Interview by Pao Ching-ming
26 December 2021
Jump to interview-proper.
The Communist Party, its Chief Information Officer Ka Marco specifically, was kind enough to agree to this interview on the occasion of its 53rd anniversary, a month after I had interviewed Prof. Joma. The same observations about my 14-year-old self and my comportment and writing back then that make up the bulk of the prefatory note to the republished latter interview applies here, too.
Although I have tried my best to keep the original spirit and form of my questions intact, I have also tried to make them more concise and straightforward—to varying results. Some archaisms and peculiarities of my old writing I have kept, such as "&c." and the hyphenated "to-day," while others I have done away with, one of them being "Pilipino" instead of "Filipino" in reference to the people.
Ka Marco’s answers are unchanged, except for in places where initialisms are left unexplained, like "SPP" for the Socialist Party, and where there are grammatical and typographical errors. Ka Marco, like the overwhelming majority of Filipinos, uses American English and its corresponding spelling conventions; I, being annoying, use British forms—I have left this inconsistency hereunder as is. I have also refrained from adding unnecessary diacritics to Tagálog text other than mine.
The 55th anniversary of the Party is approaching at a time of great upheaval and revolutionary upsurge. Abroad, Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is making abundantly, soberingly, and infuriatingly clear to the oppressed and imperialised peoples the depraved lengths to which imperialism will go in protection and in pursuance of its own interests. Perhaps more importantly, the Palestinian people’s heroic and effective resistance underscores not only the necessity of armed struggle for liberation but also its practicability. "Turn grief into revolutionary courage," as one Ang Báyan editorial from the First Quarter Storm says, and at the same time, turn tragedy into revolutionary optimism.
And with the continuing victories of the Palestinian and Filipino revolutions, as well as of other liberation movements the world over, revolutionary optimism is in no short supply. At home, contradictions within the ruling classes are ever intensifying—just this month we have seen the younger Duterte call the second Marcos régime’s decision to reëxplore peace talks with the Party an "agreement with the devil." These are consonant with the ever-worsening crises of state-sponsored neoliberalism in the economy, agriculture, education, and society at large. As the moribund semicolonial and semifeudal system approaches its final collapse, more and more of the toiling masses join the ranks of the Party, the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front; new guerrilla fronts continue to be opened up and old ones defended and expanded as the state goes deeper and deeper into debt and loses more and more of its capacity to maintain its mercenary army.
When I did this interview with Ka Marco two years ago, the situation was already very favourable for further revolutionary advance. To-day, thanks to the outstanding efforts of the Party and the revolutionary masses in their millions, the situation is even more favourable—exceedingly favourable, to borrow Prof. Joma’s turn of phrase. I hope that this interview will be of at least some use to those seeking to educate themselves on the Filipino revolution and on the Party which leads it. I also hope to do more work of a similar nature soon. "Arouse," after all, comes before "organise" and "mobilise," and to arouse we must also teach and be taught.
Pao Ching-ming
15 December, 2023
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1. Before anything else, may you provide us with a brief history of the Filipino people’s struggle for liberation, from the earliest scattered risings under the Spanish yoke to the national-democratic revolution currently being waged against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism?
On the occasion of the anniversary of Lapulapu’s uprising on April 27, 1521, we marked earlier this year 500 years of Philippine armed resistance against foreign aggressors. Although the Lapulapu uprising was victorious, the disparate islands would ultimately be suppressed by the Spanish colonizers with superior military force representing a more advanced social and economic system. I invite you to review the April 21, 2021 editorial of Ang Bayan, the CPP’s official news organ, which described in broad strokes the development of Philippine history as a continuum of armed uprisings to fight for national liberation.
To understand the nature of these armed uprisings, it is important to also delve into the class nature and theories that guided these. During the first stage of more than three hundred years of anticolonial resistance, the big and small, short-lived and prolonged armed uprisings, were mostly local and of limited scale. Many of these were mostly led by local landowners whose interests were trampled upon by the colonizers and their demand for tribute. They were in a position to lead the local masses in armed uprisings, but were no match to the superior military force which the colonizers could concentrate on a local area.
