Communist Party of the Philippines
With boundless joy, we celebrate the 46th founding anniversary of our great and glorious beloved Communist Party of the Philippines, the proletarian revolutionary vanguard of the Filipino people’s democratic revolution against US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
We congratulate all our comrades for winning victories in building the Party, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front; in carrying out the revolutionary armed struggle, genuine land reform and building the rural mass base (organs of political power and mass organizations) and in intensifying the mass movement in both urban and rural areas.
As always, we honor and give the highest respects to all our revolutionary martyrs and heroes for the accumulated strength of the Party and the revolutionary mass movement since the founding of the Party. We render special honor to the revolutionary martyrs and heroes in the previous year. Their arduous struggle and supreme sacrifice inspire us to fight more fiercely than ever before for the total victory of the revolution.
We reiterate our congratulations to the Kabataang Makabayan, our Communist Youth League, for celebrating its 50 years of service to the proletariat as its assistant and to the entire Filipino people. We are ever grateful for the revolutionary education and training of the young workers, peasants, students and professionals who join the revolutionary mass formations and consequently the Communist Party of the Philippines.
The tide of revolution is ever rising in the Philippines because of the worsening chronic crisis of the rotten US-dominated ruling system of big compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats. The prolonged and ever worsening crisis of the world capitalist system is aggravating the domestic crisis.
Persistent crisis of global capitalism and mounting wars of aggression
The crisis of global capitalism is persistent and is ever worsening as the US and other capitalist powers cling to the neoliberal economic policy under the Washington Consensus. This policy has not only failed to solve the old problem of stagflation but has aggravated it.
But the US and its followers have retained the policy because it serves the superprofit-taking by the monopoly bourgeoisie and the financial oligarchy and they belittle the current level of revolutionary resistance and underestimate its potential. The protraction of the severe crisis provides the opportunity for the revolutionary forces to develop further.
Even within the imperialist countries, economic depression and social degradation have taken a serious toll on the people. The proletariat and people of color have suffered the most from unemployment, reduced income and social cutbacks. The so-called middle class has drastically shrunk.
The big bourgeoisie has benefited from the bailouts and the expansion of money and credit and continue to enjoy tax cutbacks, financial incentives, investment and trade liberalization, privatization of public assets, deregulation of social and environmental restrictions and the denationalization of client-economies.
At the base of the economic and financial crisis is the crisis of overproduction. This is starkly demonstrated by the drop in international prices of crude oil by nearly 50% over the past six months in the face of the estimated oversupply of 700,000 to two million barrels per day. The oversupply is the result of unprecedented levels of shale oil production in the US and non-reduction of crude oil production by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) amid stagnating demand of crude oil. The fall in the prices of crude oil has destabilized the economies of Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and other countries which are heavily reliant on oil export revenues.
One financial bubble after another has been created by the big bourgeoisie to lay over the economic crisis but keeps on bursting to aggravate the crisis. Since the financial meltdown of 2008, the bubble of public debt through sheer expansion of money supply and credit in the financial markets has become overblown and is in the process of bursting to cause further destruction of the forces of production.
Unable to expand and revive the civil economy, the US, the EU and Japan are engaged in ever higher spending for high-tech war production. The US is spearheading its NATO allies and Japan by increasing the deployment of US military forces in the underdeveloped countries, especially in the oil-producing countries and in the vicinity of China and Russia. The US and its NATO allies are practically spreading the flames of aggressive war and civil strife on a global scale. The US has also prodded Japan to discard its pacifist stance.
The US and its imperialist allies use homeland security and anti-terrorism as pretexts for violating the national sovereignty and independence of other countries. They have also used the same pretexts to build the legal and political infrastructure for domestic fascism and militarization.
They brainwash and train the police and military to regard political opposition and the exercise of the right to free speech and assembly, especially by people of color, as manifestations of terrorism. In the US, racial profiling has resulted in widespread state violence against African-Americans, including the killing of an African-American every 28 hours by a police officer. In addition, African-American men, who form 6% of US population, disproportionately composes nearly half of US prison population.
The oppressed peoples and nations suffer extreme economic plunder by the imperialist powers with the collaboration of client states. They are victimized by debt-driven consumption, dependence on imported manufactures and food, the extraction of raw materials and chronic trade and budgetary deficits.
In the case of certain underdeveloped countries, in which the states become assertive of national independence because of the demand of the people, the US and its imperialist partners have unleashed wars of aggression, as in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Control of energy sources and supply lines have been a major cause of such wars. The US persists in economic and military blockades, threats and provocations against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Cuba.
Recent moves by the Obama admistration towards the possible restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba does not mean the end of US economic sanctions and schemes to subvert the current government and social system of Cuba. It shows the failure of the US to isolate Cuba. For its part, the Cuban government and the Communist Party of Cuba have declared that they will continue to defend the ideals of independence, national sovereignty and socialism.
Under the prodding of the neoconservatives, the US has systematized a grand scheme to keep the whole world under US hegemony or Pax Americana in the entire 21st century by using the full spectrum of its power, especially its supreme high-tech military power against real and potential rivals or recalcitrant states in underdeveloped countries.While toning down some of the abrasive unilateralist rhetoric, the supposedly anti-neoconservative Obama regime has continuously pushed for a US-ruled unipolar world order.
The US has already demonstrated several times how it can use a combination of bombing campaigns and economic sanctions to bring down a state and bring up a set of puppets. It has underestimated how its acts of aggression can bring out the people’s revolutionary resistance in the long run.
Until recently, the US and its imperialist allies have celebrated the full integration of China and Russia in the world capitalist system as the death of the socialist cause and the strengthening of global capitalism. But the US is now increasingly worried that these big capitalist countries are challenging US hegemony and disturbing the world order as designed by Washington.
Due to the increasingly independent stance of Russia and China, inter-imperialist contradictions are growing over a wide range of issues: economic, trade, financial, security and so on. A realignment among the capitalist powers is occurring with China and Russia taking a lead role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a security bloc and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as an economic bloc.
The US has always applied a policy of engagement and containment towards China. But in recent years, it has engaged more in containment by carrying out a strategic pivot to East Asia, aiming to concentrate 60% of US naval forces and 50% of ground and air forces in the area.
The strategic pivot of military forces is combined with the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, which pointedly excludes China. The current apparent objectives of the US is to pressure China to further privatize its state-owned enterprises and to encourage the so-called pro-democracy forces to undercut and junk the Communist Party as the authority legitimating the Chinese bourgeois rulers.
At the same time, the US together with the UK as its most rabid NATO ally is continuing the provocations against Russia started by the so-called color revolutions in countries bordering it. It has escalated the provocations by openly instigating and funding neo-Nazi groups in the Ukraine to overthrow the Yanukovych government and install a rabidly pro-US and pro-NATO government in this country.
This government has downgraded the ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine and provoked them to assert their right to self-determination and proclaim their own people’s republics. To further aggravate the situation, it has invaded said regions in Novorossiya and blamed Russia for the missile attack that brought down Malaysian commercial airline MH-17 in July. The unfounded accusation has been used as pretext for economic sanctions by the US and EU and for Russia’s suspension from what used to be the G-8. The US Congress has recently issued a resolution practically declaring war on Russia.
The provocations towards both China and Russia by the US and its imperialist allies have only served to push the two countries to close ranks and defend their mutual interests. They have made agreements on cross-border trade between oil, gas and other raw materials from Russia and manufactures and food from China and on building the pipelines and train lines for the purpose. They have also agreed on joint military exercises, building of the BRICS Bank and using currency other than the US dollar for trade. .
The US is still stuck in the quagmires of its own making in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. It is exacerbating and complicating its imperial overstretch by making provocations against China or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in East Asia and against Russia from the European side.
It is wrongly presuming that all the EU countries would follow the dictates of the US at all times. Some of the major EU countries need the oil and gas that Russia can supply and hesitate to be pawns in a revived Cold War and in the exchange of nuclear threats between the US and China. At any rate, the US keeps on instigating troubles in Eastern Europe and compromising the EU countries with the NATO framework.
