[If I might say that although this post is quite long its well worth
persevering with as it expresses effortlessly both
the local and global position also drawing our
attention once more to the root cause of war just
as was first unearthed in its full irony by that
analysts analyst Karl Marx: the overproduction of
commodities... (Bill)]
[Via Communist Internet... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ]
[Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ]
.
.
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2001 3:16 PM
Subject: Philippines. CPP 33rd anniversary statement
From: Redmond Guerrero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Peoples War] CPP 33rd anniversary statement
Hereunder is the statement of Comrade Armando Liwanag,
Chairman of the CPP Central Committee on the occasion
of the Party 's 33rd founding anniversary.
Hail the rising revolutionary forces and the upsurge
of the mass movement
Message on the 33rd anniversary of the reestablishment
of the Communist Party of the Philippines
by Armando Liwanag, Chairman
Central Committee, CPP
With utmost joy, we celebrate the abundant harvest of
victories that we have reaped as we mark the 33rd
anniversary of the reestablishment of our Party under
the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on
December 26, 2001. We hail the rising revolutionary
forces and the upsurge of the mass movement.
As chairman of the Central Committee, I wish to
express warmest congratulations to all Party organs
and units, all Party cadres and members and to all the
people for all the struggles and successes in carrying
forward the new-democratic revolution against US
imperialism and the exploiting classes of big
compradors and landlords.
We owe our victories to the correct principles and
line of the Party in the ideological, political and
organizational fields and to our ceaseless efforts to
carry these out resolutely and vigorously. We have
worked hard and feared neither sacrifice nor death in
the struggle against the enemy.
We have made significant advances in building the
Party as the advanced detachment of the working class,
the New People's Army as the main instrument for
seizing political power and the united front as the
means for rallying the broadest range of people to the
revolutionary cause.
1. THE RISING REVOLUTIONARY FORCES AND MASS MOVEMENT
Ten years ago, the incorrigible opportunists and
renegades had formed factions within the Party and
sought to destroy the Party from within. The urban
insurrectionists and militarists had joined up with
the longrunning reformists and had come under various
influences such as Gorbachovism, Trotskyism and
imperialist neoliberalism. They had tried in vain to
cover up their gross errors as well as crimes in the
1980s until 1991 and they opposed the Second Great
Rectification Movement.
Since then, the renegades have thoroughly discredited
themselves. Their grouplets have either disintegrated
or have further dwindled. They have come out as
special agents of the enemy against the vigorously
growing revolutionary forces and mass movement. The
worst of the renegades openly became political
hirelings and bootlickers of the Ramos and Estrada
regimes.
Thanks to the Second Great Rectification Movement, we
have reaffirmed the ideological line of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism against modern revisionism,
empiricism and dogmatism, the political line of new
democratic revolution through protracted people's war
against "Left" and Right opportunism and the
organizational line of democratic centralism against
ultrademocracy and bureaucratism.
We have continuously educated and trained thousands of
proletarian revolutionary fighters on the theory and
practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Our Party cadres
and members have learned to apply the scientific
theory of the working class on the concrete conditions
of the Philippine revolution through collective
studies and mass struggles.
We have aroused, organized and mobilized millions of
the Filipino people by pursuing the general line of
new-democratic revolution through protracted people's
war. We have developed the armed struggle as the main
form of revolutionary struggle and we have also
developed the other forms of struggle in the legal
arena.
Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New
People's Army is operating in more than 100 guerrilla
fronts. Our Party cadres and members, Red fighters
and mass activists are continuously expanding and
consolidating these guerrilla fronts. In every
guerrilla front, we maintain the correct proportion
between the center of gravity and the other more
dispersed units of the New People's Army.
The people's army is growing in strength by waging
extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on an ever
widening and deepening mass base. We are accumulating
arms by seizing them in basic offensive operations
(ambushes, raids and arrests) against the military,
police and paramilitary forces of the enemy. We also
launch special operations to punish the worst elements
among the enemy forces and render justice to their
victims.
In combat, we fight the enemy fiercely but after the
din and smoke of battle we treat our prisoners
leniently and give immediate medical attention to the
wounded. We follow the Geneva Conventions and its
protocols and the GRP-NDFP Comprehensive Agreement on
Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law
(CARHRIHL).
The mass base is built by forming the democratic
organs of political power, the mass organizations of
workers, peasants, women, youth, children and cultural
activists and the working committees to assist the
overall committee of self-government and by carrying
out the campaigns for mass education, land reform,
higher production, self-defense and militia training,
health and sanitation and so on.
