Amado Guerrero
Written by: Amado Guerrero (Jose Maria Sison);
Published: Date uncertain, but internal evidence suggests 1975.
Source: Text archived on Banned Thought which was retrieved from Philippine Revolution, (retrieved Dec. 31, 2008.);
Markup: Simoun Magsalin;
Copyright: No specific copyrights. Provided freely by the Communist Party of the Philippines.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This is a statement of the urgent tasks of the Communist Party of the Philippines in the light of the Third Plenum of the Central Committee and the most recent circumstances. Here included are the conditions, forces, methods, trends and reasons involved in carrying out such tasks.
We must unite wholeheartedly and firmly to carry out these tasks for the single purpose of winning the life-and-death struggle against the fascist dictatorial regime of the U.S.-Marcos clique and in the process carry forward the people’s democratic revolution in a comprehensive way.
Each one of us in the Party must take as much assignment and responsibility as possible, fearing neither hardship nor sacrifice and always devoting ourselves to serving the people. All of us must exert the utmost effort to lead our people towards national liberation and social emancipation.
We must resolutely carry forward the antifascist, antifeudal and anti-imperialist movement. This is the current combative expression of our general line of people’s democratic revolution against U.S. imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
The Marcos fascist dictatorship is the main force of armed counter-revolution and is ruthlessly conducting a civil war. Thus, we must give first place to the antifascist movement. We must do everything we can to push forward the democratic armed revolution against the fascist armed counterrevolution.
Everywhere in the country we must focus on the abuses of the Marcos fascist dictatorship. In the entire semicolonial and semifeudal history of the Philippines, there is no regime more infamous than this for the political tyranny and economic crisis it has unleashed against the broad masses of the people.
The “new society” (variably calling itself “constitutional authoritarianism”, “crisis government” and now lately “new democracy”) is but the old society gone far worse and far more intolerable. The reactionary state has shorn itself of all its bourgeois democratic embellishments and is nakedly acting as the coercive instrument of the big comprador-landlord-bureaucrat clique of Marcos and U.S. imperialism.
We have the Marcos fascist dictatorship as the narrowest and weakest target on which to concentrate the broadest and strongest possible attack by the people. But to achieve the most profound, most wide-ranging and most forward results in the antifascist movement, we must deliberately and clearly link it to the antifeudal and anti-imperialist movements. It is only thus that we can effectively strike at the very essence and main body of the reactionary state.
Otherwise, we would be merely calling for the restoration of formal democratic rights and worn-out processes of the ruling system. Like bourgeois democrats, and not proletarian revolutionaries, we would be going after forms and we would be missing the content of a people’s democratic revolution.
To deepen the antifascist movement, we must vigorously wage the antifeudal movement. By doing so, we develop the main force for overthrowing or causing the overthrow of the fascist dictatorship. We respond no less to the main demand of the people’s democratic revolution and win the abiding interest of the most numerous class, the peasantry, in the armed revolution.
To raise the level of the antifascist movement, we must vigorously undertake the anti-imperialist movement. We must make U.S. imperialism pay the ultimate price for having masterminded the Marcos fascist dictatorship and having been the most aggrandized by it. The longer Marcos stays in power, the stronger the anti-imperialist movement should become.
So long as we pay comprehensive attention to the antifascist, antifeudal, and anti-imperialist movement, there is no chance for U.S. imperialism and the local reactionaries to confuse the people and derail the revolution one day by simply replacing the current fascist dictatorship with another.
The Marcos fascist dictatorship is a measure of the weakening and desperation of the entire ruling system, rather than of strengthening and stability. This open terrorist rule is the absolute proof that the ruling classes can no longer rule in the old way.
The political crisis continues to worsen. The split among the reactionaries has continued to widen and become more virulent. The revolutionary mass movement, under the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat, has proven to be resilient and has expanded and intensified, instead of being crushed by the fascist counterrevolution.
Though at first taken by surprise by the ultra-rightist coup, Marcos’ political rivals have gone on to disseminate anti-Marcos propaganda in their so-called bailiwicks and maneuver for influence in the very same reactionary armed forces manipulated and used by Marcos for his fascist autocratic purposes. In the years to come, the gun will become more important than ever in the conflicts of the reactionaries.
The alliance of the Macapagal, Aquino, Lopez and Manglapus groups is not idle. Though U.S. imperialism continues to get what it wants from the Marcos fascist dictatorship, it has already assured this alliance that it should do what it can to stand in reserve in the face of Marcos’ gross unpopularity. U.S. public opinion and certain U.S. business interests recognize the fact that even as the Marcos fascist dictatorship is a short-term asset for U.S. imperialism, it is a long-term liability.
The Marcos fascist dictatorship has given no quarters to its political rivals. The ultra-rightist coup of the executive against co-equal branches of the reactionary government, against the constitutional convention and against all kinds of opposition carried extremely vindictive measures. Properties have been extorted for the personal gain of Marcos and his henchmen. The Marcos press monopoly and other Marcos assets in far larger enterprises consist mainly of robbed property.
The series of fake referendums have in progression served to merely endorse the arbitrary martial law proclamation and the autocratic rule of Marcos. The “new” constitution, the indefinite nonconvening of the interim national assembly, the supplantation of national and local elections by presidential appointment and the projection of Imelda as second-in-command and successor of the fascist dictator close every peaceful avenue to political power for Marcos’ political rivals.
The broad masses of the people have suffered most from the fascist counterrevolution. More than 95 percent of victims of illegal mass arrests and mass detention, massacres, assassination, torture, forced mass evacuation, illegal searches and looting, sexual molestation, bombardment, extortion and the like come from the ranks of ordinary people. Hundreds of thousands have become victims of direct physical abuse by the fascists.
At least three million people have been displaced, especially in the countryside, through fascist intimidation. People have been forced to abandon their homes, crops and small landholdings due to enemy “counterinsurgency” campaigns, expansion of corporate farming, “infrastructure” projects and real estate speculation.
The elimination or drastic diminution of political and economic rights and opportunities is causing incalculable suffering to the broad masses of the people. In such a situation, more people are liable to suffer oppression of the most direct and brutal kind.
The mass organizations of national-democratic character and the critical press are banned. The workers are deprived of their right to strike and the effective exercise of their trade union rights. The right of the peasants to self-organization is sabotaged by military operations and by the imposition of the “samahang nayon”. The students, together with their teachers, are under close guard and even student governments and publications are prohibited.
Every means of democratic expression is shut off. All forms of mass action opposing fascist, feudal and imperialist abuses are expressly prohibited. Even private conversations are liable to be considered “rumor-mongering”. Ownership and operation of even mimeographing machines and other minor printing equipment are also severely restricted. There are not only the written penalties but also the far more severe penalties imposed by the fascist torturers, murderers and extortionists.
Under the suffocating fascist martial rule, the broad masses of the people have no course but to fight back. They learn daily to resist their enemy. The Marcos fascist dictatorship has stood out as the best teacher by negative example. The learning process is so deep-going that the people increasingly detest not only the Marcos fascist dictatorship but also the entire ruling system.
The Marcos fascist dictatorship has, instead of effecting “peace and order”, fanned the flames of armed resistance. The New People’s Army, led by the Party, has only strengthened itself and expanded in the face of fascist abuses and barbarities. There are now tested guerrilla forces of the people’s army in all regions outside Manila-Rizal.
The armed resistance for self-determination among the people of southwestern Mindanao has been ignited and fueled by the abuses of the Marcos fascist dictatorship. This has constituted a great though indirect support to the revolutionary armed struggle of the New People’s Army.
A revolutionary underground is thriving all over the country. This is composed mainly of basic revolutionary forces led by the Party. Allied forces and other antifascist forces also have their own underground activities. In time to come, a powerful groundswell will overthrow the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
The Marcos fascist dictatorship is extremely isolated and is under fire from all directions. Contrary to its wishes it cannot be at the center of a “balancing act” between left and right. It is the ultra-right. It has made itself the target of a broad antifascist movement.
The economic crisis has rapidly worsened, making the core of the political tyranny more rotten everyday. This crisis is generated by the Marcos fascist dictatorship through its own profligacy and corruption and its subservience to U.S. imperialism which is shifting the burden of its crisis to a semicolonial dependent like the Philippines.
All our Party cadres and members must be well acquainted with the fast changing economic data in the country as a whole and in the local areas where they are so that they can give clear substance to their propaganda and agitation.
Prices have been soaring since 1970 but these have been soaring even more rapidly since the imposition of fascist martial rule. Price increases have been by several hundreds of percent since 1972. Imported commodities lead the way. The repeated oil price increases obtained by the U.S. oil companies alone have been a major factor in pushing up prices in the country.
Severe scarcities of locally produced commodities have been occurring and have been pushing up price because the main focus of the fascist regime is to encourage production of raw material for export and build up the “infrastructure” for it. Domestic prices of exportable commodities have risen so fast because exports are being made without prior attention to local needs. Food production is also grossly inadequate and food requirements are dependent on imports.
The income of the toiling masses are forced down to yield high profits to the U.S. and other foreign monopolies and the local exploiting classes. Wage levels have sunk too far below the price of basic commodities. The wage increases recently announced by the fascist regime do not correspond to the inflation since 1970 and can be completely circumvented due to the loopholes provided by the antilabor fascist regime.
It is openly admitted in watered-down statistics of the reactionary government that the purchasing power of the peso has gone down from 1965 to 1970 to 74 centavos and more rapidly from 1970 to l975 to 33 centavos. This is bad enough. But the fact is that the purchasing power of the peso has certainly gone down to far less than 20 centavos.
According to no less than the National Economic Development Authority, the top economic agency of the fascist regime, a worker must earn P45.00 daily for his family to subsist. Another agency, the Private Development Corporation of the Philippines, has also arrived at the slightly higher figure of P46.00. Even when applied faithfully, the new minimum wage of P10.00, P9.00 and P7.00 for nonagricultural workers in Greater Manila, nonagricultural workers in the provinces and regular agricultural workers, respectively, are far below the level of subsistence.
Unemployment is more rampant than ever. Forty percent of the employable population is without employment. This exceeds the chronic level of 25 percent noted in 1970. Most of the unemployed are in the countryside, under the guise of being irregular farm workers. Many of the unemployed continue to flock into the cities to look for jobs that are not available.
There is no land reform whatsoever. It is a big hoax, obvious from the very start. The tenant masses have been merely offered to buy land from their landlords at prohibitive prices. The bogus land reform has been used as cover for divesting the tenant masses of their tenancy rights, for arranging high fixed land rent and promoting usury, for expanding corporate farming and for enriching Marcos-controlled corporations on fertilizer, pesticide and farm equipment sales contracts with the reactionary government.
U.S. and other foreign investors are encouraged to extract superprofits on their direct investments, loans and trade. Restrictions that should have fallen on U.S. investments upon the termination of the Parity Amendment and the Laurel-Langley Agreement have been overridden by obnoxious antinational provisions of the Marcos constitution and presidential decrees enlarging those privileges already available to foreign investors in those foreign investments incentives laws before fascist martial rule.
U.S. investments and assets amount to far more than the well-known figure of $3.0 to $4.0 billion and comprise 85 percent of all foreign investments. Ownership is often camouflaged by the various nationalities of U.S. multinationa1 firms.