The protracted and ever worsening crisis of global capitalism is pushing the imperialist powers to intensify their struggle for a redivision of the world. In response to escalating threats of aggression and first nuclear strike by the US, Russia has made its own exercises to demonstrate its own military strength and nuclear capabilities. The proletarian revolutionary parties and peoples of the world need to grow in strength to counter wars of aggression and an inter-imperialist world war.
The severe economic crisis and political turmoil arising from the inter-imperialist contradictions are favorable conditions for the resurgence of the movements for national liberation, democracy and socialism. The growing danger of imperialist wars of aggression and the possible use of nuclear weapons in an inter-imperialist war can and must be counteracted by mass movement and revolutionary civil war in all the imperialist countries and the rest of the world.
Puppetry, corruption, plunder and brutality discredit the US-Aquino regime and the entire ruling system
In its first four years in power, the Aquino regime was touted by its imperialist and local reactionary sponsors as made out for “good governance” and “peace and development.” The objective of the imperialists and yellow reactionaries was to make the Aquino regime most effective in deceiving the people, further denationalizing the economy and liberalizing the operations of foreign capital and attacking the revolutionary movement with Oplan Bayanihan.
It was favored by an extremely long “press honeymoon” by the imperialist and local reactionary mass media and opinion poll survey. But in the last two years of its tenure of office, the regime is being buffeted by the people’s clamor and movement for its ouster. The extreme corruption of the regime, especially in the use of the pork barrel system and in favoring the Aquino-Cojuangco family and its cronies has become well exposed.
The regime was also provided with a heavy flow of hot money or portfolio investments by US hedge funds to conjure the illusion of an “economic miracle.” The delusionary claims of 6.8% and 7.2% growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012 and 2013 are well accounted for by the foreign hot money that flowed into the stock and bond markets and that somehow supported import-dependent and debt-driven consumption, including the glossy but unstable private construction boom.
The bubble has not revived the export-oriented semimanufacturing of semiconductors, garments and footwear and reassembly of cars and appliances for domestic use, which had been previously shut down by the global depression. It has not changed the fundamental fact of underdevelopment that ties down most of the manpower to agrarian and semifeudal conditions in the production of goods and drives 20% of the population to seek jobs abroad.
The drastic fall in the inflow of hot money is due to the tapering of the so-called quantitative easing in the US (rapid expansion of money supply) and the tightening of credit in China where the expansion of public debt and private credit had been so many times bigger than that in the US. The global depression is expected to further debilitate and degrade the Philippine economy.
The economic underdevelopment of the Philippines has been aggravated and deepened by the neoliberal policy. Investment liberalization has allowed foreign and big comprador firms to control economic and financial policy in the country to plunder human and natural resources, export raw materials and avoid tax payments. The unbridled expansion of export-oriented mining, logging and plantations has resulted in grave damage to the economy and environment.
The denationalization of banks and domestic trade has ensured the foreign capture of the foreign debt and foreign exchange earnings of overseas contract workers.
Consistent with its treasonous character, the Aquino regime is scheming to amend the 1987 charter in order to get rid of the provisions on economic sovereignty, conservation of the national patrimony and nationality restrictions on foreign investments.
The privatization of public assets has favored the foreign banks, the multinational firms and the big comprador firms and has resulted in unlimited profit-taking and the deterioration of social services. The deregulation of social and environmental restrictions has resulted in the extreme exploitation of labor, women and children and the pollution and degradation of the environment.
The foreign corporations and the big compradors have benefited most from the bubble generated by foreign hot money and by pork barrel spending. While taking their superprofits, they have further impoverished the people who suffer a higher rate of unemployment, reduced incomes, landlessness and homelessness, soaring costs of basic goods and services and the degradation of social services and the environment. They have caused further underdevelopment, widening trade and budgetary deficits and mounting foreign and local public debt.
The Aquino regime has been throughly exposed for its corruption in having made the yearly budget as a construct of lump sum appropriations under the sole arbitrary discretion of the president and under his illegal claims to savings for the purpose of misappropriation and malversation. No less than the Supreme Court, including the Aquino-appointed justices, has ruled that such devices as the Disbursement Acceleration Program and Priority Development Assistance Fund are unconstitutional and illegal.
But stubbornly, the Aquino regime persists in making most of the P2.6-trillion budget for 2015 and the so-called off-budget accounts (like the Malampaya fund, PSCO earnings and the like) the personal discretionary fund of the president. The corruption of the Aquino regime knows no limits. It extends to all supply contracts with the civilian and military agencies of the reactionary government, the finances and operations of the government-owned corporations, the infrastructure projects under the Private-Public Partnership Program and the Conditional Cash Transfer and PAMANA doleouts.
Even the relief and rehabilitation program for the Haiyan/Yolanda supertyphoon victims and other calamities has not been spared from the thieving hands of bureaucrats and military officers. Rampant corruption is being exposed as a result of the outcries of the victims, the militant diligence of the people and the revolutionary forces and contradictions of the regime with rival factions within the ruling system.
It can be expected that the corruption and other wrongdoings of the regime will be exposed as the contradictions among the reactionaries will intensify in connection with the 2016 presidential elections. So far, however, the self-proclaimed presidential candidates do not offer any assurance that there will be any significant change in the character of the elections and in the ruling system. The elections will be preconditioned in the main by the big campaign financiers, the political dynasties, use of government resources and manipulation of the automated electoral system.
The revolutionary movement is set on exposing the electoral system as a farce and denouncing the worst political forces and candidates in the service of US imperialism and the local exploiting classes. At the same time, it can take advantage of the contradictions among the reactionaries, employ the policy and tactics of the united front in electoral matters, raise the issues most important to the people and promote the program and objectives of attaining a just and lasting peace. As such, the most patriotic and progressive parties and candidates are are in a better position to garner more seats in the reactionary parliament and local government.
From year to year, the Aquino regime has vowed to destroy the armed revolution under the US-designed Oplan Bayanihan and has shown lack of serious interest in peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. At this point, it is clear that the reactionary armed forces cannot destroy the armed revolution even ifthe regime commit gross and systematic violations of human rights and even if they can occasionally carry out dramatic arrests and attacks.
The Aquino regime is definitely far worse than the Arroyo regime in imprisoning far more people on trumped-up multiple charges of rebellion and common crimes in violation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law and the Hernandez political offense doctrine. It has also detained 14 political consultants of the NDFP in violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees. The Aquino regime is fundamentally as bad as the Arroyo regime in allowing illegal detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, forced evacuations, landgrabbing from the peasants and repression of workers and their trade unions. The gross and systematic human rights violations under Oplan Bayanihan have exposed the regime’s claims to peace and development as a farce and have pushed the people and revolutionary forces to intensify the resistance in various forms and ways.
From year to year, the Party has accumulated all-sided victories in carrying out the general line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. Despite the bellicose position of the regime towards the armed revolution, the NDFP, like the Party, is well aware of the worsening crisis of the ruling system and continues to explore the possibility of peace negotiations in order to attain realizable goals for the benefit of the Filipino people.
The Aquino regime has boasted that it has more military forces to deploy against the people, the Party and the New People’s Army in Mindanao as a result of a peace settlement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In fact, 60% of the reactionary armed forces are reported to have been already deployed against the forces of the NPA in Mindanao. While the NPA in Mindanao continue to wage all-out armed resistance, the Bangsamoro people are also determined to push forward their revolutionary armed struggle so long as their right to self-determination and ancestral domain is not respected.
Since the US military bases were kicked out of the Philippines in 1992 as a result of the decision of the Philippine Senate not to renew the US-RP Military Bases Agreement, the US has persistently sought to reentrench its military forces in the Philippines under various pretexts such as joint military exercises, interoperability training, civic action, medical aid, disaster relief and antiterrorism.
In the process, it has wangled the Mutual Logistics and Support Agreement and Visiting Forces Agreement by which it can land its military forces on Philippine territory and maintain forward stations. Now, it has gotten the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement by which it can have military bases under the guise of Agreed Locations within Philippine military bases and reservations. These are in clear violation of the 1987 Constitution, particularly the provision banning foreign military bases. This provision is a product of the people’s struggle against the US and the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
The Aquino regime has used the maritime dispute of the Philippines with China in order to betray the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Philippines by allowing the US military bases to be reestablished and the US military forces to further entrench themselves in the Philippines in connection with the US strategic pivot to East Asia.