We have carried out the united front policy in order
to reach and mobilize the greatest possible number of
masses. We continue to build the national united
front against US imperialism and the local
reactionaries as well as the antifeudal united front
for ensuring peasant support and realizing the
democratic content of the revolution.
In the past year, we achieved a dramatic victory in
the overthrow of the US-Estrada ruling clique by
employing the tactics of the broad united front. In
this connection, we have clearly put forward the line
that the Party and the masses can overthrow any ruling
clique through legal struggle along the line of the
broad united front and that we can thereby accumulate
strength and experience until we can overthrow the
entire ruling system of big compradors and landlords.
To overthrow the entire ruling system, we need to
build the people's army, strive to disintegrate the
reactionary army and smash both the military and
bureaucratic machinery of the counterrevolutionary
state. We cannot achieve political and social
revolution without overthrowing the reactionary state.
In engaging peace negotiations with the National
Democratic Front (NDFP), the Government of the
Republic of the Philippines (GRP) has the minimum aim
of confusing and demoralizing the ranks of
revolutionaries and the masses and the maximum aim of
obtaining the capitulation and pacification of the
revolutionary forces.
But the NDFP has successfully frustrated the
counterrevolutionary aims of the GRP. It has made
clear to the revolutionary forces and the people that
there can be no just and lasting peace without
addressing the root causes of the civil war and that
the negotiations are merely one of the legal forms of
struggle and are less important than the legal mass
struggles on the basic issues.
In the meantime, the NDFP has gained points for the
international recognition of the people's democratic
government. It has successfully required the GRP to
co-sign the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for
Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law
(CARHRIHL). Under this agreement, the revolutionary
forces can go after violators of human rights and
international humanitarian law and can take the GRP to
account for violations.
The NDFP is ready to disengage from peace negotiations
with the GRP if the latter is unwilling to form with
the former the Joint Monitoring Committee for ensuring
the implementation of the CARHRIHL and to come to a
mutually satisfactory comprehensive agreement on
social and economic reforms before tackling the
question of political and constitutional reforms. The
NDFP will certainly rebuff any scheme of the GRP to
gloss over the root causes of the civil war and
maneuver the NDFP into a position of capitulation.
The revolutionary forces and the people have a long
and rich experience in people's war. They have grown
in strength and advanced no matter how much assistance
US imperialism has given to the local reactionaries.
They cannot be coerced by any threat of US
intervention or aggression under the pretext of
antiterrorism. They are prepared to engage the enemy
in whatever kind of war it wishes to launch.
Even as it has properly concentrated on its
revolutionary homework, the Party has always tried to
do the best within its capability to perform duties
under the principle of proleetarian internationalism
as well as the principle of broad anti-imperialist
solidarity in the international united front.
The Party has made significant contributions in
Marxist-Leninist conferences and seminars in defining
the Marxist-Leninist position against imperialism,
modern revisionism and fascism in order to raise the
level of understanding and cooperation among communist
and workers' parties.
It has also made significant contributions in defining
the anti-imperialist position against neoliberal
globalization and wars of aggression and in this
regard supported broad anti-imperialist formations and
actions on an international scale. It has encouraged
Filipino organizations in the homefront and abroad to
participate in anti-imperialist campaigns on any
social concern.
2. FAVORABLE GLOBAL CONDITIONS FOR REVOLUTION
Ten years ago, the imperialists and their camp
followers gloated over the turmoil in China, the fall
of the revisionist regimes in Eastern Europe and the
disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1989-1991
period. They proclaimed that history could not
proceed any farther than capitalism and liberal
democracy and celebrated the position of the US as
sole superpower at the head of "free market"
globalization and as the No. 1 policeman in a "new
world order".
Since then, the worsening economic crisis of the world
capitalist system and the US-led wars of aggression
have served as exceedingly favorable conditions for
the resurgence of the anti-imperialist and socialist
movements. The shift of economic policy stress from
Keynesianism to neoliberalism has merely served to
aggravate and deepen the economic stagnation and
crisis of imperialism and whip up the aggressive
character of imperialism, despite the enod of the Cold
War upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Neoliberal or "free market" globalization has
accelerated the crisis of overproduction in all types
of goods and the process of accumulating and
concentrating capital in the hands of the monopoly
bourgeoisie in the United States, Japan and European
Union. This has resulted in the devastation of the
economies of the third world and former Soviet-bloc
countries.
