First Published: People’s Tribune, Vol. 4, No. 19, September 1972.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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From 1966 to 1971 some 232,000 workers in Puerto Rico went out on 344 strikes. In the first half of this year strikes or threatened strikes have involved 75,000 workers. And no slackening is in sight. In fact, this spontaneous proletarian fightback is the greatest in Puerto Rico since the 1930’s. To grasp this motion we must go back and expose the deepening hold of U.S.N.A. (United States of North America) imperialism on Puerto Rico, how it overthrew semi-feudalism and then created an agricultural proletariat only to destroy it at a later stage in the name of manufacturing and industry thus creating a more exploited industrial proletariat to run its machines.
In the late 1800’s Puerto Rican society was predominantly semi-feudal and based on a hacienda system which was linked to a limited degree to international-Spanish-capital.[1] There was a significant exception even then, however, in the capitalist production of coffee – Puerto Rico being fourth in the world in coffee production. The producing classes were either semi-serfs on the haciendas or poor peasants that barely making enough to live on. The USNA invasion in 1898 brought this stage to an end by definitively implanting capitalist production relations in the countryside, specifically, a system of sugar and tobacco plantations, and by destroying the semi-feudal hacienda system.
This new system deepened imperialism’s hold on Puerto Rico, increasing its profitability for the USNA ruling class and tying it more closely to the USNA economy. It also created a rural proletariat, especially in sugar and tobacco. By the 1930’s the agricultural proletariat had its own labor federation, the Federacion Libre de Trabajadores and its Partido Socialista.[2] This stage, in which the agricultural proletariat became the leading producing class and in which Puerto Rico’s role was to supply cheap sugar, tobacco and coffee for USNA imperialism began again to change from the 1940’s on.
The great Lenin pointed out that one of the essential features of imperialism is “the export of capital....as distinguished from the export of commodities.”[3] What lies behind the export of capital is mainly imperialism’s unquenchable thirst for maximum profit and its desire to guarantee its supplies of raw materials, etc.. In the colonies it is able to reap superprofits due to the low wages, scarcity of capital, low price of land, cheapness of raw materials.[4] And, as Lenin notes, “The export of capital greatly affects and accelerates the development of capitalism in those countries to which it is exported. ”[5] This developing capitalism means ever greater exploitation of the colonial masses through the development of the more productive manufacturing and heavy industry. Where before one worker might produce new value for the capitalist of $20 a day, now working on his machine, he turns out $500.
Just such an intensification of imperialist plunder has taken place in Puerto Rico since the 1940’s but especially after 1950. On the one hand this has meant the ruin of agriculture and thousands of agricultural proletarians and poor peasants. (In 1940 1 out of 4 in the “work force” made his living in agriculture; today it’s less than 1 in 16)[6] Many thousands were permanently unemployed and from 1955 to 1966, some 564.000 were forced to emigrate.[7] Many have had to join the new manufacturing or industrial proletariat. On the other hand, the increased exploitation has meant the formation of a modern concentrated proletariat.
In Puerto Rico, like the Negro Nation, the USNA imperialists have direct colonial control. Puerto Rico is “game” basically only for USNA imperia ism. So it is no surprise that as this second stage of imperialist exploitation developed, USNA capital squeezed more and more wealth out of the island. In the early 1950’s, when the new trend was still relatively weak, profits on imperialist capital were only $22 million a year; by 1966 they were 13 times larger.[8] Just 4 years later they had leaped by $300 million.[9]
While they have been fattening on their colonial super-profits, the imperialists have been busily digging their own grave. As Stalin has said, “... in exploiting these countries (colonies and dependent countries) imperialism is compelled to build there railways, factories and mills, industrial and commercial centers. The appearance of a class of proletarians, the emergence of a native intelligentsia, the awakening of a national consciousness, the growth of the liberation movement – such are the inevitable results of this ’policy’.”[10]
By 1969 there were some 137,000 workers in manufacturing plants (mainly in clothing, leather goods and food processing).[11] “There were also a few thousands employed in heavy industry, such as the Phillips petroleum refinery and the Ferre (the so-called ’governor’ of Puerto Rico) cement plants. Since the ’workforce’ is about 1,070,000 (with some 30% unemployed) and because agriculture accounts for just 5% of Puerto Rican income now, it is clear that the manufacturing and industrial proletariat is by far the leading producer class.”[12]
The workers in manufacturing were making $3,100 a year before taxes.[13] Since the cost of living is 15% higher than in the rest of the USNA state, real income comes to $2,630 a year or $53.50 a week – before taxes. And since the average Puerto Rican family has 5 members, it is clear that this miserable sum has to be spread far too thinly. With this kind of wage, most workers cannot keep their heads above water and slip into debt. From 1961 to 1969 family debts – not including mortgages – increased 500%.[14] Although most proletarians have’ some possessions, such as a radio or a television or refrigerator, most of the time it is on the installment plan. Repossessions are very frequent as families, unable to keep up, have to surrender what little they have.
