Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
00
Of • •
Solidarnosc:
. Polish
Company Union for
CIA and Bankers
"
>.; 3A 8OEHHY.a
.'1;, 060POHY
! sf~tT'.
)" S'?"" CO&ETCKOrO . :.'
6AOKAnP9TH8 . .' •
.....~""- MMnEPMAA"3"AJ •••, ,
Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377, GPO, New York, N.Y. 10116
2
Table
of Contents Introduction
As Lech Walesa struts before the Iy 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 perc,ent 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 raisep 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 nearly a half-century ago is revolutionary unity of the Polish and
Counterrevolutionl ........... 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
Irving Brown: Stalinism has squandered the socialist against the USSR, military/industrial
and internationalist historic legacy of powerhouse of the deformed workers
Cold War Criminal .......... 13 "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 burermcracy, 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 no socialist opposition worthy of the the capitalist West to "democratize"
Cold War Assignment
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-constitutl! the
Political Revolution Certainly it is notour job to apologize programmatic core of the international
for the Stalinist rulers who have vanguard party necessary to the revolu-
in Eastern Europe ...........35 tionary defense of the working masses of
disorganized the Polish economy, capit-
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 organl~ed 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 Solldarnott office. tionally behind the defense of historical- World Stalinism'," included in the 1959
3
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~n first-strike against the USSR.
Wall Street Journal in painting us as was American imperialism's main man Simply put, the Wall Street Journars
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"W eek 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
6.
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 SolidarnoAc 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 I~bor lieutenant of leader Albert Shanker, a notorious "I 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-Soyiet war newspaper, New America, denounced 'will be a total confrontation.,.,
drive, has announced he will be there to George McGovern as little short of a "We see more clearly that without
wave the "free world" banner in Poland. "Commie dupe" and even condemned political solutions nothing can be
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 mous social pressure on them do to so.
"Maybe we'll dissolve it" (New York response from the anti-Moscow center, Most of these workers probably retain
Times, 13 Septerpber). 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 c1erical-
stood that the organization was moving his long-awaited encyclical on "the nationalism of Wa'lesa & Co. But todey
to take over the basic economic and social question." This reaffirmed the such workers are clearly a minority and
political aSRects of Polish life. Now, church's traditional defensl' ofcapitalist 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 of the Polish proletariat.
democrat, Jacek Kuron, has called fora 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 recognize 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, PUWf), 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 the 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
ttfltion 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 AgreeIpent 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
banner of eagle and cross in a crusade development of a left opposition from Solidarity'S economic program would
agaillst "Russian-imposed Com!Du- 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 winterl 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 re:volu- '''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 pla'nning Western imperialism. While the demand
For example, the Solidarity newspaper (including the collectivization of agri- for trade 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 could Solidarity Calls for "Bourgeols- up the International Confederation of
declare that the, Polish crisis signals the Democratic" Counterrevolution Free Trade Unions in closest colla bora,..
beginning of the end of Communism, tion with the Central Intelligence
the desperate dream of world imperial- For a year the Solidarity leadership
stopped short of openly calling for the Agency. It is therefore quite fitting that
ism ever since October 1917: accompanying Lane Kirkland to the
", ,. I think the things we're seeing not overthrow of the official "Communist"
only in Poland but the reports that are system (a bureaucratically ruled work- Solidarity congress will be none other
beginning to come out of Russia itself ers state) and its replacement by than Irving Brown, "Mr. AFL-CIA,"
... 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. CIO in the United Stat-es or the DGB in anti-Communist meaning of the slogan,
These were no mere philosophical West. Germany. But as the economy "free trade unions," as they have been
musings. U.S. imperialism is deeply descended into chaos, everyone recog- dealing with the AFL-CIO tops for
involved in fomenting anti-Communist nized that simple trade unionism was months.
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 5300,000 and their first empty, people wait 110ursto 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. Reaganl 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 bod,ies" (New York
imperialist counterrevolution, the con..; planning, the election of enterprise Times. 10 September). In the wodd 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. In 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 unlversitvf
students wear "EA •
("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 [/937-38]). 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? I n 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 AFT-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 theconllict between
Wiliesa 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- nationalized 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, Przetakiewicz 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" ("'ew 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
Przetakiewicz announced Solida'rity
was opening its first foreign office in the
January/February
.
There's a. saying: tell me who your
street has no sympathy for Solidarity
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 (UFT). Well, these are Solidarity's American resentment.
The UfT is hardly a typical American friends.
The fundamental reason is that the
business union. It is the main organiza- Soviet working masses want to defend
tional base for the Social Democrats, Soviet Russia and the
Counterrevolutionary Danger the collectivized social system born in
U.S.A., otherwise known as "State the October Revolution, despite its
Department socialists." Shanker's So- in Poland
subsequent Stalinist degeneration,
cialist Party (which in 1972 changed its Faced with the counterrevolutionary
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
bitler end, even after Nixon/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
mainstream liberals as crazed, anti- When will not lightly relinquish the social
conquests of October. Moreover, Soviet
communist warmongers. In the film
Sleeper by left-liberal humorist Woody
Karl Marx working people keenly remember the 20
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
the future and learns that his civilization
unite., he never from the horror of the Nazi occupation.
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
really don't know, but we think a man do it aga~nst imperialism, with the anti-Communist
fanatics Reagan/Haig on the trigger
by the name of Albert Shanker acquired
the atomic bomb.
communism. finger, is aimed at them.
