracy as well as to the world people’s struggle against imperialist plunder and war. I commend Aklat ng Bayan for rendering an important service to the people, the progressive forces and the activists, scholars and others.

Volumes 3 and 4 reflect how the Filipino people’s struggle developed and advanced amidst the rapid deterioration of the local ruling system and the grave global economic and political crises during the period of 2001 to 2009. They are the necessary and logical sequel to the first two volumes covering the decade from 1991 to 2000, which saw the revitalization of the revolutionary forces and the resurgence of people’s struggles in the Philippines despite the fierce ideological, political, economic and military offensives unleashed by the US-led imperialist powers and the local reactionaries.

In the last nine years, imperialist plunder under the slogan of “free market” globalization intensified as the world capitalist system rushed inexorably to its worst crisis in eighty years, culminating in the bursting of the financial bubble in the US and causing the collapse of financial markets all over the world. The US also escalated imperialist aggression and state terrorism under the policy of a permanent and borderless “war on terror” in a futile attempt to stave off the impending collapse of its bubble economy as well as to further expand and consolidate its global hegemony as sole superpower.

Attempts by imperialist states and their propagandists to cushion and cover up the impact of the financial meltdown have proven futile as public funds have invariably bailed out the big culprit banks and corporations in the military industrial complex rather than the mass of victimized people suffering from unemployment, fallen incomes, homelessness and deprivation of social services. So called stimulus packages have dismally failed to revive production, generate employment and expand the market.

The current global economic and financial crisis is bound to deepen further, inflict further suffering on the people, but is opening up the possibilities for dramatic advances in peoples’ struggles all over the world. Contradictions are intensifying between imperialism and the oppressed nations and peoples, among imperialist powers competing for economic territory and political control, between imperialism and countries asserting national independence and sovereignty, and between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the capitalist countries. The increasingly intolerable conditions of oppression and exploitation compel and impel more and more people all over the world to protest, resist and fight imperialist plunder and war.

Under the weight of the grave crisis of the world capitalist system, the crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the Philippines will worsen at an accelerated rate. The persistent evil forces of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism will wreak further havoc on the lives of the people and ruin the environment. But the broad masses of the people and their patriotic and progressive forces will become more determined than ever before to fight for their national and democratic rights and advance from one level of the struggle to a new a higher level.

Once again, thank you. With your solidarity and support, we can look forward to Aklat ng Bayan’s publishing more books from this author and others who are for a new and better Philippines, characterized by genuine national independence, democracy, all-round development, social justice and peace.

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INVITATION

Aklat ng Bayan, Inc. is launching Volumes 3 and 4 in the 4-volume series of the Selected Writings of Jose Ma. Sison from 1991 to 2009 on February 10, 2010, 5 p.m. at the Balay Kalinaw, UP Diliman. Volume 3 is entitled Crisis of Imperialism and People’s Resistance, while Volume 4 is People’s Struggle against Imperialist Plunder and Terror.

Aklat ng Bayan, Inc. publishes and circulates books and other publications that are socially relevant and that are specifically committed to furthering the goals of peoples’ struggle for national and social liberation and democracy.

We would like to invite you to attend the launch which will feature reviews of the two volumes, as well as musical performances from Sison’s poetry and other cultural presentations.

Copies of the book will be available at a discounted price. While for obvious reasons the author cannot be present to sign copies, each copy will include a bookmark that bears his signature.

We earnestly hope that you can come.

Yours sincerely,

LUIS V. TEODORO
Chair, Board of Directors
Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.

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NEW BOOKS

THE SELECTED WRITINGS OF JOSE MA. SISON (1991-2009)

Volume 3: Crisis of Imperialism and People’s Resistance

(Please click on the cover image for a larger version.)
Volume 4: People’s Struggle against Imperialist Plunder and Terror


(Please click on the cover image for a larger version.)

Excerpts from introductions

1. Elmer A. Ordonez
"Writing an introduction to what is basically history of struggle benefits from hindsight. Past, present and future are intertwined in these essays. No linear time here, shifts in chronology are inevitable, but the inexorable march of history as a Marxist sees it in stages is unmistakable."

