Message of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
the Philippines
on the 47th Anniversary of its Reestablishment
December 26, 2015
Introduction
On the 47th anniversary of its reestablishment under the
guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on December 26, 1968, the Communist Party
of the Philippines celebrates with the Filipino people its accumulated and
current ideological, political and organizational victories and is determined
more than ever before to advance the Philippine revolution along the general
line of the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war.
As the advanced detachment of the proletariat, the Party
leads the current stage of the revolution and the consequent stage of socialist
revolution. On this day, we salute and honor the tens of thousands of Party
cadres and members, the thousands of Red commanders and fighters of the New
People’s Army, the tens of thousands of people’s militia members, the hundreds
of thousands of self-defense unit members and the millions of mass activists
who have achieved the victories through their arduous struggle, hard work and
sacrifices. We accord the highest honor to the revolutionary heroes and martyrs
and we strive to honor them best by following their inspiration and by waging
an ever fiercer struggle for national liberation and democracy.
We have fought and defeated a series of brutal regimes
intended by the US
and the local reactionaries to destroy the Party and the revolutionary
movement. These regimes include the 14-year Marcos fascist dictatorship and a
chain of successors pretending to be democratic and yet of the same oppressive
and exploitative class character as the previous 20-year Marcos regime.
We have defeated the latest reactionary regime of big
compradors and landlords, the US-Aquino regime. Its US-designed Oplan Bayanihan
has failed to achieve its objective of destroying or reducing the New People’s
Army to inconsequence despite the deployment of 70 percent of its maneuver
battalions against the revolutionary forces. The deployment of 24 percent of
enemy forces in Eastern Mindanao has resulted in the intensification and
advance of the people’s war in this area and in other regions in Mindanao,
Visayas and Luzon. The inspiring example of
the revolutionary forces and people of Eastern Mindanao and the intensification
of tactical offensives elsewhere have served to strengthen and advance the
people’s war nationwide.
The adversaries and detractors of the revolution prate
mockingly that the people’s war has not yet succeeded in seizing the
presidential palace in Manila.
They seek to obscure the fact that the revolutionary people’s government of the
workers and peasants has arisen in the countryside and is steadily spreading.
The organs of democratic political power have a mass base running into millions
and enjoy the support of tens of millions outside of the guerrilla fronts. They
govern a large part of the country and carry out programs of mass education,
land reform, production, health, cultural upliftment, self-defense and justice.
The conditions for advancing the Philippine revolution are
excellent. The crisis of the world capitalist system is ever worsening. The
capitalist powers continue to fail in lifting the global economy from crisis
and depression. They keep on passing the burden of crisis to the people and are
thus aggravating the economic and financial crisis as well as escalating
inter-imperialist contradictions bringing about widespread conditions of state
terrorism and imperialist wars of aggression. The Philippines is one of the few
countries in which the illusion of economic growth is conjured from time to
time by large inflows of portfolio investments. But whenever this money flows
out, the country suffers an abrupt economic downturn.
The economic, social and political crisis in the Philippines is
fertile ground for the advance of the revolutionary movement. The people suffer
the heavy burden of escalating oppression and exploitation. They are thus
driven to protest and rebel. The crisis conditions easily lead to revolutionary
resistance because there is a growing revolutionary party of the proletariat
that exposes the increasing inability of the ruling system to rule in the old
way and that arouses, organizes and mobilizes the people to take the road of
revolution.
In performing its revolutionary role and duty in the Philippines,
the Party demonstrates to the proletariat and peoples of the world that the
road of revolution is available against imperialism and all reaction. The
US-instigated neoliberal economic policy of unbridled greed, the recurrent and
worsening economic crisis and the increasing use of state terrorism and wars of
aggression have laid the basis for an unprecedentedly widespread revolutionary
resistance.
I. Protracted Crisis of World Capitalist System Deepens and
Worsens
Under monopoly capitalism, especially under the
US-instigated economic policy of unbridled greed, the drive to extract higher
profits by squeezing wages and adopting higher technology inevitably leads to
and further aggravates the crisis of overproduction. The use of finance
capital, particularly the expansion of money supply and credit in an attempt to
override the crisis, raises the profits and asset values of the monopoly
bourgeoisie, bails out the banks and the big corporations, artificially raises
consumption and boosts military production ahead of the recovery of civil
production and employment and. But it generates more and bigger financial
bubbles resulting in ever worse financial crises on top of the worsening
economic crisis.
The world capitalist system is in the throes of a general
crisis, involving the recurrence and worsening of economic and financial
crises. The financial meltdown in 2007-2008 has resulted in a global depression
that is comparable in duration and severity to the Great Depression of the
1930s. Slight upturns do occur but are followed by longer downturns in country
GDPs and the world gross product. The official figures for these, like the
current estimated rate of global economic growth of 2.8 per cent for 2015, are
bloated by government deficit spending, public debt, financial market
transactions and private spending that do not raise employment and incomes for
the people.
Production and employment have continued to fall or stagnate
in industrial capitalist countries and to a worse extent in the underdeveloped
countries. Governments in industrialized countries have engaged in financial
bailouts for the benefit of the big banks, investments and favored defense
industries. They have wantonly expanded money supply and credit. Faced with
budget deficits, they have adopted austerity measures, including sharp cutbacks
on spending for social benefits and social services, reduction of government
employees and deep cuts in wages for the working people.
Total global debt outstanding (including household,
corporate and government debt) has grown by 62 percent in eight years, from USD
142 trillion in 2007 to an estimated USD 230 trillion by end-2015. It has
become impossible for debt of such level to ever be repaid, with a global gross
domestic product of just about USD 60 trillion whose growth is slowing down.
Public debt, most of it incurred by several imperialist countries with high
deficits, is growing as the latest and biggest financial bubble that can burst
anytime soon and wreak unprecedented devastation. The US and China are showing
stress from the burden of the public debt. Even then, the EU is following the
US and Chinese path of quantitative easing (merely printing money). The
bursting of the public debt bubble portends to be the biggest in the offing.
The global growth rate of employment dipped to an average
1.2 percent annually in the 2007-2014 period, compared to the 1.7 percent in
the previous 1991-2007 period. Unemployment and underemployment continue to
rise, both in the urban and rural areas, especially in Africa, the Middle East,
Southern Europe, and Latin America. Asian countries officially show low rates of
unemployment, but these are due to high rates of so-called informal employment
or oddjobbing that can reach up to 85 percent of total employment in some
countries. Most megacities of the Third World have a low degree of
industrialization and teem with millions of people—mere oddjobbers suffering
slave-like conditions under irregular and short-term hirers.
The disparity in global wealth has increasingly widened,
with the wealthiest big bourgeoisie constituting less than 1 percent of the
world’s population while already owning nearly 50 percent of the world’s total
wealth. Ninety percent of them are based in North America and Europe. They
enjoy lower tax rates and other windfalls from plundering public assets and
human and natural resources of foreign countries. Poverty is becoming rampant
even in the developed countries, with the working class receiving less income
and less social benefits than before and the middle class shrinking. The
peoples of the underdeveloped countries suffer far worse conditions of poverty.
The US and other imperialist powers are stepping up war
production in compliance with the crisis-driven demands of monopoly firms in
the defense industry as well as in pursuit of the objective of keeping and
expanding economic territory and geo-political interests. The protracted and
worsening crisis of monopoly capitalism is generating chauvinism, racism,
religious bigotry, fascism, state terrorism, proxy wars and wars of aggression.
The US, NATO member states and Zionist Israel are still the dominant
combination of aggressors and are the most aggressive in provoking and
undertaking military actions to weaken their adversaries in West Asia (Middle
East), Central Asia, Africa and on the borders of Russia.
There is no end in sight for the general crisis of monopoly
capitalism and the trend towards bigger wars, especially because the
imperialist powers cling to the neoliberal economic policy. All attempts to
moderate or lessen the areas of economic and military conflict, through such
international forums such as G7 and G20 summits, UN and OECD processes,
treaty-mandated conferences such as WTO, Rio+20 and annual climate talks, and
other big-region mechanisms such as APEC, have failed and have resulted in more
gridlocks.
The unipolar world dominated by the US after the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War has gradually given way to a
multipolar alignment of conflicting trade and economic blocs and their
corresponding political-military alliances. US imperialism has practically
undermined itself by outsourcing consumer manufactures, expanding military
expenditures, and financializing its economy. But it continues to maximize its
remaining clout with the IMF, World Bank and WTO. In a vain attempt to keep its
dominant position in global finance and trade, the US is aggressively pushing
to impose the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement
on its EU allies and adopting the same approach with its Pacific Rim allies to
impose the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. It is using secretive
talks, backdoor deals, blackmail and double-talk to have the TTIP and TPP
agreements passed, despite their flagrantly repellent pro-US big corporate
biases.
