Reds Told to Expand, Launch More Attacks

On the eve of the 39th anniversary of the New People’s Army, the Communist Party of the Philippines calls for more attacks and for the guerrillas to expand their reach to cover, according to the party, every congressional district in the Philippines.

Below is the full text of the statement.

Seize the Initiative, Launch the Offensives to Reap Victories for the 40th NPA Anniversary

Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
March 29, 2008

With utmost joy, we celebrate the 39th anniversary of the founding of the New People’s Army by the Communist Party of the Philippines. We salute all Party cadres and members, Red commanders and fighters and the broad masses of the people for their long-accumulated and recent victories in the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war against US imperialism and the local reactionary classes of big compradors and landlords.

We honor and congratulate you for achieving highly significant political and military victories. We pay our highest respects to the revolutionary martyrs and heroes for having sacrificed the most in order to advance the great red banner of our just revolutionary cause.

We look forward to the achievement of far greater victories in the revolutionary struggle in the forthcoming year. We wish to achieve these victories in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the NPA. We can reap great victories by continuing to seize the initiative and launching far more tactical offensives against the enemy than last year.

The US-Arroyo regime is daydreaming by boasting that it can destroy or reduce the NPA to inconsequentiality before 2010. Oplan Bantay Laya 1 failed miserably to destroy a single guerrilla front from 2002 to 2007. Oplan Bantay Laya 2 is bound to fail even more miserably in the few remaining years of the regime. The regime itself is in grave trouble and is on the brink of an ignominious downfall.

The crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system is worsening rapidly. This oppressive and exploitative system will rot faster than ever before as the crisis of the world capitalist system has resulted in a global depression, unprecedented since the Great Depression, due to the unravelling of the US-dictated policies of “neoliberal globalization” and “global war on terror.” The conditions are exceedingly favourable for the people’s war in the Philippines and for all forms of revolutionary anti-imperialist resistance by the people throughout the world.

I. The World Capitalist System in the Throes of Depression

The world capitalist system is in the throes of a depression. Gone are the days when the abuse of credit could facilitate sales and conjure the illusion of growing economies. The core of the system, which is the US, is exposed as afflicted by a grave economic and financial crisis and is generating waves of economic and social ruin in all imperialist countries, in the largest so-called emerging markets and worse than ever before in the general run of underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

At the base of the global crisis is the crisis of overproduction in the real economy. New technology has raised higher the social character of production but has also whipped up the private monopoly character of appropriation. The policy of “neoliberal globalization” has accelerated the concentration and centralization of capital in the US and a handful of monopoly capitalist countries through the denationalization of the less developed countries, liberalization of investments and trade, privatization of public assets and deregulation, against the social rights of the working people, women, children and the environment.

The maximization of monopoly profit through the expansion of constant capital and the reduction of the wage fund and social spending by the government in the US and other imperialist countries has contracted global and domestic markets and have steadily resulted in the decline of industrial production and the increase of unemployment. More efficient means of transport and communications have pushed the imperialist powers to outsource the manufacturing of consumer goods in a few less developed countries like China and India in which the cost of labor is far lower. The high end of industrial production, especially of goods which are most profitable or are related to military policy and war, is retained. Growth of irregular employment in the service sector has failed to make up for the general decline of regular employment in the industrial sector.

Since the onset of the 1980s, the imperialist policy makers have presumed that growing the economy is merely a matter of making available an abundant supply of money and credit and countering the boom-and-bust cycles of capitalism with gentle manipulation of interest rates and with the least state intervention in the so-called free market. The fundamental crisis of overproduction has been recurrent and has become worse from period to period but it has been covered up by ever increasing doses of credit for generating consumption, piling debt on debt and pure speculation.