V. RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT UNDER MARXISM-LENINISM-MAO ZEDONG THOUGHT: 1992 ONWARD

A comparison between the period of 1968-77 and the subsequent period of 1978-91 shows that in the former period deviations, errors and shortcomings were promptly and thoroughly criticized and repudiated in the light of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought; while in the latter period the most serious deviations and errors arose, accumulated and hardened within central leading and staff organs without being promptly criticized and rectified, thus increasingly undermining and violating the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Subjectivism and opportunism ran rampant within the Party as a result of the slackening of ideological vigilance and militancy along the proletarian revolutionary line.

At the root of all the ideological, political and organizational deviations, errors and shortcomings within the Party was the diminution and in certain areas even disappearance of the study and conscious application of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. When the ideological line is not correctly and clearly defined and followed, then all kinds of deviations, errors and shortcomings can thrive. Preoccupation with practical work from day to day, without the guidance of theory leads to unhealthy currents, degeneration and grave losses.

At the end of 1991, the proletarian revolutionary cadres and the entire Party membership recognized the urgent need for a comprehensive and thoroughgoing rectification movement. The first and main rectification document, Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors was drafted and together with other rectification documents was processed by the Executive Committee, the Political Bureau and the Central Committee, one after the other in 1992. It is based on scores of major documents and hundreds of other documents over a period of several years, reflecting the democratic interaction of the central leadership with lower Party organs and organizations through direct investigations, consultations, reports and minutes of conferences and meetings at various levels of the Party.

The most important task in the rectification movement is theoretical education in Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The rectification movement is mainly and essentially an education movement. After a long period of neglecting theoretical education, the Party is compelled to make a new start in accordance with the principle that there can be no revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory. But this time, the Party is endowed with a far greater amount of revolutionary experience, both positive and negative, than that which the proletarian revolutionaries had in 1967 to 1969, during the first great rectification movement. There is also far greater confidence because there is now a far greater number of Party cadres and members and they are determined to overcome the deviations, errors and shortcomings.

In this education movement, the most important study materials are Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors, the supporting document, General Review of Important Events and Decisions from 1980 to 1991 and Stand for Socialism Against Modern Revisionism. The first two documents focus on deviations, errors and shortcomings in the Philippine revolutionary struggle and the third document deals with the revisionist deviation, explains the phenomenon of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration, firms up the resolve to achieve the national-democratic and socialist stages of the Philippine revolution, combats the ideological offensive of the imperialists and their anticommunist petty-bourgeois camp followers and points to the bright socialist and communist future of mankind.

Even as these documents are the result of the study and analysis of accomplished facts and are based on democratic discussions within the Party, these are open and subject to the endless dialectical process of study and practice. So, the lower Party organs and organizations are being encouraged to further sum up and analyze their experience in the light of these documents, drawn by the central leadership in the exercise of its duty to provide ideological and political leadership to the entire Party organization and the revolutionary movement. In giving life to the principle of democratic centralism, the Party follows the dictum of Mao Zedong Thought, "from the masses to the masses" of the Party membership through the appropriate organs and units of the Party.

In view of the prolonged period in which theoretical education has been diminished or neglected in the entire Party, there is currently the drive to reproduce the classic works of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and basic Party documents along the proletarian revolutionary line within the Party, promote immediately the reading and study of these by all Party collectives and to undertake a three-level program of study: basic, intermediate and advance. In the past, there was either a scarcity or complete lack of these Marxist-Leninist study materials. At the same time, where and when there were some studies, these were sporadic and either incomplete or lopsided. To correct such a situation, the cadres in charge of education are instructed to push the three-level program of study.

The basic Party course seeks to instill the spirit of serving the people, self-sacrifice, combating liberalism and proletarian internationalism and to provide an initial understanding of dialectical and historical materialism, a comprehensive grasp of Philippine history, the basic problems of Philippine society, the new-democratic revolution and the current rectification movement.