I n the past decade the Social Demo- They fear the transformation o(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 fulish Workers" on
national AFL-CIO. Kirkland/Shanker The Kremlin bureaucrats cynically
Ben Wattenberg At LaIge
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
the way for Reagan's massive arms unrest and democratic aspirations in
buildup and anti-Soviet war drive. East Europe, as in Czechoslovakia in
These two crimina:ts are actively work- 1968. But the Poland of Wojtyla and
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 Solidarnoic. 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 style counterrevolutionary rebellion on
to the Russians in the SALT negotia-
against Solidarity. Mass meetings in the a massive scale.
tions. The first point in a recent
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) Rebuilding American 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 betray millions of people who fell in task to advise the Kremlin Stalinists on
battles against imperialism. to betray how to deal with the counterrevolution-
our Communist future."
I' SUBSCRIBE -New York Times. ary situation in Poland for which they
12 September bear ultimate responsibility. They are
YOUNG SPARTACUS not our saviours. We have no confi-
These words and these meetings are dence the Russian Stalinists can or will
monthly paper of the not simply bureaucratic displays from
Spartacus Youth League defend the social gains of the October
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: Spartac,us Youlh whip up Great Russian anti-Polish Stalinists are perfectly capable of selling
Publishing Co., Box 3118. Church SI. Sla ..
New York. N,Y. 10008
chauvmism. Furthermore, Soviet work- P~land to the German bankers if they
ers and collective farmers resent the fact thInk they can preserve their own
12
domestic power base. Remember the doubt. The task of communists must be Fake-Trotskyists and fatuous oppor-
Stalin-Hitler pact. Ever since the Red to defend at all costs the program and tunists like Jack Barnes and Ernest
Army drove out Hitler's forces at the gains of the dictatorship of the proletari- Mandel (who hailed; Khomeini's "Islam-
end of World War II, the Western at. Today Trotskyists find themselves in ic Revolution" as progressive even as the
imperialist bourgeoisies have dreamed such a position over Poland, and it is mullahs were slaughtering their follow-
of "rolling back" the Soviets to the necessary to swim against a powerful ers) now claim a proletarian political
borders of the USSR (and beyond). current of counterrevolution. revolution is going on in Poland and
However, given the impl~cable, insane But Soviet military intervention Solidarity is its instrument! On the
hostility of the Reagan adminstration against Solidarity will have an entirely contrary, Solidarity is the translucent
and the relative weight of American as different character from its invervention Trojan Horse for Reaganl,Haig's fanati-
against German imperialism, giving up against the Islamic reactionaries in cal anti-Soviet war drive and what is
Poland is not a very viable option for the Afghanistan, which opened the possibil- going on in Poland is a pro-imperialist
Soviet bureaucracy today. This is ity of liberating the Afghan peoples counterrevolutionary polarization. It is
especially the case as' Poland lies across from the wretched conditions of feudal no accident that Solidarity has flour-
the main supply and communications and pre-feudal backwardness. There we ished under the gun of mounting anti-
routes between the Soviet Union and said, "Hail Red Army!" In Poland it is Soviet imperialist militarism of first
East Germany, the main state confront- the Stalinists themselves, through de- Carter/Brzezinski and now Reaganl
ing Western imperialism. cades of capitUlation to capitalist forces, Haig, with their virulently anti-
who have produced the counterrevolu- communist Polish pope in the Vatican:
Every class-conscious worker in the I t is also no accident that in this period
world, especially in the Soviet Union, tionary crisis.
when defense of the Soviet Union is
Poland and the other East European If a Trotskyist leadership had to
urgent, fake-Trotskyists led by Barnes/
countries, must understand that Soli- intervene against counterrevolution in
Mandel abandon all pretense ofdefense
'darity is pursuing a straight-line policy Poland today the conflict might be no
of the Soviet Union and embrace
threatening the gains of the October less violent. But it would seek. to
Solidarity.
Revolution, the greatest victory for the' mobilize those sections of the Polish
working class in history. Solidarity'S working class which stand on the The choices facing revolutionaries
counterrevolutionary course must be historic social gains of liberation of over Poland in the absence of a mass
stopped! If the Kremlin Stalinists. in Poland from Nazi enslavement and Trotskyist vanguard are not attractive
their necessarily brutal. stupid way. capitalist exploitation, who hate the even if they are clear. Abstentionism is
intervene militarily to stop it. we will bureaucracy for undermining those not a choice; it is backhanded support to
support this. And we take responsibility gains, and who would fight tpgether counterrevolution. No less a danger is
in advance for this; whatever the idiocies with the Soviet Army to defend the abandoning the perspective of struggle
and atrocities they will commit, we do material foundations of a socialist for the conscious factor in history, for
not flinch from defending the crushing future. The crimes of Stalinism, not the the international proletarian vanguard,
of Solidarity's counterrevolution. least the present counterrevolutionary which leads either to a social-
situation in Poland, mandate proletari- democratic accommodation with' the
What do revolutionaries do when the an political revolution in the Soviet bourgeoisie or accommodation with the
Marxist program stands counterposed bloc, and these workers could well be its Stalinist bureaucracy (a la Marcy who
to the overwhelming bulk of the. conscious vanguard in Poland, tem- defended Stalinist intervention against a
working class, a situation we of course pered in part through a revolutionary nascent workers political revolution in
urgently seek to avoid? There can be no mobilization to crush the reactionary Hungary). Of course the present Polish
forces of Solidarity. situation could only have come to
The European bourgeoisies, no h!ss fruition in a political vacuum reflecting
Workers Vanguant than Reagan and Haig, are trying to
convince the working masses to focus
the destruction of the important tradi-
tion of international communism in
Bound Volumes their fears on a supposed menace of "red Poland through savage persecution,
imperialism." But this is starkly con- both capitalist and Stalinist. That
Vol. 1 WV Nos. 1-34
Nov. 1970-Dec. 1973 trary to the facts. In Afghanistan the tradition will only be reforged in a
Vol. 2 WV Nos. 35-58 CIA is arming feudalist tribesmen in an reborn Fourth International by revolu-
Jan.-Dec. 1974
attempt to strike a blow at the southern tionaries who defended the gains of
Vol. 3 WV Nos. 59-89 border of the USSR, while Soviet October when the danger was near, the
Jan.-Dec. 1975 situation complex and the need for
Vol. 4 WV Nos. 90-114
troops act as social liberators. Vietnam
is under constant menace of renewed programmatic clarity and backbone
2 Jan.-18 June 1976
attack from China, now overtly militari- urgent.