The emergence of the Propaganda Movement in the latter part of the 19th century gave all these local uprisings a national character, although Rizal and others actually sought to attain reforms under the colonial regime. Bonifacio was of working class origin but was inspired by bourgeois ideals as expressed by Rizal’s exposition of the Filipino national identity and the slogans of the French revolution for freedom, brotherhood and equality. Enlightened by bourgeois liberal concepts, he formed the Katipunan as a national resistance movement with the objective of driving away the Spanish colonizers. The bourgeois illustrado forces would soon violently take over the leadership of the revolution. The inchoate bourgeois forces in the country, however, were weak and could easily be subdued by the US imperialists.
It would take the incipient working class to pick up the banner and resume the struggle for national liberation and the armed resistance movement. At the early part of the 20th century, working class organizations which were moderately influenced by Marxism, would raise the slogan calling for an end to US colonialism. Although it could mount large demonstrations, the Filipino working class was numerically small and ideologically immature to come up with a comprehensive strategy for resistance against the imperialist adversary.
The formation of the Communist Party of the Philippine Islands in 1930 was a watershed event that marked the integration of the Filipino working class movement with the international proletarian movement under the leadership of the Soviet Union and the Communist Internationale. In the fight against Japanese armed aggression, the CPPI wisely applied united front tactics and armed struggle, forging an alliance with the peasantry, waging guerrilla warfare, carrying out land reform and building organs of political power. The revolutionary forces under the CPPI (then merged with the Socialist Party of the Philippines) would control large swathes of territory in Central Luzon and other parts of the country. Waging people’s war, however, was adapted as a tactic in the fight against Japanese fascism, and would later be discarded. The merger party had no clear analysis of the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions of the country and failed to expound on its revolutionary strategy. The CPPI was strongly influenced and led by unremolded pettybourgeois intellectuals, who, for the following decades, would swing from Right and "Left" opportunism.
The revolutionary armed struggle for national and social liberation resumed in 1969 with the formation of the New People’s Army by the reestablished CPP. The CPP benefited from the victorious revolutions in China and Korea (and later in Vietnam) which demonstrated the necessity of waging people’s war in semicolonial and semifeudal countries, forging the basic alliance with the more numerous peasant class, and adapting guerrilla tactics to confront and defeat a militarily more superior enemy force. The CPP assiduously applied Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on the concrete conditions of the Philippines to come up with specific tactics for building a nationwide army and waging people’s war in an archipelagic country. The people’s war has developed and progressed over the past 50 years. It has the singular achievement of self-reliantly waging people’s war at a time when the proletariat had already been defeated in China and the Soviet Union.
2. How has the people’s war progressed since the Party’s reconstitution 53 years ago? Is it still in the stage of the strategic defensive as outlined by Mao and Prof. José Ma. Sison?
In its message last December 26, the CPP Central Committee said that the people’s war is at the middle phase or substage of the strategic defensive. During this phase, the NPA aims to complete building company-sized guerrilla fronts by waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever expanding and deepening mass base, and build more guerrilla fronts to further extend the revolutionary territories of the NPA. Upon completion of these requirements, the people’s war will advance towards the advanced phase of the strategic defensive, where it will have the capacity to annihilate company- sized or larger armed formations of the enemy, and work towards achieving strategic stalemate with the enemy.
3. Throughout its over half a century years of existence, the Party has maintained its basic politico-ideological integrity against revisionism and other forms of reaction and counter-revolution. Indeed, the Party’s reëstablishment itself was an act of resistance and struggle against the revisionism and right-opportunism of the Lavas and other diehards of the old guard. This First Great Rectification Movement would be followed by another decades later but against the "left"-opportunism of the Lagman-type adventurists and urban insurrectionists. Even to-day, the Party stands as a bulwark against modern revisionism in the Philippines, China, and elsewhere. How has the Party kept its proletarian and anti-revisionist outlook from its founding up to the present?
The Party has successfully applied and propagated Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and transformed it into an invincible material force. It has succeeded in cultivating deep class loyalty to the proletarian cause among its cadres and members. Most of the Party’s members come from the oppressed classes of workers and peasants who are the most desirous to wage revolution. Party cadres from the pettybourgeoisie undergo self- remolding by integrating themselves with the oppressed classes. All Party members, including leading cadres, belong to basic Party branches, where they shoulder common tasks in Party building and engage in criticism and self-criticism. The Party implements a three level Party course: basic, intermediate and advanced, as well as a special study course, where Party members deepen their knowledge of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism from one level to the next. Party members are taught to carry out social investigation, assessments, drawing conclusions from facts, and methods of planning to scientifically raise the level of their practice.
