The Critical and Creative Tasks of the Rectification Movement in the Communist Party of the Philippines

Comrades and Friends,

Twenty-five years ago, on December 26, 1968, the Communist Party of the Philippines was reestablished under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Since then, the Party has won great ideological, political and organizational victories through the integration of the revolutionary theory of the proletariat with the concrete practice of the Philippine revolution. In the entire history of the Filipino people, the Party has stood as the most formidable revolutionary force, deeply rooted among the masses of the working people and the most developed on a nationwide scale.

As one of those who founded the Party, I am exceedingly happy that it has proven itself as the advance detachment of the working class and as the leading force of the entire Filipino people in their revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

The great victories of the Party would not be possible without the hard work, struggle and sacrifices of the Party cadres and members and all the people who have joined and supported them in the course of the revolutionary struggle. We owe the most to the revolutionary martyrs. Amidst this celebration, we pause for a moment to pay our highest and deepest respect to them. We celebrate today not only the accumulation of the victories of the Party in general but also in particular the resounding victory of the current rectification movement within the Party. We offer all these victories to the memory of Comrade Mao Zedong, the great communist thinker, leader and fighter whose 100th birth anniversary coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Party.

I propose to discuss with you today the critical and creative tasks of the rectification movement. This is in accordance with the theme of this meeting of celebration and, of course, with the common recognition that the rectification movement is of crucial importance to the Party and the entire revolutionary movement in the motherland.

Historical and Current Context of the Rectification Movement

First, let me present the historical and current context in which this rectification movement has arisen and has developed. It would be one-sided for us only to celebrate the great victories against the blatant enemy and not to consider the errors and shortcomings which have lessened the victories and which have even caused a big setback, especially in the period from 1984 to 1989.

The point is to rectify those errors and shortcomings in order to unite the Party and the people along the correct revolutionary line and raise higher their fighting will and capabilities against the enemy, the US-Ramos clique. This clique currently represents the ruling system of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class, the exploiting classes servile to the foreign monopoly capitalists.

The rectification movement is an important method for strengthening a revolutionary party, for combating and overcoming errors and shortcomings that weaken it, especially those of a major character that have accumulated for sometime. If not for the first great rectification movement which preceded and coincided with the reestablishment of the Party, the Party would not have laid a solid foundation for its development and would not have successfully developed in consequence. We can observe that the current second great rectification movement is yielding excellent results.

As you know, the Party grew in strength and advanced cumulatively from year to year since its reestablishment in 1968 up to 1984, registering the most rapid growth from 1981 to 1984. Then in 1985, there was a drastic decline in the rate of growth. And this proceeded to negative growth rates in several respects, especially with respect to mass base, until 1989 when the proletarian revolutionaries started to effectively arrest the rapid rate of decline and make partial corrections and adjustments in accordance with the principles and methods clarified as early as 1988 in a review of Party history. In 1990 the erroneous line of “strategic counteroffensive” and “regularization” was criticized and withdrawn.

Notwithstanding the undeniably gross setback from 1984 onward, the Party and the revolutionary movement are still so many times far bigger than their small and modest proportions in 1968. The Party started with a few scores of members who had studied Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and had a mass following of some thousands organized since the onset of the 1960s mainly through the legal democratic movement. Now, the Party has a membership of several tens of thousands and leads the New People’s Army with thousands of Red fighters, a mass base of millions under organs of political power and in mass organizations of workers, peasants, fishermen, youth, women, professionals and other people.

What is excellent about the current situation of the Party is that a comprehensive and thoroughgoing rectification movement has been carried out since last year and is being vigorously carried out by all of the seventeen regional Party organizations. The Party rank and file are enthusiastically participating in the rectification movement, which in the first place an increasing number of them have demanded since the early 1980s, in opposition to the opportunists. At every level, the organs and organizations of the Party are summing up revolutionary experience, conducting criticism and self-criticism and carrying out the revolutionary tasks in accordance with the rectification documents and other decisions issued by the 10th plenum of the Central Committee.

The Party cadres and members are loyal to the Party Constitution and Program and to the Party and its Central Committee and support the rectification movement. They are recruiting several times a greater number of new Party members from the revolutionary mass movement than the paltry number of those temporarily or permanently led astray by the long-running and recent spate of slander and intrigues spread by the opportunists.

