Just got this now via email from the NDFP International Office:
CPP 40th anniversary statement
Or if you prefer to read it now:
STRENGTHEN THE PARTY AND INTENSIFY THE PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE IN CELEBRATING THE 40th FOUNDING ANNIVERSARY
Message of the Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
December 26, 2008With utmost joy, we celebrate today the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as the advanced detachment of the Philippine working class under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Forty years ago today, we reestablished on a new foundation what originally was the Communist Party of the Philippine Islands (CPPI).
On this happy occasion, we in the Central Committee of the CPP salute all comrades in all Party organs, units and spheres of work, all Red commanders and fighters of the New People’s Army, all allied forces in the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, all leaders and functionaries of the local organs of the people’s democratic government, all activists in the mass movement and the broad masses of the Filipino people.
We congratulate all Party cadres and members for all the accumulated and recent victories in ideological, political and organizational work and all revolutionary forces and people for the great victories in pursuing the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war and united front work against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
The revolutionary cause of the people cannot advance without the principled commitment, militancy and perseverance of the entire Party in revolutionary struggle. We have won our victories through hard work, arduous struggle and sacrifices. We must render the highest tribute to our revolutionary martyrs and heroes, including those who have died in the battlefield and those who have devoted their lives to various types of revolutionary work beyond the battlefield.
From year to year, the US-Arroyo regime has ranted that it would completely destroy, strategically defeat or debilitate the armed revolutionary movement of the oppressed and exploited people. It has in fact unleashed the most barbaric attacks against the millions of people in the guerrilla fronts and against unarmed persons, including leaders and members of legal mass organizations workers, peasants, youth and women, teachers, church people, lawyers, journalists, judges and all other personalities, who criticize and oppose its rotten policies and criminal acts.
At this time, we can proclaim the utter failure of the so-called Enhanced National Internal Security Plan and Oplan Bantay Laya I and II. These have only served to incite the people to intensify the armed revolution and other forms of struggle. The people and revolutionary forces have gained strength in the course of militant struggle. They must not slacken but must intensify all forms of struggle.
Let us celebrate our Party’s 40th founding anniversary throughout 2009 by undertaking educational, organizational, political, cultural and other activities to advance and bring the revolution to a new and higher level. Let us strive to bring about a great leap forward in all forms of our revolutionary struggle.
We must carry out vigorously the education and training of our Party cadres and members in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and in the new democratic revolution. Our Party must lead the broad masses of the people by arousing, organizing and mobilizing them. We must wield firmly and effectively the weapons of armed struggle and united front. We must further strengthen the Party organization by accelerating the recruitment of Party candidate-members from the revolutionary mass movement and the building of Party branches in communities, factories, farms, schools and other institutions.
The armed struggle must be intensified in conjunction with land reform, the dismantling of big landholding and landgrabbing enterprises, and the widening and deepening of the mass base. The local organs of political power and the mass organizations must be further strengthened. Mass campaigns must be carried out to raise the level of the people’s consciousness on major issues, raise production, promote health work, step up the training of militia and self-defense units and carry out cultural activities on a wide scale. The guerrilla fronts must be developed in the direction of creating relatively stable base areas. The various forms of alliance must be built within the framework of the anti-imperialist and antifeudal united front.
Conditions for advancing the Philippine revolution are excellent. The No.1 imperialist power oppressing and exploiting the Filipino people and the people of the world is in the throes of a historically unprecedented economic and financial crisis that is worse than the Great Depression of 1929 and is incurring serious losses in its two current wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contradictions are sharpening between the imperialist powers and the oppressed peoples and nations, among the imperialist powers and between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the working class in the imperialist countries.
The chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the Philippines is rapidly worsening and is making the big compradors, landlords and their political agents more than ever incapable of ruling in the old way. The broad masses of the people are intensely desirous of revolutionary change and they trust the Communist Party of the Philippines as the leading force of the revolution. This is the Party that has steadfastly fought the domestic ruling system, the imperialist system of plunder and war and has upheld the aspirations of the Filipino people for national liberation and democracy and for a socialist and communist future.
I. Unprecedented Economic and Financial Crisis
For more than two years, we had observed the impending total unravelling and complete discredit of the “free market” pretense of monopoly capitalism and the full bankruptcy of the policy of “neoliberal globalization.” But the leaders of the US and other imperialist countries and the puppet states were always lying and boasting about the so-called strong fundamentals of their economies. Only recently have they been compelled by the circumstances to admit that the US and global capitalist system are beset by the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Soon after the bursting of the hightech bubble in the stock market in 2000, which had hit hard the pension funds and savings of at least 40% of American households, US authorities and financial institutions devised the housing bubble in order to hook American households into taking mortgages at low interest rates and into believing that the rising value of houses would enable them to borrow further and consume imports as much as they wanted even if they did not have enough income or employment. The increased hightech military production under the Bush regime could not make up for the longrunning industrial decline, service orientation and financialization of the US economy.
The housing bubble started to burst in 2006. A growing number of US households could not pay the amortization of their mortgages as interest rates were raised to counter inflation. From month to month the epidemic of foreclosures spread. This exposed the unbridled leveraging by and resultant bankruptcies of the biggest investment banks and financial institutions and other major commercial banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Merril Lynch and Goldman Sachs), the biggest insurance company (the American International Group), the federal government sponsored enterprises (Federal National Mortgage Association or Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency or Freddie Mac), and so on.
The mortgage meltdown has exposed US financial institutions as having exported to Europe and other continents toxic financial products, involving the securitization of the bad mortgages, labeled with such exotic names as mortgaged-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, structured investment vehicles, credit default swaps and so on. These have generated a chain of financial collapses, including the credit crunch in interbank lending and in the money market and the stockmarket crash, not only in the US but also on a global scale. The US and other imperialist states have given priority to bailing out the banks and other financial institutions with public money rather than the people victimized by the depredations of monopoly finance capitalism.
The mortgage meltdown has certainly ignited the current financial crisis. But the fundamental cause of this crisis goes much deeper. It involves the ever persistent drive of the monopoly bourgeoisie to extract surplus value from the working class, to maximize superprofits even further by pushing down wage levels and thus to unwittingly contract the market by reducing the income of the working class and effective demand for products. Thus, the crisis of overproduction and the cycle of boom and bust. These have been further aggravated and deepened by the US’ drive to seek and exploit cheaper labor abroad as well as to provide investment and market accommodation to its main allies.
