Uphold the Leadership of the Proletariat in the Revolution and Go Deep among the Masses of Workers

Ang Bayan, Vol. VII, No. 2, May 1, 1975

On May First, we celebrate the glorious sacrifices and triumphs of the working class in its long history of revolutionary struggle against the oppressors and exploiters throughout the world and in our own country. We uphold the leadership of the proletariat in the Philippine revolution and resolve to go deep among the masses of workers.

We, the advanced detachment of the proletariat, perform our revolutionary tasks in our country not only for the sake of the broad masses of the Filipino people but also in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. We are determined to fulfill our share in the struggle of the world proletariat for the liberation of the people of the world from the scourge of imperialism, modern revisionism and all reaction.

The millions of workers in our country are suffering from extreme oppression and exploitation under this fascist dictatorial regime of the US-Marcos clique. They are eager to defend their political and economic rights and join the ranks of resistance. They know that their liberation is impossible without the liberation of all the oppressed and exploited in the country.

The masses of workers are neither cowed nor deceived by the fascist regime. Fully aware of the viciousness of the US-Marcos dictatorship through their concrete experience, they recognize that revolutionary militancy and consistent revolutionary work must be qualified by prudence and vigilance, especially in the cities and the enemy’s main lines of communication.

Patient underground work is the general character of revolutionary work among the masses of workers today. To have well-selected cadres working underground, to accumulate strength and bide our time, and to avoid rashness and exposure is the rule. It requires a great deal of revolutionary effort and struggle to reach and unite the workers in a series of workplaces and in entire industries.

Every open and legal manifestation of strength must presuppose an underground strength that is several times larger. We can never tire of working arduously and patiently for the revolutionary cause of the working class and the entire nation. We can measure our daily cumulative successes against the difficulties and even some setbacks that we encounter. If we look a few years back, we started with so little or nothing at all. We have every reason to be confident of winning victory. The objective conditions for waging revolution are more excellent than ever before. The political and economic crisis of the Philippine ruling system is getting worse everyday. The world crisis of the capitalist system is getting worse everyday. The world is aglow with the victories of the people. All that needs to be done is to steadily build up the subjective forces of the revolution. We expand and consolidate them in the course of revolutionary struggle. At the beginning of the fight, our forces are small and weak and the enemy’s are big and strong. But the objective conditions show the way for us to grow big and strong step by step and defeat in the end an enemy that is now outwardly big and strong but is rotten to the core.

The plight of the Filipino workers

The fascist dictatorial regime of the US-Marcos clique prides itself in suppressing the workers’ political and economic rights, in “stabilizing” the political situation by brute force and pressing down workers’ wages for the benefit of the US and other foreign monopoly capitalists and such arch reactionaries as the big compradors and big landlords.

The Labor Code of the Philippines, which has replaced the Industrial Peace Act, systematizes and incorporates all the anti-worker orientation, content and effects of Proclamation 1081, General Orders Nos. 1, 2, 2-A & 5 and Presidential Decrees Nos. 21, 133, 143 & 148, among others. There is nothing new about this handbook except that it conveniently sums up the anti-worker character of the “new society.”

The masses of workers, including those in the government service, remain under the threat of arbitrary arrest, raid, murder, torture and indefinite detention by the fascist military. There is nothing that dispels the presupposition and effects of such consummated and still being consummated acts of the fascist regime in carrying out arbitrary dismissals of government workers, in raiding and looting the homes and offices of progressive workers and trade unions, in arresting and indefinitely detaining trade unionists and common workers and encouraging private employers to punish trade unionists and make the most profit from their workers.

General Order No. 5, which scandalously deprives the masses of workers of their right to strike, reigns supreme. The subversion and nullification of the workers’ right to unionize and undertake mass actions is a continuing fact. The “labor code’s” recognition of the workers’ right to self-organization and right to concerted activities or its harping on the line of “one union, one industry” is senseless formality. Without the right to strike, trade unions whose collective bargaining agreements terminate face extinction and workers, who have no trade union at all to start with, face extreme difficulties in organizing one.

