(This article, the first of two parts, appeared in the September 11 issue of the French-language fortnightly Inprecor, published in Paris. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Today Thailand and the Philippines are the two Southeast Asian countries in which there is the greatest growth in mass anti-imperialist struggles. The opening of the Sino-Indochinese crisis should not lead us to ignore or downplay the importance of these struggles for the international workers movement and national liberation struggles.
Quite the contrary, the development of a strong revolutionary mass movement in the ASEAN countries! would break the noose encircling the Indochinese revolutions.
More generally, there is the possibility in that region, as well as in South Korea, of a new extension of the revolution in East Asia, extending the victories won in China (1949) and in Indochina (1954-1975).
Nonetheless, the situation in Thailand and the Philippines remains largely unknown outside the region, and solidarity activities are largely limited to small circles of activists. But it is necessary to lay the groundwork for broadening the international support movement. The struggles in the Philippines and Thailand have, in fact, reached a turning point in their history. They have begun to undergo-or can undergo in the coming period-qualitative growth.
At the same time, they are largely isolated on the regional level. They are also subject to the contradictions and tensions that arise from the Sino-Indochinese conflicts, and to the pressure of U.S. and Japanese imperialism. They face dictatorial regimes that do not hesitate to use the police and army against them.
Because of both the possibilities and difficulties they confront, the revolution ary struggles in Southeast Asia deserve support from a vast international solidarity movement. But broadening solidarity work, under present conditions, can take place only very gradually.
And if we are to succeed in broadening the solidarity movement, we must first understand and discuss the basic problems posed before the revolutionary movements of the region and the solidarity movement, because, as we shall see, there is a problem.
This article is written within this perspective. It seeks to provide information and some elements of analysis regarding the present evolution of the revolutionary movements in Thailand and the Philippines. It also seeks to provide greater understanding of the need to strengthen solidarity activities today. It seeks to open a discussion on some political questions that are key to both the future of the struggles in the region and the strengthening of international support.
A Key Region
The geopolitical importance of Southeast Asia has already been proven. It is a pivotal area controlling communications between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Rich in raw materials and with a rather large market, Southeast Asia is an area of growing economic investments from the United States, Japan, and other imperialist powers. In addition, no other region anywhere has been swept by such a long succession of confrontations between revolution and counterrevolution as has dominated the history of East Asia since the beginning of the century.
Today Southeast Asia is still the arena of important regional and international class confrontation. It is perhaps the region of the Third World where the role of the Communist movement has been (and remains) the greatest, where the number of victorious socialist revolutions has been the greatest, and where the Sino-Soviet conflict and the Sino-Indochinese conflicts have the most direct consequences.
Since the victory of the Indochinese revolutions in 1975, the center of gravity of mass anti-imperialist struggles in the region has shifted toward Thailand and the Philippines, each of which has a population of nearly 50 million.
In Indonesia, the most important coun try in the region in terms of population and economic resources, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was ruthlessly crushed in 1965. (The PKI was one of the largest CPs in the world outside of the workers states). This has had a lasting impact. As far as we can tell, the Communist movement in Indonesia no longer exists in an organized form, or rather exists only embryonically. What remains of the PKI is largely in exile, split between Moscow and Peking.
On the other hand, in East Timor, at the far end of the Indonesian archipelago near
Australia, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) and the masses came together to fight the army of Indonesian dictator Suharto when it overran the former Portuguese colony. Resistance to the occupation continues, although under extremely difficult conditions.
It is impossible to judge how deeply rooted the Communist Party of Malaya is or the scope of the two splits that shook it in the early and middle 1970s. But the bulk of its guerrilla forces are confined to the Thai side of Malaysia's northern border, and in the past period in Malaysia and Singapore social struggles have not been able to establish themselves in a lasting way in the face of the repression.
In Burma there have been important movements of national resistance, but in the absence of widespread class struggles, although in some border areas the forces of the Communist Party may have seen some growth.
By contrast, in Thailand and in the Philippines there was an unprecedented growth in class struggles in the 1970s. In Thailand there was the explosion of strikes and peasant and worker mobilizations after the Thanom-Prapass military dictatorship fell in October 1973 due to the pressure of vast, quasi-insurrectional student and popular demonstrations. Then after the bloody October 1976 coup, the guerrillas became qualitatively and quantitatively stronger.