The Party always maintains a high degree of vigilance against modern revisionism, and other counterrevolutionary trends that seek to undermine the proletarian viewpoint and standpoint of the Party and its cadres. It engages in polemical or theoretical debate with both Right and "Left" opportunists who seek to either draw the Party to collaborationism, liquidationism or sectarianism.
4. Is it a negative attitude to act as if people’s war, the triumph of revolution, and other such positive outcomes are inevitable? Or is this simply an expression of revolutionary optimism?
I think communists and revolutionaries are irrepressible optimists. This is not blind optimism, or merely waiting for the inevitable, rather from the dialectical materialist attitude that laws governing change are knowable and ultimately controllable by people. Thus, revolutionaries always have the attitude of turning a negative situation into positive, and not being complacent after victories or achievements. This optimism is rooted from a scientific outlook and method of always analyzing the two aspects of a situation, and determining the dialectical laws that govern the process of change of a thing, in order to plan an intervention to attain the desired outcome. From the outset, many of the Party’s victories amid great adversity would not have been achieved without large doses of revolutionary optimism.
5. As I have mentioned in my previous talk with Prof. Joma, the prospects of the coming election seem most unfavourable. Of the major presidential candidates thus far, only the rejectionist-revisionist Leody has offered detailed and actually progressive policies. In terms of their determination to dismantle or at least struggle against policies favourable to US imperialism and feudalism, the liberal Robredo and the fascist-descended Marcos are basically the same insofar as both are uninterested in any such thing. The former, for instance, continues to vacillate between promising to maintain the terroristic National Task Force to "End" Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) as it is and guaranteeing nebulous reforms to it. In light of the current situation, what is the Party’s perspective and policy on electoralism?
As Ka Joma and the Party has previously explicated, the CPP is not governed by the legal political processes of the reactionary system. The Party, through the NPA, wages armed revolution towards the overthrow of the ruling state, and as such, is automatically disqualified from taking part in the ruling system’s electoral contest.
The reactionary elections form part of the ruling system’s method of maintaining the ruling system. It is the method for determining who among the rival reactionary cliques will control the government and all its resources. It is also a means to perpetuate the ruling system by making people believe that democracy exists and it is the people who choose their leaders. In fact, only their reactionary parties and organizations can effectively participate in the elections.
The national democratic organizations and parties who exist under the 1987 constitution, can take part in the reactionary elections to use it as a platform to promote the national democratic program, forge political alliances and win seats in the parliament or local and national positions. They can do so without promoting illusions of democracy under the reactionary system.
6. Women and queer people have long been oppressed by the colonial and feudal patriarchal order perpetuated by the local ruling classes and their imperialist masters. The proliferation of the imperialist sex trade and the murder of women and baklâ at the hands of the foreign devils—the martyred Jennifer Laude being one of the most prominent victims in recent years—are proof enough of their continued oppression. How has the Party insured their equal treatment, as well as the abolition of the means by which they are exploited?
The cause of women and the LQBT community against discrimination and oppression is enshrined in the Party’s constitution and program. The provision pertaining to LGBT rights was inserted in the revised Party constitution as approved in the 2nd Congress in 2016. Equal rights of gay and lesbians to relations and marriage have been recognized since 1992. The Party and NPA regularly hold discussions to raise the awareness of its members and fighters about the issue of gender oppression, and to constantly remind them of the need to do away with stereotypes. Gays and lesbians have become responsible commanders of the NPA, and leaders of the Party.
7. How does the Party engage with its religious cadres and allied organisations and religion as a whole?
The Party forges friendly relations with progressive religious forces. Of course, religious idealism and Marxist materialism are diametrically opposed world views. However, the emergence of a progressive-minded movement within different denominations has made possible an alliance between communists and some religious on the basis of a common aspiration for liberating people from oppression and exploitation.
