[PRWC Party Documents] Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism, January 15, 1992

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

I. The Party's Marxist-Leninist Stand Against Modern Revisionism

Veering Away from the Antirevisionist Line

Basahin sa Pilipino Basahon sa Hiligaynon

Armando Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines

January 15, 1992

This counterproposal disregarded the fact that the Lava revisionist group had already preempted our Party from the possibility of "fraternal" relations with the revisionist ruling parties. More significantly, the counterproposal did not take into serious consideration the Marxist-Leninist stand of the Party against modern revisionism.

Notwithstanding the ill-informed and unprincipled basis for seeking "fraternal" relations with the revisionist ruling parties and the absence of any congress withdrawing the correct antirevisionist line, the staff organ in charge of international relations proceeded in 1984 to draft and circulate a policy paper, "The Present World Situation and the CPP's General International Line and Policies" describing the CPSU as a Marxist-Leninist party, the Soviet Union as the most developed socialist country and as proletarian internationalist rather than social-imperialist, as having supported third world liberation movements and as having attained military parity with the United States. This policy paper was presented to the 1985 Central Committee Plenum and the latter decided to conduct further studies on it.

In 1986, the Executive Committee of the Central Committee commissioned a study of the Soviet Union and East European countries. The study was superficial. It was done to support the predetermined conclusion that these countries were socialist because their economies were still dominated by state-owned enterprises and these enterprises were still growing and because the state still provided social guarantees to the people. The study overlooked the fact that the ruling party in command of the economy was no longer genuinely proletarian and that state-owned enterprises since the time of Khrushchov had already become milking cows of corrupt bureaucrats and private entrepreneurs who colluded under various pretexts to redirect the products to the free market.

By this time, the attempt to deviate from the antirevisionist line of the Party was clearly linked to the erroneous idea that total victory in the Philippine revolution could be hastened by "regularizing" the few thousands of NPA fighters with importations of heavy weapons and other logistical requisites from abroad, by skipping stages in the development of people's war and in building the people's army and by arousing the forces for armed urban insurrection in anticipation of some sudden "turn in the situation" to mount a general uprising.

There was the notion that the further development of the people's army and the people's war depended on the importation of heavy weapons and getting logistical support from abroad and that the failure to import these would mean the stagnation or retrogression of the revolutionary forces because there is no other way by which the NPA could overcome the enemy's "blockhouse" warfare and control of the highways except through the use of sophisticated heavy weapons (antitank and laser-guided missiles) which necessarily have to be imported from abroad.

In the second half of 1986, with the approval of the Party's central leadership, a drive was started to seek the establishment of "fraternal" relations with the CPSU and other revisionist ruling parties as well as nonruling ones close to the CPSU. A considerable amount of resources was allotted to and expended on the project.

In late 1986, some Brezhnevites within the CPSU and some other quarters made the suggestion that the Communist Party of the Philippines merge with the Lava revisionist group in order to gain "fraternal" relations with the CPSU. But such a suggestion was tactfully rejected with the countersuggestion that the CPSU and other revisionist ruling parties could keep their fraternal relations with the Lava group while the CPP could have friendly relations with them. We stood pat on the Leninist line of proletarian party-building

Up to 1987 the failure to establish relations with the revisionist ruling parties was interpreted by some elements as the result of the refusal on the part of our Party to repudiate its antirevisionist line. These elements had to be reminded in easily understood practical terms that if the antirevisionist line of the Party had been withdrawn and the revisionist ruling parties would continue to rebuff our offer of "fraternal" or friendly relations with them, then the proposed opportunism would be utterly damaging to the Party.

By 1987, the Party became aware that the Gorbachov regime was already laying the ground for the emasculation of the revisionist ruling parties in favor of an openly bourgeois state machinery in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by allowing his advisors, officials of the Academy of Social Sciences and the official as well as independent Soviet mass media to promote pro-imperialist, anticommunist and antisocialist ideas under the guise of social democracy and "liberal" communism. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution, Gorbachov himself delivered a speech abandoning the anti-imperialist struggle and describing imperialism as having shed off its violent character in an integral world in which the Soviet Union and the United States and other countries can cooperate in the common interest of humanity's survival.

In 1987, the chairman of the Party's Central Committee made an extensive interview on the question of establishing relations with the ruling parties of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. This was made in response to the demand from some quarters within the Party that the Party repudiate its line against revisionism and apologize to the CPSU for having criticized the Soviet Union on the question of Cambodia and Afghanistan. The interview clarified that the Party can establish friendly relations with the ruling parties even while the latter maintained their "fraternal" relations with the Lava group.