[PRWC Party Documents] Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade, April 22, 1972

Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade

A Forest Nightmare

II. The Purely Military Viewpoint

Basahin sa Pilipino

Amado Guerrero

April 22, 1972

Revolutionary School of Mao Tse Tung Thought, Communist Party of the Philippines

William J. Pomeroy does not question but upholds the purely military viewpoint that prevailed in the old merger party under the Jose-Jesus Lava leadership. He sometimes appears to be critical of the errors of this leadership. But that is only because he cannot help mention the facts of defeat to promote his time of bourgeois pessimism. Thus, he goes as far as to say: "We have been living in a fools's paradise."

On his own account Pomeroy refers to the Communist Party as merely the "political wing" of a military organization. The central leadership of the old merger party is considered as merely the executive body of the political wing of the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan. The regional Party committee is considered as merely the political wing of the regional army command. Pomeroy puts the military in command, instead of politics. He denies the absolute leadership of a proletarian revolutionary party over a genuine people's army.

Regarding the relationship between the Party and the people's army, Chairman Mao point out: "The Party commands the gun and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party." He further teaches us:

If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without the revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory, and in the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs.

At a point that he seems to recognize the need for centralized political guidance in the revolutionary struggle, Pomeroy describes the Party as a commandist organization "separate from the armed forces but protected by it". By way of trying to prove that the Communist Party is a surplusage in the revolutionary movement, he boasts that many HMB commanders are not Party members and that in towns near the forest camp there is not a single Party member though these are "solidly pro-Huk, up to and including town officials". On our part, we say that without clear and correct Party leadership a military organization and the localities can never be consolidated. Mr. Pomeroy's experience demonstrates the truth of this statement.

Chairman Mao teaches us:

A well-disciplined Party armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, using the method of self-criticism and linked with the masses of the people; an army under the leadership of such Party; a united front of all revolutionary classes and all revolutionary groups under the leadership of such a Party -- these are the three main weapons with which we have defeated the enemy.

Though the flimsiest of circumstances are dealt with by Pomeroy, he avoids a thorough ideological and political analysis of the errors of the Jose-Jesus Lava leadeeship. He would rather deal at great length with the "revolutionary solution to the sex problem", the "dialectics of love", the "strategy and tactics of courtship", and his love-making with Celia. On the arrest of the "Politburo In" or the Sercetariat in Manila in October 1950, he can only conjecture superficially that it may be the first result of enemy infiltration, carelesness or laxity of security. He fails to inquire thoroughly into the subjectivism and "Left" opportunism of the Jose Lava leadership and, therefore, lets down every valid reason for writing the book.

At the most, he is willing to admit only that the cause of the defeat under the Jose-Jesus Lava leadership is "the very low technological level of the people's army". With sarcasm, he goes on to say:

It is on par with the half-primitive methods that the average peasant uses to work his farm. It is a matter of fact that could, of course, be overcome, if the knowledge were supplied. However, in the entire Philippine national liberation movement there is not one military leader of any professional caliber.

Here Pomeroy puts weapons ahead of politics and external factor ahead of internal factors.

Expressing awe for the army and disdain for the Red fighters, he rails: "some of the best minds from American military academies are out here meeting their match from untrained peasants"; and "...the enemy has the advantage in firepower and modern weapons". The bourgeois militarist mentality of Pomeroy is consistent: The people's army has no chance against the military superiority of the enemy since the military is more important than politics and the peasants are inferior to U.S.-trained officers.

In writing about the February-March 1950 conference of the central committee of the old merger party, Pomeroy fails to present anything -- his own or that of the conference -- which can shed light on the disastrous line and policies taken by the Jose Lava leadership or a new line of new policies that can carry the revolutionary movement forward. The decisions of the conference carry on the false assumptions of the Jose Lava leadership against a protracted people's war and, therefore, involve basically the continuance of a wrong line and wrong policies.

