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GREETINGS TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PHILIPPINES
ON THE OCCASION OF ITS FORTIETH FOUNDING ANNIVERSARY
By Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairman
Communist Party of the Philippines
26 December 2008
As founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), I
convey warmest greetings of comradeship to all CPP cadres and members
on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the CPP. I
share your joy in celebrating all the struggles waged and all the victories
won by the CPP and the Filipino people in the last four decades of the
new democratic revolution.
Let me congratulate you for the victories of the CPP, as published in
Ang Bayan and reported to the Negotiating Panel of the National
Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
I congratulate you for all the victories won in the ideological field. The
CPP has successfully integrated the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
with the concrete conditions and concrete practice of the Philippine
revolution. It has correctly understood the history and circumstances
of the Filipino people and has produced works of high theoretical and
practical value.
The CPP has educated well its cadres and members in adopting the
Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method. They have learned
materialist dialectics not only through the formal courses of study at
the basic, intermediate and advanced levels but more importantly
through revolutionary practice and the constant study of its
circumstances and development.
The CPP criticizes and repudiates modern revisionism and subjectivism,
be it dogmatism or empiricism. It is well known for periodic and timely
criticism and self-criticism in order to strengthen its unity and make its
work more effective than ever. It has carried out great rectification
movements as campaigns of education to clarify basic principles,
policies and line, to rectify major errors and to set forth new tasks
in order to advance the revolutionary process.
The First Great Rectification Movement paved the way for the founding
of the CPP. It criticized and repudiated modern revisionism and the
major errors, especially those of the Lavaites, that had marked the
previous attempts to develop the party as an advanced detachment
of the revolutionary proletariat. The Second Great Rectification
Movement saved the CPP from attempts to disorient and to liquidate
it from within and to condone serious crimes that followed the major
political errors.
The resounding victory of the Second Great Rectification Movement
meant the defeat of highly placed deviants with their muddled notions
from classical and modern revisionism, bourgeois liberalism, Gorbachovism
and Trotskyism. It strengthened the CPP's adherence to the new
democratic and socialist revolutions against the ideological, political,
economic and military offensives of imperialism in the wake of the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and other revisionist regimes and
the social turmoil in China.
I congratulate you for all the victories won in the political field. The
CPP has accurately described the Philippine ruling system as semicolonial
and semifeudal, directly ruled by the comprador big bougeoisie and
landlord class subservient to US imperialism. Correspondent to this fact,
the CPP has put forward the general political line of new democratic
revolution through protracted people's war.
The CPP has aroused, organized and mobilized millions of people in the
urban and rural areas. It engages in mass education and agitation on
a wide scale. Its cadres and members are at the core and leadership
of the revolutionary mass movement. They have built mass organizations
for workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, cultural activists
and others. The CPP has engaged in broad mass mobilizations, including
those for ousting the Marcos and Estrada regimes and those opposing
unequal treaties with foreign powers, human rights violations and change
of the 1987 constitution to make it even more anti-national and
anti-democratic.
The CPP has built and led the New People's Army (NPA) since 1969.
This has been the largest revolutionary army since the Philippine
revolution of 1896. It has thousands of battle-tested Red fighters
with political-military education and training. It moves freely in at least
80 per cent of Philippine territory. It has more than a hundred guerrilla
fronts covering large portions of 70 provinces and 800 municipalities.
Close to 100 per cent of the weapons in the hands of the NPA have
come from its enemy through tactical offensives.
The NPA has been carrying out intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare
on the basis of a widening and deepening mass base in the context of
the defensive strategic stage of the people's war and the probability
course of strategic stages of defensive, stalemate and offensive. The
revolutionary armed struggle is integrated with land reform and mass
base building. All three integral components are meant to contribute
to the realization of the strategic line of encircling the cities from the
countryside until the people's army is strong enough to seize the cities
and other strongholds of the enemy on a nationwide scale.
With the support of the NPA, the CPP has been able to build in thousands
of barangays the organs of political power and mass organizations for
workers, peasants, women, youth and cultural activists in the countryside.
It has been able to launch mass campaigns for public education, land reform,
raising production, health and sanitation, training of the militia and self-defense
units, settlement of disputes and cultural activities.
The CPP has adopted and promoted the policy and tactics of the united
front as an indispensable weapon of the revolution. The new democratic
revolution is based on the alliance of the working class and peasantry. In
turn, the toiling masses are allied with the urban petty bourgeoisie in a
progressive alliance. This is best embodied by the National Democratic
Front, which the CPP and other revolutionary forces co-founded in 1973.
Further is the alliance of the patriotic forces, including the middle bourgeoisie.
Still further is the broad united front, which involves unstable and temporary
alliance with certain reactionaries against the worst of the reactionaries who
are narrowed down as the enemy. The CPP has so far targeted as the enemy
the ruling reactionary clique because this have been the most reactionary and
most servile to US imperialism.
I congratulate you for all the victories in building the Party organization. The
CPP is guided by the principle of democratic centralism, which means
centralism based on democracy and democracy guided by centralism. This
principle opposes bureaucratism as well as ultra-democracy or anarchy. The
CPP has struck deep roots among the toiling masses of workers and peasants
and has built Party organs and organizations on the scale of the entire Philippines.
The CPP has tens of thousands of members, mainly from the workers and
peasants. It has drawn the most advanced elements from the mass movement
of workers, peasants, women, youth and cultural activists. It has admitted to
its ranks the educated youth, who come mainly from the urban petty
bourgeoisie but who are willing to remould themselves into proletarian
revolutionaries through revolutionary study and practice in the service of
the people.
The CPP has a sound organization of cadres and members. This can be the
basis for a well-planned accelerated growth of the CPP organization. Tens
of thousands of cadres and hundreds of thousands of members are needed
for a new great leap in the advance of the Philippine revolution. There are
gigantic tasks ahead for the CPP.
The bankruptcies of the US-instigated policies of “neoliberal globalization”
and “war on terror” have resulted in an unprecedentedly rapid worsening
of the crisis of the world capitalist system and the Philippine ruling system.
The crisis conditions inflict terrible suffering on the people but also incite
them to wage revolutionary struggle. They are therefore favorable for
the rapid growth and advance of the Communist Party of the Philippines
and other organized revolutionary forces of the Filipino people. ###
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