Political Thesis of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, THE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE
NACLA
Viva Puerto Rico Libre y Socialista! The long and militant history of class struggle in Puerto Rico has led to the recognition that only socialism can guarantee true independence. In the last...
...The Working Class Time and again, Marx insisted that capitalism is not merely the production of commodities, but rather the production of capital...
...1,073,000 persons over 14 years of age are excluded from this "working sector...
...enterprises) Government (bureaucracy) 149,000 22 45 Services 100,000 15 51 TOTAL 681,000 100 35 Source: Departamento del Trabajo, Empleo y Desempleo, 1971...
...It retains only remnants of patriotic nostalgia, which leads the party to revive stale slogans such as "jibaro statehood" and "the preservations of the Puerto Rican nationality within the great American nation...
...The high cost of medical and hospital services along with the qualitative and quantitative deficiencies of public health services, not to mention the complete absence of preventive medicine, deprives people of their right to good health...
...Thus, among Puerto Ricans growing up in the United States, an obvious startification process occurs...
...16 Due to the dependent relationship, the structure and productive capacity of the Puerto Rican economy have never been, and are not at present, consistent with the interests of the Puerto Rican people...
...Congress for the organization and reorganization of its colonial administration in Puerto Rico...
...Jose de Diego was a lawyer and writer who served as Secretary of Justice in the short-lived autonomous government of 1897...
...later, to channel surplus capital into highly productive activities...
...But the fundamental factor is that these leaders will be more capable and efficient to the extent that their actions respond adequately to the requirements of the historic moment in which they happen to live...
...But all aim towards the conception of the bourgeois world, with their schools acting as spokespeople...
...In many senses, and by virtue of its position as a yanqui fortress, Puerto Rico is a frontier nation on the Continent...
...If the jobs to which we have access are the worst paid, our wages the lowest, our unemployment levels the highest and our participaion in labor unions the lowest, our progressive asfixiation in regard to the spiraling rise in the cost of living is without doubt one of the worst in the United States...
...4. Imposition of U.S...
...The United States, however, arrived in time to take possession of Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico between 1895 and 1898...
...Congress was held...
...8. Department of Consumer Affairs, Memorandum of the Chief of the Studies and Plans Division to the Sub-director, April 19,1973 (memorandum...
...This includes 106,000 "officially" unemployed and 150,220 idle persons...
...Yet, a diametrically opposite aspect was hidden in this process, a total disorganization of thought which arises when one is deprived of a general, theoretical world view...
...3. Imposition of North American citizenship on Puerto Ricans and their consequent subjection to all U.S...
...9. To the ideological framework of bourgeois education must be added all those doctrines that in one way or another negate the possibility of objective knowledge...
...We see as congenial the processes being developed in Peru and Panama, as well as the progressive positions assumed by the Argentinian government...
...and (4) to act with flexibility, always taking into account the correlation of forces...
...This reshuffling and readjustment has a definite effect on Puerto Rico-the weakest link in the U.S...
...The historical genesis of our modern working class is tied to the capitalist development of Puerto Rico controlled by the United States...
...Their function, aside from that of deculturalization, is to immaculately preserve the social contacts of the young whose parents belong to the higher economic strata...
...As a result, future generations will continue to reside there even after the conquest of our national liberation...
...Yet these con- tradictions will not be of an antagonistic nature...
...The air bridge between Puerto Rico and the United States which allows for the constant coming and going of Puerto Rican workers, so lucrative for the North American airlines, further strengthens this conviction...
...branch in 1973...
...Clearly, at that point in time there was no pretension of formulating a complete strategy, but certain steps toward that goal were taken...
...8. militarism...
...In 1959 the colonial legislature approved a Joint Resolution requesting that the U.S...
...Although the government's definition of "poverty levels" does not reflect real poverty in the United States, one third of the Puerto Rican population in the United States, like the Afro-americans, live below this level...
...two firms import and distribute 79 per cent of the total rice supply...
...None of the above denies the need for a transition process in the construction of socialism, with political independence as its cornerstore...
...The development of the crisis and its dimension will depend on many internal and external factors...
...More than two million Puerto Ricans, or 40 per cent of our nation's population, live in the United States...
...The new strategy of economic growth is based on a socialist conception, on the direct and concrete actions of the Puerto Rican working class for the benefit of society as a whole...
...The organization is adequate but its operation has failed for not having scientifically utilized material resources nor taken full advantage of human potential Among the fundamental reasons for this failure is the lack of awareness and commitment on the part of the health workers who receive an elitist and denationalizing education which does not even provide them with the minimum knowledge of public health...
...Most recently in Puerto Rico, workers at the Aqueduct and Sewers Authority staged a 6-week strike in November, 1974...
...Never before, in more than a century of struggle for Puerto Rican independence, has there been such resounding international support for our cause...
...Such a break would not usher in a capitalist nation since that would mean a mere change in masters for the great majority of the people...
...It will be able to achieve the vertical integration of industry and ensure that all phases in the elaboration of a given product take place in Puerto Rico...
...In addition to integrating the industrial process, our industrialization policy will promote intensive specialization in certain hightechnology industries...
...Capital concentration and centralization in the advanced capitalist countries, especially in the United States, provide the material basis for this process, by which the multi-national firms become the basic structure of monopoly capital...
...1 5 This quantity represents 21 per cent of the net income generated by the economy...
...economic crisis in Puerto Rico-whether or not they are temporarily resolved-and the international scrutiny of the United Nations to lead Washington and the colonial administrators to devise changes in the U.S...
...The anarchic forces of the capitalist market are incapable of providing the island with an alternative industrial structure, one that is not entirely dependent...
...It is the basis for the failure of every attempt made by the Department of Consumer Affairs or its predecessor, ASERCO (Consumer Services Agency...
...Migrant Agricultural Workers The Puerto Rican who lives in the cities of the United States has his/her rural counterpart in the Puerto Rican agricultural migrant...
...Of these, sugar cane production was by far the dominant economic activity...
...The situation worsened and began to assume crisis proportions when a significant sector of the so-called Third World initiated measures to control and protect their natural resources...
...Congress would approve it...
...The schools, the universities and the mass media attempt to crush us with the superiority of yanqui culture...
...Part II presents the program of the PSP for the transition period between capitalism and socialism...
...Such changes would have to satisfy at least two objectives: a) to remove P. R. from the direct jurisdiction of the United Nations, or at least to confuse, dissipate and hinder U.N...
...Moreover, their economic power and control enable them to take over the surplus produced by smaller enterprises, leading many of them to bankruptcy...
...At no time does it cancel out the exploitation to which these "bribed" workers themselves are victim...
...It is obvious that the national liberation to which we aspire is set within Puerto Rican national territory, the seat of our nation...
...Cuba and Puerto Rico Are Two Wings of One Bird...
...The system tries to form an intermediary stratum to function harmoniously with the interests of the ruling class...
...Multinational corporations demand control of every phase of the industrial process, regardless of geographic location...
...We are the frontier between the yanqui and Latin American worlds of today...
...Meanwhile, the process of socio-economic absorption and displacement of the working class would continue...
...The lack of adequate social services greatly burdens their lives...
...another providing that any amendment to this "constitution" conform to Law 600, the U.S...
...Shortly before the founding of the Party in 1971, we resumed, with the aid of Cuba, our diplomatic offensive in the United Nations, aimed at reopening debate on the colonial case of Puerto Rico...
...Constitution...
...Although not an independent nation, Puerto Rico had the right to elect voting delegates to both houses of the Spanish Cortes...
...While there has been a considerable rise in national income, its distribution is concentrated more every day in the hands of the ruling class and its closest intermediaries...
...Of these, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass (PPG) and Union Carbide together consume about 10 per cent of all the electricity currently generated in Puerto Rico...
...2) patriotic unity...
...The U.S...
...Work will be not only a means of subsistence, but a primary necessity vital to every human being...
...It is notorious that schools fulfill the additional function of hiding unemployment and retarding integration into a productive life...
...As a corollary, enterprises which call themselves private universities carry on big business in keeping with the basis of the regime's propaganda, which presents13 education as the best means of ascent in the society...
...In turn, this is connected to the overly practical, empirical and strictly pragmatic practice of the system's politicians who, on analyzing our society, can't see the forest for the trees.14 3. Our education develops without any attempt at seeing as an integral whole the problems of the countryside and those of the cities...
...of the Federal Government...
...On December 14, this report was approved by an overwhelming majority of 104 to 5, and included the August 30 resolution recognizing the Puerto Rican people's inalienable right to self-determination and independence...
...In their new environment, the Puerto Rican working masses, due to their own self-image and the transitory nature of their position as victims of an oppressive system, remain within the world of their community...
...It is fundamental to place our struggle within the larger framework of Latin America and, more specifically, the Caribbean...
...Quintero, Marcia, "Squatters Dramatize Problem," The San Juan Star, March 12, 1974...
...In our assessment, the revolution which culminated in the establishment of the People's Republic of China, led by the Chinese Communist Party, is one of the great historical events which has fundamentally changed the correlation of forces in the world...
...These industries will eliminate actual imports of intermediate goods and will export their remaining production to the world market...
...It will occur in sharp contrast to the growing organizational cohesion and unity in purpose and action of the exploited, which finds its clearest expression in the actions of the vanguard...
...To all this must be added the heightened rhythm of working-class struggle in Puerto Rico, the demands of a people plagued by inflation and the environmental dangers which permeate imperialism's new economic plans...
...Due to its low organic composition of capital (low capital-intensity in industry), the sugar industry depends on cheap labor to obtain an attractive rate of profit...
...To err is human, as has been said from ancient times...
...imperialism...
...In the first political thesis of the MPI (The Hour of Independence, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1963) the need to develop a clear strategic base for the movement is already discussed...
...capitalists stopped investing and reinvesting at the same rate in Puerto Rican light industry, while initiating such investment in other Latin American, Asian and European countries...
...In the new economy, workers must develop workers' power at all levels of economic organization...
