D. Organizational Errors
Organizationally, the main disability of the Communist Party of the Philippines has been its failure to build up an organization that has a broad mass character and that is national in scale. Where the Party has been built, the principle of democratic centralism has not been applied correctly in the organizational life of the Party, resulting in errors of sectarianism and liberalism, and commandism and tailism, because of subjectivism and opportunism.
Building a party of a broad mass character requires a national system of party cadres who build up a great mass following. Under the difficult conditions existing in Philippine society, it is a wise policy to build the Party carefully. Recruitment and development of cadres must always conform to the standards of a proletarian revolutionary party.
A party with a broad mass character means that party cadres have a big mass following through the adoption of the correct ideology, political line, and principles and methods of organization. The Communist Party of the Philippines can have a broad mass character only if its cadres could truly lead masses of workers and peasants in revolutionary struggle. The Party guides the revolutionary struggle of the masses and in turn the struggle produces the best and most advanced fighters of the revolution who become party members.
Closed-doorism was a marked tendency of the Crisanto Evangelista leadership. Party work was concentrated in the trade union movement.
The Party gained strength during the anti-Japanese war only by waging revolutionary armed struggle and leading the peasant masses. In 1948, the Party regained revolutionary strength for some time until the errors of adventurism of the Jose Lava leadership undermined the revolutionary resurgence. In this instance, in was shown that the Party could gain real mass strength only to the extent that it merged with and led the peasant masses. In a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country like the Philippines, the Party can gain strength only by arousing and mobilizing the peasant masses in line with the agrarian revolution as the main content of the people's democratic struggle. In the final analysis, the proletarian revolutionary party in the Philippines can have a broad mass character only if it gains the mass support of the peasantry, particularly the poor peasants and farm workers.
Until now, Party members are relatively over-concentrated in Central Luzon and in the Manila-Rizal areas. Even in the previous high tides of the revolutionary movement in the Philippines, the Party did not succeed in broadcasting sufficiently on a national scale the people's democratic revolution through the systematic disposition of cadres.
In the course of his long period of being a trade union leader, Crisanto Evangelista developed a small amount of relations with other trade union leaders in the Visayas. But he himself, even as late as the later part of the thirties, had the illusion that if the Party could gain control over Central Luzon, then the whole of Luzon would easily follow; and if the Party could gain control over Luzon, then the whole archipelago would follow.
At the beginning of the anti-Japanese war, there was an attempt to send a team of cadres to the Visayas but it was called off. During the war, the Party and the Hukbalahap were built up mainly in the single region of Central Luzon. Even in the accessible region of Southern Tagalog, the Party was not able to seize leadership and initiative in the anti-Japanese war from pro-American guerrilla units. After the war, the question of sending cadres out to other islands was not immediately taken up seriously.
It was only at the height of the armed struggle under the Jose Lava leadership that Party cadres were sent out to Cagayan Valley, Bicol, Panay, Ilocos and Mindanao to build the Party and army. But these pioneering comrades were clearly not able to build the Party and army on strong foundations. They did not have sufficient time to do so because of the failure of the Party leadership to adopt a correct political line. The main policy of rapid military victory did not allow the cadres sufficient time to build the Party, the army and the united front on a more massive and nationwide scale and to develop all requisites for people's democratic power.
During the entire period of the Jesus Lava leadership, the failure to build a national organization persisted. This leadership merely presided over and hastened the destruction of old Party units as well as new ones established outside of Central Luzon. Even during the later part of the 1950s when legal mass organizations under the leadership of the Party could be established, there was no serious attempt made by the Party to build up legal mass organizations as the medium for Party expansion. It would only be after 1960 that, through the initiative mainly of new and reactivated old Party members, the Party would dare to push forward the resurgence of the revolutionary mass movement. Now the Party has started to make modest gains in building a Party that has a broad mass character and that is national in scale.
Through a national united front, the proletarian revolutionary party which is carrying out agrarian revolution, with the full support of the oppressed peasantry, can still broaden its support by allying itself with such supplementary revolutionary forces as the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie.
In the Philippines, the Party first experienced a united front policy when it opposed fascism during the days of the Popular Front. But during this period, the powerful influence of the petty bourgeoisie within the Party started to corrode the revolutionary will of the Party in a subtle way.
After the war, the Democratic Alliance was put up as a formal unified front organization. But this alliance served only to support Right opportunism and allowed some bourgeois personalities to assume the leadership. The Party practically carried the sedan chair for them for some time until they scurried away when the armed struggle became intensified.
During the Jesus Lava leadership, no genuine united front could be built because of the failure to build a strong people's army and legal mass organizations under the leadership of the Party. At the time that the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie were being agitated by Claro Mayo Recto to join the anti-imperialist movement, the Party failed to take advantage of the situation fully because of the liquidationist policy that gravely hampered and threatened the very organizational existence of the Party.
