Boldly Advance The Philippine Revolution Amidst Worsening Global And National Crisis

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Message on the 35th Anniversary
of the Communist Party of the Philippines

By Comrade Armando Liwanag
Chairman, Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
December 26, 2003

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, I have the honor to convey to all comrades, friends and the broad masses of the people most militant greetings of revolutionary solidarity on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the reestablishment of the Party under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and on the basis of Philippine history and current circumstances.

We joyously celebrate today the great victories that our Party has accumulated over a long period of time as well as from the fresh victories won under the Three Year Plan of 1999-2002 and in the past year under the Three Year Plan of 2003-2005. We stand on a strong basis in order to boldly advance the Philippine revolution amidst the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords.

The victories that we have won are fully paid for by hard work, struggle and sacrifices. In this regard, we praise all Party cadres and members, Red commanders and fighters, the mass activists and the entire people for all their revolutionary efforts. We express our highest praise to the revolutionary martyrs and heroes.

The Party has proven itself as the advanced detachment of the revolutionary proletariat in the Philippines and as the force leading the Philippine revolution by upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, by carrying out the general line of new democratic revolution through protracted people's war and by expanding and consolidating the Party organization under the principle of democratic centralism.

The Party takes pride in successfully waging people's war for thirty-five years in a country of strategic importance to US imperialism. The Party and the Filipino people have together withstood and prevailed over tremendous odds posed by imperialism and reaction, including the 14 years of the Marcos fascist dictatorship and continuous US military intervention of various forms in post-Marcos regimes.

We have demonstrated that protracted people's war can be successfully waged in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country in chronic crisis. Our revolutionary movement is now in the forefront of national liberation movements in the world and we fervently desire that more peoples wage armed revolution. We are determined to complete the new democratic revolution no matter how long it takes to complete and proceed to the socialist revolution.

When the revisionist-ruled countries were in turmoil and the revisionist rulers were casting away their communist and socialist signboards and frenziedly privatizing public assets, the imperialists, the local reactionaries and the revisionist and Trotskyite renegades were all peddling the lie that the Party and mass movement had lost their sources of ideological inspiration and material support.

To the dismay of all counterrevolutionaries, the Party undertook the Second Great Rectification Movement and reiterated its anti-revisionist position, criticized and repudiated the revisionist renegades and incorrigible opportunists and proceeded to criticize and repudiate the "new world order", "free market" globalization and various anti-communist fallacies couched in petty bourgeois language.

By upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, leading the further advance of the Philippine revolution and expressing its position on global issues, our Party has contributed significantly to the efforts of the international communist movement and the broad anti-imperialist movement to counter the multifaceted offensive of the imperialists and has gained the recognition, respect, mutual support and cooperation of communist and workers' parties and the proletariat and people on a global scale.

1. Growing Strength of the Party

With utmost enthusiasm, we are carrying out the Three-Year Plan for 2003-2005 to further strengthen the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally, raise the level of the people's war and advance in an all-round way. We have based ourselves on the victories achieved in the course of the Second Great Rectification Movement and the Three-Year Plan of 1999-2002.

We continue to be inspired by the First Great Rectification Movement launched in 1967 and the Second Great Rectification Movement launched in 1992. Both rectification movements have strengthened and re-strengthened the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally. The First Great Rectification Movement criticized and rectified major errors since 1930 and led to the reestablishment of the Party in 1968. The Second Great Rectification Movement criticized and rectified major errors since 1980 and led to the revitalization of the Party in more than a decade until now.

All Party organs, units and individual members are in constant process of study and learning the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Thus they have inculcated themselves with the proletarian revolutionary stand, viewpoint and method. They are equipped to criticize and repudiate subjectivism, be this in the form of revisionism, empiricism and dogmatism.

They can integrate the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete conditions and concrete practice of the Philippine revolution. The Second Great Rectification Movement has been decisive in educating them. The summings up undertaken in connection with it by the leading organs and staff organs of the Party at various levels and by Party units working in various types of territory, various types of functions and various types of mass organizations constitute rich study material.

More than ever all Party cadres and members are required to conduct and learn from social investigations related to their mass work, to assess and evaluate their work and engage in criticism and self-criticism in order to raise the level of their knowledge and improve their work and work style. The organs and units of the Party conduct study meetings related to current work, long standing issues and selected readings.

The formal courses at the basic, intermediate and advanced levels are being conducted constantly. The basic course is meant to ensure that every Party member gets basic education in Marxism-Leninism and the Philippine revolution. The intermediate course is meant to provide cadres with intimate knowledge of the current revolution and to make comparative studies. The advanced course is meant to acquaint the Party cadres with the classic literature of Marxism-Leninism in philosophy, political economy and strategy and tactics and to require them to analyze major problems in the Philippines and the world.

The Party has issued important documents with theoretical and practical significance for the education of Party members. These involve the critique of modern revisionism and the collapse of revisionist-ruled states, the essentials of monopoly capitalism, "free market" globalization, "neoconservative" aggressiveness and various types of petty bourgeois anticommunism, including neo-Kautskyism and Trotskyism. The Party has gained recognition from communist parties and progressive organizations abroad for its theoretical and political analyses.

The Party is resolutely and militantly pursuing the general political line of new democratic revolution through a protracted people's war against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. All Party cadres and members are united in waging the democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat in response to the immediate semi-colonial and semi-feudal conditions and in long-term anticipation of the socialist revolution.