It is keeping to an old ritual for the Department of Labor to be talking about the “rationalization” of the trade union movement, even if such “rationalization” were merely aimed at putting all trade unions at the dictation and command of the fascist regime. What so far is the principal intention of the fascist regime has been to subvert and nullify all kinds of trade unions rather than carry out a reactionary syndicalist policy. A reactionary government becomes concerned about organizing its own kind of trade unions only when it is faced with a large trade union movement with a revolutionary character.

The employers, with the foreign monopolies on top, are far ahead in integrating their organizations. It is already evident that the fascist regime is more interested in such farces as “tripartite congresses,” with itself and the highly organized employers playing ball with a few handpicked labor aristocrats who pretend to represent all the disparate yellow trade unions and even the overwhelming majority of workers, who remain unorganized and are outside of either yellow or genuine trade unions.

The “labor code” retains every obnoxious feature of Presidential Decree No. 21. It adopts the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), the same dog as the Court of Industrial Relations (CIR) with a new tag. With the never-ending increase of cases involving the workers and their employers, the shifted officials of the CIR and a bigger pack of arbitrators and lawyers continue to prey on the workers and take advantage of bureaucratic delays to carry on their corrupt work.

While there is pretense of protecting the workers from lockouts, dismissals and suspensions, employers are allowed to carry out “preventive suspensions,” “reassignments,” and “demotions” and are no longer considered criminally liable for unfair labor practices because cases involving these are now conceived to be mere administrative cases easily decided under the table or indefinitely delayed, if not outrightly dismissed, when the workers insist on their rights. The workers are under a permanent and absolute injunction because they are deprived of their right to strike. And only in “limited cases” may the NLRC issue injunctions or restraining orders against employers. Since the trade unions are prohibited from collecting strike and defense funds, the workers are in the most difficult situation to pay for competent legal advice and make their way through the NLRC.

More cases than ever before do not reach the NLRC. Employers simply call on the fascist military and the integrated police to quell any just demand from the workers and punish their leaders. The workers and their leaders are simply charged with “economic sabotage,” “possession of deadly weapons,” “theft of company property” or any such fabrication. For “stealing” any material, spare part, product or article worth even only a few centavos, a worker can be imprisoned for six to twelve months under a fascist decree.

All the hard-won economic gains of the workers through decades of struggle have been drastically reduced or wiped out. Upon the repeal of the Blue Sunday Law, the employers are allowed to rearrange the work schedules of workers so as to permit them no slack period, avoid paying for overtime work and sabotage every attempt of workers or even only their leaders to meet on Sundays.

Female workers are discouraged from working in nighttime productive enterprises but are encouraged to work in tourist-oriented enterprises like bars, nightclubs, sauna baths and massage clinics. Maternity leave benefits of working mothers have been drastically reduced. The exploitation of child labor has been liberalized because work permits are no longer required for such. The sick and injured can no longer seek compensation under both the workmen’s compensation and the Social Security System (SSS) schemes but instead they can do so only under one integrated scheme, with drastic reduction of benefits and with the workers required to pay premiums, unlike before.

The job security and wage conditions of all regular workers are grossly undermined with the approval and encouragement given by the “labor code” for employers to take in “apprentices” and “learners” at wages far below the minimum wage and farm out aspects of an enterprise to contractors who are not bound by the minimum wage law. Regular workers are being forced to resign or retire early only to be replaced by lower-paid workers. For exploiting “apprentices” and “learners,” the big capitalists are even given tax deductions as incentives.

The big capitalists are maximizing their profits by taking advantage of the political and legal conditions set by the fascist regime, by enforcing speed-ups, by lengthening the working hours, setting excessively high production quotas on every worker and instituting arbitrary work regulations that are used to cause wage deductions. Of course, the semicolonial and semifeudal character of the economy has not only remained but has even deepened. The landlords are carrying out an enclosure movement but the depressed industries cannot absorb the displaced tenants and homesteaders. The army of reserve labor has rapidly increased and is being deliberately used to depress wage levels.

