Die Philippinen im Spiegel der neueren DDR-Literatur. Eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme

Abstract

This article attempts to summarize and to review the political research on the Philippines which has been undertaken in the German Democratic Republic. Firstly, the theoretical framework which political scientists in the German Democratic Republic apply to analyse underdevelopment in the Philippines is investigated. This reveals that all studies are based on the Soviet-Marxist theory of non-capitalist development. Subsequently, three major hypotheses of the East German political scientists are compared to the findings of international research on the Philippines :the hypothesis of the leading role of the Partido Komunistang Pilipinas (PKP) in the peasants' struggle for social justice before and after World War II and in the Huk Rebellion, the hypothesis of the nationalist economic and foreign policy of President Marcos, and finally, the hypothesis of the progressive character of martial law. From this comparison it can be concluded that there are considerable discrepancies between the findings of the scholars from the German Democratic Republic and international research on the Philippines.