The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP; Filipino: Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas) is a far-left, Marxist–Leninist–Maoist revolutionary organization and communist party in the Philippines, formed by Jose Maria Sison on 26 December 1968 following a split in the original Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas.
The CPP has been fighting a protracted people's war against the state since its establishment. Its goal is to carry out a national democratic revolution and establish a people's democracy guided by a communist vanguard party. The CPP's application of Marxism-Leninism to the particularities of the Philippines is captured in its ideology of National Democracy.
Although its ranks initially numbered around 500, the party grew quickly, supposedly due to the declaration and imposition of martial law by former president and dictator Ferdinand Marcos during his 21-year rule. By the end of Marcos' rule of the country, the number of combatants had expanded to include more than 10,000 fighters. In 2019, Sison claimed that the number of its members and supporters is growing, despite claims by the Philippine government that the organization is close to being destroyed. The organization remains an underground operation, with its primary goals being to overthrow the Philippine government through armed revolution and remove U.S. influence over the Philippines. It consists of the National Democratic Front, a coalition of other revolutionary organizations in the Philippines with aligning goals; the Kabataang Makabayan, which serves as its youth wing; and the New People's Army, which serves as its armed wing.
The CPP claims to be the largest Marxist–Leninist–Maoist formation in the world, with the organization claiming to have 150,000 members, while other sources claim the membership to have peaked at 25,000 members in the late 1980s with membership dwindling ever since.
It has been designated as a terrorist group by the United States Department of State, together with Sison and the New People's Army, since 2002. The European Union renewed its terrorist designation on the organization in 2019, though a 2009 ruling by the EU's second highest court delisted Sison as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze assets. According to the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, the CPP and the NPA aims to destabilize the Philippines' economy and overthrow the national government.
Philippine president and former student of Sison Rodrigo Duterte declared the group a terrorist organization in 2017, though the CPP-NPA has not yet been legally declared as a terrorist group by Philippine courts.
The original Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP, later PKP-1930) was founded on November 7, 1930 and was born out of the local labour movement with its core consisting of former members of the Partido Obrero de Filipinas, an earlier Marxist party. Initially formed under the wings of the CPUSA, the PKP established the Hukbalahap in 1942 first as a guerilla group against the Japanese but later extended their goal into a rebellion against the Philippine government and formally integrated the force as their armed wing, the Army of National Liberation (Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan, HMB). By the mid-1950s, after the decisive defeat of the HMB, the PKP abandoned the armed struggle and announced its plans to partake in elections. This was made impossible by the Anti-Subversion Act of 1957 outlawing the party and its front organisations. In the face of the anti-communist campaign the party effectively went into hiding, limiting contact between members and ceasing to recruit new ones.
It was during this time that a young Jose Maria Sison organized a Marxist study group called the Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines (SCAUP), counting in its rank many of the future revolutionary leaders of the CPP such as Satur Ocampo. Through connections to the Communist Party of Indonesia he was exposed to the writings of Mao Zedong which left a big impression. After working for a while in the PKP-led Lapiang Manggagawa Sison was appointed to the PKP's Executive Committee in January 1963. As head of the PKP's youth wing he founded and chairmaned Kabataang Makabayan in 1964. Kabataang Makabayan would function as the primary source of new recruits for the PKP, but, aligning with Sison, they demanded the party to take a more active stance against U.S. imperialism, the Philippine government and landlords who controlled the means of rural production.
In December 1965 Sison submitted a report constituting a critical review of the PKP's entire history to be debated in Congress. This report which would later be given the title of "Rectify Errors and Rebuild the Party" (RERP) identified key problems with the PKP under the leadership of the Lava brothers (Vicente, José and Jesus) which spanned from 1942 to 1964. It critiziced the party for being "city-based" and opting for "bourgeois parliamentary struggle" after World War II. Intended as a piece of criticism and self-criticism calling for a "thorough rectification campaign", RERP was shelved by party leadership and Sison was expelled from the PKP in April 1967.
While the PKP Central Committee declared his expulsion, Sison and his followers insisted on the opposite and on December 26, 1968 "re-established" the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) on the foundations of Mao Zedong Thought and on the occasion of Mao Zedong's 75th birthday. The "Congress of Reestablishment" was held in a barrio in Alaminos, Pangasinan near the home of relatives of Arthur Garcia, one of the founders of the CPP. Sison later claimed that he and Garcia were joined by nine other delegates attending the congress and two lookouts from a Manila trade union. Among the attendees of the Congress of Reestablishment were Monico Atienza, Rey Casipe, Leoncio Co, Manuel Collantes, Herminihildo Garcia, Ruben Guevara, Art Pangilinan, Nilo Tayag and Fernando Tayag. Jose Luneta who was in China on party business was elected into the Central Committee in absentia. One of the lookouts was identied by Sison as Mariano "Ka Duma" Lacsa who would go on to become a local leader in the CPP's Northern Luzon Central Committee.
In 1969, Bernabe Buscayno, one of the very few active HMB guerilla leaders left in the 1960s joined Sison, and on March 29, 1969 they established the New People's Army (NPA) as the armed wing of the CPP with the goal of overthrowing the government. The founding of a people's army trained in guerilla warfare was central to the Maoist military strategy of the protracted people's war which the CPP included in its 1968 Program for a People's Democratic Revolution as the central means to overthrow the government. Buscayno has previously broken with both the PKP and Commander Sumulong who oversaw the transformation of most of the Central Luzon HMB forces from a revolutionary army to a lucrative crime syndicate.
Later reports would situate the reestablishment of the communists amid a peak in civil unrest in the late 1960s due to escalating poverty across the country and the rising unpopularity of the Vietnam War. Rising tensions especially accompanied the election and first term of President Ferdinand Marcos who funded and made use of organized crime forces, and sent troops aiding the USA and South Vietnam into the war.
While some scholars cite the Sino-Soviet split as a central reason for the ideological split in the PKP, others such as Francisco Nemenzo, a former member of the PKP-1930, refused this explanation:
The schism was not a local expression of the international dispute between the Soviet and Chinese parties but the offshoot of a generational rift between the remnants of an aborted rebellion and the new elements who were spared the trauma of defeat.
Second Great Rectification Movement (1992–1998)
In the 10th plenum of the CPP, the party engaged in a "second rectification movement" that reviewed and corrected the errors that created havoc on the revolutionary movement for more than a decade since its founding in 1968.