Believing in the tenets of communism, one of which is the belief in the necessity of revolution to usher in a political transformation that would liberate the working class, which in later variants now include even the peasantry and not just the urban proletariat, is a legitimate ideological stance. Unless acted upon, and while it remains only an idea, then it can only be subjected to discursive challenges, but never as a basis for criminal prosecution.
Communist, Marxist, Maoist or Leninist political parties are perfectly legal in many parts of the world. Some of them even end up governing after winning an election, such as in some states in India.
But there are also countries where communist parties are outlawed, like Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Philippines outlawed communism and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1957 through Republic Act (RA) 1700. However, this was repealed in 1992 through RA 7636. In short, the CPP is technically no longer an illegal organization. The implication of this, therefore, is that mere party membership, or adherence to the communist ideology, is no longer a basis to prosecute individuals. Communism, as an ideology, can also now be freely taught and propagated by people, and there is no criminal liability for anyone adhering to its tenets, as long as these are only as ideas.
What remain crimes are those acts which are treated as such under the Revised Penal Code, considering that RA 7636 did not repeal these. These were reiterated in RA 9372, or the Human Security Act of 2007, where they were collectively labeled as acts that constituted terrorism when committed by any person with the purpose of “sowing and creating a condition of widespread and extraordinary fear and panic among the populace, in order to coerce the government to give in to an unlawful demand.” These include piracy, mutiny, rebellion or insurrection, coup d’etat, murder, kidnapping and serious illegal detention and crimes involving destruction of property.
Despite the repeal of RA 1700, RA 9372 has provided another route by which the illegal status of the CPP could be reinstated. This is by declaring it as a terrorist organization.
However, while President Duterte has declared the CPP as a terrorist organization, such can only become legally binding when a petition filed to declare it as such is upheld by the courts. Specifically, Section 17 of RA 9372 states that “… Any organization, association, or group of persons organized for the purpose of engaging in terrorism, or which, although not organized for that purpose, actually uses the acts to terrorize mentioned in this Act or to sow and create a condition of widespread and extraordinary fear and panic among the populace in order to coerce the government to give in to an unlawful demand shall, upon application of the Department of Justice before a competent Regional Trial Court, with due notice and opportunity to be heard given to the organization, association, or group of persons concerned, be declared as a terrorist and outlawed organization, association, or group of persons by the said Regional Trial Court.”
Any organization judged by the lower court as a terrorist organization, by implication, can have the remedy of appealing such decision to the Court of Appeals and eventually to the Supreme Court. This can effectively suspend the execution of the decision for years, within which the presumption of being a legal organization will remain to be enjoyed by the CPP.
Should the CPP be finally judged as a terrorist organization, the state will still nevertheless be restricted in prosecuting its members not on the mere basis of adhering to communism, but on the acts they commit that violate the law. As a rule, criminal proceedings are initiated against natural persons, hence only individual members of the CPP who perform such acts can be held liable. Once declared illegal as a terrorist organization, it is even doubtful if the state can argue that the entire leadership of the group can be held accountable in the same way as officers of juridical entities are held liable under certain conditions. This is because juridical entities are non-human but legal entities, and any judgment that will bestow upon the CPP the illegal status of being a terrorist organization would extinguish the legal personality it acquired when RA 1700 was repealed by RA 7636.
In the absence of judicial affirmation of being a terrorist organization, adherence to communism, and even mere membership with the CPP, if not coupled with actual acts prohibited by law, are not grounds for criminal prosecution. This is precisely why the Philippine National Police (PNP) chose to file cases of kidnapping and human trafficking against the so-called Talaingod 18 composed of Satur Ocampo, France Castro and others, even as rebellion, murder, arson, possession of illegal arms and other related crimes are the usual grounds for detaining and prosecuting suspected NPA cadres, and not because they are members of the CPP.
This is also precisely why the allegations made against Lumad schools that are accused of teaching the communist ideology to children can only be dealt with administratively by the Department of Education. Only when laws are violated, such as laws prescribing the proper singing of the national anthem and penalizing any violation thereof, or on child abuse where direct recruitment of children to become child warriors is prohibited, that criminal proceedings can be initiated but only against the parties who commit the act and not on the entire faculty and staff of the school.
Communism started out as an ideology that wanted to liberate people from oppression. Eventually, it was appropriated, bastardized and corrupted by authoritarian despots like Pol Pot. China remains ruled by the Communist Party of China but whose ideological coherence has deviated a lot from what communism meant to Karl Marx, its ideological father who theorized it as the final stage of history rising from the ashes of the fall of capitalism, and Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader who appropriated it and customized it to fit the needs of China that was characterized not by capitalism but by an agrarian economy. One can even say that communism in China has transmogrified into a defacto capitalism.
At present, the communist ideology remains a theoretical construct, even if the practices it inspired and engendered may have trampled upon it to a point that it has mutated into something that is beyond recognition. What is needed, therefore, is to discern the discursive complexity of what communism is, and what it has become, and avoid making generalizations that only privilege the actions of those who simply use it as a label, but have long abandoned its teachings.
Communism is an ideological construct that needs a lot of updating because it may already be outdated. However, adhering to it is not the crime. The crime lies in the prohibited acts of the people who use it to justify their political agendas.
https://www.manilatimes.net/being-a-communist-does-not-make-one-a-criminal/479595/
https://www.manilatimes.net/being-a-communist-does-not-make-one-a-criminal/479595/
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