COMMUNIST PARTY 41ST ANNIVERSARY

The Communist party of the Philippines is now 41 years in the Philippines. We understand that the principle of communism is equality for everybody. Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the working class.

The communist party (CPP) continues to struggle to achieve these objectives even if it will costs them so much. They will continue to pursue communism even if it will cost them their lives. Revolution as they call it.

The working class originated in the industrial revolution, which took place in England in the last half of the last (18th) century, and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of the world. It all began when the steam engine was invented and other manufacturing equipments that would require manual labor to operate. The existence of industry has replaced the practice of slavery but retained the division of classes between rich and poor. This division is called the division between the capitalist and the proletariat or the working class.

The difference between the working class and the slaves is that slaves have no freedom from their masters while the working class are free but often controlled by their employers and the industry practice. The industry is often accused of manipulating the economy to increase capitalist returns while the working class remains always at the mercy of the industrialists. The working class just gets what is minimum wage, often set by the industry, while the capilists enjoys huge returns. There is not much of a difference after all.

If we look back to the history of communism, it all started in Russia. Russia was ruled by a monarchy that wielded absolute power over the people: the Romanov Dynasty. Czar Nicholas II and his wife resisted the shift toward democracy that much of the world was making. The members of Russia's lower classes had long suffered in poverty. These two factors, combined with the huge losses suffered during World War I, made the czar very unpopular. In addition, he and his family were living in luxury while their subjects struggled for basic necessities.

A famine broke out during the world war I in Feb 1917 which brought Russia in chaos. Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his throne. The Russian Provisional Government was set up to take his place, effectively ending the Romanov Dynasty. Vladimir Linen who opposed to war was leading his communist party, got the support of the people and thereby overthrew the Russian provisional Government.

Manipulation also existed even in communism just to get the message across. Lenin was aware that the upper class wouldn't willingly give up land or wealth, so he created the New Economic Policy (NEP) to legislate redistributing land -- taking it from the nobility and giving it to the poor. Upholding the necessary phases that Marx outlined, Lenin initiated the Red Terror, a threatening fear campaign led by the Bolsheviks. His goal was mass murder, which he accomplished through three main methods.

Man-made famine was Lenin's most successful tool. He knew that if he could break the peasantry, he'd have full control. Lenin engineered famines by requiring peasants to sell their crops to him at virtually no profit, using the rationale that he needed the crops to support his army. The peasantry was so indignant that they reduced crop production drastically, leading to a full-scale civil war. The exact numbers vary, but tens of millions of people starved and millions died.

Lenin also instituted slave labor camps. Anyone who disagreed with Lenin's rule was sent to work at one of these camps, where millions more suffered and died. And, he executed his detractors to silence their voices. During the Red Terror, hundreds of thousands of detractors were put to death.

There is the beginning of communism. Communist Russia began to be aggressively expanding in its neighboring countries toward Europe after World War II which was evidently halted by the creation of NATO. Since military process is deemed easily recognizable like what happened in Afghanistan during the 1988-89 Rassian invasion, the communist resorted to underground movements where it supports clandestine activities that are geared to destabilize existing democratic fronts.

Communists supports these movement financially. You will not wonder now why these left leaning groups in the Philippines are able to sustain massive demonstrations, mobilizing a huge crowd without draining organizational funds for a long period of time.

41 years of extensive revolt is no ordinary endeavor. We know capitalist America has had its lessons learned in the recent financial crisis, but communist Russia progressed by opening their market to capitalism. We are certain that communism therefore cannot be an answer to the plight of the Filipino people. It may look promising but Some schools of thought insist that communism is simply unsupportable on a large scale.

Therefore, the decline of the USSR was inevitable so will Philippine communist movement. Like the old school Lenin approach of creating a scenario to influence people to buy their idea, manipulating his way to achieve his communistic vision, we can relate that these local communist leaders are also buying their time to ride on peoples' misery, win them to believe and follow a losing proposition.