The revolution surges forward

Armando Liwanag
Chairman
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
December 26, 1997

Message on the 29th Anniversary of the Reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines

The Communist Party of the Philippines celebrates the 29th anniversary of its reestablishment under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It is leading the revolutionary mass movement that is surging forward amidst the gloom and turmoil of the domestic ruling system and the world capitalist system.

On this occasion, we honor our revolutionary martyrs and thank them most profoundly for their selfless dedication to the revolutionary cause. We congratulate all Party cadres and members for their resolute adherence to the basic revolutionary principles of the proletariat and the mass line and for all their militant work and achievements among the masses.

Impelled and propelled by the Second Great Rectification Movement, the Party has successfully led the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and the broad masses of the people. It has made significant advances and scored brilliant victories since last year in the fields of ideological, political and organizational work.

Since 1992, the rectification movement has strengthened the Party in an all-round way and has equipped it to take advantage of the increasingly favorable conditions for waging revolution. The crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system is rapidly worsening. The broad masses of the people are roused to wage armed revolution by the increasingly intolerable exploitation and oppression that they suffer.

1. Global Disaster Wrought by Monopoly Capitalism

In nearly five decades, from the '30s to the end of the '70s, the Keynesian, social-democratic or fascist policy of state intervention served as a weapon for monopoly capitalism to counter economic crisis, make social pretenses, wage global and local wars, engage in the arms race and superpower economic competition in the Cold War and push pseudodevelopment in the former colonies.

But in the '70s monopoly capitalism was faced with the intractable problem of stagflation. It proceeded in the '80s to cover up rather than solve the problem by making a policy shift to monetarism and laissez faire capitalism, under the bannerhead of Reaganism and Thatcherism. This policy is otherwise called neoliberalism because monopoly capitalism reverts to using the outdated logic and language of free competition capitalism. It uses such slogans as liberalization, deregulation and privatization in order to use the resources of states and giant corporations to extract ever higher profits from the proletariat and the oppressed peoples and nations.

The essence of the policy is to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie and the delivery of public funds to private corporations and cut down the incomes of the people by pushing down employment and wage levels and reducing social spending by governments in order to maximize profits and combat inflation.

The problem with the anti-inflationary bias of the neoliberal policy in the industrial capitalist countries is that it contracts the domestic market exactly when productivity is being boosted by the use of higher technology. In the 90's, the fundamental contradiction between the heightened social character of the means of production and the private monopoly character of appropriation has intensified.

The general tendency is to concentrate capital, in the form of constant capital, in the three global centers of capitalism. More than 70 percent of the global flow of direct investments are concentrated in the United States, Japan and the European Union even as the overall growth rates of the countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have fluctuated and stagnated between one and three percent and national profit rates have tended to fall from 1987 to 1997.

Despite its huge public debt and trade deficit, the United States is relatively the strongest and maintains its advantage by using its lead in technology, its hegemonic politico-military power and the direct investments it attracts from the two other global centers of capitalism. Its monopolies have been downsizing regular employment but generate part-time jobs to be able to claim a high rate of employment.

Since the bursting of its economic bubble in 1990, Japan's economy has stagnated under strong US competition in the Asia-Pacific region, has gone into colossal public deficit spending in a futile attempt to revive itself and has aggravated the problem of bad debts to Japanese and South Korean firms. The European Union has also stagnated, with a high level of unemployment at 12 percent.

Under the slogan of "globalization", another phrase for the neoliberal myth of the free market, the three global centers of capitalism promote the so-called emergent markets, which are the targets of speculative capital and dumping of surplus goods. Less than 30 percent of total global direct investments from the imperialist countries have gone to the "emergent markets", which are mainly in East Asia. Here far higher profits have been drawn from a small amount of productive investments and from a great deal of speculative investments, until the coming of the current Asian disaster to dispel the illusion of the long-touted Asian miracle.

