Hail the rising revolutionary forces and the upsurge of the mass movement
Armando Liwanag
Chairman
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
December 26, 2001 Message on the 33rd Anniversary of the Reestablishment
of the Communist Party of the Philippines
With utmost joy, we celebrate the abundant harvest of victories that we have reaped as we mark the 33rd anniversary of the reestablishment of our Party under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on December 26, 2001. We hail the rising revolutionary forces and the upsurge of the mass movement.
As chairman of the Central Committee, I wish to express warmest congratulations to all Party organs and units, all Party cadres and members and to all the people for all the struggles and successes in carrying forward the new-democratic revolution against US imperialism and the exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
We owe our victories to the correct principles and line of the Party in the ideological, political and organizational fields and to our ceaseless efforts to carry these out resolutely and vigorously. We have worked hard and feared neither sacrifice nor death in the struggle against the enemy.
We have made significant advances in building the Party as the advanced detachment of the working class, the New People's Army as the main instrument for seizing political power and the united front as the means for rallying the broadest range of people to the revolutionary cause.
1. THE RISING REVOLUTIONARY FORCES AND MASS MOVEMENT
Ten years ago, the incorrigible opportunists and renegades had formed factions within the Party and sought to destroy the Party from within. The urban insurrectionists and militarists had joined up with the longrunning reformists and had come under various influences such as Gorbachovism, Trotskyism and imperialist neoliberalism. They had tried in vain to cover up their gross errors as well as crimes in the 1980s until 1991 and they opposed the Second Great Rectification Movement.
Since then, the renegades have thoroughly discredited themselves. Their grouplets have either disintegrated or have further dwindled. They have come out as special agents of the enemy against the vigorously growing revolutionary forces and mass movement. The worst of the renegades openly became political hirelings and bootlickers of the Ramos and Estrada regimes.
Thanks to the Second Great Rectification Movement, we have reaffirmed the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism against modern revisionism, empiricism and dogmatism, the political line of new democratic revolution through protracted people's war against "Left" and Right opportunism and the organizational line of democratic centralism against ultrademocracy and bureaucratism.
We have continuously educated and trained thousands of proletarian revolutionary fighters on the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Our Party cadres and members have learned to apply the scientific theory of the working class on the concrete conditions of the Philippine revolution through collective studies and mass struggles.
We have aroused, organized and mobilized millions of the Filipino people by pursuing the general line of new-democratic revolution through protracted people's war. We have developed the armed struggle as the main form of revolutionary struggle and we have also developed the other forms of struggle in the legal arena.
Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People's Army is operating in more than 100 guerrilla fronts. Our Party cadres and members, Red fighters and mass activists are continuously expanding and consolidating these guerrilla fronts. In every guerrilla front, we maintain the correct proportion between the center of gravity and the other more dispersed units of the New People's Army.
The people's army is growing in strength by waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on an ever widening and deepening mass base. We are accumulating arms by seizing them in basic offensive operations (ambushes, raids and arrests) against the military, police and paramilitary forces of the enemy. We also launch special operations to punish the worst elements among the enemy forces and render justice to their victims.
In combat, we fight the enemy fiercely but after the din and smoke of battle we treat our prisoners leniently and give immediate medical attention to the wounded. We follow the Geneva Conventions and its protocols and the GRP-NDFP Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).
The mass base is built by forming the democratic organs of political power, the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, children and cultural activists and the working committees to assist the overall committee of self-government and by carrying out the campaigns for mass education, land reform, higher production, self-defense and militia training, health and sanitation and so on.
We have carried out the united front policy in order to reach and mobilize the greatest possible number of masses. We continue to build the national united front against US imperialism and the local reactionaries as well as the antifeudal united front for ensuring peasant support and realizing the democratic content of the revolution.
In the past year, we achieved a dramatic victory in the overthrow of the US-Estrada ruling clique by employing the tactics of the broad united front. In this connection, we have clearly put forward the line that the Party and the masses can overthrow any ruling clique through legal struggle along the line of the broad united front and that we can thereby accumulate strength and experience until we can overthrow the entire ruling system of big compradors and landlords.
