Rebel Peripheries | The Anarchist Library

 

 

When anarchism (or any other idea for that matter) is brought into new
contexts, it necessarily enters into dialogue with the histories and
traditions of that new context. When Mao Zedong Thought was all the rage
during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., this new idea was
re-contextualized in the context of the history of revolutionary
nationalism of the Katipunan, Andres Bonifacio, and the resistance to
the American colonial State. Anarchism in the Philippines necessarily
indigenizes itself into the Philippine context, something I’ve written
about in the past on various
libertarian
elements in the Philippines. My purpose here isn’t to restate what
I’ve already written on previously but to expand the
re-contextualization of the potentiality of anarchism in rebel
peripheries to a distinctly anti-anarchist project: that of the
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). As a Hadith of the Prophet
Muhammad says “Seek knowledge even in China,” China being the furthest
and most remote place in the ancient Arab imagination, urging that we
ought to seek knowledge even from the most remote—or in this case, the
strangest—of places.

The CPP, its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), and its front the
National Democratic Front (NDF) have been waging Maoist armed struggle
in the Philippines since 1969. In doing so, it has created a number of
rebel peripheries in the countryside that exist outside the control of
the Philippine State—in the anarchy of the peripheries. However, the
longstanding second communist rebellion in the Philippines has to be
placed in the historical context of anarchic and rebel peripheries in
the archipelago. Once we move past and sublate the experiences of the
Maoists for the revolutionary project of anarchism, we can then move on
understanding the insurrectionary project of mamundok-in-place.

To build up to this thesis of mamundok-in-place, I first start with a
discussion of the anarchy of the peripheries, a condition by which State
power cannot cohere and territorialize in the internal peripheries of a
country. I touch here on the question of why Marxist guerrillas, rather
than anarchists, are often found in anarchic peripheries. These anarchic
peripheries act as refugia for political projects. Then I move to the
second section on desertion and marronage which sees peoples and rebels
move to peripheries out of the politics of escape and how this can
transform into the politics of rebellion, as with the case of the
maroons. I also discuss the notions of dragons and hydras in terms of
organizational form as developed by Russell Maroon Shoatz. In the third
section, I situate concepts of the politics of escape and the politics
of rebellion in the Philippines with concepts such as remontar and
mamundok. It is in this tradition that I contextualize the New Peoples
Army and the communist insurgency. I move on to the fourth section to
return to Shoatz’s dragon and hydra analogies to apply these to the
Philippine experience. This is necessary to make an anarchist appraisal
of the second communist insurgency which feeds onto a broader political
project of appraising Maoism and its use of rebel peripheries. I extend
this discussion of Maoism in the fifth section to critique the Marxist
project using Shoatz’s analysis. Through this, I develop a notion of
“post-Maoism” that learns from the mistakes and defeats in the Marxist
and Maoist projects. I return to rebel peripheries in the sixth section
in order to problematize rebel peripheries in the context of the
revolutionary and insurrectionary project. Rebel peripheries are
ultimately projects that suffer from problems of isolation and
marginalization. This isolation clashes with the revolutionary project
of wanting the whole world. In the seventh section and building upon
these problems in the previous section, I unpack rebel peripheries to
make sense of what aspects of rebel peripheries are pertinent for
anarchists and revolutionaries today. It is here that we can begin to
see the contours for the development of autonomous projects in the
Twenty-First Century that learns from the deficiencies of rebel
peripheries while also affirming the politics of care forwarded by the
Black radical tradition. It is here that mamundok-in-place begins to
make sense. In the penultimate section, I return again to the
Philippines and the rebel peripheries of the Maoists to make sense of
what is being subverted. The contours of mamundok-in-place are
outlined in precisely what is not being subverted and what could be
subverted in its place: organized abandonment and proletarianization. In
the final section, I further sketch the contours of what
mamundok-in-place could be, understanding that lines of desertion are
found everywhere and that the insurrectionary project can find its
reality when we see the whole world is our mountain.

The Anarchy of the Peripheries

The “anarchy of the peripheries” is what I term as the condition of
internal peripheries within countries, especially within the former
Third World, where State power cannot fully cohere and
territorialize. I term “anarchic peripheries” as the internal
peripheries that exhibit this condition. These anarchic peripheries are
usually situated in boondocks, mountainous formations, and other
difficult terrain. The people who live there have historically defied
civilizational imposition and all that entails—corvée, taxes, slavery,
colonialism, proletarianization, and all. The anarchy of the peripheries
also exist as refugia by which those in the colony or civilization
could desert to in avoiding civilizational imposition. “Refugium”
(plural: “refugia”) here refers to places of refuge that is isolated
from changes outside it.

The specific anarchy that exists in the periphery are conditioned by
geography and political power. State power coheres where it can
territorialize its power over a population. This territorialization is
geographic in the sense that States need accessibility and a settled
population. Thus, where it is easy to settle, we also find States. As
such, States usually cohere and territorialize in or by geographic
features like plains, rivers, and valleys where historical settled
populations are found. Where the State can travel and deploy its agents,
there we can also find the State. The Andes mountains in Columbia and
Ecuador are a clear exception because much of the population density of
these countries are in the mountains where much of the population lives
due to the favorable climate. In this sense, the favorable climate
adheres to the general rule of accessibility of settlement—the exception
that proves the rule.

Outside the core areas where State power is cohered and territorialized
is the anarchic peripheries. These areas are conditioned by the anarchy
of the peripheries, by their remoteness to State power as boondocks. The
geography of these areas are mountainous and heavily forested. The
difficulty to traverse these areas also makes it difficult for States to
project their power these peripheries. Hence, the result is that these
peripheries tend to be anarchic in character. The anarchy of peripheries
usually exist in the former Third World, especially in regions where
State power only cohered in core geographic features like lowlands and
rivers.

In this sense, the anarchy of the peripheries is a condition, not a
political project. Indeed, many peoples in the peripheries of States
throughout history have their own polities that some may describe as
hierarchical or proto-statist. These peripheries are anarchic in
relation to State-administered core areas. Whatever statist institutions
are built here simply cannot be compared to the coherence of State power
in the urban, suburban, and immediate environs.

The anarchy of the peripheries are also the refugia where guerrilla
movements, especially those claiming to be Marxist-Leninist, are able to
establish bulwarks and strongholds. Where rebels take hold in anarchic
peripheries, I term these as “rebel peripheries.” Ironically, these
Marxist-Leninist rebel peripheries are marked by a “heretical thesis”
that suggests that Marxist guerrillas survive and thrive precisely
because of the condition of the anarchy of the peripheries, and that it
is the Marxist-Leninists—not the anarchists—who are able to fully take
advantage of this condition of anarchy. Guerrilla Marxists owe their
existence to anarchy, yet in places where State power is weakest,
anarchists are not to be found. That is to say, in the anarchy of the
peripheries where there are armed guerrillas with statist projects
(i.e. to take State power), we do not find intentional projects for
anarchy. This double irony is what characterizes the vast majority of
left-wing guerrilla movements, with the Zapatistas (EZLN) and the
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) being the clear exceptions. And even if
we look at those exceptions, both the Zapatistas and the PKK started out
as Marxist guerrilla movements, with both eventually developing
libertarian programs at varying points in their life. With the
Zapatistas, their libertarian turn was quite early, before their first
insurrection, while the PKK only adopted libertarian elements after
Abdullah Öcalan’s own libertarian turn.

Why anarchists are not found in the anarchic peripheries is likely
because anarchist armed struggle is largely urban in character under
non-revolutionary conditions or widespread across vast distances in
conditions of revolution and civil war. Marxist guerrillas move to
peripheries in order to build Statist projects that prefigure a future
socialist State. The anarchy of the periphery allows them to build
proto-States and shadow governments. The State is, as Gustav Landauer
reminds us, a social relationship, a way of relating to one another that
can only be smashed through enacting different social relations.
These Marxists bring the State with them and build new ones in the
anarchic peripheries, while anarchists are not wont to do the same.

But despite this, there may still be potential for anarchy as a project
within the context of the anarchy of peripheries, especially when it
comes to desertion.

Desertion and Marronage

The anarchy of the peripheries are the refugia of those deserting or
rebelling against the State. These anarchic peripheries become rebel
peripheries when they are politicized, as in open rebellion against the
State. Desertion of civilization is infrapolitical. James C. Scott
coined “infrapolitics” as invisible politics, much like infrared is
invisible to the naked eye. For Scott, desertion from the military is
infrapolitical compared to open mutiny.

In Southeast Asia, the most famous anarchic periphery is Zomia, a large
highland in mainland Southeast Asia that spans several countries from
Myanmar to China to Thailand. Zomia and its people are outlined in an
“anarchist history” in James C. Scott’s book,
The
Art of Not Being Governed. In this vast periphery, vast disparate
peoples evaded State power for generations, thus also escaping and
resisting corvée, taxes, and colonialism. In this case, archaeology uses
“pericolonialism” to refer to what I call as the anarchy of the
periphery. It literally abbreviates the “periphery of colonialism.”
Pericolonialism is the effect of colonialism on the peripheries of the
colonial project, showing how pericolonial peoples are also affected by
colonialism (though not directly colonized), and can even react or
resist colonialism.

We may think of rebel peripheries as the political act of deserting and
rebelling against the State to form de facto autonomous communities,
the visibly political form of the infrapolitical desertion. Without this
politics of rebellion, desertion remains as the politics of escape.
Indeed, this is how I conceptualize the term to think of Zapatista
Chiapas or other Marxist guerrilla strongholds, but a more classical
historical example would be that maroon communities across the Americas.

“Maroons” were those who escaped slavery (or their descendants) who
built autonomous communities in the peripheries of colonial
slavocracies. “Marronage” is their act of escaping slavery and building
maroon communities autonomous from slavery and colonialism. This concept
of marronage is something specific to the Black experience and the Black
radical tradition. Marronage is the denial of the enslavement of Black
people and its resulting fugitivity. The specific act of desertion in
marronage is not merely that of deserting the colony, but of also
escaping the diktats of commodification of the body through enslavement.
Marronage is not merely desertion, but the “stealing oneself from
bondage,” an act of open rebellion just by daring to escape the
plantation. However, marronage and the politics of escape can often
leave captivity for others in place. This problem was well-recognized
by maroons such as those in San Domingo (known today as Haiti), which
did set up lines of desertion and escalated to the politics of rebellion
through armed struggle against slavery. During the Haitian revolution
and after independence, the self-abolition of the enslaved resulted in
the development of a class of free peasant maroons who lived largely
free and autonomous from the machinations of the Haitian State. They
formed maroon communities in the mountains of Haiti, where the
plantation system (albeit without slavery) could not be reimposed by
Haiti’s new leaders.