Vol. 5 WV Nos. 115-138
25 June-24 Dec. 1976 ly allied with U.S. imperialism. And the We warn the Polish workers and the
Vol. 6 WV Nos. 139-162 ,; racist apartheid South African regime is world proletariat that under the banner
7 Jan.-17 June 1977
increasingly becoming a central part of of nation, church and "the free world,"
Vol. 7 WV Nos. 163-186
24 June-23 Dec. 1977 the "free world," acting as an American the Solidarity leadership is organizing a
Vol. 12 WV Nos. 271-295 surrogate in attacking Angola with bloody capitalist counterrevolution.
2 Jan.-18 Dec. 1981 Israeli supplied weapons. Or that other The creation of a "democratic" Poland
Vols. 8-11 forthcoming showplace of the "free world," EI subservient to Reagan/Haig on the
Salvador, where American war materiel Western border of the USSR would
Make payable/mail 10: and Green Berets are supplying and bring much closer the dreadful prospect
$20.00 Spartacisl Publishing Co.
Box 1377 GPO maintaining a kill-crazed junta busy of anti-Soviet nuclear holocaust. Solid-
per volume New York. New York 10116 exterminating large sections of its own arity's counterrevolution must be
population. stopped before iUs too late!.
13
Irving Brown:
Cold War· Criminal
"Tell me what company you keep. Brown's notorious activities are newspaper LR Monde detailing Brown's
and /'/1 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 Meany.ite 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
annouilced 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 SoIidarnosc in Gdansk, ha~chetman-Ieader of the U.S. Commu- against communism.... In his spe~ch
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 CGTs 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 ofthe AFL's "Free the ranks of free trade-unionism 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
Already in the McCarthy years this apostle of "free trade-unionism":
Lane Kirkland's connections with the
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" (AIFLD), the AFL in Europe," and published in of the so-called Mediterranean Com-
which sets up yellow "unions" and helps Labor Action of 20 October 1952. mittee, which is virtually a Brown
overthrow leftist governments in Latin Draper quoted articles in the French crea~ure. He, had found his ma~n, one
Spartacist Canada
LeBolchevi k Newspaper of the Trotskyist League of Canada
Publication de 1a 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), $]0/11 issues-Airmail
Postfach 1 6747 Spartacist Publications,
6000 Frankfurt/Main 1, West Germany GPO Box 3473,
Pschk. Ffm 119 88-601 Sydney, NSW, 2001,
Verlag Avantgarde • Australia
15
reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 287, 14 August 1981
"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 tra~e " ... they [the self-management bodies] fi"ancing would immediately bankrupt
unionism is impossible in Poland today. should have the right to exercise control hundreds of enterprises throwing hun-
over the assets of the 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, they should be able to cover their program are realistic enough to know
darity must know that demanding and costs out 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 only makes the economic condi- Solidarity leadership is seriously com- "The union recognizes that the enter-
tion worse. The Solidarnosc leadership mited to the Yugoslav model or is prises will have ihe right to ma.ke
simply setting on paper the convention- changes in their employment levels as
is under pressure from their most they nee~ to. But the government
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 realized, 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
Trotskyist United Secretariat, keep incred ible mismanagement and ever layoff workers at wiH 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 Spiegel (15 June)
where would the investment funds come
from to restructure the Polish economy,
the Solidarity chief replied: " ... per.haps
from the West in the form of joint
companies. I have seen for myself on 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
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-or.iented "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 counterrevoluti'on- national economy itself."
every vacancy in the socialized sector in ary danger. . . - What Next? Vital Questions/or
Slovenia there were only 1.5 job seekers; The advocates of "market socialism" the German Proletariat
in Kosovo there were 35 job seekers for like Brus and Sik argue that traditional Obviously a workers government
every vacancy! Inequalities of this Soviet-type planning wastes enormous should produce the types of consum~r
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-
intrigues. in warehouses, while other commodities tion between enterprises. The central
While the Soviet Union is far from are chronically in,short supply. Art this economic administration in close con-
free of national conflicts and Great is true and comes as no news whatso~ver sultation with consumer cooperatives
Russian chauvinism, centralized plan- to Trotskyists. should continually a~just 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. C1eafly it makes no sense-
wretchedly backward peoples of Central plan, the Left Opposition denounced except to some' deluded Gosplan
Asia and those of European Russia. The bureaucratic arbitrariness in economic apparat~hik-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 [~hich] 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 Soviet Economic Sys- goods."
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 tile
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
its policies and economy; an actual workers states: not backward to .the
reaucracy, for example, by encouraging
migration from the over-populated control over the bureaucracy; and the •., anarchy of the market with its inflation
growth in the feeling of responsibility of and unemployment, its national chau7
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 fayor~
bly on production itself:. the frictio.n to. socialism through an international
The Trotskyist Answer to would be reduced. the costly economic planned economy based· on soviet
Bureaucratic Centralism zigzags would likewise be reduced; to a derpQcracy .•
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 "R ussian
Communism." In the Yugoslav and
Hungarian deformed workers states the
SUBSCRIBE· NOW!
tendency of enterprise autonomy to Name ________~__~__~------~------------~-------
regenerate capitalistic economic rela- Address ______ ____ _____________________
~~~~~ ~
Whose Poland?