In the Philippines there was a rapid radicalization of the student movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and then a continuous extension of social mobilizations and areas of guerrilla activity from region to region and island to island. At the same time there was a considerable growth in the armed resistance of the Moro people, who are Muslims, in the southern part of the Philippine islands.
In Thailand and the Philippines, with the exception of the Muslim regions, Communist parties of Maoist orientation were the only revolutionary organizations able to intervene on a national scale. Organized far-left forces in these countries remain uncommon today.
For a long time Southeast Asia was the last region of the world where parties that stemmed directly from the Third International (or quasi-directly, as in the case of the Thai CP) had neither achieved victory (as in Yugoslavia or China), become reformist, or been destroyed by repression, but had rather remained involved in revolutionary battles. This situation began to change, first with the political bankruptcy of the Indonesian CP-whose reformist character was already well-established before it was crushed without being able to resist-and then with the victory of the Indochinese revolutions.
But the special history of the communist movement in Southeast Asia and the influence of the Chinese revolution remain crucial to understanding the movements struggling in Thailand and the Philippines.
This is true for the Communist Party of Thailand (CT), which retains a certain continuity with the Communist movement of the period of the Second World War and earlier. But it is also true of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), even though that party was established only recently. The revolutionary movement of the whole region was to one degree or another stamped by the early history of the Communist movement in Southeast Asia.
Communist Parties at the Crossroads
The Thai and Philippine CPs have different origins. The Thai CP goes back to 1930. It was officially founded in 1942, after the Communist Party of Siam was largely destroyed by repression. The Philippine CP, on the other hand, was only established in 1968, in a split with the pro- Moscow Communist Party.
For a long period the growth of the Communist Party of Thailand was slow, and it suffered serious setbacks.? After it was driven from the cities by the repression, its base was mainly in the areas inhabited by the ethnic minorities (in the north), and in the outlying regions of the country (the northeast and south).
By contrast, the Communist Party of the Philippines grew rapidly after it was formed a dozen years ago by a handful of members, with about seventy-five sympathizers around them. A year later the CP's guerrilla organization, the New People's Army (NPA), was established with sixty members and thirty-five weapons of questionable quality.
Today the CPP and the NPA each have several thousand members (more than half the members of the NPA being members of the CP as well. Twenty-six "guerrilla fronts" have been set up in eleven regions outside of the Manila-Rizal area, where the
See also Andrew Turton, Jonathan Fast, and Malcolm Caldwell, eds., Thailand: Roots of Conflict (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1978).
Inprecor published an article on the Thai CP in its April 10, 1977 issue.
WOER
Students fleeing attack on Thammasat University during military take-over of Thailand in October 1976. Coup prompted many to join guerrilla forces.
capital is located.3 Moreover, the political influence and direct participation of CP members is felt in many mass struggles carried out by peasants and agricultural workers, industrial workers and urban slum dwellers, mountain tribes, and students. It is clear that the CP has developed a real mass base in the Philippines, although its base still varies depending on the region.
The same thing happened with the Thai CP in the years 1973-76. Before 1973 it had roots in regions such as the northeast and the non-Muslim south. The fall of the military dictatorship and three consecutive years of semi-democracy and intense social struggles allowed it to win a new base in a a number of factories in the Bangkok region, in the student movement, and among peasants in the northern plain.
Some of these gains were lost in the repression that followed the October 6, 1976 coup. A number of working-class and student activists fled the capital and took refuge in the guerrilla zones, and legal peasant organizations such the as
Farmers Federation of Thailand were decimated. But at the same time the People's Liberation Army of Thailand grew rapidly, to more than 10,000 members. And the earlier social, political, and geographic growth in the CP ranks did not disappear.4
The growth in the influence of the Thai and Philippine CPs takes place in a dual context. In the first place, new social contradictions are coming to a head in these countries. The urban centers are expanding rapidly (Bangkok has between 4 and 5 million inhabitants, and Manila between 6 and 8 million, depending on which estimate you use). The student youth are faced with a crisis in job opportunities. A modest process of industrialization is taking place. The peasantry is undergoing a process of pauperization and differentiation, which is especially linked to the spread of market relations into the countryside.