The crisis of overproduction has now extended from raw
materials, semimanufactures and basic industrial goods
to high-tech electronic goods. Thus, the US no less
is now reeling from the overproduction of high-tech
goods and the bursting of the high-tech financial
bubble. It is in danger of getting into a protracted
decline similar to that of Japan, which has run for
more than a decade.
The crisis of overproduction is at the base of the
financial crisis besetting the various types of
economies of the world. The third world and former
Soviet-bloc countries overproduce the raw materials,
semimanufactures and some basic industrial products,
thereby get less income from their exports and suffer
bigger deficits and increasing debt burden.
However, the crisis in the economic hinterland of
imperialism recoils upon the centers of imperialism.
The world capitalist economy has in fact been
depressed since the 1980s if we take into full account
the depressed economic conditions in the third world
and the Soviet-bloc countries. Ultimately, the global
centers of capitalism are hit hard by deficits, market
contraction and inability of debtor countries to pay
their debts.
>From decade to decade, the US has promoted high-tech
military production and consumerism and like the third
world has covered its trade deficits with borrowed
funds in the form of holdings of US securities in
stocks and bonds bought by Japan and Europe. But now
lowered interest rates and fallen profits make the US
vulnerable to the adverse effects of a runaway sale of
US securities held by Japanese and European investors.
The Bush scheme to increase military production in
order to stimulate the US economy bodes ill for the
people of the world. This is setting the stage for
increased US wars of aggression and other forms of
military adventure. In the last ten years, the US has
launched three wars of aggression: in Iraq, the
Balkans and Afghanistan.
The Bush regime is using the September 11 attacks on
the twin towers of the World Trade Center and Pentagon
as the pretext for making a so-called global assault
on terrorism. It is whipping up a hysteria to push
military production, wars of aggression and
curtailment of democratic rights in both the US and
abroad.
It is ironic that the biggest terrorist power in the
history of mankind, US imperialism, is masquerading as
the champion against terrorism. It is already taking
actions to repress its own people, encourage puppet
regimes abroad to rule by open terror and push wars of
aggression against the people waging revolution,
nations fighting for liberation and countries
asserting national independence.
For the time being, it appears that the US can act
unilaterally or lead military alliances to wage wars
of aggression. But after every successful aggression,
the US takes the lion's share in the spoils of war and
offends some of its imperialist allies and puppets by
some measure. In due time, there will be a falling
out between the US and some of its imperialist allies.
At the moment, the simultaneous bankruptcy of
neoliberal globalization and the aggressiveness of US
imperialism serve to incite the broad masses of the
people throughout the world to wage revolutionary
resistance. There is widespread popular hatred for
such US-controlled formations as the Group of 8, OECD,
IMF, World Bank, WTO, NATO and the US-Japan security
alliance.
In the imperialist countries, the people are rising up
in mass protests against neoliberal globalization,
unemployment, racism, fascism, wars of aggression and
other antipeople phenomena. Elsewhere in the world,
the people are engaged in various forms of protest and
resistance. In various continents, there are seeds
for the spread of armed revolution.
In due course, four major contradictions will
intensify in the current decade. They are those
contradictions between the imperialist powers and the
oppressed peoples and nations, those between the
imperialist powers and countries assertive of their
national sovereignty, those among the imperialist
powers and those between the monopoly bourgeoisie and
proletariat in imperialist countries.
The intensification of any of these contradictions
will tend to inflame the other contradictions. Under
these circumstances, it is decisive for the subjective
forces of the revolution in various countries to
strengthen themselves, step up their mass work and
carry out mass struggles for national liberation,
democracy and socialism against imperialism and all
reaction.
3. VULNERABILITY OF THE RULING SYSTEM AND EVERY RULING
CLIQUE
Ten years ago, all the reactionary politicians of the
big compradors and landlords echoed the imperialists
in trumpeting the supposed victory of monopoly
capitalism over demands for national liberation and
socialism. They wished for the bounties of "free
market" globalization, with the Asia-Pacific region as
the growth area for an indefinite period of time.
Since then, the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions
of the Philippines have aggravated and deepened. The
violation of national sovereignty and bargaining away
of national patrimony have only led to further
underdevelopment of the country, impoverishment of the
people, grave social discontent, bitter contradictions
among the reactionaries and intensified armed
revolutionary resistance of the Filiipino people and
Bangsamoro. The entire ruling system (as well as
every ruling clique of the reactionaries) is
vulnerable to the crisis of the world capitalist
system.
Under the Ramos regime, the country went fast into
import-dependent low value-added semimanufactures
(electronic components, garments, shoes, toys and the
like) and into private construction propped up by
large amounts of private credit convertible into
public debt. The crisis of overproduction in
semimanufactures and private construction with
excessive foreign credit devastated the Southeast
Asian economies in 1997.