The US has been an unapologetic aggressor against the Philippines and the Filipino people since 1899. It cannot be relied upon to defend the Philippines against China as a potential aggressor. The US has far greater interest in relations with China than in those with the Philippines.It has already admitted that it will not defend the Philippines against China and has in fact raised no objection to China’s seizure of the Panatag Shoal and certain islets and reefs within the Spratly island group.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea , the Philippines has rights over its exclusive economic zone and extended continental shelf in the South China Sea. . The best that the Filipino people can do in the long run is to uphold national sovereignty, realize people’s democracy, carry out economic development through land reform and national industrialization, achieve social justice and promote international solidarity for peace and development.
By having genuine national independence and industrializing its economy, the Philippines can make its own modern means of defense and can make full use of diplomacy against any threat or aggression by a foreign power. The Filipino people can look forward to a new and brighter future of socialism by waging and winning the people’s democratic revolution against imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
Victories and tasks of the Party in ideological, political and organizational work
The protracted crisis of the world capitalist system and the chronic crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system have inflicted terrible suffering on the people in terms of exploitation and oppression and have incited the people to hope for revolutionary change. The Party has responded to the people’s desire for revolution by intensifying ideological, political and organizational work in order to further develop the revolutionary forces and the revolutionary mass movement.
The work has resulted in significant and brilliant victories. Over the past several years, the Party has made significant advances in various fields of revolutionary work. It has led commands of the New People’s Army in breaking new grounds in sustained expansion and maintaining initiative in waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare and frustrating the enemy’s campaigns of suppression. It continues to accumulate significant victories in building people’s militia units and unleashing mass initiative in waging armed struggle.
Party cadres are leading in the establishment of organs of political power with ever-widening scopes of authority and responsibility. Land reform campaigns and struggles are waged in ever-expansive areas. Implementation of land reform continue to advance to higher levels, confront problems of building cooperative forms of production, preventing the emergence and dominance of rich peasants, building socialist relations and raising production and economic planning while waging people’s war.
The clamor for the ouster of the US-Aquino regime continues to gain ground as the democratic mass movement. The people continue to accumulate strength in exposing and opposing the rotteness, puppetry, brutality and mendacity of the ruling regime. The mass movement stand on firm ground upon which it can advance forward considerably in the next year or two.
Even as the Party leads in accumulating advance experiences in pushing forward the revolutionary movement, it also leads in addressing the backlog problems confronting the people in other fields of revolutionary work.
The Communist Party of the Philippines must be able to expand and strengthen itself substantially in the next year or so in order to shoulder the task of carrying forward the revolutionary struggle to new heights.
As the advanced detachment of the proletariat, the Party upholds firmly and seeks to further develop and propagate the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). It makes sure that the Party cadres and members undertake and complete the formal basic, intermediate and advanced study courses of the Party within reasonably short periods. The formal courses are necessary for understanding Marxist-Leninist-Maoist basic principles and methods of thinking.
The formal study courses of the Party are a guarantee that the Party is guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and that the Party rank and file are inspired by it and are a definite measure of how much the Party is doing to raise the level of proletarian consciousness among its cadres and members. Everyday, Party units across the country organize scores of study meetings in both the urban and rural areas.
Party organs, units and individual members of the Party are encouraged to study revolutionary theory and practice beyond the prescribed time and content of the formal study courses. Written texts of classic MLM writings as well as theoretical papers produced by the Party are easily available, especially with the help of the internet. The CPP Education Department has also produced simplified texts and audio-visual aids in various Philippine languages for the benefit of comrades who have less training in reading long texts in a foreign language.
Cadres at all levels of the Party must skillfully apply Marxist-Leninist-Maoist methods of thinking to analyze their work, identify problems and come up with resolutions. Party leaders should sum-up their work periodically in order to ensure that the level of work in their field is raised to the next level. The laws of development dictate that Party cadres must guard against stagnation and work to periodically bring the level of their work to new heights.
Revolutionary theory must be used as a dynamic tool in conducting social investigations, policy researches, summing up experiences and planning to solve concrete problems and define tasks in the revolutionary struggle. Major issues of national and international significance must be tackled in the light of the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Work and theoretical conferences to discuss and resolve urgent questions that impact the conduct of revolutionary work in the different spheres and areas must be organized and undertaken.
The Party remains ever vigilant and is determined to wage incessant battle against the pernicious influence of subjectivism, modern revisionism, reformism and opportunism. No matter how brilliant its victories and achievements, the Party has always stressed the absolute need for remaining humble and self-critical in order to keep on advancing forward.
The general line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war has advanced from victory to victory. It has defeated every strategic plan of the US and local reactionaries to destroy the people’s just cause of national liberation and democracy. The US-instigated Marcos fascist dictatorship not only failed to stop the armed revolution but even served to goad the people to join it. The Party and the people have defeated every strategic campaign plan unleashed by the Marcos and post-Marcos regimes to suppress the revolution. Oplan Bayanihan is already a proven failure even before the end of the US-directed Aquino regime. The Party continues to wisely, skillfully and successfully wield the revolutionary armed struggle and united front as weapons.
Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People’s Army has emerged as the strongest revolutionary army ever built in Philippine history. It has followed the strategic line of protracted people’s war, encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating strength until conditions are ripe for the seizure of the cities on a nationwide scale. The armed struggle is integrated with the agrarian revolution, which involves minimum and maximum levels of implementation, depending on the given circumstances in a locality. It is also integrated with the building of the mass base through the creation of organs of political power and mass organizations of various classes and sectors of the people in the countryside.
The Party is determined to complete the strategic defensive stage of the people’s war and to reach the threshold of the strategic stalemate as soon as possible. The call for the advance towards the strategic stalemate has boosted the morale of the Party, the people’s army and the people. They are enthusiastically doing their part in the fulfillment of the requisites for reaching and developing the stage of the strategic stalemate, such as the expansion and consolidation of the Party membership, NPA units and guerrilla zones and the intensification of the people’s war in order to seize more arms, temper the revolutionary forces in struggle, merge or integrate guerrilla fronts into stable base areas wherever possible and gain greater popular support, more territory and more resources.
All commands and units of the NPA are capable of frustrating and defeating any attack of the enemy. However, to master and use strategy and tactics well in actual battles and to maintain flexibility and initiative especially against concentrated and prolonged enemy counter-guerrilla offensives require a high degree of determination and internal cohesion, a good amount of experience, knowledge about the enemy and ourselves, good judgment, and above all, deep and close links with the masses and skillful mobilization and use of mass support. And whenever the reactionary army makes a concentrated attack on any NPA command or unit, all other NPA commands and units are conscious of their obligation to intensify their own offensives to take advantage of the enemy overstretch and give relief to their comrades in arms under attack.
The people’s war continues to break new ground in several regions in Mindanao Since the start of 2014, the AFP has been strategically deploying large numbers of troops in Mindanao in an attempt to stem the rising tide of armed struggle. The escalating attacks of the enemy, however, have been frustrated by the NPA Red fighters who are fighting heroically, resolutely, skillfully and victoriously. The NPA has largely maintained the initiative and must continue to carry out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare in order to thwart the enemy’s plan to put a halt to the advance of people’s war.
In other regions, NPA commands at the regional and subregional levels have succeeded in launching coordinated armed campaigns consisting of several small tactical offensives combined with a few headblows against the enemy. They are raising their capability to sustain these coordinated tactical offensives over a period to gain the initiative and frustrate enemy plans.
All in all, the people’s war is developing unevenly in the various regions across the country and among subregions and fronts within a region. Some areas are confronted with problems of advance such as the training of commanders to effectively lead NPA platoons, companies and battalions, raising the capability and initiative of people’s militia units and commands, expanding and consolidating local Party sections, raising production and developing socialist relations in land reform areas, building inter-village or municipal-level mass organizations and organs of political power, further revolutionizing the basic mass organizations, developing civil defense systems and sustaining education, medical and economic services during times of war.