In addition, the system of imperialist domination in the entire region has gone into crisis with the defeat that the Indochinese revolutions inflicted on the U.S. military forces.
The Thai CP and Philippine CP have been able to win over the most radical wing of the new revolutionary generations that arose in the struggles of the 1970s. Through this process they strengthened (in Thailand) or won (in the Philippines) a central place in the active far-left that is largely unchallenged, except perhaps by reformist currents.
But today they face important difficul ties, in terms of both consolidating the gains of the previous period and making the political reorientations called for by the rapid changes in the national and international situation.
These difficulties have been seen most sharply in Thailand. Many students who joined the guerrilla struggle after the 1976 coup have returned to Bangkok. Some of the principal leaders of the Socialist Party and the United Socialist Front, which had joined the armed struggle in 1976 and with the CP had set up the Committee for Coordinating Patriotic and Democratic Forces in 1977, quit the united front in 1979 and took refuge in Laos or returned to the capital. Some soldiers of the People's Liberation Army of Thailand, including Therdpoom Jaidi, a former ranking union leader, also left the jungle and crossed the Mekong into Laos.
These splits and individual departures did not break the organizational backbone of the Thai CP or appreciably reduce its national implantation. It is not the first time that that party has gone through small splits. Apparently there were even larger ones in the past that involved members of the leadership apparatus, including a member of the Political Bureau.
Moreover, while new Marxist currents opposed to the CP's line took shape during the crisis in the resistance movement, no competing political organization has arisen (either in Bangkok or in Laos), at least publicly. It is doubtful that any such organizations with an active rank and file exist at present.
But one cannot judge the real political importance of these recent developments on a numerical basis alone. The basic problems that have developed in the last two years in the Thai resistance are actu ally much deeper than a "quantitative" analysis of the split might lead one to believe.
The majority of the students who left the guerrilla zones did not, however, break politically with the party. Quite often they left because of the difficulties that young city dwellers encountered when they suddenly found themselves in camps in the middle of the jungle where no real preparations had been made to receive the sudden influx of new recruits driven en masse to the zones controlled by the CP by their fear of governmental repression.
Often too, the departures were hastened by frictions that arose between the students and local cadres of peasant extraction in the guerrilla camps.
But a number of basic questions lie behind these departures. One was the lack of democratic functioning and politicoideological life in numerous camps and in the CP apparatus itself. Another question was how to integrate new generations trained in the 1970s into a cadre established in the 1950s and 1960s, since the new generation had very different political experiences from those of the preceding generations, especially in terms of mass work.
Moreover, some splits have taken place on the basis of a worked-out political criticism of the Thai CP's line. Although the criticism is not necessarily accompanied by the development of a positive alternative line, it directly touches on a whole series of real questions: the analysis of the social structure in Thailand; the strategic balance between rural and urban work; the functioning of the united front; the nature of the close relations between the Thai CP leadership and Peking; the Thai CP leadership's political alignment with the Chinese CP, in particular regarding the Indochina question; the ideological basis of the party; and so on.°
The people who left for political reasons in that period were the Thai reflection of the marked escalation of the Sino-Indochinese crisis in 1979. A layer of members, who had already been critical, viewed the break between the Thai Communist Party leadership and the Vietnamese and Laotian leaderships as a sign that the Thai CP was irreversibly lined up with Peking, whose international orientation they condemned.
But the political debate that opened up at that time was concerned at least as much with the strategy of the national revolutionary movement as with regional questions. That debate revealed the existence of a whole series of older disagreements which continue to nurture unofficial discussions within the Thai CP itself and among the party's sympathizers.
There are apparently quite a few CP members and sympathizers who share some of the criticisms of the Thai CP leadership put forward by the "splitters." Some even share the fundamental criticisms. But they feel there is no viable alternative to the Thai CP and the debate should be carried out within it and with it.
No comparable crisis exists in the CP in the Philippines. The movement there continues to grow while, for the moment, the progress of the Thai resistance seems stalled. The Philippine CP leadership's relations with Peking differ markedly from those of the Thai CP, and the apparatus is also clearly much younger.
