Poland: Behind the Crisis (Sam Marcy)

Poland: Behind the Crisis
Author	Sam Marcy
Written in	1975–1982
Publisher	Workers World
First published	1982
Type	Articles
Source	https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/marcy/poland/index.html

Introduction

The following collection of articles about events in Poland was written for the most part during and immediately after the August 1980 strikes in that country. The articles were originally published in Workers World newspaper and still offer a guide to action as well as to understanding. By the time the material appears in this pamphlet, events will have proceeded in Poland and the political situation will have changed, if only to a degree. Nevertheless, the series as a whole, which is printed here together with previous articles on the (not accidentally) Polish Pope provides an indispensable analysis of current Polish society and arms the reader with a basic comprehension of the class forces therein.

The articles are all too unique in their emphasis on the real reason for the Polish crisis — namely, the tremendous loans by Western imperialist banks and their consequent pressure on the Polish government to retrench and cut back on benefits to the Polish workers. This banker-imposed retrenchment very much includes the rise in the price of meat which touched off the August protests. Others have mentioned the role of the Western banks, but nobody else has shown the banks as the fundamental cause of the crisis and insistently called for an indefinite moratorium on this (now) $25 billion debt, as Sam Marcy has done here.

The U.S. ruling class and its sycophants have hailed the Polish protests and wildly acclaimed the workers' strikes (the Polish workers' strikes, that is, not the strikes of U.S.workers!). Marcy shows that it is not really a question of the rights of Polish workers, but rather one of the right of imperialist banks to rule over socialist Poland. From his analysis it is clear that the Polish United Workers Party leadership could have called upon the strikers to fight the Western banks as well as to check the capitalist tendencies in the countryside. Thus they could have outmaneuvered the restorationist tendencies of the Church hierarchy and right-wing opponents of the regime. But they did not do this, or apparently even attempt it. And other class forces have begun to take command.

The situation was and is a complex one. At first glance it would appear that the events of last August were merely a matter of workers protesting difficult conditions and complaining about bureaucratic practices. And indeed if that were all that was at stake in Poland, it would be easy to side with the strike movement and solidarize with "Solidarity."

But as Marcy shows, infinitely more is at stake than this. One almost infallible guidepost in understanding at least the broad character of the events is the propaganda campaign of the U.S. ruling class in behalf — allegedly — of the Polish workers (at the very same time that they are waging a ruthless campaign for wage-cuts, layoffs and social cutbacks in the United States! ) But that does not answer the bigger questions, which are posed in the following pages.

Marcy's articles do not deal so much with the propaganda of the ruling class as with the actual tactics and strategy for its planned take over of Poland by a "cold" counter-revolution — that is, by economic penetration and political infiltration. This is what the Polish as well as American workers need to know most of all — the concealed strategy of the U.S. ruling class.

It is this strategy, by the way, that explains why a section of the ruling class, along with the Polish Cardinal and the Polish Pope, want to "go slow" in Poland so as to avoid a Soviet intervention, with or without civil war. Some of them think they can travel the Yugoslav road toward capitalism, and in fact they are doing their best to get the Polish workers onto this particular highway in the name of Polish nationalism, virtual supremacy of Church over State(i.e., the workers' state), fortification of private property in land, and the planned decentralization of the nationalized factories.

The new union "Solidarity" has now had time to crystallize its program somewhat since the bulk of these articles were first printed. And it is clear from Solidarity's collaboration with right-wing elements who are even farther to the right than the Catholic hierarchy that the leadership of Solidarity is definitely not in solidarity with the goals of socialism and has in fact consciously taken the road to capitalist restoration.

At the moment these lines are being written, Lech Walesa, the president of Solidarity, is visiting the Pope in Rome. This is no religious pilgrimage but a highly political errand for world capitalism. In the middle of his blessing, the Pope, an "expert" on Poland, told Walesa to "go slow," implying that he should not push for a confrontation with the state. At almost the same instant in Washington, that most hawkish of Cold Warriors, Zbigniew Brzezinski, another "expert" on Poland, expressed satisfaction with the present tempo of the capitalist restoration movement, calling the new situation a "compromise" that should be supported by the United States. This view, like the Pope's advice, flows from the estimate that the basic shift of Polish society is to the right and, given the present state of things and the policies now being followed, ultimate capitalist restoration is inevitable — again, if there is no confrontation.

Even under these difficult conditions we support all the progressive demands of the Polish workers, including anti-bureaucratic demands (such as an end to corruption, special privileges, etc.). And there should be no principled objection to strikes in a socialist country. If the workers sometimes go on strike, they are not, ipso facto, opposing socialism. But the timing of a strike, who leads it, and the circumstances under which it takes place can indeed give it an anti-socialist character.

Lenin insisted upon the workers' right to strike and spelled out his position during the famous Trade Union Discussion on December 30, 1920. "We must use these organizations (i.e., the unions — V.C.) to protect the workers from their state. ..." he said. And he added the next day that there were "bureaucratic distortions" in the state. But Lenin was talking to communists and the workers generally understood that both capitalism and its subservient Church hierarchy were their class enemies. Lenin finished the above sentence, incidentally, by saying "... and to get them (the unions) to protect our state." It is hardly necessary to add that Lenin had in mind by such an approach the improvement and strengthening of the workers' state and was looking forward to a more direct, more perfect workers' rule, as outlined by him in his The State and Revolution.

Neither Lech Walesa nor any of his leading cohorts or advisers has the slightest interest in The State and Revolution or for that matter in Lenin himself. The Pope and the Polish Cardinal are their political guiding stars, the bitterly anti-Soviet and vulgarly anti-Leninist Solzhenitsyn is their ideologist while the Rockefellers, the Mellons, the Morgans, the Krupps, the Flicks and the other imperialist bankers are their off-stage puppet-masters.

In view of all that has happened, it is quite probable that the official Polish Communist trade union leaders have lost the confidence of the majority of the industrial workers. If that is so it is a painful fact and must be recognized. But the formation of an "independent" union is something else again.

It is like many an "independent" union in the United States. The latter begins as an opposition to some bureaucratic practice in the national or international organization of workers in an industry. But once it cuts its ties to the rest of its class, it falls prey to the scheming pressures of the big corporation. At first it may register some substantial gain, and of course, the dues are lowered! But later, the company takes the "union" over and reimposes the slave conditions of the past.

This is only a partial analogy with the "independent" union called "Solidarity." The difference in Poland is that the "independent" union there is not the product of naive or inexperienced leaders, it is being guided by a whole team of rightwingers and Church figures who know just what they want. Its "victory" is far more likely to be an historic defeat for the working class than is the emergence of a company union in an isolated U.S. plant.

As opposed to the Polish workers "independent" leadership the workers themselves are another matter. The workers could throw off the right-wing leadership entirely and be the best defenders — and rejuvenators — of the workers' state. But for this to happen, there has to be a communist orientation. Under present circumstances, the Communist leadership or a section of it must appeal to them against the reaction — against the hierarchy, against the rural bourgeoisie, and above all, against the Western imperialist bankers, who are exploiting them through the colossal loans of the past few years. To do this, the Polish CP leaders would have to repudiate their own recent course of conciliation to these elements.

Marcy showed in these articles that hard as it may have been to do it, it could have been done. Positions have hardened in the few months since then. But as long as the Polish party leadership has not actually capitulated to the pro-imperialist bourgeoisie and has not been overthrown, it is still possible to do it.

The world movement would receive a terrible blow if the course of socialist progress should be wholly reversed in Poland and a bourgeois regime reinstituted. But this blow can be fended off or avoided altogether if the forces of socialism can rise to their historic task. It is to be hoped that they can and will.

Vince Copeland

January 18, 1981

Background to the current crisis

Fundamental Causes of the Polish Crisis, Part 1

The current, very serious crisis in Poland goes far beyond the demands of the striking workers. Even if the strike is settled on some acceptable basis to the government and to the workers, it will by no means solve any of the basic problems confronting the Polish masses.

The current crisis is symptomatic of a far deeper, much more profound crisis which is rooted in the dual character of the Polish social system.

On the one hand, the People's Republic of Poland is legally and constitutionally structured as a socialist state. It can, however, be regarded as socialist only in a very narrow, restricted, and purely sociological sense. Its socialist character derives mainly from the public ownership of the basic means of production and elements of socialist planning that the government still retains, but much of which it has virtually abandoned.

In most other respects the Polish government has succumbed to a bourgeois economy. This is most dramatically illustrated by the abandonment of collectivization of agriculture and the return to private, bourgeois methods of production to the point where more than 87 per cent of all agricultural production is in private hands.

BOURGEOIS FORMS OF AGRICULTURE

The food crises in Poland, which brought about the 1970 strikes and their suppression, are a recurring phenomenon. They stem directly from the return to bourgeois forms of production which enrich some of the wealthy farmers but which are incapable of raising production to meet the needs of the vast majority of the Polish people.

The current meat crisis, which induced the government to raise the price of meat, is unquestionably directly related to the government's handling of the agricultural problem. The government's effort to stimulate agricultural production on a bourgeois basis by granting more and more lucrative incentives in the form of price increases at public expense has proved to be a failure as a means of increasing production.

This is what is completely hidden in the imperialist press.

It is also true that there have been several years of poor crops as a result of bad weather. That, however, is not the fundamental basis for the food crisis, which has lasted for more than a decade.

The government's resort to huge purchases of grain and other foodstuffs from abroad is directly related, not only to the restoration of bourgeois agriculture, but to the widening capitalist market economy, to the growing bourgeois trend of continually reducing the socialist sector in favor of bourgeois market economic practices.

WHAT THEY MEAN BY 'DECENTRALIZING'

This is not altogether new. As long ago as December 14, 1970, the New York Times observed regarding changes in Poland's five-year plan, "The changes [in the Polish economic plan] are aimed at diversifying and decentralizing the nation's economic base." The key word here, of course, is decentralizing, which is a code word for restoration of the bourgeois market economy.

"They will replace," the Times added approvingly, "some of the management techniques of centrally-planned economies [meaning, of course, socialist economies] with more competitive, [that is, capitalist] methods used in the West."

How splendidly successful these "new techniques" and the "more competitive methods" are is shown by the very severe character of the present crisis. This singularly significant truth is what is deeply hidden in the bourgeois press and what the Polish leadership, if it is willing to overcome the crisis on a socialist basis, must face up to.

Alongside the bourgeois sector of the economy has arisen the power of the Catholic hierarchy which aggressively cultivates, promotes, and intrigues with the so-called dissidents and bourgeois liberal elements in the government to prop up the private, capitalist sector of the economy. It is on this basis that the Catholic hierarchy has emerged as the "champion of the masses. In reality, however, it is the defender and promoter of a full-scale bourgeois restoration.

DUAL POWER

Dual power has thus existed in Poland for a number of years in a now hidden, now open form with the church hierarchy as one of the antagonists and the official governing group as the other. The church hierarchy has been amassing more and more power and a succession of leaders in the government has steadily been giving way more and more to the bourgeois opposition.

Such a contradictory condition in society cannot exist for long. Poland, in truth, has been approaching a fork in the road for a number of years, if not decades.

To properly understand this, it is necessary to brush aside the imperialist slanders, lies, and distortions regarding Poland as a "puppet" or "satellite" of the Soviet Union. It is equally important to denounce the slanders of so-called ultraleft groupings in the working-class movement which, taking their cue from the Chinese leadership, have for years slandered Poland as a "puppet of social-imperialism," meaning the USSR.

In reality, both the imperialist as well as the Beijing version of Poland's difficulties are objectively a defense of international capitalism.

What has been truly obscured with regard to Polish development until virtually the outbreak of the recent strikes is not Poland's relationship to the Soviet Union, but its relationship to international finance capital, to imperialism.

INDEBTEDNESS TO WEST

Lately the bourgeois press has been pouring out statistics showing the enormous indebtedness of the Polish government to Western banks. Some are highly exaggerated but almost all are calculated to cover up the role of Western imperialism and put the blame for Poland's economic plight on "communist inefficiency," "an over-centralized economy," and "dogmatic inflexibility in planning."

In a word, the imperialist press is putting the onus of the economic crisis in Poland on Marxist economic theory and communist practices, and not at all on where it really belongs — on the enormous penetration of international finance capital into Poland to the point where Poland's entire economy is now, by agreement of the Polish government, monitored by the international, imperialist bankers.

The huge loans that the Polish government obtained from Western banks were not regarded as a very serious infringement on the economy for a number of years. This was partly because these loans were not publicly well-known and partly because they did not appear to be of a magnitude as to endanger either the economy of the country or its political independence as a socialist state.

TIMES BREAKS NEWS OF POLAND'S FINANCIAL PLIGHT

However, in a front-page story on January 26, 1979, the New York Times broke the news of Poland's deteriorating financial and economic situation and its enormous indebtedness to the Western imperialist banks. "As part of an effort to obtain a major, new loan," said the Times, "Poland has agreed to permit Western banks to monitor its economic policies, American bankers say. They regard the concession as a historic breakthrough in the financial relations with the communist world." As indeed it is.

"To persuade the banks to agree to the new financing," the Times continued, "Poland has already had to announce a strict, new budget for 1979 and provide its creditors with comprehensive, new information on its financial situation." Onerous as it is to capitulate to this demand, it is not all.

The Times went on, "The banks involved in the new credit will henceforth track the progress of the Polish economy much as the International Monetary Fund monitors the economies of non-communist countries in financial distress" [meaning, of course, underdeveloped and oppressed countries].

Coming from a socialist country that is the tenth most industrialized in the world and so rich in natural resources, this was an unbelievable departure from the most elementary precept of national sovereignty since it entails approval of the national budget by the bankers. So unbelievable was it that this writer was prompted not only to try to verify this with several of the 14 U.S. banks in question (which included Bank of America, Manufacturers Hanover, Bankers Trust, Chemical Bank, Citibank, and so on) but to prod the Polish authorities here for more information. Alas, the Times story unfortunately proved all too true.

BANKERS MONITOR, HAVE SAY IN POLISH ECONOMY

The meaning of this should be crystal clear. Any government official in the oppressed countries, from Argentina to Zambia, knows what a socialist government should know in its bones — that permitting Western imperialist finance capital to "monitor economic policies" and "track the progress of the economy" is in large part a surrender of national sovereignty. It paves the way to enslavement, to being bound to the chariot wheel of imperialism.

"We don't have a blueprint for the Polish economy to follow," one banker is quoted as saying in the same Times article, "but we made it clear that belt-tightening was a prerequisite to any new credits."

It is this belt-tightening which the bankers demanded and which the Polish government has foisted on the workers and which the workers now have to suffer through, which is the real, underlying cause of the strike crisis.

This monitoring by the banks of the Polish economy means, to quote this banker, "that it gives Western capitalism a certain say in how the Poles proceed."

