IV. Plan for a Qualitative Leap of the Armed Revolution
Our Party considers of crucial importance how to bring the new democratic revolution to a new and higher level of development or a qualitative leap on account of the rich accumulated revolutionary experience, strength and great victories of the Party, New People's Army, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the broad masses of the Filipino people and the ever worsening crisis and depression of the Philippine reactionary ruling system and the world capitalist system.
It is necessary for the Party to formulate the plan for accelerating the advance of ideological, political and organizational work, enlarging the subjective forces of the revolution and taking advantage of the ever worsening crisis of imperialism and the local reactionaries in order to approach the goal of overthrowing the rotten ruling system and establishing the people's democratic republic.
We can have a five-year central plan of work. It must have clear objectives to be accomplished from year to year involving cumulative growth as well as flexibility and adjustability in order to achieve better results. It must be based on the current level of strength, track records and plans of the lower Party organs and organizations, on further inquiries to confirm current strength and estimate potential growth and on a determination to be clear about tasks and methods of carrying out the tasks and undertaking the necessary check-ups, follow-ups and necessary adjustments.
The overriding objective of the plan must be to increase the strength of the revolutionary forces and approach the goal of destroying the ruling system and replacing it with the people's democratic state. The plan must encompass the following points:
1. Educate and train Party cadres and members on the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the general political line of new democratic revolution
The Party must educate and train a large number of Party cadres and members on the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and on the general line of new democratic revolution through protracted people's war in order to serve as the steel core and leading force of the revolutionary mass movement. We need tens of thousands of Party cadres and hundreds of thousands and then millions of Party members to carry out the gigantic tasks of the revolution and bring about a qualitative leap in the revolutionary movement.
The Party branch and groups must undertake the basic political course and the basic Party course in order to promptly educate and train a large number of Party candidate-members to become full Party members and for the latter to refresh and consolidate their knowledge. The higher Party organs must undertake the intermediate and advanced Party courses and pay attention to the education and training of instructors for all courses of study.
The Party organs concerned must plan how the existing and forthcoming Party candidate-members must take and finish the basic Party course without any delay. Those with lesser ability than others to read and comprehend original texts must be provided with simplified study materials and interesting visual aids. Those with more ability must provide comradely assistance to others in the process of learning under the direction of the instructor.
2. Accelerate the recruitment of Party candidate-members from the revolutionary mass movement and expand the Party boldly
The Party must recruit candidate members from among the most active and advanced elements of the mass movement. Our constant policy is to expand the Party without letting in a single enemy agent. The mass movement is a reliable way of determining the honest elements who accept the Party Constitution and Program and who are resolute and militant in pursuing the general line of people's struggle for national liberation and democracy. We may also recruit such elements in reactionary institutions and organizations who accept the Party Constitution and Program but who must take precautions in order to carry out effectively special tasks for the Party.
It is the responsibility of the Party organs concerned to make candidate members become full members within the time specified by the Party Constitution, according to class considerations. Immediately after taking the general and special mass courses, advanced elements of the mass movement should be able to take the mass and the basic Party course as candidate members. To achieve full Party membership, the candidate member must complete the basic Party course, must be active in a Party branch or group and must carry out the tasks assigned. Such tasks in the period of candidature may be construed as the trial work.
The Party is aware that its organizational growth has been restrained by negligence to recruit candidate members and if and when these are recruited at whatever rate there is negligence in providing the basic Party course and minding the period of candidature. All Party cadres and members are reminded that mass activists become inspired when they become Party candidate members and the latter become even more inspired to work harder and fight more fiercely for the revolutionary cause when they become full Party members and that the Party will be capable of accomplishing greater victories if there is a cumulative increase of Party cadres and members.
3. Intensify the campaigns to arouse, organize and mobilize the people along the general line of the new democratic revolution.
We must always learn from the masses through social investigation of their oppressed and exploited conditions and their concrete needs and demands. Thus, we learn how to carry out mass campaigns to arouse, organize and mobilize the people. We must trust and rely on the people in being able to act effectively on issues that concern their rights and interests and to take the direction towards empowering and benefiting themselves along the general line of the new democratic revolution.
The Party must ensure that the leaders and members of the mass organizations undergo and understand the general mass course on Philippine society and revolution and the appropriate sectoral mass course. With such a growing corps of conscious activists in the mass organizations, the Party can bring the revolutionary message to ever larger numbers of people. The task of arousing the people must be well carried out through mass actions and publications and in various forms of agitation and propaganda.
The mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, cultural activists and other sectoral or issue-based formations must be constantly expanded and consolidated. Every mass organization must have a clear plan of expanding its membership cumulatively and consolidating it through political education, tasking and checking of results. Mass mobilizations and mass campaigns should be ways for exercising the current strength as well as increasing strength by attracting more people to become members.
4. Intensify the revolutionary armed struggle and hit the targets to maximize the political and military victories
Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People's Army must continue to pursue the strategic line of protracted people's war. It must grow in strength in the countryside until it attains the capability of seizing the cities on a nationwide scale. The revolutionary armed struggle is integrated with the agrarian revolution and the building of the mass base.
The NPA must advance from the stage of the strategic defensive to that of the strategic stalemate and finally to that of the strategic offensive. At every strategic stage, it must launch tactical offensives to change the balance of forces by inflicting more and more defeats on the enemy and gaining more and more armed strength through increased fighting experience, weapons and technical capabilities.