The myth spread by the reactionaries and incorrigible opportunists that the Philippines is no longer semi-feudal but has been highly industrialized and urbanized, since the period of the big comprador Marcos fascist regime, is totally discredited in the face of the backward agrarian conditions exposed by the worsening and deepening crisis. The myth that issues of national sovereignty and national patrimony have become passe is likewise totally discredited as the broad masses of the people confront the plunderous character of "free market" globalization and the horrors of imperialist terrorism and wars of aggression.

The Second Great Rectification Movement has made the Party ever more competent in studying the petty bourgeois social basis for the Right and "Left" opportunist errors and tendencies and learning to combat and root these out effectively. Our victory over opportunism, reformism, revisionism and liquidationism within the Party has accelerated the growth of the Party and the revolutionary mass movement. The incorrigible opportunists and revisionist renegades have further degenerated and thoroughly exposed themselves as special enemy agents.

The Party has consistently linked the working class with the peasantry by relying mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, by winning over the middle peasants, neutralizing the rich peasants and taking advantage of the contradictions between the enlightended and evil gentry in order to isolate and destroy the power of the latter. This is the revolutionary class line of the Party in carrying out the anti-feudal democratic revolution, in waging the protracted people's war, in carrying out land reform and in building organs of political power and mass organizations in the countryside.

The Party consistently adheres to the strategic line of waging people's war over a protracted period of time by encircling the cities from the countryside and accumulating strength until it becomes possible to seize the cities. Under the leadership of the Party, the New People's Army is accumulating armed strength by launching tactical offensives within the current stage of the strategic defensive. It is waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and ever deepening mass base. It has by and large developed the early phase of the strategic defensive and is now in the process of developing the middle phase.

It has thousands of Red fighters who have automatic rifles and other high-powered weapons. They have received politico-military training and are well-tested in battles and in mass work. They have increased at an annual rate of 10 to 15 percent from 1999 to 2001 in stride with the increase of high-powered rifles at the annual rate of 11 to 16 percent during the same period. However, the Red fighters still outnumber the firearms at the rate of 3:2. There is therefore the urgent need to seize more weapons by launching tactical offensives.

The NPA operates in 128 guerrilla fronts, encompassing millions of people. They are in more than 8000 barrios or nearly 20 percent of all barrios. They are in substantial portions of 700 to 800 municipalities and cities (about 50 percent of the total) and in more than 90 percent of the provinces. Under the direction of the Party, the people's army has deliberately slowed down the increase in the number of guerrilla fronts (relative to the high rate of increase in the latter half of the 1990s) in order to expand and consolidate each guerrilla front.

The enemy has failed to accomplish the objectives of its all-out war policy and its concentration of military forces on 12 selected guerrilla fronts since 2001. The armed revolutionary movement is ever growing and cannot be suppressed. The enemy can concentrate military forces on 12 guerrilla fronts and commit all sorts of atrocities against the people. But in more than 110 guerrilla fronts as well as in new areas, the NPA can further build its strength, conduct revolutionary work and launch tactical offensives.

The Party gives the highest priority to realizing the revolutionary policy of land reform in order to fulfil the peasant demand for land, which is the main content of the democratic revolution. In addition to the land reform campaign, the Party undertakes campaigns to organize and educate the masses, raise production, improve conditions of health and sanitation, train the people in self-defense, reduce or eliminate illiteracy, promote cultural activities, settle differences among the people and so on.

The Party systematically builds the mass base of the revolution. This involves the local organs of political power and the mass organizations. The local organs of political power constitute the people's democratic government. They are the revolutionary government of the workers and peasants engaged in a civil war with the reactionary government of big compradors and landlords. They are supported by the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth and others and by the broad masses of the people. The membership of these mass organizations runs into hundreds of thousands and has increased at the average annual rate of 19.4 percent from 1999 to 2001.

The people are the inexhaustible source of strength of the Party and the people's army. Their best sons and daughters join the revolutionary forces. They readily contribute resources when they draw benefits from land reform, wage increases, higher production, better prices for their products, mass education, health care, cultural activities, internal security and defense. The taxation policy of the people's democratic government is aimed at raising resources for the social benefit of the people.

The Party coordinates the revolutionary forces and people in the urban and rural areas. For this coordination to be carried out, Party organs and units use legal and illegal methods of work. Party groups exist and multiply in legal institutions and organizations, including reactionary ones. The Party always works hard to enable the armed revolutionary movement and the legal mass movement to advance in their respective ways against the ramparts of reaction.

The Party has successfully carried out its united front policy. To augment the basic worker-peasant alliance, it has developed other forms of alliances. These are the alliance of progressive forces which include the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the alliance of the patriotic forces which include the aforementioned and the middle bourgeoisie and the temporary and unstable alliance with certain sections of the reactionaries for the purpose of isolating and defeating the enemy.

The united front policy and tactics of the Party are meant to complement and support the revolutionary armed struggle and rouse the people in their millions beyond the existing number of people in the organized revolutionary forces to join the various forms of struggle and rise up in mass actions. The broader an alliance is the more effective it is in isolating and weakening the enemy. So far, the Party has succeeded in using the broadest type of alliance in order to isolate and overthrow the Marcos fascist regime in 1986 and the corrupt Estrada regime in 2001. The strength and experience gained from overthrowing particular ruling cliques can lead someday to the overthrow of the rotting ruling system.

The democratic mass movement of workers, peasants, fisherfolk, urban poor, tribal people, women, youth, professionals, religious, entrepreneurs and others is conducting the most important forms of legal struggle. The mass movement conducts timely propaganda offensives and mass actions on the longrunning as well as burning mutlisectoral and sectoral issues. Other kinds of legal struggle are the defense of human rights even in the reactionary courts, the peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the impending reactionary elections.