To overthrow the entire ruling system, we need to build the people's army, strive to disintegrate the reactionary army and smash both the military and bureaucratic machinery of the counterrevolutionary state. We cannot achieve political and social revolution without overthrowing the reactionary state.
In engaging peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front (NDFP), the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) has the minimum aim of confusing and demoralizing the ranks of revolutionaries and the masses and the maximum aim of obtaining the capitulation and pacification of the revolutionary forces.
But the NDFP has successfully frustrated the counterrevolutionary aims of the GRP. It has made clear to the revolutionary forces and the people that there can be no just and lasting peace without addressing the root causes of the civil war and that the negotiations are merely one of the legal forms of struggle and are less important than the legal mass struggles on the basic issues.
In the meantime, the NDFP has gained points for the international recognition of the people's democratic government. It has successfully required the GRP to co-sign the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). Under this agreement, the revolutionary forces can go after violators of human rights and international humanitarian law and can take the GRP to account for violations.
The NDFP is ready to disengage from peace negotiations with the GRP if the latter is unwilling to form with the former the Joint Monitoring Committee for ensuring the implementation of the CARHRIHL and to come to a mutually satisfactory comprehensive agreement on social and economic reforms before tackling the question of political and constitutional reforms. The NDFP will certainly rebuff any scheme of the GRP to gloss over the root causes of the civil war and maneuver the NDFP into a position of capitulation.
The revolutionary forces and the people have a long and rich experience in people's war. They have grown in strength and advanced no matter how much assistance US imperialism has given to the local reactionaries. They cannot be coerced by any threat of US intervention or aggression under the pretext of antiterrorism. They are prepared to engage the enemy in whatever kind of war it wishes to launch.
Even as it has properly concentrated on its revolutionary homework, the Party has always tried to do the best within its capability to perform duties under the principle of proletarian internationalism as well as the principle of broad anti-imperialist solidarity in the international united front.
The Party has made significant contributions in Marxist-Leninist conferences and seminars in defining the Marxist-Leninist position against imperialism, modern revisionism and fascism in order to raise the level of understanding and cooperation among communist and workers' parties.
It has also made significant contributions in defining the anti-imperialist position against neoliberal globalization and wars of aggression and in this regard supported broad anti-imperialist formations and actions on an international scale. It has encouraged Filipino organizations in the homefront and abroad to participate in anti-imperialist campaigns on any social concern.
2. FAVORABLE GLOBAL CONDITIONS FOR REVOLUTION
Ten years ago, the imperialists and their camp followers gloated over the turmoil in China, the fall of the revisionist regimes in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1989-1991 period. They proclaimed that history could not proceed any farther than capitalism and liberal democracy and celebrated the position of the US as sole superpower at the head of "free market" globalization and as the No. 1 policeman in a "new world order".
Since then, the worsening economic crisis of the world capitalist system and the US-led wars of aggression have served as exceedingly favorable conditions for the resurgence of the anti-imperialist and socialist movements. The shift of economic policy stress from Keynesianism to neoliberalism has merely served to aggravate and deepen the economic stagnation and crisis of imperialism and whip up the aggressive character of imperialism, despite the end of the Cold War upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Neoliberal or "free market" globalization has accelerated the crisis of overproduction in all types of goods and the process of accumulating and concentrating capital in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie in the United States, Japan and European Union. This has resulted in the devastation of the economies of the third world and former Soviet-bloc countries.
The crisis of overproduction has now extended from raw materials, semimanufactures and basic industrial goods to high-tech electronic goods. Thus, the US no less is now reeling from the overproduction of high-tech goods and the bursting of the high-tech financial bubble. It is in danger of getting into a protracted decline similar to that of Japan, which has run for more than a decade.
The crisis of overproduction is at the base of the financial crisis besetting the various types of economies of the world. The third world and former Soviet-bloc countries overproduce the raw materials, semimanufactures and some basic industrial products, thereby get less income from their exports and suffer bigger deficits and increasing debt burden.
