First Published: The Call, August 2, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The July 18 issue of Claridad, the organ of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) with a branch in the U.S., has voiced total agreement with the recent Soviet-backed conference of European revisionist parties.
According to PSP, this conference of European “communist” parties “opens a new stage in the history of the international workers’ movement.” PSP adds: “We Puerto Rican socialists are in agreement with the results of the meeting of the communist and workers’ parties of Europe. Their fundamental conclusions are in perfect harmony with the basic principles on which the international and national policies of our Party are founded.”
We welcome the frankness and candor of the PSP who, at times like these, drops its centrist disguise and comes out fully and “totally” in support of the schemes of hegemonism and domination which the USSR cooks up.
We only wish the Claridad article would have been more specific about the many aspects of the reactionary conference with which it found “total agreement.” The only one mentioned was the declaration of the various participants that they are all “independent” from the Soviet Union.
With European parties such as the French, Portuguese and Italian revisionists all fighting for a seat in Parliament, these declarations are little more than attempts to legitimize themselves in the eyes of the bourgeoisie of each country. None of these parties stands a chance of electoral success if they appear to be agents of Soviet social-imperialism, which is deeply hated and feared by the European peoples. None stands a chance if they appear to be supportive of Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia or Soviet mental hospitals for dissidents. Proclamations of independence are even more crucial since Brezhnev threatened to “burn down the house of Europe” if the European countries don’t peacefully submit to Soviet hegemonism.
But PSP is not as “independent” of Soviet policy as they would like us to believe. The line of “peaceful transition” to socialism; their spreading of the myth of “detente”; their defense of Soviet intervention in Angola, and their sponsorship of the Havana Conference, which sets the stage for Soviet interference in the Caribbean, all demonstrate PSP’s lack of real “independence.” They have shown their independence only from Marxism-Leninism, which they claim to uphold.
The PSP here in the U.S. has been working overtime in the Puerto Rican community and among the left to spread its line of support for the Soviet Union. Whether it be on questions of the Caribbean, Europe or Angola, the PSP is exposing itself as an apologist for Soviet social-imperialism. The bone of “independence” for all revisionist parties thrown by Brezhnev will help the European parties get their electoral seats. Since the electoral road is PSP’s road to “socialism” as well, it is only natural that they are in complete harmony with the aims of this opportunist conference.