FALSE INDEPENDENCE

This, then, is the real meaning of "Polish independence," as the so-called dissidents and the Catholic hierarchy have been preaching. This is what they mean by "national sovereignty" and "independence"! This is what former President Gerald Ford meant with his well-known remark during his 1976 pre-election TV debate with then candidate Carter that "Poland is an independent nation."

It turns out that Polish independence is a lie, the result of imperialist deception and domestic coverup by the Polish leadership.

If Poland is now saddled with loans amounting to $20 billion, the interest alone is staggering. Business Week of August 25, 1980, says, "Polish exports to the West are already heavily mortgaged. Debt repayment and service absorb virtually 100 per cent of all hard currency earnings."

What is this situation but a return to the situation Poland faced in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when Western bankers counseled belt-tightening and austerity and the government clubbed the workers into line to pay the interest on the loans?

How does Poland's present-day situation really differ from the situation which imperialism imposes on the people of Zaire, the Philippines, Ecuador, or Brazil? These countries carry an equal burden of mortgaging their exports to the U.S., British, West German, and Japanese banks.

EFFECT OF WORLD CAPITALIST CRISIS

Were it not for the outbreak of the capitalist crisis on a worldwide scale, the Polish economy might not necessarily be in such a severe crisis. But it is precisely the capitalist economic crisis which has exposed the dual character of the Polish social system.

Beginning with Gomulka and followed by Gierek, the Polish economy has been more and more geared toward the Western capitalist market, to the blind forces of monopoly capitalism. As a result of Poland's rightward turn, starting with Gomulka, all the Western capitalist countries slowly opened up trade channels with Poland and lifted the commercial and economic ban which the imperialists have generally imposed on other socialist countries.

Following the insurrection of 1956, the Polish government's increasing turn to the West finally persuaded Washington to lift its trade ban on Poland and grant it the so-called most-favored-nation status in trade.

But it is not trade per se that the imperialists are interested in. It is super-profits and political domination. Were trade relations conducted on an equal basis, there would be eagerness and no objection by all socialist countries to trade with the imperialists. But imperialism is predatory monopoly finance capital which inexorably seeks political domination to secure its extortionate loans and strings-attached commercial trade relations.

Where the imperialists cannot extort political conditions or other means of securing their investments, they do not trade with socialist countries. Only under very compelling conditions, such as the need for strategic materials or for purely political purposes, do they extend to them commercial and trade relations on a wide scale.

PINNED HOPES ON CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT

The Polish government in the early 1960s pinned its hopes on an upward cycle of capitalist development and forgot what every schoolgirl and schoolboy in Poland who has learned the ABCs of Marxism knows — that a capitalist crisis inevitably shrinks the world market for exports until the next cycle of capitalist economic development.

The promise of lush markets has failed to measure up to expectations even at the present time for Polish coal, an energy source. The imperialists themselves are involved in one of the most ferocious trade wars at a time when their markets are contracting. Squeezing out Poland is far more palatable to the imperialists then letting it share in the market.

What, then, can be done at this time?

The issue must first be accurately formulated and made to be understood by the workers. Should the workers surrender to belt-tightening as demanded by the bankers?

(On August 19, 1980, a representative of the Bankers Trust Company, one of the most powerful banks in the country and one of the largest creditors in the consortium which made the loans to Poland, speaking for all 14 banks involved in the loans, appeared on PBS-TV on the McNeil-Lehrer Report.

His response to a question on what should be done in light of the crisis in Poland was instructive and should be enlightening to every worker: "The Poles have to tighten their belts and make sure to pay their debts.")

No, the workers must not be made to bear the burden imposed by the banks, to which the mismanagement of the leadership has greatly contributed by utterly false and revisionist policies. These policies are based on bourgeois pragmatism and not at all on any Marxist concept of building socialism or any real understanding of the nature of Poland's reciprocal relations with imperialism.

Every country, including of course every socialist country, has a right and a need to trade and to carry on normal commercial as well as diplomatic, cultural, and social relations with other countries. That's elementary and beyond dispute.

But it's another matter entirely, as Business Week puts it, to "mortgage" the country's economy to international finance capital.

Admittedly, the situation in Poland is very grave. Aside from the Polish Communist Party and those sincere and devoted administrators there is no organized political force of a progressive character capable of taking the initiative and redirecting Polish society in a genuinely socialist direction.

The bourgeois elements, particularly those organized around the church hierarchy, are formidable. There is the danger that they will, in the course of playing demagogue, as they are in the present strike, seize the political initiative and urge the workers to move in a bourgeois restorationist direction.

CANCEL THE DEBT!

Rather than impose hardships on the workers, since the crisis is not of their making and does not grow out of any inadequacies of the socialist system, it is much more preferable to reach an agreement with the striking workers and reject the belt-tightening, austerity demands of the international bankers by suspending debt service on the loans and declaring a moratorium on them.

More than anything else it is necessary to turn away from the enslaving character of the type of trade and commercial collaboration which the Polish leaders have been carrying on with the West. In this task it is urgently necessary that all socialist countries collaborate in such a way as to strengthen each other and help the Polish government overcome its crisis on the basis of solidarity with all other socialist countries.

This is not the full answer to Poland's problems, it is only a beginning. However, as we stated on June 6, 1979: "Poland is a halfway society.... The Polish state structure is in reality a concealed form of dual power. The tendencies toward bourgeois restoration are strong and politically vocal. The socialist administrators of the state are commanding less and less respect, even from ardent supporters of the socialist cause.

"A fundamental realignment of class forces is necessary in Poland. The continued existence of a concealed form of dual authority will prove unendurable if the economic situation becomes aggravated, especially by unforeseen developments.

"It is difficult to foresee what form the struggle, which will surely break out into the open, will take. But whatever its form, it is the creative initiative and resourcefulness of the class-conscious workers of Poland that must be relied upon to play the leading role in charting a new course for socialist reconstruction.

Fundamental Causes of the Polish Crisis, Part 2

It is now the thirteenth day of the strikes in Poland. By all accounts they have become widespread enough to have created a national crisis of the first magnitude, both for the government and the cause of socialism.

It is difficult to believe that a situation so serious in its implications could be so terribly mishandled and mutilated to the detriment of both the governing group headed by Edward Gierek and the socialist cause as a whole.

The political and economic situation in Poland is both complex and at the same time singularly simple in the clear-cut alternatives which the government hopefully still has at its disposal.

NUMBER ONE PRIORITY

Let us start with the very beginnings of the strike. No sooner had it become clear to the government that the strike had taken on serious and significant proportions, than the leadership should have cast aside all other problems and priorities and given the strike its undivided attention.

A principal prerequisite for doing this adequately was for Gierek himself, as both the actual head of state and the First Secretary of the Communist Party, to realize that the official trade union leadership and the other state organs responsible for dealing with the strikers had either lost their influence with the workers, lost control of the situation, could not understand the situation of the workers, or were never really directly and intimately associated with the workers enough to have gained any influence among them.

Under these circumstances it was utterly inadequate and completely self-defeating to merely replace functionaries and high officials with a new group which the vast majority of strikers had no reason to believe would in any way deal differently with them or have any more understanding of their basic economic problems.

CONFIDENCE OF WORKERS

As a worker himself who once toiled in the mines like other workers, Gierek should have known that in such a critical situation as that evolving in Poland, this was one time when he had to cast aside all so-called prestige matters, all conventional formalities of the high office he holds, and deal directly with the strikers themselves.

To the bourgeois snobs and to the elevated bureaucrats, this may have looked like a comedown and a dangerous surrender to the anti-socialist and bourgeois dissident elements. But in reality it would have been the only way to reach the hearts of the workers, to, as one of the strikers put it, "look them straight in the eye" and go over the real and common problems of the workers' conditions, and the sad state of the economy.

Of course, talk alone, dialogue alone, between the workers and the highest authority in the socialist regime, would not produce the desired results — the kind of settlement which would alleviate the grievances of the workers and at the same time strengthen the socialist regime.

But, if need be, even great risks could be taken to win the workers rather than taking measures which would only mollify them without an attempt to win their confidence. If we understand correctly Gierek's first television talk, based merely on excerpts from the bourgeois press (no official text is being made available here or through the officials of the Polish government) he did not address himself to the specific economic problems of the workers.

SHOULD HAVE GRANTED WAGE INCREASES

What was necessary to win back the confidence of the workers was to quickly declare a basic across-the-board wage increase and, if need be, to extend it nationwide. This could have been done after direct discussions with the workers' representatives.

Losing the confidence of the workers is the worst of all situations for a socialist regime, which is based upon the working class as the dominant class in society.

Gierek's talk, however, was not calculated to win them and to reestablish confidence. It was calculated to persuade the workers that their economic grievances would be dealt with later, on an individual plant-by-plant basis and by the same officialdom.

At the same time by again officially admitting grave and serious errors and making wholesale dismissals from the Politburo (even though these dismissals may have been justified) Gierek weakened his own hand and strengthened the bourgeois opposition to the regime and gave the upper hand in the strike committee to that element among the workers who are now manipulated by bourgeois dissidents.

Gierek did nothing to strengthen the confidence of the broad mass of the workers who were frustrated by his talk. It left them a ready object for manipulation by the bourgeois dissident elements.

BOURGEOIS ELEMENTS ARE PERIPHERAL

It cannot be stressed too much that strong though the bourgeois intelligentsia maybe (the dissidents are their most right-wing expression) they are in reality powerless in the economic structure of the country and their overall political influence on the working class is still peripheral, even at this late date.

So what was needed first and foremost was to redirect the attention of the government and its leading cadres toward strengthening itself among the workers at all cost, casting aside all other priorities.

Granting far-reaching economic concessions, in plain and unambiguous language, should have been the first order of business. This would have immediately taken the wind out of the sails of the bourgeois and anti-socialist elements on the periphery of the working-class movement and in the strikebound areas first and foremost.

In the second place, even the political demands could be discussed and, if need be, acceded to, to the extent that they do not interfere with or become a brake upon socialist construction and the orderly planning of a growing socialist economy. These political demands are not incompatible with a strong and powerful workers' government that has the confidence of the workers.

The autonomy or the so-called independence of the unions cannot for any length of time become a source of bourgeois restorationist power in an otherwise socialist-oriented environment as long as the government and the party assiduously pursue the goal of making the question of the workers' conditions their top priority in resuming the orderly construction of a socialist society.

The immeasurable sources of revolutionary socialist energy, which could be unleashed by a perspective based upon winning and maintaining the workers' confidence, would inevitably dissolve any retrograde and regressive tendencies, which are external influences on the working class, within the working-class movement, and above all in the trade unions.

DUAL CHARACTER OF WORKERS' STATE

It should be noted that in the initial stages the approach of both the government and the party to the workers' strike was to cast the strikers in the role not merely of an antagonist but of an "enemy." This was a near fatal error by those who are supposed to base their strategical and tactical approach on the Leninist theory of the nature of the state, including the workers' state.

A workers' state, even under the best of circumstances, is a dual phenomenon both socially and politically. In its paramount role it is the guardian in the struggle against bourgeois restoration and the organizer of overall socialist production. It is charged with the orderly planning and promotion of the reorganization of society and its transformation into a socialist society.

However, as Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Program and Lenin in his State and Revolution pointed out, the state in its economic role is also the distributor of the national income during the transition period to socialism. The basis for the distribution of the national income is according to the formula "to each according to their work" and not, as it is under a classless society, "from each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs."

Thus, in its role as the distributor of the national income the workers' state acts on the basis of bourgeois norms of distribution. This in turn makes a certain amount of tension between the workers and their own state inevitable. It is also possible, but not inevitable, that it may create sharp antagonisms between the workers and their own state that even go to the extent of outright hostility when the workers feel their interests are being neglected.

Failure to understand the dual character of the workers' state in this respect, failure to understand that a certain amount of opposition is to be expected from the workers, is a failure to understand the historically transitional role of the workers' state and, in particular, that it has a transitional bourgeois aspect to it which may be in conflict with the immediate aims of the workers.

ROLE OF PARTY

The party, however, is the historical instrument of the proletariat and the ideological and political vanguard of the workers. It must be the embodiment of the workers' best interests. In times of tension between the state and the workers, as is the case now, and in times of worker dissatisfaction and even outright hostility, the party of necessity must be ready, even at some risk to the economy, to partially detach itself from the state with which it is so intimately interwoven and connected and which it has been leading; the party must be ready to create some distance between itself and the state and stand by the workers, even when they may occasionally be temporarily in error.

Failure to do so creates an utterly inadmissible confrontation between the workers and the party and opens the door for bourgeois elements to act as demagogues on behalf of the workers. Under no circumstances can the party abandon its role as the defender of the workers' interests.

Rather than carve out for itself a role as mediator between the workers and the bourgeois elements in Polish society who thrive on the bourgeois economic sector, rather than ally itself and curry favor with the reactionary church hierarchy, even going to the extent of opening up the publicly owned media to Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski to sermonize to the workers and counsel them, the Communist Party ought to firmly, clearly, and unequivocally stand with the workers. It ought to expose the bourgeois elements who thrive on the government's false policies of the past and who are in alliance with the foreign bank creditors of international imperialism.

By steadily giving in to demands without strong, direct intervention in this struggle and in the negotiations by Gierek himself, the Gierek leadership and its advisers have approached the situation in the most self-defeating of all ways. If need be, Gierek should have gone to Gdansk himself to address the workers. The concessions given only emboldened the bourgeois opposition and frustrated the majority of the workers at the present.

MISDIRECTED PRIORITIES

How could so many mistakes be made all at once? It is due to the fact that the objective of winning back the confidence of the workers is not the top priority of the Polish governing group. The top priority is putting the economy in order, to stabilize it.

Of course the economy must be stabilized. However, the economy is in truth a dichotomy. There is the socialized sector, the basic industries whose ownership is vested in the government. And there is now the vast and ever-growing bourgeois sector of the economy which is responsible for all the ills of the country.

For instance, on the eve of the so-called meat crisis it was disclosed that once again Poland was applying for a new and larger loan from the international capitalist bankers. These are the very same bankers to whom Poland is now indebted to the tune of $20 billion, which the finance minister finally admitted publicly yesterday. This enormous debt is like an albatross hanging around the neck of the government.

This huge indebtedness is the result of a series of so-called liberal economic reforms which in reality revived the bourgeois market and bourgeois methods of production in agriculture and in other spheres of economic life in Poland. These reforms have dragged Poland into the morass of the capitalist world economy, which is experiencing one of the most acute crises of its own.

NEW LOAN AGREEMENT

For instance, this new loan agreement of close to a half-billion dollars that was nailed together over the summer by a group of Western banks led by Bank of America and Morgan Guaranty Trust Company" (Business Week, September 1, 1980) was supposed to be signed and effectuated on August 22, 1980. But in view of the growing peril engulfing the Polish economy and the specter of a strike wave, the loan agreement was held up.