The US adopted the policy of “neoliberal globalization” to overcome the phenomenon of stagflation in the 1970s which it blamed on rising wage levels and government social spending but not on economic concessions it had to give to its anticommunist allies, military competition with the USSR in the Cold War and big government spending for military production, the overseas deployment of US military forces and the costly wars of aggression in Korea and Indochina. In accordance with its line of “neoliberal globalization,” the US has pushed down domestic wage levels, caused industrial decline, favored the military-industrial complex and oil giants and promoted the so-called post-industrial service economy as well as the shadow financialization of the economy.
The falling real incomes of the American people relative to GDP has led to the recurrence of increasingly severe crisis of overproduction in the form of recessions from decade to decade since the 1980s. But the US has always resorted to debt financing in order to override recessions and the persistent trade and budgetary deficits. All three sectors of the US economy have gone into extreme and unsustainable borrowings: the government, the private corporations and the households. These have gone too far beyond the limits and have caused the current gravity of the US and global financial and economic crisis.
The US has incurred the understated total debt of US$53 trillion, which is 350 percent of the US GDP of US$14.6 trillion. This is a far cry from the Great Depression when such debt was only 250% of the US GDP. The US total debt consists of the national government debt of US$10.6 trillion, corporate debt (non-financial and financial) of US$23 trillion and household debt of US$14 trillion.
The US national debt was less than US$1 trillion at the end of the Carter administration in 1982. It went up to US$3.6 trillion by the end of the Reagan administration. This turned the US from No.1 creditor to No.1 debtor of the world. Reagan had engaged in highspeed, hightech military production, incurred large trade deficits in order to accommodate the exports of its anticommunist allies; and attracted foreign investments in US stocks and bonds. Clinton promoted “neoliberal globalization” and kept on increasing the trade deficit even as he balanced the budget. At the end of the Clinton term, the US national debt was US$5.7 trillion. The Bush regime bloated this even furtherat a much faster rate. The national debt now stands at US$10.6 trillion. A great part of this debt (estimated at US$2.5 trillion) is owed to China, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Caribbean banking center, and so on.
The US corporate debt of US$23 trillion is understated. The non-financial corporations take loans from the banks as well as issue bonds. The biggest US corporations like General Motors and General Electric are far more involved in finance than in production. It is easily conceivable that the financial corporations are far more indebted than the nonfinancial. Banks can generate credit nine to ten times that of bank deposits and, as a result of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, investment banks have been allowed to generate credit 12 to 30 or even more times the placements of investors. Under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 1999, various types of financial institutions can generate derivatives without any restraint.
The US household debt is in the form of housing mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and student loans. It has been bloated mainly by the housing bubble. The general run of American households have negative savings; aggregate household income in relation to aggregate household debt has risen to 138%, with a 40-year record increase of 37%. Millions have lost their homes. The unemployment rate is higher than the official one of 6.7%, which excludes those who have stopped applying for jobs and those supposedly unqualified for available jobs. More than half a million are now losing jobs every month. The drastic fall of employment and income in US households spells further loss of effective demand for the products of both US and foreign productive enterprises.
It took decades for the current financial and economic crisis to grow before bursting . This will not be solved in the short term of one to two years. The solutions made so far, like the bail out for collapsing financial institutions, aggravate the problem. Government dispensing of public money for this sort of bailout is a case of further robbing those who have been robbed to bail out the thieves. It is also a case of throwing good money after bad. It does not at all revive production, employment and effective demand. Even the credit crunch among the banks has not eased because producer firms would not borrow money for production if they cannot sell their products. Bailout money is simply being used by the strongest finance monopoly groups to consolidate and enlarge their monopoly positions. Worst of all, the national debt bubble is growing and is about to burst. The market for treasury and corporate bonds is expected to collapse next year.
Obama’s plan of creating 2.5 million jobs through infrastructure projects and expansion of social services will not offset even only the low estimate of 4.0 million job losses from further financial collapses, bankruptcies, plant closures and mass layoffs. The public funds available for Keynesian pump-priming are limited by further demands of the financial institutions and giant non-financial corporations such as the Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler), by the continuing wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, by the drastic reduction of tax collection and by the continuing need to import goods from abroad.
A prolonged recession or depression in the US similar to that in Japan is in the horizon. After the spike in food and oil prices, which delivered superprofits to the giant oil and food corporations, a deflationary trend has emerged and has prompted the US Federal Bank to cut down the basic interest rate to nearly zero. However, the beneficiaries are not the millions of American workers who have lost their jobs, homes, savings and pension funds, but the stronger financial institutions, which are gobbling up the weaker ones, A longrunning global depression is already being aggravated and deepened by the international credit squeeze and by reduced demand from the American consumer market.
Within the last quarter of this year, millions of workers have been laid off at an unprecedented rate in the imperialist countries and even more so in the neocolonies. The number of people who live on less than US$1 to US$2 a day is rapidly rising. A billion people go hungry daily. Two billion people have no access to clean water. The current turmoil guarantees even more rapid increase in misery in the years to come. Millions of low-wage workers in export-processing zones of monopoly capitalist firms in the neocolonies are particularly vulnerable to the reduced orders for consumer goods and semimanufactures in the industrial countries. Millions of peasants, farm workers and workers in the extractive industries are bound to suffer even graver destitution as demand for raw materials decline. Migrant workers, especially undocumented laborers will become ever more vulnerable, targeted as they are as scapegoats for rising unemployment in capitalist countries and sent back to their countries of origin.
Beneath their rhetorical concern over climate change and the environment, the imperialist countries continue to intensify plunder of natural resources in the neocolonies, They contunue to emit virtually all the greenhouse gasses that is causing global warming and is already leading to declining crop yields, increasing food and water insecurity, diseases and deaths in the exploited and oppressed countries.
Under the auspices of “neoliberal globalization,” the US has been vaunted as the engine of growth and market of last resort for the global economy in the last three decades. But now, it has clearly become the center of the global financial and economic crisis and is thus clearly recognized as the generator of the destruction of productive forces and of socio-economic and political turmoil. As a result of the current severe crisis, the position of the US as the No. 1 imperialist power is deeply undermined, especially in economic and political terms, even if it remains the strongest in military terms. The current crisis is causing an over-all weakening of the US and it is loosening its control over its imperialist allies. The latter are scrambling to protect their national and ultra-national interests and are demanding a multipolar world and moving away from a unipolar world of unquestioned US dominance.