Currently, the NPA is waging intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever expanding and deepening mass base. It must intensify this guerrilla warfare in order to wipe out enemy units, destroy enemy facilities, interdict enemy lines of supply, force the enemy to take guard duties and go on the defensive. It must also dismantle the landgrabbing operations of foreign and local agri-corporations, mining companies, logging companies for export, real estate companies and similar enterprises that reduce the land for agriculture and land reform and that result in the destruction of the environment.
The NPA must deal with the impunity of high bureaucrats and military officials in perpetrating treason, plunder and human rights violations. Those who commit these grave crimes are subject to summons for investigation and arrest and if armed and dangerous or protected by armed personnel are subject to battle by the NPA arresting unit. Retirement from reactionary government service does not free the suspects from criminal liabilities, arrest or battle. Close relatives and friends who benefit from the criminal offenses or fruits thereof must be treated as accomplices in crime. Dynasty-building and cronyism must be combated.
5. Raise land reform to a new and higher level towards the maximum level
The Party must raise land reform to a new and higher level towards the maximum program of land reform, wherever possible. The minimum land reform program may be maintained wherever it is still advantageous to the tillers and the requirements for maximum land reform are not yet present, such as the sufficient strength and readiness of the Party, the people's army and the peasant association.
In striving for maximum land reform, the main blow must be directed at the big despotic landlords and the landgrabbing corporations that have armed personnel or use the reactionary military and police to oppress the peasant masses and fight the revolutionary movement. The NPA must employ the tactics of dismantling and rendering unprofitable the operations of these land-greedy entities and thus forcing them to leave the land. Concomitantly the landless tillers must be organized to take over the land.
When the despots and landgrabbers insist on holding the land by employing the reactionary military and police and the private armed guards, the NPA must turn the latter into sources of weapons by repeatedly assaulting the isolated guard posts or ambushing the guards on the road. The bigger the landholding, the more difficult it is to guard. It would prove excessively costly for the big landlords or the corporations to try to hold the land against the resolute resistance of the people and the people's army.
6. Develop the guerrilla fronts toward becoming relatively stable base areas
The guerrilla fronts must be increased to the level of 168. This means having a guerrilla front in every congressional district in all the provinces in consonance with the line of intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare based on an ever widening and deepening mass base. Armed city partisan units with specific missions in highly urbanized congressional districts can be deployed and directed from the nearest guerrilla front commands in coordination with the appropriate urban district Party organ.
Having a definite goal for increasing the number of guerrilla fronts leads us to think of the next stage in the development of revolutionary territory. It is realistic and logical to anticipate and work for the emergence of relatively stable base areas from the increase, merger, integration or expansion of existing guerrilla fronts under a base area command, capable of launching company-size tactical offensives on the scale of a province or several provinces, if based on an inter-provincial border area.
To build the relatively stable base area, the Party must lead the NPA in suppressing and driving away the oppressors and exploiters and dismantling the reactionary organs of political power over extensive areas. The Party, the people's army, the revolutionary organs of political power and the mass organizations must attain a new and higher level of development. As internal security is maintained by the people's militia and the self-defense units of the mass organizations, the NPA fighting units can increase and intensify their tactical offensives and carry out battles with short rest periods.
7. Develop the various alliances under the united front policy in order to reach the people in ever larger numbers
We must develop the various alliances under the united front policy in order to arouse , organize and mobilize the people in ever larger numbers. The most important of these alliances is the basic worker-peasant alliance as it is the very foundation of the people's democratic revolution. It combines the working class as the revolutionary leading class and the peasantry as the most numerous class and main force of the revolution. The people's democratic government is based now and in the future on the worker-peasant alliance.
We must continue to develop the progressive alliance of the toiling masses of workers and peasants with the urban petty bourgeoisie. All of them are the basic forces of the revolution. At the moment,their alliance is best embodied in the revolutionary underground by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. We must also continue to develop the patriotic alliance of the basic revolutionary forces with the middle bourgeoisie by promoting anti-imperialism and espousing national industrial development.
Further, we must develop the broad united front, involving the alliance of the patriotic and progressive forces with certain sections of the reactionary classes against the enemy, defined as the worst reactionary clique and most servile to imperialism. This kind of alliance is temporary and unstable because the allies are reactionary in character and may abandon or betray the alliance. In this regard, we must always be vigilant, maintain independence and initiative, be skillful at unity and struggle and gain revolutionary strength while the alliance holds.
8. Uphold proletarian internationalism and broad anti-imperialist solidarity
The Party must uphold proletarian internationalism and remain active in the international communist movement. The best way we can contribute to the advance of the world proletarian revolution is to make further advances and win further victories in the ongoing new democratic revolution in the Philippines and to condemn and combat imperialism, revisionism and all reaction. We must exchange revolutionary experiences and ideas with other Parties and arrive at possible and necessary forms of practical cooperation.
The Party must uphold the broad anti-imperialist solidarity of the people of the world. Together with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, it has long been active in promoting anti-imperialist solidarity by relating to, and cooperating with, national liberation movements and various people's organizations and institutions abroad. We are encouraged that mass organizations of the Filipino people are active domestically and internationally in fighting imperialist plunder and war which have been pushed by the US under such slogans as "neoliberal globalization" and "war on terror".
The Party must further develop its relations with parties, people's organizations and institutions abroad not only to garner support for the Filipino people in their struggle for national liberation and democracy but also to contribute what it can and participate in the efforts of all peoples to attain greater freedom, democracy, social justice, development and world peace.
