PERSONAL RIFTS aside, differences that later gave substance to demarcations on theoretical and tactical questions among RJ groups were apparent from the very beginning. Such differences, recalls Reyes, revolved around how the RJs looked at the past and how they saw the future.

One side took to the KRMR Counter-Thesis, developed by Lagman, that views the crisis in the revolutionary movement as a crisis of the "Maoist tendency in the Philippines." In general, this says the CPP's theoretical line was erroneous from the very start, when the CPP was founded in 1968. It claims that "the CPP is Stalinist-Maoist in orientation, an aberration of real Marxism-Leninism. The Party's understanding of class realities in the Philippines is similarly erroneous in that it overplayed the role of the peasantry and underplayed the role of the working class. Instead of a protracted people's war (PPW), it should have been a working class-based and -led insurrection strategy."

The other was Reyes's formulation. Reyes did not find fault in the national-democratic framework of th revolution, its class analysis, the armed struggle and the working class-peasant alliance. But he took exception to the protracted people's war strategy. In a recent interview with PCIJ, he argued, "My only point is, sometime in the 1980s after the period of experience, and after study, the PPW was no longer appropriate. We might as well shift to a political-military combination strategy. It's combination of an insurrectional approach in the urban areas and armed struggle for the countryside."

The KRMR counter-thesis held sway over those who do not see the presence of a "revolutionary situation" to merit the primacy of armed struggle at all times as waged by the CPP-NPA-NDF. This, and some other basic positions served as basis for the establishment of Marxist-Leninist parties both clandestine — RPM, Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino (PMP) — and legal — SPP. Even the 'Bloke,' the mainstream KRMR that ousted Lagman, is said to have consolidated its ranks under the politico-military framework, which combines armed and mass struggles.

Set up just this year, the PMP embraces Marxist-Leninist orthodox teachings on the socialist revolution, the working class party and movement. While it acknowledges that the revolution is still in the national democratic stage, the party adheres to a Marxist concept of a continuing revolution that is not dependent on the ND revolution's victory.

To the PMP, a revolutionary movement in a Third World country sans an armed force is unimaginable. But while it doesn't discount the inevitability of the revolution leading to war, it believes this must happen in the context of the developments of the class struggle. Thus, it views the protracted people's war strategy as a vulgarization of the concept of armed revolution. Says a PMP leader: "They're like the alchemists concocting artificial conditions to create a revolution. The artificial condition is the armed struggle. It's like a script, because since 1968 Joma had mapped out how the revolution was going to advance — strategic defensive, strategic stalemate, strategic offensive. Just like a three-act play."

The RPM, for its part, espouses a similar return to orthodox Marxism-Leninism. It views Philippine society as basically capitalist though in a backward or "maldeveloped" stage. The main vehicle of the revolution is the open mass movement and is working class-led. Unlike the PMP, though, RPM retains an army in the countryside, the merged Revolutionary Proletarian Army-ABB Negros (RPA-ABB), mainly for defense, considering that democratic institutions are still very weak.

Reyes eventually abandoned the Party concept and broached the formula for a united front type of organization within the Third Force bloc. "If you look at the RJ, the whole array of forces and individuals who criticized the RA position, they were already developing different frameworks. Setting up a single organization, a more solid one, could wait. If it's going to be a Party, then let it be a Party."

Such a contentious issue spelled the further break-up of the fragile union as majority still favored establishing a clandestine party, whose expression today is the Partido Proletaryo Demokratiko (PPD). Formed in July 1995 during a Third Force bloc assembly initiated by the NUFC, the PPD upholds Marxism-Leninism, criticizes the CPP's "closed door-ism" to Mao and its curtailment of studies on other Marxist trends and schools of thought. Particular emphasis is given to Marxist humanism in its conduct of revolutionary work that holds human beings as the center of development, whose ultimate end is the liberation of human beings from exploitation by their own kind.

Finding no travelling companions in his united front path, Reyes went his own way and helped form the open mass movement Padayon (Visayan for "continue"). "It is," says Reyes, "a commitment to continue what is good, what is worthwhile, that there is something to be proud about the national democratic struggles." It endeavors to wage democratic struggles like land reform and expanding these to empower the people.