Political Program
Communist Party of Puerto Rico (CPPR)
III Congress of the Communist Party of Puerto Rico, celebrated on December 18, 2016 and continued on January 29, 2017 in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
I. Exposition of motives for the political program
The development of capitalism during more than a century of direct imperialist domination over Puerto Rico has invariably resulted in a majority of persons that, in order to survive, are only left with their labor power, the working class, and the perpetual struggle they wage to correct the maladies engendered by capitalist property relations and production for profit. The fundamental task of the Communist Party of Puerto Rico is to lend organizational and theoretical leadership to the class struggle carried out by the working class in Puerto Rico.
The peculiar combination of a clearly defined and highly developed working class, and an antiquated regime of colonial oppression in Puerto Rico define the immediate objectives of this struggle: the eradication of colonialism and the taking of political power by the working class to put under its control the primary means of production and banking institutions; and the crushing of the resistance of the capitalist class and its allies. The opposition of classes with interests that are irreconcilably antagonistic to those of the working masses as well as the fragmented and dependent character of economic development in Puerto Rico require that our struggle be carried out in close collaboration with the international working class.
Considering the particular combination of conditions that characterize the struggle of the working class in Puerto Rican society, the Communist Party of Puerto Rico works to achieve the following demands:
II. Political Demands
- the immediate political independence of Puerto Rico through the formation of a Workers’ Republic governed by a National Assembly, to be composed of representatives selected by the working class with a compensation equal to that of an average worker;
- political and administrative reorganization in the form of workers’ and neighborhood councils, organisms from which delegates to the National Assembly will be selected;
- election of all delegates and public functionaries to leadership posts based on universal suffrage and secret ballot of members of the corresponding local councils;
- the revocability of all public functionaries by electors;
- the substitution of the current police force and National Guard by workers’ militias charged with common defense;
- the immediate withdrawal of foreign military forces;
- approval of all national laws via popular referenda;
- equality before the law and protections against discrimination motivated by any social category that can divide the working class guaranteed to all persons;
- the establishment of foreign relations of solidarity based on proletarian internationalism with all sectors of the international working class in struggle.
III. Economic Demands
- nationalization without compensation of all businesses identified by the National Assembly as essential to the needs of society and their reorganization under the administration of the corresponding workers according to a national economic plan;
- guaranteed employment to all based on a rational adjustment of the working day and a national plan for sustainable development;
- the yearly setting of salaries for each category of work according to the costs of basic necessities, including cultural and leisure activities, by a statistical commission assigned by the National Assembly;
- scientific and practical education at all levels paid for by the State;
- a state system of universal medical care and guaranteed retirement benefits;
- the responsibility and authority to take measures to guarantee the food security of the nation to be rested within the National Assembly;
- the creation of a public authority under the supervision of the National Assembly with the responsibility to plan and coordinate the rational distribution of goods;
- the annulment of all contracts that have privatized natural resources and public enterprises;
- the expropriation of all banking entities and their reorganization as branches of a National Bank under the control of the National Assembly;
- the annulment of all current public debt;
- abolition of all consumption taxes and the establishment of a regime based on taxing capitalist profits.