Contrary to the claims of the fascist regime that it has reduced the unemployment rate to 4.1 percent—an obvious lie because in the present crisis-ridden capitalist world even the leading capitalist countries have high rates of unemployment—the rate of unemployment now in the country could be at least 35 percent. Every year, about a million youth reach working age without finding employment. Large masses of workers are being thrown off their jobs due to the economic crisis churning in the capitalist world.

In a semicolonial and semifeudal country like the Philippines, unemployment is usually camouflaged by the seeming absorption of those who reach working age into the ranks of farm workers. The percentage of farm workers who have daily work within the agricultural season is certainly flimsy and is fast thinning out in all agricultural areas. To create a false picture, statisticians of the reactionary government beat themselves every year in manipulating figures on the unemployed and underemployed.

The vast majority of industrial and other non-agricultural wage-earners in the Philippines do not receive the minimum wage of eight pesos a day. They get coolie wages. Employers circumvent the minimum wage law by resorting to pakyaw or piece work. It is also through this method that employers of farm workers circumvent the law requiring a minimum wage of ₱4.75 for farm workers. The benefits from the Sugar Act of 1972, social security contributions and the “social amelioration bonus” for sugar workers are gobbled up by the sugar landlords themselves through various devices. Farm workers in rice, corn, coconut, banana and other areas have no defined rights whatsoever.

The fascist regime brazenly declares that there should be no fuss about minimum wage levels because it considers “development,” the “generation of more jobs” and “strengthening the purchasing power of the peso” as more important. But the truth is that the minimum wage levels set in 1970 have been left far behind by inflation and the continuous devaluation of the peso.

The open-door policy for foreign investments, the incurring of huge foreign and local debts, the unrestricted remittance of superprofits, the large foreign trade deficits, the expensive and graft-ridden infrastructure projects, the endless increase of the tax burden and the continuous devaluation of the peso have resulted neither in “development,” “generation of more jobs” nor “strengthening of the purchasing power of the peso.” They have merely served to squeeze the toiling masses and the entire nation dry.

Though the fascist regime claims to have cut down the rate of inflation from an already reduced figure of 34 percent to a mere eight percent—another obvious lie—the rate of inflation is actually running high at over 35 percent and is mercilessly cutting down the real wages of workers. It is bad enough, even if we go by the understated figures of the reactionary government’s statisticians, that since 1970 the prices of basic goods and services purchased by the average household of six has been increasing at 20.64 percent yearly.

According to the May 1974 statistics of the reactionary government, a day’s supply of nutritious food costs ₱18.16—a far cry from the minimum wage. What about the other basic needs of workers such as clothing, decent shelter, transport fare, medicine and medical care, some utilities as water and electricity and a certain educational level for members of their families? Only the most callous anti-worker will insist that there should be no fuss over the minimum wage level. Since 1965, the minimum wage level has gone up from six to eight pesos or a mere 33.3 percent. But, during the same period, the value of the peso has gone down from 100 to 33 centavos (0.33 of the peso value in 1965) or a drop of 67 percent.

The plight of the workers calls for resolute revolutionary work. Their misery is intolerable. They are certainly ready as ever to develop within their ranks the organizations capable of asserting and advancing their class interests as well as the interests of the entire nation.

The Party and the workers

It is in keeping with our firm Marxist-Leninist principle that the working class is the leading class in the Philippine revolution that we must go deep among the masses of workers. We must arouse and organize them on the basis of their needs and demands and draw from their ranks the best elements into their own party, the Communist Party of the Philippines.

We should shun the notion or tendency to keep the Party a preserve of members who are of petty-bourgeois origin. We should be seriously concerned with the ever-pressing task of drawing into the ranks of the Party those who come from the toiling masses of workers and peasants. The Party can become strong only if it succeeds in drawing into its ranks members of worker and peasant class background, making them the majority of the Party membership and developing cadres among them.