The intermediate Party course seeks to develop the ability of the Party cadres and members to analyze their own experience and the experience of their particular collectives and the entire Party organization in actual revolutionary struggle -- in Party building, army building and united-front building, economic work and cultural work, in the light of the basic central and regional documents of rectification and, above all, in the light of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Comparative studies are also made within the framework of the national revolutionary struggle and of the world proletarian revolution, in accordance with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The main thrust is to study the experience of the Party and the essential and relevant works of Comrade Mao Zedong.

The advance Party course seeks to provide a thoroughgoing, comprehensive and deepgoing understanding of the three stages of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought in materialist philosophy, in the critique of capitalism and revisionism, in the grasp of socialist political economy, and the strategy and tactics of the proletariat in the new-democratic and socialist stages of the revolution and in continuing the revolution under proletarian dictatorship in socialist society until communism can arise. The objective of the advance Party course is to create a corps of senior and middle-level cadres capable of leading the Philippine revolution now and in the long future.

Theoretical education in the CPP is not formalistic. It is integrated with the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution. There is a wealth of experience and an accumulation of problems to solve in the ongoing revolutionary practice of the Party cadres and members. The living study of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought is most intense when confronting the long unrectified and deepgoing deviations and errors of the past and the current serious problems. The rectification movement is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, the Party cannot overcome the long-accumulated problems and the drive of the imperialists and the petty-bourgeois anticommunists to destroy it through ideological and psychological warfare in combination with the most brutal military means.

The current circumstances for pushing Marxist-Leninist theoretical education are exceedingly favorable. Firstly, the subjectivist and opportunist currents that have been pushed by unremoulded petty-bourgeois elements within the Party have been frustrated in actual revolutionary practice and have been basically defeated by the central leadership through its basic rectification documents and by the entire Party membership through further study and analysis of their experience. Secondly, the disintegration and collapse of the revisionist ruling parties have in a big way cleared the way for the advance of the proletarian revolutionary cadres who are armed with Mao Zedong Thought. Thirdly, the crisis of the world capitalist system is rapidly worsening and the imperialists and their retinue of petty-bourgeois anticommunists are now embarrassed by their own triumphalist propaganda about their "victory over socialism". Their straw-figure socialism is in fact modern revisionism and bureaucrat capitalism masquerading as socialism.

The old and new Filipino revisionists (Gorbachovites), bourgeois populists, liberals and neoliberals, the petty-bourgeois socialists, Christian-democrats, social-democrats, Trotskyites, insurrectionists and militarists who have hitched a ride on the anticommunist ideological and political offensive of the imperialists and who have separately and jointly mocked at Marxism-Leninism and at the CPP have dramatically exposed themselves as a small band of anticommunist counterrevolutionaries by their own proclamations and actions. They draw their slogans from the antiquated arsenal of the Cold War by declaring themselves as an anti-Stalinist alliance and by acting directly and indirectly in collaboration with and in support of the U.S.-Ramos regime.

Since the late 1970s, the most blatant attack on the line of the CPP has been on its analysis of Philippine society as semicolonial and semifeudal. It took the form of ceaseless questioning without respect for the facts. This was followed by the proposal to change the strategy and tactics of the new-democratic revolution, especially in the sphere of armed struggle, under the guise of innovating on, refining and adjusting strategy and tactics. Thus, the "Left" opportunist line of "regularization" and "strategic counteroffensive" as well as of combining urban insurrectionism and military adventurism; and the Right opportunist line of liquidationism, reformism, capitulationism and pacifism were pushed.

By way of rectification in the field of political education, such works as Philippine Society and Revolution, Specific Characteristics of People's War in the Philippines, Our Urgent Tasks, On the Mode of Production in the Philippines, Philippine Crisis and Revolution, Continuing Struggle in the Philippines are being put forward as study materials concerning the character of Philippine society, the character of the ongoing stage of the Philippine revolution, the motive forces, the targets, the tasks, the socialist perspective of the Philippine revolution.

