Although its ranks initially numbered around 500, the party grew quickly, supposedly due to the declaration and imposition of martial law by former president and dictator Ferdinand Marcos during his 21-year rule.

In a speech before the US Congress in 1986, President Corazon Aquino accredited the party's rapid growth as being caused by Marcos' attempts to stifle it with the "means by which it grows" with his establishment of martial law, suggesting that other governments view it as a lesson when dealing with communist insurgencies.[1][relevant?]

The European Union[9] renewed its terrorist designation on the organization in 2019,[10] though a 2009 ruling by the EU's second highest court delisted Sison as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze assets.

[11] According to the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, the CPP and the NPA aims to destabilize the Philippines' economy and overthrow the national government.

Jose Maria Sison, allegedly the man behind the nom de guerre Amado Guerrero, confirmed its birth at Barangay Dulacac in the tri-boundary of Alaminos, Bani and Mabini in the province of Pangasinan.

According to Party documents, in the 1960s, a massive leftist unrest called First Quarter Storm occurred in the country to protest against the government policies, graft and corruption and decline of the economy during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos.

The new members advocated to resume what they regarded as the unfinished armed revolution against foreign and feudal domination, referring to what was claimed to be legacy and de facto continuation of the Philippine–American War of 1899, combat subjectivism and opportunism in the history of the old merger party and fight modern revisionism then being promoted by the Soviet Union.

A sharp division and struggle developed between them in ideological and political issues, Sison and his group led the reestablishment of the party after he and his colleagues bolted out from the PKP.

Jesus Lava, the General Secretary of the PKP, was labelled a "counterrevolutionary revisionist", and the new leaders also attacked what they called "the gangster clique" of Pedro Taruc-Sumulong in the old people's army of the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB), remnant of the Hukbalahap in Central Luzon.

[22] The reestablishment was centered on a comprehensive and thoroughgoing criticism and repudiation of modern revisionism and of the leadership of the Lavas in Manila as well as the Taruc-Sumulong grouping which had usurped authority over remnants of the HMB.

Afterwards, the CPP launched the "protracted people's war" a strategical line developed by Mao Zedong during the phase of guerrilla warfare of the Chinese Communist Party.

Despite the arrests of CPP Central Committee members in 1973, 1974, 1976 and 1977, the erstwhile skeletal regional Party organizations gained flesh and muscle from the growth of the armed revolutionary movement and the urban underground.

The document states that these erroneous policies "have caused setbacks through a process of self-constriction and have inflicted unprecedentedly heavy losses in the strength of the Party and the people's army and gross reductions of mass base".

[26][27] The criticism and debates that ensued between the leading party cadres resulted in the expulsion of advocates of "left and right opportunism", notably forming the so-called "rejectionists" and "reaffirmist" factions.

The rejectionists took the lines of "strategic counteroffensive", "regularization", and combining military adventurism with insurrectionism from 1980 onward that overlapped with the reaffirmists who uphold the "correct" revolutionary method of people's war.

[28] In July 1993, the Komiteng Rehiyon ng Manila-Rizal (KRMR), one of the Rejectionists, declared its autonomy from the central leadership: From this day on, we sever our ties with the illegal and absolutist circle that passes itself off as the 'Central Committee' of the CPP ...

It is a principled declaration of independence ... not a secession from the entire Party organization.Within a few months, several of the Party's regional formations and bureaus followed suit: Central Mindanao, Western Mindanao, Negros and Central Visayas, the Visayas Commission (VisCom) staff and New People's Army units under its control, the National Peasant Secretariat, the United Front Commission and the Home Bureau and Western Europe committee.

The KRMR, VisCom and the Central and Western Mindanao regional committees later merged to form the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa – Pilipinas (RPM-P) in 1998.

The KRMR faction led by Filemon Lagman was earlier expelled from the RPM-P due to his "liquidationist" attitude and refusal to help in Party preparations and functions.

The United Front Commission cadres formed the Partido Proletaryo Demokratiko (PPD) which then merged with Lagman's BMP and Melencio's SPP to give rise to the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino-Pinagsanib (BMP-Pinagsanib).

[30] So long as it resolutely, militantly and thoroughly carries out its ideological, political and organizational building, the Communist Party of the Philippines is certain to lead the broad masses of the Filipino people of various nationalities and ethno-linguistic communities to total victory in the national democratic revolution against US imperialism and the local reactionaries; and bring about the start of the socialist revolution.The CPP adheres to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its guiding ideology in analyzing and summing up the experience of the party and its creative application to the concrete conditions in the Philippines in fighting US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

[36][37] In December 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte issued a proclamation declaring the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), as terrorist organizations.

[38][39] The CPP-NPA responded by claiming that the declarations don't represent the will of the Filipino people, and accused the DILG and AFP of threatening the LGUs and local leaders with arrest and not giving their governments the funds they needed.

[40][41] Following the People Power Revolution that ousted Ferdinand Marcos and allowed Corazon Aquino to assume the presidency, the Philippine government granted amnesty to political prisoners, including top CPP figures like Sison and Buscayno.

In April 2017, peace talks between the National Democratic Front and the Philippine government brokered by Norway took place in the Netherlands, hoping to reach a political settlement in twelve months to end the conflict.

[47] In 2019, the Duterte administration unilaterally declared the end of peace talks between the GRP and the NDFP, focusing instead on their counter-insurgency program Oplan Kapanatagan and what it terms as a "whole-of-nation" approach.