Tasks of the Trade Union Movement: Keynote Address to the Kilusang Mayo Uno National Congress

I wish to greet the Filipino workers and express my solidarity with them as they join the international proletariat in celebrating International Workers’ Day. In spirit, I join them in their marches and rallies together with the rest of the people in the National Capital Region and all over the country.

We raise high the red banner of the international proletariat, reaffirm the historic mission of the working class in the liberation of the people from imperialism and all reaction and renew our determination to carry the revolutionary struggle forward.

We resolve anew to further strengthen the broad national unity of the working class with the rest of the people in the fight against the fascist dictatorial regime of the US-Marcos clique and in striving for the total victory of the national democratic revolution against US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

It is not the Marcos dictatorship alone but the entire semicolonial and semifeudal system that is dying. The fascist counterrevolution has failed to quell the revolutionary mass movement; it has, in fact, succeeded in causing this to grow rapidly.

The anti-industrial and pseudo-development policy adopted by the US imperialists to prop up the tyranny has only served to aggravate and deepen the agrarian character of the economy; and plunge it irretrievably into the foreign debt trap.

Every IMF-World Bank “economic recovery” measure imposed by the imperialists and fascists spells further loss of economic sovereignty and further intensification of the exploitation of the working class and the entire people. The rapacity of the imperialists and the fascists knows no bounds.

Millions of workers have been laid off. Those who hold on to their jobs are forced to receive starvation wages and are in constant danger of being laid off. The prices of basic commodities keep on soaring rapidly. The peso has been repeatedly and drastically devalued and depreciated. The pre-industrial import-dependent economy is in a deep state of depression.

The urban unemployed as well as bankrupted entrepreneurs are being urged by imperialist and reactionary propaganda to turn to agriculture, notwithstanding the fact that the economy is in shambles precisely because it has been mainly dependent on agricultural export crops whose prices are constantly depressed in the world capitalist market. Even staple crop production is adversely affected because it has been made dependent on imported inputs for which foreign exchange is in short supply.

A great number of urban workers who have been laid off are indeed going back to the countryside to avoid starvation in the cities. Many of them find their way to the revolutionary armed struggle and reinforce the worker-peasant alliance and the proletarian leadership.

Workers who manage to eke out a living in the cities are participating militantly in the rapidly growing trade union and strike movement as well as in the broad legal democratic movement. The most advanced members of the working class are finding their way into the revolutionary underground and the party of the proletariat.

With the intensification of social unrest, the fascist dictatorship has become increasingly vicious and violent. Under the prodding of the US imperialists, it is escalating campaigns of terror against the working class and the entire people. The US imperialists continue to provide their puppets all the means—military and otherwise—with which to trample on the national sovereignty and all democratic rights of the people.

The more the US imperialists tout the fascist dictatorship as an improving “democracy,” the more are the workers deprived of their basic trade union and other democratic rights; and the more are they made to suffer all kinds of atrocities and abuses—including the brutal dispersal of strikes, murders on and off picket lines, kidnapping, illegal detention, arbitrary dismissals and union busting.

But the workers have not been cowed. They are ever more determined to expand and intensify the trade union and strike movement; and in joining the rest of the people in the broad democratic mass movement, which is a united front of all patriotic and progressive forces.

Genuine and militant anti-imperialist trade unionism is developing vigorously. Economic struggles easily become political struggles against the fascist dictatorship and its imperialist master, especially because of the wanton use of counterrevolutionary violence on the workers.

Right now, the working class movement is in the forefront—developing general strikes and nationwide people’s strikes. These strikes will certainly hasten the dismantling of the fascist dictatorship and the end of the unjust social system.

The day will come when the forces of the national democratic movement in the urban centers will conjoin with those in the rural areas in the strategic offensive to wipe out the final strongholds of counterrevolution and win total victory.

The only solution to the ever worsening political and economic crisis of the ruling system is the revolutionary struggle and victory of the Filipino people under the leadership of the proletariat through a correct revolutionary party.

Unite to overthrow the fascist dictatorship of the US-Marcos clique!

Carry forward the struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism!

Long live the Filipino working class!

Long live the Filipino people!

Long live the working class and all peoples of the world!