The crisis in the Communist Parly
The Manila-Rizal Regional Committee leads an organiser and a leader of the BMP (Workers' important opposition currents in the Communist Union for a Change"), a regroupment of trade
Party of the Philippines. Paul Petitjean unionists in the Manilla region.
interviewed Sony Melencio, a trade union
International Viewpoint #266 May 1995
Philippines • International Viewpoint: Can you outline your view of the current crisis the Communist Party?
• Melencio: From the late 1980s there was a trend of marginalisation in terms of the mobilisations the Party could command, and in terms of the guerilla war. For example, a number of New People's Army (NPA) commanders came down from the mountains to talk to the government. It was also reported that the number of arms that the NPA had was much more than the number of guerillas
- something which had never happened before.
[Party leader] Sison came out with the proposition that the root cause was that we were not Maoist enough. He said that one had to reaffirm the so-called basic principles of the Party: the theory of the semi- colonial/semi-feudal Philippines; "protracted peoples war"; modern revisionism as the basis for the collapse of the so-called socialist countries in Eastern Europe. Disciplinary measures were taken against some of his opponents, and some units were dissolved. This impelled those who opposed Sison's views to look at the problems and what was wrong with the Party. All the opposition agreed that sectarianism was the basic problem and that this was rooted in the Stalinist character of the Party.. I can confidently say now that the entire opposition is anti-Stalinist.
The Manila-Rizal group (M-R) has produced a more programmatic critique of the Maoist character of the CPP, the Party's "strategy," and the "protracted peoples war".
What are the differences within the opposition?
One view is that instead of building another party, there should be a broader united front or a genuine national democratic front (NDF). Some go to the extreme of basically liquidating the party formation (this is the case among some activists based in Europe. This debate is 14 partly due to the bitterness of experience of many members of the CPP.
Some have also criticised Leninism saying that it was another form of Stalinism. They look back to Marx or to writers such as Gramsci. In my view these are all theoretical attempts to shift away from the Marxist-Leninist conception. What is confusing is that this criticism of Leninism has come from an understanding of Marxism-Leninism as described by Stalinism. There has been a debate about the dictatorship of the proletariat for some time now. There are those who say it is passé, and that better examples lie in the experience of Nicaragua and El Salvador.
The M-R current believes that the theoretical foundations of the revolutionary movement in the Philippines should still be Marxist and Leninist but not as distorted and defined by Stalinism. But some of the other groups are moving towards the ideas of the Popdems Popular Democrats- ed], This current came out earlier than the others from the NDF and developped earlier a critique of the CPP. The problem with this current - and some of the Popdems are very up-front about what they think - is that some say national democracy is comparable to social democracy, so what is wrong with social democracy? Some identify with left social democracy.
Manila is the central industrial region in the Philippines. The Manila-Rizal CPP region has been in existence for around twenty-five years. It is here that the CPP formation began, with the student upsurges in the 1970s and later on the focus on activity in the working class. So it was able through the years to build up a large working class base and membership. One newspaper columnist described M-R as the proletarian wing of the Party, in as much as the cadres of the local party came from this industrial centre, with a working class background. The membership of the Party in other regions was based in the NPA and would come predominantly from the peasant classes. It is difficult for M-R to convince the other regions because differences are rooted in the class character of the Party units.
M-R was naturally pressured from the very beginning to examine writings other than Maoist ones. They didn't get any guidance from Mao about our urban work, so early on they were studying Lenin. MR was criticised by the central leadership. which held the Maoist idea that Leninism applies to an industrialisd capitalist Government soldiers at Auguimlido country and not what they characterised as a "semi-feudal" country such as the Philippines.
In 1978 M-R was instrumental in building the Laban electoral formation — together with Begnino Aquino and other anti-Marcos politicians. The 1978 policy of the Party that participation is unprincipled and the election merely a fight between the reactionary classes was reaffirmed for the 1986 elections. The result was a fiasco. Representatives of the CCP in the M-R region were on the electoral slate. But the official Party policy became boycott. Because participation, the M-R committee was dissolved and the M-R leadership charged with factionalism, revisionism and reformism. All its members were to be put through re-education - stripped of Party membership and made into ordinary regular NPA guerilla. The main leader of M-R was in a NPA camp for five years as an ordinary member, not even a Political Officer.
ty of the Philippines
International Viewpoint #266 May 1995
• Could you summarise the alternative theses presented by the M-R leadership?