The Black revolutionary Russell Maroon Shoatz wrote a Black Marxist
history of maroons and marronage in his seminal work
“The
Dragon and the Hydra.” In that work, Shoatz showed how various
acts of marronage and maroon communities not only escaped slavery, but
resisted and attacked slavery from the peripheries. In San Domingo, as
documented by CLR James, maroons attacked slavery by liberating people
from bondage and instigating slave rebellions. Shoatz contrasted two
organizational forms: dragon and hydra, or “centralized and
decentralized forces of change.” Dragon-type organizations are large
centralized apparatuses of resistance with a clear leader, while
hydra-type organizations are several decentralized groups without
overall leaders and largely operated under self-directed militancy.
As Shoatz suggests, rebel dragons can easily be slayed by much larger
imperial dragons, either be literally destroyed or be co-opted to betray
their rebel gains as in Haiti. However, rebel hydras are persistent and
resilient. While some heads of the hydra can be encouraged by colonizers
to be co-opted (in what he calls as “treaty maroons”) or defeated, there
are still many other hydra heads that resist co-optation or
colonization. True enough, many of these maroon communities still
survive today across the Americas, outlasting slavery and empires.

In this sense, we can think of rebel peripheries as a more general term
to which marronage is specific to the Black experience. It is the
evasion and desertion of the State where they become sites of not only
de facto autonomy from States, but also sites from which States and
their machinations can be assaulted from.

Remontar and Mamundok

The Philippines has a long history of pericolonialism and rebel
peripheries. Desertion from the colony was termed as “remontar” in the
Philippines. “Remontar” is Spanish for “re-mounted,” as in “mountain,”
where “remontar” is an action of going up a slope, all calling to mind
a return to the mountain. In this sense, remontar is similar to
marronage, albeit specific to the Philippine experience and with the
notable absence of chattel slavery.

Indigenous peoples in the Philippines have long practiced remontar by
leaving easily colonizable lowlands for uplands like in the Cordilleras
and in the interior of islands like Mindoro, Panay, and Mindanao. This
is the politics of escape.

Stephen Acabado’s work on
pericolonial
archaeology of Ifugao sites argues that the ancestors of the Ifugao
consciously chose to move to the interior highlands of the Cordilleras
to escape colonialism. The Ifugao also adopted wet-rice agriculture
as a way of intensifying economic activity to support a large
pericolonial population. One of the Ifugao people’s achievements was the
creation of a vast mountainous wet-rice terrace system—the Ifugao Rice
Terraces—that was constructed without State power. The Ifugao also
attacked the colonial system, not merely through raids that brought them
into conflict with the colonial State, but also through economic
warfare. The colonial State harshly enforced a tobacco monopoly in the
country, but the Ifugao people subverted this monopoly by growing their
own tobacco and selling it to lowlanders. In this way, we see how
pericolonial people not only resisted colonization, but also subvert it
economically. Notably, this subversion was coordinated without a polity
we would recognize as an Ifugao State. Likely, their resistance to
Spanish rule was largely self-directed, as the Ifugao did not have a
stratified class society like in the colonial lowlands.

Some Indigenous groups in the Philippines are given the exonym
“Remontado.” Remontados were those who did remontar, who “fled from
the bells” (of the town church) to live a life outside Spanish rule in
the mountains, rejecting the colonial State and Christianization. An
American-era anthropologist noted that some “civilized” Filipinos like
the Pangasinense had a tendency to flee to the mountains, to remontar,
to escape the colony, given the proximity of Pangasinan to the mountains
of Benguet. He also noted that the Guardia Civil periodically launched
expeditions against the Remontados. In the Commonwealth era of the
American colonial period, Remontados in Rizal province were noted have
been inclined to semi-nomadic life, but was forced to create permanent
settlements to avoid their land from being grabbed by lowlander
creoles. One Remontado group, the Dumagat-Remontados, are found
inland, despite their name implying some connection to the sea (root
word “dagat”), suggesting a past of remontar where they left lowlands
near the sea to go up to the mountains. (The Dumagat-Remontados are
still threatened by the State today through the disastrous Kaliwa Dam
plan. No to Kaliwa Dam!)

I suspect the vast majority of remontar in the Philippines will not
have an explicit historical record as remontar in these cases are
inherently infrapolitical and self-directed. Instead of small
rebellions that leave their mark as footnote to history, why not simply
just go up the mountain as the Remontados do to avoid those nasty
Kastila colonizers? In this sense, remontar is infrapolitics and the
politics of escape in the silent way people desert the lowland colonial
zone for the freedom of the mountains. Contrary to Murray Bookchin who
ruminated on the phrase “the city air makes one free,” it seems to
be more the case in the Philippines that the mountain air makes one
free. This irony is made stronger where according to one anthropological
report published in 1937 (during the American colonial period), the
Remontados of Rizal province were inclined towards democratic politics
where they elect barrio presidents, vice presidents, councilors,
secretaries, chief of police, and members of their police. (Though
perhaps Bookchin ought to be credited for recognizing that there is
something liberating about mountain air that generates liberatory
politics when he noted that the mountains of Greece provided fertile
ground for early democratic politics or how the Green Mountains of
Vermont informed democratic assemblies in his native Vermont.
Though, unfortunately, Bookchin never explored this insight in depth
before he died.)

Elsewhere in the Philippines, various revolts against the Spanish
colonial State built spaces of autonomy as more recognizable and
intentional rebel peripheries, moving to the politics of rebellion. One
notable event on the island of Bohol called the Dagohoy rebellion
founded several barrios in the interior boondocks of the island to live
autonomous of the colonial State for 85 years, conquered and co-opted
only in 1829. With their base in the mountains of Inabangan and Talibon,
Dagohoy and his followers lived full lives free from colonial
burdens. Their rebel periphery prefigured much of the Maoist
strategy between “red areas” controlled by the Maoists and “white areas”
still nominally under control by the State. During the rebellion,
Inabangan and Talibon prefigured the red areas which acted as safe zones
for subterfuge and occasional raids elsewhere on the island of Bohol,
much like white areas today.

During the late Spanish period and the American colonial period,
millenarian and apocalyptic movements went to the mountains where they
could practice their faith and found utopian communities in peace, some
of which were violently repressed by the Spanish colonial State like
that of the Aritao Commune of Hermano Pule. Many of these
millenarian movements still exist today in the peripheries of the
Philippines, their mountains functioning as their holy places and as
refugia for indigenous religious practices.

During the Philippine Revolution, the mountains and boondocks offered
safe havens for Katipunero guerrillas. Remontados gave support for
Bonifacio’s Katipunan. The anarchic peripheries are then transformed
into rebel peripheries. During the latter stages of the Philippine
Revolution after the American invasion forces conquered Manila, the
military government of the dictator Emilio Aguinaldo relocated to the
mountains where General Antonio Luna planned a long-term guerrilla war
using the mountains as their bulwark. After the defeat of the
nascent republic, Miguel Malvar continued a guerrilla war from the
peripheries, striking at the American colonial State in his home
province. Later on, Macario Sakay proclaimed a rebel republic in
Mt. San Cristobal and later Morong province (now Rizal province) where
Remontados gave him support and refuge.

Quite notably in the Second World War, guerrillas of all strips created
uncountable liberated barrios across the nation, free from the
landlords, the State, and the Japanese Empire. Some of these rebel
peripheries persisted in the post-war period during the Huk rebellion
(the first communist insurgency).

In this sense, the red areas of the Communist Party of the Philippines
today is best situated within this long history of remontar and rebel
peripheries in the archipelago, from the Spanish colonial period to
today. A common euphemism for joining the communist armed struggle is
mamundok or going to the mountain, again, an act of remontar, of
deserting the State for the liberty of the periphery. While, of course,
the purpose of these Maoist rebel peripheries is the protracted
people’s war (PPW), the effect is a spiritual successor to previous
traditions of remontar in the country. Indeed, mamundok is a
modernization, politicization, and continuation of remontar. In this
sense, mamundok is the political form of the infrapolitical
remontar.

Furthermore, some anecdotal evidence suggests that Indigenous peoples
and peasant creoles already living on the periphery often join the NPA
either as full guerrillas or as “part-timers.” This suggests that
these people living on peripheries are conscious of preserving the
autonomy of their peripheries and see the CPP-NPA as a means of
preserving their autonomy. In this sense, the anarchy of the periphery
and its peoples dovetails with the political-military strategy of the
Party.

Indeed, when it comes to the anarchy of the peripheries, the CPP is
quite explicit in their strategy of basing their armed struggle
specifically in the mountains. They noted that the geography and
populations of the internal peripheries are ideal for their armed
struggle.

The mountainous character of the country countervails its archipelagic
character from the very start. A mountainous terrain with some
population and with thick vegetation is an excellent condition for our
people’s war. […] The Sierra Madre sews up almost the entire length of
Luzon on the eastern side of the Cagayan Valley to the Bicol region
through Central Luzon. It links as many as nine provinces. […] A
mountainous terrain, where more people inhabit the foothills, clearings,
plateaus, and riversides or creeksides, is more favorable for the
people’s army.

In these red areas, communist guerrillas set up their own autonomous
governments and systems of representation for peasants and rural
folk. Where State power is weak and thus lacks the provision of
medicine, education, and law, the New People’s Army also acts as a
mobile clinic, school, and court. Among the peripheral peasantry, they
institute various reforms they call as “agrarian revolution” or
increasing wages, lowering rents, and informal land redistribution
(informal because they are obviously not recognized by the State). What
is curious about these reforms is that they are rather mild and
moderate, recalling to mind one Filipino Trotskyist’s formulation of the
New People’s Army as being “social democrats with guns” as they enforce
reforms that are essentially social-democratic in nature, yet with
the effectivity of Maoist praxis of “political power growing out of the
barrel of a gun.”