Once clarified simply, relevantly and step-by-step, Marxism-Leninism is more easily and profoundly grasped by the workers than by the petty bourgeois. It is after all the theory that touches the essence of the workers’ daily experience, that shows the leading role of their class in the Philippine revolution and that is drawn from the revolutionary experience of the world proletariat.

The reorganization of the Party organization in the Manila-Rizal region that has recently taken place is in the correct direction. The principal feature in strengthening the Party branches and Party groups at the base of the regional Party organization should be going deep among the masses of the workers. It is necessary to make more cadres available for work in the factory areas and workers’ communities. After all, the largest and strongest possible mass force in the region is the working class.

The urban committees of other regional Party organizations should look up to the example of the Manila-Rizal regional Party organization in going deep among the masses of workers, without neglecting other sections of the urban population. It is also obvious that in guerrilla bases and zones the Party in the New People’s Army should not fail to pay attention to the workers even as principal attention is paid to going deep among the peasant masses and in carrying out a peasant war.

Inasmuch as the masses of workers are most concentrated in the Manila-Rizal region, we refer mainly to them when we discuss the tasks and methods that should be undertaken with regard to going deep among the masses of workers.

We have more than enough cadres to start with for going deep among the masses of workers. Even before the Party was reestablished, we had done some modest amount of trade union work. The most important thing now is that we have a correct ideological and political line in approaching the workers and we know where to concentrate our efforts in order to make wise use of our limited personnel and resources even as we readily work where we most easily can, where we have some contact in one form or another with the workers or where one or more of our Party members are employed or are residing.

We cannot go far in arousing and mobilizing the workers without first doing social investigation. We can always start by making friends with some workers in a given factory or line of work and holding a series of talks with them, preferably in their homes, about their work and living conditions. The few friends that we start with have their own friends in the same workplace. So, it is always possible to expand our source of information whenever a previous round of talks seems insufficient.

A good knowledge of the reactionary laws pertaining to trade unions and workers is necessary. Actual work and living conditions of the masses of workers are so bad that certain provisions of these laws can be invoked and used to improve these conditions. We must be good at raising questions on trade union experience, job security, compliance with the minimum wage, medical and dental care, the system of promotions, the number of regular and nonregular workers, the departments or sections of work, the profits made by the company, the need for a trade union truly concerned with the welfare of the workers and the like.

Though strikes are banned, there is no expressed ban against trade unions. Though the collection of strike and defense funds is banned, that of funds for education and seminars is not. Though employers have the prerogative of making “preventive suspensions,” the suspended workers can demand compensation for the period that they are suspended. The workers can always demand due cause for punitive measures against them. Of course, there are certain laws (like the minimum wage law, law on overtime pay, workmen’s compensation law, social insurance law and medicare law), which are supposed to be automatically applied for the benefit of the workers but are not, when the workers are not well organized and do not demand what is due them. All these and others can provide a legal basis for making petitions to the NLRC and organizing or maintaining trade unions.

We must be good at being pupils of the workers. A worker-cadre must always remember this in dealing with co-workers. At the same time, we must not fail to inform the workers as to how they are being exploited and what they stand to gain by organizing a trade union and demanding compliance by the employers with provisions of the law that are beneficial to the workers. In the course of social investigation, we do not only accumulate data and firm up in the end a list of workers’ demands. But we also develop close relations with the interviewees and pick out among them those who can initiate organizational work.

As soon as a list of demands can be drawn up, we must be able to form a workers’ organizing committee of at least five members. Just as the social investigation is conducted without the employer’s knowledge, the workers’ organizing committee must be formed discreetly. The task of this committee is to draw in the masses of workers step-by-step so that in the end the majority are solidly behind the list of demands. The employer must not be made aware of such a campaign until the overwhelming majority of the workers have adopted a definite form of legal organization or course of legal action by which to pursue their demands and are thoroughly united to fight for what is due them.