After the ruling revisionist cliques in the former Soviet
Union and China openly and fully embraced capitalism, in the years of
1989-1991, the US and its allies had no choice but to accept the entry of
Russia and China into the club of the global capitalist elite. While the
capitalist powers collude in exploiting and oppressing the Third World, the new
players have asserted their own interests and have thus aggravated the crisis
of the world capitalist system and the inter-imperialist contradictions.
While coping with its own internal crisis and stabilizing
itself with high oil earnings for a while, Russia under Putin has managed to
protect and expand its own economic and geopolitical interests within the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and with other neighboring states
along the borders with EU. In recent years, it has dealt with and contained the
successful US subversion of western Ukraine and installation of a fascist
pro-US puppet regime in Kiev. The aggressive war unleashed by the Kiev puppet
regime against the ethnic-Russian people’s republics in Novorassiya and Crimea
has resulted in the latter voting to rejoin Russia.
The US persists in carrying out provocations against Russia,
such as seeking to subvert it, together with other ex-Soviet states, expanding
the NATO to its borders, undermining the ties between it and EU states,
imposing sanctions and suspending/excluding it from the G-8. Russia in turn has
consolidated its western flanks by setting up the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)
with four other former Soviet republics. It has also extended its own inroads
of influence to the West by exerting major diplomatic roles in Central Asia and
Middle East affairs, particularly in Syria and Iran, and by offering economic
cooperation to the most crisis-stricken EU countries. Most importantly, it has
strengthened its bilateral economic and security relations with China.
China is coping with an economy overheated by excessive
public and private construction, overproduction of steel and other industrial
products, runaway expansion of money supply and credit (many times worse than
that in the US) and other internal troubles of a social and environmental
character. These problems put China at a long distance from the US in
per-capita GDP. At any rate, China continues to export surplus capital and
expand its overseas operations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and has
launched an ambitious two-pronged strategic link to Europe through the Silk
Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the Maritime Silk Road (MSR).
The US maintains a dual policy of colluding and contending
with China. But in recent years, it has increased the aspect of contention,
with the so-called strategic pivot to East Asia and the US-headed TPP which
excludes China. The US strategic pivot to East Asia is designed to block
China’s projection of its armed forces beyond its borders and to push internal
forces towards privatized capital and bourgeois politics. The US is taking
advantage of China’s disputes with neighboring countries over South China Sea
claims as well as with Japan over the Daoyu islands in the East Sea. The US has
maneuvered the Philippines into allowing US military bases under the Enhanced
Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) and has blatantly emboldened Japan to
revive its militarist posture as a foil to China.
Aside from bilateral agreements, Russia and China have
availed of multiple platforms to strengthen their alliance for countering the
unwelcome pressures and challenges from the US and its closest allies. In
economic terms, the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)
has consolidated itself as a global alliance with ample resources to counter
the US-Canada-EU-Japan axis. BRICS now has its own New Development Bank (NDB),
in addition to the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), with
ample resources to counter the IMF-World Bank and undertake large projects,
such as SREBand MSR.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), initiated by
China and Russia, has expanded to include eight Eurasian member-states and
India and Pakistan. This is in addition to the Russia-led EEU. In geopolitical
and military terms, the SCO-EEU combination has the potential to countervail
the US-NATO alliance on its western flanks and US-Asian allies on its eastern
flanks.
Following the Ukraine crisis of 2014, several hotspots of
long standing have flared up anew this year in the Middle East and Africa. The
occupied Palestinian territories have erupted anew in what may develop as a
third intifada against Zionist Israel. The continuing civil strife in Syria,
Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Sudan and Nigeria have been made
more complicated by US interventions and the worst of barbarisms are being
perpetrated by such US-created, trained and armed terrorist groups as Daesh
(Islamic State), which are further funded and coddled by US client states like
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Qatar.
The imperialist wars of aggression and the local and
regional armed conflicts have intensified contradictions between imperialist
blocs and their regional proxies and allies and have resulted in unbearable
economic and social catastrophes leading to a gigantic wave of refugees in
millions within countries and regions and now surging in large numbers towards
Europe. Russia’s military support for Syria in the drive against Daesh,
Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian combat plane, the Paris terrorist attacks
and French-British response of bombing in Syria, have triggered a dangerous
chain of events that could lead to an escalation towards larger-scale warfare
involving imperialist bombs and boots on the ground.
Official GDP statistics are used as basis to claim that
certain regions like East Asia and Africa have been enjoying high growth rates
and a “growing middle class”. But this growth is fuelled by capital flows from
imperialist countries, mostly hot money from hedge funds that do not build
industrial plants and lasting employment but go to the financial market and
unsustainable economic activities such as construction, real estate, tourism,
and telecommunications-based services, and the consequent government tax
revenues go to black holes like military expenditures, bureaucratic operations
and corruption. All these aggravate the debt problem and deepen and worsen the
underdevelopment of the Third World.
Imperialist countries are able to shift the burden of the
crisis to the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America
because the impoverished agrarian and semifeudal conditions provide cheap labor
and raw materials and lower operating costs; the neocolonial puppetry of
civilian bureaucrats; and big bourgeois control of local finance. As a result,
entire countries are thrown into widespread social and political turmoil in
which the masses of workers, peasants and other working people suffer intense
exploitation and oppression.
A favorite theme of imperialist propaganda is the supposedly
fast-growing “global middle class”, with the highest growths seen in Asia,
combined with the supposed halving of global poverty rates compared to 20 years
ago. But this is just statistical deception, as the so-called poor, low-income,
and middle-class brackets globally have been pulled down to rock-bottom
minimums. The middle class in the underdeveloped countries are on more or less
the same level as the poverty thresholds in the US. The imperialist propaganda,
even if sugarcoated by post-2015 UN promises of further reducing global
poverty, cannot hide the expanding and deepening conditions of extreme and
systemic poverty, exploitation and oppression for the majority of the world’s
toiling masses of workers and peasants. Even in the imperialist countries and
so-called emerging or middle-income economies, the crisis and protracted
depression have greatly pulled down the working and living conditions of the
working class and petty bourgeoisie. The imperialist powers spearheaded by the
US, the EU and Japan and their subalterns in underdeveloped countries add the
neoliberal policy of unbridled exploitation in the name of “free trade” to the
neocolonial foundation of exploitation.
The US is still the chieftain of the imperialist powers for
enforcing the exploitative impositions on underdeveloped countries. Since the
end of World War II, the US has been responsible for the killing of at least 35
million people in wars of aggression and massacres and for the displacement of
far more millions of people due to the mass killings and destruction of social
infrastructure mainly by bombardments. In recent decades, regardless of the
ruling party in power, the US has been guided by the neoconservative line of
“full spectrum” global hegemony in the 21st century. This line has whipped up
fascist lawmaking, state terrorism and wars of aggression under various
pretexts such as pursuing a perpetual and borderless “war on terror,” regime change,
humanitarian intervention, and even the “war on drugs”. The US rationalizes its
aggressive policy by claiming to secure the freedom and wealth of its
citizenry. But in fact a major cause of the economic and financial crisis
afflicting the American people is the heavy cost of war production, maintenance
of more than 800 military bases abroad and wars of aggression.
In recent times, the US and its NATO allies have wantonly
targeted and destroyed sovereign states, waging wars of aggression against
countries assertive of national independence, such as the former Yugoslavia,
Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and causing the overthrow of anti-US governments
such as in Ukraine, Yemen and Venezuela. They have continued to make war
provocations in Eastern Europe against Russia. They have unleashed wars of
aggression against states that control strategic energy sources, raw materials
and routes. They use sanctions, blockades and war threats and provocations
against so many countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They have used Zionist Israel, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, and rightist armed oppositions and jihadi groups like Daesh and
Al Qaidda affiliates as attack dogs. They are hostile against the Palestinian
and other peoples in the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South Asia. The
US is actively pushing Japan, Australia and South Korea to join its war
provocations in East Asia.
The US-led imperialist powers have become so driven by
militarism and war; and their many crimes against humanity so whitewashed by
imperialist and reactionary media, that they use the same mindset and machinery
with impunity against their own peoples at home, especially in the face of
rising people’s resistance. They have adopted even more reactionary and
draconian policies and measures, including outright fascist laws, full-spectrum
surveillance, and heavily militarized police actions against ordinary citizens
under the pretext of combating terrorism, common crime, drug use, and other
petty offenses.