Even if the Kremlin doesn't intervene, Above all. "Solidarity" has come to
the U.S. bas already ,made Poland a embrace the whole of the Polish
For Proletarian focal point of the Cold War with its
endless talk of "invasion by osmosis,"
working class, with all of its tensions
and contradictions. One million Polish
Political Revolution! "indefinite extension of Warsaw Pact
war games," etc. The U.S. "seem[s] to be
party members have joined the new
unions, and the party is in deep
playing some kind of game with a whole trouble-hardliners isolated. the leader-
Pdland is coming unstuck. The nation," exclaimed one Pole angered by ship weakened, the ranks in uproar.
"Solidarity" union movement (Solidar- Washington's constant alarms (New And the church has pulled back from
nose) 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 stable pole for counterrevolution
a shambles. And United States imperial- full-scale Russian intervention, and in the face of Russian military
ism. is wildly seeking to provoke a they're doing their best to spark it. They intervention.
Russian intervention. Reagan and Haig want to see Polish. workers under the
have seized upon Poland as a pawn for This political fluidity. by no means
eagle and the cross throwing Molotov signifies a fundamental change in the
their superheated Cold War drive cocktails at Soviet tanks. They want to
against the Soviet Union. And their relationship of forces. which is still
provoke a bloodbath in Poland so that distinctly unfavorabl~ from a revolu-
ultimate aim is to overthrow the they can use the battle cry of "Rus-
remaining conquests of the October tionary standpoint. But if a genuine
sian aggression" to push forward on
Revolution, the main bastion of prole- Leninist-Trotskyist opposition were
all fttmts in their drive toward World precipitated. it could 4uickly grow and
tarian state power. Revolutionaries and War III.
all class-conscious workers must oppose have a tremendous polarizing impact.
this imperialist provocation and uncon- Imperialist politicians and the West- Should the Kremlin, goaded by imperi-
ern press all speakpf a Soviet "invasion alist provocation. move to restore bu-
dilionally defend the Soviet bloc states
against counterrevolutionary attack. of Poland." In fact the Soviet Army reaucratic order in Poland. however. it
Washington hectors its West drove the Naz.i German forces out of would in the best case freelethat p.olitical
European "allies" to stiffen their anti- Poland and liberated the country in differentiation necessary for the only
Soviet resolve with nuclear missiles 1944-45. They have been there since, progressive solution to the Polish crisis:
and today two Russian divisions guard workers political revolution. Thus
.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 defeat for the cause of socialism.
USSR. American secretary of war
leave the Warsaw Pact-tantamount to But far worse would be violent
Weinberger threatens terrible reprisals
if the Soviet Union intervenes. He even calling'for unilateral disarmament of the resistance by the Poles. which could
flashes the U.S: menacing "China Soviet bloc. It is not an invasion that is produce a hloodbath. This would he a
card," threatening to arm Peking, posed. but a Russian military interv.en- historic catastrophe. A "cold" suppres-
presumably with atomic weapons capa- tion into the civil life and class struggle 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 import~nt developments 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 Baltic Polish people walk by them hissing,
Ever since World War II the Ameri- ports last August brought Polish work- what has really changed? But if there is a
can bourgeoisie has tried to talk itself ers before a historic choice: with the violent response, the resulting repres-
into the idea that they can nuclear bomb bankruptcy of Stalinist rule dramatical- sion would crush the Polish working
the Soviet Union and live! This goal is ly demonstrated. it would be 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 SolidarnoSi' 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 lanaowning Haig are pushing for such a bloodbath.
believe that Soviet intervention in peasantry. the counterrevolutionary Proletarian revolutionarieJ must there-
Poland will remove all obstacles in their danger remains great. But a process of fore emphatically oppose all viole'nt
preparations for such a war. political differentiation has begun. resistance, whether maH action or
19
solution'and are hostile to the Vatican going on in our country as the work of gesture on his part would be unthink-
and Western capitalism. antisocialist forces but as a proper ablc today. He has moved towards
restoration of Marxist-Leninist princi- social dembcracy. the Church and a
Solidarnosc in Turmoil, ples" (New York Times, 16 April). nationalistic position."
Communist Party Polarized However. overall the PUWP
dissidents are nut moving toward a Above All, A Revolutionary
Today we see the beginnings of in-
rediscovery of authentic Leninisll1. They Internatio,nalist Party
ternal political differentiation within
tend rather toward liberal Stalinism.
"Solidarity" and the Communist party. Whether or not Moscow intervenes
"socialism with a human face." as the
For the first time forces are opposing militarily in the near future. the Polish
Clech Stalinist reformer Dubcek called
bureaucratic rule not in the name of the crisis is fast heading toward the explo-
it during the Prague Spring of 1969. and
eagle and the cross but calling for sion point. Thc el:onomic chaos is
they seek a favorable hearing from the
"socialist renewal" and even a return to assuming disastrous proporti0t;Js. Food
present leaders of Solie/amaH'. More-
the principles of "Marxism-l.enlnism." supplies are shrinking rapidly; hard
over. they are quoted expressing anti-
The New York Times (12 April) now currency exports hav\: fallen 25 percent
Russian prejudices 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 Torun conference re-
workers' revolution in Poland will not situation is anarchic. There must be a
marked: "Our Soviet friends have a
be a struggle against the Communist tremendous 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
absolutism 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-
f crysfallization of a Trotskyist propa- their interests. Seeking to placate the
ed to democracy." And what of the
ganda nucleus in Poland which alone masses. the Stalinist leaders are now
national hero and fascistic dictator
can offer a war out of the desperate and talking about granting more powers to
Pilsudski. a former right-wing social,
seemingly endless crises which are the parliament, the Sejm, nominally the
democrat who defended Polish capital-
wracking Poland. highest governing body.
ism against the Red Army in 1920?! As
The political landscape has changed Trotsky pointed out, the Stalinist In Poland today the classic Bolshevik
considerably since the Gdansk-based bureaucracy itself could generate a demand-all power to the soviets,
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 appeal.