...3) We shall struggle to safeguard the right of Puerto Ricans living in the United States to free transit between that country and their homeland, in such manner as to maintain constant communication and to prevent isolation from their relatives and their country...
...The principal criteria will be social benefit and economic efficiency...
...but this is the exception...
...Wage-increases, in turn, reduce the rate of profit in light industry, since it has a relatively low organic composition of capital...
...In such case they would approve it and only then would it take effect...
...These industrial enterprises will be a major source for financing new investment necessary for the creation of a new socialist industrial structure...
...THE POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL SUPERSTRUCTURE Constitutional History since 1898 Throughout the 19th century the United States had a two-fold interest in Puerto Rico: as a market and as a strategic military center of vital importance...
...The reality is that a war situation persists between imperialism and the progressive drive of peoples to erradicate the oppression of the imperialist yoke...
...Similarly, by serving as an escape valve to reduce pressures, by helping to determine the participation rate in the labor force and by reducing the level of unemployment, emigration is one of the concrete conditions that shape the development of that working-class sector which remains in Puerto Rico...
...Puerto Ricans living in the United States, under conditions of super-exploitation, face the choice between preserving and developing their national identity, or seeing it die and disappear...
...and when they can no longer derive the enormous profits, which today they obtain with ease from their investments in the colony...
...These are the ones who receive scholarships based on academic excellence-an excellence which is difficult to attain for the rest who come from homes violently afflicted with economic hardships...
...To reach communism, we must first construct and consolidate socialism...
...Victory will only be won by wrenching it away from the hands of the imperialists...
...In practice, democratic centralism signifies the following: a) the elective character of all leadership bodies, from the bottom to the top...
...It would be in open defiance of the world consensus against colonialism expressed in United Nations resolutions...
...That is, not only does production take place in large factories, but the ownership of several medium-sized enterprises belongs to a single monopoly...
...lis ne fees...
...4. environmental colonialism...
...According to the requirements of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the Washington agency that guarantees mortgage loans in Puerto Rico, the minimum annual income of a family must be $11,000 to qualify for acquiring one of these dwellings...
...Furthermore it creates a scientist who is Flag raised during Puerto Rican war for independence at Lares, Puerto Rico, on September 23, 1869...
...that is, it will recognize the independence of Puerto Rico for lack of any other alternative...
...The Popular Party itself, with its traitorous policy of the past quarter century, laid the foundations for its own demise and the rise of the New Progressives...
...Recent studies show that Puerto Rico uses energy more inefficiently than most countries of the world, measured in terms of the Gross National Product (GNP) per unit of total energy consumed (usually electrical energy...
...currency on Puerto Rico as part of its basic subjection to the entire U.S...
...Having consummated this farce, the United States notified the United Nations in 1953 that it would no longer provide information on Puerto Rico in accordance with Article 73(c) of the U.N...
...Congress pass a series of amendments to the Law of Federal Relations...
...occupation, de Diego became the first President of the insular House of Representatives and, in later years, devoted himself towards gaining independence for Puerto Rico.28 bourgeoisie within the PPD...
...4. The right of the workers and the Puerto Rican people to use all forms of struggle within reach, including revolutionary violence in the face of the repressive violence of the colonial-capitalist system, in order to achieve the fundamental rights previously enumerated...
...While unemployment is common to all capitalist societies, given the imbalances and fluctuations of capital, the situation in Puerto Rico is made even more acute by the colonial, extremely dependent and foreign-dominated nature of capitalism...
...a world is transplanted, a collective with a collective worldview...
...further investment in that activity...
...economy are now a source of anxiety for these sectors, as are the heightened effects here of U.S...
...The first of these four basic rights-national independence-is inalienable...
...Ours is a clear case of direct government by the metropolis...
...For this reason the party's centralism is a democratic centralism, in other words, it is based on the will of the party's masses...
...This will establish the basis of political and economic power which is necessary to achieve the initial objective of socialist industrialization...
...No other objective can distract its practical efforts nor its ideological development...
...It is no coincidence, therefore, that Puerto Rico is at once a fortress of the United States in Latin America and one of the countries where revolutionary struggle is reaching higher levels on the Continent...
...Military invasion was the repressive means used by U.S...
...In the vanguard concept of organization there is no room for the simplistic notion that the people's liberation is in the hands of a populist ("caudillo"-type) leader, a messiah who knows all, does all and decides all...
...Therefore, even though from 1962 to 1972 we were invaded by petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries, the production of technicians and scientists decreased in proportion to the total number of those matriculated...
...In relation to capital, these salaried groups share common characteristics with the industrial proletariat: the lack of their own means of production and, hence, the sale of their labor power as a commodity...
...They therefore have the responsibility to contribute to the salvation of our nationality by establishing a free and socialist homeland on Puerto Rican soil...
...Unconsidered is the fact that the refining of high-sulphurated petroleum in Puerto Rico creates very serious environmental problems...
...Recent changes in the petroleum industry on a worldscale have worsened the energy problem in Puerto Rico...
...When it is accepted, that Left is not in a position to use this understanding toward the advancement of the revolutionary process...
...The emigration of such a large portion of our population, one of the largest exoduses in modern history, constitutes (at the most obvious level) an escape valve to reduce social pressures during the transformation of Puerto Rico's economy of colonial super-exploitation...
...This neocolonialist option would seek to avoid international consideration of Puerto Rico's case...
...The Intermediary Bourgeoisie The dominant class in Puerto Rico today is the U.S...
...Our commitment is to socialism, which presupposes political independence as a guarantee of our existence as a people free from socio-economic exploitation...
...Investment in Puerto Rico has followed an anarchic pattern, alien to the interests of the Puerto Rican people...
...At this moment, they serve as a guide on the long road that stretches before us...
...As Fidel said in a recent speech, "If you have arms but not the masses, you cannot have a victorious revolutiop...
...We consider that the correct policy of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam and of the National Liberation Front of South Viet Nam will succeed in defeating all obstacles set up by imperialism and will achieve the definite reunification of its homeland...
...While the United States envisions an increasingly dependent role for Latin America, as a backyard for its industrial production, struggles are being waged to break this domination and build a new future...
...In its second thesis, the MPI rejects the reformist alternatives and takes a revolutionary stance...
...Although industry in Puerto Rico and our working class have grown, the number of technicians has not grown accordingly, highlighting the lack of an important link in the capitalist industrial chain...
...Thus, although investment during the sixties and early '70's has been very substantial, the number of new jobs created has been minimal...
...This strategy of socialist industrialization will develop a national base of intermediate goods produced with imported or national raw materials...
...TABLE 4: Manufacturing Workers by Sector, 1973 % of % of Total % of Sector Number Total in 1966 Women Clothing Food Machinery-and Electrical appliances Textiles Leather Professional and Scientific instruments Rock, Clay and Glass Chemical products Refineries and Petroleum Others 46,800 21,840 14,040 8,040 7,800 7,488 7,176 7,332 7,020 27,924 30.0 14.0 9.0 5.5 5.0 4.8 4.6 4.7 4.5 17.9 30 16 16 88 21 57 7 51 6 72 70 8 16 27 TOTAL 156,000 100.0 49 Source: Departamento del Trabajo, Censo de Manufactura...
...We consider the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its Communist Party to be powerful foundations of the socialist camp...
...The drive for super-profits by the big oil companies has forced the United States to ration drastically the use of petroleum derivatives...
...Its scope broadens or contracts according to the existing need to broaden or reduce the participation rate in the labor force...
...Other patriotic sectors voted against Law 600 in June, 1951 when the referendum ordered by the U.S...
...These demands, timid as they were, were further weakened in the drafting of the bill...
...In this manner, we promote the unity of the socialist camp.45 At the international level, our principal efforts are directed toward the socialist camp, as the cardinal example of solidarity with the peoples of the world and our natural ally in the construction of socialism...
...The U.S...
...Thus the petty bourgeois intellectual, confident of his own value, scorns and distrusts collective activity...
...To a large extent, the same phenomenon occurs in all countries subject to yanqui imperialist domination...
...Nevertheless, there is also a large concentration in the Mid West (170,000), of whom approximately 125,000 live in Chicago and another 80,000 in other parts of the country.27 The much lower figures alleged by the U.S...
...all the rest are the debris thrown aside by the victorious...
...Jenaro Baquero, Conference given in the University of Puerto Rico, Law School, October 1973...
...In addition to the working class, this includes all workers in service industries, the state bureaucracy and other salaried employees...
...At the same time, it is exploited by capitalism and faces a major contradiction: the petty bourgeoisie strives to accumulate as much capital as the bourgeoisie, but is constantly threatened by the largescale production of big capitalists...
...but we are also aware of how imperialism uses this possibility for blackmail...
...Likewise, we support with solidarity the proposals of the Democratic Republic of Korea for the independent unification of the Korean homeland...
...Both conditions complement each other and are equally necessary...
...troops invaded.25 citizenship...
...It will also regulate the integration of economic activity, the selection of appropriate technology, participation in the world economy, the promotion of scientific research, pricing and all other aspects of economic development...
...Thus, the organizational forms of the new economy will not be homogeneous...
...They share the same illusions and dreams, the same worldview...
...thus, the basic premise of our transition program is the socialization of the principal means of production...
...There is nothing worse than persisting in one's errors...
...There, the people of Puerto Rico, with their votes, without conditions or reservations of any kind, and through the absolute exercise of self- determination and sovereignty, will provide their delegates with a political mandate for the establishment of a free Puerto Rico...
...The first industrialization plan will initiate the process of total integration of industry, while creating a national base for production of parts and accessories to replace imports...
...In the United States, the primary function of our Party is to unleash in full force the national liberation struggle of Puerto Rico in the heart of U.S...
...We reaffirm our solidarity with the Chilean revolutionary forces which are organizing the struggle of resistance against the fascist military junta and its imperialist allies...
...If decisions are not followed in the test of practice, the organic units become demoralized...
...Ibid...
...The Lumpenproletariat The lumpenproletariat are those declassed elements, marginalized from the production process...