The disaster has been caused by the global overproduction of the types of goods produced by the neocolonial client states of East Asia, over-importation and overvaluation of supplies both for production and for consumption and the unregulated excessive flow of speculative capital from private finance companies and transferpricing in the intracompany transactions of multinational firms. East Asia is now crushed by overproduction, bad debts and bankruptcies.

With the global overproduction of such types of products as cars, consumer electronics, ships and steel, the old "tiger" Korea has been losing in the competition with the imperialist countries. In the case of the Southeast Asian "emergent markets" and China, their lower value-added consumer manufactures (garments, semiconductors, shoes, toys and the like) have gone into a global overproduction, together with similar products from South Asia and some countries in Latin America (especially Mexico) and Central Europe.

South Korea and the Southeast Asian countries have suffered large trade deficits annually. But the heavy inflow of speculative capital from the imperialist countries to finance the importation of components for export-oriented manufacturing, upper class consumerism, debt service, privatization of state assets, telecommunications and other public utility projects and real estate development has sustained the illusion of economic prosperity for a while in the so-called Asian miracle.

The chronic current accounts deficits and heavy inflow of speculative capital have long foretold the currency and stock market meltdowns, which started in Thailand last July, spread to the rest of Southeast Asia and then to Northeast Asia and ultimately shook the capital markets of the imperialist countries. All these have been preceded by the overproduction of the lower value-added exports of Southeast Asia and China and that of the higher valued-added export products of the old "tigers" (South Korea and Taiwan) and the imperialist countries.

South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia are being bailed out by the IMF to the tune of over USD100 billion. In exchange for the heavy debt burden, they are required to go into austerity, open themselves up further to the imperialist vultures and try to produce the same products at lower real wages or else close shop. Despite the bailout, the "emergent markets" continue to sink. The current financial crisis is far worse than that in Latin America in the '80s and Mexico in 1994-95. The IMF is extremely worried by its dwindling resources and by the prospect of financial turmoil in any of the big countries like China, Brazil and India.

The imperialists scold their puppets in the client states for making unsound economic policies, including corruption and wastefulness or overexpansion of production or overconsumption. But in the first place, the puppets have followed their imperialist masters dutifully in pushing the policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization and trampling down upon the rights of the workers and pushing down their wage and living conditions within the framework of the IMF, World Bank, WTO, OECD , ADB, APEC and other overlapping regional trade agreements.

The Asian disaster exposes the destructive character of monopoly capitalism, especially under the auspices of the neoliberal policy. It means the destruction of the productive forces in the most-favored client-states. It recoils upon the imperialist countries by contracting their global market and field of investment. It tends to join up with the worst conditions in the overwhelming majority of the countries, still dependent on raw-material production for export, overburdened with foreign debt and subjected to prolonged conditions of depression and civil strife as a consequence of the crisis of overproduction of raw materials since the '70s.

It tends to link up with the terrible conditions of de-industrialization and thirdworldization of the former Soviet-bloc countries. In the main, the Western imperialist countries, especially Germany, France and Britain, are dumping on them surplus commodities and surplus capital for trading and speculation. Secondarily, some productive capital is deployed lopsidedly only in a few selected enterprises to avail of cheap labor and fetch quick profits. Ultimately, the continuous deterioration of the Russian and East European economies result in the further contraction of the market for Western goods. Both the third world and the former Soviet-bloc countries are being crushed by a debt burden of more than USD 2.0 trillion.

The trend towards the contraction of the world market adversely affects the domestic economies of the global centers of capitalism. The bursting of the bubble in East Asia has an immediate and long term impact on the growth and profitability rates in the United States, Japan and European Union because these have invested heavily in the "emergent" markets. Thus, the capital markets have been repeatedly shaken and continue to be shaken.

There is a global trend towards the bursting of bubbles, deflation and depression. First, the immediate consequences of overproduction become conspicuous. Then follow the general slowdown of production and the steady deflation of the overvalued assets and output. At the moment, world output is overvalued by thirty times and is prone to deflation under conditions of market contraction. For example, even the high technology stocks which have been the spearhead of capital expansion in the US stock market in the 90s, have become volatile because of overproduction and market contraction.