The US is being undermined not only by the financial and economic crisis but also by its own wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global deployment of its military forces. Iraq will remain a quagmire for the US and its puppets for as long as the US maintains military bases and troops and has a stranglehold over the Iraqi economy and oil resources. The Iraqi people will not give up their resistance. If the US under Obama brings more of its military forces to Afghanistan, it will ultimately suffer the same fate as the Soviet forces of aggression in the past. Afghanistan can become a more sucking quagmire for both the US and NATO.
Competition is growing among the imperialist powers for oil and other natural resources, markets, fields of investment and spheres of influence. Imperialist powers other than the US increasingly protect their national interest as they adopt fiscal and monetary measures independently of the US in order to cope with the financial and economic crisis and as they avoid or restrain themselves from being dragged by the US into wars of aggression. There are definite signs that certain imperialist powers are contradicting the position of the US on economic, financial, political and security issues.
As objects of imperialist interest and as active aspirants for a bigger say in global affairs, certain large but less developed countries like China and India have an impact on the changing balance of forces among the imperialist powers. China has become the biggest foreign creditor of the US even as it remains poor and dependent on the US as market for its cheap consumer manufactures and is vulnerable to the looming collapse of the bond market and the fall of the US dollar. However, it competes with the US for sources of oil and other natural resources and independently seeks markets and fields of investments in various parts of the world. Russia is using its oil and gas resources and its continuing military capabilities to keep itself a major imperialist power.
Complaints are growing against US dominance in the UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO and other global institutions. On the western front, France has joined Russia in demanding the formation of a new European security alliance to replace NATO and in opposing the missile shield put up by the US in Poland and Czechoslovakia. On the eastern front, China and Russia are spearheading the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a security alliance which includes the former Soviet republics in Central Asia and major countries in the Middle East and South Asia. Beneficial to the US at first, the full reintegration of Russia and China into the world capitalist system has in the long run resulted in the intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions rather than an amicable and peaceful expansion of capitalism.
Even as its No. 1 position is being undermined, the US remains a key player among the imperialist powers in the foreseeable future. It must be pointed out that the imperialist powers remain allied against the oppressed peoples and nations of the world and always try to shift the burden of crisis to them. The contradiction between the imperialist powers and the oppressed peoples and nations is still the main contradiction in the world, not only in terms of the given fact that the imperialists and their puppets inflict the worst forms of oppression and exploitation on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, but also because of the growing real and potential struggles for national and social liberation.
The current crisis of imperialism inflicts severe suffering on billions of people in the third world but also incites the people of the world to resist and provides them with a bigger room for maneuver in the struggle to liberate themselves from imperialism and all reaction. The broad masses of the people detest the ever worsening general crisis of the world capitalist system and their ever worsening oppression and exploitation. From year to year, we can expect the rise of various legal and illegal forms of mass resistance by the people.
The revolutionary armed struggle of the people will rise to a new and higher level in such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan, which the US and other imperialist powers invade and occupy. The long-running armed movements for national liberation and democracy, such as in the Philippines, Colombia, India, Peru and Turkey, will make great advances and will inspire more people’s wars to arise in various continents. The peoples and governments of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other Latin American countries are noticeably asserting national independence against the hostile policies of the US imperialists.
South Asia remains the fertile ground for the rapid growth of the armed revolution for national liberation, democracy and socialism. The people’s war in Nepal has allowed the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to overthrow the monarchy, establish a republic and take leadership over the coalition government. The people and revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) can play the great role of bringing the world proletarian revolution to a new and higher level in the same way that those of Russia did in the wake of the First World War and those of China did in the wake of the Second World War. At any rate, the proletariat and peoples of Russia and China are in deep discontent on a wide scale. The revolutionary communist parties are steadily growing to raise high the red banner and legacy of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
The implosion of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc revisionist regimes, the return of the worst forms of oppression and exploitation in Russia and China and the current depredations of the US and global financial and economic crisis expose the rottenness of the world capitalist system and point to the great challenges and opportunities for the peoples of the world to carry forward their revolutionary cause. Social unrest is now spreading in China, the former Soviet republics and former Soviet bloc countries. The people are increasingly rejecting capitalism and demanding socialism.
Within the imperialist countries, the class struggle between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the working class is surfacing and coming to the fore. The workers, the youth, women, the migrants seethe with anger as they face rising unemployment and decreasing income and the scandalous greed and arrogance of the monopoly bourgeoisie. They increasingly condemn capitalism and clamor for socialism. The Parties of the Left have gained strength in several countries of Europe. To deflect the proletariat and people from class struggle and anti-imperialist solidarity, the monopoly bourgeoisie and its slimy politicians are doing everything to drum up chauvinism, racism, fascism and war hysteria.
But it has been demonstrated time and again that the proletariat and people in the imperialist countries, including the US, are capable of rising against the exploitative and oppressive policies of monopoly capitalism. The current severity of the current financial and economic crisis has definitely begun to stir the broad masses of the people against the capitalist system. As the crisis prolongs for several years and probably more than a decade, there is ample opportunity for the revolutionary forces to arouse, organize and mobilize the masses and to develop and grow ideologically, politically and organizationally.
The total bankruptcy of “neoliberal globalization” is impressing the proletariat and people of the world that monopoly capitalism is evil because it destroys the forces of production and inflicts intolerable suffering and that there is an urgent necessity for revolutionary struggles for national liberation, democracy and socialism. The conditions of crisis are conducive to revolutionary activity but do not automatically or inevitably bring about revolution. The conscious and organized revolutionary forces, chiefly the revolutionary party of the proletariat, need to work and struggle hard in order to call upon and bring the broad masses of the people on to the road of revolution.
II. Desperate State of the Philippine Ruling System
The semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system in the Philippines is in chronic crisis, subjected as it is to the worst forms of exploitation and oppression by foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism. It is therefore vulnerable to the vagaries of the general crisis of the world capitalist system and to the current financial and economic crisis that has already been described by chieftains of imperialist countries as the worst since the Great Depression and by some economic analysts as unprecedented in the last 100 years.
However, most of the year, the Arroyo regime and its economic experts were giving false assurances to the Filipino people that the Philippines was decoupled from or even immune to the financial and economic crisis of the US and world capitalist system. They were boasting about the supposed strong fundamentals of what actually is a pre-industrial, semifeudal and agrarian economy, dependent on the export of raw materials and low value-added semimanufactures, on the remittances of overseas contract workers and on foreign borrowing for covering trade and budgetary deficits.
