3. BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY MASS MOVEMENT IN THE COUNTRYSIDE!

We must build the revolutionary mass movement in the countryside; and we must build the basic mass organizations for the peasants, youth, women, children and cultural activists to be able to generate it. Not much can be accomplished in mobilizing the great masses if our propaganda teams and guerrilla squads limit their organizing to the barrio organizing committees and small local armed groups.

The key point in our rural mass work is to arouse and organize the peasant masses in the shortest possible time and carry out the land reform movement step by step. In the course of focusing attention on the organization of the peasant association in a typical farming barrio, the other basic mass organizations can also be organized. The peasant activists can easily move the youth, women, children and cultural activists of their own class to accomplish their self-organization.

The farm workers' association, the union of nonagricultural workers and fishermen's association are also basic mass organizations that should be organized wherever there is a basis. In cases where there are already mass organizations positively working for the people's interests, all that we do is to adopt them and transform them further into revolutionary organizations.

There is really no point in feeling sorry that there is a paucity of Party cadres to attend to rural mass work. A propaganda team or guerrilla squad can rely on the local mass activists and can cover so many barrios, even as many as twenty within six months. It is even possible for one, two or three experienced cadres from the outside to work initially with the local mass activists and cover several barrios within a relatively short period.

The local mass activists emerging at every stage of the process of developing the revolutionary mass movement are themselves prospects for recruitment into the Party. Through this process, new Party members keep on arising and local Party branches can be established.

We must rely on and trust the masses. So long as we grasp their interests, needs and demands through social investigation and close contact with them, we can arouse and guide them to set themselves into motion. They can very well organize and mobilize themselves along the correct path. There are always enough activists arising from their own ranks to firm up the revolutionary direction of their movement.

There must be a series of careful steps in organizing the people in a barrio, especially under the present harsh conditions of fascist martial rule. There are four of these steps which culminate in the full organization of the basic mass organizations.

The first step is to get reliable contact men or liaison men in a barrio that we wish to organize. The number of these can range from three to ten. Within the shortest possible time, we should form them into what we may call the barrio liaison group. This has been called the "barrio organizing group" in Central Luzon and the "organized group of contacts" in Southern Tagalog.

Usually, we can get the contact men in a barrio because of our preceding mass work in an adjoining barrio. This is advancing wave upon wave. It is inevitable that the people in one barrio have relatives and friends in the next barrio. Sometimes too, we can reach a barrio where work must be done and get the contact men or liaison men because a Party member, a Red fighter or activist or any reliable person has relatives or friends in that barrio.

Preliminary social investigation can be done on a barrio in a day or a few days, depending on the reliability and knowledgeability of our initial contact men. The shortcomings of some of these contact men can be made up for by further contacts. We must gather all the general and specific information we need to start political work in the barrio.

There is expediency in forming the barrio liaison group from out of the contact men that we initially come to know through reliable intermediaries. Although we try immediately to put the best available men in the group, it may not be possible all the time to get the best representatives of the people in the barrio. After all, it takes time to develop revolutionary activists. Sometimes, the contact men may all come from only one part of sitio of a barrio or from only one section of the barrio population.

But we must make sure that the members of the barrio liaison group are desirous of revolution, are elements of the exploited classes, are known to be honest and good people, have extensive relations in the barrio, are intelligent and resourceful and are conscientious in performing the tasks that we give them.

The functions of the barrio liaison group include assisting us in social investigation, conducting initial propaganda among the people, putting us in touch with the positive forces and elements in the barrio gradually and secretly, and making sure that we are secure in our entry into, stay in and exit from the barrio. All these functions involve the smoothening of our initial relations with the people in the barrio.

The barrio liaison group replaces the barrio organizing committee. Some similarities between the two are apparent. But there are basic differences between them.

The barrio liaison group is no longer empowered nor expected to act as an embryo of people's government in the barrio. Its members do not have the unwritten vested privilege to becoming automatically the chief moving force behind the mass organizations to be established. We depart from the old pernicious practice of giving initial contact men this privilege and therefore we remove or drastically reduce the condition for unreliable elements to creep into the mass organizations.

