COMMITTEE EXHIBIT NO. 22 RESOLUTION ON PUERTO RICAN WORK IN THE UNITED STATES The Resolutions Committe on Latin America considers that it is necessary to have a ringing statement on Latin America, finishing it up with some concrete proposals. That is, aid to the Latin American peoples against exploitation and oppression by American imperialism. However, because Puerto Rico is the most directly exploited colony of American imperialism, and because of the urgent need for stepping up activities in behalf of the Puerto Rican population in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois and many other states where Puerto Ricans are now living in considerable numbers, we propose a special resolution on Puerto Rican works Puerto Rico is a nation. It is a direct colony of American imperialism. The Party has a two-fold task in relation to Puerto Rican work. First, to aid the people in Puerto Rico in the fight against economic, social and political oppression by Tall Street imperialism, and for full sovereignty and independence. Second, to aid the Puerto Ricans in their struggles against extreme conditions of poverty, slum ghettoes, discrimination, police brutality, and other forms of oppression against the Puerto Ricans in the United States. Puerto Rican youth has been used as cannon fodder, without consultation or consent from the Puerto Rican people, in all U. S. imperialist wars. Over 65,000 Puerto Ricans participated in the Second orld Tar. Puerto Rico suffered one casualty for every 660 inhabitants of Puerto Rico as compared with one casualty for every 1,125 inhabitants of the United States in the U. S. imperialist invasion of Korea. As of December 1958 there were 608,000 Puerto Ricans by birth and 241,000 of Puerto Rican parentage living in the United States. There are sizeable Puerto Rican communities in large cities from coast to coast, with a Puerto Rican population of 654,000 in New York City alone. The National Convention therefore declares that it is an imperative duty for our Party to turn its face to the Puert Rican people, to learn their conditions and needs and to give them practical and political aid in their efforts to organize themselves into unions, to raise their desperately low wages, to improve housing conditions and abolish slums, to attain proper education, to meet the social, cultural and economic needs of their youth, to combat the chauvinist campaign of slander and lies about the Puerto Rican people, and to struggle against every act of discrimination and oppression. The Convention considers that appropriate attention to the vital needs of the Puerto Rican and Negro people is a test of Communist integrity and responsibility because the Communist Party has always been distinguished by the fact that it is the defender and champion of the most exploited and oppressed sections of the working population. This Convention decided upon the following concrete steps to overcome the long neglect and grave weaknesses in relation to our work among the Puerto Rican people: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The incoming National Committee shall make a thorough study and evaluation of our work in every community and industry in which there is a significant number of Puerto Ricans throughout the United States. Special emphasis in this study shall be given to housing, jobs, peace, and political action. Consideration shall be given to Puerto Rican Commissions in states here there are larg populations of Puerto Ricans, and Puerto Rican concentration clubs, enlisting for such clubs Spanish-speaking and other comrades interested in Puerto Rican work. The National Convention shall organize a Party seminar and classes on Puerto A special bulletin shall be issued in Spanish devoted to facts of Puerto Rican life and experiences in struggles based upon the proposed study and experiences. Within a reasonable time and after adequate preparation, state conferences shall be called of delegates from all clubs (or sections) to draw up a fuller statewide plan of work. An important feature of such conferences shall be the question of jobs for Puerto Ricans and Negroes. 6. 7. 8. 9. A special commission on Puerto Rican work shall be set up by the National The Worker, Political Affairs, and other publications shall give major attention to Puerto Rican work. The Party shall make a conscious and persistent effort to involve Puerto Rican members and leaders in all phases of leadership. This National Convention shall send a message of greeting to our brother Party 10. This Convention of the Communist Party of the United States demands the freedom of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos and all other Puerto Rican political prisoners now in Puerto Rican and federal prisons in the United States, COMMITTEE EXHIBIT NO. 23 DRAFT RESOLUTION ON PARTY ORGANIZATION Introduction The Party is rallying in unity around policies for mass work, for peace, democracy and security. It is consolidating its ranks on the basis of the universally valid principles of Marxism-Leninism as applied to the specific conditions of American life. For these reasons, and because of increasingly favorable objective conditions in the overall, it faces the urgent necessity as well as new opportunities for rebuilding and revitalization. The correct mass policies of this 17th Convention arm the Party with the first essential, in the new conditions, for the renewed development of the Communist Party, USA. But the opportunities and possibilities flowing from our