1.) “Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture” ni D.

Fernandez
Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture

By: Doreen G. Fernandez

What's Cooking? "The old and the new. The provincial and the pop. The slow and the
fast. The past, the present, the future. That's what's cooking in Philippine cuisine. Which
means that, as the most popular (people-created, people-processed and people-consumed)
segment of popular culture, it is dynamic and changing, living and lively."

Writing about Food. "When one describes food, one does not use words alone, but the readers'
remembering as well -- of past pleasures, savored sensations. One writes on and with the
readers' palates, alluding to food tasted as children, drawing on their reservoirs of pleasure. In
effect, one draws on all of the culture that shaped oneself and one's readers."

On Mangoes. “... we wager that the mango memories of many a Filipino still revolve around the
fruit ripening to fragrance in Maytime; around fat golden halves dripping their juice on
glistening suman in Antipolo; around mangoes peeled whole with the hands on farms and at
fiestas...to drip on chin and clothes; around mangoes chilled in river water rather than in
refrigerators, while the feasters-to-be swim in the rivers of childhood; around mangoes sweet
because stolen from consenting uncles or neighbors; around the fruit not as commercial
product, but as pledge of time and season and memory."

2.) “Welgang Bayan: Empowering Labor Unions Against Poverty and

Repression” ni R. Torres-Yu
Welgang Bayan: Empowering Labor Unions Against Poverty and Repression

By: Rosario Torres-Yu

How do workers respond if management denies them the right to organize, to speak, and to
strike?
What pretexts do employers use to get away with their union-busting and witch-hunting for
progressive elements on the payroll?
How do government mandates meant to quell union activities instead fan the fire of discontent
and spur the spread of protests?
What factors innate to the Philippine colonial economy nurture the steady growth of radicalism
and militancy in the labor sector?

Welgang Bayan answers these questions by following the trade union movement from 1972 to
1984 as it braves the martial law years; celebrates May 1 milestones; metamorphoses into the
BMP, TUCP, and KMU, among others; and struggles for both workers’ rights and rewards—
from the tiny shops along Avenida Rizal to the export processing zones, from
the batilyos’ indignation Mass in Navotas to the legendary strike at La Tondena—and along the
way, leaves lessons for all employees, employers, labor leaders, and legislators today.
3.) “Dissent and counterconsciousness” ni R. Constantino
4.) “From Globalization to National Liberation” by E. San Juan, Jr.
 5.) “The Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anti-Colonial
Imagination” by B. Anderson

In this sparkling new work, Benedict Anderson provides a radical recasting of themes
from Imagined Communities, his classic book on nationalism, through an exploration of fin-de-
siecle politics and culture that spans the Caribbean, Imperial Europe and the South China
Sea.

A jewelled pomegranate packed with nitroglycerine is primed to blow away Manila’s 19th-
century colonial elite at the climax of El Filibusterismo, whose author, the great political
novelist Jose Rizal, was executed in 1896 by the Spanish authorities in the Philippines at the
age of 35. Anderson explores the impact of avant-garde European literature and politics on
Rizal and his contemporary, the pioneering folklorist Isabelo de los Reyes, who was imprisoned
in Manila after the violent uprisings of 1896 and later incarcerated, together with Catalan
anarchists, in the prison fortress of Montjuich in Barcelona. On his return to the Philippines,
by now under American occupation, Isabelo formed the first militant trade unions under the
influence of Malatesta and Bakunin.

Anderson considers the complex intellectual interactions of these young Filipinos with the new
“science” of anthropology in Germany and Austro-Hungary, and with post-Communard
experimentalists in Paris, against a background of militant anarchism in Spain, France, Italy
and the Americas, Jose Marti’s armed uprising in Cuba and anti-imperialist protests in China
and Japan. In doing so, he depicts the dense intertwining of anarchist internationalism and
radical anti-colonialism.

Under Three Flags is a brilliantly original work on the explosive history of national
independence and global politics.

6.) “The Light of Liberty: Documents and Studies on the Katipunan,

1892-1897” ni J. Richardson

Most of the 73 Katipunan documents in this volume were seized by the Guardia Civil in Manila
in 1896–1897 and locked away for decades in the Spanish military archives. Transcribed and
published here for the first time are two versions of the Katipunan’s founding statutes of 1892;
more than twenty records of the Supreme Council; initiation rituals; draft contributions
to KALAYAAN, the KKK newspaper; and letters of Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto. Also
included here are a few better known documents, such as Bonifacio’s “Decalogue,” Jacinto’s
“Kartilya” the Acta de Tejeros, and the Naik Military Agreement. The original Tagalog texts are
in most cases preceded by brief introductions and followed by English translations or
paraphrases. Supplementary essays discuss the Katipunan’s leadership and structure in the
city and province of Manila, and the contested historiography of the Katipunan. This volume
provides a wealth of fresh insights into the character, ideals and travails of the secret society
that launched the struggle for liberty.