In addition, the Philippines do not have any common border with Indochina, and the Philippine CP is not as directly af fected by the repercussions of the Sino-Indochinese conflicts as the Thai CP. Nonetheless, in terms of political positions, we can discern a number of problems that are similar to those seen so sharply in the crisis of the Thai resistance.
Is the Chinese Bureaucracy Internationalist?
One of the main contradictions the Thai and Philippine CPs confront is their policy regarding the Chinese Communist Party. How can formations that have been involved in ongoing revolutionary struggles in their own country continue to support Peking's international policy at a time when the Chinese bureaucracy is cynically and openly carrying out a counterrevolutionary orientation throughout the region?
Of course this is not to defend the policy of the Soviet bureaucracy, whose own record includes the betrayal of a goodly number of revolutions. The Soviet bureaucracy even bears the historic responsibility for the Sino-Soviet split, sealed in 1960 by the sabotage of Chinese economic development, the international isolation of Peking as the price of the Moscow-Washington accords reached at Camp David, and the transfer over time of one-third of the Soviet army to the Chinese border.
But the Chinese CP's policy must be subjected to the same critical analysis as that of the Soviet CP.
For a long time Maoist activists in Southeast Asia would try to explain the contradictions that developed between their own struggle and Chinese diplomacy by distinguishing between "government to government relations" (the realm of Chinese diplomacy) and "party to party relations (through which Peking was supposed to continue to support their liberation struggle). But it is no longer possible to try to analyze the orientation of the Chinese bureaucracy in those terms.
At a given moment, the policy of a revolutionary government (forced to establish diplomatic and commercial relations with a reactionary government) may not necessarily coincide with, or take place on the same plane as, the policy of the party, which is the principal instrument for carrying out an internationalist orientation. But the policy of the government and the policy of the party cannot be contradictory.
Does anyone still believe that the Chinese party supports revolutionary struggles in countries such as Thailand and the Philippines at the very time that the Chinese government seeks to ally itself as closely as possible with the ASEAN regimes? Or that the Chinese party calls on the Japanese proletariat to fight against the rearmament of Japanese imperialism at a time when the government clearly and openly declares that it hopes that Tokyo's military potential will be rapidly increased? Or that the Chinese party supports the struggles of the peoples of Southeast Asia against Japanese and U.S. imperialism while the government is calling on the U.S. not to withdraw from the Pacific?
On such fundamental questions, the basic orientation of the party and the government must be identical; and there is no doubt that this orientation is counterrevolutionary. In the name of the struggle against "the principal enemy" (Soviet "social imperialism") the Chinese bureaucracy seeks to stabilize the regional situation (meaning to safeguard the neocolonial regimes from a possible extension of the revolution) while isolating and weakening the Indochinese regimes (which is precisely where imperialism has suffered one of its most bitter defeats).
The climate has changed quite a bit among the Philippine and Thai revolutionary activists. Even three or four years ago it was nearly impossible to raise questions the internationalist character of about Peking's policy and receive a hearing (except from militants who were especially open to the international realities).
Today the discussion is opening in wider and wider circles. But people still respond that we should not be "too quick in judging" Chinese orientations. "Too quick"? It has now been more than ten years since they began to put the present policy into effect, enough time to see it applied on all the continents. The record is eloquent!
In Africa: Peking sent military advisers to the disgraceful Mobutu regime in Zaire; together with the South African apartheid regime it provided military aid to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
In the Middle East: There was Peking's remarkable show of support for the shah of Iran during Hua Guofeng's visit to Tehran. Hua's visit came at the very moment when the masses of Iran were mobilizing in demonstrations of rarely equaled size, despite the repression, and were calling for vengeance against the tyrant. The support for the shah also involved the shameful abandonment of one of the main guerrilla struggles in the region, the struggle in Dhofar. The Dhofari guerrillas (who claimed adherence to Maoism!) were battling the Iranian army, the regional gendarme of the neocolonial order.
In Europe: There was Peking's support for strengthening European integration; the publicity it gave to anticommunist proposals made by extreme right-wing generals under the pretext that they were also anti-Soviet; the portrayal of the French and Belgian imperialist military intervention in Zaire as a model for the alliance between the "second" and "third" worlds.
In Asia: Peking studiously ignored the Bengali people's right to national self-determination; it supported the Sri Lankan regime's brutal repression of the country's rural youth and the People's Liberation Front (JVP) movement in 1971.
