Pragmatic Purism: The Ideological Dedication of the Communist Party of the Philippines after the Cold War

Abstract

Much of the current research on the 75-year-old communist insurgency in the Philippines suggests that the Communist Party of the Philippines’s (CPP) efforts to overthrow the incumbent government stagnated after 1991. This view is based on two erroneous assumptions. The first stems from the once-popular ‘end of history’ view and is based on the idea that the end of the Cold War was synonymous with the collapse of global communism and thus with the decreasing decisiveness of insurgents that identify with this ideology. The second assumption is that the CPP’s dedication to Maoism is as strong as the movement has claimed since it was founded in 1968. This study aims to challenge this limited and outdated view by examining the extent to which the Communist Party of the Philippines’ dedication to Maoism and its accompanying military strategy has altered since 1991. It does so by making a distinction between the movement’s public and private activities. Public activities are examined through the party’s frequent and widely accessible publications. Private activities are represented by the ideas of founder and ideological leader Jose Maria Sison, who was interviewed for this research in March and December 2020. What became clear is that although the movement continued to affirm its strict ideological and strategical dedication after 1991 publicly, the private ideas during this period show an increasing tendency towards a more pragmatic, revisionist approach.