Central Committee

December 26, 1991

We must strengthen the Party ideologically, politically and organizationally. We cannot do so without taking stock of our strengths and weaknesses. We must assess and evaluate all these, identifying and understanding what are the major accomplishments and problems. Only then can we set forth our tasks correctly.

We must rectify the deviations and errors which violate our basic principles and negate the hard work, struggle and sacrifices of our Party, the people and the revolutionary martyrs. The central leadership of the Party is taking the initiative of carrying out a comprehensive and deepgoing rectification movement.

Study Marxist-Leninist Theory and Combat Subjectivism!

The Party has succeeded in integrating the universal theory of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution. It has clarified Philippine history, the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society, the new-democratic stage of the Philippine revolution, the leading class, all the motive forces and adversaries, the strategy and tactics of people's war, the main tasks and socialist perspective of the Philippine revolution.

By clarifying these, the Party has been able to provide the theoretical and political guidance to the revolutionary movement as never done before in Philippine history. The revolutionary movement of the people has won victories surpassing those of the old democratic revolution and all attempts to resume the Philippine revolution before 1968.

The documents of the Party's reestablishment and subsequent basic documents of the Party are the study materials for the basic level of Party education. Further, there are the distinctive content and study materials of the intermediate and advanced levels of Party education.

The intermediate level studies more thoroughly than the basic level our own revolutionary experience, compares it with and draws lessons from the most significant and most relevant experiences abroad in terms of building the Party, the people's army and the united front in the new democratic revolution. This entails the evaluation of the revolutionary experience of our Party and that of others and gives due recognition to the significance and relevance of the Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Cuban and other revolutions to the Philippine revolution.

The advanced level provides the Party members with a comprehensive and profound knowledge of materialist philosophy, historical materialism, political economy, scientific socialism and the world revolution as taught by such great communist thinkers and leaders as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Ho. This provides us with the most extensive and deepgoing understanding of the basic principles of the proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship.

All Party members are enjoined to engage in theoretical study not only through formal courses but also in the course of revolutionary mass struggle and in the course of Party life in leading organs and in basic units and to strive to raise their collective experience and practical knowledge to the level of theory. They must ceaselessly develop their Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method.

Since the late 1970s, however, there has been a gross neglect of theoretical education and a gross inadequacy of study courses and materials. Worse, there has been a departure from a structure of theoretical education that is based on our revolutionary experience, that is suitable to our situation and revolutionary struggle and that properly takes into account the significance and relevance of the advances of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice abroad.

We must be able to evaluate the significance and relevance or applicability of the teachings of all the great communist thinkers and leaders. We must know how the teachings can shed light on our conditions and struggle. We must know the historic conditions from which the teachings have arisen. We must not take any successful foreign revolution or any segment of it out of the concrete context of its own national history as well as of world history.

The works of one great communist thinker should not be dogmatically used to squeeze out those of another, especially if the works of the latter which are more relevant in terms of historical and social conditions and can shed more direct light on the Philippine revolution. Lesser figures of revolutions that do not reach the socialist stage should not be evaluated more highly than any great communist thinker in an eclectic or dogmatic manner.

The basic writings of our Party, which are based on the analysis of our own concrete circumstances and our revolutionary experience, should never be laid aside nor depreciated in the desire to copy some recent model that is believed to be the easy way to victory, without full consideration of the history and conditions of such a model. We must not fly away from the actual conditions and level of the development of our own revolutionary struggle by pursuing any foreign model, be it a complete revolutionary process or a mere part of it.

There has been the subjectivist wish of certain elements to hasten the Philippine revolutionary process and bring it abruptly far beyond its actual level of development. They focus on and take out of historical context such dramatic events as the Bolsheviks' Petrograd and Moscow uprisings of 1917, the Vietnamese uprising of 1945 or Tet offensive of 1968 and the Sandinista's final offensive of 1979 in Nicaragua. These examples are counterposed to the entire theory of people's war and to the entire process of developing people's war in stages and the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside.

The mere wish for achieving total victory and a share of political power in the offing, unwarranted by the existing strength of the revolutionary movement and the objective conditions, is passed off as "new theory" and has been turned into a reason for reorienting and rearranging the revolutionary forces for armed urban insurrection, the premature formation of larger but unsustainable military units as well as topheavy staffing in both urban and rural areas. In areas where this "new strategy" has been carried out, mass work is neglected and the enemy gains ground in forcing the revolutionary forces into a purely military situation.

The basic principles and basic line of our Party have been put under question or denigrated by elements who have a narrow, one-sided and fragmented view of things and processes in the country and abroad and who have not really studied both Marxist-Leninist theory and the history and conditions of our own revolutionary movement in a comprehensive and deepgoing way. Because of their failure to understand our own revolutionary experience, they do not even realize that they are actually seeking to resurrect and combine both the Sakdalista concept of insurrection of the 1930s and the Jose Lava adventurism of the 1950s.