7.) “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” ni Paulo Freire

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Portuguese: Pedagogia do Oprimido), written by educator Paulo

Freire, proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society. It
was first published in Portuguese in 1968, and was translated by Myra Ramos into English and
published in 1970.[1] The book is considered one of the foundational texts of critical pedagogy.
Dedicated to the oppressed and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults to read
and write, Freire includes a detailed Marxist class analysis in his exploration of the
relationship between the colonizer and the colonized.
In the book Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model of education" because it treats
the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggy bank. He argues that
pedagogy should instead treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge.
The book has sold over 750,000 copies worldwide.
 8.) “Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T.H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo
de los Reyes and the Production of Modern Knowledge” ni R.
Mojares

About the book:

Grounded in a detailed analysis of the lives and works of Pedro Paterno, T.H. Pardo de
Tavera, and Isabelo de los Reyes, the book is a richly textured portrait of a generation
that created the self-consciousness of the Filipino nation. It explores the hist orical
conditions that shaped the emergence of a modern Philippine intelligentsia and the
unfinished, strange and wondrous itineraries diverse intellectuals took in engaging
Western knowledge and dealing with the local realities of the country from, of, an d for
which they tried or pretended to speak. Brains of the Nation is a groundbreaking work
in Philippine intellectual history.

9.) “Forging a Nationalist Foreign Policy: Essays on U.S. Military

Presence and the Challenges to Philippine Foreign Policy” ni R.
Simbulan

Book Review: Forging a Nationalist Foreign Policy

“Forging a Nationalist Foreign Policy” is a tour guide for social activists and conscience-
stricken Filipinos who want to enlighten our socially-conscious countrymen, especially in the
ranks of the youth about the ills of neocolonial domination and hegemony, the dangers of free
market globalization and foreign intervention in all aspects of the internal affairs of other
countries, and the importance of militant nationalism in our political, social and cultural
awakening. This book reminds us that the Filipino nation is still not independent in a sense
that it is tied in a tight rope of neocolonial domination and elite rule. The Subic rape case and
the Jennifer Laude rape-murder case give us the right opportunity to make this book a good
reading reference for all those who still has the courage to express our love of country. So far,
the greatest challenge is to light the torch of a nationalist awakening that will surely put a
blowing end to neocolonial domination, hegemony, militarism and elite/cacique rule.

10.) “Nationalist Economics” ni A. Lichauco

Nationalist Economics

PREFACE The nation is undergoing a socioeconomic crisis whose intensity and complexity are
without precedent, and this book has been written for those who wish to understand the origin
and nature of that crisis in layman's terms and who are seeking for ways and means out of that
crisis, also in layman’s terms. The understanding of that crisis need not and should not be
confined to economists, and the fundamentals underlying it should be placed within the grasp
of every Filipino, even of those who have not had the benefit of a formal course in economics.
Just as politics is too important to be left to politicians, interest in the nation's economic
situation, and the formulation of the appropriate solutions, should not be confined to economists
because the crisis affects the life and well-being of everyone. It is a crisis which in fact threatens
the very survival of the Philippines as a nation-state. Too oflen our crisis is perceived by the
layman as a moral one because it has been generally explained primarily in terms of a corrupt
government, a corrupt bureaucracy, of corrupt cronies and corrupt presidential relatives. But if
this were so, if the crisis is fundamentally a function of corruption, how explain that in countries
where corruption is equally rampant, considerable economic progress has been made, and
continues to be experienced? America's period of accelerated growth and economic take-off
coincided with the rise and rule of her robber barons, while the accomplishments of Marxist
states have been brought about by overcentralized bureaucracies plagued by the cronyism and
corruption which such bureaucracies bring in their wake. The robber barons of America did not
prevent her from becoming the most affluent state in the world, and the corruption of her
bureaucracy has not prevented the Soviet Union from becoming a formidable industrial and
military power. The bureaucracies and political systems of virtually all nations in Asia have long
been notorious for their pervasive and intractable venality, but virtually every state in Asia today
is on the move, at least in economic terms, posting historic achievements that are conspicuously
altering for the better the material condition of peoples. While the Philippines decays. Not long
from now, social historians will be explaining why a country flaunted as uthe only Christian
nation in Asia” is the most impoverished in the region. The Philippine case is making Christianity,
at least in Asia, synonymous with backwardness and poverty. The truth, however, is that the
Philippine crisis represents a derangement, not so much of the moral order, as of developmental
policy. This book suggests why. Its central theme is that the failure of policy, from which the
crisis essentially stems, is due to the fact that policy has ignored the country’s vital requirements
as a nation-state, and even collides with those requirements. Philippine development policy has
been tailored to meet the strategic needs of external interests which profit from the country's
situation as a social organism saddled with an economy that belongs to a distant, pre-industrial
age. They are forces which profit from the Philippine status quo. To the extent that this fatal
misorientation of policy is a result of ignorance on the part of Filipino functionaries responsible
for the country's policy, it reflects what nationalist historian Constantino has described as the
“miseducation of the Filipino.” To the extent that it is a function of conscious error, then it reflects
something more sinister and deadlier than corrup- tion. But whatever it is of which we speak,
the truth, in its entirety and as one perceives it, must be told. For in that lies freedom.
ALEJANDRO LICHAUCO November 21, 1988 Quezon City