Within these imperialist countries, the big bourgeoisie and
their controlled media whip up chauvinism, racism, religious bigotry,
Islamophobia, terrorist-baiting, and war hysteria to draw attention away from
the capitalist roots of the social crisis, quell social discontent and mass
resistance and obscure the need for revolutionary class struggle. To win votes,
fascist, neo-Nazi and ultra-Rightist political parties wage hate campaigns in
the media and allow hate crimes to spread against refugees, asylum-seekers,
migrant workers, and even second-generation immigrants especially those of
color and particularly victimizing women and youth.
The wars of aggression and big-power terrorism launched by
the US and its worst allies and puppets inflict terrible suffering on the
people—killing and wounding hundreds of thousands and devastating the homes,
livelihood and social infrastructure in orgies of bombing. Thus, the people are
driven to wage armed resistance. This continues even after the US and its allies
apparently succeed with their aggression and occupy a country. In fact, they
are compelled to phase out their occupation forces because the people’s
resistance inflicts heavy costs on these unwelcome forces.
The US and its allies were able to bring down the Saddam
regime in Baghdad, Iraq but the Sunni officers and men under the Baath
nationalist leaders regrouped to fight the foreign aggressors and the Shia
puppet government. They were also able to bring down the Taliban government in
Kabul, Afghanistan but armed resistance has continued not only from the Taliban
armed forces but also other armed organizations that have arisen. Having
overthrown the Qaddafi regime by bombing and arming various militia
organizations which are now fighting each other, they have found cause for
further intervention to the continuing ruination of Libya.
The countries devastated by imperialist wars of aggression
and proxy wars in the Middle East and Africa have become breeding and playing
grounds for jihadist organizations, like affiliates of Al Qaidda and the Daesh.
Despite its propaganda against Al Qaidda after 9-11, the US has armed and used
Al Nushra affiliate of Al Qaidda to wage war on the Assad regime in Syria. It
has also created, trained and supplied the Daesh to punish its own puppet
government in Baghdad for becoming too close to Iran and also to wage war on
the Assad regime in Syria and open the way for US and NATO intervention there.
The absence of a revolutionary and effective Communist Party
in a country attacked by the US and its allies have enabled jihadists to seize
the armed political initiative after a secular nationalist government is
brought down. Previously in such countries as Iraq and Syria, the Baathists
were able to maintain their regimes against threats from the US and Zionist
Israel because of support from the Soviet and other revisionist-type communist
parties. The absence of truly revolutionary communist parties in Tunisia and
Egypt allowed Islamic parties to take power during the so-called Arab spring
until the US-bred military bourgeoisie took back power.
Where the US and its allies have unleashed wars of
aggression, Communist parties ought to lead the people’s revolutionary movement
for national liberation. However, conditions are favorable for truly
revolutionary communist parties to arise in other global regions. By waging
wars of aggression and proxy wars in the Middle East and Africa, the US
undermines itself by going into high military expenditure, overreaching in more
than one direction. Thus, it actually loses focus on countries where
revolutionary Communist Parties are waging armed struggle.
The most exemplary of the armed revolutionary movements are
those waging people’s war and gaining victories either under the guidance of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and/or an anti-imperialist program of national and
social liberation. The armed revolutionary movements are in the Philippines,
India, Palestine, Colombia, Peru, Turkey, Kurdistan and elsewhere. The Kurdish
people and their revolutionary forces have benefited most directly from the
current armed conflicts in the Middle East. They fight back the attacks of the
Daesh and Turkey in Syria and North Kurdistan and arm themselves in the process
as well as establish organs of democratic power.
The exploitation and oppression of the proletariat and the
people throughout the world, made more acute by the economic and social crisis,
are pushing them to fight back in various ways and forms available to them—from
spontaneous and localized protests and strikes, to nationally coordinated
strikes and mass campaigns, and all the way to generating broad and sustained
people’s movements for national and social liberation in the
imperialist-dominated underdeveloped countries; and for socialism in the
imperialist homegrounds.
Throughout the underdeveloped countries, workers in urban
areas, mining districts and special economic zones persevere in the difficult
work of building unions and launching trade union struggles. The peasant masses
demand genuine land reform and are being mobilized for the purpose.
Student-youth are being radicalized in growing numbers, and their protests
inside the campus are overflowing into the streets and communities, where they
link up with workers, semiproletarians and other sectors. The most advanced
workers and students are learning to link up with the peasantry and indigenous
peoples in the rural areas.
In the advanced capitalist countries, including the US, EU,
Japan, China and Russia, there is a marked rise of people’s resistance
movements. Among the workers, youth, women, minorities, migrants, and cultural
and intellectual workers, there is growing interest and demand for an
anti-capitalist or Marxist critique of capitalism and reaffirmation of
socialism. In a few countries, such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal, mass
movements with a clear anti-capitalist orientation are gaining strength.
Despite complex twists and turns, progressive parties and parliamentary
coalitions are learning both from positive and negative lessons.
The rate at which the general crisis of the world capitalist
system is worsening generates conditions favorable for the rise of genuine
revolutionary parties of the proletariat and revolutionary mass movements. So
long as monopoly capitalism and reaction persist, there is no end to the
epochal struggle of the proletariat and people against the big bourgeoisie. We
are still very much in the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution.
As the crisis of imperialism worsens and deepens, the anti-imperialist and
socialist movements will resurge with increasing resolve and vigor.
II. Worsening Crisis of the Ruling System and Rise of
Revolutionary Resistance
For a while, from 2010 to 2013, the Philippine ruling system
appeared to be exempt from the crisis of world capitalist system, if we were to
look at the rise of the gross domestic product. This was growing far beyond the
growth rate of the world economy. The Philippine growth rate was being touted
as the highest in Asia in 2013. The content of the growing GDP was obscured. The
money flow reflected by the GDP of 7.2 percent consisted of portfolio
investments (hot money) that went mainly to the financial markets (stock, bond
and money markets) to the extent of 65 percent, reducing to only 6 percent the
proportion of money remittances of overseas migrant workers and the income from
call center operations. The rest of the total money flow came mainly from
government spending for bureaucratic operations, debt service and other
counterproductive purposes.
The US deliberately gave the Aquino regime the special
privilege of having the Philippines receive a large flow of money from hedge
funds in order to conjure the illusion of economic growth, sustain the private
construction boom and generate government revenues for boosting military operations
and appropriating large doleout funds for the conditional cash transfer and
Pamana program to make the US-designed Oplan Bayanihan successful. Increased
government spending, remittances of the overseas contract workers and earnings
of business call centers also served to maintain high consumption spending by a
small part of the population.
Oplan Bayanihan became a big failure because of its
antipeople character, the ineptness and corruption of the regime´s civil and
military bureaucracy and because of the superiority of the Party’s strategy of
protracted people’s war and the tactics of intensive and extensive guerrilla
warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. At the same
time, the crisis of global capitalism reasserted itself relative to the
Philippines. The flow of hot money began to subside in 2014 when the US
announced it would slow down quantitative easing and possibly raise interest
rates and because of China’s even worse problem of wanton spending and credit
for public and private construction.
The much-vaunted Philippine economic growth rate of 7.2
percent has gone down to 6.1 percent in 2014 and is expected to go further down
to 5.8 percent in 2015. The World Bank blames slow government spending,
negative net exports and the initial impact of El Niño. In fact, the neoliberal
economic policy has undermined and reduced production output in agriculture and
manufacturing. Manila government figures show that manufacturing has slowed
down to 5.9 percent in the first quarter of 2015 in comparison to 7 percent in
the first quarter of 2014. Agriculture continues to decline. Its share in the
economy is 10 percent and the share of manufacturing is 23.2 percent, which is
as low as in the 1950s.
Especially under the US-dictated neoliberal economic policy,
one puppet regime after another has rejected national industrialization with
genuine land reform as the concomitant for expanding the domestic market. The
US-Aquino regime is quite brazen in outrightly rejecting national industrialization.
It favors foreign corporations and big comprador operations rather than
national industrialization. It promotes schemes relying on the so-called global
value chains and ASEAN integration under the control of the TNCs. The big
comprador-landlords in collusion with foreign capital are hell-bent on pushing
for an economic Charter change to fully remove constitutional restrictions to
fully remove constitutional restrictions on foreigners to own lands and engage
in all types of small, medium, and large scale economic ventures and give them
license to further exploit the country’s natural and human resources. They have
pressured Congress to insert the phrase “unless otherwise provided by law” in
some sections of Articles XII (national economy and patrimony), XIV (education,
science and technology, arts, culture and sports) and XVI (general provisions).
The biggest gainers under the US-Aquino regime are the
foreign banks and corporation and the big comprador firms. Their interests are
in banking, insurance, real estate development, infrastructures, shopping
malls, semi-manufacturing, mining, logging, plantations and the like.