The neoliberal policy has so far run for only 17 years and yet it has pushed the crisis of the world capitalist system to an unprecedented level of virulence since the end of World War II. All basic contradictions are becoming acute. These include the contradictions between the imperialists and the oppressed peoples and nations, among the imperialist powers themselves and between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in imperialist countries.

In the overwhelming majority of countries where the peoples and nations are oppressed by imperialism, the conditions are fertile for the emergence and development of armed revolutionary movements for national liberation and democracy. There are a few such countries where these movements persevere under the leadership of the proletariat. These movements keep up the torch of armed revolution until their counterparts in many more countries arise in the future.

While some states, such as Cuba and North Korea, continue to stand up for national independence and avow socialism and a few others oppose imperialist intervention and aggression, so many others are neocolonial client-states docile to the imperialist powers. But in time to come, the deterioration of social and economic conditions is bound to lead to the emergence and development of more revolutionary movements. When the subjective forces of the revolution grow strong, a broader united front against imperialism and its worst local agents can take advantage of the sharpening struggle for power among the reactionaries. There are still strong anti-imperialist currents in certain countries like China, India and Russia because of persistent national industries and longstanding and current political issues that put them at odds with the Western powers.

On the surface currently, the imperialist powers are all united under the hegemony of one superpower in pushing "globalization" and "free trade", in enlarging a security alliance like NATO or strengthening a security alliance based on the US-Japan Security Treaty and in pursuing a policy of engagement with China and partnership with Russia. But the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system is in the process of unsettling the balance of relations among the traditional imperialist powers.

The economic competition and crisis can sharpen to the point that in certain imperialist countries the forces of nationalism, protectionism and fascism gain the upperhand and make the state more aggressive. Disputes over economic territory in the third world and former Soviet-bloc countries can arise among the imperialist powers. The US drive to be the principal imperialist power in every global region, the current US aggressions and interventions in the Balkans and the Middle East and the expansion of the NATO and the new US-Japan security guidelines in the Asia-Pacific region can ignite wars in the future.

The contradiction between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the proletariat in imperialist countries is still under control by the former. That is because the monopoly bourgeoisie can still shift the burden of exploitation to the third world and the former Soviet-bloc countries and the subjective forces of the proletarian revolution are still small and weak. However, general strikes and mass protest actions are starting to become widespread.

The workers' revolutionary movements under the leadership of Marxist-Leninist parties can emerge and develop only in connection with the worsening crisis of monopoly capitalism, the growing interimperialist contradictions and the resurgence of revolutionary struggles of the oppressed peoples and nations in the third world and the former Soviet-bloc countries.

The current economic crisis and turmoil in the world capitalist system is setting the stage for the next great round in the epochal struggle between the forces of socialism and democracy and those of imperialism and reaction. We are in transition from a world capitalist system under a single superpower to one in which several imperialist powers are violently at odds with each other and t he proletariat and oppressed peoples and nations can once again take the initiative of fighting for national liberation, democracy and socialism. We can look forward to great struggles and great victories of the proletarian revolution in the 21st century.

II. Explosive Domestic Conditions

The economic and political crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system in the Philippines is rapidly worsening at a rate and in a manner comparable to the first half of the '80s. The objective conditions are exceedingly explosive. The claims of the US- Ramos regime to economic prosperity and political stability have been completely proven false. The regime is coming to a dismal end.

Philippines 2000, the medium-term development plan of the regime, is supposed to make the Philippines an economic "tiger", a newly-industrialized country by the year 2000. But unlike the economic plans of South Korea and Taiwan in becoming "tigers" in the past, the Ramos plan has not pushed a single basic industrial project, has considered land reform unnecessary and has become bound by the antidevelopment policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization that are completely servile to the multinational firms and banks.