The Estrada regime sank in the socioeconomic crisis
that had earlier become severe under the Ramos regime
and could not get out of it precisely because it was
also extremely servile to the US. It pushed the
Senate ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement
and the elimination of national restraints on foreign
investments.
Nothing came from the US and other imperialists to
lift the economy from crisis. Instead the IMF pressed
the Estrada regime to collect more taxes and cut down
deficit-spending in a shrinking economy. To satisfy
its bureaucrat-capitalist appetite for corruption, the
regime was reduced to collecting bribes from operators
of the numbers game (jueteng) and drug traders and
devising scams for raiding the GSIS and SSS pension
funds of state and private employees.
Estrada could be easily removed from office because of
his obvious stupidity, gross arrogance and flagrant
corruption. But no matter how cute or polished may be
the ways of Estrada's successor, Mrs.
Macapagal-Arroyo, she is already emerging as the
patroness of corruption.
The Macapagal-Arroyo regime is put in a corner by its
own devotion to "free market" globalization, which has
cut down official foreign credit and favored the
marauding activities of the multinational firms and
private banks. As a consequence of the economic ruin
caused by liberalization, privatization and
deregulation, the ground for mutual accommodation
among the reactionary politicians in committing
corruption has become so limited that acts of
corruption can easily be exposed.
The economy is in shambles and yet the ruling clique
is being required by the IMF to collect more taxes,
cut back on any kind of social spending and give
priority to debt service and funding the military and
police. Under these circumstances, the current ruling
clique like its predecessor can easily become isolated
and discredited.
The global crisis of overproduction has hit the types
of product exported by the Philippines, raw materials
and semimanufactures. The country is importing a lot
of manufactures and even food products. Thus, the
foreign trade deficit is ceaselessly increasing and
the foreign debt burden is mounting. The global slump
is also reducing the demand for overseas contract
workers and consequently their wage remittances to the
Philippines.
The budget of the reactionary government is becoming
more conspicuously wasteful and absurd. Its budgetary
deficit is widening every year due to the mounting
debt service (46 percent of the budget), the huge
allocation for the military, police and intelligence
funds (exceeding 14 percent) and the corruption in
pork barrel appropriations and supply contracts
entered into by all government offices.
The Macapagal-Arroyo regime does not alleviate but
aggravates the suffering of the broad masses of the
people. Mass unemployment, wage freeze and erosion of
incomes, rising prices of basic commodities,
increasing tax burden and deterioration of social
services and the infrastructure are making the lives
of the people, especially the toiling masses and lower
middle class, more and more miserable and intolerable.
The regime has ridiculed the pleas of the workers and
government employees for wage and salary adjustments
and the demand of the landless peasants for genuine
and thoroucghgoing land reform. The base for removing
Macapagal-Arroyo from power or frustrating her 2004
electoral plans is developing.
The regime is increasingly becoming the target of
public outrage as a result of its puppetry to
imperialist interests, incompetence and corruption.
The loose ruling coalition is becoming more unwieldy
and unstable as the major and minor allies of the
president expect her to become further discredited and
unable to run for the presidency in 2004 and they
speculate in advance on realignments before 2004.
The regime is vulnerable to the intensification of
contradictions among the reactionary political parties
and factions. The legal progressive forces can play
once more a vital role in arraying a broad united
front against the ruling clique.
The military and police continue to be afflicted by
corruption. Officers combine and compete with each
other in stealing public money through supply
contracts and in running criminal syndicates engaged
in kidnapping for ransom, drug trading, smuggling of
goods in and out of the country and so on.
Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo projects an image of
obsequiousness to the military by repeatedly
flattering them, yielding to demands for more funds
and placing the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations in the
hands of defense secretary Gen. Angelo Reyes whom the
US is secretly grooming as her successor. Such
debilitated image of Macapagal-Arroyo is conspicuous
even as she sometimes poses as a tough
commander-in-chief by issuing bellicose statements and
by aping Bush in pushing the so-called anti-terrorist
line.
She is practically in the clutches of General Angelo
Reyes and similar militarists who pushed Estrada into
an all-out war policy against the Filipino people and
the Bangsamoro. They have placed her in the position
of condoning and encouraging violations of human
rights and international humanitarian law and yielding
to the militarists what should be her initiative in
the GRP peace negotiations with the NDFP.
