Revolutionary Clarity as Imperative in the Face of Exploitation

 

Three years have passed since the death of Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, yet his ideas resonate with unrelenting relevance, not only in Southeast Asia but across the African continent, particularly in Kenya. Sison articulated a truth that history repeatedly confirms: when the oppressed masses begin to rise, to question entrenched exploitation, and to demand structural change, capital does not respond with reform, dialogue, or accommodation. It responds with coercion, suppression, and fascist tactics—violent attempts to obscure the real roots of crisis while maintaining the prevailing order.

Kenya presents a case study in the systemic logic Sison described. For decades, the working majority—the informal sector workers, rural farmers, youth, and urban laborers—has borne the brunt of policies designed to enrich a narrow elite. Structural adjustment programs, debt-driven development projects, and public-private partnerships have concentrated wealth and opportunity in the hands of a few, leaving the masses exposed to stagnation, poverty, and precarity. When collective unrest emerges, it is met not with policies that address structural inequities but with militarized policing, selective legislation, and narratives designed to divide, distract, and demobilize. The privatization of public resources, the securitization of dissent, and the politicization of ethnic identity operate as modern tools of fascism—tools that Sison warned would emerge wherever capital fears loss of control.

Sison’s insight is precise: neutrality, the claim that one can remain impartial while exploitation persists, is illusory. In Kenya, political elites routinely present themselves as arbiters above ideological struggle, yet their neutrality is a veneer that conceals complicity. The government enforces austerity measures while tolerating corruption, criminalizes dissent while celebrating the accumulation of wealth by loyalists, and promotes “development” projects whose ostensible beneficiaries are often the same corporations and political allies who perpetuate systemic inequality. The masses, meanwhile, are left to navigate the consequences of economic exclusion, inadequate public services, and precarious employment. To claim detachment in such a context is to align tacitly with those maintaining the status quo.

Historical and contemporary evidence in Kenya demonstrates this pattern with painful clarity. Consider the proliferation of debt-driven mega-projects: the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), financed by foreign loans, was celebrated as a flagship infrastructure project. Yet its implementation has often prioritized elite contracts, generated unsustainable debt burdens, and displaced communities without meaningful restitution. Similarly, public land allocations, preferential procurement contracts, and privatized utilities systematically transfer resources from the public domain into private hands. When communities protest, they are met with intimidation, harassment, or criminalization—a pattern that mirrors the very fascistic responses Sison identified as the natural reflex of capital threatened by collective assertion.

Revolutionary clarity, therefore, is not an abstract philosophical ideal. It is a practical necessity. In contexts like Kenya, where inequality is structural, capital is embedded in political machinery, and repression is routine, clarity is the only means of conceptualizing resistance and survival. Without it, the oppressed risk being seduced by illusions of reform, participation, or moderation—tools of pacification that sustain systemic extraction while offering the appearance of democratic agency. The Kenyan state often co-opts civil society, appropriates activism for performative legitimacy, and uses media narratives to fragment consciousness, ensuring that dissent is individualized rather than collective. Those who fail to adopt revolutionary clarity are rendered complicit in their own subjugation, caught in cycles of false hope and delayed justice.

Moreover, revolutionary clarity demands recognition of the global forces that shape local realities. Kenyan economic policy, foreign debt obligations, and investment priorities are often dictated by transnational capital. Structural adjustment, loan conditionalities, and multinational corporate interests operate through a veneer of “development” to maintain asymmetrical power relations. Understanding the nature of these forces is critical; to ignore them is to misdiagnose the crisis as cultural or administrative rather than systemic. Revolutionary clarity, therefore, is simultaneously analytical and militant: it involves the intellectual rigor to identify exploitative structures and the ethical imperative to resist their perpetuation.

This clarity also challenges the misconception that struggle is optional. In a society where governance, economy, and social institutions are interlocked with elite enrichment, passivity equates to consent. Revolutionary consciousness is inseparable from action, whether in forms of organized collective mobilization, intellectual critique, or strategic noncompliance. In Kenya, this might manifest as advocacy for transparent governance, popular control over resources, and radical reform of institutions that systemically reproduce inequality. The refusal to engage critically with these realities is, in effect, participation in the perpetuation of injustice.

Finally, Sison’s work reminds us that revolutionary clarity is inseparable from truth. To perceive the world as it is—where inequality is deliberate, where oppression is systemic, and where capital prioritizes preservation over justice—is to equip oneself with the tools for strategic resistance. Neutrality is impossible; the ethical choice is to align with those oppressed by systemic extraction. In Kenya, this requires both rigorous analysis and militant resolve: analysis to understand the mechanics of exploitation, and resolve to act despite intimidation, misinformation, and social fragmentation.

Three years since Sison’s passing, the lesson is urgent: revolutionary clarity is neither optional nor theoretical. It is a moral and political necessity, a shield against illusion, and a guide for resistance. In Kenya and across Africa, the imperative is clear: to survive, to resist, and to reclaim justice, the oppressed must see the world honestly, act decisively, and refuse the seduction of neutrality. History repeatedly confirms that where the masses rise and understand the structures of exploitation, the machinery of power responds with violence, coercion, and misrepresentation. Revolutionary clarity is the only way to pierce the veil, confront systemic injustice, and sustain meaningful struggle.