The U.S. monopoly capitalists, followed by the Japanese, have increased their direct investments especially in banking, investment houses, mining, oil exploration, foreign and local trading, plantations, repacking and reassembly, real estate and the like in accordance with their schemes of quick profit and misshaping the economy. The basic character of the economy remains as semifeudal as ever, restricted to being a producer of raw material and consumer of finished products from abroad.
Foreign loans with usurious rates of interest and other onerous conditions are being rapidly unloaded on the Philippines by the imperialists. Whereas the foreign debt of the Philippines stood at $2.2 billion at the end of 1972, accumulated through seven years of Marcos misrule, it now stands at more than $5.0 billion after only three years of fascist rule.
This is already far beyond the critical point. New and bigger loans have been incurred to pay old debts thus there is no end to the enlargement of the debts. What is most silly is that those who take most advantage of these loans are the foreign investors and the Marcos clique of big compradors and big landlords.
The deficit in the balance of trade has gone beyond the $1.0 billion level in comparison to the few hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars three years ago. It is still mounting. A greater volume of exports at lower prices is being made, while a greater volume of imports at higher prices is being made. With their tighter stranglehold on the local financial system, the foreign monopoly capitalists are using foreign trading more rapaciously than ever before to camouflage the remittance of superprofits.
The deficit on the balance of payments keeps on rising. It went beyond the level of $500 million at the end of 1975 and is now approaching the level of $1.0 billion. As usual, bigger foreign loans are resorted to in order to cover the deficit. Taking aside the private foreign exchange deposits in commercial banks, the international reserve fund of the Philippines is composed almost entirely of foreign loans in the process of being rapidly spent and replenished by new borrowing.
A great deal of foreign loans incurred by the Marcos fascist dictatorship has been used to put up ill-planned and inflationary “infrastructure” projects beneficial essentially to the foreign investors and the local exploiting classes. The purpose is not only to make propaganda out of showy public works but also to enrich the fascist dictator and his henchmen through contract-pulling, kickbacks and real estate speculation. Marcos has controlling interests now in the major local construction firms and related companies.
The manipulation of public works is an old bureaucrat-capitalist method of self-enrichment which Marcos has indulged in an unprecedentedly colossal manner. “Infrastructure” projects are always priced high above the actual inflationary trend. A major part of the “cost” of every construction project represents the corruption of the fascist dictator and his top henchmen. The burden that is the fascist dictatorship’s profligacy and corruption is always passed on to the people in the form of higher taxes and higher toll charges or service fees.
The tax burden has increased abruptly so many times. This increased from P6.6 billion in 1972 to P14.3 billion in 1974 and has continued to rise. And yet revenues of the reactionary government fall far short of expenditures. The budgetary deficit for fiscal year 1974–75 is P5.0 billion, almost equivalent to the total budget of only a few years ago. Aside from foreign borrowing, the fascist dictatorship has had to resort to heavy local borrowing. At P20.7 billion in fiscal year 1974–75, the local public debt is now rapidly approaching P30 billion, skyrocketing from the 1972 figure of P9.7 billion.
The new development in the budgeting of the reactionary government under fascism is the rapid increase of appropriations for the military and the number one position of military expenditures. Before fascist martial rule, expenditures for public education and public works always vied for the top position, with those for the military running a poor third. Out of the total 1974–75 expenditures of P18.5 billion, the share of the military is more than P4.0 billion, including some P1.0 billion for intelligence.
On the whole, the expenditures of the reactionary government has been mainly for beefing up the personnel and equipment of the reactionary armed forces, increasing salaries and privileges of military officers, purchasing office materials and vehicles, acquiring public works equipment, paying private contractors, maintaining the general payroll, servicing public debts and the like. In every money transaction involving the fascist dictatorship, there is the inevitable cost that goes for graft and corruption.
There is no economic development whatsoever. Deterioration is the precise word for it. The gross national product is no gauge for economic growth. The transactions of the reactionary government, the foreign monopoly capitalists and the local exploiting classes compose the bulk of this gross national product. Also, this can be no basis for per capita income. More than 90 percent of the people live the lives of the exploited workers and peasants.
We must further strengthen the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally. We have made some modest achievements on the basis of which we can advance further. But we have also had certain errors and weaknesses which we must rectify so that we will not be weighed down and dragged down by these and so that we will win more and greater victories.
The reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines on the theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought constitutes a victory of profound and far-reaching significance in the Philippine revolution. We have set down and clarified the correct ideological and political line of the Party.
To set the Philippine revolution on the correct course, we have studied and researched into the history and circumstances of the Filipino people and the Party and put out the necessary documents and writings for the edification of all Filipino revolutionaries. In the process, we have successfully criticized and repudiated the long-standing revisionist lines of the Lavas and Tarucs which polluted and suffocated the old merger party.
We have disseminated the works and propagated the scientific revolutionary teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and we have successfully criticized and repudiated Soviet modern revisionism and social-imperialism. Chairman Mao’s works have been widely circulated because they not only deal correctly and elaborately with problems of a people’s democratic revolution in a semicolonial and semifeudal country but also because they contain the latest and most comprehensive summing-up of the experience of the world proletariat and people.
To propagate the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method, we have undertaken study courses, put out analyses of current national and international events, promoted further researches of national and regional scopes and required social investigations and criticism and self-criticism as methods for raising our ideological level and improving our practical work.
In our ideological rebuilding, we have had to lay stress on studying basic Marxist-Leninist principles and combating the modern revisionism of the Soviet and local renegades. We have had to rely considerably on books dealing with successful revolutions led by fraternal parties abroad. We ourselves have had to go through more revolutionary experience than what we started with in order to deepen our grasp of Marxism-Leninism. And quite a number of our Party cadres are of petty-bourgeois background who definitely have more book learning than experience.
Under these circumstances, the dogmatist tendency more than the empiricist has been most prominent among those ideologically in error. Instead of making concrete investigations and analyses in linking with the masses, there are some of us who would rather rest content with parallelisms, analogies, quotations and phrasemongering. There is even the notion that we do not deserve to be called revolutionaries if we cannot copy a successful revolution abroad.
There are also those who seem to grasp the basic principles and lessons derived from our criticism and repudiation of the Lavas and Tarucs but fail to grasp our own course of development and the different concrete circumstances that we are in. They fail to understand that we can advance only step by step and that we cannot apply on ourselves completely the same course of thinking and action demanded of the Lavas and Tarucs on the basis of forces available to them and circumstances obtaining at the end of World War II.
While the dogmatist tendency prevails among those in error, there are also those who remain immersed in their own narrow and limited experience either because they are given no chance of developing ideologically or are merely browbeaten or they systematically react to the dogmatist tendency with their own avoidance of theoretical study.
After more than seven years, our reestablished Party has gained enough experience to be in a new stage of knowing clearly the specific characteristics and specific requirements of our revolutionary struggle in the whole country and in the various localities. It is in this spirit that we call for rectification of ideological errors.
Those who have an advantage in book learning must link themselves closely to and learn from the toiling masses of workers and peasants and from our comrades who have an advantages in experience. At the same time, comrades who are of worker and peasant status must not shirk the responsibility of relating their experience to theory and asking that theory must be disclosed in a language easy to understand.
There is paucity of exchanges of worthwhile experiences within the Party, especially between our several regional Party organizations. To promote these, the Central Committee is putting out Rebolusyon as an internal and theoretical bulletin, exclusively for Party members. We intend to publish here, apart from statements and directives from the Central Committee, mainly documents emanating from regional Party conferences and articles that are the result of the application of Marxist theory in the course of concrete revolutionary practice, social investigations, study courses and criticism and self-criticism sessions.
We also intend to undertake conferences among representatives of various regional Party organizations and encourage the attendance in regional Party conferences of representatives of other regional Party organizations. In this way, the most detailed yet discreet exchanges of experience are made possible.
We urge all Party members to contribute to the general effort of giving Marxism a national form. We should disabuse ourselves of the idea that only a few theoreticians know theory and know how to apply it. We can triumph only if the entire Party consistently applies Marxist-Leninist theory on the concrete conditions of the Philippine revolution.
The Party has established its political leadership of the proletariat in the revolution by laying down, clarifying and carrying out the general line of people’s democratic revolution. This is a great victory. We have made clear the character, the motive forces, targets and perspective of this revolution.
The character of the revolution is determined by its essential task, which is to liberate the people from foreign and feudal domination and establish an independent and democratic Philippines. Such a task can be accomplished only by waging armed struggle as the main form among the motive forces to isolate and destroy the target or enemy.
At the helm of the motive forces is the proletariat. It takes as its main ally, the peasantry whose demand for land is the main content of the people’s democratic revolution and from which the main contingents of the people’s army can be drawn. The basic alliance of the toiling masses of workers and peasants is the solid foundation for the united front which must win over the urban petty bourgeoisie firstly and the national bourgeoisie secondly.
The targets of the revolution are the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class. Our current revolutionary struggle against the Marcos fascist dictatorship is more than a struggle against the ruling clique. In the course of fighting this clique, we must develop the strength to weaken the entire ruling system and then topple it in the end.
The perspective of the people’s democratic revolution is socialism. The socialist revolution must begin upon the completion of the people’s democratic revolution. Though we are ready to give concessions to the petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie in a period of transition, we shall no longer pass through a full stage of capitalist development as in the case of the old democratic revolutions before the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.
In line with the people’s democratic revolution, we have established the New People’s Army and launched the revolutionary armed struggle. Our strategic line is to encircle the cities from the countryside and through a protracted period of time develop rural bases from which to advance to seize political power.
Like the Party, the people’s army started from scratch and immediately launched revolutionary armed struggle. The people’s army has grown in strength step by step, won military victories against powerful odds and won the hearts and minds of millions by its heroic deeds.
The people’s army has been the main instrument of the Party in organizing the peasant masses. Hundreds of thousands of people in the barrios have come directly under the barrio organizing committees organized by our guerrilla squads and armed propaganda teams. We have established small guerrilla bases and far more extensive guerrilla zones, carried out mass movements and initiated land reform.
In the face of the fascist enemy, we have continued to organize and lead large masses of people. Even when our barrio organizing committees collapse in one area due to a massive and prolonged enemy campaign, those in other areas increase to more than make up for the losses and even these losses are temporary, still open to recovery.
In support of the mass movement and armed struggle in the countryside, great mass movements have also been raised by the Party in the cities. The first quarter storm of 1970 and succeeding mass actions in Manila-Rizal and other urban areas have broadcast our revolutionary propaganda all over the country and have yielded to us a considerable number of Party and non-Party activists who have been shifted to the countryside or who continue to develop the revolutionary mass movement in the cities.
It is a matter of necessity in the countryside to expand at a rate fast enough to have a wide area for maneuver for our guerrilla forces. For the purpose, we have been setting up the barrio organizing committees. While we have required the organization of these committees to follow the policy of the antifeudal united front, many of these are so haphazardly organized that unreliable elements creep in, prevail over the poor and middle peasants and flaunt their functions while the enemy is not yet around.
The error of haphazard organizing oftentimes characterized by lack or insufficiency of social investigation and by yielding membership in the barrio organizing committee to whomever are the initial contacts in a barrio, leads on to another error. The work of consolidation is not attended to. The basic mass organizations for peasants, workers, women, youth, children and cultural activists are not organized and mobilized to ensure sustained all round mass support for the revolution. Thus, the surrounding waters may be wide but shallow.
