By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairman
Communist Party of the Philippines
Conference on Maoism
Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht
05 September 2012
Introduction: Definition of Maoism
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was reestablished on the theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought on 26 December 1968. Since 1995, it has officially used the term Maoism as synonym for Mao Zedong Thought. The adoption of the term is due to language alignment in relation to Marxism-Leninism rather than due to any change of meaning or line in relation to Mao Zedong Thought. Since 3 September 1993 in his message to the Symposium on Mao Zedong Thought in Manila, the founding chairman of the CPP has referred to adherents of Mao Zedong Thought as Maoists.
The Communist Party of the Philippine stands by its definition of Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism as the third stage in the development of the theory and practice of the revolutionary proletariat towards the ultimate goal of communism. The ongoing stage of Maoism proceeds from the previous stages of Marxism and Leninism, respecting and upholding the theoretical and practical achievements of each stage, extending and developing them further and making new achievements.
Maoism has arisen thus far as the highest stage in the development of the theory and practice of proletarian revolution by confronting the problem of modern revisionism and putting forward the theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship through cultural revolution in order to combat revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate socialism. Among the many great achievements of Mao, the aforesaid theory and practice constitutes his greatest. This inspires hope for a socialist and communist future against imperialism, revisionism and reaction.
Mao is indubitably correct in identifying the revisionism of degenerates in power in socialist society as the most lethal to socialism, and in offering the solution that succeeded in China for ten years before it was defeated in 1976. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the full restoration of capitalism in revisionist-ruled countries in the period of 1989-91 have vindicated Mao´s position on the crucial importance and necessity of the struggle against revisionism and the theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) can be regarded as the prototype for the ample realization of the theory of continuing revolution in socialist society, like the Paris Commune of 1871 was the prototype for the proletarian class dictatorship that won victory in the October Revolution of 1917. Proletarian revolutionaries can be confident that they are forearmed with the theory behind the GPCR and the experience gained from it in order to face the challenge of revisionism in socialist societies.
Maoism encompasses the major contributions of Mao to further develop such basic components of Marxism as philosophy, political economy, and social science as first laid down by Marx and Engels in the period of free competition capitalism and the rise of the modern industrial proletariat in the 19th century. Maoism also encompasses Mao´s major contributions to further develop Lenin´s earlier theoretical and practical achievements in developing the aforesaid components and to carry forward the great victory of Lenin and Stalin in socialist revolution and construction in the era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution.
In philosophy, Mao made a penetrating study of the unity of opposites as the most fundamental law in materialist dialectics. He explained the wave-like alternating and interactive advance of theory and practice, and social practice (i.e., production, class struggle and scientific experiment) as the source of knowledge. In political economy, he based himself on the Marxist critique of capitalism and the Leninist critique of modern imperialism, learned from the Soviet experience in socialist revolution and construction, and put forward a political economy of socialism that sought to improve on the pioneering experience of socialist revolution and construction in the Soviet Union.
In social science, Mao followed the teachings of Marxism and Leninism that class analysis is applied on a class society, that class struggle is the key to social progress and that class struggle in bourgeois society must lead to the class dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie in the attainment of socialism. Mao´s class analysis of the semicolonial and semifeudal society enabled the Chinese Communist Party to win the people’s democratic revolution with the correct program and strategy and tactics, and proceed to the socialist revolution.
Subsequently, his class analysis of Chinese society in the period of socialist revolution and construction showed the correct handling of contradictions in such society. He reiterated the Leninist thesis that classes and class struggle would continue to exist in socialist society, that the resistance of the defeated bourgeoisie would increase 10,000-fold, and that it would take a whole historical epoch for the proletariat to completely defeat the bourgeoisie. He was well grounded in recognizing the threat of modern revisionism in China and the need for the theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship.
Mao stressed the necessity and importance of working class leadership through the Party and the basic alliance of the working class and peasantry in the new democratic revolution. He posited that the semicolonial and semifeudal society is in chronic crisis, and that the huge peasant population in the countryside serves as the basis for the strategic line of protracted people’s war and establishment of the revolutionary organs of political power even while the reactionary state still sits in the urban areas.
He developed further the Leninist theory and practice of Party building and pushed forward the rectification movement as an educational method through the mass movement for rectifying major errors and strengthening the Party by raising the revolutionary consciousness and capabilities of the Party and the masses. The rectification movement in the Party was the seminal basis for the conception of the cultural revolution in socialist society.
Mao pointed out that the bourgeoisie, after being politically and legally deprived of the private ownership of the means of production, retreats to the cultural realm to survive and make new recruits even among the children of the working people being educated under the socialist system. The cultural sphere can thus become the breeding ground for bourgeois subjectivist ideas, revisionism and retrogression, unless an indefinite series of proletarian cultural revolutions are undertaken.
Mindful of the way modern revisionism arose in the cultural sphere and then the political sphere in the superstructure in the Soviet Union, Mao put forward the theory and practice of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. This involves a process of revolutionizing the relations of production and the superstructure through a mass movement led by the proletariat and its party.
I. Development of Maoism in the Philippines
Prior to the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968, we the proletarian revolutionaries in the Philippines, adhered to the teaching of Lenin that there can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory, and that the first requisite in Party building is ideological building. We applied the revolutionary theory of Marxism and Leninism in the formulation of the basic documents of the Congress of Reestablishment: Rectify Errors and Rebuild the Party, Constitution of the Communist Party of the Philippines and Program for a People´s Democratic Revolution.
We read and studied the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, These included the Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Wages, Prices and Profit, Anti-Dühring, Critique of the Gotha Program, Civil War in France, What Is to Be Done, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, State and Revolution, Two Tactics of Social Democracy, “Left Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Foundations of Leninism, Short History of the CPSU, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, the Polemics on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, the little Red Book of quotations from Mao and major documents of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
We sought to understand Marxist-Leninist philosophy, political economy, social science, the history of the international communist movement, and the strategy and tactics of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, the then ongoing Vietnamese revolution and other revolutions. With the aid of theoretical studies, we tried to understand the history and situation of the world, the Philippines and the old Communist Party of the Philippine Islands established in 1930 and merged with the Socialist Party in 1938. We read and studied the documents of the old communist party before and after its merger with the socialist party.
We adopted the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as the guide to revolutionary action. We considered Mao Zedong Thought as the fruit of the long revolutionary experience of the world proletariat under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, and as the latest, most comprehensive, most profound and most effective instrument for analyzing the history and circumstances of the Filipino people and for setting forth the tasks to accomplish the people’s democratic revolution in preparation for the socialist revolution.
We sought to integrate Maoism with the concrete conditions of the Philippines and with the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution. In this regard, we applied materialist dialectics and class analysis in summing up and analyzing the history of the Filipino people, defining the basic character of Philippine society and recognizing the need for a people´s democratic revolution. These were clearly stated in the basic documents of the Congress of Reestablishment and would be further developed in the book of Amado Guerrero, Philippine Society and Revolution, first published in mimeograph form in 1969 and subsequently in several more editions and translations to this day.
We were inspired and guided by Mao’s class analysis of the semicolonial and semifeudal society. Thus, we were able to understand the character of Philippine society and clarify the need for the people’s democratic revolution, the class leadership of the proletariat, the basic alliance of the workers and peasants against the joint dictatorship of the comprador big bourgeoisie and landlord class servile to foreign monopoly capitalism, the united front policy, the strategic line of protracted people’s war, and the socialist perspective.
With the aid of Mao´s teachings on the building of the Party, the people´s army and the united front, we were able to sum up and analyze the history of the old Communist Party, We criticized the defective ideological foundation of the merger of the communist and socialist parties and mainly the bourgeois subjectivism and major Right and “Left” opportunist errors of the succession of Lava brothers who became general secretary of the Party. Ultimately, we decided to break away from the old party in 1966 and launched in 1967 what is now known as the First Great Rectification Movement (FGRM) that laid the basis for the reestablishment of the Communist Party in 1968.
We issued the basic document of the rectification movement, Rectify Errors and Rebuild the Party, both to criticize and repudiate the errors of the Lava revisionist renegades and to proclaim the urgent necessity of waging the people´s war along the general line of people’s democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. We committed ourselves to building the three great weapons of the revolution, namely, the Party as the advanced detachment of the proletariat, the revolutionary armed struggle on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance, and the united front of patriotic and progressive forces.
We criticized and repudiated the Right opportunist line of Vicente Lava, which was responsible for breaking up the people’s army into small armed teams of only five members under the “retreat for defense” policy in 1942, generating pessimism and passivity during the war of resistance against Japan, subordinating the people’s army to the US strategic plan to reconquer the Philippines and subsequently welcoming reconquest by the US in 1945, echoing the Browderite “peace and democracy” slogan of the Communist Party of the USA, and demobilizing the people’s army for parliamentary struggle within the framework of the 1946 puppet republic.
We criticized and repudiated the “Left” opportunist line of Jose Lava, which called for waging “all-out armed struggle” and “winning victory in two year’s time”, without paying attention to painstaking mass work and land reform, overestimating the so-called “geometric progression” of the people’s army due to the people´s growing hatred for the corruption of the regime of Elpidio Quirino in 1949, basing the main force of the people´s army in a series of isolated camps in the unpopulated areas of the Sierra Madre mountain range, and launching one wave of offensives and ultimately failing to overcome the enemy counter-offensive in a situation that became purely military.
