IV. MAIN ERRORS AND WEAKNESSES
A. Ideological Weaknesses
The main ideological weakness of all previous leaderships of the Communist Party of the Philippines has been subjectivism, appearing in the form of dogmatism and empiricism, and resulting in Right and "Left" opportunist lines. The Philippines, being a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, has a large petty bourgeoisie which serves as the historical and social basis for subjectivism. Since the Party exists in this kind of society, it is liable to reflect subjectivist trends from without and from within if it is not alert and careful in its Marxist-Leninist ideological building which is the first requirement in Party building.
The Party could be penetrated by a considerable number of Party members of petty-bourgeois orientation (middle peasants, intellectuals, handicraftsmen and other petty producers) who fail to remould their world outlook and methods of thinking in accordance with Marxism-Leninism and who fail to integrate revolutionary practice with dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
Although the first Party members were mainly from the working class represented by Comrade Crisanto Evangelista, the Party leadership erroneously put much reliance on open, legal, parliamentary and urban political activity which resulted in the paralyzation of the Communist Party of the Philippines once it was outlawed by the US imperialists and their running dogs. A revolutionary and thoroughgoing proletarian world outlook would have made the Party recognize the dialectics of the whole Philippine situation and would have enabled it to adopt the correct methods of legal and illegal struggle.
It was around 1935, however, while the Party was still outlawed by its class enemies when a considerable number of Party members of petty-bourgeois class status crept into a fluid underground Party that was deprived of a definite central leadership and tried to carry on political work, bringing with them their unremoulded petty bourgeois and bourgeois ideas. At the helm of this petty bourgeois element within the Party were those who were greatly influenced by the empiricist and Right opportunist current spread by Browder. At this time, the Communist Party of the Philippines, under the auspices of the Communist. International, was assisted by the Communist Party of the USA by seeing to it that cadres like Vicente Lava who became its leading representative would carry on Party work.
Subjectivism of the empiricist type was manifested by major political policies and developments such as the principal importance given to urban Party work before the outbreak of the Pacific war; the merger of the Socialist Party and the Party which artificially increased the membership of the latter; the Rightist preamble in the merger constitution; capitulationism towards US imperialism and the Commonwealth government; the absence of any plan to shift the Party headquarters from the city to the countryside; the adoption of the "retreat for defense" policy of 1943 and the belief of Vicente Lava that there could be no proletarian leadership in the countryside; the purely anti-Japanese line during the war period and the shift of the Party central organs to the city after the anti-Japanese war and the blatantly Right opportunist policies of Vicente Lava, Jorge Frianeza and Pedro Castro during the period of 1945-1948.
Empiricism grows on a static underestimation of the people's democratic forces and on a static overestimation. of the enemy strength. Party work becomes dictated by the actions of the enemy instead of by a dialectical comprehension of the situation and the balance of forces. Revolutionary initiative becomes lost because of a static, one-sided, fragmented and narrow view of the requirements of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-fascist struggle.
Thus, there is the overconcentration on urban political work because of the subjectivist and opportunist desire to compete or collaborate with bourgeois parties and groups, and beg for "democratic peace" from the US imperialists and local reactionaries in their own urban citadel. The countryside is grossly underestimated and thus, revolutionary initiative, the indispensable mass support of the peasantry, and a wide area for maneuver are ignored. There is also the personal desire of the petty bourgeois to enjoy the comforts and prestige of city life.
There is, however, the other side of the coin of subjectivism. Between 1948 and 1955, subjectivism of the dogmatist type prevailed during the first two years of the Jose Lava leadership and the first five years of the Jesus Lava leadership. This dogmatism grew on an overestimation of the people's democratic forces and an underestimation of the enemy strength, without taking into full account the painstaking process of a protracted people's war. Under the Jose Lava leadership, the strategic view was adopted that, in a brief period of two years, the Party was certain to seize power. The Jose Lava leadership did not take into full account the necessity of a concrete and extended process of Party building, building of a people's army and the building of a revolutionary national united front.
The Jose Lava leadership was fond of "Left" jargon so unrelated to the whole basic situation, a manifestation of subjectivism of the dogmatist type. This leadership took the style of confounding comrades with book knowledge and some supposedly special knowledge about the world situation and about the inner circles of the enemy. On the basis of such knowledge it took decisions that over-strained the Party and the masses beyond their capability and understanding. It did not care for painstaking work among the masses in the development of a protracted people's war.
On the other hand, subjectivism of the empiricist type manifested by the Vicente Lava leadership and the Jesus Lava leadership was the cowardly reaction to the incumbent military superiority of the enemy. These leaderships took the line of passivity both strategically and tactically. They lost sight of the possible development of revolutionary principles and policies correctly adopted and applied on the basis of the internal laws of development of Philippine history and society. They simply went with the tide of defeat, without trying to seize revolutionary initiative.
Empiricism and dogmatism are two sides of the same petty-bourgeois coin. A twirl of the coin of subjectivism will abruptly show this or that side. The subjectivist errors of the Vicente and Jose Lava leaderships were mainly empiricism and dogmatism, respectively. These errors spring from the same petty bourgeois disease of subjectivism that has afflicted the Party and that has wrought havoc to the revolutionary movement.