Public-private partnerships favor big comprador companies and foreign suppliers
in infrastructure and energy projects. As a result, the wealth of the 10
richest Filipinos has risen exponentially from PhP 650 billion in 2010 to PhP
2.2 trillion in 2015. Top-level corruption of the Aquino ruling clique and its
business favorites is frequently exposed, with particular instances of
corruption involving hundreds of millions and even billions of pesos.
Social inequalities have worsened as unemployment has
increased, real income of the working people and even the middle social strata
have decreased, the prices of basic commodities have risen and social services
have deteriorated and public utility charges (especially transport, electricity
and water) have soared. Since the drastic fall of semiconductor production and
other semimanufacturing as a result of global market contraction starting in
2008, unemployment has increased and wage incomes have fallen. So far, more
than ten million Filipino contract workers have left the country pushing their
lot in unfamiliar lands and cultures under harsh working and living conditions,
low wages and neglect by the Philippine government.
A two-tiered wage system is now being implemented under RA
6727 in which tier 1 or the ¨floor wage¨ replaces the minimum, while tier 2 or
the “productivity wage” is set by individual firms. Short-term
contractualization and flexible working arrangements continue to keep down
workers as temporaries and part-timers. Contractualization of workers runs as
high as 90 percent of the labor force in many factories, service and commercial
enterprises juxtaposed with a rapidly shrinking percentage of regulars who are
either retrenched or reduced as contractuals.
Tripartism allows the employers and government to put the
workers in a corner and defeat trade union demands. Self-regulation and
voluntary compliance so-called are rampant capitalist practices legitimized by
the state. Working conditions are dismal and hazardous. The most basic health
and safety regulations in the workplace are widely violated. A glaring example
of the vicious collusion between capitalists and bureaucrats and their criminal
disregard for the workers’ welfare is the Kemtex tragedy where more than 100
workers perished. Worsening these are state policies such as Republic Act 6715
(Herrera Law), Wage Rationalization Law, Regional Wage Boards, “no union, no
strike” enterprises, “end of contract” and other anti-labor acts. These have
aroused the working class to widen and fortify their ranks, develop not only
trade unions but revolutionary unions and other workers’ associations in the
factories and in the workers communities. The Party in some regions has led and
supported successful fights of exploited and oppressed regular and contractual
workers in several factories and plantations.
The Philippines has an agrarian semifeudal economy but it
has lost food self-sufficiency, particularly with regard to rice and corn
production due to the neoliberal economic policy of allowing rice and other
food imports to swamp the market and discourage local production. At the same
time, large plantations have been devoted to the production of such crops as
rubber and palm oil for export and large areas of land allocated for bioethanol
production. Eventually, rice and other food imports have become more expensive
while local food production and the peasant masses have become more
impoverished.
The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and the
CARP-Extension with Reforms (CARPER) have come to an end since last year
without having solved the problem of landless tillers. Those who have received
certificates of land ownership awards (CLOA) have mostly become unable to pay
the amortization of the land to the Land Bank or have suffered family illness
and crop failures that have compelled them to sell their land to rich peasants
or money lenders. lenders. Government has resorted to various legal machinations
and maneuvers to dispossess beneficiaries of the awarded land. The government
and landgrabbers collude and succeed in reclassifying rice and corn land to
other types of land exempt from land reform. This has become an effective
scheme to evict farmers and divest them of their lands. Many huge landed
estates previously subject to land reform remain undistributed to beneficiaries
as a result of the landlords’ legal maneuvers. In the case of Hacienda Luisita,
the landed estate remains undistributed notwithstanding a Supreme Court
decision, epitomizing the Aquino-Cojuangcos’ contempt of legal institutions and
arrogant display of big-landlord-bureaucrat-capitalist power. New
reconcentrations of land in the hands of the landlords and agricorporations,
both local and foreign, are reemerging.
Sixty-six million Filipinos are living on PhP 125 or less a
day. Poverty is most widespread in the countryside. With land frontier
exhausted since the end of the 1960s, the excess population in the countryside
has tended to move towards the cities and swell the urban poor slums. PhP 178
billion has been appropriated for the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (P4)
or Conditional Cash Transfer over the period 2010-14 for doleouts to poor
households. But this huge amount of money has been dissipated through
bureaucratic corruption and has not resulted in reducing or even alleviating
poverty to a significant extent. A hefty sum of PhP 62.7 billion, almost twice
the previous average annual allocation has been allocated for this program for
2016.
The Philippines is artificially buoyed up by a huge amount
of external debt of USD 75 billion as of June 2015. This is a far cry from the
USD 27 billion foreign debt left by the Marcos fascist regime. Trade deficits
have risen and have been covered by further foreign borrowing. Total public
debt has risen to PhP 5.847 trillion as of end July 2015. Of this amount,
domestic debt has reached PhP 3.89 trillion. Government deficit spending has
necessitated the rise of the local public debt.
The underdevelopment, widespread poverty, mass unemployment
and the worsening crisis of the Philippine economy cause social unrest and
revolutionary resistance. The workers are outraged by the neoliberal drive to
push down their wages, draw them down to the level of short-term
contractualization as temporaries and part-timers, and suppress their
democratic rights, especially their right to unionize and to strike. Trade
union leaders are being murdered to intimidate the entire working class.
The peasant masses have continued to suffer ever worsening
conditions of feudal and semifeudal exploitation given the series of patently
bogus land reforms from the time of Macapagal, through Marcos to the Aquinos.
Now, the swindling political agents of the landlord class have dropped their pretense
at land reform with the end of CARPER last year. The peasant masses and the
indigenous people suffer the most exploitation and oppression. Land
reconcentration is occurring at the levels of the small, middle and big
landlords. The worst of the big landgrabbers acquire the largest tracts of land
with the active assistance of the reactionary government for the purpose of or
in connection with real estate development and speculation, plantations, mining
and special economic zones.
The peasant masses are waging various forms of struggles to
fight for and assert their land rights. They are waging campaigns to reduce
land rent, lower rates of usury, raise the wages of agricultural and
farmworkers, raise production and the prices of their produce, lower rentals on
farm tools and equipment, set up cooperatives and engage in mutual help. In
some regions, occupation of abandoned and contested lands are being undertaken.
Nationwide protest campaigns such as peasant marches and Peasant Chain have
been held.
The indigenous peoples’ right to ancestral domain is being
brutally violated. In the attempt to grab the land, the government aids the
foreign and local land grabbers, the Aquino regime subjects the peasants,
including the indigenous people, to military and psywar operations under Oplan
Bayanihan. Military operations are nowadays called peace and development
operations by the enemy. As the hinterlands have been neglected by the
reactionary government, the people on their own have put up schools and other
social facilities. These are now being occupied and destroyed by the military
troops and paramilitary groups of Oplan Bayanihan in the course of landgrabbing
for the benefit of the foreign corporations and big compradors engaged in
mining, logging and plantations. Local leaders and educators are being
murdered. The victims have refused to be intimidated and have fought back. They
have gone on long marches from Mindanao and the Cordillera to rally the entire
nation against the oppressors headed by Aquino.
The students and the out-of-school youth are restless and
launch militant mass actions against rising tuition fees, lack of jobs after
graduation, the commercialization of education (including state colleges and
universities), the imposition of the K+12 system to produce a docile work force
for the foreign and local exploiters, the reduction of public funds for the
public school system and the increase of public fund for the military, police
and intelligence equipment and operations.
The entire Filipino nation is appalled at the gross and
systematic violations of human rights being perpetrated by the US-Aquino regime
in carrying out Oplan Bayanihan. The toiling masses of worker and peasants have
strengthened their unity with the urban petty bourgeoisie that has been offended
by fixed low incomes, corruption of the ruling clique and high bureaucrats in
general, shortage of job opportunities in the country and pressures to seek
jobs abroad. The middle bourgeoisie has long been disgusted by the hostility of
the US-Aquno regime to the cause of industrialization and indifference to
demands for support to small and medium enterprises.
The US-Aquino regime is now in extreme isolation. But the
possibility of Aquino’s being overthrown by a people’s uprising has been
dissipated by the onset of the electoral struggle for the presidency in 2016,
unless he commits a serious crime or blunder. The bourgeois allies of the
toiling masses and the dominant Church have lost interest in a people’s
uprising to overthrow him. Even then, he remains isolated by the exposure of so
many scandals and by even bigger and more serious accountabilities, such as
rabid implementation of the neoliberal economic policy, gross and systematic
human rights violations, and the aggravation of social inequality and
injustices, unemployment and poverty.