Solie/arno,(i·. Meanwhile. many of the bc imbued with virulent anti-Russian A revolutionary vanguard might well
more than one million working-class nationalism. demand that the supposed powers of the
members of the Polish United Workers If the PUWP liberals are talking of a Sejm 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 Brelhnevite Stalin- the socialist direction of society. Espe-
Stalinist ideology) in conflict with the ists 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 influence 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 days Jacek 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 strike at the end of March, tion of Independent Poland (KPN) of organizing the socialist impulses among
Cardinal Wyszynski issued a joint Leslek Moczulski. Of course, the the working masses around a Marxist,
statement with Prime Minister Woj- Kremlin hacks would denounce any internationalist program.
ciech Jarulelski urging that "strikes can political opposition, including and A communist vanguard must be
be eliminated as extremely costly to the especially Trotskyists, as "counterrevo- militantly anti-nationalist. It would
enfeebled national economy" (Daily lutionary" and even "fascistic." But look back to the tradition of the pre-
World. 2g March). Stalinist slanders notwithstanding, World War 1 socialist party of Rosa
Most striking is the impact which the KOR arid the KPN areeach in their own Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. In
workers struggles have had on the ways enemies of socialism. contrast to Pilsudski's chauvinist Polish
Stalinist apparatus of the PUWP. The The KPN is openly c1erical- Socialist Party, they called their organi-
recent Central Committee meeting at nationalist and anti-socialist. This is not zation 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 was inextrica-
itself." declared the party secretary of "Marxist"-a reflection of his stance in bly bound up with' the proletarian.
the Ba Itic port of Szczecin. 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. Jogiches SDKPiL was Felix Dzerzhin.-
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 New Left role in the Bolshevik Revolution as head
dissident groupings within the party Review ("Poland-Hopes and Fears," of the Cheka, the police arm of the early
called for full and adequate informa-
i January-February, 19!5 I). She, recalls Soviet power. Dzerzhinski, whose
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 er 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
AFL-CIO Tops-
Hands Off Poland!
Throughout most of the I960s-'70s,
the Meanvite labor fakers attacked the
State Department from the right, for
being "soft on Communism." George
Mcanv and his chief lieutenant, Lane
Kirkl~nd. were hawks on Vietnam even
after Nixon and Kissinger had given it
up as a lost cause. Now with Reagan in
the Whitc House, the AFL-CIO tops
havc'a president whose foreign policy at
least is more to their liking. U ncler 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 recognizing inde- Polish
pendent unions, the AFL-CIO Execu- Solidarity.
tive Board announced it had established
a "Polish Workers Aid Fund." At the
same time, Doug Fraser of the more
liberal UA W said the Auto Workers
union, had sent $120,000 to the Polish
strikers' families. By early this year the
AFL-CIO 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 Ne .....s and Moscow. Even Carter's "detente"-
purchase office equipment and supplies (also published in Polish) has a picture minded secreta"ry of state Muskie first
to help the Polish union ..... (New York of federation president Kirkland shak- oppos~d it, though the State Depart-
TimeJ, 7 January). Nobody could ing hands with strikebreaker Carter. ment soon came around. When in
remember the AFL-CIO showing such The "aid" fund was preceded, of course, / December Pravda 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 bovcott to cut off commerce with pointing out that the AFL-CIO fre-
workers in 1970. "C-;'mmunisC' Poland. Even the Ma- quently 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 yearswhentheAFLopera-
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 News 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-CIO 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' organizations in savage capi-
Jimmy Carter tried to break the 1978 talist police states friendly to U.S.
coal strike with a Taft-Hartley injunc- In Latin America, It's Called
"AFL-CIA" imperialism-South Africa, EI Salva-
tion. Supporters of a 4O-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
Labor Development" (AlfLD), a long- for exampie. the social-democratic devastating condemnation of Stalinism
standing joint project with such blood- International Socialists who write, "We thai after 30 years of so-called "social-
sucking multinationals as United Fruit hope the Polish workers will gratefully ism," mucb of the Polish working class
and ITT, has been responsible for (and accept the western unit)ll leaders' money now looks to the Vatican for salvation
bragged about) "destabilizing" elected and courteouslv reject their advice" and to the "AFL-ClA" for financial
governments like the nationalist Gou- (C!lUnK(,J. L)c~ember 1980/ January support. .
lart . in Brazil in 1964 and "Marxist" 19X I). Such illusions in "no 'strings As Trotskyists, however, we do not
Allende in Chile in 1973. (In his book, attached" Western support' arc also write off the Polish proletariat, consign-
Insitit' the Company, ex-CIA agent spread bv the German fake-Trotskyist ing it to the camp of clerical-nationalist
Philip Agee describes the AIFLD as a (iruppe Internationalc Marxisten. reaction. The central task for a revolu-
"C.I.A.-controlled labor center fi- which has been campaigning for the tionary communist vanguard in Poland
nanced through A.f.D. [the V.S. Agen- DOB trade-union federation to show, today would b~ to split the new union
cy for International Development].") "St)lidaritv with Solidarnosc." Yet the movement politically, winning 6ver the
Significantly, the June 19XO Free DGS is I~d by the same Social Demo- ,mass of workers from the Catholic
hade Union Nel\"~ ran a front-page crats who served as a funnel for CIA church-led forces. Key elements for a
article lauding the AlfLD's "land money to Portugal in 1975 and who~e revolutipnary program in Poland are
reform" in EI, Salvador (locally known infamous OstbUro was for years a the strict separation of church and state,
as "reform by death") written by its vehicle for imperialist meddling in East the promotion of agricultural collect i-
architect, Ray Prosterman, whose Europe! vi/atiol1', defense of the Soviet-bloc
previous credits include the "Phoenix . On the other hand, it's no accident bureaucratically oegenerated/deformed
Projel't" for mass assassination of that the Solidarnosc leaders have workers states against Western imperi-.
leftists in Vietnam. And when two awakened such "disinterested" financial alism, and proletarian political revolu-
AIFI.D men were recently killed by support from the West. This is no bread- tion against the Stalinist bureaucracy.