There has never really been any objective of making the Philippines a newly-industrialized country. The real objective has been to open up the country as "emergent market", for the dumping of surplus products and surplus capital, especially speculative capital from abroad, and to further subject the country to the dictates of the imperialist powers and the IMF, World Bank, APEC, WTO and other imperialist multilateral agencies.

The illusion of economic prosperity has been conjured for a while by a rapid rise of local and foreign public debt, a heavy inflow of foreign speculative capital since 1993 and the capture and double counting of the foreign exchange earnings of overseas contract workers. The reactionary government has claimed bogus high rates of growth in GNP and GDP and an incredible diminution of the proportion of the population under the poverty line by conveniently ignoring the actual rapid concentration of assets and incomes in the hands of the multinational firms and local exploiting classes.

Despite the rapid accumulation of wealth by a few and the depressed incomes of the broad masses of the people, the actual rate of inflation has been high because of the ever rising cost of the imported content of basic goods and services. Wage levels have been pressed down and an extended value-added tax has been imposed on the people. The foreign monopolies, finance companies, the exporters and importers, the operators of export-oriented manufacturing, the megamall magnates and real estate speculators have been benefited by the free flow and convertibility of foreign exchange.

The state has served as an agency for collecting taxes from the people and redistributing these to the foreign monopolies, big compradors and high bureaucrats. State assets in corporations and prime land have been privatized at bargain prices and the proceeds have been used up merely for budgetary expenditures. The main items in these expenditures have included servicing the colossal local and foreign public debt, "modernizing" the military and police, congressional pork barrel and the acquisition of office computers and cars.

Philippine imports are consumption-driven. Imported luxuries for the upper class and upper-middle class are conspicuous. These include cars, consumer electronics and residential palaces in exclusive subdivisions. Even imported fuel goes in the main to consumption rather than to production. The importation of construction equipment and structural steel goes in the main into office and residential towers and golf courses and secondarily to warehouses and sweatshops for export-oriented manufacturing.

The gross income from the export of import-dependent and low value-added manufactures (semiconductors, garments, shoes, toys and the like) has surpassed that of the raw-material exports. But the net export income from export-oriented manufacturing is far smaller or even negative because 80 percent of the gross income covers the cost of the imported components, which are always overvalued for the purpose of transfer-pricing.

Now, export-oriented manufacturing is hit hard by the global crisis of overproduction. Export income from garments has plunged abruptly since 1994 and that from semiconductors has been declining since 1996. Under the neoliberal scheme of trade liberalization, the agricultural and mineral exports of the Philippines are further squeezed by the long-running crisis of the overproduction of raw materials. Even the production of basic food products has been undermined by trade liberalization. Sugar, rice, corn and other food products are being imported in increasing quantities.

The absence of land reform and the lack of incentives and support for local food production have been aggravated by the legal conversion of agricultural land into residential, commercial and industrial estates and by rampant landgrabbing by real estate, plantation, mining, logging and other land-based companies. Landgrabbing has been attended by brutal operations carried out by the reactionary military, police, paramilitary and private security forces against the urban and rural poor, the peasants and ethnic communities.

The rotten fundamentals of the Philippine semifeudal economy have always made the country prey to such "normal" bloodsucking operations as capital repatriation and profit remittances and loansharking by multinational firms and banks and lately to such recent dramatic events as the attacks on the currency and the capital flight. The multinational firms and banks have complete freedom to raid the local financial system and to gobble up any new infusion of funds from private and official lenders abroad.

An economy that is basically agrarian, consumption-driven and stricken with mounting trade deficits, takes foreign loans and portfolio investments heavily, pegs the peso to the dollar and allows the free flow of foreign exchange has no way but to reach the edge of the precipice soon enough and plunge into a new depth of degradation.

Since July 11 this year, the peso has been devalued from 26 pesos to more than 40 pesos to the US dollar or by more than 50 per cent and continues to go down. The Philippines has hardly enough dollar reserves for a two-month worth of imports. It has more difficulties attracting foreign funds as loans or as direct investments. It now suffers from capital flight and a low international credit rating. It is forced to go into austerity and aggravate the exploitation of the people.

