5. BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY MASS MOVEMENT IN THE CITIES!

We must build the revolutionary mass movement in the cities by developing the trade unions, the community organizations, school organizations and others and engaging them in a broad democratic movement that is distinctly antifascist and anti-imperialist, a movement sympathetic to and supportive of the distinctly antifeudal movement in the countryside.

We must pay principal attention to the masses of workers and other urban poor. We must get the workers mainly through their workplace and trade unions and also through the communities, where they are linked with the other urban poor. We must also pay attention to the urban petty bourgeoisie, especially the student masses and their teachers.

In undertaking an open democratic movement in the cities, we can invoke the very laws of the reactionary state which contain hypocritical terms and reform concessions just to enable us to go into the midst of the masses. Among the masses, we can create a revolutionary underground and transform legal organizations or build new ones that can militantly yet legally carry forward the national-democratic line step by step.

Combining legal and illegal methods, we can develop the revolutionary mass movement in the cities. Our main tactic is to turn the table against the enemy or to use another metaphor, to take the enemy's fortress from within by stratagem (but preparations for this are protracted and cannot be separated from the progress of the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside).

The open and legal democratic mass movement cannot be firm, vigorous and well-directed without the illegal Party at the core. The Party as an underground force must be the backbone of this movement. It must be the guide, nurturing the movement at every step and seeing to it that the next step is taken upon the ripening of conditions for it.

As in the countryside, there is nothing discouraging about the smallness of the Party amidst the large masses in the cities. So long as the mass movement develops, activists emerge and make themselves available for recruitment into the Party. Thus, the Party is strengthened to achieve more and assume greater tasks.

It is only through a reinvigorated mass movement that we can raise the new forces to tackle the new situation created by fascist martial rule. There is no other way to solve such problems as the constrictions and unhealthy conspiratorial tendencies of a narrow underground and the enemy's cunning in looking out for the Party by merely tailing known activists of days before martial rule.

In this time of severe economic crisis, the masses of workers are stirring and pushing forward their economic struggle. We must get into this economic struggle and raise it to the level of the political struggle so that the entire working class will not only be able to fight most effectively for its own interests but also link itself fully with the rest of the people in the powerful flow of the people's democratic revolution.

There are immediate conditions and issues which make easy the transformation of the economic struggle into a political struggle. As previously pointed out, the wage and living conditions of the workers are extremely pushed down and benefits put into law by virtue of several decades of workers' struggle have been drastically reduced by the fascist dictator. And to top these all, the workers are prohibited from exercising their right to strike in most enterprises just because they are categorized as "vital industries" and "export industries" by the fascist dictatorship. In the main, these are enterprises owned by U.S. and other monopoly capitalists and by the big comprador bourgeoisie and big landlords.

Whenever the employer gets wind of a plan among the workers to make a mass petition for the improvement of their conditions, the easiest thing for him to do is to make "preventive suspensions" and to call on the troops and police to show up and bully the workers. Of course, when the strike, slow-down, sit-down or any mass protest action is already on, the armed minions of fascism show up to make arrests and make all sound and fury about "subversives", "economic sabotage" and "national discipline".

The masses of workers have experienced the right to strike in times far better than the present. Their present experience of intensified oppression and exploitation is extremely intolerable to them. Thus, no amount of fascist intimidation has deterred them from mass protest actions. These have already developed into concerted strikes and street demonstrations.

We must promote the strike movement and must make it so widespread and so intense to demonstrate to the entire nation and people that the fascist ruling clique and big bourgeoisie are so puny and weak and so rotten to the core. We must promote the economic strikes and transform them into political strikes and political demonstrations. We must hit the big bourgeoisie (and foreign monopoly capitalists and the comprador big bourgeoisie) the hardest. The rate of exploitation is highest in their enterprises.

We are presently at the stage of making the economic strikes more widespread. Even at this stage, the political dimension of such strikes is already coming to the force. We must make solid preparations to bring great multitudes of workers to the streets and plazas for political demonstrations.