There is no cost but a great benefit to the Party in the departure of the opportunists and fictitious communists from the Party. Allowing the incorrigible and the worst opportunists to remain in the Party, commit the most destructive errors and crimes and spread degeneration have inflicted a heavier cost on the Party and the revolutionary movement than their desperate and futile attacks in the course of their recent departure from the Party. The expulsion of such opportunists is beneficial to the Party and the revolutionary movement.

The unity of the Party is strong and the Central Committee and its Political Bureau and Executive Committee are firmly leading the Party. There is neither a split nor a mass purge in the Party. In nearly two years of the rectification movement, from the beginning of 1992 to the end of 1993, only two central staff organ have been reconstituted and another dissolved, and three out the seventeen regional Party committees have been reconstituted in order to deal organizationally with splittist and liquidationist activities.

The “Left” opportunist exponents of urban insurrectionism and military adventurism and the Right opportunist exponents of liquidationism, reformism and capitulationism are a measly few. They were basically defeated in the middle of 1991 through the process of democratic centralism in the Party. But in late 1991 they started to make loud noises outside the Party by publicly circulating gossip and slander articles against the Party and the central leadership. They tried but failed to stop the rectification movement by threatening to split the Party and by spreading fear about a mass purge worse than Kampanyang Ahos, for which some of the chief opportunists were criminally responsible in 1985-86 in Mindanao.

They have unwittingly helped the rectification movement by putting themselves out of the Party and publicly attacking it, by adopting anticommunist slogans and thereby exposing themselves as blatant counterrevolutionary Rightists, by openly going over to the side of the US-Ramos clique and openly collaborating with the intelligence and psywar agencies of this regime as well as with corrupt trade union leaders, the Lava revisionist renegades, some foreign-funded NGO bureaucrats, the bourgeois populists, the pro-imperialist liberals, the Christian democrats and the Trotskyites.

The counterrevolutionary Rightists are hitching a ride on the wagon of the imperialist ideological and political offensive. Their favorite anticommunist line is to hold Comrade Stalin responsible for the very anti-Stalin character of the modern revisionism that undermined and ultimately destroyed what Stalin had built and defended. By using anti-Stalin slogans, the counterrevolutionary Rightists demagogically misrepresent themselves as champions of democracy in the bourgeois press. But among them are the principal criminals in bloody witchhunts like Kampanyang Ahos which trampled on the basic rights of Party members, Red fighters and allies and murdered hundreds upon hundreds of them on the basis of mere suspicion as deep penetration agents.

Any revolutionary party of the proletariat somehow and to some extent reflects at any given time the contradictions of the society in which it exists. The law of uneven development operates within the party as a whole and in its parts. There is the constant problem of remoulding Party members of urban-petty bourgeois background and current lifestyle. There is always some ground in a communist party for subjectivism and opportunism to arise. Thus, there is always a two-line struggle between the proletarian revolutionaries and the purveyors of the bourgeois influence within a communist party even at its best.

From 1968 to 1977, those individuals wittingly or unwittingly carrying and pushing the bourgeois influence were generally spontaneous and disparate. Major errors and shortcomings were promptly criticized. But from 1978 there arose certain individuals in central leading and staff organs systematically propagating ideological eclecticism and opposing the Marxist-Leninist analysis of Philippine society. Spurred by petty-bourgeois impetuosity and by the rapid growth of the revolutionary movement resulting from the implementation of the line set by Our Urgent Tasks they sought a rationale for a leap in the armed struggle from the early substage to the advance substage of the strategic defensive without fulfilling the comprehensive requirements of the people’s war. Others, unremoulded bourgeois populists and Christian democrats who had slipped into the Party, sought a rationale for liquidating the Party or subordinating it to bourgeois politicians opposed to the US-Marcos regime and falling back on bourgeois reformism.

From 1980 onwards, certain high Party officials started to spread systematically a line running counter to, undermining and interfering with the correct line and process of developing the revolutionary movement. Opportunism principally took a “Left” form with the line of the “strategic counteroffensive” and “regularization” in 1980 and farther on, the line of combining military adventurism and urban insurrectionism in 1982. Secondarily, opportunism took a a blatant Rightist form with the line of liquidating the Party and replacing it with the “New Katipunan,” a formal united front organization as the center of the revolution in 1980.

