1. NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION OF A NEW TYPE

Our country is semicolonial and semifeudal. It is under the indirect rule of U.S. imperialism whose most reliable agents and puppets are the big comprador-landlords and big bureaucrats. The cities are ruled by the comprador big bourgeoisie and the countryside is ruled by the landlord class.

The overwhelming majority of our 41 million people, more than ninety per cent of them, are severely exploited and oppressed by the big compradors and big landlords who together with their closest and best paid political and technical subalterns compose a tiny minority that is no more than two per cent of the population. The most oppressed and exploited are the toiling masses of workers and peasants. The urban petty bourgeoisie and the middle or national bourgeoisie also suffer from the semicolonial and semifeudal situation, with the former stratum suffering more than the latter.

It is obvious why we interchangeably speak of people's war and revolutionary war. We are fighting for the revolutionary interests of the broad masses of the people. We are fighting specifically for their national-democratic interests. Ours is a national-democratic revolution aimed at completing our struggle for national independence and giving substance to the democratic aspirations of our people. We have no course but to fight for national emancipation and social liberation against U.S. imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

In a sense, our national-democratic revolution is a continuation of the Philippine Revolution that started in l896. But this revolution has assumed new characteristics. It is of a new type. It is no longer part of the old bourgeois-capitalist revolution. It is part of the proletarian-socialist revolution which has emerged since the first global interimperialist war and the victory of the great socialist October Revolution. Though we are still fighting for a national-democratic revolution, this constitutes a preparation for carrying out a socialist revolution in our country.

We are therefore engaged in a continuous Philippine Revolution, with two distinct stages: the national-democratic and socialist stages. In both stages, the class leadership is held by the proletariat which is historically the most progressive, as a political and economic factor, and which evokes the most advanced ideology. Through its vanguard detachment, the Communist Party of the Philippines, the proletariat sees to it that the national-democratic revolution is carried out and completed; that the socialist revolution immediately ensues upon the victory of the national-democratic revolution; and that for a whole historical epoch socialism creates the foundation for communism.

At the present stage of the Philippine Revolution, the Party wields two weapons against the enemy. These are armed struggle and the national united front. These are interrelated like the spear and the shield. One serves the other. The national-democratic front ensures the widest possible popular support for armed struggle; it splits the enemy ranks and isolates the worst single enemy at a time. Armed struggle is specifically the weapon for carrying out the central task of the revolution, which is the destruction and overthrow of the enemy rule and the seizure of political power.

To paraphrase Chairman Mao, without an army like the New People's Army, the people have nothing. To have a few seats in a reactionary parliament and to have no army in our country is to play a fool's game. Anytime that the enemy chooses to change the rules of the game, say the constitution, he would be able to do so at the people's expense.

Between armed struggle and parliamentary struggle, the former is principal and the latter is secondary. Every genuine revolutionary knows that the chief component of the reactionary state is the reactionary army. The Filipino people are helpless without their own army. They cannot take a single step towards smashing the entire military-bureaucratic machine of the enemy without a people's army.

In carrying out a people's war, the Party builds the people's army as its main form of organization. It is not only an organization where the Party membership is most concentrated. It is also an organization for uniting the proletarian revolutionaries and the peasant masses both within the army and in the localities. In this way, the basic alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry so necessary in a national united front takes the most effective concrete form.

The basic alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry is the foundation of the national united front. The stronger this alliance is in the course of people's war, the stronger is the desire of the urban petty bourgeoisie to join the national united front and take active part in revolutionary work. Likewise the national bourgeoisie is encouraged to bring its support to such basic forces of the revolution as the proletariat, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie. At this stage of the revolution, the leadership of the Party and the proletariat is best proven by its ability to build a people's army and realize the basic alliance of the toiling masses.