correct general line will come to naught unless we grasp one other essential: the need to gear the Party, in every facet of its activities, to the correct application and fulfillment of its mass policies. Given these conditions, our small Party could, in the conditions shaping up, almost overnight become a large and influential force in the life of our country. To do this, it will be necessary: 1. To shake off and overcome apathy, certain concepts, practices, and shortcomings which remain with us from the past; 2. To make a turn in the fight for the Party's ideological and organizational work directed to the realization of the mass line. The perspective before the American people, and hence before our Party, is one of heightening mass struggles as the conflict over the future economic and political course of our country sharpens. Already a new fluidity characterizes the national and local scenes as groups and individuals begin to shift their positions to meet changed conditions. These developments are a signal to the Party to be ready to react more quickly and with greater boldness to events, both in the application of the united front and in timely projection of Party and Left initiatives. They are also an alarm clock rousing us to the time of day, advising that while we have time to make a break with the primarily defensive posture of "holding operation" conceptions, we have no time to lose. 10 To gear the Party to the fulfillment of the 17th Convention decisions requires that in good time the shortest necessary time - we overcome our most serious weaknesses, we solve a number of long-unsolved problems. I. Overcome Our Shortcomings The Party approaches the task of drastically improving its ideological and organizational work, of eliminating weaknesses, from the standpoint of confidence in its scientific socialist theory and with the knowledge that, despite the ravages of the recent years, it has the capacity, the vitality and the will to fulfill its guiding role in relation to the mass struggles of the people. The wave of revisionism which threatened to engulf the Party has been repulsed, and those who sought to deny the need for a Marxist vanguard party of the working class have been routed. The anti-Party sectarians have been rebuffed and incorrigible domatism finds itself more and more isolated. The ideological unity of the Party has been restored in very considerable measure. Today, it is possible for a united Party to wage the struggle against opportunist tendencies to the right or to the "left" as they arise concretely in the course of mass work. The Party's capacity and potential for mass work has been demonstrated in difficult conditions and at the very time when the revisionists were proclaiming its death and the sectarians were clamoring for policies which would further isolate the Party. Despite certain glaring gape and such unevenness, the Party played an important role in a number of electoral struggles (Califormia, This, New York, Illinois, Michigan, etc.); in a number of strike struggles (steel, auto, packing, hospital, etc.); in the fight against unemployment (national and state marches, lobbies): in the fight for integrated schools, housing and for state FEPS; and in the development of peace actions, especially in relation to A and B bomb tests and other ierues in a number of areas. A number of districts (Illinois, California, etc) have developed their capacity for united front actions on local and national issues, a capacity which extends to a growing number of sections. At the same time, the Party has advanced its public role in onerous ways: the distribution of over 1 million pieces of national and local mes materials of all kinds since the 16th convention: the growth of the number of Party and Left sponsored mass meetings and forums: the more frequent appearance of the Party at public hearings, on radio and television; the growth of invitations to Party speakers on college campuses and before mass organizations. Marxist education has been revived in a number of areas. There is a growth of Marxist study circles and clasees for non-Communists. A beginning has been made toward re-establishing a cadre training progres. Major headway has been made in the resolution of basic theoretical questions relating to the Negro question. Attention to youth work, for some time completely abandoned, has been resumed. Recruiting has been renewed in a number of areas. And important advances have been registered also in other fields. Recognizing that these accomplishments afford proof that the Party has the will to live, to fulfill its vanguard role, the fact remains that they are only a small indication of what must and can be done, if we overcome our weaknesses. That this much was done in the midst of the critical inner situation and great objective difficulties attests to the basic health of the Party, to the fact that it has the inner strength and resources to make the required drastic improvement. Side by side with these accomplishments, and bampering their spread and development, are a number of serious weakness08: 1. The temporary loss of the Daily Worker and the checking of the decline in Worker circulation at such a low point as to prolong the critical situation of the press. (see special resolution). 