Last 28th July, 2008, President Arroyo delivered her eighth State of the

Nation Address (SONA) in her eighth year of presidency at the Batasan

complex on the occasion of the joint opening of the upper and lower

legislative Houses. Aside from the content of her speech, many Filipinos used

to count the number of applause the president gets from her audience. This

year, she was applauded 104 times, much higher compared to last year’s

103 (thanks to the Bugkalot mayor in Bahag).

While the president was on her fullest effort of eluding the people from

the real situation of the country, different groups of leftist and protesters

were shouting along the defined street of Commonwealth Avenue. This kind

of rally is typical scenery whenever there is a SONA. The protesters

exclaimed that the SONA was no different from her previous SONAs. The

president downplayed the leftists’ reaction saying it was no different from

their previous SONA reactions; and comes the saying “history repeat itself.”

Actually, the president in her SONA defended herself from her political

enemies, “My critics say this is fiction, along with other facts and figures I

cite today.”1 In this manner, she knew and anticipated the fact that she

received and will continue receiving substantial criticisms from the people.

They say that Bush and Gloria have something in common aside from their

fathers were both former Presidents; they assumed office on the same

day!(January 20,2001); they both use "Executive Privilege" to prevent

congressional investigations from discovering their gross mistakes; but most

1
http://thefilipinoweb.com/news/gma-sona-2008-2
especially, they both suffer all-time low public approval ratings! The fact that

there is always a mass protest during SONA is one proof that progress is still

an illusion if not a joke. The point now is what hinders us from achieving the

dreamed progress and satisfactory living? Perhaps we can get answers from

Althusser’s “Lenin and Philosophy.” Althusser said that philosophy is political

and that there is partisanship in philosophy, thus neutrality is impossible.2

How about if the country has pluralistic parties and ideologies? Our

false democracy became the home for many, varied and differing ideologies,

each claiming and aiming for ascendancy. This is the reason why those in

position will not end-up without receiving negative impressions from persons

or group of persons whose ideals contradicts with them. Since the

declaration of the false independence, history shows that there was no

leader and party who never pushed their own interest upon assumption into

power. There was a time when Enrique Dussel asked Rorty if the exploitation

of Latin America or of the poor North Americans is caused by capitalism, “Is

there in any event a system without exploitation?”3 the latter replied.

Although Rorty was playing safe in his answer yet seemed affirmative,

capitalism for the Marxists promoted division and has become an obstacle for

us to leap forward (in Maoist sense) to a better future. For capitalism means

accumulation.

2
www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1968/lenin-philosophy
3
Dussel, Enrique. The Underside of Modernity. Trans and Edited by Eduardo Mendieta, New
Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996.
 Some Church people and religious congregations went out and joined

the anti-Gloria’s SONA rally, remarkably the Franciscans. This shows that

even inside the Church there is no place for neutrality, for the God they

believed-in is a bias God. The Catholic religion is of great influence in the

country’s politics and day to day life. However, during the rally, certain

personalities asked, “Where is the CBCP? This led me to ask, is the Church

guilty of mediocrity? Or their absence only shows partisanship and division

within the Church’s hierarchy? Indeed, partisanship has apparently entered

the Church patterned with that of the secular world.

We have proved that the issue on partisanship becomes one of the

major, but not the ultimate, hindrances for the country’s economic progress.

If Althusser was right, why is it that only few, if none, communist states

achieved economic progress? Was communism doomed to failure? Working

hand in hand is not hard to do in these countries for they are under one

banner and one party. Perhaps there is a more concrete reason for all of this.

The United States of America is so enthusiastic and motivated in fronting

democracy as the answer to progress, crashing Hussein for capitalistic and

imperialistic purposes. However I believe in a saying “do not impose your

own definition of success to others.” The utopia of democracy (in the sense

of Manheim) is a failure here in the Philippines. Our democratic concept of

freedom becomes a tolerance for those in power.

Going back to the SONA, some interesting part of her speech aside

from one great announcement made at this year’s SONA; that “texting”
would now only cost .50 cents, were about the issues on land reform,

ancestral domain, and the much awaited issue of scrapping VAT (value

added tax) which was denounced by the president. "If we remove the VAT,

business confidence will decline, interest rates will go up, the more the value

of the peso will fall, and the more commodity prices will rise."4 I can make a

lot of critique from this statement. However, another statement that comes

from her mouth got my attention, “I said this is a global crisis where

everyone is a victim. But only few can afford to avoid, or pay to delay, the

worst effects.”5

Globalization is often used to refer to economic globalization, that is,

integration of national economies into the international economy through

trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of

technology.6 Globalization has become the hegemonic culture of humanity. In

the case of the Philippines, we cannot escape this trend. Perhaps, Gloria is

right partly in putting the blame into global crisis but failed to put the blame

in her administration.