Also common in red areas is the practice of “revolutionary taxes”:
protection racketeering of rural business like haciendas, plantations,
and mines. This isn’t a moralistic judgment: revolutionary racketeering
is good, actually! The Ukrainian, Spanish, and Uruguayan anarchists were
not above a little racketeering for a cause. Illegalism is quite a valid
tactic when the situation calls for it. The problem becomes when this
protection racket becomes formalized in a way that revolutionary forces
then permit a level of exploitation in exchange for protection money,
which the NPA does at times. Sometimes the NPA does destroy mining
equipment instead of collecting protection money, so at least they ought
to be credited for that.

The essential politics behind remontar and mamundok are ultimately
agreeable with anarchy and anarchism. However, that does not mean we
agree with the Party that espouses it.

Half-Dragon, Half-Hydra

The CPP still maintains democratic centralism in Party functions and
political line, but they have a longstanding practice of
decentralization when it comes to their protracted people’s war. This
policy is called
“the
policy of centralized leadership and decentralized operations.”
This is partly due to geography: unlike in China, Thailand, Peru, Nepal,
and India, the Philippines is an archipelago, not a contiguous land
mass. This makes for a centralized contiguous military operation quite
difficult and almost impossible by the NPA, hence the use of
decentralized islands of guerrilla fronts across the country.

Returning to Shoatz’s formulation, the CPP-NPA is a dragon politically,
but a hydra militarily and socially. Its hydra aspect gives it multiple
advantages in its persistence and resilience, but its dragon aspect
leaves them prone to misleaderships. Hence the mass confusion among
their mass base during their shameful alliance with the fascist regime
of President Rodrigo Duterte. Like the “treaty maroons” or the
counterrevolutionary Haitian leadership, the CPP and NDF leadership can
be co-opted and entreated to demobilize.

This is clearly a development from the first communist insurgency of the
Huk Rebellion under the old communist party (PKP-1930). The Huks
concentrated their forces in a contiguous land area in the plains of
Central Luzon, but their highly concentrated dragon-type organization
led to a combination of concentrated military offensive against them by
the newly independent Philippine government (and their American
overlords) and government incentives to give up armed struggle—the
carrot and the stick. Eventually, the PKP-1930 was enticed to give up
armed struggle, even to the point where they supported the dictatorship
of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., and quite a number of their mass base was
co-opted by becoming settlers in the new frontier in Cotabato in
Mindanao.

Yet the hydra aspect of the CPP-NPA-NDF and the broader tendency of
National Democracy is not something to be discounted. Like a hydra with
multiple autonomous heads, National Democracy in both its underground
and above ground aspects have proven to be very able organizers. The
Marcos dictatorship saw innumerable guerrilla fronts open across the
archipelago alongside urban mobilizations. A centralized coordination of
mobilization of this caliber and character is quite literally impossible
and requires a high level of initiative and autonomy from the
rank-and-file. Indeed, I have seen and met with youth who identify with
National Democracy and I have seen that they are often self-directed in
their militancy, sometimes even independent from the formal mass
organizations, or even opposed to cadre leadership (this is in the case
of the issue with sexual harassment).

But we cannot discount the dragon aspect of the CPP. Despite the high
level of autonomy in the Party, intrigue and plots in the Central
Committee prevented a Second Party Congress from convening directly
after the fall of the dictatorship. Anonymous authors speak of
“authoritarian
tendencies” in the Party, and whole Party organs
declared
autonomy from the Central Committee, specifically putting the blame
squarely on Armando Liwanag (the recently deceased Jose Maria “Joma”
Sison). Instead of a Second Party Congress, dissident factions of
the Party fed up with the authoritarianism of Liwanag simply split from
the CPP to form new groups in what is called the
Reaffirmist–Rejectionist Schism. This schism, combined with disastrous
mass torture and murder of hundreds, if not a few thousand, committed
communists during various purges destroyed the gains of the National
Democratic revolution. In this sense, the dragon aspect of the CPP
resulted in a disastrous demobilization and fragmentation. To this day,
the CPP has not recovered the heights of its mobilization reached since
the ending of the dictatorship.

Today, the CPP and National Democracy remains an impressive force, to be
sure. The autonomy of action in above ground National Democratic groups
are still indicative of a living hydra, but its dragon aspect still has
the ability to harm their own movement.

Post-Maoism and Dividing the Dragon

There’s a certain tendency in the North American left to talk about the
New People’s Army as the “good Maoists” on par with the Zapatistas. This
is in part by a very effective publicity campaign by the US-based
kasamas (or what National Democrats are called in the United States).
I would not go as far to say that I support the CPP-NPA-NDF. I agree
that the creation of red zones of autonomy are good, but I still reject
the theory of National Democracy,
their
carcerality, their bloody record in internal purge massacres,
their assassinations of leftists, and their shameful opportunist
support for the fascist Rodrigo Duterte out of some false promises.

With that said, what the CPP-NPA-NDF does in terms of building autonomy
in red areas—rebel peripheries—isn’t exactly wrong. The purpose of their
construction in their intent is “National Democracy,” the protracted
people’s war, the capture or creation of state power, and the formation
of a Party-State apparatus. While this intention is disagreeable to
anarchists, the praxis of building organs of autonomy isn’t wrong, and
in fact, is to be celebrated.

“Insurrectionary libertarian post-Maoism” was a half-serious inside joke
in our milieu that referred to the idea that the Maoist insurrection in
the Philippines was essentially something to celebrate, but that
anarchists in the Philippines needed to build on the revolutionary
tradition and transcend Maoism on libertarian terms due to the anarchist
disagreements on States. While great for shitposting, the idea is not
disagreeable, especially when it comes to the autonomous and
self-directed aspects of the communist insurgency today. Indigenization
of ideas is a natural yet integral part of revolutionary politics
anywhere. In the Philippines, it will necessarily mean also
recontextualizing and indigenizing anarchism within the history of
desertion, remontar and mamundok, including that of the communist
insurgency. Post-Maoism in the Philippines means learning from the
experience of the National Democracy and situating our own anarchism
within the context of the revolutionary and rebel history of the
Philippines. We can reject many of the theories and practices of the CPP
and National Democracy—Stalinism as an organizational form, the use of
violent purges and assassinations to control the left, class
collaborationism as with Duterte—but we can also affirm what they did
right: deserting the State, attacking it, and creating spaces for
autonomy in rebel peripheries.

Another aspect of taking insurrectionary libertarian post-Maoism
seriously would be on critiquing its dragon aspect and fully committing
to a hydra organizational form. Maoism has always had this tension
between top-down centralization and bottom-up organizing, or a tension
between the hybridization of its dragon and hydra aspects. In his essay,
Shoatz’s example of the failures of dragon-type of organizing was
revolutionary Haiti where the dragon-type forces of Toussaint
L’Ouverture and his successors would betray their mass base time and
time again like reimposing the plantation system:

Thus, we can clearly see how Haiti’s dragon forces played a very
ambivalent role in the rebel fight for independence: They started out as
tenacious and brilliant fighters against all of the European imperial
and colonial elements, and the traitors amongst the Mulatto’s, who were
all but bent on keeping the enslaved Africans underfoot. During the
course of the revolutionary struggle, they all opportunistically
switched to the French imperialist’s side, and went on to attempt to
drown the still revolutionary masses and their decentralized group in
blood; hoping that way the French would allow them to serve as a new
elite class of African policemen against a re-enslaved African worker’s
class.

Failing to suppress the rebels, the dragon forces rejoined the hydra
elements and lent their weigh to totally defeating the French, only to
once again turn against the revolutionary masses by establishing
themselves as a dictatorial and exploitative African elite.

Outside the Black radical tradition, we can see too many of such
examples, even if we avoid the obvious example with Joseph Stalin, the
supposed wrecker of Lenin’s legacy, so let’s start with Nikita
Khrushchev. Maoists are famously anti-revisionist, meaning they uphold
the contributions of Stalin. They are anti-revisionist because they
opposed the perceived revisions by Khrushchev who succeeded Stalin as
paramount leader. But Stalin was the one who concentrated so much dragon
power into his position. Khrushchev simply took over the dragon’s head
and led the dragon. Stalin, and by extension, Stalinism, had allowed
power to be structured in such a way that a “great betrayer” could
simply take its place.

Thomas Sankara, another darling of the left, also tells us a lot of the
dangers of the dragon. Unlike Toussaint L’Ouverture and his successors,
we cannot perhaps fault Sankara for being a betrayer. His greatest “sin”
is perhaps because he was assassinated and his project fallen
apart—supposedly not a fault of his own—but this is crucial. Sankara’s
revolution in Burkina Faso was largely top-down and State-led. Without
the dragon’s head to protect the gains of his revolution, it simply fell
apart. Had Sankara’s revolution seriously made an effort of promoting
the revolutionary self-activity of the Burkinabè working class and
creating a true monster of a hydra, his assassination would not have led
to such an easily-won counterrevolution.

