On the United Front

On the book: The Party often finds it necessary to explain that the national united front is mainly for promoting and advancing the revolutionary armed struggle because of the common notion that it is mainly or solely for carrying out all legal forms of struggle, including commonplace expression of political views, electoral competitions and peace negotiations. But in carrying out the people's democratic revolution, the Party wields the national united front as a weapon for strengthening the armed struggle by gaining political allies who can deliver arms to the NPA or can coordinate with the NPA in military operations.

Since 1986, it has been proven that the legal united front tactics can rouse a broad range of forces to converge against a fascist dictatorship and overthrow it. This would be proven again in the overthrow of the corrupt regime of Estrada in 2001. But it takes more than legal united front tactics and gigantic mass actions to overthrow the entire semicolonial and semifeudal system. If the Party and the Filipino people were to win total victory in the new democratic revolution, they would have to combine the armed struggle and the united front in advancing the people's army from the current of strategic defensive to the further stage of the strategic stalemate and further on to the strategic offensive.

On the Author: Jose Maria Sison led the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968 as well as the founding of the New People's Army in 1969 and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in 1973. He is now among the world's most outstanding theoreticians in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. He continues to do research and write on Philippine and global issues as a public intellectual.

About the Series: The International Network of Philippine Studies presents the eighth book of the Sison Reader Series: On the United Front. Shortly following will be. GRP-NDFP Peace Negotiations, Socialism: Setbacks and Resurgence, On the Legal Democratic Mass Movement, On the Revolutionary Mass Movement, On the Workers' Movement, On the Peasant Movement and Land Reform, On the Youth Movement, Women in Revolution, On National Minorities and their Right to Self-Determination, Imperialism in the Philippines, Imperialism in Various Global Regions, On Ecology and Environment, On People's Rights, Justice and Peace, and more books in the series.