The Party has grown in strength organizationally from year to year because it adheres strictly to the principle of democratic centralism and combats both bureaucratism and anarchy. The centralized leadership is based on democracy and in turn democracy is guided by the centralized leadership. All leading organs, units and individual members are thriving in a well-balanced Party life of discipline and freedom.

The Party has a nationwide membership in the tens of thousands. It has increased this by recruiting the most advanced elements from the armed revolutionary movement and the legal democratic mass movement. Thus, it has made closer and deeper more than ever before its close links with the toiling masses of workers and peasants. It is highly conscious of increasing the number of workers and peasants in order to strengthen its revolutionary basis and character.

The Party builds its organizational strength by building branches in localities and work places and electing the leading organs upwards from the branch level. At the same time, it builds Party groups within the various types of mass organizations and institutions. Being the main organization of the Party, the New People's Army has a high proportion of Party members. Furthermore, the Red commanders, the political officers and Red fighters live and work together daily.

The most difficult and dangerous tasks are in the countryside, especially in the guerrilla fronts. The Party systematically encourages Party cadres and members who are workers and educated youth to join the revolutionary struggle in the countryside. They have the political and technical competence to raise higher the level of work and struggle. Mass activists who desire to become Party members are also encouraged and required to go to the countryside to learn from the struggle there and render service to the people.

The Party is conscious of its duty to attract the women to join its ranks. It has become stronger by increasing the proportion of women in the Party membership and in the organs of leadership. The increasing role of women within the Party has an inspiring effect to women as well as men in general and makes available to the Party and the revolutionary movement important abilities and dimensions of effectiveness that would otherwise be lost.

With membership being bigger and of higher quality than before, the Party is capable of performing a wider range of tasks and in a more competent way than ever before. Upon the increase of its organizational strength, the party is in a position to lead the proletariat and people more effectively in boldly advancing the Philippine revolution amidst the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords.

2. Worsening National Crisis

The socio-economic crisis of the ruling system is daily worsening. By every major indicator, it is clear that the Philippine semi-feudal economy is sinking. The complete submission of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime to the US policy of "free market" globalization has rendered the Philippine economy ever more bankrupt and depressed. The regime has put aside the people's demand for economic sovereignty, conservation of the national patrimony, land reform and national industrialization and has ruined the economy at an unprecedentedly rapid rate.

Agricultural production and the limited manufacturing for local consumption are pushed down by the higher costs of imported equipment, fuel and ingredients and by the dumping of surplus goods from abroad. At the same time, the production of raw materials (agricultural and mineral) and low-value added semi-manufacturing for export have been pushed down by global overproduction of these types of goods and by the fall in the prices of these goods far below the costs of import-dependent production.

The importation of goods for domestic consumption of the ordinary people and of luxury goods for the high bureaucrats and exploiting classes and the maintenance of the bureaucratic and military operations of the reactionary government are financed by an intolerable rising level of taxation, local public borrowing (to cover the growing budgetary deficit) and foreign debt (to cover mainly the ever growing trade deficits).

The reactionary government has a grotesque budget. It sets a high ceiling for deficit spending and always overshoots this in practice. It requires higher tax collection from a devastated economy and continues to spend huge amounts of tax money for debt service, the military and police, intelligence funds, foreign travels, computers, cars for high bureaucrats and so on.

Funds for education, health, housing and other social services continue to dwindle. Corruption competes with the depressed condition of the economy as a cause for decreased state revenues. The budget deficit last year was 217 billion pesos. To cover the budgetary deficit, the Macapagal-Arroyo regime has resorted to borrowing from the local and foreign capital markets and has depended mainly on private US lending at onerous terms.

The Philippine economy has been falling abruptly since the 1997 financial crisis, as a result of the global overproduction of low-value added semi-manufacturing and the busting of the private construction boom. Since then, the unemployment rate has soared up to the level of more than 50 per cent, if we do not follow the silly official definitions of unemployment, underemployment and self-employment in official statistics. Most of the short-term contractual and part-time jobs in the sweatshops connected to the multinational firms as well as the casual jobs in government have disappeared. This fact comes on top of the reduction of regular full-time jobs under the so-called flexible labor policy.

Unemployment and falling incomes have hit hard not only the toiling masses of workers and peasants but also the middle social strata. More than 85 percent of the people have fallen below the poverty line. The broad masses of the people are being assailed by the rapid rise of direct and indirect taxes, prices of basic commodities and fees for the fast deteriorating social services and infrastructure. Charges for water, electricity, transport and other public utilities have rapidly risen.

More than 60 percent of women and children suffer from serious malnutrition. Disease and vulnerability to ill health are widespread. Health care from the reactionary government is close to nil in both rural and urban areas. More and more children cannot go to school because of the dire conditions of their parents and the absence of school facilities. Token housing projects are financed by the reactionary state only in the biggest of cities.

The oversupply of energy resulting from the graft-ridden proliferation of private power producers and the operationalization of the Malampaya gas pipeline has not reduced the service charges but has pushed the electricity firms to overcharge the consumers. The privatization of the water and sewerage system in the national capital region has resulted in unbridled overcharging in tandem with the deterioration of services.

Despite the bankrupt and depressed condition of the Philippine economy, the reactionary government boasts of a rising economic growth rate and an unemployment rate incredibly lower than in some advanced capitalist countries. Activities financed by public debt, the exaggeration of the proportion of the service sector in the economy and the remittances of overseas contract workers conjure an illusion of rising economic growth. A tricky definition of what constitutes employment also gives the illusion of an unemployment rate far lower than the reality.