."
right-wing gunmen in San Salvador. and-butter trade unioil, simply fighting I n the intervention in Poland the pro~
one of them, Michael Hammer, was for better wage!\. hours and working capitalist union bureaucrats of the U.S.
given a special "hero's burial" in conditions. And the wily old CIA- and West Europe are essentially acting
Arlington National Cemetery. Shortly connected operators in AfL-CIO head- as instruments of their imperialist'
after; the V.S. solicitor general (at- ljuarters k now this.' They understand masters. whether or not the money
tempting to justify the liftin, of Agee's that the group around Lech Walesa and comes directly from the CIA. Strength-
passport) revealed that the AIFLD pair many of the local activists see them- ening the connection between the
were working "under cover" (New York selves as leading a Catholie-nationalist~ clerical-nationalist Solidarnosc leader-
Times, 15 January). It's no wonder that inspired- revolt against Soviet-imposed ship and the AFL-CIO (or, for that
the AFL-CIO is known in Latin ··Communism." This is especially matter, the social-democratic West
America as the "AFL-CIA." . clear from their wholehearted support German OG B) only increases the
to "Rural Solidarity." even threatening potential for counterrevolution. For
Such. '~Iabor"-flavored imperialist these are the direct conduits of
. subversion is not limited to Latin a general strike on behalf of this peasant
group whose demands point toward full capitalism-imperialism into the Polish
America. The AIFLD has since' workers' movement. American trade
spawned the Africa-American Labor restoration of capitalism In the
countryside., unionists who want to serve the real,
Center, the Asian-American Free Labor
class interests of the Polish workers
Centers and, since 1978, the Europe- Solidarnosc leader Walesa's links to must demand: AFL-CIO Tops-Hands
based Free Trade Union Institute counterrevolutionary forces go above Off Poland!.
(FTUI)',FTUI director is the same old all through the Roman Catholic church.
Irving Brown. As for FTUI president "I am a union man and not a socialist."
Lane Kirkland. while George Meany he says. adding that "without my $1.00
used to boast he "never walked a picket religion I would be a dangerous man"
line,~'his successor could brag that he (iHanche.Her Guardian WeekII'. 16
was never even a worker. A graduate of :\ovember 1980). And he doesn't just
the GeOrgetown University School of pray to the "Queen of Poland" (the
Foreign Service in Washington, the Virgin Mary) for counsel; his advisers
.Iong-time AFL-CIO treasurer served on arc largely drawn from the associates of
the post-Watergate Rockefeller Com- Cardinal Wyszynski .. When Walesa
mission on the CIA (which did not recently paid a triumphal visit to the
mention its labor ties), worked with Vatican, receivi.ng honors usually re-
Nelson Rockefeller in AIFLD and with sef\ed for heads of states . .Iohn Paul
brother David at the Trilateral Com- Wojtyla assured his disciple he had
mission. He may have a friend at Chase aided Solidarnosc "in every way dis-
Manhattan, but he's no friend of Polish creetly possible," When the time is ripe,
workers: of course. the Polish pope could be a
powerful rallying point for capitalist
What $olidarity? restoration-and then his intervention
Some liberal and left ish trade would be anything but discreet.
unionists may oppose the AFL-ClO's The Polish proletariat has historically
notorious. activities in Latin America, had a strong Marxian socialist tradi- Make checks payable/mall to:
Spartaclst Publishing Co.
but still see nothing wrong with its, tion. The forces of clericalism and Box 13n, GPO
supporting the Polish unions. Pseudo-' nationalism were never predominant New York, NY 10116
leftist groups even call for such "aid"- among industrial workers. It is a
24
reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 263, 5 September 1980
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: "pilg'rims" in a commemqration of the
a crucifix and used a foot-long red and "Thus, the priesthood has becom~ 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 reminding them how Poles acted when
ballpoint pen, a souvenir of Pope and many openly defy the Communist
Wojtyla's visit to Poland last year. (To Party by building churches without "freedo'm 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 ~ut 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.
Even more ominous was the demand "In recent years, the church has taken a
The Polish episcopate, fearing both
for "access by all religious groups [read sharper anti-government turn under Russian military intervention (the War-
Roman Catholic church] to the mass Krakow's Cardinal Wojtyla, 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 I,:autious
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 18,000
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 the allegiance of university stu- "Free Trade Unions"?
Polish episcopate has long campaigned. dcnts by opel1ing the city's churches to
their anti-government discussion Until a few days before the settlement
This is an anti-democratic demand groups;" the general strike was limited to the
which would legitimize the church in its Just a few months earlier this cardinal . B!iltic 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 St: 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 Joll 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 bunch of Pope?" WVNo. 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
spread to its own more volatile and tent. It is commonly believed that as (running about 8 percent a year) qui~ted
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 continue~. While offering con- exile, described the process in a 1977
popular discontent into traditional anti- siderable economic concessions, Gierek interview:
Semitic Polish chauvinism. V nder 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
PVWP 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 e~ded 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- freeze 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 E4ropean Japan. They maintained
Blood on the Baltic and Gierek'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 1971 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 Szczeein 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 dire'c- 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 In~ernationale, 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. curemenl 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 economic 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 the first 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
to concede an independent workers
taneously tried to brake the economy
and steer it into a .V-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 norma1. 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
Glerek (leH) the temporary rationing of meat to
mortgaged
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
buyoff 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, cliquism 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
-Labour Focus on Eastern
.1976 Gierek forbade the use of firearms, Europe, March-April 1978 can't deliver on): You give us "free trade
and serious violence was limited to the unions," an end to censorship, etc.; in
mammoth U rsus tractor factory near The government promised to leave the return, we will convince the workers to
people alone; in return, it asked only accept a few years of austerity. In an
Warsaw and the small industrial city of
Radom. The Radom workers were that the people leave it alone. But the article in a current Der Spiegel (18
driven into a fury when, on seizing the world economy wouldn't' leave Poland August) Michnik appeals to Gierek's
Party headquarters, they discoverc:d a alone. 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 not 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, Zaire and Peru. appendage of the peasant economy and
The Polish Stalinist bureaucracy's But then Gierek's Poland has become the world market."
