Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines
July 1992

As proletarian revolutionaries, we have availed ourselves of the great treasury of Marxist-Leninist theory and have drawn from it the basic principles that guide our revolutionary cause in the stages of new democratic revolution, socialist revolution and communism. We must continue to do so, or else suffer the fate of the revisionist ruling parties (including their camp followers) that started to revise and depart from basic revolutionary principles more than three decades ago and would eventually disintegrate during these last few years.

Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. We can persevere in revolutionary struggle, promote the rights and interests of the people, stay on the correct line and win further victories only if we have firm ideological moorings. We must therefore undertake theoretical studies seriously.

Political studies and activism are absolutely necessary in order to arouse, organize and mobilize the masses. But these are not enough. We must not limit ourselves to the study of the national situation from time to time. We also must not swing and sway with the current hype in the bourgeois mass media nor with pressures of unstable and unreliable allies. We must constantly be clear about our theory and our ideas. We must constantly be clear about the interests of the proletariat and the oppressed people in our own country and throughout the world.

We must maintain and further develop our Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method. We must constantly improve our knowledge of the materialist philosophy, historical materialism, political economy, scientific socialism, the new-democratic revolution, party building, people's war and the building of the united front.

Since the reestablishment of the Party, theoretical study has had three levels: the basic level focusing on Philippine history, society and revolution and our own basic documents; the intermediate level, on the comparative study of the Philippine revolution with the Chinese and other revolutionary movements, using our seven-volume selections from Mao's works; and the advanced level, on the basic principles of Marxist-Leninist theory, using the most important works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao for reading and study by individual Party members and by Party branches.

But since the late 1970s, we have increasingly departed from the foregoing structure of theoretical education and given less attention to the works of Mao. Writings of lesser importance and lesser relevance to our revolutionary struggle have gained more attention from Party members although in a superficial manner.

Also since the late 1970s, except for the basic Party course and other sporadic educational drives of limited coverage, there has been a gross lack of study courses and study materials for theoretical education at the intermediate and advanced levels. New translations into Pilipino of the basic documents of our Party's reestablishment and other important basic writings were made and distributed in 1981-82 but only in limited number. The works of the great communist thinkers and leaders have also become scarce and unavailable to the Party rank and file.

Low Level of Theoretical Education

The undeniable consequence of this neglect of theoretical education is the widespread low level of theoretical knowledge among Party cadres and members, especially among those recruited since the late 1970s. There is a growing failure to evaluate the revolutionary experience of our own Party and people as well as foreign revolutionary experiences, past and current. There is also a growing failure to identify, criticize and combat the petty bourgeois ideas and influences that emerge inside and outside the Party and are allowed to mislead our Party members and the revolutionary masses. Cadres with a low level of theoretical knowledge have been organizationally promoted and are prone to serious deviations and errors not only in ideology but also consequently in political and organizational work.

There is wide ground for subjectivism, including the dogmatist and revisionist trends, to arise within the Party. Instead of having a comprehensive, complete and all-sided view of things and theoretical development from a proletarian revolutionary stand, there is a narrow, one-sided and fragmentary view of these, depending on which deviation certain elements wish to promote.

For instance, there are elements who exaggerate the current role of their urban area of work and eclectically take out of historical context certain dramatic events, like the Petrograd and Moscow uprisings, the Vietnamese uprising of 1945, the Tet offensive of 1968 and the Nicaraguan final offensive of 1979 _ in order to insist on the "autonomous/specific dynamism of urban struggle" (apart from the entire strategy) and devise a "new strategy" of armed urban insurrection and dogmatically superimpose it on or counterpose it to the entire theory and practice of people's war.

People's war does not exclude armed insurrection at the appropriate time, like the widespread revolutionary uprisings in many Philippine provinces in 1896-98 and 1898-99 against Spanish colonial rule and then against the U.S. war of aggression and those in Central Luzon in late 1944 and early 1945 against the collapsing Japanese forces. In their respective times, the Philippine revolutionary army and the Hukbalahap were the rallying points of the organized and spontaneous masses.

A successful popular insurrection is premised on the disintegration of the counterrevolutionary army and on the existence of a new armed revolutionary force among other factors. To deny the necessity of developing people's war and building the people's army in stages, while the enemy force is still intact and not yet disintegrating, is not only to demagogically take advantage of a natural desire for quick victory but to lead the revolutionary forces to self-destruction.