Even as the wrong lines overlapped with it, the correct line continued to guide the majority of Party cadres and members and to result in the rapid growth of revolutionary forces from 1981 to 1984, especially because of the rapid worsening of the crisis of the ruling system. Such basic and major documents of the Party as the Guide for Party Cadres and Members (1968), Philippine Society and Revolution (1970), Specific Characteristics of Our People’s War (1974) and Our Urgent Tasks (1976) had drawn the correct ideological, political and organizational line and would prevent the wrong lines from taking over the Party completely.

The most devastating effects of the wrong line of combining military adventurism and urban insurrectionism in Mindanao became indubitably clear in the gross setbacks of the prematurely and rapidly formed companies of the people’s army in 1984 and the anti-informer hysteria and Kampanyang Ahos in 1985-86. The wrong line and its results (including the bloody witchhunt called Kampanyang Ahos) were not properly examined, criticized and repudiated. Instead, the wrong line was pushed even more vigorously on a nationwide scale. From 1985 onward militarism grew strong as the NPA “General Command” started to break out of the absolute leadership of the Party and ran ahead in pushing the “strategic counteroffensive” and “regularization” through a series of military conferences.

The great victories and rapid growth of the revolutionary movement from 1981 to 1984 were never due to the wrong lines but were due to the solid foundation laid by the first great rectification movement, the correct line set by the Party at its reestablishment in 1968 and carried out continuously by the proletarian revolutionaries and by the rapid aggravation of the chronic crisis of the ruling system. Thus, notwithstanding the spread of the wrong lines from 1980 to 1989, the proletarian revolutionaries had a strong basis to stand on in asserting themselves with the support of the people against the wrong lines, arrest the decline of revolutionary strength and carry out the second great rectification movement

If you wish to know more about the rectification movement, I suggest that you read the issues of Rebolusyon, which contain “Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors,” “General Review of Important Events and Decisions, 1980-1991,” “Stand for Socialism Against Modern Revisionism;” the Party anniversary statements from 1988 to 1993; and the rectification documents formulated by Party leading organs at various levels before and after the Central Committee’s 10th Plenum.

The Critical and Creative Tasks of the Rectification Movement

Let me now provide you with an understanding of the critical and creative tasks of the rectification movement. In doing so, I am guided by the ten points guiding the rectification movement.

1. Uphold the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought!

The rectification movement is first of all a movement of theoretical education in Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. It stresses the integration of the revolutionary theory of the proletariat with concrete revolutionary practice. It promotes the study and application of the basic Marxist-Leninist principles and raises to the level of Marxist-Leninist theory the rich revolutionary experience of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the revolutionary mass movement. It seeks to develop the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method of the revolutionary proletariat. Party cadres and members must learn to grasp the law of contradiction and handle it well in class analysis and revolutionary struggle.

The rectification movement criticizes and combats the subjectivism that has given rise to the “Left” and Right opportunist errors that have in turn caused great damage to the party and the revolutionary movement. It repudiates the eclecticism, empiricism and dogmatism that have afflicted the Party for a considerably long period of time. It combats the depreciation of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and of the Philippine revolution, the deviations from the antirevisionist line through the adoption of Brezhnevite and Gorbachovite revisionism, the depreciation of the two-stage Philippine revolution through the uncritical adulation of movements without proletarian revolutionary leadership and the dishonest practice of quoting the great Lenin out of context to attack the line of the Party.

The rectification movement points out that theoretical education within the Party is necessary and that political education on the national democratic revolution is not enough. It seeks to revive, improve and propagate three levels of Party education: basic, intermediate and advanced. The study materials include both the works of the great communist thinkers and leaders and the most important documents of the Party that pursue the correct revolutionary line. The materials are reproduced and circulated for reading and study in advance of the formal study courses. All Party organs and units are urged to undertake social investigation, summings-up, criticism and self-criticism and the definition of tasks along the Marxist-Leninist line.

2. Pursue the anti-revisionist line consistently!

It is of crucial importance to pursue the anti-revisionist line consistently. Although modern revisionism has been discredited through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet revisionist party and the accomplished disintegration of revisionist ruling parties and regimes in some countries and the continuing degeneration of those in other countries, the exponents of modern revisionism, neo-revisionism and social democracy are still trying to extend their influence by combining with the ideological and political offensive of the imperialists and their retinue of anticommunist petty bourgeois camp followers in misrepresenting modern revisionism of the last more than three decades as “flawed socialism” or “Stalinism.”

