A Spartacist Pamphlet $1.00 Solidarnosc: Polish Company Union for· CIA and Bankers

-.~~, )(-523 Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377, GPO, New York, N.Y. 10116 2

Table of Contents Introduction As Lech Walesa struts before the ly progressive socialized property in Solidarnosc conference displaying his Poland, all the more so since the Madonna lapel pin and boasting how he discredited Stalinists manifestly cannot. Introduction ...... '..... , ...... 2 could easily have secured 90 percent of The call for "communist unity against the vote, the U.S. imperialists see their imperialism through political revolu­ Wall Street Journal Loves revanchist appetites for capitalist resto­ tion," first raised by the Spartacist Poland's Company Union .. 4 ration in Eastern Europe coming closer tendency at the time of the Sino-Soviet and closer to fruition. And the "crisis of split, acquires even greater urgency as Time Runs Out in Poland proletarian leadership" described by the Polish crisis underlines the need for Stop Solidarity's Trotsky Qearly a half-century ago is revolutionary unity of the Polish and Counterrevolution! ...... 7 starkly illuminated in the response of Russian workers to defeat U.S. imperi­ Walesa Brings "Mr. AFL-CIA" those in Poland and abroad who claim alism's bloody designs for bringing to Poland the right to lead the working class. Poland into the "free world" as a club I rving Brown: Stalinism has squandered the socialist against the USSR, military/industrial Cold War Criminal ...... 13 and internationalist historic legacy of powerhouse of the deformed workers the Polish workers movement, demoral­ states. Solidarity Leaders Against izing the working class in the face of This pamphlet documents the Sparta­ Planned Economy resurgent Pilsudskiite reaction. The cist analysis of the unfolding events in "Market Socialism" Is Polish Stalinist bureaucracy, having Poland. Beginning in February, we Anti-Socialist ...... 15 already mortgaged Poland to the recognized in the Polish upheavals both German bankers in the futile hope of an opening for revolutionary agitation U.S. Imperialists Provoke buying off its own working class, now and an awesome potential for reaction­ Soviet Union seems paralyzed by Solidarnosc' bid to ary mobilization based on the Catholic Whose Poland? ...... 18 sell the country to the imperialists church, the peasant "free market," a outright. There has emerged in Poland "dissident" movement which looks to Kirkland, Fraser on Cold War Assignment no socialist opposition worthy of the the capitalist West to "democratize" name. And internationally the fake-lefts Eastern Europe. As Solidarnosc consol­ AFL-CIO Tops- see in this mortal danger to socialized idated around an anti-socialist program Hands Off Poland! ...... 22 property in Poland a chance to earn culminating "in the adoption of the Fight Clerical Reaction! For their stars and stripes as a left cover for slogan of "free trade unions," one of Proletarian Political Revolution! the social democrats and the pro­ the war· cries of Cold War anti­ Polish Workers Move ...... 24 capitalist "labor statesmen" who long Communism, we counterposed the call ago enlisted as junior partners in for trade unions independent of bureau­ Polish Social Democrats imperialism'S war drive against the cratic control and based on a program Arm in Arm with Clerical Reaction Soviet Union. In this the virulently anti­ of defending socialized property. The All the Pope's Dissidents .. 33 Communist chieftains of the American demands raised in the articles in this AFL-CIO show themselves not so pamphlet-for the strict separation of different from the ruling Stalinist church and state, for the collectivization bureaucrats from Moscow to Peking, of agriculture, for the cancellation of Appendix sellout heads of workers institutions Poland's debt to the imperialist bankers, which they are incapable of effectively for the military defense of the USSR "Pure Democracy" or defending against the class enemy. against imperialism-constitut'! the Political Revolution Certainly it is not our job to apologize programmatic core of the international in Eastern Europe ...... 35 for the Stalinist rulers who have vanguard party necessary to the revolu­ disorganized the Polish economy, capit­ tionary defense of the working masses of ulated to the church and the smallhold­ Poland against imperialism and capital­ ing peasantry, lorded it over the work­ ist restoration through political revolu­ ing class with bureaucratic privileges tion in the deformed workers states and which mimic the invidious inequities of proletarian revolution throughout the capitalist society, alienated the intelli­ capitalist world. gentsia and youth, fostered nationalism * * * * * and every kind of backward ideology, We include as an appendix to this not least anti-Semitism, and turned pamphlet extracts from The Hungarian "Communism" into a curse word. There Revolution, published by a forerunner is a blood line-the blood of revolution­ of our tendency in 1959. The author, aries from Indochina to Spain-which Shane Mage, was one of several left­ Cover photo: separates us Trotskyists from Stalinism, Shachtmanite youth who became New York City, 24 September 1981, that "great organizer of defeats." But it Trotskyists and fused with the Socialist demonstration organized by the is very much our job to seek to rally the Workers Party (SWP) in 1958. "The Spartaclst League/U.S. protesting working class in Poland and interna­ YSL Right Wing and the 'Crisis of the opening of Solldarno.t office. tionally behind the defense of historical- World Stalinism'," included in the 1959 3

parties need not call for nor immediately effect the denationalization of statified industry. Rather, they would subordi­ nate the nationalized industry to the interests of the domestic petty bourgeoi­ sie and international capital. In this Mage was not expressing some idiosyn­ cratic view but was following Trotsky who wrote in 1937: "Should a bourgeois counterrevolution succeed in the USSR, the new government for a lengthy period would have to base itself upon the nationalized economy" ("Not a Work­ ers' and Not a Bourgeois State?") At the same time, Mage insisted that counterrevolution was not what was occurring in Hungary in October­ November 1956. The effective organs of power were workers councils which expressed a confused socialist con­ sciousness, albeit with syndicalist devia­ tions and "neutralist" illusions, while the clerical-reactionary forces around Cardinal Mindszenty were relatively weak and counterposed. These were crucial considerations for revolutionists in mandating an orientation toward the 1956 Hungarian events as moving in the direction of proletarian political revolu­ tion. Mage's polemic thus sharply highlights the Spartacist tendency's line in thc present Polish crisis, where the constellation of counterrevolutionary forces which were in Hungary a distinct­ ly subordinate element today wield the upper hand behind the Solidarnosc "union." That the analytical framework and programmatic criteria advanced by Mage for Hungary 1956 retain their validity in necessitating very different conclusions for Poland today illustrates the power of Trotskyism as the contem­ Pnoto porary Leninist guide to revolutionary 260 Park Avenue South, New York-headquarters of "State Department action. socialist" Albert Shanker and his teachers' union, now also houses his friends Mage's writings on Hungary arc not from Solidarnosc, Polish company union for the C~A and bankers. without weaknesses. As a SUbjective revolutionist in transition from Shacht­ pamphlet, was originally a factional wretched W olforth and others toward manism, he at this point retained a document within the Young Socialist Trotskyism and the SWP. softness toward undifferentiated "anti­ League (YSL), youth group of the These young Trotskyists, who were Stalinism" and the "neutralism" tendency headed by Max Shachtman an important section of the founding espoused by some of the Hungarian which had split in 1940 from the then­ cadres of the SWP youth group, found dissidents. Moreover in ruling out revolutionary SWP to reject the funda­ themselves again in a rapidly rightward­ support to a Russian intervention no mental Trotskyist principle ofuncondi­ moving party. Mage was among the matter what, Mage impermissibly ele­ tional defense of the Soviet Union comrades who emerged as the SWP's vated the bourgeois-democratic right of against imperialism. The Shachtmanite left opposition, were expelled in 1964 national self-determination above the majority's advocacy of "general demo­ and formed the Spartacist League. The class question of defense of proletarian cratic aims" in the 1956 Hungarian Spartacist tendency embodies the Trot­ state power against capitalist­ Revolution was .an important step skyist program abandoned by the SWP, impcrialism. toward their liq uidation into official now a wretchedly reformist formation. We include in the appendix a shorter American social democracy. It was the Mage himself left revolutionary politics excerpt from "'Truth' and Hungary," Shachtmanites' course toward unifica­ in the 1960s. ' Mage's reply to American Stalinist tion with Norman Thomas' "Cold War Analyzing the potential social bases Herbert Aptheker, also taken from the for counterrevolution in Eastern Eu­ socialist" party (which they soon came "1959 pamphlet. to dominate) which pushed the YSL left rope, Mage observes in "The YSL Right wing of Mage, James Robertson, the Wing ... " that counterrevolutionary g October 1981 ____II __ II... _miIlmMl .. ~~,ur > •. 1111

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reprinted from WQrkers Vanguard No. 290, 9 October 1981 Wall Street Journal Loves Poland's Company Un ion Western imperialism figures it has an ers' union on September 24 was a Then the Wall Street Journal devoted unprecedented opening in Poland, a graphic symbol of Polish Solidarity'S the lead editorial in its 29 September chance to strike a blow against the application for membership in the "free issue to a sharp attack on those who USSR deep in its own sphere. From the world." And outside the press confer­ dare to expose the common thread Pentagon to the Common Market ence which celebrated this event, the linking the American labor bureaucra­ Commission to the Vatican, the forces Trotskyists of the Spartacist League cy's political and financial support to of reaction are egging on Solidarnosc in demonstrated against Solidarnosc' Solidarnosc with the U.S. State its recent call for "free trade unions" counterrevolutionary course, demand­ Department/CIA appetites for counter­ throughout Eastern Europe. In the ing "No 'Rollback'!-No Capitalist revolution in Poland. After several mouths of these certified labor-haters, Restoration in Eastern Europe!" Ap­ paragraphs dismissing an expose of CIA the call for "free trade unions," long pealing to the socialist and internation­ involvement in AFL-CIO "aid" to the fighting slogan of. Cold War alist traditions of the Polish workers unions internationally which appeared anti-Communism, really means "free movement of Rosa Luxemburg, the in CounterSpy magazine more than six enterprise": the restoration of capi­ protesters exposed the "solidarity" months ago, the editorial says: talist exploitation through bloody between Solidarnosc and the "Counterspy was not the last source to counterrevolution. AFL-CIO tops as brokered by the CIA. strike this theme. Just a little while ago, For example, Lech Walesa extended broadcasts from the Soviet Union could It is no surprise that the anti­ AFL-CIO chief Lane Kirkland an be heard denouncing Solidarity'S Amer­ Communist AFL-CIO bureaucracy, ican connection and cutely referring to invitation to visit Poland in the com­ forged in the 1950s McCarthy period Lane Kirkland as among the 'chief pany of the notorious Irving Brown, when "reds" and militants were forcibly stockholders' in the Polish dissident long-time creature of the CIA whose movement. Over on this side of the purged from the labor movement, is credentials as "AFL-CIO European ocean, when Solidarity recently opened deeply involved in this enterprise. With representative" furnish the "labor" an office in New York, a respectably­ sized group of demonstrators was a zeal which recalls their ultra-hawk cover for his decades-long career of stance for U.S. imperialism's dirty war organized to picket the opening in provocation and gangsterism against protest against the American imperial­ against Vietnam, the American union the European labor movement. The ism it allegedly represented." tops are up to their necks in the U.S. Spartacist demonstrators carried pla­ The Wall Street Journal editorial government's schemes to manipulate cards like "Reagan smashes PATCO which attacks our demonstration is more the Polish crisis as a spearhead of the American Union, Loves Solidarnosc" than a political statement. What this imperialist drive to "roll back" Commu­ and chanted "Kirkland/Shanker / mouthpiece of the American ruling class nism throughout the world. .Brown-CIA Stooges." has in mind is not an exchange of In this context, the opening of a The protest was covered by a couple polemics on Poland, but a government Solidarnosc office in -New York at the of local TV stations but was blacked out assault on the right of communists in the headquarters of Albert Shanker's teach- by the networks and the newspapers. labor movement to challenge the pro­ capitalist line of the American labor bureaucracy. The article ends with an unmistakable threat: "Anyone seeking to delegitimize" the AFL-CIO's crusade for "political freedom" "should be aware of just how serious an attack he is launching. " The threat is no less ominous because it leaves implicit the mechanisms of repression envisioned by the editors. Is the editorial's title, "Communists and the AFL-CIO," intended to evoke an intensification of McCarthyite witch­ hunting against communists in the trade unions? Nor should anyone miss the sinister import of the Wall Street Journal's suggestion that our demon­ stration was inspired by the Russian Stalinists. The notion of Trotskyists as "State Department socialists" flank Solldarno6t spokesman. some kind of Russian agents may be 5

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. fighting Communist domination of la­ bor movements. It learned early in the • game that Communist parties and free unions are natural mortal ene­ mies, more violently so because free Communists and the AFL-CIO unions, more than any other free insti­ tution, threaten Communist claims to Poland's Solidarity movement is progressive, truly "labor-oriented" legitimacy. W1len American labor holding the second stage of its national forces in the country .. In the Domini­ goes head to head with Communists, convention in Gdansk without the can Republic, the AFL-CIO set up an the obvious counterattack for the presence of one of its best known in­ organization that "ran propaganda Communists is to claim that American vited guests: Lane Kirkland, president units as well as goon squads against labor is an arm of the American gov­ of the AFL-CIO. Mr. Kirkland had pre­ the legitimate unions." ernment, manipulated by the CIA_ pared a speech to deliver to the Soli­ And, comrades, this is no accident. How easy it is to make lists of the CIA darity meeting, but at the last minute Counterspy tells us that AFL-CIO offi­ ,connections: the parallel aims, the in­ the Communist government of Poland cials have always denied working with stances of collaboration, the communi­ refused to grant visas to him and his the CIA or taking CIA money for their cations and shared acquaintanceships. AFL-CIO delegation. This is no big activities, but these denials "ring hol­ How easy to use the list to try to dis­ surprise, really; American labor's low." After all, do we not have the tes­ credit the AFL-CIO enterprise in Po­ support for Solidarity has gravely em­ timony of a former CIA official who land, and more important, to try to ex­ barrassed Warsaw, and the Polish says he actually handed over bucks to punge the colossal embarrassment government keeps trying to discredit an AFL representative? DO we not Solidarity represents to world-wide the pffort. It is also sadly unsurprising know that the CIA read the mail of communism. that thp Polish Communists are get­ high labor personnel "in order to mon­ This is a very dirty business we are ting help here in the U.S. itor their handling of CIA money"? dealing with. American labor has been You call get an idea of how the an­ So when we see American labor at active on the international scene in or­ ti-AFL campaign is working by taking work in Poland, we should know that der to further its own perfectly legiti­ a look at a recent issue of Counterspy, we're not viewin~ anything like an ex­ mate purposes. One result of its activi­ a Washington-based magazine that pression of genuine solidarity among ties has been to expose, time after proclaims itself devoted to exposing the working classes. Instead, what time, the gulf between Communist in­ the nefarious work of the CIA and its we've got is just another variation on terests and worker interests. This ex­ agents of American imperialism wher­ a deeades-old American capitalist posure has often worked to the benefit ever they roam in the world. An arti­ plot. of an activist U.S. foreign policy, and cle in the magazine is straightfor­ Counterspy was not .the last source opponents of such a policy have rea­ wardly titled "AFL-CIO: Trojan Horse to strike this theme. Just a little While son to want to tarnish the whole con­ in Polish Unions." A special editorial ago, broadcasts from the Soviet Union nection. introduction to the article flut the the­ could be heard denouncing Solidarity's But they should not be allowed to sis just as straightforwardly: In coun­ American connection and cutely refer­ do so easily. W1lile the American labor try after country, "AFL-CIO aid has ring to Lane Kirkland as among the movement has at times in recent invariably had the ulterior motive of "chief stockholders" in the Polish dis­ years identified itself too closely with establishing, securing and expanding sident movement. Over on this side of political parties and administrations U.S. corporate and strategic inter­ the ocean, when Solidarity recently for our liking, on the whole it remains ests ... opened an office in New York, a re­ a free and independent force pitting How do we know this is true? For spectably-sized group of demonstra­ its weight against state power both in ont' thing, says Counterspy, we have tors was organized to picket the open­ the U.S. and abroad. Its efforts on be­ before us the record of American la­ ing in protest against the American half of political freedom are thus Sig­ bor's reactionary efforts in Latin imperialism it allegedly represented. nificant. Anyone seeking to delegitim­ America. In Guatemala, George American labor is indeed aiding ize its performance in this realm Meany worked with CIA-connected or­ the' Solidarity movement, openly and should be aware of just how serious an ganizations to undermine the properly unashamedly. It has a long history of attack he is launching.

ludicrous, but you can be sure the social nications and shared acquaintance­ Danger," whose program is a nuclear democrats will not be far behind the ships." And how easy it is! Irving Bro-.yn first-strike against the USSR. Wall Street Journal in painting us as was American imperialism's main man Simply put, the Wall Street Journal's sinister Stalinist spies, the better to in Western Europe after World War II, line is: CIA? Sure, but so what? Albert cement their own united front with the where he used CIA dollars to plant Shanker, in his "Where We Stand" CIA. agents, buy officials and hire goons to column in the October 4 Sunday New What is perhaps most interesting split, smash and subdue combative York Times "Week in Review" section, about the editorial is that it makes no unions. And talk about "parallel takes the same tack. Shanker quotes attempt to claim that the accusations aims"--Albert Shanker's outfit, "Social Radio Moscow's charge that Shanker's about the "AFL-CIA" are anything but Democrats, 'USA," was an una­ union "annually receives $100,000 from true. "How easy it is," says the Wall shamed Vietnam hawk after even Nixon the CIA for international contacts and Street Journal, "to make lists of the CIA gave it up as a lost cause; Shanker now activities." "Totally false," says Shank­ connections: the parallel aims, the joins with Kirkland in the right-wing er, who goes on to boast of the money he instances of collaboration, the commu- militarist "Committee on the Present gets from the Agency for International !lill~!am I II~·

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Spartacist slogans (some in Polish and Russian) at September 24 demonstration:

No Rollback! No Capitalist Restoration In Eastern Europe! Polish SOlidarnosc-Agents of Counterrevolution Social Democrats and the AFL-CIO Front for CIA In Poland, Tool Reagan Smashes PATCO American Union, Loves Solidarnoscl Reagan and Haig: Hands Off Poland! For Class Struggle Workers Parties-in Poland and America! Don't Sell Poland to the German Bankers! Polish Solidarnosc-Running Dog of Imperialism 600,000 Red Army Soldiers Fell Liberating Poland from the German Nazis For Military Defense of the Soviet Bloc against Imperialism! Death to Pilsudskilte Anti-Semites! Waryriski, Not Wojtylal Long Live the Party of Luxemburg, Jogiches, Warski, Walecki & Wera Kostrzewa! Stalinism Undermines the Workers States-For Trotskyist Workers Parties to Power! For Rebirth of the Trotskyist Fourth International!