To rectify the grave error of militarism, there is now a wide recognition of the need to develop extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare with a widening and deepening mass base in the entire stage of the strategic defensive of the people's war. There is now a clear recognition that the drive to form NPA companies and battalions interfered with and prevented the full development of platoon-size forces and operations and the multiplication and consolidation of the guerrilla fronts; unduly lessened the number of guerrilla squads and armed propaganda units as the horizontal forces for mass work and the sustainable guerrilla platoons and companies as centers of gravity of guerrilla fronts and regions, respectively; shallowed and narrowed the mass base; and resulted in intolerable logistical burden on the masses because of the top-heavy structure of the NPA.

Thus, a major point in the rectification movement is the redeployment of the forces of the NPA. The main thrust is to have only 25 to 30 percent of NPA personnel in platoons and companies serving as centers of gravity (rallying points and strike forces) from the level of the guerrilla fronts upward; and 70 to 75 percent of the personnel serving in local guerrilla squads, subdivisible into armed propaganda teams for mass work under favorable conditions (where enemy forces are not concentrated). The NPA retains the capacity to launch offensives involving various sizes (small teams, squads, platoons, companies and upward) according to the level of development and concrete circumstances.

Even the centers of gravity are to be in relative concentration when not in an offensive mode, so that they can also participate in mass work and other nonmilitary work. The center of gravity goes for absolute concentration only when conducting tactical offensives, politico-military training, security duty, tax enforcement, and other similar operations. A big number of guerrilla squads are now deliberately spread out in order to expand and consolidate the existing guerrilla fronts, recover lost ground and open and develop new areas of work. At the same time, these guerrilla squads can be drawn in like a net by the center of gravity to muster the superior strength for annihilating or disarming an enemy target.

The drive to prematurely build NPA companies and battalions in violation of the line of extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare has resulted in gross setbacks. There is therefore a return to the period before the full development of platoon-size forces and operations and multiplication and consolidation of the guerrilla fronts was aborted. It is wrong to form prematurely larger units, fight in the way that the enemy wants us to fight and thus play into his hands. Thus, the line of "strategic counteroffensive" and "regularization" and its worst application in the line of combining urban insurrectionism and military adventurism have been criticized and repudiated.

There is no mystery about the apparent success of the enemy with its offensive strategy or war of quick decision and its tactics of gradual constriction. Due to his far superior military forces, it suits him to deploy brigades in order to concentrate on a guerrilla front or a province and then tries to convert his strategic advantage into tactical advantage by using special operations teams for intelligence and psywar purposes and also well-informed and well-armed platoons, companies and battalions for specific offensive operations. He can be successful only if in the first place the NPA forces in his target area have given up the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare that is widely and deeply based among the people in a protracted people's war. The copy-cat special operations teams can be successful only insofar as the NPA has previously given up mass work and the expansion and consolidation of the mass base.

Through correct redeployment and mass work, the NPA can go back to the strategy and tactics which yielded the most weapons by launching only those offensives that can be won. It can disarm the paramilitary forces and the local police and wipe out small units of the regular enemy forces. It can evade the superior enemy forces that it cannot yet defeat. Instead of trying to hit the large forces or hard points of the enemy, it can wait for in ambush or lure in the small part of the enemy force that it can beat. The NPA can defeat the reactionary armed forces only piece by piece and thereby accumulate strength over time.

The CPP's revolutionary experience has proven again and again that people's war cannot be developed without the full and widespread realization of the minimum land reform program, consisting of rent reduction, elimination of usury, raising of farm wages, restitution of grabbed land, improving prices of farm products, increasing agricultural production and promotion of sideline occupations, and rudimentary cooperation through exchange of labor, work animals and tools. Land reform is undertaken along the antifeudal line, with the proletarian cadres relying mainly on the poor and lower middle peasants and farm workers winning over the middle peasants, neutralizing the rich peasants and taking advantage of the splits between the enlightened and despotic landlords in order to isolate and destroy the power of the latter. The antifeudal line is within the framework of the entire new-democratic revolution.

It is worthwhile to review and improve the Revolutionary Guide to Land Reform on the basis of the rich experience in the antifeudal struggle. The main content of the new-democratic revolution is the solution of the land problem, up to the confiscation of landlord property and free distribution of land in the maximum land reform program. But this program is best carried out after the realization of the minimum land reform program on so wide a scale that the potentially unified landlord class and the enemy troops can no longer effectively counter the confiscation of land with the massacre of the peasant leaders and masses. Undoubtedly the best time to carry out the maximum land reform program is when the enemy is defeated over extensive liberated areas or when the entire country is already liberated.