In the face of fascist martial rule yellow labor leaders have become more discredited than ever. The top labor aristocrats of the country have blatantly placed themselves in the payroll of the fascist dictatorship under the so-called Trade Union Congress of the Philippines. Others have been so cowed and discouraged by anti-union restrictions that they have turned to other occupations.

The trade union movement has become more than ever a fertile ground for the revolutionary work of the Party. The masses of workers are already aware that when the Party is in their midst their economic struggle becomes resolute and militant and they become equipped with a profound political understanding of their situation and with a wide range of tactics.

Our propaganda has had some effects. Normally, it should outstrip our organizational work. But our propaganda and prestige have too far outstripped what solid results there should be for our organizational work. We should solve the problem not by reducing our propaganda. On the other hand, we should ceaselessly increase and amplify it. We should intensify not only our written propaganda of a general character but also all forms of verbal and nonverbal agitation suited to the most specific conditions. But we must harvest the crop of propaganda and agitation.

We must conduct organizational work among the workers more vigorously than ever before in conjunction with our propaganda and agitation. Since long before the fascist rule, the Party has devised the workers' organizing committee as an underground force for organizational expansion among the workers. But learning from experience in the countryside, specifically in connection with organizing a trade union where there is none yet, we do not immediately form this committee from out of those workers whom we meet at the beginning.

We can go through a process akin to that in organizing the present masses. First step is to organize as a matter of expediency the workers' liaison group from out of those workers with whom we can have relations at the beginning. Second step is for members of this secret group to introduce to us more workers, coming from every major part of an enterprise, so that we can form a secret organizing group in every major part of that enterprise.

Third step is for us to draw representatives or the best elements from the organizing groups to form the workers' organizing committee. At every step, we must deepen our social investigation and provide political education and appropriate instructions to the workers that we come into contact with and organize.

The workers' organizing committee retains the organizing groups as its subsidiaries and improves their composition whenever necessary. By the time that the committee is established, it shall have been ready to draw up the list of workers' demands to which the majority of the workers are to be won over before the employers and his agents get wind of it. It takes only one, two or three capable Party cadres to work with the committee.

The workers' organizing committee can be formed ahead of the workers' organizing group only in cases where we are certain right away that reliable and capable members are on hand at the beginning at least for honest trade union work. Such cases occur whether the objective is to form a trade union where there is none, to transform an already existing one or to put up one trade union against a thoroughly discredited one.

In any case, the workers' organizing committee and its organizing groups are a good means for giving way to the emergence of worker activists within them and outside them. The process of winning over the majority of workers to a list of union demands, creating the militant unity necessary to pursue such demands and developing the political consciousness of the worker masses are conditions for the emergence of a considerable number of worker activists.

Even only at the stage of the workers' organizing committee and organizing groups, our Party cadres should draw into the Party the advanced elements from the ranks of worker activists. Those who are through with the mass course on the trade union work and the national-democratic revolution can be immediately introduced to Marxism, their very own class ideology to which they are very receptive.

The ideological, political and organizational work of the Party branch and the groups under it in the enterprise is the best guarantee that revolutionary politics is in command of trade union work. The Party branch forms and directs the Party groups embedded in the leadership of the trade union.

The workers' organizing committee and its organizing groups are dissolvable upon the establishment of the Party branch and groups within the enterprise and the absorption of all the worker activists into the structure of the trade union. The organizing groups can be converted into group stewards and certainly a number of their members can qualify to be members of the Party groups. More and more workers can be put into study circles organized by the Party.

It is necessary for some of our Party cadres to draw salaries and allowances from trade unions so as to devote their full time to trade union and political work. But Party members should not monopolize the high posts in the trade union, and the members of the secretariat of the Party branch should not necessarily become the highest leaders of the trade union. We must allow the democratic broadness of the trade union; there can be good union leaders who cannot yet comply with the requirements of Party membership. And moreover, we do not want to let the enemy cripple the Party branch by simply clamping down on the trade union or its open leadership.

