The Players of History

History, though it is commonly defined as the story of man, is not the story of man the individual, but man the collective, that is, associated man. Without society there can be no history and there are no societies without men. History must focus principally on the anonymous masses of individual and of the social forces generated by their collective lives and struggles.

Man alone, man the individual could never have become human except in association with other men. Man interacts with nature and with other men through the intervening reality of society. Without society he would have remained like other animals, unable to consciously change his environment or himself.

It was in cooperative work that men first become human and this cooperative effort is what produced society. But cooperative is an exigency of struggle against nature and against social forces. Men must work together to fight natural or social forces stronger than the individual selves.

Struggle is therefore the essence of life, whether of an individual or a society. An individual has no history apart from society, and society is the historical product of people in struggle.

Human society is the cause and the result of people in motion and in constant struggle to realize the human potential, for the human being is the only species that has unlimited possibilities for development.

History, then, is the recorded struggle of people’s forever increasing freedom and for newer and higher realizations of the human person. But the struggle is a collective one and as such involves the mass of human beings who are therefore the motivators of change and of history.

History is not merely a chronology of events. It is not the story of heroes and great men. Essentially, history consists of the people’s efforts to attain a better life. The common people possess the capacity to make history. In fact, the historic initiative[ of the masses has time and again produced social cataclysms that have changed the world.

The various changes in society and the upward climb of civilization could not have been possible without the people playing definite and irreplaceable roles in each epoch

The individuals who made history colorful could not have made history without the people. Supermen may exist in romantic minds or among those who persist in the primitive practice of deifying men; but no supermen exist, only leaders who became great because they were working with and for the people. ( Excerpts and words borrowed from Renato Constantino, from a book: ‘The Philippines: A Past Revisited.’)