The loan agreement, like all the other loan agreements which add up to the $20 billion, has strings attached to it — austerity measures, belt-tightening, and veto power over the national budget. It's the kind of an agreement the bankers always make with underdeveloped countries, and even developed ones like Italy, where they try to suck the blood out of the workers in the form of extortionate interest rates.

This last agreement was to be signed in Warsaw. But, we are informed by Business Week , "it was hastily relocated to London."

Gierek is dividing his priorities between settling the strike and "adjusting the situation" so as not to imperil the loan or offend the bankers who unquestionably will demand their pound of flesh in the form of more austerity measures which are the principal cause of the strikes. Gierek has his eye on London more than on the port cities in the Gdansk area.

U.S. POSITION ON LOAN

It should be noted that Poland's assurances on the loans to the bankers of Western imperialism are not mere verbal or written promises.

One must also know that there is a division in the ruling class, too, on the question of guarantees. The ultra-rightists in the U.S. ruling class were against the loans from the start because, in their view, they rest on the willingness of the communist government to carry out its end of the bargain.

But the Western bankers' reply to that is that they have collateral security in Poland in addition to the willingness of the Polish officialdom to agree to live by the bargain. The collateral security is the political power of the Catholic hierarchy and the bourgeois intelligentsia.

Sitting on the horns of this dilemma, the Gierek government, by its handling of the situation, has made the kinds of concessions over the years which mollify the international bankers, strengthen the bourgeois intelligentsia, widen the capitalist market economy, and tie Poland's destiny as a whole to the will-o'-the-wisp of Western international finance capital and its chronic capitalist crises.

It is false to say that the crisis in Poland arose out of differences on how much to invest in capitalist construction in order to industrialize the country more rapidly. Of course sound policy is necessary here as elsewhere. But it is not the principal cause of the crisis.

SOCIALIST SOLUTION

The beginnings of a socialist solution clearly lie, first of all, in fearlessly approaching the workers, granting new economic concessions even at great risk, explaining to them Poland's new bondage to the imperialist banks, suspending the payment of interest, and declaring a moratorium on foreign debts.

To the sycophants of imperialism who invoke the Soviet military threat, the following should be noted and repeated over and over again as the imperialist press fails to do: Even in the latest loan that the bankers extended or said they would extend to Poland, this was only done on the basis that the Soviet banks underwrote — that is, guaranteed — the bulk of the loans in the first place, as a means of aiding Poland out of its crisis.

In other words, it is high time to show that it is economic and financial contributions from the Soviet Union which are truly helping Poland. This is what the Polish government officials should be candid to the workers about, rather than raising the spectre of Soviet intervention — which, of course, right-wing reaction may nevertheless provoke should the imperialists' intervention of a political and economic character continue unabated to the point where it actually controls the vital arteries of the regime itself.

Notwithstanding all this, it is possible for the regime to extricate itself by making a bold turn to the socialist alternative in rebuilding the economy rather than once again going through the travail of constantly reorganizing the apparatus of the party and the government in a blind search for solutions.

The latter can give, at best, only temporary reprieve and more frequently, as the past two-and-a-half decades have shown, merely strengthens the bourgeois sector of the economy, eats away at the vitals of the socialist economy, destroys the class consciousness of the workers, and makes them ready objects of manipulation by bourgeois elements at home who are in alliance with the imperialists abroad.

The former may be a slower process and entail sacrifices by the bourgeois intelligentsia, the petty-bourgeois tradesmen and merchants, and the rural bourgeoisie. They are the ones who have grown rich off the high prices for meat and other foods that are the direct result of decollectivization and the restoration of bourgeois agriculture.

Fundamental Causes of the Polish Crisis, Part 3

Now that the strikes are over and the Polish government has agreed to the demands of the workers it is possible to draw some tentative conclusions which flow from the unprecedented social and political crisis which has yet to be fully resolved.

No capitalist government could have agreed to such sweeping demands of the workers without the use of threats against the workers and without a show of force.

As it turned out, the Polish government and the party saw fit to avoid such a catastrophic confrontation. There was no use of the police, no mobilization of the militia, and no threats to use military force. And, of course, there never was any chance for the constantly predicted threat of "Soviet intervention" which the imperialist press harped upon.

Only when it became obvious that the strike was over and the cheering in the imperialist camp from Copenhagen to Tokyo began to die down did the New York Times on September 10, 1980, reveal that a Polish CP official said "There was no worry of Soviet intervention." Further, he said, the possibility of Soviet intervention could only come "if Poland abandoned the socialist system or if Poland went out of the Warsaw Pact." Neither condition was possible, he added.

On the matter of the immediate cause of the crisis this party official, alluding to the raising of meat prices, noted that the Soviet Union "had advised Warsaw in 1976 against raising meat prices, implying that the Russians had taken the same line this summer [on the meat price rises]." The Times added that "higher meat prices touched off protests four years ago and also provoked the recent strikes."

The Times neglected to restate that it was the utterly incredible demands of the Western bankers for austerity and belt-tightening at the Warsaw meeting last June which was the principal immediate cause of the strikes.

GOVERNMENT NEEDS CONFIDENCE OF WORKERS

Both the Polish party and the government, after a period of great vacillation and confusion, finally saw fit to grant all of the demands of the workers as the only secure exit from the utterly untenable situation in which the government found itself and for which it alone, in the final analysis, must bear full responsibility.

The government granted the sweeping demands only because it is, after all, a socialist government. If it is to function with any degree of stability it has to have, unlike a capitalist government, not only the support but the confidence of the working class.

This we indicated in an earlier installment. The government and the party had to try to win back the confidence of the workers, which it had obviously lost (if it ever had much of it in the first place), at almost "any cost" including political concessions of a risky character.

Unquestionably the workers have won wholly justifiable and substantial economic and social gains. In the context of present-day Poland, however, it also set back the clock of socialism.

INDEPENDENT UNIONS

The legal validation of the so-called independent unions should not in and of itself pose a political challenge to a socialist government. If these unions are truly free and independent — free that is, from bourgeois influence, free of entanglements with the Western trade union leaders who act as conduits for imperialist finance capital, as well as being free from bureaucratic regimentation-they can within time become the firm foundation for a truly socialist government.

As matters stand, however, what the workers have gained economically and socially is at the cost of legitimatizing a bourgeois opposition not merely to the present leadership of the government and the party, but to socialism in general.

This is so despite all the protestations to the contrary by the bourgeois dissidents who have now become the staunch allies and mentors of the strike leaders. This is what the imperialist bourgeoisie so well recognizes. This is why the press of finance capital on a world scale from Copenhagen to Tokyo has cheered the Polish strikers.

NEED NOT BE AN OBSTACLE TO SOCIALISM

An independent federation of Polish workers which is merely apolitical in character or composed of workers whose class consciousness is as yet inadequate for the task of socialist construction would not necessarily have to be on a collision course with the government. On the contrary, alertness, close contact, and dedication to the cause of the workers will facilitate the redress of grievances and the more or less autonomous existence of the federation within the framework of the socialist state and will not necessarily be a formidable obstacle to socialist construction. It really all depends on the degree of socialist consciousness, dedication, and self-sacrifice of the party and the state officialdom.

It is something altogether different if these independent unions orient in the direction of a bourgeois political party, whether it be in the form of a labor party or a Christian Democratic party. Whatever its name may be, such a development can, of course, pose a staggering political problem for the socialist future of Poland. For one thing, Poland would then have not only a private (bourgeois) sector in agriculture, but one also in industry and this would endanger the very social foundations of the Polish People's Republic.

It is true, of course, that at the time of the strike agreement, the strike leaders obligated themselves not to form a political party. But the character of the present leadership, its alliance with the Catholic hierarchy and the bourgeois intelligentsia, and its strong contacts with the imperialist West, make this obligation by the strike leaders of a dubious character. In reality the strike itself has pushed all the bourgeois elements forward and they are now springing into life all over the country.

Nevertheless, the government is far from lacking in options for regaining influence among the masses, revitalizing the economy, and turning the political situation around. It all depends on the orientation of the leadership from now on.

POLAND: A HALF-WAY HOUSE

As we have said on many occasions, Poland can only be called a socialist country in a very narrow and sociological sense. The basic means of production and limited centralized planning are in the hands of the government. To that extent only can the government be called socialist.

Poland, however, is a half-way house. Aside from the small state sector in agriculture, capitalist farming prevails throughout Poland. It has been getting steady, consistent, and ever-larger infusions of subsidies from the government, that is from the hides of the workers. This is true even though it is widely recognized that small private farming is inefficient and largely responsible for the poor state of food production in Poland.

Even Secretary of State Edmund Muskie in an interview on CBS's Face the Nation on September 7, 1980, said that the farms in Poland, which are 10 acres or less, "are inefficient." A friend of agribusiness in this country, Muskie knows that it is only the huge farms which can mass produce and employ the most modern technology to create an abundant food supply.

Yet by continuing to subsidize the small plots of privately owned farms, the government has not only helped to strengthen bourgeois influence and ideology, it has created the basis for the series of food crises in Poland.

The abandonment of collectivization as a result of the 1956 uprising has widened the sphere of bourgeois influence in the economic life of the country far beyond the countryside and into the cities where more than 200,000 so-called independent entrepreneurs operate on a free enterprise basis and swallow up no meager share of the national income.

All the rebellions beginning with the 1956 uprising up until the present, regardless of the legitimate character of the grievances, have led to abandoning socialist forms of production in favor of decentralized and market economy (bourgeois) practices.

(Decentralization in and of itself is not necessarily destructive of socialist planning if the decentralization strengthens workers' democracy, cuts down on bureaucratic practices, and helps in the execution of an overall socialist plan for the nation. Where decentralization is harmful and destructive is where those decentralized units become virtually autonomous and even worse, are permitted to deal with the foreign imperialist monopolies unilaterally.)

OPTIONS FOR GOVERNMENT

If so-called free unions now come under the domination of elements hostile to socialism, it may very well speed up the ultimate crisis in Poland. In this crisis the government will have to choose either to try to reconstruct the economy in accordance with the original socialist objectives it was pledged to promote or be pulled altogether into the orbit of imperialist finance capital as a result of the chronic economic crises which arise from the continual concessions given to the bourgeois elements since 1956.

The admission by the Polish Finance Minister that the government is indebted to the Western imperialist banks by more than $20 billion is alarming in itself. But what is even more alarming is the government's failure to truthfully explain how such an enormous debt could be piled up in such a short time, mostly from the mid-1970s.

The stock answer from the government is that they were trying to industrialize the country too rapidly and invested too much in capital construction. They do not explain, of course, why the imperialist banks were so eager to advance such huge sums of money to socialist Poland while these very same banks are so vehemently opposed not only to advancing money but even to diplomatically recognizing such socialist countries as Cuba, Viet Nam, Ethiopia, Kampuchea, Angola, or north Korea.

True, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia have also been advanced loans, but certainly nowhere to the extent of those advanced to Poland.

Why the almost reckless lending on the part of the imperialists to Poland, more than any other socialist country. Is it because it is such an attractive economic prospect? Or is it because it is a politically motivated, coordinated endeavor by the imperialist banks to strengthen the private, that is, the bourgeois, economic sector in Poland and to weaken the nationalized socialist sector by making it excessively dependent on exports to the imperialist countries and thereby bring Poland into the imperialist orbit altogether?

After all, is not $20 billion of investment on the part of even the most powerful banking syndicates in such a relatively small, industrialized country, which has neither oil, uranium, nor natural gas but an abundance of coal and other resources and a firm socialist government, an extravagant and speculative venture by the imperialists?

POLAND'S VULNERABILITY

The answer to the question lies in the political motivation of the imperialist governments that are controlled by the banks and the military-industrial complex. The latter have long seen Poland as the most vulnerable area in the struggle against the socialist countries. A "cold" victory against Poland, that is, a victory by the slower but nonetheless equally deadly process of economic penetration, could eventually turn into a greater victory than one won by imperialist armed intervention.

The risk, of course, to the imperialists is great. But their method of slow, "peaceful" subjugation is nonetheless an irresistible temptation to them. Whether the Soviet Union can ever permit imperialist penetration to result in economic and political control by the imperialists of its key, fraternal socialist ally on its border is another matter.

It is not the indebtedness as such which is significant or the solicitation of loans and credit as a basis for normal trade relations which is significant. The U.S. was for many decades a debtor nation and solicited loans and credit from the European capital markets for a long time before it became the predominant imperialist power. It was never, however, the target of a hostile capitalist world intent on undermining its social order, as is the case with the socialist countries, particularly Poland.

NEED FOR INVESTIGATION

Were there any really progressive elements in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, where there are endless investigations on matters of urgent international significance, they would certainly embark upon an investigation of the banks and seek out and expose the real threads which the banks hold in Poland. Certainly, in order to advance such tremendous sums of money over such a short period of time for no apparent good risk or reason, much bribery had to be advanced à la Lockheed and other scandalous and shady deals.

A real investigation of the banks and what they were doing in Poland would be most revealing. Witness the title of an article in Fortune magazine (September 22, 1980) on Poland: "What the bankers did to Poland." As a result of the banks' concerns, the article says, "Poland has ended up like a less-developed country selling pork bellies, ham, potatoes and coal."

The article was not meant to be an indictment of the banks but rather a boast of their accomplishments.

INDEPENDENT, SOCIALIST INVESTIGATION

It is, of course, even more fitting for the new leadership in Poland to open up a real public investigation as to how and why such a big debt was piled up in such a short time and who gained by it.

One of the questions that should be answered is how did it happen that Bank Handlowy, Poland's leading international financial institution, replaced its chairman, president, and many of its top operating officers in August 1979. Was it, as the New York Times of August 14, 1979, claims, to improve its "image in world [imperialist] banking circles"? Or was it because they refused to make available so-called financial data to Western bankers never previously released? In other words, was it because they refused to submit Poland's national budget to the approval of U.S. bankers or because they saw the danger of being swallowed by the imperialist banks?

The banks advanced money for rapid industrialization, but industrialization in and of itself does not advance socialism or promote a higher standard of living for the masses, as workers in the capitalist countries know very well. The industrialization must be based on the concept of socialist construction with the view of meeting the most urgent needs of the masses.

This is not what the bankers advanced the money for. A thorough investigation by a truly independent commission including representatives from fraternal socialist countries to go into the details of how such vast sums of money could be borrowed, extended, and used for what purposes would be a form of enlightenment for all concerned.

It would reveal that the period when these extravagant loans were made is precisely the period when the imperialist governments warmed up to the Polish government and began to see it, as former President Gerald Ford did, as an independent country."

ATTITUDE IN POLAND ON DECLARING DEBT MORATORIUM

It is extremely interesting to note the attitude which the Polish government and party is taking toward the critical question of declaring a debt moratorium.

It now turns out that Deputy Prime Minister Henryk Kisiel was specifically asked whether any such step was contemplated and replied that the government does not seek a moratorium on its debt. In fact, he is quoted as saying that the debts would be paid "with the precision of a Swiss watch." (New York Times, September 9, 1980.)