In further consideration of tactics in the face of the fascist enemy, trade unions under the effective leadership of the Party should not be replaced under only one chosen legal labor federation. This is to prevent the enemy from singling out one nest for attack. Our trade unions can variably be independent or members of various labor federations. We must determine the best possible status of each trade union.

The Party secretly links and coordinates all our trade unions. Our "independent" unions can retain more income from membership dues and are somewhat saved from control by the reactionary trade union leaders. But when members of different labor federations, our unions have the advantage of enjoying close relations with other unions which the Party can gradually get into.

The Party branch in an enterprise should see to it that Party members and other worker activists, with the help of the mass of their workers, do systematic revolutionary work in the communities. We must expand the workers' revolutionary movement by promoting contacts among workers of various enterprises not only within labor federations, along industrial lines or through factory areas but also through the communities.

In communities, workers from all kinds of enterprises reside. The workers already organized and politicized by us can form secret study circles and work closely in community work with other workers. The result is that the latter will bring us to so many more enterprises. Our Party cadres should take firm hold of this possibility for expansion.

In community work, we must rely mainly on the masses of workers and other urban poor. They compose the majority of the people in most communities in the cities. If we place the focus on them in establishing the community organizing committees and either transforming the previously established mass organizations where they predominate or building new mass organizations, especially where there are none yet, it becomes relatively easy to strike roots in the community and reach the youth, women and other sections of the community.

We must consign to a secondary position the old pattern of sending youth activists, mainly student activists, into urban poor communities and then letting them deal mainly with the youth in the community. We must advance from that situation before fascist martial rule in which there were more youth and student youth organizations than workers' organizations under our direction. We do not wish to diminish youth organizing and discourage activists from schools from participating in local community work. But we wish to give full play to the workers' role not only in trade union affairs but also in community affairs.

The community organizing committee can be immediately formed when we rely on workers or a combination of workers and youth who are themselves residents of the community and have proven to be good activists elsewhere. Of course, we assume that they are led by Party cadres. Then, community organizing groups can be formed to cover the various parts of the community.

The community organizing committee should continuously conduct social investigation and expand its contacts to be able to do well its work at every step. Since there are mass organizations existing prior to our organizational work, the community organizing committee can draw activists from these to form the community organizing groups. These organizations usually include the neighborhood associations, youth clubs, women's associations, squatters' organizations, athletic clubs, groups of professionals, civic clubs, regionalist or provincial groups and the like.

The advantage in drawing activists from already existing organizations is that they are closely related to the people in the community and that we can cover effectively not only the parts of the community but also the already existing mass organizations. Though we can form new mass organizations with different names in different communities, there is a decided advantage, especially under conditions of fascist martial rule, to make use of the legality of already existing mass organizations and engage the soonest in activities by which we can go deep among the masses and gradually raise their political consciousness.

Because we rely mainly on the masses of workers and other urban poor and we take up their majority interests, it is not too difficult to transform certain already existing mass organizations. We develop a Party group within each of them and make political advances step by step. On this basis, we can maneuver or overwhelm even the "barangay councils" or "kabataang barangay" and other reactionary organs or institutions into becoming forums or channels for our revolutionary propaganda.

At every stage of the work of the community organizing committee and its organizing groups, we can draw into the Party the most advanced elements from the ranks of the revolutionary activists. In due time, the community organizing committee and its organizing groups can be dissolved because a Party branch has been established in the community and in the legal mass organizations. Mass work and Party work can so advance in the communities that the Party branch will be based eventually on the street.

It is a matter of course that the Party should be vigilant and look after its security all the time and everywhere, especially in the cities where enemy control and surveillance are tighter than in the countryside. But the Party should pay special attention to securing itself from infiltration by antisocial lumpen-proletarian elements though this be covered by our political work.

The urban petty bourgeoisie is a social stratum whose members are usually self-centered and dispersed. But their children are concentrated in universities and high schools and here they are receptive to revolutionary propaganda. The schools therefore merit the conscientious attention of the Party. These are next in importance to the factories and the urban poor communities.