But perhaps let us look at a Marxist who did create a true monster of
a hydra: Mao Zedong himself. The Cultural Revolution in China, initiated
by Mao himself, was truly an unprecedented and unsurpassed marvel of
social movement mobilization: so many untold millions were mobilized
that the world has never seen a scale of mass mobilization as in China
ever before or ever since. Many of those mobilized could not have been
commanded to by above and really did practice a level of self-directed
militancy. Yet as Wu Yiching shows in his
The Cultural
Revolution at the Margins, the Party-State acted as a demobilizer,
jailer, and executioner of many Chinese communists. Yu Luoke wrote
and organized against bloodline theory that tried to formalize the
creation of a privileged caste, but he was executed for it. Conservative
red guards would win over radical red guards because the conservative
red guards were the scions of the bureaucrats in the Party-State. The
working class alliance
Sheng-wu-lien
organized against a reemergence of a “red capitalist class,” argued for
a “People’s Commune of China” and agitated for the fullest conclusion of
the Cultural Revolution. For these sins, they were ruthlessly
repressed by Mao and the Party-State. Innumerable other Cultural
Revolutionary forces were co-opted and then integrated into the
Party-State, their political lines moderating until they could be safely
assimilated. And so the Cultural Revolution was demobilized. Though he
initiated the Cultural Revolution, Mao
“is
like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the
nether world whom he has called up by his spells” and rushed to
crush or co-opt the very powers he unleashed. The last hurrah of the
Cultural Revolution, in 1989 after Mao’s death and the rise of Deng
Xiaoping, saw the communist youth who grew up in the Cultural Revolution
march to protect their gains at Tiananmen Square and across China in the
June 4th movement.
We
all know how that ended—a nominally “communist” government
slaughtering workers and well-convinced communists, their dragon no
longer under their control. As Wu argued, the demobilization of the
Cultural Revolution by the Party-State led to the post-socialist
transition in China. “It is right to rebel,” but only within the
allowances of the Party-State. The dragon may have unleashed a hydra,
but it re-leashed some of its heads and killed others until the dragon’s
head was taken over by yet another great betrayer in Deng Xiaoping and
his “capitalist roader” successors. Long declared illegal by the heirs
of Deng, the hydra of the Cultural Revolution is still alive, struggling
against the Party-State and capitalism with Chinese characteristics,
alive in the name of, in spite of, and not because of, Mao.

Dragons, then, are alluring and appealing. But even on communist terms,
they are dangerous beasts that bring about “revisionism” and the victory
of “capitalist roaders.” Others,
including
Shoatz himself, suggest that a “revolutionary dragon” is still
necessary to “consciously disarm and disperse the reactionary dragon,”
but that this revolutionary dragon must be kept in “a cage” where it
“cannot escape” with the keys in the hands of the hydra, where the hydra
brings out the revolutionary dragon only when it is needed and kept in
its cage otherwise. But what does keeping the dragon in the hydra’s
cage and leash even mean? Shoatz’s concession that hydras cannot defeat
dragons and need their own dragon to protect them offers little
solutions other than vague analogies to prevent the revolutionary dragon
from betraying and decimating our hydra. Ultimately, Maoism, and by
extension much of Marxism, has no answer to how to prevent a great
betrayer from taking over the dragon’s head beyond some sophistry about
the mass line, two-line struggle, and launching cultural revolutions or
great rectifications.

Indeed, we’ve all been here before. Two-line struggle failed to remove
“revisionists” and “capitalist-roaders” in the Maobadi movement in Nepal
to the point where official Maobadis in government broke strikes and
struck deals with multinationals. Even in the Philippines, there was
fierce two-line struggle in the CPP around fifteen years ago which some
have framed as a “Sison–Tiamzon” conflict where Party rank-and-file,
apparently self-directed, criticized the upper cadre for class
collaboration with the Manny Villar candidacy for president (of which
Bongbong Marcos was part of alongside National Democracy!). Clearly
these lower cadre failed in their two-line struggle and would probably
have decried and protested the CPP fawning over Duterte six years later.
No, not even two-line struggle in the Cultural Revolution succeeded.
Dragons are just that dangerous and can only tolerate hydras at their
pleasure.

Neither can purges be a necessary nor sufficient solution for preventing
the capture of the dragon’s head. The Soviets, Chinese, and Vietnamese
purged and purged and purged, but all three saw the restoration of
capitalism in the end. The purges in the CPP were even more meaningless
as the only result was self-inflicted decimation and demobilization. As
we have seen, opportunists and capitalist-roaders survive purges all the
time, often able to find refuge in the Party hierarchy.

However, do not mistake this as an argument for doing nothing at
all. I agree with Bookchin’s critique of the failure of the CNT in
the Spanish revolution to establish their political power. The CNT
were given a choice to consolidate their political power, but
dogmatically refused to do so out of some naïve belief that it was
anti-anarchist. Would not have excluding the statist forces and
safeguarding the self-directed militancy of the proletariat been a
revolutionary anarchist act? This could have been the unleashing of the
hydra and the protection of the hydra from both the Republican and
fascist dragons, but after all, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Post-Maoism will mean learning from the dragon and dividing it, thus
transcending the Maoist experience. This post-Maoism will necessarily
bring into the front the valiant self-directed militancy as in the
Cultural Revolution. Post-Maoism will mean necessarily sublating the
lessons that are effectively useful for new generations.

Rebel Peripheries Today

What is the theoretical and praxeological value of rebel peripheries
today? What would it take to think of rebel peripheries as more than a
means to an end? As Ursula K. Le Guin once wrote in
The Lathe of
Heaven: “The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an
end? All we have is means.” Contrary to the overly enthusiastic
online leftists, the Philippines is not at the precipice of communist
revolution today. State control is arguably stronger today than it was
under the Marcos dictatorship due to highly effective soft power—which
has proven to be stronger than mere coercion. Unlike in the Marcos
dictatorship which sought to undermine networks of political patronage
and political dynasties in favor of strongman (dragon) rule, the current
State under the son of the dictator, Bongbong Marcos, co-opts the
networks of political patronage and political dynasties. Even the State
can be a hydra today. This means a sober reading shows that the ends of
communist State power or even National Democracy is not near in sight.
“All we have are means”; what we have right now are the rebel
peripheries.

Anarchists, of course, refuse to make a virtue out of necessity, in this
case the rebel peripheries. In a classic example, Czarist Russia
necessitated a militarized underground and highly centralized party.
Though these material conditions under the Czar were not a universal
reality, necessity was made into a virtue and militarized centralism was
deemed a virtue for communist parties after the Bolshevization of the
Comintern. Even anarchists have done non-anarchist things out of
necessity like joining the Republican government and even setting up
concentration camps during the Spanish Revolution. Today anarchists
reject the virtue of these necessities. Though anarchists are not always
right: in a bit unfortunate example today, some anarchists make a virtue
out of necessity in joining the Ukrainian military apparatus. It can
certainly be framed as a necessity, but it is neither anarchist nor a
virtue.

In the same way, rebel peripheries can sometimes be seen as making a
virtue out of necessity. As I have argued here, it is indeed virtuous to
desert and attack the State. But we cannot be satisfied with rebel
peripheries; we want the whole world. As James Connolly says: “For our
demands most moderate are, / We only want the earth.” Rebel
peripheries should be seen as making the best use of necessity, but not
converting it to a virtue in-of-itself. The CPP and National Democracy
is self-aware of this problem. The ongoing Third Rectification movement
within National Democracy attests to the idea that they cannot and
should not be satisfied with
doing
underground mass work and being
“roving
rebel bands”; they want the “strategic stalemate in the people’s
war” and State power.

But why has the CPP failed to move past the rebel peripheries? I suspect
that the NPA is unable to move past the peripheries is precisely because
of the freeholding class interest of peasants in the peripheries. By
freeholding, peasants want to maintain their petty property and
independence rather than wanting to overthrow capitalism. Peasants in
the periphery want to be independent, and the NPA allows them to keep
their independence from the State and from the big agribusinesses. There
is no need for the peripheral peasants to move past this petty
independence.

Since antiquity, States have historically been constructed on the backs
of the peasantry. Elites like landed nobility build State power over
compelling peasants into compliance—corvée, taxes, conscription, etc.
What is unique about the Maoist project since Mao Zedong himself was
that the peasants are centered as the agential motors of the new State,
as partners in State-building and modernization. In previous eras the
agential motors were landed nobility or the later bourgeoisie which saw
peasants as subordinates. But again, peasants do not want to build
States—they want to escape it and live free as freeholders. There is no
“self-abolition of the peasantry” like there is with the proletariat.
Peasants do not have an innate class interest for abolishing themselves.
If they partake in State-building, it is because they are compelled to
by authorities, or it allows them to continue to live independently such
as through land reform that creates a class of a free peasantry.

Why the peasantry in China was a suitable base for revolution was
because the communist bulwark in Yan’an is actually quite large,
compared to the NPA rebel peripheries in the Philippines. With this
considerable territory (and the relative independence the communists
enjoyed due to the political instability of the Warlord Era), the
Chinese communists were able to build a State apparatus and a regular
army. With this State, the Chinese communists instituted land reform to
win over the peasantry to their side in the Chinese civil war until the
victory of the communists in the post-War period. In the Philippines,
there is no such region where the shadow government of the CPP-NPA-NDF
could operate openly and prepare to build a regular army. Nor do they
undertake more ambitious land reform projects. So all they have are
rebel peripheries.

If pericolonialism is the effects of and responses to colonialism from
the periphery, we can also think of a “peristatism,” or the effects of
and responses to the State from the peripheries, especially rebel
peripheries. Just as the Ifugao were pressured to change their social,
political, and economic life in response to colonialism on their
borders, rebel peripheries likewise face a similar pressure to defend
their autonomy. To think of it another way, we can think of the Soviet
Union as sort of being in the periphery of world capitalism and
imperialism (this is not totally correct, but bear with me here). In the
Soviet Union, this resulted in developing support in the
imperial-capitalist core to defend the Soviet periphery. Communist
parties in the imperial core organized to defend the Soviet Union in the
periphery and their own social conditions become secondary. The defense
of the “socialist motherland” came first. In the same way, National
Democracy’s rebel peripheries become the center of gravity of militancy
in the Philippines today. As BISIG
once
noted,

…an organization with a major underground or armed component will
eventually make this component its center of gravity. As a result, the
logic of the organization’s actions will always follow the needs of the
underground component. The above ground expression will only become an
auxiliary to the first logic of the underground component.

This is indeed the orientation of National Democracy today. Militarism
and militarization makes the armed force the center of gravity. Some
anarchists try to solve this through subordinating the armed actions to
political struggles rather than other way around. This was the case with
the armed struggle of the FAU in Uruguay. But for National
Democracy, and many of the armed struggle groups across the world,
“political power grows out the barrel of a gun” rather from
self-directed militancy.

In another aspect, the romanticization of mamundok is also
problematic. As Paul Mattick
Sr. says
quite eloquently:

Instead of finding their orientation in the actual social conditions and
their possibilities, the new leftists base their concerns mainly on a
set of ideologies that have no relevance to the requirements of social
change in capitalist nations. They find their inspiration not in the
developmental processes of their own society but in the heroes of
popular revolution in faraway countries, thereby revealing that their
enthusiasm is not as yet a real concern for decisive social change.