There is no concrete analysis of the situation, particularly of the balance of forces in the struggle. There is no grasp of the ideological, political and organizational strength of the revolutionary forces and there is also no grasp of the need to develop through a protracted period of time the people's armed struggle. Under these circumstances, it is not possible to set forth the correct tasks concerning the building of the Party, people's army, united front, mass organizations and organs of political power. The conference calls for the "regularization" of guerrilla units but it hitches this to the illusion of quick military victory in the absence of the fundamental criticism of the "Left" opportunism of the Jose Lava leadership. On the basis of the wrong notion that the enemy is to collapse on its own, Pomeroy and his fellow Lavaites put too much reliance on the success or failure of their "boycott" policy towards the reactionary elections of November 1951. It is posited that if this electoral farce is more fraudulent and terroristic than the one in 1949 then the people will spontaneously abandon the enemy and join the people's army to overthrow the state within the short period of time. Essentially, the Jesus Lava leadership continues the error of the Jose Lava leadership in onesidely setting a timetable for quick military victory within two years.

Pomeroy and his Lavaite cohorts are unaware all along that they themselves have been isolated in the forest as a result of the disastrous "Left" opportunist line and policies of the Jose-Jesus Lava leadership. Even their leaflets calling for boycott of the reactionary elections cannot be distributed in those parts of the country previously reached by the people's army. The "solidly pro-Huk areas" have suddenly turned hollow because in the first place the factors of consolidation have not been properly attended to.

The Forest itself is a testimony to the fact that to launch the Sta. Cruz raid on August 26, 1950 there is extreme over-extension of the people's army. The forest camp is left with no security detail at all since the raid entails the participation of every fighter from the camp. In the course of the raid, putschist acts like unneccessary burning and the killing of an enemy officer who offers to surrender his men are perpetrated for lack of time to withdraw. The raiders are short of time beacuse they have to withdraw to distant points over extremely unreliable areas.

When the enemy launches its own offensive against the forest camp, it inevitably turns out that political work has not been well carried out among the people in the surrounding areas and even within the camp itself. It turns out that the forest camp is relying mainly on physical concealment and not on a well-consolidated base. District organizing committees disintegrate in a day; food supplies are either seized or poisoned and allowed to pass through by the enemy. Within the camp itself, harsh punishments are the order of the day to maintain "discipline". Pomeroy misjudges and cannot trust even his own guard.

On January 1951 the enemy succeeds in penetrating the forest camp, first the cluster of huts of the Education Department and Jesus Lava's hut where the stocks of food for the entire camp are seized. From then on, the problem of supply and communications becomes exteremly acute. Yet after the February-March conference, the Secretariat with a personnel of 200 men and women, including a handful of armed guards, is set up in the forest. This soon becomes a definite and isolated target for intensified enemy operations.

Pomeroy acknowledges the fact that food for the forest camp comprises canned goods and rice bought from the town market. This is true especially after the enemy destruction of the "kaingins" (forest clearings). The forest camp has been supported almost wholly by funds taken from town raids and the gangster-like activities of "economic struggle " units which include robbery on ordinary bus and train passengers. It is anomalous that there is not a system of collecting grain contributions or even buying rice directly from the peasants instead of from the town market. Grain tax cannot be collected from the peasants because in the first place the old merger party has failed to carry out agrarian revolution or land reform and has also failed to lead production campaigns for support of the people's army.

Mustering all dishonesty, Jesus Lava contends in his Camp Crame article "Paglilinaw sa 'Philippine Crisis'" (Clarification on "Philippine Crisis") that the HMB under his leadership has never had its supply and communication line cut off by the enemy. Pomeroy's The Forest can be slapped on his face. The Secretariat precisely had to break up because its large personnel would starve if not physically wiped out by the enemy offensive. The book deals mainly with panic and blind flight through the forest and sheer struggle for physical survival in the absence of a wide and strong political base to rely on.

In the notorious Lavaite style, Pomeroy makes self-contradicting statements. he implies at the early part of his book that upon the ascendance of the Jose-Jesus Lava leadership in 1948 the old merger party becomes "well organized" and has "clear strategic and tactical aims". But the whole book shows the opposite.

However, Pomeroy does not hold the Jose-Jesus Lava leadership responsible for any serious errors and for the defeat. He blames "men for their individual weaknesses"! He prates:

When the tide of struggle is running our way, individual weaknesses are submerged in the flood of high spirits; when the enemy is strong and the tide is not our way, these weaknesses emerge and turn men into slimy things that scuttle for the safety on the exposed shoreline.