2. Rey Claro C. Casambre
"It is not an exaggeration to say that Prof. Sison’s ideas and works, part of which are contained in this volume, have served to inspire, educate and enlighten tens of thousands of revolutionaries and social activists not only in the Philippines but all over the world."

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NEW BOOKS

THE SELECTED WRITINGS OF JOSE MA. SISON (1991-2009)

Volume 1: For Justice, Socialism and Peace

(Please click on the cover image for a larger version.)
Volume 2: For Democracy and Socialism against Imperialist Globalization


(Please click on the cover image for a larger version.)

Size: 6 in x 9 in
Process: Offset
Binding: Smythe Perfect Binding
Publisher: Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.
Cover design: Diego Siquieros
Philippine price: Php 300.00 each
Price abroad: US$ 15.00 each


Reviews

1. Elmer Ordonez (See full text below)

2. Judge Ad Litem Atty. Romeo Capulong
"I have been tasked to review Prof. Sison�s twelve articles and speeches on justice, socialism and peace for Volume 1 of the series covering the period from 1991-1995. I dare say that the breadth and depth of these three topics encompass the entire gamut of the writer�s life-time revolutionary work and commitment, manifested in his fifty years of selfless service to the national democratic struggle and to the Filipino people."

3. UP Faculty Regent Judy Taguiwalo

"Tunay na napapanahon ang aklat na ito (For Democracy and Socialism against Imperialist Globalization) sa ngayon na kinakaharap ng mundo ang walang kapantay na kapitalistang krisis pang-ekonomiya at ang patuloy na mga digmang agresyon ng US sa Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine at sa atin dito sa Pilipinas."

"Humayo't bumili ng libro at basahin ito. Mas mahalaga, patuloy na kumilos para sa isang mundong malaya sa imperyalismo at kapitalismo. Tulad ni Prop. Sison, isabuhay natin ang turo ni Marx, 'Philosophers have merely interpreted the World, the point, however, is to change it.' Unawain natin ang daigdig para baguhin ito."

HOW TO ORDER BOOKS:
Please email us at anbi[at]aklatngbayan[dot]org.


The Other View
by Elmer A. Ordonez

TO CHANGE SOCIETY ONE HAS TO INTERPRET IT

The title of course is an inversion of what Marx said that �philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it� � inscribed on his tomb in Highgate, London. This is the key premise of publishing Selected Writings of Jose Maria Sison in four volumes covering the period from 1991 to 2009, involving historical junctures after the disintegration of the �revisionist� Soviet Union to the now raging global economic crisis. The first two volumes were launched recently by Aklat ng Bayan.

From his student days Jose Maria Sison has not only sought to interpret society at large; he has contributed significantly towards changing it as the leading light of the �longest running� revolutionary movement in this part of the world. Sison is cited in the Bibliographical Dictionary of Marxism as among the 210 most important Marxists since the 1848 Manifesto. Historian Teodoro Agoncillo acknowledged Sison as one of the three most influential revolutionary leaders after Andres Bonifacio and Crisanto Evangelista.

Sison was founding chairman of the reestablished (1968) Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), jailed for ten years (1977-86) by the Marcos regime, and now lives in Utrecht as chief political consultant to the National Democratic Front (NDF) Panel engaged in on-and-off peace talks with the Philippine government.

As an English major scholar in UP Diliman in the late 50s, Sison began his study of the history/science of revolution towards the application of Marxism-Leninism/Mao Zedong Thought in changing social relations in what he considered a semi-feudal/semi-colonial Philippine society. He wrote primers for the education of the organized masses that would carry out the revolutionary tasks. Thus Struggle for National Democracy (1967) and (under the pseudonym Amado Guerrero) Philippine Society and Revolution, 1970).

When martial law was declared in 1972, he saw in the countryside the lessons and needs of the revolution and thus wrote Specific Characteristics of People�s War (1974) and Our Urgent Tasks (1975). He was no arm-chair Marxist intellectual.

Captured and tortured severely in 1977, Sison continued his study in prison and wrote poems published in 1983 by the Free Jose Maria Sison Movement. His prize-winning Prison and Beyond was the basis for his getting the S.E.A. Write Award in 1986 in Thailand. Released during EDSA by President Aquino who promised to free all political prisoners, Sison lectured in U.P. and chaired the Partido ng Bayan which fielded senatorial and congressional candidates in the trapo-dominated 1987 election. Only two PnB representatives made it.