...II...
...At certain conjunctures, the unemployed become enemies of the working class, used as strike breakers or scabs against workers who rebel against the inhuman demands of capital...
...The relations of production generated by capitalism have reached a point of such instability in Puerto Rico that extra-economic functions have been added to guarantee the social order...
...5. In November, the United Nations General Assembly widely debated the report of the Committee on DeColonization on the colonial case of Puerto Rico...
...The 1950's and '60's saw an astronomical increase in the influx of U.S...
...businesses bombed...
...It is well known that the great majority of people are denied access to private medical benefits because of the cost...
...To this must be added a total of 153,000 persons, or 19 per cent of the work force, who are under-employed...
...The parochial schools, all private, have also been of great assistance in this task...
...Under socialism, however, planning will enable the workers of Puerto Rico to collectively determine .and coordinate their objectives...
...It controls the principal means of production and, in the last analysis, controls and directs the entire political superstructure of domination...
...A number of factors combined to favor the PPD's return to power: (1) the structural crisis of colonialism began to manifest itself in an intensification of basic social problems: the constantly rising cost of living, increasing unemployment, lack of adequate housing for the great majority, and an over-all deterioration of social conditions...
...they live in encampments that are literally -concentration camps...
...This high degree of industrial concentration results, among other things, from the presence of technologically advanced enterprises which realize greater economies of scale...
...Puerto Rico's environmental problems include the destruction of beaches by sand-extractions and oil spills...
...Furthermore, since the United States employs more living labor (i.e...
...Another world war, we understand, would not advance the process of humanity in the least...
...The government sector (bureaucracy) follows in importance, employing 22 per cent of the entire working population...
...2. At the same time the system promotes a distance between theory and practice...
...Looking at capitalist production as the production of capital and not only of commodities, we must recognize as part of the proletariat all salaried workers who sell their labor power on the capitalist market, who do not possess their own means of production and who do not perform any oppressive role for capital...
...Workers And The New Economy During the transition period, different types of relations of production will co-exist, as remnants of the capitalist mode of production persist alongside the new socialist relations...
...Nevertheless, large capital has led to the concentration of these workers which, in turn, leads them toward greater consciousness of their possibilities for economic struggle...
...The direct colonial domination of Puerto Rico represents an act so universally repudiated that it has provoked condemnation by a broad world-wide consensus...
...It will also coordinate scientific and technological research with the long-term planning of economic development...
...4 Most of Puerto Rico's heavy and semi-heavy industries utilize industrial processes that require large amounts of energy, while their output is channelled to the United States for use in industrial processes that require much less...
...That is, the socialist society to which we aspire will lead to a communist society, the only one that can achieve the disappearance of class divisions...
...This does not preclude, however, that in a given set of circumstances some sectors of this bourgeoisie could enter into contradiction with imperialism...
...For 1972, the trade deficit, that is the excess of imports over exports, reached the record level of 1,153 million dollars.12 Due to the deterioration of agriculture, production no longer matches consumption...
...The capital accumulation process in these countries had exceeded their capacity for capital investment within their own national boundaries at a maximum rate of profit, forcing capitalists to seek new areas for investment...
...Nor does it prepare them to hold a satisfactory job which would guarantee more income and a higher standard of living...
...Other factors which influence this failure are the low salaries of these public employees, the lack of appropriate health information for the people and the poor distribution of existing resources.12 At the same time the health system manifests one of the most dramatic inequalities in our society: "first class" patients receive services from the private sector while "second class" citizens, as well as all those rejected from the private sector, are relegated to public services, increasing the burden of crowded facilities even more...
...2) The other option would be the real or apparent recognition of areas of political power, based on the same objectives of economic domination and on military intervention in our internal affairs, coupled this time, however, with the simultaneous relinquishment of yanqui federal jurisdiction over Puerto Rico...
...The legislature (made up of a House of Representatives and an Administrative Council) would pass on all internal matters, fix the budget, determine tariffs and taxes, and accept or reject any commercial treaties concluded by Spain without local participation...
...To consolidate the situation even more, bourgeois education establishes titles and diplomas that once conferred or denied, classify one as much as the "carimbo" (brand on a slave) did to the slave...
...The specific conjuncture that will enable us to proclaim our independence will depend on innumerable circumstances and conditions, which will arise in the course of the struggle itself...
...The application of a correct policy of patriotic unity is therefore essential to our strategic development...
...Despite the great sums of money taken from the public treasury for propaganda, 35 per cent of the registered voters and more than 50 per cent of the citizens eligible to vote did not participate...
...In the large cities, this fractionof the proletariat is concentrated in large commercial centers...
...However, the sharpening crisis of capitalism makes these enterprises the prime targets of any attempt at economic readjustment and thereby creates the bases for the commercial proletariat to escape its ideological enclosure...
...They may be characterized as owning and directly working their small-scale means of production, sometimes with the help of family members, and selling their goods on the capitalist market...
...In addition, the best agricultural land in Puerto Rico is taken over by U.S...
...The Pro-Independence Movement (MPI) took advantage of this new situation to launch an intense international campaign for the independence of Puerto Rico...
...This unemployment rate is determined on the basis of those included in the "working sector," i.e...
...Objective conditions, however, are such that PuertoRico shall certainly be affected to a higher degree than the United States...
...Let's look at these last points in detail: 1. Bourgeois education tries to impede a knowledge of the world as an integral whole by breaking it into unconnected pieces...
...However, it also entered into contradiction with the interests of imperialism and a sector of the commercial petty bourgeoisie...
...The bourgeoisie utilizes the weapon of unemployment-and maintains a standing reserve army of labor-to divide the working class and pay low wages...
...Intelligence lies in correcting the error...
...No tariffs...
...Some of them belong to medium and small capitalists, nationals as well as foreigners, while others are owned by large corporations...
...Thus, one can infer the enormous sacrifices undergone by a family of meager resources forced to comply with classist education...
...This is achieved through a regimen of competence in exams, qualifications, diplomas and other similar measurement criteria...
...Society as a whole will decide what portion of production will be dedicated to satisfying immediate needs, such as distribution or imports of consumer goods, education, public health, recreation and other social activities, and what part will be reinvested to raise production...
...2 1 More than 40 per cent of the population was living in inadequate or deteriorating housing...
...Thus, its industrial development strategy need not maximize employment in all cases...
...The colonial political parties all represent variations of the same ideology: that of a parasitic crust of bureaucrats and intermediaries who have served as the support and social base for foreign intervention...
...the pollution of rivers, lakes, bays and coasts by disposal of sewage waste, particularly acute in the bays at Ponce and Mayaguez ravaged by wastes from the tuna fish industry...
...Equally significant is the development of our relations, based on mutual solidarity and support, with the heroic Palestinian people in their struggle against Zionism, with Algeria, Syria, Iraq and Democratic Yemen...
...Here again, it is evident that under the colonialcapitalist regime the fundamental activities of Puerto Rico's economy depend on the rate of profit for yanqui capitalists and not on the realities and needs of the Puerto Rican people...
...Similarly, most tendencies indicate that those who migrate have been displaced by the penetration of U.S...
...This implies a total restructuring of the Planning Board in order to modernize, democratize and reorient its functions, and to guarantee the strengthening of short-term, sectoral and regional planning...
...This dependency is now absolute...
...7. Ibid...
...Precisely, therein lies the difference between the revolutionary vanguard and those sectors or groups which still have not attained an adequate understanding of colonialist domination...
...These problems are dialectically related to the economic-political situation in Puerto Rico...
...The Status Commission worked for two years, finishing its task on July 25, 1966...
...Such development necessitates technical and professional training, higher salaries and better living conditions for broad sectors of the working classes...
...It is vital for us to block this strategy...
...The economic and political readjustments of yanqui imperialism have reinforced the military and strategic function of Puerto Rico within the Caribbean in particular, and toward Latin America in general...
...bourgeoisie...
...You see, in toms between you and your U.S...
...literally, a piece of a country that goes on struggling to maintain its cohesion in a new environment...
...Cathedral Station, Now York, NY 10025 or Box 226, Berkeley, CA 94701...
...In this way the organic units which are democratically elected are able to carry out in practice what has been approved through wide discussion...
...Low income coupled with the constant increase in the cost of living forces the worker and the unemployed to remain at a very depressed standard of living...
...On the contrary, it responds to a specific reality and to a given level of development of the productive forces...
...Socialist Planning A country is capitalist or socialist not by virtue of its ideas or intentions, nor the existence of a plan, but ac- cording to its social structure and the class nature of its leadership...
...The new strategy of economic exploitation that began to take shape during the second half of the 1940's focused on creating the conditions for a massive invasion of U.S...
...On this base, all possible alliances between the exploited classes of Puerto Rico and those of the United States must be built...
...Over the past few years, in particular, a rapid succession of events has dispelled all illusions that Puerto Rico will continue indefinitely on the course of "commonwealth" exploitation and capitalist development...
...Rather, we must include in that definition17 those sectors employed in the process of commodity circulation which allow the surplus value embodied in those commodities to be converted into capital...
...1972...
...These workers receive starvation wages for their labor, the very lowest on the U.S...
...C. Persistent Inflation In general terms, inflation consists of a continual rise in prices and, hence, in the cost of living, while wages do not increase at the same rate...
...The peasantry, owners of small tracts of land, was at one time an important sector of the Puerto Rican economy and the social base of the old Popular Party...
...government agencies, and the continued, chaotic construction of land-extensive private homes in the agricultural valleys, the serious threat posed to Puerto Rico's agricultural as well as political future is clear...
...Objective and subjective conditions relegate them to marginal activities such as robbery, drugs, prostitution, etc...
...The rate of monopolization has been increasing continuously and "the over-all situation clearly reflects a general increase in the levels of concentration...
...But this power, this effective participation, cannot be achieved without planning...
...The honesty and administrative integrity which once characterized the government of the Popular Democratic Party have disappeared...
...Socialist planning will insure an efficient allocation of resources...