However, the crisis in the economic hinterland of imperialism recoils upon the centers of imperialism. The world capitalist economy has in fact been depressed since the 1980s if we take into full account the depressed economic conditions in the third world and the Soviet-bloc countries. Ultimately, the global centers of capitalism are hit hard by deficits, market contraction and inability of debtor countries to pay their debts.
From decade to decade, the US has promoted high-tech military production and consumerism and like the third world has covered its trade deficits with borrowed funds in the form of holdings of US securities in stocks and bonds bought by Japan and Europe. But now lowered interest rates and fallen profits make the US vulnerable to the adverse effects of a runaway sale of US securities held by Japanese and European investors.
The Bush scheme to increase military production in order to stimulate the US economy bodes ill for the people of the world. This is setting the stage for increased US wars of aggression and other forms of military adventure. In the last ten years, the US has launched three wars of aggression: in Iraq, the Balkans and Afghanistan.
The Bush regime is using the September 11 attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and Pentagon as the pretext for making a so-called global assault on terrorism. It is whipping up a hysteria to push military production, wars of aggression and curtailment of democratic rights in both the US and abroad.
It is ironic that the biggest terrorist power in the history of mankind, US imperialism, is masquerading as the champion against terrorism. It is already taking actions to repress its own people, encourage puppet regimes abroad to rule by open terror and push wars of aggression against the people waging revolution, nations fighting for liberation and countries asserting national independence.
For the time being, it appears that the US can act unilaterally or lead military alliances to wage wars of aggression. But after every successful aggression, the US takes the lion's share in the spoils of war and offends some of its imperialist allies and puppets by some measure. In due time, there will be a falling out between the US and some of its imperialist allies.
At the moment, the simultaneous bankruptcy of neoliberal globalization and the aggressiveness of US imperialism serve to incite the broad masses of the people throughout the world to wage revolutionary resistance. There is widespread popular hatred for such US-controlled formations as the Group of 8, OECD, IMF, World Bank, WTO, NATO and the US-Japan security alliance.
In the imperialist countries, the people are rising up in mass protests against neoliberal globalization, unemployment, racism, fascism, wars of aggression and other antipeople phenomena. Elsewhere in the world, the people are engaged in various forms of protest and resistance. In various continents, there are seeds for the spread of armed revolution.
In due course, four major contradictions will intensify in the current decade. They are those contradictions between the imperialist powers and the oppressed peoples and nations, those between the imperialist powers and countries assertive of their national sovereignty, those among the imperialist powers and those between the monopoly bourgeoisie and proletariat in imperialist countries.
The intensification of any of these contradictions will tend to inflame the other contradictions. Under these circumstances, it is decisive for the subjective forces of the revolution in various countries to strengthen themselves, step up their mass work and carry out mass struggles for national liberation, democracy and socialism against imperialism and all reaction.
3. VULNERABILITY OF THE RULING SYSTEM AND EVERY RULING CLIQUE
Ten years ago, all the reactionary politicians of the big compradors and landlords echoed the imperialists in trumpeting the supposed victory of monopoly capitalism over demands for national liberation and socialism. They wished for the bounties of "free market" globalization, with the Asia-Pacific region as the growth area for an indefinite period of time.
Since then, the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions of the Philippines have aggravated and deepened. The violation of national sovereignty and bargaining away of national patrimony have only led to further underdevelopment of the country, impoverishment of the people, grave social discontent, bitter contradictions among the reactionaries and intensified armed revolutionary resistance of the Filipino people and Bangsamoro. The entire ruling system (as well as every ruling clique of the reactionaries) is vulnerable to the crisis of the world capitalist system.
Under the Ramos regime, the country went fast into import-dependent low value-added semimanufactures (electronic components, garments, shoes, toys and the like) and into private construction propped up by large amounts of private credit convertible into public debt. The crisis of overproduction in semimanufactures and private construction with excessive foreign credit devastated the Southeast Asian economies in 1997.