The student masses and their teachers are an important force in bringing the intelligentsia and the entire urban petty bourgeoisie to the side of the revolution. They are the section of the urban petty bourgeoisie which has the most revolutionary potential. This fact has been proven repeatedly in our history; and the first quarter storm of 1970 and succeeding developments prove it. Students continue to join today's workers' struggles.

Quite a number of students and their teachers have gone so far as to strive remolding their outlook, engage deeply in revolutionary work and join the Party. Other students do not go as far but they accept the general line of the Party and spread this to the ranks of the petty producers and the professionals. The revolutionary fervor of the student masses could be such that even some children of the exploiting classes who are their schoolmates become attracted to the revolutionary movement.

In the course of community work, the owners of small stores and shops, professionals and white-collar employees are reached by our propaganda. Though they can render some service to the revolutionary movement, they are not as important as the student masses and teachers who are concentrated in great numbers in schools, are very capable of propaganda work and mass actions and are willing to coordinate their activities with the masses of workers.

The national-democratic organizations of the youth before fascist martial rule have done a great service to the revolutionary cause. Their work has been so fruitful in some schools and communities that there are now Party branches continuing revolutionary underground work here.

In schools where there are yet no Party branch and no Party-led mass organization, Party cadres should establish school organizing committees and organizing groups to develop the initial activists from among the students, teachers and other school personnel, push for the establishment of genuine student governments and publications, promote revolutionary ideas in old student organizations or build new ones as means of promoting such ideas and help develop unions among teachers and other school personnel.

Student activists developed by the school organizing committee and organizing groups should be directed to create as many secret study circles as they can among friends and classmates; and teacher activists should do likewise among co-employees, students and friends. The efficacy of their ideological and propaganda work should in due time result in political mass actions.

The student masses, teachers and other school personnel should link the issues on the campus with the deteriorating conditions of society in general. The progressive students of the University of the Philippines are showing the way to fight the Marcos fascist dictatorship, how to oppose antinational, antidemocratic policies and actions. They have started to make mass protests of their own and join those of the workers.

Even only at the stage of the school organizing committee and organizing groups, we can start to draw into the Party the most advanced elements from the ranks of the school activists. Eventually the Party branch should emerge in the school, and Party groups in the various parts of the school as well as in the mass organizations there. In large universities, it is possible for a section committee of the Party to lead so many Party branches that are based on the colleges.

We should continue carrying out the policy of deploying student activists for social investigation and mass work in factories and communities accessible to them. We should promote the closest links between the worker and student activists in the cities so that concerted mass actions of the worker masses and student masses will become possible.

The development of the democratic movement in Manila-Rizal and other urban areas constitutes powerful political support to the revolutionary struggle in the countryside. The people in the entire country become aroused and the enemy is shaken within his fortress.

The people in the cities should realize that the long-term development of the underground there and the steady growth of political mass actions and a preparation for the final day of reckoning for the ruling system, when their general uprising will come into coordination with the general offensive of the people's army. The Party should promote this revolutionary thinking and dispel notions that the people's army should now send its small but growing forces to the cities for some spectacular actions.

There are other kinds of support from the cities for the revolutionary struggle in the countryside. The Party organization in the cities can systematically dispatch cadres who still have legal status or who no longer have this to the countryside. Cadres of worker status or of student background can be sent to their native areas or where they are most needed. Funds, medicine, military equipment, medical equipment, communications equipment, clothes, revolutionary publications and other useful materials can also be collected and sent.

It is inevitable at the moment for our communication to pass through certain cities. For instance, communications between the Visayas and Mindanao on the one hand and the central leadership of the Party cannot bypass Manila-Rizal. There should be a reliable corps of couriers who can travel legally between the cities and the countryside and from one region to another.

There should be coordination between the revolutionary struggle in the cities and that in the countryside on so many things. The Party is the coordinator and should have special organs to attend to the requirements of coordination.