It takes more pesos now to pay for the foreign debt of USD 44.8 billion. This does not include the exceedingly large amount of USD22 billion in short-term loans borrowed by private companies from foreign finance companies in the last two years. Ultimately, these private foreign loans will be passed on to the state. The IMF always requires a client state to take responsibility for the bad debts owed to monopoly capitalist sharks.

Capital flight of portfolio investments in stocks and bonds has been the quickest. The sweatshop enterprises of the multinational firms and their big comprador agents are also reducing production or are folding up. This is occurring even as the imperialists push the notion that export-oriented manufacturing thrives on devaluation and lower wages. Local entrepreneurs are in a worse situation. They are being rendered bankrupt by the rising interest rates and the rising cost of supplies from abroad.

Unemployment is rising. The percentage of the population living below the poverty line has certainly increased overnight. The precipitous devaluation of the peso has drastically cut the income of the broad masses of the people. The prices of basic goods and services are skyrocketing. The price increases are so abrupt and are generating widespread social unrest.

The basic class contradictions in Philippine society are flaring up. Already in 1997, especially in the second half, mass protest actions have surged in the national capital region and on a nationwide scale and the tactical offensives of the armed revolution have also increased. Strikes and protest marches and rallies conducted by the workers, peasants, urban poor, students and other youth have been on the rise.

The socioeconomic crisis of the ruling system is rapidly worsening and likewise the political crisis. The rivalries and conflicts of the political factions of the exploiting classes are becoming intense. Like the ruling reactionary politicians, the civil bureaucracy and the military and police personnel are becoming more brutal and corrupt than ever before.

The forthcoming elections are farcical inasmuch as they are monopolized by the traditional politicians of the exploiting classes. They neither reflect the will nor satisfy the basic demands of the people. They are no more than a fleeting circus and thus cannot dispel the people's discontent. Neither do they resolve the rivalries of the reactionary factions but exacerbate them. The pie for bureaucratic looting is shrinking and will generate more bitter struggles among the reactionary politicians.

All the frontrunning contenders for the presidency in these elections are direct political descendants of the Marcos fascist dictatorship. They are all tried and tested in the work of oppressing and exploiting the people in order to serve the monopoly capitalists and the local exploiting classes. Everyone of them is subservient to the IMF, World Bank and WTO, the imperialist powers and the multinational firms and banks. None of them dares speak up to assert national sovereignty and advocate national industrialization and land reform.

All major opposition presidential candidates and parties publicly claim to be popular and enjoy the benefit of the protest vote against the ruling party and its candidates. But in fact, they privately concede that they do not have as much machinery and money as the ruling party and, worst of all, they are not in a position to counter the ruling party from cheating them in the vote count.

Whoever succeeds Ramos will be incapable of solving the all-round crisis of the ruling system. The economic depression that has already started is generating more widespread and more intense social unrest and popular resistance. Whoever sits in power at any level of the reactionary government will have to reckon with the rising outrage of the people and the growing strength of the revolutionary movement.

The revolutionary forces cannot participate in the reactionary elections because they uphold their revolutionary principles and the enemy bans them. But to the extent possible and in certain ways, they can handle the reactionary elections and the results in accordance with the Party's policy of the united front. The current electoral system of the exploiting classes is so rotten that nationwide and in most places the application of the united front involves taking advantage of the contradictions among the reactionary politicians and parties. There are only a few progressive candidates.

Following their political superiors, military, police and paramilitary forces have oppressed the people and launched campaigns of suppression against the revolutionary forces. Many military and police officers, involve themselves in the worst of criminal syndicates, including those that engage in murder for hire, robbery, prostitution, gambling and kidnapping of Chinese businessmen and members of their families for ransom. The most ambitious of the military and police officers involve themselves in political factions and jockey for high elective and appointive positions and business privileges.