As Mattick described about how leftists in the core countries are
waylayed by romanticism of the third-world guerrilla, perhaps we can
also say the same about those Filipino leftists living under the full
dominion of the State and their relationship to the guerrillas in the
distant peripheries of the same country. The conditions of social and
revolutionary change are very different in the internal cores and
peripheries of the same country. The focus of gravity is the protracted
people’s war and the defense of the rebel peripheries instead of
thinking hard about the questions of class struggle in the cities.

Indeed, peristatism encourages the center of gravity to be at the rebel
peripheries, the red areas. The most militant Filipinos are encouraged
to mamundok, to go up the mountain, and desert the state. This leaves
the cities impoverished of militants. Those who remain chant “peace
talks, ituloy!” (continue the peace talks!). Yes, but what if we want
class war? Just as the Moscow-aligned communist parties called for no
war with the USSR, National Democracy calls for peace with the
CPP-NPA-NDF. To be clear, this isn’t an indictment of the peace process.
Realistically, the peace process can be used to push reforms in
alignment with the National Democratic agenda and defend the autonomy of
rebel peripheries. It is just that the push for the peace process saw
the old communist party—the PKP-1930—become best buddies with the
dictator Marcos Sr. and then sometime later, Duterte’s presidential
campaign for a peace process resulted in disastrous opportunism from
National Democracy in exchange for false promises of peace talks.

The peristatism of the rebel peripheries have another effect in an
unexpected way. In the past two decades, we have seen an uncountable
number of urban insurrections across the world: the Arab Spring, Occupy,
the squares movement, Yellow Vests, the George Floyd uprisings, and many
others. Yet the Philippines has not seen an urban insurrection of a
similar caliber precisely because the most militant elements leave the
city for mamundok. Indeed, when urban insurrections did happen in the
Philippines, as in the 1986 People Power Revolution (also called EDSA
Uno), and again in 2001 EDSA Dos and the failed EDSA Tres, rebel
peripheries played a very small part. (To their credit, while their
rebel peripheries played a small part, National Democracy in the urban
centers did participate in EDSA Uno and Dos.) The CPP-NPA-NDF
essentially allowed the liberal oligarchic opposition to take lead in
EDSA Uno, leaving the left out in the cold as the oligarchy and the
political dynasties was reinstated, leaving the working classes without
leadership.

Peristatism also lives in isolation, and isolation often coincides with
poverty. It is not necessarily that peristatism causes poverty, but that
they coincide together. Indeed, the anarchy of the peripheries is
anarchic precisely because these peripheries lack integration with the
State and the world-capitalist system, leading to underdevelopment. It
is not a coincidence that impoverished peripheries become rebel
peripheries. It is said that in Bicol, “where the road ends, insurgency
begins.” The Soviet Union and other so-called socialist states were
isolated, and while we cannot discount impressive gains in human
development, we cannot discount their separation from the vast
interconnectedness of Western capitalism. Or perhaps that it is that
they were never really well-connected to Western capitalism to begin
with that they were able to wage revolution. In any case, rebel
peripheries today are beset with economic isolation, even if there are
some with impressive human development. Revolutionary projects like the
Zapatistas and Rojavans alike may have impressive models of politics and
social work, but remain economically isolated and underdeveloped. Maoist
rebel peripheries in the Philippines are likewise quite impoverished.
While we can sometimes hear of red areas controlled by the NPA that have
impressive development due to rich protection rackets, these are more
the exceptions that prove the rule.

So what? Are rebel peripheries and desertion useful or not? And if rebel
peripheries cannot be discounted, what then ought their role be today?
And what place do rebel peripheries and desertion have in the social
revolution today? We start with some basic facts:

1. Rebel peripheries are still sites of autonomy and bases by which to
   assault the State.

2. Hydra-type organizational forms are more resilient to State power
   than dragon-types.

3. Rebel peripheries push the center of gravity of a movement towards
   themselves.

4. Islands of rebel peripheries are not enough if we want the whole
   world.

5. Rebel peripheries are mired in the peristatist problem of isolation,
   a rare revolutionary island in a counterrevolutionary sea.

As an oft-repeated line in Oppenheimer (2023) says, “theory will take
you only so far.” The fact of the matter is that revolutionaries
have never solved the problem of revolutionary isolation. Even if the
CPP-NPA-NDF wins State power tomorrow, they would just have an isolation
problem the size of a nation-state, akin to Cuba, Venezuela, or Bolivia.
State power fundamentally cannot solve the problem of revolutionary
isolation. There are, of course, proposals to solve the problem of
revolutionary isolation, a notable creative solution I think is Peter
Kropotkin’s
The
Conquest of Bread (which dealt with the revolutionary isolation of a
region the size of Paris and its environs that feeds itself and also
reduces working hours), but none that have ever been proven to work.

Of course, there are some anarchists who don’t have a problem with the
problem of isolation in peristatism and rebel peripheries.
Desert,
for example, revels in the freedom new rebel peripheries offers them in
a time of climate crisis. But again, we want the whole world.

Unpacking Rebel Peripheries

The fact of the matter is that marronage and remontar as modes of
struggle as the enslaved or colonized did it was shaped by the
limitations of the technologies of power at the time. The colonial and
slavocratic States of previous eras could only exercise State power in
certain “developed” areas where plantations and taxable economic
activity could take place, and therefore where powers of policing and
slavery can operate. With desertion, people could simply leave these
zones of development and civilization for where the mountain air makes
one free. In corners of the world today where rebel peripheries persist,
as in the Philippines, India, Mexico, and Algeria, the State is not
sophisticated enough to exert complete police powers over its claimed
territory. In such places, rebel peripheries remain quite viable modes
of struggle.

But beyond literally deserting the State and start rebel peripheries in
the mountains, can we rethink desertion for the Twenty-First Century? Or
rather, if we unpack the concept of rebel peripheries to deserting the
State and capital, building community autonomy, and organizing like a
hydra, what would that look like? And what would it look like if we
specifically want the whole world?

I am reminded that Peter Kropotkin,
in
several media, explained his opposition to a tendency to start
isolated communal experiments, something similar to the desertion and
community autonomy with rebel peripheries. He asked a leading
question: “What would become of the European revolutionary movement if
most women and men of strong individuality—most of those ready to
rebel—went to settle in distant lands, trying to make colonies there?”
The answer was simple enough: it would cause a drain in militancy; not
to mention the creation of settler relations elsewhere. In the first
communist rebellion, the very same people who took up arms against the
Japanese and then the post-independence State became willing settlers in
Cotabato, tying them to State-making in the region. In the current
communist rebellion, the highest stage of class struggle is to
mamundok—leaving the city for the guerrilla war. The first case is
counterrevolutionary, and the second is revolutionary, but they have a
similar effect: divesting the State-administered “white areas” of
militancy.

Kropotkin’s solution to this is quite straightforward actually: instead
of divesting revolutionary energies to communal experiments in the
peripheries, just set these up precisely near the urban: “Well, the best
spot for it is near London or near Paris!,” he says. Perhaps this is the
revenge of Murray Bookchin: that there really is something about the
city air that makes one free, that there is something qualitatively
unique about the urban that allows for specific forms of collective
action and class struggle that overcomes the isolation of the periphery.

But is it possible for urban struggles to desert the State and capital?
After all, the very same urban force that concentrates populations also
allows for the concentration of State powers of administration and
policing. Sure, even in the urban there were areas where State power
cannot coalesce and govern. One thinks of the Kowloon Walled City in
Hong Kong or Free Derry in Ireland. These “urban peripheries” (and even
a rebel periphery with Free Derry) can certainly prove that the urban
can be sites of desertion and autonomy, but even the very fact of their
statelessness only reaffirms the power of the State in the core governed
areas. In hoc, ego regam—in this I will rule, to hell with over there!

But then again, urban peripheries usually emerges in specific or extreme
circumstances. The Kowloon Walled City carved out its autonomy in the
context of an inter-State jurisdictional dispute; Free Derry carved out
its autonomy under conditions of civil war. Unlike rebel peripheries in
the mountains which can defend their autonomy almost indefinitely by
virtue of the anarchy of the peripheries and the distance from State
power, urban peripheries can be reconquered by the State sooner or
later. Then again, the State cannot suffer challenges to power so close
to its center of power.

Perhaps instead of thinking of building community autonomy in terms of
desertion, we ought think of it in terms of organized abandonment.
Historically speaking, the State
usurped
the various functions of society in order to engender dependence from
society onto the State. States historically used their terrorism to
destroy the organizations and mutual aid associations of the working
class. The State then legitimizes the functions it usurps and
delegitimizes functions that it does not license. In the contemporary
Philippines, this was most clear when the most able and learned health
workers and leaders could not simply self-organize a sane pandemic
response to COVID-19 simply because the State chose to legitimize a
highly militarized mode of pandemic management under its own power.
However, there are some populations where the State chooses not to
provide various societal functions to, in essence abandoning them.

Again, the Black radical tradition and Black anarchic radicalism is
central here, precisely because their radical tradition is one formed by
the very premise of exclusion and organized abandonment by the State. As
William C. Anderson and Zoé Samudzi summarizes as the
“anarchism
of Blackness,”

While bound to the laws of the land, Black America can be understood as
an extra-state entity because of Black exclusion from the liberal social
contract. Due to this extra-state location, Blackness is, in so many
ways, anarchistic. African-Americans, as an ethno-social identity
comprised of descendants from enslaved Africans, have innovated new
cultures and social organizations much like anarchism would require us
to do outside of state structures.

And true enough, it is through challenging this organized abandonment by
the State that Black communities form something akin to a
“marronage-in-place.” Like the anarchic peripheries of the State,
populations abandoned by the State largely live without the societal
functions the State provides. Marronage-in-place replies to organized
abandonment with desertion-in-place, through the creation of communities
of care in defiance of abandonment. This is indeed what the Quilombo in
West Oakland California did for a number of years with a social
space.

