C. Military Errors
Errors in ideology and politics always lead to errors in the armed struggle. A party that does not seriously pay attention to this relationship is bound to fail in performing its central revolutionary task of seizing political power and consolidating it.
Armed struggle is the main weapon of the Communist Party of the Philippines in carrying out the people's democratic revolution. Without a people's army under the command of the Party, the people have nothing as Comrade Mao Tsetung has taught us in his theory and practice of the Chinese revolution. Being in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, our Party must integrate three necessary and inseparable components in waging a people's war in the countryside; namely, armed struggle, agrarian revolution and rural base building.
During the first 12 years of the existence of the Party, 1930 to 1942, the Party did not immediately develop these three components. In 1931, it met its first concrete experience of suppression by US imperialism and its running dogs. The reactionary state with all the weapons of coercion at its command succeeded in creating grave difficulties for the Party for so many years.
When the Party finally organized the guerrilla forces of the Hukbalahap on the basis of the popular anti-Japanese resistance, the Party leadership did not have a clear understanding of what it took to wage a people's war. When the Party and the army had their first serious setback at the hands of the Japanese fascists, the Party leadership adopted the "retreat for defense" policy. This policy involved the dissolution of the Hukbalahap "squadrons" and the formation of minuscule units composed of only three to five men at a time that the people's army needed to concentrate larger forces to deal punishing blows on isolated parts of the Japanese invasionary forces and their mercenaries. The dissolution of the Hukbalahap "squadrons" had far-reaching debilitating effects on the people's army.
The Party leadership had to abandon the "retreat for defense" policy and remuster the Huk "squadrons" in the face of persistent popular demand to annihilate the enemy. However, when US imperialism returned to reoccupy the Philippines, the Party and the Hukbahalap leadership again surrendered the military initiative to the USAFFE forces. Hukbalahap "squadrons" were too ready in welcoming and in merely assisting the US reoccupation forces when what was needed was for them to keep their forces distinct in fighting the retreating Japanese fascists. The Party leadership was too ready to abandon the military initiative to US imperialism for it was bent on returning to the city and conducting peaceful parliamentary struggle.
Even when US imperialism attacked the people and the people's army in a campaign to restore landlord power in areas that the Party and army controlled, the Party leadership ordered the disbandment of armed units of the people's army under the erroneous banner of "democratic peace" unlike in China where the vanguard Party held on to its arms and fought.
Under the Jose Lava leadership, the error of military adventurism and purely military viewpoint was perpetuated as an extreme counter-development of Right opportunism. The petty bourgeois world outlook was at the root of the "Left" subjectivist error of military adventurism. This outlook prevented the Party leadership from understanding the laws of development of a people's war in Philippine society and thus from adopting the correct strategy and tactics.
The Jose Lava leadership was marked by military impetuosity and petty-bourgeois vindictiveness manifested inside and outside of the Party. What was, however, in common between the "Left" opportunism and the Right opportunism it opposed was the petty-bourgeois illusion that the people's forces could be commanded from the city and that the city of Manila, the strongest base of the bourgeois state power, could be easily seized without building rural bases.
The selfish desire to seize power in the city in so short a time as two years without having laid down an extensive ground work among the people showed lack of understanding of protracted people's war. As "Left" opportunism emerged as the principal aspect of the Jose Lava leadership, Right opportunism persisted as a secondary aspect or as an undercurrent represented by Luis Taruc. As the power of the reactionary ruling classes was estimated to be weak because it was wracked by an internal split, the Jose Lava leadership gave orders to direct fire only against Filipino puppet troops and to strictly avoid attacks against US military personnel.
The underestimation of US military support for the local reactionaries was primarily "Left" opportunism. At the same time, there was the false belief that avoiding military engagement with US military personnel would make the fight for the Red army easier. This was Right opportunism lurking behind "Left" opportunism and was still a carryover of the counter-revolutionary rightist line during the anti-Japanese war that the United States would return to the Philippines in order to restore "democratic peace" after overcoming the Japanese fascists.
It was "Left" opportunism to hope for rapid military victory on uncertain grounds, such as the illusion that the bourgeois politicians, Laurel and Rodriguez, would lead revolts against the Quirino government from Batangas and Rizal in concert with the People's Liberation Army. And yet the element of Right opportunism is to be found in giving bourgeois politicians a decisive role in so central a question as the actual seizure of power. At this time the HMB had not yet gained enough strength to capture Manila: no more than 3,000 Red troops could be massed for the purpose, with the sure difficulties of over-straining the people's armed strength in all other places.
The predominating "Left" opportunist line of the Jose Lava leadership was evident in the issuance of military orders to the people's forces in the countryside from the city-based Secretariat or Politburo-In. Even in the countryside the Politburo-Out was distant from the main military forces and relied on camouflage rather than on developing a stable rural base on which it should have relied. There was still a great gap between the Party leadership and the masses consisting of unstable areas in Central Luzon and blatantly White areas in Southern Luzon.
While the Party headquarters in the city was distantly separated from the Politburo-Out and the latter was in turn distantly separated from the main forces of the people's army, orders were brought down making the people's armed forces leap over unstable and unreliable areas to simultaneously attack widely separated targets such as military camps, cities and provincial capitals. This kind of armed movement over-extended the strength of the people's army and further strained what had already been the over-stretched lines of communications and supplies. The raids of March 29 and August 26, 1950 conducted by the people's army in accordance with the "PB Resolutions" of January 1950 demonstrated fully the adventurist impetuosity of the Jose Lava leadership. In essence, it failed to recognize dialectically the ability of the enemy to make a counter-attack that could break the over-extended lines linking the Politburo-Out to the regional commands and so on and so forth. The enemy did counter-attack after the March and August raids by pitting 25,000 troops against the people's army of a lesser number dispersed all over Central Luzon, Manila, Rizal, Bicol and Panay.
