Threats against Libya
The United States is openly planning a military raid on a
Libyan underground chemical plant and the use of nuclear weapons
has not been ruled out. I was stunned after I read the column by
A.M. Rosenthal that appeared in the April 21 issue of the San Juan
Star, the English-language daily published in Puerto Rico. It is
difficult to remember a more open call for the first strike use of
nuclear weapons than this article.
Rosenthal is a widely read mouthpiece of the interests of the U.S. ruling class. If my memory serves me correctly, he is a former editor of the New York Times. He says that except for nuclear weapons the U.S. has no weapon capable of destroying the chemical plant which he claims is to make poison gas weapons. The article states that the U.S. military is currently developing two weapons to destroy this plant.
Rosenthal himself admits that the ease with which he was able to get information about classified projects is evidence that the military planners wanted the information to be public. This is a trial balloon. President Bill Clinton and the Pentagon are watching closely the reaction to this and other articles because before ordering a military strike, either conventional or nuclear, they have to judge the political price that they will pay in the world. The higher the political price the less likely they are to use the weapon. The more we protest now the less likely is this act of imperialist aggression.
After reading this article I thought back to the visit of Margaret Thatcher to Puerto Rico less than a week ago. Thatcher, the ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, addressed a $200-per- person dinner in San Juan. "The right ideals will not stop bombs and dictators," she was quoted in the newspaper. "We have to combine internationally to do more in areas of intelligence and in pre-emptive strikes." She did not mention Libya by name. The audience included top leaders of the Puerto Rican government and earlier she had had a private meeting with Gov. Pedro Rosselló.
Fortunately, not everyone in Puerto Rico welcomed Thatcher to this U.S. colony. The Nationalist Party released a statement that denounced her for her role in the war with Argentina over the Malvinas Islands and in Ireland. "She arrives in Puerto Rico to speak of privatization and neo-liberalism, discourse akin to the politics of dispossession that handcuffs the poor countries and is totally foreign to the interests and needs of the Puerto Rican people," said the statement of the party.
The arrogance of the imperialists of the United States and the United Kingdom knows no limits. Both countries have carried out their wars with policies that maximized the loss of human life. The United Kingdom torpedoed the Argentine warship General Belgrano when it was sailing away from the Malvinas Islands. On the road from Kuwait City to Basra the U.S. military massacred Iraqi soldiers who were in full retreat and posed no military threat to the U.S. forces in the region. As the rationalizations are prepared for the next use of nuclear weapons, the United States remains the only country that has ever used them in combat.
Ron Richards
San Juan, Puerto Rico
What are social relations?
In the March 18 and April 29 issues a question and a response
are given around the meaning of "social relations" and its
decisive bearing on the class nature of any state. The exchange
revolves around the meaning of the term.
In reality social relations are the things that all producers and exploiters engage in every day of their lives and, consequently, are the things with which we have the most experience, they are the most common of matters. Marx explained that, "The history of humanity must always be studied and treated in relations to the history of industry and exchange." Second, Marx explained that, "In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations.
"The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist." Finally, Engels (as well as Marx), explained that, "Economics deals not with things but with relations between persons, and, in the last resort, between classes; these relations are, however, always attached to things, and appear as things."
Capitalism came into being, as Marx said, with the steam-mill which changed the way people made a living and hence their social relationship to each other. In turn, the steam-mill eventually led to mass production industries which again changed the way people made a living and their social relationship to each other. With mass production industries we get the exhaustion of capitalism's contribution to social advancement and social relations, and the foundation for proletarian rule.
Based upon the growth of the productive forces (best epitomized by the mass production industries) a revolution took place fundamentally altering the social relationship between the workers and the capitalists after World War II in Eastern Europe. The workers then, and still now, won control of a larger share and decision-making power over the surplus product. This is exemplified, but only exemplified and not defined by, things like the wealth of society used to guarantee full employment, free medical care, and education.
This is a change in social relations, i.e. which class controls how much of the surplus product. This social relation has not been fundamentally overturned; the capitalists haven't been able to win back their previous degree of control of the surplus product which was based upon a different relationship of forces, a different social relationship.
John Votava
Chicago, Illinois
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