However, Zigmunt Szeliga, deputy editor of the Polish weekly Polityki and an economist, said, "There is no question of declaring bankruptcy. Poland is a big country with big resources and wants to act seriously. " However, he added, "But postponing repayment may become the wisest course."

This signifies that the question of declaring a moratorium and indeed the whole question of the indebtedness to the imperialist banks is the pivotal issue in the as yet undisclosed struggle between the more progressive, anti-imperialist oriented leaders in both the government and the party as against the conciliators.

The perennial so-called economic reforms since 1956 were in reality a partial restructuring of the Polish economy along bourgeois lines. These so-called reforms put the socialist sector in ever-greater jeopardy until the banks could finally proclaim, as they did as long ago as January 26, 1979, in an astonishing article in the New York Times, that the bankers can now control the Polish economy.

There can be no resolution of the deep-seated crisis which has been wracking the Polish economy until the spotlight is turned on the real cause of the crisis.

How the U.S. plans to take over Poland

The U.S. is readying plans to take over Poland economically and politically, and it is this fact that raises the possibility of a counter-action by Poland's socialist allies.

The severe political crisis facing Poland is overshadowed in the U.S. media and press by the purported danger of Soviet intervention. The plans of the U.S. in alliance with Western interests to take over Poland have, on the other hand, been given little if any attention until just this week. However, because of the gravity of the situation and the perilous and unforeseeable consequences for U.S. and Western imperialist interests, some very pertinent facts as well as positions have now surfaced in the press.

ASPIN'S OP-ED PIECE

On February 6, 1981, Les Aspin, a former member of the House Banking and Currency Committee and now a member of the House Armed Services Committee, made public the orientation of the U.S. position with respect to Poland (New York Times, Op-Ed page). Although he uses language of a euphemistic character calculated to soften and make more palatable the takeover plans that the U.S. is projecting, he nevertheless lays them out in sufficient detail for anyone to get the message — if not loud, then certainly very clear. It is probably directed particularly at calming the fears of the Western allies and holding them in line.

"If Soviet tanks," he opens, "do not determine Poland's future course, Western bankers can. " How's that? "The leaders of the Polish Communist Party," he goes on, "would never admit it, but the strongest foreign leverage on Poland is the huge debt to Western banks that Poland, unlike other Communist countries, has racked up. The Polish hard currency debt at the end of 1980 was about $25 billion," he says, "one of the largest debt burdens of any advanced developing country. Almost all of Warsaw's debts are held by Western banks and governments."

Aspin doesn't say how such a small, relatively poor country managed by a socialist government was able to obtain loans of such staggering amounts. The truth of the matter, of course, is that these loans were made on the basis that the Western capitalist countries would open their markets to Polish products, specifically destined for Western Europe and the U.S.

The capitalist governments, using the economic crisis as an excuse, have gone back on their promises to the Polish government and have in fact not only not opened wide the markets, but on the contrary constricted them as a means of further strengthening their financial hold on Poland and making it more or less inevitable that more loans would thus become indispensable.

CRUSHING DEBT BURDEN

Thus it is that mere debt service costs for the loans, says Les Aspin, "equal all that Poland earns in hard currency. In 1981 alone, Poland must borrow $11 billion to $12 billion."

It will require, Aspin continues, "about $3.5 billion to $4 billion in new hard-currency loans to finance debt service and to continue to run a trade deficit. ... Moreover, the prospect for 1982 is more of the same. ..."

Agreement to such huge loans and extortionate interest, which would normally be regarded by the responsible national leadership of a small country as spurious and extravagant, assumes the proportion, in this case, of real collusion between the banking interests and elements of the Polish leadership. That is why Aspin concludes that. The Polish debt now gives Western governments the means to influence the direction that the Polish government takes. ..."

What he really means is that the U.S. government in alliance with the Western imperialists can now dictate, not merely influence, the direction that the Polish government takes — providing, he adds, "they coordinate their efforts" (which they are feverishly doing!) and (please listen to this!) "do not overplay their hand."

Aspin and those for whom he speaks are advising that the banks roll over the debts that will shortly be due and present certain conditions to the Poles. If the U.S. works it nicely and neatly, these will in reality effectuate a dismantling of what is left at the present time of the socialist system, and put the Polish economy under the control of the U.S. and its imperialist allies.

U.S. GUARANTEES 'UNPLEASANT ALTERNATIVES'

If Poland refuses to go along, he continues, it has only "unpleasant alternatives." If it should declare a moratorium and default, he says, "all lending to Poland would cease and its assets in the West would be seized. Nothing would be shipped to Poland without cash in advance."

This would be handing the Polish government the Iran treatment, whereby the U.S. seized Iranian assets in an effort to destabilize them economically and make it impossible for them to continue normal financial and economic relations with other capitalist countries.

If Poland merely tried to reschedule its loans and suspend payments on the principal unilaterally it would lose all "credit" with the West. In any case, "the loss of credit and the need to balance trade would mean immediate and major cuts in imports of food, spare parts, and raw materials. " However, he says, if Poland seeks to reschedule its debt on the basis of an agreement with the West, then of course the U.S. and Western banks can impose their economic system, if, of course, the West doesn't "overplay its hand."

BANKS HOPEFUL FOR A 'COLD TAKEOVER'

The U.S. program can then be implemented by the Polish authorities. In fact, he goes on to say, if the U.S. program is put into practice, then "with that program we could help underwrite a peaceful resolution of the economic and political crisis." In other words, the strength of the U.S. and Western banks in Poland is so large and their influence so great economically alone, not counting the political factors, that the U.S. imperialists have the power to underwrite a peaceful resolution of the economic and political crisis — another euphemistic phrase for the cold takeover of the country and an end to the imperialist economic destabilization that is wracking the country.

And what would be the price, as he puts it, for Warsaw and Moscow?

"The price would be the toleration of an independent source of political authority: Solidarity." One has to reread this to really believe that it could be put in writing at a time when presumably the Polish and Soviet leaders can read it too! For what it says is that, in return for dismantling the socialist system and giving authority to an "independent" source (now we know how really independent Solidarity is if the bankers are willing to put their trust in it!), they will reschedule the loans.

Thus, "In exchange for rescheduling the debt, banks, at the behest of Western governments [meaning the U.S. and above all BankAmerica, Chase, Manufacturers Hanover, etc., ] would certainly be within their rights to urge [the softest of diplomatic euphemisms for dictate to] Warsaw to adopt economic reforms."

'REFORMS' MEAN OVERTHROW OF SYSTEM

Aspin doesn't spell out the reforms, but the Washington Post of February 11, 1981, which deals with the same question makes quite clear what these reforms would be. "It is widely believed in the West that the Warsaw government would have to take a number of reform measures . . ." The first mentioned is to "decentralize its management of the economy."

Decentralization of the management of a socialist economy under the existing circumstances of the Polish economic and political situation means to dismantle the socialist system. The public ownership of the means of production would then constitute merely a legal premise which, given the present political situation, would be reduced to a legalistic fiction and pave the way for complete dismantling of public ownership.

The second reform demanded, according to the Washington Post, would be to "give greater support to the private farmers as the most efficient producers." This means not merely permitting the existence of private farming, but for the new pro-capitalist government to support bourgeois agriculture "as the most efficient producers," which means giving it precedence over whatever collective and state farms exist. This would completely nullify whatever socialist forms exist at all.

U.S. GOVERNMENT OPENLY ADMITS PRESSURE

Finally, the U.S. government, which has previously extended loans and credit to the Polish government, and has never had the temerity, indeed the impudence, to openly attach strings to any loans, does so now. The Washington Post of February 11, 1981, quotes State Department spokesman William Dyess: " 'Our feeling is that what's needed most of all in Poland is internal economic reform. The Poles know this,' he said, indicating that until the Warsaw government itself takes action that shows it is 'serious' about improving the economic situation, the Reagan administration is unlikely to pump in more money."

It is therefore clear from both these sources — the official U.S. government position as well as Les Aspin, who is speaking somewhat less officially but nonetheless authoritatively in revealing the facts and real position of the U.S. government — that the U.S. banks working in concert with their Western European counterparts have embarked on what amounts to economic strangulation and destabilization in Poland. Once having gotten a strong foothold in the economic system by these enormous and extraordinary loans, they now seek to dictate an overturn of the socialist system.

DESTABILIZATION AIDED BY WEAK LEADERSHIP

This is an utterly new phenomenon in a socialist country, but is a time-honored practice of imperialist finance capital in the underdeveloped countries. They could not have accomplished this without a weak, vacillating, and accommodating leadership in Poland which has been incapable of dealing with the workers and has opened the door to anti-socialist, anti-communist, and counter-revolutionary elements whom the bankers recommend as a partner for collaboration with a pro-capitalist government.

As Aspin says, "An important element would be labor peace. Although the bankers need not say it [Aspin says it for them in such elegant language], peace can only be achieved by dealing with the Solidarity labor movement as a partner."

Is it possible that there are no socialist forces in the Polish leadership who are willing and able to fight back, rather than become enslaved to imperialist finance capital? Is it possible that Poland's socialist allies, particularly those on the borders of Poland, will sit idly by while BankAmerica, Manufacturers Hanover, Chase, etc., etc., complete the destabilization and takeover?

The Polish political crisis cannot long continue. Poland is truly at a crossroads. It will either find the inner resources and revolutionary determination to resist reenslavement to imperialism and resume the road of socialist construction, or it will once again become a satellite of imperialist geopolitics in the service of the U. S. banks and as a battering ram against the Soviet Union.

After martial law

The new Polish crisis

The world capitalist press is trying to project the image that Poland is menaced by the military — by Polish or Soviet tanks.

The reality of the situation is altogether different. Poland is, and has been, menaced for longer than two decades not by Eastern tanks, but by Western imperialist banks.Everything else said in the capitalist press is of a superficial character. They concentrate on phenomena which are the effects and not the profound causes of the economic and political crisis in Poland.

HALF-A-BILLION DUE JUST IN INTEREST

On the very day of the pronouncement of martial law and the military takeover, the capitalist press was forced to publish in its inside financial pages the fact that the previous Polish government had heavily indebted itself to the tune of between $26-30 billion to almost 500 banks. The largest banks are from the U.S., West Germany, Britain, France, and Switzerland.

The estimates of the debt vary from country to country and almost from day to day. But on the very day of the imposition of martial law the government was faced with $500 million due merely for interest on the debt! (Reported in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Christian Science Monitor, December 14, 1981.)

How is it possible for such a small country, in so short a time, to have piled up such an enormous debt and to have to pay the kind of interest that amounts to the annual wage bill of a fifth of the industrial work force of Poland?

Did Poland get all this money — $26 billion to $30 billion — in the form of industrial equipment and goods? Or is it the product of "rollovers," an infamous practice of international finance capital? A rollover takes place when instead of paying the principal on the debt, the debt is "rolled over" and interest is added on at higher, more extortionate rates — and so it goes from year to year to year.

How did Poland get itself in such a situation? How does a country which began socialist construction — the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, the collectivization of much of the land, and the creation of a state monopoly of foreign trade — find itself paying ever-higher interest payments at the current rate of 20% without sufficient food to supply the population, with many of its factories idle, with inflation increasing, and with industrial production declining?

TURNED TO WEST FOLLOWING 1956 UPRISING

It happened because following a reactionary uprising in 1956, which overturned the then-existing leadership, Poland turned to the West. The country was opened up slowly and gradually to Western capitalism. The leadership thought this would gain Poland a normal, fair, and reasonable relationship with the capitalist West.

The new Polish government virtually abolished collectivized agriculture and decentralized some of the important industries in order to be able to trade with the West. Above all they opened wide the gates to the penetration of finance capital under terms and conditions imposed by the Western banks.

It was understood by the Polish authorities that Western capitalist markets would thus be opened to Polish products and that the import of necessary technology and materials would be made available on fair and equitable terms. It was also thought that the restrictions of a political character, like the so-called blacklists which the imperialists impose against other socialist countries such as Cuba, Viet Nam, etc., would be lifted against Poland, assuring it of being treated as an "equal partner" in capitalist trade and commerce.

ECONOMY ENTANGLED WITH IMPERIALIST FINANCE CAPITAL

What followed, however, is part of the same undeviating pattern — the merciless, ruthless, and avaricious entanglement of all industrial Poland into the vortex of imperialist finance.

For a few years, while the debts were piling up, the small amount of Polish exports to the capitalist West increased. Beginning with the early 1970s, however, the trend toward increased exports from Poland to the Western capitalist countries on a basis where they could compete and be sold diminished as a result of deliberate political measures taken by the imperialists.

This made it more and more urgent, if the process of continuing the relationship with the West were not to be halted, to further increase the debts in order to facilitate exports and continue the purchase of needed commodities.

This orientation made the economy of Poland completely dependent on Western markets, Western imports, and Western financing.

The socialist sector in Poland was being steadily squeezed out and replaced by the relentless so-called market economy. A market economy, which means more capitalist commodity production, always generates greater and greater inequality. This results in a polarization between those who are better paid, those closer to the market, the bourgeois technocrats, those in the higher echelons of the officialdom engaged in running the economy, those involved in selling, purchasing, and general business dealings with the West, in a word the neo-bourgeois elements on the one hand, and the general working class on the other.

Capitalist commodity production, both of a hidden as well as of an open character, was gradually replacing most of the socialist economic arteries that are the lifeblood of Poland. Only the legal right of public ownership and nationalization remained but this was merely like a skeleton, the last economic barrier to capitalist restoration.

In the meantime the ravages of the world capitalist economy — inflation and unemployment, the invariable concomitants everywhere and every place of the penetration of international finance capital — while they had begun to envelop Poland much earlier, took on a galloping momentum and brought about the strike struggles of August-September 1980.

There is no question that bankers throughout the capitalist world now openly acknowledge that the great crisis in Poland is at bottom an economic crisis and moreover admit having virtual economic control over the Polish economy as a result of their extraordinary financial stranglehold.

BANKS BOAST OF CONTROL OF ECONOMY

Workers World newspaper was the first in the workers' movement here and abroad to call attention to the great danger that the penetration of Western capital posed for Poland and other socialist countries. The New York Times made this penetration public in a front-page story on January 26, 1979, in the kind of article which was more a boast by the banks than the release of a news item.

"As part of an effort to obtain a major, new loan," wrote the Times, "Poland has agreed to permit Western banks to monitor its economic policies, American bankers say. They regard the concession as a historic breakthrough in the financial relations with the communist world.

"To persuade the banks to agree to the new financing, Poland has already had to announce a strict, new budget for 1979 and provide its creditors with comprehensive new information on its financial situation.

"The banks involved in the new credit will henceforth track the progress of the Polish economy much as the International Monetary Fund monitors the economies of non-communist countries in financial distress."