The rectification movement criticizes and repudiates all the deviations from the antirevisionist line. The first major deviation started in the early 1980s and involved the subjectivist expectation that the Soviet Union and its allies would provide military and financial assistance in order to accelerate the victory of the Philippine revolution. This opportunism took the appearance of being Left but the content was Rightist because it led to the Party’s shift to regard the CPSU and similar parties as no longer revisionists, the Soviet Union as no longer social imperialist and the satellites as no longer neocolonies of Soviet social imperialism. The second major deviation infected some key cadres infected some key cadres in the late 1980s. They adopted and spread Gorbachovite revisionism in certain parts of the Party. Ultimately, the worst of these opportunists would become like Gorbachov, blatant anticommunist, using anti-Stalin slogans to attack the Party.

In the education movement in Marxism-Leninism, the studies include the critique of modern revisionism and Mao Zedong’s theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian leadership in order to consolidate socialism, combat modern revisionism and prevent the restoration of capitalism. The Party is promoting its comprehensive stand for socialism against modern revisionism and is clarifying the bright future of socialism and communism against monopoly capitalism.

3. Confront the semifeudal and semicolonial character of Philippine society!

The persistence of the semicolonial and semifeudal character of Philippine society is obvious. This is a society ruled by the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class in the service of foreign monopoly capitalism. It has an economy that is agrarian and without basic industries. Its import-dependent low value-added manufacturing either for domestic consumption or reexport is ailing and breaking down.

The rectification movement repudiates and rectifies the line pushed by the “Left” and Right opportunists since the late 1970s, crediting the US-Marcos regime, the IMF-World Bank and the foreign multinational firms with having industrialized and urbanized the Philippines to the extent, as the opportunists claimed, that the theory and strategic line of protracted people’s war had become outdated and needed refinements, adjustments and innovations. The misrepresentation of Philippine society laid the basis for the “Left” opportunist line of the “strategic counteroffensive” and “regularization” combining urban insurrectionism and military adventurism; as well as the Right opportunist line of urban-based reformism. Now, both types of opportunists have exposed themselves as counterrevolutionary Rightists, endorsing the scheme of the US-Ramos ruling clique to suppress the revolutionary movement and to make the Philippines a “newly industrializing country” before the year 2000. It is now clear that after all the US-Marcos ruling clique never industrialized the Philippines. The opportunists are now betting on the US-Ramos clique to achieve industrialization.

It is absolutely necessary to describe correctly the character of Philippine society because it lays the ground for what is the correct general line for the revolutionary movement. The chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal society like that of the Philippines calls for the strategic line of protracted people’s war. The rectification movement is promoting the study of the continuous social analysis done by the Party from the years 1968-1970, through 1982, to the present in direct opposition to the false claims of the purveyors of official development theory, dependent capitalism, revisionism and so on.

4. Carry out the general line of new democratic revolution!

The general line of new-democratic revolution aims to complete the Filipino people’s struggle for national liberation and democracy. It is new because it is under the leadership of the proletariat and no longer the bourgeoisie. It is the first stage of the Philippine revolution, leading to the next stage of socialist revolution. The revolutionary forces required to achieve the first stage are the same forces that can begin the socialist revolution under the leadership of the working class.

The rectification movement criticizes and repudiates the opportunist line of subordinating the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. The opportunists had been trying to weaken the class leadership of the proletariat by using petty-bourgeois arguments to preserve and enlarge the interests of the big bourgeoisie and landlord class. They elaborated and diluted the national- democratic program and pushed the idea of setting up a so-called national-democratic state and a national-democratic economy after the seizure of political power by the revolutionary forces.

The revolutionary class line of the Party is to uphold the class leadership of the proletariat, rely mainly on the worker- peasant alliance, win over the urban petty bourgeoisie to become a basic revolutionary force and further win over the middle bourgeoisie to become a positive force of the revolution and take advantage of the contradictions among the big bourgeois and landlord reactionaries in order to isolate and destroy the power of the most reactionary faction at every given time. Upon the seizure of political power, the new democratic revolution is basically completed and the socialist revolution can begin.