8. What are the rôles of the NPA and the NDF in the CPP-led national-democratic revolution? What organisations comprise the NDF?
The NPA and the NDF are both instruments developed by the Party for fighting the enemy. The Party leads the NPA as its principal weapon for destroying the enemy’s armed forces which is the main force for preserving the reactionary state. Through the NDF, the Party forges the broadest alliance of class and sectoral forces to generate support for the armed revolution and isolate the enemy politically. Amado Guerrero describes the NPA and NDF as the Party’s spear and shield, for offense and defense. You can also say that both are weapons for waging integrated military and political struggles.
The NDF is composed of underground revolutionary mass organizations that support the armed revolution. It is a united front for armed struggle. There are at least 17 mass organizations among the youth, workers, peasants, fisherfolk, women, semiproletariat, migrant workers, scientists, artists, overseas Filipinos, cultural workers, and so on. The Party helped form these organizations to draw in the advanced activists among the different mass movements.
9. The super-typhoon Odette, known abroad as "Rai," has proven itself one of the most catastrophic disasters nationally since Yolanda. In the face of mass disruptions in electrical and water services, the reactionary Government seated in Manila has essentially left the suffering masses on their own. What measures have the Party and its affiliated organisations taken to aid Odette-stricken communities?
As in past calamities, local Party branches organize and mobilize the people in the villages to collectively respond to their needs, mobilize resources, coordinate with other villages and with relief organizations, as well as with state agencies and distribute resources equitably. The Party has also directed units of the NPA to serve as first responders, and to assist the people in rehabilitation and recovery work. Red fighters help survivors in rebuilding or repairing their homes, especially of senior citizens, repairing farms and organizing production brigades to assist in planting. At the same time, the Party rouses the people to demand the reactionary state for its typically slow and meager response to the disaster and to hold it responsible for the neglect of its duties.
10. As the vanguard of the Filipino people, the Party must be at the forefront of the mass movement for genuinely new, proletarian art, literature, and culture against the art, literature, and culture of the old bourgeois colonial and feudal system. Journals and publications like Ulós and Tilamsík are good examples of this revolution in culture. How has the Party furthered the development and enrichment of all fields of human endeavour, including the sciences, towards liberation and socialism?
The Party’s program stipulates the promotion of a national, scientific and mass culture as a key component of the revolutionary struggle. The material conditions brought about by revolutionary struggles have generated a slew of cultural forms of expression in the villages, in the people’s army, in the democratic mass movement, as well as in the digital space. Organizations of cultural workers have sprouted and through these, cultural work is being carried out more systematically and prevalently, popularizing works of art and literature among the masses, mobilizing them and raising standards. Cultural work is most vigorous in areas where the masses are active in agrarian revolution and wage antifascist and other democratic struggles. Heroes and martyrs from among the local revolutionaries are recognized and promoted as models for emulation. The Party promotes the scientific method of thinking, observation and analysis in all fields of endeavor. In production, it draws from the practice of the masses, while encouraging scientific experiment, and the integration of advanced scientific knowledge and technologies, to promote and further improve these practices, for example, in the use of organic material as fertilizers. Science and technologies are also used in the New People’s Army to develop new weaponries, as well as in propaganda, education and organizing work.
11. 12 million Filipinos—over a tenth of all Filipinos—reside abroad as migrant workers, students, naturalised citizens, or all three. Prof. Joma, in our recent discussion, said of the diasporic population: "The national-democratic movement has done excellent work in arousing, organizing and mobilizing the overseas Filipinos in so many countries. . ." How exactly does the movement, and the Party specifically, go about arousing, organising, and mobilising the diaspora?
The Party promotes the rights and aspirations of overseas Filipinos. It supports their struggles, especially against government neglect and fleecing them of fees and taxes. The Party considers Filipinos abroad playing an important role in exposing the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions in the Philippines and promoting the national democratic cause.
To organize Filipinos abroad, the Party and revolutionary forces establish contacts with Filipino communities and form Party cells and underground organizations. Revolutionary forces in the Philippines are encouraged to raise the political consciousness of their relatives abroad and link them up with Party branches and revolutionary organizations. The Kabataang Makabayan has several chapters in Europe and the US. Communication technologies have facilitated and accelerated efforts in organizing and linking Filipinos abroad with the revolutionary forces in the country.