When we cannot apply the principle of combining a few cadres from the outside with many local activists, it is even very likely that the scope of our political work is narrow. Thus, we must handle well the relationship of expansion and consolidation, of making the guerrilla zone and the guerrilla base a good fighting front for us.
In cases of errors with disastrous results, the principal tendency has been adventurism or “Left” opportunism. With mass support wide or narrow but shallow there are those who engage in military actions against enemy troops and then when enemy reaction rises, they do not know where to go or the enemy catches up with them. They fail to recognize that to support and ensure the success of any important action, military or otherwise, requires painstaking mass work.
There are petty-bourgeois elements who are still unremolded and who think that it suffices to beat the drum — make sweeping propaganda but forget to do solid organizational work among the masses — and who also think that the military action of a few courageous men must precede solid organizational work among the masses.
Relying on a mere committee dominated by unreliable but prestigious personalities has also spawned commandism. The chairman and the chief of defense of the barrio organizing committee often neglect to have any collective life within the committee. And in the absence of militant mass organizations, the trend is to order people around and make them do what is beyond their level of consciousness and organization.
While we oppose “Left” opportunism as the principal tendency among those of us in error, we must also be on guard against Right opportunism. Our insistence on taking the mass line, establishing the basic mass organizations and laying the foundation for a truly people’s war should not be twisted to mean the indefinite postponement of tactical military offensives even when conditions for them are already ripe.
There have been manifestations of the Right opportunist tendency in the countryside. To consciously let in unreliable elements in barrio organizing committees and relax with the transitory advantages that they provide is one. To enjoy the conveniences of one barrio and fail to venture out and do mass work in another barrio is another. To remain fixed on going after local bad elements and fail to push forward the land reform and the armed struggle is still another.
In the cities, there is the “Left” opportunist notion prevalent among those of us in error that there can be no revolutionary struggle when there are no strikes, demonstrations and other conspicuous mass protest actions. They fail to recognize that it is perfectly revolutionary struggle to lay down the foundation for these higher forms of political action by doing solid organizational work among the masses.
There is also the notion among those of us in error that sweeping propaganda work suffices to mobilize the people. There is still another notion that the economic struggle of the workers can be slurred over, whereas we must grasp it at its own level and steadily raise it to the level of the political struggle.
There have also been instances of Right opportunism in a certain region. One is the proposal to superimpose the slogan demanding general election in the country on other slogans asserting the democratic rights and interests of the basic masses. Another is making flimsy demands to avoid even only basic trade union demands and the necessary preparations for pushing them forward.
While we have pointed out that sweeping propaganda does not suffice by itself in revolutionary work, we recognize that it is of great importance and that without it mass organizing is without an advance notice and also without direction. We need to step up our propaganda work if we are to enhance our all-round revolutionary work. Our capacity for propaganda and agitation will certainly rise as the basic masses are well organized and activists from their ranks increase.
The corrective measures that we need to undertake in our political work will be dealt with more thoroughly in succeeding sections of this statement.
The membership of the Party is drawn generally from the ranks of activists of the revolutionary mass organizations and Red fighters of the New People’s Army. It is clear that our membership is closely linked with the masses and embedded in the revolutionary mass movement. But up to now, our Party is mainly a cadre party. We have thus remained a small party.
The Party started with less than a score of Party members coming from the old merger party and 75 prospective members in late 1968. The membership increased to several scores in 1969, to a few hundreds in 1970 and close to a thousand in 1971. Since 1972, we have had a few thousand members. But since 1973, we have had a slower rate of growth.
Our Party has become nationwide. Directly under the Central Committee, there were groups of Party members in Manila-Rizal, Central Luzon, Cagayan Valley and Southern Luzon in 1969 and 1970 with most members in the first two regions mentioned. Following the Second Plenum of the Central Committee in 1971, we started to build the regional Party committees and organizations. Now, we have nine regional Party organizations covering the whole country.
The majority of Party members are now under the regional Party organizations outside Manila-Rizal. In turn, the majority of these are in the countryside developing the revolutionary armed struggle. But the Manila-Rizal Party organization still remains the single largest Party organization. Though this regional Party organization has been giving cadres to the other regions, it has continued to grow.
We realize that the growth of the Party is quite slow if we relate it to the large numbers of masses being led by the Party. At first it looks flattering that so few could lead so many and that strict standards are being applied on recruitment. But there are unflattering reasons for the slow growth.
Sectarianism, poor tasking and check-ups, irregular and ponderous study courses and lack of recruitment planning are problems both in the cities and in the countryside which have restricted the organizational growth of the Party. We must solve these.
The outstanding reason for the failure of regional Party organizations outside Manila-Rizal to outstrip the membership of the Manila-Rizal Party organization is the failure to build the mass organizations and the mass movement in the localities. Without these, there can be no sound basis for establishing local Party branches. The mass organizations, aside from the people’s army, should be the vast reservoir of revolutionary activists and Party members.
The Manila-Rizal Party organization should not be flattered and should not remain complacent about being the biggest single regional Party organization. In the last two years, there has been a tendency here for the membership to stagnate and even decrease. Just as we demand that local Party branches be set up among the peasants in the countryside, we demand that local Party branches be set up among the workers.
The fascist martial rule cannot be used as the main reason for the slow growth of the Party. The strictures of this tyrannical rule has been more than compensated for by the deep-going hatred and growing resistance of the broad masses of the people. In no year has the enemy struck down more than five percent of the membership of the Party. The Party should be able to achieve a high rate of growth because it is small but composed mostly of cadres, if only we grasp the necessity and importance of mass members of the Party from the ranks of the workers and peasants.
The Manila-Rizal based national bureaus served positively from 1971 to 1973 not only as administrators of the city-based national mass organizations but also as schools for a considerable number of new Party recruits. In the first year of martial rule, it also served positively to direct the orderly retreat of the mass organizations suddenly forced to go underground. But in 1974, it became very clear that the national bureaus had outlived their purposes.
It is admitted that the period of one year after the first year of martial rule and before their dissolution in July 1974 constituted a big delay which unduly restricted the disposition of good cadres for various regional Party organizations eager and ready to get them.
It remains our policy to expand the Party boldly on the basis of the revolutionary movement and without letting in a single undesirable. We must follow the reasonable standards set by the Party constitution and we must increase the number of Party members who are of worker and peasant status. In this regard, we must keep in mind that we do not wish to be an exclusively cadre party.
We want a large mass of Party members who are of worker and peasant status because this is a measure of the effectiveness of our revolutionary work, because we want to accomplish gigantic tasks that mainly concern and involve them and because we want to counteract and dilute the negative influences that Party members coming from other classes are liable to bring into the Party.
The Party upholds democratic centralism as its basic organizational principle. This is centralized leadership based on democracy and democracy guided by centralized leadership. By this principle, we can stand and act united and well informed on any important matter. We must apply this principle consistently.
The committee system at every level of leadership, from the Central Committee down to the branch executive committee, is the most important tool of the principle of democratic centralism. The leading committee at a certain level is the point of concentration for an entire Party organization on that level and for lower organs and lower organizations; and within the collectivity of the committee democracy, is carried over from the lower ranks.
With so few Party members taking on large tasks, there is a tendency for a far fewer Party leaders to take on large tasks. When the Party leaders are often attending to large tasks in different places and have difficulties in often coming together, there is always the danger that single Party leaders decide matters that should be taken up in a committee.
Thus, there are conditions for the phenomenon of one-man monopoly of affairs to arise. Indeed it has arisen in the Party and we have been combating this for a long time. Until now, it persists because the conditions for it to keep on arising persist.
The standard organizational solution to this problem is to have a smaller standing committee more easily convened than the full and large committee to act and decide on matters under the guidance of standing policies. For instance, there is the Political Bureau of our Central Committee, then there is the Executive Committee and still there is the General Secretariat. There is the executive committee of the regional committee and then there is the secretariat.
It takes good judgment based on experience and full grasp of policies for a Party leader to make a prompt decision on an urgent matter. He could be like an army commander in an emergency military situation. But always as soon as possible he must submit his decision or action to a collective body.
Any Party leader can initiate or propose a draft or anything, though it is the chairman or the secretary who is expected to perform this leading role. But there must be some preparatory meeting in a smaller committee before presentation of matters before the plenary meeting of a larger committee. In this way, there is thoroughness in preparation and in the entire process of decision-making.
Bureaucratism is also an error contravening the spirit of democratic centralism. Our cadres should not limit themselves to merely receiving reports but they should go down for worthwhile periods of time to lower levels and to the grassroots to investigate for themselves the basis for policies, verify reports and study the correctness or incorrectness of policies.
Going down to the grassroots is good for the remolding of high and middle level Party cadres. We do not mean to say that they abandon their functions in the leading organs but for them to perform these better. And we do not mean that they dissipate their efforts in going around to many places. But they must go down to investigate typical or critical situations (whatever is the main problem that needs close attention) and link themselves closely with the masses.
The central leadership no less has undertaken certain special projects requiring special detachment of personnel, heavy fixed investments and special methods of work that are not assured of effective or sufficient support by the masses in the vicinity of operation. These should no longer be undertaken because these easily meet failure and unduly preoccupy the leadership with matters of secondary importance to a self-reliant revolutionary movement.
At lower levels of the Party, there have also been instances of business and other projects that tend to distract Party leaders from their fundamental tasks. If these projects are beneficial to the revolution, they should be undertaken by trustworthy personnel without wasting the time of Party leaders and without risking the resources of the Party which are much needed for other purposes.
All leaders and members of the Party must be diligent and thrifty. Every moment must be seized to advance the revolution. Every centavo must be spent wisely. Upon our diligence and thrift, we can fruitfully carry out the policy of self-reliance.
In this period of fascist martial rule, the Party must not only be vigilant but extra-vigilant. We must have contempt for the enemy strategically but we must take serious, meticulous account of him tactically. The fact that the Party has always been underground and involved in armed struggle since the very beginning shows that it has always been prepared and equipped to face the worst of eventualities. But there are vulnerabilities that we must be aware of so that we can guard against them.
In the cities, we must be aware that the open activists of legal progressive organizations before fascist martial rule have been used by the enemy as unwitting tracers of the Party underground. Many of these activists have been apprehended and some of them are proven or merely suspected Party members. We must apply the policy of shifting or reassigning those Party members who can no longer effectively work in their present urban assignment.
In the countryside, the Party members on the manhunt list of the enemy should adapt to the fluidity of our guerrilla activity. The risks are also high in the countryside because we have mere guerrilla squads and at the most guerrilla platoons. But certainly, here we can rely on mass support that is bigger over wider contiguous areas than in the cities. Party members who cannot work freely in the cities can work here far more freely.
In both cities and countryside, a number of comrades have sacrificed their lives and limbs or have fallen into the hands of the enemy and have suffered the most excruciating torture and the torment of incarceration. These include some members of the Central Committee and various regional Party committees.
We honor and emulate our martyrs and heroes. And we convey to our comrades in prison to steel themselves further while in prison and turn the prison into a school. We should learn from their experience. So long as our regional Party organizations keep on growing through revolutionary struggle, there is always a basis for cadres to come forward and replenish as well as reinforce the Central Committee and the regional Party committees.
Only so few among those who have fallen into the hands of the enemy have become traitors or betrayers. There are also those few who cannot stand the difficulties of the struggle and drop out or surrender themselves to the enemy. All these renegades are only a handful and do not make even two percent of those who have fallen into the hands of the enemy. We should learn from their negative examples.