The Party failed in many instances to combine legal and illegal struggle in its organizational work. At the time that the Party was outlawed for the first time soon after its founding, there was no secret second line of leadership that could carry out Party tasks legally and illegally. At the beginning of the war, a second line of leadership replaced an incapacitated first line but the former had in the main been detached from mass work previously, having only engaged in limited political work among urban petty bourgeois elements.
As a result of erroneous political lines, grievous organizational errors were committed. Democratic centralism did not come into full play in order to arrive at the correct decisions.
The development of the black bourgeois line of the Lavas is the result of gross violations of democratic centralism. The astounding series of Lava leaderships has been the result of bourgeois maneuvers chronically causing falling-off and demoralization among Party cadres through a period of more than 30 years. Liberalism in the most vulgar forms like nepotism and favoritism was practised in the making of assignments and appointment or election to leading positions.
Liberalism marked the merger of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Socialist Party. Members of the Socialist Party were taken wholesale into the Communist Party notwithstanding the ideological requirement of a Marxist-Leninist. The first and second lines of leadership adopted a liberal attitude to Party organization as they concentrated on urban and legal political work before the outbreak of the anti-Japanese war.
The big upsurge of 1iberalism and legalism represented by Vicente Lava, Jorge Frianeza and Pedro Castro after the anti-Japanese war had dialectical connections with an unrectified Right opportunist trend starting before the war. Jorge Frianeza advocated the complete dissolution of the people's army and a "united front" with the reactionary Roxas government; and Pedro Castro advocated the organization of a "mass party" for parliamentary struggle and the liquidation of illegal Party work. Within the Democratic Alliance, a liberal policy of allowing the predominance of bourgeois personalities occurred. It was itself an act of liberalism to allow the Democratic Alliance to play the central role in the political struggle of the masses.
Sectarianism was the principal organizational error of the Jose Lava leadership while liberalism was its secondary error. Isolated from the concrete conditions of the armed struggle in the countryside, this leadership was commandist in bringing down its orders. Among the fighting forces in the countryside, sectarian excesses occurred under the cover of the slogan of "Bolshevization". Contradictions among the people and minor infractions within the Party were considered as contradictions between the people and the enemy. Whereas a policy of persuasion and leniency was required in many cases, the harshest penalties were imposed on erring Party members and Red fighters. In the city, sectarianism was also practised in relation to the national united front. As a result of the failure of the Democratic Alliance, the importance of a consistent united front policy towards the middle forces was immediately discounted by the Jose Lava leadership.
Although the main organizational error of the Jose Lava leadership was sectarianism, it perpetuated liberalism in appointing to high Party positions and recruiting into the Party persons who happened to be relatives, personal friends and townspeople of the Lava family, without benefit of undergoing the tests of revolutionary mass struggle. Certainly, liberalism was essentially involved in the rapid recruitment policy in the city of Manila, a policy which allowed the penetration of the Party by enemy agents. The cornerstone of this policy was personal trust. The ludicrous example of liberalism was the appointment of Taciano Rizal to a decisively important position on the narrow consideration that he bore the name of the bourgeois national hero, Jose Rizal.
The Jesus Lava leadership carried substantially for some time the sectarianism of the Jose Lava leadership. For a number of years, the Party leadership represented by Jesus Lava resorted to the sectarian method of intimidation to put Party members into line and there were many cases of cadres executed for flimsy reasons. On the basis of mere suspicion, Party members suffered the death penalty.
When Right opportunism prevailed, the Jesus Lava leadership practised liberalism by coddling Party members whom it dissuaded from joining the revolutionary mass struggle. The main line of parliamentary struggle inevitably degenerated into liquidationism. The flight of the Party leaders from the countryside to the city resulted in the neglect of Party organizations in the countryside and in the disastrous liquidationist "single file" policy which destroyed in a big way the collective life of Party organizations, cut off lines of responsibility between higher organs and lower organs and isolated the Party from the people.
The Jesus Lava leadership became reduced to the general secretary alone, made one-man decisions, issued political transmissions from some secluded room and made appointments to high Party positions on the basis of blood and personal relations. During the late fifties, opportunities for regrouping Party and armed units in the countryside were completely disregarded and parliamentary struggle itself was not properly conducted. It would only be during the early sixties that party rebuilding and the establishment of mass organizations were effected by the Party members independent of the isolated Party leadership.
In the main, the black bourgeois line of the Lavas is organizationally the disease of liberalism, liquidationism and the consistent violation of democratic centralism. A thoroughgoing rectification movement to remove the ideological, political and organizational roots of the black bourgeois line of the Lavas must be conducted in order to rebuild the Party in accordance with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The black bourgeois line of the Lavas can still persist if no serious efforts are taken to repudiate organizationally its ideological and political agents within the Party.
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