The Estrada regime sank in the socioeconomic crisis that had earlier become severe under the Ramos regime and could not get out of it precisely because it was also extremely servile to the US. It pushed the Senate ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement and the elimination of national restraints on foreign investments.
Nothing came from the US and other imperialists to lift the economy from crisis. Instead the IMF pressed the Estrada regime to collect more taxes and cut down deficit-spending in a shrinking economy. To satisfy its bureaucrat-capitalist appetite for corruption, the regime was reduced to collecting bribes from operators of the numbers game (jueteng) and drug traders and devising scams for raiding the GSIS and SSS pension funds of state and private employees.
Estrada could be easily removed from office because of his obvious stupidity, gross arrogance and flagrant corruption. But no matter how cute or polished may be the ways of Estrada's successor, Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo, she is already emerging as the patroness of corruption.
The Macapagal-Arroyo regime is put in a corner by its own devotion to "free market" globalization, which has cut down official foreign credit and favored the marauding activities of the multinational firms and private banks. As a consequence of the economic ruin caused by liberalization, privatization and deregulation, the ground for mutual accommodation among the reactionary politicians in committing corruption has become so limited that acts of corruption can easily be exposed.
The economy is in shambles and yet the ruling clique is being required by the IMF to collect more taxes, cut back on any kind of social spending and give priority to debt service and funding the military and police. Under these circumstances, the current ruling clique like its predecessor can easily become isolated and discredited.
The global crisis of overproduction has hit the types of product exported by the Philippines, raw materials and semimanufactures. The country is importing a lot of manufactures and even food products. Thus, the foreign trade deficit is ceaselessly increasing and the foreign debt burden is mounting. The global slump is also reducing the demand for overseas contract workers and consequently their wage remittances to the Philippines.
The budget of the reactionary government is becoming more conspicuously wasteful and absurd. Its budgetary deficit is widening every year due to the mounting debt service (46 percent of the budget), the huge allocation for the military, police and intelligence funds (exceeding 14 percent) and the corruption in pork barrel appropriations and supply contracts entered into by all government offices.
The Macapagal-Arroyo regime does not alleviate but aggravates the suffering of the broad masses of the people. Mass unemployment, wage freeze and erosion of incomes, rising prices of basic commodities, increasing tax burden and deterioration of social services and the infrastructure are making the lives of the people, especially the toiling masses and lower middle class, more and more miserable and intolerable.
The regime has ridiculed the pleas of the workers and government employees for wage and salary adjustments and the demand of the landless peasants for genuine and thoroughgoing land reform. The base for removing Macapagal-Arroyo from power or frustrating her 2004 electoral plans is developing.
The regime is increasingly becoming the target of public outrage as a result of its puppetry to imperialist interests, incompetence and corruption. The loose ruling coalition is becoming more unwieldy and unstable as the major and minor allies of the president expect her to become further discredited and unable to run for the presidency in 2004 and they speculate in advance on realignments before 2004.
The regime is vulnerable to the intensification of contradictions among the reactionary political parties and factions. The legal progressive forces can play once more a vital role in arraying a broad united front against the ruling clique.
The military and police continue to be afflicted by corruption. Officers combine and compete with each other in stealing public money through supply contracts and in running criminal syndicates engaged in kidnapping for ransom, drug trading, smuggling of goods in and out of the country and so on.
Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo projects an image of obsequiousness to the military by repeatedly flattering them, yielding to demands for more funds and placing the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations in the hands of defense secretary Gen. Angelo Reyes whom the US is secretly grooming as her successor. Such debilitated image of Macapagal-Arroyo is conspicuous even as she sometimes poses as a tough commander-in-chief by issuing bellicose statements and by aping Bush in pushing the so-called anti-terrorist line.
She is practically in the clutches of General Angelo Reyes and similar militarists who pushed Estrada into an all-out war policy against the Filipino people and the Bangsamoro. They have placed her in the position of condoning and encouraging violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and yielding to the militarists what should be her initiative in the GRP peace negotiations with the NDFP.
