Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 02:41:11 -0500
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: on nation building  in this epoch


dear Jim Blaut,

Yes, Puerto Rico is a viciously exploited "posession"
of the USA .  Islands ringed with huge US miliary instillations
&  also like the rest of the world ensconced in  capitalist wage slave 
production/social  relations dominant now.  Labor skinning
factories of sweated laborers , with many  women   forced
into the "market" for sex to survive, and an oppressor that 
at one period used forced sterilization of  the women for  a
 long time in PR. These are horrid crimes .

I was not being cavalier and unconcerned about this Jim,
I recognize the intense suffering via plunder , of the Puerto Rican 
tiolers, in PR, and here in the USA proper too , and this Jim
is why the PR  workers are  firstly part of an INTERNATIONAL class first 
in so far  as liberation goes.  Workers of course should unite as brothers
and sisters in class (not bourgeois nationalist ) liberation  with 
the tiolers of the PR by fighting the main enemy- here at home .

THe PR bourgeois and petty bourgeois have' unity" of slolen
booty- profits  of which the USA bosses shares not an insignificant
 amount with the local PR exploiters and others . 
So in the real world looking at the political economy of PR/USA  and the 
tactical question of  fighting imperialism , i think the partisans
of  real liberation will go at the class struggle and spread it ,
 rather than unite with the bourgeoisie (later to be crushed by it)  which
 is where all nationalism ends up in the modern epoch. The bourgeois
 of different colors unite to smash the workers all the time , so why
should
 not  workers of differing colors/languages  unite on their class terrain,
especially
 now when "globalization" of capitalist production is pushing much of the
the whole 
 whole class into  one bigger world  piss-pot of capital anyway??

You should study Rosa L's views before denouncing them ,
she made mistakes in political/economic analysis but not
on so-called national liberation. 
Jim , take any nat-libber struggle this century and size it up 
next to Rosas scathing critique -FROM A WORKING CLASS
VANTAGE POINT . Qui bono?? The workers/farmers or the
 capitalists/land barons?
Name one of your nat -lib groups that did not just pave the
way for more "patriotic" waged slavery and labor skinning once the
big "nat-lib" rulers got in the saddle. And none could survive 
as new capitals without grabbing up support of one group
of the big powers or another. This is what Rosa already saw 
Jim --at the WW1 period . She was in the vanguard here.
and not riding with nat-libb cheerleaders on the caboose.

You need to study the dialectic- material--economic underpinnings 
of the politics  here and and not just glory at demagogic speeches
of macho men with beards and fatigues  , waving a  45 auto
in the air. All these fellows would sooner blow  their mothers heads 
off  (and those of their workers!)than break  their growing  ties to
 international imperialism--because as a ruling class they have
to to stay  to keep on the slackening accumulation cycle..

Neil



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