We criticized and repudiated the “Right” opportunist line of Jesus Lava, which consisted of ordering the conversion of the people’s army into “organizational brigades” for legal struggle in 1955, liquidating the Party branches with the “single file policy” in 1957, disconnecting the party leaders from the remaining units of the people’s army, and failing to generate even a legal mass movement. When we the proletarian revolutionaries started to join the old Communist Party in 1962, not a single Party branch existed. We were the ones who formed the Party branches in localities and Party groups in mass organizations in the 1960s.
The First Great Rectification Movement under the guidance of Mao Zedong Thought provided a sound basis for formulating the Program for the People´s Democratic Revolution, and the Constitution of the Communist Party of the Philippines. In preparing the founding of the New People´s Army on 29 March 1969, we drew inspiration from the victorious people´s war in China and the war of national liberation in Vietnam against the US war of aggression in order to formulate the Rules of the New People´s Army. We criticized and repudiated the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique for usurping authority over remnants of the old people´s army as well as for perpetuating the mentality and practice of roving rebel bands.
The process of reestablishing the CPP was interconnected with the world proletarian revolution and the struggle against imperialism, modern revisionism and all reaction. We upheld Marxism-Leninism against modern revisionism, which was first espoused by Khrushchov and then by his successor Brezhnev. We had an adequately full view of the ideological debate between the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Communist Party. We avidly read and discussed the polemics between the two parties. We sided with the Marxist-Leninist anti-revisionist position of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.
We studied how modern revisionism had developed to dominate the Soviet Union and other communist parties in Eastern Europe and elsewhere and how the danger of modern revisionism had also emerged in China. On such grounding, we welcomed the theory and practice of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We took a Marxist-Leninist position against modern revisionism not only on the basis of studying the pertinent events abroad but also on the basis of the struggle against the Lava revisionist renegades who were acting under the influence of the Soviet-centered modern revisionism.
Since 1963, we had criticized and repudiated Khrushchov´s bourgeois populist notions of the “party of the whole people” and “state of the whole people” which denied the proletarian character of the Soviet party and state; and his bourgeois pacifist views, such as “ peaceful transition to socialism” which denied the necessity of revolutionary violence against counterrevolutionary violence, “peaceful economic competition” which gave primacy to economic struggle over political struggle and “peaceful co-existence” which was overstated as the general line of the international movement and not simply the policy governing the diplomatic relations of socialist states with other kinds of states, irrespective of ideology and social system.
The Lava revisionist renegades sought to prevent the criticism of the serious opportunist errors of the Lava brothers from 1942 onwards, and used the Khruschovite notion of “peaceful transition” to buttress their position that there must be an indefinitely long period of legal struggle leading to the general offensive in the form of uprisings. The proletarian revolutionaries took the position that the legal mass movement — especially that of the workers and peasants which they had already started to develop — must serve as the basis for organizing the people´s army and starting the people’s war. We argued that the semicolonial and semifeudal society was in chronic crisis and that the countryside and the peasantry could provide the physical and social terrain for building the people´s army and accumulating strength in stages in accordance with Mao´s teaching on the strategic line of protracted people’s war.
We studied how among various ways the Khruschovite revisionists breached the socialist system by decentralizing the economy and making enterprises and collectives autonomous and individually responsible for their cost and profit accounting, and how in contrast the Brezhnevite revisionists subsequently recentralized major enterprises along the line of state monopoly capitalism in order to assure the central authorities of funding and the ability to engage in the arms race. We studied how the socialist system had been built and how the revisionists were dismantling it in the philosophical, socio-economic, political, military and cultural spheres.
The CPP Congress of Reestablishment in 1968 was attended by twelve delegates (with one in absentia) representing around 80 Party cadres and members. These led hundreds of advanced mass activists who were being prepared for Party membership, and most of whom were leading trade unions and mass organizations of urban poor, peasants, women, youth, professionals and cultural workers. The total number of the organized urban mass base nationwide was at least 30,000. Party membership rose by the hundreds from 1968 to 1971, reaching the 2000 level in 1972 and 4000 in 1974. The Party members came mainly from the trade unions, urban poor community associations and peasant organizations, and from the Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth).
The Party established the New People´s Army on 29 March 1969 by combining the proletarian revolutionaries and the good elements of the old people´s army who had broken away from the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique. The Party central leadership based itself in the second district of Tarlac province where the good remnants of the old people´s army had a mass base of 80,000 in several municipalities. Here the New People´s Army started with 60 Red fighters armed with only nine automatic rifles and 26 inferior firearms. Despite starting from scratch, we were optimistic because of the justness of our revolutionary cause and because we were inspired by Mao´s teaching that we could grow from small to big and from weak to strong.
The Party cadres and the armed propaganda teams spread out to do mass work in the countryside of Tarlac and nearby provinces. They formed the barrio (village) organizing committees as the temporary appointive organs of political power. They established the revolutionary mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, children and cultural activists. Drawing the best elements from the mass organizations, Party branches were established as the leading force in the locality and the barrio revolutionary committees were established as elected bodies and as the relatively stable organs of political power.
The Party led the organs of political power and the mass organizations supported them in undertaking mass campaigns and activities related to mass education, mass organizing, land reform, production, health and hygiene, arbitration, and cultural work. To augment and assist the people´s army, the militia units were formed in the villages and all able-bodied men and women in mass organizations served as self-defense units. When a platoon-size strike force was subsequently formed, it coordinated daily with the local guerrilla units, armed propaganda teams and the militia units.
On the basis of the strong mass base, the New People´s Army was able to launch an increasing number of tactical offensives against the enemy. The offensives were carried out by teams, squads and a platoon-size strike force. Through these offensives the NPA increased the number of its automatic rifles from only nine in 1969 to more than 200 by the end of 1970. The enemy reacted with the 5000-strong Task Force Lawin consisting of army, police and paramilitary forces. Known peasant leaders in every village were assassinated. It became a daily and nightly occurrence for the enemy to raid 5 to 10 villages at every given time with the aim of locating the Party central leadership.
Even prior to the formal founding of the New People´s Army, politico-military training was conducted from January to March 1969 in order to prepare the deployment of a few politico-military cadres to a few provinces in other regions for opening new guerrilla zones. The most successful of these expansion efforts were in the province of Isabela in Northeast Luzon. The three politico-military cadres assigned there created a mass base of 150,000 before the end of 1970. In view of the bigger mass base and the better terrain for guerrilla warfare, the Party central leadership began to transfer to Isabela in 1970.
In the forest region of Isabela, hundreds of politico-military cadres were trained for expansion within the region and nationwide. The Party and the mass organizations in Manila and other parts of the country sent cadres there for politico-military training and participation in mass work. The trained politico-military cadres were re-deployed to establish or strengthen regional Party committees and NPA regional commands in all regions of the Philippines from 1972 to 1974. Ten regional Party and army organizations had been formed by 1974 and these increased to fifteen before 1977 as a result of the division of the Mindanao island organization into several regional organizations.
The NPA used and improved upon the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare and methods of expansion and consolidation which had been successfully tried out in Tarlac and Isabela. By the 1975 plenum of the CPP Central Committee, the nationwide strength of the NPA had reached more than 1000 high-powered rifles, with the full-time Red fighters augmented by the people´s militia and the self-defense units of mass organizations. The Party employed the policy of united front for armed struggle in order to take advantage of violent splits among the reactionaries, to open new guerrilla zones, and to acquire weapons and other forms of support from allies.
Under the direction of the newly reestablished Party, the urban-based mass movement expanded more rapidly and became more militant than ever in Manila and on a nationwide scale. It led to the First Quarter Storm of 1970. In Metro Manila alone, for three months weekly mass actions of 50,000 to 100,000 people marched from several directions and rallied at major public places and in front of the presidential palace, Congress and the US embassy in order to condemn the anti-people, anti-national and anti-democratic policies and acts of the US-directed Marcos regime. The demonstrations spread to provincial capitals and cities. Their principal slogans included: “Dare to struggle, dare to win!
People´s war is the answer to martial law!” Amado Guerrero wrote the First Quarter Storm, a series of articles, to track and define the protest mass actions against the three evils of US imperialism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
The US-Marcos regime tried with brute force to suppress the First Quarter Storm and the subsequent protest mass actions until 1972. It suspended the writ of habeas corpus on 21 August 1971 and then proclaimed martial law on 21 September 1972 in order to impose a fascist dictatorship on the people. This compelled the legal forces of the national democratic movement to go underground and encourage their activists to participate in the people’s war. The Party steadily developed its strength in the underground and encouraged indoor and outdoor protest actions.
On 24 April 1973, the Preparatory Commission of the National Democratic Front issued the 10-Point Program of Revolutionary Action (or NDF Manifesto: Unite to Overthrow the US-Marcos Dictatorship) for developing the united front in support of the revolutionary armed struggle, thus signaling the founding of the National Democratic Front (NDFP). The NDF succeeded in creating its own cells and it focused on united front work among aboveground unions and peasant associations not identified by the enemy as Party-led, among associations of urban petty-bourgeois intellectuals and professionals, among the religious and among the anti-Marcos reactionary politicians. In 1975 the Party and NDF underground in Manila carried out the La Tondeña strike which sparked off strikes in 300 workplaces nationwide. The Christians for National Liberation in the NDF played a key role in helping the workers to defy the fascist authorities.