The lies of the regime have been ineffective, especially when the prices of food and fuel were soaring. The people are disgusted that even as the Philippines is an agricultural country and historically the base of the “miracle rice” it has become the No. 1 rice importer of the world. This has been a result of decades of rice dumping on the country under the auspices of trade liberalization, even way ahead of the schedule for tariff reduction set by the World Trade Organization. This has also been a result of converting land from the production of rice and corn to other crops for export or to entirely nonagricultural uses.
The regime boasted that by raising the people’s tax burden through the expanded value added tax under orders from the International Monetary Fund it had protected the economy from global financial and economic crisis. It pointed out that only 20% of Philippine exports go to the US and that any export drawdown would not be painful to the Philippines. In fact, the direct exports of the Philippines to the US amount to as much as 25%. Moreover, the increased Philippine exports to Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are actually destined for the US after some additional processing.
Certainly, the contraction of the consumer market and production in the US hits the Philippines hard in terms of decreased US demand for Philippine exports. Worst of all, the international credit crunch deprives the Philippine rulers of the key resource for covering trade and budgetary deficits and for servicing old debts with new debts to conjure an illusion of economic growth. As the financial and economic crisis protracts and worsens, the demand for Filipino contract workers abroad will decrease. This means the decrease of the foreign exchange remittances as a major financial resource to which the Philippines has been accustomed.
The depression of the Philippine economy will worsen. The decrease of export income, foreign loans and remittances of overseas contract workers will mean less resources for Philippine production and consumption. Even now the Arroyo regime has already scaled down the previous projections of economic growth rates, which are anyway still exaggerated and do not fully take into account the credit crunch. The reality of depression will include more bankruptcies, closures, reduced production, mass layoffs and the drastic fall of incomes for the toiling masses and even for the middle social strata.
Under current circumstances, the economic depression in the Philippines is already causing acute and widespread discontent among the broad masses of the people. The demand for jobs, decent wages, industrial development, land reform, adequate social services and respect for the democratic rights of the working people will ring louder and move the broad masses of the people to march and rally on the streets and convene at various public places.
For the reactionaries, there is no way out of the depression and the chronic crisis of the ruling system. No part of the huge amounts of funds borrowed domestically and abroad, collected as taxes from the people or remitted by overseas contract workers has gone into industrial development. Even the agricultural land devoted to staple crops has been reduced in the shift to export crops, real estate speculation and other land-extensive enterprises.
The people will increasingly desire and demand a revolutionary way out of the economic and social crisis as the counterrevolutionary rulers employ deception and violence to mislead and suppress them. The people will be further goaded to rebel by the counterrevolutionaries themselves who trample on their basic democratic rights and who offer no solutions to the social and economic problems but only further betrayal of national independence, economic sovereignty and the national patrimony under the auspices of the totally discredited policy of “neoliberal globalization.”
The competing political factions of the ruling classes of big compradors and landlords are differentiated by the names of their parties and coalitions but are quite undifferentiated in their subservience to the US-dictated policy of “neoliberal globalization.” What they similarly compete for are the blessings of the US and the spoils of political power. Whichever is the reactionary faction that ascends to power tends to monopolize the spoils. The opposition factions, on the the hand, preoccupy themselves with the clamor for clean government and against corruption, but avoid the fundamental issues of national independence, democracy, industrial development, genuine land reform, people’s culture and independent foreign policy.
Every reactionary ruling clique, from that of Ramos to that of Arroyo, has proposed to amend the 1987 Constitution of the reactionary government in order to extend its rule and delete or rewrite provisions that were the fruit of the struggle against the US-instigated Marcos fascist dictatorship, such as those restraining the proclamation of martial law, protecting human rights and civil liberties, upholding economic sovereignty and national patrimony and banning foreign military bases, foreign troops and nuclear weapons storage and transport on Philippine territory. In fact, these have been undermined and circumvented through legislation and executive agreements.
Even as the US-directed policy of “neoliberal globalization” has been totally discredited by the current financial and economic crisis, the minions of the Arroyo regime in the House of Representatives have proclaimed that their purpose in seeking to amend the 1987 constitution of the reactionary government is to cast away economic sovereignty and national patrimony and to allow foreign investors 100 percent ownership of land and all kinds of enterprises. The Arroyo regime has embarked on treason in exchange for prolonging itself in power.
The ever worsening social and economic crisis has continuously pushed the political crisis of the ruling system. And the ruling classes have increasingly become unable to rule with any lasting moral authority through any of the reactionary factions that assume power. The broad masses of the people have long become disgusted with the puppetry, corruption, mendacity and brutality that have characterized every reactionary ruling clique. They are therefore intensely desirous of revolutionary change and strongly wish the revolutionary party to lead and hasten the advance of the struggle for the overthrow of the entire ruling system and establish the people’s democratic state.
With the Arroyo ruling clique at the top, three political formations collaborate in an unstable alliance for dominating the people. These are the Kabalikat ng Mamamayang Pilipino (KAMPI) of the fake president Arroyo, the Lakas-NUCD of ex-president Ramos and the Nationalist People’s Coalition of the old Marcos crony Eduardo Cojuangco. These are the largest and most moneyed political formations but are discredited, especially for corruption.
Ranged against these dominant formations are the far smaller parties which stand to benefit from the discredit of the dominant parties, but which tend to be fractious. These include the Nacionalista Party of Manuel Villar, the Liberal Party of Mar Roxas, the Partido ng Masang Pilipino of former president Joseph Estrada, the PDP-Laban of Aquilino Pimentel, and the makeshift coalition called United Opposition (UNO).
The Arroyo ruling clique is pushing charter change through a constituent assembly in a maneuver to prolong its rule. But the Senate has refused to collaborate with the House of Representatives, especially because of popular opposition to the Arroyo project of charter change. The Arroyo ruling clique is preparing to rig the 2010 elections in order to protect its loot and secure impunity for its criminal liabilities. It is preparing to employ massive electoral fraud and terrorism to secure the election of its own candidates.
Contradictions among the reactionary political formations are bound to sharpen as the Arroyo ruling clique tries to rig the 2010 elections as in 2004. Contradictions among the factions in the military and police will also sharpen. They have run deep and wide because the Arroyo ruling clique has persecuted those officers and men who have denounced its criminal policies and activities and has favored those who are not only partisan of the ruling clique but are also flagrantly engaged in corruption and other lucrative criminal activities within and outside the military and police services.