...This process has been accelerated by the colonial relationship and the development of capitalism on a world-scale, which have undermined the preceding economic base...
...In a colonized country like ours, the implications of this phenomenon are more acute since they aim towards the reduction and stagnation of our own scientific and technical base...
...We cannot anticipate the concrete forms that this struggle34 will assume during that period in Puerto Rico...
...Congress, the congressional committees which participated in the drafting of Law 600 reported: The application of the Law of Federal Relations with Puerto Rico and the exercise of federal authority in Puerto Rico under its terms are in no way diminished by the Constitution of Puerto Rico and cannot be af- fected by future amendments to that Constitution, nor by any law passed by the Legislature of Puerto Rico...
...In our country private schools are abundant...
...This fact allows us to see that the priorities of health care are established by those possessing economic power...
...Puerto Rico was, and still is, one of these conquered nations...
...Puerto Rico can become a major international supplies of final and intermediate goods of the previously mentioned industries...
...Banking and commercial capital allow for and promote the realization of surplus value by extending credit to industrial capitalists, in exchange for a share in the surplus value extracted from the industrial proletariat...
...that is, it cannot be compromised...
...The Socialist Camp For a Marxist-Leninist party, the solidarity offered by a bourgeois government can never be equivalent to that offered by a workers' party or government...
...However, recent political developments in the Middle East and strong popular opposition in Puerto Rico have, for the time being, caused the suspension of these projects...
...It is based upon the principle: "from each according to his/her capacity and to each according to his/her work...
...To ensure a steady development, both sectors depend on U.S...
...7. The contempt on the part of scientists towards the social sciences is based on the assumption that such activities are not worthy of being called sciences because they do not employ the method of investigation adhered to by natural sciences...
...Inflationary pressures have become characteristic of the Puerto Rican economy and one more form of exploitation...
...A new attempt was launched to reform the colonial regime, touching off a heated debate...
...This assures that a substantial part of the technology will not pass through the hands of the colonized people...
...3. The right of Puerto Rican workers to progressive socialization of the means of production, be they in foreign hands or national, and to the construction of a socialist society where ultimately there are neither exploiters nor exploited...
...Thus the history of Puerto Rico remains uprooted from its Antillian and Latin American context...
...On the contrary, technical assimilation has been concentrated in determined economic sectors, while others have remained on the margin-the most dramatic example being that of agriculture...
...They are direct consequences of the incapacity of colonial capitalism to generate integrated and independent economic development...
...2) it is a collection of units...
...Light Industry It is within this framework that the economic policies of the colonial government, particularly its industrialization program, must be examined...
...ruling class...
...The U.S...
...Those who live in the very belly of the monster can make a decisive contribution to this process...
...For Puerto Ricans living in the United States, the construction of socialism in that country is also a primary task because it is the only solution to the conditions of super-exploitation they presently suffer...
...The absence of reformist alternatives which would diffuse the level of struggle, and which the colonial regime tries to apply, slowly at first and then more and more rapidly, complements this process...
...This discussion had been tabled indefinitely in 1967 following a two-day debate in the Committee on De-Colonization...
...The different aspects of the Party's political position, its tactical and strategic conceptions, have arisen from responsible practice, the study of Marxism-Leninism and its creative application to the Puerto Rican reality, and an ongoing process of discussion on all levels...
...Their production will be a significant contribution to the economy, and they will represent an organizational alternative for small-scale producers...
...political superstructure in Puerto Rico is predicated on economic, juridical, social and military domination by the United States in every area vital to our30 life as a people...
...Congress and Government, in order to force enactment of a law recognizing our independence...
...It states that the goal of this strategy, in the case of Puerto Rico, "is the triumph of independence, or a substantial and decisive advance in this direction...
...There are fifteen banks in the country (including the Banco Gubernamental de Fomento-Government Development Bank) with total assets of $4,826 million as of May 1973.9 There is no sector more monopolized.than the banking sector...
...The superport and petroleum complex projects that the yanqui capitalists plan to locate in the AnascoRincon-Aguada area would enormously increase these serious problems...
...w4Dft~tlkv38 Part Three Strategy and Tactics First Congress of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party heldin the United States, New York, April 8, 1973.39 I. THE STRATEGY FOR PUERTO RICAN LIBERATION Since its formation fifteen years ago, the Pro-Independence Movement has recognized the need to set foundations for a clear strategy toward national liberation in our country...
...Charter, since the territory had achieved self-government...
...Thus, from the outset, the juridical institutions, the repressive military apparatus and the economic structures of the North American capitalist state all combined to announce the regime which was to prevail in Puerto Rico...
...The ruling class is in fact "bribing" its working classes through exploitation of the Third World...
...At that moment, moral support must be translated into material aid, in all its many aspects...
...bourgeoisie...
...bourgeoisie...
...Its slow disappearance both numerically and in terms of its economic function, has accompanied the decay of agriculture...
...Within this context, the emergence of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP), a Marxist-Leninist party committed to the overthrow of colonial rule and the establishment of socialism, is of major historical significance...
...S. Ibid...
...It has also accentuated the tendency to borrow large sums of money for public works, adding to the burden of Puerto Rico's public debt when the borrowing margin of the colonial government is nearly exhausted...
...businesses arrived, together with light industry, to further accentuate agricultural decay...
...In view of these conditions, the sugar industry in Puerto Rico flourishes or declines in response to the interests of a small group of yanqui and Puerto Rican capitalists, and by no means according to the real needs of our people...
...But the revolution in Puerto Rico is a prerequisite for revolutionary development in the United States...
...As a result, the petty bourgeoisie may at times ally itself with the proletariat in its struggle against the bourgeoisie...
...After two years of political and military occupation, the U.S...
...Alongside military invasion, the economic invasion was stepped up through agricultural corporations that already had established interests in Puerto Rico...
...This can only be achieved by the overthrow of capitalism...
...Therefore, the destruction of the yanqui fortress necessarily signifies the deepening of contradictions within North American society itself...
...For the majority, who are unable to afford private housing, there remains public housing, renting deteriorating housing or directly taking over the land...
...Many of these forms are mutually dependent...
...The particular relationship that has existed historically between the United States and Puerto Rico, since the military invasion of 1898, and the present escalation of class struggle make it imperative for North Americans to understand and define their role in this process...
...industries...
...The names of the great leaders of the Carribean countries who struggled for freedom like Hatney, Toussaint, Dessalines, Duarte, Maceo, Marti and others, remain like voices of alien tongues...
...The impossibility of obtaining housing on the market together with the constant deficit of public housing forces one to live in shocking and miserable dwellings...
...society as well...
...for non-electrical machinery it was 32 per cent in Puerto Rico and 4.6 per cent in the9 WVhat would mour prfits be if you didaft have to payanly ? InPue to Iersic property...
...This must be understood as one of the objective conditions in the formation and development of the contemporary Puerto Rican working class and includes, for example, systematic attempts to destroy our nationality through assimilation...
...This is particularly true in Puerto Rico, where commercial capital plays an important role in the economy and where gigantic enterprises are eager to dump a considerable portion of yanqui production on the island...
...Health It is well known that the health of the population and the extent of medical services depends to a great degree on the economy, science and culture of the country...
...The proletariat or the working class is composed of all wage-laborers and salaried workers who participate directly in the financing, creation and circulation of material goods, by which the extraction and realization of surplus value is accomplished.18 The Industrial proletariat is the principal sector of the working class and is composed of all workers who participate directly in the production of material goods and the creation of surplus value...
...Despite the fact that Puerto Rico does not have harsh winters, the island could face the possibility of being forced to control the sale of gasoline as a result of this measure...
...The triumph of the Red Army over fascism and the establishment of popular democracies in Eastern Europe laid the bases for what would come to be known as the socialist camp...
...It has been demonstrated throughout history that this politico-economic system is incapable of providing job opportunities for our people...
...its incapacity to solve the problems of the Puerto Rican people-housing, employment, income, education and health--is now evident...
...Thus, dependency takes on a variety of characteristics in different historical moments and in different places...
...bourgeoisie as junior partners or representatives...
...We speak of revolutionary power bases not in the geographic sense, but in terms of concrete reality, of the commitment and action of the workers and masses in coordination with the working-class party and with the patriotic and revolutionary fronts and organizations it generates...
...The Popular Party has effected a fundamental change in its political leadership and moved fully into the technocratic era...
...capital into all sectors of the Puerto Rican economy...
...Important victories for the independence struggle were won in 1973, in the United,Nations and in the Conference of Heads of State of the Non-Aligned Nations in Algiers...
...In its practical aspects, the genesis of this process came from the necessity to organize the large mass of knowledge which the natural sciences brought to human knowledge...
...The extension of the presidential and vice-presidential vote to Puerto Ricans would require an amendment to the U.S...
...There is no specific signal of the ripeness of the revolutionary process, but certain symptoms of social explosion can be discerned and scientific steps taken to hasten its arrival...
...In 1973, the following events of great significance to our struggle occurred in rapid succession: 1. In August, for the first time in history, a body of the United Nations-the Committee on De-Colonizationlistened to the plight of the Puerto Rican people against the government and U.S...
...bourgeoisie exercises over our country and our economy, we must not ignore the existence of groups within the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie and their role in different areas of the economy...
...The U.S...
...illiterate in a broad sense, who lacks any awareness of social solidarity and who becomes an easy prey to the imperialist's multiple programs to employ his skills against humanity...
...The colonial government responded to this conflict by taking the line of least resistance...
...It gathers together the historical experience of the country-and of other countries fighting against exploitation in all its forms and manifestations-and examines it in light of Marxist theory which represents the richest revolutionary experience of our time...
...The working masses are made up of all those who must sell their labor power to survive...
...The fact that Puerto Rico is a captive market for the United States and that it must rely on the U.S...
...dedicated and highly dn oa u yo'% t h [ufir eri...
...Owners of small and medium-sized businesses will be part of the private or cooperative sector of the new economy, insofar as they adjust production to the national development plan...
...that is, due to the relations of dependency...
