The World Socialist Web Site is publishing messages of support for Dr. Joseph Scalice from throughout the world. Dr. Scalice has come under attack from the Philippine Stalinists for his powerful lecture, “First as Tragedy, Second as Farce: Marcos, Duterte and the Communist Parties of the Philippines,” which examined the support given by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the various organisations that follow its political line, to authoritarian Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.
Acutely sensitive to the criticism of the CPP, its founder Jose Maria Sison, without a shred of evidence, has denounced Dr. Scalice as a paid CIA agent and an informer for Duterte. Dr. Scalice, through the establishment of the historical record about the betrayals of the CPP, has done a service to the working class in the Philippines and internationally.
We urge our readers to come to the defence of Dr. Scalice, including by sending statements of support to the WSWS opposing the slanderous attack on him by the CPP and sharing his lecture widely.
An office worker in Istanbul
I give my full support to academic Dr. Joseph Scalice and condemn the Stalinist attacks by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
The slander of the CPP follows the method of Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” But they whistle in the wind. The Stalinist/Maoist betrayals in the Philippines, which have been exposed in detail by Scalice, are too great to hide.
Their betrayals are not unique to the Philippines, of course. The capitalist globalization undermined their national programs, leading to capitalist restoration by the Stalinist regimes. They cannot manoeuvre anymore as in the “Cold War” era. Now they are only able to manoeuvre between various factions of the bourgeoisie and imperialist powers. And it is not possible for them to hide their betrayal.
Trotsky wrote in 1928 in his Critique of the Draft Program of the Comintern: “In our epoch, which is the epoch of imperialism, i.e., of world economy and world politics under the hegemony of finance capital, not a single communist party can establish its program by proceeding solely or mainly from conditions and tendencies of developments in its own country. This also holds entirely for the party that wields state power within the boundaries of the USSR. On August 4, 1914, the death knell sounded for national programs for all time. The revolutionary party of the proletariat can base itself only upon an international program corresponding to the character of the present epoch, the epoch of the highest development and collapse of capitalism.”
Dr. Scalice presents, in the case of CPP and Jose Maria Sison, a total confirmation of Trotsky’s words. His lecture is significant political education material not only for the Filipino working class but also for the working class all over the world.
An office worker in Istanbul
I wish to express my full support to Dr. Joseph Scalice who defends undauntedly historical truth against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its leader Jose Maria Sison who uses the program of Stalinism to betray the interests of the working class.
Dr. Joseph Scalice conducted crucial research through “painstaking work” full of “verifiable evidence” and “logical arguments” in Dr. Scalice's own and quite right words.
As a serious scholar who devoted himself to the scientific principles of Marxism, his work and his struggle must be a significant example for us, the working class. Workers from all over the world, we must speak up to show our support for his efforts, especially in countries with a belated capitalist development such as Turkey or the Philippines. Every day we are under attack from bourgeois ideologies and their petty-bourgeois Stalinist and Maoist defenders. These forces are telling us to support the so-called “progressive wing” of the bourgeoisie.
Dr. Scalice is exposing the systematic and ongoing threat and repeated betrayal to the working class. For this reason he is under a serious attack, like all the genuine advocates of Marxism who warn the workers against this threat and arm them with a scientific historical approach and perspective based on the struggle of the world Trotskyist movement.
A reader from Adana, Turkey
One of the most important features of the Trotskyist method of politics, that differs from bourgeois politics and the pseudo-left, is that it is based on facts, not on lies. By telling the truth Trotskyists struggle to build a leadership within the working class opposed to imperialist war and for socialism. It is only political movements that have points in their history that they want to hide, which try to conceal, falsify or deny the historical truth to create an imaginary history. They know that the judgment of history will show itself sooner or later and they try to escape from it.
Therefore, the defence of history and historical reality has an important place in the struggle of the ICFI and the World Socialist Web Site. The WSWS has opposed the attempt to rehabilitate the Nazis in Germany and the racialist politics of the 1619 Project in the United States. These are just two of the many examples of the struggle for the defence of historical reality carried out by the Trotskyist movement.
Dr. Joseph Scalice made a tremendous contribution to the struggle for the defence of truth and his contribution aroused the anger of the Stalinists in the Philippines, who have backed the drive to dictatorship and did not want it to be mentioned. Scalice did nothing but tell the truth, and to defend Scalice is a duty of all who are for historical truth. I would like to send my revolutionary greetings to Joseph Scalice. In the future, historians will take his scholarship as an example while condemning those who attack him.