Development, frequently a conduit for CIA "counterinsurgency" which has financed operations from Guatemala to Thailand. For Shanker, there's nothing unholy about an alliance between the American labor tops and the American government; it's a legitimate anti­ Communist united front stretching from the UFT office to Langley, Virginia and blessed by the Wall Street Journal to boot. American social democracy stands in the front line of a broad counterrevolu­ tionary chorus of Solidarnose fans. An intimate of Shanker's Social Demo­ crats, USA, one Ben Wattenberg, hosted an October 2 public television special titled "Specter Haunting Communism: Polish Workers." The ad for the program in the October 2 New York The demonstration the bourgeois press blacked out. Times gloated: "When Karl Marx urged workers to unite, he never .dreamed tion to the U.S. imperialist-led "free live long enough to get black lung. Lech they'd do it against communism." And world," the pope ... and now even the Walesa's affection for the IMF is the who paid for the TV show? DuPont's International Monetary Fund! Is there a clearest possible demonstration of Conoco oil company, product of the union leader anywhere else in the world Solidarnose' real role as a company world's biggest capitalist merger. This who would dare to so openly make union for the CIA and the bankers. friend of Solidarnose is, among other common cause with the international The Spartacist League's defense of things, one of America's big coal bankers' cartel? If the IMF ever gets a the workers movement demands the companies. A comparison of its safety chance to implement its program for most vigorous protest against the pro­ record with that of the Polish coal mines Poland, it will surely begin by starving capitalist American labor tops' witting should explode any idea that Solidar­ most of the Polish population. Ameri­ collusion in Solidarnose' imperialist­ nose and its American patrons are can workers may not understand the toll backed counterrevolutionary enter­ supporters of workers' rights! in human suffering and death contained prise. Our aim is not merely to expose The spectacle of the Wall Street beneath those initials, but workers all the unholy alliance between the U.S. Journal, a main ideological voice of the over the globe know what the IMF government and the American labor U.S. bourgeoisie, posturing as a parti­ means. Pinochet's bloody coup in Chile officialdom, but to break that alliance san of a "free and independent" Ameri­ was for the purpose of making the through the forging of a class-struggle can labor movement is certainly ob­ country "safe" for the IMF. If Conoco union leadership which will militantly scene. But no more obscene than a and the IMF ever get their hands on oppose U.S. imperialism's sinister Polish "union" which looks for salva- Poland, Polish miners will be lucky to schemes to export counterrevolution.• 7 reprinted from WorJsers Vanguard No. 289, 25 September 1981

Time Runs Out in Poland Stop Solidarity's Counterrevolution! The massive strike in the Baltic ports last August brought Polish workers before a historic choice: with the bankruptcy of Stalinist rule dramatical­ ly demonstrated, it would be either the path of bloody counterrevolution in league with imperialism, or the path of proletarian political revolution. The Gdansk accords and the emergence of Solidarity (Solidarnosc), the mass workers organization which issued out of last year's general strike, produced a situation of cold dual power. This precarious condition could not last long, we wrote. And now time has run out. With its first national congress in early September, decisive elements of Solidarity are now pushing a program of open counterrevolution. The appeal for "free trade unions" within the Soviet bloc, long a fighting slogan for Cold War anti-Communism, was a deliberate provocation of Moscow. Behind the call for "free elections" to the Sejm (parlia­ ment) stands the program of "Western­ style democracy," that is, capitalist restoration under the guise of parlia­ mentary government. And now leading Polish "dissident" Jacek Kuron, an influential adviser of Solidarity, and a member of the Second International, has issued a call for a counterrevolution­ ary regime to take power. To underscore their ties to the "free world," Solidarity's leaders have invited Solidarnosc leaders bow to pope. Lane Kirkland, the hard-line Cold Warrior who heads up the American AFL-CIO, to attend the second session In turn Solidarity is opening a U.S. leader, Lech Walesa, told printers who . of the congress scheduled for late office in the premises of teachers' union were striking government newspapers: September. This top labor lieutenant of leader Albert Shanker, a notorious "1 believe that confrontation is U.S. imperialism, a man deeply in­ right-wing social democrat whose party unavoidable. The next confrontation volved in Washington's anti-Soviet war newspaper, New America, denounced will be a total confrontation .... drive, has announced he will be then; to George McGovern as little short of a "We see more clearly that without "Commie dupe" and even condemned political solutions nothing can be wave the "free world" banner in Poland. achieved. The whole war will be won by Accompanying Kirkland is Irving Nixon as soft on Russia! us." Brown, the sinister AFL-CIO "Euro­ Over and above the formal actions of -Los Angeles Times, 21 August pean representative" whose "labor" the congress, the whole activity and When asked what would happen if the cover is an invaluable part of his years-. spirit of Solidarity is that of an organi­ Sejm refused to act· on Solidarity's long role as top CIA provocateur zation making a bid for power. A few program for self-managed enterprises, against the European labor movement. weeks before the congress the top Bogdan Lis, regarded as the organiza- 8

tion's number two, replied smartly, course has also produced a powerful mou~ social pressure on them do to ~o. "Maybe we'll dissolve it" (New York response from the anti-Moscow center, Most of these workers probably retain Times, 13 September). When the 900 the Vatican. A week after the congress some loyalty to the communist cause delegates left the congress, they under­ Pope Karol Wojtyla of Krakow issued and are hostile to the clcrical­ stood that the organization was moving his long-awaited encyclical on "the nationalism of Walesa & Co. But today to take over the basic economic and social question." This reaffirmed the such workers are clearly a minority and political aspects of Polish life. Now, church's traditional defense a/capitalist on the defensive as the Solidarity writing in Solidarity's newsletter, Nieza­ private property against socialism and leadership has the support of the leznosc, Poland's most prominent social war against Marxism, while favoring active majority ofthe Polish proletariat. democrat, Jacek Kuron, has called for a unions as long as they are a "construc­ Thus. the threat of a counterrevolution­ new government based on a "council of tive factor of social order and solidari­ ary thrust for power is now posed in national salvation" consisting of Soli­ ty." The Polish Conference of Bishops Poland. That threat must be crushed at darity, the Catholic church and "moder­ got the message and has thrown its all costs and by any means necessary. ate" Communist officials. "The moment support behind Solidarity's long­ the council is formed, it would suspend standing demand for greater access to Solidarity Under the Eagle and operation of all authorities, including the mass media. Does anyone doubt Cross the government," Kuron added (UPI that "the new Poland" Solidarity's dispatch, 16 September 1981). leaders say they are building conforms It is sheer cynicism that Solidarity's The sophisticated representatives of to the guidelines set down by the leaders still claim to adhere to the 31 Western imperialism, such as the New Catholic church to which they all August 1980 Gdansk Agreement, which York Times, and apparently the Krem­ profess deep allegiance? The pope's stated that the new union movement lin Stalinists as well, understand that encyclical (written in Polish) could well would recogni7.e the "leading role" of Solidarity has now crossed the Rubicon. become the manifesto of a counterrevo­ . the Communist party (Polish United Top American officials have been lutionary mobilization in Poland. Workers Party. PUWP), would respect quoted in European papers saying that It is the most damning indictment of Poland's international alliances (i.e., the Poland today is the most exciting and Stalinism that after three decades of so­ Warsaw Pact) and would not engage in important opportunity for tht: West called "socialism" a majority of the political activity. Of course, Walesa and since 1945. And this is from an adminis­ Polish working class is so fed up with it his colleagues were strongly opposed to tration that begins to salivate as soon as as to embrace the slogans of the Cold all these conditions but regarded them it hears the word "rollback." Moscow War. It is the Stalinists with their as tactical concessions for the moment. has issued its strongest warning to date, crushing censorship and endless falsifi­ The notion that the new union move­ demanding that the beleaguered War­ cations, their corruption and gross ment would not be political was an saw regime "immediately take the economic mismanagement, their sup­ absurdity. As we stated when the determined and radical steps in order to pression of democratic rights always Gdansk Agreement was signed, either cut short the malicious anti-Soviet accompanied by cynical promises of the new union movement would become propaganda and actions hostile toward "democratization" who have driven the a vehicle for clerical-nationalist reaction the Soviet Union." In response the historically socialist Polish proletariat or it would have to oppose it in the name Polish government has announced it is into the arms of the Vatican and "AFL­ of socialist principle. There was and is preparing drastic actions. Everyone CIA" no "third way," much less a purely thinks this means declaring a state of It is also important to point out that a trade-unionist third way. emergency and preventing the second reported 15 to 20 percent of the Polish It was clear from the beginning that part of Solidarity's congress. workers have not participated in Soli­ Walesa & Co. saw themselves leading Solidarity's counterrevolutionary darity's mobilization, despite the enor- the entire Polish nation under the

With Its first congress Solidarity crosses over to pro-1m perlalist counter­ revolution. 9

banner of eagle and cross in a crusade development of a left opposition from Solidarity's economic program would against "Russian-imposed Commu­ among those Solidarity and Communist lead to immediate mass unemployment, nism." Solidarity is no longer a trade party militants who wanted a genuine facilitate imperialist economic penetra­ union, but has come to include large "socialist renewal" by seeking to recover tion and greatly strengthen the forces sections of the intelligentsia, petty the internationalist· traditions of Lenin pushing toward capitalist restoration. bureaucrats, priests, etc. Last winter/ and Luxemburg, perverted in the service (For a fuller discussion of this, see spring much of Solidarity's efforts were of the Stalinist bureaucrats. A revolu­ "'Market Socialism' Is Anti-Socialist," directed toward forcing the government tionary vanguard in Poland would seek WV No. 287, 14 August.) If the to legally recognize the organization of to split Solidarity, winning the mass of government does not agree to this peasant smallholders, Rural Solidarity, the workers away from the anti-Soviet program, Solidarity is threatening to a potent social force for capitalist nationalist leadership around Walesa. It conduct its own national referendum as restoration. In late March Solidarity would put forward a program centering the first step to taking over effective even threatened a nationwide general on strict separation of church and state, control of the economy. strike primarily on behalf of the rural unconditional military defense of the But the actions of Solidarity's first petty capitalists, despite the fact that Soviet bloc against capitalism­ congress go much further even than this. they were driving up food prices for imperialism, and a political revolution Its open appeal for "free trade unions" urban consumers. against the Stalinist bureaucracy and in the Soviet bloc is both an arrogant Local Solidarity organizations have establishment of a democratically elect­ provocation of Moscow and a declara­ kept up a barrage of anti-Soviet propa­ ed workers government based on soviets tion of ideological solidarity with ganda of the most vile right-wing sort. to carry out socialist economic planning Western imperialism. While the demand For example, the Solidarity newspaper (including the collectivization of agri­ for tradc unions independent of bureau­ at the Katowice steel mill, the largest in culture). Yet we fully recognized that cratic control is integral to the Trotsky­ the country, reprinted chapters from this program goes very much against the ist program for proletarian political Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago stream in Poland today and that the revolution in the Stalinist-ruled Soviet and ran cartoons that could have come dominant tendency was for Solidarity to bloc, the slogan of "free trade unions" straight out of the Western yellow press. consolidate around a counterrevolu­ has long since been associated with At the same time, Solidarity's leaders tionary course in the name of nation, NATO imperialism. At the start of the have nothing but good things to say church and "the free world." Cold War the fanatically anti­ about the imperialist West. Communist Meanyite bureaucracy set Small wonder Ronald Reagan G.ould Solidarity Calls for "Bourgeols­ up the International Confederation of declare that the Polish crisis signals the Democratic" Counterrevolution Free Trade Unions in closest collabora­ beginning of the end of Communism, For a year the Solidarity leadership tion with the Central Intelligence the desperate dream of world imperial­ Agency. It is therefore quite fitting that ·ism ever since October 1917: stopped short of openly calling for the overthrow of the official "Communist" accompanying Lane Kirkland to the ..... 1 think the things we're seeing not Solidarity congress will be none other only in Poland but the reports that are system (a bureaucratically ruled work­ beginning to come out of Russia itself ers state) and its replacement by than Irving Brown, "Mr. AFL-ClA," ... are an indication that communism is (bourgeois) "democracy" like in the whose disruption of the labor move­ an aberration-it's not a normal way of West. Walesa in particular liked to ment on behalf of U.S. imperialism living for human beings, and I think spans three and a half decades. The we're seeing the first beginning cracks, posture as a simple trade unionist, as if the beginning of the end." Solidarity was the same as the AFL­ Solidarity leadership is well aware of the ,New York Times, 17 June. cIa in the United Statesorthe DGB in anti-Communist meaning of the slogan, "free trade unions," as they have been These were no mere philosophical West Germany. But as the economy dealing with the AFL-CIO tops for musings. U.S. imperialism is deeply descended into chaos, everyone recog­ months. involved in fomenting anti-Communist nized that simple trade unionism was reaction in Poland, especially through impossible. Industrial and agricultural Even more important than "free trade the AFL-CIO bureaucracy which has production has collapsed, the stores are unions" in the ideological arsenal of contributed $300,000 and their first empty, people wait hours to buy food imperialist anti-Sovietism is printing press to Solidarity. and other necessities. The head of "democracy"-not workers democracy While engaged in subverting Poland Solidarity's Warsaw chapter likened the based on soviets as in the Bolshevik from within, the Reagan administration organization to a union of seamen Revolution of 1917 but bourgeois is also trying to provoke the Soviet aboard a sinking ship. The obvious parliamentary "democracy." Here also Union into military intervention, in part helplessness of the Polish Stalinists and the Solidarity congress fully adhered to through inflammatory statements like evident reluctance of the Kremlin to the "bourgeois-democratic" counterrev­ the above. Reagan/ Haig want to see intervene militarily further emboldened olution. The important Warsaw chapter Polish workers hurling Molotov cock­ Solidarity's so-called "militant" wing. put forward a motion calling for "free tails at Russian tanks in order to fuel The organization made its first bid for elections" to the Sejm, further stating their anti-Soviet war drive to white heat. power on the economic front. Last April that "the road to the nation's sovereign­ While the motion in the year-long Solidarity came out with a program for ty is through democratic elections to Polish crisis has been toward pro­ the abolition of centralized economic representative bodies" (New York imperialist counterrevolution, the con­ planning, the election of enterprise Times, 10 September). In the world of dition of cold dual power also created an managers by the workers and enterprise Solidarity everything, including democ­ opening for the crystallization of an autonomy on the basis of market racy, is subordinate to Polish national authentically revolutionary workers composition. I n the anarchic conditions sovereignty. (For a theoretical discus­ party which could reverse this process of Poland such self-managed enterprises sion of "bourgeois-democratic" coun­ from within. As Trotskyists, therefore, would quickly free themselves from all terrevolution in bureaucratically ruled we oriented toward the potential for but nominal state control. If carried out, workers states, see Shane Mage, "'Pure .$-.' .

10

Counterrevolution is no joke. Polish universitv students wear "EAf' ("anti-socialist element") T-shirts.

Democracy' or Political Revolution in lutionaries. They would be closer to ers' and Not a Bourgeois State?" Writ­ East Europe," Spartacist No. 30, Au­ Pilsudskiite nationalism, hankering ings [1937-38]). State industry would tumn 1980.) after the great Poland of the fascistic be starved for new investment or even Assuming the Warsaw regime was dictator of the interwar years. repairs, since this would divert resources powerless to prevent it (as is probably And what would happen to any left from the rapidly growing private sector. the case) and that the Soviet army didn't opposition to such "bourgeois­ At the same time, foreign capitalist intervene, what kind of government democratic" counterrevolution? In his investment would be invited in on a would emerge from free elections to a report to the Solidarity congress the massive scale. Walesa openly calls for sovereign parliament in Poland today? organization's secretary, Andrzej Ce­ joint enterprises with Western capital­ A quarter to a third of the voters would linski, declared that his Communist ists as the salvation of the Polish be peasant smallholders,who will do opponents "do not hesitate to enter the economy~ Wages would be kept low to what their local priest tells them to do. road of national treason" (U PI dis­ compete on the world market. Hun­ Their social attitude was summed up by patch, 6 September). Given the mood of dreds of thousands, if not millions, of British journalist Tim Garton Ash: "It is the delegates, the accusation of "nation­ workers would be laid off as a "neces­ the conservative Catholic peasants of al treason" is the most inflammatory sary" rationalization measure. Certainly South-Eastern Poland who would political denunciation imaginable. As the mass of deluded workers in Solidari­ overthrow communism at the drop of a Solidarity moves to reassert national ty do not want this. But the restoration Cardinal's hat" (Spectator. 14 Febru­ sovereignty, loyal members and sup­ of capitalism in all its ruthlessness ary). Historically, Marxian socialism porters of the PUWP will become the would follow, as the night follows the has been a powerful and at times victims of a white terror. day, from Solidarity's program of dominant current within the Polish Fake-Trotskyists like Ernest Mandel "Western-style democracy." industrial proletariat. But 35 years of of the European-centered United Secre­ Tell Me Who Your Friends Are ... Stalinist bureaucratism has made much tariat and Jack Barnes of the American of the Polish working class sympathetic Socialist Workers Party, tailing anti­ While proclaiming the need for "free at this time to clerical-nationalism and Soviet social democracy, argue that Sol­ trade unions" in the Soviet bloc, pro-Western social democracy, while idarity's leaders have not explicitly Solidarity has conspicuously not solid­ demoralizing the rest. The likely result called for the restoration of capitalism. arized with workers' stuggles in capital­ of parliamentary democracy would be But they clearly have called for the ist countries. When Ronald Reagan fired the victory of anti-Communist, nation­ overthrow of the existing state and its 12,000 striking air controllers. the entire alist forces seeking an alliance with replacement by a clerical-nationalist national union membership, practically NATO imperialism against the Soviet regime with close ties to NATO imperi­ every trade-union federation in the Union. alism. And this would not be a peaceful Western world protested. But not the Such a government would mean the process but a bloody counterrevolution. Polish Solidarity! Solidarity spokesman counterrevolution in power. In 1935 Trotsky debunked the notion of a Zygmunt Przetakiewicz attended the Trotsky observed that "the restoration peaceful, gradual transformation from New York City Labor Day demonstra­ to power of a Menshevik and Social proletarian to bourgeois state power as tion in the company of Albert Shanker. Revolutionary bloc would suffice to running the film of reformism in reverse. At a time when even the most right-wing obliterate the socialist construction" As for the resulting economic AFL-CIO bureaucrats were denouncing ("The Workers State, Thermidor and transformation, Trotsky also pointed Reagan's massive union busting and Bonapartism," Writings [1934-35]). out that "Should a bourgeois counter­ savage cuts in social welfare programs, And the parties that would win "free revolution succeed in the USSR, the the Solidarity spokesman maintained a elections" in the Poland of Wojtyla and new government for a lengthy period careful neutrality in the conflict between Walesa are far to the right of the would have to base itself upon the the American working class and the Russian Mensheviks and Social Revo- nationali7ed economy" ("Not a Work- most reactionary government in half a 11 century. When asked what he thought of suggested by such responsible defense that for years Moscow has subsidized Reagan's policies, Przetakiewicl re­ analysts as those associated with the the Polish economy, although the Committee on the Present Danger, plied, "I would not like to be involved in must be undertaken as rapidly as standard of living in Warsaw and this kind of thing" (New York Times, 8 possible." [italics in original] Gdansk is far higher than in Moscow or September). -"The Global Vision of Social Kiev. Even Western bourgeois journal­ Democracy," New America, ists report that the Russian man-in-the­ At the Labor Day demonstration January/February Przetakiewicz announced Solidarity street has no sympathy for Solidarity was opening its first foreign office in the There's a saying: tell me who your and what it stands for. Why? It is not New York headquarters of Shanker's friends are and I'll tell you who you are. primarily chauvinism or economic United Federation of Teachers (U FT). Well, these are Solidarity's American resentment. friends. The U FT is hardly a typical American The fundamental reason is that the business union. It is the main organiza­ Soviet Russia and the Soviet working masses want to defend tional base for the Social Democrats, the collectivized social system born in U.S.A., otherwise known as "State Counterrevolutionary Danger in Poland the October Revolution, despite its Department socialists." Shanker's So­ subsequent Stalinist degeneration, Faced with the counterrevolutionary cialist Party (which in 1972 changed its against world imperialism. Unlike in name to avoid the stigma of socialism') danger in Poland, the Kremlin Stalinists Poland, where a deformed workers state were hawks in the Vietnam War till the have gone beyond denunciations in was imposed from above by the Red bitter end, even after N ixon/ Kissinger Army, the Russian working class in had given it up as a lost cause. 1917 took history into its own hands and The Social Democrats are despised by will not lightly relinquish the social mainstream liberals as crazed, anti­ When conquests of October. Moreover, Soviet communist warmongers. In the film Karl Marx working people keenly remember the 20 Sleeper by left-liberal humorist Woody million lost fighting Hitler's Germany. Allen, the typical New York hero (or urged workers to 600,000 of these fell liberating Poland anti-hero) reawakens a few centuries in from the horror of the Nazi occupation. the future and learns that his civilization unite, henever The Soviet working people know that was wiped out in a nuclear war. He asks, dreamed they'd the terrible nuclear arsenal of American how did this war begin? He's told: we imperialism, with the anti-Communist really don't know, but we think a man do it against. fanatics Reagan/ Haig on the trigger by the name of Albert Shanker acquired communism. finger, is aimed at them. the atomic bomb. In the past decade the Social Demo­ They fear the transformation of East crats have developed the closest ties to Europe into imperialist-allied states See "Specter Haunting Communism: extending NATO to their own border. the Meanyite machine which runs the . Polish Workers" on The Kremlin bureaucrats cynically national AFL-CIO. Kirkland/Shanker Ben Wattenberg At Large have done more than anyone else in the Fri., Oct. 2, 9:30 pm, Channel 13 exploit this consciousness to rally American labor movement to prepare support for their crushing of popular unrest and democratic aspirations in the way for Reagan's massive arms Malk po~~lh\e In part bv a P.UIlI from buildup and anti-Soviet war drive. East Europe, as in Czechoslovakia in (conoco) 1968. But the Poland of Wojtyla and These two criminals are actively work­ J Du Pon! company ing for a nuclear first strike against the Walesa is not the Czechoslovakia of Soviet Union. Kirkland is a member of Counterrevolutionary friends of Dubcek's "socialism with a human the Committee on the Present Danger, a Solidarnosl:. face." Now the counterrevolutionary right-wing militarist pressure group danger is all too real. Any day Poland which 'attacked Carter for "selling out" could explode into a 1921 Kronstadt­ Pravda to mobilizing the Soviet workers to the Russians in the SALT negotia­ style counterrevolutionary rebellion on against Solidarity. Mass meetings in the tions. The first point in a recent a massive scale. giant Zil auto and truck factory in resolution on global politics by the Moscow and similar plants in Lenin­ But if Poland could become a giant Social Democrats, U.S.A., states: grad and elsewhere were held to approve Kronstadt, the bureaucratic regime of "The major priorities for the [Reagan] a public answer to Solidarity's appeal to Brezhnev is separated by a political administration in the area of foreign policy should be: Soviet workers: counterrevolution from the communist "I) Rehuilding A merican nuclear and "They ask us to renounce ourselves, the government of Lenin and Trotsky. As conventional strength: The correction results of our work, of our struggle, to proletarian revolutionaries, it is not our of the imbalance. along the lines hetray millions of people who fell in task to advise the Kremlin Stalinists on hattlcs against imperialism, to betray how to deal with the counterrevolution­ our Communist future." ary situation in Poland for which they SUBSCRIBE -Neli' York Times, 12 September bear ultimate responsibility. They are YOUNG SPARTACUS not our saviours. We have no confi­ These words and these meetings are monthly paper of the dence the Russian Stalinists can or will not simply bureaucratic displays from defend the social gains of the October Spartacus Youth League above without support at the base. Revolution bureaucratically extended $2/9 issues Doubtless the Kremlin Stalinists try to to Poland. In principle the Kremlin Make Payable/mail to: Spartacus Youth whip up Great Russian anti-Polish Stalinists are perfectly capable of selling Publishing Co., Box 3118, Church SI. Sta., chauvmism. Furthermore, Soviet work­ New York, N.Y. 10008 P~land to the German bankers if they ers

