Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as Guide to the Philippine Revolution

Contribution to the International Seminar
on Mao Zedong Thought, 6-7 November 1993

By Armando Liwanag
Chairman, Central Committee,
Communist Party of the Philippines

Proletarian revolutionary cadres reestablished the Communist Party of the Philippines on December 26, 1968 and proclaimed Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as their theoretical guide. The CPP armed itself with the most powerful ideological weapon of the world's proletariat for analyzing the revolutionary history and circumstances of the Filipino people, for resuming the new-democratic revolution through people's war and for looking forward to the socialist future up to the threshold of communism. Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought is the microscope and telescope of the Philippine revolution.

After the crushing defeat of the revolutionary movement in 1950 and for nearly a decade afterwards, the revolutionary road had been enveloped in darkness both by the power of U.S. imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords and by a long chain of unrectified grave errors and shortcomings. Were it not for the adoption of Mao Zedong Thought as its theoretical guide, the Communist Party of the Philippines could not have been reestablished and the revolutionary movement of the Filipino proletariat and people could not have been resumed. Mao Zedong Thought served to illumine the road of armed revolution.

The great victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 breached the imperialist front in the East in a big way and resounded in the Philippines. But this was also the time that the revolutionary forces were being brought to destruction by the Left opportunist Jose Lava leadership of the old merger party of the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. What followed the defeat of the revolution in 1950 was a decade of intense reaction, made more acute by the Cold War and McCarthyism.

In the period of defeat, the Jesus Lava leadership of the old CP-SP merger party swung to a Right opportunist line and the followers of this line continued to be influenced by the Browderite line of "peace and democracy" and were further influenced by the rise of Khrushchovite modern revisionism. The proletarian revolutionary cadres therefore faced tremendous odds in striving to continue the unfinished Philippine revolution along the new-democratic line.

The works of Comrade Mao Zedong were scarce in the Philippines before the decade of the 1960s. As early as the late 1930's and during World War II, some of his works on the united front and armed struggle were already available to the comrades in the Chinese bureau in the Philippines. But these remained in the Chinese original. It would be through the efforts of the proletarian revolutionary cadres themselves that the works of Comrade Mao Zedong became readily available, with the assistance of Indonesian and Chinese comrades, at the time of the Great Leap Forward and subsequently the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The Filipino communists necessarily read and studied the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. They recognized that the teachings of Mao proceeded from the basic principles laid down by his great predecessors and were a further development of the revolutionary theory of the proletariat in the particular conditions of China as well as the world. They also recognized in 1966 that the stage of Mao Zedong Thought could be reached because of the earlier stages of Marxism and Leninism.

Marx and Engels laid the theoretical foundation of Marxism by putting forward for the first time the basic principles of dialectical materialism; the critique of capitalist political economy; and scientific socialism in the era of free competition capitalism. Lenin further developed the three components of Marxism in confrontation with the bourgeois subjectivists and classical revisionists and together with Stalin realized the stage of Leninism through the establishment of the Soviet Union as a proletarian dictatorship and through the sustained process of socialist revolution and construction until the emergence of several socialist countries in the era of modern imperialism and socialist revolution.

Mao Zedong Thought emerged as the third stage in the development of Marxism when Mao confronted the problem of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration already evident in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as well as in the manifestation of the same problem in China. He put forward the theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship in order to consolidate socialism, combat modern revisionism and prevent the restoration of capitalism and successfully put the theory into practice for the first time, from 1966 to 1976.

But the teachings of Mao pertaining to the new-democratic revolution had the most powerful immediate influence on the Filipino proletarian revolutionaries for the simple reason that those teachings had a strong relevance to the social conditions in the Philippines and showed the way to make the new-democratic and socialist stages of the Philippine revolution. Further on, Mao Zedong Thought provides the theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship until it becomes possible to defeat imperialism and attain communism on a global scale.

Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought is the most comprehensive and profound guide of the Filipino proletarian revolutionaries, the reestablished Communist Party of the Philippines and the Philippine revolution with regard to the analysis of Philippine history and society; the first great rectification movement from 1967 to 1969; the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines; the revolutionary struggle from 1968 to 1980; the revolutionary struggle from 1980 to 1991; the second great rectification movement from 1992 onward; the Philippine revolution in the new world situation; and the socialist and communist future of the Filipino people.

Introduction
I II III IV V VI
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