After the wanton abuse of both local and foreign public borrowing and massive dissipation of resources by the Ramos regime, the succeeding regimes of Estrada and Macapagal-Arroyo have been easily exposed for corruption by the opposition. The ruling cliques have conspicuously gotten large cuts from public contracts and loans from state financial agencies and have exercised private control over gambling and other lucrative criminal activities.

The contradictions among reactionary politicians are reflected in those among military and police officers. Every reactionary politician or party finds it necessary to be well connected to definite military and police factions. Likewise military and police officers find it necessary to be well connected to definite factions of reactionary politicians. There is mutual protection between factions of the bureaucratic and armed apparatuses of the state.

The worst and strongest factions of military and police officers use their personnel to control and operate criminal syndicates engaged in prohibited drugs, gambling, prostitution, kidnapping for ransom, smuggling, murder for hire, robbery, car theft, and so on. The strongest of the factions are active factors of reactionary politics at the national level. They pool campaign funds for presidential candidates of their choice. A former national police officer, who is a crime lord, is now presenting himself as a presidential candidate.

Corruption and criminality among high military officials, including the former defense secretary Gen. Angelo Reyes and the former chief intelligence officer Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus, have become so rampant that more than 300 junior army and naval officers conducted a public protest action on July 26, 2003 and exposed among other crimes the overpricing of supplies for the troops and the terror bombings that have killed numerous civilians in Mindanao for the purpose of justifying state terrorism and US military intervention under the pretext of the "war on terrorism".

The US has manipulated the puppet and corrupt character of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime in order to dictate economic policy under the slogan of "free market" globalization and to inject into crucial points of the bureaucracy pro-US agents under the cover of the so-called Accelerating Growth, Investment and Liberalization with Equity (AGILE) to push policies and laws beneficial to the US and US multinational firms. It has also used the slogan of "war on terrorism" in order to whip up state terrorism against the people and to push the military intervention of US troops and what amounts to a return of the US military bases through the Mutual Logistical Support Agreement.

She has also frozen the peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). She has gone so far as to accuse the militant trade unions and other mass organizations of "terrorism" for defending national and democratic rights and demanding social and economic reforms to alleviate the people's suffering,

The broad masses of the people consider Macapagal-Arroyo a liar for declaring on December 30, 2002 that she would not run for president and then reneging on her word after a few months. The widespread expectation is that she cannot win in the presidential elections, unless she engages in vote-buying and manipulating the newly-adopted computer technology for the vote count. Thus, her political rivals are preparing to rouse the people to make gigantic mass protests and to call for military intervention by their collaborators within the reactionary armed forces.

Whoever would come out second to her, former Sen. Raul Roco or movie star Fernando Poe, Jr, a broad united front can easily arise to hold her accountable for stealing the election. Eduardo Cojuangco of coco levy notoriety, former president Joseph Estrada and the Marcoses would try to benefit somehow from the political turmoil and its outcome. Anticipating her "victory" in the elections and fearing the violent reaction of her rivals, Macapagal-Arroyo is already offering to amnesty and reconcile with the biggest plunderers such as Cojuangco, Estrada and the Marcoses.

She is also offering a constitutional convention as the way to a parliamentary form of government and to her becoming a French-style president. At the same time, she expects to benefit and please the US with a new constitution that eliminates the provisions on the rights specified under the Miranda doctrine, on economic sovereignty and protection of the national patrimony and on the prohibition of foreign military bases, foreign troops and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

She might still lose the elections despite all the material resources and dirty tricks at her command. But there is no guarantee whatsoever that the winner would be fundamentally different from her. All the major reactionary presidential candidates can run because they get campaign funds and facilities from the exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords and because they pledge servility to US imperialist interests.

There are some progressive parties and candidates vying for positions at levels lower than the presidency and the senate. These can take advantage of the popular disgust at the most powerful reactionary parties and politicians and the contradictions among the reactionary parties and candidates. They can win a noteworthy number of seats unless the imperialists and the local reactionaries exert special efforts to cut off their chances.

In connection with the forthcoming reactionary elections, both the progressive and the reactionary political parties and candidates approach the Party and other revolutionary forces because of their mass base. As a matter of revolutionary principles, the Party does not believe that electoral struggle is the most effective way for the national and social liberation of the people. But the Party considers the approaches of political parties and candidates within the framework of the united front.

After following the direction of the US and rabid military puppets, headed by General Angelo Reyes, in declaring an all-out war policy against the revolutionary forces and paralyzing the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations since June 2001, Macapagal-Arroyo has in recent months indicated publicly that she desires the resumption of said negotiations. It remains to be seen whether these would really resume. It is probable that she is merely going through the motion of showing interest in peace negotiations in order to soften her bellicose image.

The NDFP has consistently manifested its serious interest in the resumption of the peace negotiations because it wants the formation

The ever worsening economic and political crisis of the ruling system entails the sharpening of the oppression and exploitation of the broad masses of the people. The ruling reactionaries always try to pass the burden of the crisis to them and to repress them when they put up resistance. The violation of economic, social and cultural rights of the people always come in tandem with the violation of civil and political rights.

Under US direction and under the impetus of "free market" globalization and the "war on terrorism", the Macapagal-Arroyo regime has engaged in wanton violations of human rights. But the people cannot be cowed, especially because there are revolutionary forces as well as legal democratic forces determined to arouse, organize and mobilize them.