This article was also a none too gentle hint that if further economic reforms in the direction of capitalism were not made, the stranglehold of the banks would become tighter.

Indeed, Poland thereafter purged its chief banking executives and replaced them with personnel more amenable and accommodating to the Western imperialist bankers.

The truth of the matter was that along with economic control went economic destabilization and political infiltration, a process which had been going on throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

REAGANITES PROMOTE BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION

As is usual with the international banking consortiums, and the U.S. banks in particular, bribery and corruption went hand in hand in the negotiation of the loans.

The Reagan administration, it should be remembered, has gone to the extent of urging the lifting of legal and perfunctory restrictions on multi-national corporations against bribery of foreign officials, as is practiced by Lockheed and hundreds of other multi-national corporations. American multi-nationals, they propose, should have the unrestricted right to bribe and corrupt.

Of course, the current legal restrictions against bribery have resulted in fines which for the corporations are equivalent to traffic violations. A $50,000 or $100,000 fine for bribes that run into the millions of dollars involving transactions of hundreds of millions of dollars is a mere irritant to the multi-nationals. But even this the Reaganites consider too heavy a burden on the "delicate" financial structure of the corporations and the banks.

CAN'T BUILD SOCIALISM WHILE SURRENDERING ECONOMY TO WEST

The steady and consistent purging of the officialdom in Poland and the bureaucratic inner struggles among the technical and industrial managerial groups were the result of pursuing a contradictory process with no satisfactory solution insofar as the needs of the mass of the workers were concerned. This contradiction is the attempt to construct socialism while at the same time surrendering the most vital aspects of economic life to Western capitalist interests. It led straight back to the very same ills that prevail in any capitalist country: high prices, shortages, concealed (as against open) unemployment, and the diversion of necessary productive facilities for marketing and exporting purposes.

Attempts to recoup its financial losses have driven Poland deeper and deeper into the economic morass. The cause is not socialist planning, not so-called centralization of the economy, of which there has been little in Poland in the last two decades. It is the lack of socialist planning, the lack of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, the lack of socialist cooperation with the socialist community of which Poland is formally an integral part that has resulted in the precipitous decline in industrial production.

NICARAGUAN LEADER ON IMPERIALIST DOMINATION

Look at any underdeveloped country. You will see that Poland's situation differs little from any of the poor, oppressed, Third World countries where the Western imperialist banks are dominant.

Listen to Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan representative who spoke at the UN General Assembly on October 7, 1981: Despite the Third World countries' efforts to restructure their foreign debt and pay its servicing with untold sacrifice [that's just the way it is in Poland now — SM] the present economic outlook is so dark that it calls for serious reflection. Unless formulas corresponding to our countries' economic realities are found, the only way out will be to waive the foreign debt, including its servicing. Otherwise the day will come when all the poor countries in the world, acting in common agreement, will have to say that we aren't going to pay because we have nothing to pay with.

Poland's situation differs in only one respect from the other oppressed countries which have become indebted as a result of imperialist financial control over their destinies. This difference is that Poland has a strong industrial base. It has a tremendous coal industry. It is considered one of the ten most industrialized countries in the world.

What happened was that it put its economic lifeblood, what the workers built up over decades, in hock to the banks.

How did this happen? Was it merely the result of corruption of leadership, gross negligence, bureaucratic practices, and alienation from the mass of the people? In part, and only in part, this is true. But the historical roots for this are just as significant.

HISTORIC COMPROMISE

Poland was never a socialist country in the generally accepted definition of that term. Poland from the very beginning of its development after the Second World War was a compromise between world imperialism and the Soviet Union as well as between the conflicting class forces internally.

The U.S., it must be remembered, emerged from the Second World War as the paramount victor with a nuclear monopoly and with the least amount of military casualties. The USSR, on the other hand, had been inflicted with untold destruction and lost over 20 million lives — almost a million in the defense of Poland against the Nazis.

These circumstances and the entire preceding historic period — the reign of political reaction in Poland, the hold of the Catholic hierarchy over the peasantry, the leanings of the petty bourgeoisie toward Western imperialism, and the divisions in the working class — made a full-scale socialist revolution in Poland impossible at the time.

What did occur was the revolutionary intervention of the Soviet Red Army in alliance with the working-class and democratic, anti-fascist resistance movement. The bourgeois resistance movement, which in reality had been putting up a mild and token resistance to the Nazis, was, under the prompting of imperialism, veering in the direction of the restoration of a bourgeois republic as a satellite of Western, particularly U.S., imperialism.

Under these conditions, a historic compromise took place. Poland was established as a socialist republic in form, but in reality it was a halfway house between two social systems which at bottom were irreconcilable because they were based on diametrically opposed class interests and veering in different directions.

IMPERIALISTS WOULDN'T ALLOW POLAND TO 'LIVE AND LET LIVE'

The compromise could last only if the imperialist powers were content to at least let things in Poland work themselves out automatically on the basis of the internal class relations and class contradictions without imperialist economic and financial intervention.

This was at bottom the understanding between the USSR and the imperialist powers when Poland was finally recognized as an independent and sovereign state.

However Poland like the other socialist countries, was diplomatically, politically, and economically ostracized by the new imperialist cordon sanitaire when the Cold War began in earnest. At the same time, the pro-bourgeois, pro-imperialist internal forces, which under the compromise agreement were to have a voice and be part of the new regime, continued an uninterrupted, undercover war against Poland's pro-socialist course.

It need hardly be stated that grave and serious mistakes of the leadership facilitated the course of the bourgeois restorationists. That. however. is another chapter in the history of the Polish workers' movement and of the world communist movement in general.

The outstanding fact of Polish history since the 1956 reactionary uprising is the reemergence of the pro-capitalist elements, their infiltration into the workers' movement, and the corruption of the leadership — all as the result of the penetration of imperialist finance capital on such a huge extraordinary and utterly untenable basis. The latter was welcomed with open arms by the Polish Communist Party leadership.

The day of reckoning had to come. The massive strikes, which began more than 16 months ago, are not the effect of socialist planning and socialist construction, but the lack of it. Malignant finance capital was riding roughshod over the Polish economy.

WHY IMPERIALISTS REGARDED POLAND AS 'INDEPENDENT'

Sheer delight over the imperialists having so much sway in Poland prompted then-President Gerald Ford to proclaim in 1976, in a nationwide debate with then-Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter that "Poland is an independent state." Ford made his remark to an excited nationwide public, and a good part of the world was listening. It was prompted by Carter's goading of Ford on allegedly being "soft on communism" in Eastern Europe.

This remarkable admission by Ford was not some hasty, thoughtless statement. Otherwise, he would have corrected it later, since he was certainly asked about it. Ford was merely stating publicly what was then understood politically in the U.S. capitalist establishment. This was particularly made clear by the briefings Ford got from Kissinger, his secretary of state, who in turn was, and is, an intimate of David Rockefeller. Rockefeller's immense financial control in the banking consortiums which deal with the Eastern European countries particularly Poland is well understood everywhere in the capitalist financial world.

Ford, however, was slightly ahead of himself. He and the bankers, diplomats, and White House strategists at the time too hastily equated economic control with more or less general political control. It is true that political infiltration had already taken an enormous toll on the state structure in Poland. But automatic economic processes do not so easily translate themselves into full political control, even where political infiltration is very serious. There were still other progressive forces, hostile to imperialist control, available to the people of Poland.

IMPERIALISTS DIDN'T COUNT ON PROGRESSIVE FORCES

Soviet interventionm which the imperialist press has saturated the public with day in and day out, may be a last resort. But what the imperialist banking fraternity had not counted on was that the Polish military establishment would, at least for now, stand up, if not for a regeneration of socialist construction in the Marxist sense, at least as a barrier to the reestablishment of Poland as an imperialist satellite. That is what has happened since martial law was established in Poland.

The real issue is not whether the military under present conditions is capable of, or is fully united in, resuscitating Poland on a socialist basis. The issue is whether the army, general staff and its commanding strata, aided by loyal soldiers and militia can help the working class stave off a counter-revolution under the phony flag of "Solidarity," which is a mask for covert, imperialist intervention. That is the real issue.

A victory for the counter-revolution would be a victory for world imperialism. It would reinforce imperialist oppression and exploitation on a terrifying scale everywhere. It would embolden all the most reactionary elements in the capitalist world. It would darken the prospects for socialist struggle elsewhere. It would encourage the unbridled militarists in the Pentagon to move on Eastern Europe and lay the basis for an eventual confrontation with the USSR.

In all of this, what has to be remembered is that the world capitalist crisis — intractable, pervasive, and malignant in its effects — has enveloped some of the socialist countries. Like a malignant disease, wherever it spreads its tentacles it tears down the healthy foundations. Over the last 70 years it has brought about dozens of counter-revolutionary insurrections, military dictatorships, two imperialist wars, atomic annihilation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the current nuclear saber-rattling over Western Europe. A Polish counterrevolution would facilitate the deployment of U.S. missiles in Europe and make the struggle against imperialist war that much more difficult.

The workers of the world and the workers in the United States have nothing to gain and a great, great deal to lose by supporting, encouraging, or promoting the cause of this counter-revolutionary, fink outfit misnamed Solidarity. The latter, under the influence and direction of imperialist agents, has captured a formidable part of the Polish workers, and on the morrow of its victory would hand them over lock, stock, and barrel to the imperialist powers, above all the U.S.

Poland's struggle for independence

For longer than a century, the European people have been passionately devoted to the struggle for Polish independence.

It was Karl Marx himself who in connection with his organizing effort for the North during the American Civil War, also organized a public meeting in Britain on behalf of Polish independence. This meeting was attended by many Polish workers and workers of other nationalities, especially from the London area.

The Polish working class in Europe understood Polish independence one way.

But the clamor for "independence" by the capitalist powers was something else again.

When the German bourgeoisie spoke of Polish independence they had in mind an annexation of Poland. When the French bourgeoisie spoke of independence, they meant an alliance under which Poland would be subjugated and used as a battering ram against both the Germans and the Russians. And when the British spoke of independence they had in mind the extension of the British Empire to the gates of Warsaw.

They haven't changed much at all today.

It is no wonder that revolutionary Marxists have always been suspicious about the clamor for "Polish independence" when they see that its cheerleaders come from the Bourse, Lombard Street, and Wall Street.

ROLE OF POLISH ARMY

Of all the dramatic events arising out of the Polish situation, that which has surprised and stunned the bourgeoisie most is the fact that it was the Polish Army, not the Soviet Army as the capitalists had been predicting, which opened up the offensive against the counter-revolution.

It also stunned the bourgeois elements in Poland. The New York Times on December 19, 1981, carries a Warsaw dispatch with a December 17, 1981, dateline by Henry Kamm, which states: "There were no Soviet tanks in Warsaw today. That, to many Poles, was the hardest thing to take about the crackdown which began Saturday."

Why was it the Army that initiated and is carrying through the struggle against the counter-revolution, apparently without any visible opposition from within?

Shouldn't the Army above all be in favor of an "independent" Poland as defined by Solidarity? Shouldn't the Army be for breaking its ties with the Warsaw Pact, and the Soviet Union in particular, and be "independent"?

The answer to these questions is that the Army leadership has demonstrated that it understands the real meaning of independence for Poland.

That was once understood here in this country among certain elements of the capitalist establishment. It was a short-lived period.

That was around the time when the Soviet Red Army had just broken the back of the Nazi war machine and Poland was about to be fully liberated from the Nazi yoke. The question of the future of Eastern Europe was still considered an Eastern European and Soviet affair, in which negotiations would end with a peace treaty between East and West.

The Yalta agreement, which came about a year later (1945), was considered to be such an agreement. It recognized the independence of Poland.

HOW LIPPMANN UNDERSTOOD POLISH INDEPENDENCE

One of those close to the U.S. State Department at the time and who best understood the real meaning of Polish independence was the well-known foreign affairs commentator and so-called dean of the U.S. journalistic community, Walter Lippmann. He was also an adviser to more than a half a dozen presidents, including Kennedy, Johnson, and Eisenhower.

Needless to say, Lippmann was an able exponent of U.S. imperialist policy and reflected elements within the imperialist establishment.

Ronald Steel, who has written the authoritative book on Lippmann Walter Lippmann and the American Century , had this to say about Lippmann's view on Poland:

"Lippmann thought Prime Minister Churchill's plan for a pro-British government in Warsaw entirely fanciful. An independent Poland could survive 'only if it is allied with Russia,' he wrote as early as January 1944. If the Poles annex territory that was German [that territory was returned to Poland a decade later — SM] they would need outside help to hold on to that territory. Only Russia could provide that. "Therefore, he underlined, Poland had to come to terms with Russia, 'to terms which make Russia the principal guarantor of the Western boundary.' Stalin knew this, the Germans knew it, and so did the moderate [bourgeois — SM] Poles. There could be 'no future for a Poland governed or even influenced by those Poles who even before they are liberated from the Nazis conceived themselves as the spearpoint of a hostile coalition against the Soviet Union.' "

That's how it was understood for a short period in most of Europe and in the U.S. And that's how the Polish Army understands it today. It understands that there can be no guarantee for any real independence except, as Lippmann wrote, by alliance with the Soviet Union.

The attempt by the U.S. government, in secret alliance with other imperialist powers, to influence, promote, and financially support "those Poles who conceived themselves as a spearpoint of a hostile coalition against the Soviet Union" is what lies at the bottom of the struggle between Western imperialism and the socialist countries, particularly Poland. It is the attempt by the U.S. and its imperialist allies, ever since the Polish People's Republic was established, to undermine and destabilize the Polish economy, undermine the state, nullify the Yalta agreement and reestablish Poland as a satellite of imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism.

What is happening now is in some ways a rerun, with far more serious international implications, of what happened after the death of Roosevelt the coming to power of the Truman administration the pronouncement of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and the opening up of the vicious Cold War.

HOW THEY DESTABILIZED EARLY POLISH ECONOMY

The way the U.S. destabilization against Poland began is sometimes told in their own words, which are occasionally released in official documents of the U.S. In the State Department document entitled 1948 — Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Volume 4, there is considerable material which indicates how the new post-Yalta policy of U.S. imperialism began to take shape.

For instance, it says on page 528 that on March 26, 1948, "President Truman issued a proclamation which redefined arms and implements of war so as to include a category of exports which had not been subject to licensing control in 1947 and included categories of equipment previously not requiring clearance."

This dealt with purchases by the Polish government of industrial equipment necessary to put the Polish coal industry back into operation following its destruction under Nazi rule.

The U.S. government suspended the shipments even though Poland had already paid a considerable amount of money for them, which included a blooming mill, a slabbing mill and other equipment necessary for the coal industry. However, the U.S. government insisted on first settling the nationalization agreements with the Polish government.