The erroneous thinking that power can be seized or shared with the bourgeoisie, regardless of the actual strength of the people's army, by rousing and riding on the spontaneous masses has to be immediately cited because it has attacked the basic principles and line of the Party most systematically; and it has wrought the gravest damage _ unprecedented in the history of our Party and the ongoing revolutionary movement.

Since its reestablishment, the Party has been committed to a cogent antirevisionist line as a result of the study of the Lavaite errors and the modern revisionism promoted by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on a world scale since 1956. The Party has never abandoned its Marxist-Leninist line. No leading or staff organ can overturn the decision of a Party Congress. The basic antirevisionist line in the basic documents of the Party's reestablishment has never been erased, notwithstanding any previous current of thought among some elements that the revolutionary struggle would either stagnate or retrogress without the foreign assistance of Brezhnev and his successors.

The critical antirevisionist line of the Party is proven correct and vindicated by the disintegration and collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There, capitalism and bourgeois class dictatorship have been blatantly restored after more than three decades of peaceful evolution (degeneration) from socialism to capitalism.

Gorbachov has the historical distinction of presiding over and carrying out the final stage of the destructive career of modern revisionism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The initial stage was that of Khrushchov who laid the foundation of modern revisionism by spouting bourgeois populism and pacifism and carrying out capitalist-oriented reforms in the economy. The middle and longest stage was that of Brezhnev who recentralized the bureaucracy and resources for the benefit of the new bourgeoisie as well as for the arms race and further promoted the so-called economic reforms of his predecessor.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union and collapse of the revisionist ruling cliques and regimes mean the total discredit of modern revisionism as well as that of its consequence _ undisguised capitalism _ that continues to wreak havoc on the lives of the peoples in these countries. Contrary to the mocking propaganda claim of our enemy, it is not our Party which is embarrassed and orphaned by the fall of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes. It is the Lava revisionist group and its successors.

As far as the Party is concerned, Marxism-Leninism stands brilliantly as the proven correct guide in the new democratic revolution and in the future socialist transformation in our country. The new challenge in theoretical work is the further development of the theory of continuing the revolution, combating modern revisionism and preventing the restoration of capitalism in socialist society and resuming the revolution where modern revisionism has prevailed or has already passed on to blatant capitalism in the anticommunist and antisocialist counter-revolution.

Mao Zedong started theoretical and practical work on the problem of modern revisionism. The failure of the proletarian cultural revolution, after some years of success, has not invalidated the theory of continuing proletarian revolution in the same way that the failure of the Paris Commune of 1871, after a fleeting success, never invalidated the theory of proletarian revolution. Persevere in People's War and Build the Mass Base!

There is no doubt whatsoever that under the oppressive and exploitative conditions of the semicolonial and semifeudal system the Filipino people have no choice but to engage in the new-democratic revolution under the leadership of the working class through its advanced detachment, the Party.

The people in their millions have been aroused, organized and mobilized by the Party as never before in Philippine history, in accordance with the general line of new democratic revolution. Through the revolutionary armed struggle and the united front, the Party has been able to lead the broad masses of the people in their millions.

By building the NPA and waging people's war, the Party has been able to arouse, organize and mobilize the largest oppressed class in Philippine society, forge the basic alliance of the working class and peasantry and answer the central question of the revolution.

There are now scores of guerrilla fronts in the countryside in the overwhelming majority of Philippine provinces. Here the mass base is being expanded and consolidated. Organs of political power are not simply being built above the heads of the local people but mass organizations of workers, peasants, fishermen, women, youth, cultural workers and others are being formed to realize the most active and strongest participation of the people in the armed struggle and all types of mass campaigns for their benefit.

The key campaign is land reform. What is generally being carried out is the minimum program of rent reduction, control of interest rates, improvement of the wages of farm workers, better prices of farm products and raising production through rudimentary forms of cooperation, improved agricultural techniques and sideline occupation. Land confiscation is carried out against despotic landlords and restitution of land to the rightful owners is carried out in cases of landgrabbing.

Let us continue to remind ourselves that our people's war is a revolutionary political mass movement within the framework of the new democratic revolution and that it integrates the armed struggle, land reform and building the mass base along the antifeudal line. This is being restated in view of a gross misrepresentation that the waging of people's war and the building of the people's army is mainly or primarily a military process.

The NPA has been able to preserve and strengthen itself through guerrilla warfare. The Party spreads the people's army like a fisherman's net to do mass work and draws it in to concentrate a force in order to wipe out the enemy forces piece by piece by surprise. If they are to fight effectively and self-reliantly and accumulate strength in the long term, the NPA guerrilla forces must rely on an ever expanding and consolidated mass base in view of the vastly superior military strength of the enemy.