As the economic and political crisis of the ruling system worsens, the military, police and paramilitary forces will be made to launch bigger and more frequent campaigns of suppression against the people and the revolutionary forces. Their officers will become even more involved in criminal activities and political conspiracies, up to threatening and launching coups. However, patriotic and progressive sentiments can also be expected to grow among the honest and better elements within the reactionary military and police.

The US-Ramos regime has not at all pacified the Moro people. The Moro people's armed struggle for self-determination is continuing. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is continuing the armed struggle. The Moro people are disgusted with the capitulation of the Moro National Liberation Front and with the false promises of the Manila government. They are agitated by the oppressive and exploitative policies of this government and its agencies in the Moro areas.

The objective conditions are excellent for the Communist Party of the Philippines to lead the Filipino people in carrying out the new-democratic revolution through protracted people's war. Consequent to the rectification movement, the mass base has been widened and deepened for extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare.

At the same time, the legal democratic mass movement has consolidated and expanded its forces. I997 has been a banner year for mass protest campaigns. Big mass campaigns have been waged, such as those against the charter change scheme of the Ramos regime, poverty, deterioration of wage conditions, landgrabbing, lack of genuine land reform, the repeated oil price hikes, human rights violations, and so on. The legal progressive forces put forward the basic demands of the people along the general line of national liberation and democracy against the imperialists and their local lackeys.

The largest mass campaign was held in Manila and other cities all over the country against charter change. On September 21, the broad united front against the Ramos regime was able to mobilize more than one million people on a nationwide scale and 600,000 people to rally at the Rizal Park. The legal progressive forces predominated in the provinces. They participated with the largest nonreligious contingent and were able to attract a large section of the Rizal Park rallyists to march further on towards the presidential palace in a spectacular torch parade.

The tactical offensives launched by the New People's Army in several regions, especially in Southern Tagalog, have been inspiring to the broad masses of the people. They have caught the attention of the bourgeois press and have exposed the falsity of the long-running claims of the enemy in his psywar campaign that the NPA has broken up and disappeared.

The NPA has demonstrated the ability to capture enemy officers and men in the course of raids and ambushes. The prisoners of war have been treated well under the longstanding policy of lenient treatment of enemy captives and under the NDFP Declaration of Adherence to the Geneva Conventions and Protocol I. The people have admired the release of prisoners of war on humanitarian grounds and as a goodwill measure.

In contrast, the enemy continues to unleash atrocities against the people in campaigns of suppression in the service of the multinational firms and the local exploiting classes. Millions of people continue to be displaced to make way for speculative real estate projects, so-called industrial zones, plantations, mining, logging and capitalist tree farming and so on. Massacres, selective murder, illegal detention and torture are rampant. Political prisoners are made to languish in prison under false charges and sentences.

Local government authorities impose private levies on the catch of subsistence fishermen and small and medium fishing entrepreneurs along the seacoast and in inland waters and keep them out of fishing grounds to favor the big fishing companies. Fish pens of the fishing magnates dominate the lakes, big rivers and bays. Foreign factory ships freely poach in Philippine waters.

Not finding employment in our own country to sustain their families, millions of our compatriots have been driven to seek livelihood as migrant workers in different parts of the world. They comprise some 15 percent of the Philippine labor force. Migrant workers suffer exploitative terms of work, long separation from their families and a deliberate lack of protection from the Manila government whose policy is to cheapen labor export and grab the foreign exchange earnings. The Filipino migrant workers have started to organize themselves worldwide to fight for their rights and welfare in their host countries and to link themselves with the national democratic movement in the motherland.

The National Democratic Front is fighting for a just and lasting peace along the line of the national-democratic revolution. It is pursuing the peace negotiations along the same line. Neither a just and lasting peace nor an indefinite ceasefire or truce is possible so long as the people are not satisfied with comprehensive agreements on human rights and international humanitarian law, social and economic reforms and political and constitutional reforms.

