Who won the Cold War?
The recent discussion on the current situation of the workers' states in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is useful in helping to clarify the world revolutionary process in its entirety. If we learn anything from the recent events there, it should be that the epoch of socialist revolution, which was opened with the Russian revolution in 1917, is alive today and that reports of the death of history are very much exaggerated. Rather than asking who lost the cold war, it may be more relevant to ask who won it.

Here the answer is unequivocally, the workers within the workers' states and by extension the workers of the world.

Is the deepening penetration of market relations impoverishing the people of this region? Yet, how could it be otherwise in a time of world economic depression and crisis. It does not follow, however, that capital is in a better position today to overturn the social relations, which are deeply ingrained in the hearts and minds of millions of increasingly combative workers.

While it is true that communist leadership continuity was broken by the Stalinist overseers, it is equally true that capitalist "cultural" continuity was broken. Capitalism's strength has been in the spontaneous way it recreates its own conditions and values of inequality and competition. What is different in the workers' states is that a modern working class already exists in the absence of capitalism or a local capitalist class. In every country in question, the working class has taken their new-found political freedom to organize and fight against each step of the various governments' privatization plans.

The result of any of today's particular battles is not decisive. Of far more importance is the valuable lessons that these workers are gaining in combat experience, experience denied to them for decades under Stalinism.

The idea that imperialism is ready and able to take these workers on is increasingly questionable. Communists never say that the working class can't be defeated, but we know that in trying to defeat them, the imperialist will ignite massive class battles through which the workers in the workers' states will make their contribution to the world revolution including the reknitting of a truly international communist movement.

Mark Wyatt

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

On `Megan's Law'
I have some opinions about your editorials in the issue of June 3, 1996. I have read somewhere that if you are on the side of the employer, you are not on the side of the workers.

On the editorial "Repeal Megan's Law": President Clinton of the U.S. has just signed legislation known as "Megan's Law." The bill requires local notification of a person convicted of a sex offense. I could say directly that I am against such a law. I am aware of the increasing violence in our society today and that one must abide by the law. But "Megan's Law" is an attack on democratic rights and it is arbitrary because this law does not permit the right to a trial and jury.

In the editorial "Lift the embargo on Iraq" you have enumerated all the tragedies of the Gulf War.

I hope sincerely that the U.S. lifts the embargo and that Iraq will be permitted to sell oil for their social and medical needs.

I think that the demand "U.S. out of the Middle East" is right. Clinton hopes that he can remove Saddam Hussein and replace him with someone amenable to U.S. dictates.

One can hope that the masses of toilers tomorrow, who are young now will fight for their rights even in Iraq.

A reader

Stockholm, Sweden Need `Militant'
I would like to learn more about your publication the Militant. What is it about, what group of people is it aimed at, etc. What is the yearly subscription rate for prisoners and how often is it published? I am requesting, along with the other information, a complimentary (one time) issue so that I may review the contents.

A prisoner

San Diego, California

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