Communist Party of the Philippines
by Luis Jalandoni

THE PHILIPPINE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE, ALLIANCES
AND COOPERATION OF COMMUNISTS NOWADAYS

Comrades,
We, the Communist Party of the Philippines, thank the
Communist Party of Greece for inviting us to this
International Conference. We express greetings of
comradeship and revolutionary solidarity to the host party
and to all delegations.
In a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country like the
Philippines, the significant issues and mass struggles that
arise pertain to the over-all revolutionary struggle for
national liberation and democracy under the leadership of
the proletariat, against US imperialism and the local
exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
Since the imposition of Spanish colonialism on the Filipino
people in the 16th century, the Philippines has become part
of the development of capitalism in Europe and the world as
a whole. It has become more so since the beginning of the
20th century, when US imperialism imposed itself on the
people.
In 1898, the Filipino people had the distinction of being
the first people to win the bourgeois democratic revolution
of the old type in Asia. Unfortunately, US imperialism
intervened and waged a war of aggression in order to impose
its own colonial rule on the Philippines. This rule
continued until the US decided to grant nominal
independence to a semi-colonial republic in 1946 as a
consequence of the irrepressible demand for independence
and revolutionary struggle of the people.
Under conditions of direct colonial rule and then indirect
colonial rule, the US has promoted a semi-feudal kind of
social economy, favoring as agents of oppression and
exploitation, the comprador big bourgeoisie and the
landlord class. At this point in time, the broad masses of
the people are confronted with the big comprador-landlord
state in the service of the US and other foreign monopoly
capitalism.

Revolutionary Class Basis of Strategy and Tactics

In seeking to overthrow this state, we the Communist Party
of the Philippines pursue the strategy and tactics of the
new democratic revolution through protracted people's war.
There is a definite revolutionary class basis for this
strategy and tactics.
We uphold the class leadership of the proletariat in the
Philippine revolution. The advanced detachment of this
class is the Communist Party of the Philippines. By legal
and illegal methods, we promote the working class movement.
In the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution,
there is no class but the proletariat for leading the
Philippine revolution in its current new democratic stage
and in its future socialist stage.
We develop the worker-peasant alliance as the foundation of
the new democratic revolution. We do so with the
proletarian revolutionary cadres promoting the peasant
movement by carrying out the agrarian revolution and
building the New People's Army, the organs of political
power and the mass organizations in the countryside. There
must be a solid unity of the basic toiling masses of
workers and peasants, especially because the workers are
still a minority in the Philippines.
We also develop the alliance of progressive forces, which
include the basic toiling masses and the urban petty
bourgeoisie. In the Philippines today, the National
Democratic Front of the Philippines is the most
consolidated underground alliance of progressive forces.
At the same time, there are legal multi-sectoral and
sectoral alliances of progressive forces. When they are
won to the side of the revolution, the urban petty
bourgeoisie help to accelerate the revolutionary flow on a
nationwide scale. Left to themselves without the work of
communists among them, they remain co-opted by the big
bourgeoisie.
We further develop the alliance of all patriotic or
positive forces. This includes the aforementioned
progressive forces and the middle bourgeoisie. The latter
has dual progressive and reactionary characteristics and
tendencies. But it can be won over by promoting its
legitimate national interest against foreign monopoly
capitalism.
We take advantage of the splits among the reactionaries.
We can have formal or informal temporary allies among the
reactionaries against the worst of them whom we identify as
the enemy. Such allies are unstable and unreliable but are
necessary for isolating the enemy. In this regard, we are
vigilant towards such allies and we are conscious of
maintaining our independence and initiative and exercising
unity and struggle with restraint in the united front.
By developing the echelon of alliances as we have described
above, we can maintain our revolutionary integrity and
direction, augment or amplify our current strength and
realize the broadest range of forces against the enemy as
the narrowest target at every given time. We can thus
isolate and destroy the enemy, whom we define as the most
reactionary and the most servile to US imperialism.
The Communist Party of the Philippines has successfully
pursued the foregoing class line since the time it was
reestablished on 26 December 1968. It has been able to
overcome the difficulties of reviving the revolutionary
mass movement from its defeat in the early 1950s and the
vicious attempts of the US-Marcos regime to �nip it in the
bud� and suppress it up to the point of imposing a
fourteen-year long fascist dictatorship on the people from
1972 to 1986. The Party has also overcome the
counterrevolutionary violence and �democratic� pretenses of
one post- Marcos regime after another.
The line of the Party is to fight one reactionary ruling
clique after another and gain strength in the process until
it becomes possible to overthrow the entire ruling system.
The Party uses all available forms of struggle, legal and
illegal, and wages revolutionary armed struggle as the
principal form of struggle.
The Party has had to fight the frontal enemy and has
thereby won revolutionary victories. At the same time, it
has successfully waged the Second Great Rectification
Movement since 1992 to overcome subjectivism and both
�Left� and Right opportunism. It has also thwarted the
influence of modern revisionism and the ideological and
political offensive of imperialism as a consequence of the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and the
revisionist-ruled regimes.
Right now, the Party leads and coordinates the largest
patriotic and progressive mass organizations and alliances
in the Philippines in the urban and rural areas. It
commands the New People's Army on more than 100 guerrilla
fronts. This has a mass base of millions of people, who
are in mass organizations and under their own
self-government through local organs of political power.
The Communist Party of the Philippines considers as its
most outstanding political achievement the fact that it has
been able to wage protracted people's war and establish Red
political power in expanding areas, by applying the
universal theory of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete
conditions of a semicolonial and semifeudal country. Such
an achievement has been made in a strategically important
base of US imperialism for dominating Asia.