2. We are plagued with continued underestimation of organizational work, with much organizational looseness, reflected in unsatisfactory functioning of many Party organizations, departure from the principle of democratic centralism, in the low ebb in the circulation of literature as well as the press, in the absence of systematic recruiting, and many other ways. 3. Great unevenness of participation in the Party's mass work from district to district, section to section, club to club, member to member. 4. Insufficient collectivity at all levels in working out mass policies, planning mass work; in the course of its execution, and in subsequent evaluation and exchange of experiences. 5. Failure to rally the Party as a whole to react in time and with sufficient strength to a number of important situations affecting the interests of the working class, the Negro people and their allies. o. Failure to give necessary attention to a number of important areas, such as national group work, especially the Spanish-speaking minorities, farmers; and the problems of women. 7. Insufficient attention to ideological work and cadre development; 8. Insufficient attention to problems of mass education, especially to the development of class, political and socialist consciousness on the urgent issues of the day. It is imperative that we be unrelenting in the struggle to overcome these veaknesses in the shortest possible time. III. Gear the Party to its Mass Policies! A. Master the United Front! Mastery of the theory and practice of the united front policy is the key task before the whole Party every organization, every member. - The united front is the basis style and method of our mass work. Its validity encompasses comrades in the labor and mass organizations as well as those comrades able to function publicly as Communists in or out of mass organizations. Our ideological work must be directed first of all toward re-arming the Party with a keen understanding of the theory and practice of the united front, and how to build the Party in the course of its development. It must combat concepts which require ideological agreement as the basis of unity in action, It should develop understanding of the role of Left initiative and of the Party's independent role in relation to the united front. It must imbue the entire Party with the confidence that all members, all Party organizations can and must play a role in winning this biggest unwon battle: whether on a large scale of helping to move many organizations in concert on one or more issues, or on a small scale of moving 3, 5, 7 people on single issues. Practical leadership must be directed first of all to helping members, clubs and sections solve problems of developing the united front. The absence of attention and guidance to work in the mass organizations must be overcome. Work in mass organizations must be placed on a selected, concentration basis just as it is vitally necessary to overhaul and modernize the Party's time-tested main policy of concentrating its attention to basic, decisive sections of the working class. As in the policy of industrial concentration, studies must be made of the mass organizations and issues to determine focal points of priority attention which are decisive to moving masses on their urgent needs. Know how in the development of mass work must be promoted through restoring the practice of exchanging experiences and evaluating activities, through conferences and other appropriate means. Assistance must be provided comrades in unions and mass organizations toward learning how to advance Party policies, how to go about building Left groupings, how to develop political and class consciousness, how to bring people closer and closer into the Party. The remants of distorted concepts of security left over from the McCarthy period, which hamper the Party's capacity to develop the united front, must be overcome. Real problems of safeguarding the Party and its members from reactions persecution must be separated out of the mass of confusion and distortion which surrounds this question in many areas, and resolved on the basis of collective application of a general Party position to each specific, individual case. Above all, it must be approached from the viewpoint of safeguarding the capacity of Communists to do mass work, to increase the influence of the Party's policies, to advance the united front--and not as an excuse to evade these responsibilities. B. For Renewal of Left Initiatives. A number of recent experiences confirm the value and need of timely and properly project Left initiatives in building the united front, and in, sooner or later, helping to rewin acceptance of Left as well as Communist participation in united fronts. At the present level of development, there are many cases in which Left initiative can stimulate united activities and movements. The emergence of a more militant, Left in the struggle of the labor and Negro people's movements today affirms this necessary and places a new urgency upon more conscious efforts to help reconstitute the Left in the mass movement. At the same time, outside the existing mass organizations of labor and the people, the experiences of the Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born nationally and in some areas, of organizations for defense of civil liberties in Illinois, California and elsewhere, as well as of certain other organisations, prove the value and the need for reviving certain types of Left organizations where they can stimulate not conflict with-- the mass movements. C. Strengthen the Party for Its Mass Tasks. The irregular functioning of many Party clubs, the unsatisfactory level of literature and press circulation, the widespread organizational looseness and |