5. Build the Party as the vanguard force of the proletariat and the people!

In this era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution, the working class is indubitably the most productive and most progressive force in the Philippines and in the world. This is the class defined by the objective conditions and by its long history of revolutionary struggle to lead the new-democratic and socialist stages of the Philippine revolution. The advance detachment of the proletariat is the Communist Party of the Philippines. It is the leading force of both the proletariat and the entire Filipino people in the new-democratic revolution, within the context of a world proletarian-socialist revolution rather than a world bourgeois capitalist revolution.

The rectification movement completely rejects the notion that the revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism can be won without the class leadership of the proletariat. Such a notion runs counter to the petty bourgeoisie’s history of cooptation, the middle bourgeoisie’s dual character, flabbiness and lack of basic industries, and the close collusion of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class with the imperialists in the oppression and exploitation of the Filipino people. It also runs counter to the recent history and current circumstances which show that the national democratic movement has become a strong force because of the proven, tested and continuing class leadership of the working class through its vanguard party, the Communist Party of the Philippines. The rectification movement condemns those opportunists who have become exponents of bourgeois pluralism and Gorbachovite anticommunism, rabid opponents of the vanguard role of the working class and special psywar agents of the bourgeoisie and the current ruling system.

The rectification movement asserts the principle of vanguard role of the proletariat through the Communist Party of the Philippines. That key cadres of the Party could in the past degenerate to the point of attacking the vanguard role of the working class serves to underscore a serious lack of ideological and political education within the Party. The rectification movement therefore seeks to further strengthen the Party comprehensively in ideology, politics and organization so that it can continue to be the advance detachment of the leading class in the Philippine revolution.

6. Wage the protracted people’s war and carry out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare based on an ever widening and deepening mass base!

The theory and strategic line of protracted people’s war means that the people’s army must encircle the cities from the countryside and accumulate strength in the countryside until it can seize political power in the cities. The protracted people’s war is the revolutionary process of seizing power along the new- democratic line. It is a revolutionary mass undertaking. In the course of people’s war, the Party builds the worker-peasant alliance. It carries out land reform and builds the mass base in the form of mass organizations and the organs of political power. The people’s army cannot preserve and accumulate strength without the strong foundation in the people’s participation and support, realized through painstaking mass work and solid mass organizing. The people’s army itself is an armed mass organization under the absolute leadership of the Party.

The rectification movement vigorously opposes and condemns the “Left” opportunist line of combining military adventurism and urban insurrectionism. This has caused the worst damage to the Party and the revolutionary movement in their entire history. This put the prematurely enlarged military formations in an isolated and passive position and caused the drastic reduction of the mass base and the big diminution of armed tactical offensives. This made the Party and the revolutionary movement vulnerable to the enemy’s strategic offensive and tactics of gradual constriction. This led to the urban-basing of the “general command” of the people’s army and the notion of depending on foreign military assistance, misrepresenting it as the crucial factor that without it there is either retrogression or stagnation of the revolutionary movement. This also led to barbarities like bloody witchhunts and gangsterism. The incorrigible “Left” opportunists have been frustrated and have swung not only to a Right opportunist position but worst of all to a position of becoming counterrevolutionary agents of the US-Ramos regime.

As a result of the rectification movement, there is now a redeployment of the forces of the people’s army. There is an appropriate size of the center of gravity involving no more than thirty percent of the total number of Red fighters in every guerrilla front. The overwhelming majority of the Red fighters are now deployed on a wider scale in order to operate in a greater number of municipalities and do painstaking mass work, expanding and consolidating the mass base. Extensive areas temporarily lost are now being recovered and new areas are being opened in the expansion of revolutionary work. The current line is to conduct intensive and extensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. The Party is putting into effect the minimum land reform program and mass base building on a far wider scale. It is coordinating the rural- based armed struggle as the principal form of struggle and the urban-based legal democratic mass movement as the secondary but important and indispensable form of struggle. The urban Party organizations are now determined to send more Party cadres and members to the countryside.

7. Pursue the revolutionary class line in the united front!

The revolutionary class line in the united front is no different from the class line of the entire new democratic revolution as previously defined. It is possible to pursue the united front with or without any organizational form. Fortunately, the Party has plenty of experience in building formal united front organizations legally and illegally. There are the alliances based on class and sectoral interests or on certain important issues in the legal democratic movement. There has also been the underground National Democratic Front since 1973. The most important of all the alliances is the basic one between the working class and the peasantry. To build this alliance the Party has pursued the antifeudal class line in which the proletariat relies mainly on the poor, lower-middle peasants and farm workers, win over the rest of the middle peasants, neutralize the rich peasants, take advantage of the contradictions between enlightened and evil gentry in order to isolate and destroy the power of the despotic gentry. Since 1969, this class line has been followed in building organs of political power in the countryside.