A broad legal united front can rise up to isolate and
remove the current ruling clique or at least weaken
and disable it from winning in the 2004 reactionary
elections. At the same time, it is possible to
coordinate the armed resistance of the Filipino people
and the Bangsamoro in a broad united front in order to
further weaken the very foundation of the reactionary
state.
It is the duty of the Communist Party of the
Philippines to lead and build the New People's Army
for the ultimate revolutionary goal of overthrowing
the reactionary state and likewise to develop various
forms of united front for mobilizing the broadest
range of forces and the greatest number of people
against the enemy in order to carry forward the new
democratic revolution.
4 .STRENGTHEN AND SHARPEN THE WEAPONS OF THE
PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION
The crisis conditions in the Philippines and the world
do not translate automatically into revolutionary
advances. It is the task of the revolutionary forces
to resolutely, militantly and effectively carry the
Philippine revolution forward. The Communist Party of
the Philippines, the New People's Army and the
National Democratic Front must strengthen and sharpen
themselves as weapons to fight and defeat the enemy.
We must strengthen and sharpen the Party as the
vanguard force of the proletariat and the people
through the study and conscious application of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We must continue to learn
from the Second Great Rectification Movement. We must
avoid the pitfalls of subjectivism, be this in the
form of empiricism or dogmatism and act firmly against
imperialism, revisionism and reaction.
We must always make concrete analysis of Philippine
conditions and our revolutionary practice. The
assessment and evaluation of our work, learning
lessons from both positive and negative experience,
clarification of the tasks, criticism and
self-criticism give us all the chance to improve our
work and raise the level of our revolutionary
consciousness. At the same time, we must seriously
read and study Marxist-Leninist materials in our
respective organs and units as well as in formal study
courses.
We must adopt and carry out a plan to recruit more
Party members from the mass movement of workers,
peasants, women, youth and professionals. Thus, the
Party can maintain and enhance its close links with
the masses. We must attract to the Party the most
advanced activists and attend promptly to their
Marxist-Leninist education and trial work as candidate
members of the Party.
We must carry out the new-democratic revolution
through protracted people's war and avoid the pitfalls
of "Left" opportunism and Right opportunism. We must
strengthen and sharpen the New People's Army as the
main instrument for realizing the basic alliance of
the proletariat and peasantry and for fighting and
defeating the counterrevolutionary state.
We must continue to employ the people's army for
integrating the revolutionary armed struggle, land
reform and mass base-building. The Party must
exercise leadership over the commands of the people's
army. It must build party units within units of the
people's army.
We must strengthen and sharpen the united front as a
weapon for augmenting and amplifying the strength of
the revolutionary forces and for rallying the broadest
range of forces against the narrowest target. We must
continue to build a comprehensive echelon of alliances
in the national united front: the basic alliance of
workers and peasants, the alliance of such progressive
forces as the toiling masses and the urban petty
bourgeoisie, the alliance of such patriotic forces as
the progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie.
In building the basic worker-peasant alliance, it is
absolutely necessary that the Party strengthen and
sharpen the antifeudal united front. This is the only
way for getting the biggest direct mass support for
the protracted people's war in the countryside for the
revolutionary cause of national liberation and
democracy.
Whenever feasible and necessary, we build even the
unstable and temporary alliance with reactionary
forces against the current enemy. The objective is to
isolate the enemy completely and overthrow him. We
have demonstrated at the national level how to develop
the unstable and temporary alliance with reactionary
allies in the movement to overthrow Marcos and
Estrada.
We are confident that in the next ten years we shall
be able to make great strides in the new-democratic
revolution and that the anti-imperialist and socialist
movements in the world shall surge forward in an
unprecedented way amidst the worsening crisis of the
world capitalist system and the great disorder due to
wars of aggression and campaigns of repression.
Under the leadership of the Communist Party of the
Philippines and the revolutionary proletariat, the
Filipino people are now carrying out the national
democratic revolution of the new type. Upon the basic
completion of this stage of the Philippine revolution,
they shall proceed to carry out the socialist
revolution until imperialism is defeated on a global
scale and the threshold of communism is finally
reached. Such is the bright future of the Philippine
revolution and the Filipino people.
In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the
Party must continue to develop close relations with
Marxist-Leninist parties in order to promote
conditions for rebuilding the international communist
movement. The Party must also continue to encourage
the development of the international united front,
characterized by broad anti-imperialist solidarity.
_________________________________________________
KOMINFORM
P.O. Box 66
00841 Helsinki
Phone +358-40-7177941
Fax +358-9-7591081
http://www.kominf.pp.fi
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