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Mongolia strengthens defences

as China threatens war action

The Mongolian People’s Re-
Public has taken steps to
Strengthen its defences because of

atening actions by the Hua
Kuo-feng government in China.

Mongolia’s Montsame news
agency reported early in April
that a note of the MPR Govern-

_ Ment to the People’s Republic of

China was handed over to the
nese side in Ulan Bator and
ig. 2

The note expressed a desire for
Normalization of relations be-
‘Ween the two governments, but
Said it had received no positive
Tésponse from China to its pro-
Posals,

The Mongolian note said, that
Soviet military units had been in-
vited by the MPR to assist in
Suarding ‘‘the state independence
and territorial integrity of the
MPR together with the Mongolian

ple’s Army.’’

These steps were taken, said
the note, because ‘‘ruling circles

_ Of the PRC many times have

€xplicitly pronounced ... their
desire: to integrate the MPR into
hina. An immediate threat to the
Security of the Mongolian
People’s Republic is posed by
na’s open war preparations.”

__ The Soviet troops were invited
mM conformity with the
Ongolian-Soviet Treaty of
tiendship, Cooperation and
Mutual Assistance, the note said.
‘The Government of the
MPR,” the note to China said,
Considers that the threat to
Ongolia’s sovereignty and inde-
Pendence continues to exist to-
ay, since far from abandoning
€ir designs vis-a-vis Mongolia,

the Chinese authorities keep on™

Mia sien preparations
St the
USSR” PR and her ally, the
_ Cooperation and mutual aid be-
‘Ween the USSR and the Mongo-
‘an People’s Republic has existed
Since 1921 when the youthful
founder of the new Mongolian
State, D. Sukhe-Bator signed an
agreement with the Soviet
‘OVernment.
recent editorial in Unen,
Newspaper of the Mongolian
©ople’s Revolutionary Party, en-

titled Peking’s Policy — A Threat
to Our Security, accused Peking

of opposing “‘fiercely any positive '

steps directed at detente and
disarmament,” and of putting
forward ‘‘absurd, absolutely
unacceptable demands.”

The editorial calls Peking’s
demand for withdrawal of Soviet
troops from Mongolia ‘‘crude
interference’’ in Mongolian af-
fairs. Since the time of Mongolian
independence, the editorial
charges, ‘‘Chinese militaristic
circles have not concealed their
aggressive great-Han ambitions
to swallow Mongolia and conquer
its vast lands.

“China is building up tension
on the border with the Mongolian
People’s Republic and is launch-

‘ing various acts of sabotage

against it. Open military prepara-
tions have been stepped up. The
concentration of Chinese .troops

‘and the construction of various

military and strategic installations
is continuing in the areas directly
adjoining the Mongolian border.

Reactionaries
push N-bomb

HELSINKI —: There is
“neither a military nor a political
justification for the production of
the inhuman neutron weapon, a
means of striving for predomi-
nance and of aggression,”’ stated
the World Peace Council in a re-
cent press release.

In appealing to the United Na-
tions Special Session on Disar-
mament to ‘“‘ban the neutron
bomb’’, the world body called
this weapon ‘‘the gravest threat to
peace and disarmament today.”

““The production of this
bomb,”’ the World Peace Council
said, “is being advocated by the
most reactionary and militarist
forces in the NATO countries... :
to undermine the efforts to prom-
ote detente and peace ...”’

The appeal calls upon all
peoples and governments to ex-
press opposition to the neutron
bomb and to demand that it be
banned.

More than 250 military exercises
have been held in these areas
since 1969.

‘In face of a real threat from

China, its hostile anti-Mongolian
moves,” the editorial says,. the
MPR ‘“‘has been forced to take

measures to strengthen the coun- ©

try’s defence capacity-. ..

‘Soviet military units have
been brought into the Mongolian
People’s Republic at the request
of our government, and now they
are standing shoulder to shoulder
with the Mongolian People’s
Army guarding the state indepen-
dence and territorial integrity of
the .- Mongolian People’s
Republic.”’

ee J

~

Mongolia erected this monument to the Soviet armed forces In ap-

preciation of their fraternal military ald, in 1921 against counter-revolu-
tionary bands and in 1939 against Japanese incursions. Mongolian and
Soviet troops fought together against imperial Japan in 1945. Canadian
Tribune editor, James Leech (left) visited the site on the outskirts of Ulan
Bator, the Mongolian capital, in.1976.

Big press plays numbers game

CPI marks gains in elections

The May 15 vote in Italy’s local

elections was heralded in the
Western press as a “‘defeat for the
Communist Party’’. What the
capitalist dailies neglected to say
was that their comparison figures
were the 1976 general election re-
sults and not the 1972 local elec-
tion count, the last local elections
held.
_ Writing in the U.S. Daily
World, Tom Foley says the
“large Communist vote was a
clear indication that the electorate
favors inclusion of the Com-
munist Party of Italy (PCI) in the
government to help deal with
Italy’s severe and continuing
economic crisis.

Foley continues:

With Italy’s last local elections
in 1972 as the basis of compari-
son, both the Italian Communist
Party ‘and the Christian Dem-
ocratic Party (DC) won gains in
the voting: the DC got 42.5%, up
from 36.6% in 1972; the PCI got
26.7%, a gain over their 25.3% in
1972.