The Need for an International United Front
In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the
Communist Party of the Philippines is determined to
contribute to the advance of the world proletarian
revolution and the broad anti-imperialist movement by
carrying the Philippine revolution forward.
At the same time, it seeks the support of the proletariat
and people of the world. It promotes party-to-party
relations on the basis of Marxism-Leninism as well as
anti-imperialist solidarity. It also promotes
people-to-people relations through mass organizations on
the basis of anti-imperialist solidarity, without any
ideological precondition.
It has always sought to learn from the revolutionary
experience and achievements of other communist and workers'
parties and national liberation movements. It has supported
the cause of national liberation, democracy and socialism
in other countries.
It has participated in international conferences and
seminars of communist and workers' parties in order to
exchange experiences and views, to raise common
understanding and to arrive at possible forms of
cooperation.
In the last ten years, it is unavoidable that among the
most urgent topics are the disintegration of the Soviet
Union, the full restoration of capitalism in former
socialist countries, the rampage of monopoly capitalism
masquerading as �free market� globalization, the
imperialist ideological and political offensive and the
need to revitalize the international communist movement and
the national liberation movements.
While communist and workers' parties must strive to build
their unity on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and to realize
the class leadership of the proletariat in the
revolutionary process in their respective countries and in
the world, there is an acute need for an international
united front of revolutionary forces and peoples against an
imperialism that is more than ever unbridled in its
oppressiveness and exploitativeness.
Monopoly capitalism seems to be invincible after the
prolonged spread of modern revisionism and reformism in the
working class movement, the restoration of capitalism in
socialist countries and the colonial cooptation of national
liberation movements. It seems like the sole superpower
and the other imperialist powers can do as they please in
oppressing and exploiting the people and in launching wars
of aggression.
But we must recognize above all that imperialism at present
is in an unprecedented crisis that is precisely due to the
explosive combination of the rapid increase of social
productivity due to higher technology in the imperialist
countries and the most rapacious methods of monopoly
capitalist appropriation in the name of the mythical free
market.
The accelerated concentration and centralization of capital
in the few imperialist countries, principally the United
States, means the accelerated extraction of surplus value
from the proletariat in industrial capitalist countries and
superprofits from the client countries, the pressing down
of the income levels of the working people through mass
unemployment and the curtailment of the rights of the
working people. There is actually a contraction of the
market and a ceaseless worsening of the crisis of
overproduction.
The destruction of productive forces is wide scale. The
most victimized are the working people of Asia, Africa,
Latin America and the former socialist countries. They are
crushed by the crisis of overproduction in raw-materials
since the 1970s and by mounting deficits and foreign debt.
Social unrest is gravest in these countries. In some of
them, armed revolutionary movements have arisen. However,
in the meantime, the imperialists headed by the US are
instigating the local reactionaries to unleash counter
revolutionary violence or are launching wars of aggression
against so-called rogue states that assert national
independence.
Even as they extract superprofits from their direct and
indirect investments in client countries, the imperialist
countries are hard hit by the crisis of overproduction.
Among them, the US scores the highest growth rate by taking
advantage of investments from Japan and Western Europe and
by inflating its assets. In all imperialist countries,
mass unemployment is increasing; regular jobs are being
replaced by part-time jobs. Unrest is growing among the
workers against the deterioration of wage and living
conditions.
The US still manages to head the imperialist alliance and
this alliance coheres insofar as it seeks to shift the
burden of crisis to the working people, especially in the
neocolonial client states, under the auspices of such
multilateral agencies as the IMF, World Bank and WTO, and
insofar as it undertakes punitive actions against the
so-called rogue states with the use of the UN Security
Council, the NATO and bilateral military agreements.
But inter-imperialist contradictions are becoming
conspicuous in the economic field. With regard to
politico-military matters, the US continues to push
military burden-sharing and allows Germany and Japan to
rearm. The danger of inter-imperialist war will grow when
the monopoly bourgeoisie in imperialist countries turns
further to fascism to quell the rise of the revolutionary
proletariat.
All basic contradictions in the world are steadily
sharpening. These are between the imperialist countries
and the oppressed peoples, those between the monopoly
bourgeoisie and the proletariat in industrial capitalist
countries and those among the imperialist powers.
In building the international united front, we must be
ready to combine the strength of all the mass movements,
parties and states that take the anti-imperialist line. We
can build this united front step by step. Initiatives of
various types and scales that can contribute directly or
indirectly, formally or informally, must come into play in
the building of this united front.
The Communist Party of the Philippines shall continue to
participate in conferences and seminars which are aimed at
ideological-building and promoting people's war wherever
practicable and necessary. In any such gathering, where
common action is considered, it shall espouse the policy of
the international united front against imperialism.
The upcoming formation of the International League of
People's Struggle on 16-17 December 2000 in Duisburg,
Germany is a positive development. Its participants are
mass formations (mass organizations, alliances and
institutes) which take the anti-imperialist line. They are
either associated or not associated with political parties.
The League is independent of any political party, church
or state. The important thing is that it takes the
anti-imperialist line on a comprehensive range of concerns.

In any international anti-imperialist gathering, the
participating organizations must arrive at a common view
against the common enemy, which is imperialism, and must
define a common program of action.
It is timely to undertake all efforts to consolidate and
expand the international united front against imperialism
and all reaction. The worsening crisis of the world
capitalist system and the new world disorder are the
prelude to the resurgence of the anti-imperialist and
socialist movement.