Anarchist Ioflniehfls
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anarchist ioflniehfls 12 Se!’ *6’"be"_1_?§_¥,_lf0l. 4.2.» No.1 8 FREEDOM has not had a good hard look The Ukraine used to be referred to as Soviet leaders obviously, for all their at Poland for exactly one year. Our last the ‘breadbasket of Europe’. Now oddly Marxist ideology, have contempt for the front page headline on Poland (13th Sept enough, year after year, there is crop workers, just like capitalists have. 80), was: ‘The Betrayal Begins’. failure after crop failure, while across the But what about these workers in Well, surprise, surprise, the betrayal in Atlantic, in spite of the fearful results of Poland? September 1980, that seemed to begin, the dustbowls of the 30’s, due to the never really got off the ground. For the erosion caused by overcropping, abun- Somehow, without the party hier- fact is that the real betrayal began in dance follows abundance year after year. archy realising it, subversive ideas have October 1917 when the bourgeois So Russia buys food from America, year been spreading, steadily but firmly. Ten counter-revolution began with the Bol- after year. years of stability, apparent servility, can shevik seizure of power. Ever since then, There is of course a price to pay for breed a smugness in a ruling class de- the ability of the men in the Kremlin to that. It is Western investment in the tached from the grass roots. (Compare react to a threat other than by an ex- Soviet economy -— that other kind of our own ruling class, here, and the anger hibition of naked power has seemed im- erosion: the inroads of foreign investment among the young!) And it is now very Dossible. that undermines the ability of a nation to clear that the beginning of the present The credibility of exhibitions of naked be ‘master in its own house’. Solidarity movement was way back in power can wear as thin as their ideo- Stalin’s megalomania enabled him to re- 1970, when protesting workers were shot logical clothing, even allowing for the sist this. Better his people starved, he down in Gdansk. The heady brew has thickness of their skins. Discounting thought, than that they should find them- been fermenting ever since. Afghanistan, which is really papering selves in hock to the capitalists. And, by The brew was not so heady, however, their walls to fool the enemy, whilst St Nicholas, they starved. that it led them into impulsive adventur- plugging holes in the buffer-states around The present generation of Soviet leaders ism. We cannot but admire the con- their frontiers, the tired old men in the is not so tough. Deserted now by the summate skill with which the Polish Kremlin can no longer muster the ideo- Communist parties in the Western capital- workers have waged their battle against logical strength even to pretend. ist countries, where the ‘proletariat’ is their state. Suspicious as we must admit A state is as strong as its economy, and hooked on consumerism but ideals are a we were of the Catholic Lech Walensa the Soviet economy can no longer even luxury few want to afford, their support and his leading role, we must admit now pretend to hold the one trump card that has dwindled to their satellite govern- that he has guided the struggle in the matters: the supply of food to its people. ments and the armed forces they can workshops and the shipyards with a deft The root of the Bolsheviks’ failure lies count on. Unknown quantities all. touch, laced with toughness that has al- in one factor above all others: the aliena- Because Marxism is an intellectual ways put the workers one step ahead of tion of the peasants. And that was not religion, the fact that the bulk of those their bosses. just in Stalin’s mad attempt at forced who have found the courage to be ‘dissi- Our comrades who advocate violence in collectivisation in the thirties, followed dents’ in the Soviet Union are ‘intellec- all circumstances could do well to con- by his even more mad annihilation of six tuals’ must loom large in the Kremlin’s sider the non-violent nature of the Polish million kulaks for their oppositon to his hagiography. Don’t forget that they think workers’ struggle. Never, at any time, has centralist policies — it lies deep in the in terms of leaders, so that a few Shol- the state been given the slightest excuse heart of the Marxist dogma which lays szenitzins or Zhacharovs might seem the to get tough itself. Indeed, on the one the entire responsibility for the historic tips of bigger icebergs than they really occasion when police moved in and beat revolutionary role upon the industrial are. Workers trying to start independent up some workers occupying a factory, proletariat — scorning the peasantry for trade unions in the USSR can be dis- Solidarity’s leadership was able to mount their backwardness. counted easier, perhaps, because the moral indignation (plus the threat of a FREEDOM 2 general strike!) to denounce it -— and industrial basis — all workers in a factory Polish debts?’ And the answer would be stop it. ‘ belonging to the same union, rather than because Russia itself has trading relations At every stage Solidarity’s actions being split into separate ‘trades’, as they with the West, which would obviously have been strong, determined, direct, are in Britain. Hence the special signifi- be shall we say ‘prejudiced’ if this hap- industrial action, and its success has cance in the word ‘Solidarity’, as distinct pened. Like no wheat this year‘? stemmed from the apparently 100 per from the ‘demarcations’ which are so Not only Marx, but Stalin, too, must be cent support of the Polish working class. important in the division of labour in this spinning in their graves. Never could Even Communist workers have joined the country. either the highly phoney social scientist struggle against their own party hierarchy. None of this, however, could have pre- or the highly megalomaniac psychopath Hardly a week has passed in the last year vented the ruthless crushing of this dissi- have foreseen that capitalism itself would when there has not been a strike of one dent movement if the Soviets had felt have provided the contradictions in the sort or another. able to do so. communist system that would have ren- But the gains have not been economic, What held them back‘? dered it powerless against the strength of for all reports seem to say that the state Well, first of all, the enormous national the working class! of the economy and the living standards debt that Poland has got herself into - FOOTNOTE: of the workers and the availability of mostly with Western banks. If Russia had As we go to press, we note that West food, for example, is worse than it was a moved into Poland in 1980 to take over Germany, Poland’s largest creditor, is year ago. against Solidarity, she would also have urging Poland to rejoin the International What has been gained is a new dimen- had to take over debts amounting to Monetary Fund (a ‘specialised United sion of responsibility in social relation- £13,000 million, spread over 480 banks Nations Agency’), to help solve its ships. Solidarity is a network of industrial in the capitalist West. serious debt problems. unions independent of the state, the Interest charges alone on these debts Poland left the IMF when it became a party, and their servile trade union struc- amount to £1,500 million a year. member of the Comecon—S0viet block ture. Indeed, as far as we can understand, You may ask ‘Why couldn’t Russia just economic group. Retum to the IMF the union structure laid down by Solidar- move in and take control of Poland with- would encourage Western banks to ex- ity is not on a trade basis, but upon an out accepting responsibility for these tend new loans...! ITALIAN ANARCHIST REFUSED ENTR Y AN Italian comrade, contributor to In addition the comrade was detained Umanita Nova has been refused entry to by officials for 25 hours and endured the UK as a visitor by immigration offl- lengthy interrogations in which he was cials at Southampton because of (and charged with having been involved in THE Chinese government is considering here we quote the Refusal of Leave to Northern Ireland, Liverpool and London measures to make birth control legally Enter Document) ‘information available disturbances and police took his photo- enforceable. The present system relies to me about your recent political activi- graph and fingerprints. on fines and ‘material incentives’. This ties’ It goes on ‘I am sure that your ex- He writes that despite all this trouble, is now said to be inadequate. Says a clusion is conducive to the public good’! ‘Nobody and nothing will prevent me newspaper article ‘compulsion is not Needless to say this ‘information’ is never from coming again to the UK even if the the same as coercion’. revealed. police have said to me: never!’ nowr CONTRACEPTION is also a contentious T994) on issue in Zimbabwe. The government is to THE sass take over the Family Planning Associa- FCLLOU tion, after trouble about the use of the WE LEADER birth control drug, Dep-provera. This l drug is under investigation in Europe and PEN\S ......../ the USA. There is widespread disquiet B-IVY A& BEFORE .- C“5mAT'°"‘ I BEFORE Plflsvar / about side effects. It formed the basis for co MPLD< EA”, E REFSONAEIZ family planning in rural areas in Zimbab- TOILET I E"PEm"r‘°“S we.