On the Combination of Legal and Illegal Forms of Struggle

General Comment

As a student and teacher of political science, let me comment on the combination of legal and illegal forms of struggle waged by the proletariat and the people against the big bourgeoisie. I try to speak in the light of the Marxist-Leninist theory of state and revolution and, of course, the historical experience of the proletariat.

Whenever I refer to the revolutionary party of the proletariat, I mean the party guided by the theory of Marxism-Leninism and in particular by its component theory of state and revolution. Such a party may already be waging armed revolution or if not yet doing so recognizes the necessity of this in the attainment of socialism.

In any country where the big bourgeoisie reigns, the party of the proletariat that aims to carry out socialist revolution runs the risk of being suppressed someday. The class dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie exists to prevent the proletariat from taking power and establishing socialism.

While it can still use imperialist and neocolonial methods of exploitation and pretend to be democratic and civil in its homeground, the big bourgeoisie has a repertoire of peaceful methods for coopting, undermining, cutting down and isolating the revolutionary party of the proletariat, short of unleashing all-out fascist repression. But when such a party cannot be undermined, cut down and isolated through peaceful methods and instead grows in strength until it is perceived as a real threat to the very life of the ruling capitalist system, then the big bourgeoisie carries out violent suppression.

It is revisionist to believe that the proletariat can evade the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and peacefully bring about the socialist revolution. According to Marx and Engels, the class dictatorship of the proletariat must replace that of the bourgeoisie in order to bring about socialism. So far, there is yet no historical instance of a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism. But there is ample proof that the peaceful transition from socialism to capitalism is possible.

In Industrial Capitalist Countries

In industrial capitalist countries, the party of the proletariat wages legal struggle as the main form of struggle for a long period of time, for so long as it is possible and necessary. It is foolhardy to play with an armed insurrection when the severity of the crisis does not yet render the big bourgeoisie incapable of ruling in the old way, when the people are not yet desirous of overthrowing the state and when the party of the proletariat is not yet strong enough to lead a successful revolution.

For the party of the proletariat to wage any form of armed struggle that is untimely is to invite total destruction by the big bourgeoisie, which has centralized and concentrated in its hands the means of coercion, livelihood and communications. And yet the revolutionary party of the proletariat that is not waging any armed struggle must combine illegal forms of struggle with the legal forms of struggle in order to prevent the big bourgeoisie from effectively conducting surveillance, penetrating, controlling, redirecting, framing up, discrediting or marginalizing all the proletarian revolutionaries in the short run and in order to develop a powerful underground in preparation against fascist suppression and for armed revolution in the long run.

While the big bourgeoisie can still afford legality to the party of the proletariat, it uses the intelligence services, the mass media, the schools, churches, civic associations and a two-party or multiparty system to push said party of the proletariat to the margin of electoral and other political processes.

When the crisis of capitalism becomes severe to the point that the revolutionary party of the proletariat and the revolutionary mass movement becomes too strong for toleration by the big bourgeoisie, then the previous lack of or incompetence at the illegal forms of struggle will certainly result in the total destruction of the revolutionary forces.

From one industrial capitalist country to another, there may be illegal forms of struggle other than armed struggle which vary according to the bourgeois laws obtaining. For instance, in certain industrial capitalist countries, it is illegal to simply keep guns without license. In the United States, it is legal for individuals and gun clubs to keep a wide array of guns without license.

In all industrial capitalist countries, the intelligence services of the bourgeois state exert all efforts to know the entire list of members of a working class party. Even if there is no law against secret membership in such a party, there is a presumption or anticipation of illegality attached to the secrecy of the membership of any portion of that party.

However, the best teacher in the secrecy of the most important operations are the big bourgeois who keep their business and political secrets well. They use secrecy to prepare policies, laws and contracts not only against each other in their competition but most importantly against the proletariat and the people.

In fighting the big bourgeoisie and in preparing against the worst that this class can unleash, the revolutionary party of the proletariat is required by concrete conditions of class exploitation and oppression and by its historic mission of realizing socialism to combine legal and illegal forms of struggle. For one thing, it cannot naively expose all its personnel to the coercive apparatuses of the bourgeois state or put all its eggs in the basket of parliamentary struggle, especially when counterrevolutionary currents are running high.

