By Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairman of Kabataang Makabayan and the Communist Party of the Philippines
November 30, 2019
We, the Filipino nation and all patriotic and progressive forces, celebrate today the 156th birth anniversary of Andres Bonifacio in order to honor him and the Katipunan for their revolutionary heroic deed of declaring and fighting for Philippine independence against Spanish colonialism in 1896.
We likewise honor all the national heroes who have followed their example in fighting against foreign and feudal domination. We make special mention of Kabataang Makabayan, founded on November 30, 1964, for striving to continue the unfinished revolution, interrupted by the US imperialist war of aggression and conquest of the Philippines soon after the people’s victory over Spanish colonialism.
The best way to celebrate Bonifacio Day is to renew and reinvigorate the revolutionary unity and will of the Filipino people to continue the struggle for genuine national independence and democracy against the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system dominated by US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.
This ruling system is now chiefly represented by the traitorous Duterte regime, which tries to serve two imperialist masters by keeping the all-sided overall dominance of US imperialism and at the same time selling out the sovereign rights of the Filipino nation over the West Philippine Sea and over its economy and natural resources in the entire archipelago.
The chronic crisis of the ruling system is worsening rapidly due to the policies of neoliberalism and state terrorism. Foreign monopoly capitalism extracts superprofits by keeping the Philippines underdeveloped and a cheap source of labor and raw materials and a denationalized and deregulated field of imperialist trade and investments.
The people are being subjected to worse conditions of exploitation, deteriorating working and living conditions, rising unemployment and mass poverty. While the local and foreign public debt is growing rapidly due to the importation and consumption of foreign manufactures, the Duterte regime has increased the tax burden at the expense of the ordinary people only to use the public funds to feed bureaucratic corruption and reinforce the instruments of state terrorism.
There is now a de facto regime of fascist dictatorship in the Philippines. Under the pretext of rabid anti-communism, the reactionary government is under a process of militarization and fascisation in accordance with Executive Order No. 70 for the purpose perpetuating and serving the three evil forces of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.
The traitorous, tyrannical, genocidal, corrupt and swindler Duterte regime is imposing extreme and intolerable forms of exploitation and oppression on the Filipino people. It is therefore inciting anf goading the people to fight back. It is driving them to rise up in mass protests for full national independence and democracy and to engage in the new democratic revolution with a socialist perspective.
Indeed, the conditions for the people’s struggle for national and social liberation are favorable in the Philippines. So are the conditions abroad favorable for the revolutionary struggle. The world capitalist system is in grave crisis. It has been unable to solve the problem of stagnation and depression since 2008. The inter-imperialist contradictions are intensifying. For decades, US and Chinese monopoly capitalism were main partners in neoliberal globalization. Now, they are in a vortex of struggle for a redivision of the world.
The people of the world have undergone intolerable suffering from imperialist plunder, state terrorism, foreign military intervention and wars of aggression. In response, they have risen up in militant mass protests all over the world, especially against neoliberalism and fascism. These mass protests are bound to intensify and grow and stimulate the spread of people’s war and the resurgence of the anti-imperialist and proletarian-socialist revolutionary struggles on a world scale.
In carrying out the new democratic revolution for more than 50 years, the Communist Party of the Philippines as leading force and the entire revolutionary movement of the Filipino people under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism have withstood and overcome the pro-imperialist currents of neocolonialism, anticommunism, reactionary liberalism, social democracy and neo-Keynesianism, modern revisionism, neoliberalism and fascism.
They have stood out as torch bearer of the world anti-imperialist struggles and the world proletarian revolution and continue to grow in revolutionary strength and advance in concert with the peoples of the world, as did the Katipunan under Bonifacio when it was the leading force of the old democratic revolution. This was the first national liberation movement to defeat a Western colonial power in Asia, and served as the torch-bearer of liberal democratic revolution in Asia, long before the Chinese revolution of 1911 and the emergence of new states after World War II.
In carrying out the new democratic revolution, the Communist Party of the Philippines is inspired by the revolutionary spirit of Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan. It is the New Katipunan at a new and higher level of revolutionary struggle, that of the people’s democratic revolution with a socialist perspective, in the era of modern imperialism and the world proletarian revolution. It seeks to contribute the best it can to the achievement of national liberation, democracy and socialism in other countries.
Long live the revolutionary spirit of Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan!
Intensify and carry forward the new democratic revolution of the Filipino people!
Long live the Philippine revolution and the Filipino people!
Long live proletarian internationalism and the international solidarity of peoples!