The years of 1968 to 1977 may be considered as the foundational years of the CPP, the NPA and the NDFP under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The early development of the revolutionary forces was guided by the basic documents in the reestablishment of the CPP, the NPA and the NDFP, and by Philippine Society and Revolution. The Party was focused on waging the revolutionary armed struggle as the main form of struggle while it continued to encourage and revitalize the legal urban mass movement even with the fascist dictatorship ruthlessly ruling the country.
For the purpose of ideological building, the Party translated and published the short classic works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. It arranged and published handy volumes of Mao´s works under seven general headings: On Class Analysis and Social Investigation, On Party Building, On Building the People´s Army, On Armed Struggle, On the United Front, On Economic Work and Land Reform, and On Propaganda and Cultural Work. These were translated into Pilipino, the national language. Regional Party organizations translated them into the regional lingua franca and disseminated them within their areas of responsibility.
The CPP issued the Organizational Guide and Outline of Reports in 1971 to guide mass work and require prompt and accurate reporting of results. The Summing Up of the First Three Years in 1972 showed the results of the various aspects of the revolutionary struggle. The CPP promulgated in 1972 the Guide for Establishing the People’s Democratic Government as the people´s constitution to serve as framework for the organs of political power. It also promulgated in 1972 the Revolutionary Guide for Land Reform. Amado Guerrero´s Specific Characteristics of People´s War in the Philippines was issued in 1974, drawing on our experience in applying the strategic line of people’s war in our archipelagic country. As a result of the 1975 Plenum of the Central Committee, Our Urgent Tasks was issued in 1976 to further clarify the ideological, political and organizational line and tasks and show the methods for accomplishing them.
The decisions and directives of the Central Committee and other central organs, the reports to the Central Committee on the regional investigation of social conditions and revolutionary work, the exchange of communications between higher and lower organs of the Party leadership and other writings of Party cadres and members are a rich source of information on how the CPP applied Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory in the practice of the Philippine revolution. Ang Bayan served as the official publication of the Central Committee for news reporting and analysis of domestic and global events and issues, Special pamphlets carried important articles. Subsequently, Rebolusyon was published as the theoretical and political organ of the Central Committee.
From 1969 to 1977, the Party established regional Party organizations and regional commands of the NPA: Northeast Luzon, Northwest Luzon (including Cordillera), Central Luzon, Manila-Rizal (national capital region), Southern Tagalog, Bicol, Western Visayas, Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas, and several regions of Mindanao. These covered the entire country. Tarlac and Isabela set the pattern for opening and developing guerrilla zones, which basically involved creating the mass base and commencing land reform, showing to the masses the necessity and importance of the people’s army in the elimination of despotic landlords, local tyrants and bad elements, and proceeding to tactical offensives against the enemy armed forces carried out by teams, squads and platoons of the NPA.
Guerrilla zones were established in areas favorable for guerrilla warfare. They were consolidated to become guerrilla bases through painstaking mass work, land reform, and the building of the organs of political power and the mass organizations. Subsequently, clusters of guerrilla zones and guerrilla bases were consolidated to become the guerrilla front, with the district Party committee and the guerrilla platoon serving as the main strike force and center of gravity for the relatively dispersed squads and armed propaganda teams. Millions of people were in the guerrilla fronts. The NPA in Mindanao was the first to adopt the term “guerrilla front” and to build main guerrilla units and secondary guerrilla units.
In 1976 the NPA platoons in the region of Eastern Visayas were showing to the entire revolutionary movement how to launch frequent tactical offensives in an extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base, with the use of platoons against municipal police forces and small army detachments, and accumulate weapons rapidly despite ferocious enemy campaigns of encirclement. The Party central leadership considered it wise to multiply the platoons on a nationwide scale for the purpose of delivering effective blows against the enemy forces and seizing weapons.
Comrade Mao´s strategy and tactics of people’s war, as applied by the Specific Characteristics of People´s War in the Philippines, and as practiced by the Party cadres and NPA commanders and Red fighters, ensured the self-reliant advance of the revolutionary armed struggle in the country. The archipelagic character of the Philippines did not confound the Party. It was considered merely as an initial disadvantage but eventually a long-term advantage.
The expanse of the countryside, the archipelagic and mountainous character of the Philippines allowed the Party to divide and disperse the strength of the enemy armed forces by giving utmost importance to the principle of centralized ideological and political leadership and decentralized operations, the principle of self-reliance, and the principle of advancing in phases and eventually in stages in the people’s war. By 1977 the NPA had established more than 30 guerrilla fronts nationwide, on terrain favorable for guerrilla warfare.
In an effort to supplement and boost the self-reliant conduct of people´s war, two attempts were made to import weapons in 1972 and 1974. The first one was partially successful but in the main failed; and the second attempt completely failed. The Party summed up and drew lessons from these negative experiences. Without a common land border with a helping state, the people´s army would have to practice the principle of self’-reliance by seizing arms from the enemy forces and making the reactionary armed forces its unwitting chief transport and supply officer.
The Party summed up and analyzed its conduct of people´s war and practiced criticism and self-criticism to correct errors and improve methods and style of work. Among the notable errors criticized were the introduction of firearms without prior mass work in Negros Occidental in 1969, bypassing the Visayan peasants and going straight to the hill tribes in Mindanao in 1972 to 1973 and the concealment and passivity of two full companies of the NPA in the Isabela forest region from 1972 to 1974. The Party learned lessons from setbacks and the death or capture of Party cadres and Red commanders at various times. The revolutionary movement on the whole kept on advancing, despite some major errors and setbacks. The capture of no less than the Chairman of the Party Central Committee in 1977 did not dampen or disrupt the advance of the people´s war.
The CPP, NPA and other revolutionary forces in every region have a long and rich story to tell about how in their formative years they grew in strength and advanced against tremendous odds, how they combined the armed struggle and united front, how they coordinated the legal and illegal forms of struggle, how they at certain times committed serious errors, suffered setbacks and overcame these through criticism and self-criticism, actual rectification and revitalization. Time prevents me from giving even only a summary of the story of every region. I can only give the salients in the development of Maoism in the Philippines.
In the period of 1978 to 1986, the strength of the revolutionary forces continued to grow due to their adherence to the teachings of Mao and the leadership of the CPP, and of course due to the Filipino people’s increasing hatred for the Marcos fascist dictatorship. The armed revolutionary movement in the countryside grew steadily. In 1978 the mass movement in urban areas engaged in widespread open mass protests, including noise barrages in the national capital region and provincial cities. It was growing steadily until the Marcos regime assassinated Benigno Aquino in 1983. The Party seized the opportunity to undertake the broadest possible united front and generate the rapid upsurge of the urban mass movement. The broad masses of the people rose up in their millions to bring down the fascist regime in 1986.
The largest mass organizations in the protest mass actions belonged to the national democratic movement. At the same time, the NPA intensified its tactical offensives against the enemy. The CPP applied the policy of the broad united front in order to isolate and destroy the power of the US-propped Marcos fascist regime. It relied mainly on the basic worker-peasant alliance, gave full play to the alliance of the progressive and patriotic forces and made a temporary alliance with unreliable reactionary groups like those of Aquino and others. After the fall of Marcos, the Aquino regime was obliged to release all political prisoners but later on claimed that the revolutionary movement had nothing to do with the overthrow of Marcos.
Party membership had risen to more than 30,000 by 1986. The guerrilla fronts had increased to more than 60 in 14 regions outside the national capital region. In most regions of the country, the organs of political power and rural-based revolutionary mass organizations thrived. A total of seven million people were in guerrilla fronts. The armed strength of the NPA increased to more than 5000 high-powered rifles in 1983. The growth of the people´s army decelerated because of the errors of “Left” opportunism. The NPA strength was recorded at 5,600 at the time of the 1985 Plenum of the Central Committee. This increased to 6,100 in 1986.
Relative to the military strength of the enemy, the strength of the NPA was far smaller but it was augmented by the tens of thousands of people´s militia with inferior firearms, and by the hundreds of thousands of self-defense units of the revolutionary mass organizations. Contrary to persistent claims of the enemy armed forces and the bourgeois mass media, the NPA never reached 25,000 high powered rifles in the 1980s.
Even while the strength of the CPP, NPA, NDFP, the organs of political power and mass organizations grew from 1978 onwards because of the excellent Maoist foundation of the CPP and the perseverance of the Maoist proletarian revolutionaries, anti-Maoist elements in high positions in the CPP started to generate subjectivist and opportunist lines, especially from 1981 onwards. They spread the subjectivist line that the Philippine economy was no longer semifeudal but semicapitalist, in effect claiming that the big comprador-landlord Marcos fascist regime had industrialized and urbanized the Philippines by some 40 per cent.
The detained founding Chairman of the CPP was able to make in 1982 the long interview, “On the Mode of Production in the Philippines”, to counter the subjectivist line and to sustain with statistics and analysis the position that the Philippine economy was still agrarian and semifeudal. The interview served to support the proletarian revolutionaries in holding their ground and stopping the subjectivist line from spreading and gaining the upper hand in the entire Party. In 1983 he wrote in “The Losing Course of the Reactionary Armed Forces” that NPA strength could grow very rapidly upon reaching the critical mass of 5000 high powered rifles but warned against premature verticalization or the formation of unsustainable larger units.
