First Published: The Guardian, October 16, 1974.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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It would clearly be impossible for anyone to oppose independence for Puerto Rico and still lay claim to being of the left.
For this reason, the forthcoming demonstration in support of Puerto Rican independence at Madison Square Garden in New York City Oct. 27 has drawn wide support.
But a closer examination of the ways in which different groups have entered into this event helps to demonstrate that what is called “fragmentation of the left” will not be easily wished away and that, in fact, the left will only be unified when both revisionism and infantile ultra-“leftism” have been thoroughly exposed and their lines defeated.
The Communist party endorsed the action Sept. 11, three months after it was announced. Its hesitation stemmed from qualms about the militant cast the action was developing and the presence in the initiating committee of a number of people, such as this writer, who have made no secret of their enmity for modern revisionism.
But while the CPUSA felt obliged to endorse the rally, its statement of support is a revealing self-exposure of how revisionism in practice plays down revolutionary struggle and attempts to substitute for it various legalistic tactics which will inevitably sap the movement of its vitality.
One need only contrast the call for Oct. 27 issued by the Puerto Rican Solidarity Day Committee with the statement by the CPUSA.
The Solidarity Committee concretely documents the exploitation of Puerto Rico by the U.S. imperialism and minces no words in describing the present “corrupt government” that serves its U.S. masters on the island. It then goes on to document the struggles of the people of Puerto Rico themselves, showing that “Puerto Rico has had a long history of anticolonial struggle” and that the independence movement today is at a qualitatively new level.
As a result of the resistance of the Puerto Rican people, the call points out, the rest of the world was forced to take notice leading to the December 1973 UN resolution upholding Puerto Rico’s right to self-determination and independence. How does the CPUSA treat all this?
It turns everything upside down. The CPUSA attempts to transform the rally into a demonstration in support of the UN resolution. It completely ignores the mass movement in Puerto Rico itself but centers everything on the resolution, going so far as to say that “the resolution. . .puts the struggle for Puerto Rican independence on a level of mass struggle,” as though the UN rather than the Puerto Rican masses is the central factor.
When it isn’t touting the UN resolution, it glorifies the weakest part of the Solidarity Day Committee’s own statement, the slogan of “a Bicentennial without colonies.”
Is this nit-picking over words? No, the CPUSA chooses its words carefully, especially in this case where it took them three months to figure out what to say.
Actually, the question of Puerto Rican independence is a much thornier one for the CPUSA than it would like to admit. First there is the question of armed struggle, a notion that has been known to create paroxysms of disquiet in the ranks of the revisionists. Can anyone possible believe that anything but a mass legal and extra-legal and ultimately armed struggle by the people of Puerto Rico themselves will win genuine independence? Yes, one can believe that if one can accept the revisionist hogwash that a decaying and weakened U.S. imperialism will suddenly become more “reasonable” in its hours of destruction.
In an effort to further insinuate themselves into a popular demonstration that was proceeding effectively without them, the CPUSA followed up its statement of “support” with an article in its newspaper, the Daily World. In this brief item the party sought to foist its own political line onto the Solidarity Day Committee by saying that the Oct. 27 meeting was intended “to kickoff a national campaign in support of the 1973 United Nations resolution.”
They then went on to designate the rally’s “main speakers” as–in this order–Angela Davis, Juan Mari Bras, secretary general of the Puerto Rican Socialist party (PSP), and Jane Fonda. The Solidarity Day Committee, however, had already agreed that any such designation would not be in keeping with the spirit of the occasion and that with the exception of Mari Bras, all speakers would have equal time. We will leave it to the CPUSA to explain why such people as Russell Means, Piri Thomas, Corky Gonzalez, Ossie Davis, Dave Dellinger, Jim Forman, Owusu Sadaukai and others are less “main” than their nominees. There is a word for this kind of behavior in the people’s movement–opportunism. There has been another kind of sniping at the Oct. 27 demonstration that takes an ultra-“left” form but really has a lot in common with the revisionists. The most public expression of this came from–of all places–the Interboro Chapter of the New American Movement (NAM). After expressing support for the independence rally, the New York City group raised three significant criticisms of the action in its publication, Common Ground:
(1) They don’t like the way the sponsoring committee was organized. Interboro NAM thinks that the PSP, which played the leading role in initiating the action, should have brought in everyone from the beginning, including those who were not in agreement with some of the fundamental concepts.
