Issue No. 77, September, 1980

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Issue No. 77, September, 1980 ~ Australasian 4. 30 CENTS Number 77 September 1980 Fight clerical reaction! For proletarian political revolution! II I Everyone predicted it was coming. A restive, combative working class, peasant strikes, massive foreign debt, chronic and widespread food shortages, a powerful and increasingly assertive Catholic j church, the burgeoning of social­ democratic and clerical-nationalist oppositional groupings. All the elements J.•........ i,{!""~'" .... ':1';' were there. Poland in the late '70s was I .. ' locked in a deepening crisis heading ) < toward explosion, an explosion which ., f il. could bring either proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist bureauc­ racy or capitalist counterrevolution led by Pope Wojtyla's church. And when it came it gripped world attention for two solid weeks. The Baltic ':JII'1 • coast general strike was the most power­ ful mobilization of the power of the working class since France May 1968. But was it a mobilization for working-class power? That is the decisive 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 Polish workers' power to struggle against the Stalinist Strikers In Gdansk (left); praying beneath pope's portrait at Lenin Shipyard (right). A massive demonstration of the bureaucracy, revolutionaries can support the strike and its outcome. But only a power of the working class - but a mobilisation for working-class power? blind man could fail to see the gross influence of the Catholic church and also Kremlin has a sense of humor. If Gierek willingness to negotiate with unofficial decade ago. The regime quickly agreed to pro-Western sentiments among the in Warsaw is pushed to the wall, shop-floor spokesmen, not just rep­ this. striking workers. If the settlement Brezhnev in Moscow stands behind him. resentatives of the state-run trade Within a week 150,000 had downed strengthens the working class organiz­ The settlement was conditioned, on both unions. In this sense the Gierek regime tools, 200 factories were shut and the ationally, it also strengthens the forces of sides, by the presence of forty Soviet encouraged small wage strikes as a lesser Baltic ports - Gdynia, Sopot, Szczecin, reaction. Poland stands today on a razor's divisions in East Germany. The Kremlin evil. Elblag as well as Gdansk - were edge. has already made disapproving noises July saw a flurry of slowdowns and paralyzed. And it seemed as if every time The compromise creates an impossible about that settlement, and Soviet military strikes - tractor builders near Warsaw, the Interfactory Strike Committee (MKS) situation economically and politically; intervention cannot be ruled out. The end railwaymen in Lublin, steel workers near met, it raised five more, and more it cannot last. In a country facing inter­ of the strike is only the beginning of the Krakow - which were quickly settled political, demands - "free" trade national bankruptcy, heavily subsidized crisis of Stalinist Poland. with significant wage rises. Predictably, unions, end all censorship, free all by the Soviet Union, the strikers are The present crisis was triggered once the strikes had a cascade effect. Other political prisoners (there were only six). demanding. the biggest free lunch the again by increases in the price of meat. workers went out demanding more. In What had begun as a series of quickly world has ever seen. The Poles demand On July 1 the Gierek regime took a early August there were stubborn strikes ended wage struggles had become a that they live like West Germans. There's gamble and it lost. To continue the price by Warsaw garbagemen and transit political general strike. a joke in Poland: we pretend to work and freeze was economically intolerable, workers; one ofthe leaders was arrested. the government pretends to pay us. In especially to Poland's Western bankers But when on 14 August 17,000 workers Workers democracy or clerlcal­ West Germany one works. (the food subsidy absorbed fully 8 percent seized the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, the nationalist reaction? Politically the Stalinist bureaucracy of total national income!). To raise the Stalinist regime was faced with a fun­ What is the political character of the cannot live with this kind of independent price of food without a wage increase was damentally different order of challenge. strike and the consciousness of the working-class organization, a form of cold to invite an immediate, nationwide mass It was the Baltic shipbuilders who in 1970 workers? Certainly the workers are dual power. The bureaucracy is not a strike/protest like in December 1970 and toppled Gomulka and forced his suc­ reacting against bureaucratic mis­ ruling class, whose social power is June 1976. The regime figured it could cessor Gierek to accept an independent management, privilege and abuse. The derived from ownership of the means of minimize the financial cost and social workers committee for a time. One of the Polish workers' grievances are real and production, but a caste based on the disruption by granting wage rises only to strikers' first demands was to build a they are just. The firing of an old militant, monopolization of governmental power. those groups of workers who made some monument to the workers killed when Anna Walentynowicz, a few months But it's a good thing someone in the trouble. The government indicated its Gomulka called in tanks to restore order a Continued on page 2 . .. ~ The Korean war and .CPA."