11.) “Imagined Communities: ni B. Anderson

IMAGINED COMMUNITIES
Benedict Anderson

INTRODUCTION

My point of departure is that nationality, or, as one might prefer to put it in view
of that word's multiple significations, nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are
cultural artefacts of a particular kind. To understand them properly we need to
consider carefully how they have come into historical being, in what ways their
meanings have changed over time, and why, today, they command such
profound emotional legitimacy. I will be trying to argue that the creation of
these artefacts towards the end of the eighteenth century was the spontaneous
distillation of a complex 'crossing' of discrete historical forces; but that, once
created, they became 'modular', capable of being transplanted, with varying
degrees of self-consciousness, to a great variety of social terrains, to merge and
be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological
constellations. I will also attempt to show why these particular cultural artefacts
have aroused such deep attachments.

CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

Before addressing the questions raised above, it seems advisable to consider

briefly the concept of 'nation' and offer a workable definition. Theorists of
nationalism have often been perplexed, not to say irritated, by these three
paradoxes: (1) The objective modernity of nations to the historians' eye vs. them
subjective antiquity in the eyes of nationalists. (2) The formal universality of
nationality as a socio-cultural concept - in the modern world everyone can,
should, will 'have' a nationality, as he or she 'has' a gender - vs. the irremediable
particularity of its concrete manifestations, such that, by definition, 'Greek'
nationality is sui generis. (3) The 'political' power of nationalisms vs. them
philosophical poverty and even incoherence. In other words, unlike most other
isms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: no Hobbeses,
Tocquevilles, Marxes, or Webers. This 'emptiness' easily gives rise, among
cosmopolitan and polylingual intellectuals, to a certain condescension. Like
Gertrude Stein in the face of Oakland, one can rather quickly conclude that
there is 'no there there'. It is characteristic that even so sympathetic a student of
nationalism as Tom Nairn can nonetheless write that: '''Nationalism'' is the
pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as "neurosis" in the
individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar
built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon
most of the world (the equivalent of infantilism for
societies) and largely incurable.'
 12.) “Imperialism in the Philippines” ni A. Lichauco

Description:

Filipino nationalism was on the rise during the 1960s and was strongly expressed by delegate
Alejandro Lichauco in his speech (this book) during the 1971 Philippine Constitutional
Convention. He was one of the first jailed when martial law was declared by Marcos in Sept.21,
1972.
 13.) “Prison Notebooks”ni A. Gramsci

Prison Notebooks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Antonio Gramsci, depicted in 1922
The Prison Notebooks (Italian: Quaderni del carcere [kwaˈdɛrni del ˈkartʃere]) were a series of
essays written by the Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was imprisoned by the
Italian Fascist regime in 1926. The notebooks were written between 1929 and 1935, when
Gramsci was released from prison on grounds of ill-health. He died in April 1937.
He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his
imprisonment. Although written unsystematically, the Prison Notebooks are considered a highly
original contribution to 20th century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources
- not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges
Sorel and Benedetto Croce. His notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including Italian history
and nationalism, the French Revolution, Fascism, Fordism, civil society, folklore, religion and
high and popular culture.
The notebooks were smuggled out of prison in the 1930s. They were not published until the
1950s and were first translated into English in the 1970s, by the Scottish poet and folklorist
Hamish Henderson.

Some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory that are associated with
Gramsci's name:

 Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the capitalist state.

 The need for popular workers' education to encourage development of intellectuals from
the working class.
 The distinction between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.) which
dominates directly and coercively, and civil society (the family, the education system,
trade unions, etc.) where leadership is constituted through ideology or by means of
consent.
 "Absolute historicism".
 A critique of economic determinism that opposes fatalistic interpretations of Marxism.
 A critique of philosophical materialism.

14.) “Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of

the Earth System” ni I. Angus

Review by Victor Wallis

[published in Socialism and Democracy, vol. 30, no. 3, November 2016,

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08854300.2016.1223892]

Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 2016), 277 pp., $19.

The Holocene is over. The Anthropocene has begun.

That cannot be reversed. The climate changes already under way will last for
thousands of years….
The question is not whether the Earth System is changing, but how much it
will change, and how we will live on a changed planet. (212-13)