Focusing again on the question posited above, I shall now break my

intellectual neutrality by accepting the leftists critique on capitalism. The

archipelago is a home for capitalists, especially foreign investors. The

country depends so much to the global economy being a member of the

4
http://thefilipinoweb.com/news/gma-sona-2008-2
5
http://thefilipinoweb.com/news/gma-sona-2008-2

Bhagwati, Jagdish (2004). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford, New York: Oxford

6

University Press.
international communities such as the WTO. Capitalism and consumerism is

fast changing and its growth is seemingly unstoppable. The country is not

yet an industrialized one but the advanced countries kept on advancing and

accumulating while we are left lame and ultra dependent to them. We are

dependent because our then and now leaders allowed this to happen and

that majority of the Filipinos just tolerated if not passive to such critical

public issues. However, I cannot put the blame to the vast poor Filipinos

whose accessibility to public involvement is being thwarted by economic and

political dominators. We are all victim of this industrial and capitalist culture

as Horkheimer said that the sociological theory that the loss of the support of

objectively established religion, the dissolution of the last remnants of pre-

capitalism, together with technological and social differentiation or

specialization, have led to cultural chaos is disproved every day; for culture

now impresses the same stamp on everything.7 This is what Marcuse is

telling us, the one dimensional society, one dimensional thought and one

dimensional man.8 Gloria’s SONA is actually contradictory to what is

happening in the reality. However, it appears through media and television

impressive. The SONA is like a sound film through live coverage and

documentation of the media; Batasan complex can no longer be

distinguished from the CCP; there are directors, protagonist (Gloria),

7
Marxist Literary Criticism Philosophy Archive @ Marxist.org: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment
as Mass Deception
8
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideologies of Advanced Industrial
Society. Boston: Beacon, 1964.
supporting actors (Bugkalot in Bahag, etc.) and fans club (all slave and

pervert audience). A society which commodifies culture is a place of massive

contradiction for the talented innovator.9 There are techniques by which the

innovator can use and exploit this condition, these including satire and irony,

manipulation of the medium, independent production and alternative

distribution. Derrida and Baudrillard would interpret this as implosion but not

yet in the last phase10.

Many intellectuals have just interpreted the world in varied ways; the

point is to change it.11 If I would be asked how to change it, I will not just

settle for Foucault’s aesthetic of existence. We need more than that. Much

more to Baudrillard’s overconsumption, our third world dwellers don’t have

access to that. My assessment thus is first; we should have one strong

philosophical party (in Althusser’s sense) that would combat the one

dimensional culture (in Marcuses’s sense) imposed to us by the multi-

national owners of production through putting artificial needs that leads to

“mass deception” (in Horkheimer and Adorno’s sense). Secondly; that this

party should be composed by the intellectuals who have time and access to

public domain’s privileges, for a typical passive Juan dela Cruz is busy

devoting his time in fulfilling the “basic needs”12 for survival. Thirdly; that

these Leninized people (just a term for orthodoxy and loyalty to the party)
9
http://barneygrant.tripod.com/cultureindustry.htm
10
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
11
XIth thesis on Fuerbach as cited by Althusser in his “Lenin and Philosophy”
12
Abraham Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs.
shall start the logico-dialectic-artistic way of living through great refusal that

would lead to a collective revolution. There are many ways of revolution. Arm

struggle is typical if dialogue is not appropriate. In the early part of this

article, I ask the question why most communist and socialists or at least

independent states did not achieve prosperity? What is the common factor

with that of the poverty of the third world republican countries? We may win

the revolution in our own independent states, however, the problem is

global. The issue still is the unequal distribution of goods and services

controlled by multi-national companies mostly settled in the West and other

center countries. I did not find the true answer to all discussed contemporary

philosophers. We can emancipate ourselves through reason and intellectual

masturbation but not our living, still they are the owner of mass production

and the deception will continue with its advanced pleasuristic forms. This

utopia will never be realized unless the “Ego” will give way to the third world

“Other.”13

Our Lady of the Angels Seminary

Bagbag, Novaliches, Quezon City

A Marxist Critique on President Gloria Arroyo’s

State of the Nation Address (SONA)

13
Dussel, Enrique. Philosophy of Liberation.
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
In
Contemporary Philosophy

Submitted to:

Professor Gerardo Lanuza

By

Adam E. Dalac
First Semester, 2008