The broad masses of the people have increasingly risen up to uphold, defend and advance their national and democratic interests against the foreign and feudal domination and the rising trend of fascism. The trade union movement is vigorously defending trade union and other democratic rights and demanding across-the-board wage increase and denouncing the rising prices of fuel, food and other basic necessities. It is standing up to the vicious acts of the state and of employers to lay off workers, reduce wages, undermine unions and break up strikes.

The peasant movement is demanding genuine land reform and denouncing and opposing all the tricks being used to withdraw even the previous tokens of land reform and to promote the further consolidation of the land in the hands of a few corporations and landlord families. The peasant masses and the ethnic minorities suffer the main brunt of the brutal military campaigns of encirclement and suppression as well as the equally cruel drives of the corporations and landlord families to grab the land. The oppressed people in the rural areas wage all forms of struggle in order to assert and defend their rights.

The women, the youth, the professionals, the cultural activists, religious, patriotic entrepreneurs and other sectors of society have engaged in mass actions to take up their sectoral concerns. They have also joined up with the workers and peasants in order to underscore their common multisectoral interests and to heighten their effectiveness in solidarity. They engage in localized and nationwide mass actions.

The overseas Filipinos, mostly migrant workers, are ten percent of the population bringing in precious foreign currency to the coffers of the state. They are patriotic and wish to work in their own country and be with their families. But there are no job opportunities amidst the rampant unemployment. They are outraged that the reactionary state refuses to protect them abroad and yet imposes on them so many exactions. Thus, they wage militant protests abroad and their families likewise in the country.

The legal mass movements are important. They can expose the evils of the ruling system and can sometimes cause some reforms and amelioration of conditions. But they cannot change the fundamental character of the oppressive and exploitative ruling system. Only the armed revolution can overthrow the ruling system and replace it with a new system that is independent of imperialism, free from the exploiting classes, democratic, just, prosperous and progressive.

3. Worsening Global Crisis

The world capitalist system is stricken with the worst crisis of overproduction and financial crisis since the end of World War II. The global crisis has been worsening since four years ago. The countries most devastated by the crisis are the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and the retrogressive countries in the former Soviet bloc. All the global centers of capitalism, the US, the European Union and Japan, are all afflicted with internal crisis and the abruptly shrunken global market.

The US was benefited by its established economic, political and military power, its lead in high technology and its standing as the largest consumer market and as the ultimate destination of the biggest flows of capital from the other global centers of capitalism, the oil-exporting countries and from the rest of the world in the 1990s. It gave free rein to monopoly capitalist rapacity masquerading as "free market" globalization. High U.S. interest rates, the booming stock market, the high-tech bubble and the blazing consumer market attracted foreign funds.

There was the illusion of a "new economy" of never ending growth without inflation and at full employment even as regular fulltime jobs were being massacred and replaced by part-time jobs. The financial overhang became too thick and heavy through excessive foreign borrowing by the US, through corporate raids on the banking system and pension funds, through speculative corporate mergers and overcompensation of the corporate executives, and through the overvaluation of assets under the spell of the high-tech bubble.

Since March 2000, the US economy has taken a deep plunge. The financial collapse has involved the stock market crash and an epidemic of bad loans causing the bankruptcies of investment houses and industrial firms. It was bound to happen as the real economy was afflicted by overproduction of high-tech, industrial and agricultural goods, huge trade deficit due to overlarge importation of consumer goods and a high foreign debt due to the foreign investments. In the free fall of the US stockmarket, US$ 8 trillion has been wiped out. Industrial production has continued to decline, with brief spells of growth in some quarters of the year. The US has an outstanding public debt of more than US$6.94 trillion and a net foreign debt of more than US$3.0 trillion.

Under the neoliberal policy auspices of "free market" globalization, the world capitalist system has come to a point at which the crisis of overproduction and financial collapses in both the underdeveloped and overdeveloped countries interact with each other and recoil upon each other to cause a contraction of the global market to the detriment of all. The fundamental problem of imperialism is that the monopoly bourgeoisie maximize profits by cutting down employment and incomes of the real producers and ultimately ruining the market for products in the real economy.

Under the Bush regime, the US has been afflicted by an ever worsening economic crisis and has become more aggressive than ever before. It seeks a way out of the economic crisis by giving tax cuts to the monopoly bourgeoisie and its firms (amounting to US$2.65 trillion over a ten-year period) and putting more capital in their hands, encouraging them to engage in production for war, assuring them with military purchase contracts, whipping up a hysteria for a so-called war on terrorism and launching wars of aggression. While making more funds available for war production, repression in the name of homeland security and wars of aggression, the US continues to cut back on social spending.

The US wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq in quick succession appear resoundingly successful and lucrative. The US has acquired large chunks of new economic territory in terms of sources of cheap labor and raw material (especially oil), fields of investment, spheres of influence and positions of strength. The US imperialists are quite happy to use as much as US$ 400 billion to replenish and further upgrade its arsenal, mostly weapons of mass destruction. The new contracts that the US government has made with the military industrial complex account for the so-called US economic growth for the second and third quarters of 2003.

But that growth has meant only the growth of output and profits for the military industrial complex. It has not generated any significant amount of employment, especially in manufacturing. It has not caused a lasting substantial reduction of the unemployment rate of 6 percent and on the 3 million US workers, disemployed under the watch of the Bush administration. Jobless growth cannot result in sustained recovery for the sick US economy.

Under conditions of worsening crisis in the world capitalist system, the contradictions among the imperialist powers are becoming conspicuous. The European Union and Japan have overproduced their own industrial and agricultural products and have demanded that the US eliminate direct and indirect subsidies to its producers and keep the American market open. They, together with other steel-exporting countries, have vigorously opposed the high tariff walls put up by the US against steel imports. The Bush regime has been compelled to yield to the ruling of the World Trade Organization that the US bring down said tariff walls.