The Party reflects the iniquitous society outside. Thus, there are errors and weaknesses. And there are the few who go overboard completely and become traitors. It is clear that within the Party the law of contradiction and the law of class struggle operate. But our Party members in general are certainly good. The Party stands united to further strengthen itself.
We must build the revolutionary mass movement in the countryside; and we must build the basic mass organizations for the peasants, youth, women, children and cultural activists to be able to generate it. Not much can be accomplished in mobilizing the great masses if our propaganda teams and guerrilla squads limit their organizing to the barrio organizing committees and small local armed groups.
The key point in our rural mass work is to arouse and organize the peasant masses in the shortest possible time and carry out the land reform movement step by step. In the course of focusing attention on the organization of the peasant association in a typical farming barrio, the other basic mass organizations can also be organized. The peasant activists can easily move the youth, women, children and cultural activists of their own class to accomplish their self-organization.
The farm workers’ association, the union of nonagricultural workers and fishermen’s association are also basic mass organizations that should be organized wherever there is a basis. In cases where there are already mass organizations positively working for the people’s interests, all that we do is to adopt them and transform them further into revolutionary organizations.
There is really no point in feeling sorry that there is a paucity of Party cadres to attend to rural mass work. A propaganda team or guerrilla squad can rely on the local mass activists and can cover so many barrios, even as many as twenty within six months. It is even possible for one, two or three experienced cadres from the outside to work initially with the local mass activists and cover several barrios within a relatively short period.
The local mass activists emerging at every stage of the process of developing the revolutionary mass movement are themselves prospects for recruitment into the Party. Through this process, new Party members keep on arising and local Party branches can be established.
We must rely on and trust the masses. So long as we grasp their interests, needs and demands through social investigation and close contact with them, we can arouse and guide them to set themselves into motion. They can very well organize and mobilize themselves along the correct path. There are always enough activists arising from their own ranks to firm up the revolutionary direction of their movement.
There must be a series of careful steps in organizing the people in a barrio, especially under the present harsh conditions of fascist martial rule. There are four of these steps which culminate in the full organization of the basic mass organizations.
The first step is to get reliable contact men or liaison men in a barrio that we wish to organize. The number of these can range from three to ten. Within the shortest possible time, we should form them into what we may call the barrio liaison group. This has been called the “barrio organizing group” in Central Luzon and the “organized group of contacts” in Southern Tagalog.
Usually, we can get the contact men in a barrio because of our preceding mass work in an adjoining barrio. This is advancing wave upon wave. It is inevitable that the people in one barrio have relatives and friends in the next barrio. Sometimes too, we can reach a barrio where work must be done and get the contact men or liaison men because a Party member, a Red fighter or activist or any reliable person has relatives or friends in that barrio.
Preliminary social investigation can be done on a barrio in a day or a few days, depending on the reliability and knowledgeability of our initial contact men. The shortcomings of some of these contact men can be made up for by further contacts. We must gather all the general and specific information we need to start political work in the barrio.
There is expediency in forming the barrio liaison group from out of the contact men that we initially come to know through reliable intermediaries. Although we try immediately to put the best available men in the group, it may not be possible all the time to get the best representatives of the people in the barrio. After all, it takes time to develop revolutionary activists. Sometimes, the contact men may all come from only one part of sitio of a barrio or from only one section of the barrio population.
But we must make sure that the members of the barrio liaison group are desirous of revolution, are elements of the exploited classes, are known to be honest and good people, have extensive relations in the barrio, are intelligent and resourceful and are conscientious in performing the tasks that we give them.
The functions of the barrio liaison group include assisting us in social investigation, conducting initial propaganda among the people, putting us in touch with the positive forces and elements in the barrio gradually and secretly, and making sure that we are secure in our entry into, stay in and exit from the barrio. All these functions involve the smoothening of our initial relations with the people in the barrio.
The barrio liaison group replaces the barrio organizing committee. Some similarities between the two are apparent. But there are basic differences between them.
The barrio liaison group is no longer empowered nor expected to act as an embryo of people’s government in the barrio. Its members do not have the unwritten vested privilege to becoming automatically the chief moving force behind the mass organizations to be established. We depart from the old pernicious practice of giving initial contact men this privilege and therefore we remove or drastically reduce the condition for unreliable elements to creep into the mass organizations.
The group is also under strict advice not to expose themselves as the organizers of mass meetings. At the same time, we take care that it does not know more than it should about the actual widening and deepening of organizational and political work being done in the barrio. Of course, the members of the group receive political education from us and are tested through work and at least some of them can advance from being mere contact men. But the group as a whole does not enjoy any automatic privilege of knowing details beyond its liaison work.
The second step is for our guerrilla squad, propaganda team or cadres to move from one part of the barrio to another or fan out to several parts at one time to conduct deeper social investigation and carry out study meetings among the people, especially the poor peasants, farm workers and lower-middle peasants. We should do everything possible to link ourselves closely with the exploited masses.
Our mass work should bear fruit initially in the form of the people’s organizing groups. These include the peasant organizing groups for the poor and lower-middle peasants, the youth organizing group, the women’s organizing group and such other organizing groups that have a basis. These are based on a division of territory (sitios and parts of the barrio center if much larger than the sitio).
The organizing groups should be able to win the majority of people in their respective fields and initiate activists to arouse and mobilize them. At this point, local activists should start to arise inside and outside the organizing groups. The cadres of the Party should make sure through propaganda and study meetings on the national democratic revolution that politics takes command of all activities.
We must grasp the antifeudal class struggle as the key link of our rural mass work and we must uphold the poor peasants, farm workers and lower-middle peasants as the most reliable and resolute revolutionary force in a typical farming barrio. But we cannot go far in the antifeudal struggle if we fail to link it well with the antifascist and anti-imperialist struggle not only by way of providing the basic antifeudal forces with the most comprehensive political view but also by way of bringing into active play all other positive forces in the countryside for the revolutionary cause.
The third step can be taken soon after the establishment of the people’s organizing group in all or most of the parts of the barrio. There is already a wide and deep basis for establishing the people’s organizing committees on a barrio-wide scale.
We have already found out who is fit for what function within each committee. The basic functions to be apportioned are those that pertain to organization, education, economy, defense and health. The apportioning of functions should be settled well within the committee by the members upon our guidance. The committees should be capable of raising the enthusiasm of the majority of the people in their respective fields for the revolution and coming into coordination with struggles launched over areas that include several barrios.
Like the organizing groups based on the parts of the barrio, which must be retained as their support, the people’s organizing committees should be an underground force. They must know how to cover their activities with whatever legal and traditional organizations there are in the barrio and must know how to dissemble, use revolutionary dual tactics, before the enemy or unreliable elements.
As early as the successful establishment of the peasant organizing committees over a large area in the countryside, even only some scores of barrios, it is possible to take such a simple and easy first step towards land reform as the reduction of land rent through the systematic withholding of a certain part of the crop without the landlords’ knowledge. The campaign to reduce interest rates and eliminate usury; arrange fair prices with the merchants; promote savings, mutual aid and simple exchange of labor and nonpayment of debts under Masagana 99; raise production and productivity; and the like can be pushed.
In cases where the landlords have cunningly abandoned the old practice of sharecropping on the bases of the actual crop and resorted to the “leasehold” system (the system of high fixed land rent) promoted by the Marcos fascist dictatorship and by the Lava revisionist renegades, the tenant masses should deliver only a part of the rent and claim bad crop or some plausible reason for the nonpayment of the full rent. If all the peasants claim the same reason, the landlords will be at a loss; they cannot threaten so many with eviction and they might as well simply write into their records the undelivered part of the rent as “debts”.
Harvest after harvest, the process of peaceably outmaneuvering the landlords can be done until they come to terms with the peasants. The landlords’ threat to deprive the tenants of credit for subsistence or production will be rendered naught by the peasants’ gains from land reform, their thrift, mutual aid and simple exchange of labor and alliance with the well-to-do peasants who come under persuasion not to engage in usury.
Any despotic landlord who abuses his tenants is liable to be punished by the people’s army or secret groups of peasants. It would not pay for him to refuse to come to terms with the peasants. It would be difficult for his overseers and for scabs to show their faces before the peasant masses.
Depriving the landlord of a part of the land rent and demanding fair terms from merchants and moneylenders can be achieved only if the peasant masses are well organized, united and have a high level of political consciousness.
In a typical farming barrio, the majority of the population are poor and lower-middle peasants (most tenants belong to these strata). On this basis, the peasant organizing committee plus the other people’s organizing committees can have their way through the barrio councils of the reactionary government. Using the tactics of the united front, peasant organizing committees can enhance their strength.
The peasant organizing committees can actually control the barangay councils or any legal organization for purposes of holding public meetings favorable to the peasant masses and for revolutionary dual tactics in the face of the enemy. In effect, they can function as the embryo of the people’s governmental authority on their own strength, supplemented with cooperation of their allies who are often very much their own relatives and personal friends.
The fourth step in organizing the barrio people is to fully organize the basic mass organizations. It would seem as if the people’s organizing committees and groups are a skeleton taking full flesh. All members are enlisted and they elect the leading committees of their respective mass organizations. The peasant association includes mainly the poor and middle peasants.
Of course, like the antecedent organizing committees, the basic mass organizations cannot be fully organized all at the same time, say in one day or one night. There is the law of uneven development and differences of conditions. But we must strive that in one definite period in a barrio or group of barrios, all the basic mass organizations are fully organized. This requires planning and consistent work.
The fascist enemy has been more alert to peasant associations and far more intolerant towards them than the other mass organizations. We must be flexible in adopting legal forms for the peasant associations. We must use different names for them in different barrios. In handling them for the revolutionary cause, we must be good at combining illegal and legal methods. There must be open legal activities and clandestine illegal activities.
We should be fully aware of our strength and we should not overstep it. It is understandable if, for considerable period of time in a given group of barrios, the antifeudal movement is capable only of effecting rent reduction and other agrarian reforms in the manner that we have described in discussing the third step.
While experience has shown that mass organizations other than the peasant association are less suspected and less subjected to evil measures by the enemy, we must take the same precautions that we take in having the peasant association. Whenever the enemy comes to know that a mass organization is led by the Party, it is liable to be subjected to the most vicious attacks.
Even when we are still at the second step of organizing the people in a barrio, we should start to carry out Marxist ideological instruction and recruit into the Party the most advanced elements among the mass activists so that by the time we reach the third or fourth step, we shall have been able to establish the local Party branch in the barrio, with a group in every sitio and major part of the barrio center. At the fourth step, we shall also have Party groups within the basic mass organizations.
Upon the establishment of the basic mass organizations and the local Party branch, it becomes possible to establish the barrio revolutionary committee as the organ of democratic political power. It shall simply be a matter of putting together the representatives of the Party, the basic masses and allied forces.
In our old areas where the barrio organizing committees are reliable and are of sound character, we should work as fast as possible for their dissolution by establishing the basic mass organizations, the local Party branch and the organ of democratic political power. We can speak of working fast here, at least faster than in new areas, because we have known the people and worked with them long enough.
