III. Great Victories of the Communist Party of the Philippines
In the last forty years, the Communist Party of the Philippines has won great ideological, political and organizational victories which are of lasting value and have served to advance the new democratic revolution of the Filipino people against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. These victories have been won against tremendous odds through resolute and militant struggles that have gone through twists and turns but have ascended to new and higher levels of revolutionary consciousness and fighting capability.
The US imperialists and their local puppets, have unleashed so many nationwide and localized campaigns of military suppression against the Party, the New People's Army and the Filipino people in vicious attempts to destroy the armed revolutionary movement. After trying in the period of 1969-71, to "nip in the bud" the people's war in one and then in two guerrilla fronts, the US imperialists instigated the Marcos regime to impose fascist dictatorship on the people for 14 years–from 1972 until this was weakened by the people's resistance and brought down by an uprising in 1986. Then this would be followed by the series of post-Marcos regimes, pretending to be democratic and trying in vain to destroy the people's democratic revolution through deception and violence.
All attempts to destroy the armed revolution have failed. They have merely served to make the people suffer further and incite them to fight more fiercely for their national and social liberation. We must underscore the fact that the new democratic revolution through protracted people's war has endured and has advanced in a big and all-round way in a country, which has long been a major base of US imperialist hegemony in the entire East Asia. This is a great victory which is ever inspiring to the Filipino people and other peoples of the world.
In leading the Philippine revolution successfully, the Party has always sought to integrate the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with the concrete conditions of the Philippines and with the concrete practice of the revolution. It has seriously studied the history of the Filipino people and the international working class movement and has taken advantage of crisis conditions of, and contradictions within, the Philippine ruling system and the world capitalist system.
In ideological work, the Party has firmly adhered to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and has always sought to develop the dialectical materialist stand, viewpoint and method among Party cadres and members, rejecting subjectivism, be it empiricism or dogmatism. In political work, it has set forth the line of new democratic revolution through protracted people's war, rejecting Right and "Left" opportunism. In organizational work, it upholds the principle of democratic centralism, rejecting liberalism and bureaucratism, and has built itself nationwide and struck deep roots among the toiling masses of workers and peasants.
The Party has improved its work and style of work by conducting periodic and timely sessions of criticism and self-criticism. But major errors can persist and grow when Party cadres in higher organs or even in the Central Committee continue to hold and spread these in the Party. In the face of such errors, a rectification movement of major proportions needs to be conducted. In this regard, the Party has victoriously engaged in two great rectification movements, each being a campaign of education to draw lessons from experience, rectify major errors and set forth the tasks for advancing the revolutionary cause.
The First Great Rectification Movement prepared the founding of the Party from 1965 onward and proceeded during the foundational years of the Party from 1968 to 1977. It criticized and repudiated the accumulated errors of the Lavas and Lavaite revisionists and the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique. The Second Great Rectification Movement dealt with the "Left" and Right opportunist errors in the 1980s and early 1990s. The "Left" opportunists inflicted serious harm to the Party and the mass base during most of the 1980s. After the "Left" opportunists openly swung to the Right in the late 1980s, the Right opportunists sought to liquidate the Party with their eclectic hodgepodge of notions derived from bourgeois liberalism, Gorbachovism, Trotskyism and social democracy.
As a consequence of the resounding victory of the Second Great Rectification Movement, which took its course for more than six years since 1992, the Party has revitalized and further strengthened itself ideologically, politically and organizationally. The worst of the "Left" and Right opportunists have turned into out-and-out anticommunists and counterrevolutionaries. They act as special agents of imperialism and reaction as they specialize in anticommunist slander. Some of them have become racketeers in imperialist-funded "non-governmental organizations" and others have joined the military and intelligence services of the enemy as consultants and psywar experts.
The Party has developed its ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism by studying the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao as well as by confronting, exposing and repudiating opportunism, reformism and revisionism and the various anti-communist and anti-socialist ideas. It has taken up the most important issues in the history and current circumstances of the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and people in the Philippines and the world. It has confronted the problems of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism and has advanced the theory and practice of new democratic revolution.
The Party has produced and issued major decisions, analytical articles and books that have a high theoretical and practical value. These are published in Pilipino and other Philippine languages as well as in English and other foreign languages. Together with the classical works of the great communist thinkers and leaders, they are in the syllabi of study courses undertaken by the Party. Study guides and aids are provided to enable the workers, peasants and other people with less formal education to advance in their theoretical and political education.
The primary course includes the study of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the history, basic problems of the Filipino people and the new democratic revolution as solution. The intermediate course seeks to analyze and compare the Philippine revolution with other revolutions abroad. The advance course involves the study of the works of the great communist thinkers and leaders in philosophy, political economy, social science, strategy and tactics and history of the international communist movement.
The Party membership runs into several tens of thousands. It is deeply rooted among the toiling masses of workers and peasants through the length and breadth of the Philippine archipelago. Party members are recruited from the revolutionary mass movement of workers, peasants, women, youth and other sectors. They are developed through courses of study and training in and out of their work units, through collective work and individual assignments and through revolutionary mass struggles.
The Party follows the principle of democratic centralism, with centralism based on democracy and democracy guided by centralism. A territorial structure of leading organs and organizations covers the entire country at various levels: regions, provinces, districts, cities and municipalities and barangays. The leading organs have staff organizations that assist them in various types of work. The basic organization of the Party is the branch, which is based in local communities, factories, farms, transport lines, campuses, offices and the like. The Party group is also the basic Party organization at various levels of a mass organization or social institution.