The group is also under strict advice not to expose themselves as the organizers of mass meetings. At the same time, we take care that it does not know more than it should about the actual widening and deepening of organizational and political work being done in the barrio. Of course, the members of the group receive political education from us and are tested through work and at least some of them can advance from being mere contact men. But the group as a whole does not enjoy any automatic privilege of knowing details beyond its liaison work.

The second step is for our guerrilla squad, propaganda team or cadres to move from one part of the barrio to another or fan out to several parts at one time to conduct deeper social investigation and carry out study meetings among the people, especially the poor peasants, farm workers and lower-middle peasants. We should do everything possible to link ourselves closely with the exploited masses.

Our mass work should bear fruit initially in the form of the people's organizing groups. These include the peasant organizing groups for the poor and lower-middle peasants, the youth organizing group, the women's organizing group and such other organizing groups that have a basis. These are based on a division of territory (sitios and parts of the barrio center if much larger than the sitio).

The organizing groups should be able to win the majority of people in their respective fields and initiate activists to arouse and mobilize them. At this point, local activists should start to arise inside and outside the organizing groups. The cadres of the Party should make sure through propaganda and study meetings on the national democratic revolution that politics takes command of all activities.

We must grasp the antifeudal class struggle as the key link of our rural mass work and we must uphold the poor peasants, farm workers and lower-middle peasants as the most reliable and resolute revolutionary force in a typical farming barrio. But we cannot go far in the antifeudal struggle if we fail to link it well with the antifascist and anti-imperialist struggle not only by way of providing the basic antifeudal forces with the most comprehensive political view but also by way of bringing into active play all other positive forces in the countryside for the revolutionary cause.

The third step can be taken soon after the establishment of the people's organizing group in all or most of the parts of the barrio. There is already a wide and deep basis for establishing the people's organizing committees on a barrio-wide scale.

We have already found out who is fit for what function within each committee. The basic functions to be apportioned are those that pertain to organization, education, economy, defense and health. The apportioning of functions should be settled well within the committee by the members upon our guidance. The committees should be capable of raising the enthusiasm of the majority of the people in their respective fields for the revolution and coming into coordination with struggles launched over areas that include several barrios.

Like the organizing groups based on the parts of the barrio, which must be retained as their support, the people's organizing committees should be an underground force. They must know how to cover their activities with whatever legal and traditional organizations there are in the barrio and must know how to dissemble, use revolutionary dual tactics, before the enemy or unreliable elements.

As early as the successful establishment of the peasant organizing committees over a large area in the countryside, even only some scores of barrios, it is possible to take such a simple and easy first step towards land reform as the reduction of land rent through the systematic withholding of a certain part of the crop without the landlords' knowledge. The campaign to reduce interest rates and eliminate usury; arrange fair prices with the merchants; promote savings, mutual aid and simple exchange of labor and nonpayment of debts under Masagana 99; raise production and productivity; and the like can be pushed.

In cases where the landlords have cunningly abandoned the old practice of sharecropping on the bases of the actual crop and resorted to the "leasehold" system (the system of high fixed land rent) promoted by the Marcos fascist dictatorship and by the Lava revisionist renegades, the tenant masses should deliver only a part of the rent and claim bad crop or some plausible reason for the nonpayment of the full rent. If all the peasants claim the same reason, the landlords will be at a loss; they cannot threaten so many with eviction and they might as well simply write into their records the undelivered part of the rent as "debts".

Harvest after harvest, the process of peaceably outmaneuvering the landlords can be done until they come to terms with the peasants. The landlords' threat to deprive the tenants of credit for subsistence or production will be rendered naught by the peasants' gains from land reform, their thrift, mutual aid and simple exchange of labor and alliance with the well-to-do peasants who come under persuasion not to engage in usury.

