By Max Lane
MANILA — A struggle within the Filipino communist movement has spread and sharpened within the Communist Party of the Philippines-influenced legal National Democratic (ND) organisations. The issues are Stalinism, internal party democracy, the need for autonomy for legal mass organisations, the place of armed struggle in revolutionary strategy and the role of the countryside vis-a-vis the cities.
The Metro Manila Rizal Committee (MMR) of the CPP has rejected Stalinism, called for more internal party democracy and stated it will not interfere to counter the decisions of the organisations that look to it for general leadership. It rejects the concept that armed struggle must always be the highest or main form of struggle; this also has implications for the relationship between urban political work and rural work.
The opposite positions have been reaffirmed by the official leadership of the CPP, now usually referred to as the "Reaffirmists".
In August, a majority of the militant trade unions which look to the MMR for leadership broke away from the national leadership of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) trade union centre.
On September 16, more than 150 student leaders from the ND student organisation, the League of Filipino Students, met at the University of the Philippines, Manila, where they decided to break away from the national LFS and form a new student organisation. They came from 14 universities and tertiary colleges in the Manila region.
The discussion in the assembly reflected discontent with what was seen as an authoritarian style of work within the old LFS. The students called for the establishment of a new democratic students organisation.
Tony Cabardo, delivering greetings from the Manila branch of the mass organisation federation BAYAN (also recently broken away from the national leadership), rejected national leadership accusations that the Manila students were "reformist". According to Cabardo, the national leadership "equates war with revolution and revolution with war", thus belittling all non-military mass work.
LFS Manila leader Khermin Azucena explained to Green Left that there had been discontent with national policies for some time. The national leadership, according to Azucena, consistently opposed any struggle for reforms as "reformism".
For example, Azucena noted, the national leadership argued that the student movement should totally oppose a current proposal for legislation to formalise a Magna Carta of Student Rights, guaranteeing freedom of organisation and freedom to speak on campus for all students. Many university administrations have very repressive regulations which this bill will make illegal.
Students in the socialist-oriented BISIG told Green Left that some national LFS activists have explained that any relaxation of administration repression will make students more complacent and harder to organise.
The breakaway LFS students and BISIG student groups are campaigning to ensure the bill is not watered down in Congress.
"This [national LFS] approach is related to the concept of the student movement as the propaganda arm of the national democratic struggle", stated Azucena. "This means that students should concentrate only on propagating the national democratic program and win people to join the armed struggle in the countryside. Thus campaigns for reforms around which students might be radicalised are downplayed."
At the same time, Azucena commented, there was a tendency to delay raising the question of the need for revolution to the majority of students. "We want a dynamic and militant student movement fighting for demands in its sector, and we also want to facilitate the process of radicalisation."
Azucena and other leaders told Green Left that the new organisation would start with a membership of 500-600, with 250 core activists and more than 30 full-time student cadre activists based at 14 universities and colleges. Its base would be the campuses with the students from low income families.
The two main elite state universities (the University of the Philippines — Diliman and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines) were traditionally organised directly by the national LFS leadership, and the situation in the student movement on those campuses had not yet clarified.
During almost the same period, a similar polarisation took place within the ND peasant federation, the National Federation of Peasants (KMP). On September 12 a move by the Reaffirmists in the KMP sabotaged efforts by KMP Chairperson, Jaime Tadeo, to unite the two sections of the organisation.
The Reaffirmist section held a press conference to declare that Tadeo, who had just been released after five years in jail, had not been formally reinstated. This group, comprising 12 of the 22-member National Council of the KMP, also said that they knew of no unity meetings being organised. They have taken steps to set up a new KMP national office, as the staff have remained loyal to Tadeo and other members of the National Council.
In breaking with Tadeo, the Reaffirmist group, headed by Rafael Mariano, accused the other group of "reformism" and of attempting to strip the KMP of its militancy.
The split seems to reflect not only rejection of the Reaffirmist positions on Stalinism and strategy in recent CPP documents but also long simmering disagreements regarding peasant organising. Officers of the KMP national staff explained to Green Left that the former Aquino government's total war military operation against the peasant movement in the countryside resulted in a loss of 70% of the movement's base. In an attempt to rebuild the movement, much greater emphasis has been given to open, mass organising.
"This has meant organising peasants in crop-oriented organisations to campaign for demands that would improve their terms of trade and other factors impinging on their livelihood in the short term", explained Jun Borras of the KMP. "There were also campaigns to demand better services by the National Food Authority. This was a different approach than before, where we would have campaigned for the abolition of the National Food Authority as being part of the oppressive state."
According to Borras, the new mass peasant organising is developing by "leaps and bounds", especially in the plains areas and areas close to the towns. According to the progressive Philnews service, Mariano's group has labelled this approach as "reformist" and has called for the KMP to return to its earlier approach.
Tadeo has rejected this, saying, "KMP's political-economic combination of peasant advocacy work is correct. They are not errors of economistic reformism ... they fall within the framework of the democratic, dynamic, full-blown and militant peasant movement."