When the basic mass organizations flourish, the revolutionary mass movement can make great strides. Revolutionary studies and propaganda become more widespread and vigorous than before. Land reform becomes firm. The able-bodied volunteers from every mass organization can be formed into the local militia and given military training and duties. The campaign for higher production becomes effective. Every mass organization has a special agricultural plot or cottage enterprise to support the revolution. Cultural activities blossom and raise the people’s fighting spirit against the enemy. Health work is also attended to on a mass scale.
Under these circumstances, the foundation for greater military victories by the New People’s Army is laid. The people’s fighting spirit is ever rising. There is abundant material support for the revolutionary armed struggle because of land reform, higher production and special production. The local militia are a powerful reserve and auxiliary force of the people’s army. The Party becomes well-rooted in the localities by taking into its ranks the most advanced local activists.
We must further strengthen the New People’s Army as the main form of organization under the leadership of the Party and carry forward the revolutionary armed struggle as the main form of our people’s struggle. We have established a good basis for the further strengthening of the New People’s Army.
Our Red fighters have a high level of political consciousness and are closely linked with the masses. Every squad has a Party group within it and oftentimes the majority of the Red fighters are Party members. The Party branch is at presently based on the platoon.
The people’s army has grown in rifle strength from early 1969 to the eve of fascist martial rule and from the latter time to the present. What it is now in armed strength is a far cry from the 35 rifles and handguns that it started with. The people’s army now has guerrilla forces in all regions outside Manila-Rizal and has a total of twenty guerrilla fronts.
Each regional army organization is led by a regional Party committee. The nationwide expansion of the people’s army under the direction of the Central Committee is a far cry from its beginnings in the second district of Tarlac.
Our army has gained invaluable experience and has become tempered. It has undergone the acid test of massive and prolonged enemy campaigns. We recall Tarlac of 1969–71, Isabela of 1972–73, Sorsogon of 1974–75 and Aurora of 1975. At the peak of his campaigns, the enemy always employs a number of troops more than a hundred times bigger than ours, with the support of paramilitary forces, heavy weapons and the most modern means of communications and air and land transport.
Our heroic Red fighters and Party cadres together with the masses have overcome tremendous odds. Despite all the enemy campaigns, marked by the most wicked forms of “population control,” the people’s army has on the whole grown in armed strength. We have suffered some setbacks. There is not a single regional army organization which has not suffered serious setbacks at varying times. But the expansion, shifting and recoveries by our guerrilla forces have more than compensated for the losses.
Because of the nationwide expansion of the people’s army, the enemy cannot concentrate his combat troops on one region without risking the advance of our forces in other regions. So far, he has not had the pleasure of inflicting a total or strategically decisive defeat on all our forces in any single region. Within a region, the existence of several guerrilla fronts tend to weaken the enemy campaign whether directed against all or any of these.
Despite all our achievements in building the people’s army, our overall armed strength is still so small in comparison to that of the enemy who is several hundreds of times stronger. The course of historical development and the current balance of forces, particularly our level of armed strength, determine the mode of our warfare, which is guerrilla warfare.
There is no course for us but to grow in strength step by step. Our revolutionary armed struggle is just and enjoys abundant support from the people. So long as we adhere to a correct strategy and tactics, we shall grow from small and weak to big and strong. To repeat, we shall do so step by step.
Our people’s war is protracted. It shall take a long period of time to change the balance of forces between us and the enemy. We must recognize further that at the back of the local reactionaries is U.S. imperialism. This superpower will keep on supplying and assisting them at the least. It regards the Philippines as an important base for maintaining itself as a Pacific power and as a position of strength in Asia.
The worldwide decline of U.S. imperialism, especially after its failed war of aggression in Indochina, is definitely favorable to our revolutionary armed struggle. But we must also recognize that U.S. imperialism is at the moment hardening its position in the Philippines precisely as a result of its defeats elsewhere and, for a long time to come, only a deep-going people’s war can strike effectively at its foothold.
Friendly forces abroad cannot extend military assistance to us as much as we may need or wish. We must reconcile ourselves to the irony that when we need such assistance most it is most difficult for us to get it. The single imperialist power dominating the country is not yet an easy pushover in terms of the next few years. And his prior hold on our small archipelagic country is a serious factor to contend with.
We have to maintain a high degree of self-reliance in our people’s war. We must rely on ourselves most certainly to a degree higher than many revolutionary armed movements abroad. There is no course for us but to always raise our determination to get all that we need for the armed struggle from our people and from the enemy himself in the battlefield.
Our strategic line in our people’s war is to encircle the cities from the countryside until such time that we become capable of moving on the cities from stable revolutionary bases in the countryside. For a long time, we have to develop guerrilla warfare on a nationwide scale so as to convert into our advantage the disadvantage of fighting in a small archipelagic country, whose countryside is so vast in relation to the cities but fragmented into so many islands.
We are at the stage of the strategic defensive and we are precisely at its early substage of developing guerrilla warfare from almost nothing. From almost nothing because of the revisionist line of the Lavas and Tarucs that threw away all previous revolutionary gains of the people.
We have only to look at how much armed strength we have in each of the eight regions outside Manila-Rizal to know the magnitude of hard work that we have to do to further increase our squads and platoons. Again it shall take another magnitude of hard work to advance from the present phase of squads and platoons.
In the whole country or in an entire region, we are on the strategic defensive in the face of the large enemy forces encircling us. But we are capable of tactical offensives. In parts and parts of the countryside, we can achieve local superiority. At a given moment and in a limited area, we can put a small enemy unit in the tightest bag and crush it.
We must launch tactical offensives as the most essential content of our strategic defense. We simply refuse to engage our small forces in any strategically decisive engagement with the far larger forces of the enemy. Not in any region or guerrilla front should this happen. Knowing that large forces of the enemy is divisible, as everything is from a Marxist viewpoint, we must take the initiative of maneuvering the enemy to divide his forces and then concentrating our small forces at only that part of the enemy which we are sure of wiping out at a given place and time.
We should accumulate the small victories from our ambushes and raids. Over a period of time, such victories should give birth to more guerrilla squads and platoons. Then our capacity to destroy the enemy will increase. The highest mark of initiative in our guerrilla warfare is annihilating the enemy and capturing his weapons. We should not waste our precious limited ammunition and we should plan well the disposition and intensity of our lines of fire on a given target. There is no point in killing enemy troops if it is not in the course of depriving them of the weapons which they would refuse to yield.
We must learn well the rudimentary tactics of guerrilla warfare. We disperse to do propaganda and organizational work among the masses. We concentrate a superior force to destroy the enemy. We shift or circle round to avoid a superior enemy force, learn more about it through the masses and through our own reconnaissance and move to an advantageous position politically and militarily.
We can apply our guerrilla tactics well only if we have the wide and deep organized support of the people and we have eliminated the enemy informers and bad elements who are incorrigible. With the organized masses screening out the enemy, rendering him blind and deaf, we can foil his attempt to concentrate his forces on our small forces. Even when he is still preparing to attack us, we can learn through the masses his strength and movements and as a result we can act appropriately.
When the enemy is on some short-term offensive and wants to move in on us in superior force, we must deprive him of a target and we let him punch the air and thereby exhaust himself. We can remain on the active side either by laying an ambush on a weak part of the enemy disposition, attacking the enemy in an entirely different area or simply going elsewhere to do mass work. We should never accept or undertake any battle that we are not sure of winning. We may not be able to smash an enemy offensive but certainly we can frustrate it.
In all our experience, it is the massive and prolonged army campaigns, marked by forced mass evacuation and all kinds of barbarities, that have been our most outstanding problem in the battlefield. The enemy has launched such campaigns in areas where we are relatively strong over a wide area. At the early stage of such enemy campaigns, when enemy control is not yet tight, we must make him pay as much of a heavy price as we can exact from him, without prejudice to the prompt shifting of our main guerrilla forces to an alternative guerrilla front or area.
Enemy campaigns, whether short-term or protracted, are very costly to the enemy. That is why the military budget of the fascist dictatorship keeps on rising. Repeatedly frustrating them and depriving them of a target will undermine the resources of the reactionary government and also undermine the morale of enemy troops who also suffer some deprivations for nothing.
There is nothing wrong about shifting when faced with enemy forces ten or a hundred times stronger. This is neither accepting defeat nor flightism. This is preserving our forces to destroy the enemy another day. The areas that adjoin or are a short leap from the area being encircled by the enemy and under his heavy concentration are also fertile soil for revolution. Besides, we can always recover any “lost” area after sometime.
So as not to be merely forced to shift to an uncertain destination by an enemy campaign, we should be prepared long beforehand for such an enemy campaign by developing alternate guerrilla fronts and by deploying propaganda teams in areas where guerrilla warfare is to be developed from scratch or is to arise upon the shifting of guerrilla forces from elsewhere.
The unpopulated forest areas are good passageways and offer good points for schooling and temporary retreats. But to simply wait out a massive and prolonged enemy campaign of about one year to two years in the forests is to fall for the siege tactics of the enemy. It is also artificial to bring a considerable number of unarmed masses with you in this kind of retreat. Movement will be hampered. Food will soon run out and isolated kaingins are easily detected by the enemy.
When the masses are being forced to evacuate, legal mass struggle should be launched to oppose and stop the evacuation. Even when the forced mass evacuation is already done these legal mass struggles can go on for the restitution of damage to their crops and homes, for better treatment and rationing at evacuation centers and for their early return to their evacuated homes.
Some of the masses or selected families can also be directed by us to shift mainly on their own and by different ways to the area where we are shifting. There are many of those who might have relatives and friends there. Or there are public lands there which they can open like other people do.
Whenever the time comes for us to recover an area previously abandoned by us and then abandoned by the enemy, we must disarm the “home defense units” left by the enemy and increase the weaponry of the people’s army. We must clean up those who have blood debts And we must be alert for spies planted in the midst of the masses.
We have insisted that for a start in every region we must develop our guerrilla fronts on favorable terrain, that is to say, forested, mountainous and hilly terrain with population. It is in this kind of terrain where enemy rule and influence are usually weak and where we can establish our guerrilla bases within the shortest possible time at this stage. Here we not only have a wide area for maneuver but also easily achieve depth in our maneuvers. Here we can best apply the tactics of “luring in” the enemy. He can not come in without first exposing himself and alerting us. It would be easy for us to be on the look-out and prepare for his coming.
We have also directed that for a start in a region, two or three guerrilla fronts on such a terrain should be established. We have been concerned with the possible dissipation of our limited Party cadres and resources by a previous current that we should have a guerrilla force in every province. But any regional Party organization can have more than two or three guerrilla fronts, whenever development and conditions permit.
While we must take advantage of the most favorable terrain for our guerrilla warfare, we must strive to move forward from the mountain to the plains and coordinate the revolutionary forces in the mountains and in the plains as well as those in the barrios and in the towns. In dealing with the islands, we should attend to the major islands first and then the minor ones.
This early, we must also pay attention to the coastal areas. This is important inasmuch as we are an archipelagic country.
Conditions are not yet ripe for having a well-known central revolutionary base, where the Central Committee of the Party and the general headquarters the New People’s Army are seated. We should keep the enemy guessing and ignorant where our principal leaders are in the countryside. But certainly at this stage, we should be firmly taking the steps towards creating such a base in the best possible location.
The emergence of the central revolutionary base presupposes the achievement of a higher stage in our people’s war and takes into consideration the development of nationwide guerrilla warfare and international developments involving U.S. imperialism. We still have a long road to traverse in this regard. Of all the regional Party and army organizations, the most directly concerned in bringing about the conditions for the emergence of the central revolutionary base are Northwest Luzon, Northeast Luzon and Central Luzon.