...The private sector caters to less than 30 per cent of the population, yet it accounts for a budget of three times as much as the public sector...
...However, if we consider only that part of the GNP that remains in Puerto Rico, mainly in the form of wages, this inefficiency is even more pronounced...
...In addition, elitism is reinforced by establishing special schools that (in keeping with the basis of economic discrimination) avoid having the "white-skinned" rub elbows with the "rubbish...
...Of course, this "bribery" is a product of the ruling class' desire to fatten itself as a class and to enjoy the privileges of its position...
...With the help of our allies throughout the world, we will fight against all the attempts to suffocate the republic on the part of imperialism and its allies on the island...
...market than Puerto Rican goods, also contributed to the stagnation and even decadence of light industry...
...In its early stages, the independence struggle focused on formal separation from first Spain and then the United States...
...2) the equivocation and deception which flourished in the PNP government...
...As the principal classic colony of the United States, Puerto Rico is a strategic point for imperialist domination of Latin America...
...Rather, in simultaneous fashion and within an historical perspective, a significant part of the nation-more than a third--is transplanted...
...NACLA 's decision to translate and publish this Thesis reflects our solidarity with the struggle for socialism in Puerto Rico as a whole, and not an endorsement of any one political group...
...Part I of this document offers an analysis of the economic and class structure of Puerto Rico, as a product of decades of imperialist penetration...
...The racism and lack of democracy that characterizes many labor unions excludes Puerto Ricans from higher wages and better working conditions...
...Moreover, its role as junior partner enables the intermediary bourgeoisie, despite its dependency, to maintain class privileges and enjoy its share of profits-its share in the exploitation of the Puerto Rican working class...
...But in the present historical moment, anyone who proposes the formal, artificial independence of the neocolony as an equivalent of political independence has fallen into the imperialist trap...
...This network has been formalized in juridical terms in the various organic statutes (Foraker Law, Jones Law, Public Law 600 and the Free Associated State), it is demonstrated and reaffirmed by U.S...
...Likewise, with the liberation movements which struggle against racism and apartheid, we extend and receive support...
...Workers in socialist enterprises will take responsibility for direction and management of the socialist enterprises, and for determining the most efficient means for achieving the objectives set by society as a whole...
...Another basic principle established in this first thesis is that "the forms of struggle are always subordinate to strategy and tactics...
...After the U.S...
...Frequently heard are the persistent ideological assertions of so-called over-population in Puerto Rico...
...Several years after the plebiscite the first Ad hoc Committee was named, under the colonial administration of Governor Luis A. Ferre, to study whether Puerto Ricans should vote for the President of the United States...
...Congress has passed two bills (the Jones Law and Public Law 600), with the sole purpose of adjusting the political structure of Puerto Rico's colonial administration to the needs and desires of the United States...
...Of the two major industrial sectors (manufacturing and construction), manufacturing employs the most workers...
...The United States accumulated enormous reserves of capital during the war from the sale of armaments and other goods to Europe...
...capital for heavy industry...
...but if you have the masses and not the arms, a victorious revolution is still not possible...
...Their class origin is linked to the transition phase between the pre-capitalist and capitalist modes of production...
...In addition, the industrialization strategy will develop agricultural raw materials for the food industries, which will permit the integration of both sectors of the economy...
...They also needed raw materials, such as minerals and agricultural products, and an available supply of cheap labor, in order to achieve a higher rate of profit...
...The stratification of the working class, which maintains the productivity of this class as a whole, includes "transporting the Third World into the national territory of the United States...
...In this light, for example, history is not seen as an integral process that encompasses all the aspects of humanity, but is reduced to political history, and within this, the history of countries...
...For 1972 the average cost of private housing placed on the market was $28,000...
...military, economic and social domination...
...Guided by proletarian internationalism, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party maintains an independent political line at the international level...
...4) Conduct yourself both in public and private in accordance with the best interests of the Socialist Party and the Puerto Rican Revolution...
...This process has produced the following bases for the colonial version of the yanqui capitalist state: 1. U.S...
...In general, they do not hire additional laborers, or very few, and produce little or no surplus value...
...2) In accordance with your conditions, to the extent of your capabilities, carry out the tasks and activities required by the struggle for independence and socialism in coordination with the leadership bodies of the Party...
...This, in turn, has increased pressure to begin mining activities as soon as possible...
...wage scale...
...At the same time, certain sectors of the economy will obey the social criterion of maximizing employment...
...Congress exerts its control over Puerto Rico...
...Socialist planning is neither spontaneous nor erratic...
...To achieve these goals, Puerto Rico must participate in a new international division of labor...
...This process will culminate in the formation of parallel structures that will gradually wrest away areas and functions of the enemy's power and establish revolutionary power bases that will permit the complete seizure of power...
...The process of political and economic erosion of imperialism in Puerto Rico will provoke a crisis in two principal and inter-related forms: when the yanquis can no longer administrate and govern the colony effectively, nor delegate power to the intermediary and management bourgeoisies...
...and re-invest...
...Trapped in this situation, it is not uncommon that a vicious circle develops: the greater the economic problems, the greater the social, family and mental imbalances...
...Fifty-three per cent of all women workers in the manufacturing sector are in the garment and textile industry...
...2) That it be permitted to gradually assume certain functions then exercised by agencies of the federal government...
...Education, moreover, assumes an ideological function of preservation, promotion and defense of the colonial capitalist regime...
...Education in every capitalist country discharges the first function...
...This was done at the expense of incipient domestic industry, owned by Puerto Rican capital, and the production of raw materials in the agricultural sector...
...Likewise, we manifest our solidarity with the fraternal struggle of the Dominican people against the dictatorship and imperialism...
...imperialism and the liberation struggles of peoples around the world...
...These problems arise from the high degree of economic concentration and the brutal differentiation that exists in the Puerto Rican economy, that creates a large "marginal" population-marginalized in terms of income and access to social and cultural services...
...colony, is expressed in a variety of structures designed to perpetuate yanqui domination...
...this concentration obliges them to recognize their own strength...
...When we add up the 25 thousand acres of the oil complex, the 36 thousand requested by the mining companies in Utuado, Lares, Adjuntas, Jayuya and northern Ponce, the 13 per cent of arrable lands occupied by the U.S...
...Lastly, in the planned economy of the Democratic Workers Republic, investment needs will be carefully CUBA Y PUERTO RICO SON DE UN PAJARO LAS DOS ALAS...35 studied and planned before beginning any project...
...At the end of 1966, in response to extraordinary pressure from Washington, the colonial administrators and legislators hastily approved-despite strong popular opposition at home-a law providing for the recommended plebiscite...
...However, this document presents only a bare outline of what constitutes strategy and tactics from a political perspective...
...In general they possess neither political nor class consciousness, although in certain historic circumstances they have been swept along by the revolutionary tide...
...Over the last fifty years, the United States has proceeded to liquidate the old agrarian capitalist structure, opening the door to industrial capitalism...
...Europe and Japan were also affected as a result43 of capitalist integration on a world scale...
...Of the 47,286 matriculated students in the universities throughout the country, as noted by the latest Kirkpatrick Report, 2 2 16,493 are matriculated in private universities...
...and the greater these imbalances, the greater the economic problems...
...1, February 1975 Published monthly, except May-June and July-August when it is published bi-monthly, at 160 Claremont Ave., New York, NY 10027...
...To the extent that the slogans of the vanguard take root and are embraced by the people as their slogans, victories will be won which will continually deepen the struggle for independence and socialism...
...that is, its functions with delegated powers...
...of struggle, including revolutionary violence against the repressive violence of the system, to assert the national rights of Puerto Rican people wherever they reside...
...4) the lack of an electoral alternative capable of ousting the PNP, particularly on the left, due to the PIP's refusal to form a united front with the PSP...
...Many of the problems we face in daily life result from our position in the lowest-paid strata of production and services...
...d) subordination of the minority to the majority...
...The reverse happens as well...
...The Oil Industry During the 1960's, Puerto Rico embarked on stage three of its industrialization strategy, this time importing U.S...
...It attaches particular importance to the job opportunities that the construction phase of these projects will create...
...While the triumphant bourgeoisie, sure of itself after putting down the old feudal classes, encouraged the sciences and integral knowledge, to the extent that it has been shaken by its own proletariat and by the advance of socialism in the world, it has begun to slip backward into the reactionary views of science once held by feudal thinkers...
...Talk of the dismantling of its war economy are utopian dreams...
...We are the frontier between the present system of colonial and neocolonial domination and the future of socialist liberation...
...No matter what citizenship they hold, the instant they arrive in Puerto Rican national territory they will be granted Puerto Rican citizenship with all its rights and obligations...
...Moreover, they are used as one of capitalists' weapons to keep wages low and to weaken the negotiating power of active workers...
...A few corporations, exercising extensive control over the means of production, can impose their own conditions on sales,production levels, prices and distribution of markets and profits among themselves...
...Puerto Rico's position as a captive market for food and industrial products from the United States has always tended to raise the price of labor on the island above that of other colonies and neo-colonies...
...Puerto Rico has one of the highest coefficients of regional inequality in the world...
...Infectuous and parasitic diseases do not constitute the main enemies of health-rather it is the poor distribution of economic wealth...
...Of these, close to half come from families with incomes of less than $4,000 annually...
...Within the knowledge of the society, this separation promotes the establishment of pseudo-scientific hypotheses at the theoretical level that will never yield to proof on the factual level...
...For the great majority, the only alternative has been emigration to urban areas or to large cities on the east coast of the United States...
...Secondly, we must prepare an armed force able to confront the enemy's aggression and protect the republic...
...There are so many forms in which it would be possible to organize the production of equipment for use in various types of laboratories but the hierarchy of values established in our education never poses the problem from this perspective because it is considered as a fact that theory and practice are not inevitably linked...
...Congress for a plebiscite to make the final decision on the question of political status, based on recognition and affirmation of the sovereignty of the Puerto Rican people...