In East Asia: The Chinese regime stabbed the Indochinese revolutions in the back during Nixon's trip to Peking (and then on to Moscow) while Hanoi and Haiphong were subjected to unprecedented U.S. bombing.
In Latin America: The immediate support for Pinochet in Chile, at the very moment when the new regime was unleashing mass repression that was denounced throughout the world for its violence.
The list is endless. One could say that the present orientation of the Chinese leadership is the opposite of the positions Peking proclaimed in the early 1960s, positions that allowed China to bring around it, against Moscow, the living forces of numerous liberation movements. In those years the Chinese bureaucracy put forward the "anti-imperialist and antirevisionist" line officially giving priority to support for liberation struggles. They denounced the line of "peaceful coexistence" and "détente" with imperialism that the Soviet bureaucracy was putting forward.
Even then the real Chinese policy could differ from the orientation that was seemingly put forward, as shown by China's unprincipled support for Pakistan against the Bengali liberation struggle, or Mao's support for Aidit's reformist orientation in the Indonesian CP.
But generally, following the Sino-Soviet split, Chinese policy helped liberation movements to escape the straitjacket of "peaceful coexistence" that the Soviet bureaucracy tried to impose on them.
There has never been any official expla nation of the radical change in Peking's international orientation. It simply reflects the narrow needs of the Chinese bureaucracy's diplomacy. The only public change was in how the Soviet Union was officially characterized. It went from being revisionist, to capitalist, and then to socialimperialist (although there has never been any serious basis put forward for these changes).
NPA fighter in the Philippines.
Today Peking is doing exactly what it (rightly) castigated Moscow for. The Chinese bureaucracy has, like the Soviet bureaucracy, written off revolutionary struggles and seeks to establish an agreement of peaceful coexistence with U.S., Japanese, and European imperialism against the Soviet Union. What does this kind of policy have to do with defense of liberation struggles and of the world revolution?
The 'Principal Enemy'
In both the Thai and Philippine CPs there is a contradiction between the international and national positions they take. In 1978 the leadership of the Thai CP officially adopted the "Three Worlds" theory put forward by Peking, and the Philippine CP denounced Soviet "social imperialism" as one of the "two superpowers."
But both of these parties continue to assert that in their own countries the "principal enemy" is still U.S. imperialism and the reactionary regimes in power.
The Thai Communist Party has not published any official position paper in its own name, although the Committee for Coordinating Patriotic and Democratic Forces and the Socialist Party have done so. But given the CP's influence over these two organizations, we can take their declarations as reflecting the present official line of the Communist Party leadership, which is confirmed by a series of interviews and discussions with leaders and members of the CP.
Responding to a letter sent to the Thai CP and the Committee for Coordinating Patriotic and Democratic Forces by the French Solidarity Committee, the CCPDF declared that "today the revolutionary movement considers the Kriangsak government and American imperialism to be the principal enemies." The SP (or at least that faction of the SP that remains loyal to the alliance with the CP) noted in its declaration published at the conclusion of its Third Congress, held April 25, 1980, that "on the international scene, the two superpowers are contending for world domination, provoking, as a result, disorders and wars in various places, including in Southeast Asia. Despite its defeat in the Indochina wars and the significant decline in its influence, U.S. imperialism still firmly dominates Thailand and seeks to maintain its influence in this region. " As a result, the Thai Socialist Party states that it must "maintain its cooperation with the CPT" in order to "resolutely pursue armed struggle with the aim of overthrowing the reactionary government, a puppet of U.S. imperialism."?
Moreover, in a recent interview with an American journalist, which took place in the historic base of the Thai resistance, the Phu Phan Mountains, a leader of the Thai
CP stated that "at present we still regard American imperialism and Kriangsak as our principal enemies. Therefore the report that we are not in favor of the overthrow of Kriangsak is unfounded."