This book underscores the depth of the environmental crisis and, with its thorough
grounding in the scientific literature, situates the onset of the crisis in geological as well as
historical time. These two time-scales now converge, signifying the end of the ecological
conditions that allowed the human species to flourish.
Herein lies the drama – and, with it, the challenge – that we are now living. Angus
eloquently captures the relative suddenness, in historical terms, with which this threshold has
been reached. His exposition is patient, but his message is devastating: our species – along with
many others – sits on a precipice while the power-holders tighten their grip on the structures
that have brought us to this point.
“Anthropocene” is not an arbitrary tag. It is a category that is increasingly accepted by
geologists to define a new epoch in which the human impact upon the Earth – including the new
substances that human industry has devised (such as plastics) – has brought environmental
changes of a magnitude comparable to that of all the previous great geological transitions.
What the Anthropocene replaces is the Holocene – that unique atmospheric and climatic
configuration which, with its relative stability and predictability, undergirded, in the brief
geological window of eleven millennia, all the achievements of human civilization. The end of the
Holocene has come more suddenly than most people realize, but the suddenness is not
unprecedented. Relatively sudden climatic change between epochs – abrupt yet long-term
warming or cooling within the span of just a few years – has now become recognized as the norm
rather than the exception (64). While the buildup of destabilizing factors may be gradual and
barely perceptible, their cumulative effects – sped up by feedback loops and tipping-points –
crash into our lives without warning, in the heightened severity of atmospheric and climate
events.
Such is the progression of geological time. The historical time-scale is incomparably
shorter, but is structurally similar, in the sense that each epoch of class-rule likewise entails a
gradual buildup of aggravating factors, culminating in some variety of breakdown or explosion –
chaos or revolution.
The historical side of the present drama is the accelerating extraction of fossil fuels, in
the form of carbon and hydrocarbons (including methane) and their processing either via simple
combustion (as energy sources) or via industrial chemistry (to produce synthetic substances –
from plastics to fertilizer to napalm to pesticides). This whole petrochemical complex, capped by
highways blanketed with cars and trucks, grew exponentially in the decades following World War
II.
This was the so-called “golden age” of capitalism – the period in US history in which
military might and anticommunism, economic power and abundance, and a widely celebrated
“labor truce” sustained by unprecedentedly high wages for union jobs, combined to generate the
“American Dream” of lasting personal security and prosperity. Although for most working-class
people this all gave way, in the subsequent period, to deindustrialization, union-busting, and
neoliberal economics, its ideological aura would survive in the minds of many to inspire lasting
credulity – hyped by politicians of both major parties – for the myth of a distinctive American
“greatness.”
The point here is not only that this myth reflected a fleeting historical conjuncture, but
also that the defining features of that conjuncture – massive energy-waste and the proliferation
of privately owned structures and appliances – were what lay at the core of the epochal
environmental breakdown (represented by hockey-stick-shaped curves in graphs showing the
incidence of toxic substances). These trends were scathingly denounced by biologists Rachel
Carson and Barry Commoner at the very time that the curves began their vertiginous rise (in the
1950s and ‘60s).
Angus uses the phrase “fossil capitalism” to evoke the historical links between capitalism
and the reliance on fossil fuels. Citing Andreas Malm’s book Fossil Capital (2016), Angus notes
that 19th-century mill-owners switched from water power to coal power not because coal was
cheaper or more reliable than water-mills, but rather “because it gave the factory-owners better
access to and control over labor” (129). The tight symbiosis between capital and fossil fuels
would persist, albeit taking different forms. As of early 2016, “global proven oil reserves were
worth about $50 trillion. No capitalist would willingly exchange that for the chance to sell green
electricity twenty years from now” (173).
Capital’s persistent veto of ecological rescue – epitomized by US obstructionism at
environmental summit-meetings – is sharply addressed by Angus in the chapter that he titles
“We Are Not All in This Together.” While it is true that environmental collapse ultimately
threatens everyone, the struggle against such collapse pits the global majority against the great-
power policymakers who, viewing the impending breakdown as a “security” threat, reckon that
they can save their own skins – and the lifestyle of their class – by ramping up even further their
agenda of domination. As Angus puts it, “they are prepared to bring the world down to protect
their power” (216).
Calamity has already struck for many among the poorer populations, whether from
floods, droughts, heat waves, or food shortages. Ruling classes, instead of providing relief, tend
increasingly to respond with repressive force, as in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
Shortages precipitate military confrontations (as in Syria), which in turn generate further scarcity
along with the violence, provoking massive migratory movements that then strain the resource-
base in other regions. This dialectic of scarcity feeds and is fed by the dialectic of terror, in which
large-scale military assaults on poor countries provoke terrorist attacks on civilians in rich
countries, with such attacks then taken as pretexts to intensify the very military missions that
had brought on those attacks in the first place.
In the last two chapters of his book, Angus outlines his response to this crisis. He offers
a concise sketch of the ecosocialist alternative, followed by a discussion of how the various
constituencies of our endangered species may come together to fight for it. Within the general
framework of ecosocialism, he calls for a science-based, pluralist, and internationalist approach.
The arguments for ecosocialism have been extensively developed over the past generation
by writers such as Paul Burkett, John Bellamy Foster, Joel Kovel, Michael Löwy, and Fred
Magdoff, and in the pages of Monthly Review and Capitalism Nature Socialism. Ian Angus’s
distinctive contribution is to underscore, with his geologically grounded perspective, the urgency
of implementing the common vision. Both in this book and with his excellent website,
http://climateandcapitalism.com/, he demonstrates the need to combine immediate measures
of relief with a long-term agenda of transformation.
 15.) “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of
a Continent” ni E. Galeano

Author: Eduardo Galeano

Original title: Las venas abiertas de América Latina
Translator: Cedric Belfrage
Country: Uruguay
Language: Spanish
Subject: History of Latin America
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Publication date: 1971
Published in English: 1973 (1st edition)
1997 (25th Anv. edition)
Media typePrint
Pagesxiii, 317 p.