Under conditions of fascist martial rule, it is foolhardy to expose the leadership of what could be a trade union before the majority, if not all, of the workers are fully united to the point of being able to back up their petitions or demands, if need be, by carrying out slowdowns, making the products off-standard or unsaleable, trooping the offices, creating snags in the production line, simultaneous leaves of absences or any tactic in lieu of a strike. The closer the employer is to the fascists, the more prudent the workers should be and the more patient they should be in waiting for conditions to ripen.

To gain the support of the vast majority of the workers step-by-step in a given workplace is a worthy revolutionary struggle. To expose one’s plans prematurely and expose a few people to an enemy crackdown is certainly “Left” in form but Right in essence because it brings the workers’ movement nowhere but defeat. To accumulate strength secretly and wait for conditions to ripen involves a recognition of the fact that in so many other workplaces Party cadres are also busy arousing and mobilizing the workers for the development of a general situation beneficial to the workers in every workplace.

It is very possible that before we can organize trade unions in large droves or launch some general strike the Marcos fascist clique shall have been overthrown by a coup d’etat by other reactionaries, who are still supported by US imperialism but who may adopt some antifascist posture. Our underground efforts among the workers shall not have gone to waste because these can be carried out further to develop a revolutionary trade union movement on a scale larger than ever before and overthrow the labor aristocrats who are now licking the boots of the fascist dictatorship.

The workers’ organizing committees as an underground force in the ranks of workers should not stop at pushing forward mere economic demands. We must combat reformism and economism. After all, even only in fighting for the establishment or continued existence of a trade union, a high level of political consciousness is required to maintain the militant unity and firmness of the workers against the fascist dictatorial regime of the US-Marcos clique.

So, the workers’ organizing committees must relate the economic struggle to the Party’s general line of people’s democratic revolution. It is through group discussions not only on trade unionism but also on the whole range of the Philippine revolution that a strong political unity can be forged among the workers. The workers’ organizing committee and its possible subdivisions, like the subcommittees and groups or cells, should generate these group discussions.

Only by raising the political consciousness of the mass of workers both through their practice and study can we succeed in choosing the most advanced elements to recruit into the Party. As soon as there are three or more Party members in a factory or line of work, a Party branch can be established. The workers’ organizing committee and its subdivisions can continue under the direction of the Party branch for as long as there is yet no legal organization that can openly work for the workers’ demands.

Besides reaching the workers directly in a given factory or line of work, we can reach the workers who may belong to several workplaces by establishing community organizing committees and developing mass organizations of various types in workers’ communities. Certainly, we can establish and develop the most intimate relations with the workers in workers’ communities. After all, it is the appropriate style of a workers’ organizing committee to hold its meetings in its members’ homes rather than in the premises of a factory.

There is also the interaction between the workplace and the workers’ community; between the workers’ organizing committee and the community organizing committee, together with various mass organizations in the community; and between the Party branch based in the workplace and that based in the community. Workers in one factory belong to various communities and workers in one community belong to various workplaces. Thus, the possibility for expansion is limitless so long as we exert arduous efforts and we know how to rely on a never-ending chain of comrades and masses.

By going deep among the masses of workers, we intend to develop and strengthen further the subjective forces of the revolution, the organized workers and the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the Communist Party of the Philippines, among others. The proletarian revolutionary character of the Party would be greatly enhanced by increasing the number of Party cadres and members of working class origin who can either carry on the revolutionary struggle in the urban areas or be shifted to the countryside, especially to the New People’s Army.

Conditions for waging the revolution

The most incontrovertible evidence that the reactionary classes in the Philippines can no longer rule in the old way is the setting up and continued operation of the fascist dictatorial regime of the US-Marcos clique. While the fascist dictator is fond of boasting that he thrives on crisis after crisis, because he has in the first place set up what he calls a “crisis government,” the glaring fact is that this anti-national and antidemocratic regime has not only failed to stem a continuing political and economic crisis but has even aggravated it and intensified the oppression and exploitation of the broad masses of the people.