This is pure ultra-democratic demagogy. If PSP had followed NAM’s method, the sponsoring committee would probably still be debating the political line of the action. The PSP is a strong organization with a mass base and has every right to play the leading role in a political action which would have been impossible without its initiative and resources. At the same time, the Solidarity Day Committee is no rubber stamp for anyone. Its political definition of the action has been sound and has reflected a wide spectrum of views.
(2) Interboro NAM is upset that the Solidarity Committee was willing to include one or two Congresspeople among the speakers on the program. Here’s the way they put it: “Invitations to capitalist ’liberals’ could become a dangerous repetition of the easy co-optation of the peace movement by the ruling class.”
Yes, the Solidarity Day Committee hoped to have a member of the Black congressional caucus on the program. It is a fact that very few legislators, including some who fancy themselves quite “progressive,” are willing to take a forthright stand for Puerto Rican independence. But so long as the genuine independence forces stay in the leadership of the movement, they should welcome any support that would intensify the contradictions within the ruling class on this question. In addition, it is a serious error to lump together in indiscriminate fashion all capitalist party legislators. While none of them can ever be reliable allies, there is a material political basis for some lending limited support to a particular struggle.
Finally, it is the gravest distortion of recent history to conclude that the antiwar movement was “co-opted.” The fact is that for a period it managed to transcend its own class outlook–predominately student, intellectual and petty bourgeois–and put forward an advanced anti-imperialist program. Without the leading role of a Marxist-Leninist party it could not sustain such an advanced view and ultimately settled back into the most advanced politics possible for such a class alignment.
(3) Finally, the NAM people feel that the Solidarity Day demonstration should be “explicitly socialist.” It is not clear whether or not they mean here that the independence movement in Puerto Rico or that the North American support movement must be “explicitly socialist.” Others whose criticism of the demonstration has not been made in a public fashion have stated that the campaign must always insist on “the existing relations between the struggle of both peoples for socialism.”
All of these views are unsound. Marxist-Leninists have always seen the revolution in the colonial world as a two-stage struggle: first for national independence during which period it is possible to forge an alliance among various classes (under the leadership of the working class) to overthrow foreign rule and domination; and in the second stage, the struggle for socialism in which the working class must wrench power from their own bourgeoisie who will undoubtedly have the backing of imperialism. The Trotskyists on the other hand put forward the idealist view that the stage of bourgeois democratic revolution can be by-passed. As a result, no Trotskyist movement has ever succeeded in leading a revolutionary struggle either for national independence or socialism and the Trotskyists have found themselves in the position of attacking even Ho Chi Minh and the leaders of the Vietnamese people’s patriotic struggle because they were pursuing a “two-stage” strategy.
It would also be incorrect to make advocacy of socialism a pre-condition for political unity in the North American support movement for Puerto Rican independence. This would be an indefensible narrowing of the support movement that would substitute a spurious ideological purity for concrete assistance to independence. At the same time, of course, communists and others will find the ways to put forward their independent views within a broader coalition. Any demagogue can echo the rhetoric of socialism but the revolutionary must do much more. The real revolutionaries will be judged by the way in which they help build a genuine mass support movement for independence, always relying on the masses of people and refusing to make parliamentary forms the chief tactic of struggle. They will also try to put the independence struggle into the larger context of worldwide anti-imperialist struggle and link it up with the struggles of the working masses in the advanced capitalist countries. But they will not make their own views the political basis for unity in such a support movement.
The Solidarity Day Committee is not without its political shortcomings. The slogan “A Bicentennial without colonies,” for instance, has a certain calculated public relations ring to it and can certainly promote illusions about the nature of the bourgeois state. It also suggests a simplistic view of the nature of colonialism. But it is clear that the anti-imperialist character of this historic action does not rest on an interpretation of this particular slogan.
Even those, like the CPUSA and Interboro NAM, who have tried to sabotage Solidarity Day politically have been forced to express their support for the event. This is a measure o the power of the national liberation movement of the Puerto Rican people.
In the long run, not even U.S. imperialism will be able to hold back the rising torrent of struggle for Puerto Rican independence. The aspiring North American revolutionary movement can do no less than to give this struggle its devoted and unqualified support.