What a flimsy cover for the colossal errors of the Jose-Jesus Lava leadership.

A true scoundrel, Pomeroy blames the people. And he combines self-adulation with condemnation of the people. He boasts:

We had thought that the people moved at our pace, to the rapid click of the mimeograph machine. We had thought that the morale and discipline in this camp was the morale and discipline everywhere. We had thought that by the leaders setting a high tempo we could set the tempo of the revolution.

Pomeroy considers himself and his ilk as having properly done their part. But the people do not respond, so, he resorts to an ugly methaphor:

We are like those who lean over a deep well and drop pebbles into its interior, waiting to hear the far hollow echo of then striking water. When the sound comes back to us it is a strange echo, like the lost cry of someone drowning in that depth.

To Pomeroy, it is not the Jose-Jesus Lava leadership but the people that are guilty of opportunism. He says so in an unsubtle manner.:

Some of the Huks are bitter about the people. The people, they say, are opportunistic. When we are with them they are friendly to us; when the enemy is with them they were friendly to the enemy... They are flesh and blood and they suffer much. We are in the forest, where we can hide and fight, but they are naked to suppresssion. They are helpless before abuse, and who can stand up to abuse and robbery month after month.

An unmitigated agent of counter-revolution, Pomeroy refuses to recognize that the people themselves are the motive force of revolution and the real makers of history. Referring to the people, particularly to the peasant masses, Chairmam Mao teaches us; "Every revolutionary party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, accepted or rejected as they decide." It is foolish to ever assume that a party or an army can take care of itself and fight without the people. It is always the bounden duty of the Party leadership to arouse, organize and mobilize the people for revolution. It is foolish to imagine oneself as a messiah of the people and theen to fret that the people refuse to be saved when in the first place the correct line and corrrect policies are not taken to mobilize and serve them.

To the very end, Pomeroy insults the Filipino people. He rants:

No one looks at me, comrade of the dead. For these people life has ressumed its inexorable ways. They have seen many troops and captives. So many waves of conquest and of oppression have passed over this land that they have been numbed by it. I think how people learn to live with tragedy.

Mr. Pomeroy, we say that the broad masses of the people -- especially the oppressed workers and peasants -- will keep on rising until victory is theirs. They will march from victory to victory under the leadership and under the great red banner of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.

In opposition to the obscurantism of a revisionist scoundrel, we take heed from Chairman Mao who teaches us:

...The rectification movement is a "widespread movement of Marxist education". Rectification means the whole Party studying Marxism through criticism and self-criticism. We can certainly learn more about Marxism in the course of the rectification movement.

In his epilogue, Pomeroy is most concerned about his "end of the thread"; his reunion with his wife Celia. It must be recalled that these two were pardoned in 1961, so many years ahead of others who had also received jail sentences similar to theirs for political rebellion. Pomeroy vociferously claims that it was a worldwide letter-writing campaign for amnesty that compelled Malacanang to release them from prison. But the truth was that the U.S embassy interceded for their release. It was obvious then that Pomeroy had finished one more tour of duty for U.S imperialism. Pomeroy pretends in the epilogue of his book that he is still under persecution by U.S authorities who "refuse" to have him reunited with his Filipino wife. The case as flimsy as his trying to get an exemption from the U.S. McCarran Act so that Pomeroy and Celia can be reunited in the United States. But then such an exemption would blatantly unmask a special agent of U.S. imperialism and would prejudice a continuing sinister mission assigned to him. No one is fooled as Pomeroy and Celia are now united in London, enjoying the patronage of both U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism.

Today, William J. Pomeroy continues to perform counter-revolutionary work. The Forest is basically an effort to make use of the "Left" opportunism of the Jose-Jesus Lava leadership as an excuse for whipping up Right opportunism and modern revisionism to subvert the resurgent revolutionary mass movement in the Philippines. Unfortunately for the revisionist scoundrel, however, the Communist Party of the Philippines has correctly rebuilt itself under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and has always stood firmly against every overt and subtle attempt to becloud the horizon. Chairman Mao has pointed out:

The world is progressing, the future is bright and no one can change this general trend of history. We should carry on constant propaganda among the people on the fact of world progress and the bright future ahead so that they will build their confidence in victory.