The Ateneo and its students used to be known for living out the mantra of being persons for others through political activity, especially during the Marcos regime. Names like Edgar Jopson and Emmanuel Lacaba bring to mind images of protests and rallies. In the dark days of the Marcos regime, there was the inescapable and pervasive reality of someone, something to fight—the dictator, the dictatorship. This made politics relevant, and in that time a lot of politics was leftist.

In contrast to the Marcos regime, there is no dictatorship to fight today. There is no writ of habeas corpus or the right to a fair trial to win back. Clearly, injustice is still present, but most of it is of a different kind altogether. It is borne of corruption and under-the-table deals. It is—more often than not—the failure to pass and enforce good laws.

This form of injustice does not lend itself as easily to protest as the passage and brutal enforcement of bad legislation like Martial Law.

What still stands is the political left’s calling to action and solidarity with the marginalized. By no means is this an agenda exclusive to the left.

In the past, the Atenean figured heavily into leftist political action, but today, theAtenean seems more politically apathetic than ever. Where did this misunderstanding come from?

Conflation

Speaking politically, the left is a diverse set of ideologies and movements concerned with structural injustice—injustice that comes from how society works—and reform that empowers the marginalized. The marginalized of society are those on the losing end of these structures: The farmers and fisherfolk of the countryside, and the hard laborers of the city, for example. Historically, the left also figured greatly in resistance and reform movements against governments across the world.

Prominent leftist groups from the Loyola Schools community seem to all identify as social democrats. Social democracy is a political movement that advocates for working with the state for gradual change towards a more egalitarian society, rather than a violent revolution.

“Many think the left and the communists are the same,” says Leloy Claudio, assistant professor of the Political Science Department. He adds that this may be because the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) is “the longest standing group within the left.”

He also says that the issue of aboveground communist organizations complicates the confusion. “Nobody knows how they work. People think that all left-wing party-lists, including my own [Akbayan’s Citizen Action Party], are composed of communists.” He goes on to explain that many leftist organizations that do not identify as communist actually do have informal ties to the Communist party, which makes the situation confusing.

“The media distorts [the issue of aboveground communist parties] because it just callsthem ‘militant’ groups,” he adds. “This is a stupid term the doesn’t mean anything. The most accurate term would be ‘communist-aligned.’ A lot of the confusion is the media’s fault.”

Is there a stigma against the left? According to Claudio, yes. But he adds that “if the left were only the CPP, that stigma would be well-deserved.” The authoritarian approach of communism “is an inherently dictatorial, anti-liberal institution.” He describes that the CPP-NPA operates on the principle that through its study of “the so-called laws of history,” its leadership is always right, even without consulting with its constituents.

“Social democracy was always different from communism because it accepted the liberal value of balancing powers,” he says, comparing the two. “The long term goal of any communist party [of this sort] is a takeover of the state and a monopolization of its power.”

In the Ateneo, the Sanggunian engages in social action and nation-building. However, along the way, Ateneans seem to have dropped ideology from the discussion. Perhaps this is because there is no disagreement about goals, only means. Nonetheless, the discussion of ideology is one that is barely happening.

For a student body reputed for being persons for others, this is a worrisome deficiency. We no longer fully understand or appreciate an entire political system that espouses one of the most significant values taught in the Ateneo: To serve those marginalized in society. This blunts our ability to fully use the ideology to serve our ends.

Abbo Hernandez, premier of the social democratic student political party Christian Union for Socialist and Democratic Advancement (Crusada), shares that his party has indeed been mistaken for violent revolutionaries who even haze their members. “If you look at the complexion of our members, most of these people are bookworms. What kind of hazing can you do to them?” he asks in a mix of English and Filipino.

He notes that people see the radicalism, leftism and the color red of his party and think, “Ah, komunista.”