In this general comment, I refrain from specifying what illegal forms of struggle the party of the proletariat must undertake in any industrial capitalist country. The proletarian revolutionaries in this type of country are wise and competent enough to know and use these in their own country.

In the Philippines

The Philippines is a semicolonial and semifeudal country where it is necessary to wage the national-democratic revolution and where protracted people’s war has been carried out for more than 26 years.

Before the revolutionary armed struggle began in 1969, there was a period of predominantly legal struggle. In most of the ’60s, an anti-imperialist and antifeudal legal mass movement was carried out by the proletarian revolutionaries on domestic and international issues in order to recover from the crushing defeat of the armed revolutionary movement in the early ’50s and early ’60s and in order to prepare the way for the resumption of the armed struggle.

It became possible to resume the armed revolution in 1969 because the revolutionary forces previously combined legal with illegal forms of struggle. The proletarian revolutionaries used the legal forms of struggle to arouse, organize and mobilize the people nationwide within a short period of time but at the same time made secret preparations for the resumption of the armed struggle.

Even when the armed struggle becomes the principal form of struggle, the legal forms of struggle are indispensable. The coordination and combination of the legal and illegal forms are necessary. These two forms of struggle are complementary, dialectically interact and support each other’s development.

In theory and practice, the armed struggle is the principal form of struggle because it is that form of struggle which enables the proletariat and people to seize power and build organs of political power in one rural area after another and ultimately to overthrow the imperialists and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords nationwide and establish the people’s democratic state.

The legal forms of struggle in the cities and countryside can propagate the line of the national democratic revolution on a wide scale and even ahead of the propaganda and organizing capability of those armed units waging the armed struggle. Legal forms of political and organizational work can prepare the advance of the armed revolution.

There are various forms of legal struggle. These include legal mass struggles conducted by class or sectoral organizations and their alliances, work within reactionary institutions, the electoral process, legal defense of the victims of human rights violations and the peace negotiations.

The legal forms of struggles can be successful if there is a powerful underground secret network in support and there are many open legal activists who cannot be easily illegalized even as the reactionary state attempts to illegalize them. These activists have to make sure that they cannot be illegalized. Otherwise, they shift to the field of revolutionary armed struggle if their urban-based legal work becomes untenable.

The urban-based democratic mass movement must be mainly legal and defensive in character even if verbally offensive, articulate and militant. The protest mass actions must not be conceptually and practically mixed up directly with armed struggle. Even outside the mass actions, the armed city partisans must not engage in punitive actions at a rate and to an extent that prejudice the mainly legal and defensive character of the legal democratic mass movement.

From period to period in the course of the protracted people’s war in the Philippines, there have been changes in what is considered legal and illegal. In the period preceding the martial rule of Marcos, it was legal to form organizations with an anti-imperialist and antifeudal character and for them to launch mass actions. Under martial rule, these were banned.

For a long time, extending to the period of the Ramos regime, mere membership in the CPP or mere possession of publications considered subversive could be a cause of detention or punitive action. Upon the repeal of the Anti-subversion law in 1992, the US-Ramos regime tried to conjure the illusion of less repression.

But currently there are serious moves to amend the GRP constitution in order to prolong the rule of Ramos, eliminate a number of formal guarantees in the bill of rights of the 1987 GRP constitution and enact an antiterrorism law which is far more draconian than the discredited and repealed Anti-subversion Law.

In the Philippines, whatever are the fluctuations in what is legal and what is illegal, the fundamental fact is that there is a joint class dictatorship of the comprador big bourgeoisie and landlord class and that many of the oppressive laws issued by the Marcos fascist autocracy persist. The most horrible violations of human rights are perpetrated by the counterrevolutionary state against the workers, peasants and the rest of the people in campaigns of anticommunist suppression.

Whatever the fluctuations are in the lawmaking of the counterrevolutionary state, the revolutionary movement has learned to coordinate and combine the legal and illegal forms of struggle and use these to advance both forms of struggle.

The CPP has adeptly utilized and coordinated the legal and illegal forms of struggle. When this coordination is well done, the revolutionary movement grows in strength and advances.