The scandals include the pork barrel corruption under such
headings as PDAF, DAP, off budget accounts, special funds and so on, the
failure to provide timely and sufficient resources for the relief,
rehabilitation and reconstruction of communities devastated by the supertyphoon
Yolanda, the designation of General Purisima (while suspended on corruption
charges) as overall commander of the bungled Mamasapano operation, the
appointment of corrupt officials to high positions on the basis of personal
friendship, the special delivery of state contracts to business cronies and
other scandals. The US-Aquino regime has utterly failed to destroy or reduce
the New People’s Army to inconsequentiality through Oplan Bayanihan and related
political maneuvers. It has not been able to show good governance. Instead, it
has been thoroughly exposed as corrupt and incompetent. It has done nothing but
aggravate and deepen the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions of
underdevelopment and poverty.
Since the beginning of the Aquino regime, it has made false
promises to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in order to engage it in an
indefinite ceasefire and have more military forces to deploy against the NPA.
But the regime has failed to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) and has
exposed itself for having taken the MILF for a ride.
Despite the ceasefire of the Manila government with the
MILF, the NPA and other revolutionary forces in Eastern Mindanao have been able
to overcome the enemy forces which constitute 30 per cent of their total
national strength and inspired the NPA units in other regions of Mindanao,
Visayas and Luzon to intensify their tactical offensives and take advantage of
the thinning out of enemy troops in their respective areas. In the meantime,
the frustrations of the Bangsamoro over the mutilation and nonpassage of the
BBL offer the possibility for a more extensive and intensive armed resistance
by the Bangsamoro.
The US-Aquino regime at first expected that the entire
Filipino nation would rally to its side by its opposition to China´s
encroachments in the West Philippine Sea and that it would be able to accuse
and isolate the NPA and other revolutionary forces led by the Party as
pro-China despite their long running criticism of the Dengist restoration of
capitalism in China. But the Party and the revolutionary forces and people it
leads have stood up for national sovereignty and territorial integrity and have
condemned China´s unjust claim of undisputed sovereignty over 90 per cent of
the South China Sea and in particular the grabbing of Panatag Shoal and the
reclamations in the Spratlys—all in violation of the sovereign rights of the
Filipino people over the exclusive economic zone and the extended continental
shelf in accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
While supporting the Philippine case against China before
the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea and the Arbitral Tribunal, the
Party has condemned the Aquino regime for using the maritime dispute to allow
the US to establish military bases within “allowed areas” under the Enhanced
Defense Cooperation Agreement and even to encourage Japan to intervene
militarily in the Philippines. The Party has also condemned the Aquino regime
for allowing Chinese state and private corporations to maintain and increase
their business interests in the Philippines in the form of 40 per cent share of
the national power grid, large mining operations, plantations, financial firms,
hotels, shopping malls and so on.
If the international tribunal were to decide the
Philippine-China maritime dispute in favor of the Philippines, China should
have to give up its baseless claims of owning 90 percent of the South China Sea
and change its tack in the international community and towards the ASEAN
countries. The US should have no justification for establishing military bases
in the Philippines under the pretext of protecting the Philippines from China.
Thus, the patriotic and progressive forces and the entire Filipino people would
be able to develop economic relations with China that would advance the
national industrialization of the Philippines instead of perpetuating and
aggravating the underdevelopment of the Philippines.
The Party and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines
(NDFP) are pleased that all five major presidential candidates in the 2016
elections are committed in varying degrees to the resumption of formal talks in
the peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Manila government. Duterte has
been the most vocal and most forward in announcing his proposal to the NDFP for
a coalition government and offer of a number of cabinet positions, and in
indicating the patriotic and progressive grounds for a just peace. However,
Grace Poe has run ahead of him in comprehensively defining the grounds for
electoral alliance with the Makabayan Bloc. The grounds include upholding
national sovereignty and territorial integrity, respect for human rights,
national industrialization and genuine land reform and so on.
It is unfortunate though that both Poe and Duterte are the
target of disqualifications suits. In the case of Binay, he is the target of
relentless corruption charges. In the case of Defensor-Santiago, despite her
low rank in the poll surveys, she is the target of rumors that she has not
really overcome her cancer ailment. Despite the huge amount of public and
private funds already mobilized to support his campaign, Roxas rates low in
poll surveys because of his close association with Aquino and the wide
perception of his own performance as inept. He is actually ridiculed for vowing
to continue the Daang Matuwid policies of Aquino. But the most astute observers
have declared that no matter how the poll surveys and even the actual voting
go, what will decide the presidential elections will be the CIA and Aquino
control of the automated electoral system to be run by Smartmatic-TIM which can
be pre-programmed to “elect” officials as in the2010 and 2013 elections. The
free rein given a dubious foreign corporation in playing a pivotal role in what
is supposedly the people’s democratic exercise of their sovereign power itself
constitutes a flagrant and shameless violation of the people’s sovereignty.
The presidential electoral contest reflects in a
concentrated way the contradictions of political factions among the
reactionaries. Roxas is well known as an exponent of neoliberal economic
policy, a Wharton boy, a loyal representative of the big compradors and
landlords servile to the US. He does not care about persuading the working people
to trust him, except by superficially trying to mimic their hard work in photo
snapshots. And of course, he is isolated by even bigger and more serious
accountabilities, such as rabid implementation of the neoliberal economic
policy, gross and systematic human rights violations, and the aggravation of
social inequality and injustices, unemployment and poverty. In the case of all
other major presidential candidates, they try to champion certain demands of
the ordinary people, like ending top level corruption in government as well as
rampant common crimes, engaging in industrialization to create jobs and so on.
There will be serious consequences if any of the major presidential candidates
were to be disqualified or arrested with Roxas being perceived as extremely
favored by his foreign and local patrons.
The Party and the NDFP do not endorse any candidate, party
and coalition in the electoral process of the reactionary system. They are
outside of this system. But they do study and analyze how to regard and relate
to the candidates, parties and coalitions within the ruling system, before,
during and after elections, in connection with the civil war, what is
beneficial to the people and the peace negotiations.
It is good enough that there is the Makabayan Bloc which
strives to pursue a patriotic and progressive line in carrying out the
electoral struggle and seeking further alliances within the ruling system. The
voting strength of the Makabayan Bloc is far bigger than the capability of
Iglesia ni Cristo on a nationwide scale and is capable of electing patriotic
and progressive candidates at various levels.
Even as the Makabayan Bloc and the progressive party list
group concentrate on the electoral struggle, the various mass organizations of
workers, peasants, women, youth, students, teachers, health workers, lawyers,
artists, writers, human rights activists and other sectors carry on with their
own campaigns on burning issues and long-term issues in the national democratic
mass movement. After all, the electoral struggle involves a few months every
three years and the mass movement runs daily from year to year to arouse,
organize and mobilize the masses for various forms of struggle.
The crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system
provides the favorable objective conditions for the development of the
subjective forces of the armed revolution. The Party leads the proletariat and
the broad masses of the people along the general line of people’s democratic
revolution through protracted people’s war. It commands the New People’s Army
to carry out the highest of form of struggle, the armed struggle, and integrate
it with the agrarian revolution and mass base building.
The worker-peasant alliance is strengthened in the course of
the protracted people’s war. And the organs of political power constituting the
people’s democratic government are established in the countryside. The
revolutionary mass organizations are built and mobilized to support the organs
of political power and to contribute their strength to the building of the
national united front under the auspices of the NDFP. The subjective forces of
the revolution and their alliances are being developed through struggles on a
daily basis while the reactionaries have the illusion that their system will forever
last so long as they have periodic elections.Part III. The Communist Party of
the Philippines is Firmly and Effectively Leading the Philippine Revolution
The Communist Party of the Philippines is firmly and
effectively leading the Philippine revolution because it has correctly adopted
the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the general political line of
people’s democratic revolution and the organizational line of democratic
centralism and accordingly carries out ideological, political and organizational
work.
In ideological building, the Party has made availabile to
Party cadres and members a large collection of classic and current
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist study materials . These serve as texts and references
for the basic, intermediate and advanced courses of the Party. It is always
emphasized that grasping the revolutionary theory and principles make a
cohesive and disciplined Party. It is emphasized even more that the theory and
principles must be applied on the history and current circumstances of the
Filipino people and the Party.
The Party has consistently used the Party Constitution and
Program and Amado Guerrero’s Philippine Society and Revolution for the basic
Party course. It updates and augments these with new basic documents, analyses
of current events and sustained works issued by the Party Central Committee
through Ang Bayan. It has also issued works that serve the intermediate and
advanced course. Among these are documents of the First and Second Great
Rectification Movements and Armando Liwanag’s Stand for Socialism against
Modern Revisionism.
