Four centuries of resistance:
The Filipino people's continuing revolution


by Jose Maria Sison
Founding Chairperson,
Communist Party of the Philippines
Excerpts from a speech delivered at a forum sponsored by the Iranian Students' Association on February 21, 1995 in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
It is an iron law of history that oppression and exploitation engenders resistance. Philippines history and current circumstances provide ample proof of this truth. One period in Philippine history is significantly and radically different from another as a result of violent developments. The social condition of the people in every period is determined by what kind of economy and political power is holding sway and is the outcome of the balance and struggle of forces of armed revolution and armed reaction.

1. Spanish colonialism conquered the Philippines by force of arms in the 16th century... Since the 16th century there had been sporadic and spontaneous outbreaks of violent popular resistance of varying geographic and time scales. Although these were quelled by the colonizers, there was a cumulation of anticolonial, antiracist and antifeudal national consciousness.

2. The qualitative leap occurred in 1896 when under the flag of the Katipunan the Philippine revolution broke out. The demand was for national independence from Spain and the social emancipation of the peasants from the feudal rule of the religious orders that were the biggest landowners.

The qualitative leap was not only one from a long cumulative train of spontaneous uprisings to a nationally conscious and nationwide armed revolution against colonial rule but it was also one from the reformism of Jose Rizal and the propagandists to the line of armed revolution of Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan.

Anyhow, the Philippine revolution of 1896 was of the old democratic type, bourgeois liberal in ideology and led by the nascent bourgeoisie. The lasting value of this revolution was that it bequeathed to us a revolutionary sense of nationhood and democracy...

3. After our victory over Spanish colonialism, the United States could intervene successfully and could conquer the Philippines because of superior military force and the inadequacies in the ideology and strategy and tactics of the Philippines revolutionary government and army.

In the course of the Filipino-American war, which started in 1899, the U.S. aggressors killed off nearly one-tenth of the Filipino people, through combat, massacres, forced relocations, food blockades and other forms of barbarities. At the same time, the U.S. used the slogan of benevolent assimilation and peace negotiation to split the ranks of revolutionaries.

The liberal ideology of the leadership of the revolution could be coopted by a modern imperialist power. The latter also used the slogans of liberalism and ladled out concessions to the leaders who were inclined to compromise with the enemy and betray the revolution. After all, a modern imperialist power like the United States was in a better position than the old-type Spanish colonialism to concede to the reformist demands previously submitted to the Spanish parliament before the start of the armed revolution.

4. As a result of its successful war of aggression, the U.S. was able to put the Philippines under its own colonial rule and to begin converting the Philippines into a semi-feudal society, dominated by the resident comprador big bourgeoisie and a landlord class subservient to the new colonial power...

[There were] violent uprisings in every decade. In 1930, the Communist Party of the Philippines was established to engage in legal struggle but was soon suppressed by the U.S. colonial authorities...

5. In early 1942, the Philippines came under occupation by the invasionary forces of fascist Japan. On March 29, 1942, the merger party of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Socialist Party formed the People's Army against Japan (Hukbalahap or Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon).

In conjunction with the armed struggle against Japan, the revolutionary movement was able to establish red political power and carry out land reform in Central Luzon... The people gained political power in the barrios and carried out land reform and other social reforms. Towards the end of the Japanese occupation, the revolutionary forces... were able to seize power in the municipal centers of several provinces in Central Luzon.

6. In the process of recapturing the Philippines after World War II, the U.S. military forces, together with the pro-U.S. guerrilla forces, the pro-Japan Constabulary troops and the landlord-organized civilian guards, suppressed the revolutionary forces through massacres and other forms of barbarities and reinstated landlord power over Central Luzon.

The United States proceeded to grant nominal independence to the Philippines and thus turned it into a semi-colony or neo-colony. The joint class dictatorship of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class was installed nationwide. The politicians of the two exploiting class became directly responsible for the national administration of the Philippines.