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

By: Eduardo Galeano

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for
historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and
cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital
accumulation since Marx.
Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized
the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of
exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee,
fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and
tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio
Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into
the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.
Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the
passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with
a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great
historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and
an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.
This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende’s inspiring introduction. Universally
recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her
talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.
 16.) “The Wretched of the Earth”ni F. Fanon

Author: Frantz Fanon

Original title: Les Damnés de la Terre
Translator: Constance Farrington (1963) Richard Philcox (2004)
Illustrator: Zonama Bonaharda
Country: France
Language: French
Subjects: Racism, Colonialism, Violence, Post-colonialism, Third-world development,
Revolution
Publisher: Grove Press (1963 translation)
Publication date: 1961
Published in English: 1963
Media type: Print
Pages: 251

The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by Frantz
Fanon, in which the author provides a psychiatric and psychologic analysis of the dehumanizing
effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation, and discusses the broader social,
cultural, and political implications inherent to establishing a social movement for the
decolonization of a person and of a people. The French-language title derives from the opening
lyrics of "The Internationale".

Summary

Through critiques of nationalism and of imperialism, Fanon presents a discussion of personal

and societal mental health, a discussion of how the use of language (vocabulary) is applied to
the establishment of imperialist identities, such as colonizer and colonized, to teach and
psychologically mold the native and the colonist into their respective roles as slave and master
and a discussion of the role of the intellectual in a revolution. Fanon proposes that
revolutionaries should seek the help of the lumpenproletariat to provide the force required to
effect the expulsion of the colonists. In traditional Marxist theory, the lumpenproletariat are the
lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat—especially criminals, vagrants and the
unemployed—people who lack the class consciousness to participate in the anti-colonial
revolution.

Fanon applies the term lumpenproletariat to the colonial subjects who are not involved in
industrial production, especially the peasantry, because, unlike the urban proletariat (the
working class), the lumpenproletariat have sufficient intellectual independence from the
dominant ideology of the colonial ruling class, readily to grasp that they can revolt against the
colonial status quo and so decolonize their nation. One of the essays included in The Wretched
of the Earth is "On National Culture", in which Fanon highlights the necessity for each generation
to discover its mission and to fight for it.

17.) “The World We Wish to See” ni S. Amin

The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century
By: Samir Amin, James Membrez

The World We Wish to See presents a sweeping view of twentieth-century political history
and a stirring appeal to take political culture seriously. Samir Amin offers a provocative
analysis of resistance to capitalism and imperialism and calls for a new politics of opposition.
Capitalism is a global system, so ultimately any successful challenge to it must be organized on
the same level: an "internationalism of peoples."
Throughout the twentieth century the socialist and communist internationals, national
liberation movements, and great revolutions have presented challenges to the world order.
Amin provides a succinct discussion of the successes and failures of these mobilizations, in
order to assess the present struggle. Neoliberalism and the drive for military hegemony by the
United States have spawned new political and social movements of resistance and attempts at
international organization through the World Social Forum. Amin assesses the potential and
limitations of these movements to confront global capitalism in the twenty-first century. The
World We Wish to See makes a distinction between "political cultures and conflict" and
"political cultures of consensus." A new politics of struggle is needed; one that is not afraid to
confront the power of capitalism, one that is both critical and self-critical.

In this persuasive argument, Amin explains that effective opposition must be based on the
construction of a "convergence in diversity" of oppressed and exploited people--whether they
are workers, peasants, students, or any other opponent of capitalism and imperialism. What is
needed is a new "international" that has an open and flexible organizational structure to
coordinate the work of opposition movements around the world.

The World We Wish to See is a bold book, calling for an international movement that can
successfully transcend the current world order, in order to pursue a better world. Amin's lucid
analysis provides a firm basis for furthering this objective.

18.) “Time for Outrage!” ni S. Hessel

This is the title of the English edition of Stephane Hessels best selling French pamphlet,
Indignez-Vous. Stephane Hessel is the 93-year-old Ambassadeur de France for life. He is a true
hero of the French Resistance who was tortured by the Nazi's and escaped twice-certain death
in Concentration Camps. After the war, he was one of the framers of the UN Declaration of
Human Rights with Eleanor Roosevelt.
He has always been an outspoken, true champion of the down trodden. At 93, he retains a
childlike energy and mental acumen that rivals those as third of his age.
Though born of a German Jewish family, he has risked and been a target of the ire of the Zionists
worldwide because of his passionate defense of the rights of the Palestinians. He has been
criticized as a racist by his detractors who would silence him rather than be confronted with his
accusations of Israeli outrages against the Palestinians. To quote his retort to his accusers, "My
love of Israel is stronger than yours because I want it to become an honest country."