The ideological education of Party cadres and members is
ever expansive as they are encouraged and instructed to take the intermediate
Party course and learn about the revolutions of other peoples in the spirit of
anti-imperialist solidarity and proletarian internationalism and finally the
advanced Party course which seeks to provide them with sufficient knowledge of
Marxist-Leninist philosophy, political economy, social science, revolutionary
strategy and tactics and history of the international communist movement.
Those with high formal education are always encouraged to
read the study materials in advance of or beyond the Party courses of study.
But the Party has been cognizant of the difficulties of workers and peasants
with lower formal education in reading study materials. There are simplified
and illustrated materials in print and on video. And teaching cadres are
motivated and trained to explain terms and issues in a language understandable
to the workers and peasants. After all, the subject is essentially their
oppression and exploitation and their struggle for liberation.
When ideological education is done well and promptly, it
results in more knowledgeable and determined Party cadres and members who do
their political and organizational work consciously, militantly and
effectively. Otherwise, all kinds of work suffer. Ideological education is
sometimes neglected because of preoccupation with practical work. At other
times, there is a predilection for overly long study meetings in big batches of
students, which cannot be easily repeated. There may be small or big study
meetings, depending on the security situation. And study meetings can be
properly scheduled to avoid protracted meetings.
We have observed that central staff organs and regional
party organs and organizations that do ideological education well and promptly
also do well in all kinds of work. There are no unnecessary delays in the
education of the Party cadres and members who proceed to recruit more Party
candidate members. Party candidate-members promptly become full party members
within the period of candidature and are encouraged to raise their level of
knowledge through the Party courses of study. Thus, the Party cadres and
members keep on increasing and always the majority are young.
The Party has been successful at carrying out the general
political line of people’s democratic revolution through the strategic line of
protracted people’s war against the semicolonial and semifeudal system. The
working class serves as the leading revolutionary class in the current stage of
the Philippine revolution and the consequent stage of socialist revolution. To
win the revolution, it employs three weapons to arouse, organize and mobilize
the people and defeat the enemy.
The first weapon is the Communist Party of the Philippines.
It is the advanced detachment of the working class, which directs the
revolutionary mass movement and coordinates the various forms of struggle. The
second weapon is the revolutionary armed struggle, which is the highest form of
struggle because it is for overthrowing the reactionary ruling system and
installing the people’s democratic state system. The third weapon is the united
front which brings about several types of alliances to win over the people in
their millions and to weaken, isolate and destroy the enemy in a revolutionary
civil war or a patriotic war against foreign aggression.
The Party is now established on a nationwide scale in both
urban and rural areas. In urban areas, it is based among the workers in
factories, transport lines and urban poor communities. It is also based among
the urban petty bourgeoisie, especially the educated youth, low income
professionals and government employees. At the beginning, the proletarian
revolutionaries came from the urban areas. As the revolutionary armed struggle
progressed in the rural areas, more proletarian revolutionaries emerged from
the ranks of workers in mining, logging and plantations, traditional farm
workers and poor peasants and the young educated activists from the urban
areas.
The Party carries out the strategic line of people’s war to
encircle the cities from the countryside and accumulate armed and political
strength in the countryside until it gains the capability to seize the cities
on a nationwide scale. For the purpose, the Party has deployed Party cadres and
members for work in the New People’s Army and the rural communities at first in
a few regions and soon enough on a nationwide scale. Guerrilla fronts of the
Party and the NPA covered Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao by 1977.
The people’s war has been effective where revolutionary
armed struggle, agrarian revolution and mass base building are integral
components under the leadership of the Party through various levels of NPA
command. The Party provides all Red commanders and fighters with
political-military education and encourages them to win victories in order to
build more NPA units with the armed seized from the enemy.
Agrarian revolution in the two stages of minimum and maximum
land reform is undertaken. The minimum program is carried out extensively in
all guerrilla fronts, consisting of reduction of rent, lowering if not
elimination of usury, lowering of rent on tools and equipment, raising
production and the prices of produce, setting up cooperatives and mutual-help,
etc. The maximum program consists of distributing land for free to the tillers.
More than a million peasant families are currently benefiting from both the
maximum and minimum land reform program, with tens of thousands of hectares
distributed to family beneficiaries nationwide over the past few years.
Mass base building is accomplished by forming the organs of
political power (at first the barrio organizing committees and the barrio
revolutionary committees,) and the mass organizations of workers, peasants,
women, youth, childen and cultural activists. Municipal and sub-municipal level
organs of political power are emerging in several regions. Pambansang Kaisahan
ng Magbubukid (National Peasant Union) chapters have been organized at the
sub-municipal, municipal and up to the district level. The people exercise
their sovereignty through elections that are conducted freely, with secret
balloting. Militia platoons are formed among the able-bodied for self-defense
and for maintaining peace and order.
The general capability of the NPA is still extensive and
intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass
base. The offensive operations are carried out by small teams, squads, platoons
and oversized platoons. But the regions most advanced in people’s war have been
able to concentrate companies and even a battalion to carry out the most
dramatic offensive operations against mining, logging and plantation
enterprises and against field commands of the enemy.
So far, we have not accomplished the much-desired nationwide
advance of the NPA from the strategic defense to the strategic stalemate. The
delay in achieving nationwide the strategic stalemate can be explained by the
uneven development of the subjective forces and by the intensity of enemy
reaction upon the rise in the number of offensives carried out by the people’s
army. In criticism and self-criticism sessions and in sustained rectification
campaigns, the first thing to look at is whether the Party is doing promptly
the needed ideological, political and organizational work, whether there is
stagnation or decrease of Party cadres and members and whether the work is
lopsided and effectively avoids the need for the people’s army to carry out its
main duty of winning battles against the enemy through raids and ambushes.
However, all previous calls for reaching the threshold of
the strategic stalemate have served to inspire our Party and the Red commanders
and fighters to exert their best efforts to win victories in the people’s war.
As a matter of fact, in a few regions, the NPA has reached a ertain level of
strength and capacity as to allow greater interplay of initiative, flexibility
and planning, wage more extensive and widespread guerrilla warfare, sustain
tactical offensives and frustrate prolonged enemy campaigns.
The forces of the Party and the NPA in Eastern Mindanao must
be cited for their heroic, wise and victorious example. They have demonstrated
that they can grow stronger by fighting back against the most concentrated enemy
attacks. Through more than ten years, they prevailed over such vicious enemy
campaign plans as Bantay Laya and Bayanihan. One enemy chief of staff after
another has been embarassed by premature claims of victory. In the latest enemy
campaign against the NPA in Eastern Mindanao, the premise is that the
deployment of 30 percent of the total armed strength of the reactionary armed
forces would result in the defeat of 40 percent of total NPA strength.
But the result is the contrary. The NPA in Eastern Mindanao
has prevailed over the enemy by taking advantage of the wide gaps in enemy
deployment on rough terrain and has inspired the forces of the NPA in other
regions of Mindanao and in the Visayas and Luzon to intensify their tactical
offensives. In varying degrees, most of these regions have responded to the
Party’s call and stepped up their tactical offensives on the basis of their own
capability and strength and after resolving problems through summings-up and
criticism and self-criticism. While the regions outside Eastern Mindanao were
benefited by the relative thinning of enemy forces due to the latter’s
concentration on Mindanao, the marked intensification of tactical offensives
nationwide has in turn significantly contributed to frustrating the enemy’s
plan to focus on and destroy the revolutionary forces in Eastern Mindanao and
thereby cripple the entire revolutionary forces in accordance with Oplan
Bayanihan. On a nationwide scale, our greatest victory is the defeat of Oplan
Bayanihan which was designed by both the US and the puppet armed forces to
destroy or render the NPA inconsequential.
In desperation, the enemy has organized paramilitary units
to attack the Lumad indigenous people and murder their leaders. This has
exposed the brutal character of Oplan Bayanihan and the US-Aquino regime which
is serving the interests of foreign companies and big comprador firms in
landgrabbing and plundering the rich natural resources of Mindanao.
The Party has developed the closest alliance between the
working class and peasantry by carrying out the highest form of struggle in the
countryside. This basic alliance of the two largest classes, the most oppressed
and exploited in Philippine society, is the foundation of the new democratic
revolution, national unity and all possible alliances. To make the alliance of
basic revolutionary forces, the toiling masses of workers and peasants join up
with the urban petty bourgeoisie. The middle bourgeoisie can also be won over
to a patriotic alliance. Even certain sections of the reactionary classes can
be won over as temporary and unreliable allies in order to isolate and destroy
the power of the enemy.