It remains the long-term strategic task of the revolutionary forces of Luzon to destroy the main forces of the enemy. The day is certain to come when the forces from the north and south of Luzon will converge on Manila-Rizal in a general offensive. It also remains the long-term strategic task of the revolutionary forces of Mindanao and the Visayas to draw the forces of the enemy and disperse them. At certain times, the bulk of enemy forces can be drawn to Mindanao. The area for maneuver for us here is as wide as that in the three regions north of Manila-Rizal, and the people’s army can either take advantage of or coordinate its efforts with the resistance of the Bangsa Moro Army, if integration of the latter is not possible.
We have repeatedly pointed to the present low level of armed strength of the New People’s Army. To amplify this strength, we must give full play to the participation of the people in the revolutionary armed struggle. We should not limit this participation to merely providing for the material needs of the full-time Red fighters and watching out for the enemy.
We must give political-military training to as many able-bodied men and women from the mass organizations and from time to time get the required number of volunteers from them to participate in well-planned military actions where their inferior weapons can blend with more advanced weapons of the full-time Red fighters. In the hands of so many people inferior weapons can prove to be superior and yet we make sure that at the core of such weapons as bolos, spears, bows and arrows and homemade explosives are good guns.
When the people’s combative spirit is kept high by continuous political education and military training, they will make do with any weapon and will use every trick and ruse to disarm the enemy even with bare hands. The most important thing is the people’s revolutionary determination and wisdom. In the future, popular uprisings or insurrections will arise over extensive areas.
We must build the revolutionary mass movement in the cities by developing the trade unions, the community organizations, school organizations and others and engaging them in a broad democratic movement that is distinctly antifascist and anti-imperialist, a movement sympathetic to and supportive of the distinctly antifeudal movement in the countryside.
We must pay principal attention to the masses of workers and other urban poor. We must get the workers mainly through their workplace and trade unions and also through the communities, where they are linked with the other urban poor. We must also pay attention to the urban petty bourgeoisie, especially the student masses and their teachers.
In undertaking an open democratic movement in the cities, we can invoke the very laws of the reactionary state which contain hypocritical terms and reform concessions just to enable us to go into the midst of the masses. Among the masses, we can create a revolutionary underground and transform legal organizations or build new ones that can militantly yet legally carry forward the national-democratic line step by step.
Combining legal and illegal methods, we can develop the revolutionary mass movement in the cities. Our main tactic is to turn the table against the enemy or to use another metaphor, to take the enemy’s fortress from within by stratagem (but preparations for this are protracted and cannot be separated from the progress of the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside).
The open and legal democratic mass movement cannot be firm, vigorous and well-directed without the illegal Party at the core. The Party as an underground force must be the backbone of this movement. It must be the guide, nurturing the movement at every step and seeing to it that the next step is taken upon the ripening of conditions for it.
As in the countryside, there is nothing discouraging about the smallness of the Party amidst the large masses in the cities. So long as the mass movement develops, activists emerge and make themselves available for recruitment into the Party. Thus, the Party is strengthened to achieve more and assume greater tasks.
It is only through a reinvigorated mass movement that we can raise the new forces to tackle the new situation created by fascist martial rule. There is no other way to solve such problems as the constrictions and unhealthy conspiratorial tendencies of a narrow underground and the enemy’s cunning in looking out for the Party by merely tailing known activists of days before martial rule.
In this time of severe economic crisis, the masses of workers are stirring and pushing forward their economic struggle. We must get into this economic struggle and raise it to the level of the political struggle so that the entire working class will not only be able to fight most effectively for its own interests but also link itself fully with the rest of the people in the powerful flow of the people’s democratic revolution.
There are immediate conditions and issues which make easy the transformation of the economic struggle into a political struggle. As previously pointed out, the wage and living conditions of the workers are extremely pushed down and benefits put into law by virtue of several decades of workers’ struggle have been drastically reduced by the fascist dictator. And to top these all, the workers are prohibited from exercising their right to strike in most enterprises just because they are categorized as “vital industries” and “export industries” by the fascist dictatorship. In the main, these are enterprises owned by U.S. and other monopoly capitalists and by the big comprador bourgeoisie and big landlords.
Whenever the employer gets wind of a plan among the workers to make a mass petition for the improvement of their conditions, the easiest thing for him to do is to make “preventive suspensions” and to call on the troops and police to show up and bully the workers. Of course, when the strike, slow-down, sit-down or any mass protest action is already on, the armed minions of fascism show up to make arrests and make all sound and fury about “subversives”, “economic sabotage” and “national discipline”.
The masses of workers have experienced the right to strike in times far better than the present. Their present experience of intensified oppression and exploitation is extremely intolerable to them. Thus, no amount of fascist intimidation has deterred them from mass protest actions. These have already developed into concerted strikes and street demonstrations.
We must promote the strike movement and must make it so widespread and so intense to demonstrate to the entire nation and people that the fascist ruling clique and big bourgeoisie are so puny and weak and so rotten to the core. We must promote the economic strikes and transform them into political strikes and political demonstrations. We must hit the big bourgeoisie (and foreign monopoly capitalists and the comprador big bourgeoisie) the hardest. The rate of exploitation is highest in their enterprises.
We are presently at the stage of making the economic strikes more widespread. Even at this stage, the political dimension of such strikes is already coming to the force. We must make solid preparations to bring great multitudes of workers to the streets and plazas for political demonstrations.
In the face of fascist martial rule yellow labor leaders have become more discredited than ever. The top labor aristocrats of the country have blatantly placed themselves in the payroll of the fascist dictatorship under the so-called Trade Union Congress of the Philippines. Others have been so cowed and discouraged by anti-union restrictions that they have turned to other occupations.
The trade union movement has become more than ever a fertile ground for the revolutionary work of the Party. The masses of workers are already aware that when the Party is in their midst their economic struggle becomes resolute and militant and they become equipped with a profound political understanding of their situation and with a wide range of tactics.
Our propaganda has had some effects. Normally, it should outstrip our organizational work. But our propaganda and prestige have too far outstripped what solid results there should be for our organizational work. We should solve the problem not by reducing our propaganda. On the other hand, we should ceaselessly increase and amplify it. We should intensify not only our written propaganda of a general character but also all forms of verbal and nonverbal agitation suited to the most specific conditions. But we must harvest the crop of propaganda and agitation.
We must conduct organizational work among the workers more vigorously than ever before in conjunction with our propaganda and agitation. Since long before the fascist rule, the Party has devised the workers’ organizing committee as an underground force for organizational expansion among the workers. But learning from experience in the countryside, specifically in connection with organizing a trade union where there is none yet, we do not immediately form this committee from out of those workers whom we meet at the beginning.
We can go through a process akin to that in organizing the present masses. First step is to organize as a matter of expediency the workers’ liaison group from out of those workers with whom we can have relations at the beginning. Second step is for members of this secret group to introduce to us more workers, coming from every major part of an enterprise, so that we can form a secret organizing group in every major part of that enterprise.
Third step is for us to draw representatives or the best elements from the organizing groups to form the workers’ organizing committee. At every step, we must deepen our social investigation and provide political education and appropriate instructions to the workers that we come into contact with and organize.
The workers’ organizing committee retains the organizing groups as its subsidiaries and improves their composition whenever necessary. By the time that the committee is established, it shall have been ready to draw up the list of workers’ demands to which the majority of the workers are to be won over before the employers and his agents get wind of it. It takes only one, two or three capable Party cadres to work with the committee.
The workers’ organizing committee can be formed ahead of the workers’ organizing group only in cases where we are certain right away that reliable and capable members are on hand at the beginning at least for honest trade union work. Such cases occur whether the objective is to form a trade union where there is none, to transform an already existing one or to put up one trade union against a thoroughly discredited one.
In any case, the workers’ organizing committee and its organizing groups are a good means for giving way to the emergence of worker activists within them and outside them. The process of winning over the majority of workers to a list of union demands, creating the militant unity necessary to pursue such demands and developing the political consciousness of the worker masses are conditions for the emergence of a considerable number of worker activists.
Even only at the stage of the workers’ organizing committee and organizing groups, our Party cadres should draw into the Party the advanced elements from the ranks of worker activists. Those who are through with the mass course on the trade union work and the national-democratic revolution can be immediately introduced to Marxism, their very own class ideology to which they are very receptive.
The ideological, political and organizational work of the Party branch and the groups under it in the enterprise is the best guarantee that revolutionary politics is in command of trade union work. The Party branch forms and directs the Party groups embedded in the leadership of the trade union.
The workers’ organizing committee and its organizing groups are dissolvable upon the establishment of the Party branch and groups within the enterprise and the absorption of all the worker activists into the structure of the trade union. The organizing groups can be converted into group stewards and certainly a number of their members can qualify to be members of the Party groups. More and more workers can be put into study circles organized by the Party.
It is necessary for some of our Party cadres to draw salaries and allowances from trade unions so as to devote their full time to trade union and political work. But Party members should not monopolize the high posts in the trade union, and the members of the secretariat of the Party branch should not necessarily become the highest leaders of the trade union. We must allow the democratic broadness of the trade union; there can be good union leaders who cannot yet comply with the requirements of Party membership. And moreover, we do not want to let the enemy cripple the Party branch by simply clamping down on the trade union or its open leadership.
In further consideration of tactics in the face of the fascist enemy, trade unions under the effective leadership of the Party should not be replaced under only one chosen legal labor federation. This is to prevent the enemy from singling out one nest for attack. Our trade unions can variably be independent or members of various labor federations. We must determine the best possible status of each trade union.
The Party secretly links and coordinates all our trade unions. Our “independent” unions can retain more income from membership dues and are somewhat saved from control by the reactionary trade union leaders. But when members of different labor federations, our unions have the advantage of enjoying close relations with other unions which the Party can gradually get into.
The Party branch in an enterprise should see to it that Party members and other worker activists, with the help of the mass of their workers, do systematic revolutionary work in the communities. We must expand the workers’ revolutionary movement by promoting contacts among workers of various enterprises not only within labor federations, along industrial lines or through factory areas but also through the communities.
In communities, workers from all kinds of enterprises reside. The workers already organized and politicized by us can form secret study circles and work closely in community work with other workers. The result is that the latter will bring us to so many more enterprises. Our Party cadres should take firm hold of this possibility for expansion.
In community work, we must rely mainly on the masses of workers and other urban poor. They compose the majority of the people in most communities in the cities. If we place the focus on them in establishing the community organizing committees and either transforming the previously established mass organizations where they predominate or building new mass organizations, especially where there are none yet, it becomes relatively easy to strike roots in the community and reach the youth, women and other sections of the community.
We must consign to a secondary position the old pattern of sending youth activists, mainly student activists, into urban poor communities and then letting them deal mainly with the youth in the community. We must advance from that situation before fascist martial rule in which there were more youth and student youth organizations than workers’ organizations under our direction. We do not wish to diminish youth organizing and discourage activists from schools from participating in local community work. But we wish to give full play to the workers’ role not only in trade union affairs but also in community affairs.
The community organizing committee can be immediately formed when we rely on workers or a combination of workers and youth who are themselves residents of the community and have proven to be good activists elsewhere. Of course, we assume that they are led by Party cadres. Then, community organizing groups can be formed to cover the various parts of the community.