·""conference: the utilit'd ." PessiOlisOIinlhe '80s ... 6 Gdansk shipyard started every day by particular prelate was responsible for the said, •'we were promised that many times Poland ••• "rush[ing] into the courtyard and at a trot greater oppositional stance of the church: before". began tossing pictures of the Virgin "In recent years, the church has taken a Now the workers' attitude is very continued from page 1 Mary, Queen of Poland, into the air" sharper anti-government tum under different than, say, ten years ago. The (New York Times, 31 August). And at the Krakow's Cardinal Wojtyla, who captured 1970-71 strikes were clearly economic. before her retirement, which reportedly signing of the strike settlement, Walesa the allegiance of university students by None of the eleven demands of the ostentatiously wore a crucifix and used a opening the city's churches to their anti­ Warski Shipyard strike committee in sparked the Lenin Shipyard takeover, government discussion groups." should infuriate every honest worker. The foot-long red and white (the Polish Just a few months earlier this cardinal Szczecin (the leading workers' organiz­ existence of special shops exclusive to national colors) ballpoint pen, a souvenir from Krakow had become the "infal­ ation at the time) went beyond prices, party members and cops, which the of Pope Wojtyla's visit to Poland last lible" head of the Roman Catholic wage compensation and no reprisals. strikers demanded be abolished, is an year. (To top it off, Walesa's father, who church, the first non-Italian successor to Today leading elements of the Gdansk­ abomination, a rejection ofthe most basic has emigrated to the US, posed with the throne of St Peter in four centuries. based Interfactory Strike Committee are principles of socialism. Ronald Reagan as the Republican reac­ Karol Wojtyla is a dangerous reactionary associated with the Catholic church But if we know what the Baltic workers tionary officially kicked off his presiden­ working hand in glove with US imperi­ opposition and the social-democratic are against in an immediate sense, what tial campaign.) alism (especially his fellow countryman Committee for Social Self-Defense are their positive allegiances and general Even more ominous was the demand Zbigniew Brzezinski) to roll back (KOR). With the authority of the bu­ political outlook? Early in the strike there for "access by all religious groups [read "atheistic Communism", beginning in reaucracy greatly weakened, the unions were reports of singing the Inter­ Roman Catholic church] to the mass his homeland. As we wrote when this will strongly tend to break the paper nationale, which indicates some element media" , a prerogative for which the Polish anti-Communist was made pope: prohibition on political oppositional of socialist consciousness. Some of the Polish episcopate has long campaigned. " . .. he now stands at the head of many activity. strike committee members had been This is an anti-democratic demand which millions of practicing Catholics in East The particular slogan of "free trade shop-floor leaders in the official trade­ would legitimize the church in its present Europe, a tremendous force for counter­ unions", pushed for years by the CIA­ union apparatus who were victimized for role as the recognized opposition to the revolution" ("The President's Pope?", backed Radio Free Europe and the trying to defend the workers' interests. Stalinist regime. Significantly, the strike WVno 217,20 October 1978). Catholic church, has acquired a definite They undoubtedly were and possibly still committee did not even demand the right The power and the danger of the Polish anti-communist and pro-Western con­ are members of tpe ruling Polish United to such media access for itself or for the Catholic church are clearly revealed in notation. Remember the 1921 Kronstadt Workers Party (PUWP, the official name "free trade unions" it was fighting to set the present crisis. The day after the Lenin mutiny's call for "free soviets" - free of the Communist party). These advanced up. In effect the Baltic shipbuilders were Shipyard seizure Cardinal Stefan from Communists, that is I An integral workers surely desire a real workers asking for a state church in a deformed Wyszynski led 150,000 "pilgrims" in a part of the Trotskyist program for pro­ Poland and world socialism.
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