Without a comprehensively organized mass base, the Party and the people's army cannot thrive and advance. Thus, the organs of political power are necessarily set up. These are supported by the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, cultural activists and children. From these organizations, working committees to assist the organs of political power are created and put in charge of public education, mass organizing, self-defense, land reform, production, finance, health, cultural activities, arbitration and so on. Where there is a strong mass base, there can be a strong Party and deep reserves for the people's army through such augmentative forces as the self-defense units, militia and local guerrilla forces.

There is dual political power in the Philippines today. One is the revolutionary government in the guerrilla fronts. And the other is the reactionary government still entrenched in the cities. The revolutionary government can be expanded and consolidated only through the integral factors of revolutionary armed struggle, land reform and mass base-building. If the Party gives up any of these factors, the revolutionary movement begins to shrink and fail. When the territory of the revolutionary government grows, that of the reactionary government shrinks.

To prevent such phenomena as Ahos campaign and other instances of anti-informer hysteria from recurring, the system of law and justice in the revolutionary movement is being developed, with the proper legal and judicial code and trained personnel to apply these. Since the beginning, the Party and the revolutionary movement have been committed to the development of a democratic system of law and justice. There is an accumulation of decisions and rules pertaining to these. Since 1972, the Rules for Establishing the People's Revolutionary Government has laid down a bill of rights which guarantees the civil and political rights of the people.

There is a crying need for proletarian revolutionary cadres in the countryside because for a long period of time, there was a reverse flow of Party cadres and members (especially experienced ones) from the rural areas to the urban areas, propelled by the "Left" opportunist line of combining urban insurrectionism and military adventurism and by the Right opportunist line of reformism and parliamentarism. The Party is once more stressing the importance of revolutionary work in the countryside because it is here where the armed strength is accumulated and developed to overthrow the ruling system and because the guerrilla fronts are in dire need of certain competent personnel that only the cities can provide.

The urban-basing and repeated arrests in 1988 to 1991 of the former NPA "general command" in Metro Manila and certain regional commands are negative examples for the entire Party and the people's army. The rectification movement repudiates the previous practice of the "general command" and some regional army commands to base themselves in urban areas under such pretexts as operating radios, computers and other high-tech equipment, leading both the rural-based people's army and armed city partisans or waiting for a sudden turn of events in the urban areas. Certainly so-called special operations, which in fact deteriorated into gangsterism, is an impermissible reason for urban basing. The eventual control of town and provincial centers shall be the result of the wave-upon-wave advance of the revolutionary forces.

There is the Party organization that properly belongs to the urban areas. From the underground, it leads the legal democratic mass movement, which has a defensive character. The entire Party is repudiating the previous error of being carried away by the "Left" opportunist illusion which regards armed city partisan warfare and armed urban insurrections as the decisive factor for advancing or winning the revolution or by the Right opportunist illusion which regards reformism and parliamentarism or any combination of Right and "Left" opportunism or by a flip-flop from one to the other as likewise the decisive factor for advancing or winning the revolution. Any muddleheadedness in this regard is impermissible because it has proven to be very costly.

For a considerable period of time, the legal democratic mass movement will play an important role in the development of the revolutionary armed struggle but it shall be a role secondary to the revolutionary armed struggle being carried out in the countryside. It means that the legal democratic forces in the urban areas cannot by themselves overthrow or radically transform the ruling system even if on certain occasions the unarmed uprising of the people as in 1986 is capable of causing the downfall of one reactionary ruling clique and replacing it with another reactionary ruling clique. In a country like the Philippines, it takes more than an armed or unarmed urban uprising to defeat the entire reactionary armed forces, bring down the entire ruling system and make social revolution. Through the process of protracted people's war, the revolutionary forces develop the strength not only to overthrow the entire ruling system but also to basically complete the new-democratic revolution and start the socialist revolution.