A short while after the raids of August 26, the Party headquarters in the city was smashed systematically by the enemy in October 1950. Considering the extent of enemy success in this crackdown, the policy of rapid recruitment of Party members in the city was demonstrated to be a folly and a violation of the defensive and underground requirements of urban party work. No less than the highest organs of the Party were infiltrated by the enemy.
The failures of the military policy vis-a-vis the enemy were aggravated by the incorrect handling of Red cadres and fighters. Under the guise of "Bolshevization", the Jose Lava leadership adopted harsh methods on those who were found committing even minor errors. The death penalty was imposed on cadres and fighters even where a lighter punishment would have sufficed. In meting out punishments, the life history of erring cadres and fighters was not considered seriously and oftentimes the immediate error was isolated from the circumstances. What was mistaken for "Bolshevization" were the rules of war from bourgeois military books. This mishandling of cadres and fighters worsened as the peoples army suffered an increasing number of setbacks and a tendency towards disintegration occurred.
In its petty-bourgeois eagerness to seize power, the Jose Lava leadership instructed Party organs to put the military viewpoint in command, to make military-technical articles dominant in the HMB Bulletin and to study and adopt as a basic training guide the 90-week "Master Training Schedule"- a manual used by the US Army and the reactionary armed forces of the Philippines. These specific instances showed the utter lack of understanding of the nature of people's war.
As the armed struggle started to ebb during the latter part of 1951, the relationship between the people's army and the people was mishandled in a serious way. Distinctions were made between friendly and hostile barrios. The distinctions were made not for purposes of waging the correct propaganda campaign to win over the people from a hostile attitude to a friendly attitude but for purposes of making retaliatory and vindictive foraging attacks even against ordinary peasants some of whose work animals were confiscated to provide food for the beleaguered fighters of the people's army. It was not fully realized that aside from being a fighting force, the people's army was a propaganda and productive force.
It was as a result of the serious mistakes of the Jose Lava leadership and the effective counter-attacks of the enemy that a tendency towards roving rebel bands and a degeneration of these bands became more pronounced. The absence of genuine proletarian discipline, the wanton dispersal of the people's army and the concomitant loss of effective central command led the Party from one disaster to another.
After the Jesus Lava leadership assumed command, "Left" opportunism continued in the form of roving rebel tendencies on the basis of forced dispersal of armed units. With the central command lacking in a main armed force, the dispersed armed units now subject to massive "encirclement and suppression" operations of the reactionary army committed in the name of "struggle for survival" or "economic struggle" many abuses and excesses that the enemy used to its "psy-war" advantage. Taking advantage of real abuses and excesses of the "people's army", the reactionary army systematically used reactionary troops in civilian clothes to make their own abuses and excesses and blamed them on the people's army. A deep line of sectarianism within the Party leadership of Jose and Jesus Lava was taken advantage of by the enemy.
The Jesus Lava leadership could not correct the military adventurism of the Jose Lava leadership because it did not have any comprehensive understanding of the nature and requirements of a people's war. It was completely ignorant of how to conduct a people's war at its stage of strategic defensive and tactical offensive. As before, it was completely ignorant of how to smash an enemy campaign of encirclement and suppression. Because of its failure to grasp Marxism-Leninism, it was never able to regroup the dispersed armed units of the people's army which were attacked in a massive way by the reactionary army continuously from 1951 to 1955.
In 1955, under conditions of military defeat, the Jesus Lava leadership took a Rightist line and adopted parliamentary struggle as the main form of struggle. Jesus Lava became guilty of liquidationism when he actually disbanded armed units, including his own armed security, and chose to live the life of a city fugitive. The individual flights of the commander-in-chief of the people's army, Castro Alejandrino, and the general secretary of the Party, Jesus Lava, from the countryside to the city and their subsequent capture in the city proved conclusively the erroneous military line of the Party leadership.
It has only been in the area of Regional Command No. 2, particularly in the province of Pampanga and partially in Tarlac, Bataan and Nueva Ecija where remnants of the People's Liberation Army have persisted. It is not those who have slavishly followed the leadership of the Lavas who are now waging the armed struggle. Nevertheless, a thoroughgoing rectification of the black bourgeois line of the Lavas and the capitulationism of Luis Taruc must be waged particularly in this area. Roving rebel tendencies and practices must also be corrected here. What is to be generated is a genuine people's army that is under the effective command of a Marxist-Leninist party guided by Mao Tsetung Thought, that is a weapon for agrarian revolution and that builds up stable base areas.
It has been a disadvantage for the Party to have established its strength only in the areas of Greater Manila, Central Luzon and partially in Southern Tagalog although these areas have strategic value because it is here where bourgeois state power is most concentrated throughout the archipelago. However, new military strategy and tactics in line with Mao Tsetung Thought must be adopted taking into full account the weak links of the bourgeois state power on the basis of class analysis and turning the archipelago from a short-run disadvantage into a long-run advantage for the Party and the People's Liberation Army. The development of the people's main military forces and rural bases in Luzon other than in Central Luzon should be well-considered; and the other islands of Visayas and Mindanao should be utilized to disperse and dissipate the main forces of the enemy concentrated in Luzon.
I II III IV V
Back to top
|