Campus dynamics

Claudio notes that the cost of these misconceptions is that they inhibit involvement with activism. Indeed, the student voice seems rather silent on pressing national issues. The Facebook group for the Ateneans for Agrarian Reform Movement (Afarm), for example, only has 251 members out of the school population of thousands. Of those thousands, though, a majority also defends the farmers’ cause, despite not being in Afarm. This goes to show that people’s beliefs do not always translate to activism.

Enrico La Viña (AB Philo ‘14) was a former premier of Crusada and was also involved with the Ateneo Task Force Anti-Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport (ATFAA) and Afarm. According to him, this stigma against the left was a cause for the teams behind ATFAA and Afarm to make sure that the groups were seen as church-backed and supported by many sectors.

These misconceptions even affect the very way students approach social issues. According to Loyola School of Theology Associate Professor Romeo Intengan, SJ, people do not think ideologically anymore, explaining “ideologically” to mean thinking in terms of a coherent worldview and guide to action. He stresses that “you must think ideologically, or else you’ll be dragged around by the current ideology around you.”

Hernandez believes that an apathetic student body maintains a lot of these misconceptions. He says “most of the people who don’t really care about politics” are the ones with a tendency to keep away from activism.

Beyond apathy, he recognizes that there are people who take an interest in politics but maintain these kinds of views anyway. He suspects a part of this problem may be that being a leftist entails some level of sacrifice and this is intimidating to some people. “Some students will tell you [that] they come to Ateneo because of all the activists in [the University of the Philippines]. So when they see a Crusada member or leftist member [willing to rally], they get a bit disturbed.”

He notes that identifying with social democracy is definitely demanding of students, in an understandably difficult way. Taking up a social democratic advocacy involves “completely changing your lifestyle.”

“We don’t patronize corporations that abuse contractual labor. We don’t enable groups that steal land from farmers,” he says in a mix of English and Filipino. “[Social democracy] changes not only your mindset towards charity, but your very movement in every day of your life.”

He describes that his party has learned to adjust and focus on people who take an interest in politics, and to just point to issues for those that do not, encouraging change little by little while trying to keep a more approachable image.

Preference for the poor

Historically, leftist ideals have also found an outlet in theology. Liberation theology is a theology from the perspective of the poor and oppressed that focuses on fighting poverty with the political left in parts of the world. Even the Church itself has had a touch-and-go relationship with the idea of liberation theology, with members of the Vatican having condemned it for politicizing religion at times.

The movement has, however, had an undeniable impact that can be felt even here in the Ateneo. The entire point of a core subject every student must take, A Theology of the Catholic Social Vision (TH 141), deals directly with structural injustice. The goal of this class is to explore what the Catholic duty is in light of structural injustice, and how that relates to being persons for others. The university has required immersion programs in poor communities through this class to truly build solidarity with the marginalized.

Fr. Intengan notes that the preferential option for the poor, as well as the distinction between different leftist ideals, was taken much more seriously in the 1970s and the 1980s “because of the heightened social awareness to a large extent fostered by the various kinds of left and of the Church.”

He argues that many of the advocates kept up their vigilance for social democracy in the time of communism and Marcos but that few now do. It seems to him that many were not in the struggle for principle but for reaction. One should not be acting out of fear of some villain like Marcos, but “because you want a better life for the people, a society with more justice,” he says.

This want for a just society is reflected in the Ateneo community. The mantra of “downfrom the hill,” for example, recognizes that Ateneans are in a position of privilege in the country and that they have unique opportunities and perspectives. The calling to the community has always been for genuine solidarity and involvement with society at large.

Leftist thought has the potential to play a large role in why Ateneans go down from the hill. It is an ideological framework that says that they have the duty to do so, that they have a duty to care about the political process and that they have a duty to undo structures that harm the most vulnerable ones in society.

It is in giving a “why” that the left can so strongly color the “how” of this process as well. Social democracy is a concrete direction to take. It is one of many, but surely one with the weight of its development throughout history woven into the fabric of what it is now.