Any despotic landlord who abuses his tenants is liable to be punished by the people's army or secret groups of peasants. It would not pay for him to refuse to come to terms with the peasants. It would be difficult for his overseers and for scabs to show their faces before the peasant masses.

Depriving the landlord of a part of the land rent and demanding fair terms from merchants and moneylenders can be achieved only if the peasant masses are well organized, united and have a high level of political consciousness.

In a typical farming barrio, the majority of the population are poor and lower-middle peasants (most tenants belong to these strata). On this basis, the peasant organizing committee plus the other people's organizing committees can have their way through the barrio councils of the reactionary government. Using the tactics of the united front, peasant organizing committees can enhance their strength.

The peasant organizing committees can actually control the barangay councils or any legal organization for purposes of holding public meetings favorable to the peasant masses and for revolutionary dual tactics in the face of the enemy. In effect, they can function as the embryo of the people's governmental authority on their own strength, supplemented with cooperation of their allies who are often very much their own relatives and personal friends.

The fourth step in organizing the barrio people is to fully organize the basic mass organizations. It would seem as if the people's organizing committees and groups are a skeleton taking full flesh. All members are enlisted and they elect the leading committees of their respective mass organizations. The peasant association includes mainly the poor and middle peasants.

Of course, like the antecedent organizing committees, the basic mass organizations cannot be fully organized all at the same time, say in one day or one night. There is the law of uneven development and differences of conditions. But we must strive that in one definite period in a barrio or group of barrios, all the basic mass organizations are fully organized. This requires planning and consistent work.

The fascist enemy has been more alert to peasant associations and far more intolerant towards them than the other mass organizations. We must be flexible in adopting legal forms for the peasant associations. We must use different names for them in different barrios. In handling them for the revolutionary cause, we must be good at combining illegal and legal methods. There must be open legal activities and clandestine illegal activities.

We should be fully aware of our strength and we should not overstep it. It is understandable if, for considerable period of time in a given group of barrios, the antifeudal movement is capable only of effecting rent reduction and other agrarian reforms in the manner that we have described in discussing the third step.

While experience has shown that mass organizations other than the peasant association are less suspected and less subjected to evil measures by the enemy, we must take the same precautions that we take in having the peasant association. Whenever the enemy comes to know that a mass organization is led by the Party, it is liable to be subjected to the most vicious attacks.

Even when we are still at the second step of organizing the people in a barrio, we should start to carry out Marxist ideological instruction and recruit into the Party the most advanced elements among the mass activists so that by the time we reach the third or fourth step, we shall have been able to establish the local Party branch in the barrio, with a group in every sitio and major part of the barrio center. At the fourth step, we shall also have Party groups within the basic mass organizations.

Upon the establishment of the basic mass organizations and the local Party branch, it becomes possible to establish the barrio revolutionary committee as the organ of democratic political power. It shall simply be a matter of putting together the representatives of the Party, the basic masses and allied forces.

In our old areas where the barrio organizing committees are reliable and are of sound character, we should work as fast as possible for their dissolution by establishing the basic mass organizations, the local Party branch and the organ of democratic political power. We can speak of working fast here, at least faster than in new areas, because we have known the people and worked with them long enough.

When the basic mass organizations flourish, the revolutionary mass movement can make great strides. Revolutionary studies and propaganda become more widespread and vigorous than before. Land reform becomes firm. The able-bodied volunteers from every mass organization can be formed into the local militia and given military training and duties. The campaign for higher production becomes effective. Every mass organization has a special agricultural plot or cottage enterprise to support the revolution. Cultural activities blossom and raise the people's fighting spirit against the enemy. Health work is also attended to on a mass scale.

Under these circumstances, the foundation for greater military victories by the New People's Army is laid. The people's fighting spirit is ever rising. There is abundant material support for the revolutionary armed struggle because of land reform, higher production and special production. The local militia are a powerful reserve and auxiliary force of the people's army. The Party becomes well-rooted in the localities by taking into its ranks the most advanced local activists.