Others need to address problems at the intermediate or basic levels which have hindered efforts to buildcritical mass strength and sustain the momentum of advance to a higher level. This includes ensuring the sustained expansion and consolidation of NPA units and striking the correct balance between military work and mass work. This also concerns the proper deployment of NPA forces and building people’s militia units to ensure coverage of guerrilla zones without overstretching NPA units and ensuring their capability to rapidly concentrate sufficient numbers to launch tactical offensives or conduct defensive maneuvers against operating troops of the enemy.
At every given level of development, the Party ensures that armed struggle develops apace with agrarian revolution and mass base building. This can be ensured by conducting periodic summing-up meetings to draw lessons and map out plans to advance the three aspects of people’s war.
The Party’s central leadership is taking prompt and significant measures to address the disparities in the development of people’s war by mobilizing available capabilities and resources and developing various means of cooperation in order to support and boost the efforts of less advanced Party units and NPA commands.
In wielding the weapon of the national united front, the Party relies mainly on the worker-peasant alliance and strives to unite all patriotic and progressive forces of the toiling masses and the middle social strata against imperialism and reaction. The principal expression of the basic alliance is the absolute leadership by the CPP of the NPA, which is largely a peasant-based army. This alliance is also expressed in the support of the urban-based mass movement comprised largely of workers and allied classes for the antifeudal struggles in the countryside; and conversely, in the efforts of the peasant mass movement to link up with the anti-imperialist and democratic mass struggles in the cities.
In allying itself with the peasantry, the working class applies the policy and tactics of the antifeudal united front. It relies mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, wins over the middle peasants, neutralizes the rich peasants and takes advantage of the split between the enlightened and despotic sections of the landlord class.
In order to further isolate the enemy, the Party may under given circumstances broaden the united front to take advantage of splits among the reactionaries but must always maintain its independence and initiative.
The Party mobilizes the people through mass campaigns based on national, class and sectoral interests. Economic struggles are combined with and consciously raised to the level of political struggles in order to continuously broaden the reach among the masses while increasingly developing their militancy and political consciousness and leading their activity toward the correct revolutionary direction.The policy and tactics of the national united front are employed to bring together the organized forces led by the Party, the allied forces and the spontaneous masses. The progressive movement has accumulated vast and rich experience in developing massive and powerful mass movements centered in the urban areas.
Land reform and other mass campaigns are waged in the countryside to maintain and develop the participation of the peasant masses and other people in the democratic revolution. These campaigns are the reason for being of the revolutionary mass organizations and organs of political power and are key to expanding and consolidating the mass base. If they are neglected and the mobilization of the masses gets narrowed down to supporting the material needs of the full-time guerrilla units, the mass base stagnates and weakens and the mass organizations, organs of political power and local Party organizations often succumb to bureaucratism and other disorganizing tendencies.
On a wide range of issues, the patriotic and progressive forces wage mass campaigns in the urban areas in order to build up their indepependent strength especially among the workers, semiproletarians and urban petty bourgeoisie and take full advantage of all opportunities to reach the greatest number of people within the shortest time. The urban mass movement should be good at open and legal means of propaganda, organizing and mobilization while building a deep, resilient and expansive underground backbone.
It should also be especially good at using the policy and tactics of the national united front in order to bring together the organized forces led by the Party, the allied forces and the spontaneous masses.
Ever worsening conditions compel the people to wage bigger and more widespread mass struggles one after another. The urban mass struggles are bound to surpass the intensity of the mass struggles of the past three decades as the various sectors unite to advance the common demand for a national minimum wage, for wage and salary increases, for job security, lower prices and increased public spending for social services.
The ever worsening forms of imperialist economic plunder and military interventionism heighten the Filipino people’s patriotic fervor and determination to advance the struggle for national freedom.
The students and intellectuals must be mobilized in a big way in order to wage a propaganda war against the political, ideological and philosophical line promoted by the apologists of imperialist neo-liberalism.The Party must lead in efforts to study the history of US colonization and aggression in order to fire up the spirit of patriotism among the current generation of youth.
The necessity of waging an anti-imperialist study movement and propaganda offensive is underscored by the need to intensify the struggle to demand the abrogation of such lopsided military agreements as the EDCA, VFA and MDT, end US military presence and attain justice for crimes committed by US troops against Filipinos. This is also underscored by the need to counteract the aggressive imperialist propaganda being waged in preparation for the APEC meeting in Manila next year whose objective is to project illusory economic miracles and gloss over the grave hardships and oppression of the Filipino people after three decades of liberalization, deregulation, privatization and denationalization.
The Party calls on the Filipino people to intensify their struggle to oust the Aquino regime and amplify their just demand to hold it accountable for all its crimes against the people. The Filipino people must wage ever-intensifying mass struggles in order to muster enough strength to force Aquino out of power.
The ruling regime and system want the people to go through the elections as a means of transitioning to a post-Aquino regime. As in 2010 and 2013, US imperialism will be mobilizing its machinery for political intervention to ensure that the automated elections of 2016 will favor its chosen candidate.
It is through the process of arousing, organizing and mobilizing the masses that mass activists and mass organizations arise and grow. The mass movements in both urban and rural areas train, temper and develop the mass leaders and activists. The Party recruits as candidate members the most advanced activists who undergo revolutionary mass education and accept the Party Constitution and the Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution. It is a matter of course and reflective of social reality that the candidate members are recruited from the ranks of workers and the educated youth in the urban areas and the peasantry in the countryside.
The Party membership is deeply rooted among the toiling masses of workers and peasants and is of national scale. Even then, there uneven development in the Party organization. The Party membership needs to be increased so that there is greater leeway for deploying Party cadres and members where there is an absence or scarcity of them, especially in the countryside.
In expansion areas, experienced cadres can combine with the locals who are desirous of revolution. The educated youth who are Party members and mass activists have integrated themselves with the toiling masses by learning from them their conditions and needs and finding out firsthand what way they can serve the people on the revolutionary road.
There should be no illusion that the ongoing peace negotiations with the reactionary government will soon lead to comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political problems as basis for a just and lasting peace. The biggest obstacle in the peace negotiations is the antinational, anti-democratic and antipeople character of the reactionary government and its current officials who regard the negotiations as the means for the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary forces and the people.
What is good about the peace negotiations is that the NDFP is able to broadcast the Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution and help bring about the victory of the revolution in the long run or before then help bring about truce and cooperation with a government that is not led by the Party but which adopts patriotic and progressive policies to deal with the severe crisis brought about by imperialism and reaction.
In the meantime, the Party and the people have no choice but to persevere in the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. The crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system inflicts terrible suffering on the people but generates awareness of the need to wage armed revolution for the national and social liberation of the people.
Summary of urgent tasks of the Communist Party of the Philippines
As the crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system deepens, the tide of revolution rises ever higher. The Communist Party of the Philippines must continue to take advantage of the favorable conditions to advance the revolutionary movement to greater heights. The leadership and entire membership of the CPP must hold fast to the following tasks:
We congratulate all our comrades for winning victories in building the Party, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front; in carrying out the revolutionary armed struggle, genuine land reform and building the rural mass base (organs of political power and mass organizations) and in intensifying the mass movement in both urban and rural areas.
As always, we honor and give the highest respects to all our revolutionary martyrs and heroes for the accumulated strength of the Party and the revolutionary mass movement since the founding of the Party. We render special honor to the revolutionary martyrs and heroes in the previous year. Their arduous struggle and supreme sacrifice inspire us to fight more fiercely than ever before for the total victory of the revolution.
We reiterate our congratulations to the Kabataang Makabayan, our Communist Youth League, for celebrating its 50 years of service to the proletariat as its assistant and to the entire Filipino people. We are ever grateful for the revolutionary education and training of the young workers, peasants, students and professionals who join the revolutionary mass formations and consequently the Communist Party of the Philippines.
The tide of revolution is ever rising in the Philippines because of the worsening chronic crisis of the rotten US-dominated ruling system of big compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats. The prolonged and ever worsening crisis of the world capitalist system is aggravating the domestic crisis.
Persistent crisis of global capitalism and mounting wars of aggression
The crisis of global capitalism is persistent and is ever worsening as the US and other capitalist powers cling to the neoliberal economic policy under the Washington Consensus. This policy has not only failed to solve the old problem of stagflation but has aggravated it.
