III. Revitalized Forces of the Revolution

The Second Great Rectification Movement has won resounding victories in ideology, politics and organization. The Communist Party of the Philippines is thereby revitalized and further strengthened as the advanced detachment of the proletariat leading the Philippine revolution forward. It has raised its revolutionary consciousness, organized strength and militancy to a new and higher level. As a consequence, the New People�s Army, the National Democratic Front, the organs of democratic political power and the mass organizations under the leadership of the Party have likewise raised the level of revolutionary unity, fighting will and capabilities for carrying out the new-democratic revolution through protracted people�s war. The Second Great Rectification Movement is mainly and essentially a movement of education within the Party in order to reaffirm the basic principles of the revolutionary proletariat, to sum up experience and take stock of

The Party Central Committee had to launch the rectification movement in 1992 to defend the very life of the Party and the entire revolutionary movement because fundamental and major errors of subjectivism and opportunism, which had accumulated and had run since the late �70s, gave rise to revisionism, liquidationism and outright treason and criminality of a few well-placed and long-running incorrigible subjectivists and opportunists who tried to wreck the Party and the revolutionary movement.

Through the rectification movement, the Party has frustrated and defeated the handful of renegades and incorrigibles. Their own open degeneration and the blatant use of them by the enemy for psychological warfare have verified the correctness and accuracy of the rectification movement in targeting them for criticism, repudiation and condemnation. The all-round struggle against them has turned them into teachers by negative example and has educated the entire party on what is correct and what is wrong on a comprehensive range of issues in the sharp two-line struggle between the proletarian revolutionaries and bourgeois renegades.

The rectification movement has upheld Marxism- Leninism-Maoism as the ideological line of the Party and has repudiated such forms of bourgeois subjectivism as revisionism, empiricism and dogmatism. The basic principles of the revolutionary proletariat, which are reaffirmed, are drawn from the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Party cadres and members have become more conscious of the three stages of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism in the development of the revolutionary theory and practice of the international proletariat.

The Party propagates the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist stand, viewpoint and method among its cadres and members and trains them in these in comprehending the current circumstances of the world and the Philippines and in taking the course of action that needs to be taken in the context of the world proletarian revolution, the two-stage Philippine revolution and the specific fields of work.

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the specific guide to the revolutionary practice of the Party in striving to arouse, organize and mobilize the people to make revolution. The Party integrates Marxist-Leninist- Maoist theory with the concrete conditions of the Philippines and on the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution. Thus, the Party established through class analysis the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society and has set the general political line of new-democratic revolution through protracted people�s war.

Through the rectification movement, the Party has thoroughly defeated with facts and arguments the subjectivist line that the Philippines is no longer semifeudal but is far more industrial and urbanized than pre-revolutionary Russia and China and that in effect the big comprador-landlord Marcos regime has developed the country economically.

The Party has criticized and repudiated the �Left� opportunism and the Right opportunism which in common used this subjectivist line in order to attack the strategic line of protracted people�s war. The �Left� opportunists sought to make the NPA a purely military force and urban insurrection as the lead factor for a quick military victory. The Right opportunists sought to make the urban-based legal struggle the main or sole factor in political struggle and the united front as a framework for liquidating the vanguard role of the Party and the proletariat. The Party has once more uprooted modern revisionism. This directly penetrated the Party when the �Left� opportunists started to push for

The Second Great Rectification Movement has completely thwarted the attempt of the enemy to destroy the Party and revolutionary movement from within. This vicious but futile attempt to sow ideological and political confusion has served to immunize and reinvigorate the Party. Through the rectification movement the Party has reasserted its stand for socialism against modern revisionism and has actively fought against the imperialist ideological and political offensive which presents the fall of the revisionist regimes as proof of the futility of socialism and which boasts of the irresistibility of �free market� globalization.

The Party has produced a rich accumulation of documents on basic and major issues involving the ideological, political and organizational line in order to defeat the erroneous ideas of the renegades and traitors as well as those of their superiors�the imperialists and local reactionaries, and in order to raise the knowledge and practice of the Party cadres and members.

The rectification documents issued by the Central Committee, the articles written by responsible cadres and the summings-up made by territorial and staff organs and units are a rich store of historical and current knowledge that serve as a basis for defining the tasks and moving forward in the revolutionary struggle. All these documents constitute living knowledge inasmuch as they reflect the concrete conditions of the revolutionary struggle and the revolutionary position and direction taken by the Party.

The rectification movement has been conclusively won against the biggest degenerates and renegades since the reestablishment of the Party. But we must remain vigilant and militant against all remnants of their mode of thinking and practice as well as against backsliding. For instance, recently a handful of renegades, previously pretending to support the rectification movement but surreptitiously opposing it, have exposed themselves as the latest tools of enemy propaganda. We are confident without being complacent that the Party is capable of staying healthy and strong and of repelling any kind of attack that arises.

