An Ideology for Filipinos

by Ferdinand E. Marcos

117 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos, Sr. (September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino politician and kleptocrat who was President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He ruled as dictator under martial law from 1972 until 1981. While his regime started an unprecedented number of infrastructure projects and monuments (known colloquially as an "edifice complex'" and at great taxpayer cost), it also became infamous for its corruption, extravagance and brutality.

Reviews

[Michael David]

Don't be misled by the high ratings: there are a lot of people in the Philippines who worship the "personality cult" of Marcos.

In this expansion of the earlier Towards a Filipino Ideology, Marcos attempts to present his declaration of Martial Law as the foundation of a future Filipino ideology. Obviously, he had failed. Within the book there are even glaring inconsistencies that are logically flawed, especially with rigorous analysis.

[Francés M]

Do not be misled by the yellow cult and the communist terrorist groups in the Philippines. Marco's efforts in improving the country were gone into wastes because of this filthy cults. This book will enlighten you and it will develop you to a high quality Filipino citizen.

[Marchaic]

It's hard to read this book without looking back at the major event that the "author" declared in the 70s, which is the Martial Law. Consequently, this book was published amidst it, or at least near when it ended. And throughout chapters, here are the things that you'll see the author mentioning: egalitarian society, social equality, economic rights/responsibilities, oligarchy, order, duty, New Society, etc.

For the sake of economic matters (as it was the most crucial sector in the Philippines, considering that many suffered from poverty and unequal welfare distribution) Martial Law was said to be declared as it his duty as president to maintain order and to fend off the oligarchy that tried to rule the government and positions of power, wherein after, equality in wealth and resource distribution will exist for the Filipino people. That is, henceforth, the egalitarian or New Society Marcos was looking forward to.

It's an idealistic goal, most books in the same field are like that, but it's full of pages on justifying his action on and on.

[Gael B]

Power really corrupts a man. Reading this you expect some sort of deep ideological propaganda, but it's actually a very sound approach to Filipino society. If only the man who wrote this could have been the same one who led our country. But alas not.