As the Party expands the united front, it exercises firmness
of principle and flexibility in policy and maintains its independence and
initiative. The point is to win over the masses in their millions, increase the
strength of the revolutionary movement and isolate, weaken and destroy the
enemy. The united front is a weapon applicable in various legal forms of
struggle as well as in the revolutionary forms of struggle. It is carried out
even more effectively because the Party and the people have their people’s army
that is deeply rooted among the toiling masses of workers and peasants.
It is a function of the united front to develop the
cooperation of national and local officials of the reactionary governments in
opposing policies and acts of national betrayal by the reactionary ruling
clique and the gross and systematic violations of human rights by the coercive
apparatuses of the state. It is also a function of the united front that the
Party and other revolutionary forces encourage the critical participation of
legal patriotic and progressives forces in the electoral process of the ruling
system. It is further a function of the united front to develop close relations
with armed movements of the Moro people against the reactionary state. Even the
peace negotiations have a potential for promoting an alliance against foreign
and feudal domination and laying the ground for a just and lasting peace.
The organizational principle and line of democratic
centralism has served the Party well in the maintenance and growth of the
Party. The essence of democratic centralism is getting the information and
proposals from all Party cadres and members through their leading organs and
collective units and concentrating their will and strength for carrying out the
urgent and long terms tasks of the revolution. Centralism is based on democracy
and guides democracy. The minority is subordinate to the majority. The lower
organ is subordinate to the higher organ. The Central Committee, with members
in different parts of the country has the Political Bureau and Executive
Committee to make necessary and timely decisions. Depending on the significance
and scale of decisions to be made, the Party holds its Congress and the
meetings of the Central Committee, Political Bureau and Executive Committee,
accordingly.
The Party continues to maintain and strengthen a nationwide
organization, which is deeply rooted among the masses. In certain regions, the
increased size and strength of the Party organization manifests the all-round
advance of the revolutionary movement. In other regions, there may be major
errors and shortcomings which adversely affect the organizational strength of
the Party, including lapses in security which which are not promptly and
effectively corrected and result in the loss of cadres.
By whatever degree or frequency the enemy kills or captures
leading Party cadres at whatever level, the leading organs have been able to
replenish and strengthen their ranks from the development of Party cadres and
members from within the same region or area. Additionally, Party cadres have
been transferred from one region to another to spread lessons from successful
revolutionary struggles or reinforce or replenish a leading Party organ that
has suffered dislocations and serious losses.
The revolutionary mass movement of various patriotic and
progressive classes and sectors have generated highly conscious and militant
mass activists who can be recruited immediately as candidate-members and sworn
in as full Party members within the period of candidature stipulated by the
Party Constitution. The background, bio-data and personality of the Party
candidate-members as well as their basic understanding of the Party
Constitution and Program are promptly checked and verified. Within their period
of candidature, they undergo the basic Party course and perform their
assignments in a Party unit.
The Party undertook a serious effort to increase its
membership, registering a 33 percent growth. Although significant, greater
effort is needed to harvest from the relatively broader mass base. The rate of
increase has been adversely affected by disruptions in the mass base due to
serious errors & enemy attacks.
The Party organs concerned and the Party branch or group
that are responsible for developing Party candidate-members to full members
sometimes or oftentimes neglect their duty to ensure that the promotion of
candidate-members to full Party members must be accomplished within or at the
end of the period of candidature. The nonperformance of duty blocks the
continuous organizational growth of the Party. It would be edifying to study
the relation of a stagnant or decreasing Party membership to the shrinkage of
the mass movement and lack of well-rounded development of revolutionary work.
The Party Central Committee relies heavily on the regional
Party committees for the organizational growth of the Party and on Party groups
within national mass organization for strengthening central staff organs. It is
problematic when a regional Party committee is immobilized for whatever reason
and does not make and implement a periodic plan to educate, deploy and swear in
promptly new Party members. It is also problematic when a regional Party
committee fails to develop an increasing number of Party members for both urban
and rural work and does not fulfil the continuous need in the countryside for
Party cadres and members from among the workers and educated youth.
The Party organizations in the urban areas, especially in
the National Capital Region, must develop their work in accordance with their
two main responsibilities. There is a need to further invigorate the urban mass
movement, organize and mobilize in greater numbers the workers, youth and
students, women, professionals, urban poor and others , carry out more and
larger protest actions, intensify the rifts within the ruling class and further
isolate the ruling US-Aquino regime. Cadres and activists arising from and
tempered in the mass movement must be deployed continuously and in large
numbers to the countryside.
Regional Party committees have based themselves in the
countryside. Sometimes some of them fail to give the prompt and proper attention
to developing the city-based Party organization and to drawing from the urban
areas workers and educated youth to become Party cadres and members. The Party
cadres and members of peasant origin always need to be augmented by workers and
educated youth cadres for political responsibilities higher than the village
level and for command and technical functions higher than platoon level.
There are central, regional, provincial and guerrilla front
Party leading organs whose members are of advanced age and frail health. Such
organs can be rejuvenated by including more members who are young and in their
early middle age. A healthy and vigorous combination of young, middle-aged and
senior Party cadres must be maintained in the aforesaid leading organs. While
still capable, the senior members can continue with major tasks. Those who are
sickly or with frail health must be looked after and properly located for their
safety.
Part IV: Revolutionary Tasks of the Communist Party of the
Philippines
The Communist Party of the Philippines and the Philippine
Revolution have withstood all attacks of US imperialism and the local
exploiting classes. That is because the Party has defined well and carried out
its ideological, political and organizational tasks. The Party must carry out
well such tasks in order to advance the Philippine revolution while the crisis
of global capitalism and the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system is
worsening and providing favorable conditions.
By all means, the Party must lead and advance the people’s
democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. No matter how long it
takes, the strategic defensive must advance towards the strategic stalemate.
And this latter stage must develop for as long as it takes to build regular
mobile forces, supported by the guerrilla forces, the people’s militia, self-defense units or
the mass organizations and the mass movement and prepare all revolutionary
forces for the strategic offensive in the future.
The Party must continue to build itself ideologically. This
remains always the first requisite of Party building. This is the first task.
To neglect it is to allow all kinds of subjectivism to arise, be it empiricism,
dogmatism and outright revisionism. Without the constant study and application
of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory guided by dialectical materialism and based
on successful revolutionary practice, subjectivism can take the form of
empiricism or basing oneself on experience without any theoretical guidance or
direction; and can also take the form of dogmatism or going by fixed ideas
without concrete analysis of concrete conditions and developments.
Without the constant study and application of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory,
we are liable to mislead ourselves or to come under the influence of the
crudest ideology of the bourgeoisie, spread most widely by the daily mass
media, or by the most clever ideology of the bourgeoisie, generated by academic
pedants who deliberately distort the theory and practice of the great communist
leaders.
We must continue to study and build on the wealth of theory
and practice that the Party has created under the guidance of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It includes the basic documents of the First and
Second Great Rectification Movements, the founding program of the Party,
Philippine Society and Revolution, Stand for Socialism Against Modern
revisionism and the articles against neoliberalism, Gorbachovism, Dengism, Trotskyism and various schools and
labels of anti-Marxism.
The Party has been able to create a treasury of Marxist
literature in the course of successful revolutionary struggle and combatting
wrong ideas and major errors within and outside the Party. It constantly
applies theory to its practice and raises practice to the level of theory by
regularly conducting assessments, summings-up of revolutionary practice,
criticism-and-self-criticism, social investigation and class analysis and
planning . Since the full restoration of capitalism in revisionist-ruled
countries in the years of 1989-91, the Communist Party of the Philippines has
stood in the forefront as a revolutionary party of the proletariat loyal to the
theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and relentlessly carrying out the people’s
democratic revolution with a socialist perspective. We have a party with a
wealth of theory and practice to study in the basic Party course, to compare
with previous and current revolutionary struggles in the intermediate Party
course and to relate to the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the
advanced Party course.
We must have a plan to carry out systematically the three
levels of Party study courses in order to strengthen ourselves ideologically.
The more Party members who can finish the basic Party course during the period
of candidature, the greater the number of Party personnel who can be relied
upon to perform revolutionary tasks in the mass movement. The more who can
finish the intermediate Party course and the advanced course as soon as
possible, the more we can have cadres who can be in the leading organs of the
Party and other revolutionary forces.
We must efficiently provide the basic Party course to all
Party candidate-members. The courses can be given to small groups of five to
ten participants anywhere in any room or under the sky and to bigger groups
with better cover or more security precautions in areas of armed conflict. All
Party members must be encouraged to read and study the materials on their own
even before taking a course. The study materials are easily available even in
the internet. At every level of Party education, study materials must be
simplified and accompanied by illustrated or audio-visual aid in various
Philippine languages for the benefit of study participants who have less formal
education. In addition to regular Party courses, Party units at all levels must
diligently hold study sessions on such topics and articles as are useful for
carrying out their revolutionary tasks , especially updates and Party analyses
in Ang Bayan and other Party publications.