With regard to the question of the semi-feudal/semi-colonial character of the Philippines, Sison has been saying although not directly — that the mode of production in this country is semifeudal/semi-colonial. There have been debates on this question for a long time. At a time, there was even the idea that M-R was living in a capitalist enclave, while the
Sison-led group was in a feudal enclave and there would be different types of struggle. M-R now says that the Philippine mode of production is basically capitalist, although backward with feudal vestiges. With regard to "protracted peoples war" the M-R rejects of the universal relevance of this strategy. What Sison does is to apply the Chinese experience not only in the Philippines but as an universal theory do base (ČTK) for revolution in the third world. M-R agrees with Lenin that the form of a particular struggle cannot be immediately seen, it is a product of the class struggle. Lenin rejected the idea that the party should impose the concrete forms of the class struggle which will prove to be essential during a given period. And this is what Sison does with "protracted peoples war"
The third M-R document is a critique of the programme of the party in the Philippines revolution, a critique of the national democratic programme. The CPP only talks about the national democratic character of the revolution, and presents the struggle for socialism as something far away in the future. The M- R view is that the struggle in this country is basically a struggle towards socialism but that we have to pass through and complete the stage of a national democratic revolution. It would be foolish not to clarify this. There is no reason to delay the education of the masses on the need for the socialist struggle until the national democratic revolution is won. This is a pressure for
M-R because it works among the working class, who will not be convinced of the for revolution by a national democratic programme which has something to say about the peasants, about other sectors of society, even about local capitalists, but nothing to say about the workers. All it says about the workers is that it will improve their conditions - that there will be better wages and so on. But this is something that the workers could get under capitalism. They wouldn't need a revolution to get those kind of changes. • M-R says Sison empties Mao's 'protracted peoples war' of its historical dynamism, reducing it to permanent guerillaism, unable to win...
Chinese communists participated in a war of national liberation against the occupying Japanese. As a result it was possible to develop guerilla bases even at that time. It was a real war. But to expand this experience into an universal one is to neglect the historical context. Guerilla warfare is not something you can just start. It should be the product of the class struggle itself. For Sison though, "protracted peoples war" is connected to the agrarian character of the revolution in general. This is surprising because "protracted peoples war" actually limited the ability to organise amongst the peasantry. With the creation of guerrilla groups, the situation becomes militarised to the extent that you cannot reach out to the masses. You are limited to the mountain strongholds, from where you cannot reach the majority of the population, who live in the plains and cities. • What impact has the CPP crisis had on the legal political and social movements?
I think the impact of the crisis is basically positive because the split was a rejection of the Stalinist conception of the Party and the sectarian attitude. The immediate impact has been for groups to come together in rejecting sectarianism and the Sison group. On the legal front there were a number of different coalitions with polical blocks which, previously, were not able to work together:
groups linked to the CPP, Bisig, Pandayan, Pepdems, even the PKP (the old CP), democratic groups, and the left wing of the social-democratic PDSP.
As we see, a split within a party is not always negative. It is sometimes necessary in order for the party to breath and grow. This is the case in the Philippines.
M-R is now conscious of the need for the development towards autonomous social movements with their own dynamics, rather than Stalinist style Party controlled mass organisations. M-R has been saying for some time that there is no dynamism within the legal movements and that was because the Party was limiting their dynamism.
What about the trade unions?
The Stalinist organisational structure was replicated in the trade unions and so the trade union center Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) had the same problems as the Party. The two biggest federation (NFL and NAFLU) left the KMU precisely because of its undemocratic character, as did other unions in the Manila-Rizal capital region. An added factor of the crisis was that the lack of democracy developed to the extent that there was corruption in the leadership.
The BMP (Workers' Union for a Change") emerged from this split. Together with the other federations which left the KMU, and unions linked to left forces as Bisig and Pandayan, we have formed the the National Confederation of the Philippines, which regroups unions somehow connected with the left. We also have the "Caucus for Labour Unity" (soon probably Congress for Labour Unity) which is broader. This is composed of all the different trade unions, with the exception of the KMU and the FFWE!.
The BMP (and M-R) believe in unity with all the workers wherever they are, and trade union unity wherever it can be achieved. There are "yellow" leaders but not "yellow" unions. National leaders may be yellow but there are many genuine leaders at the local level in all unions, and we should try to reach out to them. *
This interview took place in December 1994
1. The FWW is part of the Christian World Confederation of Labour, and doesn't want to get involved with ICTUconnected unions. On the other hand, the bureaucratdominated TUCP is part of the Caucus.
15
Profits up - wages down. What use is an upturn in this cra