“Left” and Right opportunist lines bifurcated from the subjectivist line. The “Left” opportunist line was stronger than the Right opportunist until 1987. The new Party leadership misconstrued the early phase of the strategic defensive — the phase at which the people´s war still was — as the advanced phase, and aimed to undertake what it inappropriately called the phase “strategic counteroffensive” as the final phase of the strategic defensive ushering in the strategic stalemate. The rhetorical “advance” in the people’s war concealed the fact that in 1978 the strength of the people´s army was around 1500 high powered rifles. It was still a period in which the example of building platoons and using them for frequent offensives as in Eastern Visayas, particularly Samar, still needed to be replicated in other regions.
Impetuosity afflicted not only the central leadership but also the regional leadership in Eastern Visayas when it decided in 1979-80 to build companies and two battalions. But the regional leadership was dissuaded from carrying out its plan and was directed to expand in the region by using platoons and to make its tested cadres available to the central leadership for redeployment to help other regions, especially Negros, Panay and Mindanao. In the entire country as a whole, the Party and the NPA were able to expand the mass base and wage successful tactical offensives.
The central Party leadership was not able to carry out its so-called “strategic counter-offensive”. However in 1981, the Mindanao Commission invented its own brand of military adventurism, which it called the Red Area-White area (RAWA) strategy. It decided that the time was past for mass work and that it was time to build in Mindanao 15 NPA companies as a purely military force as soon as possible by putting together the smaller NPA units which had been doing mass work. At the same time, it considered the armed city partisans and the spontaneous masses in the cities as the politico-military leading force for winning the revolution through urban insurrection. Carried away by impetuosity, underground Party cadres participated openly in mass actions dubbed as people´s strikes.
The first three companies showed good military results in offensives against the enemy. But as more companies and more staff units were formed, the mass base became weakened and eventually eroded. At the same time, the companies became vulnerable to enemy attacks as they were easily sighted by enemy informers and army reconnaissance teams. When the policy of prematurely forming NPA companies resulted in enemy successes at ambushing the NPA units and when urban underground cadres were being raided and captured or killed, the Mindanao Commission resorted to blaming “deep penetration agents” (DPAs) as the cause of the setbacks instead of reviewing and casting away the wrong policy. In 1985, the caretaker committee of the Mindanao Commission decided to launch a hysterical putschist campaign supposedly to ferret out and rid the region of so-called DPAs. It called the campaign Kampanyang Ahos, which turned out to be a criminal bloody witch hunt within revolutionary ranks.
The grave errors of “Left” opportunism were not promptly rectified and led to successful enemy attacks and such anti-informer hysteria as Kampanyang Ahos in 1985 to 1987 in Mindanao and at various times the so-called June breakthrough in Manila, anti-DPA campaigns in Northern Luzon and Negros island and Operation Plan Missing Link in the Southern Tagalog region. The advance of the armed revolution was undermined and slowed in various areas for certain periods. The premature formation of big military units resulted in the neglect of mass work and the contraction of the mass base. Lacking a deep and wide mass base, and with greatly reduced flexibility and mobility, the big NPA units became more vulnerable to enemy detection and attack. For the most part of the 1980s, it was the turn of the Bicol regional Party organization to provide the exemplary well-balanced development of the Party, the people´s army and mass base among the regional organizations.
Right opportunism reared its ugly head in 1980, when the so-called popular democrats proposed to convert the National Democratic Front into a “New Katipunan” by taking out the leadership of the proletariat, supposedly to make the united front more attractive to the bourgeoisie. A new draft program that diluted the revolutionary content of the previous program and echoed the bourgeois ideas of the Dengist counterrevolution in China was put forward but was opposed and shelved. A proposal was also made to reconsider the character of the Soviet Union as a social imperialist power in order to facilitate approach to the Soviet Union and its allies for military assistance.
The Right opportunists were stopped from pushing the proposal to change the character of the NDF and dilute its program. Their move was easily repudiated by the proletarian revolutionaries as the people’s war intensified towards the overthrow of the fascist dictatorship in 1986. But after the fall of Marcos, the Right opportunists overstated the boycott policy of the Party leadership in the 1986 presidential snap election as a strategic error and whipped up recriminations against the central leadership. They were openly grateful to the US-directed Aquino regime for the so-called democratic space and sought to ingratiate themselves with the Aquino regime.
Following his release from prison, the founding chairman of the CPP delivered a series of 10 lectures, titled Philippine Crisis and Revolution, at the University of the Philippines in 1986. It was intended to counter and clear up the confusion being sown by the “Left” and Right opportunists about the downfall of Marcos and the character of the Aquino regime, and more importantly to update Philippine Society and Revolution and clarify the new situation and the new tasks of the revolutionary movement. The compiled lectures served to firm up the revolutionary principles and raise the fighting spirit of the Party and the revolutionary movement in the face of the attempts of the Aquino regime to carry out a scheme of destroying the movement through a combination of violence and deception.
By this time, the “Left” opportunists had conjoined with the Right opportunists to exaggerate the boycott error as the worst error of the CPP, in order to cover up the far more disastrous character and consequences of their grave errors of principle and line and their crimes in the anti-DPA witch hunts. They were prating that only urban insurrections and importation of arms could successfully counter the gradual constriction of guerrilla fronts under the enemy´s war of quick decision.
After the failure of their policy of so-called nationally coordinated operations in 1987-88, which consisted almost entirely of harassment operations and which wasted a lot of ammunition, the “Left” opportunists were basically a spent force and became dispirited and defeatist. Some of them joined the Right opportunists in praising Gorbachov for his “new thinking” and then celebrating the full restoration of capitalism of the revisionist-ruled countries in 1989 to 1991. Together they started to jockey for staff positions in various reactionary parties and in various agencies of the reactionary government,
In the years from 1988 to 1991, the Party surveyed the extent of the loss of the revolutionary mass base as a result of the self-constricting line of the “Left” opportunists. It became clear in 1991 that the loss of the mass base had reached 60 per cent nationwide. The handful of “Left” opportunists who were incorrigible increasingly became anti-CPP, anti-Mao and anti-communist . They collaborated with the incorrigible Right opportunists in anti-communist propaganda and racketeering in NGOs funded by the imperialists and local reactionary politicians. In 1991, the Party Central Committee prepared for the Second Great Rectification Movement by drafting its most basic document, based on the reports and recommendations of lower Party organs and organizations.
II. Current Status of Maoism in the Philippines
The current status of Maoism in the Philippines can be understood and appreciated only by observing how the Maoist theory has been successfully applied to the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution in the new democratic stage, how it has been used to confront and overcome tremendous odds in the objective situation and solve problems in the development of the Party and other revolutionary forces; and how it has guided all the revolutionary forces to preserve themselves, grow in strength and advance.
It has been a great historic feat for the CPP to have overcome the tremendous attempts of the US imperialists and the local reactionary forces to destroy the Party and the entire revolutionary movement with the use of task forces (Lawin and Saranay) against the NPA supposedly to “nip it in the bud” from 1969 to 1972, the 14-year long fascist dictatorship of Marcos from 1972 to 1986 and the succession of pseudo-democratic regimes which have pretended to give “democratic space” to those who seek national independence and democracy but have never ceased to use brutal campaigns of anti-communist and anti-people suppression.
The CPP has been guided well by Maoist theory that the new democratic revolution, through the strategic line of protracted people´s war, is the correct and just response of the people to the joint dictatorship of the big comprador and landlord classes ruling the semicolonial and semifeudal society under the hegemony of US imperialism. It is well proven that the US and the local exploiting classes have been unable to defeat the revolutionary movement of the people with the use of violence and deception.
In more than four decades of revolutionary armed struggle, the CPP has been able to lead and build the people´s army, the organs of democratic power in the countryside, the revolutionary mass organizations, and the united front of patriotic and progressive forces. On the basis of the ever growing mass base, the CPP has been able to establish Party branches in the localities. Under its leadership, the people´s democratic government is growing against the reactionary government and the ruling system in chronic crisis.
The reactionary government is compelled to recognize the revolutionary government by engaging in peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). A series of foreign governments (Dutch, Belgian and Norwegian) have facilitated the peace negotiations. In the light of international law, the NDFP negotiates with the Manila government on an equal footing as a co-belligerent in a civil war. In this regard, the CPP founding chairman has clarified the NDFP framework of negotiations in Two Articles on the People´s Struggle for a Just Peace.
The Hague Joint Declaration sets the mutual framework of peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Manila government. The NDFP has asserted in its Unilateral Declaration of Undertaking to Apply the Geneva Conventions and Protocol I the existence of the revolutionary organs of political power as constituting the people´s democratic government. So far, the peace negotiations have resulted in the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human rights and International Humanitarian Law, signed and approved by the principals of the negotiating parties in 1998.
The revolutionary forces and people led by the CPP adhere to the principle and line that the struggle for a just and lasting peace is exactly the struggle for national liberation and democracy. Peace negotiations can succeed only if such struggle of the people is fulfilled. The revolutionary forces cannot be led astray by false illusions about the peace negotiations. Instead, they have been able to avail of the peace negotiations as a means to put forward just and reasonable demands for social, economic and political reforms for the immediate and long-term benefit of the Filipino people and have been able to broadcast internationally the program for a people´s democratic revolution and to expose the anti-national and anti-democratic character of the Manila government.