Walesa Brings "Mr. AFL-CIA" to Poland Irving Brown: Cold War Criminal

.. Tell me what company you keep. Brown's notorious activities are newspaper Le Monde detailing Brown's and I'll tell you what you are." carried out in secret, or publicly with a operations in France, where with the aid -Cervantes. Don Quixote "labor" cover provided by the Meanyite of U.S. dollars, fascist collaborators and Cold Warriors who control American Corsican gangsters he engineered a split On August 27 the AFL-CIO quietly unions. But the cover has been lifted in the Communist-led CGT union announced that the American labor enough times so that his true aims and federation: federation's "President Lane Kirkland employers are plain to see. Beginning in "Being a realist, Mr. Irving Brown does has accepted the invitation of President the mid-'30s he was the No. I side­ not long hesitate, it is well known, about Lech Walesa to attend the first National kick of Jay Lovestone, once Stalin's the choice of methods to struggle Conference of Solidarnosc in Gdansk, hatchetman-Ieader of the U.S. Commu­ against communism .... In his speech Poland, Sept. 26-29." The terse press on December 13, 1951 at the American nist Party who became an anti­ Club of Brussels, he even gave France release added that Kirkland will be Communist witchhunter in the unions precise advice: abolish the CGT's right accompanied by one "Irving Brown, long before McCarthyism. When Love­ to trade-union representation; return to AFL-CIO European representative." stone was made head of the AFL's "Free the ranks of free trade-llnionism the Polish workers beware! Walesa's wel­ Trade Union Committee" in 1944, activists who were purged for having come to this pair can mean but one given support to the [Nazi-allied] Vichy Irving Brown became his main Euro­ regime." thing: openly embracing capitalist pean operative. His mission: carry out a counterrevolution. Red Purge of European labor. Draper comments on the methods of this apostle of "free trade-unionism": Lane Kirkland's connections with the Already in the McCarthy years U.S. imperialist state are well known­ Brown's activities were revealed in an "This frankly means 'anti-Communist for example, his directorship of the CIA expose by Hal Draper entitled, "Cloak­ terror: and less frankly, terror backed and-Dollar Man: Mr. Irving Brown of by the benevolence of the government. labor front, the "American Institute for The prime example in France ... is that Free Labor Development" (AI FLD), the AFL in Europe," and published in of the so-called Mediterranean Com­ which sets up yellow "unions" and helps Lahor Action of 20 October 1952. mittee whieh is virtually a Brown overthrow leftist governments in Latin Draper quoted articles in the French creature. He had found his man, one America (Guatemala 1954, Brazil 1964, Chile 1973). But Irving Brown is in SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY another category. H is sinister record of National Office Champaign Houston anti-labor, anti-Communist subversion Box 1377. GPO C/o SYL Box 26474 goes back more than three and a half New York, NY 10116 P.O. Box 2009 Houston. TX 77207 decades. This IQng-term operative of the (212) 732-7860 Champa'lgn, IL 61820 Los Angeles Amherst (217) 356-1160 Box 29574 U.S. spy agencies is "Mr. AFL-CIA" c/o SYL Los Fel iz Station himself. P.O. Box 176 Chicago Los Angeles, CA 90029 Box 6441, Main PO. Amherst, MA 01004 (213) 662-1564 Chicago, IL 60680 Irving Brown was the man who used (413) 546-9906 (312) 427-0003 Madison CIA dollars to plant agents, buy Ann Arbor c/o SYL officials and hire goon squads to split, c/o SYL Cleveland Box 2074 PO Box 8364 Box 6765 Madison, WI 53701 smash and subdue combative unions in Ann Arbor, MI 48107 Cleveland, OH 44101 (608) 255-2342 Western Europe after World War II. (313) 662-2339 (216) 621-5136 New York Irving Brown has been identified by Berkeley/Oakland Box 444 former Central Intelligence Agency PO Box 32552 Detroit Canal Street Station Oakland, CA 94604 Box 32717 New York. NY 10013 official Philip Agee as the "principal (415) 835-1535 Detroit, MI 46232 (212) 267-1025 C I A agent for control of the I nterna­ Boston (313) 868-9095 San Francisco tional Confederation of Free Trade Box 840. Central Station Box 5712 Cambridge, MA 02139 San FrancIsco. CA 94101 Unions." Irving Brown was dispatched (617) 492-3928 (415) 863-6963 to Portugal in 1975 to stop revolution by busting up the Communist-led union TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA federation while CIA-funded mobs were Toronto Vancouver burning CP offices. Now Irving Brown Box 7198. Station A Box 26. Station A Toronto. Ontario M5W lX6 Vancouver, B,C. V6C 2LB is being sent to Poland to organize (416) 593-4138 (604) 681-2422 counterrcvolut ion. 14 Wiadomoki WOID,c:h ZwiQzk6w ZawHo.,c:h dock workers." Meanwhile, following M'I-t:IO Brown's advice, the U.S. literally bought itself a union movement in the Wcstern occupation zones of starving postwar Germany by feeding hundreds of functionaries with CARE packages and supplying free paper, printing presses and cars-and a ban on the Communists. The total cost of the Lovestone/Brown operations was esti­ mated by Braden at $2 million a year. The whole post-WWII AFL-CIA operation would have had little success if it hadn't been for Stalinist betrayals, such as the French CP /CGT suppres­ sion of strikes as their ticket for staying Sinister Irving Brown: Promotes in the government. And Lovestone first bloody. counterrevolution in learned his gangster methods as Stalin's Poland with AFL-CIO Polish hack at the head of the CPU SA, where lan$luage Issue of Free Trade he silenced, expelled and beat up the Union News. Trotskyist Left Opposition (only to find himself expelled soon after). But make Pierre Ferri-Pisani, among the Mar­ from 1950 to 1954, explained how "With no mistake: these "labor" front men for seilles dockers-described flatteringly funds from Dubinsky's union [the U.S. imperialism are the front-line as a 'steely Corsican' by the [Readers] Digest-and poured AFL money in to ILGWU], they [Lovestone and Brown] organizers of bloody counterrevolution. build it up." organized Force Ouvriere, a non­ Remember how they helped prepare the Communist union. When they ran out 1973 Chile coup! Polish workers: donot Brown's "steely Corsican" put together of money they appealed to the CIA. let the crimes of Stalinism blind yOU to goon squads in every French port to Thus began the secret subsidy of free the fact that the AFL-CIO a~d its' intimidate the CGT and unleashed a trade unions" ("I'm Glad the CIA is Solidarnosc friends represent a mortal wave of terror that sent several CP Immoral," Saturday Evening Post, 20 threat to the collective property which is leaders to the hospital. May 1967). In 1949 Ferri-Pisani's goon a historic conquest of the world prole­ It all cost a bundle, far more than the squads broke a French dockers strike: tariat. No to the "democracy" and "free AFL could manage. Quite a few years Braden said Brown needed the CIA trade unionism" of CIA assassins, later it was confirmed that Irving money "to payoff his strong-arm Reaganite strikebreaking and racist Brown's big bucks came from the CIA. squads in Mediterranean ports, so that terror! Defend the gains of October! Tom Braden, head of the Agency's American supplies could be unloaded Smash the counterrevolutionary International Organizations Division against the opposition of Communist threat! •

PUBUCATIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPARTACIST TENDENCY Workers Vanguard Spartacist Britain Biweekly organ of the Spartacist League/U.S. Marxist monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League/Britain $5/24 issues (1 year) International rates: £1.50/10 issues $20/24 Issues-Airmail $5124 Issues-Seamail Spartacist Publications Spartacist PubliShing Co. PO Box 185, London WC1H 8JE, England Box 1377 GPO. NY. NY 10116. USA Spartacist Canada Le Bolchevik Newspaper of the Trotskyist League 01 Canada Publication de la Ugue trotskyste de France $2/10 issues 20 F les 6 numeros Box 6867, Station A, Toronto, Ontario, Canada BP 135-10, 75463 Paris Cedex 10, France Australasian Spartacist Spartakist Monthly organ of the Spartacist League of Australia Herausgegeben von der Trotzkistischen Uga Deutschlands and New Zealand Jahresabonnement 8,50 OM $3/11 issues (1 year) in Australia and seamail elsewhere Auslandsluftpostabonnement 10,-OM (1 Jahr) $10/11 issues-Airmail Postfach 1 67 47 Spartacist Publications, 6000 Frankfurt/Main 1, West Germany GPO Box 3473, Pschk. Ffm 119 88-601 Sydney, NSW, 2001, Verlag Avantgarde Australia 15

reprinted {rom Workers Vanguard No. 287, 14 August 1981

Solidarity Leaders Against Planned Economy "Market Socialism" Is Anti-Socialist While Solidarity leader Lech Wale­ prises based on workers self­ downhill side of a roller coaster ride, sa's favorite posture is that of a simple management: free-market competitIOn and self­ trade unionist, bread-and-butter trade .. they [the self-management bodie~l financing would immediately bankrupt unionism is impossible in Poland today. ..,houle! have the right to exercise control hundreds of enterprises throwing hun­ over the assets of t he concern, to decide There is no bread and butter. At the time on the aims of production and sales, the dreds of thousands, if not millions, of of the Gdansk agreement last summer choice of production methods. and workers into the streets. Significantly, we wrote: "The present large wage investment goals. They should also the only group of Polish workers which increases now being granted will lead decide on the distribution of the profits actually seems to be pushing for self­ either to wild inflation or even longer of the enterprise." management are the employees of the waiting lines" ("Polish Workers Move," The document further specifies that national airline, LOT, a state monopo­ WV No. 263, 5 September 1980). By "concerns should be self-financing, that ly. The authors of the Solidarity now practically every member of Soli­ is. thev should be able to cover their program are realistic enough to know darity must know that demanding and costs ~ut of their own earnings." that theirs is a recipe for instant mass getting higher money wages and shorter One doesn't know whether the layoffs: hours on Iv makes the economic condi­ Solidarity leadership is seriously com­ ... ( he union rccogni/es that the enter­ tion wors~. The Solidarnosc leadership mited to the Yugoslav model or is pri,e, \\ ill have the right to make simply setting on paper the convention­ changc, in their employment levels as is under pressure from their most they need to. Hut the govtrnmcnt responsible members, as well as sympa­ al formulae for liberal economic reform authorities will still be responsible for thetic intellectuals and bureaucrats, to in East Europe. What is clear, however. carrying out a full employment poli­ come up with some positive program to is that if realiled. the Solidarity pro­ cy .... The self-financing of enterprises get out of the economic crisis. gram would be an even greater catas­ may also result in some having to cut back or close down." Solidarity's numerous leftist lawyers trophe for the Polish working class than in the West, like Ernest Mandel's fake­ that brought about by the Stalinists' So the self-managers are to be free to I rot~kyist United Secretariat, keep incred ible mismanagement and ever layoff workers at will and somehow the arguing that its leaders have never greater concessions to bourgeois forces. government has to find ways to reem­ actually called for the restoration of With the Polish economy on the ploy them all! Just like it is supposed to capitalism, though they almost never say anything good about a socialized economy. In point of fact, Walesa has praised American economic imperial­ ism and called for its greater penetration into Poland. When asked by the liberal West German Der Spiexel (15 June) where would the investment funds come from to rcstructure the Polish economy, the Solidarity chief replied: ..... perhaps from the West in the form of joint companies. I have seen for myselfon my Japanese trip how strongly Ameri­ can capital has contributed to Japan's enormous economic ascent." Solidarity's most comprehensive and authoritative statement of economic program to date is a document, "The Course of Union Action in the Coun­ try's Present Situation," published in the 17 April Solidarity Weekly (translat­ ed in Intercontinental Press, 22 and 29 June). This document advocates an extreme version of "the Yugoslav model," calling for autonomous enter- Walesa (center) In solidarity with reactionary Polish Catholic church. 16

find food when there isn't any. Here Solidarity's scheme is far worse-more ruthlessly capitalistic-than Yugoslav practice. In Yugoslavia enterprises are prohibited from dismissing a worker for economic reasons without securing "equivalent substitute employment" for him. But under Solidarity's plan the majority of "self-managers" can get rid of the workers in an unprofitable or marginal department in order to bolster their own income. Solidarity indeed! Inequality and Unemployment Socialism means a democratically administered, planned, egalitarian and internationally organized economy. Before the rise of Stalinism practically no one who considered himself a socialist disputed these basic principles. The program of "market socialism" has ~ nothing in common with socialism. It is Der Spiegel basically a product of liberal Stalinism. Shopping in Poland: No meat, no soap, no cigarettes. In order to eat one must The impetus for "market socialism" in work. East Europe does not come from the sionists like Paul Sweezy and Charles (as at present). "Market socialism" workers, but rather from a technocratic Bettelheim have praised workers self­ violates the elementary principle, shared wing of the bureaucracy seeking in this management it la Yugoslavia, while by trade unionists as well as socialists, of way to overcome the rigidities and deploring market competition between equal pay for equal work. wastefulness of traditional Stalinist enterprises. In the real world such a planning. When implemented, however, separation is not possible. If workers are inter-enterprise competition, allowing to be fully master in their own factory, The Yugoslav Experience enterprises to trade on the world they cannot lay claim to the state budget In Yugoslavia we can see the full market, etc., produces stro~ capitalis­ for additional wage or investment flowering to date of "market socialism." tic tendencies. The leading advocates of funds. Expenditure by a given enterpris'e After three decades of workers self­ "market socialism," like the Czech Ota for wages, bonuses, new facilities, etc. management Yugoslavia suffers the Sik and the Pole Wlodzimierz Brus, are can be limited by the revenue from the highest rate o.f inflation in Europe, East invariably on the far right of the sale of its product or limited by the or West, a 14 percent unemployment Stalinist bureaucracies. The immediate decision of a centralized economic rate and gross inequalities throughout effect's of inter"enterprise competition, administration. But expenditures must economic life. The unemployment rate increased unemployment and greater be limited somehow. Socialist revolu­ would be far higher still except that the wage differentials, are always resented tion does not abolish the economic authorities routinely bailout enterprises by the workers as in Hungary and also in home truth that there is no such thing as in financial trouble at the cost offeeding Czechoslovakia in 1968. a free lunch. an inflation rate which is now running We can judge the effects of "market "Market socialism" by its very nature 50 percent a year (Economist, I Au­ socialism" from life itself. Autonomous generates increased income inequalities gust)! And meanwhile they send their enterprises under workers self­ and unemployment. Moreover, the "surplus" sons and daughters to work in management were introduced to the profitability or unprofitability of a capitalist West Europe: remittances world by Tito's Yugoslavia shortly after concern is usually only marginally from Yugoslavs abroad amount to over ,. the break with Stalin in 1948. Workers affected by the diligence of its work­ half the total value of goods exported. councils elect the management and force. In general the most important Inter-enterprise competition com­ control after-tax revenues. Enterprises factor determining the difference be­ bined with federalism has in fact are, however, subject to certain decisive tween selling price and cost is the widened regional differences, thereby restrictions which still define them as relative age of the plant. Under "market aggravating national conflicts which state, not group, property. Enterprises socialism" workers unfortunately stuck could rip the country apart. Yugosla­ cannot liquidate themselves or sell off in older enterprises are penalized with via's most advanced republic, Slovenia, their physical plant without lZovernment lower incomes than their fellow workers enjoys economic conditions compa­ approval. Workers have a share in employed in new or newly retooled rable to neighboring Austria's, while enterprise profits only so long as they plants. The second major factor govern­ Albanian-populated Kosovo more are employed there; they have no ing enterprise profitability is supply and closely resembles Turkey. Moreover, property rights per se. (For a perceptive, demand conditions on the domestic the gap between the richest and poorest though now somewhat dated, analysis and/or world market, again something regions has increased under "market of the Yugoslav model and its contradic­ the workers have no control over. Under socialism." In 1952 per capita income in tions, see Theo Schulze, "Yugoslavia's Solidarity'S scheme Polish coal miners, Kosovo was 23 percent of that in Way: the Workers' Council System," for example, would benefit when OPEC Slovenia; by 1977 it was only 15 percent International Socialist Review, Sum­ pushed up the price of oil, thereby (Laura D'Andrea Tyson and Gabriel mer 1962.) increasing demand for coal, and suffer Eichler. "Continuity and Change in the Certain New Left Stalinist confu- when the world oil market was in glut Yugoslav Economy in the 1970's and 17

1980's," in East European Economic bloody counterrevolution, not a peace­ minimum, a healthier distribution of Assessment). The social surplus pro­ ful, gradual, purely economic process. forces and equipment would be assured, duced in Slovenia is largely reinvested in But any market-oriented "reforms," and ultimately the, coefficients of growth would be raised. Soviet democ­ Slovenia. This is clearly seen in the further atomizing the Polish economy, racy is first of all the VItal need of unemployment picture. In 1977 for can only increase the counterrevolution­ national economy itself." every vacancy in the socialized sector in ary danger. - Whal Nexl."' Vilal Questions/i)r Slovenia there were only 1.5 job seekers; The advocates of "market socialism" the German Proletarial like Brus and Sik argue that traditional in Ko~ovo there were 35 job seekers for Obviously a workers government every vacancy' Inequalities of this Soviet-type planning wastes enormous should produce the types of consumer magnitude can easily fuel reactionary resources, especially in the consumer goods people want - with the most nationalistic movements and provide goods sector. It produces frequently efficient use of resources. But this has exploitable material for imperialist shoddy goods. Unwanted items pile up nothing to do with atomized competi­ in warehouses, while other commodities intrigues. tion between enterprises. The central While the Soviet Union is far from are chronicallv in short supply. All this economic administration in close con­ free of national conflicts and Great is true and co~es as no news whatsoever sultation with consumer cooperatives to Trotskyists. Russian chauvinism, centralized plan­ should continually adjust the output of ning has enabled it to appreciably Even before Stalin drove down the different goods to satisfy market de­ narrow the once vast gulf between the living standards with his first five-year mand. Clearly it makes no sense­ wretchedly backward people~ of Central plan. the Left Opposition denounced except to some deluded Gosplan Asia and those of European Russia. The bureaucratic arbitrariness in economic apparatchik-to apply long-term targets liberal British economist Alec Nove, no administration and indifference to to the number of shoes delivered to admirer of the Soviet economic system, consumer well-being. The 1927 Plat­ various department stores or wrenches acknowledges: "The wage rates in form of the Joint Opposition called for supplied to various garages. The objects Central Asia are similar to those in "the lowering of prices [which] affects of the long-term plan are the construc­ Central Russia, the prices of cotton, above all the objects of mass consump­ tion of new factories, mines, railroads, citrus fruits, grapes, tobacco, have been tion among the workers and peasants." airports, etc., major retooling opera­ relatively favourable, the social services It further specifies a "price-lowering tions, urban renewal and the like. provided in Central Asia have been on policy. more adapted to the conditions As Trotsky wrote a long time ago, the standard 'Soviet' scale, and budget of the market, more individualized­ only the interaction of workers democ­ statistics show that additional sums are that is. taking into greater consideration racy, the plan and the market can guide earmarked for the budgets of backward the market position of each kind of the economy through the transitional republics" (The Suviet Economic goods." .s:vs­ epoch from capitalism to communism. tem [1977]). To be sure, a workers In 1932, at the height of Stalin's This is the goal of Trotskyists' call for government in the Soviet Union would economic adventurism, Trotsky wrote: proletarian political revolution in the overcome the still great inequalities "The participation of workers them­ bureaucratically degenerated/ deformed fostered by the parasitic Kremlin bu­ selves in the leadership of the nation, of workers states: not back ward to the reaucracy, for example, by encouraging its policies and economy; an actual anarchy of the market with its inflation migration from the over-populated control over the bureaucracy; and the growth in the feeling of responsibility of and unemployment, its national chau­ Central Asian republics to the labor­ those in charge to those under them­ vinism and imperialist war, but forward short regions of Russia and Siberia. all these would doubtless react favora­ 'bly on production itself: the friction to socialism through an international The Trotskyist Answer to would be reduced. the costly economic planned economy based on soviet Bureaucratic Centralism liglags would likewise be reduced to a democracy.• Solidarity's advocacy of enterprise self-management expresses the influ­ ence of liberal Stalinist and social­ democratic intellectuals on the one hand and possibly primitive syndicalist im­ pulses on the other. It also reflects nationalistic rejection of "Russian Communism." In the Yugoslav and SUBSCRIBE NOW! Hungarian deformed workers states the Name ______tendency of enterprise autonomy to regenerate capitalistic economic rela­ Address ______tions is circumscribed and checked by a still strong governmental apparatus. ______Phone{ But in the anarchic conditions of City ______State ______Zi p ______Poland, self-managed enterprises could pp free themselves from all but nominal state control. 0$5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard 0$2/4 issues of If carried out, Solidarity's program (includes Spartacist) Women and Revolution New 0 Renewal would add mass unemployment to the o 0$2/10 introductory issues of miseries afflicting the Polish workers, Workers Vanguard would facilitate imperialist economic o $2/9 issues of Young Spartacus (includes Spartacist) penetration and would strengthen the Make payable/mall 10: Spa,laclll Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, New Yo,k 10118 forces pushing for capitalist restoration. Capitalist restoration would mean 18 reprinted from Workers VafJguard No. 279, 24 April 1981

u.s. Imperialists Provoke Soviet Union Whose Poland?