From about 1966, the worsening of the crisis of USNA imperialism has further intensified the oppression of the proletariat in Puerto Rico. In the first place, inflation since 1966 has reduced workers’ real income. For example, from 1966 to 1969 the price of food and health services rose 6 to 7% a year.[15] Secondly, unemployment has increased among the proletariat. The garment industry, the largest in Puerto Rico, has laid off several thousand workers. In Aibonito, for example, over 1,500 workers have been laid off in the last year – out of 2,000!
Thus we see that imperialism has laid the conditions for its own destruction. The proletariat which it created to extract more wealth from Puerto Rico has, as the crisis has developed, engaged in sharper spontaneous struggles. Moreover, imperialism, by annihilating the remnants of semi-feudalism along with building up the working class, has put on the immediate agenda of the national liberation struggle in Puerto Rico the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Clearly, the objective conditions for revolution are maturing in Puerto Rico. It is also clear that, “as in’ the rest of the USNA state, the subjective factor lags behind the mass movement. First, there is not anywhere in the USNA state, including Puerto Rico, a Marxist-Leninist, multi-national communist party. So long as this situation persists, no revolution will be possible in the USNA state. In addition, there is a Puerto Rican revisionist party, the Partido Socialista Puertorriqueno-Movimiento Pro Independencia (PSP-MPI) which has been busily attempting to keep Marxism-Leninism out of the working class, thus following in the footsteps of the Communist Party USA. The PSP-MPI practices tailism toward the spontaneous workers’ struggle. According to a recent statement by A. Agosto, a high-ranking PSP-MPI leader, the economic strike is the highest form of workers’ struggle. With this line of pushing Marxism-Leninism into the background, not educating the workers in theory, and pushing to the foreground “only what seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie” it is no wonder that the PSP-MPI acts as a brake on the workers’ struggle in Puerto Rico. The PSP-MPI, which is petty-bourgeois in origin, is trying to attach itself to the workers’ movement and use it (for the bourgeoisie). Proletarianize their high-ranking cadre and have them leave their cushy positions, etc.? Sorry, that would be too much to ask! It’s “better” to picket “in sympathy” with strikers, etc. Or, if they find a good worker, a talented union organizer, try to swallow him into the PSP-MPI and push him up the union bureaucracy. After all, then he will be in a “position of power”, and so on. With this kind of backstabbing, bourgeois, revisionist, so-called “leadership” it is crystal clear that whatever progress the workers have made has been solely the result of their spontaneous struggle and that the PSP-MPI is a big obstacle on the road to national liberation in Puerto Rico.
The national liberation struggle in Puerto Rico is linked to the proletarian revolution in the Anglo-American nation by the fact that both share common oppression through the USNA state. It is in the interests of the Anglo-American proletariat to support their comrades in Puerto Rico since the island acts as a reserve of the imperialists, used to depress wages, create monopoly super-profits, establish military bases and so on. The struggle in Puerto Rico also forms part of the national liberation movement of all Latin America. It is absolutely required to support these struggles since the Latin American masses of oppressed peoples will be the principal ally of the Anglo-American proletariat in its revolution. Puerto Rico – 14% covered by military bases, source of many compradors useful in subverting Latin America (such as T. Moscoso, of “Alliance for Progress” fame) and so on – is the key to revolution in the Americas, for all Latin American revolutionaries will be watching how we carry out our proletarian internationalist duties to “our bourgeoisie’s own colony”. Puerto Rico is the concrete link to hemispheric revolution. It is the touchstone by which our reliability as allies will be tested.
For these reasons, the Communist League upholds Puerto Rico’s independence, without which – under conditions of imperialist control – it cannot have self- determination, and upholds the necessity of a Marxist-Leninist, multi-national Communist Party in the USNA state in the slogans which serve to guide our practice:
INDEPENDENCE for PUERTO RICO!
BUILD A MULTI-NATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY!
[1] A.G. Quintero Rivera, “El desarrollo de las Clases Sociales y los Coriflictos Politicos en Puerto Rico”
[2] ibid, p. 3 and 8
[3] V. I. Lenin, Imperialism. Highest Stage of Capitalism. Selected Works, Vol. 5, p. 81
[4] Ibid p. 58
[5] Ibid
[6] Kal Wagenheim, Puerto Rico. A Profiler Praeger 1970 p. 100
[7] Juan Angel Silen, We, the Puerto Rican Peoplet A Story of Oppression and Resistance, MR Press, p. 90
[8] Ibid p. 92
[9] (Apendice a la) Declaracion General de la Asamblea Constituyente del PSP-MPI, p. 12-13
[10] J.V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, FLP, Peking, 1970, pp. 5,6
[11] Wagenheim, p 101
[12] Apendice. p. 7, 8
[13] Wagenheim, p 101
[14] Apendice
[15] Ibid.