The community organizing committee should continuously conduct social investigation and expand its contacts to be able to do well its work at every step. Since there are mass organizations existing prior to our organizational work, the community organizing committee can draw activists from these to form the community organizing groups. These organizations usually include the neighborhood associations, youth clubs, women’s associations, squatters’ organizations, athletic clubs, groups of professionals, civic clubs, regionalist or provincial groups and the like.
The advantage in drawing activists from already existing organizations is that they are closely related to the people in the community and that we can cover effectively not only the parts of the community but also the already existing mass organizations. Though we can form new mass organizations with different names in different communities, there is a decided advantage, especially under conditions of fascist martial rule, to make use of the legality of already existing mass organizations and engage the soonest in activities by which we can go deep among the masses and gradually raise their political consciousness.
Because we rely mainly on the masses of workers and other urban poor and we take up their majority interests, it is not too difficult to transform certain already existing mass organizations. We develop a Party group within each of them and make political advances step by step. On this basis, we can maneuver or overwhelm even the “barangay councils” or “kabataang barangay” and other reactionary organs or institutions into becoming forums or channels for our revolutionary propaganda.
At every stage of the work of the community organizing committee and its organizing groups, we can draw into the Party the most advanced elements from the ranks of the revolutionary activists. In due time, the community organizing committee and its organizing groups can be dissolved because a Party branch has been established in the community and in the legal mass organizations. Mass work and Party work can so advance in the communities that the Party branch will be based eventually on the street.
It is a matter of course that the Party should be vigilant and look after its security all the time and everywhere, especially in the cities where enemy control and surveillance are tighter than in the countryside. But the Party should pay special attention to securing itself from infiltration by antisocial lumpen-proletarian elements though this be covered by our political work.
The urban petty bourgeoisie is a social stratum whose members are usually self-centered and dispersed. But their children are concentrated in universities and high schools and here they are receptive to revolutionary propaganda. The schools therefore merit the conscientious attention of the Party. These are next in importance to the factories and the urban poor communities.
The student masses and their teachers are an important force in bringing the intelligentsia and the entire urban petty bourgeoisie to the side of the revolution. They are the section of the urban petty bourgeoisie which has the most revolutionary potential. This fact has been proven repeatedly in our history; and the first quarter storm of 1970 and succeeding developments prove it. Students continue to join today’s workers’ struggles.
Quite a number of students and their teachers have gone so far as to strive remolding their outlook, engage deeply in revolutionary work and join the Party. Other students do not go as far but they accept the general line of the Party and spread this to the ranks of the petty producers and the professionals. The revolutionary fervor of the student masses could be such that even some children of the exploiting classes who are their schoolmates become attracted to the revolutionary movement.
In the course of community work, the owners of small stores and shops, professionals and white-collar employees are reached by our propaganda. Though they can render some service to the revolutionary movement, they are not as important as the student masses and teachers who are concentrated in great numbers in schools, are very capable of propaganda work and mass actions and are willing to coordinate their activities with the masses of workers.
The national-democratic organizations of the youth before fascist martial rule have done a great service to the revolutionary cause. Their work has been so fruitful in some schools and communities that there are now Party branches continuing revolutionary underground work here.
In schools where there are yet no Party branch and no Party-led mass organization, Party cadres should establish school organizing committees and organizing groups to develop the initial activists from among the students, teachers and other school personnel, push for the establishment of genuine student governments and publications, promote revolutionary ideas in old student organizations or build new ones as means of promoting such ideas and help develop unions among teachers and other school personnel.
Student activists developed by the school organizing committee and organizing groups should be directed to create as many secret study circles as they can among friends and classmates; and teacher activists should do likewise among co-employees, students and friends. The efficacy of their ideological and propaganda work should in due time result in political mass actions.
The student masses, teachers and other school personnel should link the issues on the campus with the deteriorating conditions of society in general. The progressive students of the University of the Philippines are showing the way to fight the Marcos fascist dictatorship, how to oppose antinational, antidemocratic policies and actions. They have started to make mass protests of their own and join those of the workers.
Even only at the stage of the school organizing committee and organizing groups, we can start to draw into the Party the most advanced elements from the ranks of the school activists. Eventually the Party branch should emerge in the school, and Party groups in the various parts of the school as well as in the mass organizations there. In large universities, it is possible for a section committee of the Party to lead so many Party branches that are based on the colleges.
We should continue carrying out the policy of deploying student activists for social investigation and mass work in factories and communities accessible to them. We should promote the closest links between the worker and student activists in the cities so that concerted mass actions of the worker masses and student masses will become possible.
The development of the democratic movement in Manila-Rizal and other urban areas constitutes powerful political support to the revolutionary struggle in the countryside. The people in the entire country become aroused and the enemy is shaken within his fortress.
The people in the cities should realize that the long-term development of the underground there and the steady growth of political mass actions and a preparation for the final day of reckoning for the ruling system, when their general uprising will come into coordination with the general offensive of the people’s army. The Party should promote this revolutionary thinking and dispel notions that the people’s army should now send its small but growing forces to the cities for some spectacular actions.
There are other kinds of support from the cities for the revolutionary struggle in the countryside. The Party organization in the cities can systematically dispatch cadres who still have legal status or who no longer have this to the countryside. Cadres of worker status or of student background can be sent to their native areas or where they are most needed. Funds, medicine, military equipment, medical equipment, communications equipment, clothes, revolutionary publications and other useful materials can also be collected and sent.
It is inevitable at the moment for our communication to pass through certain cities. For instance, communications between the Visayas and Mindanao on the one hand and the central leadership of the Party cannot bypass Manila-Rizal. There should be a reliable corps of couriers who can travel legally between the cities and the countryside and from one region to another.
There should be coordination between the revolutionary struggle in the cities and that in the countryside on so many things. The Party is the coordinator and should have special organs to attend to the requirements of coordination.
We must realize a broad antifascist, antifeudal and anti-imperialist united front under the leadership of the working class through its political party. As earlier pointed out, the foundation of this united front policy is the basic alliance of the working class and the peasantry.
Upon this foundation, we win over the urban petty bourgeoisie principally and the national bourgeoisie secondarily as additional allies. At the same time, we note well and take advantage of the splits among the reactionaries — the comprador big bourgeoisie and landlords who are now divided between the pro-Marcos and anti-Marcos sides.
The toiling masses of workers and peasants compose the overwhelming majority of the national population and, being the most oppressed and exploited, they are the most interested in a comprehensive antifascist, antifeudal and anti-imperialist movement. They constitute the main force of the united front. Only with such a force can we implement the policy of uniting the many to oppose the few and isolate and destroy the enemy.
Going deep among the workers and also among the peasants, the Party links and coordinates both classes for a united revolutionary struggle. At the stage of the national-democratic revolution, when armed struggle is the main form of struggle, it is of the highest importance that the Party in representation of the working class must do painstaking mass work among the peasants and build a peasant army.
It does not suffice to say that the peasantry is the closest and most reliable ally of the working class. Further analysis is required for the concrete application of the united front in the countryside. The peasantry is divided into three strata with various political attitudes on the basis of their economic status.
We must develop the antifeudal united front in the countryside. We must rely mainly on the poor peasants, win over the middle peasants and neutralize the rich peasants to oppose the evil landlord gentry. When we speak of the peasantry as the closest ally of the working class, we refer essentially to the poor peasants and middle peasants.
The barrio organizing committee was originally conceived as an organ of expansion and as the embryo of local people’s government along the line of the united front. Now that we are laying it aside, it does not mean that we are dispensing with united front work in the barrios. We simply want to strengthen the poor peasants and lower-middle peasants together in their own mass organization and not simply mix them up with the rich peasants and other unstable elements in a committee.
Carrying out the united front policy and employing its tactics, we must deal properly with all those entities outside the peasant movement. We must step by step win over the entirety of the middle peasants into the association, we must deal with them properly as individuals or groups and still try to gain some support and cooperation from them.
The rich peasants are not so much interested in the antifeudal movement. But they resent the economic crisis, the arbitrariness of the fascist dictatorship and the increasing taxes and have some patriotic feelings. When the revolutionary peasant movement is strong and the people’s army is around, they are quite a hospitable lot and may even offer to join the peasant association. It is upon the rise of reaction that their reactionary aspect comes to the fore.
There are usually traditional and legal organizations where peasants of all strata are mixed up. We cannot summarily ban or ignore these. We must study these carefully and apply the united front policy to make them truly beneficial to the poor and lower-middle peasants or helpful to the revolutionary struggle.
There are such associations or groupings as the elders’ councils, the usually informal mutual aid and labor exchange groups, irrigation associations, farm workers’ groups, cooperatives, youth clubs, athletic teams, carpenters’ groups, the parents-teachers association, 4H club, women’s club, religious sects and so on and so forth.
Even such tools of the reactionary government as the barrio or “barangay council”, “kabataang barangay”, “samahang nayon” and at certain times the rural police, ronda or “home defense”’ unit may be neutralized, transformed or broken up, depending on the circumstances. The names of these associations can often be used for revolutionary dual tactics specifically for covering up what is revolutionary.
In the countryside, there are many other kinds of possible allies. There are the teachers and other professionals, the small and middle merchants and entrepreneurs, certain relatively big businessmen and some enlightened landlords. The teachers and professionals are good medium for spreading propaganda in the towns. Doctors and nurses can give much-needed medical services and medicine. The businessmen and enlightened landlords pay taxes or give contributions and sometimes provide facilities to us.
When conditions are ripe, we must establish the organ of democratic political power along the line of the united front. We have already pointed out that the full establishment of the basic mass organizations in the barrio is the precondition for the establishment of the barrio revolutionary committee. In the period before the establishment of the barrio revolutionary committee, the functions of local self-government can be performed with the peasant organizing committee or the leading committee of the fully-organized peasant association hewing to the Party’s united front policy. In the cities, we must continue the policy of winning the support of the student masses and their teachers by way of reaching and winning over the entire urban petty bourgeoisie. Upon the success of this policy, we can also win over the national bourgeoisie as they become aware that a strong anti-imperialist movement is advocating independence and national industrialization.
Elements of the national bourgeoisie in areas within the jurisdiction of the people’s army have extended support to us. In the cities, there are also members of the national bourgeoisie who have extended support to us, especially through the student and youth movement.
In the principal conservative and reactionary organizations in the country, best exemplified by the political parties like the now dormant Nacionalista and Liberal parties, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie have been mere tails of the ruling classes — the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class.
This is true even in professional and civic organizations at the municipal, provincial and national levels. In the chambers of commerce and industry, the national bourgeoisie are also reduced to being mere tails of the big bourgeoisie and big landlords. We must form groups within these associations to consolidate the ranks of the national bourgeoisie and promote the national and democratic line.
The Preparatory Commission of the National Democratic Front and the regional united front commissions have projected and broadcast our united front policy; have succeeded in winning over groups and personalities who take the stand of the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie and have established progressive underground groups, called national-democratic cells, within the most reactionary institutions and organizations. Some of these groups have helped us reach the basic classes that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
The aforesaid commissions have the special task of winning over the middle forces to the revolutionary cause and bringing to the main organization of the Party concrete assistance in reaching the basic forces of the revolution. Legal mass organizations and mass activities of a national-democratic character should be well undertaken. Close attention must be paid to this urgent task.