A broad legal united front can rise up to isolate and remove the current ruling clique or at least weaken and disable it from winning in the 2004 reactionary elections. At the same time, it is possible to coordinate the armed resistance of the Filipino people and the Bangsamoro in a broad united front in order to further weaken the very foundation of the reactionary state.
It is the duty of the Communist Party of the Philippines to lead and build the New People's Army for the ultimate revolutionary goal of overthrowing the reactionary state and likewise to develop various forms of united front for mobilizing the broadest range of forces and the greatest number of people against the enemy in order to carry forward the new democratic revolution.
4. STRENGTHEN AND SHARPEN THE WEAPONS OF THE PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION
The crisis conditions in the Philippines and the world do not translate automatically into revolutionary advances. It is the task of the revolutionary forces to resolutely, militantly and effectively carry the Philippine revolution forward. The Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People's Army and the National Democratic Front must strengthen and sharpen themselves as weapons to fight and defeat the enemy.
We must strengthen and sharpen the Party as the vanguard force of the proletariat and the people through the study and conscious application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We must continue to learn from the Second Great Rectification Movement. We must avoid the pitfalls of subjectivism, be this in the form of empiricism or dogmatism and act firmly against imperialism, revisionism and reaction.
We must always make concrete analysis of Philippine conditions and our revolutionary practice. The assessment and evaluation of our work, learning lessons from both positive and negative experience, clarification of the tasks, criticism and self-criticism give us all the chance to improve our work and raise the level of our revolutionary consciousness. At the same time, we must seriously read and study Marxist-Leninist materials in our respective organs and units as well as in formal study courses.
We must adopt and carry out a plan to recruit more Party members from the mass movement of workers, peasants, women, youth and professionals. Thus, the Party can maintain and enhance its close links with the masses. We must attract to the Party the most advanced activists and attend promptly to their Marxist-Leninist education and trial work as candidate members of the Party.
We must carry out the new-democratic revolution through protracted people's war and avoid the pitfalls of "Left" opportunism and Right opportunism. We must strengthen and sharpen the New People's Army as the main instrument for realizing the basic alliance of the proletariat and peasantry and for fighting and defeating the counterrevolutionary state.
We must continue to employ the people's army for integrating the revolutionary armed struggle, land reform and mass base-building. The Party must exercise leadership over the commands of the people's army. It must build party units within units of the people's army.
We must strengthen and sharpen the united front as a weapon for augmenting and amplifying the strength of the revolutionary forces and for rallying the broadest range of forces against the narrowest target. We must continue to build a comprehensive echelon of alliances in the national united front: the basic alliance of workers and peasants, the alliance of such progressive forces as the toiling masses and the urban petty bourgeoisie, the alliance of such patriotic forces as the progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie.
In building the basic worker-peasant alliance, it is absolutely necessary that the Party strengthen and sharpen the antifeudal united front. This is the only way for getting the biggest direct mass support for the protracted people's war in the countryside for the revolutionary cause of national liberation and democracy.
Whenever feasible and necessary, we build even the unstable and temporary alliance with reactionary forces against the current enemy. The objective is to isolate the enemy completely and overthrow him. We have demonstrated at the national level how to develop the unstable and temporary alliance with reactionary allies in the movement to overthrow Marcos and Estrada.
We are confident that in the next ten years we shall be able to make great strides in the new-democratic revolution and that the anti-imperialist and socialist movements in the world shall surge forward in an unprecedented way amidst the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and the great disorder due to wars of aggression and campaigns of repression.
Under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the revolutionary proletariat, the Filipino people are now carrying out the national democratic revolution of the new type. Upon the basic completion of this stage of the Philippine revolution, they shall proceed to carry out the socialist revolution until imperialism is defeated on a global scale and the threshold of communism is finally reached. Such is the bright future of the Philippine revolution and the Filipino people.
In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the Party must continue to develop close relations with Marxist-Leninist parties in order to promote conditions for rebuilding the international communist movement. The Party must also continue to encourage the development of the international united front, characterized by broad anti-imperialist solidarity.#
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