But organized abandonment by the State is different from desertion from
the State in one crucial way: policing. Populations like Black America
get none or few of the State services but all of its police and carceral
violence. In previous modes of struggle, we have seen the Black Panther
Party take over neighborhoods abandoned by the State and provide social
functions of care. The Black Panthers were most dangerous not when they
were shooting cops, but when they were providing social functions of
care that the State refused to provide, hence why the State worked
industriously to provoke armed confrontations with the Black Panthers
over just doing the societal functions it usurped to begin with. In this
sense, communities of care in defiance of abandonment was more dangerous
than armed struggle.

As it happens, the Black Panthers declined precisely because it doubled
down on its dragon-type organizing and even turning into internal
authoritarianism and violence. Rather than facing a great betrayer,
the internal authoritarianism simply drove people away and demobilized
their movement. Shoatz’s rumination on marronage, dragons, and
hydras—and indeed many other Black anarchic radicals—are precisely
placed within the context of the failure of the Black Panthers’
organizational form.

The crucial difference in the sophistication of police carceral power
and the experience of the Black Panther Party and successors like the
Black Liberation Army informs what is perhaps the most significant
project for Black autonomy today:
Cooperation Jackson. Cooperation
Jackson is a network of worker cooperatives and community institutions
in Jackson, Mississippi that aims to build economic democracy and
community power in communities that have historically been abandoned by
the State.

In building community autonomy in the urban, Cooperation Jackson
essentially satisfies Kropotkin’s concern against militancy drainage. In
working with communities and populations abandoned by the State, they
also operate in conditions similar to desertion and living in
peripheries, albeit with all the amplitude the urban provides. That
armed struggle is not central to their project, they are not a priority
target for repression. And with committing to economic democracy, they
commit to a hydra-type organization over a dragon-type (as they are a
network of cooperatives and institutions), thereby avoiding the problems
and issues faced with heads of the dragon, whether that be betrayal or
incompetence.

In essence, what I am suggesting is that organizing for autonomous
communities of care among abandoned populations could constitute a way
to think about building autonomous projects in the Twenty-First Century.
This is the beginning of a “mamundok-in-place,” something similar to
the Black Panther Party, albeit instead of a Maoist dragon-type of
organization, it would need to be a post-Maoist hydra-type of
organization to effectively resist co-option, assassination, or
isolation and pursue self-directed militancy.

This is not without issues. Autonomous projects in the city are still
subject to policing and law. They would still be pressured by the logic
of value and the need to make and rely on money. This has its own risks
where cooperatives become sites of workers becoming their own harsh
bosses. Furthermore, there is still a need to defend against the State
and its law. However, the contours of this “mamundok-in-place” still
need to be mapped. Part of this mapping requires an understanding of
organized abandonment and its relation to armed struggle.

What is Being Subverted?

It is an oft-repeated line within National Democracy that armed struggle
has its roots in organized abandonment by the State. The way it is
framed is that the failure of reform and legal struggle alongside
organized abandonment—poverty, landlessness, imperialism—feeds into
people joining the armed struggle in the periphery.

Under different conditions in Black America, the failure of Black reform
and legal struggle led to the creation of the Black Panthers Party, the
demise of which led to the armed struggle of the Black Liberation Army.
In the same way, the CPP argues that armed struggle becomes the primary
choice.

Armed struggle, however, is not an inevitability from organized
abandonment. Armed struggle is a deliberate choice through
organizational agency won through initiative and organizing. The CPP
consciously decided upon armed struggle based on emulating the Chinese
model of armed struggle combined with historically-specific repression
under the Marcos dictatorship. After the demise of the dictatorship, the
Second Great Rectification reaffirmed the dogma of armed struggle
despite the changing material conditions. However, it is clear that we
are no longer under conditions of dictatorship. Even the CPP
acknowledges that armed struggle is not the only way to pursue National
Democracy. Yet armed struggle is still valorized as the highest form of
class struggle.

The question then becomes: Is armed struggle the correct reaction to
organized abandonment? Does it address organized abandonment in a
necessary and sufficient way?

Paradoxically, armed struggle with the NPA reinforces organized
abandonment. The presence of a people’s army makes a State less willing
to enforce its rule of law and associated State welfare in a periphery.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, as this abandonment is then coupled
with a level of autonomy of an area from the State, which in turn
reinforces its status as a rebel periphery. Indeed, this is best
exemplified by the Zapatistas who have a more contagious and well-known
political system. (Compared to the Zapatistas, and even others like the
Maobadi of Nepal, the CPP-NPA-NDF are highly secretive of their
underground government and there is not much scholarship is done on it.)
But even with the Zapatistas, we see how the Mexican State simply
abandons the whole of Zapatista Chiapas, and other rebel peripheries in
Mexico like Cherán, and reinforcing the isolation these rebel
peripheries experience.

But then again, in Mexico and the Philippines, armed struggle forces a
localized crisis of dual power within a periphery—where the local state
apparatus competes with the authority of the revolutionary movement.
Unlike the so-called dual power projects in urban environments put
forward by anarchists and libertarian socialists, the situation in rebel
peripheries are closer to true dual power situations in that State power
really does have to compete with revolutionary power. Legitimacy really
is in competition in the rebel peripheries.

But we cannot speak of generalities. The conditions in Chiapas are
different from the conditions in Cotabato. Armed struggle might be
necessary and sufficient in Chiapas, but is it so in Cotabato?

Unlike the Zapatistas, the Philippine State and the CPP-NPA-NDF seem to
be two sides of a single yet bipolar stable system—two sides of the same
coin, so to speak. The underground government is the Philippine
government’s shadow, just as the NPA is the shadow of the Armed Forces
of the Philippines. Over more than fifty years of armed struggle, this
system has cohered. The cities and the near-rural belongs to the
Philippine government. But the forests, the mountains, the peripheries,
and the many abandoned belong to the great underground. As Landauer
reminds us, “the State is a social relationship.” This bipolar
system is only made possible because the social relations of the State
are brought to the peripheries where Maoist insurgents cohered their own
shadow State power. Indeed, the stability of this bipolar system is
still unified by the regime of proletarianization, work, alienation, and
hierarchy.

I often return to Gilles Dauvé’s
“When
Insurrection Dies.” To quote at length:

Power does not come any more from the barrel of a gun than it comes from
a ballot box. No revolution is peaceful, but its “military” dimension is
never central. The question is not whether the proles finally decide to
break into the armouries, but whether they unleash what they are:
commodified beings who no longer can and no longer want to exist as
commodities, and whose revolt explodes capitalist logic. Barricades and
machine guns flow from this “weapon”. The greater the change in social
life, the less guns will be needed, and the less casualties there will
be. A communist revolution will never resemble a slaughter: not from any
nonviolent principle, but because revolution subverts more (soldiers
included) than it actually destroys.

To imagine a proletarian front facing off a bourgeois front is to
conceive the proletariat in bourgeois terms, on the model of a political
revolution or a war (seizing someone’s power, occupying their
territory). In so doing, one reintroduces everything that the
insurrectionary movement had overwhelmed: hierarchy, a respect for
specialists, for knowledge that Knows, and for techniques to solve
problems — in short for everything that plays down the role of the
common man.

Here, Dauvé challenges to think of armed struggle as something necessary
and sufficient. Revolution, in this sense, is not necessarily the taking
up of arms (though it can and often does), but rather subversion. The
political power of the proletarianized do not come from the barrels of
guns or in ballot boxes, but in subverting their class condition of
proletarianization—the self-abolition of the proletariat. For the CPP,
to be “proletarianized” is to accept the Party program and join the
armed struggle. But proletarianization is the very imposition of
abandonment, alienation, and the proletarian condition to our bodies by
capitalist society. Bourgeois class power is constituted for class rule,
while proletarian class power is constituted for the abolition of all
classes. Those who talk of proletarian class power without any
perspective on self-abolition have a corpse in their mouth.

In this sense, perhaps carving out rebel peripheries can and will have a
role in subverting proletarianization as spaces of autonomy. The lines
of desertion towards rebel peripheries could potentially act as a
revolutionary underground railroad by which the proletarianized can
escape to where the mountain air makes one free.

But armed struggle is itself insufficient. “The force of an insurrection
is social, not military,” as At Daggers Drawn reminds us.
Communist parties that are launching people’s wars certainly claim and
believe they are fighting for the whole world, but the fight for
proletarian class power is not in the peripheries, it is in the belly of
the beast where proletarianization is most cohered. The National
Democratic revolution, for all intents and purposes, is not the
unleashing of workers from their commodification and proletarianization.
Indeed, the NPA even works with “enlightened landlords” and I have
heard at least one account of the NPA breaking a peasants’ strike. The
stabilized system dividing the Philippines between the State and the
underground government has eclipsed the possibility of the subversion of
social relations. As such, the NPA seem content to carry out social
democracy out of the barrels of guns.

In this sense, what really matters more in terms of organized
abandonment is not the armed struggle, but the subversion of organized
abandonment through the autonomous communities of care, the undoing of
the conditions imposed by the civilizational order. Armed struggle may
still become necessary, but its necessity is rooted in support of
subversion and the revolutionizing of social relations, not to merely
enforce the creation of rebel peripheries. In a sense, the NPA at least
recognizes the necessity of the communities of care—as previously
mentioned, they also provide healthcare and pedagogy to the far-flung
peripheries. But they crucially fall short of revolutionizing social
relations out of a fear of “left-opportunism,” thus leaving land rent,
proletarianization, and wage relations largely intact.

What this suggests is that mamundok-in-place is something that deserts
the current order towards refugia and attacks it from the position of
subversion. The contours of mamundok-in-place becomes clearer when we
see what is not being subverted in the Philippines today, in terms of
the regime of proletarianization, gender, work, alienation, abandonment,
and hierarchy.

Mamundok-in-Place

To the guerrilla, the boondocks and mountains represent lines of
desertion, refugia from fugitivity, and open rebellion. For the
anarchist, the whole world is our mountain. To mamundok-in-place is to
see mountains of possibility and its lines of desertion in our everyday
social relations. Climbing those mountains means to bring autonomy and
subversion in all facets of our lives. The virtual rebel peripheries we
build is in the anarchy of the everyday. Ultimately, it is not a
question of urban versus rural rebel peripheries, but the whole world.
We cannot be satisfied with peripheries! We are tired of living in the
margins and the peripheries of this world! We want the whole world!

