A letter regarding On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” Part 3:

Sorry but my english are not so good to follow this article completely but let me ask this:In many communist papers the following statement is always wriiten: “proletariats of all countries,opressed nations unite”Is this statement accurate?Does it express the way the communists around the world should think?

A guest correspondent replies:

That phrase comes from the end of  The Communist Manifesto. In English, it is usually expressed as “Workers of the world, unite!” In some other languages, it is closer to “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”

The phrase was correct when Comrade Marx wrote it in 1848, and it is still correct today in 2008. But we need to be clear on the meaning of “workers” and “proletarians.” Not “all countries” have significant numbers of proletarians. Amerikkka, for example, has no proletariat at all (although there are some Mexican and other non-Amerikkkan proletarians within U$ borders).

So we can and do say “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” but it is important to understand who is a proletarian and who is not. The “workers” of the First World are petty-bourgeois or even bourgeois. The exploited proletarian masses of the Third World should NOT unite with the pro-imperialist “workers” of the First World; rather, they should unite AGAINST the First World and overthrow it.