Don’t call them ‘progressives’ or ‘nationalists’; they’re neither
SO how do we collectively refer to organizations with such diverse avowed aims as feminism (Gabriela), youth welfare (Anakbayan), trade unionism (KMU) or “people’s economics” (Ibon Foundation)?
There is something certainly common to them, and therefore, they are a class that deserves its own name: they are all against any administration; they all adhere to the program first espoused by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as the struggle for “national democracy,” which will put an end to the evils of “imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism.”
Don’t call them “progressives,” the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s preferred term for them, which is really an indication of that paper’s sympathy and even admiration for them. That’s an old, old term that disguised the nascent communist movement, which CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison in the 1960s used to camouflage his political views drawn from his readings of Mao Zedong. In fact, his first printed venue for such writings on this was titled The Progressive Journal.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “progressive” as “making use of or interested in new ideas, findings or opportunities.” Progressive may have been appropriate in the 1960s to describe the kind of views Claro M. Recto espoused, which was for the country to move out of the American colonizers’ economic, political and cultural hold.