Harassed and eluding assassination attempts. Prof. Sison accepted invitations to give lectures abroad. He sought asylum in Netherlands when his passport was cancelled. Settling in Utrecht where the NDF office is located he has kept himself busy giving public lectures in Europe. His speaking engagements outside of Netherlands were stopped when the U.S., the European Union, and the Philippine government tagged him a �terrorist.� He was deprived of his allowance and housing as a political refugee and has survived, with his wife, Juliet de Lima, in Utrecht, with the help of friends.

Attempts on his life are ever present.

At the book launching, Senator Jamby Madrigal shed tears when told that Sison had fallen sick and could not address his well-wishers at the event. The senator recalled her visit to meet Joma and Juliet in Utrecht.

Since he left the country he has had several books published including his lectures and interviews. His and Juliet de Lima-Sison�s book Philippine Economy and Politics was issued in 1998. Ninotchka Rosca wrote Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World launched by Ibon Foundation in 2004.

Volume One of Selected Writings is titled For Justice Socialism and Peace which includes 12 articles starting with an analysis of the Iraq War in 1991 to human rights violations under the Aquino regime, the peace negotiations, the World Economic Summit, the resurgence and the future of socialism, the question of revolutionary violence, a symposium on Mao Zedong Thought, the rectification movement in the CPP, socialism and the �New World Order,� technology and poverty in the Third World, and strengthening the alliance for human rights..

Volume Two titled For Democracy and Socialism against Globalist Imperialism highlights what Ed Villegas calls the �glory days of globalization� in the latter 1990s. Here Sison anticipates the collapse (now in progress) of the world capitalist system � a kind of poetic justice for Francis Fukuyama�s book which spelled �the end of history� with capitalism and �liberal democracy� permanently installed. Sison is right in dismissing Fukuyama�s oracle as nonsense.

The last two volumes will follow within the year to complete Sison�s project of providing guidelines for the resurgence of anti-imperialist and socialist movements. In his 70th year, he has sustained his Marxist interpretation of the world and his active participation in the historical process of changing it.

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NEW BOOK

Book Title: PHILIPPINE SOCIETY AND REVOLUTION

Author:
Jos� Maria Sison

ISBN 971-52460-49

Size: 6 in x 9 in

Process: Offset

Binding: Smythe Perfect Binding

No. of Pages: 174, excluding cover
lamination in full color

Cover Design by Fidel Rillo based on Botong Francisco's "Andres Bonifacio episode"

Publisher:
Aklat ng Bayan, Inc.

Philippine price: Php 250.00
Price abroad: US$ 12.00

Excerpts from "Two nationalist books" by Elmer A. Ordo�ez

Nationalism is the basic ideology of Philippine Society and Revolution (PSR) which was first issued in 1970. Early versions (Philippine Crisis) appeared in mimeograph and in the Philippine Collegian and Ateneo's Guidon in the late sixties (as recalled by Monico Atienza). PSR, which uses the materialist approach in its historical account and Marxist class analysis in its dissection of Philippine society, became the primer of young activists who had also read Sison's Struggle for National Democracy, Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino. With these readings they were just a step away from reading the works of Marx, Lenin and Mao.

The fifth edition of PSR reproduces the original text with slight revisions for the author and publisher maintain its continuing relevance in a "semi-feudal and semi-colonial" society like ours. As Luis Teodoro quotes, "the more things change, the more they are the same." The land question, bureaucrat/crony capitalism, and US imperialism (now in the vesture of globalization) remain unresolved. The fifth PSR edition may be compared to the third (1979) and fourth (1996) editions which include two "praxis" documents: Specific Characteristics of People's War (1973) and Our Urgent Tasks (1976). The fourth edition has excerpts from later writings of Sison. The Bibliographical Dictionary of Marxism (London, 1986) lists Sison as among the most important 200 Marxists since the 1848 Communist Manifesto. Historian Agoncillo in 1985 said that Sison was one of three most influential revolutionary leaders after Andres Bonifacio and Crisanto Evangelista.

-- "Two nationalist books" in The Other View by Elmer A. Ordo�ez, Manila Times, February 18, 2006

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