But the US and its followers have retained the policy because it serves the superprofit-taking by the monopoly bourgeoisie and the financial oligarchy and they belittle the current level of revolutionary resistance and underestimate its potential. The protraction of the severe crisis provides the opportunity for the revolutionary forces to develop further.
Even within the imperialist countries, economic depression and social degradation have taken a serious toll on the people. The proletariat and people of color have suffered the most from unemployment, reduced income and social cutbacks. The so-called middle class has drastically shrunk.
The big bourgeoisie has benefited from the bailouts and the expansion of money and credit and continue to enjoy tax cutbacks, financial incentives, investment and trade liberalization, privatization of public assets, deregulation of social and environmental restrictions and the denationalization of client-economies.
At the base of the economic and financial crisis is the crisis of overproduction. This is starkly demonstrated by the drop in international prices of crude oil by nearly 50% over the past six months in the face of the estimated oversupply of 700,000 to two million barrels per day. The oversupply is the result of unprecedented levels of shale oil production in the US and non-reduction of crude oil production by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) amid stagnating demand of crude oil. The fall in the prices of crude oil has destabilized the economies of Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and other countries which are heavily reliant on oil export revenues.
One financial bubble after another has been created by the big bourgeoisie to lay over the economic crisis but keeps on bursting to aggravate the crisis. Since the financial meltdown of 2008, the bubble of public debt through sheer expansion of money supply and credit in the financial markets has become overblown and is in the process of bursting to cause further destruction of the forces of production.
Unable to expand and revive the civil economy, the US, the EU and Japan are engaged in ever higher spending for high-tech war production. The US is spearheading its NATO allies and Japan by increasing the deployment of US military forces in the underdeveloped countries, especially in the oil-producing countries and in the vicinity of China and Russia. The US and its NATO allies are practically spreading the flames of aggressive war and civil strife on a global scale. The US has also prodded Japan to discard its pacifist stance.
The US and its imperialist allies use homeland security and anti-terrorism as pretexts for violating the national sovereignty and independence of other countries. They have also used the same pretexts to build the legal and political infrastructure for domestic fascism and militarization.
They brainwash and train the police and military to regard political opposition and the exercise of the right to free speech and assembly, especially by people of color, as manifestations of terrorism. In the US, racial profiling has resulted in widespread state violence against African-Americans, including the killing of an African-American every 28 hours by a police officer. In addition, African-American men, who form 6% of US population, disproportionately composes nearly half of US prison population.
The oppressed peoples and nations suffer extreme economic plunder by the imperialist powers with the collaboration of client states. They are victimized by debt-driven consumption, dependence on imported manufactures and food, the extraction of raw materials and chronic trade and budgetary deficits.
In the case of certain underdeveloped countries, in which the states become assertive of national independence because of the demand of the people, the US and its imperialist partners have unleashed wars of aggression, as in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Control of energy sources and supply lines have been a major cause of such wars. The US persists in economic and military blockades, threats and provocations against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Cuba.
Recent moves by the Obama admistration towards the possible restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba does not mean the end of US economic sanctions and schemes to subvert the current government and social system of Cuba. It shows the failure of the US to isolate Cuba. For its part, the Cuban government and the Communist Party of Cuba have declared that they will continue to defend the ideals of independence, national sovereignty and socialism.
Under the prodding of the neoconservatives, the US has systematized a grand scheme to keep the whole world under US hegemony or Pax Americana in the entire 21st century by using the full spectrum of its power, especially its supreme high-tech military power against real and potential rivals or recalcitrant states in underdeveloped countries.While toning down some of the abrasive unilateralist rhetoric, the supposedly anti-neoconservative Obama regime has continuously pushed for a US-ruled unipolar world order.
The US has already demonstrated several times how it can use a combination of bombing campaigns and economic sanctions to bring down a state and bring up a set of puppets. It has underestimated how its acts of aggression can bring out the people’s revolutionary resistance in the long run.
Until recently, the US and its imperialist allies have celebrated the full integration of China and Russia in the world capitalist system as the death of the socialist cause and the strengthening of global capitalism. But the US is now increasingly worried that these big capitalist countries are challenging US hegemony and disturbing the world order as designed by Washington.
Due to the increasingly independent stance of Russia and China, inter-imperialist contradictions are growing over a wide range of issues: economic, trade, financial, security and so on. A realignment among the capitalist powers is occurring with China and Russia taking a lead role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a security bloc and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as an economic bloc.
The US has always applied a policy of engagement and containment towards China. But in recent years, it has engaged more in containment by carrying out a strategic pivot to East Asia, aiming to concentrate 60% of US naval forces and 50% of ground and air forces in the area.
The strategic pivot of military forces is combined with the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, which pointedly excludes China. The current apparent objectives of the US is to pressure China to further privatize its state-owned enterprises and to encourage the so-called pro-democracy forces to undercut and junk the Communist Party as the authority legitimating the Chinese bourgeois rulers.
At the same time, the US together with the UK as its most rabid NATO ally is continuing the provocations against Russia started by the so-called color revolutions in countries bordering it. It has escalated the provocations by openly instigating and funding neo-Nazi groups in the Ukraine to overthrow the Yanukovych government and install a rabidly pro-US and pro-NATO government in this country.
This government has downgraded the ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine and provoked them to assert their right to self-determination and proclaim their own people’s republics. To further aggravate the situation, it has invaded said regions in Novorossiya and blamed Russia for the missile attack that brought down Malaysian commercial airline MH-17 in July. The unfounded accusation has been used as pretext for economic sanctions by the US and EU and for Russia’s suspension from what used to be the G-8. The US Congress has recently issued a resolution practically declaring war on Russia.
The provocations towards both China and Russia by the US and its imperialist allies have only served to push the two countries to close ranks and defend their mutual interests. They have made agreements on cross-border trade between oil, gas and other raw materials from Russia and manufactures and food from China and on building the pipelines and train lines for the purpose. They have also agreed on joint military exercises, building of the BRICS Bank and using currency other than the US dollar for trade. .
The US is still stuck in the quagmires of its own making in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. It is exacerbating and complicating its imperial overstretch by making provocations against China or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in East Asia and against Russia from the European side.
It is wrongly presuming that all the EU countries would follow the dictates of the US at all times. Some of the major EU countries need the oil and gas that Russia can supply and hesitate to be pawns in a revived Cold War and in the exchange of nuclear threats between the US and China. At any rate, the US keeps on instigating troubles in Eastern Europe and compromising the EU countries with the NATO framework.
The protracted and ever worsening crisis of global capitalism is pushing the imperialist powers to intensify their struggle for a redivision of the world. In response to escalating threats of aggression and first nuclear strike by the US, Russia has made its own exercises to demonstrate its own military strength and nuclear capabilities. The proletarian revolutionary parties and peoples of the world need to grow in strength to counter wars of aggression and an inter-imperialist world war.
The severe economic crisis and political turmoil arising from the inter-imperialist contradictions are favorable conditions for the resurgence of the movements for national liberation, democracy and socialism. The growing danger of imperialist wars of aggression and the possible use of nuclear weapons in an inter-imperialist war can and must be counteracted by mass movement and revolutionary civil war in all the imperialist countries and the rest of the world.
Puppetry, corruption, plunder and brutality discredit the US-Aquino regime and the entire ruling system
In its first four years in power, the Aquino regime was touted by its imperialist and local reactionary sponsors as made out for “good governance” and “peace and development.” The objective of the imperialists and yellow reactionaries was to make the Aquino regime most effective in deceiving the people, further denationalizing the economy and liberalizing the operations of foreign capital and attacking the revolutionary movement with Oplan Bayanihan.
It was favored by an extremely long “press honeymoon” by the imperialist and local reactionary mass media and opinion poll survey. But in the last two years of its tenure of office, the regime is being buffeted by the people’s clamor and movement for its ouster. The extreme corruption of the regime, especially in the use of the pork barrel system and in favoring the Aquino-Cojuangco family and its cronies has become well exposed.
The regime was also provided with a heavy flow of hot money or portfolio investments by US hedge funds to conjure the illusion of an “economic miracle.” The delusionary claims of 6.8% and 7.2% growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012 and 2013 are well accounted for by the foreign hot money that flowed into the stock and bond markets and that somehow supported import-dependent and debt-driven consumption, including the glossy but unstable private construction boom.