U.S. 'LINKS' PURCHASES WITH NATIONALIZATIONS

The Polish government had said that the nationalizations, some of which included U.S. businesses, were another matter and should not be linked up with purchases of necessary equipment and technology which were made by other agreements. The Polish position was that the nationalizations were an internal affair.

But the U.S. regarded the nationalization of industry in Poland, that is, the taking of the means of production into the hands of the state for purposes of socialist construction, and also the collectivization of the land, as "undemocratic" measures and opposed them.

Its opposition took the form which was outlined in Truman's memorandum quoted above. In accordance with that directive, the U.S. put an embargo on most exports to Poland pending an agreement concerning the nationalizations of industry and finance, collectivization of the land, and other matters.

This is the way the U.S. attempted to block Poland's progressive measures toward socialist construction. It abrogated agreements by which Poland was to purchase urgently needed technology to rebuild the devastated coal industry after the ravages of the Nazi invasion.

NICARAGUA AND POLAND

The reader should examine the current negotiations between the U.S. and Nicaragua and it will be easily seen that the U.S. is taking just about the same position in relation to Nicaragua as it took to Poland in that earlier period.

First, it insists upon stopping the socialist reconstruction of Nicaragua and insists upon supporting and promoting the so-called private sector for the purpose of undermining socialist construction. It places political conditions on any credits for the purchase of much-needed technology to rebuild the destruction caused by the Somoza regime.

Nicaragua's unwillingness to agree to internal "reforms" demanded by the U.S., which the latter labels "democratic reforms," is what lies at the bottom of the U.S.'s denial of export licenses to ship much-needed supplies to Nicaragua. This puts the country in a virtual state of embargo and blockade.

This is what the U.S. began with its Cold War against Poland, other East European countries, and especially the Soviet Union.

'POLAND FEARS VIRTUAL U.S. EMBARGO'

A memorandum of conversation cabled by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Thorp to Washington on April 9, 1948 (see document above) quotes then-Polish Ambassador to the U.S., Joseph Winiewicz, as saying:

"While Poland has made purchases approximately up to 60% of the total credit ... the Poles are unable to obtain vitally needed equipment such as bulldozers, shovels, etc., in addition to the blooming mills and slabbing mills, Poland fears that the American export policy might amount to a virtual embargo of shipments to Poland and that the members of the Polish government have been extremely reluctant to proceed any further with negotiations of the nationalization agreement."

The U.S. government was holding back export licenses and vital equipment and technology in order to first wrest a nationalization agreement. Under the terms of such an agreement, the U.S. would attempt to stop socialist ownership and control of the productive forces of Poland and the collectivization of land. It was a clear attempt to put the economic squeeze on Poland, dictate its economic and foreign policy, and make it capitulate on its internal social structure.

Some in the State Department at the time were against this linkage.

ORIGIN OF 'LINKAGE'

The term linkage was recently revived with the new Cold War that Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski inaugurated and which Reagan is carrying to extremes. The term had its origins in the Cold War and specifically as it applied to Poland.

Just as the Reagan administration is now saying to Poland, "If you want food shipments and extension of loans and technology, you better not abolish those very, very, democratic reforms" (those "reforms" which have virtually led Poland to the abyss and which are completely bourgeois-restorationist in character), the Truman administration was saying in 1948, "If you want the blooming mill and slabbing mill and other technology to put the coal industry in shape, then give up the socialist reconstruction of Poland"!

What was demanded of the Polish people during that period, and which ended in a compromise, at least on paper, is now being revived on a more dangerous scale. In truth, it never was abandoned. It was continued on the basis of economic penetration via the huge loans and in collusion with a corrupt officialdom which saw great merit in opening up Poland completely to Western capitalist financial and economic penetration.

The question of linkage, that is, of using U.S. and Western economic weapons as a means for political control by the imperialists, was never abandoned.

TIME FOR SHOWDOWN

On April 3, 1948, then-U.S. Ambassador to Poland Griffis, who was for linkage, wrote to the U.S. Secretary of State in a secret cable (see document quoted above) which concluded with this observation: "I might go along with this theory [of linkage]. This is not the time for a showdown. But the time must come and we should not, without serious consideration, give up any trading elements which may appear for us." [Our emphasis — SM] (Signed by Griffis, page 530, Volume 4.)

Indeed, the U.S. has never given up its so-called trading elements, its economic weapons, its billion-fold loans as weapons for economic and financial penetration.

The time for the showdown, the U.S. imperialists apparently thought, had come with the secretly cultivated and now highly publicized Solidarity organization and its eventual evolution to the point where it openly plotted for a counter-revolutionary coup. The showdown came when this organization, under the guidance of U.S. agents, pro-imperialist bourgeois elements in Poland, prepared to call a national referendum for the purpose of overturning the government.

It was then that the Polish Army asserted its right and its revolutionary duty to hurl back the bourgeois pro-imperialist attempt at a counter-revolution. Such a counter-revolution would have meant restoring Poland to its pre-war status as a satellite of imperialism and destroying the real independence of Poland. That in essence is what the struggle in Poland is all about today.

Class rule and the forms of state

Of all the dramatic and extraordinary developments arising out of the Polish struggle, that which has truly stunned if not really staggered the imagination of the U.S., and indeed the world, capitalist class was the military takeover in Poland and the institution of martial law.

In particular, the bourgeoisie was struck by how rapidly and effectively the plans for the martial law were executed.

Ever since the strike movement started more than a year ago in Gdansk and other cities, it appeared to most bourgeois observers and publicists that, barring a Soviet intervention, the so-called democratic processes which had suddenly and so rapidly accelerated in Poland would gradually evolve into a full-fledged "democratic" state of affairs.

They had been describing this gradual, "democratic" process for quite a number of years before the strike wave. Insofar as its economic and political content, this process amounted to instituting reforms that were specifically aimed at reestablishing capitalist relations in all spheres of the economic and political life of the country.

Of course, certain real, genuine, and progressive reforms that vitally affected the interests of the working class of Poland were urgently needed and long overdue. They should have been addressed a long time ago, were it not for a wholly delinquent and in many respects corrupt leadership of the Polish government.

To the extent that these working-class reforms came in the wake of the so-called democratic movement, they were of course welcome. Unfortunately, they merely became instruments for a movement, and in particular a leadership, which is wholly destructive and contradictory to the fundamental historical interests of the working class.

It is not the first time in history that a reactionary movement has seized upon genuine popular grievances in order to foist upon the back of the working class the chains of imperialism.

BOURGEOISIE BANKED ON PEACEFUL COUNTER-REVOLUTION

When future historians peruse the media and press reports of this exciting period in Polish history, they will unfailingly see that the world bourgeoisie had banked over a long period of time on a peaceful takeover of Poland.

Every article, every press and media report, every analysis, especially since the days of Gdansk and the strike wave, has consistently promoted the line that a peaceful evolution of the so-called democratic reform movement was leading in the direction of a full-scale restoration of capitalism.

In fact, the totality of impressions gathered by the world bourgeois press, as well as the press from the socialist countries viewed from a different angle, seemed to confirm that Poland was now in the hands of bourgeois elements. All that was needed, they thought, was to gently but surely close their fist and the restoration of capitalism was assured.

The only fear of the bourgeoisie, and this fear was drummed into the heads of the masses day in and day out throughout the world, was that Soviet tanks might roll through the streets of Warsaw any day. Otherwise, they felt that there was no real obstacle, no force in the entire Polish governmental apparatus, which had the readiness or willingness to stop the counter-revolution.

The imperialist bourgeoisie were greatly encouraged in their happy perspective by a phenomenon that had rarely been seen in world history. The leadership of the Polish government and its leading authoritative organs who were holding the reins of government were so consistently surrendering to every single demand made by the leaders of the counterrevolution that the conclusion seemed almost irresistible that Poland would fall into the hands of the bourgeoisie like an overripe fruit.

As each new leadership of the Polish Communist Party faltered and fell, the counter-revolutionary elements grew bolder and bolder. Their deliberate destabilization of the economy was reaching the point where the entire industrial apparatus would at any day come to a shrieking halt.

And still, the Polish government seemed more intent on further appeasement than any effort to halt the imminent collapse of the economy and the resulting capitalist restoration.

SOLIDARITY OPENLY PLOTTED COUP D'ETAT

Finally, the denouement came when the Solidarity leaders decided to publicly come out for the abolition of the present form of government.

"On December 7, 1981," the Washington Post revealed in a front-page story on December 8, "the Polish media carried tape-recorded remarks from a closed-door meeting last week in Radom of leading [Solidarity] representatives." According to the Post, the tapes quoted Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and others as stating Solidarity's real goal as being a takeover of power in Poland. Union officials, clearly upset by the open airing of what they thought were private exchanges among 38 regional Solidarity leaders, did not deny the quoted remarks." (Our emphasis, see appendix C.)

Less than a week later the leaders of Solidarity deliberately and insolently challenged the Polish authorities by proclaiming their intention of taking over the government by a coup d'etat, unless the government capitulated, they said, to a national referendum, on a date arrogantly set by them and which they would administer.

The New York Times in a dispatch dated December 12, 1981, from Warsaw, headlined its front-page story on these developments: "Leaders of union urge Polish vote on form of rule. Broad referendum asked. Options would include forming a non-communist regime and defining Soviet ties." (New York Times, December 13, 1981)

WEST DIDN'T SAY 'STOP!'

It is astonishing that in the light of this open proclamation that a real coup was about to unfold, no capitalist statesman in the West said to the Solidarity leaders, "Stop! This is dangerous and also illegal. This flouts the constitution of Poland which prescribes certain methods for changing the structure of the government."

The bald truth is that when all this was openly declared by the Solidarity leaders, and none — we repeat none — bothered to even deny that this was their aim no U.S. State Department official made any warnings to Solidarity not to go too far.

They might have — if they had known what was coming next.

The capitalist media, especially in the U.S. where the media boast of their much-vaunted independence and seemingly adversarial relation to the capitalist state, decided, as though by unanimous secret decision, not even to editorialize on this impending momentous development — a projected coup openly and brazenly proclaimed and undenied in a country considered of key and cardinal importance to Western imperialism.

How this development went by the board, as though it were one of a multitude of incidents which did not add up to a qualitative change, must of course be left to the historians of the future.

COMPLETE SURPRISE

The fact of the matter is that the army takeover and the institution of martial law came as a complete surprise to the imperialist bourgeoisie. It was a miscalculation of truly historic dimension.

It must also have come as a humiliating embarrassment to all the imperialist organs of suppression and subversion, both overt and covert, which have long been at work in Poland, as they are in many countries throughout the world.

It cannot be denied that the various U.S. intelligence agencies and the diplomatic corps, the CIA and its thousands of operatives in both overt and covert operations, including the new crop of top U.S. businessmen acting as CIA agents, had a superabundance of information and conduits regarding the Polish situation. But even for them, the army takeover was a complete surprise.

WHY NO OUTCRY OVER 'FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE'?

Unlike other surprises for U.S. imperialism, such as in Iran, Cuba, and other countries, there was no outcry in the U.S. press about the "failure of intelligence." It would scarcely be possible to do so when they had such an abundance of information and had made such deep inroads.

When the capitalist establishment puts the onus of its disasters on a so-called failure of intelligence, it inevitably opens up acrimonious debate within the ruling class. Its only merit is that it shields the president from blame and puts the onus of responsibility on a few of the more or less minor officials in the spy establishment and more frequently the State Department.

For the capitalist establishment as a whole it has the "redeeming value" of ultimately strengthening the overblown, secret covert operations apparatus. And demands are inevitably made for larger and larger appropriations for the military as well.

This occurred, for instance, just after the "rescue operation" in Iran when the Air Force skillfully manipulated the capitalist press in general, and the politicians in particular, to go along with increased military spending to strengthen the Air Force and the military forces in general.

Each new imperialist disaster of necessity creates the basis not for a reversal of policy, but for digging in deeper.

CALCULATIONS BASED ON FALSE ASSUMPTION

None in the capitalist establishment, even at this late date, venture to say that they had a premonition of coming events nor that they knew the military would intervene. Certainly some of this would have surfaced in the capitalist press as a result of a leak here or there.

Their calculations, however, were based strictly on the false assumption that the Polish military would intervene only on the side of the counter-revolution. And this would have occurred, they thought, only if the Soviet Union moved in.

That, however, is not what happened. The army moved in not on the side of the counter-revolution, but in an effort to repulse it if not to crush it altogether.

The outcome of the struggle is by no means certain at this date. The counter-revolution has been repulsed and silenced and in part suppressed. The struggle, however, is by no means over. There are formidable forces available to the counter-revolution internally. And the external forces of imperialism while currently in a state of shock and confusion are more than likely to regroup and resume the offensive.

SURPRISE FACTOR

The factor of surprise is very important and should not be underestimated. The U.S. intelligence services were left unaware notwithstanding their vast accumulation of knowledge of the Polish economy, personnel, and various governmental and party leaders. But not, apparently, of the army itself.

Certainly they knew the top command of the army. This was indicated by the historical sketches of the army that appeared in the press both before and after the institution of martial law.

Knowing all this, however, and even having intimate knowledge of the personal histories of the commanding staff of the army does not in and of itself assure a correct estimate of the army's role in such a monumental historical struggle, in which the destiny of Poland literally hangs in the balance.

It is also of considerable significance that the Polish Army was able to plan the takeover and the institution of martial law with exceptional skill and effectiveness, as attested to by the imperialist press.

It is thus with considerable pride and a dash of scorn that the Polish government released on January 3, 1982 through the Polish news agency PAP, a commentary which, as they put it, quotes political analyst Jerzy Muszynski.

Of course, it represents the view of the Polish military. But to soften the blow to U.S. imperialism it is put in the form of a commentary by a political analyst. Not all of the article is available to us at this time. Portions of it are reprinted in the January 4 edition of the New York Times, from which these extracts are taken. It is worth quoting at some length.

COMMENTARY A REVERSAL OF ATTITUDE TO U.S.

The language used in this commentary has not been heard in Poland for many years. It represents a sharp reversal of the former servile attitude to U.S. capitalism and the fear of antagonizing it. Even during the Watergate days, the Polish press played Watergate almost completely low-key, while elsewhere, even in the capitalist world, it was front-page news. Whatever view was taken of Watergate, it added to discrediting the U.S. capitalist system.

One of the officials of the current government even alluded to the fact that the rebellions and demonstrations in the U.S. in the 1960s were also very much played down by the Polish press out of consideration for maintaining good relations with Washington.

The January 4 1982 commentary however is fundamentally different from previous Polish news broadcasts.

"The world public as a whole," it begins, "including that which is friendly towards Poland and that which never had sympathy for the rule of the working masses received with anxiety the sharp turn in U.S. policy towards Poland, and especially the personal involvement of President Reagan against the legal authorities of the Polish People's Republic."

This is the first open attack on Reagan in the Polish press after months and months of ambivalence, accommodation, and downright servility.