The rectification movement vigorously condemns and opposes the attempt of the former “Left” and Right opportunists within the Party who are now openly counterrevolutionary Rightists to liquidate the class leadership of the proletariat and destroy the basic worker-peasant alliance which is the foundation of the revolutionary united front. The rectification movement criticizes and repudiates the series of Right opportunist attempts to liquidate the leading role of the working class in the united front, starting with the 1980 concept of the “vanguard front” to replace the vanguard party, proceeding to the 1985 and 1987 decisions to convert the NDF into a “federation” or “confederation” in which the Party is made to relinquish it role as center of the revolution and further proceeding to the 1990 attempt to convert the NDF into a confused federation of member-organizations and of individuals, in which the Party gives up its leading role in the revolution and its independence and initiative and is subordinated through a voting system to a ready-made majority of petty-bourgeois groups and individuals that imposes on it a program of bourgeois nationalism, pluralism and mixed economy.

The rectification movement is applying the Party’s clarification of the distinct roles and correct relationship of the Party, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front along the correct revolutionary class line. It is stressing the principle of upholding the working class leadership in the united front. On behalf of the proletariat and the entire people, the Party wields the revolutionary armed struggle and the united front as the weapons of the revolutionary movement. It maintains its independence and initiative in any kind of united front arrangement and is for the rule of consensus among allied organizations rather than a system of voting in which the non-proletarian groups have a ready-made majority.

8. Follow the principle of democratic centralism!

Democratic centralism is the basic organizational principle of the Party. It is centralism based on democracy and democracy based on centralized leadership. I need not restate here all the provisions of the Party Constitution regarding democratic centralism. Let me point out however that democratic centralism is not just about the democratic and collective process of decision making. Were it simply so, there would be no difference between the Party and a business or even a religious corporation. The essence of centralism in the Party is the commitment to the basic Marxist-Leninist principles and policies that are clearly stated in the Party Constitution and Program. Democracy is the method by which the essence of centralism is integrated with the concrete practice of the revolution, and by which the dialectical relationship or interaction is realized between the central leadership and the general membership of the Party through the elected representative organs of leadership.

The rectification movement opposes and repudiates such notions as the following: that education in the basic principles of the Party constitutes “fundamentalism” (whatever that means), that there must be “democratic pluralism” instead of democratic centralism and that anticommunists can become Party members, that the evaluation of Party members is “inquisition”, that anti- Party factions, their “caucuses” and “autonomous groups” are permissible, and that public attacks against the Party by those who claim to be Party members are beyond the ambit of Party discipline and are legitimate and democratic. Since early 1992 and even earlier on a smaller scale, ultrademocracy has been whipped up by both former “Left” and Right opportunist elements. The Party combats both bureaucratism and ultrademocracy. Each one is a one-sided malignance; one simply dictates from above and the other is anarchy or the tyranny of the mob. Those who are now counterrevolutionary Rightists had been the worst practitioners of these in the entire history of the Party.

In the rectification movement, the Party explains thoroughly the meaning of democratic centralism. It demonstrates how the rectification documents have been arrived at, how they have been decided, how they are being implemented and how they are being further enriched. All lower Party organs and organizations are encouraged to make further summings-up and criticism and self-criticism. All Party cadres and members are encouraged to participate in decisionmaking and to engage in criticism and self-criticism. There are the bounds of discipline and within these bounds there is inner-Party democracy to make sure that discipline is well-informed and enlightened. The Party must always be concerned about the unity, solidity and security of the Party as a necessity in the revolutionary struggle. Within the Party there is a dialectical relationship between discipline and freedom.

9. Look forward to the socialist revolution!

There is no point in making the national-democratic revolution now if there is no socialist perspective. In the first place, the national-democratic revolution cannot be won if the factors that make for socialist revolution do not prevail in the course of the national-democratic revolution. The factors for bringing the people to the stage of socialist revolution are the class leadership of the proletariat through the Party, the people’s army as the main component of state power under the absolute leadership of the Party, the proletarian class dictatorship at the core of the people’s democratic form of government and the basic revolutionary alliance of the working class and the peasantry as the foundation of the united front. In brief, there is power in the hands of the working class and its revolutionary party to start the socialist transformation. Upon the seizure of political power nationwide, the national-democratic revolution shall have been basically completed and the socialist revolution can begin. The socialist sector of state enterprises and cooperatives shall be instituted even as there are transitory concessions to the owner- cultivators of land and the petty and middle bourgeoisie.

