February 24, 1992

4. The "strategic counteroffensive" within the strategic defensive was a form of insurrectionism insofar as the model it emulated was the Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968 and sought to achieve something like this. The central leadership withdrew the concept of the "strategic counter offensive" in 1988.

The concept was devised by the central leadership in the early 1980s in the course of a competition of concepts for "innovating on" or "surpassing" the theory of people's war and accelerating the speed of the revolutionary process either towards total victory or a sharing of power with some sections of the ruling classes.

There was a rapid rhetorical advance from the early to the advanced substages of the strategic defensive and further on to the "strategic counteroffensive".

In an apparent attempt to open a "new path," the central leadership actually declared that the road of the Philippine armed revolution is neither the Bolshevik example nor the Chinese example.

Although the concept of "strategic counter offensive" limited itself to being a substage (the final one) of the strategic defensive, there was an element of Left opportunism (pagbabakasakali) that the "strategic counteroffensive" could bring down the entire ruling system, with the Marcos fascist regime, irrespective of the strength of the people's army and the revolutionary forces.

The SCO concept whipped up the wind of questioning and undermining of the theory of people's war and the depreciation of Mao in favor of the Bolshevik uprising paradigm (minus the more extended armed struggle in the countryside in the civil war and anti-intervention war), the Sandinista paradigm, especially the final offensive minus the two other tendencies -- protracted war and proletarian -- and only certain parts of the Vietnamese people's war, like the Tet offensive, the Soviet supply of sophisticated weapons and tactics of blows to the head.

The element of "Left opportunism" links the SCO line to the various kinds of insurrectionism. The SCO concept also flew away from the level of the development of our armed struggle (guerrilla warfare, involving HPRs which we can count and whose potential we should not mystify).

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