Even when the wholeness of a certain thing or process is well perceived and even when the two contradictory aspects are recognized, errors have been committed either in identifying which are the principal and the secondary aspects under certain conditions at a given time; or after identifying the principal aspect, in completely or virtually denying the secondary one.

Take for instance the current of thought leading to the boycott error of 1986. The central leadership was correct in declaring that the 1986 snap presidential election was farcical and that Marcos would cheat and win the Comelec count. So up to a given set of circumstances and within a certain period of time, the principal aspect was obviously for Marcos to remain in power. Indeed, Marcos would "win" by Comelec count and Batasang Pambansa (the legislative) proclamation.

But the secondary aspect could rise to the principal position upon a change of circumstances, like the U.S.-engineered military mutiny and the popular uprising that arose due to the convergence of both the organized reactionary forces (including the Catholic Church) and the progressive forces. As early as November 1985, the high potential of the secondary aspect rising to the principal position was already discernible.

In the handling of contradictory aspects, error can also arise from trying to combine or reconcile the principal aspect with the secondary aspect. According to dialectical materialism, an entire thing or process can be understood by knowing both the principal aspect and the secondary aspects or in a complex thing or process, both the principal and the secondary contradictions.

For example, one line is correct, like the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside in accordance with the theory of people's war. Another line is wrong, like aiming for total victory or a share of power with the bourgeoisie soon, without necessarily building the people's army in stages until it is strong enough to smash the bureaucratic-military machinery of the reactionary state in the cities. Thus, Party cadres, including those on the enemy manhunt list, concentrate in urban-based staff organs for the purpose of "preparing" for armed insurrection; and the people's army is pushed to build prematurely and unsustainably large combat formations and top-heavy military staff.

The wrong line is not at all identified as such because it pays lip service to the theory of people's war and the leadership of the Party and also because it uses Party cadres and rides on _ even while it undermines _ the existing urban and rural mass base and contains certain elements of short-term validity like more effective offensives by bigger military formations before the mass base is greatly reduced or lost.

Proposals for shifting to an "insurrectionary" strategy or the diminution of importance of base building and the antifeudal struggle have been rejected, but these have not been thoroughly criticized. Worse, they have been allowed to persist in other guises such as aiming for the decisive victory of the revolution by means of the "strategic counteroffensive" within the strategic defensive and "seizing opportunities" by means of an urban insurrection combined with "regularization" for the strategic counteroffensive.

There is in effect a blending of the correct and wrong lines which allows the latter to make a big headway until the Party wakes up to the ultimate losses. In the absence of a clear and consistent criticism and rejection of what is wrong, the compromise allows the error to work like a parasite on the correct body of principles, the Party, the people's army and the revolutionary mass movement.

The grossest example of failing to recognize the principal and secondary aspects of a certain thing or process pertains to Ahos Campaign (the anti-informer hysteria in Mindanao). The grave violations of civil rights, the unjust taking of the lives of comrades and other individuals and the attendant devastation of the revolutionary forces by this campaign are so strikingly clear and revolting. Yet for some time the campaign was deemed correct on the premise that it probably succeeded in eliminating real deep penetration agents even if hundreds upon hundreds of good comrades and innocent people were victimized and killed.

Various reasons which are extraneous or of indirect relevance to the flow of events under the responsibility of the Mindanao Commission from the early 1980s to late 1986 are cited as the basic causes of Ahos Campaign. These cut off the real connection among the wrong ideological, political and organizational line; the resultant setbacks; and the anti-infiltrator hysteria. The worst proposition put forward by some elements is that Ahos Campaign was a revolutionary success.

The People's War and the Two-Stage Revolution

It is not a matter of arbitrary choice that in the structure of theoretical education a large part should be allotted to the study of the works of Mao and the Chinese revolution. Mao represents a stage of theory and practice which is a major development of Marxism-Leninism. His works bring Marxism-Leninism deeper into the East. And these arose from semicolonial and semifeudal conditions basically similar to those of the Philippines.

The Chinese and the Vietnamese examples of people's war bear closer relevance to the current people's war in the Philippines than any other armed revolution abroad. These examples demonstrate that the chronic crisis of the semifeudal conditions is the ground for a protracted people's war and, to this day, they remain the best available and most relevant to our struggle.