The petty-bourgeoisie is the social base of subjectivism and opportunism. There is always a certain amount of these arising spontaneously or deliberately within the Party because many Party members are of petty-bourgeois origin and bring in with them their petty-bourgeois tails. There is also the continuous impact of petty-bourgeois influence from the outside as well as from deliberate efforts of the imperialists and local reactionaries to use pettybourgeois lines of enticement against the line of the Party and the revolutionary movement.

The Party is carrying the rectification movement through to the end and is resolutely carrying out ideological work, involving the study of the rectification documents and the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist classics, concrete social investigation, evaluation and summing up of work and comradely criticism and self-criticism. Ideological and political education in theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the most important factor in the remoulding of Party members in preventing degeneration and in using the two-line struggle or the struggle of ideas for attaining a higher level of unity.

To propagate the basic founding principles of the Party and the teachings of the great communists and to reinforce the rectification movement, formal Party study courses at the primary, intermediate and advanced levels are being carried out. The rectification movement is promoting these courses in view of the fact that the lack or dearth of Marxist-Leninist courses in the past gave way to the growth of eclecticism, revisionism, empiricism and dogmatism.

The new basic Party course has been taken by all Party organs and units and is given to all Party candidate-members as part of their candidature. The regional Party committees have taken initiative in running the intermediate Party course. Central and regional leading and staff organs are taking the initiative to study the advanced Party course. All Party units and members are encouraged to read and study materials in advance of taking the formal courses.

Instructors are being trained and are gaining experience in giving the courses at various levels. Instructors in pilot classes are also developing study guides for further developing the courses. Simplified versions of the Party study courses and study materials have been issued for the benefit of Party candidate-members and full members who come from the toiling masses and who have a low level of literacy. They learn far more from simple and concrete discussions related to their life experience and to the current struggle and from comrades who use simple language to explain basic concepts from the books.

Study materials are being reproduced and distributed on a wider scale than before. Outlines for concrete social investigation at all levels are being improved, refined and propagated. Marxist-Leninist

The Party organization is also within every command and unit of the NPA. The people�s army combines armed struggle with land reform and mass-base building. The Red commanders and fighters rely on and trust the masses. They arouse, organize and mobilize the masses for revolutionary struggle and for immediate social benefit.

Their links with the masses are intimate. The best sons and daughters of the masses are in the people�s army. The masses cherish the people�s army because it is their own army, fighting for their rights and interests. Thus, they are full of enthusiasm as the inexhaustible source of strength of the people�s army.

Within the context of the new-democratic revolution, under the leadership of the proletariat, the Party and the people�s army follow the revolutionary class line of relying mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, winning over the middle peasants, neutralizing the rich peasants, taking advantage of the contradictions between the enlightened gentry and despotic gentry and destroying the power of the latter.

In the course of the rectification movement, the people�s army has been reoriented and retrained. It is highly conscious of and deeply committed to serving the people. It has criticized and repudiated the purely military viewpoint and the various currents of �Left� opportunism, especially the premature and militarist line of �strategic counteroffensive� and �Red Area-White Area� line of militarism cum urban insurrectionism.

The strategic line of the NPA is protracted people�s war, the line of encircling the cities from the countryside. The NPA accumulates strength in the countryside until it gains sufficient strength to seize the cities in a strategic offensive that develops from the prior stages of strategic defensive and strategic stalemate.

At this given time, the NPA is still in the stage of the strategic defensive. But it can launch tactical offensives that it is capable of winning in order to change the balance of forces step by step. The current specific line is to wage extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base.

Were it not for the grievous �Left� opportunist errors, which sought to prematurely �enlarge� and �regularize� units of the people�s army and thus separated them from the masses, the people�s war would have become far more developed on a sound basis than now, at least within the strategic defensive.

As part of the process of rectification, the NPA has been reorganized and redeployed. The typical guerrilla front continues to have a platoon-size center of gravity and several squads dispersed and divisible into armed propaganda teams for mass work on a relatively wide scale, as conditions permit. In certain tactical offensives and certain enforcement operations, the NPA can muster a platoon, an oversized platoon or a company.

The way to ensure a wide area of maneuver for shifting, concentrating or dispersing guerrilla-style, for launching offensives against the enemy and for countering and frustrating enemy offensives, is to consolidate and expand the mass base. Thus, for a number of years in the course of the rectification movement, the NPA has concentrated on mass work. It has had to arrest and reverse the big contraction of the mass base and to recover the areas lost due to �Left� opportunist errors. The mass base has been consolidated and expanded to a significant extent in the guerrilla fronts.