Regarding the new Thai prime minister, Prem Tinsulanonda, the CP leader maintained that he, like Gen. Kriangsak before him, "represents the interest of the imperialists, the [feudal] Sakdina group, and the comprador capitalists. Therefore it is of little import if one replaces the other. The policy cannot change very much."8
The Philippine Communist Party has gone even further in its official declarations (this time issued in its own name). It opens up the debate over who is the "principal enemy" on the international level. The March 29, 1980, declaration of the Military Commission of the Philippine CP Central Committee, published in the party newspaper to commemorate the eleventh anniversary of the founding of the New People's Army, states that:
In recent years Soviet social-imperialism was behind open aggression and occupations carried out in Africa and in eastern and western Asia. ... But, on the other hand, U.S. imperialism is still the real immediate enemy that peoples in many parts of the world must confront. In Asia, Latin America, and Africa, the revolutionary movements are mobilizing to confront U.S. imperialism's control, domination, and interference. American imperialism is trying to recover from the big defeats it suffered and continues to suffer at the hands of the revolutionary peoples. It takes advantage of the growing isolation of Soviet social-imperialism to stem its continuous weakening and to rebuild its earlier strength.
The two superpowers-U.S. imperialism and Soviet social imperialism—are the principal enemies of the peoples of the world today....
It is correct for proletarian parties and revolutionary movements in different countries to pursue their goals on the basis of real conditions. For the Filipino people, it is correct to vigorously carry forward and step up the revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism, while remaining alert to the plans of Soviet socialimperialism.*
In addition, the entire resolution is a call to intensify the struggle against the U.S.- Marcos regime.
We can see that despite the fact that the Philippine CP continues to characterize the Soviet Union as "social imperialist" and puts the two "superpowers" on the same footing, the analysis of the international situation presented here is profoundly different from Peking's analysis, which calls for a broad alliance with the reactionary neocolonial regimes and imperialism against the USSR.
For the Chinese bureaucracy, the "main enemy" today is the USSR (although this could change tomorrow) and its "international line" is based on that.
Regardless of one's analysis of Soviet society and of the ruling bureaucracy's policy, from the vantage point of defense of liberation movements and of the world revolution, there can be no doubt that the "principal enemy" by far remains imperialism (U.S., along with Japanese and European).
To be convinced of this fact one need only glance at a world map. Taking into account "real conditions," note where the USSR could be the main enemy.
This difference in outlook is not restricted simply to things written in documents. The Philippine CP and the New People's Army are involved in a multifaceted struggle against the Marcos regime and the presence of U.S. military bases in their country. Their guerrilla movement may, in the very near future, reach the "advanced stage of strategic defense,"°
meaning the final stage before balance is established between the guerrilla forces and the regime's forces. They are trying to prepare for a qualitative leap forward in revolutionary struggles, both in terms of deepening the mass movements and strengthening the party's military capability.
We will deal later with the contradictions in and the seriousness of the Thai CP's line regarding the Indochinese question. But in Thailand too they hope to enter the "advanced phase of strategic defense." The Thai government is carrying out its repressive policy and hopes to use the crisis that has opened within the resistance to deal it heavy blows.
According to a memorandum prepared by the new prime minister, Gen. Prem, who is known for carrying out a counterinsurgency policy in the northeast, the principal task of the government is to defeat the Thai CP..
Major military battles are constantly taking place. For example, in the south in June Thai CP forces took over a military base, killing twenty-one soldiers and rangers and seizing many weapons in an operation involving more than 100 guerrillas.12 Also in
June the government launched a major offensive in the Phu Phan Mountains, using heavy artillery and air strikes. 13 International Positions of the Philippine CP
An analysis of the international positions taken by the Philippine CP confirms that it wants to maintain an attitude of solidarity with today's big anti-imperialist struggles. But such an analysis also shows the confusion and the dangers in a series of positions that flow from the Maoist analysis that capitalism has been restored in the USSR and that the Soviet Union is "social imperialist."
Finally, it shows how in a number of cases the Philippine CP fails in its internationalist duty to publicly denounce the counterrevolutionary policy of the Chinese bureaucracy, while never hesitating to denounce the policies of the Soviet bureaucracy. "
The Philippine CP saluted the "victory of the Nicaraguan revolution." Following on the heels of the overthrow of the shah of Iran, that victory represents "a big step forward in the world struggle against imperialism" and could have especially important repercussions in Latin America. The Philippine CP saluted the courage of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) but stressed the need to build a "Marxist-Leninist party." Analyzing the presence (in August 1979) of three wings within the FSLN, including a bourgeoisliberal wing, the Philippine CP stated that a "clearly socialist program should be articulated," and stressed the importance of ensuring that the "sacrifices of the people" are not diverted to benefit a "refor-
115 mist path.