The door continues to be open widely for cooperation with those who are against the Marcos fascist dictatorship who may vary in degree of anti-imperialism and antifeudalism. We must unite with them but we must maintain our independence and initiative and we struggle with them on just grounds and with restraint all for the purpose of winning the hearts and minds of the people and advancing the revolutionary struggle.
The Lava revisionist renegades have long excluded themselves from the united front. By surrendering to the Marcos fascist dictatorship and actively participating in vicious counterrevolutionary actions, this handful of revisionist fascist criminals have become totally discredited even in the few small areas which they once boasted of as their bailiwicks. The Manglapus group, fancying itself as the “social democratic party”, has also excluded itself from the united front by being no more than a tool of the Central Intelligence Agency.
As it is now taking shape, the main split among the reactionaries is between the Marcos fascist gang and an alliance ostensibly led by Macapagal. Though Marcos has a sizable number of agents within the interim national assembly and has limited its authority, especially under fascist martial rule, he refuses to convene it and intends to explicitly abolish it because he is afraid that it would become a forum for popular opposition.
Aware of Marcos’ scheme, especially with Imelda already emerging as second-in-command and successor, Macapagal has called on the officers of the reactionary armed forces to make a countercoup and rule for a short period to pave the way for the convening of the interim national assembly. Obviously, he has already gotten the assurance of U.S. imperialism that he can openly lead the opposition loyal to the ruling system. The pushing out of certain inside men of the C.I.A. from Marcos ranks bears watching.
U.S. imperialism intends to be aggrandized, whichever direction events may take in the struggle between the Marcos and Macapagal factions. This single dominant power in the country wants two dogs to compete for the same reactionary purposes. The only difference there is from reactionary competitions before martial rule is the increasingly conspicuous role of the reactionary armed forces.
Under the circumstances, with both reactionary factions competing for the good graces of U.S. imperialism, it is clear that we become more determined to carry forward the national-democratic line against fascism, feudalism and imperialism and carry out the armed struggle relentlessly. As revolutionaries, we do not want to get bogged down in debates whether the Marcos constitution or the 1935 constitution is to be promoted. The point is to fight well the Marcos fascist dictatorship and the forces behind it and in the process carry the revolution forward.
A coup d’etat led by reactionary military officers can be as bad as or worse than the present Marcos fascist dictatorship even if it promises to pave the way for the interim national assembly. However, there is also the possibility that the coup d’etat will bring to power a civilian faction and really allows it to reverse Marcos’ fascist excesses. We must be prepared for every possibility.
We must always remember that our united front work is in support of the revolutionary armed struggle. We must have reliable and long-term allies and we must also have unreliable and short-term allies. The most important thing is that we have allies to be able to reach, arouse, organize and mobilize the millions upon millions of people who are under various influences for the revolutionary cause.
We must relate the Philippine revolution to the world revolution. We are proletarian internationalists. We are carrying out the Philippine revolution to contribute our own share in the struggle of the world proletariat and the entire mankind to defeat imperialism and bring about the dawn of communism.
We recognize at the same time all anti-imperialist struggles and advances of the revolution in other countries redound to the benefit of the Philippine revolution and favor its advance. These bring about conditions favorable to our revolutionary efforts. We receive powerful political support and boundless inspiration. We learn invaluable lessons. We see in the victorious national-democratic revolutions and socialist revolutions abroad our bright future.
The astounding revolutionary victories of the Indochinese peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have signaled the irreversible decline of U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia, in the whole of Asia, in the whole world and in its very homegrounds. We are enthusiastic that the peoples of small countries can deal so stunning a blow to U.S. imperialism and make so great a contribution to the world revolution.
The stable outposts of anti-imperialism in Southeast Asia have arisen and have raised the banner of socialist revolution and socialist construction. In all unliberated countries in the region, the people are more than ever determined to carry out revolutionary armed struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys.
We are witness today to the abandonment of the ignominious Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, an outrightly U.S. military instrument, and a retreat into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This latter organization no longer flaunts the aggressive power of U.S. imperialism and even denies being an instrument of this superpower. But it admits openly that the three main concerns of its reactionary member governments are to suppress “insurgencies”; promote “peace, freedom and neutrality” and develop “regional economic cooperation”. We must not fail to recognize that the main and essential character of the ASEAN is counterrevolutionary even as we observe that this organization reflects a certain trend that is merely the result of the crisis of the world capitalist system, the U.S. imperialist debacle in Indochina and the crisis plaguing each unliberated Southeast Asian country. Such a trend should remind us the more of our responsibilities as revolutionaries.
In our vicinity are the people of China surging forward in their socialist revolution and socialist construction and standing firmly against the two superpowers. The Korean people are engaged also in socialist revolution and socialist construction in the north and are facing up to U.S. imperialism and its lackeys in the south.
Far and wide, the revolution is rapidly advancing. The people of Asia, Africa and Latin America continue to wage powerful revolutionary movements against imperialism, colonialism and hegemonism. In all other continents, including the homegrounds of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, the people are engaged in revolutionary struggles. Revolution is still the main trend in the world today and Marxist-Leninist parties are steadily forging ahead.
The world revolution is advancing under conditions of intensifying superpower contention, grave crisis of the world capitalist system and the rise of the third world people and countries as the main force of the world anti-imperialist struggle. All basic contradictions are sharpening and all the ingredients of both revolution and war are achurning.
Despite their off-and-on “peace” and “detente” duets to lull the people of the world, the two superpowers are engaged in an ever-intensifying rivalry for world hegemony and are feverishly making arms expansion and war preparations. They are trying to push each other out and gain an advantage everywhere. It is clear that their imperialist rivalry is the source of the danger of war.
Though the two superpowers are over-extending themselves all over the world, Europe is their main bone of contention. Their clashing interests are most concentrated here. War is likely to start here. Troubles are now increasingly erupting here and in its vicinity. Should war break out in that part of the world, the beasts can finish off or weaken each other while we push forward the revolution in our country and in our region.
But while war does not yet break out in Europe, Soviet social-imperialism is trying to penetrate even such a country like the Philippines which U.S. imperialism considers a permanent preserve in this part of the world. Soviet social-imperialism calculates that it must make diplomatic and trade inroads to weaken U.S. imperialism in as many places as possible and push hard its new-tsarist ambitions of world hegemony.
U.S. imperialist domination in the Philippines can be removed only by a powerful revolutionary movement. But the Soviet social-imperialists nurture the illusion that someday their long-discredited local agents, the Lava revisionist renegades, will be able to do turns for them and commit far more treachery and mischief than they presently can as shameless tools of the Marcos fascist dictatorship. Even now, within their narrow circles, the Lava revisionist renegades do not tire of talking about getting more help from their imperialist master to do more mischief.
The reason is clear why Soviet social-imperialism even as enemy of U.S. imperialism cannot be our friend in any way. While we must oppose U.S. imperialism, we must be alert to Soviet social-imperialism and frustrate its scheme. We are well past the early sixties when Soviet modern revisionism could still deceive well-intentioned people.
The present crisis of the world capitalist system has been the worst since the end of World War II and continues to deepen and worsen. The inherent law of motion of capitalism, bringing about a crisis of overproduction; the monopolistic competition among capitalist countries, especially the leading imperialist powers; and the reduction of economic territory by revolutions and by the assertion of independence by hard-pressed countries have spelled the present world capitalist crisis.
The imperialists shift the burden of crisis to those whom they can. They do so through accelerated rates of profits on direct investments, usurious loans and unequal trade. The people resist. Even a reactionary government like that of the Philippines, while determined to remain a puppet of U.S. imperialism, has to maneuver for its own sake.
The third world countries have increasingly asserted their independence and demanded a new international economic order in the face of the world capitalist crisis and superpower machinations. Underlying the phenomenon of even reactionary governments posing to assert the independence of their countries is the growth of the revolutionary movement and at the same time the concern of the reactionary leaders that they must lessen or palliate the crisis that threatens them.
It must be made clear to the people that the Marcos fascist dictatorship has broadened the diplomatic and trade relations of the Philippines out of desperation and weakness even as it still clings to U.S. imperialism as its imperialist master. The circumstances in the emergence of better Philippine relations with the Middle East countries and China are clear.
As the fascist dictator claims credit for promoting the U.S. line of “interdependence” in the third world, we must criticize and condemn him for acting as an inveterate agent of U.S. imperialism within the third world and for putting a brake on the most meaningful participation of the Philippines in the anti-imperialist struggle of the third world. We must make our own projection of the demands of the third world in the terms especially of its revolutionary people.
The facts show that under the Marcos fascist dictatorship the economic stranglehold of U.S. imperialism on the Philippines has become tighter. Because of the Marcos constitution and the fascist decrees giving more privileges to foreign investors, there is practically no more need for any new economic treaty replacing the Laurel-Langley Agreement.
The fascist dictator has always asserted that U.S. imperialism should keep its military bases in the Philippines, provide a “nuclear umbrella” and guard the skies and seas. Negotiations on the US-RP military treaties have been an old ritual repeatedly resorted to in a futile attempt to deflect the people’s anti-imperialist struggle.
The only new thing in current negotiations on such treaties is that the Marcos fascist dictatorship wants some rent on the vast tracts of land occupied by the U.S. military bases, relinquishment of some small sections of the land for Marcos’ real estate speculation and assurances of more U.S. financial and military assistance. The question of sovereignty over the U.S. military bases has long been resolved; the point has always been to assert such sovereignty by deeds.
We must strive to have the Philippine revolution enjoy not only the political support of friendly forces abroad but also concrete assistance from them. U.S. imperialism has not stopped but has even stepped up the giving of congressional and extra-congressional military and other kinds of assistance to the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
Remaining a puppet of U.S. imperialism, the Marcos fascist dictatorship misappropriates such terms as “self-reliance” and “nonalignment” in the same fashion that he domestically misappropriates such a term as “democratic revolution” for the fascist counterrevolution. Snatching terms from the revolutionary movement is an old trick of the fascist thief. But reality speaks louder.
Unlike the reactionaries, we stand on the basic principles of independence and self-reliance. Foreign assistance should only be supplementary to our independent and self-reliant efforts. Even without any foreign assistance, we should be able to fight on and advance step by step. As already pointed out, practically everything that we need can come from the people and from the battlefield.
We should be able to draw support and assistance from as many foreign friends as possible, short of falling into any trap set by the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists. We appreciate most the kind of assistance that enhances self-reliance, our armed struggle and our propaganda.
Aside from developing the closest and most fruitful relations with the Marxist-Leninist parties and other revolutionary organizations, we should pay attention to our own Filipino compatriots abroad. Associations of our compatriots should extend every possible kind of support to the revolutionary struggle in their motherland and should win the widest possible support from their host people.
The half-a-million Filipinos in the United States have a very important role gathering support for the Philippine revolution not only from their own ranks but also from the American people. U.S. intervention and the possibility of another U.S. war of aggression in the Philippines must be effectively opposed with the support of the American people.
Overseas Filipinos are found in various parts of the world. Wherever they are, they should do what they can to help their people and should prepare themselves to join the ranks of the revolutionaries in the motherland. We assume that the most progressive among them study Marxism-Leninism and take appropriate interest in the revolutionary struggles in their host countries.
The conditions in the world which now favor the advance of the Philippine revolution are bound to become more excellent. The future for all revolutionary people is bright. That of the imperialists and the reactionaries is bleak.