Whoever succeeds Ramos as president will be obliged to continue the peace negotiations with the NDFP so long as the revolutionary forces grow in strength amidst the worsening crisis of the ruling system. Any successor will face an armed revolutionary movement that is ever more resolute and vigorous amidst the greatly worsened social conditions. The revolutionary forces and the people will continue the struggle to realize their basic demands for national and social liberation.

III. Growing Strength of the Communist Party of the Philippines

Since 1992, the Second Great Rectification Movement has revitalized and further strengthened the Party in the fields of ideology, politics and organization. The rectification of major errors and weaknesses has made possible the expansion and consolidation of the Party. Since last year, the Party has scored significant achievements in the fulfillment of its fighting tasks.

The Party is in a better position than ever to take advantage of the current virulent crisis of the ruling system. The objective conditions are exceedingly favorable for carrying forward the new-democratic revolution. There is no force other than the Party that can lead the Filipino people towards national liberation and democracy against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

All Party cadres and members uphold the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the guide to the revolutionary movement and combat the various subjectivist trends of modern revisionism, empiricism and dogmatism. They extend the ideological struggle to the debunking of the anticommunist and reformist ideas being circulated by the imperialist and neocolonial states, the multinational firms, bourgeois universities and the imperialist-funded "NGOs".

The Party cadres and members have raised the level of their ideological consciousness to a new and higher level. They reaffirm and apply the basic revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on the history and current circumstances of the Philippines and on their concrete revolutionary practice. The rectification movement has been conducted as the living study of the revolutionary theory of the proletariat.

Major errors at the level of the Central Committee and of nationwide scope as well as those errors specific to staff organs and territorial organs and organizations have been criticized and repudiated. Under the guidance of the central rectification documents, the regional Party committees have accomplished their summings-up. Under the direction of the Central Committee, a number of them have reviewed and improved these.

The method of criticism and self-criticism is being used to uphold the Party line, make timely correction of errors and weaknesses, improve the style of work and produce better and faster results. Criticism and self-criticism is based on facts and the analysis of these facts and is aimed at the fulfillment of the urgent tasks.

There is daily enthusiasm for the reading and study of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, basic Party documents, the rectification documents, Rebolusyon as the theoretical organ and current issuances of the Central Committee. The Party's leading organs at every level make sure that Party cadres explain and put theoretical matters and complex issues within the grasp of the mass of Party members and in turn learn from them in the course of discussions.

Party members and candidate-members have taken the basic Party course, using the new textbook. Many of them have repeatedly taken the course. At any rate, even after the formal course, Party units review what they have studied. The basic Party course is required of all candidate-members. The most advanced mass activists are also encouraged to read and study materials in advance.

A significant number of Party cadres and members have taken the intermediate and advanced Party courses. Trade union, peasant, women and youth cadres at the national level as well as regional and provincial cadres in the Cordillera, Southern Tagalog and northern Mindanao have been among the frontrunners. There is now a drive to increase the number of comrades taking these courses in every region. The study materials are made available for reading and study in Party units in advance of the formal courses.

The General Secretariat and the National Education Department have fielded instructors to conduct study courses of the Party. Regional Party organs are directed to develop their educational departments and instructors' bureaus. Instructors can undertake a mobile school system. Special efforts by cadres, especially instructors, are required to simplify and make the subjects and the study materials comprehensible and interesting to the mass of Party members and candidate-members who have difficulties in reading comprehension and in grasping abstract terms. Regional Party committees are vigorously undertaking the translation of Marxist-Leninist texts and the issuances of the Party's central organs into their respective regional languages and are disseminating these.

The ideological consolidation of the Party has ensured a highly conscious and resolute Marxist-Leninist core of the revolutionary mass movement. Most Party organs and units have carried out ideological consolidation and have continued at the same time to expand Party membership and mass work. However, a few units have turned consolidation into a method of contraction and this needs to be rectified.

The rectification movement involves a dialectical relationship between central leadership and lower organs and knowing the facts at various levels and in various spheres of work and carrying out the rectification movement at each level or in each sphere of work. It is necessary to express one's opinions within the appropriate venue in order to enrich, firm up and make the decision-making process orderly and prompt. Any debate on any issue must be resolved within the framework of democratic centralism. However, there are still a few elements who go astray.