Consequent to the long-term subversion and betrayal of socialism by modern revisionism and the complete victory of the capitalist counterrevolution in China, Soviet Union and other former socialist countries, the US imperialists and the Filipino reactionaries have been prating that socialism is hopeless and that history cannot go beyond capitalism and liberal democracy. They have tried to demoralize the people and the revolutionary forces with the assertion that there is no more socialist country to aid them and that there is no other way but to capitulate to imperialism and its reactionary stooges.
But thanks to the teachings of Mao on the new democratic revolution, on the principle of self-reliance and on the mass line, the revolutionary movement of the Filipino people has been able to grow in strength and advance without having to depend on material assistance from abroad. More than 98 per cent of the NPA armed strength comes from fighting the enemy. Less than two per cent comes from donations by local allies. Again, thanks to Mao´s proletarian revolutionary line against modern revisionism since the latter half of the 1950s, the CPP has been founded on the line of upholding Marxism-Leninism and opposing modern revisionism.
All revolutionary forces of the Filipino people comprehend the degeneration and ultimate disintegration of socialism in countries ruled by the modern revisionists. They are further armed with the Maoist theory of continuing the revolution under proletarian dictatorship in socialist society. They are not only well-grounded in the practice of the new democratic revolution but have the foresight to build socialism and combat the danger of revisionism and capitalist restoration. The socialist revolution commences upon the basic completion of the new democratic revolution through the nationwide seizure of political power.
A revolutionary party of the proletariat like the CPP is subject to the law of contradiction at every stage of the revolution. It must be alert to the incessant need to struggle against the bourgeoisie that exerts influence from the outside or manages to creep into the Party through unremolded or retrogressive petty bourgeois elements who misrepresent petty bourgeois ideas as proletarian ideas and attack the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line either subtly or crudely.
Being well versed on the teachings of Mao, the CPP was in a position in 1992 to identify, criticize and repudiate the major errors of subjectivism and opportunism from 1980 to 1991 that were aimed at undermining and liquidating the Party and the revolutionary movement. It successfully launched the Second Great Rectification Movement (SGRM) in 1992, with the overwhelming support of the Party cadres and members who have remained loyal to the Party and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Exactly at the time that the incorrigible opportunists imagined that they could deliver the death blow to the CPP, the central leadership issued the rectification documents: Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors, General Review of Major Events and Decisions from 1980 to 1991 and Stand for Socialism Against Modern Revisionism. Indeed, without the Second Great Rectification Movement, the CPP and entire revolutionary movement would have disintegrated from within, as openly wished by a US intelligence asset collaborating with and pushing the incorrigible opportunists.
Instead, the Maoist proletarian revolutionaries carried out the Second Great Rectification Movement from 1992 to 1998 as a campaign of theoretical and political education to reaffirm basic revolutionary principles, criticize and repudiate the major subjectivist opportunist errors, and revitalize the revolutionary forces and movement. The SGRM also involved practical measures to counter the wrecking operations by the highly-placed degenerates and renegades, to recover the personnel and resources misappropriated and messed up by them; to reorient and redeploy cadres; and to revitalize the entire Party and revolutionary movement.
In presenting the current status of Maoism in the Philippines, it is necessary to take up the ten issues raised in the Second Great Rectification Movement and to narrate the positions and actions taken by the Party and the consequences. The issues are the following: 1. the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; 2. the anti-revisionist line; 3. the semifeudal and semicolonial character of Philippine society; 4. the general line of new democratic revolution; 5. the Party as the vanguard force; 6. protracted people’s war and guerrilla warfare; 7. revolutionary class line in the united front; 8. principle of democratic centralism; 9. the socialist perspective; and 10. proletarian internationalism.
1. Upholding the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
The CPP took note that the subjectivists and opportunists had deliberately put aside the study of the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism within the organs and units in which they were supposed to be Party cadres. They stopped such study in order to impress and bamboozle other Party members that they had better ideas, which were actually drawn from non-Maoists and anti-Maoists. They displayed an eclectic array of anti-communist petty bourgeois ideas.
Under the pretense of refining, improving or even surpassing Marxist-Leninist theory, they put forward forward the subjectivist line that Philippine society was no longer semi-feudal but “semi-capitalist” and proceeded to put forward all sorts of harebrained notions to make quick and easy the process of taking power and effecting social revolution. The “Left” opportunists offered armed urban insurrection and military adventurism in lieu of protracted people´s war. And the Right opportunists offered legal struggle and reformism as the protracted way for making the ruling system ripe for overthrow.
Among the “Left” opportunists were military putschists who fancied themselves as generals of large army units without a mass base and urban insurrectionists who wanted to mimic the anti-authoritarian insurrection in Nicaragua. At the start of the SGRM, the exponents of these variants of “Left” opportunism were already discredited by their dislike for the study of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, well-known failures and criminal acts and were exposed as aliens to the Party.
But some “Left” opportunists occupying high positions in the Party committee in the national capital region sought to stop the SGRM and in the process exposed thoroughly their Trotskyite notion that the urban uprisings of workers made unnecessary the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside for a protracted period. They had been able to camouflage their Trotskyite position previously by paying lip service to people´s war, until they thought that they had enough anti-Maoist following within the CPP.
Among the Right opportunists were exponents of bourgeois populism, liberalism, social democracy, Gorbachovism and Trotskyism. All of them concurred with the “Left” opportunists” on the subjectivist notion that the Philippine economy ceased to be semifeudal and had become “semicapitalist” upon their presumption that a significant increase of industrialization and urbanization had been accomplished under the big comprador-landlord economic policy of the US-directed Marcos fascist regime.
They invoked and mimicked Gorbachov´s “new thinking” and claimed that anti-communist thinking could strengthen the Communist Party and the new democratic revolution. They used empiricist, reformist and revisionist thinking and simply cussed as “orthodox” and “fundamentalist” the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. They posed as sophisticates in justifying eclecticism and touting a petty bourgeois supermarket of ideas in a futile attempt to swamp the theory and practice of proletarian revolution.
The Central Committee of the CPP issued the basic rectification documents in order to confront and defeat the incorrigible subjectivists and opportunists. In addition, the founding chairman of the CPP issued the article, “Critical and Creative Tasks of the Rectification Movement in the Communist Party of the Philippines”. This further clarified the rectification movement as a process of education and the tasks to be carried out in order to raise further the revolutionary consciousness and fighting capabilities of the Party and the people.
To uphold the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the Second Great Rectification Movement re-instituted the three levels of study courses for Party cadres and members. To become full Party members, candidate members are required to finish the primary course, which integrates the Maoist theory with the history and circumstances of the Filipino people. The intermediate course involves the systematic study of Maoist theory and comparative study of revolutions in various countries. The advanced course involves the study of philosophy, political economy, social science, strategy and tactics, and the history of the international communist movement from the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
The Second Great Rectification Movement revived the critique and repudiation of modern revisionism and its latest variants, especially neo-revisionism. It exposed and opposed the neoliberal economic policy, the security policy of military intervention and aggression, cultural imperialsm and related policies of US imperialism. It criticized and condemned all the major trends of anti-communist petty bourgeois thinking, including liberalism, neoliberalism, bourgeois populism, social democracy, Gorbachovism, and Trotskyism.
The living study of Maoism is encouraged above all. It means applying Maoism in social investigation and decision-making in order to solve current problems in the revolutionary struggle. Major domestic and international issues are discussed and resolved in the light of Maoist theory. The Party publishes statements and resolutions on issues and informative and analytical articles and books.. These are published in the website www.philppinerevolution.net. Audio-visual productions and illustrations of study materials are used to facilitate the theoretical and political studies of Party cadres and members who come from the working class and peasantry and have limited formal education.
2. Pursuing the anti-revisionist line
The US imperialists and the Filipino reactionaries were beside themselves gloating over the social turmoil in China, the disintegration of the revisionist regimes in Eastern Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the period of 1989 to 1991. They boasted that the CPP would weaken and disappear because supposedly it had no more foreign benefactors.
In fact, the CPP soberly regarded these events as vindication and verification of Mao´s anti-revisionist line and prediction that modern revisionism would lead to full capitalist restoration. The CPP raised even higher its appreciation for Mao´s theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship to combat revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate socialism. Those incorrigible opportunists who had claimed that Gorbachov´s perestroika and the Dengist counterrevolution were meant to save and strengthen socialism were thoroughly discredited and embarassed.
The Filipino Maoists laughed at the absurdity of the US imperialists and Filipino reactionaries in pretending to forget that the CPP was established under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, that it was founded on the line of opposing modern revisionism, that it arose and developed self-reliantly, and that it understood and was enlightened by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, the CPP gave serious attention to the continued attempts of the incorrigible opportunists to spread within the Party their bourgeois liberal, Gorbachovite and Trotskyite interpretations of the disintegration of the revisionist-ruled systems and collapse of the Soviet Union in the period of 1989 to 1991.