The neo-fascist Italian Social
Movement (MSI) plunged from
6.8% in 1972 to less than 4.5%.

Italian government officials

said close to 89% of the 38 million

eligible voters in 816 cities and.

towns participated ‘in. the
elections.

Luca ,Pavolini, PCI spokes-
man, said the DC gain came from
‘fan emotional upsurge, but also
by the fact that they promoted a
policy of understanding with
other democratic forces and took
a firm line on the Moro affair.”

Besides the neo-fascist loss, the
various small ultra-left groups lost
out with voters, too, and the DC
party statement said this is a di-
rect rejection of them by voters:

The capitalist news media were
attempting to use the 1976 na-
tional general election figures to
distort the results and to show a
Communist ‘‘setback.’’ In the
1976 elections, the Christian
Democrats got only 38.9% (com-
pared with this year’s 42.5%); the
1976 figure for the PCI was 35.4
(compared with the present 26.7).
But clearly the alleged ‘‘setback”’
is the result of comparing ‘‘apples
and oranges*’ — general elections
with local elections.

What is clear from the May 15

lection is that the overwhelming

majority of Italian voters want a
stable Italian government, with
assured support in parliamentary
vote tests from the Italian Com-
munists, capable of moving ahead
to tackle Italy’s longstanding
economic and social problems.

Italy’s more than 1.3 million
unemployed have been unem-
ployed longer than any other job-
less group in the entire Common
Market (EEC), although there are
today EEC countries like Bel-
gium and Ireland with higher per-
centages of unemployed. It is also
noteworthy that Italy’s un-
employed include a very high
amount of people from the south-
ern Italian region known as the
mezzogiorno, literally the ‘‘mid-
day,’ or South — regions like
Calabria on the toe of the Italian
“‘boot,”” and Sicily.

Young people, women; stu-
dents and the unemployed, are
the groups in the Italian pgpula-
tion bearing the hardest burdens
in the Italian capitalist economic
crisis and who are most of all fed
up with the lack of change.

Means of production & personal property C=

A letter from a group of Toronto
Teaders asks for an explanation of what
's meant by “‘means of production” as
distinct from personal property. They
Write that they have difficulty under-
ponding this in relation to the demand
Or “public ownership of the main
Means of production’.

Ye will attempt to give a brief con-

€nsed explanation of a number of
terms used in the political economy of
,_ xism, and of the difference be-
€en social swnership and personal
Property,
; * * 2k

To begin. The production of material
Wealth forms the basis of social life. It
‘volves labor, objects of labor and
Means of labor.

Labor is man’s purposeful activity di-
Tected to the production of the neces-
Sities of jife. That is its main objective.

£ople'do not simply find all the things

Y need to live. They have to produce
them. In harnessing the forces of na-

-> people develop their abilities and
lire new skills.
things which are subjected to

_ Man’s labor are the objects of labor.

They may be found in nature,’ that is
"aw materials like ore, trees, oil and so

7

Marxism-Leninism in Today’s World

on. Or they may be materials that have

already been worked upon and take on

the form.as semi-finished materials. As

science and technology develop the

range of these objects ef labor expand

and new uses for them are discovered.
* * *

We now come to the means of labor
that people use upon the objects of
labor to change them to satisfy their
needs. They include the tools, land,
roads and the means of transportation,
production buildings, all the things that
are needed for the labor process. The
most important means of labor are the
tools, especially the machines. They
are the bone and muscle of production.

The objects of labor and the means of
labor taken together constitute the
means of production. That is the mate-
rial factors: of the production process.
Taken together, the material and per-
sonal factors of the production process
form the productive forces of society.

*. * *

The personal factors include the
working people who operate the means

-of production. The workers are the

primary productive force at all stages of
social development. The means and ob-
jects of labor which are created by man,
became the material factors of the pro-
duction process only after human labor
has been applied to them.

_ The social productive forces are the
means of production created by society
and the people who set them in motion.
The reproduction process could not be
carried out without people, their skills,
production experience and knowledge.

* *

The basic contradiction of capitalist
society is that while production is social
the main (social) means of production
are privately owned, as is the product.
Socialism solves this contradiction by
converting the main means of pro-
duction into social, public property. In
this way the form of ownership comes
into harmony with the social character
of production.

What we are speaking about here are
the means of social production, particu-
larly the main means of production
such as natural resources, which in-
clude energy, land, raw materials,
transportation facilities, extraction and

manufacturing industries, machinery
applied to such production, and ail
financial institutions such as banks,
trusts, insurance companies and
mortgage .companies, etc., and the
buildings that house all such means of
production.
* * *

We speak about the main means-of
production because there will exist
under socialism other, lesser means of
production. For instance there will
likely exist for quite some time forms of
cooperative ownership such as farm
cooperatives, handicraft and housing
cooperatives, and other such-type
enterprises.

It is necessary too, to distinguish the
difference between social or coopera-
tive ownership of means of production,
and the personal ownership of things by
individuals for their personal use.
Under socialism no individual can own
property for the purpose of exploiting
the labor of other people. However, all
objects that are used solely for the per-
sonal use or satisfaction of the indi-
vidual and the family constitute per-
sonal property. Such property belongs
to the individual and his ownership is
inviolate.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—June 2, 1978—Page 9