Even if the Kremlin doesn't intervene. Ahove all, "Solidarity" has come to the U.S. has already made Poland a emhrace the whole of the Polish For Proletarian focal point of the Cold War with its working class, with all of its tensions endless talk of "invasion by osmosis," and contradictiom. One million Polish Political Revolution! "indefinite extension of Warsaw Pact party memhers have joined the new war games." etc. The U.S. "seem[s] to be unions, and the party is in deep playing some kind of game with a whole trouhle-hardliners isolated. thl: leader­ Poland is coming unstuck. The nation," exclaimed one Pole angered hy ship weakened, the ranks in uproar. "Solidarity" union movement (Solidar­ Washington's constant alarms (New And the church has pulled hack from nasi') is polarizing. The Polish Commu­ York Times, 6 April). Indeed. Reagan Walesa & Co .• hoping to maintain itself nist party is in chaos. The economy is in and Haig have made it clear they want as a stahle pole for countcrrevolution a shambles. And United States imperial­ fUll-scale Russian intervention, and 111 the face of Russian military ism is wildly seeking to provoke a they're doing their hest to spark it. They intervention. Russian intervention. Reagan and Haig want to see Polish workers under the This political fluidity hy no means have seized upon Poland as a pawn for eagle and the cross throwing Molotov signifies a fundamental change in the their superheated Cold War drive cocktails at Soviet tanks. They want to relationship of forces, which is still against the Soviet Union. And their provoke ~ blood hath in Poland so that distinctly unfavorahle from a revolu­ ultimate aim is to overthrow the they can use the battle cry of "Rus­ tionary standpoint. Hut if a genuine remaining conquests of the October sian aggression" to push forward on Leninist-'J rotskyist opposition were Revolution, the main bastion of prole­ all fronts in their drive toward World precipitated, it could 4uickly grow and tarian state power. Revolutionaries and War Ill. have a tremendous polari7ing impact. all class-conscious workers must oppose Should the Kremlin. goadcd hy imperi­ this imperialist provocation and uncon­ Imperialist politicians and the West­ alist provocation. move to restore hu­ ditionally defend the Soviet bloc states ern pre~s all speak of a Soviet "invasion of Poland." In fact the Soviet Army reaucratic order in Poland. however, it against counterrevolutionary attack. drove the Na7i German forces out of would in the bcstcase free/ethat political Washington hectors its West Poland and liherated the country in differentiation necessary for the only European "allies" to stiffen their anti­ 1944-45. They have heen there since, progressive solution to the Polish crisis: Soviet resolve with nuclear missiles and today two Russian divisions guard workers political revolution. I hus ,aimed at the "Russian aggressor in the vital communications links to East genuine proletarian internationalists Poland." General Haig tries to line up Germany and the NATO front. To must hitterly protest a Russian military NATO governments to break off eco­ demand withdrawal of Soviet troops intervention, which would represent a nomic and diplomatic relations with the from Poland is to demand that Warsaw de/i'at for the cause of socialism. USSR. American secretary of war leave the Warsaw Pact-tantamount to Weinberger threatens terrible reprisals Hut far worse would he violent calling for unilateral disarmament of the if the Soviet Union intervenes. He even resistance hy the Poles, which could Soviet hloc. It is not an invasion that is flashes the U.S.' menacing "China produce a hloodhath. This would he a posed. hut a Russian military interven­ card," threatening to arm Peking, historic catastrophe. A "cnld" suppres­ tion into the civil life and class struggle presumably with atomic weapons capa­ sion would only postpone the confron­ ble of reaching Soviet cities. And the in Poland. And those processes have tation hetween the Polish workers and Chinese are ready. even eager: they undergone important developmenb their Stalinist rulers. If there is a Soviet don't just want thermonuclear missiles, during nine months at full hoil. tank on every street corner and the they want to use them! The massive strike wave in the Haltic Polish people walk hy them hissing, Ever since World War II the Ameri­ ports last Aug'ust brought Polish work­ what has really changed" But if there is a can bourgeoisie has tried to talk itself ers hefore a historic choice: with the violent response, the resulting repres­ into the idea that they can nuclear bomb hankruptcy of Stalinist rule dramatical­ sion would crush the Polish working the Soviet Union and live! This goal is ly demonstrated. it would he either the class into the ground politically and now openly stated by the Reagan path of bloody counterrevolution in produce an explosion of anti-Russian administration. White House Russia league with Western imperialism~or the nationalism that would take years, expert Richard Pipes says the Soviets path of proletarian political revolution. perhaps decades to overcome. It would face the choice of "changing their With the clerical-nationalist influence in also fuel U.S. imperialism's war drive to Communist system in the direction of Solidarnosc' and now the emergence of a a white heat. which is why Reagan and the West or going to war." Reagan/Haig mass organization of the landowning Haig are pushing for such a hloodbath. believe that Soviet intervention in peasantry. the counterrevolutionary Proletarian revolUlionarie.1 must there­ Poland will remove all obstacles in their danger remains great. Hut a process of fore emphat iealll' oppose all violent preparations for such a war. political differentiation has hegun. resistance. whether mass action or 19

replaced by the national hymn. "Oh God, Who Has Defended Poland," and the new workers' leader. Lech Walesa, declared himself at every opportunity to be a true son of the Polish church. Many of the "dissidents" who raised their head~ arc openly reactionary­ virulently nationalist, anti-communist, anti-democratic and even anti-Semitic (despite the fact that there arc almost no ./ews left in Poland). The upsurge of clerical nationalism is associated with pro-Western sympa­ thies. often expressed in calls for "free trade unions" like in the U.S. and West Germany. Polish workers would do well to look at the hlood-soaked American nco-colonies hefore buying the Radio hee Europe line. The Rus~ians would have to kill something like 150,000 Poles to proportionately match the number of workers and peasants slaughtered dur­ ing the last year hy Carter/Reagan's junta in EI Salvador. In Bra/il. the popular union leader "Lula" has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for far less than threatening to lead a political general strike every month or so. Even United Auto Work­ ers observer ./ohn Christensen commented: "It's incn:dihlc to me that in comparing Hra/il and Poland. a Communist countr). thne seems to he more freedom thne than here. Wale", is freer than l.ula. I here the (i(l\l'rlllllent Warsaw Pact tanks in Poland. agrl'cd to hold a dialogue with him. not here." individual terror, (Jxaim/ such a SCII'iet simply a reaction to the police suppres- ' -,\'/'11' Yurk Till//,.I . .1 April militar)' interventio/l in Po/and sion of democratic rights and the gross The' present Polish ,ituation is the privileges and corruption of the "social­ A visit to EI Salvador and Bralil hy a product of decades of capitulation by ist" officialdom. The present Polish "Solidarity" delegation might teach the Stalinist bureaucrat~ to capitalist crisis. especially the dangerous growth them a thing or two ahout the "free forces. It makes revolutionaries yearn of clerical-nationalist sentiment, has its world"-if they got out alive. for a Trotskyist leader~hip in the USSR roots in the failures and hroken prom­ With the strong clerical-nationalist which would make short shrift of the ises of re/emll Stalinism. influence over the new unions which Polish crisis. Only a po!itical revolution When Wladyslaw Gomulka eame to became SolidarnuU·. we have repeatedly throughout Stalinist-ruled East Europe power in 1956 proclaiming the need for warned of the danger of capitalist can open the road to socialism. And that the widest workers democracy, he counterrevolution spearheaded by Pope requires internationaliq[ rotskyist par­ enjoyed enormous popular authority. Wojtyla's church. At the same time, we ties which cail reach out to the Sovict Then he turned and suppressed the recogniled that the emergence of a working class in defending the gains of workers councils and dissident intellec­ powerful workers movement funda­ the Octoher Rcvolutilln. tual circles which had supported him mentally challenging Stalinist bureau­ against the hard-line Stalinists. When cratic rule could also open the road to Stalinism Fuels Clei"ical­ Edward Gierek replaced Gomulka in proletarian political revolution. We Nationalist Reaction 1970 after the Baltic coast workers' have therefore insisted that the key The Soviet armed lorces entering uprising. many believed his promises of strategic task for a Trotskyist vanguard German-occupied Poland in 1944 were unparalleled economic prosperity. Then in Poland was to !'plit the mass of greeted as Iiherators III a social as well as he ruinously mortgaged Poland's wealth workers from reactionary forces. This a national sense. '1 he expropriation of to Western oa nkers and also ruinously means fighting for a series of program­ the large landed estates and higeapital­ ~uosidi/ed the landowning peasants! matic demands including strict separa­ ists in the mid/late-1940s was a hroadly So when under the pressure of rising tion of church and state, defense of supported measure. Yet three decades of prices and food and other consumer collcctivilCd property, defense of the Stalinist bureaucratic rule have turned goods shortages the workers exploded Soviet bloc degenerated/deformed much of the popUlation. and much of last summer. they looked to the power­ workery states against imperialism. A the industrial working class. against ful <. 'atholic church a~ the reeogni7ed Trotskyist vanguard would seck to what they view as the "R ussian-imposed opposition to the discredited Commu­ polarile the workers movement, attract­ Communiq system." And this is not nist regime. The Internationale was ing those who seck a genuinely socia list 20

solution and arc hostile to the Vatican going on in our country as the work of gesture on his part would he unthink­ and Western capitalism. antisoeialist forces but as a proper ahlc today. He has moved towards restoration of Marxist-l.eninist princi­ social democracy. the Church and a Solidarnosc in Turmoil, ples" (New York Times, 16 April). nationalistic position." Communist Party Polarized However. overall the PlJWP dissidents arc Ilol moving toward a Above All, A Revolutionary Today we sec the beginnings of In­ rediscovery of authentic l.eninism. They Internationalist Party ternal political differentiation within tend rather toward Iiheral Stalinism, "Solidarity" and the CommunIst party. Whether or not Moscow intervenes "socialism with a human face." as the For thl: first time forces are oppo~ing militarily in the ncar future, the Polish Clech Stalinist reformer [)uhcek called bureaucratic rule not in the name of the crisis is fast heading toward the explo­ it during the Prag\le Spring of I96H. and cagle and the cross but calling for sion point. '1 he economic chaos is they seek a favorable hearing from the "socialist renewal" and even a return to assuming disastrous proportions. Food present leaders of Solidamu.lc'·. More­ the principles of "Marxism-l.enll1i~m." supplies are shrinking rapidly; hard over. they are quoted expressing anti­ The New York Timcs (12 April) now currency exports have fallen 25 percent Russian prejudiee~ and political senti­ projects: "Barring Soviet military inter­ since last year, coal exports have ments common in Poland today. One vention, the likely next phase in the dropped 50 percent. Politically the delegate at the 'Iorun conference re­ workers' revolution in Poland will not situation is anarchic. There must be a ma rked: "Our Soviet friends have a be a struggle against thl: Communist trl:ll1endous felt need for the working history that has accustomed them to Party but a struggle within the party people of Poland to take control of ahsolutism in government. But the itself." This makes even more urgent the society, of the economy. and direct it in history of our nation is closely connect­ crystalli/ation of a Trotskyist propa­ their interests. Seeking to placate the ed to democracy." And what of the ganda nuclem in Poland which alone masses. the Stalinist leaders are now national hero and fascistic dictator can otTer a WUI' out of the desperate and talklllg ahout granting more powers to Pibudski. a former right-wing social seemingly endless crises which are thl: parliament. the Scim, nomll1ally the demoerat who defended Polish capital­ highest gCl\erning body. wracking Poland. ism against the Red Army in 1920?' As The political landscape has changed I rotsky pointed out. the Stalinist In Poland today the classic Bolshevik considerably since the Gdansk-based bureaucracy itself could generate a demand-all power 10 the .l'ul'iels, general strike last summer. Walesa is fascistic wing-he called it the "Butenko the democratically elected workers under several-sided attack from within faction"-which in Poland today would councils-would have a broad appea\. Solidamo.;c'·. Meanwhile, many of the be imbued with virulent anti-Russian A revolutionary vanguard might well demand that the supposed powers of the more than one million working-class nationalism. members of the Polish United Workers I f the PU W P liberals are talking of a Scim be vested in a congress of soviets as Party (PUWP) now participating in "socialist renewal" in Poland, the in the Russian October Revolution. But "Solidarity" must find their socialist Kremlin is warning of "creeping coun­ soviets in themselves do not guarantee convictIOns (however deformed by terrevolution." The Bre/hnevite Stalin­ the socialist direction of society. Espe­ Stalinist ideology) in connict with the ish dare not attack the real basis for cially under present Polish conditions, reactionary views of Walesa and his counterrevolution, the powerful Cath­ they could fall under the innuence of associates. The church hierarchy, on the olic hierarchy, but instead target rela­ reactionary nationalist forces seeking other hand, has pulled back, fearing a tively small dissident groups, notably imperialist backing against the USSR. Soviet military intervention. A few day, .!acek Kuron's Committee for Social The crucial element is an authentically before "Solidarity" had scheduled a Self-Defense (KOR) and the Confedera­ revolutionary workers party capable of general ,trike at the end of March, tion of Independent Poland (KPN) of organiling the socialist impulses among Cardinal Wys/ynski issued a joint Les/ek Moczulski. Of course, the the working masses around a Marxist, statement with Prime Minister Woj­ Kremlin hacks would denounce alll' inlernalionali.l't program. ciech Jaru/elski urging that "strikes ca'n political OppOSition, including and A communist vanguard must be be eliminated as extremely costly to the especially Trotskyists, as "counterrevo­ militantly ami-nationalist. It would enfeebled national economy" (/)ai/l' lutionary" and even "fascistic." But look back to the tradition of the pre­ World. 2H March). Stalinist slanders notwithstanding, World War I socialist party of Rosa Most striking is the impact which the KOR and the KPN areeach in their own Luxemburg and Leo .!ogiches. In workers struggles have had on the ways enemies of socialism. contrast to Pilsudski's chauvinist Polish Stalinist apparatus of the PUWP.'The The K PN is openly c1erical- Socialist Party, they called their organi­ recent Central Committee meeting at nationalist and anti-socialist. This is not lation the Social Democracy of the the end of March turned into a political the case, however, with Kuron's KOR. Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. brawl. "We must know that Solidarity is In the West Kuron is widely regarded as They maintained that the socialist in the first place the working class some kind of left radical, even a transformation of Poland \\ as inextrica­ itself." declared the party secretary of "Marxist"~a renection of his stance in hly bound up with the proletarian the Baltic port ofSzclccin. Only the fear the 1960s. As we have pointed out in the revolution in Russia. of the Kremlin's reaction prevented this face of his pseudo-Trotskyist cheerlead­ One of the leaders of the Luxemburg/ meeting from throwing hardliners like ers, he has since moved far to the right. .Iogiches SDKPiL was Felix Dzerlhin­ \ Stefan Olszowski off the Politburo. A Tamara Deutscher confirms this in an ski, who later played a distinguished recent national conference in Torun of important recent article in Ne ..... Leti role in the Bolshevik Revolution as head dissident groupings within the party Rel'ie ..... ("Poland-Hopes and Fears," of the Cheka, the police arm of the early called for full and adequate informa­ January-February. 1991). She recalls Soviet power. Dzer/hinski, wh@se tion, secret ballots, mUltiple candidates. that when sentenced to prison in 1964, Polish accent in Russian became strong­ One delegate protested: "The authori­ "Kuron and his comrade defiantly sang el when he was agitated, was chosen for ties should not present the changes the Internationale in court. Such a this most sensitive post because he was a 21

revolutionist of outstanding moral But this would be possible only under a integrity. On a far lesser historic scale, revolutionary soviet regime which could there was Konstanti Rokossovski, a counter imperialist economic retaliation young Polish socialist who joined the by appealing to the workers of West Soviet Red Army in 1919. Imprisoned in Europe to become comrades in interna­ the Stalin purges of the late 1930s, he tional socialist planning in a Socialist reemerged to become one of the greatest United States of Europe. Soviet commanders of World War II. As important as appeals to the Marshal Rokossovski was not a revolu­ working class of the capitalist West are tionist but a Stalinist military officer. to a proletarian political revolution in But his service in defending the Soviet Poland, still more important is the J Union against imperialist attack does perspective toward such a revolution in him honor-and he played a key role in the Soviet Union. Should the Kremlin liberating Poland in 1944-45 from intervene militarily, the immediate fate nightmarish Nazi occupation. of the Polish workers would in large In his great essay on "The Tragedy of measure depend on their ability to the Polish Communist Party," Isaac influence and win over Soviet con­ Deutscher ~tressed as his main conclu­ script soldiers-that is, young Russian, sion: " ... if the history of the Polish CP Ukrainian and Central Asian workers and of Poland at large proves anything and peasants in uniform. Anti-Russian at all, it prm'e.1 hOI1' indestructihle is tht' Polish nationalism, and especially link hct\\"'en thc Polish and the Russian violence directed at Soviet soldiers or rCl'olutiotls." Today it is necessary to of.licers, would sabotage the proletarian revive the tradition of revolutionary Polish revolutionary Felix Dzer­ cause. unit~ of the Polish and Russian prole­ zhinski headed Bolshevik Cheka, Here it is important to recognize that tariat. ~ow it must be directed against security arm of early Soviet power. illusions about "good will" and peace­ the Stalinist bureaucracies, in defense of fulness of the Western capitalist powers, the collecti\ i/ed economie~ and prole­ consumers-is by far the largest item in common in East Europe and particular­ tarian state powers against the threat of the government budget and accounts for ly in Poland, do not extend to the Soviet capita list-imperialism. a significant share of total national lJ nion. After losing 20 million fighting I he leadership of "Solidarity" stands income. Russian and Ukrainian collec­ Nazi Germany, the Soviet people directly opposed to these principles. tive farms now supply Poland with understand full well that NATO's Walesa and his colleagues see them­ tood, even though the consumption nuclear arsenal is targeted at them. This selves leading the entire Polish nati()n level, especially of meat, is much higher understanding is now heightened by against Russian "Communism." This is in Warsaw and Gdansk than in Moscow Washington's open threats of a nuclear most strongly expressed in their active and Kiev. An immediate key task for a first strike. The Soviet people legiti­ support to the peasant organization, revolutionary soviet government in mately fear the transformation of East Rural Solidarity. In fact, the recent near Poland would be to promotc the Europe into hostile, imperialist-allied general strike was called primarily on c(I/lcctil'i::ation of agriculture. Cheap states extend,ing to their own border. behalf of the peasant organization. credit and generous social services Expressing the aC4uisitive appetites of should be given to those peasants who The Kremlin bureaucrats exploit this Poland's numerous landowning peas­ pool their land and labor. Those who legitimate fear to crush popular unrest ants, R ural Solidarity aims at the want to remain petty agricultural and democratic aspirations in East complete reestablishment of capitalist capitalists should be subject to higher Europe, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968. relations in the countryside. Its non­ taxes and other forms of economic But the situation in Poland today is economic demands include the con­ discrimination. significantly different from that during struction of more churches, no restric­ Along with the backward smallhold­ the "Prague Spring." Anti-Russian tion of religious education and an end to ing agriculture, an enormous foreign nationalism is far more virulent, while compulsory teaching of Russian in the debt is at the root of the current Polish Washington and its NATO allies are schools. Little wonder, then, that Pope econOllllC crisis. During the 1970s the being far more provocative and militari­ Wojtyla himself demanded that the Gierek regime tried to buy off the ly threatening. For these reasons the Warsaw regime recognize Rural Soli­ workers and peasants with massive 4uestion of defense of the Soviet Union darity, a potent base for capitalist loans contracted from the West. His against imperialism takes on far greater restoration. The fact that the Stalinist successors have accelerated this disas­ importance in the present Polish crisis. regime has just legitimi7ed this peasant trous policy. Poland's debt to the West Revolutionary Polish workers cannot organilation, reversing its earlier stand, has increased by one-third in the last hope to appeal to Soviet soldiers unless marks a major concession to the forces seven months alone! Repaying the they assure them that they will defend of reaction. bankers of Frankfurt and Wall Street the social gains of the October Revolu­ The socialist answer to Rural will absorb all of Poland's hard­ tion against imperialist attack. Solidarity is not maintaining the status currency export earnings for years to On~1' hy addressing their Soviet class 4UO in the countryside. For that come. (And no small share of Soviet hrothers in the name of socialist situation is disastrous. Poland's ineffi­ hard-currency exports are expended on internationalism can the Polish prole­ cient, aging smallholders are a major repaying directly or indirectly Poland's tariat liberate itse(( from the chains of barrier to balanced economic develop­ Western capitalist creditors.) The de­ Stalinist oppression. With this perspec­ ment. The $10 billion food subsidy-the mand to cancel the imperialist debt is tive a Trotskyist vanguard in Poland difference between what the state pays crucial in breaking the capitalist could turn a looming catastrophe into a the farmers and what it charges urban stranglehold on the Polish economy. great victory for world socialism .• 22 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 274, 13 February 1981