It was of crucial importance that Armando Liwanag published Stand for Socialism against Modern Revisionism in 1992 to explain the long struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in socialist countries, and how socialist revolution and construction had advanced until the modern revisionists succeeded in usurping power and carried out capitalist restoration. The modern revisionists captured and kept power for the purpose of capitalist restoration by casting away the revolutionary class struggle, by using the “theory of productive forces” against the socialist relations of production and promoting bourgeois and backward modes of thinking and behavior in the superstructure.
Most importantly, the work of Liwanag clarified how monopoly capitalism would continue to be stricken by ever worsening crisis and engender ever greater resistance by the proletariat and people. The anti-imperialist struggle of the people and the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie would go on to make way for socialism and communism. This renewed and strengthened the resolve of the entire Party to pursue the anti-revisionist line and dismiss as rubbish the outlandish claims that there is no alternative to capitalism or that history cannot go beyond capitalism and liberal democracy.
Filipino Maoists are proud to be among the proletarian revolutionaries upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism against imperialism, revisionism and reaction amidst the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system. The total bankruptcy of the US-instigated neoliberal policy of “free market” globalization has brought about a protracted global depression and the increased tendency of the imperialist powers to whip up state terrorism and unleash wars of aggression. Revolution is bound to reemerge as the main trend in the world as all major contradictions intensify.
3. Confronting the semifeudal and semicolonial character of Philippine society
The incorrigible subjectivists and opportunists claimed that the Philippine economy was no longer semifeudal in order to attack the general line of new democratic revolution through protracted people´s war. The CPP thoroughly debunked the claim and stressed the fact that the Marcos fascist dictatorship aggravated and deepened the underdeveloped and agrarian character of the economy by directing resources away from national industrial development and genuine land reform.
The economy remains pre-industrial and semifeudal. It continues to be plundered and impoverished by imperialist powers headed by the US and by the local exploiting classes of big compradors in cities and landlords in the countryside. The post-Marcos regimes have further aggravated the underdeveloped character of the Philippine economy and have further devastated the environment by following the neoliberal economic policy which dictates labor flexibilization, trade and investment liberalization, privatization of public assets, deregulation, and denationalization.
Industries that exist are dependent on imported equipment, components and fuel. The so-called manufacturing industry involves mere assembly of imported components for re-export. In fact, the share of manufacturing in the gross national product has dropped drastically since the shift from import-substitution manufacturing to export-oriented manufacturing. Major issuances of the CPP and the book co-authored by the CPP founding chairman with Julie de Lima, Philippine Economy and Politics, maintains that the Philippine economy is semifeudal.
Since the time of the Ramos regime from 1992 to 1998, key incorrigible Right opportunists have declared that the issue of national sovereignty is passé, blatantly denying the semicolonial character of the ruling system. They argue that it is pointless to assert national sovereignty under the US-instigated policy of neoliberal globalization. They endorse this policy even as from time to time, they pretend to criticize some of its worst features only to beg that these be reformed or improved.
They have become racketeers in non-government organizations (NGOs) and intelligence consultants of some US agencies and the Manila government. Many of them are now close advisors of the current Aquino regime on how to use psychological warfare against the revolutionary movement, within the framework of the US-designed counter-insurgency program Oplan Bayanihan. Some hold key positions in government agencies concerned with media manipulation, phony anti-poverty work, covering up human rights violations, sabotaging peace negotiations, and whipping up the anti-China scare in order to justify and facilitate US military intervention in the Philippines.
4. Carrying out the general line of new democratic revolution
True to the teachings of Mao, the CPP carries out the new democratic revolution through protracted people´s war against the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system of the big compradors and landlords subservient to US imperialism. The leading class of the revolution is the industrial proletariat. It maintains a basic alliance with the peasantry as the main force of the revolution. It wins over the urban petty bourgeoisie to form the alliance of the basic forces of the revolution. It wins further the national or middle bourgeoisie to form a patriotic alliance.
The three great weapons of the new democratic revolution are: the proletarian revolutionary party, the people’s army, and the national united front. They have brought about the revolutionary strength of the people by arousing, organizing and mobilizing them. The people’s democratic government keeps on growing in the countryside, challenging the reactionary government of big compradors and landlords, and displacing this in a growing number of localities.
The organs of democratic political power have been built in more than 110 guerrilla fronts, covering extensive portions of 70 of the 81 Philippine provinces, more than 800 of the nearly 1500 municipalities, and thousands of the more than 40,000 villages in the country. They are supported by mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, children, cultural activists, teachers and other professionals and the broad masses of the people.
Nothing is being done by the US and the local reactionary classes to change the character of Philippine society. Thus the general line of the Philippine revolution stands. The neoliberal economic policy continues to aggravate and deepen the agrarian and semifeudal character of the Philippine economy. The crisis of the world capitalist system continues to ravage the economy. The ruling reactionaries are so desperate that they allow 100 percent foreign-owned corporations to exploit and plunder the natural resources and destroy the environment. The private-public partnership program, especially in infrastructure projects, is reminiscent of the similar imperialist-big comprador program of the Marcos fascist regime.
The current US-Aquino regime is obsessed with seeking to destroy the revolutionary movement through Oplan Bayanihan, and has completely sabotaged the peace negotiations by violating agreements already made between the NDFP and the Manila government. It refuses to do its part in addressing the roots of the civil war and paving the way for a just and lasting peace through mutual agreements on basic social, economic and political reforms. It refuses to take up the offer of the NDFP for an immediate truce and alliance for the purpose of achieving national independence, people´s democracy, national industrialization and land reform, and an independent foreign policy of peace and development.
5. Building the Party as the vanguard force of the proletariat and the people
The Party is the advanced detachment of the working class. It is the vanguard force of the proletariat and people. It bears the responsibility of the working class to lead the people’s democratic revolution and to bring it forward to the socialist revolution. Being the most progressive and most productive force, the working class has the historic mission of bringing about the socialist revolution.
The CPP adheres to the teachings of Mao regarding the building of the revolutionary party of the proletariat ideologically, politically and organizationally. The ideological line of the CPP is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Its current political line is the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. Its organizational line is democratic centralism. By applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on the concrete conditions of the Philippines and on the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution, the CPP has become the largest and strongest revolutionary party of the proletariat in the entire history of the Philippines.
Through the SGRM, the CPP has reaffirmed all its basic principles and revitalized itself ideologically, politically and organizationally. It has emphasized the living study of Maoism through the concrete analysis of concrete conditions for the purpose of waging revolution. At the same time, it has strengthened the formal study courses to ensure ascending levels of revolutionary practice and theoretical knowledge. It has advanced politically by wielding the people’s army and the united front effectively. It has strengthened the Party as an organization deeply rooted among the toiling masses nationwide.
Under the SGRM from 1992 to 1998, the CPP underwent a process of all-round strengthening by consolidating and expanding the ranks of the Maoist proletarian revolutionaries while combating and rectifying the major errors of subjectivism and opportunism in the 1980s, and rebuilding those parts of the Party that were damaged or destroyed by the incorrigible opportunists and renegades. These were defeated and they left the Party in grouplets before the end of 1994. Many of those who had been previously misled and confused criticized them as well as themselves.
The CPP increased its Party membership at a cumulative rate from 1994 onwards in response to the demands of mass work and campaigns, people´s government and revolutionary armed struggle. Solid Party organizing has been demanded on the basis of the solid mass organizing. The most advanced activists are encouraged to join the Party. According to a recent report, CPP Party membership has increased from the level of 50,000 as of 2009 to the current level of 100,000. Under the SGRM from 1992 to 1998, the CPP underwent a process of all-round strengthening by combating and rectifying the major errors of the 1980s to 1991.
The CPP has announced the plan to increase its membership to 250,000 in connection with the overall plan to advance the people´s war from the stage of the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate. The current policy is to boldly expand the Party without letting in a single undesirable. Acceptance of the Party Constitution and Program for a People´s Democratic Revolution suffices for an applicant to become Party candidate member. Full membership comes by performing duties in a Party branch or group, and finishing the basic Party study course within the period of candidature.
6. Waging the protracted people’s war and guerrilla warfare
The SGRM criticized and repudiated the “Left” opportunist line of presuming that enough mass work had been accomplished and that the point had been reached to build absolutely concentrated companies and battalions, with adequate staff units at various levels, in order to accelerate the victory of the Philippine revolution. The Party pointed out that the revolution would be lost if it gave up mass work and its political superiority over the enemy and placed itself in a purely military situation, fought the way the enemy does and allowed the enemy’s military superiority to prevail.
The SGRM also criticized and repudiated the Right opportunist line that armed struggle should be reduced and made secondary to the legal democratic mass movement. The Party pointed out that the revolutionary armed struggle was the principal form of struggle for seizing political power and that the depreciation, decrease and debilitation of this form of struggle would surely lead to defeat. Indeed, as Mao emphasized, the people have nothing without a people´s army.
Under the SGRM from 1992 onwards, the Party took vigorous efforts to stress the correct line of people´s war in the entire people’s army in accordance with Mao´s teachings. In commands and units influenced or affected by the “Left” opportunist line, the Party reoriented, reorganized and redeployed the Red commanders and fighters. The prematurely formed NPA companies and battalions were reduced to platoons or oversized platoons in order to serve as the center of gravity for platoons, squads and teams that were dispersed over a wider area for maintaining and developing intimate links with the masses.