But the United States made sure that it retained property rights military bases and control over the Armed Forces of the Philippines by making it dependent on the U.S. for strategic planning, indoctrination, officer training, supplies and so on.

7. ...Because of the relentless bloody assaults on the revolutionary forces and the people and the unseating of the legislators belonging to the Democratic Alliance, the Hukbalahop was converted in 1950 into the People's Liberation Army (Hukbo Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB)). The Jose Lava leadership of the old merger party declared all-out armed struggle against the U.S.-Quirino regime.

However, the strategic line of the armed struggle was "left" opportunist... There was no consideration of the need to do painstaking mass work and to accumulate armed strength over a long period of time. The crisis of the ruling system was expected to cause the rapid growth of the spontaneous support in geometric progression.

Within months after the successful first wave of HMB offensives in August 1950, the merger party of the Communist and Socialist Parties and the HMB were being smashed by the U.S.-directed and U.S.-supplied Armed Forces of the Philippines... The defeat of the armed revolution made the entire decade of the 1950s one of extreme reaction, whipped up by McCarthyism and the cold war.

8. It took nearly two decades before the revolutionary armed struggle could resume. A few months after its re-establishment on the theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, the Communist Party of the Philippines formed the New People's Army on March 29, 1969.

The CPP correctly analyzed Philippine society as semi-colonial and semi-feudal and correspondingly, the Philippines revolution as national democratic of a new type, under working class leadership. The proletariat was recognized as being in basic alliance with the peasantry, in further alliance with the urban petty bourgeoisie and still further with the national bourgeoisie. All these patriotic classes were ranged against the reactionary classes of big compradors and landlords. The Philippines revolution was set forth as a process to be realized in two stages: national democratic and socialist.

The CPP considers armed struggle as the main form of revolutionary struggle because it performs the central task of the revolution, which is to seize political power. The theory and strategic line of protracted people's war is pursued. The New People's Army is to encircle the cities from the countryside, accumulating strength until it can seize the cities.

The protracted people's war is made possible by the chronic crises of the semicolonial and semifeudal system, by the proletarian revolutionary leadership guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, by the peasant majority of the population and their democratic demand for land reform and by the favorable tropical terrain. The revolutionary organs of political power can be created in the countryside even while the reactionary state is still entrenched in the cities.

9. Even before the Marcos ruling clique declared martial law in 1972, the armed forces of the counter-revolutionary state of big compradors and landlords were already engaged in the most brutal campaigns of suppression.

But the Party and the NPA engaged in guerrilla warfare with an ever widening and deepening mass base. When the enemy forces concentrated in one area, they had difficulties occupying the target areas in the adjoining ones and they gave up far wider areas beyond. The NPA has therefore deliberately expanded and consolidated its mass base in the countryside on a nationwide scale in order to have the widest room to maneuver.

Martial law from 1972 to 1986 proved to be futile in trying to destroy the armed revolutionary movement. It merely incited a greater number of the people to fight back. The shift to the pseudodemocratic regime of Aquino also proved to be ineffective in suppressing the armed revolution. General Ramos is the consistent prominent figure in all the failures of the reactionaries to suppress the armed revolution.

10. ...The NPA can victoriously carry out the revolutionary armed struggle, only as it is supported by the organs of political power, the mass organizations and the local Party branches and is augmented by the local militia units and self-defense units.

The NPA would have become a much stronger force in the 1980s and up to the present, were it not for "left" opportunist errors of militarism and insurrectionism which played into the hands of the armed forces of the reactionary government and undermined the revolutionary mass base.

The Communist Party of the Philippines has carried out since 1992 a movement within its ranks to reaffirm basic Marxist-Leninist principles, rectify errors and further strengthen all the revolutionary forces. This movement is raising higher the fighting will and capabilities of the CPP and the people. The CPP recognizes the need for revolutionary violence in order to overthrow the oppressive and exploitative ruling system and install a new social system in which the people enjoy national independence, democracy, social justice, material and cultural progress and peace.
This speech first appeared in the pamphlet "Rising up in Arms" published by the NDF's International office.