Marcos the Man, Marcos the Machine
I have been critical of certain aspects of the mainstream narratives surrounding EDSA I, along with certain ways that such narratives are put into practice. With that being said, we should remember history --- and remember it properly. By my criticisms I do not wish to glorify the elder Marcos or desecrate the experiences of those who were subject to his worst intentions. But remembering an event, or might I say, a culmination of many events, requires us to understand those realities which are not so apparent to us.
Therefore, we must speak of it not with grandiloquent platitudes, but rather with a reasoned understanding of the whole reality that can give direction to our sentiments. EDSA was a complex of various actors, motivations, and historical processes that went far beyond the Marcos administration. Marcos was by no means a one-off event: many of our previous presidents had tendencies towards tyranny that was simply not possible to realize at that time.
One of the salient things worth commemorating about the event was its miraculous peacefulness. Had it been won by blood, the resulting junta would have been just as repressive as, if not more so than, the previous regime --- just like what happened with almost every other revolution. We can see this by the way that certain military elements, including JPE, attempted to overthrow the Aquino administration.
But despite it being a catalyst for the return of the 'old society,' the EDSA event was perhaps the best possible outcome of a regime marked by decades of martial law followed by the slow decline of the country along with Marcos Sr.'s health. But we continue to live under the managerial regime which pushes along with itself the spirit of 'nationalism', this weird extension of Tagalism, upon the people.
EDSA changed the operator, but not the machine. And such a machine today can, when the circumstances are ripe, once again return to the days of Martial Law. The real enemy was never Marcos the man --- it was Marcos the machine. “The face of power changes,” says Bertrand de Jouvenel, “but never its nature” (On Power). We saw a foretaste of future tyranny in Duterte's policies of vulgar impunity and in his draconian measures against the lockdown. What makes it so sure that this cannot happen again?
The solution is not in electing good-natured presidents who at the same time can ensure the stability of the State. The tension between stability and one’s kind-heartedness is inevitable, and the interests of the Center will trump one’s prior commitments, no matter how heartfelt they were at the time. As Cory told Doy: “I was told that the Edsa revolution … erased all those promises.”
Bertrand de Jouvenel understood that the solution to tyranny does not lie in taking over the center. It lies in getting rid of it completely. Karl Marx, too, understood this, when he said that “the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it…” (April 12, 1871). This, however, did not stop his disciples from taking up the machinery of State in the name of transition and vanguard (Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power).
Let us remember history, therefore, not by missing the forest for the trees. The trees exist, let them be acknowledged: but we need to start asking ourselves what made a Marcosian tyranny possible in the first place, and what might allow it to happen again. The short answer? The managerial state.
Daniel Tyler Chua is the founder and president of the Collegium Perulae Orientis. He is also a contributor to the Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Sentinel PH.
