BRIEF MESSAGES & LETTERS, 2001- Present

The Importance of Circles in the Study of Marxism

Message of Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairman
Communist Party of the Philippines

May 5, 2003

I am pleased to extend my revolutionary greetings to the students and other youth who are now gathered to celebrate the birth anniversary of the great teacher Karl Marx this May 5.

Your symposium to study and discuss the Communist Manifesto and other works of the founder of the international communist movement is most appropriate.

I am happy about your desire and effort to re-launch the circles to study Marxism. It is a great honor for me to extend this message to clarify the importance of such circles then and now.

Forming, increasing and developing these circles is both important and necessary. This is where cadres are molded by studying and grasping Marxism-Leninism. They are decisive: without revolutionary theory, there is no revolutionary movement.

The most important tool for a revolutionary movement to have a firm foundation is to have cadres with a comprehensive and deep knowledge of the revolutionary ideology of the proletarian class which has the historic mission to establish socialism and defeat imperialism in order to establish communism.

In the national-democratic schools, we mold all of the activists on the present general political line. From their ranks, we draw the most diligent in study and action in order to promote them as cadres. Then as now, we need the widespread establishment of Marxist study circles.

These circles became decisive inside SCAUP and other universities in Manila as well as unions and peasant associations in order to create communist cadres and members that became the core for the revival and development of the mass movement along the line of the national-democratic revolution.

Your attempt to form these circles and to multiply cadres that have a firm grasp of Marxism-Leninism is absolutely correct. Carry out your attempt thoroughly. In this manner, you can ensure the consolidation of the core of a broad mass movement and firm up the correct direction of the revolution. "