But it is around the issue of Iraq that we have seen some sharp contradictions between the US and some of its major imperialist allies. To this day, France, Germany and Russia together with China resent the fact that the US has waged a war against Iraq and occupied it. They have the best of reasons for opposing the US war of aggression against Iraq and because the latter did not commit a prior act of aggression against the US and continued to comply with the decision of the UN Security Council for the UN inspection teams to look for weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, France, Germany, Russia and China, three of which are permanent members of the UN Security Council, had lucrative contracts with Iraq. Since its occupation of Iraq, the US has nullified the contracts of the Iraqi government with companies belonging to these countries and yet demands that they reduce or reschedule Iraq's repayment of their loans. The US has pointedly excluded them from prime contracts for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of what the US had destroyed and damaged on a large scale long before and during its second war of aggression against Iraq. The US is engaged in a program of privatizing and monopolizing the privatization of the oil production, oil resources and other assets of Iraq.

The Bush regime has used the September 11 attacks as the pretext to aggress against Afghanistan and establish a chain of US military bases and outposts in Central Asia and in the Caspian Sea region in order to control the oil resources in these regions and prevent the flow of oil to Europe and China independent of US-controlled pipelines to the US and British oil companies. Likewise, the US has conquered and occupied Iraq in order to acquire directly its vast oil resources, maintain US military bases for controlling the entire Middle East and keep the US dollar as the currency of oil transactions.

While the US has been busy penetrating Central Asia under the pretext of a "war on terrorism", Russia and China have on one hand apparently welcomed the intrusions but have on the other hand developed further military cooperation under the Shanghai Cooperative Organization Treaty among Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan. The US is obviously trying to outflank both Russia and China but the latter two are also trying to improve their position and prevent the US from stabbing them in the back.

The sole superpower and the other traditional imperialist powers are now busy trying to take advantage of the prostrate condition of the third world and former Soviet bloc countries. They try to unite against the oppressed peoples and nations here by using the UN Security Council, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, NATO and other military alliances. But they also compete for the upperhand because it is in the nature of imperialist powers to strive to increase their share of economic territory in the world. They are liable to collide in the backward and retrogressive countries. In this connection, the states asserting national independence and the oppressed peoples and nations can play off the imperialist powers against each other in order to prevent, delay or frustrate their aggression.

The growing armed resistance of the various Afghan and Iraqi forces currently troubles the US more than its contradictions with other imperialist powers. The resurgent Taleban and other mujahedeen forces in Afghanistan are increasingly launching offensives against the US and its NATO allies. A broad range of forces in Iraq, including bourgeois nationalists, communists, Sunni, Shia, Christians, Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other ethnic communities, are fighting the US occupation forces and the puppet Iraqi Governing Council.

The table is now turned against the US forces, which is now at the receiving end of guerrilla offensives. The so-called neoconservatives in the Bush regime had calculated that they could unleash blitzkrieg wars of aggression with impunity in order to disintegrate governments that resist US dictates. But they had also overlooked the necessity for US military and other personnel to stay on the ground in order to secure the spoils of war. For a long time, the US will try to keep the large spoils that it has grabbed and will be locked in combat with the anti-imperialist forces and people.

The struggle of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan for their own national liberation and to deal lethal blows on US imperialism is of crucial importance to the people of the world. Without it, the US will know no bounds for unleashing wars of aggression under the doctrine of preemptive war and for promoting fascism in the US and on a global scale under the pretext of a permanent "war on terrorism".

The exports of the countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa and the retrogressive countries of the former Soviet bloc are mostly raw material products, some semi-manufactures and still fewer manufactured products. All of these have been overproduced and the overproduction has led to production cutbacks, bankruptcies and mass layoffs. The trade deficits of these countries have become too wide and have resulted in a mounting debt burden of more than US$ 3 trillion from which there is no foreseeable relief within the world capitalist system.

China's integration into the world capitalist system and its overproduction of low-value added consumer manufactures and semi-manufactures for the imperialist countries and neighboring countries have reduced the so-called tigers in Southeast Asia into sickly kittens. But China itself is vulnerable to the fact that quite a number of countries persist in overproducing similar goods for the imperialist countries, whose consumer market has contracted.

The US expects that China's entry into the WTO would result in further dismantling the state-owned industries previously built under socialism and in accelerating the compradorization of the Chinese economy. While indeed the comprador big bourgeoisie has the upper hand over the national bourgeoisie, the US is actually so protectionist and unfair in a monopolistic way on trade issues that China, India, Brazil and 17 other underdeveloped countries have joined up against the US position in the WTO.

Certain governments in the third world have asserted national independence against the grossest hostile acts, impositions and threats from the imperialists. The firmest among them are those that strongly affirm national independence and socialism. There are also those that appeal to the people from a bourgeois nationalist position in order to oppose the worst schemes of the US. A lasting product of the revolutionary movements led by the proletariat is the decolonization of so many countries since the end of World War II. It is foolhardy for the US to proceed from neocolonialism to recolonization.

The oppressed peoples and nations are the largest and most reliable source of resistance against imperialism and for national independence and democracy. They wage the strongest resistance because they suffer the most intolerable forms of oppression and exploitation. Their contradiction with imperialism is today the main contradiction. In most cases today, this contradiction is veiled by the servility of the puppet governments to imperialism.

