The present form of imperialist domination has created political, economic and social situations in the country which necessitate popular national anti-imperialist struggle. Neoliberal policies have widened the social base and the political motivations for struggle for change in a progressive direction. What is necessary is to take advantage of these circumstances in order to develop our revolutionary perspectives. The Communist Party of Labour must intervene in these conditions with the aim of bringing closer revolutionary insurrection.

I. What underlies monetarist and neoliberal policies
During the last 15 years of the application of the social and economic policies designed by the IMF and the neoliberal conceptions going alongside these, the situation of the country could not have been worse with regard to the effects of these policies on the great majority of people. The most obvious and tragic result of this policies has been the constant increase in poverty which some estimates see as affecting about 70 per cent of the total population, and if this is the case we are talking about approximately five million people. This situation is crudely reflected in the various social indicators through which it is possible to judge the level of well-being of society in particular periods.
A policy of continuing cutbacks in social spending of the state leaves that sector of the population on middling, scarce, or no income in a situation of acute difficulty with regard to heath, education, and the other services essential for human development. With regard to health the total spending on consultations, beds, and the admission of patients to hospitals and public dispensaries has been reduced from 60-70 per cent in the 1990s as compared to the 1980s; and in 1995, if we take into account the 1977 prices, on every Dominican the state "spend" 40 pesos on health services.
In education, from 2.1 per cent of the internal budget which was spent in 1980, itself an insignificant amount, there was a reduction in 1990 to only one per cent.
The proportion of education for which the government has responsibility has greatly decreased; in 1977, 65 per cent was financed by the state but since the adjustments demanded by the IMF this has been reduced drastically to 45 per cent, in this way allowing a great increase in the private sector.
This situation, as one would expect, has affected the mass of the poor. Comparing the budget of income and expenditure of 1977 with that of the 80s, one can see that 40 per cent of the poorest Dominicans have had to spent 400 per cent more on education, while the five per cent who make up the richest of the population have spent only 125 per cent more. Equally, with regard to health, 40 per cent of the poorest families have had to spent twice as much as previously.
Al this has happened at the same time as an exaggerated concentration of wealth. Wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and the majority of the population are being forced into a process of corporisation. The Interamerican Bank of Development, BID, has revealed that 95 per cent of the Dominican population receives less than 12,500 Dominican dollars per head per year, and according to the criteria established by this institution, to fall below this level of income is to be considered the below the poverty line.
Taking into account only these social indicators, we are right to reiterate our conclusion that poverty is the most eloquent result of neoliberal policies and is the material problem which we as Dominicans must most urgently confront, within a general platform which campaigns for the sustainable and independent development of the country.
Over and above these problems, and the result of the same policy, is the gradual destruction of the national productive base, which means that the country is losing its ability to feed itself and hypothetically even its sovereignty. National production as the generator of consumer wealth and as culture resulting from the skills and knowledge developed over many years bears fundamental strategic importance. No country concerned with maintaining its fundamental political and economic independence ignores the feeding of its own people, this independently of whatever may be its capacity to buy from abroad. Political and even natural contingencies can at certain times cut short the supply of trade and services and the country will find itself exposed to shortages, or at least to being forced to accept exorbitant prices and conditions. The self-sustaining capacity of a country is the basic principle of its sovereignty. National production together with language territory and culture gives the nation its identity.
For this reason, we have to take seriously the policies of neoliberalism through which huge areas of fertile land are handed over to businesses and foreign consortiums for the planting of fruits for export and the construction of tourist centres, at the same time as we see disincentives for the production of crops for national consumption. Ways of life established by many generations of peasants have been destroyed in a virtual cultural genocide, in order to give way to the new economy based on service industries and agroindustries for the benefit of the North American population.
This is how the native industrial and livestock farming infrastructure is passing through a process of decline, generating, according to the Institute of Economic Studies, a decrease at the present of up to 13 per cent in manufacturing industry, while the contribution of the livestock farming sector to the national economy has been reduced almost to half what it was ten years ago.
This deterioration has been expressed, as one would expect, in levels of employment; according to the Central Bank, unemployment in the industry has gone from 15.8 per cent in July 1995 to 16.6 per cent in January 1996; while in the agricultural plantations during the same period the rate went from 13.5 to 14.9 per cent.
These are the results of a policy which involves the economy of the country ever more deeply in service industries and speculative activities, up to the point where a series of measures of a financial and monetary character have been taken in official circles which have led, for example, to the loans of commercial banks meant for industry being reduced in the last few years by almost half, and by little less the loans meant for agriculture; while more money has been given to businesses involved with imports, commercial activity in general and to individuals as the solution to the problems of daily life.
Consistently with these policies, in 1994 the Bank of Agriculture (Banco Agricola) was meant to give financial farmers to the extent of more than 20 billion pesos, but only had available 1.150 billion out of which it handed over a little more than one billion.
