First Published: Party Voice, [publication of the New York State Communist Party, USA] Vol. I, No. 10, January 1954.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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A leader of the Puerto Rican community in New York, speaking at a “Stop McCarthyism Now!” rally in early December, declared that the Jefferson School of Social Science is “the only school in the country offering systematic instruction on the Puerto Rican Question.” This may sound like an exaggeration; but in a very fundamental sense it is absolutely true.
There are many bourgeois schools and colleges that include something about Puerto Rico and about Puerto Ricans living in this country as a part of more general courses in the social sciences. There may be a few which even offer special courses dealing with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Puerto Rican population. We may be sure, however –even without making a survey–that not one of these institutions offers instruction on The Puerto Rican Question. Only a Marxist school could even conceive of Puerto Rico in the political and theoretical framework which such a title implies.
The imperialist bourgeoisie view Puerto Rico as “our territory,” and all issues relating to it as “internal” affairs of the United States. To them, the Puerto Rican population in New York and other mainland cities constitutes a “social problem” to be dealt with, if at all, through the reformist superficialities of “social work.” The chauvinist monopolists who run our country do not even think in terms of a Puerto Rican nation, or of a Puerto Rican national minority in this country. For them there is no political question at all–certainly no question of the liberation of a nation and an uprooted people from imperialist oppression. And, of course, whatever attention monopoly-dominated schools and colleges give to Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in this country fully reflects this chauvinist point of view.
It is only the science of the working class, Marxism-Leninism, that illuminates the true national character of the Puerto Rican question, that focuses attention on its political importance, and that interprets the organic inter-relations of the liberation struggles of the Puerto Rican nation and the U.S. working class struggles for peace, democracy and economic security. It follows, of course, that a Marxist educational institution must necessarily approach the Puerto Rican question from this proletarian internationalist point of view.
Thus it is that the Jefferson School of Social Science offers courses on “The Puerto Rican Question,” “The Puerto Rican National Minority,” and related subjects, which are absolutely unique in American education. Here, indeed, is “the only school in the country offering systematic instruction on the Puerto Rican Question.”
There is abundant evidence that members of our Party and other progressives, both Puerto Ricans and non-Puerto Ricans, sorely need the Marxist understanding which comes with systematic study of these and other courses on the national question at the Jefferson School. A few illustrations are in order.
More than a few progressives were taken in by Eisenhower’s recent promise to support “complete independence” for Puerto Rico if its Legislature asked for it. Had they grasped the Marxist principle that self-determination for a nation is impossible so long as its economy is dominated by a foreign imperialist country–that “non-sovereign nations and colonies cannot be emancipated without the overthrow of the power of capital” (Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, p. 115)–they would have understood the President’s “promise” as nothing but a tactical maneuver to win U.N. support for the “Associated State” fraud. They would have realized that there can be no real independence for Puerto Rico without breaking the sugar trusts’ stranglehold on the nation’s economy.
Many of our comrades still approach relations with the Puerto Rican minority in New York in non-political, bourgeois-humanitarian terms. They are justly “horrified” at the brutal housing, school, employment and other discriminations to which the Puerto Rican masses are subjected in our city; and they want to “do something to help these poor people.” We can applaud their humanitarianism and at the same time condemn their social work ’“uplift” orientation. If they grasped the Marxist principle that “the road to victory of the [socialist] revolution in the West lies through the revolutionary alliance with the liberation movement of the colonies and dependent countries against imperialism,” (Ibid., p. 184) then they would understand that the American working class must struggle against anti-Puerto-Rican discrimination in its own interest and that of the American nation as a whole.
Some comrades give evidence of even deeper penetration of anti-Puerto Rican chauvinism. They develop no social relations among the Puerto Rican people and, if criticized, try to blame their failure on the alleged “stand-offishness” of Puerto Ricans they know. They remain quite calm and serene in the face of common discriminations against Puerto Ricans in their shops, apartment houses and schools, never initiating or taking part in struggles against these chauvinist practices. They generally “overlook” Puerto Ricans when it comes to selecting leaders in their trade unions, clubs and community organizations. Some even accept the imperialist lie that virulent police brutality against Puerto Ricans is due to their alleged “criminal tendencies.” They never raise the question of independence for Puerto Rico in their mass organizations. If these comrades understood the Marxist principles that the necessary alliance between the U.S. working class and the oppressed Puerto Rican people can be formed only if “the proletariat of the oppressor nation renders direct and determined support to the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples against the imperialism of its ’own country,’”[1] they would fight against the chauvinist poison which immobilizes the working class of our community in the face of this problem, and would actively organize struggles for the full democratic rights of the Puerto Rican national minority and the liberation of the Puerto Rican nation.
There are some Puerto Rican comrades who tend to approach all questions solely as Puerto Ricans–not as proletarian internationalists. Understandably irked by chauvinist neglect of the Puerto Rican question in our ranks, they tend to lose their working class perspective, and to view all questions through a nationalist prism. Such nationalist tendencies, of course, reflect the influence of bourgeois, anti-working class ideology, and a failure fully to grasp the Marxist principle that the national question “is not an isolated, self-sufficient question; it is a part of the general problem of the proletarian revolution, subordinate to the whole, and must be considered from the point of view of the whole.” (Ibid., p. 185.)
These new illustrations hardly begin to open up the rich store of insights on the Puerto Rican question which can be grasped only through mastery of Marxist theory on the national question.
It is true, of course, that the extensive writings of Lenin and Stalin on the national question do not analyze the Puerto Rican Question, as such. But it is also true that here, as with all Marxist science, their theoretical analyses of the national question in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union set forth universally applicable principles based on the generalized experience of the working class and the national movements. Indeed, there can be no truly scientific understanding of or approach to the national question which does not emerge from mastery of Marxist theory in this and related fields.
Our comrades would do well to make full use of the rich opportunities for the systematic study of Marxist theory on the Puerto Rican question which are afforded at the Jefferson School of Social Science. Perhaps more of us would enroll in “The Puerto Rican Question,” “Stalin’s ’Marxism and the National Question,’” and related courses if we reflected occasionally on the fact that this School for working people in our community is the only educational institution in the United States where systematic instruction in this field may be found.
[1] Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, p. 188.