The hatred of the broad masses of the people for the fascist puppet dictatorship is profound and it deepens with every day that passes. US imperialism and the big comprador-landlords on whose account the fascist dictator wishes to remain in power indefinitely are inevitably seen by the people as the malefactors behind the fascist counterrevolution. Each moment that the tyrannical regime stays is a favorable occasion for the subjective forces of the revolution to grow and develop.

The Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army and various revolutionary people’s organizations are growing and developing steadily. Having taken the correct road of armed revolution from the start, though from scratch, and applying the strategic principle of encircling the cities from the countryside, the Party and the New People’s Army have frustrated the attempts of the enemy to crush them and have become tempered in the course of fierce struggle. Also in the urban areas, the Party has proven to be resilient because of its underground character from the very start.

The Party and the New People’s Army have sown the seeds of a protracted people’s war in all regions of the country. Fierce fighting is going on without letup in several regions. There is no region in the country where the fascist enemy has not received a hard blow from the NPA. Small hard blows are being made to accumulate strength and rouse the people to a wider scale of armed resistance.

With the Party going deep among the peasant masses, the solid basis for the national united front is being laid. The organs of democratic political power (the barrio organizing committees and the barrio revolutionary committees) are springing up in the countryside. Mass organizations for workers, peasants, youth, women, children and cultural activists enthusiastically support them. At levels above the barrio level, the Preparatory Commission of the National Democratic Front is actively working for cooperation between the Party and its antifascist allies.

The people of southwestern Mindanao, the Moro National Liberation Front and the Bangsa Moro Army are persistently fighting for national self-determination. They have extended considerable support to the NPA by tying down large enemy forces and inflicting heavy losses on them.

The Lopez group has started to stir after more than two years of being blackmailed since the declaration of the fascist martial rule. Fascist rule is bound to be shaken in the Visayas. Antifascist sentiments and currents are also building up within the Catholic Church, Iglesia ni Cristo and the Protestant sects. Thus, the fascist dictator is not getting anywhere in whipping up a “Christian-Muslim war.”

The group potentially most capable of overthrowing the Marcos fascist clique by a coup d’etat remains to be seen. This group has some representatives openly making anti-Marcos propaganda in the United States and are working with significant sections of US policymakers. The fascist dictatorship is demanding more US military aid under the pretext of fighting the revolutionary people of southwestern Mindanao. But US imperialism is already concerned about Marcos’ own determination to stay in power beyond his puppet usefulness and calculates that some day it must wash its hands of any accountability for keeping him in power.

However, by all indications, especially the third fake referendum which brusquely removed from the people the formal right to suffrage, it is clear that the fascist dictator has the illusion that he can stay in power on a stretch as long as that of Suharto, Pak or even Franco. There cannot be a more foolish illusion. He underestimates the broad masses of the people who cherish national independence and democracy. The civil war which he has instigated has barely started.

This is the worst time in the world for someone to undertake a fascist puppet dictatorship in the Philippines. A semicolonial and semifeudal country has its own chronic political and economic crisis that has its own worsening course. Thus, this has led to a fascist puppet dictatorship. But consider that on top of this is an unprecedentedly grave crisis of the world capitalist system that is now occurring due to the accumulated defeats of US imperialism in the hands of the revolutionary peoples of the world and its endless struggle with Soviet social-imperialism for world hegemony and arms supremacy.

Trying to make up for its losses elsewhere, US imperialism is exacting a rate of profit that is higher than ever before on its direct investments and loans in the Philippines and is shifting here the ravages of its inflation and recession. This is on top of the unbridled corruption and profligacy of the Marcos fascist gang. The broad masses of the people are forced to suffer soaring prices, an increasing tax burden, a breakdown of local industries and even of agricultural production and an accelerated rate of unemployment. The end result cannot but be the expansion and intensification of revolutionary struggle.