The current level of strength and the nationwide scale of 60 guerrilla fronts at strategic points allow the NPA to launch frequent successful tactical offensives for seizing arms and other resources from the enemy and making him ceaselessly bleed in many parts of his body. Tactical offensives have increased significantly from year to year. But the number of offensives is still much below actual capabilities. We still need to stir ourselves from some amount of inertia and conservatism arising from the focus on mass work for several years. In response to the call of the Party Central Committee for the launching of tactical offensives within capabilities, the people�s army is putting units on political-military training and building up intelligence for the purpose. Ordnance, medical and communications personnel are also being trained.

Our mass work involves social investigation, propaganda and agitation, organizing the organs of political power (at first provisional appointive ones and then regular elective ones) and the mass organizations of peasants, workers (if any), fishermen, women and youth, cultural activists and children mobilizing them in campaigns for their own benefit. These campaigns include land reform, production, public education, local self-defense, health, settlement of local disputes, and culture.

The land reform campaign is the key one because it responds to the main problem of the peasant masses and is the main content of the democratic revolution. At the moment, what is realizable in most areas is the

In other areas, the masses have been aroused, organized and mobilized to fight the foreign companies, bureaucrat capitalists and landlords and prevent them from grabbing the land from the peasant masses. Fierce struggles are currently being waged against foreign companies engaged in mining, logging, plantation, ranching and real estate �development�. The peasants, including ethnic minorities and settlers, are either keeping or taking back their land.

Our successful mass work has enabled the NPA to increase its tactical offensives. The NPA has seized a significant number of firearms from the enemy and captured some military and police officers. In certain dramatic cases, it has compelled the enemy to plead for the release of prisoners of war under the auspices of peace negotiations between the NDFP and the reactionary government.

The Party and the people�s army have adhered to the long-running policy of lenient treatment accorded to prisoners of war and the principle of due process in the investigation, prosecution and trial of accused war criminals. The NPA has complied with international humanitarian law in accordance with the NDFP Unilateral Declaration of Undertaking to Apply the Geneva Conventions and Protocol 1 and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, recently approved by both the NDFP and the reactionary government. The revolutionary movement is gaining international recognition for its status of belligerency under international law.

The revolutionary armed struggle is self-reliant in terms of acquiring weapons and providing for the needs of the NPA. The peasant masses are the main source of support to provide the basic needs of the Red fighters. The NPA and the mass organizations also engage in a significant amount of production for the NPA and families of Red fighters.

The people�s democratic government, explicitly or implicitly using the people�s army as its enforcement agency, can collect taxes (especially to raise cash) from the enlightened gentry and business enterprises. The element of class coercion surfaces when entities of the exploiting classes refuse to follow the law of the people�s government and refuse to pay their tax obligations. However, persuasive rather than coercive measures are applied on the middle-bourgeois entities in accordance with united front policy.

Tax collection is a function of the people�s government. It raises the resources to serve the collective needs of the people and the people�s army.

The reactionary government and some �NGOs� that survive on crumbs-begging from foreign funding agencies are engaged in cheap psy-war when they heap calumny on revolutionary taxation, calling it a form of extortion or sellout to the exploiters.

The Party wields the united front as a weapon complementary to the armed struggle. This united front is principally for armed struggle. It seeks to unite the broadest range of forces and mobilize the people in their millions against the enemy at every given time.

In building the united front, the Party adheres to the revolutionary class line. The united front must be led by the proletariat, founded on the basic alliance of the workers and peasants, supported by the urban pettybourgeoisie, further supported by the middlebourgeoisie and must take advantage of the splits among the reactionaries in order to isolate and destroy the enemy.

The Party constantly builds an echelon of alliances: the basic worker-peasant alliance, the alliance of progressive forces which includes the urban petty-bourgeoisie, the alliance of all patriotic forces which includes the middle-bourgeoisie, and whatever alliance is possible with sections of the reactionaries that are against the enemy on general or specific issues.

The worker-peasant alliance is realized, with the Party leading and building the New People�s Army and coordinating and strengthening the workers� and peasants� movements. Under the leadership of the Party, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines has remained an underground united front of the basic progressive forces.

At the same time, it is always ready to make further alliances with other forces. The alliance with the middle-bourgeoisie has continued to be informal up to this day. But it does exist and is effective insofar as the representatives and groups of the middlebourgeoisie take an anti-imperialist position and middle-bourgeois enterprises fulfill their obligations to the people�s government because they prefer to avoid prohibition or losses in areas where the people�s army is capable of enforcing the law of the people�s government.

