The main reason for the defeat of the armed revolutionary movement in the early 1950s was the Left opportunist or adventurist line of quick military victory in two years’ time, exaggerating the spontaneous character of the masses due to the social crisis and not paying attention to the balance of forces and the need for painstaking mass work to lay the ground for social revolution and to counteract the military superiority of the enemy forces. But the deceptive “peace” approaches to local leaders of the revolutionary movement by U.S. and reactionary agents augmented and complemented the heavy military onslaughts of the blatant enemy in the entire strategy to defeat the revolutionary forces.
Revolutionaries determined to carry out the objectives of the national democratic revolution can logically and legitimately consider peace negotiations as a way of pushing forward the aforesaid objectives, in the same way that the other side considers the same peace negotiations as a way of pushing forward its own objectives. Inevitably, the struggle across the table reflects first of all the struggle in the battlefield and then influence further developments in the battlefield.
The sincerity of the NDF… is to be measured by its steadfastness in defending and upholding the people’s interests, its firmness of principles even while making policy adjustments to achieve certain specific anti-imperialist (e.g., the immediate removal of U.S. military bases) and democratic (e.g., genuine and thoroughgoing land reform) demands, and its vigilance in frustrating every scheme to undermine the gains and achievements of the revolutionary movement and the people.
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