The pull of both the "Left" opportunist line of urban insurrectionism and the Right opportunist line of reformism on Party cadres and members to stick to the urban areas even when they can no longer operate effectively in the urban areas have wrought serious damage to the urban-based Party underground and legal democratic mass movement as well as to the armed revolutionary movement in the countryside. The Party is systematically dispatching Party cadres and members and revolutionary activists to the countryside in order to help raise the level of revolutionary work in the countryside and not only to put into relatively safer conditions in the countryside those who can no longer work effectively in the urban areas. There is a lot of catching up to do in dispatching fresh revolutionary cadres and activists to the countryside in order to respond to the crying need for them there.

There are certain anticommunist elements who wish to induce the Party to take the road of counterrevolutionary reformism. They claim that the people have gotten tired of waging armed resistance against their oppressors and exploiters and that by implication prefer to suffer in silence the violence of oppression and exploitation indefinitely. They prate about deemphasizing the people's war or even altogether abandoning it. The best proof of the fallacy and chicanery of this counterrevolutionary line is that the pseudoprogressive petty-bourgeois groups like the revisionists, bourgeois populists, petty-bourgeois socialists, liberals and neoliberals, Christian democrats and the like have remained small, marginal and inconsequential. They seem to be larger than they are only when they are used as tools of anticommunist propaganda by the ruling system and by foreign anticommunist agencies. The legal mass movement that has a national democratic character is still led by the proletarian revolutionary party. Were the CPP to terminate or diminish the people's war, then it would become impotent and marginalized like these anticommunist petty-bourgeois groups.

Those who are pushing the counterrevolutionary reformist line also make a hue and cry about peace at any cost to the people and to the revolutionary cause. They wish pacifism to take hold of the revolutionary forces and thereby liquidate them. These reformist elements wish to appropriate the name of the people for their own counterrevolutionary purposes under the pretext of being the "third force" between the reactionary government and the National Democratic Front but they have exposed themselves completely by going so low as to provide intelligence briefings and psywar support to the U.S.-Ramos regime and collaborate with the agents of the regime in holding anticommunist rallies.

The Party and the entire revolutionary mass movement are systematically smashing the counterrevolutionary line being peddled by the alliance of the anticommunist petty-bourgeois that echo the anti-Stalin slogans of the U.S. imperialists and that actively assist the U.S.-Ramos regime, especially in intelligence and psywar. By unmasking these elements, all Party members and mass activists can raise the level of their consciousness and militancy. These anticommunist petty-bourgeois groups have incorporated into their ranks the frustrated ringleaders of urban insurrectionism and military adventurism and criminals who have engaged in bloody witchhunts, gangster activities and intelligence service to the enemy.

To further develop the urban-based legal democratic mass movement, the Party continues to do painstaking mass work among the workers, urban poor, poor fishermen, students, youth, women, the professionals, and the small and medium businessmen. The work in the trade unions, urban poor communities, student movement, institutions and so on results in solid mass organizations and secret Party branches and groups. And the masses are aroused, organized and mobilized along the national democratic line on the issues that most affect their lives.

The rectification movement combats and rejects the pernicious suggestion from various pseudorevolutionary quarters that the working class must give up its vanguard role or that the Party must be liquidated in favor of a united front at first dominated by petty-bourgeois groups but ultimately serving the imperialists, the big compradors and landlords. There would have been no revolutionary movement at all in the Philippines now if not for the leadership of the working class through its advance detachment, the Communist Party of the Philippines. Those who say otherwise have no other intention but to undermine, sabotage and destroy the revolutionary movement.

It is the CPP's continuing achievement that its organization is nationwide and deeply rooted among the masses of the workers and peasants. It is a Party with a cadre and mass character. The quantity and quality of the Party membership are examined. The ideological and political quality is examined first of all. Those who do not come up to the standards are given special attention to become truly qualified as Party members. Those who do not wish to raise the level of their qualifications through ideological and political studies and practical work are allowed to leave the Party.