Alliances with some reactionaries are also informal and are the most unstable because of their class character. They arise at both national and local levels and take the form of secret political cooperation against worse reactionaries. Some reactionaries have also proven cooperation by complying with certain commitments to the people�s government. They are often encouraged to oppose the enemy and deliver what is needed to further the armed struggle.

So far, the largest and most outstanding informal alliance with the reactionaries came about in the common struggle to overthrow the Marcos fascist dictatorship. Every time bourgeois elections are held, reactionaries at the national and local levels compete to have temporary alliance with the Party. They are required to respect and comply with the laws and policies of the people�s government. The Party has always supported the Moro people�s struggle for self-determination against

The Party, the armed struggle and the united front are all instruments of the people and perform distinctive and interrelated functions. The new-democratic revolution fails if any one of these instruments is neglected or given up. The Right opportunists were utterly wrong when they pushed the notion that the united front is for cutting down or doing away with the vanguard role of the party of the proletariat or that it is a framework for subordinating the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

The proletarian revolutionary cadres who reestablished the Party developed the legal antiimperialist and antifeudal movement during the entire �60s and up to the First Quarter Storm and mass upsurge in the entire 1970-72 period. Since its reestablishment, the progressive mass organizations have always rallied to the revolutionary leadership of the Party even under the worst conditions of suppression by the Marcos fascist dictatorship and the post- Marcos regimes.

The Party always encourages the development of the urban-based legal democratic movement by developing underground Party groups within the mass organizations. Upon the development of people�s war, urban-based mass activists are also confident that they can go to the guerrilla fronts in the countryside whenever they can no longer work in the cities. Because the economic crisis is rapidly worsening, workers being laid off or being persecuted for exercising their right to strike, are encouraged to join the people�s army. An increasing number of workers as well as educated youth are volunteering for social investigation and mass work in the countryside.

The legal democratic mass movement is rapidly growing in strength and surging forward vigorously. This is the political result of the rectification movement and the daily worsening crisis of the ruling system. The trade unions and the legal organizations of peasants, urban poor, women, youth in general, students, teachers, government employees, lawyers, health workers, scientists and technologists, writers and artists, economists, other professionals and progressive religious are working hard to consolidate and expand their ranks.

They continue to build sectoral and multisectoral alliances. They express their views and undertake protest actions along the national-democratic line on long-running basic issues and on burning issues of the day against the imperialists and the local reactionaries, now chiefly represented by the US-Estrada ruling clique.

The mass organizations and movements pursuing the national-democratic line are conspicuously a major political force. To say the least, their total direct mass following runs into hundreds of thousands nationwide. Their influence reaches millions of people. They also enjoy high international prestige and make outstanding contributions in international conferences and other forms of anti-imperialist solidarity work.

The Party coordinates all forms of political struggle. It is in a position to do so because it is an underground organization with intimate links with the masses in both urban and rural areas. It has also succeeded in developing underground groups in reactionary institutions and organizations. Political work principally and technical means secondarily have enabled the Party to coordinate the legal democratic movement and the armed movement of the people.

The Party upholds the principle of democratic centralism as its organizational line. This means centralized leadership based on democracy and in turn democracy under the guidance of central leadership. The essence of centralism is adherence to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the determination to carry out the new-democratic revolution and consequently to fulfill the historic mission of the

As a process of decision-making, democratic centralism involves the subordination of the minority to the majority, the lower organ to the higher organ, the individual to the entire Party organization and the entire Party membership to the Central Committee. Through inner-Party democracy, the facts and opinions of Party cadres and members are presented and concentrated through a continuous process of dialectical interaction between lower and higher levels of the Party organization.

Bureaucratism and ultrademocracy or liberalism are anathema to democratic centralism. The incorrigible opportunists and renegades practised bureaucratism and commandism where they were in authority and ultrademocracy where they contended with higher organs. They violated not only the organizational process of decision-making but, worst of all, they whipped up counterrevolutionary lines against Marxism- Leninism and the Party and tried to wreck the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally.

Once a decision has been taken on any issue in accordance with democratic centralism, there is unity of will and action. Anyone can reserve his or her opinion but must follow the decision. Without the necessary discipline after the process of democratic decision-making, the Party cannot engage in a life-and-death revolutionary struggle against the enemy.

The Party has nationwide scope and is deeply rooted among the masses of workers and peasants. It is imbued with the spirit of service to the people and always promotes the style of simple living, hard work and selfsacrifice.

The Party cadres and members conduct criticism and self-criticism in order to correct errors and shortcomings and to improve the work and produce better results. Criticism and selfcriticism is done on a timely and regular basis within the Party and, whenever necessary, before the masses, in order to redress any offense or harm done to them. Party candidate members are drawn from the ranks of the most conscious and most militant mass activists in the rural and urban areas. Thus, in