economic mismanagement is today a West German client state economical- -Shane Mage. The Hungarian
Revolution (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 bank~. 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
good coin and thinks he would be better Poland with credits. have pointed out
combative working class and a back-
off under "free enterprise" capitalism that. its deposits of coal. copper. silver.
plat.m~m and vanadium make it an ward, smallholding peasantry by mort-
should consider these few statistics: I~trmslcally 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 a'nd
centrally planned East European econo- the Polish crisis is divided between
factories. short-term financial interests and a
mies at 7.7 percent (Scientific American,
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.
tion of the ways in which capitalism with the food subsidy and impose other
Yet all those who get dollars from
might be restored in East Europe, austerity measures. But the right-winger
relatives in America would like to spend
them on lUxury goods imported from the Should a petty-bourgeois clericalist Franz-Josef Strauss called for a mora-
party come to power in a "democratic torium on loans to Poland to blackmail
West. For strike leaders who yearn for
revolution," he posited, it could restore the regime into granting all the strike
capitalism, we suggest a long vacation in
capitalism by eliminating the state committee's demands.
Liverpool where they won't have tei
monopoly of foreign trade and reinte- One cannot, however, consider Po-
stand in line to buy anything. Of course,
grating the country into the world land's relations with Western capitalism
they will have a little difficultyJinding a
economy without significant denation- without taking the Soviet Union very
job, and even if they do their pay will be
alization of the existing industrial plant: much into account. To do so is truly to
so low that they will have to cut back on
"Another decisive aspect of the return play Hamlet without the Danish prince.
their meat consumption. (The dissidents The experiences of 1970 and 1976
ought to be sent to Afghanistan where to capitalism under petty-bourgeois
democratic leadership would be the ties convinced the Kremlin that if the Polish
they can find out what Carter's "human of .Po.land and Hungary with the mass~s were pushed too hard to pay the
rights" are all about by seeing what capitalist world market.... ' foreign debts, there would be a popular
happens to them if they try to teach "And what would become of the
nationalized industries? Their fate explosion which, whatever way it went,
young girls to read and write.) ,
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
Strangleholdl trade with the Western capitalists. both directly and by shipping the
Hungary and Poland can be capitalist Warsaw regime agricultura! produce. In
In 1978 over 50 percent of Poland;s ~ithou! denationalizing a single large
mdustnal plant;, all that is necessary is one sense Poland has become the
hard currency earnings were absorbed
to 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 Spartaellt Spartacist League
Gierek's economic mismanagement as TrotlkYlte 75463 Paris Cedex 10 League/U.S. Box 1377, GPO
Poland's workers. They demanded and de France France New York, NY 10116
USA
got the right to monitor all aspects of Spartaellt Spartacist Publications
economic policy and to have their rec- Leaguel PO Box 185
Britain London, WC1H 8JE Spartacllt Spartacist Publishing Co.
ommendations 'taken very seriously- England Stockholm Box 4508
an unprecedented step for a deformed Trotzklltllche Verlag Avantgarde 102 65 Stockholm
workers state. As an economist for Llga Postfach 1 67 47 Sweden
Bankers Trust commented at the time: Deutlchlandl 6000 Frankfurt/Main 1
"This marks the first time a Communist West Germany Trotlkylst Trotskyist League
government has embraced austerity-a Lega Walter Fidacaro League Box 7198, Station A
Trotlkllta C.P. 1591 of Canada Toronto, Ontario
purposeful cut in its planned rate of d'ltalla 20100 Milano Canada
growth-for balance-of-payments rea- Italy
sons" (New York Times, 26 January Spartacllt Spartacist League Spartacllt Spartacist League
1979). This is the same kind of program Leaguel 33 Canal Row League of GPO Box 3473
Lanka Colombo 01 Australlal Sydney, NSW, 2001
th~ International Monetary Fund nor- Sri Lanka New Zealand Australia
mally imposes on neo-colonial bank-
32
restoration of capitalism represents the nal Myndszenty, who was discredited by Moczulski is more militantly anti-
left 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 1940s"! Mean-
Rights. The latter is based on the the CIA's house organ, Problems of while, USec leader Ernest Mandel
founding declaration of the LJN 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 beeJl for the support
fend human rights .... " Where KOR of the Church, even the new alliance national Internal Discussion Bulletin,
publishes Robotnik, ROPCIO puts out between 'the intelligentsia, village; and October 1979).
Gospodarz (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 revQlutionary social
this is not the Catholicism of Vatican II, hatred of the authorities." democracy of a Rosa Luxemburg, who
-New York Review of Books,
either. The Economist (9 September 8 February 1979 . wrote in 1905:
1978) 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 jinti-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 hate the organized 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) the ZN AK 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, whicb in Krakow used churches was aJew 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 bureauGracy is that it has discredited
them, of course, cover themselves with Jew, is so enamored of the new, the name of communism among thipk-
rhetoric about "democracy." This gives "enlightened"· Catholic primate that he ing workers.
rise to the Polish dissident joke: "Ques- wrote of the pope's vi~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 world of Christian culture, a
the Jews out of Poland even though they 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 ZN AK movement, champion of which they see as being contrary, the most left-wing are the East
which has several representatives in their fellow coun\ryman John Paul 11, 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, West this is but another variety of
For Polish Trotskyism!