The Party is correct in adopting and implementing the policy of the broad united front in taking advantage of the contradictions and rifts among the reactionaries and in seeking the objective or conscious alliance and cooperation of groups and individuals in the reactionary parties and coalitions, in the civil bureaucracy and in the military and police services who express patriotic and progressive positions against the reactionaries who are the worst and are the most rabidly loyal to the imperialists. The broad united front has taken up important issues against the Arroyo regime, including electoral fraud in 2004, numerous mega cases of corruption, the gross and systematic violations of human rights, unequal trade and economic agreements with foreign powers and the scheme to amend the 1987 constitution.
The Arroyo regime stands as the worst of the reactionaries and is therefore categorized as the enemy of the people and the revolutionary movement. It is comparable to the Marcos fascist dictatorship in its puppetry to US imperialism. It caninely follows the US-dictated policies of “neoliberal globalization” and “war on terrorism” despite the bankruptcy and total discredit of these policies. It is rated as the the most corrupt regime in the whole of Asia and the No.2 most corrupt in the entire world. It has engaged in gross and systematic violations of human rights.
These human rights violations include the massive military campaigns of suppression against workers, urban poor, peasant masses and national minorities; and the extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture of legal democratic activists (including workers, peasants, women, youth, church people, lawyers, human rights defenders and peace advocates) and consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) who are guaranteed safety and immunity under the GRP-NDFP Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees.
The US imperialists have instigated the Arroyo regime to unleash barbaric military campaigns of suppression against the people and the revolutionary forces and to prevent the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations from proceeding to address the roots of the armed conflict with social, economic, political and constitutional reforms. The US and the Arroyo regime have drummed up the so-called “global war on terror” in order to allow US military intervention in the civil war between the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces and the continuous basing and operation of US military forces in our country.
In line with the dictates of its US master, the Arroyo regime has rendered impossible the resumption of formal talks between the negotiating panels in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations by preconditioning it with the surrender and pacification of the revolutionary forces and people under the guise of a prolonged ceasefire and by refusing to affirm and comply with the previously signed bilateral agreements without the precondition of a prolonged ceasefire. The malicious objective of the regime is to replace the peace negotiations with ceasefire and surrender negotiations, discard the previously signed agreements and prevent substantive negotiations on social, economic, political and constitutional reforms. After murdering so many NDFP consultants and progressive activists, the Arroyo regime demands the surrender of the very life of the entire revolutionary movement.
The Party and the entire revolutionary movement of the people have no choice but to intensify the revolutionary armed struggle against the priorly escalating military campaigns of suppression against the people under Oplan Bantay Laya and the Enhanced National Internal Security Plan. The New People’s Army and all other revolutionary forces of the people can take advantage of the rapidly worsening crisis of the domestic ruling system and the US and world capitalist system. Most concretely, they can take advantage of the fact that the reactionary government and armed forces are now faced with the problem of having to fight on two war fronts, one in Moroland and another all over the Philippine archipelago.
The Arroyo regime has closed the door to peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front by casting away the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) and demanding the resumption of informal talks without the MoA-AD. It has also closed the door to the resumption of formal talks with the NDFP by preconditioning it on the violation of The Hague Joint Declaration and all other previously signed agreements.
It is of strategic importance to the Filipino people and the Bangsamoro to fight for their revolutionary cause in their respective territories and to maximize their unity, coordination and cooperation in accordance with the longstanding alliance agreement between the NDFP and the MILF.
It is to the great advantage of the revolutionary forces and the people represented by the NDFP and the MILF that in common they fight a thoroughly discredited and isolated regime under severe conditions of domestic and global crisis. They have the critical mass to systematically deliver lethal blows against the many weak points of the enemy armed forces and ruling system. The main thing is to hit hard at those weak points in order to incapacitate and destroy the ruling system. Thus the revolutionary strength of the people can further grow and win greater victories. We can trust the people and the revolutionary forces to build a new Philippines that is independent, democratic, just, progressive and peaceful.
III. Great Victories of the Communist Party of the Philippines
In the last forty years, the Communist Party of the Philippines has won great ideological, political and organizational victories which are of lasting value and have served to advance the new democratic revolution of the Filipino people against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. These victories have been won against tremendous odds through resolute and militant struggles that have gone through twists and turns but have ascended to new and higher levels of revolutionary consciousness and fighting capability.
The US imperialists and their local puppets, have unleashed so many nationwide and localized campaigns of military suppression against the Party, the New People’s Army and the Filipino people in vicious attempts to destroy the armed revolutionary movement. After trying in the period of 1969-71, to “nip in the bud” the people’s war in one and then in two guerrilla fronts, the US imperialists instigated the Marcos regime to impose fascist dictatorship on the people for 14 years–from 1972 until this was weakened by the people’s resistance and brought down by an uprising in 1986. Then this would be followed by the series of post-Marcos regimes, pretending to be democratic and trying in vain to destroy the people’s democratic revolution through deception and violence.
All attempts to destroy the armed revolution have failed. They have merely served to make the people suffer further and incite them to fight more fiercely for their national and social liberation. We must underscore the fact that the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war has endured and has advanced in a big and all-round way in a country, which has long been a major base of US imperialist hegemony in the entire East Asia. This is a great victory which is ever inspiring to the Filipino people and other peoples of the world.
In leading the Philippine revolution successfully, the Party has always sought to integrate the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with the concrete conditions of the Philippines and with the concrete practice of the revolution. It has seriously studied the history of the Filipino people and the international working class movement and has taken advantage of crisis conditions of, and contradictions within, the Philippine ruling system and the world capitalist system.
In ideological work, the Party has firmly adhered to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and has always sought to develop the dialectical materialist stand, viewpoint and method among Party cadres and members, rejecting subjectivism, be it empiricism or dogmatism. In political work, it has set forth the line of new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war, rejecting Right and “Left” opportunism. In organizational work, it upholds the principle of democratic centralism, rejecting liberalism and bureaucratism, and has built itself nationwide and struck deep roots among the toiling masses of workers and peasants.
The Party has improved its work and style of work by conducting periodic and timely sessions of criticism and self-criticism. But major errors can persist and grow when Party cadres in higher organs or even in the Central Committee continue to hold andspread these in the Party. In the face of such errors, a rectification movement of major proportions needs to be conducted. In this regard, the Party has victoriously engaged in two great rectification movements, each being a campaign of education to draw lessons from experience, rectify major errors and set forth the tasks for advancing the revolutionary cause.