At this point in time, the economy based on services and speculation is no longer just a tendency in the country but is becoming dominant and we have to consider the repercussions of this reality in the make up of the working class; in the population in its localities and in the dynamic of the cities, as well as in the ideas and the other areas of the superstructure of society.
In the talk given by the governor of the Central Bank, Hector Valdez Albizu, in front of the Association of Businessmen of Santiago and the North Region he gave the following comparative data:
In 1994 there were in the country 18 hotels in operation with 1,134 rooms; now there are 467 hotels with 29,000 rooms which attract every year 1,300,000 foreigners and 597,000 "absent" Dominicans.
Tourism brought in 1.147 billion dollars in 1994; this was 44.1 per cent of the total value of exports.
Moreover, in this sector there are 42,000 direct employees and 106,000 indirect. The Free Trade Zones for their part were almost unknown in 1964; today there exist about 500 enterprises and they employ 182,000 people directly. In 1994 they exported 1.416 millions of dollars generating an income of 441 millions dollars to the country. Money sent abroad by Dominicans reached 493 million dollars in 1994.
Services, which were in 1964 accounted for 25 million dollars of income, thirty years later accounted for 1,957 million.
In this way the country adapted itself to the requirements of the world economy, dominated by the imperialist powers. "Let us produce what sells", said the governor of the Central Bank in his talk, reaffirming, not by accident, for the new government that the same financial and monetary policy would be followed.
Under a new appearance, the Dominican Republic continues being tied to the plans of imperialism, especially to those of the US. All its economic development and its possibilities of growth are subordinated to external commerce, and orientated to correspond to the needs of capital accumulation for imperialism.
The breaking of this neoliberal dependence continues to be a primary condition for the achievement of a democratic sovereign and independent republic, which can guarantee the general well-being of its citizens. For many self-described revolutionary and anti-imperialist people, this is a question of the past for they have been won to the idea that it is through the fall of the communist regimes that these centres of imperialist domination have become agents of democracy in those countries with which they seem to have allied themselves in the role of collaborators. The North Americans have managed to deceive many with their claims that now they are going around the world supporting democratic regimes which agree to free elections and the fights against drug trafficking.
Over and above this demagogy is the hair-raising reality that neoliberal policies and the changes which are helping to swell the accumulation of capital and the development of its strategic interests, have as their necessary counterpart the impoverishment of our people; the damaging of its sovereignty and the destruction of the cultural elements which give us our specific personality as a nation. In its efforts for domination imperialism make sure in every country that it takes the necessary measures to win huge economic advantages, and undertakes the political and ideological work through which it can make complete its penetration and fundamental control of vital areas. But in neoliberalism, the form assumed nowadays by imperialist domination, the ideological and political offensive is being taken essentially against nation-states themselves. Whereas before the existence and strengthening of nation-states was necessary for the defence of the interests of big monopoly capitalism, nowadays in the light of so-called globalisation, and of the market as regulator of prices and fluctuations in trade and services, a reduction in the role of the State in our countries seems to be a necessity in order to gain the greatest economic benefits and to solve the crisis of the system.
Monopoly capitalists and the government at their service are forcing the reduction of "our" States to the condition of simple guardians of private property, since given that, as Lenin says in his book "imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism", the redivision of lands has now been completed among the major powers, and what is important for them now is to win and to make new markets, and to this end, to eliminate as much as possible the state regulations which might hinder the free movement of investments, of finance capital, and of the goods and services which are being produced in the industrialised countries in forms and in a volume without precedent due to the modern revolution in productive forces.
The anxiety to expand markets at the cost of national States shows itself also in the neoliberal demand that states should abandon once and for all all their responsibilities towards education, health, social security and all the policies and practices traditionally undertaken by public institutions, areas in which capital can find many opportunities for making new profits.
Things being as they are, communists and revolutionaries find in the national question a rational for anti-imperialist and patriotic work. The flag of anti-imperialism must be kept aloft with new energy.

II. Once again, the national question
Not by accident, the problem of "our" national State and of the nation itself has appeared again in debate among many intellectuals. The 1990s began with a discussion about the viability or not of the Dominican nation and about the form and the space in which Dominican citizens could exercise our sovereignty.
The discussion is not new, it has always been part of the republic's history, but it is very symptomatic, and not accidental that it has been revived just at the point when the imperialist powers are proposing to break down national frontiers, when they are theorising about globalisation and are prostituting values and symbols which give a people its identity.
"The decline of the Dominican nation" was declared by professor Manuel Nunez in a work with the same title which appeared in March 1990 and whose ideas were explained in 1997 in an article in the magazine "Hoy" (Today).
A very interesting proposal on how to exercise sovereignty was formulated by professor Andre Corten in a book entitled "The Weak State" which appeared in 1989 and in which, after declaring the impossibility of the existence of the Haitian state as well as the Dominican, proposed that the sovereignty of one or the other country should not be associated with "the state of citizenship, but rather in the state of being metropolitan". This means understanding as sovereignty the capacity "to respect the fundamental rights of the members of a society wherever it finds itself". Thus, national sovereignty, according to this author is for Haitians and Dominicans the capacity that they might have to respect the fundamental rights of emigrants reunited as a community within a metropolis, New York for example.