But the Philippine CP's positions most clearly contradict those of the Chinese leadership in regard to Iran. The Philippine CP saluted the overthrow of the shah. And in November 1979, when the American hostages were seized in Tehran, it pledged its support for the "struggle carried out by the Iranian people against American imperialism."
*The mass action carried out by the Iranian people," the CP wrote, "is part of their ongoing struggle against U.S. imperialism to achieve their national liberation." It is a correct struggle and "every blow struck against imperialism, socialimperialism, and all the local or internareactionary forces is a good tional thing."16
Here too the Philippine CP stressed the "Iranian people's need for a Marxist-Leninist party in order to win a total victory. It saw the Khomeini leadership as tied to the national and agricultural capitalists and made a very critical assessment of the regime. "Only the working class can lead the revolution," the article asserted. "The working class has proven its uncompromising revolutionary position by placing itself in the forefront of the people's strug gles against the shah and imperialism," despite the negative role of the pro-Moscow Tudeh Party."
To defend Iran the CP campaigned against Washington's use of U.S. military bases in the Philippines to aid the deployment of its naval and air forces in the Indian Ocean and to sit off Iran's shores.1 It denounced U.S. imperialism's attempts to draw "the Filipino people into [its] war preparations."19
In addition, in an issue of BMP (which at least officially is the organ of the National Democratic Front rather than of the CP) there is an analysis of the Cuban leadership that is interesting for several reasons. The article sharply criticizes Cuban intervention in Africa, but it tries to do so from an anti-imperialist point of view.
The article begins by denouncing the Cuban abandonment of the struggle of the Eritrean people: Cuba "at one time helped to train the Eritrean guerrillas. But it abandoned them when the USSR told Cuba to help in the murder of the Eritreans by the Ethiopian tanks." However, the article continues, "the world revolution must be the sole criterion and the people themselves the sole pope. Therefore the most fundamental principle in all national liberation struggles is the right of each national and ethnic group to self-determination, which in essence means the right to secede."
The article also tries to refute the argument that the Eritreans are not worthy of support from communist forces because of the character of their leadership or the fact of possible infiltration of CIA agents into their ranks. Such arguments have no validity "to the extent that [this struggle] has the benefit of a real mass base and receives massive support from the population."
Furthermore, using this criterion, the Philippine CP recognizes the justice of the struggle of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNFL), which is supported by the Muslim population in the southern Philippines. In fact, "a mass uprising of great breadth like that of the MNLF, Polisario [in the Western Sahara], or Fretilin [in East Timor] cannot be artificially created by simple intrigues launched by a handfull of conspirators. *20
This is an important discussion. It is true that recognition of the right to selfdetermination cannot simply be dropped when the liberation struggle involves an entire population. From this vantage point it is necessary to discuss the aid that the USSR and Cuba provide the Ethiopian regime when the Addis Ababa armies are trying to drown the Eritrean rising in blood.
But we should note that the Philippine CP forgets its own principles when it ippines
Bouth Chine
PHILIPPINES
Luzon
Mino
Mindana amboone
Вола
Borned refused to recognize the same right to selffor the Bengali people, determination under the pretext that the Indian bourgeoisie would profit from the breakup of the former Pakistani state.
But that too was a real mass uprising, and armies foreign to the local population (Islamabad's armies) tried to use terror to prevent the secession of eastern Pakistan (what is now Bangladesh).
But in that instance Peking defended the Pakistani dictatorship, with which the Chinese leadership had established special relations.
The previously cited article also attacked the role of the Cubans in Angola, in the same terms as their role in Ethiopia. But in Angola the Cubans intervened at the request of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) only after UNITA had begun to base itself on the United States and South Africa when it was unable to extend its own mass base in Angola and could not stop the victorious progress of the MPLA. By then UNITA, along with the Angolan National Liberation Front (FNLA), had lost any pretense of representing the national liberation struggle in that former Portuguese colony.