Consequently, the NPA grew in strength and advanced. This was manifested by the increase of tactical offensives and by the ability to capture enemy officers, up to senior level ranks. On the downside in certain areas, as a result of prolonged mass work, made difficult by previous errors and anti-informer hysteria, inertia developed in certain NPA units as these tended to overconcentrate on mass work and be conservative with regard to planning and carrying out tactical offensives. By and large, the NPA has overcome conservatism and is availing of the mass base for intensifying the people´s war nationwide.
Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People´s Army has become the largest and strongest revolutionary army since the defeat of the Philippine revolutionary army in the Filipino-American war of 1899-1902. The politico-military training of the Red commanders and fighters includes learning the teachings Mao on people´s war and the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare. The NPA has thousands of Red fighters with high-powered rifles, and is augmented by tens of thousands in the people´s militia and hundreds of thousands in self-defense units within the mass organizations. It is operating in 110 to 120 guerrilla fronts which covers large portions of 70 of the 81 provinces in the Philippines.
It is carrying out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base, firmed up by carrying out land reform and building organs of political power and mass organizations. It is seeking to bleed the enemy to death by an ever rising number of tactical offensives and to foil enemy campaigns of encirclement with the tactics of counter-encirclement on the scales of the guerrilla front, inter-front, regional and interregional. It is determined to bring the people´s war from the strategic defense to the strategic stalemate according to a five- year plan. It aims to develop the rudiments of regular mobile warfare on the basis of guerrilla warfare. It plans to bring the level of its armed strength to 25,000 high-powered rifles and to increase the number of guerrilla fronts to 180.
The Party branches, the organs of political power and the mass organizations are consciously assuming appropriate functions in localities in order to allow units of the people´s army to devote more time to politico-military training and to waging tactical offensives. In this connection, the self-defense units in mass organizations can perform appropriate security functions. The people´s militia acts as the local police force and may undertake certain combat functions that are well within their capabilities. At any rate, units of the people´s army rotate at performing combat, training, mass work, production and cultural work so that they continue to be closely linked to the masses.
As the CPP has announced, the NPA will intensify not only the tactical offensives to wipe out enemy units. It will also subject to attrition enemy units, facilities and convoys. To make more land available for land reform, protect the environment and conserve natural resources for future industrialization, the NPA is striving to dismantle plantations, logging and mining operations that belong to foreign companies and big compradors. It is also determined to arrest and submit to the people´s court system those human rights violators, plunderers, drug operators and other criminals liable for the most serious offenses which are being condoned and committed by the reactionary authorities.
7. Pursuing the revolutionary class line in the united front
The SGRM asserted the necessity of class analysis and class struggle, the leadership of the working class and the revolutionary class line in the national united front. It combated the Right opportunist line of seeking to delete the working class leadership from the program of the National Democratic Front with the avowed objective of attracting more people and further encouraging bourgeois middle forces to join the revolution. It also rejected the proposal of some “Left” opportunists to replace the vanguard role of the Party with that of the united front.
The Party pursues the policy of the united front for the purpose of advancing the armed struggle, serving the interests of the broad masses of the people, and reaching and mobilizing the masses in their millions. As explained in 1998 in “The Requirements of the Revolutionary United Front” by the CPP Chairman Armando Liwanag, the united front encompasses an echelon of alliances under the revolutionary leadership of the working class, such as the basic alliance of the workers and peasants, the progressive alliance of these toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the patriotic alliance of the aforesaid progressive forces with the national bourgeoisie, and the temporary and unstable alliance with those reactionary forces that are against the enemy, which is either the most reactionary force at a given time or an invading imperialist power.
The revolutionary class line runs through the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating armed strength here until the revolutionary forces and the people gain overwhelming capability for a strategic offensive to destroy the last holdouts of the enemy, seize the cities one after the other and take power nationwide. The anti-feudal united front belongs to the national united front; the working class and its party 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 despotic landlords.
In any alliance with the national bourgeoisie or sections of reactionary classes opposed to the enemy, the Party and the working class have to exercise independence and initiative in order to avoid being compromised in anything unacceptable or being caught flatfooted in case of betrayal. The objective is to defeat one enemy after another, gain strength in the process, and become capable of winning greater victories in the anti-imperialist and class struggles.
As in the overthrow of the Marcos fascist regime in 1986, the CPP once more successfully applied the policy of the broad united front, which extended to having a temporary alliance with unreliable reactionary allies, in order to isolate and overthrow the corrupt Estrada regime from 2009 to early 2001. The objective is to take advantage of the contradictions among the reactionaries, defeat one enemy after another and strengthen the revolutionary forces in the process. However, the CPP did not succeed in overthrowing the more brutal, more corrupt and more hated Arroyo regime due to the US dictation to the anti-Arroyo reactionaries to refrain from the extra-constitutional ouster of the sitting president and to use the elections as method for regime change and also due to shortcomings of the legal progressive forces in the implementation of the broad united policy.
It is not a fixed rule that the CPP uses the broad united front policy to target only the ruling reactionary clique. It is possible to use such policy to target and terminate the US domination of the Philippines and have a temporary alliance with the ruling clique for the purpose. But so far every ruling reactionary clique has been a craven puppet to US imperialism and had refused to take an anti-imperialist and patriotic position and enter into an alliance with the revolutionary forces.
In the course of peace negotiations, the NDFP has repeatedly offered to forge with the Manila government an immediate truce and alliance in order to realize the Filipino people´s aspiration for complete national independence and real democracy. But the puppet rulers have no shame and are incapable of taking the patriotic and progressive path. So far, their intention in going through the peace negotiations is to cosmeticize their anti-national and anti-democratic character and goals. They even have the gumption to seek vainly the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary forces.
8. Following the principle of democratic centralism
The SGRM criticized and repudiated the bureaucratism and commandism that the incorrigible opportunists had exercised over CPP organs and units under their authority, as well as the ultra-democracy and anarchy that they indulged in for a long time in relation to higher organs. Their anarchy peaked as they formed factions and intensified their opposition to the Party and the rectification movement. Ultimately, they blatantly brought themselves out of the Party and exposed their degenerate and renegade character.
The Party follows the organizational principle of democratic centralism. This is centralized leadership based on democracy and democracy guided by centralism. The essence of centralism is adhering to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and unifying and concentrating the will of the Party and the masses for waging the revolution. Democracy is the process by which opinions and recommendations are expressed and decisions are taken. In every collective, the individual must follow the decision of the majority. The higher organ relies on the lower leading organs for reports and recommendations. The lower organs and organizations are subordinate to higher ones and must follow their decisions.
In every organ of the Party, decisions are made by the majority or by consensus. There is freedom to discuss issues and present facts and arguments in order to arrive at decisions for improving work and work style, achieving better and bigger results and advancing the revolutionary struggle. Once a decision is taken, there is collective discipline to follow and implement the decision. A decision may be reconsidered only upon the presentation of new facts and new arguments that were not previously available or not fully considered.
All individual Party members are subordinate to the collective and the entire Party. An individual may continue to hold his or her own opinion against a decision but must follow and implement it. Freedom is necessary for presenting the facts and arguments and for discovering the truth and arriving at the best possible decision. At the same time, centralized leadership and collective discipline are necessary to concentrate the will and strength of the Party in order to defeat the enemy and advance the revolution.
Democratic centralism is not merely a set of rules governing the organizational relationship between the individual and the collective and the minority and the majority. It ensures the entire Party’s revolutionary commitment and unity under the Party program and line. No faction or individual is allowed to remain in the Party while opposing the basic principles and program of the Party. Any individual or group is free to leave the Party when it can no longer accept such principles and program. It is a matter of democratic right of the Party to uphold, defend and promote these.
9. Looking forward to the socialist revolution
The SGRM exposed the fact that the incorrigible opportunists had degenerated into anti-socialists and anti-communists. They were united in seeking to liquidate the Party but fragmented into various grouplets espousing bourgeois populism, liberalism, neoliberalism, social democracy, Gorbachovism and Trotskyism. They echoed the imperialist propaganda that the socialist cause is impossible and hopeless, and that there is no alternative to capitalism. The worst of them went into racketeering in imperialist-funded NGOs and joined the reactionary government as anti-communist propagandists and research analysts and spies of the reactionary intelligence services.
The Party steadfastly disseminated in 1992 Stand for Socialism against Modern Revisionism, showing the glorious achievements of socialism and the way the modern revisionists subverted and destroyed it. The Party stressed that the class struggle of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie would continue, and that the proletariat would successfully lead the people to national liberation, democracy and socialism in the era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution. The CPP founding chairman made in 1994 a long interview on “Socialism and the New World Order” to counter the claims of the US about the demise of the socialist cause and the perpetuity of Pax Americana.
The aspiration for a socialist future cannot be suppressed for as long as the proletariat and people are exploited and oppressed. They are compelled by the imperialists and their lackeys to wage resistance against intensifying oppression and exploitation as the crisis of monopoly capitalism worsens. Mao has shown proletarian revolutionaries the way to fight the imperialists and local reactionaries, build socialism, combat revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism, and ensure the development of socialism towards the goal of communism.
Since the period of 1989-1991, a new world disorder has arisen, with one major country or region of the world capitalist system after the other plunging into a severe socio-economic and political crisis. The neoliberal economic policy has continued to intensify exploitation and result in an ever worsening crisis of overproduction due to the over-accumulation of capital by the monopoly bourgeoisie and its finance capitalist cream. The global depression now is comparable to the Great Depression which brought about fascism and the second world war.