Kirkland, Fraser on Cold War Assignment AFL-CID Tops­ Hands Off Poland I Throughout most of the I 960s-'70s. the Meanyite labor fakers attacked the State Department frolll the right, for being "soft on Communism." George Meany and his chief lieutenant, Lane Kirkland, were hawks on Vietnam even after ~ixon and Kissinger had given it up as a lost cause. Now with Reagan in the White House, the AFL-CIO tops have a president whose foreign policy at least is more to their liking. Under the slogan "Solidarity with Solidarnosc" Right-wing (the Polish union body), they are CIA-connected U.S. labor leading the charge on the Polish front of bureaucracy Cold War II. sends money to Early last September, right after the Lech Walesa's Gdansk agreement recogni/ing inde­ Polish pendent unions. the A FL-C10 Execu­ Solidarity. tive Board announced it had established a "Polish Workers Aid Fund." At the same time, Doug Fraser of the more liberal UAW said the Auto Workers union had sent $120,000 to the Polish strikers' families. By early this year the AFL-C10 fund had amassed $160,000, So it is entirely appropriate that this press to Solidarnosc) was immediately which had been "used by the Paris office same special "Solidarhosc" edition of denounced as a provocation by Warsaw of th: American labor federation to the A FL-CIO Free Trade Union News and Moscow. Even Carter's "detente"­ purchase office e4uipment and supplies (also published in Polish) has a picture minded secreta"ry of state M uskie first to help the Polish union ... " (Nell' York of federation president Kirkland shak­ opposed it, though the State Depart­ TiIll£'.I, 7 January). Nobody could ing hands with strikebreaker Carter. ment soon came around. When in remember the AFI.-CIO showing such The "aid" fund was preceded, of course, December Pra\'(Ja again protested U.S. encouragement to workers defying by the reactionary I LA longshore financial support to the Polish unions, the American government-e.g., postal boycott to cut off commerce with pointing out that the AFL-CIO fre- workers in 1970. "Communist" Poland. Even the Ma­ 4uently acts as a conduit for the CIA, Seeking to give this anti-Communist chinists' "socialist" president Winpi­ Washington cried slander. Yet this is a and probably CIA-connected operation singer fell in behind conservative I LA well-established fact, ever since the post­ a thin cover of trade-union militancy, a chief Gleason by agreeing to cut off World War II years when the A FL opera­ special September issue of the federa­ airline service to Warsaw. As we pointed tive I rving Brown doled out hundreds of tion's Free Trade Union Nell'S praised out at the time, both the bucks and the thousands of CIA dollars to split the the Polish workers for demanding "the boycott are "designed to strengthen the West European labor movement and right to strike." The AFL-CIO Exec cold war drive against the Soviet Union" thus undermine Communist influence. Board, champions of the right to strike'? ("No to ILA Anti-Communist Boy­ It is also a fact that the AFL-C10 has Tell that to the coal miners! Meany, cott!" WV No. 263, 5 September 1980). done little or nothing to support Kirkland & Co. didn't lift a finger when workers' organi7ations in savage capi­ Jimmy Carter tried to break the 1978 talist police states friendly to U.S. In Latin America, It's Called coal strike with a Taft-Hartley injunc­ imperialism-South Africa, EI Salva­ "AFL-CIA" tion. Supporters of a 40-hour workweek dor, Chile, South Korea, the list is in Poland, these pro-capitalist bureau­ The AFL-CIO dollar-laundering endless. On the contrary, AFL-CIO crats go along with compulsory over­ operation. mostly via European unions largesse has been consistently directed time throughout U.S. industry, often (such as the Swedish labor federation, against left-wing governments. The resulting in 50-60 hours of labor a week. which passed along a $50,000 printing notorious "American Institute for Free 23

Lahor Development" (AIFLD), a long­ for example, the social-democratic devastating condemnation of Stalinism ~tanding joint project with such blood­ Internat(()nal Sociali'h who write, "We thai after 30 years of so-called "social­ sucking multinationals as United Fruit hope tbe Poli~h workers \\ ill gratefully ism," much of the Polish working class and ITT, has becn responsihle for (and accept thc we,tern union leaders' money now looks to the Vatican for salvation hragged ahout) "destahili/ing" elected and courteou,ly reJect their advice" and to the "ArT-CIA" for financial gO\'l.:rnments like the nationalist Gou­ (C!wl/,!!,e.l. Decl'mher 19XO/.Ianuary support. lart in Hra/il in 1964 and "Marxist" 19~ I). Such dlu\lon, in "110 strings A, Irohkyists, however, we do not Allende in (hile in 197.l (In his book, attachcd" \\'estern ,upport arc abo write off the Polish proleta-riat, consign­ Imide tire COlllpanr, ex-CIA agent ,plcad h\ the (ierman lake-I rotskyl'it ing it to the camp of clerical-nationalist Philip Agee descrihes the AIFLD as a (jruppe Internatioilale Marxisten. reaction. The central task for a revolu­ "C.I.A.-controlled labor center fi­ \\ hich has heen campaigning for the tionary communist vanguard in Poland nanced through A.I.D. [the U.S. Agen­ ()GH trade-union federation to ,ho\\ today would he to split the new union c~ lor International Development].") "Solidarit\ \\ ith Solidarnosc." Yet the 1ll00elllent politically, winning over the Significantly, the June 19XO Free P(,IJ i, led hy the same Social Demo­ mas-, of workers from the Catholic '/i'ad/' l ;nion Sell·.1 ran a front-page cral\ \\ho ,ef'ed as a funnel lor CIA church-led forces. Key clements for a article laudlllg the AIFLD's "land nHlne\ to Portllg~iI in 1975 and who .. e re\olutionary program in Poland arc rclorm" in 1.1 Sal\ador (locally known inlamou, Osthiiro \\as for year~ a the strict separation of church and state, a, "rL'lolm hy death") written hy its \Chicle lor imperialist meddling in East thc promotion of agricultural collect i­ l architcct. Ray Plosterman, whose Europe vi/ation. defense of the Soviet-hloc prC\iou, credih include the "Phoenix On the other hand. it', no accident hureaucratically degenerated/ deformed Project" lor mas, assassination of that the Solidarno\c leaders have \\orker, states against Western imperi­ lelti',h In Vietnam. And when two a\\akened such "disinteIT-,{ed" financial alism. and proletarian political revolu­ AII·I () men \\l'I'e recently killed hy support from the West. I hi, is no hread­ tion against the Stalinist hureaucracy, right-\\ ing gunmen in San Salvador, and-hutter trade union. simply fighting In the intervention in Poland the p;o­ one of them, Michael Hammer, wa, for hetter wages, hours and working capitalist union hureaucrats of the U.S. gl\en a spl"Cial "hero's hurial" in conditions. And the wily old CIA­ and We,t Lurope arc essentially acting Arlington National Cemetery. Shortly connected operators in AI·L-CIO head­ as In,truments of their imperialist alter. the U.S. solicitor general (at­ quarter, kno\\ thi,. They understand llla,ters, whether or not the money tempting to justify the iifting of Agee's that the group around Lech Walesa and comes directly from the CIA. Strength­ passport) revealed that the AIFLD pair manv of the local activists sec them­ enll1g the connection hetween the were working "under cover" (Nev.' York ,elves as leading a Catholie-nationalist­ c1encal-nationalist Solidarnosc leader­ 7/111/,.1, 15 January). It's no wonder that inspired revolt against Soviet-imposed ship and the AI-I.-CIO (or, for that the AFL-CIO IS known 111 Latin "ColTlmuni,m." this IS especially matter. the social-democratic West America as the "AFL-CIA." clear from their wholehearted support German DGH) only ll1ereases the to "Rural Solidarity," even threatening potential lor counterrevolution. For Such "lahor"-f1avored imperialist these arc the direct conduits of suhversion is not limited to Latin a general 'trike on hehalf of this peasant group \\ hose demand, point toward full capitalism-imperialism into the Polish America. The AIFLD has sll1ce \\ orkcrs movement. American trade spawned the Africa-American Lahor restoration 01 capitall';m In the countn,ide. unIOnists who want to serve the real, Center. the Asian-American Free Lahor class interests of the Polish workers Centers and, since 197X, the Europe­ Solidarno;'c leader Wale,a's links to must demand: AFI.-CIO Tops-Hands hased Free Trade Union Institute counterre\olutionary forces go ahove Off Poland'. (I-TUI). FIUI director is the same old all through the Roman Catholic church. Irving Hrown. As for FTUI president "I am a union man and not a socialist." Lane Kirkland, while George Meany he ,ays, adding that "without my $1.00 used to hoast he "never walked a picket religion I would he a dangerous man" line," hi, successor could brag that he (.\1al/elre.I/('r (Juori/[(/I/ Wcek Ir. 16 was never even a worker. A graduate of :\ 0\ emher 19XOj. And he doesn't just the Georgetown lJ niversity School of pra\' to the "Queen of Poland" (the Foreign Service in Washington, the Virgin Man j lor coun,e!: his advisers long-time AFI.-CIO trea.l'urerserved on are lalgel~ drawn I 1'0 III the as-,ociates of the post-Watergate Rockefeller Com­ Cardlllal \\\"yn,kl. \Vhen Walesa mi~~ion on the CIA (which did not rcccntl\' paid a triullIphal \ isit to the mention its lahor tics), worked with Vatican. recei\ ing hllllllr, usually re­ l\iebon Rockefeller in AI FLD and with scned lor head, 01 ,tate" John Paul hrother David at the Trilateral Com­ Wojtyla assured his disciple he had mission. He may have a friend at Chase aided Solidarnosl' "in every way dis­ Manhattan. hut he's no friend of Polish creetly po'Sihle." When the time is ripe. workers. of cour,e. the Polish pope could he a powerful rall~ ing point for capitalist What $olidarity? restoration~aqd then hiS intervention Some liheral and left ish trade would he anythll1g hut discreet. unionists may oppose the AFL-CIO's '1 he Polish proletariat has historically notoriow. activitie~ in Latin America, had a strong Marxian socialist tradi­ Make checks payable/mall to: tion.1 he forces of clericalism and Spartacist Publishing Co. hut ~till see nothing wrong with its Box 1377, GPO ~urporting the Polish unions. Pseudo­ nationalism were never predominant New York, NY 10116 leftist group~ even call for such "aid"- among indu,trial workers. It is a 24 reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 263, 5 Septemher 1980

Fight Clerical Reaction! For Proletarian Political Revolution! Polish Workers Move

Everyone predicted it was coming. A restive, combative working class, peas­ ant strikes. massive foreign debt. chron­ ic and widespread food shortages. a powerful and increasingly asser­ tive Catholic church, the burgeoning of social-democratic and c1erical­ nationalist oppositional groupings. All the elements were there. Poland in the la te '70s was locked in a deepening crisis heading toward explosion, an explosion fi'hich could hring either proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy or capitalist counterrevo­ lution led hy Pope Woityla's church. And when it came it gripped world attention for two solid weeks. The Baltic coast general strike was the most powerful mobilization of the power of the working class since France May 1968, But was it a mobilization for working-class power? That is the deci­ sive question, Now there is a settlement on paper, The Polish workers have forced the bureaucracy to agree to "new self­ governing trade unions" with the pledge that these recognize "the leading role" of the Communist party and do not engage in political activities. Insofar as the settlement enhances the P~ish workers' power to struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy. revolutionaries can sup­ port the strike and its outcome, But only a blind man could fail to see the gross influence of the Catholic church and also pro-Western sentiments among the striking workers. If the settlement strengthens the working class organiza­ tionally, it also strengthens the forces of reaction, Poland stands today on a razor's edge, The compromise creates an impossi­ ble situation economically and political­ ly; it cannot last. In a country facing international bankruptcy, heavily sub­ sidized by the Soviet Union, the strikers are demanding the biggest free lunch the world has ever seen, The Poles demand that they live like West Germans. There's a joke in Poland: we pretend to work and the government pretends to AP pay us. In West Germany one works. Workers shake Stalinist regime, but kneel before Catholic church. 25