There is a new resolve to increase the proportion of Party members with worker and peasant status to at least ninety percent and to reduce the proportion of those from the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, not by turning away those who are willing to remould themselves but by positively accelerating the recruitment of members from the toiling masses. The all-round strength of the membership of the Party is drawn from and tested in the revolutionary mass moment. The advance elements in the revolutionary mass movement are invited to become candidate-members. Emphasis is on the recruitment of the advance elements from the working class movement, from the people's army and the peasant movement and from the intelligentsia.

Party leading organs and units take responsibility for and plan the systematic recruitment of candidate-members and their development into full Party members within the prescribed period of candidature. It is a long-running shortcoming of the Party that the mass activists of the national democratic movement are recognized and yet are not being invited to become candidate-members and that in the case of those invited as candidate-members, they are not developed to become full Party members within the prescribed period. An individual Party member can recommend a mass activist to become a candidate-member. It is subsequently the responsibility of the Party unit receiving the recommendation to see to it that a cadre verifies the personality and record of the recommendee and see to it that he or she becomes a full Party member by taking the basic Party course and fulfilling trial work.

The practice of assessing and evaluating work and making criticism and self-criticism is being reinvigorated and encouraged in every leading organ and in every unit. The leading organs are required to take responsibility for and take initiative in the promotion of criticism and self-criticism even after the successful end of the current rectification movement.

The principle of democratic centralism is upheld. It means that centralized leadership is based on democracy and the latter is guided by the former in accordance with the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Both bureaucratism and ultrademocracy are being combated. There is inner Party democracy but at the same time there is Party discipline. Exponents of ultrademocracy have recently exposed themselves as inveterate liquidationists and anticommunists.

To guard against bureaucratism, the leading organs consist of elected representatives of lower Party organs and organizations and are not cut off from but continuously interact with them in order to gather facts and recommendations from below, through direct investigation, reports, consultations, and study and work conferences. All leading organs up to the National Party Congress are required to meet as regularly as possible in accordance with the provisions of the Party constitution. Thus, the experience of the Party can be promptly summed up and the tasks can be defined.

At the same time, the phenomenon of independent kingdoms, factionalism or autonomism is being vigorously combated. The most rabid opponents of the rectification movement have tried to destroy the Party by whipping up ultrademocracy or anarchy. They wish to decapitate and disintegrate the Party and thereby preempt their grave accountabilities. The so-called "freedom of criticism" long ago criticized by the great Lenin is rejected. Any communist party, whether out of power or in power loses its proletarian revolutionary character when it admits into its ranks alien elements and allows them to promote petty-bourgeois and other antiproletarian ideas and actions within the Party.

While the ringleaders of the "Left" and Right opportunists were still formally in the Party, they sought to liquidate the leadership of the working class and the Party. The "Left" opportunists wanted to do away with the absolute leadership of the Party over the New People's Army. They demanded that the NPA have a separate machinery independent of the Party so that they could freely push their line of urban insurrectionism and military adventurism and conduct "special operations", including gangster activities. The Right opportunists wanted to liquidate the Party as the vanguard and center of the revolution, replace it with a bogus united front and reduce the Party to a member organization, giving up its independence and initiative and subordinating itself to a majority of petty-bourgeois groups and individuals that depict the Party as an unwelcome "authoritarian" entity. The Party has smashed both types of opportunists by issuing the directive on the Relationship of the Party with the NPA and the United Front.

The problem of security for the Party, especially in the urban underground, has become complicated and aggravated by the treachery of a handful of "Left" and Right opportunists who have become outright enemy agents, engaged not only in a campaign of slander and lies against the Party but also assisting the enemy in so-called keyhole operations. The Party is therefore reorganizing its personnel, shifting a number of them to the countryside and, most important of all, recruiting more Party members in order to render useless the previous information level of the renegades.

As a result of the current rectification movement, the Communist Party of the Philippines can be expected to become stronger ideologically, politically and organizationally. The rectification movement is guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. It seeks to reinforce the foundation of the Party, enhance the victories already won, overcome deviations, errors and shortcomings and raise to a new and higher level the fighting will and capabilities of the Party and the people against the enemy. It is a method learned from Mao Zedong in strengthening the revolutionary party of the proletariat. It is a major component of Mao Zedong Thought.

Introduction
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