attock Stabir headquarters EAST POLAND CZECHOSLOVAKIA worker wage stability (it's true that this means nominal and not real wage stability) and security of employment. The reforms by introducing the criteria of "profitability" (enterprises will be judged on the difference realised between cost and sale price) bring about a tendency for the destruction of these conquests. If an enterprise maintains a creche for workers' children, it will tend to lead to the abolition of this as an unproductive expense. Job and wage security as similarly meanced: every time that the revenue of the enterprise is lowered, decreased salaries or unemployment will result. A number of nonprotitable enterprises close down, and unemployment reappears. All these phenomena already exist at this time in Yugoslavin.
Many similar examples can be quoted (for instance the extraordinary increase of rents) but what one must understand is that the working class will fight back against every attack on their social conquests. This fight has already been started in Yugoslavia where the increase in strikes has been phenomenal.
- Who Are Not Necessarily Liberals Although the new Government team in Poland promuscs to make reforms just as in the case of Czechoslovalia, it is important not to argue by analogy. In Czechoslovakia just the sume the whole of the bureaucracy agreed that reforms were necessary, in practice, however, a section of the bureaucracy (the "conservatives")
sabotaged the day-to-day application of these retorms. It was this section of the bureaucracy which was most intimately bound up with the Novotny regime. The section of the bureaucracy which wanted to put the reforms into practice (the "liberals") was then forced to allow a political critique of the Novotny period and to place helvy reliance on a mobilisation of the masses to chase the conservatives out of office. The liberals opened the road to refurm by a kind of retarded version of the 20th Congress. We already know how this process drew the Czech masses into political action forcing the Kremlin bureaucracy to intervene in the name of the international interests of the bureaucracy. Agin we come across the limits of the reforms which we mentioned carlier.
What is peculiar to the Polish situation is dynamic (the organisation of the workers in soviets, formation of a workers' militia, the weakening of the bureaucratic monolith). It seens that compared with elsewhere the Polish leaders cherish fower illusions about the "internationalism" of their Soviet brothers-they Know very wall that if they lose control of the situation they will very quickly be persuaded to ask for the aid of their sister armies.
So if two distinct groups within the governing team can be distinguished, they do not conform to the liberal conservative dichotomy. To give a brief characterisation, we have:
The Technocrats-the tecluticians of the coonomy with the responsibility for working out the orgunisation of the reforms and applying them. The technocrats are grouped around the new first secretary Gierek.
The "Partisans"-the group which controls the leadership of the militia, political police and army, in short the whole of the repressive according to which a "small handful of students and Zionists" were the only ones disconted with the regime, does not correspond with the reality. It is the labouring masses, above all the working class and in particular the young workers, who are fighting to establish on the basis of a socialist economy, a democratic socialist regime in which the workers themselves would be the masters of the economy and the state. They would elimiate the fraud and the waste creatod by a stubbom, privileged and inept bursaucracy. The fact that the demonstrators at Gdansk, Gydnia and Cecezin sang the "Internationale' and that the police and the army repressed these demonstrations in the most brutal way. demonstrates the gap which exists between apparatus grouped acound the former minister of the interior, the sinister General Moczar, Among this group not infrequently "comrades" can be found who are motivated by purely nationalist ideologies, anti-intellectualism and anti-semitism.
We're not going to delve into the personal ambitions of members of the two sections-let's simply note that each sooms to need the other.
No power can maintain itself by brute force alone, so the "Purtisans" need the technocratic personnel to realise reform. At the same time, the technocrats need the "Partisans" since they need a strong police force and army to suppress any mobilisation of the working class against the attacks on their standard of living.* Another factor specific to the "Polish road" at the present time is the strictly coonomic level of the last strugeles. It's thus different from the Czech movement in 1968 and even from the 1956 Polish events. Undoubtedly this lack of a politi cal perspective hus enabled the bureaucracy to limit the movernent more easily. The roots of this lack can be found in the check of the movement in 1956: the Polish working class will not readily insolve itsolf in new "political" struggles without having a guaranter that they will not be exploited by a section of the bureaucracy which wishes to take power for itself. Thin question poses the whole problem of the orguni sation of the Polish proletariat on an independent programme.
Te's too soon to say precisely how long lasting the new regime will be. But one can say straight away that the contradictions caused by the burcuucratic framework of the reform will not be long before they break to the surface in a fresh outburst. The most probable hypbthesis in the light of what has been described here is that it won't be liberalisation which will be tho fundamental factor in the resumption of the strugglo.
Inigoing onto the streets of Gdansk and Szerecin the Polish workers have affirmed their determination not to lave the question of their living standards to the mercy of the bureaucrats who are conscious at most of the increase in price of French Cognac (one-third of u worker's wages). There will not be any solution to the cconomic problem of the popular demogracies dictatorship.
The Fourth International expresses total solidarity with the Polish workers, students and intollectuals struggling for the anti-bureaucratic political revolution which will consolidate the foundations of socialism in Poland, foundations which are being undermined more and more by the bureau cracy.
We denounce the vicious repression against the workers and the bankruptcy of a regime which dares call itself "communist," aed which opens fire on strikers and on worker and student demonstrators and in this way gives the best possible help to the assassin Franco, who can now cover his own crimes by those of the Polish bureaucracy.
Ve call upon all communist miltant to economy, the liberation of all the potentialities of the economic system first of all demand the democratisation of political and social life, the taking of decisions by the working class, the #poution or bereaucrstic privileges and the stute apperatus which defends them. The bureau cracy remains trapped in a contradiction: if it does not carry out reforms, it will be swept will sooner or later provoke an anti-bureaucratic movement. The bureaucrats in every country will sooner or later learn at their expense that there is no path to economic reform thatdoes pot involve political revolution -In Poland, as in the other Popular Democra cies, political revolution is inevitable.
*If there were "Eiberals" among the technocrats who disliked the alliance with the Partisans, the Glansk events have probably convinced them to pass over these considerations.
U0 - 8230 TANKS IN GDANSK, 1970: GOMULKA FALLS, BUT THE BATTLE IS ONLY JUST BEGINNING to the democracy of workers councils, in the USSR and in Eastern Europe. This is the only way of overcoming and transcending the terrible disgrace that Stalin and his successors have inflicted on the name of communism.
We call upon all revolutionary militants to demonstrate everywhere in the world, their solidarity with the Polish workers in their struggle, without in any way confusing their banners with those of the anti-communist capitalists and without making any concessions to those who conceal and justify aggression against the Vietnamese people and the repression against other victims of imperialism.
OV For the feudal landlords, the big bourusual in the shape of the Army. Of course there
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that the Polish leaders have already gone through their national experience of the 20th Congress (the movement of "56) and of the accompanying
problems TANKS IN POZNAN, 1956: GOMULKA RISES TO POWER AND PLEDGES REFORM as long as decisions are not taken democratically by the whole of society. The restarting of the
away by a revolution; if it reforms and at the same time attempts to preserve its privileges, it