...Furthermore, in the case of Hawaii, an accelerated process of mechanization raised the productivity of agricultural labor to a much higher level than that in Puerto Rico...
...That ideology is capitalist and colonialist...
...The greater the influx of Afro-americans and Puerto Ricans, the greater the exodus of other groups and the worse the maintenance...
...Capital is invested in Puerto Rico, as in any capitalist colony, to obtain the largest possible profit...
...This is not blind obedience to one who decides and gives orders, but the concrete expression of a will which has been collectively decided upon, which obeys a common sentiment: that of ending the exploitation of one person by another...
...The agricultural proletariat, the protagonist of many battles between 1920 and 1940, has also lost its strength alongside agricultural deterioration...
...Junta de Planificacion, Informe Economicoal Gobernador, 1972 (San Juan), 1973...
...Such dependency imposes an absolute limit on any policy of price-controls that attempts to better the living standards of the working masses...
...and 4) international solidarity with our struggle...
...The extremely unbalanced growth of colonial capitalism has made social manifestations of exploitation far worse in certain regions of the country than in others...
...economy, but in Puerto Rico it does function as one, given the relatively smaller size of the economy...
...Accordingly, many members of the petty bourgeoisie have joined the struggle for independence and have become a key factor in its leadership since the turn of the century...
...At the same time, the economies of the European capitalist countries were virtually destroyed by the war, leaving their own internal markets as well as the foreign markets supplied by them in North American hands...
...As Puerto Ricans, we confront the most serious social problems: the proverty that envelopes us, the racism that permeates U.S...
...In its preambular clause, it recognized the "inalienable right of the Puerto Rican people to selfdetermination and independence, in light of Resolution 1514 (XV) approved by the General Assembly on December 4, 1960," and mandated the Committee's Working Group to submit a report on the procedural aspects relevant to the application of Resolution 1514 (XV) to the case of Puerto Rico by "early 1973...
...As a member of international organizations for mutual assistance, we will be able to acquire the necessary factories for the industrial integration process...
...More importantly, the crude reality of super-exploitation, oppression, discrimination and cultural aggression that Puerto Ricans face in their new environment reinforces this myth by convincing them that it is necessary to return...
...Only a few are able to ascend the social ladder...
...Of the three organizational forms described above--social, cooperative and private-the social sector will be dominant...
...This new tendency, reflected in the so-called "autonomic" demands of the Ad Hoc Committees, could give rise to a policy along one of two lines regarding the U.S...
...In other words, the true size of the industrial reserve army in Puerto Rico has grown much larger than the colonial authorities are willing to admit...
...Education promotes distrust in the very process of learning by promoting the notion that "one tries to learn, but it will be a losing battle, since in the end one can't be sure of anything...
...The intensity of these events must be considered in light of the changing character andforms of the independence movement in Puerto Rico...
...The petty bourgeoisie is destined to disappear as a class, to drift toward the proletariat and other sectors of the economy...
...This class has been the protagonist of important struggles over the past few decades, and is rapidly gaining consciousness of its strength and its true class interests...
...These priorities will vary according to the historical moment and economic conditions, and will be subject to continual reevaluation...
...These last two developments will increase unemployment in Puerto Rico, with all its accompanying social tensions...
...p. 108), "we must first determine two things: (1) the principal point against which this struggle must be directed and (2) the level of organization, preparation and development of forces...
...In the first place, investment will be determined by the collective decisions of the government and the working masses, and not by the profit-seeking of the few...
...For the next few years, the "energy crisis" will set a rhythm of escalated inflation...
...Faced with significant defeats in Asia and Africa, with challenges to its hegemony within the capitalist bloc, U.S...
...According to 1972 statistics, 55 per cent of all salaried and wage workers are under 35 years of age...
...1 Both sugar and tobacco production are based upon the existence of cheap but highly fertile land, and an equally cheap labor force...
...Eighty per cent of all garment workers are women...
...NACLA-East This double issue covers both the January and February publication of the Latin America and Empire Report...
...They emphasize that this superiority resides primarily in the technical field, without even mentioning that it is precisely yanqui capitalist intrusion which has continuously blocked progress in these fields...
...Due to their life conditions, however, the lumpenproletariat is generally more disposed toward aiding the counterrevolutionary maneuvers of the bourgeoisie...
...That is why revolution is the motor force that moves the development of human civilization...
...The present and future role of Puerto Ricans living in the United States must also be seen within this context...
...Therefore, any type of real control--going beyond strictly superficial control--on the part of the authorities would stop or limit the effectiveness of the escape, since, year after year, the number of students increases...
...For the socio-economic domination and exploitation of peoples, they no longer require the obsolete, anachronistic structure of the classical colony, which the yanquis preserve in Puerto Rico as a vestige of a by-gone era...
...In addition, the increase in average family income ($4,800 in 1969) remains far below the increase in the cost of DIA NACIONAL DE SOLIDARIDAD CON PUERTO RICO23 living...
...The way that the "Puerto Rican problem" is solved will pave the way for the future of the entire Continent...
...This group has grown to include 150,220 persons...
...he/she is an exile, a displaced victim of colonial exploitation who moves to another area only to be dominated by the same colonizer, to fulfill the same function in the labor force dictated by the U.S...
...socio-economic conflict in Puerto Rico, particularly spiraling inflation and the "energy crisis...
...5) an anti-worker policy which began with the division of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), decreed by the PPD leadership at its 1945 congress...
...These farms, however, cover a total area of 1,001,333 acres, out of a total farming area in Puerto Rico of 1,334,800 acres...
...The party's discipline is conscious and voluntary...
...We hope this document will be read in conjunction with those of other groups on the Left in Puerto Rico and the United States, and we urge those who read Spanish to examine the PSP Thesis in its entirety...
...Monopolies have a competitive advantage over small and medium-sized enterprises, their levels of productivity are higher and, hence, their rate of profit greater...
...This year, the expenses incurred by a matriculated student from a private university have reached $1,595 compared to $1,090 for a public university...
...The reformist current of Independetismlo, with all its variations, limits the struggle solely to continuous pressure on the U.S...
...comm...
...In 75 years of domination, the U.S...
...As a decisive factor in the achievement of our goals, it is included among the basic rights...
...On October 27, 1974, 20,000 people came together in Madison Square Garden to express their solidarity with the cause of Puerto Rican independence...
...Significant steps in this direction have been achieved through reciprocal solidarity established with the national liberation movements of Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique...
...and today, to resolve an energy crisis...
...In nonagricultural activities, technological development was very slow or, in most cases, non-existent until the late 1930's...
...3. invalids (4 per cent...
...Although Puerto Rico was not a belligerent nation in this conflict, the yanquis immediately installed a military regime in our country, eliminating unilaterally and totally the autonomous government institutions which had been established that same year.* Following the military conquest of Puerto Rico, the United States imposed its own terms in the conversations leading to the Treaty of Paris...
...government figures...
...Two factors make the PNP vacillate in forcing a petition for statehood: first, they know-and this has been confirmed by the latest polls-that statehood is the aspiration of only a minority of the Puerto Rican people...
...domination dictates these two conclusions: (1) No event less serious than a crisis of the colonialist system will be capable of producing either the formal or real independence of Puerto Rico...
...Since the type of manufacturing implanted in Puerto Rico from 1945 until the beginning of the sixties employed mostly women, a greater proportion of men have migrated than women.28 The fact that many Puerto Ricans return to Puerto Rico (although not the majority and although exact figures are difficult to calculate) and that many more continue to arrive creates a constant renewal of the Puerto Rican population in the United States, a constant influx of "first generation" Puerto Ricans who keep national ties alive...
...This illegitimacy will encourage the Puerto Rican people, dialectically linked to the vanguard, to take the most courageous actions in defense of their country and against the exploitation we all experience under the imperialist yoke...
...The plebiscite took place in July 1967...
...Later, large consumer goods distributors, supermarket chains, service industries and other U.S...
...Migrant agricultural workers who have decided to stay on and look for permanent employment in the United States have given rise to a growing Puerto Rican population living in conditions of extreme poverty in small towns and cities of the interior...
...Those who do attain the highest levels are called upon by the system to occupy reformist leadership positions within the community...
...From this originates the metaphysical and superficial thinking of our social theoreticians...
...supervision...
...This process was concretized in the partial victory of the PPD in the 1940 elections...
...Thus, interest rates rise according to the whims of monopoly financiers, which simultaneously increases the cost of living...
...The Party's organizational forms must adequately meet this need...
...one firm distributes 86 per cent of corn meal...
...The Second World War created favorable conditions for the significant advancement of MarxistLeninist ideology in many parts of the world...
...Only three or four years ago, it consumed only 35 per cent, an index of how heavy and semi-heavy industries (highly mechanized) consume increasing relative and absolute amounts of energy...
...The Political Thesis of the PSP, The Socialist Alternative, was approved by the Party Congress in February, 1974 and is a significant step in addressing major issues and raising important questions facing the struggle for socialism in Puerto Rico...
...Finally the Thesis was approved in the Extraordinary Congress of the PSP which took place in February 1974...
...monopolies in Puerto Rico: young people entering the work force, unskilled workers and rural migrants...
...4. In order to create docile citizens, bourgeois education insists upon reinforcing authority...
...In addition to teaching in Englisha fact which, in and of itself, makes them vehicles of cultural alienation and assimilation-also they operate for the benefit of high-income groups, guaranteeing the reproduction of a bourgeoisie ideologically armed against "subversion...
...In 1972 there were 225,000 dwellings that did not comply with the minimum requirements of health and Firestone workers on strike in Puerto Rico, April 1973.11 security...
...3 2 It must be noted that the majority of those classified as proletarians work in light industry...
...This erroneous focus neither plans towards the future nor allows for the maximization of the state of health of our people...
...The Countries of Asia and Africa The economic and political importance which these countries have gained in recent years and the advancement and consolidation of nationalist, progressive or socialist positions make them an essential factor in the decadence of imperialism and a vital source of support for our struggle...
...2. The inalienable right of the Puerto Rican people to complete recovery of the national wealth, from control by individuals, corporations, governments or foreign forces of any kind...