A Time For Outrage has been published in English and is available for $7.00 in America, but
you can down load an english translation as a PDF. It is a slim volume but since it publication
in France last October, it has topped the best seller list ever since then.

This little book argues that it is time for the French and all of us to become outraged and the
sense of responsibility we all share as members of a connected world compels us to raise our
voices and demonstrate to demand responsible change. Here is a perhaps better translation.
His inspiration is the fuel for the Spanish Demonstrations this summer in Barcelona and Madrid.
Every day there are growing demonstrations in Paris by ever increasing numbers of people
inspired by his ideas. Perhaps the spirit of this true hero of human rights will wake the spirit of
America and inspire moral, honest people to shed the feeling of hopelessness that has fostered
the public lassitude that seems to haunt America. Indignant, honest people sure out number the
artificially manipulated corporate entity known as the Tea Party. Once aroused, perhaps we can
show the Tea Brains what a real majority looks like!

His latest pamphlet, Engagez-Vouz, or perhaps translated, Get Involved was recently
published here. If you are interested, the French PDF can be downloaded. Engagez-Vous is
concerned with responsible social protest and how we can use our voices to promote ecological
concerns.
The passion of the man, who is actively using his stature and energy to effectively motivate a
new generation is undeniably infectious...Hessel is a true hero of our time.
Read about his remarkable life. His parents were the subject of Truffaut's classic film, Jules et
Jim. When he was a child, his chess tutor was Marcel Duchamp. The video I embedded here
was made last year.
 19.) “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass
Media” ninaE. Herman at N.Chomsky

In this pathbreaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to
the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search
for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and
political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the
global order.

Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy”

versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and
devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and
Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain
the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model
and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the
manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement
and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests
against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999
and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges
from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how
they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that
people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically
new way.