It is in the third world countries today where there are parties and mass movements waging armed revolutions. These are in the Philippines, Nepal, India, Peru, Turkey, Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eelam and elsewhere. The armed revolution can spread on a wide scale like a prairie fire at the rate that the global crisis is worsening and the US is rampaging. The spread of armed revolution, especially protracted people's wars in the agrarian countries, is of great importance because it can cut off the tentacles of imperialism and it can prepare the proletariat in the imperialist countries to someday go for the jugular of the monopoly bourgeoisie.

In the major imperialist countries and lesser capitalist countries, there are widepread strikes of workers and protest actions by people in general against the economic, social and political conditions. When US imperialism raved to launch a war of aggression against Iraq, the people rose up so many times in hundreds of thousands and millions in major capitals of the imperialist countries, including the US, United Kingdom, Spain and Italy. At the peak, in the middle of February 2003, thirty million people rose up within the two days all over the world.

When the US rammed through the war of aggression and the US bourgeois mass media and reactionary parties and institutions blabbered about supporting the invading troops, the antiwar movement subsided because both the organized and spontaneous forces in it did not yet have enough strength to prevail over the hypocritical forces that swung to supporting the war of aggression. The weakness of the antiwar and anti-imperialist movement can still be traced to the revisionist betrayal of socialism and the subsequent imperialist ideological, political and economic offensive to wreak vengeance on the proletariat and the people of the world.

However, the extreme exploitation and oppression under the slogans of "free market" globalization and "war on terrorism" are already inciting the people of the world to fight back and to unite in order to fight US imperialism and stop it from further exploiting and oppressing them and from bringing about another world war. It is only a matter of time before we see the sustained resurgence of the broad anti-imperialist movement for national liberation, democracy and socialism.

We anticipate that the US will become more conspicuous and aggressive. If it is not sufficiently tied down by the armed resistance of the people in the areas where it has rained destruction and disintegrated governments with the use of high-tech weaponry, as in the Balkans, Central Asia and Middle East, it will proceed to make provocation and unleash wars of aggression in East Asia and elsewhere.

We must promote in our region the solidarity of all actual and potential anti-imperialist forces and encourage them to wage anti-imperialist mass struggles. It is a certainty that the US will impose further its hegemony on a region that it covets as a rich source of natural resources and cheap labor, as a huge market and field of investments. Thus, it is always scheming and maneuvering to subordinate China, destroy the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and stifle the people's war in the Philippines.

While we seek to promote anti-imperialist solidarity in our region, we must encourage the same in all continents and countries. We can hope to defeat US imperialism, the No.1 enemy of the people of the world, only if the people of the world unite and intensify their revolutionary struggles on an ever-widening scale. We are confident that the broad anti-imperialist movement and the world proletarian revolution will soon surge forward amidst the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system.

4. Fulfill the new Three-Year Plan

The daily worsening crisis of the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords and that of the world capitalist system generate exceedingly favorable conditions for the advance of the national democratic revolution of the Filipino people under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines. We are confident that we can fulfill the current three-year plan laid down by our Party Central Committee.

We must realize the following main objectives of the plan:

1. Strengthen the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally. Propagate Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Pursue the new-democratic revolution. Carry out a Party recruitment drive with the target of several hundreds of thousands of members.
2. Uphold the leadership of the Party over the New People's Army and the armed revolution. Draw the people in their millions to the armed revolution through united front policy and tactics. Expand and strengthen relations and cooperation with all possible allies.
3. Extend the guerrilla fronts to the majority of municipalities, especially those in the strategic parts of the archipelago. Build comprehensively the requisites for the middle phase of the strategic defensive through further expansion and heightened attention to wave-upon-wave consolidation in every municipality.
4. Further expand and intensify the anti-imperialist, antifeudal, antifascist struggle. Isolate and bring down the US-Macapagal Arroyo regime. Fight the escalating US military intervention and state terrorism.

Ideological Strengthening

The Party must continue to propagate the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method and the basic principles upheld by the Second Great Rectification Movement. We must learn well the lessons from our historical experience and from our current struggle in the Philippines. We must assess and evaluate our current work, identify our strengths and weaknesses and conduct criticism and self-criticism in order to raise our level of revolutionary consciousness and improve our work and style of work.

At the same time, let us promote the reading and study of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and carry out the primary, intermediate and advanced courses of study. We must use the primary course to ensure that all Party members understand the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the intermediate course to ensure that all our Party cadres (especially at the middle level) know how to analyze and solve problems with the guidance of our scientific outlook and method. We must use the advanced course in order to develop a few thousands of cadres who have or shall have responsible positions at the central and intermediate levels of the Party.

Party cadres assigned to conduct politico-military training and Party study courses within the people's army must seriously study military theory and learn to clarify and solve problems of strategy and tactics. Cadres assigned to educational work in class or sectoral organizations and institutions, as well as on certain important issues, must seriously study the pertinent theory and learn to clarify and solve the problems at issue.

As communists, we are both patriots and internationalists. We must know the going situation both in the Philippines and in the whole world. The Party must link up with communist and workers' parties abroad in order to exchange experience and ideas with them in bilateral relations as well as in multilateral gatherings. Thus, we raise the level of mutual understanding and foster practical cooperation among parties as well as among the mass formations.

We must grasp the major ideological and political issues in the worldwide struggle of the proletariat and people against imperialism and all reaction. Thus, regardless of our current function, we understand that what we do for the Philippine revolution is a contribution to the broad anti-imperialist movement and proletarian-socialist revolution on a global scale.

Political Strengthening

As the advanced detachment of the working class, the Party must lead the national democratic revolution through protracted people's war. We must wield and develop both the revolutionary armed struggle and the united front as the weapons for overthrowing the enemy and carrying forward the people's struggle for national liberation and democracy.