Reversals from empiricism to dogmatism and from dogmatism to empiricism are peculiarly common to those who still retain the petty-bourgeois world outlook. Nevertheless, when one is the principal aspect of a subjectivist stand, the other is bound to be the secondary aspect and the secondary aspect becomes the principal aspect at another moment. That is the dialectical relationship of empiricism and dogmatism. Comrades should not wonder why under a dogmatist leadership there should be cases of empiricism; what is common between dogmatism and empiricism is the use of narrow and limited experience as the basis for over-all subjectivist decisions. Also, comrades should not wonder why a leadership with the same petty-bourgeois orientation should swing from empiricism to dogmatism and back to empiricism, and so on and so forth. All subjectivists fail to grasp the laws of dialectical development and so they are volatile and erratic.
In 1951, the Jesus Lava leadership continued to carry the dogmatist line of the Jose Lava leadership. But after a few years, subjectivism of the empiricist type started to dominate because of military defeats. The Jesus Lava leadership started to overestimate the strength of the enemy and it adopted parliamentary struggle as the main form of struggle, took flight from the countryside and then took up the so-called "single-file" policy based on its narrow individual experience.
In summing up the series of subjectivist leaderships, we can state that Vicente Lava, Jose Lava and Jesus Lava were responsible for the petty-bourgeois disease that has long afflicted the Communist Party of the Philippines. The black bourgeois line of the Lavas continues to promote revisionism in the Philippines. It is essentially the inability to grasp proletarian revolutionary ideology and apply this on the concrete conditions of Philippine society. The usurpation of the Party leadership by the Lavas during the last more than 30 years accounts for the fact that the Communist Party of the Philippines is still weak. Although the political errors of each Lava leadership became exposed in the wake of far-reaching damage, no thoroughgoing rectification movement had ever been conducted to expose and correct the basic errors in ideology.
Despite the fact that Vicente Lava's subjectivism as expressed by his "retreat for defense" policy had resulted in great damage to the Party, there was no subsequent rectification movement that could have prevented the Right opportunist errors of the subsequent early post-war years. Also, despite the serious errors of the Lava leadership, the subsequent leadership did not engage in any serious rectification movement. Until now, despite the grave errors of the Jesus Lava leadership and those of other previous leaderships, there has been strong resistance to ideological, political, and organizational rectification. The Party flounders from error to error when there is no systematic and objective evaluation of each error ideologically, politically and organizationally.
The fact that Party leadership was passed from one blood brother to another, a singular phenomenon in the entire international communist movement, could be taken as a magniloquent symptom of the subjectivism that had predominated within the Party.
The black bourgeois line of the Lavas is careerism on a grand scale within the Party. A dangerous pattern has been established wherein Party responsibilities are apportioned to blood relatives on the basis of personal trust rather than on the basis of ideological and genuine Party trust. In this manner a mechanical and slavish artificial majority could always be depended upon to elect the Lava brothers as general secretaries of the Party in a series.
The evil of subjectivism is still persistent within the Party and must be eradicated. It still appears in the form of sentimentalism on the part of elder cadres who had received their ideological training from the previous leaderships. Sentimentally, they recognize the personal sacrifices of the Lava brothers but at the same time they do not see how many lives of people and cadres have been sacrificed at the altar of subjectivist errors and failures and they do not see that the so-called personal sacrifices of the Lava brothers were the very product of their subjectivist errors and failures.
This sentimentalism has become a hindrance to the rectification of ideological, political and organizational errors. It is combined with a subjectivist awe for high bourgeois academic degrees that some cadres have. It also appears in the form of personal trust for those who have had ideological training from and those who enjoy the sanction of the series of Lava leaderships.
The black bourgeois line of the Lavas as it has developed on the basis of subjectivism now nourishes the growth of modem revisionism in the Philippines. Since we are determined to rebuild the Party, the black bourgeois line of the Lavas and all errors of subjectivism must be resolutely opposed and weeded out by a thoroughgoing rectification movement. In conducting such a movement it is not so much the persons of the Lava "dynasty" that we are after; what we are after is the rectification of subjectivist errors. If no rectification movement is to be undertaken, if no ideological consolidation of the Party is to be made, then modern revisionism would flourish to disarm and undermine the people's democratic revolution.
Lava revisionism has been persistent for decades within the Party only because rectification, as demonstrated by Comrade Mao Tsetung in the Chinese Communist Party, has never before been conducted as we have decided to do. A rectification movement within the Communist Party of the Philippines, the nucleus of the proletarian dictatorship, should be conducted in the Marxist-Leninist way that a cultural revolution is conducted under the proletarian state in order to combat Right opportunism and modern revisionism.
The preponderant form of subjectivism that has characterized the Lava leadership is empiricism. The dogmatist leadership of Jose Lava and, partially, of Jesus Lava was approximately a seven-year "Left" interregnum in what is more than 30 years of empiricism carried out mainly by the Vicente Lava and Jesus Lava leaderships. Empiricism in philosophy results in Right opportunism in politics. Empiricism and Right opportunism in turn provide the basis for modern revisionism which is persistently advocated by the neo-bourgeois and revisionist renegade clique in Moscow. At present, modern revisionism is futilely trying to gain ground. The Communist Party of the Philippines must combat it thoroughly and seriously, especially now that Party rebuilding is being undertaken.
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