Theoretical education is meant to inculcate revolutionary
principles and dialectical materialist methods of thinking and acting. There is
no point in studying theory if it does not lead to a more comprehensive and
deeper understanding of the general line of people’s democratic revolution
through protracted people’s war, the recognition of friends and enemies of the
revolution among the classes in the Philippine society, the use of such
revolutionary weapons as the Party, the people’s army and the united front; and
the arousal, organization and mobilization of the masses for the seizure of
political power.
The Party must ensure that the broad masses of the people
are aroused, organized and mobilized in their millions through the mass
organizations of various classes and sectors along the general line of people’s
democratic revolution as well as on the basis of specific class and sectoral
interests. Social investigation and class analysis must be conducted
conscientiously at all levels in order to determine and grasp the concrete
conditions on which the correct approach, tactics and methods for arousing,
organizing and mobilizing the masses must be based. A major factor for the
longstanding shortcomings in arousing, organizing and mobilizing the workers,
raising their political consciousness and recruiting them into their vanguard
Party in large numbers has been the failure to keenly understand how the
neoliberal economic policies have aggravated the crisis of semifeudalism and
concretely impacted on the trade unions and workers’ movement. Consequently,
the correct and effective tactics and methods of work for countering the
neoliberal onslaught and hurdling the obstacles put up by the capitalists and
the state are not firmly grasped and carried out.
As the party of the working class, the Party takes interest
in the trade union movement and in developing therein a strong core of
proletarian revolutionaries. There is a need to overcome economism and legalism
and develop new tactics for the workers’ strike movement and various types and
forms of arousing and organizing the workers and carrying out massive and
widespread workers’ strikes with broad support from other sectors and from
abroad. The trade unions must be turned into revolutionary unions, undertaking
socialist education, developing proletarians conscious of their class and
historic mission, raising economic struggles to political struggles, keen to
and undaunted by the schemes and attacks of its class enemies under the
neoliberal regime.
The Party seeks to forge a strong alliance with the peasant
masses and to realize agrarian revolution as the main content of the democratic
revolution. Through the protracted people’s war, the Party must integrate
revolutionary armed struggle, agrarian revolution and mass base building. The
New People’s Army must be built as the principal weapon in carrying out the
highest form of struggle for seizing political power. All Red commanders and
fighters must undergo politico-military training and learn to fight by fighting.
To gain the support of the peasant masses, the Party and the people’s army must
carry out the minimum and then the maximum land reform. They must build the
organs of political power and the mass organizations of workers, peasants,
youth, children and the cultural activists.
The Party must build the revolutionary united front for
armed struggle. It must base this on the worker-peasant alliance which is best
formed in connection with the people’s war. The alliance must be expanded into
an alliance of basic revolutionary forces which includes the urban petty
bourgeoisie. This social stratum has such a strong influence in Philippine
society that it can swing public opinion in favor of the revolution. The basic
revolutionary forces must be expanded into a national united front that
includes the national bourgeoisie.
Aside from accomplishing the alliance of all patriotic
forces, the Party must take advantage of the splits among the reactionaries. It
must have temporary even if unstable alliance with the lesser reactionaries in
order to weaken, isolate ad destroy the worst reactionaries as the enemy. In
alliances with the national bourgeoisie and some of the reactionaries, the
Party must maintain its own independence and initiative in order to preempt
betrayals and surprise attacks at the expense of the revolutionary cause.
An alliance with the national bourgeoisie or even with a
section of the reactionaries is best undertaken when the Party has an effective
armed force and a strong mass base. These are respected by such allies and
result in relations that are cooperative and fruitful in the interest of the
people and the revolutionary cause, in connection with the people’s war or
otherwise.
The Party has been flexible enough to apply the united front
policy on the electoral struggle within the reactionary ruling system and has
gone so far as to undertake peace negotiations with the enemy ruling clique on
the premise that truce and alliance is possible against foreign and feudal
domination. But so far the crisis of the ruling system has not yet moved any
ruling clique to forge a truce and alliance with the revolutionary movement. So
far, every ruling clique since the signing of The Hague Joint Declaration of
1992 has chosen to pipe dream that it can use the peace negotiations to split
the revolutionary movement and cause it to surrender. In this connection, the
Party must continue to preclude any confusion or capitulation by constantly
reminding the revolutionary forces and the people that the line of negotiations
for a just peace is the same line of revolutionary armed struggle for national
freedom and genuine democracyIndeed, there can be no peace agreement without
addressing the roots of the civil war with basic social, economic and political
reforms.
The Party must continue to uphold the organizational
principle of democratic centralism. It is democracy guided by centralism and
centralism based on democracy. There is no other way to concentrate the
revolutionary will and capabilities of the Party membership but through Party
congresses and elected leading organs under the principle of democratic
centralism.
The Party of nationwide scale must be deeply rooted among
the masses. It must expand and consolidate itself in order to accomplish
greater victories in the revolutionary struggle. At various levels, we must
have a recruitment plan for the purpose of Party expansion and an educational
plan for the purpose of Party consolidation.
To expand the Party is to recruit more candidate-members
from the mass organizations and the people’s army. To consolidate the Party is
to promote promptly the candidate members into full Party members by finishing
the basic Party course within the period of candidature and to further activate
them in the Party units to which they are assigned. Those who are already Party
members are encouraged to get the intermediate and higher Party courses. The
increase of Party members must result in the expansion of the revolutionary
mass movement and the recruitment of a bigger number of candidate members than
ever before.
The Party members must arise from or be deployed in various
forms of mass organizations and various forms of struggle. The Party must
fulfil the high demand in the people’s army for Party members and mass
activists who are of worker origin and educated youth. The urban-based mass
activists can choose to fulfil the requirements of Party candidature either in
the urban or rural areas. There must be an increasing number of Party members
arising from or being deployed to the ranks of the workers, peasants and Red
fighters.
Party leading and staff organs from the central level to the
district level must see to it that the Party organization develops in both
urban and rural areas and that there is a constant flow of young Party cadres
and members from the urban to the rural areas so that certain political,
professional and technical competencies can be transferred. When the Party in
the countryside is isolated from the urban areas for a long while, senior Party
cadres of more than 60 years at the regional level become predominant.
The length and style of work or study meetings of Party
leading organs must be reformed. Meetings must be well prepared. Drafts are
prepared in advance and the motions are collected also in advance. The
presidium must see to it that all important matters are deliberated and decided
within time limits. It is bad leadership to let meetings run for weeks and
months and rob the attending cadres of precious time for work in their
respective areas. It is also bad for security because the large amount of food
and other supplies and the number of security personnel can be easily detected
by the enemy.
The Party leading organs from the Central Committee to the
provincial committees must have a three-thirds composition of senior, middle-aged
and young cadres. The balance can be maintained by consistently promoting
cadres to expand the number of committee members and increase the number of
leading committees relative to the expansion of the Party and Party work. Those
who wish to retire and are still in good health can opt to become advisers to
the committees of which they were previously members. The Party must honor the
comrades who retire and must provide them with sufficient security and health
care.
There is a large number of overseas Filipinos. They are
mostly migrant workers who have undergone secondary and tertiary education.
They are also professionals working for international institutions and firms.
They are also immigrants and permanent residents or even citizens abroad, especially
in North America, but remain loyal to their motherland, and wish to support the
revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people. They should be drawn to
patriotic and progressive Filipino mass organizations. And the Party should
organize within these mass organizations. At the same time, the overseas
Filipinos can join non-Filipino institutions and organizations in the host
country.
The Party must develop relations of proletarian
internationalism with Communist parties and workers’ organizations abroad. The
NDFP must develop relations of anti-imperialist solidarity with national
liberation movements abroad and with anti-imperialist governments. The
progressive mass organizations based in the Philippines and abroad must develop
solidarity relations with all anti-imperialist and democratic forces abroad.
The Party, the NDFP and progressive mass organizations must
encourage and rally the Filipino people at home and abroad to stand with the
peoples of the world in struggle for national liberation, democracy and
socialism against imperialism and reaction. The Philippine revolution is for
the benefit of the Filipino people but it also contributes to the advancement
of the struggle of humankind for greater freedom, democracy, development,
social justice, cultural upliftment and international solidarity and peace. At
the same time, the Filipino people are always grateful for the support they
obtain directly and indirectly from the revolutionary struggles of other
peoples.###