Once upon a time, the facets of life we now see as world systems began
as seeds of possibility. Money and commodities existed for thousands of
years yet only generalized to conquer the whole world within only the
last few hundred years. Likewise, it is similar for States. Indeed, even
for States, there are still places within the world where State power
has not yet cohered or territorialized completely. Some of these are
indeed in the anarchy of the peripheries, but even in the urban heart of
States, State power is not totalizing and there are refugia. Within
these refugia are seeds of possibility for another world.

After all, anarchists have historically not made use of the anarchy of
the peripheries. Rather, anarchists more often nurture seeds of
possibility in place. In the revolutions in Ukraine, Spain, Germany,
Russia, in the anarchist armed struggle in Uruguay, the insurrectionary
attacks in the contemporary Mediterranean, and as part of the united
front in Rojava, anarchists have not taken advantage of the anarchy of
the peripheries. There are many reasons as to why this is so, but it
will suffice for our purposes to point out that anarchists are more fond
of the “anarchy-in-place” rather than the “over-there” of the anarchy of
the peripheries. Anarchy is, after all, what we make of it.

These refugia, liberatory seeds, and anarchy-in-place are not merely the
machismo of revolution and insurrection. To mamundok-in-place also
means to nurture the social relations of care. Indeed, friendship and
freedom come hand-in-hand. As the Comité Invisible says,

“Friend” and “free” in English, and “Freund” and “frei” in German come
from the same Indo-European root, which conveys the idea of a shared
power that grows. Being free and having ties was one and the same thing.
I am free because I have ties, because I am linked to a reality
greater than me. (Emphasis in the original.)

Our friends, our comrades, our communities of care are also refugia.
This too is anarchy. Without care, without accountability and community,
there is no insurrection. There may be no refugia we may desert to
without it. These are the social relationships we do differently that
undoes the State, as Landauer understood it. Our mountains of refuge
are also our relations of care and the communities we build now with
each other. It is from the seeds of these liberatory social relations
that we generalize to the whole world.

Indeed, this is one of the key crises in National Democracy. They are in
crisis over persisting issues over sexual exploitation. None in the
eight components for rectification was about addressing the issue of
rape. Indeed, the Central Committee of the CPP instead decried
“petty bourgeois gender radicalism” on the same page! This has only
deepened the crisis of sexual exploitation within National Democracy.
Instead, to mamundok-in-place is to make care a revolutionary act, to
undo the social relationships of the State, hierarchy, and patriarchy.

Thus, the contours of mamundok-in-place become clearer when we connect
it to the insurrectionary project of the self-abolition of the
proletariat, which itself is connected to desertion of the world of
work, cisheteropatriarchy, and hierarchy. This proletarian
self-abolition then feeds into the subversion of organized abandonment
and towards the refugia of care. The mountains we climb, the refugia we
find, the seeds we nurture are the liberatory social relations of care
we build. And it is only through the subversion of the hierarchical and
domineering social relations and our nurturing of rival seedlings that
that project can come about.

This mamundok-in-place is the sober analysis of our own material
conditions and learning the means by which social change can occur
where we are now, and create that anarchy-in-place within our own
context. In doing so, we may reject the a priori notion of armed
struggle at the peripheries as an end-in-of-itself. Of course, this does
not discount linking up with rebel peripheries in the future, once such
conditions presents itself.

When we talk of building autonomous projects for the Twenty-First
Century, this cannot be separated from the insurrectionary break or its
necessity, or the care that makes it necessary. Again, what is crucially
different with abandonment from desertion is the locality of policing
and State power. Mamundok-in-place would also mean abolitionist steps
towards the delimitation of the carceral functions of the State and
replacing these with our own communities of care. When the revolutionary
moment comes where an insurrectionary break can be acted upon, the
moment can only be made actionable by what we build before it together.

At Daggers Drawn makes a key insight, noting that one can talk of
building as many community assemblies, cooperatives, and other
autonomous organizations as they like, but without the insurrectionary
break, “breaking social normality by force,” these projects will
remain marginal. To mamundok-in-place will also need cognizance of
this contradiction, that the virtual rebel peripheries we build, the
refugia we nurture, remain as peripheries in tension with our desire
of the whole world. Though as peripheries, they are as seeds of an
insurrectionary moment, waiting to generalize to the whole world when
the current order can no longer suffice for the means of living.

The contours of the insurrectionary moment are always shrouded in the
possibility of the future and even of the present. But what is clarified
is the historical record. This mamundok-in-place requires dividing the
dragon and unleashing the hydra. It is the communities of care in the
face of organized abandonment. It is through self-directed militancy,
and not the waiting for leaders, that this anarchy-in-place can come
about.

Because of their position in the stability of the bipolar system, the
conditions for the CPP to take advantage of the insurrectionary break
has passed. That moment was EDSA Uno, the People Power Revolution.
There, key moments for the insurrectionary break were ignored by all
factions of the left. The workers looked to leadership and found only
the misleadership of the left. This all the while the military rebels,
the caciques, and the oligarchs mobilized towards their restoration.

A future insurrectionary break would perhaps be a moment where social
relations of domination become untenable for reproducing our daily life.
The social force of an insurrection has always been social, not
military, and subversion will matter more than arms. Such a social force
may perhaps look like the Cultural Revolution, albeit done right and
directed against the world of domination. There was true self-directed
militancy in the Cultural Revolution which saw the unleashing of the
hydra of the people in all of its force. However, some of the various
heads of the hydra opted to bite each other. Some heads were groomed by
the Party-State against more revolutionary heads. The directions of the
militancy was made obscure by many heads looking to misleaderships for
direction. Those who were self-directed were ultimately betrayed by
their Party-State. Insurrectionary libertarian post-Maoism would mean
fulfilling the anarchic conclusions put forward by the Cultural
Revolution.

But the point here is not the rejection of leadership outright, but the
rejection of would-be leaders in search of followers. Dangerous are
those who seek leadership for followers, for they are those who will
lead astray. Such is the nature of hierarchy and dragons. Rather, the
leadership of proletarians-in-abolition is collectively held through the
hydra of self-directed militancy grounded in communities of care.

It is said that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
But the country of the blind is a place where sight is not needed to
live and prosper. The country of the blind has no need for the one-eyed
man because they can see in ways he is alien to. We are all living
in that country of the blind, and there are one-eyed men all over who
would say their sight privileges them to lead. This sight, whether
theoretical-programmatic clarity or a self-declared vanguard, does not
privilege anyone to lead. Sight is rather a responsibility, a way
wherein we can build militancy over membership, a methodology of
empowering. The point is not to lead the blind, but the add of the
perspective of sight to their repertoire.

This is not to say that organization in the present moment is
worthless—far from it; it will have its place. The organizations we
build in defiance of abandonment can also be refugia, as virtual rebel
peripheries. Mamundok-in-place necessarily builds towards the
insurrectionary moment, towards the self-abolition of the proletariat,
utilizing the refugia, nurturing the liberatory seeds, building the
communities of care, developing lines of desertion, dividing the dragon,
building the power of hydras, self-directed militancy and all. These
things matter for what comes ahead.

There are refugia even in our daily life and the social relations we
inhabit. From these refugia, we can win the whole world. To
mamundok-in-place is to recognize the whole world is our mountain.

Author’s Note

This essay has been the product of a year of thinking, writing, and
re-writing. Throughout this essay, I am deeply indebted to the Black
radical tradition, particularly to Black anarchism and the Black
anarchic radicals. I bring Black study in dialogue with the
revolutionary traditions in the Philippines. I am also indebted to the
many readers and commentators who read this manuscript and provided
comments over the past year. I have noted in many places where I am
indebted to specific comments.

But most of all, I am indebted to my comrades and friends. No piece of
political theory is developed in isolation, and indeed, all writing is
autobiographical, especially political theory. My comrade Butingtaon
half-ironically identified with “insurrectionary libertarian
post-Maoism.” Another, Warden Unit, offhandedly mentioned that what the
NPA were doing in building autonomy is what we also want, but we just
reject their ends of a State. Many in our affinity group stresses the
centrality of care and consent. The beginnings of this zine was first
conceptualized in dialogue with comrades at Partido Sosyalista. Whatever
the deficiencies of the Comité Invisible, they wrote powerfully in To
Our Friends, “I am free because I have ties, because I am linked to a
reality greater than me.” Such are the contours of mamundok-in-place.

[1] Simoun Magsalin, “The Libertarian Elements in the Philippine
Archipelago,” Anarchist Studies, October 2020,
anarchiststudies.noblogs.org/article-the-libertarian-elements-in-the-philippine-archipelago.

[2] This coinage was made possible with dialogue with Ruth Kinna.

[3] Thank you to Herbert Docena for calling attention to the need to
discuss this.

[4] Gustav Landauer, “Weak Statesmen, Weaker People!” (The Anarchist
Library, February 2017),
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gustav-landauer-weak-statesmen-weaker-people.

[5] James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on
Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play, Fourth printing,
(Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014), xx-xxi.

[6] James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History
of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale Agrarian Studies Series (New Haven
London: Yale University Press, 2009).

[7] I thank Mooncake for this excellent phrasing and necessary
correction. Kim from Dylan’s class also raised this excellent point
of correction.

[8] Thank you Hudda for this comment from my initial presentation at
Dylan Rodríguez’s class.

[9] C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint
L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2. ed., rev (New York:
Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc, 1989).

[10] Johnhenry Gonzalez, Maroon Nation: A History of Revolutionary
Haiti, Yale Agrarian Studies (New Haven (Conn.): Yale University
Press, 2019).

[11] Russell Maroon Shoatz, “The Dragon and the Hydra: A Historical
Study of Organizational Methods,” 4strugglemag, July 2010,
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/russell-maroon-shoats-the-dragon-and-the-hydra.

[12] James, The Black Jacobins.

[13] Shoatz, “The Dragon and the Hydra”.

[14] I thank Kenneth Cardenas for bringing attention to this.

[15] Stephen B. Acabado, “The Archaeology of Pericolonialism: Responses
of the ‘Unconquered’ to Spanish Conquest and Colonialism in Ifugao,
Philippines,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 21,
no. 1 (March 2017): 1–26,
doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0342-9.