Even the social-democratic dissidents recognize that the big money wage increases will only fuel the inflation. Politically the Stalinist bureaucracy cannot live with this kind of independ­ ent working-class organization, a form of cold dual power. The bureaucracy is not a ruling class, whose social power is derived from ownership of the means of production, but a caste based on the monopolization of governmental power. But it's a good thing someone in the Kremlin has a sense of humor. If Gierek in Warsaw is pushed to the wall, Brezhnev in Moscow stands behind him. The settlement was conditioned, on both sides, by the presence of forty Soviet divisions in East Germany. The Kremlin has already made disapproving noises about that settlement, and Soviet military intervention cannot be ruled out. The end of the strike is only the beginning of the crisis of Stalinist Poland. 1970: Warski shipyard workers in Szczecin led struggle that toppled Gomulka regime; many had trust in Gierek. Workers Democracy or Clerical­ Nationalist Reaction? who in 1970 toppled Gomulka and and general political outlook? Early in forced his successor Gierek to accept an the strike there were reports of singing The present crisis was triggered once independent workers committee for a the Internationale, which indicates again by increases in the price of meat. time. One of the strikers' first demands some element of socialist consciousness. On July I the Gierek regime took a was to build a monument to the workers Some of the strike committee members gamble and it lost. To continue the price killed when Gomulka called in tanks to had been shop-floor leaders in the freeze was economically intolerable, restore order a decade ago. The regime official trade-union apparatus who were especially to Poland's Western bankers quick ly agreed to this. victimized for trying to defend the (the food subsidy absorbed fully 8 Within a week 150,000 had downed workers' interests. They undoubtedly percent of total national income!). To tools, 200 factories were shut and the were and possibly still are members of raise the price of food without a wage Baltic ports-Gdynia, Sopot, Szczecin, the ruling Polish United Workers Party increase was to invite an immediate, Elblag as well as Gdansk-were para­ (PUWP, the official name of the nationwide mass strike/ protest like in lyzed. And it seemed as if every time the Communist party). These advanced December 1970 and June 1976. The Interfactory Strike Committee (MKS) workers surely desire a real workers regime figured it could minimize the met, it raised five more, and more Poland and world socialism. financial cost and social disruption by political, demands-"free" trade un­ While the imperialist media always granting wage raises only to those ions, end all censorship, free all political plays up any support for anti­ groups of workers who made some prisoners (there were only six). What communist ideology in the Soviet bloc, trouble. The government indicated its had begun as a series of quickly ended there is no question that to a consider­ willingness to negotiate with unofficial wage struggles had become a political able degree the strikers identify with the shop-floor spokesmen, not just repre­ general strike. powerful Catholic church opposition. It sentatives of the state-run trade unions. What is the political character of the is not just the external signs-the daily In this sense the Gierek regime encour­ strike and the consciousness of the singing of the national hymn, "Oh God, aged small wage strikes as a lesser evil. workers" Certainly the workers are Who Has Defended Poland," the July saw a flurry of slowdowns and reacting against bureaucratic misman­ hundreds of strikers kneeling for mass, strikes-tractor builders near Warsaw, agement, privilege and abuse. The the ubiquitous pictures ofWojtyla-John railwaymen in Lublin, steel workers Polish workers' grievances are real and Paul I I (talk about "the cult of personal­ near Krakow-which were quickly they are just. The firing of an old ity"). The strike committee's outside settled with significant wage raises. militant. Anna Walentynowicz, a few advisers consist of a group of Catholic Predictably, the strikes had a cascade months before her retirement, which intellectuals headed up by Tadeusz effect. Other workers went out demand­ reportedly sparked the Lenin Shipyard Mazowiecki, editor of a leading Cath­ ing more. In early August there were takeover, should infuriate every honest olic journal. stubborn strikes by Warsaw garbage­ worker. The existence of special shops The strike leaders flaunted their men and transit workers; one of the exclusive to party members and cops, Catholic and Polish nationalist ideolo­ leaders was arrested. which the strikers demanded be abol­ gy. Anna Walentynowicz, asked if she But on August 14 when 17,000 ished, is an abomination, a rejection of were a SOCialist, replied that she workers seized the Lenin Shipyard in the most basic principles of socialism. was a believer. M KS leader Lech Gdansk, the Stalinist regime was faced But if we know what the Baltic Walesa in the Gdansk shipyard started with a fundamentally different order of workers are against in an immediate every day by "rush[ ing] into the court­ challenge. It was the Baltic shipbuilders sense, what are their positive allegiances yard and at a trot began tossing pictures 26 of the Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland, has become increasingly open and revealed in the present crisis. The day into the air" (New York Times, 31 aggressive in its anti-Communism. after the Lenin Shipyard seizure Cardi­ August). And at the signing of the strike Early last year the Wall Street Journal nal ,Stefan Wyszynski led 150,000 settlement, Walesa ostentatiously wore (2 January 1979) observed: "pilgrims" in a commemoration of the a crucifix and used a foot-long red and "Thus, the priesthood has become in bourgeois-nationalist Pilsudski's victo­ white (the Polish national colors) effect an opposition party. The number ry over the Soviet Red Army in 1920, of priests is at an all-time high of 19,500 ballpoint pen, a souvenir of Pope and many openly defy the Communist reminding them how Poles acted when Wojtyla's visit to Poland last year. (To Party by building churches without "freedom of life was endangered" (UPI, top it off, Walesa's father, who has government approval." . 15 August). A week later Pope Wojtyla emigrated to the U.S., posed with This article also pointed out that a declared before 1,000 Poles in the Ronald Reagan as the Republican particular prelate was responsible for Vatican that "we are united with our reactionary officially kicked off his the greater oppositional stance of the countrymen," a deliberately provoca­ presidential campaign.) church: tive act under the circumstances. The Polish episcopate, fearing both Even more ominous was the demand "In recent year,. the church ha, taken a for "access by all religious groups [read sharper anti-governmcnt turn under Russian military intervention (the War­ Roman Catholic church] to the mass Krakow's Cardinal Wlljtyla, who cap- saw Pact forces were maneuvering nearby in East Germany) and its own inability to control a workers' uprising, has taken a different, more cautious tack, It waited until the regime made public the seriousness of the Baltic general strike and then, while expressing sympathy for the workers' aims, warned against "prolonged stoppages." When the strike started spreading to other areas, the regime put Wyszynski on television to call for the workers to settle. Then a few days later the church hierarchy backed off from so fulsomely supporting the government. But whatever the present tactical calculations of the Polish episcopate, in a power vacuum the church, well organized and with a mass base, will be a potent agency for social counterrevolu­ tion. One can appreciate the plight of Gierek & Co. Short of a political revolution, it would take a J, V. Stalin to clean out the church, packing 1R,UOO priests off to forced labor camps. But then Poland would get a lot of new public libraries with spires on top of Parish priest Jankowskis later handed out color photos of himself with a them. prayer on back. media," a prerogative for which the tured thc alkgiance (If university stu­ "Free Trade Unions"? dellts by opening the city's churches to Polish episcopate has long campaigned. Until a few days before the settlement This is an anti-democratic demand their antl-govcrnment discussion groups." the general strike was limited to the which would legitimize the church in its Just a few months earlier this cardinal Baltic coast, a region whose modern present role as the recognized opposi­ from Krakow had become the "infalli­ history is very different from the rest of tion to the Stalinist regime. Significant­ ble" head of the Roman Catholic Poland. Before World War II the main ly, the strike committee did not even church, the first non-Italian successor to Baltic cities-Danzig (Gdansk), Stettin demand the right to such media access the throne of SI. Peter in four centuries. (Szczecin)-were largely populated by for itself or for the "free trade unions" it Karol Wojtyla is a dangerous reaction­ Germans, With the consolidation of was fighting to set up. In effect the Baltic ary working hand in glove with U.S. Stalinist Poland after the war, the shipbuilders were asking for a state imperialism (especially his fellow coun­ Germans were driven out and the region church in a deformed workers state. tryman Zbigniew Brzezinski) to roll resettled by Poles from the eastern But the church is not loyal to the back "atheistic Communism," begin­ territories annexed to the Soviet workers state. Far from it! The Polish ning in his homeland. As we wrote when Ukraine. Thus, while the Baltic coast church (virulently anti-Semitic) has this Polish anti-Communist was made workers are highly volatile, they lack the been a bastion of reaction even within pope: " ... he now stands at the head of socialist traditions common to the other the framework of world Catholicism. A many millions of practicing Catholics in main sections of the Polish proletariat­ typical Polish parish priest would East Europe, a tremendous force for the heavy-industrial workers around regard American Catholics, from the counterrevolution" ("The President's Warsaw and Krakow, the Lodz textile hierarchy to the laity, as a burich of Pope?" WV No. 217, 20 October 1978). workers, the Silesian miners. Had the freethinking "commies." Especially The power and the danger of the general strike spread throughout Po­ since the 1976 crisis the Polish church Polish Catholic church are clearly land, its political axis could quite 27 possibly have shifted to the left and . away from clericalism. Gierek tried, but failed, to work the same deal to end the crisis that he did in 1970-71. Then he gave the rebellious workers Gomulka's head; now he gave them that of his chief lieutenant, Edward Babiuch, and three other Politburo members. In counter to their demand for a "free trade union," he offered them free elections to the offical union. But in 1971 he promised the Baltic workers the same thing and took it back when the crisis atmosphere died away. The strike committee leader Lech Walesa no doubt had this experience in mind when he said, "We were promised that many times before." Now, the workers' attitude is very different from say, ten years ago. The 1970-71 strikes were clearly economic. None of the eleven demands of the Warski Shipyard strike committee in Szczecin (the leading workers' organiza­ tion at the time) went beyond prices, wage compensation and no reprisals. Today leading elements of the Gdansk­ based lnterfactory Strike Committee are associated with the Catholic church Gorgonl/Contact opposition and the social-democratic Pope Wojtyla-John Paul II on pilgrimage for anti-communism in Poland in Committee for Social Self-Defense 1979. (KOR). With the authority of the control. Trade unions and the right to mocracy and the deadly threat of bureaucracy greatly weakened, the strike would be necessary even in a capitalist restorationism. unions will strongly tend to break the democratically governed workers state The germs of a Leninist-Trotskyist paper prohibition on political opposi­ to guard against abuses and mistakes by opposition in Poland would have tional activity. administrators and managers. But it is nothing to do with the present dissident The particular slogan of "free trade far from clear that the "free trade groups. It would denounce them for unions," pushed for years by the CIA­ unions" long envisioned by the dissi­ trying to tie the strikers to imperialism, backed Radio Free Europe and the dents would be free from the influence the pope and Pilsudskiite anti-Soviet Catholic church, has acquired a definite of the pro-Catholic, pro-NATO ele­ nationalism. But among the rebellious anti-Communist and pro-Western con­ ments who represent a mortal danger to workers there must be elements that are notation. Remember the 1921 Kron­ the working class. In any case, in the fed up with the bureaucracy and look stadt mutiny's call for "free Soviets"­ highly politicized situation in Poland back to the traditions of Polish commu­ free from Communists, that is! today the "new, self-governing" trade nism, while having no truck with bogus An integral part of the Trotskyist unions cannot and will not limit "democracy" in priests' robes. It is program for proletarian political revo­ themselves to questions of wage rates, among this layer above all that we must lution in the degenerated/deformed working conditions, job security as was struggle to win the cadres to build a workers states is the struggle for trade the case, for example, with the Szczecin genuinely communist proletarian party unions independent of bureaucratic workers committee in 1971. They will that can defend and extend the collectiv­ either be drawn into the powerful orbit ist economic gains, opening the road to ofthe Catholic church or have to oppose socialism by ousting the Stalinist caste it in the name of socialist principle. which falsely rules in the workers' name. Price: And in determining that outcome the Poland presents the most combative $2.00 presence of a revolutionary vanguard working class in the Soviet bloc, with a party would be critical. A central task history of struggling for independent for a Trotskyist organization in Poland organizations going back to the mid- would be to raise in these unions a series 1950s. It is also the one country in East of demands that will split the c1erical­ Europe with a mass, potentially coun­ nationalist forces from among the terrevolutionary mobilization around workers and separate them out. These the Catholic church. Thus, unlike unions must defend the socialized Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in means of production and proletarian 1968, the alternatives in the present Order from: state power against Western imperial­ crisis are not limited to proletarian Spartacist ism. In Poland today the elementary political revolution or Stalinist restabili­ Publishing Co. Box 1377. GPO democratic demand of the separation of zation. At the same time, it is not New York. NY church and state is a dividing line Afghanistan where the Soviet Red 10116 between the struggle for workers de- Army is playing a progressive role in 28 crushing an imperialist-backed clerical­ reactionary uprising. In a sense Poland stands somewhere between Hungary in 1956 and Afghanistan. How has this situation come about? The Bitter Fruits of the 1956 "Polish October" Key to understanding the exceptional Inter-Factory Strike instability of Stalinist Poland is the Committee meets at compromise which staved off a workers Lenin Shipyard in revolution in 1956. As in other East Gdansk: Liberation European countries the post-Stalin of Polish workers lies in Leninism, not "thaw" produced a deep crisis within the clerical-nationalist Polish bureaucracy which extended to reaction. other sections of Polish society. Prom­ ises of "socialist legality" and higher living standards led in 1953-56 to a rising line of intellectual dissidence and of the main factors which forestalled is privately owned. Only by eliminating working-class unrest. them was that in large factories through­ their hideous poverty and rural isolation In June 1956 workers from the out the country workers councils organ­ can the hold of religious obscurantism ZIPSO locomotive works in Poznan ilCd resistance to any attempt by the on the masses be broken. marched into the center of the city Russian Stalinists and their local agents An immediate, key task for a calling for higher wages and lower to overturn "the Polish October revolu­ revolutionary workers government in prices. When the militia failed to tion." I n the giant Zeran auto factory in Poland would be to promote the disperse them, they attacked the city Warsaw, the Communists armed the collectivization of agriculture. And this hall, radio station and prison. The army workers. But it was not the Russians has nothing in common with Stalin's and special security police were called who overturned "the Polish Oetober"­ mass terror in the Russian countryside in. Over 50 demonstrators were killed, it was Gornulka. While granting large in 1929-31. Cheap credits and generous hundreds wounded. Poland stood on wage increases for a few years, Gomulka social services should be given those the verge of civil war. gradually bureaucratically strangled the peasants who pool their land and labor, In August Wladyslaw Gomulka, with workers councils, which had helped while higher taxes would be imposed on a reputation as a victimized "national­ bring him to power. He also suppressed those who remained petty agricultural liberal" Communist and honest workers the dissident Marxoid intellectuals. At capitalists. leader, was reinstated in the PUWP; in the same time, his policies permanently Polish Stalinism has strengthened the October he was made head of it. A strengthened the potential social bases church not only by perpetuating a former general secretary of the Polish of counterrevolution-the peasants and landowning peasantry, but also in a Communist Party, he was purged by the priests. more direct way. Since 1956 the Catho­ Stalin in 1948 as a "Titoist" and placed The abandonment in 1956 of agricul­ lic Znak group in the Sejm (parliament) under house arrest. Not sharing person­ tural collectivization (never very exten­ has been the only legally recognized al responsibility for the crimes of the sive) has had a profound effect on oppositIOn in any East European Stalin years, Gomulka enjoyed consid­ Poland economically, socially and country. And that opposition has in erable popular authority, especially politically. It has saddled the country general been anti-democratic. Church among socialist workers. with a backward, smallholding rural spokesmen have denounced the public In what would become the standard economy grossly inefficient even by East schools' "atheization" of Poland's youth refrain of Polish Stalinism when under European standards. I n the mid-1970s and have called for state financial attack from below, Gomulka in an open farm output per worker in Poland was support for religious instruction. The letter "to the workers and youth" less than two-fifths that of collectivized Polish medical system provides safe assured them that: Czechoslovakia, for example! Many abortions for a nominal fee. (Women ..... only by marching along the path of democratization and eradicating all the peasants still work divided-up strips, from West Europe travel to Poland to evil from the past period can we succeed not even unitary farms. And the horse­ have their abortions in order to save in building the best model of social­ drawn plow is a common sight in the money.) Committed to the patriarchal ism .... A decisive part on that road Polish countryside to this day. The rural family and with it the age-old oppres­ must be played by widening the work­ population is increasingly aged as the sion of women, the church has singled ers' democracy, by increasing the direct participation of workers in the manage­ peasants' sons and daughters emigrate out safe, cheap abortions as one of the ment of enterprises, by increasing the in droves to the cities, where the !Feat "crimes" of the Communist part played by the working masses in standard of living is appreciably higher. government. governing all sectors of the country's Contrary to the imperialist propa­ By the late I 960s the Gomulka regime life." -reproduced in Paul E. Zinner, ganda line that 90 percent of Poland is had pretty much exhausted the moral ed., National Communism and Catholic, the Polish workers movement capital of the 1956 "Polish October." Popular Revolt in eastern since the 1890s has adhered to Marxian The economy was stagnant, real wages Europe (1956) socialism. The strength of the Polish were rising more slowly than in any Khrushchev and his Kremlin col­ church is based on the social weight of other East European country. The 1968 leagues still feared Gomulka as the the rural petty bourgeoisie. And today "Prague spring" in neighboring Czech­ Polish Tito and seriously considered over a third of the labor force still toils in oslovakia panicked the Polish bureauc­ military intervention to oust him. One the fields, while 80 percent of farmland racy, which feared the unrest would 29

spread to its own more volatile and tent. It is commonly believed that as (running about 8 percent a year) quieted combative people. soon as Gierek replaced Gomulka, he worker discontent and activism. A At this point a faction in the rescinded the price increase and the leader of the Szczecin workers com­ bureaucracy around secret police chief strikes ended. In fact, he did not and the mittee, Edmund Baluka, now in Mieczyslaw Moczar sought to channel strikes continued. While offering con­ exile, described the process in a 1977 popular discontent into traditional anti­ siderable economic concessions, Gierek interview: Semitic Polish chauvinism. Under the insisted that returning to the old 1966 "But, of course, Gierek did an about rubric of "anti-Zionism," the few tens of price level was impossible. He spent the turn, and partly by bettering the first two months in power running from material situation of the workers-and thousands of Jews who had survived in the process ma_ssively indebting Hitler's holocaust, many of them loyal one strike committee to another trying Poland to the West and the Soviet PUWP cadre, were driven out of the to sell them this economic program. But Union-the Party managed to rebuild country. (Almost none settled in Israel, the workers were not buying it. In mid­ its ranks and regain control. but rather ended up teaching Slavic February a strike of largely women "The rises in living standards gave the . workers a false sense of security, but in languages in Copenhagen or Stock­ textile workers in Lodz finally caused the first 2 or 3 years of Gierek's rule holm.) Even Gomulka's Jewish wife the new regime to give up; it agreed to people thought that things in Poland wasn't safe from accusations of "cosmo­ freezt: prices at the 1966 level. were really changing for the better." politanism" and lack of "Polish patriot­ In the course of his negotiations with -Labour Focus on Eastern ism." The present political atmosphere the strike committees in early 1971, Europe, May-June 1977 in Poland, especially the growing Gierek was forced to defend his role as authority of the church, is conditioned head of a workers state and justify his Glerek Runs Out of Economic by the purging of Jews, a traditionally policies as being in the specific interests Miracles socialist and internationalist cultural of the working class. In turn, the strike Gierek's economists projected trans­ elite in East Europe. committee delegates addressed Gierek forming Poland into something like an not as the representative of a hostile, East European Japan. They maintained Blood on the Baltic and Glerek's exploitative class but as a labor leader that the rapid modernization of the Maneuver (possibly an untrustworthy bureaucrat) country's industrial plant would enable In 1970 the Gomulka regime decided who was supposed to serve the workers' Poland to flood world markets with to raise the agricultural procurement interests and do his best to meet their cheap, quality goods and so repay the price in order to stimulate greater demands. The extraordinary nine-hour loans when they fell due. Whatever slim production from the peasants. A few session in January 197 I between Gierek chance this economic maneuver had of weeks before Christmas-an unbelieva­ and the strike committee at the Warski working was dashed by the 1974-75 bly stupid piece of timing-the govern­ shipyards in Szczecin is a drama­ world depression. At a deeper level, ment announced food prices would be tic empirical refutation of all "new Gierek's economic gamble failed be­ increased on the average 30 percent. The class" theories of the Sino-Soviet cause the Stalinist regime is incapable of Baltic ports ignited. Led by the ship­ states. Interestingly, the present direc­ mobilizing the enthusiasm and sense of builders, thousands of workers, some tor of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk was sacrifice of the Polish working people. singing the I nternationale, attacked a member of the strike com­ This incompetence is endemic in a police and tried to burn down Party mittee which bargained with Gierek in bureaucracy, more due to lack of an headquarters in Gdansk and Szczecin. 1970. effective corrective feedback than to Over the objections of the top generals, Whereas in 1956 Gomulka had material privilege. Gomulka ordered the army in, tanks promised the workers democratization, Between 1970 and 1975 the value of and all. More than a hundred workers in 1971 Gierek promised them prosperi­ Poland's imports from the West in­ were reportedly killed, many times that ty. Judge me by the meat on your table, creased an incredible 40 percent a year number wounded. Once again Poland he told them. He promised huge wage (East European Economics, Fall 1979)! was seconds away from a revolutionary increases for the workers, higher pro- Exports could not possibly keep pace. explosion. 'curement prices and state pensions for By 1976 imports were twice exports, And once again the bureaucracy the peasants plus the rapid moderniza­ total foreign debt three times exports presented to the workers a new face and tion of Polish industry. And how was and debt service absorbed 25 percent of a new deal. Edward Gierek, an ex-coal this t:conomic miracle (the term was hard currency earnings (U.S. Congress, miner and party boss of the mining actually used in official propaganda) to Joint Economic Committee, East region of Silesia, had a reputation as be achieved? Through massive loans European Economics Post-Helsinki unpretentious, pragmatic and compe- from the West and also the Soviet [1977]). Moreover, things were bound Union. The Polish Stalinist bureaucracy to get worse as Poland's large loans rode out the crisis of 1970-71, but only came due in the late 1970s. by mortgaging the country to West Gierek's Poland was heading toward SPARTACIST German bankers. the honor of being theJirst Communist For the militant Baltic shipbuilders country to declare international bank­ Bound Volume the new regime's promise of an econom­ ruptcy. In late 1975 the regime simul­ No.1 ic miracle was not enough. Gierek had taneously tried to brake the economy to concede an independent workers and steer it into' a U-turn. Wage Spartaclst Issues 1-20 committee arising out of the strike increases were to be scaled back, new February 1964-July1971 committee, and free elections to the major investment projects practically $25.00 official trade union. In a year or so the frozen. The massive balance-of­ Order from/make checks payable to: bureaucracy regained control in part payments deficit was to be reversed. The Spartacist Publishing through firing some committee leaders decision to raise food prices an average Box 1377 GPO, NY, NY 10116 and coopting others, but mainly because 60 percent in June 1976 was in part the exceptional increases in real wages designed to spur agricultural produc- 30

tion, but mainly to soak up domestic was caught in the line: "The party problem through an elaborate system of purchasing power, allowing more to be decided to stuff the people's mouth different classes of retail stores. The exported. Superficially June 1976 ap­ with sausage so they would not talk better class the shop, the higher the peared to be a replay of 1970-71. The back, and now there is no sausage." prices, the more likely the goods would regime announced food price increases, The government inspired neither fear actually be on the shelves. At the top of the workers reacted with mass strikes nor respect. Corruption, black­ the line were the Pewex shops which and protests, the regime rescinded the marketeering and worker apathy be­ sold luxury items for Western currency increases. Yet the differences are per­ came common, even normal. In a 1977 only. haps more important than the open letter to Gierek, a former head of Politically prevented from raising similarities. state and PUWP general secretary prices in line with market demand, the Six years earlier the regime stood up Edward Ochab wrote: regime resorted to rationing by waiting to a two-month strike wave before relent­ "The conviction is spreading amongst line. And the waiting lines kept getting ing. Now Gierek canceled the price the people that one achieves nothing longer, especially after last year's bad harvest (in part caused by peasant strikes). Things have now reached such a pass it's reported even the Pewex shops have empty shelves. A typical Polish family spends a good part of its free time hunting for food and other consumer goods. The present large wage increases now being granted will lead either to wild inflation or even longer waiting lines. Former Polish And Polish workers know this. One of leader Edward the Baltic strike committee's demands is Gierek (left) mortgaged the temporary rationing of meat to economy to replace the present system of multiple Helmut prices and the maddening resort to ever- Schmidt's West . longer waiting lines. If Polish workers Germany, still strike for higher pay, it's because attempting to they have no control over economic buy off policy and would suffer inflation and combative shortages in any case. working class. The social democrats of the Commit­ tee for Social Self-Defense (KOR) are opposing the present large wage hikes on the grounds that it will simply fuel the inflationary spiral. Kuron, Michnik increase within 24 hours, at the first sign through honesty: the tendency to & Co., very full of themselves, are in of worker resistance. In December 1970 corruption, c1iquism and the dishonest effect offering the Stalinist regime the ·Gomulka had ordered a massacre. In earning of money increases constantly." following deal (which, of course, they -Lahour Focus on Eas/ern 1976 Gierek forbade the use offirearms, Europe, March-April 1978 can't deliver on): You give us "free tra'de and serious violence was limited to the unions," an end to censorship, etc.; in The government promised to leave the mammoth U rsus tractor factory near return, we will convince the workers to people alon!;; in return, it asked only Warsaw and the small industrial city of accept a few years of austerity. In an that the people leave it alone. But the Radom. The Radom workers were article in a current Der Spiegel (18 world economy wouldn't leave Poland driven into a fury when, on seizing the August) Michnik appeals to Gierek's alone. Party headquarters, they discovert:d a noted pragmatism: " ... whether he cache of top-quality ham and other For Workers Control of [Gierek] understands that a dialogue luxury goods unavailable on the do­ Production! with the people is indispensable to carry mestic market. By late 1977 all the through necessary, but unpopular, workers imprisoned for participating in Although the government promised economic reforms cannot today be the June events were amnestied and to freeze food prices, it couldn't meet answered." most of those fired were reinstated. market demand at those prices, especial­ But the Polish workers must nQt pay The church played a clever double ly since money wages continued to rise. for the gross mismanagement of Gie­ game. It supported the price increase, Raising the procurement price for the rek's regime. Nor should they have the which benefited its peasant base and peasantry didn't encourage nearly slightest confidence in the bureaucracy's gave it a bargaining counter with the enough additional output. And the "economic reforms." Egalitarian and regime. At the same time Cardinal government food subsidy-the differ­ rational socialist planning, capable of Wyszynski called for amnesty for the ence between the price paid to the overcoming the mess the Stalinists have imprisoned workers, a universally pop­ peasant and paid by the urban made of the Polish economy, is possible ular demand. consumer-has been an enormous and only under a government based on The June events were a devastating increasing drain on the entire economy. democratically elected workers councils and lasting blow to the moral authority In the past ten years the cost of food (soviets). As a revolutionary, transition­ of the regime. Gierek's earlier promises subsidies has multiplied twenty times al step toward that, Polish workers of unparalleled prosperity were thrown (Economist, 12 January 1980)! must struggle against the bureaucracy back in his face. The popular attitude The regime tried to get around the for control over production, prices, 31 distribution and foreign trade. rupts like Turkey, Zarre and Peru. appendage of the peasant economy and The Polish Stalinist bureaucracy's But then Gierek's Poland has become (he world market." -Shane Mage, The Hungarian economic mismanagement is today a West German client state economical­ Rel'O/Uliun (1959) glaring. Nonetheless, the historical ly, supplying it with substantial quanti­ To a considerable degree Poland has superiority of collectivized property and ties of raw materials. This was noted by become an appendage of the world centralized economic planning, even the New York Times (20 August) during capitalist economy not, as Mage pro­ when saddled with a parasitic bureauc­ the present crisis: jected, under a petty-bourgeois "demo­ racy, remains indisputable. Any Polish "West German banks, which have cratic" party, but under a shaky Stalinist worker who takes Radio Free Europe as played an important role in providing bureaucracy which tried to buy off a Poland with credits, have pointed out good coin and thinks he would be better combative working class and a back­ off under "free enterprise" capitalism that its deposits of coal, copper, silver, platinum and vanadium make it an ward, smallholding peasantry by mort­ should consider these few statistics: Intrinsically more promising client than gaging the country's wealth to the between 1950 and 1976 the advanced either Hungary or Czechoslovakia." imperialists. capitalist economies grew at an average One West German banker is now annual rate of 4.4 percent, the backward Thus, the response of the world, proposing that any new loans to Poland especially West German, bourgeoisie to capitalist economies at 5 percent and the be secured by specific mines and the Polish crisis is divided between centrally planned East European econo­ factories. mies at 7.7 percent (Scientific American, short-term financial interests and a September 1980). Following the 1956 Polish crisis and historic appetite to overturn proletarian The Poles have contradictory eco­ Hungarian revolution Shane Mage, a state power in the Soviet bloc. Most nomic aspirations. There is an over­ founding leader of the Spartacist ten­ German bankers want Gierek to win the whelming demand to abolish the special dency (who has since abandoned Marx­ best terms he can get. After all, they've ism), produced a theoretical considera­ been pushing him for years to do away shops~an egalitarian socialist measure. with the food subsidy and impose other Yet all those who get dollars from tion of the ways in which capitalism austerity measures. But the right-winger relatives in America would like to spend might be restored in East Europe. them on luxury goods imported from the Should a petty-bourgeois clericalist Franz-Josef Strauss called for a mora­ torium on loans to Poland to blackmail West. For strike leaders who yearn for party come to power in a "democratic the regime into gra'nting all the strike capitalism, we suggest a long vacation in revolution," he posited, it could restore committee's demands. Liverpool where they won't have to capitalism by eliminating the state One cannot, however, consider Po­ stand in line to buy anything. Of course, monopoly of foreign trade and reinte­ land's relations with Western capitalism they will have a little difficulty finding a grating the country into the world without taking the Soviet Union very job, and even if they do their pay will be economy without significant denation­ much into account. To do so is truly to so low that they will have to cut back on alization of the existing industrial plant: play Hamlet without the Danish prince. their meat consumption. (The dissidents "Another decisive aspect of the return The experiences of 1970 and 1976 ought to be sent to Afghanistan where to capitalism under petty-hourgeois democratic leadership would be the ties convinced the Kremlin that if the Polish they can find out what Carter's "human of Poland and Hungary with the masses were pushed too hard to pay the rights" are all about by seeing what capitalist world market. ... foreign debts, there would be a popular "And what would hecome of the happens to them if they try to teach explosion which, whatever way it went, young girls to read and write.) nationalized industries? Their fate would serve the interests of the peasants could only hurt them. So the Russians Break the Imperialist Economic and petty-bourgeoisie and the needs for are paying a good part of Poland's debt Stranglehold! trade with the Western capitalists. both directly and by shipping the Hungary and Poland can be capitalist Warsaw regime agricultural produce. In In 1978 over 50 percent of Poland's without denationali7ing a single large one sense Poland has become the hard currency earnings were absorbed industrIal plant; all that is necessary is (0 convert the industry ... into an intermediary through which Western by debt service, in 1979 over 60 percent and today over 90 percent! Early last year Poland avoided becoming the world's biggest bankrupt only by a' International Spartacist Tendency Directory major rescheduling of its debts. But Address Address Poland's Western bankers are, in an correspondence to: correspondence to: opposite' way, just as fed up with Llgue Le Bolchevik, BP 135-10 Spartacls! Spartacist League Gierek's economic mismanagement as Trotskyste 75463 Paris Cedex 10 League/U.S. Box 1377, GPO Poland's workers. They demanded and de France France New York, NY 10116 got the right to monitor all aspects of Spartaclst Spartacist Publications USA economic policy and to have their rec­ League/ PO Box 185 Britain ommendations taken very seriously­ London, WC1H 8JE Spartaclst Spartacist Publishing Co. England Stockholm Box 4508 an unprecedented step for a deformed Trotzklstische Verlag Avantgarde 102 65 Stockholm workers state. As an economist for Llga Postfach 1 67 47 Sweden Bankers Trust commented at the time: Deutschlands 6000 Frankfurt/Main 1 "This marks the first time a Communist West Germany Trotskyist Trotskyist League government has embraced austerity-a Lega Walter Fidacaro League Box 7198, Station A Trotsklsta C.P. 1591 of Canada Toronto, Ontario purposeful cut in its planned rate of d'ltalia 20100 Milano Canada growth-for balance-of-payments rea­ Italy sons" (New York Times, 26 January Spartaclst Spartacist League Spartaclst Spartacist League 1979). This is the same kind of program League/ 33 Canal Row League of GPO Box 3473 Lanka Colombo 01 Australia/ Sydney, NSW, 2001 the International Monetary Fund nor­ Sri Lanka New Zealand Australia mally imposes on neo-colonial bank- 32