The First Great Rectification Movement prepared the founding of the Party from 1965 onward and proceeded during the foundational years of the Party from 1968 to 1977. It criticized and repudiated the accumulated errors of the Lavas and Lavaite revisionists and the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique. The Second Great Rectification Movement dealt with the “Left” and Right opportunist errors in the 1980s and early 1990s. The “Left” opportunists inflicted serious harm to the Party and the mass base during most of the 1980s. After the “Left” opportunists openly swung to the Right in the late 1980s, the Right opportunists sought to liquidate the Party with their eclectic hodgepodge of notions derived from bourgeois liberalism, Gorbachovism, Trotskyism and social democracy.
As a consequence of the resounding victory of the Second Great Rectification Movement, which took its course for more than six years since 1992, the Party has revitalized and further strengthened itself ideologically, politically and organizationally. The worst of the “Left” and Right opportunists have turned into out-and-out anticommunists and counterrevolutionaries. They act as special agents of imperialism and reaction as they specialize in anticommunist slander. Some of them have become racketeers in imperialist-funded “nongovernmental organizations” and others have joined the military and intelligence services of the enemy as consultants and psywar experts.
The Party has developed its ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism by studying the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao as well as by confronting, exposing and repudiating opportunism, reformism and revisionism and the various anti-communist and anti-socialist ideas. It has taken up the most important issues in the history and current circumstances of the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and people in the Philippines and the world. It has confronted the problems of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism and has advanced the theory and practice of new democratic revolution.
The Party has produced and issued major decisions, analytical articles and books that have a high theoretical and practical value. These are published in Pilipino and other Philippine languages as well as in English and other foreign languages. Together with the classical works of the great communist thinkers and leaders, they are in the syllabi of study courses undertaken by the Party. Study guides and aids are provided to enable the workers, peasants and other people with less formal education to advance in their theoretical and political education.
The primary course includes the study of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the history, basic problems of the Filipino people and the new democratic revolution as solution. The intermediate course seeks to analyze and compare the Philippine revolution with other revolutions abroad. The advance course involves the study of the works of the great communist thinkers and leaders in philosophy, political economy, social science, strategy and tactics and history of the international communist movement.
The Party membership runs into several tens of thousands. It is deeply rooted among the toiling masses of workers and peasants through the length and breadth of the Philippine archipelago. Party members are recruited from the revolutionary mass movement of workers, peasants, women, youth and other sectors. They are developed through courses of study and training in and out of their work units, through collective work and individual assignments and through revolutionary mass struggles.
The Party follows the principle of democratic centralism, with centralism based on democracy and democracy guided by centralism. A territorial structure of leading organs and organizations covers the entire country at various levels: regions, provinces, districts, cities and municipalities and barangays. The leading organs have staff organizations that assist them in various types of work. The basic organization of the Party is the branch, which is based in local communities, factories, farms, transport lines, campuses, offices and the like. The Party group is also the basic Party organization at various levels of a mass organization or social institution.
The Party has drawn the general political line of new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war for the purpose of overthrowing the semi-colonial and semifeudal ruling system and establishing the people’s democratic state system on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance. It wields the weapons of revolutionary armed struggle and the united front. It takes the mass line. It relies on the masses and learns from the masses to be able to arouse, organize and mobilize them.
The Party has aroused, organized and mobilized the broad masses of the people in their millions. It leads the thousands of fighters of the New People’s Army and millions of organized peasants in 120 to 130 guerrilla fronts in 70 provinces, more than 800 municipalities and more than 10,000 barangays. The Party cadres within the people’s army and in the localities have formed the organs of political power and the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, cultural activists and others. Units of the people’s army can move freely in more than 80 percent of the Philippines because the regular personnel of the reactionary forces can occupy no more than 10% of the country at any single period of time.
Historically, the New People’s Army has been the largest revolutionary army ever built in the Philippines. It is larger than the Philippine revolutionary army against Spanish colonialism in the period of 1896 to 1898 and then against US imperialism from 1899 onwards. It is far larger than the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon or the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan. On its own track, the NPA is stronger than what it was in the 1980s in both political and military terms. The NPA never reached the level of 25,000 riflemen in the 1980s. Its peak strength in that decade was only 6,100, without any clear accounting of firearms lost in Mindanao as a result of Kampanyang Ahos.
In the countryside, the Party has integrated the revolutionary armed struggle, land reform and base building in order to advance the new democratic revolution. Revolutionary armed struggle is the main form of struggle. It destroys the armed power of the big compradors and landlords and thereby builds the people’s army in the countryside until it gains the capability of seizing political power in the cities. As a result of the Second Great Rectification Movement, the NPA has strengthened itself politically and militarily by waging intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base.
Only with armed power have the Party and the people been able to carry out land reform as the main content of the democratic revolution. This has involved the minimum program of rent reduction, elimination of usury, raising the wages of farm workers, improving prices at the farm gate and raising production in agriculture and other economic activities. On the basis of such program, it is possible to move up to the maximum level of land confiscation and free distribution of land. Upon the advance of the armed struggle and agrarian revolution, it becomes possible to move up from the level of guerrilla fronts to that of stable base areas by strengthening the organs of political power, the mass organizations, the militia units and self-defense units.
The Party has built the united front as an important weapon of the new democratic revolution. This weapon involves several types of alliances. The most important of these is the basic alliance of the workers and peasants. It is the alliance of the working class as the leading class and the peasantry as the main force of the Philippine revolution. As the advanced detachment of the working class, the Party has pursued the antifeudal class line in its alliance with the peasant masses: rely mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, win over the middle peasants, neutralize the rich peasants and take advantage of the splits among the landlords in order to isolate and destroy the power of the biggest and most despotic landlords.
Only with an effective basic alliance of the workers and peasants for the armed struggle can the other types of alliances in the united front become effective. We refer to the progressive alliance of such basic revolutionary forces as toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the patriotic alliance of these progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie and the broad united front of patriotic forces and certain reactionary forces to oppose the enemy, defined as the worst reactionary force and most servile to imperialism.
The Party has employed the united front policy and the various forms of alliances in order to augment the strength of the basic revolutionary forces and to reach, arouse and mobilize the people in their millions in various forms of struggle and on a wide range of issues. Together with allied organizations, the Party has built the National Democratic Front of the Philippines as the united front framework for all basic revolutionary forces. The NDFP is open to internal broadening as to include patriotic forces of the middle bourgeoisie or external broadening as to engage in a formal or informal broad united front with reactionary forces opposed to the worst reactionary force at a given time.