20.) “The Development of Underdevelopment”ni A. G. Frank

Andre Gunder Frank, The Development of Underdevelopment, 1966

Following his undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College and graduate work in
economics at the University of Chicago, Andre Gunder Frank moved to Latin Americain
the early 1960s to take a position at the University of Chile. There he became well-known
worldwide for his critique of modernization theory.
We cannot hope to formulate adequate development theory and policy for the majority of the
world’s population who suffer from underdevelopment without first learning how their past
economic and social history gave rise to their present underdevelopment. Yet most historians
study only the developed metropolitan countries and pay scant attention to the colonial and
underdeveloped lands. For this reason most of our theoretical categories and guides to
development policy have been distilled exclusively from the historical experience of the European
and North American advanced capitalist nations.
Since the historical experience of the colonial and underdeveloped countries has demonstrably
been quite different, available theory therefore fails to reflect the past of the underdeveloped part
of the world entirely, and reflects the past of the world as a whole only in part. More important,
our ignorance of the underdeveloped countries’history leads us to assume that their past and
indeed their present resembles earlier stages of the history of the now developed countries. This
ignorance and this assumption lead us into serious misconceptions about contemporary
underdevelopment and development. Further, most studies of development and
underdevelopment fail to take account of the economic and other relations between the
metropolis and its economic colonies throughout the history of the worldwide expansion and
development of the mercantilist and capitalist system. Consequently, most of our theory fails to
explain the structure and development of the capitalist system as a whole and to account for its
simultaneous generation of underdevelopment in some of its parts and of economic development
in others.
It is generally held that economic development occurs in a succession of capitalist stages and
that today’s underdeveloped countries are still in a stage, sometimes depicted as an original
stage, of history through which the now developed countries passed long ago. Yet even a modest
acquaintance with history shows that underdevelopment is not original or traditional and that
neither the past nor the present of the underdeveloped countries resembles in any important
respect the past of the now developed countries. The now developed countries were never
underdeveloped, though they may have been undeveloped. It is also widely believed that the
contemporary underdevelopment of a country can be understood as the product or reflection
solely of its own economic, political, social, and cultural characteristics or structure. Yet
historical research demonstrates that contemporary underdevelopment is in large part the
historical product of past and continuing economic and other relations between the satellite
underdeveloped and the now developed metropolitan countries. Furthermore, these relations are
an essential part of the structure and development of the capitalist system on a world scale as a
whole. A related and also largely erroneous view is that the development of these underdeveloped
countries, and within them of their most underdeveloped domestic areas, must and will be
generated or stimulated by diffusing capital, institutions, values, etc., to them from the
international and national capitalist metropoles. Historical perspective based on the
underdeveloped countries’past experience suggests that on the contrary, economic development
in the underdeveloped countries can nowoccur only independently of most of these relations of
diffusion.
Evident inequalities of income and differences in culture have led many observers to see
‘dual’societies and economies in the underdeveloped countries. Each of the two parts is supposed
to have a history of its own, a structure, and a contemporary dynamic largely independent of the
other. Supposedly only one part of the economy and society has been importantly affected by
intimate economic relations with the ‘outside’capitalist world; andthat part, it is held, became
modern, capitalist, and relatively developed
precisely because of this contact. The other part is widely regarded as variously isolated,
subsistence-based, feudal, or pre-capitalist, and therefore more underdeveloped.
I believe on the contrary that the entire ‘dual’society thesis is false and that the policy
recommendations to which it leads will, if acted upon, serve only to intensify and perpetuate the
very conditions of underdevelopment they are supposedly designed to remedy.
A mounting body of evidence suggests, and I am confident that future historical research will
confirm, that the expansion of the capitalist system over the past centuries effectively and
entirely penetrated even the apparently most isolated sectors of the underdeveloped world.
Therefore the economic, political, social, and cultural institutions and relations we now observe
there are the products of the historical development of the capitalist system no less than are the
seemingly more modern or capitalist features of the national metropoles of these underdeveloped
countries. Analogous to the relations between development and underdevelopment on the
international level, the contemporary underdeveloped institutions of the so-called backward or
feudal domestic areas of an underdeveloped country are no less the product of the single
historical process of capitalist development than are the so-called capitalist institutions of the
supposedly more progressive areas...That present underdevelopment of Latin America is the
result of its centuries-long participation in the process of world capitalist development, I believe
I have shown in my case studies of the economic and social histories of Chile and Brazil. My
study of Chilean history suggests that the Conquest not only incorporated this country fully into
the expansion and development of the world mercantile and later industrial capitalist system but
that it also introduced the monopolistic metropolis-satellite structure and development of
capitalism into the Chilean domestic economy and society itself. This structure then penetrated
and permeated all of Chile very quickly. Since that time and in the course of world and Chilean
history during the epochs of colonialism, free trade, imperialism, and the present, Chile has
become increasingly marked by the economic, social, and political structure of satellite
underdevelopment. This development of underdevelopment continues today, both in Chile’s still
increasing satellization by the world metropolis and through the ever more acute polarization of
Chile’s domestic economy.
The history of Brazil is perhaps the clearest case of both national and regional development of
underdevelopment. The expansion of the world economy since the beginning of the sixteenth
centurysuccessively converted the Northeast, the Minas Gerais interior, the North, and the
Center-South (Rio de Janeiro, Sāo Paulo, and Paraná) into export economies and incorporated
them into the structure and development of the world capitalist system. Each ofthese regions
experienced what may have appeared as economic development during the period of its golden
age. But it was a satellite development which was neither self-generating nor self-perpetuating.
As the market or the productivity of the first three regions declined, foreign and domestic
economic interest in them waned and they were left to develop the underdevelopment they live
today. In the fourth region, the coffee economy experienced a similar though not yet quite as
serious fate (though the development of a synthetic coffee substitute promises to deal it a mortal
blow in the not too distant future). All of this historical evidence contradicts the generally
accepted theses that Latin America suffers from a dual society or from the survival of feudal
institutions and that these are important obstacles to its economic development.
During the First World War, however, and even more during the Great Depression and the
Second World War, Sāo Paulo began to build up an industrial establishment which is the largest
in Latin America today. The question arises whether this industrial development did or can break
Brazil out of the cycle of satellite development and underdevelopment which has characterized
its other regions and national history within the capitalist system so far. I believe that the answer
is no. Domestically the evidence so far is fairly clear. The development of industry in Sāo Paulo
has not brought greater riches to the other
regions of Brazil. Instead, it has converted them into internal colonial satellites, de-capitalized
them further, and consolidated or even deepened their underdevelopment. There is little evidence
to suggest that this process is likely to be reversed in the foreseeable future except insofar as the
provincial poor migrate and become the poor of the metropolitan cities. Externally, the evidence
is that although the initial development of Sāo Paulo’s industry was relatively autonomous it is
being increasingly satellized by the world capitalist metropolis and its future development
possibilities are increasingly restricted. This development, my studies lead me to believe, also
appears destined to limited or underdeveloped development as long as it takes place in the
present economic, political, and social framework.
We must conclude, in short, that underdevelopment is not due to the survival of archaic
institutions and the existence of capital shortage in regions that have remained isolated from the
stream of world history. On the contrary, underdevelopment was and still is generated by the
very same historical process which also generated economic development: the development of
capitalism itself. This view, I am glad to say, is gaining adherents among students of Latin
America and is proving its worth in shedding new light on the problems of the area and in
affording a better perspective for the formulation of theory and policy.
AndreGunder Frank, “The Development of Underdevelopment,”Monthly Review 18, 4 (September,
1966) 17-31.

21.) “The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World” by

V. Prashad

The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World

by: Vijay Prashad, Howard Zinn (Editor)

A landmark study that offers an alternative history of the Cold War from the point of
view of the world's poor.

'"Europe" is morally, spiritually indefensible. And today the indictment is brought against
it…by tens and tens of thousands of millions of men who, from the depths of slavery, set
themselves up as judges.'--Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

Here, from a brilliant young writer, is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept
and global movement--the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual
origins and the political history of the twentieth century attempt to knit together the world's
impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in
the decades following World War II.