In this regard, we must motivate ourselves with the revolutionary spirit of serving the people. We must arouse, organize and mobilize the masses. We must constantly learn from the people what are their conditions, their demands and capabilities for their own benefit and for the advance of the revolutionary struggle.

The Party must continue to integrate revolutionary armed struggle, genuine land reform and mass base building in order to fulfil the main content of the democratic revolution and accumulate in the countryside the strength necessary for seizing the cities on a nationwide scale in the future.

We must build guerrilla fronts in the majority of municipalities and increase the number by 20 percent. We must attain company strength in every guerrilla front, with one platoon as center of gravity. We must aim at having a platoon as center of gravity in every municipality. We must augment the strength of the people's army by building the people's militia in the barrios and the self-defense units of the mass organizations.

Each region must have at least six guerrilla fronts. We must expand existing guerrilla fronts or increase their number in order to link them up or reduce the gaps between them and develop cooperation and coordination. The center of gravity for a region may be a platoon, an oversized platoon or company, depending on the degree of overall development and terrain in the region. The emergence of our regional strike forces on a widescale will mark a new level of development in our people's war.

We must recruit more workers and educated youth for service in the people's army and combine them well with the Red fighters of peasant origin. We must train at least 25 percent of our Red fighters to become officers at various levels. We must strengthen the system of command and revitalize the national and regional operational commands.

The people's army must allot ample time for building the mass base that is wide and deep enough to support and give us sufficient space for effective maneuvers (like dispersal, concentration and shifting) and to enable us to launch and win tactical offensives as often as possible. We must increase our organized mass base by 30 to 40 percent every year in the next three years. We must organize the people in hundreds of thousands in every region.

We must resolutely intensify the people's war and launch tactical offensives as frequently as we can win them. This is the only way for us to accumulate armed strength and advance towards the overthrow of the ruling system and the empowerment of the workers and peasants. This is the only way for us to effectively counter US military intervention and aggression.

We must carry out the land reform campaign and other mass campaigns according to conditions obtaining in the localities. We must vigorously build the organs of political power and strengthen them with the support of the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, cultural activists, children and other sectors. In the countryside, we must follow the anti-feudal class line within the framework of the united front for national liberation and democracy.

We must build the united front by developing several forms of alliance in addition to the basic worker-peasant alliance. We must develop the alliance of progressive forces by bringing together the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie. In turn, we must develop the alliance of patriotic forces by bringing together the alliance of progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie. Wherever and whenever possible at the national and local levels, we must build temporary and unstable alliances with reactionary entities opposing the current common enemy.

The Party must carry out the united front policy and tactics in order to reach out to the millions of people who have not yet been organized into the revolutionary forces and in order to augment the current strength of the existing revolutionary forces. We must employ the united front in order to advance the armed revolutionary movement as well as the legal democratic mass movement in both urban and rural areas.

The Party calls on all democratic forces in the Philippines to link up with their counterparts abroad in order to promote mutual solidarity and support and build the broad anti-imperialist movement. The democratic forces in the Philippines have played an outstanding role in fighting against "free market" globalization, imperialist wars of aggression and other issues. They must continue to do so.

Organizational Strengthening

We must consistently follow the principle of democratic centralism. Centralized leadership is based on democracy and democracy is guided by centralized leadership. We shun both bureaucratism and anarchy. We must maintain the balance between discipline and freedom, between unity of will and full play of initiatives to fight the enemy and win victory.

The organizational plan for enlarging the Party must be based on the existing membership and estimated capabilities. Reasonable estimates must be made of how the current membership can be multiplied. We need hundreds of thousands of Party members to lead the work in completing the struggle for the national democratic revolution. Without any significant increase in Party membership, we cannot make any significant advance in the revolution and we cannot perform a wide variety of necessary tasks.

The Party must review and analyze the class origins and class status of the Party cadres and members in order to ensure that the majority comes mainly from the working class and the peasantry. The Party must also review and analyze the geographic distribution of the Party cadres and members and their ratio in relation to the population. We must promote the well-proportioned development of the Party organization. We must strengthen the weak parts of the Party organization and further strengthen those that are already strong.

The Party must promptly recruit Party candidate-members from the ranks of the most conscious and most militant elements of the armed revolutionary movement and legal mass movement. The Party organs and units concerned must see to it that the Party candidate-members get the basic Party education and the reasonable kind and amount of trial work within the period set by the Party constitution. The Party candidate-members must be admitted promptly as full Party members after complying with the requirements.

To keep on raising the effectiveness of Party leadership in the countryside, Party cadres and members who are workers and educated youth must be deployed for permanent assignment in the countryside. Party candidate-members and mass activists may also be temporarily deployed from the cities to the countryside in order to learn and perform certain functions.

Party cadres and members should do revolutionary work not only in the progressive mass organizations and institutions but also do so in reactionary ones, without exposing themselves and by working in good style with patience and persuasiveness on issues. Time and again we have proven our capability of building Party groups and developing patriotic and progressive sections within reactionary organizations and institutions. We have also succeeded in the progressive transformation of certain organizations and institutions previously led by reactionaries.

We are optimistic that by fulfilling our current three-year plan we shall become stronger and win greater victories from year to year in advancing the new-democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes. We are certain that the fulfilment of the plan will prepare us for greater struggles and greater victories and bring us closer to the complete victory of the new-democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local reactionaries.

26 December 2003
English Edition

Boldly Advance The Philippine Revolution Amidst Worsening Global And National Crisis