"The fact that Reagan preferred instability to prevail anarchic tendencies to spread and conflicts between the authorities and anti-socialist forces to grow in Poland cannot surprise anybody. His exaggerated interest in the internal affairs of Poland also could not be a surprise while the extremist activists of Solidarity and other anti-socialist groups made preparations for taking over power in Poland and sought ways of achieving counter-revolutionary changes in the system."

REAGAN IS 'A FERVENT ANTI-COMMUNIST'

Reagan is then attacked in no uncertain terms.

"Reagan supported those people and their activities, as he is a fervent anti-communist. With all his heart he would like to see the success in overthrowing the socialist system anywhere. Such a chance the American President and other opponents of socialism saw in Poland."

Finally comes the punch line, which cannot but sting Reagan, the military, and especially the intelligence services.

"Then, all of a sudden, General Jaruzelski established the Martial Council of National Salvation, and the Council of State of the Polish People's Republic decreed martial law to cover all of the country. By this decree the independent trade union Solidarity and other social organizations that were to create the political infrastructure of this new deal in Poland have been suspended. The socialist army took control of various fields of public life and all of that without consent or even knowledge of the American President. (Our emphasis.)

Thus, after months of wavering, indecision, downright capitulation and groveling at the feet of U.S. imperialism by the former Polish leaders, this must come as a blow to the solar plexus of Reagan and his military and secret service camarilla.

'MAIN AUTHOR OF SECOND COLD WAR'

"History is bound to duly appraise all Reagan moves. Already now it is obvious, however, that Reagan is not going to join the pantheon of great American statesmen, though many are surprised by his manner of ruling. Undoubtedly he will go down in history as the main author of what could be termed the second cold war, the one that threatens mankind with anxiety for the future and concern over the prospects for peaceful coexistence of states with different socioeconomic and political systems. "If Reagan continues to pursue this course, the progressive part of world opinion will again, like in the 1940s and 1950s, consider the United States the main instigator of warfare, the leading bastion of contemporary imperialism and the spokesman for international destabilization."

A reading of this analysis reveals that to the extent that the Reaganites and their imperialist allies depended upon the Polish Army to stand by while the counter-revolution was slowly but surely seizing the entire social system and almost reaching the point of executing a coup d'etat, their hopes were wholly erroneous.

As we said, the bourgeoisie miscalculated. It was a howling, truly astonishing blunder.

We hope to go into a detailed examination in explaining this. It is one thing when an individual, even if he or she represents a class, makes an erroneous individual evaluation. It is something else when the representatives of a whole class, the representatives of world imperialism collectively, make this same error. This is a unique situation and requires explanation.

SHARPENS ANTAGONISMS WITH IMPERIALIST ALLIES

It should also be noted that the military takeover has put the Reaganites on the horns of an acute dilemma. Their policy has resulted in opening wider than ever the split between the U.S. and its imperialist allies.

Don't think for a minute that the European imperialists are any less unhappy than the U. S, ruling class about the military takeover. They both wish that it hadn't happened.

What the military takeover has meant for the Reaganites is a greater sharpening of the antagonisms between the U.S. and its NATO collaborators.

Both the U.S. and its imperialist allies have a common objective in Poland — to turn it back to capitalism. But the Europeans are understandably more fearful of the situation exploding into a military conflagration near or even on their territory. They know that the U.S. would be fully content for a good while, just like during the Second World War, to watch from a safe distance and utilize the bloody opportunity to get a better and stronger grip on the Western imperialist allies so as to completely subjugate them and use them as a grouping of satellites in the struggle against the Soviet Union.

WORLD PUBLIC OPINION IN CONSTERNATION

The military administration of the Polish state has also thrown vast sections of world public opinion into consternation.

The anti-communist left, which in any case has been full of the most bitter hostility not merely to the Soviet Union but to communism and revolutionary socialism in general, is full of praise for Solidarity. They are not one whit embarrassed to be found in the company of Wall Street, Lombard Street, the Bourse, and the Vatican in one great united front to "save freedom."

There is also, of course, very serious apprehension and confusion among truly progressive elements of world public opinion which should and must be addressed. To do so properly, however, it is necessary to deal with the Polish crisis in the context of the present global struggle.

Just as important, it is necessary to go back to the historical roots of the struggle and to analyze once again each and every phase of the struggle as it has unfolded over many decades.

To do this it is necessary to draw on the arsenal of revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist doctrine and methodology as our guide in illuminating some aspects of the great drama that is unfolding on Polish soil, which have been darkened if not obliterated from contemporary view by imperialist propaganda. These aspects have had and will continue to have repercussions of a worldwide significance.

A setback for the counter-revolution

It should now be obvious, five weeks after the military takeover in Poland, that the imperialist bourgeoisie has suffered a major international defeat in its effort to provoke a counter-revolution.

The counter-revolution has been repulsed and an early comeback seems hardly possible at this time.

The bourgeoisie, particularly the U.S. ruling class, is severely disappointed and in a state of shock. Instead of celebrating the victory they had hoped for, they are in a state of mourning and have begun quarreling among themselves.

The bankers especially are conducting an acrimonious war among themselves on what to do with the extortionate debts they had foisted upon the Polish people.

For the first time since the institution of martial law, Poland has disappeared from the major headlines in the U.S. press and been relegated to the inside pages.

At the January 19, 1982 press conference, which was billed as an important one since it would mark a year of Reagan's tenure, there were as many as 15 questions addressed to Reagan. Only one was on Poland. The president's remarks could scarcely be regarded as eventful.

A MAJOR SETBACK

Although the ruling class is still reeling under the severity of the setback, they have not stopped scheming and plotting. They may be regrouping and taking stock of the situation. For the moment, however, they have stopped the hysterical headlines and wild speculation.

The lifting of censorship by the Polish authorities has made it impossible to fabricate and manufacture horror stories of torture, imprisonment, and the like. But the fact that the ruling class has pulled back in its hysteria does not necessarily mean that the White House and Pentagon have given up their adventure in Poland.

They have been severely inhibited by the failure of the imperialist allies to jump at the crack of the U.S. whip. Their most important ideological weapon — red-baiting and anti-Sovietism — has taken its toll in the working class and to a lesser extent among the oppressed peoples. But it is beginning to wane and may peter out after a period of time.

The counter-revolution in Poland, they had fancied, would succeed by the slow, gradual penetration of finance capital and the step-by-step takeover of the administrative economic and political organs of the state. These hopes have been shattered.

WALL STREET JOURNAL ANALYZES SOLIDARITY DEFEAT

The Wall Street Journal, the mouthpiece of high finance and big business that poses as a stalwart champion of the working class in Poland, has attempted to sum up the situation from its own class point of view. Having more or less anticipated an easy victory, it feels most obliged to go over the events in a critical manner to find out just what went wrong.

"The popular wisdom in the West," the Journal says on January 19, 1982, "was always that it would take Soviet troops to crush the 10 million-strong Solidarity union. Certainly the Poles themselves wouldn't act against an organization which was essentially the expression of their own national will. ...

"The actuality has been quite different. Not only was it Polish soldiers and police who carried out the destruction of Solidarity, but they did it against only scattered and occasional resistance."

The Journal goes on to moan about "the movement that once sought nothing short of a reordering of Polish society" [the restoration of capitalism — SM]. "One must wonder," asks the Journal, "why Poles didn't fight en masse for Solidarity? Why were Polish special police and soldiers willing to act against a movement that appeared to be so popular?"

In the first place, as the Journal well-nigh admits, it was not that popular. The Journal berates the Western capitalist press for reporting only "the euphoria surrounding the union's birth but was remiss in chronicling" later events.

"Solidarity," says the Journal, "had slowly changed from a glittering symbol of Polish hope to just another expression of Polish frustration." Why?

WORKERS AGAINST SABOTAGING ECONOMY

Solidarity had nothing to offer by way of real, genuine change in a progressive, working-class direction.

The constant and utterly irresponsible, uninterrupted calls for strike after strike without any rhyme or reason were aimed by the leaders at destabilizing and sabotaging the economy. It made inevitable a catastrophic decline in production and the availability of the most vital necessities.

Disillusionment and disenchantment were therefore inevitable despite the growing extremes to which the reactionary leadership was heading politically. There was a growing alienation of the rank and file from the reactionary Solidarity leadership.

The "glitter" came when millions of workers more or less spontaneously joined in the struggle for economic demands in the very early period. But the reactionary leadership which had wormed its way into the workers' movement captured it at a historic moment in the life of Poland and began to turn it in a pro-imperialist direction.

As the Journal puts it, "Without the obvious presence of Soviet soldiers in Poland there was little to unify the resistance. In other words the economic grievances of the workers, the dislocation of the economy, its destabilization, and sabotage — those were not factors that could unify resistance.

The economic condition of the workers is what motivated them. What motivated the leadership was the constant projection of anti-Soviet chimeras. This is a complete dichotomy between the leaders and the led.

The leaders had in mind an anti-communist and anti-Soviet struggle with which they could confuse the masses. But they could not lead them into a direct struggle for power against the state.

Thus, without Soviet intervention they couldn't possibly evoke the much hoped for insurrection. The truth of the matter is that they couldn't even evoke a general strike — not only against martial law but even earlier. A month earlier, the projection of a general strike, the leaders quickly learned, was met with dismay and discouragement in most industrial areas in Poland.

Destabilization of the economy and outright economic sabotage by Solidarity's leaders could not only fail to retain the "glitter," but failed to generate enthusiasm for it.

IMPERIALIST MISCALCULATION

The bourgeoisie, who had been swallowing their own propaganda as the Journal here admits, had really begun to picture the situation in Poland in a sort of classical reversal of the October Russian Revolution, where the militarist Kornilov attempted with military rule to crush a revolutionary working class and peasantry.

By projecting this scene onto Poland (and changing what has to be changed to fit Polish circumstances) the bourgeoisie imagined that when the military announced martial law, Solidarity's call for a general strike within two days would come off with a bang. Millions would not only stop work but would come out into the streets in defiance of military orders.

The streets o Warsaw and Cracow and everywhere else would be filled with workers waving anti-government banners and slogans. The military and the police would then open fire and the workers would either overwhelm them or the military rank and file would join them, along with the officers, and fraternize with the workers.

Together they would storm the headquarters of the government and the Communist Party and reestablish a capitalist state.

All of this would happen with a joyous population fraternizing with the military which at last would demonstrate that they and Solidarity were all together.

But nothing like this happened, as the Wall Street Journal unhappily admits.

It was a fantasy. It was based on more than an illusion. It had its origins in a basic miscalculation of the class character of the Polish state even as it was rapidly having the ground torn from under it.

CLASS CHARACTER OF POLISH STATE

Why did the army take it upon itself to intervene?

Because the civil authorities, who were charged with governing and administering the workers state, were crumbling, disintegrating, and many in reality were secretly aiding and abetting the destabilization and sabotage of the economy and colluding with pro-imperialist elements.

The chaos and destabilization were not the products of an organic development growing out of the automatic processes of the economy, although the latter was badly managed and woefully inefficient.

Complete chaos would have eventually enveloped the entire country and made a complete takeover by the counterrevolution absolutely inevitable. It was therefore the duty and the obligation of the armed forces as one of the principal pillars of the workers' state in Poland to boldly intervene and repulse if not completely crush the counter-revolution.

It should be added that the army takeover was done in a wholly constitutional manner in accordance with the laws of the Polish Constitution. The civil authorities had granted all authority to the council of state, of which Jaruzelski was designated the head, and approved the imposition of martial law. He had previously been designated prime minister, chairman of the party, and defense minister.

It was not a coup but an assumption — by voluntary consent of the civilian authorities — of urgently needed authority to repulse the counter-revolution which the civil officialdom was both unwilling and incapable of dealing with. There is no contradiction whatever with a principled working-class approach in this problem.

The validity of an army takeover of an incompetent or disintegrating workers' government which cannot cope with the problems of counter-revolution flows out of historic necessity given the confluence of circumstances of the struggle between imperialism and the socialist countries as a whole.

MILITARY AS ORGANIZER AND EDUCATOR

The Soviet Union in its very early days, when it was led by Lenin, was obliged to dispatch its armed forces to crush the Kronstadt uprising which, incidentally, was led by ultra-leftist elements. This last fact did not at all militate against the uprising being characterized as a counter-revolutionary thrust which would have the effect of overthrowing the newly established Bolshevik government.

The armies of both the Soviet Union and China have played more than the role of defender of the workers' government from external aggression or counter-revolutionary insurrection. They have also served, and rather splendidly, as educators and organizers in the struggle to bring victory to the revolution and in socialist construction.

These attributes cannot be found in armies under the control of imperialist powers. Wherever and whenever the Polish Army, even in a modest and token way, recently assisted in, the distribution and allocation of food as well as organization in the countryside, it conducted itself with dignity, sensitivity, and firmness.

COMPARISON WITH BOURGEOIS MILITARY

Of course, both capitalist and socialist armies have certain external characteristics that are common to both. They are based, however, on diametrically opposed classes. One protects the exploiters, which the imperialists invariably are, while the socialist army protects and defends the interests of the working class and the peasantry.

The fact that the workers have become disoriented, misled, and thrown into a state of total confusion and chaos while the civilian leaders are in disarray, is at least one factor among others which may alert the military to a possible need for a takeover. When the situation continues to rapidly deteriorate, and the civilian leaders conduct a relentless undercover war among themselves about issues not clear to the masses and not defined in class terms, and these leaders become more helpless every day, this only makes it more necessary for the military authorities, who are clear about the dangerous course of events, to take the appropriate measures necessary to save the progressive gains of socialist construction and to help in reconstructing the state itself.

On how many occasions has a bourgeois army leadership saved the neck of the bourgeoisie when it has become rent by severe contradictions and is under revolutionary pressure of the workers?

In modern imperialist France under Charles de Gaulle, its most outstanding military leader, the 1968 wave of general strikes augured well for the development of a genuinely revolutionary situation.

It was de Gaulle, in his role as military chieftain of the French imperialist bourgeoisie, who ostentatiously went to West Germany in a counter-revolutionary threat to bring the French military divisions stationed in Germany (and under fascist leadership) back to France to threaten a counter-revolutionary bloodbath. It was this fascist threat which forced the Communist Party and social democratic leaders to quickly capitulate.

The army reflects the class structure of society in general. And in Poland in particular, where conscription is universal, the rank and file is composed of workers and peasants, mostly peasants.

The officer corps itself is mostly drawn from the ranks of the workers, especially the younger ones. The older ones are veterans in the struggle against the Nazi invaders. It is, of course, no secret that the army leadership has been trained and equipped for many years by the Soviet Union. This the imperialist bourgeoisie well knew.

The imperialist bourgeoisie reckoned that by penetration and subversion they had won over many of the civil organs of state, or so they believed. And believing their own propaganda regarding the popularity of Solidarity, they hastened to conclude that the army rank and file and the leadership would side with the counter-revolution.