The bubble has not revived the export-oriented semimanufacturing of semiconductors, garments and footwear and reassembly of cars and appliances for domestic use, which had been previously shut down by the global depression. It has not changed the fundamental fact of underdevelopment that ties down most of the manpower to agrarian and semifeudal conditions in the production of goods and drives 20% of the population to seek jobs abroad.
The drastic fall in the inflow of hot money is due to the tapering of the so-called quantitative easing in the US (rapid expansion of money supply) and the tightening of credit in China where the expansion of public debt and private credit had been so many times bigger than that in the US. The global depression is expected to further debilitate and degrade the Philippine economy.
The economic underdevelopment of the Philippines has been aggravated and deepened by the neoliberal policy. Investment liberalization has allowed foreign and big comprador firms to control economic and financial policy in the country to plunder human and natural resources, export raw materials and avoid tax payments. The unbridled expansion of export-oriented mining, logging and plantations has resulted in grave damage to the economy and environment.
The denationalization of banks and domestic trade has ensured the foreign capture of the foreign debt and foreign exchange earnings of overseas contract workers.
Consistent with its treasonous character, the Aquino regime is scheming to amend the 1987 charter in order to get rid of the provisions on economic sovereignty, conservation of the national patrimony and nationality restrictions on foreign investments.
The privatization of public assets has favored the foreign banks, the multinational firms and the big comprador firms and has resulted in unlimited profit-taking and the deterioration of social services. The deregulation of social and environmental restrictions has resulted in the extreme exploitation of labor, women and children and the pollution and degradation of the environment.
The foreign corporations and the big compradors have benefited most from the bubble generated by foreign hot money and by pork barrel spending. While taking their superprofits, they have further impoverished the people who suffer a higher rate of unemployment, reduced incomes, landlessness and homelessness, soaring costs of basic goods and services and the degradation of social services and the environment. They have caused further underdevelopment, widening trade and budgetary deficits and mounting foreign and local public debt.
The Aquino regime has been throughly exposed for its corruption in having made the yearly budget as a construct of lump sum appropriations under the sole arbitrary discretion of the president and under his illegal claims to savings for the purpose of misappropriation and malversation. No less than the Supreme Court, including the Aquino-appointed justices, has ruled that such devices as the Disbursement Acceleration Program and Priority Development Assistance Fund are unconstitutional and illegal.
But stubbornly, the Aquino regime persists in making most of the P2.6-trillion budget for 2015 and the so-called off-budget accounts (like the Malampaya fund, PSCO earnings and the like) the personal discretionary fund of the president. The corruption of the Aquino regime knows no limits. It extends to all supply contracts with the civilian and military agencies of the reactionary government, the finances and operations of the government-owned corporations, the infrastructure projects under the Private-Public Partnership Program and the Conditional Cash Transfer and PAMANA doleouts.
Even the relief and rehabilitation program for the Haiyan/Yolanda supertyphoon victims and other calamities has not been spared from the thieving hands of bureaucrats and military officers. Rampant corruption is being exposed as a result of the outcries of the victims, the militant diligence of the people and the revolutionary forces and contradictions of the regime with rival factions within the ruling system.
It can be expected that the corruption and other wrongdoings of the regime will be exposed as the contradictions among the reactionaries will intensify in connection with the 2016 presidential elections. So far, however, the self-proclaimed presidential candidates do not offer any assurance that there will be any significant change in the character of the elections and in the ruling system. The elections will be preconditioned in the main by the big campaign financiers, the political dynasties, use of government resources and manipulation of the automated electoral system.
The revolutionary movement is set on exposing the electoral system as a farce and denouncing the worst political forces and candidates in the service of US imperialism and the local exploiting classes. At the same time, it can take advantage of the contradictions among the reactionaries, employ the policy and tactics of the united front in electoral matters, raise the issues most important to the people and promote the program and objectives of attaining a just and lasting peace. As such, the most patriotic and progressive parties and candidates are are in a better position to garner more seats in the reactionary parliament and local government.
From year to year, the Aquino regime has vowed to destroy the armed revolution under the US-designed Oplan Bayanihan and has shown lack of serious interest in peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. At this point, it is clear that the reactionary armed forces cannot destroy the armed revolution even ifthe regime commit gross and systematic violations of human rights and even if they can occasionally carry out dramatic arrests and attacks.
The Aquino regime is definitely far worse than the Arroyo regime in imprisoning far more people on trumped-up multiple charges of rebellion and common crimes in violation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law and the Hernandez political offense doctrine. It has also detained 14 political consultants of the NDFP in violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees. The Aquino regime is fundamentally as bad as the Arroyo regime in allowing illegal detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, forced evacuations, landgrabbing from the peasants and repression of workers and their trade unions. The gross and systematic human rights violations under Oplan Bayanihan have exposed the regime’s claims to peace and development as a farce and have pushed the people and revolutionary forces to intensify the resistance in various forms and ways.
From year to year, the Party has accumulated all-sided victories in carrying out the general line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. Despite the bellicose position of the regime towards the armed revolution, the NDFP, like the Party, is well aware of the worsening crisis of the ruling system and continues to explore the possibility of peace negotiations in order to attain realizable goals for the benefit of the Filipino people.
The Aquino regime has boasted that it has more military forces to deploy against the people, the Party and the New People’s Army in Mindanao as a result of a peace settlement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In fact, 60% of the reactionary armed forces are reported to have been already deployed against the forces of the NPA in Mindanao. While the NPA in Mindanao continue to wage all-out armed resistance, the Bangsamoro people are also determined to push forward their revolutionary armed struggle so long as their right to self-determination and ancestral domain is not respected.
Since the US military bases were kicked out of the Philippines in 1992 as a result of the decision of the Philippine Senate not to renew the US-RP Military Bases Agreement, the US has persistently sought to reentrench its military forces in the Philippines under various pretexts such as joint military exercises, interoperability training, civic action, medical aid, disaster relief and antiterrorism.
In the process, it has wangled the Mutual Logistics and Support Agreement and Visiting Forces Agreement by which it can land its military forces on Philippine territory and maintain forward stations. Now, it has gotten the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement by which it can have military bases under the guise of Agreed Locations within Philippine military bases and reservations. These are in clear violation of the 1987 Constitution, particularly the provision banning foreign military bases. This provision is a product of the people’s struggle against the US and the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
The Aquino regime has used the maritime dispute of the Philippines with China in order to betray the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Philippines by allowing the US military bases to be reestablished and the US military forces to further entrench themselves in the Philippines in connection with the US strategic pivot to East Asia.
The US has been an unapologetic aggressor against the Philippines and the Filipino people since 1899. It cannot be relied upon to defend the Philippines against China as a potential aggressor. The US has far greater interest in relations with China than in those with the Philippines.It has already admitted that it will not defend the Philippines against China and has in fact raised no objection to China’s seizure of the Panatag Shoal and certain islets and reefs within the Spratly island group.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea , the Philippines has rights over its exclusive economic zone and extended continental shelf in the South China Sea. . The best that the Filipino people can do in the long run is to uphold national sovereignty, realize people’s democracy, carry out economic development through land reform and national industrialization, achieve social justice and promote international solidarity for peace and development.
By having genuine national independence and industrializing its economy, the Philippines can make its own modern means of defense and can make full use of diplomacy against any threat or aggression by a foreign power. The Filipino people can look forward to a new and brighter future of socialism by waging and winning the people’s democratic revolution against imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
Victories and tasks of the Party in ideological, political and organizational work
The protracted crisis of the world capitalist system and the chronic crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system have inflicted terrible suffering on the people in terms of exploitation and oppression and have incited the people to hope for revolutionary change. The Party has responded to the people’s desire for revolution by intensifying ideological, political and organizational work in order to further develop the revolutionary forces and the revolutionary mass movement.
The work has resulted in significant and brilliant victories. Over the past several years, the Party has made significant advances in various fields of revolutionary work. It has led commands of the New People’s Army in breaking new grounds in sustained expansion and maintaining initiative in waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare and frustrating the enemy’s campaigns of suppression. It continues to accumulate significant victories in building people’s militia units and unleashing mass initiative in waging armed struggle.