[16] Reynaldo Clemeña Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements
in the Philippines, 1840–1910, 3^rd ed. (Quezon City: Ateneo de
Manila University Press, 1989), 185–86.

[17] Frederic Henry Sawyer, The Inhabitants of the Philippines (New
York; London: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Sampson Low, Marston and
Company; Project Gutenburg, 1900), 29, 210, 296, 305,
gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38081/pg38081-images.html.

[18] Generoso Maceda, “The Remontados of Rizal Province,” Philippine
Journal of Science 64, no. 3 (November 1937): 313–21,
philjournalsci.dost.gov.ph/past-issues-1.

[19] E.g. Murray Bookchin, The Limits of the City, 2^nd ed. (New York,
Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 1974).

[20] Maceda, “The Remontados of Rizal Province,” 315. Maceda here uses
colonized language when he defines “police chief” and “members of
police.” Maceda is likely a colonized creole who used concepts in
his colonized society to refer to self-managed Indigenous ways of
keeping people safe. I doubt these Remontado “police” were carceral
like that of the colony’s police force, but rather just the people
tasked and mandated to ensure the Remontado barrio’s safety,
especially from creole landgrabbers.

[21] Personal corresopondence with Brian Tokar.

[22] Gregorio F. Zaide, Dagohoy: Champion of Filipino Freedom (Manila:
Enriquez, Aldaya & Co., 1941), 11–18.

[23] Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution, 29–73.

[24] Ileto, ibid., 185–86.

[25] This guerrilla strategy never took place as the dictator Aguinaldo
conspired against and eventually ordered the murder of General
Luna.

[26] Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution, 163.

[27] Personal correspondence, former CPP cadre.

[28] Simoun Riple (Jose Maria Sison), Specific Characteristics of Our
People’s War (Philippines: Communist Party of the Philippines,
2012),
marxists.org/history/philippines/cpp/riple/1975/specific-characteristics.htm.

[29] Redfish, “Inside the New People’s Army,” Documentary, (Redfish,
2018); Nettie Wild, “A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine
Revolution,” Documentary, (Kalasikas Productions, Chanel 4, 1988);
Iliya Makalipay, “Have You Heard of the Revolutionary Movement’s
Elections?” Liberation, March 2025,
liberation.ndfp.info/main-stream/have-you-heard-of-the-revolutionary-movements-own-elections.

[30] Kas Ned na Red, personal correspondence.

[31] Riple, Specific Characteristics of Our People’s War.

[32] Ang Bayan, “Alliance and Struggle Under the Duterte Regime,” Ang
Bayan, June 2016, 1–2,
philippinerevolution.nu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/20160607en.pdf;
Ang Bayan, “Gain Strength in an All-Round Way in Engaging the
Duterte Regime,” Ang Bayan, July 2016, 1–2,
bannedthought.net/Philippines/CPP/AngBayan/2016/20160707en.pdf;
Joseph Scalice, “First as Tragedy, Second as Farce: Marcos, Duterte
and the Communist Parties of the Philippines,” World Socialist Web
Site, September 2020,
wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/01/lect-s01.html.

[33] Ka Barry, “Resist Authoritarian Tendencies Within the Party! Let a
Thousand Schools of Thought Contend! Comments on the Paper
“Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors” by Armando
Liwanag,” Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies
8, no. 1 (1992): 158–65,
journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/kasarinlan/article/view/303;
Party Organizations in the Visayas and Manila-Rizal Regional
Commission KRMR, “Declaration of Autonomy,” Kasarinlan: Philippine
Journal of Third World Studies 9, no. 1 (1993),
journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/kasarinlan/article/view/1679.

[34] Walden Bello, “The Crisis of the Philippine Progressive Movement: A
Preliminary Investigation,” Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of
Third World Studies 8, no. 1 (1992): 166–77,
journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/kasarinlan/article/view/304;
Alex de Jong, “Hunting Specters: Paranoid Purges in the Filipino
Communist Guerrilla Movement,” in Genocide, ed. Ügür Ümit Üngör
(Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 113–30,
doi.org/10.1515/9789048518654-006; Robert Francis B.
Garcia, To Suffer Thy Comrades: How the Revolution Decimated Its
Own, Revised edition (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Anvil
Publishing, 2018).

[35] Simoun Magsalin, Against Carceral Communism, For Abolition
Communism!, 1^st ed. (USA: Hates Cafe, 2022),
haters.noblogs.org/files/2022/04/Abolition-Communism.pdf.

[36] Pierre Rousset, “After Kintanar, the Killings Continue: The
Post-1992 CPP Assassination Policy in the Philippines” (July 2003), internationalviewpoint.org/IMG/pdf/CPP-AssPol-03.07.04.pdf.

[37] Shoatz, “The Dragon and the Hydra”.

[38] Yiching Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese
Socialism in Crisis (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
2014).

[39] Sheng-wu-lien and Yang Xiguang, Whither China? (Marxists Internet
Archive, 1968),
marxists.org/subject/china/documents/whither-china.htm.

[40] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
(Marxists Internet Archive, 2000),
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm.

[41] Mia Wong, “When Communists Crushed the International Workers’
Movement,” Lausan, June 2021,
lausancollective.com/2021/communists-crushed-international-workers-movement;
Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins.

[42] Russell Maroon Shoatz and Steve Bloom, “Dragon and Hydra Revisited
— A Dialogue” (Old and New Project, 2014),
oldandnewproject.net/Essays/Maroon_D%20and%20H%20Revisited.html.

[43] Red Marriott, “Notes on Nepal: The Long March of Maoism”
(Libcom.org, 2006-04/2013-08),
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/red-marriott-notes-on-nepal.

[44] See Bulatlatan, “Bulatlatan Archive,” Archive, Marxists Internet
Archive, 2024,
marxists.org/history/philippines/bulatlatan/index.htm.

[45] Thank you to Brian Tokar for the discussion that led to the
addition of this segment.

[46] Murray Bookchin, The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the
Promise of Direct Democracy (London: Verso London, 2015), ch 8.

[47] Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 82,
archive.org/details/latheofheaven0000ursu.

[48] James Connolly, “James Connolly: We Only Want the Earth” (Marxists
Internet Archive, 1907),
marxists.org/archive/connolly/1907/xx/wewnerth.htm.
Thank you Green Tea for this suggestion.

[49] Jose Maria Sison, “On ‘Foreign Monsters’ and the People’s War That
Persists,” Kites Journal, October 2022,
kites-journal.org/2022/10/27/on-foreign-monsters-and-the-peoples-war-that-persists;
Jose Maria Sison, “Great Achievements of the CPP in 50 Years of
Waging Revolution” (National Democratic Front of the Philippines,
August 2018),
ndfp.org/great-achievements-of-the-cpp-in-50-years-of-waging-revolution.

[50] BISIG, “What Is BISIG ?” Bukluran Sa Ikauunlad Ng Sosyalistang
Isip at Gawa (BISIG), August 2007,
filipinosocialism.wordpress.com/what-is-bisig.

[51] Personal correspondence with militants from the FAU.

[52] Paul Sr. Mattick, “Introduction to Anti-Bolshevik Communism”
(2003),
marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1978/introduction.htm.

[53] Thank you to Carolus Plebejus who alerted me to this.

[54] Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer” (Syncopy, Atlas Entertainment,
2023).

[55] Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, 1907,
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread.

[56] Anonymous, Desert (Stac an Armin St. Kilda: Little Black Cart,
2011),
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-desert.

[57] Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin, Small Communal Experiments and Why
They Fail, 1901,
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-small-communal-experiments-and-why-they-fail.

[58] Steve Millett, “Neither State Nor Market: An Anarchist Perspective
on Social Welfare,” in Twenty-First Century Anarchism: Unorthodox
Ideas for a New Millennium, ed. Jon Purkis and James Bowen
(London: Cassell, 1997), 24–40,
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/steve-millett-neither-state-nor-market.

[59] Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra:
Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the
Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).

[60] William C. Anderson and Zoé Samudzi, “The Anarchism of Blackness,”
ROAR Magazine, no. 5: Not This Time! (2017),
roarmag.org/magazine/black-liberation-anti-fascism.

[61] I thank Kenneth Cardenas for this formulation. Mooncake was also
invaluable with some discussion into how this marronage-in-place
would look like.

[62] Ben Mabie and Joohyun Kim, “Strategy After Ferguson,” Viewpoint
Magazine, February 2016,
viewpointmag.com/2016/02/01/strategy-after-ferguson.
Thank you Mooncake for alerting me to this.

[63] Charles Edwin Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party Reconsidered
(Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2005), 408.

[64] Landauer, “Weak Statesmen, Weaker People!”.

[65] Gilles Dauvé, “When Insurrections Die,” Endnotes 1, no. 1
(October 2008): 51–52.

[66] Anonymous, At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, Its Defenders and
Its False Critics (The Anarchist Library, 2012), 12.

[67] Amado Guerrero (Jose Maria Sison), “Our Urgent Tasks” (2008),
marxists.org/history/philippines/cpp/guerrero/1975/urgent-tasks.htm.

[68] Kenneth Cardenas, “Two Premises: For Political Imagination, and for
Varieties of Possibility,” Academic, Kenneth Cardenas, November
2023, kennethcardenas.com/2023/11/14/two-premises.

[69] See my essay “The Anarchy of the Peripheries” in Muntjac Issue 2:
Insurgency & Counter-Insurgency.

[70] Invisible Committee, To Our Friends, trans. Robert Hurley (Ill
Will Editions, 2014), 66,
illwill.com/print/the-invisible-committee-to-our-friends.

[71] Anonymous, Why She Doesn’t Give A Fuck About Your Insurrection
(The Anarchist Library, 2009).

[72] Landauer, “Weak Statesmen, Weaker People!”.

[73] Ang Bayan, “Fulfill the Tasks of the Rectification Movement and
Advance the Revolution!” Ang Bayan, December 2024, 13,
philippinerevolution.nu/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/20241226en_special.pdf.

[74] Anonymous, At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, Its Defenders and
Its False Critics, 7–8.

[75] I thank Adrienne Cacatian alerting me of this reversal taken from
the H. G. Wells short story “The Country of the Blind” (1904).