12. How does the Party view and exercise proletarian internationalism in light of the 150-plus-year experience of communists worldwide, particularly with the Comintern and the so-called Revolutionary Internationalist Movement?
The Party believes that at this stage in the development of the international communist movement, the most crucial task is to build or strengthen communist parties by applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on the concrete conditions of particular countries. Proletarian revolutionaries must emerge or step up in their efforts to build a communist party capable of organizing and leading the masses in their numbers. Proletarian revolutionaries can develop linkages to exchange experiences, analysis and views, with the aim of raising the level of revolutionary practice. The face of the international communist movement will change with the qualitative development of revolutionary movements and the new global surge of socialist revolution that will require new forms of cooperation and organization of the international proletariat.
13. On the subject of internationalism, what is the present outlook of the Party on the upsurge of revolution abroad? What anti-imperialist parties does it lend its support and solidarity to? And lastly, how may foreign comrades help the revolutionary movement in the Philippines?
Worsening conditions under continuing imperialist crisis are ever favorable for a renewed resurgence of anti-imperialist and socialist revolution on a global scale. We can say that we are at the threshold of a resurgence of socialist and national democratic revolutions.
The Party and the national democratic forces in the Philippines have been extending solidarity and all possible support within their capacity to anti-imperialist movements around the world. These include raising the awareness of the Filipino people about anti- imperialist and national and social liberation movements, mounting mass actions, issuing declarations and statements, sending delegations to events, and so on.
Throughout its history, countless internationalists have supported and joined the revolutionary movement in the Philippines. They have extended material, political and moral support. Not a few have joined the New People’s Army as Red fighters.
14. Following the presumed triumph of the national-democratic Revolution, how will the Party adhere to the principle of self-determination for distinct nationalities and ethnicities such as the Moro people in Mindanao? Are there prospects for a centralised union of republics as was established in the Soviet Union, or should we look forward to a structure wholly different from ones past? Alternatively, is it perhaps futile to attempt to predict how the precise details of self-determination shall play out in the future?
The Party upholds the principle of the right to self-determination of the Moro people and other minority groups in the Philippines. It builds unity with the different minority groups in the struggle against the common enemy that oppresses the Filipino people and minority groups, and supports their cause for separation or autonomy from the oppressive state.
The CPP’s program elaborates on the matter, to wit:
"The Party and the people’s democratic government shall always uphold the national and democratic rights of the national minorities who compose 15 percent of the Philippine population. The national minorities shall be encouraged to take their rightful role and place in the people’s democratic state and shall receive special consideration because of the extreme oppression and exploitation that they have suffered for so long in the hands of Spanish colonialism, US imperialism and the local reactionary classes. The Bangsamoro people, the largest national minority in the Philippines, have long developed their national self-identity and persevere in their struggle for self-determination.
The Party leads the struggle against national oppression. The revolutionary forces must grow in strength among the national minorities and foster unity, cooperation and coordination between them and the rest of the people in combating the brutal campaigns of armed oppression, the grabbing of land from them, the plunder of natural resources in their areas, the imposition of absurdly low wages in plantations and mines, the paucity or lack of a just share in the social wealth and taxes produced from their areas, and all other phenomena of abuse, chauvinism and discrimination.
A new type of leadership, a revolutionary one, must be encouraged to rise from the national minorities so as to transform the traditional leadership and supplant those that have not only failed to fight for their rights but has also participated in their exploitation. Cadres of the Party and the revolution must be developed from among the national minorities."
15. What do you think of the anti-Red and anti-progressive hysteria whipped up by the Government? What state-propagated lies in particular must be dispelled from the minds of the people?
The enemy has been whipping-up "anti-terrorism" in a desperate bid to justify its counterrevolutionary war. This line aims to obscure the national and democratic aspirations of the Filipino people. It cries "terrorism" to cover up its use of state terrorism in its intensified war against civilians, especially in the form of aerial bombardment, strafing and artillery shelling.
Since the early 2000s, US imperialism has promoted "anti-terrorism" as a quasi-legal framework to justify its armed aggression and interventionism around the world.
16. Is Sabah still considered by the Party as a rightful territory of the Philippines? Does the Party conduct political, military, and mass work there?