Party cadres are leading in the establishment of organs of political power with ever-widening scopes of authority and responsibility. Land reform campaigns and struggles are waged in ever-expansive areas. Implementation of land reform continue to advance to higher levels, confront problems of building cooperative forms of production, preventing the emergence and dominance of rich peasants, building socialist relations and raising production and economic planning while waging people’s war.
The clamor for the ouster of the US-Aquino regime continues to gain ground as the democratic mass movement. The people continue to accumulate strength in exposing and opposing the rotteness, puppetry, brutality and mendacity of the ruling regime. The mass movement stand on firm ground upon which it can advance forward considerably in the next year or two.
Even as the Party leads in accumulating advance experiences in pushing forward the revolutionary movement, it also leads in addressing the backlog problems confronting the people in other fields of revolutionary work.
The Communist Party of the Philippines must be able to expand and strengthen itself substantially in the next year or so in order to shoulder the task of carrying forward the revolutionary struggle to new heights.
As the advanced detachment of the proletariat, the Party upholds firmly and seeks to further develop and propagate the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). It makes sure that the Party cadres and members undertake and complete the formal basic, intermediate and advanced study courses of the Party within reasonably short periods. The formal courses are necessary for understanding Marxist-Leninist-Maoist basic principles and methods of thinking.
The formal study courses of the Party are a guarantee that the Party is guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and that the Party rank and file are inspired by it and are a definite measure of how much the Party is doing to raise the level of proletarian consciousness among its cadres and members. Everyday, Party units across the country organize scores of study meetings in both the urban and rural areas.
Party organs, units and individual members of the Party are encouraged to study revolutionary theory and practice beyond the prescribed time and content of the formal study courses. Written texts of classic MLM writings as well as theoretical papers produced by the Party are easily available, especially with the help of the internet. The CPP Education Department has also produced simplified texts and audio-visual aids in various Philippine languages for the benefit of comrades who have less training in reading long texts in a foreign language.
Cadres at all levels of the Party must skillfully apply Marxist-Leninist-Maoist methods of thinking to analyze their work, identify problems and come up with resolutions. Party leaders should sum-up their work periodically in order to ensure that the level of work in their field is raised to the next level. The laws of development dictate that Party cadres must guard against stagnation and work to periodically bring the level of their work to new heights.
Revolutionary theory must be used as a dynamic tool in conducting social investigations, policy researches, summing up experiences and planning to solve concrete problems and define tasks in the revolutionary struggle. Major issues of national and international significance must be tackled in the light of the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Work and theoretical conferences to discuss and resolve urgent questions that impact the conduct of revolutionary work in the different spheres and areas must be organized and undertaken.
The Party remains ever vigilant and is determined to wage incessant battle against the pernicious influence of subjectivism, modern revisionism, reformism and opportunism. No matter how brilliant its victories and achievements, the Party has always stressed the absolute need for remaining humble and self-critical in order to keep on advancing forward.
The general line of people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war has advanced from victory to victory. It has defeated every strategic plan of the US and local reactionaries to destroy the people’s just cause of national liberation and democracy. The US-instigated Marcos fascist dictatorship not only failed to stop the armed revolution but even served to goad the people to join it. The Party and the people have defeated every strategic campaign plan unleashed by the Marcos and post-Marcos regimes to suppress the revolution. Oplan Bayanihan is already a proven failure even before the end of the US-directed Aquino regime. The Party continues to wisely, skillfully and successfully wield the revolutionary armed struggle and united front as weapons.
Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People’s Army has emerged as the strongest revolutionary army ever built in Philippine history. It has followed the strategic line of protracted people’s war, encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating strength until conditions are ripe for the seizure of the cities on a nationwide scale. The armed struggle is integrated with the agrarian revolution, which involves minimum and maximum levels of implementation, depending on the given circumstances in a locality. It is also integrated with the building of the mass base through the creation of organs of political power and mass organizations of various classes and sectors of the people in the countryside.
The Party is determined to complete the strategic defensive stage of the people’s war and to reach the threshold of the strategic stalemate as soon as possible. The call for the advance towards the strategic stalemate has boosted the morale of the Party, the people’s army and the people. They are enthusiastically doing their part in the fulfillment of the requisites for reaching and developing the stage of the strategic stalemate, such as the expansion and consolidation of the Party membership, NPA units and guerrilla zones and the intensification of the people’s war in order to seize more arms, temper the revolutionary forces in struggle, merge or integrate guerrilla fronts into stable base areas wherever possible and gain greater popular support, more territory and more resources.
All commands and units of the NPA are capable of frustrating and defeating any attack of the enemy. However, to master and use strategy and tactics well in actual battles and to maintain flexibility and initiative especially against concentrated and prolonged enemy counter-guerrilla offensives require a high degree of determination and internal cohesion, a good amount of experience, knowledge about the enemy and ourselves, good judgment, and above all, deep and close links with the masses and skillful mobilization and use of mass support. And whenever the reactionary army makes a concentrated attack on any NPA command or unit, all other NPA commands and units are conscious of their obligation to intensify their own offensives to take advantage of the enemy overstretch and give relief to their comrades in arms under attack.
The people’s war continues to break new ground in several regions in Mindanao Since the start of 2014, the AFP has been strategically deploying large numbers of troops in Mindanao in an attempt to stem the rising tide of armed struggle. The escalating attacks of the enemy, however, have been frustrated by the NPA Red fighters who are fighting heroically, resolutely, skillfully and victoriously. The NPA has largely maintained the initiative and must continue to carry out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare in order to thwart the enemy’s plan to put a halt to the advance of people’s war.
In other regions, NPA commands at the regional and subregional levels have succeeded in launching coordinated armed campaigns consisting of several small tactical offensives combined with a few headblows against the enemy. They are raising their capability to sustain these coordinated tactical offensives over a period to gain the initiative and frustrate enemy plans.
All in all, the people’s war is developing unevenly in the various regions across the country and among subregions and fronts within a region. Some areas are confronted with problems of advance such as the training of commanders to effectively lead NPA platoons, companies and battalions, raising the capability and initiative of people’s militia units and commands, expanding and consolidating local Party sections, raising production and developing socialist relations in land reform areas, building inter-village or municipal-level mass organizations and organs of political power, further revolutionizing the basic mass organizations, developing civil defense systems and sustaining education, medical and economic services during times of war.
Others need to address problems at the intermediate or basic levels which have hindered efforts to buildcritical mass strength and sustain the momentum of advance to a higher level. This includes ensuring the sustained expansion and consolidation of NPA units and striking the correct balance between military work and mass work. This also concerns the proper deployment of NPA forces and building people’s militia units to ensure coverage of guerrilla zones without overstretching NPA units and ensuring their capability to rapidly concentrate sufficient numbers to launch tactical offensives or conduct defensive maneuvers against operating troops of the enemy.
At every given level of development, the Party ensures that armed struggle develops apace with agrarian revolution and mass base building. This can be ensured by conducting periodic summing-up meetings to draw lessons and map out plans to advance the three aspects of people’s war.
The Party’s central leadership is taking prompt and significant measures to address the disparities in the development of people’s war by mobilizing available capabilities and resources and developing various means of cooperation in order to support and boost the efforts of less advanced Party units and NPA commands.
In wielding the weapon of the national united front, the Party relies mainly on the worker-peasant alliance and strives to unite all patriotic and progressive forces of the toiling masses and the middle social strata against imperialism and reaction. The principal expression of the basic alliance is the absolute leadership by the CPP of the NPA, which is largely a peasant-based army. This alliance is also expressed in the support of the urban-based mass movement comprised largely of workers and allied classes for the antifeudal struggles in the countryside; and conversely, in the efforts of the peasant mass movement to link up with the anti-imperialist and democratic mass struggles in the cities.
In allying itself with the peasantry, the working class applies the policy and tactics of the antifeudal united front. It relies mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, wins over the middle peasants, neutralizes the rich peasants and takes advantage of the split between the enlightened and despotic sections of the landlord class.
In order to further isolate the enemy, the Party may under given circumstances broaden the united front to take advantage of splits among the reactionaries but must always maintain its independence and initiative.
