Revisiting and Digitalizing the Debate: Philippine Left Review

Although thirty years have passed since the last issue of Debate: Philippine Left Review was published, it seems that many progressives – old and young – as well as scholars and writers still look for copies of the articles or of entire issues of the journal. Only a few libraries still have copies of Debate’s issues, and probably none of them has a complete set.

Debate only had eleven issues (a pilot and ten regular issues), but they were published in the early 1990s, at a time when the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), together with its New People’s Army (NPA) and the CPP-led national democratic (ND) movement, underwent a deep crisis and then a split. Debate tackled the very controversies and disagreements that rocked the revolutionary movement in that critical period – from a broad left perspective.

Two significant developments greatly contributed to the deep disagreements within the CPP and the Philippine left in general. The first was the “people power” uprising that toppled the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. By erroneously calling for a boycott of the snap presidential election, the CPP had boxed itself out of the popular uprising after being in the forefront of the anti-dictatorship struggle for well over a decade. The second was the fall of the socialist states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989-91. This had led to much soul-searching within the Philippine left on the whys of the crisis of socialism.

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