THE SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE
OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
IN THE PHILIPPINES

The Philippines is a semicolonial and semifeudal country. It is under the indirect rule of US imperialism whose most reliable local agents and puppets are the local big bureaucrats and the comprador big bourgeoisie and landlord classes.
More than eighty percent of the Philippine population today suffers from extreme poverty and oppression. The most oppressed and exploited among them are the toiling masses of workers and peasants. The urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie also suffer from the semicolonial and semifeudal situation. All of them have a common interest in carrying out a social revolution which would defeat US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of landlords and comprador big bourgeoisie.
All over the country today, the Filipino people are resolutely waging the national democratic revolution. It is an armed revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. It is a continuation of the old democratic revolution of 1896, one in which the peoples of the Philippine Islands fought against Spanish colonialism and feudalism. But it is already a new type of democratic revolution because it is now led by the working class through its vanguard party, and has a socialist perspective. It is therefore a part of the proletarian-socialist revolution which has emerged since the first global inter-imperialist war and the victory of the great socialist October Revolution.
The current national democratic revolution constitutes a preparation for carrying out a socialist revolution in the Philippines. In both the national democratic and socialist revolutions, the class leadership is held by the proletariat. Through its vanguard detachment, the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Filipino proletariat sees to it that the national democratic revolution is carried out and completed; that the socialist revolution immediately ensues upon the victory of the national democratic revolution; and that for a whole historical epoch socialism creates the foundations for communism.
Through the national democratic revolution, the Filipino people seek to overthrow the reactionary state and the reactionary classes behind it, assert national sovereignty and the free exercise of civil liberties, establish a people’s democratic government under the leadership of the working class, and thus pave the way for socialist revolution and construction in the Philippines
In the economic field, the new democratic revolution seeks to establish a self-reliant economy free from foreign monopoly capitalism and feudalism; carry out genuine land reform; undertake national industrialization; guarantee a just and prosperous people's livelihood; and make socialist economic construction possible.
It promotes a patriotic, scientific and mass oriented culture, and combats all adverse trends of thought through campaigns of education and information, while according due respect to freedom of thought and belief. The new democratic Cultural Revolution shall continue into the socialist Cultural Revolution, promoting the proletarian revolutionary standpoint and the spirit of service to the people, combating revisionist ideas and transforming the social superstructure to complement the revolutionization in the mode of production.
In the field of foreign relations, the new democratic revolution develops an actively independent foreign policy and develops relations at the level of countries, peoples, parties and governments, under the over-all guidance of peaceful co-existence.

Protracted People’s War

Victory in the democratic revolution shall be achieved through a protracted people’s war. While the enemy forces are still strong, the revolutionary forces accumulate strength in the vast countryside, building its mass base and organs of Red political power, implementing the minimum program of agrarian reform and launching armed tactical offensives which it can win against the currently far more superior armed reactionary forces.
The people’s war shall develop in stages, from the strategic defensive, to strategic stalemate, and onto the strategic offensive wherein the revolutionary forces shall have the capacity to smash the remaining bastions of reactionary political and military power in the nation’s capital. The revolutionary forces in the Philippines are currently developing the middle portion of the strategic defensive
Even while principally waging a protracted people’s war in the vast countryside, the revolutionary forces under the leadership of the CPP also develop the underground revolutionary organizations and the broad anti-imperialist and democratic mass movement in the cities. Legal, illegal and semilegal forms of struggle promote the well-rounded growth of the revolutionary forces and serve to link the Party and the NPA with the broadest number of people. They also prepare the ground for popular uprisings in the near future and for the advance of the NPA on the eve of nationwide victory.

Building Red Political Power

Today, the revolutionary movement under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines has been able to establish Red political power across the country, in about 9,000 out of the total 42,000 villages, in about 800 municipalities (out of a total 1,600) and in 70 provinces out of the total 79. Revolutionary mass organizations of workers, poor and middle peasants, women, youth, children, cultural activists, professionals and the urban petty bourgeois are being established in all these areas. These serve as solid bases for setting up revolutionary organs of political power in the local levels.
Revolutionary councils at the local level are democratically proclaimed by the people and perform the rudiments of local government. Various committees are established to implement programs such as for agrarian reform, health care, literacy and education, culture and self-defense.
The New People’s Army, under the direct leadership of the CPP, is principally tasked with crushing the armed counterrevolution and establishing Red political power in the countryside. At the moment, more than 120 guerilla fronts of the NPA are spread across the more than 9,000 villages under revolutionary influence. These guerilla fronts are administered by the CPP at the squad level up to the provincial, regional and national levels, through its Party committees.
A guerilla front translates to about an armed company, with a platoon as its center of gravity. The other platoons have the capacity to divide into squads and teams to do revolutionary work among the masses, assisting in the expansion and consolidation of the mass organizations, implementing agrarian reform and launching various mass campaigns, establishing local organs of political power and organizing local militias and self-defense units. The squads and platoons of a guerilla front can also concentrate the appropriate number of armed forces to strike lethal blows against the reactionary armed forces, ranging from the confiscation of firearms and ammunition to ambuscades and raids of detachments and camps.
Responding to the call of the CPP to launch intensify the armed struggle, the NPA was able to successfully launch more than 200 tactical offensives all over the country since September of last year – an average of about 6 tactical offensives in a week. The raids, ambushes and confiscation of firearms have yielded substantial number of weapons and logistics capable of arming several more companies of the NPA.
Complementing and supplementing the NPA are local militia and self-defense units numbering in the tens of thousands. They perform mostly police functions and assist the NPA with logistics, intelligence gathering, and self-defense functions, among other things.