The Party mobilizes the people through mass campaigns based on national, class and sectoral interests. Economic struggles are combined with and consciously raised to the level of political struggles in order to continuously broaden the reach among the masses while increasingly developing their militancy and political consciousness and leading their activity toward the correct revolutionary direction.The policy and tactics of the national united front are employed to bring together the organized forces led by the Party, the allied forces and the spontaneous masses. The progressive movement has accumulated vast and rich experience in developing massive and powerful mass movements centered in the urban areas.
Land reform and other mass campaigns are waged in the countryside to maintain and develop the participation of the peasant masses and other people in the democratic revolution. These campaigns are the reason for being of the revolutionary mass organizations and organs of political power and are key to expanding and consolidating the mass base. If they are neglected and the mobilization of the masses gets narrowed down to supporting the material needs of the full-time guerrilla units, the mass base stagnates and weakens and the mass organizations, organs of political power and local Party organizations often succumb to bureaucratism and other disorganizing tendencies.
On a wide range of issues, the patriotic and progressive forces wage mass campaigns in the urban areas in order to build up their indepependent strength especially among the workers, semiproletarians and urban petty bourgeoisie and take full advantage of all opportunities to reach the greatest number of people within the shortest time. The urban mass movement should be good at open and legal means of propaganda, organizing and mobilization while building a deep, resilient and expansive underground backbone.
It should also be especially good at using the policy and tactics of the national united front in order to bring together the organized forces led by the Party, the allied forces and the spontaneous masses.
Ever worsening conditions compel the people to wage bigger and more widespread mass struggles one after another. The urban mass struggles are bound to surpass the intensity of the mass struggles of the past three decades as the various sectors unite to advance the common demand for a national minimum wage, for wage and salary increases, for job security, lower prices and increased public spending for social services.
The ever worsening forms of imperialist economic plunder and military interventionism heighten the Filipino people’s patriotic fervor and determination to advance the struggle for national freedom.
The students and intellectuals must be mobilized in a big way in order to wage a propaganda war against the political, ideological and philosophical line promoted by the apologists of imperialist neo-liberalism.The Party must lead in efforts to study the history of US colonization and aggression in order to fire up the spirit of patriotism among the current generation of youth.
The necessity of waging an anti-imperialist study movement and propaganda offensive is underscored by the need to intensify the struggle to demand the abrogation of such lopsided military agreements as the EDCA, VFA and MDT, end US military presence and attain justice for crimes committed by US troops against Filipinos. This is also underscored by the need to counteract the aggressive imperialist propaganda being waged in preparation for the APEC meeting in Manila next year whose objective is to project illusory economic miracles and gloss over the grave hardships and oppression of the Filipino people after three decades of liberalization, deregulation, privatization and denationalization.
The Party calls on the Filipino people to intensify their struggle to oust the Aquino regime and amplify their just demand to hold it accountable for all its crimes against the people. The Filipino people must wage ever-intensifying mass struggles in order to muster enough strength to force Aquino out of power.
The ruling regime and system want the people to go through the elections as a means of transitioning to a post-Aquino regime. As in 2010 and 2013, US imperialism will be mobilizing its machinery for political intervention to ensure that the automated elections of 2016 will favor its chosen candidate.
It is through the process of arousing, organizing and mobilizing the masses that mass activists and mass organizations arise and grow. The mass movements in both urban and rural areas train, temper and develop the mass leaders and activists. The Party recruits as candidate members the most advanced activists who undergo revolutionary mass education and accept the Party Constitution and the Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution. It is a matter of course and reflective of social reality that the candidate members are recruited from the ranks of workers and the educated youth in the urban areas and the peasantry in the countryside.
The Party membership is deeply rooted among the toiling masses of workers and peasants and is of national scale. Even then, there uneven development in the Party organization. The Party membership needs to be increased so that there is greater leeway for deploying Party cadres and members where there is an absence or scarcity of them, especially in the countryside.
In expansion areas, experienced cadres can combine with the locals who are desirous of revolution. The educated youth who are Party members and mass activists have integrated themselves with the toiling masses by learning from them their conditions and needs and finding out firsthand what way they can serve the people on the revolutionary road.
There should be no illusion that the ongoing peace negotiations with the reactionary government will soon lead to comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political problems as basis for a just and lasting peace. The biggest obstacle in the peace negotiations is the antinational, anti-democratic and antipeople character of the reactionary government and its current officials who regard the negotiations as the means for the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary forces and the people.
What is good about the peace negotiations is that the NDFP is able to broadcast the Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution and help bring about the victory of the revolution in the long run or before then help bring about truce and cooperation with a government that is not led by the Party but which adopts patriotic and progressive policies to deal with the severe crisis brought about by imperialism and reaction.
In the meantime, the Party and the people have no choice but to persevere in the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. The crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system inflicts terrible suffering on the people but generates awareness of the need to wage armed revolution for the national and social liberation of the people.
Summary of urgent tasks of the Communist Party of the Philippines
As the crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system deepens, the tide of revolution rises ever higher. The Communist Party of the Philippines must continue to take advantage of the favorable conditions to advance the revolutionary movement to greater heights. The leadership and entire membership of the CPP must hold fast to the following tasks:
1. Resolutely and vigorously strengthen the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally in keeping with its role as the vanguard of the Philippine proletariat and revolution. We must be good at employing proletarian theory, including the lessons we have culled from our own revolutionary practice, as guide in analyzing and solving the current problems we face in carrying out our revolutionary tasks.
2. Lead the Filipino people in condemning the Aquino regime for its puppetry, corruption, exploitativeness, brutality and mendacity. It must support the people’s struggle to oust the Aquino regime as a step towards the overthrow of the entire ruling system or before the rise of a patriotic and progressive transition government. We must continue to effectively, promptly and militantly articulate and advance the sharpest critique of the regime’s schemes, frustrate and defeat its attempts to deceive and coerce, as we arouse and mobilize the people in massive protest actions and campaigns. The Filipino people’s rich experience in past struggles against, and ousting corrupt, puppet and repressive regimes clearly shows the futility of mere regime change and the need for revolution to overhaul the entire social system.
3. Intensify and advance the people’s war towards the stage of the strategic stalemate along the general line of the people’s democratic revolution. It must seize and control the initiative by launching more frequent and sustained tactical offensives with occasional blows to the head of the enemy. It must generate plans to expand the NPA and the people’s militia, increase their firepower and raise their capability in terms of military tactics and techniques. It must completely defeat the AFP’s Oplan Bayanihan. The Party wields absolute leadership over the people’s army as it launches guerrilla warfare to accumulate strength and weaken the enemy nationwide on the basis of an ever expanding and deepening mass base.
4. Expand and consolidate the revolutionary mass base in the countryside. It must ensure the rapid expansion in the number of full-fledged mass organizations. It must raise the capability of the Party cadres and activists to expand and consolidate the basic Party organizations, the mass organizations, the units for self-defense and civil defense, the organs of political power and its programs for education, public health and land reform.
5. Wage widespread campaigns for land reform and other mass struggles in the countryside. Mobilize the peasant masses in big numbers in inter-district, provincial, inter-provincial or region-wide mass struggles.
6. Expand and consolidate the urban-based mass organizations. It must aim for a dramatic expansion in the number of organized workers and students as key to the expansion of other democratic movements. It must develop the capability to wage coordinated mass struggles on a nationwide scale. It must wage various mass movements on a wide range of issues to advance national independence and democracy. It must launch and intensify an anti-imperialist study movement and propaganda war.
7. Adopt and employ the policy and tactics of the united front to reach and mobilize the people in their millions against foreign monopoly capitalism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
8. Support the struggle of the national minorities for self-determination, democracy and affirmative action. It must defend the rights of minority people against the transgression of foreign mining companies and plantations and against the brutal campaigns of the military to drive them away from their ancestral land.
9. Support the overseas contract workers and other overseas Filipinos.
10. Uphold and promote proletarian internationalism among communist parties of the world and anti-imperialist solidarity among all peoples of the world. We must actively contribute to the resurgence of proletarian revolutionary parties as well as the broad anti-imperialist movement, especially in taking advantage of the protracted global depression and crisis of monopoly capitalism to advance proletarian and peoples’ struggle and unity.
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