...Similarly, the destruction of agriculture necessitates external dependence for subsistence goods, and imposes high prices for what little is nationally produced...
...The crisis will sharpen during a long and tortuous process of conscientization, organization and mobilization of the working class and the working masses toward revolutionary actions...
...It is in this sector that the participation of workers will take on its maximum expression, since participation is more a political problem than a technical one...
...It represents the universal recognition of our inalienable right to self-determination and independence, and the commitment of peoples worldwide, who make up the widest spectrum of political forces, to offer, their moral and material support to the Puerto Rican people in their determination to exercise that right...
...Congreso Obrero, 1973, Ponencia sobre el alto cost de Ia vida (San Juan, mimeographed), 1973...
...Without exception, all of the supposed constitutions--the Foraker Law, the Jones Law, Public Law 600, the Constitution of the Free Associated State-were all organic federal laws, passed by the U.S...
...All the mechanisms of bourgeois education function to implant this negative vision of our own cultural life...
...The working masses will determine, through the broadest participation, the major economic objectives and will set priorities...
...The first is the captive nature of our market, which forces us to buy basic subsistence goods on the U.S...
...Thus, a system of selecting cadre to serve the system, based on the elimination of the majority, has been institutionalized...
...There was almost unanimous agreement that political sovereignty was the indispensable factor in any reform of the Free Associated State...
...Its patriotic residues are easily eclipsed by its class interests...
...It is in the planning of the new economy that workers' power finds its most concrete expression, in determining what to produce and how to produce it, in deciding upon the most correct pricing-policy, as well as where and when to invest...
...The executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government, the repressive police organs (Criminal Investigations Corps-CIC, shock troops, etc...
...The rise in freight and transportation costs and the Kennedy Round tariff agreements, which made many products of European light industry more competitive on the U.S...
...The defense of Puerto Rico and the proclamation of its inalienable right to independence have become a rallying cry of attack on American imperialist maneuvers throughout the world...
...territory as a colonized people...
...In Uruguay, fierce repression of the Left has proceeded to the institutionalization of fascism in the new corporate state...
...In order to process 3 million barrels of petroleum daily, the superport and petroleum complex would require about 25 thousand flat acres of the best agricultural lands, 3 such as the valleys of Anasco, Culebrinas and Corcegas...
...The colonial government of Puerto Rico promotes and facilitates this migration, and does everything possible to keep these workers defenseless in the face of their capitalist employers...
...We propose the socialization of all strategic enterprises, including all enterprises currently in the hands of government but controlled by North American shareholders (AFF, AAA, AMA, etc...
...These slogans can be synthesized into one general slogan: Independencia ya, socialsmo ahora mismo...
...For us, proletarian internationalism is a basic principle, regardless of whatever difficulties might arise at a given moment due to misinformation, ignorance or errors that may characterize our relations with a given party or government...
...The proletariat (industrial, commercial and banking) make up 63 per cent or 432,000 persons, 27 per cent of whom are women...
...Ibid...
...Such measures might be accompanied by new economic intrusions, such as the exploitation of minerals, to exhaust the remains of our national wealth in an attempt to alleviate the colonialist economic crisis...
...Quite obviously, the monopolistic impact of these larger firms is greater when they are imposed on smaller economies...
...113...
...To establish the strategy of the Pro Independence Movement," we affirmed in that first thesis (op...
...But this very process creates the material conditions for the struggle toward socialism-the only struggle that can destroy definitively the power of imperialism...
...Recent increases in oil prices at the international level, as well as those expected in the near future, will place the Puerto Rican economy in an ever more precarious position...
...Only the change to a superior form of social organization will create the conditions to contend with this problem...
...This divides the workers and impedes their understanding of the identity of interests that must exist among them...
...In either of these two versions, the U.S...
...The need to revitalize the agricultural sector is a fundamental priority, since we import approximately 68 per cent of all food consumed...
...military bases...
...Army Corps of Engineers, U.S...
...Banking proletariat 22,000 5 32 Agricultural proletariat 35,000 8 3 Commercial proletariat 100,000 23 29 Source: "La politica obrera y sindical del PSP," in Chispa, Special Edition, 1973...
...3) labor unity in the Central Unica de Trabajadores (Workers' Central Federation...
...The Struggle in the United States Puerto Rico is a Latin American country at the central point of conflict between U.S...
...Under socialist planning, investment will be decided on the basis of social possibilities and necessities...
...1974...
...Without a strong base from which to confront the totality of judgments and values perpetrated by imperialism, the development of an attitude of idolatry is facilitated by the colonized vis-a-vis the invader...
...Each time a crack appears in the facade of colonial tranquility, the repressive mechanisms of the State (national guard, tribunals, police) take action to secure the smooth operation of the economic process...
...To this must be added the irrational application of taxes (tariffs) on goods that enter from countries other than the United States, and the unfair application of navigation laws, which obliges Puerto Rico to use only the U.S...
...sources of capital accumulation-- were being anarchically eroded by imperialist capital, without permitting their active participation in in- ternational capitalism...
...domination through reforms which give the appearance of taking Puerto Rico out of the classical colonial mold...
...The Housing Problem Housing is one of the principal needs of every human being...
...The Development of the Party Without the existence of a vanguard, it is impossible to develop the numerous forms of struggle which are necessary in order to arrive at the final strategic triumph...
...Part One The National Reality I. ECONOMIC STRUCTURE In the last quarter of the 19th century, all capitalist nations entered the scramble for colonies...
...Massive emigration to the United States is one of the collective experiences that form the heritage of the Puerto Rican working class, that help to shape the worldview of those who stay on the island and of those who leave...
...Puerto Rican workers go to the United States to perform these functions...
...We have the support of that vast sector of humanity-que ha dicho basta y echado a andar -to sustain our right to independence against those who would crush it...
...For the same reason, investment in light industry, particularly since 1948, has gone hand in hand with the stagnation of sugar production in Puerto Rico...
...In that way, this guide for revolutionary work will become more effective each day...
...in Federal nporate ttax...
...It requires the application of a correct transition program that consolidates the power of the working class and sets solid bases for the construction of socialism...
...Second-class postage paid at New York...
...Since we are not dealing with a simple organization composed only of individual members, the membership, once admitted, should be grouped in organic units, from the highest leadership levels to the base...
...In the 1970's, the escalation of class struggle in Puerto Rico and confrontation between independence forces and the colonial authorities have heightened consciousness about Puerto Rican independence and made the U.S...
...all those over 14 years of age who are working and those unemployed who are actively seeking employment...
...If the crisis is suf- ficiently profound to shake the imperialist structure to its roots, independence will be accompanied by social transformations...
...First of all any document that hopes to analyze and study the overall reality of a people, the basis to project into the future, must necessarily be a transitory document because this reality is constantly changing...
...The PNP represents a class which in its present stage of development sees itself obligated to favor integration with the United States...
...Clearly, anyone who does not posit political independence as the basis for economic independence has not understood the dynamic of our historical process...
...consortiums, which alternate with the federal political structure in dictating guidelines for the administrative structure of the colonial government...
...In Puerto Rico, as a colony of the United States, this direct control is much more pronounced and evident than in any other Latin American country...
...NACLA wishes to express special thanks to the translators who helped us prepare this issue...
...We will have to make use of existing organizations or individual resources to deploy an intensive campaign...
...This is reflected in decreased food production accompanied by rising consumption, Which determine an economic structure dependent on the dominant economy...
...It must reorient the entire productive apparatus of the economy to satisfy the basic needs of our people...
...6. Jorge Freyre, Analisis de los niveles de concentration en el sector manufacturoro de Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras: University of Puerto Rico, mimeographed copy), 1961...
...Two insignificant concessions were finally obtained: direct appeal to the U.S...
...Thus, for example, racism and discrimination and their manifestations in U.S...
...Bureau of the Census, U.S...
...But under our colonial condition, even education is unable to surpass the limitations of our economic development, as defined by the dependent function of the national economy...
...By 1932, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Cuba and Hawaii supplied 75 per cent of total sugar consumption in the United States...
...Neither is it uncommon for us to be the most victimized by so-called welfare...
...The entire framework is based on the premise that the United States, in the face of crisis, will be forced to act in a pre- determined manner...
...These included: (1) That the Free Associated State be granted the option to choose whether or not to be included in commercial treaties entered into by the United States...
...Denationalization of the economy is most advanced in sectors which require greater amounts of capital and which are also most profitable...
...They must possess the ideological and organizational cohesiveness required for the Party to fulfill its leadership role...
...Thus, a kind of vicious24 circle is established, a veritable epidemic that hastens the deterioration of entire neighborhoods...
...capitalist economy at the end of World War II...
...the right to construct socialism...
...In recognizing the extensive domination that the U.S...
...The history of Puerto Rico is that of a people in continuous struggle against the changing forms of imperialist domination and against the native bourgeoisie...
...These activities culminated at the Second Conference of Heads of State of NonAligned Nations, held in Cairo in 1964, which approved a Resolution calling for discussion of the question of Puerto Rico by the Committee of 24...
...The bourgeoisie will no longer be able to count on easily obtained super-profits from the Third World, which have subsidized the economic advantages of certain sectors of the U.S...
...Criticism and self-criticism are the tools of Marxism-Leninism for combatting defects and errors...
...This presupposes the achievement of two indispensable conditions: Firstly, the incorporation of great masses of the people, led by the working class, into the movement toward the proclamation of the republic and the emergence of a revolutionary situation...
...Left to right, they are: Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, Lolita Lebron and Irving Flores...
...It is a process and revolutionary power provides the qualitative change that directs this process...
...This whole process by which the motor forces of the regime are reinforced is hidden by a propaganda apparatus which presents education as the mechanism par excellence for overcoming economic and social limitations...
...Such an attitude is nurtured by the deficient philosophic formation of the majority of scientists...
...Nevertheless, most of these small and medium enterpreneurs are subject to one or another form of exploitation and control by the monopolistic industrial enterprises, which control their lines of credit, supplies, prices and markets...
