The NDF seeks to unite the people for the overthrow of the semicolonial and semifeudal system through people’s war and for the completion of the national democratic revolution. Only the power of a united people achieved through revolutionary armed struggle and the united front of revolutionary forces can isolate and destroy the dominance of the US and other foreign monopoly capitalists and the counterrevolutionary state of the comprador big bourgeoisie and landlord class.
The national democratic revolution that we seek to complete is of the new type. It is led by the working class and has a socialist perspective. Upon the seizure of political power, the new democratic revolution is basically completed and the socialist revolution can commence.National unity in the revolution can arise and develop only when there is a definite class leadership, responds to the basic demands of the broad masses of the people and builds a united front that harmonizes their national and democratic rights and interests.
The united front of various patriotic and progressive classes, sectors and forces is the way to build national unity. Its main force is the basic alliance of the working class and the peasantry (including the farm workers and fisherfolk), which are more than ninety percent of the people and are the most oppressed and exploited. In this regard, we make special reference to the broad masses of the Bangsa Moro, Cordillera and other minority and indigenous peoples as among the most oppressed and exploited in the country.
The urban petty bourgeoisie must be won over to the revolution. It is one of the basic forces of the revolution, together with the working class and peasantry. Further, the national bourgeoisie must be won over. It is one of the positive forces of the revolution, together with the aforementioned classes.
In carrying out the united front policy, it is necessary not only to build the unity of the revolutionary forces but also to take advantage of the contradictions within the reactionary classes. Thus, it becomes possible to develop the widest range of forces to isolate and destroy the power of the faction that is most reactionary and most servile to the imperialists at every given time.
In fighting any series of the most reactionary factions and their imperialist masters, the revolutionary forces strengthen their unity with the people and accummulate the strength to overthrow the entire ruling system.
The National Democratic Front is the instrument for building the national united front of all patriotic and progressive forces. At the present stage, however, it includes within its fold organizations of the basic forces of the revolution, i.e., the working class, peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie.
It is the policy of the NDF to cooperate and coordinate with all the patriotic and progressive forces that are not within its fold as a formal alliance. It is also the hope of the NDF that upon the development of the organs of political power at levels higher than the village level these forces will decide to join the NDF and the people’s consultative conferences.
The NDF supports all forms of revolutionary struggle, legal and illegal, aboveground and underground. But the NDF is a distinctive united front organization in that it is clearly for revolutionary armed struggle.
As a matter of principle, the NDF is of the stand that the armed struggle is the main form of revolutionary struggle because it smashes the bureaucratic and military machinery of the reactionary state and makes possible the emergence and development of the revolutionary organs of democratic power. Without the seizure of political power, the national and social liberation of the people is impossible. The legal forms of struggle are important and indispensable. These can be skillfully used to expose and oppose the reactionary state and even spread the revolutionary message to millions upon millions of the people. But these are within the constraints of the reactionary state and these by themselves cannot dismantle or change the fundamental character of the reactionary state.
The NDF supports the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating armed strength until it becomes possible to seize political power in the cities and on a nationwide scale.
The people’s war is the way to forge the alliance of the working class and the peasantry. It integrates the armed struggle, land reform and mass base building. It realizes the main substance of the democratic revolution, which is land reform as a way for emancipating the peasantry politically and economically.
In conducting the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside, the revolutionary party of the working class relies mainly on the poor peasants, together with the farm workers and poor fisherfolk, wins over the middle peasants, neutralizes the rich peasants and take advantage of contradictions among the landlords in the period of minimum land reform in order to isolate and destroy the power of the despotic landlord class. This anti-feudal line is within the larger framework of the national united front which is both anti-imperialist and anti- feudal.
The NDF is of the view that the revolutionary armed struggle cannot advance without the development of the legal democratic movement. These two forms of struggle must be coordinated, expanded and intensified by applying the united front policy in both forms of struggle.
Through the application of the united front policy, not only definite organized forces join the revolutionary movement but millions upon millions of people are reached and influenced to organize themselves and participate in the revolution. The NDF must be vigilant towards those agents provocateur who wish to combine parliamentarism with insurrectionism through actions that make the most advanced forces appear as isolated aggressors and expose them to enemy surveillance and retaliation. The character of the democratic movement based in the urban areas is legal and defensive. The NDF must also be vigilant towards those who likewise play into the hands of the enemy by adopting the purely military viewpoint, regarding the armed struggle as a competition of absolutely concentrated military formations and treating the masses as political only when they are spontaneous or unorganized.
The national democratic revolution must be won through the people’s war in stages. If this revolution is not to be betrayed again by the bourgeoisie through the petty bourgeoisie, the proletariat through its vanguard party must definitely lead the armed struggle and the united front.