At any rate, US imperialism is in a state of rapid decline in its homegrounds and throughout the world. It continues to suffer defeat and weaken in the hands of the revolutionary peoples of the world. At the same time, it cannot get out of its ever intensifying contention with the other superpower. There is no detente but war preparations between the two superpowers. Under these circumstances, the first world of the two superpowers is opposed by the second world of the lesser capitalist countries and even more militantly and thoroughly by the third world of developing countries.

The Philippines is now being tugged between demands of puppetry to US imperialism and demands of being part of the third world. The former still very much prevails over the latter. The increasingly contradictory stances taken by the fascist puppet dictatorship does not prove any cleverness on the part of the fascist dictator but merely reflects the actual contradictions in the Philippine situation and in the relations between the Philippines and other countries. These contradictions can no longer be handled in the old way either by the Marcos clique or any other clique of reactionaries no matter how strong is its wish to remain under the shadow of US imperialism.

The resounding defeat of US imperialism in Indochina clearly shows the inevitable doom of US imperialism in Asia. Even as in the Philippines a relative tightening of the US grip is to be expected, because this is in line with the US scheme of remaining a “Pacific power” and of holding back its general and absolute decline in Asia, Europe is inexorably becoming the focus of contention between the two superpowers. The struggle between the two superpowers in the Middle East and the Mediterranean relates closely to their struggle in Europe.

We are still in the era of imperialism. The imperialist powers are becoming more desperate than ever before. The factors of both revolution and war are increasing. The people of the world must make revolution and be prepared against war more determinedly than ever before. As the two superpowers lurch on to a world war, the people should make revolution on an even wider scale and countries should assert national sovereignty and independence.

The unionized workers are coming out from the narrow view of unionism lorded over by union aristocrats, lieutenants of capitalism, since the early part of the 1950s due to the errors and irresponsibilities of the renegade Lava gang.

Instead of being overcome by fear, the masses of workers are being forced by the fascist dictatorship to unite and struggle in unison. The 30 workers’ strikes held since October of last year until February of this year is just a signal of bigger storms to come from the Manila-Rizal area and other regions wherein the majority of workers are concentrated.

We dare to predict that before the end of the decade, a tumultuous storm will occur, a storm much bigger than the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and participated by more masses of workers than students. But this even will only take place if the Party—as the political party and vanguard of the working class—can effectively undertake its tasks.

In learning from the planned demonstration which failed to materialize on January 25, we should give more emphasis in doing secret political work within the ranks of the workers, and popularize mass discussions in exposing workers’ demands; popularize more strikes, slowdowns, work stoppages, picketing and other forms of protests in various factories in preparation for bigger political demonstrations in streets, plazas, and even in from of Malacañang.

There are many holes and cracks that we can exploit in the dam put up by the fascist Marcos dictatorship to stem all political and economic struggles. The 30 workers’ strikes have demonstrated the weaknesses of this apparatus. If the Party will give more time and effort, we can gather a big force that will burst the fascist dam.

The Party should strengthen revolutionary propaganda and agitation in order to heighten the political consciousness of all workers, whether organized into unions or not; whether the union is genuine or not. Moreover, it should undertake solid organizing work in the midst of such propaganda and organizing campaigns.

The scarcity of Party cadres assigned to work within the workers’ ranks should not be a deterrent. The key to this problem is to rely on the workers themselves. That is why we created workers’ committees long before martial law was declared. As an underground force, this type of committee can cope better with the present condition.

The workers’ organizing committee is a tool for undertaking social investigation, developing revolutionary propaganda and studies in Marxist ideology, developing worker activists and mobilizing the majority of workers to create new unions or change old ones in order to truly serve workers’ interests in politics and economics.