At the present stage of the development of the people's war, it is wrong to absolutely concentrate any company or battalion within the short radius of one, two or three villages or in a forest camp when it is not on an offensive mode or on training exercise. If such units are not spread out to conduct mass work, they become bogged down with problems of their own maintenance and other internal problems, they become isolated from a dwindling mass base and end up fighting less and less and becoming more and more vulnerable to enemy encirclement and attacks.

There has been a gross deviation from the line of developing the people's war and the people's army in stages and of building the foundation of victory through painstaking mass work. This deviation has caused setbacks through a process of self-constriction and has inflicted unprecedentedly heavy losses in the strength of the Party and the people's army and gross reductions of our mass base. It has caused a reversal of what the Party has always been proud of: namely, when the enemy pours in his brigades and battalions on a particular area the revolutionary forces can flexibly fight back and grow in strength by leaps and bounds in so many other areas.

For nearly ten years, there has been the erroneous line of thought in certain parts of our Party that victory can be achieved sooner without so much the necessity of painstaking mass work and solid organizing by rapidly forming companies and battalions in absolute concentration and combining their offensive actions with urban uprisings of the spontaneous masses, the urban mass organizations and the armed city partisans. The armed urban uprisings, according to them, are the "highest form of struggle" that the movement is supposed to achieve. What is wrong and self-destructive about this deviation is that it argues against the necessity of developing the people's army in stages by encircling the cities from the countryside, disregards the current stage of the development of the revolutionary forces and in the name of "regularization" draws away cadres and resources from mass work and concentrates them into urban-based staff and staff of military units.

This erroneous current of thought and action has brought about the gravest setbacks and destruction to the Party and the revolutionary movement, first in one major island and subsequently on a nationwide scale. It has brought about the lopsided distribution of cadres and resources, the costly building of urban-based staff organs and topheavy military staff (which are vulnerable to the enemy), gross reductions of the mass base, the eventual isolation and passivity of the prematurely enlarged and unsustainable armed units, defeats and demoralization in a purely military situation and finally a wild surge of panic like the anti-informer hysteria.

This erroneous trend falls into the enemy's line of creating a purely military situation that allows him to effectively use his vastly superior military forces in his strategic offensive (war of quick decision) and blockhouse warfare (gradual constriction) in the countryside. The urban-based leading or staff organs which are supposed to coordinate and combine the urban and rural forces for the armed urban insurrection are also vulnerable to surveillance and punitive actions by the enemy, especially because many of the cadres are on the enemy manhunt list and can be easily identified.

In the exercise of its absolute leadership, the Party must in the first place decide the line and the strategy and tactics, and deploy cadres and resources correctly. No staff organ should be allowed to take away initiative from the comprehensive leadership of the Party in this regard.

The guerrilla forces of the New People's Army must develop under the principle of centralized leadership (especially ideological and political) and decentralized operations. They must create more guerrilla fronts and conduct guerrilla warfare on all types of terrain in order to effect extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare. They must be able to maintain initiative and flexibility and skilfully use the tactics of dispersal, concentration and shifting.

When the enemy concentrates his forces, he can grab a certain territory but in the process gives away more space to the guerrilla forces. When he disperses his forces, the dispersed parts become more vulnerable to guerrilla attacks. When he keeps on shifting his forces, he also opens his parts to attacks by the guerrilla forces. He cannot carry out the same war of fluid movement conducted by the people's army because he does not enjoy the popular support that the guerrilla forces have.

What spells victory for the NPA is the extensive and deepgoing mass participation and support, which keeps the enemy deaf and blind despite his superior military forces and war materiel. The people's army ceases to be what it ought to be when it concedes the people to the special operations teams, the paramilitary forces and other organizational devices of the enemy and fails to deploy the armed propaganda teams, local guerrilla forces and militia as well as to build the organs of political power and the mass organizations.

We must cast away illusions that we can capture and keep the cities without breaking the military backbone of the enemy in the countryside. The NPA must keep to the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside. And even in parts of the countryside where there are big and well fortified enemy camps which we cannot as yet raid and capture, we can wipe out part by part the small units that go out of such camps so long as we can encircle them with an extensive and powerful mass base.

We are on the strategic defensive. But we can launch the tactical offensives that we are capable of winning. We can carry out this strategy and tactics only by availing of the widest room for maneuver in the countryside and by constantly expanding and consolidating the mass base. We should not imagine that the U.S. and the local exploiting classes are easy pushovers in our country. We should ensure that we have the capacity to seize power and hold it when in the future we decide to take their citadel.

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