There is historical basis for the Philippine claim to Sabah, a territory of the Sulu Sultanate that was ceded to the Philippine government in 1962, but which was wrested by the British imperialists with the incorporation of Malaysia in 1963 on the pretext of fighting communism and so-called Indonesian expansionism. The so-called referendum is invalid as it was carried out under conditions of coercion. Legal definition of Philippine baseline territory in 1968 included Sabah and the seas surrounding it. In 2011, the Philippine Supreme Court ruled that the Philippine claim is valid and can be pursued in the future. The problem is that successive Philippine reactionary governments have been legally negligent since the 1960s as a way of bowing to US foreign policy. The Party has previously declared that upon establishment, the people’s democratic government of the Philippines can pursue these legal claims and seek to resolve this in favor of the country and the people of Sabah.
Filipinos in Sabah suffer grave oppression. Most of them work in oil palm plantations as farm workers. Many of them are considered stateless and illegal aliens and are made to suffer from lower wages, and lack of rights to domicile, access to public service and so on. They desire to assert their rights, as well as Philippine claims over the territory, and are linking up with the national democratic forces in the Philippines.
17. With more than 120 languages and even more dialects among them, the Philippines is one of the most linguistically diverse nations in the world. How does the Party deal with communications amid such diversity of language?
The Party promotes Filipino or Pilipino as a national language and as the principal medium of instruction and official communication, as well as local languages, to benefit the masses. The Party ensures that its news organ, Ang Bayan, is translated into the major languages and can be read by the majority of its mass base. In fact, Ang Bayan is the only newspaper in the country that is available in six languages: Pilipino, English, Binisaya, Iloco, Waray and Hiligaynon. Party documents, audio-video information materials, and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist study materials are also translated to local languages.
18. The reactionary Government and its imperialist overlords, through various official and quasi-official research and policy institutes, claim that only 30% of the population are peasants and that their contribution to the economy is only 12%. They furthermore insist that no more than a fifth of the people live in poverty. Ignoring, or perhaps supporting, the political, ideological, and class motivations behind the methods through which such data were found, pseudo-progressives and anti-people technocrats alike make the case that material conditions no longer align with the analysis of Philippine society originally put forth by Prof. Sison, which analysis is still upheld by the revolutionary movement. How does the Party counter these claims?
You are correct in pointing out how the reactionary government's statisticians and technocrats present a skewed image of social realities in the Philippines. Their views are supported by a slew of International Monetary Fund/World Bank-trained academics, as well as by some pettybourgeois reformist groups. Their objective is to undermine the Party's analysis of the semicolonial and semifeudal conditions, where production largely remains backward, agrarian and non-industrial. They do so by understating the share of agricultural output and the rural population to make the false claim of predominance of capitalist production and relations. They rely on formalistic categories of employment which does not count the value produced by women peasants (who are categorized as unemployed despite the fact that they work in the fields as much as their husbands) and young peasants (who are productive at a very young age) effectively reducing by more than half the agricultural workforce in the country. They further discount the natural economy that continues to constitute a large part of the rural production. They also bloat the urban population by claiming even fifth-class municipal centers, when in fact, these are mostly linked to the rural economy (as agri-commercial centers) rather than to capitalist production. Government technocrats also use statistical magic to reduce the number of people under the threshold of poverty and hunger, by pulling down standards of living and food requirements. They do the same manipulation of numbers to understate the true state of unemployment in the country.
The Party counters these claims through exposition of the various aspects of the concrete conditions in the Philippines. Researches are conducted and articles written to describe the state of the semicolonial and semifeudal system in the country. Ang Bayan regularly features articles that expose the backward state of Philippine agriculture and the oppression and exploitation of the peasant masses. Studies are being conducted on the extent of landlessness and the degree of land monopoly ownership. Territorial committees of the Party at various levels are tasked to come up with updated social investigations of the situation within their scope. Prof. Sison's articles discussing the objective conditions in the country are invaluable resources.
National democratic organizations among workers and peasants, as well as other sectors, as well as research outfits, also continually come up with articles and research materials which discuss the concrete situation of the broad toiling masses. They easily counter the fantastical claims of reduced poverty in the Philippines.