We have learned basic principles from the Chinese revolution and Mao's works as the Vietnamese revolutionaries have. We have applied them according to our own conditions, never copying dogmatically nor mechanically any pattern of experience. Let us cite some important differences from the Chinese experience in people's war:

1. In addition to using the countryside to divide and weaken the forces of the enemy, we have used the archipelagic character of the country to further divide and weaken them.

2. The Chinese people's army used regular mobile warfare and established extensive base areas during the strategic defensive. Like the Vietnamese, we have done so with guerrilla warfare and guerrilla bases and zones.

3. A whole period of agrarian revolution involving peasant uprisings and confiscation of land preceded the more successful campaign of rent reduction and elimination of usury during the anti-Japanese struggle. We have pursued what we call the minimum program of the agrarian revolution before the maximum program.

Dahil sa mga obhetibong kundisyon at mga suhetibong pwersa ng rebolusyong Pilipino sa kasalukuyan, maaaring tupdin ang rebolusyong dalawang-yugto (bagong demokratiko at sosyalista) na unang nilinaw ni Lenin at pinalawig ni Mao. Ang rebolusyong Pilipino, kung gayon, ay katulad ng rebolusyong Tsino, Byetnames, Koreano, Cubano at iba pang rebolusyon na maaaring tumuloy mula sa bagong demokratiko tungo sa sosyalistang yugto. Sa ganitong pakahulugan, ang ating rebolusyon ay nasa antas na mas mataas sa mga rebolusyong iniluwal ng mas atrasadong kolonyal at maging rasistang dominasyong pulitikal at ekonomiko (tulad sa kalakhan ng Aprika) o di kaya'y doon sa ang rebolusyonaryong pamunuan ay hindi naman determinadong magsagawa ng rebolusyong sosyalista (tulad sa Nicaragua).

The objective conditions and the subjective forces of the current Philippine revolution are such that it can fulfill the two-stage revolution (new democratic and socialist) first defined by Lenin and elaborated on by Mao. The Philippine revolution is therefore similar to the Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Cuban and other revolutions which could proceed from the new-democratic to the socialist stage. In this sense, our revolution belongs to a level higher than that of revolutions that have had to emerge from more backward colonial and even racist political and economic domination (like much of Africa) or those in which the revolutionary leadership is not determined to make a socialist revolution (like in Nicaragua).

The worst kind of dogmatism resulting in the worst damage to the Party is the superimposition of the Sandinista paradigm or some aspects of or events in the Vietnamese revolution outside of their historical context on our successful practice of people's war in order to push for insurrectionism and the unacknowledged revival of the Jose Lava idea of quick military victory to push the purely military viewpoint and military adventurism. The seed ideas for these started to sprout and grow in influence at first within the central leadership in the early years of the 1980s, emerged as a clear insurrectionist line in Mindanao in 1983, and was subsequently propagated on a nationwide scale from the mid-1980's onward within the frame of the program for the "strategic counteroffensive".

In its documents of reestablishment, the Party took into full account the most important and essential facts of Philippine history and circumstances, in the class struggle and revolutionary movement in our country. In the ideological field, the most outstanding achievement of the Party is the integration of Marxist-Leninist theory and concrete Philippine conditions. This involves the identification of the basic conditions and current character of the Philippine revolution, its motive forces and enemies, its strategy and tactics, its tasks and its socialist perspective.

The Party made a criticism of the various subjectivist errors _ dogmatist, empiricist or revisionist, and "Left" or Right opportunist _ of the previous leaderships of the first Communist Party (1930-38) and the merger party of the Socialist and Communist parties (1938 onward).

Among the major subjectivist and opportunist errors criticized and repudiated was the Jose Lava adventurist line of quick military victory, building battalions and companies without building (through painstaking mass work) an extensive and deepgoing mass base as their foundation. When we forget lessons from our own history, we are bound to repeat the errors.

The line of spontaneous mass uprising and urban armed insurrection looks new and trendy because it flaunts the Sandinista paradigm or some paragraphs taken from some Vietnamese writings. But in fact, this line is also an unacknowledged recycling of the Sakdalista alsa puto, which had been correctly criticized and repudiated since the time of Comrade Crisanto Evangelista. As proletarian revolutionaries, we must learn from various revolutionary experiences abroad but we must know how to evaluate them according to their world significance, national context and relevance or applicability to our own people's struggle. It is a manifestation of low theoretical understanding, subjectivism and opportunism to rate any Sandinista leader as more significant or more relevant than Mao in terms of seizing political power and making social revolution. We must read the self-criticism of the FSLN after it lost power in ten years' time.