Bourgeois states have become more repressive than ever before. Under the pretext of anti-terrorism, they engage in state terrorism against the people. The imperialist powers have launched wars of aggression against certain countries that do not submit to their dictates. At any rate, they are increasingly at odds with each other as the worsening crisis impels them to struggle for a re-division of the world. The working class movement is resurgent in major industrial capitalist countries and the broad masses of the people are rising in the underdeveloped countries.
10. Carrying out the Philippine revolution in the spirit of proletarian internationalism
The SGRM criticized the notion that the Philippine revolution can advance only with material support, especially military assistance, from abroad. This notion was spread by some of the “Left” opportunists who had sought to get foreign assistance from 1980 to 1987 and became defeatist when they could not secure such assistance. It was contrary to what the CPP had previously decided in accordance with Comrade Mao´s teaching that the people must wage revolution self-reliantly. They should not be dependent on foreign assistance, whether it is available or not.
The CPP is waging the Philippine revolution in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. The revolution is for the benefit of the proletariat and people of the Philippines as well as of the world. It is proud to engage in an armed revolution at a time when the proletariat and people of the world are suffering from the consequences of the colossal betrayal of socialism by the communist and workers parties that succumbed to modern revisionism; and the destructive multi-pronged offensives of the US and other imperialist powers. It hopes that the Philippine revolution can inspire the people of the world to rise up and wage revolution. It has described itself as a torch bearer of the world proletarian revolution at a time that this has suffered a serious setback and is in an historic trough.
The CPP took a leading role in the preparation and holding of the International Seminar on Mao Zedong Thought on the 100th birth anniversary of Mao Zedong in Germany in1993. The seminar issued the General Declaration on Mao Zedong Thought which summed up the theoretical and practical achievements of Mao and pointed to his theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship as his greatest achievement and his legacy for the continuance of the socialist cause. The long article of CPP Central Commmitte Chairman Armando Liwanag titled “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as Guide to the Philippine Revolution” is part of the book compilation of seminar contributions titled Mao Zedong Thought Lives!
The CPP has participated and taken a prominent role in the annual International Communist Seminar in Brussels, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations and other international gatherings od communist and workers´ parties. It has made major contributions by way of sharing its experiences and ideas and helping to illuminate the road of the international communist movement and the world proletarian revolution.
The CPP has shown interest in close relations with other Maoist parties in the world and is in general aware of their strengths and weaknesses. But it does not limit its relations to any of the existing Maoist parties. It seeks to develop relations with all communist and workers´ parties under the auspices of proletarian internationalism and/or anti-imperialist solidarity.
It is interested in building a broad international united front of anti-imperialist forces of national liberation, democracy and socialism. It recognizes the need for the widest possible exchanges of ideas and experiences, mutual learning and cooperation among all revolutionary forces of the world, for the purpose of advancing the anti-imperialist movement and the world proletarian revolution.
The CPP shares its ideas and experiences worldwide. For this purpose, it uses the internet and sends delegations to international forums, seminars and conferences in order to explore and arrive at resolutions of common understanding and practical cooperation for fighting and defeating imperialism and all reaction and in the process strengthening the anti-imperialist movement and the international communist movement.
The CPP is known to discuss with other communist and other workers parties the possibility of organizing a new Communist Internationale. But it has not declared that there are already conditions for its formal establishment. It looks forward to the time that such conditions would arise. It is of the view that in the meantime the revolutionary parties of the proletariat must wage revolution, strengthen themselves in their respective countries and seek to establish revolutionary states in order to pave the way for the organization of a new Communist Internationale.
III. Prospects of Maoism and the Philippine Revolution
Prospects for the further development of Maoist theory and practice in the Philippines are bright. The proletariat and people of the Philippines can be confident of completing the new democratic revolution and proceeding to the socialist revolution. Such optimism is based on the following factors: the worsening crisis of global capitalism and the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords, the advances being made in the democratic revolution in the Philippines as well as in the anti-imperialist and socialist movements around the world, and having Maoism as the compass of revolution — from winning the new democratic and socialist stages of the revolution to combating revisionism and consolidating, developing and advancing socialism towards the ultimate goal of communism.
The adoption of higher technology has intensified the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation in the capitalist mode of production. The neoliberal policy of “free market” globalization has served to accelerate the crisis of overproduction and the over-accumulation of capital by the monopoly bourgeoisie and finance oligarchy. The wanton abuse of finance capital in a futile attempt to override the crisis of overproduction has led to a severe economic and financial crisis comparable to the Great Depression in the 1930s. The entire world economy is afflicted by depression. The imperialist powers have been unable to stop the descent of the global economy from one level of crisis to another.
The imperialist powers and their client states are intensifying repression of the toiling masses of workers and peasants, and even the middle social strata, and trying in vain to stop their mass protests and resistance. The imperialists are whipping up currents of fascism, xenophobia, racism and religious bigotry in order to obscure the roots of the capitalist crisis. The legal and political infrastructure for fascism and state terrorism has been set up and is increasingly being used. The imperialist powers are stepping up war production, war mongering and the actual launching of wars of aggression, which have been so far directed mainly against resource-rich underdeveloped countries assertive of national independence and countries opposed to the US-Zionist combine in the Middle East.
Despite their attempt to override their contradictions by uniting against the oppressed peoples and nations in underdeveloped countries, the imperialist powers are driven by the worsening crisis of global capitalism to a struggle among themselves for a re-division of the world. The full reintegration of China and Russia into the world capitalist system is a major factor in cramping of space for the imperialist powers, in the worsening of the global crisis and the intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions. Major differences of position and interest have arisen between the Western imperialist powers on the one hand and China and Russia on the other hand.
The crisis of the world capitalist system is aggravating the crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system in the Philippines. The economy is depressed as a result of decreasing income from its raw material exports and low value-added re-exports; and mounting foreign and local debt obligations. The export of contract workers is increasingly being pressed down by the depression and anti-migrant propaganda in host countries. Unemployment, reduced incomes, soaring prices of basic commodities and services, deterioration of social services and the frequent calamities caused by wanton plunder of natural resources and destruction of the environment are aggravating the poverty and misery of the broad masses of the people.
The social and economic crisis inflicts intolerable suffering on the toiling masses of workers and peasants and an increasing number of the people among the middle social strata. It incites them to wage various forms of resistance. The legal democratic mass movement is growing in strength by engaging in strikes and mass protest actions. The soil has become more fertile than ever before for the further growth and advance of the revolutionary armed struggle for national liberation and democracy.
The political crisis of the ruling system is sharpening as a result of the worsening socio-economic crisis. The struggle for power and bureaucratic loot is intensifying among the reactionaries at various levels. Every regime that arises tends to monopolize power and the economic spoils, and to intimidate or coopt the intrasystemic opposition. The rival political factions compete for the support of the foreign monopoly firms and big compradors and landlords. They also compete for armed strength by collaborating with various factions within the reactionary armed forces and national police and by building their own private armies. The revolutionary forces can have unstable and unreliable reactionary allies whenever possible in order to isolate and defeat the main enemy at every given time.
It is highly probable for the CPP to realize its plan of advancing the people’s war from the strategic defense to the strategic stalemate in the next five to ten years. The strength of the CPP, NPA, NDFP, the organs of political power and mass organizations shall have increased several-fold. The frequency of tactical offensives on a national scale shall have also increased several-fold. The alliance and mutual support between the NDFP and the revolutionary forces of the Moro people shall have become ever more firm and more productive.
Even now, US military intervention in the Philippine is increasing under the pretext of combating terrorism and containing China. It is going to be more conspicuous and more offensive. The revolutionary forces and the people are doing their best to gain the most from the civil war in order to prepare against a US war of aggression. They are preparing the ground, the forces and the strategy and tactics to defeat US forces of aggression and attain retribution for the killing of 1.4 million Filipinos by the US from the beginning of the Filipino-American War in 1899 until 1913.
The military force that the US can concentrate on the Philippines can be mitigated by intensified armed struggles against the US elsewhere, and by fiscal constraints due to its ever worsening economic and financial crisis. The US is already overextended by its overseas military bases and forward stations, and by wars of aggression directed mainly against the oppressed peoples of the world and against countries that are assertive of national independence.
The world proletarian revolution will surely advance in the years to come as the major contradictions in the world intensify and preoccupy the US and its imperialist allies. The contradictions between the imperialist powers and the oppressed peoples, between the imperialist powers and countries assertive of their national independence, among the imperialist powers themselves, and between labor and capital in the imperialist countries and on a global scale are intensifying, resulting in greater disorder and more upheavals and are generating favorable conditions for the anti-imperialist and socialist movements in the world and in particular for the new democratic and socialist stages of the Philippine revolution.
Marxist-Leninist theory can fully explain how the four major contradictions work to rend global capitalism asunder and thus can guide the revolutionary parties of the proletariat and the people in winning their respective new democratic and socialist revolutions. The Maoist theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship, to combat revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate socialism provides the answer to those who question the capability of the proletariat to learn from the betrayal and reversal of socialism by modern revisionism and to uphold, defend and develop socialism onward to communism.###