In legal mass struggles against US imperialism and the worst of the local reactionaries, the Party always calls on the broad masses of the people and the patriotic and progressive forces to unite and act resolutely and militantly. The people have rallied to the Party’s calls and have risen in massive protest actions that have led to the ouster of Marcos and Estrada from power. They have foiled schemes to amend the 1987 constitution for the purpose of serving pro-imperialist and reactionary ends as they continue to expose and condemn the pro-imperialist and reactionary policies of the ruling clique.
By itself alone, the legal democratic mass movement may oust a particular reactionary regime from power but cannot overthrow the entire reactionary ruling system. The Party has always recognized that the legal democratic mass movement can weaken the ruling system, gain strength and affirm the justness of the revolutionary cause of the people. But such a movement is vulnerable to brutal attacks by the reactionary die-hards. In this connection, the Party has constantly urged patriotic and progressive legal activists to join the revolutionary armed struggle when they are targeted for extrajudicial killing, kidnapping, torture and incarceration by the reactionary state.
The Party stands for the democratic rights and welfare of overseas Filipinos and has called upon them to support the revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people for national liberation and democracy. In scores of foreign countries, it has encouraged Filipino immigrants, permanent residents and land-based and seaborne contract workers in forming their associations and in fighting for their own rights and interests.
Our Party enjoys a high standing in the international communist movement as well as in the broad anti-imperialist movement. This is due to the great victories of the Party and the Filipino people in waging the new democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local reactionaries as well as due to the revolutionary stand taken by the Party on international issues. Communist and workers parties study the publications of our Party and seek exchanges of ideas and experiences with our Party. Our Party has established and developed comradely or friendly relations with other parties through bilateral meetings and multilateral conferences. It has thereby entered into agreements of practical cooperation in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. A broad range of anti-imperialist and democratic forces has also established relations with the Party and the mass organizations led by the Party in the spirit of anti-imperialist solidarity.
IV. Plan for a Qualitative Leap of the Armed Revolution
Our Party considers of crucial importance how to bring the new democratic revolution to a new and higher level of development or a qualitative leap on account of the rich accumulated revolutionary experience, strength and great victories of the Party, New People’s Army, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the broad masses of the Filipino people and the ever worsening crisis and depression of the Philippine reactionary ruling system and the world capitalist system.
It is necessary for the Party to formulate the plan for accelerating the advance of ideological, political and organizational work, enlarging the subjective forces of the revolution and taking advantage of the ever worsening crisis of imperialism and the local reactionaries in order to approach the goal of overthrowing the rotten ruling system and establishing the people’s democratic republic.
We can have a five-year central plan of work. It must have clear objectives to be accomplished from year to year involving cumulative growth as well as flexibility and adjustability in order to achieve better results. It must be based on the current level of strength, track records and plans of the lower Party organs and organizations, on further inquiries to confirm current strength and estimate potential growth and on a determination to be clear about tasks and methods of carrying out the tasks and undertaking the necessary check-ups, follow-ups and necessary adjustments.
The overriding objective of the plan must be to increase the strength of the revolutionary forces and approach the goal of destroying the ruling system and replacing it with the people’s democratic state. The plan must encompass the following points:
1. Educate and train Party cadres and members on the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the general political line of new democratic revolution
The Party must educate and train a large number of Party cadres and members on the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and on the general line of new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war in order to serve as the steel core and leading force of the revolutionary mass movement. We need tens of thousands of Party cadres and hundreds of thousands and then millions of Party members to carry out the gigantic tasks of the revolution and bring about a qualitative leap in the revolutionary movement.
The Party branch and groups must undertake the basic political course and the basic Party course in order to promptly educate and train a large number of Party candidate-members to become full Party members and for the latter to refresh and consolidate their knowledge. The higher Party organs must undertake the intermediate and advanced Party courses and pay attention to the education and training of instructors for all courses of study.
The Party organs concerned must plan how the existing and forthcoming Party candidate-members must take and finish the basic Party course without any delay. Those with lesser ability than others to read and comprehend original texts must be provided with simplified study materials and interesting visual aids. Those with more ability must provide comradely assistance to others in the process of learning under the direction of the instructor.
2. Accelerate the recruitment of Party candidate-members from the revolutionary mass movement and expand the Party boldly
The Party must recruit candidate members from among the most active and advanced elements of the mass movement. Our constant policy is to expand the Party without letting in a single enemy agent. The mass movement is a reliable way of determining the honest elements who accept the Party Constitution and Program and who are resolute and militant in pursuing the general line of people’s struggle for national liberation and democracy. We may also recruit such elements in reactionary institutions and organizations who accept the Party Constitution and Program but who must take precautions in order to carry out effectively special tasks for the Party.
It is the responsibility of the Party organs concerned to make candidate members become full members within the time specified by the Party Constitution, according to class considerations. Immediately after taking the general and special mass courses, advanced elements of the mass movement should be able to take the mass and the basic Party course as candidate members. To achieve full Party membership, the candidate member must complete the basic Party course, must be active in a Party branch or group and must carry out the tasks assigned. Such tasks in the period of candidature may be construed as the trial work.
The Party is aware that its organizational growth has been restrained by negligence to recruit candidate members and if and when these are recruited at whatever rate there is negligence in providing the basic Party course and minding the period of candidature. All Party cadres and members are reminded that mass activists become inspired when they become Party candidate members and the latter become even more inspired to work harder and fight more fiercely for the revolutionary cause when they become full Party members and that the Party will be capable of accomplishing greater victories if there is a cumulative increase of Party cadres and members.
3. Intensify the campaigns to arouse, organize and mobilise the people along the general line of the new democratic revolution.
We must always learn from the masses through social investigation of their oppressed and exploited conditions and their concrete needs and demands. Thus, we learn how to carry out mass campaigns to arouse, organize and mobilize the people. We must trust and rely on the people in being able to act effectively on issues that concern their rights and interests and to take the direction towards empowering and benefiting themselves along the general line of the new democratic revolution.
The Party must ensure that the leaders and members of the mass organizations undergo and understand the general mass course on Philippine society and revolution and the appropriate sectoral mass course. With such a growing corps of conscious activists in the mass organizations, the Party can bring the revolutionary message to ever larger numbers of people. The task of arousing the people must be well carried out through mass actions and publications and in various forms of agitation and propaganda.
The mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, cultural activists and other sectoral or issue-based formations must be constantly expanded and consolidated. Every mass organization must have a clear plan of expanding its membership cumulatively and consolidating it through political education, tasking and checking of results. Mass mobilizations and mass campaigns should be ways for exercising the current strength as well as increasing strength by attracting more people to become members.
4. Intensify the revolutionary armed struggle and hit the targets to maximize the political and military victories
Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People’s Army must continue to pursue the strategic line of protracted people’s war. It must grow in strength in the countryside until it attains the capability of seizing the cities on a nationwide scale. The revolutionary armed struggle is integrated with the agrarian revolution and the building of the mass base.
The NPA must advance from the stage of the strategic defensive to that of the strategic stalemate and finally to that of the strategic offensive. At every strategic stage, it must launch tactical offensives to change the balance of forces by inflicting more and more defeats on the enemy and gaining more and more armed strength through increased fighting experience, weapons and technical capabilities.
Currently, the NPA is waging intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever expanding and deepening mass base. It must intensify this guerrilla warfare in order to wipe out enemy units, destroy enemy facilities, interdict enemy lines of supply, force the enemy to take guard duties and go on the defensive. It must also dismantle the landgrabbing operations of foreign and local agri-corporations, mining companies, logging companies for export, real estate companies and similar enterprises that reduce the land for agriculture and land reform and that result in the destruction of the environment.
The NPA must deal with the impunity of high bureaucrats and military officials in perpetrating treason, plunder and human rights violations. Those who commit these grave crimes are subject to summons for investigation and arrest and if armed and dangerous or protected by armed personnel are subject to battle by the NPA arresting unit. Retirement from reactionary government service does not free the suspects from criminal liabilities, arrest or battle. Close relatives and friends who benefit from the criminal offenses or fruits thereof must be treated as accomplices in crime. Dynasty-building and cronyism must be combated.
5. Raise land reform to a new and higher level towards the maximum level
The Party must raise land reform to a new and higher level towards the maximum program of land reform, wherever possible. The minimum land reform program may be maintained wherever it is still advantageous to the tillers and the requirements for maximum land reform are not yet present, such as the sufficient strength and readiness of the Party, the people’s army and the peasant association.
In striving for maximum land reform, the main blow must be directed at the big despotic landlords and the landgrabbing corporations that have armed personnel or use the reactionary military and police to oppress the peasant masses and fight the revolutionary movement. The NPA must employ the tactics of dismantling and rendering unprofitable the operations of these land-greedy entities and thus forcing them to leave the land. Concomitantly the landless tillers must be organized to take over the land.
When the despots and landgrabbers insist on holding the land by employing the reactionary military and police and the private armed guards, the NPA must turn the latter into sources of weapons by repeatedly assaulting the isolated guard posts or ambushing the guards on the road. The bigger the landholding, the more difficult it is to guard. It would prove excessively costly for the big landlords or the corporations to try to hold the land against the resolute resistance of the people and the people’s army.
6. Develop the guerrilla fronts toward becoming relatively stable base areas
The guerrilla fronts must be increased to the level of 168. This means having a guerrilla front in every congressional district in all the provinces in consonance with the line of intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare based on an ever widening and deepening mass base. Armed city partisan units with specific missions in highly urbanised congressional districts can be deployed and directed from the nearest guerrilla front commands in coordination with the appropriate urban district Party organ.
Having a definite goal for increasing the number of guerrilla fronts leads us to think of the next stage in the development of revolutionary territory. It is realistic and logical to anticipate and work for the emergence of relatively stable base areas from the increase, merger, integration or expansion of existing guerrilla fronts under a base area command, capable of launching company-size tactical offensives on the scale of a province or several provinces, if based on an inter-provincial border area.
To build the relatively stable base area, the Party must lead the NPA in suppressing and driving away the oppressors and exploiters and dismantling the reactionary organs of political power over extensive areas. The Party, the people’s army, the revolutionary organs of political power and the mass organizations must attain a new and higher level of development. As internal security is maintained by the people’s militia and the self-defense units of the mass organizations, the NPA fighting units can increase and intensify their tactical offensives and carry out battles with short rest periods.
7. Develop the various alliances under the united front policy in order to reach the people in ever larger numbers
We must develop the various alliances under the united front policy in order to arouse , organize and mobilize the people in ever larger numbers. The most important of these alliances is the basic worker-peasant alliance as it is the very foundation of the people’s democratic revolution. It combines the working class as the revolutionary leading class and the peasantry as the most numerous class and main force of the revolution. The people’s democratic government is based now and in the future on the worker-peasant alliance.
We must continue to develop the progressive alliance of the toiling masses of workers and peasants with the urban petty bourgeoisie. All of them are the basic forces of the revolution. At the moment,their alliance is best embodied in the revolutionary underground by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. We must also continue to develop the patriotic alliance of the basic revolutionary forces with the middle bourgeoisie by promoting anti-imperialism and espousing national industrial development.
Further, we must develop the broad united front, involving the alliance of the patriotic and progressive forces with certain sections of the reactionary classes against the enemy, defined as the worst reactionary clique and most servile to imperialism. This kind of alliance is temporary and unstable because the allies are reactionary in character and may abandon or betray the alliance. In this regard, we must always be vigilant, maintain independence and initiative, be skillful at unity and struggle and gain revolutionary strength while the alliance holds.
8. Uphold proletarian internationalism and broad anti-imperialist solidarity
The Party must uphold proletarian internationalism and remain active in the international communist movement. The best way we can contribute to the advance of the world proletarian revolution is to make further advances and win further victories in the ongoing new democratic revolution in the Philippines and to condemn and combat imperialism, revisionism and all reaction. We must exchange revolutionary experiences and ideas with other Parties and arrive at possible and necessary forms of practical cooperation.
The Party must uphold the broad anti-imperialist solidarity of the people of the world. Together with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, it has long been active in promoting anti-imperialist solidarity by relating to, and cooperating with, national liberation movements and various people’s organizations and institutions abroad. We are encouraged that mass organizations of the Filipino people are active domestically and internationally in fighting imperialist plunder and war which have been pushed by the US under such slogans as “neoliberal globalization” and “war on terror.”
The Party must further develop its relations with parties, people’s organizations and institutions abroad not only to garner support for the Filipino people in their struggle for national liberation and democracy but also to contribute what it can and participate in the efforts of all peoples to attain greater freedom, democracy, social justice, development and world peace.