In view of the collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes in some countries and the continuing degeneration of these in other countries, the rectification movement criticizes and condemns modern revisionism and upholds socialism. It combats the ideological and political offensive of the imperialists and the reactionaries who misrepresent socialism to mislead the people. It is absolutely necessary for the Party to study the processes and victories of the two-stage revolutions in the history of the international communist movement and the undermining and reversal of these by modern revisionism in the light of Mao’s theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship. Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought gives us the scientific basis and optimism for winning the struggle against monopoly capitalism and reaction and for attaining socialism and ultimately communism.

The theoretical education promoted by the rectification movement necessarily extends to the understanding that national- democratic and socialist revolutions will surely resurge and that Mao’s theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship is a great resource for consolidating socialism, combating revisionism and preventing the restoration of capitalism the next time that socialist societies arise once more on a wider scale on the face of the earth.

10. Carry out the Philippine revolution in the spirit of proletarian internationalism!

The new-democratic revolution in the Philippines is now at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and people of the world against imperialism, modern revisionism and reaction. It is one of the few revolutionary movements now that are led by a Marxist-Leninist party, have some significant strength and, most important of all, are engaged in the revolutionary armed process of overthrowing the imperialists and the local reactionaries. The Philippine revolution has a signal role in upholding the torch of armed revolution while a more widespread armed revolution in the world is still to come. The Party is aware of its internationalist duty in leading the armed revolution. This is something to be proud of. But this is also something that calls for hard work and the spirit of self-sacrifice and modesty in the face of tremendous odds and the growing attempts of the imperialists and reactionaries to focus on the Philippine revolution in order to destroy it.

The rectification movement condemns and repudiates the counterrevolutionary line that the Filipino people are getting tired of their own resistance to the ceaseless violence of imperialist and class oppression and exploitation and that the CPP and the NDF must follow what is globally trendy and fashionable, which is capitulation to the enemy. Frustrated in pushing their line of combining military adventurism and urban insurrectionism and getting foreign military assistance and financial assistance, the principal “Left” opportunists of the past have become counterrevolutionary Rightists and are the most active in spreading the noxious line of capitulationism and reformism. They are now aligned with the long-time principal Right opportunists who have long exposed themselves as anticommunists all along and who have had the least knowledge about the creation of Red political power in the countryside. These counterrevolutionary Rightists are getting funds from the US-Ramos ruling clique and from foreign funding agencies to spread their line of anticommunism, anti-Stalinism, reformism and capitulationism.

To perform its internationalist duty most effectively, the Party continues to strengthen itself, wage protracted people’s war and build the mass organizations and organs of political power self-reliantly. There is no way that the enemy can destroy the revolutionary movement because of the worsening crisis of the domestic ruling system and the world capitalist system. At the same time, the Party is actively cooperating with other Marxist- Leninist parties and pre-party formations in the world to propagate the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and with all other entities that are opposed to imperialism and all reaction to bring about the resurgence of the anti-imperialist and socialist movement on a global scale.

Concluding Remarks

The rectification movement is consolidating the ranks of the Party and is infusing the core and the entirety of the revolutionary mass movement with an ever stronger revolutionary resolve and vigor. All honest cadres and members of the Communist Party of the Philippines are eager to raise the level of their revolutionary consciousness and militance through the rectification movement and the revolutionary struggle, while only a few incorrigible elements have brought themselves out of the Party in order to attack it from the outside along a blatantly anticommunist line.

We can be confident that the Party and the entire revolutionary movement will become ever stronger as a result of the second great rectification movement. We wish all the cadres and members of the Party and all the revolutionary masses under their leadership to win ever greater victories. The crisis of both the domestic ruling system and the world capitalist system are daily worsening. The objective conditions are favorable for strengthening the subjective forces of the Philippine revolution and for delivering effective blows on the counterrevolutionaries. The Communist Party of the Philippines will win ever greater victories.

Long live the Communist Party of the Philippines!

Long live the proletariat and people of the Philippines!

Long live proletarian internationalism!