Obviously this is about a treacherous proposal which goes beyond the pessimistic ideas of many intellectuals of the past century and the beginning of this, around the possibility of a national project for the country ruled by a free independent and sovereign state.
We are facing a problem which has not yet been resolved with sufficient clarity, principally in the revolutionary and democratic movement in the country, even though at the same time we recognise that we have approached this theme in our general and programmatic line with correctness and have tried to formulate adequate solutions, and at the same time many of our social scientist have given unquestionable support to the idea of the national identity of Dominicans.
The theme continues to be discussed and there is no doubt that in relation to the neoliberal political and ideological offensive, pessimism regarding our possibilities of development and consolidation as an independent nation, must face new arguments, making use of the extraordinary power of modern communication systems.
Since Duarte and the other threesome founded the republic, this matter has divided into two groups, those Dominicans who participate in politics and in cultural and intellectual activity in general. The annexation by Spain in 1861 was allowed by the failure of faith on the part Santana and his followers in the national project, and the war of restoration, was essentially the reaffirmation under other conditions of Duarte's thoughts and actions; in 1965 also we saw this difference again and now we are faced with even bolder anti-national proposals and attitudes. These lines have not elucidated the problem and so it is necessary that the party together deepens its understanding because it concerns something really transcendental on whose solution the advance of a revolution in this country depends.
It is true that the men and women of the party and of our political and social movement are occupying themselves with bringing clarity to those questions which have prevented until now the triumph of the national cause and it is these tasks which are the most urgently in need of solving in order to strengthen and give a proper foundation to our perspectives.

III. This concerns more than the defence of the national state
It is necessary to establish a clear difference between those who, like the communist Party of Labour, are taking on a struggle in defence of identity and of the national state from a democratic and patriotic perspective, and those who assume anti-Haitian and nationalist positions.
Under no circumstances should we forget the class character of the State. Nor the fact that in the final analysis the bourgeoisie which controls it has used it always to manipulate the sovereignty of the state for the benefit of its own interests and that of the Yankees. Let us defend the right of the Dominican nation to constitute itself as a state and to take whatever measures are necessary to maintain and strengthen its national sovereignty, but taking this in its intimate and necessary relation with popular sovereignty, that is to say with the power of the people and their inalienable right to decide what political and social regime the consider to be most suited to their interests and culture. This is a vital line of demarcation between us and the bourgeoisie and its parties. The people have always and everywhere been the fundamental support of national sovereignty, while the bourgeoisie has always shown itself ready to deal with international powers to whom, on more than one occasion in our history it has handed over parts of our sovereignty, if not all.
The struggle for national sovereignty in harmony with the struggle to reach levels of democratic participation in national affairs commensurate with a regime based on adequate rights for all, has been an issue over which Dominicans have fought at various stages of their history and much of it has been written in blood. The war of restoration in the last century and the insurrection of April 1965 stand out in Dominican history, in the first place because of the determined intervention of popular masses, in the second place because of their sharply patriotic character, and in the third place because of their defence of the democratic ideal.
The nationalism of those such as Luis Julian Perez, Vincho Castillo and their companions and "patriotism" of Balaguer is in fact very narrow with a strong racist streak. Neither the one nor the other valued the people as the main support of national sovereignty; and for that reason and that is why they never initiated a programme of political reform resulting in greater powers of participation and decision making on the part of the popular masses in public affairs. For them, that which was national did not have a popular essence! At the same time their defence of the nation did not go beyond anti-Haitianism, in a more subtle version of the old ideas according to which the Dominican state justified itself and appeared strong through the existence of an enemy on the other side of the border, having ancestral claims to be an island "one and indivisible". The timid and sporadic criticisms on the part of these nationalists towards the policies of the US kept them within the imperialist will and they remained on that plane even when accepting the "excess population" of the neighbouring country, through whose settlement, they said, the Hispanic races would be terribly adulterated. The Communist Party of Labour is very far from these ideas. Our strategy assumes a popular and revolutionary struggle for an advanced democratic political regime; one which would assure Dominicans of a secure state of well-being, through the exercise of full sovereignty of the state with respect to third parties; at the same time a regime which would promote relationships of solidarity between peoples and collaboration and economic exchange with reciprocal advantages among other countries, especially those of Latin America.
It is from this position and with the aim of linking this with the action of the popular masses and of working to convince them of our political project, that our party takes on board the national question and confronts the neoliberal imperialist policies; and shows itself to be ready to co-ordinate actions, agreements and alliances with other forces which express the willingness to struggle for a direction which is distinct from the imperialist policies which through collaboration with the native bourgeoisie, have been imposed on the country.