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 Labour Eurocommunist means joining the
Focus on Eastern Europe (July-August camp of counterrevolution. Authentic
The Dissidents' Pope 1979), a joint pu blica tion of supporters Trotskyism stands not for the bogus
The core of the clerical opposition, of of the USec 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 realis~. But in Catholic Po- Rouge) with Leszek Moczulski, who Michniks should realize that if they are
land, probably the m9st religious was a member of the Moczar faction of successful in bringing off a national
Eur<?pean 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 Cardi- KPN. The journal comments that to go, but they will be next .•
Appendix
reprinted from Sp.artacist No. 30, Autumn 1980
35
I
"Pure Democracy~' or Political II I
foisocialism 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," C6uld free elections in Poland or Hungary result in fact
The false, abstract, undialectical character- of the in a government representing this petty-bou,r~eois majori-
methodology of the NAC majority is exemplified by the ty? A majority cannot express its rule unless It IS orgamzed.
proposition that the struggle against Stalinism is the Could this majority have been organized?
i struggle f()r 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 other change." But of N AC draft resolution. The author's of the 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 agaiilst 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 ?een ~requent reports <,>f
The formula nationalized property in industry plus the persecution of ath,eist and JeWish children by Catholic
political democracy equals socialism is not even true 011 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
true, Austria and Burma, both of whose industry is largely behalf of Gomulka at the time of the recent Polish
nationalized, and both of whom have relatively democratic elections-an action which, according to all reports, play~d
political structures, would be socialist states. The essential a major part in saving the Gomulka regime from what
prerequisite for development' toward socialism is the seemed likely to be a drastic setback. Can there be any
raising of the working class to the position of a ruling class, doubt that in really free elections the candidates endorsed
or, in precise scientific terms, the establishment of the by the Church would have a huge advantage among the
proletarian dictatorship. Catholic majority?
Would the struggle for "general democratic aims" under What role does the Church desire to play in these
Stalinism be sufficient to raise the working class to the level revolutions? The Draft Resolution states that in Poland
of a ruling class? The NAC resolution answers in the and Hungary "forces which advocate capitalist restoration
affirmative, on the basis of its formula .... A real answer, ... were extremely small and carried no weight." It is true
however, must rest on a concrete analysis ofthe Polish and that neither in Poland nor in Hungary did the Church
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: theoretically, 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. Ifitfeltfree to do so, what reason
restoration of capitalism? The NAC 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. really free elections in both Poland and Hungary would
What would have been the development in Poland or return a petty-bourgeois, clerical majority. Free elections
Hungary if the revolution had in fact achieved the were never held in Poland after the war, but if they had
establishmen~ 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 rdolution. 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 Nagy 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? I t is here irrelevant to argue that no such governments
anything at all, means free elections to a sovereign could, in fact, have been formed-because they obviously
37
could have been if the revolutions had remained within the before Hungary and Poland, the real class nature of these
bounds of formal parliamentary democracy with full 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 conver~ a Stalinist state into a Socialist one. Under
1 believe that a petty-bourgeois government in either Stalinism as und~r 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
NEP 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 .~o
capitalist elements would in fact have brought about this lead to a petty-bourgeois 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 inwhich free
kulaks and Nepmen (and the peasant and petty-bourgeois parliamentary elections would have necessprit§"refulted in
a restoration of capitalism. That answer is the establish-
parties could be nothing else) it would certainly lead
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 indicateo 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 themselvd, and quickly
positive political program of U.S. imperialism toward East proved themselves to be the political leader,ship 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 council 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 adyanced 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, do!!sn'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 follow 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-bourgeoi~ parties, of a far
only are a much smaller minority than the proletariat, but more "leftist" type than would befound in the Hungary of
are of course a reactionary. inherently anti-democratic Mindszenty, dominat~d 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 existence 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 eventually 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, tru!lting 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 bc:st 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 con'sciousness 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 ~lass 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 only in "democratie" guise. Certain aspects of Hungarian
this score ... , The fascistic groups vanished into thin air (or society 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 attached to private property (Stalinist "collectivizations"
the United States embassy. [Smallholders Party leader] did not exactly weaken thi~attachment). and economically
Bela Kovacs was invited tojointhe Kadar government, but drawn to the West. Furthermore. the rt;ligious majority in
refused and announced his "retirement" from politics. But Hungary is Catholic. The planners or"Liberation" had
the workers councils remained and carried on a fierce / good grounds to hope that the establishment ofa 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'leade_rs form of econpmic "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 freel9, there is a possibility that this would have
Observateur, 3 January 1957] happened. (Of course, even if this development were
The bitter irony of a self-styl~d "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 rev.olution 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
po.wer 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
The Hungarian working class, even though it may have
thus is closer to the truth than he suspects when he claims
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 couqcil of the II th District of
Budapest showed this when it demanded "free elections in
Central Workers Council. On December 8 Racz gave an
which only those parties may participate that recognize and
interview to the correspondent of an Italian newspaper. to
be published only if he was arrested. He declared: have always recognized the Socialist order. based on the
"I have a tranquil conscience because I 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 ~deal 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 returning to "Western-style democracy" is the simple fact
knows that the country is against it, and since it knows
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
-{II Giorno, 14 December 1956] 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
whp 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 .•
+0
Th\~ pA~e
W~S b'~n h
1'" 4-'" ~ OV"\s i f'I ~ \
~O( "'Mf.~t