Spanning every continent of the global South, Vijay Prashad's fascinating narrative takes us
from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of
nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits
of Third World giants like India's Nehru, Egypt's Nasser, and Indonesia's Sukarno--as well as
scores of extraordinary but now-forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters. The
Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose
demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political
arena. 12 b/w photographs.
 22.) “The Language of Globalization”ni P. Marcuse

The Language of Globalization

by Peter Marcuse
(Jul 01, 2000)
Topics: Imperialism

Peter Marcuse teaches in the Division of Urban Planning in the School of Architecture, Planning,
and Preservation at Columbia University. He is co-editor of Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial
Order? (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).

The language of globalization deserves some explicit attention. To begin with, the word
globalization itself is a nonconcept in most uses: a simple catalogue of everything that seems
different since, say, 1970, whether advances in information technology, widespread use of air
freight, speculation in currencies, increased capital flows across borders, Disneyfication of
culture, mass marketing, global warming, genetic engineering, multinational corporate power,
new international division of labor, international mobility of labor, reduced power of nation-
states, postmodernism, or post-Fordism. The issue is more than one of careless use of words:
intellectually, such muddy use of the term fogs any effort to separate cause from effect, to analyze
what is being done, by whom, to whom, for what, and with what effect. Politically, leaving the
term vague and ghostly permits its conversion to something with a life of its own, making it a
force, fetishizing it as something that has an existence independent of the will of human beings,
inevitable and irresistible. This lack of clarity in usage afflicts other elements of the discussion
of globalization as well, with both analytic and political consequences. Let me outline some
problem areas, and suggest some important differentiations.

23.) “Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation,

1946-1980” ni C. Hau
Caroline S. Hau
Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980
Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000

Abstract
"Necessary Fictions" examines the intimate but fraught connection between Philippine
literature and nationalist discourse through close readings of the works of Jose Rizal, Amado
Hernandez, Nick Joaquin, Edgardo Reyes, Ricardo Lee, Kerima Polotan, Carlos Bulosan, and
Mano de Verdades Posadas. The book argues that the long-standing affinity between Philippine
literature and nationalism is based, in part, on the power of literature to work through a set of
questions central to nationalist debates on the possibility and necessity of social change. It asks:
What is the relationship between knowledge and action? Between the personal and the political?
Between the foreign and Filipino? Between culture and history, culture and politics, culture and
economics? Moreover, Philippine literatyre does not merely deepen our understanding of the
fundamental assumptions informing nationalist discourse and practice. It also registers the
contradictions that exceed nationalist attempts to intervene, intellectually and politically, in the
complex realities at work in Philippine society. These "excesses", which bear the ineradicable
signatures of the oppressed and the marginalized, expose the anxieties--and the liberatory
potential--underpinning the difficult creation of Philippine modernity in the twentieth century.
 24.) “A Nation For Our Children”ni J. Diokno

We must build our nation on the principle of depending on ourselves and getting as
loans only what we need, not what we can get. We must build our political system
on respect for the sovereignty of the people, on the establishment of adequate
checks and balances and on empowering the people at the grassroots level.

A Nation For Our Children

Jose Wright Diokno - November 11, 2007 - 12:00am

common good is, how it is to be attained, and

There is one dream that all Filipinos how its costs and benefits are to be
share: That our children may have a better distributed.
life than we have had. So there is one vision
that is distinctly Filipino: the vision to make An HONORABLE nation where public
this country, our country, a nation for our powers are used for the public good and not
children. for the private gain of some Filipinos and
some foreigners; where leaders speak not
A NOBLE nation, where homage is paid only well but truthfully and act honestly; a
not to who a man is or what he owns, but to nation that is itself and seeks to live in peace
what he is and what he does. and brotherhood with all other nations of the
world.
A PROUD nation, where poverty chains
no man to the plow, forces no woman to Is this vision attainable? Or is it just an
prostitute herself and condemns no child to idle dream? If we base ourselves on today,
scrounge among garbage. we would be tempted to conclude that it is
an idle dream. For our country today is a
A FREE nation, where men and women mess. There is no other way to describe it...
and children from all regions and with all
kinds of talents may find truth and play and Yet we must not give up on our dream
sing and laugh and dance and love without because of today. For if we look at ourselves,
fear. we have all the resources — human and
natural — to become what we Filipinos
A JUST nation where whatever choose to be...
inequality exists is caused not by the way
people act towards each other but by I described to you when I began what I
differences in natural talents; where poverty, thought was the vision of most Filipinos of a
ignorance, and hunger are attacked and nation for our children, and I know that for
every farmer has land that no one can grab many of you, it may sound ideal. Yet reality
from him; every breadwinner, a job that is is often much more beautiful than anything
satisfying and pays him enough to provide a we can conceive of. If we can but release the
decent standard of living; every family, a creative energy of our people, then we will
home from which it cannot be evicted; and have a nation full of hope and full of joy, full
everyone, a steadily improving quality of life. of life and full of love — a nation that may
not be a nation for our children but which
An INDEPENDENT nation, which rejects will be a nation of our children.
foreign dictation, depends on itself, thinks
for itself, and decides for itself what the Speech delivered on October 12, 1984.