...Still limited to a purely legalistic framework, this first thesis proposes a strategic objective in the following terms: Thus, we will direct our struggle, in the future, toward the realization of a Constituent Assembly...
...Taking together those workers employed in government bureaucracy and public enterprises, the public sector represents the country's principal employer, with 28 per cent of all workers (189,000...
...Copyright 0 1975 by the North American Congress on Latin America...
...that is, creating pockets of cheap labor for tasks that are less productive in relation to the costs imposed by living conditions in the United States and which cannot, therefore, be assigned to highly skilled workers...
...bourgeoisie...
...This procedure involves not only the approval of twothirds of the Congress, but also ratification by threefourths of the state legislatures...
...To do so is also to make a decisive contribution to the revolutionary transformation of U.S...
...The PPG consumes as much energy as all of Puerto Rico consumed in 1950...
...Over the same period, farms with annual revenues of $1200 or more reduced the number of acres destined to agricultural crops from 472,438 to 290,541.11 Clearly, one of the fundamental causes of the total crisis in agriculture is its relatively monopolistic character...
...Yet education is also directed to satisfy certain necessities of the economic structure of the society...
...It further explains that "socialism is the economic-political system through which the working class, in alliance with all exploited classes, exercises power by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat, destroys the bourgeoisie and obtains complete control over the means of production to organize and promote economic development and the redistribution of wealth on the basis of 'to each according to his/her work...
...In their desire for wealth, landlords generally abandon the maintenance of their buildings when they no longer consider them sufficiently lucrative...
...In the case of Puerto Rico, technological penetration has not had a generalizing effect...
...While in real terms Puerto Rico does not face a scarcity of oil, the oil policies of the United States have created one...
...But in the long-run, its aspirations and class interests are in contradiction with those of the proletariat...
...In comparing this table with another describing all salaried and wage workers in 1973, we can note that those fractions of the working class mentioned above represent about 63 per cent of the entire working population of Puerto Rico...
...The consolidation of the socialist camp and its militant role in the political battle throughout the world are determinant factors in the struggles for national liberation...
...The sharpest indicator of this is the still small number of workers organized in labor unions...
...If Puerto Rican independence is an essential element for the transformation of North American society, as a tremendous blow to the power of the imperialist bourgeoisie and to the very system that determines the relations of production within U.S...
...To a large extent, the new struggle for independence which began in the decade of the sixties is a concerted effort toward achieving this objective...
...one packaging plant distributes 95 per cent of pork fat...
...While formally acceding to international pressure, it would maintain the necessary framework for continued exploitation...
...Thus, confronted with the failure of autonomy, the intermediary bourgeoisie leans toward annexationism...
...We have done it this way for several reasons...
...A correlation was also found to exist between greater foreign capital penetration and a higher degree of monopolization...
...In the specific case of the independence struggle, these efforts must be based upon broad, unitarian foundations...
...Yet their institutionalization in practice converts them into the cause of our remaining in the lowest strata of the socioeconomic system...
...In addition, it utilizes enormous amounts of drinking water and electricity, it penetrates into large expanses of agricultural land and provides very few jobs...
...It would also worsen the problem of inefficient utilization of energy...
...The combined efforts of the three instruments of the working class-the party, the State and the labor unions-will provide the foundation for workers' power...
...Moreover, the U.S...
...Nonetheless, the petty bourgeoisie can exist for an extended period of time under capitalism, given its ability to reproduce itself or shift to other areas of the economy where it does not face direct competition from large capital...
...Yet this liberation cannot be complete until it encompasses the enormous sector of our people living in the United States...
...bourgeoisie has developed financial super-states in the form of multinational corporations that, along with its repressive agents, make up the military-industrial complex of U.S...
...The Structure of the Working Class The working class is the largest social group in our society, including over half of all salaried and wage laborers...
...This request was partially incorporated in a draft bill, but the U.S...
...vTHE WAU...
...While housing construction increased by only 24 per cent, inadequate or deteriorating housing increased by 68 per cent...
...In other words, close to one third of the university students buy education that is sold in private universities...
...Spearhead of social revolution in Latin America, Cuba has offered the most active and effective solidarity to our people in the struggle for national liberation...
...Likewise, we reject the judgement that the Chinese process has degenerated and taken on a petty bourgeois and nationalist character...
...This means that 25,256 farms have an average size of 12 acres, since their total acreage is only 333,467...
...In this way, they instigate competition among workers: whoever accepts a lower wage wins out...
...Thus, the General Assembly of the United Nations ratified the agreement reached by the Committee on DeColonization...
...General living standards are higher in the imperialist country than in the super-exploited countries, but stratification is much greater and more complex...
...Our evidence demonstrates that those from poor areas are most subject to the severest illnesses and chronic suffering yet the least likely recipients of adequate medical attention...
...The Congress also eliminated from the so-called Bill of Rights an article pertaining to the recognition of various human rights, such as the right to employment, to housing, to medical assistance, etc...
...Revolutionary change from one social system to another cannot be achieved abruptly, nor by decree...
...Today 70 per cent of our population receives poor medical care...
...Continued reliance on food imports reflects the economic loss suffered by agriculture in Puerto Rico, due to its inability to satisfy the demand for high-protein goods...
...The contradictions inherent in the capitalist system bewteen policies which tend to maximize employment and those which maximize growth disappear in an industrial socialist economy...
...Private universities represent a type of escape valve for the illusion which the authorities themselves have created...
...Its purpose is to secure the extraction of natural resources, the exploitation of cheap labor and the acquisition of disproportionate benefits through commercial speculation in our captive market...
...In order to become a part of the PSP one must fulfill the requirements set out in the Regulations...
...We respect the independence of every Marxist-Leninist party, be it in power or struggling to obtain it, and we demand respect for our independent position...
...2) to select the moment most appropriate to a given political activity on the basis of objective analysis...
...Because of this, tens of thousands of people who work their whole lives to create someone else's wealth, suffer constant malnutrition, die from hunger or die prematurely from illnesses brought on by intolerable working conditions, miserable housing and lack of rest...
...The new struggle, however, recognizes that we ourselves, without asking the yanqui's permission, must establish our own republic...
...Children of workers and the unemployed who manage to traverse the full path represent only a small percentage of the school population, not at all comparable to their proportional number within society...
...The U.S...
...V. SHORT-TERM OBJECTIVES The daily work of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, on the road toward the seizure of power, requires fighting against the colonial-capitalist system in all its manifestations...
...You could be Whats more, you get upto I down there and running in no 17 years of tax exemptions on all . " ,. . . I. time!Thinkwhatthatcould mean local taxes-corporate, real and mIIII mm mmIm by next tax time...
...The Puerto Rican public school has been imperialism's principal agent in generating this colonized mentality...
...Contrary to previous streams of U.S...
...We cannot wait for the intermediary bourgeoisie to acquire nationalist consciousness, to fight for nationalistic demands against the U.S...
...We are in agreement with their ratification of the Leninist principle that peaceful coexistence and the reduction of tension urged by them must be fostered between states, and that there can only be struggle between classes and between oppressor and oppressed countries...
...markets...
...This situation makes the petty bourgeoisie a potential ally of the working class in its struggle for independence and national liberation...
...All of the above signifies the plunder of our economy, the growing loss of what our people produce...
...Thus one is not obliged, except as a personal act of philanthropy, to return anything to society...
...This puts pressure on tenants to move out, allowing the landlord to raise rents with each new tenant with no additional investment in maintenance...
...Although this tendency existed in the 1960's, since 1971 it has been aggravated by the galloping rate of inflation in the United States...
...imperialism to protect the socio-economic expansion into Puerto Rico initiated before 1898...
...Of course exceptions are made for those willing to be lured into the game...
...Puerto Rican migration to the United States increases when unemployment in the United States declines...
...Authentic technical progress, which would permit the domestic production of basic commodities, has not taken place...
...imperialism through the direct spokepersons of the parties for independence in Puerto Rico...
...The victory of Peronism in Argentina is thus flanked by fascist regimes, with the effect of strengthening the moderate and conservative wings of the Peronist movement...
...union In the face of each one of these problems, the PSP unfurls its battle slogans...
...In the mid-1940's, several factors related to the class roots of the PPD led the party to a change of direction in its program...
...Such a system claims to accomplish the integration of services at three levels of concentration, permitting the free movement of patients within the system, while offering flexibility in its use of human and economic resources...
...An understanding of this strategic role is spreading among many parties, governments and organizations not only in Latin America, but in Asia, Africa and the socialist camp as well...
...Together with Afro-americans, Chicanos and American Indians, we occupy the lowest strata in the U.S...
...By virtue of its position in the economic structure, the petty bourgeoisie is subordinate to the dominant mode of production, capitalism...
...capitalist economy...
...16 per year for non-profit institutions ($30 for two years...
...This is a desperate act of the PPD and the PNP colonialists, charged with consolidating U.S...
...political superstructure by means of U.S...
...In early July of 1898, the new government officially began to function...
...and (2) Once the crisis of the colonialist system has occurred, the United States will have no alternative but to recognize the independence of Puerto Rico...
...In the second thesis of the MPI, an attempt is made to define a precise strategy toward independence...
...capital, rapidly penetrating the distinct aspects of social life: economics, politics, culture and others...
...Congress passed another statute, known as the Jones Law, which eliminated the Executive Council and replaced it with a popularly elected Senate which, together with the lower house, formed the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico...
...This law provided for a public referendum in Puerto Rico to decide whether or not to adopt a "Constitution...
...Thus, we reject the proposition that the USSR is social-imperialist and the strategic enemy of humanity...
...This complex social division pits certain sectors against others, since the level of alienation is high and consciousness of their exploited condition very low...
...government statistics...
...For example, sectors exist among small merchants and small-scale manufacturers whose incomes are far greater than those of fishermen or craftsmen...
...It is impossible to anticipate the precise moment of this occurrence...
...It is counterposed to self-determination...
...In