In starting a committee, we should have as members of the core, workers that have potential as revolutionary activists in their workplaces. These advanced workers should comprise the majority if not the total membership of the committee. The Party may assign one, two, or three cadres from the outside to this core who may in due time transfer their tasks to local worker activists. There can be from five to ten members who can constitute a committee. Under a committee, subcommittees should be created within the largest department or section in a certain workplace. Thus, a bigger number of workers can readily advance forward.

We should propagate revolutionary struggles with the goal of striving to embrace the workers around just demands and to provide them with political education before any open mass action can take place. In time of open mass actions, more worker activists will be tested and the Party can then further recruit and expand its ranks.

The workers’ organizing committee is a temporary tool for expansion. This will be dissolved when worker activists have been integrated in the ranks of the local union and when a Party branch has been established in the factory.

Worker activists who are party members should not monopolize the official positions of the union nor should they place into leadership positions of the union all those who are heading up the local party branch. There are two reasons for this: one is that we do not want the party branch to be destroyed or paralyzed by the enemy when it attacks the union; another is that the democratic character of the union must be upheld.

There are two ways we can expand our organizational work and broaden the propaganda among the working masses. One is to expand from one factory to another to forge the unity among the working masses. Another is to mobilize workers to form mass organizations in their communities so that they can reach other workers from other factories.

By being active in organizing their local communities, the workers can unite not only among their fellow workers but with other oppressed and progressive sectors of the population like the urban petty bourgeoisie. They can assist in the process of uniting workers’ organizations with other organizations in the democratic movement.

In many communities of the Manila-Rizal area and other cities, the vast majority of workers should be able to fight off attacks of the fascist dictatorship that uses the barangays against them. Last January 25, the fascist dictatorship ordered the barangays to carry sticks and wait for workers who were scheduled to march from different points of the city.

The working masses can turn the table around and defeat the enemy’s tactics of pitting workers against each other. The barangay can be used as a forum voicing out demands and complaints against the fascist dictatorship.

Under the leadership of the Party, the working masses should be able to effectively unite with other progressive classes and sectors of the population in the city in order to broaden and expand the antifascist and anti-imperialist democratic movement. The working masses are the largest, most productive but most oppressed, most concentrated, most progressive, and most important force of the democratic movement in the city. However, they need allies, just as their allies need them, in order to expand and mobilize the antifascist movement.

As an organization of the working class, the Party is working closely with the peasant masses to advance the worker-peasant alliance, which serves as the basis for the broadest national and revolutionary united front. Even if they maintain their jobs in the city and wage revolutionary struggles in their workplaces, the workers should realize their relationship to the peasant masses, and the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside.

The revolutionary workers’ movement, although primarily legal for a long time, is a powerful political support for the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside. The workers must continue to undermine and shake the enemy resolutely. The working masses must continually undermine and shake the enemy which it daily surrounds in the cities.

At present, the revolutionary workers’ movement can provide concrete support for the revolutionary armed resistance in the countryside. Party cadres who are workers are warmly received in the countryside. They should systematically be sent there, especially in regions where they grew up or established roots. They can also collect funds, medical and military supplies, medicine, clothing, etc., to be sent to the countryside.

In the distant future, general strikes or general uprisings of workers in the cities will be launched in coordination with general offensives of the New People’s Army. The workers should realize the great task they must carry out to accomplish the seizure of state power nationally. After the seizure of state power and after the national democratic revolution, the historic task of the working class will intensify more in the stage of socialist revolution and socialist construction.

In raising the political consciousness of the workers, it is not enough to tell them of their great role and task in the Philippine revolution; we should also raise their enthusiasm by relating the glorious history, the revolutionary victories and continuing struggle of the proletariat and people of other countries and encourage them to contribute to the revolutionary struggles of the international proletariat and the whole of mankind against the two imperialist superpowers and all forms of reaction and opportunism.

There are many twists and turns along the revolutionary path. No major victories are achieved by the proletariat without sacrifice and suffering. We should be determined to accomplish our just goals and do everything we can. We are sure to win victory.