The decisive importance of ideological correctness and unity is proven by the revitalization and strengthening of the Party through the rectification movement. Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. Going astray from the ideological, political and organizational line of the Party, the incorrigible opportunists and renegades who have opposed the rectification movement have gone on a continuous process of degeneration and disintegration. But the loyal Party cadres and members have proceeded to make the Party ever more united and stronger than before.

The need for a new-democratic revolution through a protracted people's war is more than ever clear and urgent. The crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society has been further deepened and aggravated under the neoliberal policy of the world capitalist system. The current socioeconomic disaster has wiped out the gloss of big-comprador "modernization" and thoroughly exposed the agrarian and backward character of the Philippine economy.

Under the leadership of the Party, the New People's Army is growing in strength and advancing. It is heroically waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of a widening and deepening mass base. The center of gravity is a guerrilla platoon within a guerrilla front that carries a total force of around a company. Some 75 to 80 percent of this force is dispersed into squads or armed propaganda teams for mass work.

The typical strike force for raids and ambushes is a platoon, that is either undersized or oversized, depending on the circumstances. In the past year, the NPA has valiantly responded to the call of the Party for launching tactical offensives according to capabilities. On a nationwide scale, the guerrilla platoons have carried out tactical offensives and have seized hundreds of firearms. In this year, the guerrilla platoons of the NPA in the Southern Tagalog region have been the most outstanding in launching successful raids and ambushes, and have been exemplary to other regions in terms of planning and implementation.

The tactical offensives have shattered the false claims of the enemy that the NPA has fragmented and vanished. Successes of the offensives are the result of the successes in the building of a wide and deepgoing mass base and the politico-military training of the Red fighters. The mass base allows accurate intelligence and timely reconnaissance and the safe advance and retreat of our strike force. The politico-military training hones the fighting spirit and skills of NPA units. Meticulous planning and flexibility have been involved in our tactical offensives.

The mass base is most important for sustaining tactical offensives and frustrating enemy retaliation. It arises from painstaking mass work, arousing, organizing and mobilizing the masses according to their basic demands in the new-democratic revolution. So far, we have been able to launch offensives without straining and overextending ourselves. It is important to correlate the rate of the offensives with the progress of mass work and land reform.

In certain areas, where rifles and long arms have been put on stock, the growing mass base has made possible the formation of new rifle units and the recruitment of more Red fighters. The Party leading organs are shaking off the inertia of conservatism induced by prolonged mass work without tactical offensives. But attention is paid to the correct balance between mass work and tactical offensives.

Putting revolutionary politics in command, Party cadres and members and the Red commanders and fighters need to undertake study and train in guerrilla warfare. Tactical offensives must be launched according to capability. At the same time, the inertia of conservatism needs to be broken.

Many of the old areas previously lost due to major errors of line have been recovered and new areas have also been developed. The expansion and consolidation of the mass base have been due to the rectification movement. The Party and the NPA take the mass line. They learn from the masses and impart to them what is in their interest to fight for. Thus they develop ever closer links with the masses and advance with them in the struggle.

Social investigation, basic mass education, solid mass organizing and mass campaigns are being conducted among the farm workers and nonagricultural workers, the peasant masses, the youth, women, cultural activists and children. Their mass organizations are the solid foundation of the organs of political power and are the wellspring of local Party branches and units of the NPA and the people's militia.

Mass campaigns and the work of the organs of democratic political power in the countryside embrace grievance meetings against the enemy, basic mass education, mass organizing, land reform, production, training in self-defense, health and sanitation, resolution of differences among the people and cultural work.

Land reform is still the most important mass campaign in the countryside, especially because the regime has opposed it, the landlord class is re-accumulating land and the multinational firms and their big comprador corporate agents are grabbing the land under various laws. The hunger for land among the peasant masses has become far more acute than ever before.