Genuine Agrarian Reform

The implementation of agrarian reform fulfills the democratic content of the national democratic revolution and seeks to free the peasantry from feudal and semifeudal exploitation. On the eve of nationwide victory, the maximum program of free distribution of agricultural land to landless peasants shall be implemented. As long as the armed counterrevolution still principally holds power in the countryside, the minimum program of agrarian reform shall be implemented. This involves the lowering of land rent, elimination of usury, raising the wages of farm workers, increasing agricultural productivity and rural incomes, and lowering of payment for agricultural equipment.
The local chapters of the Pambansang Katipunan ng mga Magbubukid (PKM, National Association of Peasants), with the support of the NPA and other revolutionary mass organizations, initiates mass campaigns and mobilizations to implement agrarian reform. Successful actions have yielded concrete economic benefits for the landless farmworkers and poor peasants in terms of higher wages, a larger share in their harvest and increased productivity of agricultural land. These have also resulted in further strengthening of the mass organizations and the revolutionary mass bases in the countryside
Upon the completion of the national democratic revolution, the implementation of the maximum program of agrarian reform shall establish a solid economic base for socialist economic construction.

Campaign to Oust the US-Arroyo Regime

The current campaign to oust the US-Arroyo Regime is part of the overall revolutionary struggle to eventually overthrow the entire exploitative ruling system. Revolutionary mass organizations and cadres of the CPP are at the core of the movement to oust the hated regime, sustaining the broad united front and undertaking revolutionary propaganda and education among the masses.
An overwhelming majority of the population experience crushing poverty, subsisting on less than US$2.00 per day. A great number of people do not have enough income to eat three times a day. The US-Arroyo regime outrightly rejects the workers’ demands for higher wages and the people’s appeal for relief from poverty. Instead, it allows foreign monopoly capitalists and the local comprador bourgeoisie to increase the prices of petroleum products, electricity, water and other basic household items. It has also recently implemented an expanded value-added tax on consumer products, pushing prices of basic commodities even higher out of reach of the impoverished majority.
In survey after survey, the people express their disgust over a regime which cheated its way to victory in the 2004 national elections. They are also disgusted by the boundless corruption of the presidential family and its closest political allies, cornering the biggest government contracts and extorting huge commissions from big business in exchange for generous government deals. They are appalled by the political repression and fascism unleashed by the regime against its political enemies – repression of free speech and the right to assembly, harassment of the political opposition, and the abduction and killing of trade union leaders, organizers of political party list groups, journalists, lawyers, priests and religious workers, women and youth activists.
The revolutionary movement led by the CPP supports the principally legal struggle seeking to overthrow the hated US-Arroyo regime. The intensification of the armed struggle by the NPA in the countryside contributes and complements the mobilizations and legal mass actions concentrated in the national capital region and other urban areas. The immediate ouster of the US-Arroyo regime by a mobilization of more than one hundred thousand protestors outside the presidential palace, combined with the withdrawal of support by the reactionary military hierarchy, shall be a tactical victory for the national democratic revolution. The broad masses of the people shall reap economic and political reforms from the repeal of the most hated and repressive policies. Moreover, the ouster of the current regime will translate to further expansion and consolidation of the revolutionary movement.
The prolongation of fascist rule by the US-Arroyo regime, on the other hand, will only serve to aggravate the chronic political and economic crises in the country. More people will realize the futility of the current social system and take the revolutionary road to social change.
The start of the 21st century is turning out to be a period of intensified aggression of US imperialism and its allies against the sovereign peoples of different countries. The imperialist countries and monopoly capitalists are intensifying capitalist exploitation and repression against the workers of the world, most especially the workers and peasants of the poorest countries in the world. Reserves of natural resources are even more rapidly being depleted, even while communities of poor peasants and national minorities are brutally displaced to pave the way for capitalist extraction and exploitation.
The revolutionary people of the Philippines, led by the CPP, stand today in the forefront of the struggle to liberate the country from US and foreign domination and establish a democratic people’s government. After the completion of the national democratic revolution, the proletarian leadership shall carry out socialist construction in the 21st century as the transitional stage to communism.