We must grasp the fact fully that U.S. imperialism and the reactionary classes in the Philippines are not easy pushovers. Making revolution is not simply a matter of choosing from foreign models the easiest way to seize power. Otherwise, the coup d'etat made by progressive army officers in the Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) would be the best model. Since 1969, it has been necessary to wage a protracted people's war in order to accumulate strength and build the organs of political power in the countryside. To rush the process of ultimately seizing the cities with notions of spontaneous mass uprising and quick military victory is to feed the small fish to the shark, to plunge into setbacks and defeats.

From the mid-1970s onward, there seems to be a penchant among certain cadres for studying Bolshevik history and the works of Lenin. By itself, this is a good thing. It is even better if this is done within the context of our comprehensive theoretical education. But the effort by certain elements to apply the Bolshevik model on the Philippine revolution and at the same time diminish the importance of the works of Mao Zedong _ which are the more relevant to the conditions of the Philippines _ has encouraged a trend to deviate from the comprehensive structure of the basic, intermediate and advanced levels of theoretical education.

The apparently avid students of Bolshevik history and Lenin eventually overfocused on the issue of the 1978 and 1986 elections and neatly divided themselves into the boycott and participation sides of the debate. Because the Party was banned by the enemy from participation, the boycott side always came out winner in the internal debates. Despite objections of Party cadres to the formulation of the issue as well as practical suggestions from them, the Party center did not fully take into account how our Party conducted itself in the 1969 and 1971 elections and, of course, in reactionary institutions and organizations and how the Vietnamese comrades during the Vietnam war overrode the electoral exercises staged by the Saigon regime.

In late 1986 and 1987, there was the promotion of a tactical course on "political leadership" concentrating on Bolshevik history and strategy and tactics and on Lenin's work. The intention was to correct the erroneous application of the strategic and tactical principles of the Bolshevik revolution on the EDSA uprising and the post- EDSA political situation. At the same time, a Leninist course was promoted by the Manila-Rizal Regional Committee among their leading cadres. Because practically no other courses were undertaken, these courses had the effect of squeezing out the further study of the theory and practice of people's war and of encouraging an urban orientation which some elements used for pushing the notion of insurrectionism.

Previously in 1981, a view emerged within the central leadership itself and spread among some parts of the Party that neither the Bolshevik model nor the Chinese model is applicable to the Philippines. This further pushed the tendency to lessen the reading and study of the works of Mao and to deviate from the appropriate structure of our theoretical education.

It was further encouraged by attacks on Mao Zedong in China with regard to the great leap forward and the great proletarian cultural revolution as well as by the lessened militancy of the Chinese party in the world anti-imperialist movement. Albeit, the Chinese Communist Party did not attack Mao for his teachings on the new democratic revolution. These teachings continue to be valid and enlightening to the Philippine revolutionary movement.

The dogmatic ambush was not only on the appropriate structure of our theoretical education but also on what should be our efforts to sum up our own rich experience of people's war and raise it to the level of theory. Instead, there is the preference to go back to a single foreign example or to a part of it in an attempt to validate an erroneous line _ the line of urban insurrectionism _ and to superimpose it on our living practice of people's war.

Even while total victory has not yet been achieved in the new democratic stage of the Philippine revolution, the Party has acquired a lot of experience which can be studied and raised to the level of theory. It has created various forms of revolutionary forces. It has built Red political power in a considerable portion of Philippine territory. It has yielded writings that are significant. But petty-bourgeois faddists get bored with the line of the Party and see no great achievement unless the cities are seized.

Even at the present stage, the development of the Philippine revolutionary movement is of a level higher than that of other revolutionary movements which are better known in the international press mainly because of the more backward forms of oppression (like outright colonialism and racism) that they contend with or because their national status has gained recognition in United Nations resolutions. But those who do not seriously study theory underrate the achievements of the Philippine revolution and overrate foreign models on the basis of mere coverage in the world mass media and not on the basis of the potential and actual advances on the path of the two-stage revolution.