ANTONIO GRAMSCI AND THE PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION
ANTONIO GRAMSCI’S THEORY OF THE ‘NATIONAL-POPULAR’ & SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES by E. SAN JUAN, Jr. Though in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie… The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have no got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself as the nation, it is so far itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word. --KARL MARX & FRIEDRICH ENGELS, “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (1848) (1971, 101,109) Recent political events mark the beginning of a phase in which insurrection has become the sole means for the masses to express their political will. --ANTONIO GRAMSCI, letter dated Feb. 1925 (1971, lxxviii) Gramsci has been pronounced “dea