Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines
July 1992

The Problem of Ultrademocracy

Bureaucratism begets ultrademocracy. When there are no venues for free discussion within the Party outside of administrative bounds, then Party members tend to speak out outside of those bounds and also outside the Party. Without comprehensive ideological, political and organizational life, Party members at one level of the organization can easily get the sense that their lives are compartmentalized and are run by command from above. And thus, they tend to resist by becoming ultrademocratic or liberal.

Bureaucratism begets ultrademocracy. When there are no venues for free discussion within the Party outside of administrative bounds, then Party members tend to speak out outside of those bounds and also outside the Party. Without comprehensive ideological, political and organizational life, Party members at one level of the organization can easily get the sense that their lives are compartmentalized and are run by command from above. And thus, they tend to resist by becoming ultrademocratic or liberal. Certain central staff organs were acting like centers of comprehensive political authority. Some elements issued publications and promoted their own lines, like "critical support for the 'liberal-democratic' Aquino regime" and the line of armed urban insurrection cum premature buildup of unsustainable higher military formations. There was ideological and political osmosis between ultrademocratic elements in the Party and populists, liberals, "social democrats" and other petty bourgeois elements outside the Party who collaborated in denouncing the boycott error of 1986.

Under conditions of ultrademocracy, some elements responsible for the incomparably far bigger error and disaster in Mindanao were able to ride on the campaign against the boycott error of 1986. They kept their silence on or obscured and minimized the problems and disaster whose impact was already fully being felt in Mindanao. Some of them even had the gumption to claim that had it not been for the boycott error of 1986 the people would have been able to seize political power or share it with other forces. What the Politburo saw and took to account was only the boycott error of the Executive Committee.

There are certainly plenty of free discussions and debates prior to consensus or voting in leading as well as staff organs in the Party. In the leading organs, the range of subject matter is naturally wider than in staff organs. In the staff organs, there is an element of specialization but it is always related to the general framework of the revolutionary struggle.

There has been the prevalent notion that the Party leader presiding over the meeting is no more than a mere moderator whose main role is nothing more than to let everyone have a more or less equal share of the discussion. In fact, participants in meetings repeat the same point several times and sometimes talk their heads off. Even patently wrong ideas get more time than correct ones. Thus, the phenomenon of overly long meetings has arisen, costing those attending and the Party much time, energy and resources.

Another reason for the overly long meetings is the failure to distinguish between work and study meetings, to evaluate the items put into the agenda and set the direction of the meeting. A discussion on the national situation or certain national issues is often the best kind of discussion available in these meetings. Too much time is spent on the discussion of administrative and procedural matters. And when personal relations like marital problems and allegations of sexual offense are taken up, there are not only a few overly long meetings but a protracted series of such. There should be a more efficient way of handling these and avoiding disruption of the normal flow of work.

Another factor for overly long meetings is the deterioration of the Party's system of reports which to a large extent is also due to neglect on the part of leading Party organs. In the absence of a system of regular and special reports, plenary meetings at different levels are used to deliver, gather and synthesize the reports by lower units. The result, besides the excessive length of meetings, is widespread haphazardness in the study and verification of reports, susceptibility to one-sidedness in assessing and programming the work of the Party and a tendency to gloss over or conceal problems before they pile up and worsen.

So much time is taken away from political and organizational work. Party cadres are aware of this kind of loss and complain about it. But even far worse is lack of time for attending to theoretical and political education. The most active Party members are absorbed by political and administrative meetings and paper work and the level of theoretical and political knowledge has gone down.

So much time is taken away from political and organizational work. Party cadres are aware of this kind of loss and complain about it. But even far worse is lack of time for attending to theoretical and political education. The most active Party members are absorbed by political and administrative meetings and paper work and the level of theoretical and political knowledge has gone down. In the relationship between higher leading organs or organizations and lower organs or organizations, there is a one-way vertical from-top-to-bottom kind of bureaucratism. In major instances, as in the promulgation and implementation of the EC decision for a boycott of the 1986 elections, there is such a type of bureaucratism. For a long period already, the representatives of central staff organs appear like big bosses and moneybags when they show up in meetings of the representatives of mass organizations to push mass actions.

But there are more cases of ultrademocracy in which mere staff organs and lower leading organs take major decisions even against the Party's line, without bothering to consult the higher leading organ. The Mindanao Commission drew up and implemented the "Red area - White area" scheme and some lower Party committees and cadres under it went into local ceasefires without seeking consultations and getting the approval from the central leadership. The UFC could proceed with a "peace process framework" that degrades the NDF and is detrimental to the interests of the revolutionary movement. It also proceeded with the NDF Congress without the EC or the PB being able to go over the draft documents and plans. Upon the initiative of a single individual leading cadre, grandiose plans anchored on the line of armed urban insurrection could be drawn up and implemented for the mass movement, for military actions and for the united front in 1990 without the knowledge of the central leadership. Ang Bayan could publish articles against the decisions of the central leadership and against the antirevisionist line of the Party.

There are certain elements who keep on writing "strategy", "orientation" and "policy" papers which deviate from and attack the Party's line. They even manage to use some central staff organs to promote the wrong line on a national and international scale. Notwithstanding the disastrous results of their line, they continue to tout it.

For refusing to implement the boycott decision of the central leadership with regard to the 1978 elections and for distributing their position paper to other regions, the members of the Manila-Rizal Party committee were meted out disciplinary measures. For failing to convene the Political Bureau on the subject of the 1986 elections boycott, the Party chairman then found it necessary to resign from his position in 1986.

But there are privileged elements who consider themselves as Party members and yet write and publish articles preponderantly against the Party's line in certain publications (from Praktika to Debate). They use the personnel, the relations and facilities of the Party to attack the Party's line and they have not yet been called to account for their anti-Party actions.

Under the guise of reacting to bureaucratism, there are certain elements who whip up ultra-democracy in order to question and oppose the basic principles, line and policies of the Party; to disinform the Party membership; to misrepresent, provoke and turn the Party inside out. Ultra-democracy or liberalism is as bad as bureaucratism. It can confuse, degrade, endanger and even disintegrate a revolutionary party that allows it.

There is a seepage of the influences of liberalism, populism, social democracy and other petty bourgeois trends and even of imperialist and modern revisionist (especially Gorbachovite) propaganda into the Party. There are ultrademocratic elements who attack the leading role of the working class, the socialist perspective of the Philippine revolution, democratic centralism and other basic principles of the Party. Some of them go to the extreme of demanding that the Party adopt an "alternative framework and program", abandon the framework of Marxism-Leninism or discard its basic Marxist- Leninist principles (because these are supposed to constitute fundamentalism) and that the leading organs of the Party give up their responsibilities.

Just as they simplistically hold Stalin responsible for everything that has gone wrong under the anti-Stalinist revisionist regimes long after the death of Stalin, they wish to put the stigma of their specious definition of Stalinism on the Party. The Party will not allow itself to be wrecked from within by those stereotyping it by any epithet and by those trying to damn it by some false analogies. We know exactly how Gorbachov pushed the line of negating the entire course of Soviet history, Leninism and socialism by totally negating Stalin.

Among those who are whipping up ultrademocracy are elements who are responsible for the gross violation of the civil rights and brutal victimization of a large number of Party members and non-Party people. The Party is determined to hold such elements to account for their deeds no matter how many issues they drum up to sidetrack their responsibility and no matter how much anti-Party "conjuncture" they find with other promoters of ultrademocracy.