ton's open threats of a nuclear first strike. The Soviet masses also know that the imperialist powers' war against their country, hot and cold, began with the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Russian working people see pro­ Western "dissidents" like Sakharov for what they are-traitors to the socialist revolution. If the Kremlin believes that the Soviet conscript army can be depended on to suppress any mass upheaval in Poland or Czechoslovakia, it is not simply out of mechanical discipline or Great Russian chauvinism. The Soviet people fear the transformation of East Europe into hostile, imperialist-allied states extend ing NATO to their own border. The Kremlin bureaucrats exploit this legitimate fear to crush popular unrest and democratic aspirations in East Der Spiegel Soviet soldiers greeted as liberators in Cracow, 1945. Europe, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968. There were numerous reports that Soviet soldiers were shaken when on finance capital sucks surplus out of the the bankers of Frankfurt write off $20 occupying Prague they encountered not Soviet workers and peasants (whose billion with a shrug? What of imperialist a bloody fascistic counterrevolution, as living standards are substantially lower retaliation, economic or military? Po­ they had been told, but protests by than those of the Poles). If Polish lish workers can counter such retalia­ Communist workers and left-wing workers don't appreciate this, Western tion only by mobilizing the West students. bankers are very much aware of the fact. European, centrally West German, Revolutionary Polish workers cannot That house organ of the international working classes under the banner of a hope to appeal to Soviet soldiers unless financial community, the London Econ­ Socialist United States of Europe. they assure them that they will defend omist (9 August), writes in the current For the Revolutionary Unity of that part of the world against imperialist cnsls: the Polish and Russian Workers! attack. A Polish workers government "In past Polish crises the Soviet UnIOn must be a military bastion against has stepped in with cash and emergency All organized forces in Polish politi­ N A TO. And a proletarian political grain sales. But the Poles may be cal life-the Stalinist bureaucracy, the wearing out their welcome on begging­ revolution in Poland must extend itself bowl trips to Moscow. The Soviet church and all wings of the dissident to the Soviet Union or, one way or Union has already lent Poland $1 movement-inculcate hostility to Rus­ another, it will be crushed. billion this spring to meet pressing debt­ sia as the enemy of the Polish people. scrvice rcquirements." The Gomulka and Gierek regimes • For trade unions independent of One international banker, who chose to continually threatened that any mass bureaucratic control and based on a remain 'anonymous, remarked that struggle, even purely economic strikes, program of defending socialized Soviet military intervention would would bring in the Soviet Red Army. property! enhance Poland's creditworthiness "Our fraternal allies are concerned" is. • For the strict separation of church (New York Times, 31 August)! the stock phrase. And, of course, Pope and state! Fight clerical-nationalist A key task facing the Polish proletari­ Wojtyla's church and the dissident reaction! Guard against capitalist at is to break the imperialist economic movement grouped around it have as restorationism! stranglehold. The Baltic strike commit­ their ultimate goal "national independ­ • Promote the collectivization of tee is demanding "a full supply of food ence" (like under Pilsudski?), though agriculture! products for the domestic market, with they differ amongst themselves how to • For workers control of production, exports limited to surpluses." (It is not, achieve this. prices, distribution and foreign trade! however, demanding limitations on A hallmark for a revolutionary party • For proletarian political revolution imports.) Economic autarky is not what in Poland is a positive orientation to the against the Stalinist bureaucracy-For Poland needs. On the contrary, socialist Russian working class (which incident­ a government based on democratically economic planning should maximally ally pays no small share of Poland's debt elected workers councils (soviets)! utilize the international division of to the West). And this is not simply a • Break the imperialist economic labor, exporting and importing as much matter of abstract proletarian interna­ stranglehold-Cancel the foreign debt! as possible. tionalism. It is a matter of life and death. Toward international socialist econom­ What a revolutionary workers Illusions about the good will of the ic planning! government in Poland would do is Western capitalist powers common in • For military defense of the USSR cancel the foreign debt. Well, not quite. East Europe do not extend to the Soviet against imperialism! For the revolution­ The workers might export comrade Union. Having lost 20 million in .ary unity of the Polish and Soviet Edward Gierek to West Germany, fighting Nazi Germany, the Soviet working classes! where he can work off his obligations in people understand that NATO's nuclear • For a Polish Trotskyist party, some Ruhr coal mine. A very good idea, arsenal is targeted at them. This under­ section of a reborn Fourth some Polish worker might say, but will standing is now heightened by Washing- International! • •

33 reprinted from WoriSJ!ll Vanguard No. 263, 5 September 1980

Polish Social Democrats Arm in Arm with Clerical Reaction All the Pope's, Dissidents

'The strikes in Poland mark a proletarian rule represented by the founders of KOR, six are former significant turn in Eastern Europe present Stalinist bureaucracy. The members of the pre-war Polish Socialist because workers and dissident intellec­ dissidents' role as a conduit to the Party (PSP), among them the promi­ tuals have joined forces in a major capitalist media is nothing new~ nent economist Edward Lipinski. (Ro­ conflict with the Government," noted a Sakharov has been at it for years in the botnik was the name of the PSP paper news analysis in the New York Times Soviet Union. Nor are appeals to the as well.) The list also includes a former (23 August). As to the existence of the imperialists via the UN, the Helsinki chairman of the Christian Democratic alliance there is no doubt. From the Agreements, etc. What is particularly Party, a delegate of the World War II beginning of the Polish strike wave in ominous about the Polish dissidents, London exile government, vanous early July and in the early stages of the who range from social democrats to activists from the 1968 student move­ shipyard occupations, dissident circles openly Pilsudskiite reactionary nation­ ment (among them historian Adam in Warsaw were the main source of alists, is their active (and largely Michnik), left Catholic writers (such as information for the imperialist press. In successful) effort to form an alliance former party member Jerzy' Andrze­ addition, several of the key strike with the Catholic hierarchy. For it is the jewski, author of Ashes and Diamonds), leaders have been publicly associated church together with the land-holding several veterans of the 1944 Warsaw over the past several years with opposi­ peasantry which form the social basis uN,ising and Rev. -Jan Zieja, "Polish tion defense groups, and they have for counterrevolution in Poland. Army Chaplain in the 1920 and 1939 drawn in prominent Catholic intellectu­ campaigns" ---i.e., a died-in-the-wool als as "expert advisers." So while the KSS-KOR: Social Democrats Pilsudskiite priest who twice fought the ruling bureaucracy has been reluctant to for Popery Red Army. use force against workers in the Baltic The best-publicized Polish dissident Jacek Kuron was first known in the ports, on August 20 police in the capital group in the West is the Committee for West for co-authoring (with Karol rounded up 14 well-known dissidents Social Self-Defense (KSS), better Modzelewski) an "Open Letter to accused of illegal association. known by its original name Workers Communist Party Members" in 1964; Who are the Polish dissidents? Defense Committee (KOR). The lead­ for this he became a victim of bureau­ Western commentators hail the appear­ ing spokesman for KSS-KOR is Jacek cratic repression, spending six years in ance of a "worker-intellectual alliance'." Kuron, and its newsletter Robotnik jail. The United Secretariat opportunis­ Yet the non-Stalinist left-wing press includes among its correspondents Lech tically hailed the K uron-Modzelewski sounds the same theme. Thus we find Walesa, the leader of the Interfactory text with its syndicalist program and favorable interviews with dissident Strike Committee centered on the Lenin fuzzy analysis (which called Poland a leader J acek K uron being printed Shipyard in Gdansk. The KOR was "bureaucratic state") as the "first revolu­ everywhere from the liberal Le Monde formed after the suppression of the June tionary Marxist document" to come out and Der Spiegel to publications of the 1976 strikes at Radom and Ursus, and of the post-war Soviet bloc. Since then, ostensibly Trotskyist United Secretari­ originally centered its activities on however, Kuron has moved far to the at. Meanwhile, New York Times col­ raising funds for and demanding re­ right, now posing the struggle in East umnist Flora Lewis (whose articles lease; reinstatement of the hundreds of Europe as one of "pluralism vs. totali­ often seem to reflect the views of the workers arrested and fired at that time. tarianism." In his "Thoughts on an CIA) praises Kuron as "a responsible After a general amnesty a year later it Action Program" Kuron supports man, a moderate and a patriot." Is this became the KSS and concentrated on peasant struggles for private property, the "new coalition" which sophisticated building ties to key factories through claims "the Catholic movement is Western fomenters of counterrevolu­ Robotnik. Most of the pseudo­ fighting to defend freedom of con­ tion in the Soviet bloc degenerated/ Trotskyist left in the West has come out science and human dignity," and con­ deformed workers states have been in support of the KSS-KOR in varying cludes with a call for the "Finlandiza­ looking for as their "captive nations" degrees. tion" of Poland: relics fade into oblivion? Or does it Because of its name and origins and "We must strive for a status similar to portend a movement for "socialist the reputation of K uron, K 0 R is Finland's: a parliamentary democracy democracy," as some on the left would sometimes referred to by superficial with a limited independence in the field of foreign policy where it directly have us believe'! observers as "Marxist in orientation." touches the interests of the USSR." Certainly none of the prominent Social-democratic is a far more accurate dissident groups and personalities has a description. and even that does not do The Clerical OppOSition good word to say about socialism, justice to some of the anti-Marxist Marxism it ain't. But this social­ which is identified with the perversion of elements around it. Of the original 24 democratic program for a peaceful 34

restoration of capitalism represents the nal Myndszenty, who was discredited by Moczulski is more militantly anti­ leji wing of the dissident movement. The cooperation with the Horthy dictator­ government than KOR, and hails the right wing is openly clerical-nationalist. ship, the Polish pope (who brags he once formation of his clerical-reactionary There was a split in KOR in 1977 leading • was a worker) could be an effective party as "an event almost without to the formation of ROPCIO, the rallying point for counterrevolution. A precedent in the history of Eastern Movement for the Defence of Human revealing article by the former editor of Europe since the late I 940s"! Mean­ Rights. The latter is based on the the CIA's house organ, Prohlem.~ of while, USec leader Ernest Mandel founding declaration of the UN and the Communism, Abraham Brumberg, laments that the Stalinist bureaucracy in Helsinki accords and offers itself as an makes this crystal clear: Poland has not "permitted a democratic instrument to "cooperate with all "The Catholic Church has been crucial and intense political life; including a international organizations which de­ in the growth of a political opposition in legal Catholic party ... " ([SWP] Inter­ Poland. Had it not been for the support fend human rights .... " Where KOR of the Church, even the new alliance national Internal Discussion Bulletin, publishes Rohotnik, ROPCIO puts out between 'the intelligentsia, village, and October 1979). Go.Ipodarz (The Peasant) and appeals workers' to which Kuron refers would This pandering to clerical reaction is a to the Catholic rural population. And probably have failed to survive the • far cry from the revolutionary social this is not the Catholicism of Vatican II, hatred of the authorities." democracy of a Rosa Luxemburg, who -New York Review vf Books, either. The Economist (9 September g February 1979 . wrote in 1905: 19nq refers to this outfit as "the "The clergy, no less than the capitalist stronghold of more conservative, na­ Brumberg points out that the original class, lives on the backs of the people, tional and-with some of its members­ KOR demands for amnestying workers profits from the degradation, the traditional anti-semitic tendencies." To arrested and fired in the June 1976 ignorance and the oppression of the people. The clergy and the parasitic get ROPCIO's number, one only has to strikes were almost identical to those of capitalists hatc thc organiled working note that the first signer of its platform is the episcopate. "Since then, the parallels class, conscious of its rights, which General Borutz-Spiechowicz, the high­ between statements by the Church­ fights for the conquest of its liberties." est commanding officer of pre-World and especially by Cardinal Wyszynski, -"Socialism and the Churches" War II Poland, and that it distributes whom Michnik strongly, if not uncriti­ In fact, in all the publications of the Pllsudski calendars. cally, admires-and those of the opposi­ Polish dissidents which we have consult­ ROPCIO, in turn, gave rise to an even tion have become even more conspicu­ ed, some hundreds of pages, there is not more reactionary group, the Confeder­ ous." He points out that supporters of one reference to Luxemburg, Poland's ation of Independent Poland (KPN) theZNAK group have participated in the greatest contribution to the Marxist whose stated goal is to "end Soviet "flying university" circles sponsored by movement. "Naturally," because she domination by liquidating the power of KOR, which in Krakow used churches was a Jew and hardly a Polish national­ the Polish United Workers Party." Then for its classes with the permission of ist. But neither is there a reference to there comes the Polish League for then-Archbishop Wojtyla. Michnik other authentic Polish Communists, Independence (PPN), a clandestine described the new pope as one of the two such as Julian Marchlewski, Leo Jo­ group, and remnants of the pre-war "co-founders of the anti-totalitarian giches and Felix Dzerzhinsky. One of ultra-rightist, anti-Semitic, fascistic policy of the Polish Episcopate" (Der the greatest crimes of the Polish Stalin­ National Democratic Party. All of Spiegel, 23 October 1978). Michnik, a ist bureaucracy is that it has discredited them, of course, cover themselves with Jew, is so enamored of the new, the name of communism among think­ rhetoric about "democracy." This gives "enlightened" Catholic primate that he ing workers. rise to the Polish dissident joke: "Ques­ wrote of the pope's vis.it last year: The present crop of Polish dissidents tion: What's a Polish nationalist? "It will be a powerful demonstration of are overwhelmingly enemies of the Answer: Someone who wants to drive the bond between the Polish people and cause of proletarian socialism. They act the Jews out of Poland even though they the world. of Christian cultur::, a demonstration of their solidarity with as direct conduits to the church and the aren't there any more." More respecta­ the Catholic Church, and a demonstra­ West. Today we do not see "dissident" ble than these would-be pogromists is tion of their yearning for freedom, the Stalinists of the Titoist mold. On the the liberal Catholic ZNAK movement, champion of which they see as being contrary, the most left-wing are the East which has several representatives in their fellow countryman John Paul II, European equivalent of the "Eurocom­ the defender of human rights." parliament. While ZNAK leaves clan­ munists." But where in the capitalist destine bravado for the fringe groups, For Polish Trotskyism! West this is but another variety of their aims are no less counterrevolution­ reformism, more closely tied to its ary: they are merely waiting until an This paean to the standard bearer of "own" bourgeoisie, in the Soviet bloc explosion when they will step in as the capitalist restoration in Poland was countries passing from Stalinist to only mass-based opposition. printed without comment in Lahour Eurocommunist means joining the Focus on Eastern Europe (July-August camp of counterrevolution. Authentic The Dissidents' Pope 1979), a joint publication of supporters Trotskyism stands not for the bogus The core of the clerical opposition, of of the U Sec and the "state-capitalist" "unity of all anti-Stalinist forces"­ course, is the Catholic hierarchy, a British SWP of Tony Cliff. But these including disciples of Wojtyla and disciplined army extending from the pseudo-Trotskyists are not satisfied Brzezinski-but for a class-conscious village priest right up to the Vatican. with such a tepid brew. A subsequent communist opposition to the parasitic Stalin's famous remark, "How many issue of Labour Focus reprints an bureaucracy. And those would-be left­ divisions does the pope have?" indicates interview (by the French USec paper ists who today follow the Kurons and military realism. But in Catholic Po­ Rouge) with Leszek Moczulski, who M ichniks should realize that if they are land, probably the most religious was a member of the Moczar faction of successful in bringing off a national European country today (even the men the PUWP at the time it ran the 1968 revolt together with the clerical reac­ go to mass!), the church is a powerful anti-Semitic purge and now heads the tionaries, Gierek & Co. will be the first political force. Unlike Hungary's Card i- KPN. The journal comments that to go, but they will be next.• HIII,IIII.'lfjll______IU"