The Party has drawn the general political line of new democratic revolution through protracted people's war for the purpose of overthrowing the semi-colonial and semifeudal ruling system and establishing the people's democratic state system on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance. It wields the weapons of revolutionary armed struggle and the united front. It takes the mass line. It relies on the masses and learns from the masses to be able to arouse, organize and mobilize them.
The Party has aroused, organized and mobilized the broad masses of the people in their millions. It leads the thousands of fighters of the New People's Army and millions of organized peasants in 120 to 130 guerrilla fronts in 70 provinces, more than 800 municipalities and more than 10,000 barangays. The Party cadres within the people's army and in the localities have formed the organs of political power and the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, cultural activists and others. Units of the people's army can move freely in more than 80 percent of the Philippines because the regular personnel of the reactionary forces can occupy no more than 10% of the country at any single period of time.
Historically, the New People's Army has been the largest revolutionary army ever built in the Philippines. It is larger than the Philippine revolutionary army against Spanish colonialism in the period of 1896 to 1898 and then against US imperialism from 1899 onwards. It is far larger than the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon or the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan. On its own track, the NPA is stronger than what it was in the 1980s in both political and military terms. The NPA never reached the level of 25,000 riflemen in the 1980s. Its peak strength in that decade was only 6,100, without any clear accounting of firearms lost in Mindanao as a result of Kampanyang Ahos.
In the countryside, the Party has integrated the revolutionary armed struggle, land reform and base building in order to advance the new democratic revolution. Revolutionary armed struggle is the main form of struggle. It destroys the armed power of the big compradors and landlords and thereby builds the people's army in the countryside until it gains the capability of seizing political power in the cities. As a result of the Second Great Rectification Movement, the NPA has strengthened itself politically and militarily by waging intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base.
Only with armed power have the Party and the people been able to carry out land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution. This has involved the minimum program of rent reduction, elimination of usury, raising the wages of farm workers, improving prices at the farm gate and raising production in agriculture and other economic activities. On the basis of such program, it is possible to move up to the maximum level of land confiscation and free distribution of land. Upon the advance of the armed struggle and agrarian revolution, it becomes possible to move up from the level of guerrilla fronts to that of stable base areas by strengthening the organs of political power, the mass organizations, the militia units and self-defense units.
The Party has built the united front as an important weapon of the new democratic revolution. This weapon involves several types of alliances. The most important of these is the basic alliance of the workers and peasants. It is the alliance of the working class as the leading class and the peasantry as the main force of the Philippine revolution. As the advanced detachment of the working class, the Party has pursued the antifeudal class line in its alliance with the peasant masses: rely mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, win over the middle peasants, neutralize the rich peasants and take advantage of the splits among the landlords in order to isolate and destroy the power of the biggest and most despotic landlords.
Only with an effective basic alliance of the workers and peasants for the armed struggle can the other types of alliances in the united front become effective. We refer to the progressive alliance of such basic revolutionary forces as toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the patriotic alliance of these progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie and the broad united front of patriotic forces and certain reactionary forces to oppose the enemy, defined as the worst reactionary force and most servile to imperialism.
The Party has employed the united front policy and the various forms of alliances in order to augment the strength of the basic revolutionary forces and to reach, arouse and mobilize the people in their millions in various forms of struggle and on a wide range of issues. Together with allied organizations, the Party has built the National Democratic Front of the Philippines as the united front framework for all basic revolutionary forces. The NDFP is open to internal broadening as to include patriotic forces of the middle bourgeoisie or external broadening as to engage in a formal or informal broad united front with reactionary forces opposed to the worst reactionary force at a given time.
In legal mass struggles against US imperialism and the worst of the local reactionaries, the Party always calls on the broad masses of the people and the patriotic and progressive forces to unite and act resolutely and militantly. The people have rallied to the Party's calls and have risen in massive protest actions that have led to the ouster of Marcos and Estrada from power. They have foiled schemes to amend the 1987 constitution for the purpose of serving pro-imperialist and reactionary ends as they continue to expose and condemn the pro-imperialist and reactionary policies of the ruling clique.
By itself alone, the legal democratic mass movement may oust a particular reactionary regime from power but cannot overthrow the entire reactionary ruling system. The Party has always recognized that the legal democratic mass movement can weaken the ruling system, gain strength and affirm the justness of the revolutionary cause of the people. But such a movement is vulnerable to brutal attacks by the reactionary die-hards. In this connection, the Party has constantly urged patriotic and progressive legal activists to join the revolutionary armed struggle when they are targeted for extrajudicial killing, kidnapping, torture and incarceration by the reactionary state.
The Party stands for the democratic rights and welfare of overseas Filipinos and has called upon them to support the revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people for national liberation and democracy. In scores of foreign countries, it has encouraged Filipino immigrants, permanent residents and land-based and seaborne contract workers in forming their associations and in fighting for their own rights and interests.
Our Party enjoys a high standing in the international communist movement as well as in the broad anti-imperialist movement. This is due to the great victories of the Party and the Filipino people in waging the new democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local reactionaries as well as due to the revolutionary stand taken by the Party on international issues. Communist and workers parties study the publications of our Party and seek exchanges of ideas and experiences with our Party. Our Party has established and developed comradely or friendly relations with other parties through bilateral meetings and multilateral conferences. It has thereby entered into agreements of practical cooperation in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. A broad range of anti-imperialist and democratic forces has also established relations with the Party and the mass organizations led by the Party in the spirit of anti-imperialist solidarity.