UNITA and the FNLA had clearly become imperialism's last hope to stop a revolutionary process. What does the Philippine CP think about the aid the Chinese bureaucracy now gives UNITA, aid that is jointly distributed with aid from South Africa? And what does it think about the Chinese military advisers' role in consolidating Mobutu's bloody regime in Zaïre?
The Philippine CP apparently has nothing to say about these questions.
Silence of this kind makes it difficult to carry out a real discussion on the role of the various regimes that claim to be socialist in today's world. The BMP article on the Cubans in Africa remains cautious in its overall assessment:
"The first deviation from real proletarian internationalism is embodied in the unstable and inconsistent nature of the anti-imperialist line of the USSR and Cuba in Africa. Each year, new national liberation struggles or revolts against white power break out with extraordinary vigor. But Cuba and the USSR have been selective. While supporting some, they subject others to shameless blackmail or, worse, close their eyes to them."21
But if the Philippine CP wants to open this debate, why keep silent about Peking's abandonment of the guerrillas in Dhofar? And why, in the articles cited above, does the CP not acknowledge the Cuban leadership's role in aiding the Nicaraguan revolution?
In regard to solidarity, the main lessons that revolutionary organizations can draw from an analysis of liberation struggles in recent years is that a truly internationalist position can only be developed in total independence from the orientation of Peking as well as Moscow. It was necessary for us to support the Indochinese revolutions (long aided by Peking and Moscow), the mobilizations of the Iranian people (ignored by Peking and Moscow), the Nicaraguan revolution (aided by Cuba), the liberation movements in the former Portuguese colonies in Africa (finally supported by Moscow, and today fought by Peking), the guerrillas in Dhofar (shamefully abandoned by Peking), and Eritrea (abandoned by Moscow).
Support to the revolutionary struggles and liberation movements must start from the interests of the world revolution. Experience has shown that neither the Chinese bureaucracy nor the Soviet bureaucracy care about the interests of the world revolution. Quite the contrary. Therefore revolutionary organizations must determine their positions in total political and ideological independence from both.
But such political and ideological independence can only be developed through an open and frank debate on the policy pursued by Peking, Moscow, and the other workers states. The position of the Philippine CP, and especially the Thai CP, on Indochina shows the importance and urgency of such a debate.
[Next: The positions of the Communist parties on the conflict in Indochina, as well as the evolution of their national strategies.]
Notes
1. ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations, made up of the regimes in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
2. An analysis of the history of the Communist Party of Thailand can be found in Sylvia and Jean Cattori, L'enjeu thailandais (Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, 1979). This is one of the best and most current books on that country. There is a translation of a history of the Thai CP in the Thai Information Bulletin (Paris), No. 15, February 1978.
3. Figures taken from the "Declaration on the Eleventh Anniversary of the New People's Army," published by the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines. See Ang Bayan, special issue of March 29, 1980.
4. This growth of the Thai resistance was capped by the formation of the Committee for Coordinating Patriotic and Democratic Forces (CCPDF) in 1977. On this subject see the dossier published in Issue No. 6 (December 1977) of the Paris Bulletin thai d'information.
5. In issue No. 19 of the Bulletin thai d'information there is an initial and rather complete exposition of the debates and differences that came to light in early 1979 within the Thai resistance.
6. Bulletin thai d'information, Nos. 20 and 21, p. 28.
7. TIC News, (Sweden), May 31, 1980.
8. TIC News, July 15, 1980. Peter Kistemaker's interview with Kem Kongdul, a member of the CP Regional Committee.
9. Ang Bayan, March 29, 1980, pp. 9 and 10.
10. Ang Bayan, March 29, 1980, p. 10.
11. Cited by the Pacific Institute (New York) in its July 1980 document, p. 2.
12. Bangkok Post, June 21, 1980.
13. Bangkok Post, June 23, 1980.
14. It should be noted that I have not been able to consult the entire clandestine press of the CCP. Therefore it is possible that some important articles or positions may have escaped my notice.
15. Ang Bayan, August 15, 1979.
16. Ang Bayan, November 30, 1979.
17. Ang Bayan, December 15, 1978.
18. Ang Bayan, February 29, 1980.
19. Ang Bayan, November 30, 1979.
20. BMP, August 19, 1978, pp. 11-12.
20. BME, August 19, 19ro, PP. - 1114
21. BMP, August 19, 1978, p. 11.