Appendix 35

reprinted from SRartacist No. 30, Autumn 1980 "Pure Democracy" or Political Revolution in East Europe - ly strongest class, i.e., is necessarily bourgeois democracy. These basic considerations are well known to the From members of the NAC [National Action Committee], and presumably these comrades accept them, at least formally. 1HE The YSL Right Wing What the resolution does is simply to declare them HUnG8Rmn and the inapplicable to the revolution under Stalinism, in the "Crisis of World following way: Rt ~OL U\ \on, Stalinism" "What must be remembered is that under Stalinism, the ( 1957) fight for democracy has a different social meaning than it by Shane Mage does under capitalism, so long as it is limited to general democratic aims and demands no other change. Under capitalism, such a struggle represents a struggle for capitalist democracy. Under Stalinism, where the means of production are statified, the fight for democracy which calls for no other changes, and hence seeks the democrati­ zation of statified property, becomes the revolution for democratic socialism, even if it is not so consciously expressed." II ---' What we have here is a schematic formula, rigidified into a fetish, used as a substitute for a concrete historical The Right Wing and "Democracy" analysis. The leaders of the YSL have for a long time relied on the formula that Stalinism is not socialist because its It is no accident that the key phrase in the analysis of the nationalized property is not accompanied by political Polish and Hungarian revolutions is "democracy"-not democracy. The obvious corollary to this is that national­ "bourgeois democracy", not "workers democracy", not ized property plus political democracy is socialism. And even "peasant democracy", but plain, unqualified "democ­ this is the theoretical essence of the quoted paragraph. racy", "democracy" in general. There may be some younger This is a good example of the dangers inherent in an members of the YSL who see nothing wrong with this agitational over-simplification. It's a lot easier and more procedure. I advise all such comrades to study very effective for us to talk about "democracy" as a prerequisite carefully the writings of Lenin " on this subject, notably "State r------, and Revolution" and "Prole­ tarian Revolution and Rene­ gade Kautsky." The key thought, absolutely basic to the Marxist theory of the state, is that any form of government in a class society, including a democracy, essentially embod­ ies the domination ("dictator­ ship") of one class over the others. This is especially true of workers democracy because the proletariat, inherently a propertyless class, .cannot rule except directly and politically, i.e., through its own class organizations of the "soviet" type. Any form of "pure" "classless" democracy "in gen­ ClassiC symbol of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Stalin's statue toppled and eral" can only express the dragged through the streets of Budapest. domination of the economical- 36 for socialism than to use that nasty term "dictatorship of parliament. Free elections, in turn would mean the the proletariat." In the case of the YSL right wing, this has establishment of a government reflecting the numerically gone past a mere tactical adaptation of language and has largest section of the population. In Poland and Hungary become an adaptation of thought. The struggle for this majority is not the working class. It is the petty­ socialism under Stalinism ceases to be a struggle for workers bourgeoisie of town and country, the peasants, small power, and becomes a struggle for "general democratic shopkeepers, artisans, and the old middle classes. aims." Could free elections in Poland or Hungary result in fact The false, abstract, undialectical character of the in a government representing this petty-bourgeois majori­ methodology of the NAC majority is exemplified by the ty? A majority cannot express its rule unless it is organized. proposition that the struggle against Stalinism is the Could this majority have been organized? . struggle for socialism "so long as it is limited to general Here we come to one of the most shocking features of the democratic aims and demands no olher cha·nge." But of ;\I AC draft resolution. The authors of tne draft have made course the reality of the revolution in Eastern Europe is not the most stupid omission possible in a resolution on Poland that of pure democracy and "no other change." A huge and Hungary: there is no mention whatever of the Catholic number of economic and social changes which are not Church, either as a religious institution or as a social force! necessarily those flowing from "general democratic aims" are the inseparable accompaniment to the popular Yet, in both Poland and Hungary the Church is the one revolution against Stalinism: to cite only the one change institution to emerge full blown from the Stalinist regime, referred to by the resolution, the peasants have spontane­ with a highly organized and stable apparatus, a long ously eliminated collectivized agriculture, and restored tradition of continuity, and a high degree of popular private property on the land. It is exactly these changes that prestige. The actual power of the Catholic Church is shown determine the actual character of the revolution against by the enormous extent to which religious education was Stalinism, not an abstract formula about the relation of reintroduced into the schools in Poland and Hungary "democracy" to "socialism." (particularly in Poland, there have been frequent reports of The formula nationalized property in industry plus the persecution of atheist and Jewish children by Catholic political democracy equals socialism is not even true on an majorities). The power of the Church was shown most abstract level, no matter how useful agitationally. If it was dramatically by Cardinal Wyszinski's intervention on behalf of Gomulka at the time of the recent Polish true, Austria and Burma, both of whose industry is largely nationalized, and both of whom have relatively democratic elections-an action which, according to all reports, played a major part in saving the Gomulka regime from what political structures, would be socialist states. The essential prerequisite for development toward socialism is the seemed likely to be a drastic setback. Can there be any raising of the working cLlss to the position of a ruling class, doubt that in really free elections the candidates endorsed by the Church would have a huge advantage among the or, in precise scientific terms, the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. Catholic majority? What role does the Church desire to play in these Would the struggle for "general democratic aims" under revolutions'? The Draft Resolution states that in Poland Stalinism be sufficient to raise the working class to the level and Hungary "forces which advocate capitalist restoration of a ruling class? The NAC resolution answers in the affirmative, on the basis of its formula .... A real answer, ... were extremely small and carried no weight." It is true that neither in Poland nor in Hungary did the Church however, must rest on a concrete analysis of the Polish and Hungarian revolutions. present an openly capitalist program. But it is not necessary for it to do so. The Catholic Church, by its very nature as an "Democracy" and Capitalist Restoration international body completely controlled from the Vati­ can. plays a certain role in world politics-the role of an The key question is this: theoretical(v, was it possible for important ally of U.S. imperialism and of capitalist the Polish and Hungarian revolutions to result in the reaction in all countries. If it felt free to do so, what reason restoration of capitalism? The N AC draft resolution is there to think that the Church headed by a Mindszenty precludes this, since it states that "democracy" is sufficient would act differently than does the Church in Italy, Spain, to define "the revolution for democratic socialism." This or Austria') And iffree elections should return a parliament view, in my opinion, is possible only on the basis of a with a Catholic majority, reflecting the Catholic majority singular ignorance of the actual social and economic forces in the countryside, wouldn't the Church feel free? determining the evolution of Poland and Hungary, and the There seems to me to be a high degree of probability that world context in which these revolutions took place. reallv free elections in both Poland and Hungary would What would have been the development in Poland or retu~n a petty-bourgeois, clerical majority, Free elections Hungary if the revolution had in fact llchieved the were never held in Poland after the war, but if they had establishment of formal democracy, of the Western type, been held, few except the Stalinists have denied that they with "no other change?" We here must abstract from the would have been won by the Peasant Party of Mikolajczyk, actual level of socialist consciousness attained by the Polish Free elections were held in Hungary, and they resulted in a and Hungarian workers, since this is not a determining substantial majority for the Smallholders Party, led by the factor in the argument of the NAC resolution. It should, clerical reactionaries Ferenc Nagy and Msgr. (!) Bela however, be made clear that I believe this level of socialist Varga. consciousness was the decisive factor in the whole Would a government of Mindszenty-Ferenc I\agy or development, the key to the future of these countries. Mikolajczyk-Wyszinski have been able to restore capital­ The establishment of formal democracy, if it means ism') It is here irrelevant to argue that no such governmenb anything at all, means free elections to a sovereign could. in fact, have been formed-because they obviously I!' ... :

37 could have been if the revolutions had remained within the before Hungary and Poland, the real class nature of these hounds of fo,,;wl parliamentary democracy with fuU revolutions., It is a picture of a real possibility of the democratic rights for all parties and individuals, including evolution of these countries, if the workers had restricted clerics and emigres. The question at issue is precisely the themselves to "general democratic aims.:' The essential nature and role of such formal parliamentary democracy in thing that it shows is that it is completely false to argue that East Europe-remember that the draft resolution consid­ the establishment of parliamentary democracy is sufficient ers this "democracy" equivalent to socialism. to convert a Stalinist state into a Socialist one. Under I believe that a petty-bourgeois government in either Stalinism as under capitalism, there is no such thing as Poland or Hungary, if allowed to stabilize itself and get a democracy in general; there is proletarian democracy, and firm grip on the country, would be able to bring about a there is bourgeois democracy. Nothing else. The "classless" return to capitalism, and in very short order. The first step parliamentary forms of democracy, in a country with a would be the absolutely necessary one, for any non­ peasant and petty-bourgeois majority, represent bourgeois Stalinist government, of restoring capitalist relationships democracy. in agriculture and small production and retail trade. The N E P in Russia continually tended to develop restorationist The Socialist Alternative tendencies, epitomized in the rise of the kulaks and Nepmen. Bukharin's policy of concessions to these If a formal and parliamentary democracy was likely to capitalist elements would in fact have brought about this lead to a petty-boll I geois government and the restoration sort of capitalist restoration despite the subjective desire of of capitalism in Poland and Hungary, what should have the Bolshevik right wing to prevent it. NEP in a backward been the socialist alternative to these "general democratic and exhausted country is a dangerous business at best-if aims'!" The answer was given by the Russian Revolution, placed in the hands of the political representatives of the which also took place in a backward country in which free kulaks and Nepmen (and the peasant and petty-bourgeois parliamentary elections would have necessarily resulted in parties could be nothing else) it would certainly lead a restoration of capitalism. That answer is the establish­ straight to capitalism. ment of the state power of the working class. Another decisive aspect of the return to capitalism under In Hungary this solution was indicated perfectly by the petty-bourgeois democratic leadership would be the ties of course of the revolution itself. in which the decisive organs Poland and Hungary with the capitalist world market, of revolutionary struggle were the workers councils. These most important, of course, with the gigantic economic councils were created in the course of the struggle by the strength of U.S. imperialism. It is no secret that the main spontaneous action of the workers themselves, and quickly positive political program of U.S. imperialism toward East proved themselves to be the political leadership of the Europe is based on massive economic aid, in the form of entire nation. "loans" and outright gifts. This "aid" would have a dual The workers coun.·if or soviet represents the indicated effect: it would be a political ace of trumps in the hands of form for the establishment of workers power in Hungary the bourgeois politicians who alone would have access to and. with slight difference of form, in every other country. the American largess, and it would very rapidly serve to In a country like Hungary, the creation of councils of reorient the economies of Poland and Hungary back to working peasants. peasant soviets, would provide a means their traditional dependence on Western capitalism. Lenin whereby the peasant majority could be represented in the once remarked that he was far less afraid of the White government while preserving the state power of the Guard armies than of the cheap Western commodities they proletariat through its class institutions. In scientific brought in their train. American commodities entering terminology, the state emerging from the revolution would Eastern Europe under petty-bourgeois governments would be a workers state; the government would be a workers and not merely be cheap-they would be free! farmers government. Of course the mere establishment of a republic of And what would become of the nationalized industries? workers councils in Poland or Hungary does not guarantee Their fate would serve the interests of the peasants and these countries against capitalist restoration. The proletari­ petty-bourgeoisie and the needs for trade with the Western an regimes in East Europe would immediately be faced by capitalists. Hungary and Poland can be capitalist states the same sort of problems which beset the first soviet without denationalizing a single large industrial plant; all republic under NEP. and, if the revolution should fail to that is necessary is to convert the industry, democratically extend itself to the ad\anced countries of Western Europe, of course, into an appendage of the peasant economy and these states too would degenerate and eventually collapse. the world economy. What the workers republic would guarantee is the And the consequences of this for the workers'? Wages opportunity of the working class at every point to impose kept low, to keep down the cost of production. Workers its own conscious socialist direction on the nation. councils would naturally not be allowed to interfere with It may be that some comrades who have never read the decisions of the democratic majority on questions Lenin or forgotten what they once learned will claim that concerning the management of the economy. The present this is "undemocratic", because a soviet type of state would grossly overexpanded work force would be sharply mean the rule of a minority, the working ·class, over the reduced as an obvious rationalization measure. And of majority of the population, mainly peasants. In reply to course, the workers representatives would not hold power this objection. we point out the following basic facts: in the government and parliament; after all. in a I.) The peasantry, even where it is in the majority, is democracy, doesn't the majority rule? incapable of ruling in its own name. As a stratum of small We should here re-emphasize that the above is not a commodity producers. i.e .. a petty-bourgeois class, it tends picture of what I believe to have been the real perspective to fol!ow behind its natural leaders, the petty-bourgeois 38 and "middle class" elements in the cities. In East Europe, own way, be recapitulating the experience of the Russian this has been and is concretely expressed in the allegiance of working class. In Russia, as we all should know, the the peasantry to the Catholic hierarchy. A government proletarian revolution was followed by free elections to a "representing" the East European peasantry would be constituent assembly, the most democratic type of dominated by clerical and pro-capitalist forces, which not bourgeois parliament. Petty-bourgeois parties, of a far only are a much smaller minority than the proletariat, but more "leftist" type than would be found in the Hungary of are of course a reactionary, inherently anti-democratic Mindszenty, dominated this constituent assembly. In minority as well. Russia, it took only a day to make clear to the workers 2.) The state of a soviet type, in terms of the actual rights councils that they could not tolerate the e?,istence of a and powers enjoyed by the masses of the people, including bourgeois government by their side. The Russian workers the poor peasants, is infinitely more democratic than the acted in the right way; under the leadership of the most democratic bourgeois republic, freely-elected parlia­ Bolshevik party of Lenin and Trotsky they dispersed the ment and all. parliament and made it clear to the entire world that the 3.) In the actual revolution, the working class was the soviets were the only power in Russia. The Hungarian undisputed leader of the entire nation, and was the sole workers would eventua\)y be faced with the same problem, social force capable of an all-out struggle to overthrow the and eventually would have to act in the same way, or see the Stalinist bureaucracy. This fact gives it the highest conquests of their revolution seized from them by the democratic right to establish its own state. Historical restorationist elements. experience shows that the working class is able to win support from large sections of the petty-bourgeoisie and The Need for a Revolutionary Party peasantry only when it shows them that it is capable of acting to solve the problems of the entire society in a The Russian workers were able to act as they did only revolutionary fashion on its own, trusting only to its own because of the presence of a revolutionary Marxist party, class forces. capable of anticipating events, drawing the lessons of the The question naturally arises: if the Russian counter­ proletarian struggles, and taking resolute revolutionary revolutionary intervention had not taken place, would the action. In Hungary too, the establishment of the power of Hungarian revolution have, in fact, resulted in a republic of the workers councils would require such a party. The workers councils? Of course, we cannot answer this absence of a bolshevik party was one of the main causes for question definitively. But certain clear facts about the the strength of bourgeois-democratic and even pro-western objective and subjective aspects of the Hungarian revolu­ illusions among the workers. These illusions were the tion indicate that an affirmative answer was highly inevitable product of the situation of the Hungarian probable. working class, of its experiences under the Stalinist The first and decisive thing about the Hungarian dictatorship. They could be overcome only in the course of revolution is that it was a workers revolution, and the open political struggle after the destruction of the Stalinist leading role of the workers was institutionally formulated regime. To do this, to raise its consciousness to a higher by the establishment of workers councils. Except for the level, the Hungarian working class would have had to Russian army, there was in Hungary not the shadow of a absorb the experience of a century of revolutionary social force capable of preventing the assumption of state socialist struggles, and most of all the experience of the last power by the workers councils. Thus the objective half-century of Marxist political thought, the body of conditions for the formation of a soviet republic, in the theory developed best of all by Lenin and Trotsky. event of revolutionary victory of course, were entirely For the Hungarian working class to learn these lessons favorable. would have been, at the same time, for it to construct a The actual level of consciousness of the Hungarian revolutionary Marxist party capable of leading the workers, however, was not at the level indicated by the proletariat to the consolidation of its own power. Failure to objective possibilities of the revolution. In this the reach this new level of class consciousness, failure to create Hungarian workers were like the Russian proletariat after a bolshevik party, would have meant that the working class the February revolution. The general demand was not for would, sooner or later, let the state power slip out of its all power to the workers councils, but for "free elections" to fingers and into the hands of the "democratic" majority a sovereign parliament. representing the petty-bourgeoisie and the Church. It would, however, be a disastrous mistake to take the level of cons~iousness corresponding to the struggle against • • • • • the Stalinist bureaucracy as the permanent and ultimate From political program of the Hungarian proletariat. The "Truth" and Hungary-A Reply Hungarian workers wanted "free elections," but they also to Herbert Aptheker wanted to preserve their own councils and extend their powers. They wanted to move forward to socialism, not The Hungarian working class was the central actor in the backward to capitalism. Hungarian drama-and the working class is totally If the revolution had been successful, the workers omitted from Aptheker's version of the "truth" about councils would have emerged with the decisive aspects of Hungary! More exactly, Aptheker mentions the workers state power, de facto, in their hands. They would not be only to deny that they played any role. He asserts: "the likely to surrender this power to the petty-bourgeois and workers of Budapest by and large adopted an apathetic or clerical government resulting from "free elections." A state . passive or neutral attitude." of dual power between parliament and soviets would tend It is surely not necessary to recapitulate here the great to emerge. In this the Hungarian workers would, in their number of eyewitness accounts proving that the main 39

fighting forces were made up of young workers, that the prevents us from coming to grips with the real restoration­ heaviest fighting took place in the working class districts ist danger. I earlier referred to the universally-held (like Kobanya, Ujpest, -and "Red Csepel," the proletari­ capitalist view that the Hungarian revolution was aimed at an stronghold of Hungarian Communism and the last achieving "Western-style democracy." A brief discussion of center of resistance against the second Russian interven­ this is necessary here. tion). It should be enough to cite the curious manner the The claim that the Hungarian revolution oriented Hungarian workers chose to show their "neutrality"-a toward "Western-style democracy" was more than a complete general strike and the formation of Workers theory; it was a political program. The leaders of the Councils! "West" knew as well as the Russians that it would be The sequel to the second Russian intervention showed impossible to impose a new Horthy on the Hungarian the real nature and strength of the contending social forces people. Therefore, capitalism could be restored in Hungary in Hungary so clearly as to remove any possible doubt on onl)' in "democratic" guise. Certain aspects of Hungarian this score .... The fascistic groups vanished into thin air (or sodety make this more than a utopian dream. rather, into Austria and thence other countries of the "free A majority of the popUlation of Hungary is. rural, world," to prepare for new adventures). Mindszenty hid in att'ached to private property (Stalinist "collectivizations" the United States embassy. [Smallholders Party leader] did not exactly weaken this attachment), and economically Bela Kovacs was invited to join the Kadar government, but drawn to the West. Furthermore, the religious majority in refused and announced his "retirement" from politics. But Hungary is Catholic. The planners of "Liberation" had the workers councils remained and carried on a fierce good grounds to hope that the establishment of a Western­ struggle against the Russian occupier and its Kadar puppet style parliamentary system would result in a government government. As late as December 12, all Hungary was reflecting these majorities, under the leadership of emigre gripped by a general strike. In the end, as we know, the politicians and the Catholic hierarchy. Especially since they Kadar government was able by the threat of starvation to had powerful extra-democratic means of pressure, in the break the strike. It proceeded to arrest the workers' leaders form of economic "aid" and the activities of the fascistic and destroy the Workers Councils, on the pretext that the fringe we met earlier. Councils "have preoccupied themselves with exclusively Could capitalism have been restored in this way? political questions with the objective of organizing a sort of Certainly if the Hungarian revolution had been allowed to second power, opposed to the State Power." [France­ develop freely, there is a possibility that this wO!Jld have Observateur, 3 January 1957] happened. (Of course, even if this development were The bitter irony of a self-styled "Revolutionary Workers certain, which is not at all the case, the actual Russian and Peasants Government" outlawing the only representa­ intervention would still be an impermissible denial to the tive organs of the Hungarian working class should not Hungarian people of the right to choose their own social blind us to the fact that with this declaration the Kadar system.) government has definitively posed the real choice in The danger of capitalist restoration thus really existed. Hungary. On the one hand, the "State Power" of the But nothing at all justifies the Western claim that the discredited Stalinist bureaucracy resting on Russian revolution was essentially a struggle for the "democratic" bayonets; and on the other, the "second power," the state return of "peoples capitalism." The Western version of the power of the Hungarian working class exercised through "counter-revolution" thesis, like the Stalinist one, is false its elected democratic bodies, the Workers Councils. The because it ignores the key factor in the revolution-the Hungarian Workers Councils of 1956 were the legitimate working class. heirs of the Workers Councils (Soviets) of 1919. Aptheker thus is closer to the truth than he suspects when he claims The Hungarian working class, even though it may have that the heirs of Horthy played a decisive role in the been confused about many things, did not fight for Hungarian revolution! "Western-style" democracy-it fought for socialist democ­ racy. The workers of Gyor showed this when they The real spirit of the Hungarian workers revolution was suppressed the meeting in favor of [the right-wing emigre] eloquently expressed by Sandor Racz, a young worker 23 years old, who was elected chairman of the BUdapest Ferenc Nagy. The workers council of the II th District of Central Workers Council. On December 8 Racz gave an Budapest showed this when it demanded "free elections in interview to the correspondent of an Italian newspaper, to which only those parties may participate that recognize and be published only if he was arrested. He declared: have always recognized the Socialist order, based on the "\ have a tranquil conscience because \ have been the principle that means of production belong to society." unfortunate spokesman for the will of the workers and for [quoted in Free Europe Committee, Revolt in Hungary­ all those who have fought for the ideal of a free, A Documentary Chronology of Events (1956)] independent, and neutral Hungary and for a socialist But the decisive refutation of the idea that Hungary was state .... All that has been refused to us. The government knows that the country is against it, and since it knows' returning to "Western-style democracy" is the simple fact today that the single organized force which truly made the that the workers all over Hungary, in the heat of the Revolution is the working class, it wishes to destroy the revolution, created their own Workers Councils as organs workers united front." of the political rule of the working class. What has this to -[/I Giorno, 14 December \956] do with capitalist "democracy"? To smash the threat of As he had anticipated, Racz was arrested the moment he capitalist restoration, the Hungarian workers would went to meet representatives of the Kadar government, merely have had to exert the power that already lay in their who had promised to negotiate with the workers .... hands, to give all power to the workers councils and not, as One of the most unfortunate aspects of Aptheker's book in so many past revolutions, give up their power to a is that its preoccupation with a fictitious "White Terror" capitalist parliament..

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