ARMY VIEW OF INDEPENDENT POLAND

They therefore totally disregarded what one of their principal mentors and foreign commentators of an earlier age said during World War II. Walter Lippmann clearly foresaw why the army as a whole and especially its leadership would not side with or tolerate a counter-revolution: "There could be no future for a Poland governed or even influenced by those Poles who ... conceived themselves as the spearpoint of a hostile coalition against the Soviet Union."

There is no question that the Solidarity leadership was a rabidly anti-Soviet and pro-imperialist instrument. Under certain unfortunate circumstances, where a corrupt political leadership of the state and the party had neglected its socialist and working-class obligations, this pro-imperialist instrument captured a formidable section of the working class.

Yes, the army leadership, it can now be said, fully understood that there was no future for a truly independent Poland in becoming a spearpoint or a satellite for the imperialist West. That is a cardinal fact which could not but loom large in the calculations of the military leadership.

Intervention by the army is the last resort in periods of political crisis, both for a bourgeois state as well as a workers' state. Although the Polish economy had increasingly come under the thumb of the imperialist West and the political leadership of the workers was rapidly disintegrating, the one firm pillar of the state — the armed forces — remained loyal to the cause of socialism and against imperialist enslavement.

The bourgeoisie had miscalculated in the sense that they had equated the Polish Army with a bourgeois army under imperialist domination. That was a howling blunder.

WHICH WAY FOR POLAND?

However, the case might have been different had the imperialists been slowly penetrating the military in the way they usually do in Third World countries. There they immediately try to establish contacts and exchanges with the military and thereby establish an ongoing relationship with them until the imperialist intelligence forces completely penetrate the military forces of the newly independent Third World countries. They are therefore in an advantageous position to subvert the military and overturn the governments as they have done in Ghana, Chile, Indonesia, Pakistan, and many, many others.

From the point of view of imperialist economic penetration, Poland had achieved many of the characteristics of a neocolonialist regime under the aegis of imperialism. That's as far as it went.

But, winning over or influencing any sections of the armed forces leadership or rank and file seems to have failed, at any rate up until now. Therein lay the Achilles heel of imperialist intervention.

The bourgeois press boasted during Solidarity's heyday that Jaruzelski had refused in 1970 to send out the army to suppress the Gdansk workers. Gomulka, who was head of the Polish government at the time, then ordered the militia to do so, causing many deaths and casualties, which ultimately brought down his administration.

If Jaruzelski, as alleged in the capitalist press, refused to send out the army when asked at that period in time, he did so wisely. The struggle by the workers was at that stage still only of a purely economic character. A counter-revolutionary leadership had not yet captured the workers' movement in Gdansk or anywhere else. It had just barely reared its head and saw fertile soil for demagogic agitation in order to divert the struggle from economic into politically counter-revolutionary channels.

COMPARISON WITH 1970

In 1970 it was purely an economic struggle and not a struggle directed against the socialist state. Even though there were as many as 70 fatalities at that time, the imperialist press, especially that of the U.S., scarcely took note of it.

There were none of the howls about police brutality, no demands were made on the Gomulka government, no one proposed sanctions, no one demanded punishment. There were editorial comments calculated to discredit socialist forms of government, but there was no attempt either to magnify or utilize the events in an overt, hostile manner against the Polish regime, as the capitalist press of the world is doing now when the casualties are far less, 14 at most, and this with martial law throughout the whole country.

The truth of the matter is that at that time the bourgeoisie had not yet seen the full value of directing its forces into the workers' movement as one of the principal levers of subversion against the Polish state.

After the ouster of Gomulka and during the succeeding administration of Gierek, the bourgeoisie confined itself to pressing for opening wide the gates of the Polish economy to imperialist finance capital, which it did with remarkable success and little opposition from any publicly known sources in Poland.

From all this it should be clear that any military intervention in 1970 would have been premature and would have discredited the armed forces in the eyes of the workers.

TASK OF RECONSTRUCTION

It is too soon to say that the counter-revolution has been decisively crushed. It has merely been repulsed, silenced, and to some extent repressed.

Now the important task before the Polish government is how soon it can, with the aid of its socialist allies, begin the work of reconstruction.

Will the imperialist West, which has such a big stake in the Polish economy in the form of a tremendous indebtedness at the present time, permit the Polish government to proceed, without interference, to socialist construction? Or will the imperialists having recovered from the shock and disappointment, slowly regroup their forces for the next phase of the struggle?

The struggle in Poland extends far beyond Poland itself. Poland is a link in the worldwide struggle of all the socialist countries and all the oppressed peoples against the plans for world domination by imperialism of which the U.S. is the principal proponent and promoter.

U.S. economic war against Poland

Nothing would delight the U.S. ruling class more than finding an easy way to economically and financially strangle the Polish socialist government.

Economic warfare is not a new weapon suddenly dragged out from the multiplicity of armaments the U.S. employs in its struggle against the socialist countries. The truth of the matter is that economic warfare against the socialist countries in general and the Soviet Union in particular has never really ceased since the October Socialist Revolution in 1917. The imperialist powers waged a total economic blockade against the USSR during the civil war intervention in the early 1920s. This was resumed again in the period immediately following the Second World War and reached a crescendo in the very early 1950s. It was relaxed during the 1960s to some extent.

A degree of normality in relations between the capitalist countries and the socialist countries developed in conjunction with the policy of detente. Detente however was understood altogether differently in the U.S. than in the USSR It was conceived by the U.S. ruling class as a weapon in the economic struggle in which the U.S. would penetrate the socialist countries economically and thereby subject them to imperialist domination.

The imperialists thought they had an easy victory on their hands in Poland, after their long-standing effort to destabilize it economically and politically. They thought they could achieve a peaceful restoration of capitalism using the organization called Solidarity as their principal weapon.

This process was halted, as we all know now, with the institution of martial law and the ensuing setback of the counter-revolutionary process in Poland.

CAUGHT OFF GUARD

The imperialists with the U.S. at their head grew hysterical threatening all sorts of punishments against Poland the USSR, and all who aided or cooperated with the socialist countries without first getting permission from Washington and Wall Street.

Unable to employ military force at the moment and finding their imperialist allies fearful of the consequences of carrying the struggle against Poland much further, American finance capital retreated temporarily to a secondary form of assault. It resorted to using its time-honored strategy of intensified economic warfare against Poland and the USSR.

It instituted sanctions of a very vicious type, including the food weapon, in the hope they would quickly bring the Polish government, if not the USSR, to its knees.

Meanwhile, a struggle opened in the ruling class over whether a weapon for further economic aggression against Poland could be found by declaring Poland in default for the huge debt which the Western imperialists had forced upon the previous Polish leadership.

ULTRA-RIGHTISTS CLAMOR FOR DEFAULT

Since the institution of martial law in Poland, extremist elements in the U.S. ruling establishment have been loudly demanding that the huge Polish debt to the Western banks be called in, so as to declare a default in case the interest and principal are not paid on the due date.

The loud cries for default were led by the Wall Street Journal in its December 23 1981 editorial entitled Communism in default." This was seconded by a well-known investment banker, Felix Rohatyn, in an op-ed article in the New York Times.

The so-called New Right has been most vociferous in demanding that the Reagan administration go beyond the economic sanctions imposed upon the USSR and Poland earlier this month by the U.S. government. The New York Times has also chimed in. And the Washington Post, which took a milder view, has also indicated its preference for the default measure "if it were practical."

But it was the Wall Street Journal, the traditional mouthpiece of big business and high finance, which led the parade. It gleefully proclaimed, "Declaring a default on Polish credit from the U.S. government would trigger a general default on the $27 billion in loans accumulated by Western governments and banks in the last decade."

"American banks," it went on to say, "which hold about $1.7 billion of this debt could absorb the loss since they have already made handsome profits on the loans." (Our emphasis.)

BANKS NOT EAGER FOR DECLARING DEFAULT

Unfortunately for the Wall Street Journal, it was slightly ahead of its masters for whom it generally speaks with authority Although the U.S. banks have made more than just "handsome profits," they showed less eagerness to plunge Poland into default than their faithful mouthpiece.

U.S. banks hold more than just the $1.7 billion. Through a variety of interlocking directorates and general financial and economic sway U.S. banks have more than an abstract interest in the 27 billion which the Wall Street Journal calculates is owed to Western banks as a whole.

Felix Rohatyn argued for default, presumably on behalf of the bankers, when he cheerfully asserted that "we should put the economic burden of the satellite states squarely on the Soviet Union and point up the bankruptcy of the communist system by declaring Poland, one of its units, bankrupt."

This rather extraordinary exaltation over the prospect of the bankruptcy of the communist system contrasts sharply with his dire forebodings of bankruptcy at home.

At the same time his piece on Poland appeared in the New York Times, which was calculated to raise the anti-Soviet hysteria to a new pitch, he was writing for another periodical on the economic and financial situation in the U.S.

'COMMUNIST BANKRUPTCY' OR CAPITALIST BANKRUPTCY?

This piece pointed up not the bankruptcy of the communist system but rather that of the capitalist system. It is worth taking note of what he wrote in the January 21, 1982, New York Review.

"For the last two decades," Rohatyn woefully admits, "every recession has progressively eroded our economic and social structures." No truer words could be said! Several capitalist recessions have devastated the living standards of the majority of the working class and oppressed people and have indeed, as he well put it, broken down the social benefits which years of working-class struggle have made possible.

"We entered this recession," Rohatyn continues, "with many of our largest companies in weak financial condition, several on the brink of insolvency." How true, how true! Some analysts include among those on the brink of insolvency such luminaries as ITT, RCA, Ford Motor Co. and others not counting such small corporations as International Harvester and Chrysler.

Furthermore Rohatyn continues, "Our savings institutions [he means the really big savings banks — SM] with portfolio losses in the hundreds of billions rely on an FDIC Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation I with less than 1 0 billion in present capital." In other words, the bulk of the savings banks in this country are on the verge of bankruptcy and the $ 1 0 billion in insurance from the FDIC, which is a drop in the bucket could scarcely save them in the event of an emergency which seems to be impending.

To add to the woes, Rohatyn says that "the [imperialist] international banking system is strained by a recession throughout the West and the Third World. " Thus, concludes Rohatyn, "for the first time in two decades Europe and the U.S. are simultaneously in recession."

Japanese imperialism, which for a while seemed immune to and insulated from the capitalist crisis has finally succumbed to the inexorable process of capitalist degeneration; unemployment and inflation are beginning to take their heavy toll.

So while fuming about the alleged bankruptcy of the communist system the Wall Street Journal in its rage over the suppression of the counter-revolution in Poland conveniently overlooked the real bankruptcy of the capitalist system.

The Polish indebtedness should be seen in the perspective of the world capitalist crisis and measured against it in order to be able to properly assess the current situation with respect to Poland.

Henry Kissinger, who speaks for the Rockefellers, is now attempting to play super-hawk on the Polish crisis. He has virtually called for the break-off of diplomatic talks and contacts with the Soviet Union as a way of punishing both Poland and the USSR But it is significant that for all his new right-wing posturing Kissinger steered clear of calling for a default and confined himself merely to urging that Poland's debt to Western banks be used as economic and financial leverage in the overall political struggle against the Soviet Union and Poland.

The position of the Rockefeller empire on the question of default is also the position of Citibank, Bank America, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Chemical, Chase Manhattan, Marine Midland, First National Bank of Chicago, First Wisconsin National Bank, and the Girard Bank of Philadelphia.

WRISTON SPEAKS FOR BANKERS

The position of the bankers was authoritatively laid down on January 24, 1982, on CBS's Face the Nation by none other than Walter Wriston chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Citibank and Citicorp which have traditionally been keystones in the Morgan financial empire.

Jacqueline Adams of CBS News asked, "You indicated earlier that we should try to keep Poland in the larger [imperialist — SM] world community by continuing to loan money to them. Can we use that money, that debt, as a weapon to influence events in Poland in any way?" Wriston replied: "In my view, if someone were to call a default on that debt you will then illustrate very clearly to the Poles that they had only one friend which was Russia-it doesn't seem to me to be too productive." (Official transcript, CBS News, pages 123.)

There you have it straight from the horse's mouth. The largest and most powerful banks in the U.S. had made a decision not to throw Poland into default at this time.

Why? Because this would tend to consolidate the socialist fraternal relationships between Poland and the Soviet Union and the whole socialist bloc.

Unlike the Wall Street Journal, which has to be demagogic for its own constituency, and Felix Rohatyn, who is grooming himself for public office, Wriston can speak very plainly and clearly, at least on these matters.

REAGAN-ROCKEFELLER MEETING

Unquestionably this is what Reagan himself was told when he visited New York City January 14, 1982, to attend a festive occasion sponsored by the Rockefellers at which Wriston was conspicuously present. It was around that time that the Polish government was expected to pay 71 million it owed to U.S. banks.

The recommendation, undoubtedly made by the bankers in New York City, was that the Reagan administration repay the $71 million that Poland owes to the American banks. The, U.S. government, which guaranteed these loans, would thus not require the banks to declare Poland in default.

The recommendation to Reagan, if carried out, would also mean that the administration would repay a further $395 million of U.S. guaranteed debt that Poland is obligated to repay by the end of this year. The guarantee was made by the Agriculture Department to the banks on behalf of the U.S. government for the purchase of wheat, soybeans, and other agricultural commodities by Poland.

Reagan's visit to New York City took place almost two weeks ago. When the extreme right-wingers got wind of what the bankers were up to, they raised a hue and cry that the Reaganites were becoming soft on communism while covering themselves with bold anti-Soviet rhetoric.

But Secretary of State Haig and Treasury Secretary Regan, each of whom has banking connections with Chase Manhattan and Merrill Lynch respectively knew well what the recommendation of the bankers was. They both urged Reagan that the U.S. make its decision public, which naturally would shock the ultra-rightists on both sides of the Atlantic.

THREE PILLARS OF MONOPOLY CAPITALISM

It should not be thought that the banks, despite their key and central role in the capitalist economy, can arbitrarily make any and all recommendations to the capitalist government and automatically have the issues decided their way as in this particular case.

Even here it should be noted as was reported in the February 2 1982 New York Times and Washington Post the decision was reached on the basis of consensus between the State Department and Treasury Department, on the one side, and the Defense Department (Weinberger and his deputy Ikle) and the military-industrial complex, on the other.

The big banks are a fundamental pillar, along with Big Oil and the military-industrial complex, of the infrastructure of contemporary monopoly capitalism in the U.S. These three pillars are intimately connected, interwoven, and virtually fused with the capitalist state.

However each maintains its own separate mode of existence and independently operates within the framework of its respective function. They collaborate here and there but more frequently collide with each other, the internal strains and stresses multiplying and becoming more aggravated with the deepening of the capitalist crisis and the inability to achieve a stabilization of the rotting social system.

DID POLAND WITHHOLD PAYMENTS?

In the debate which has been raging in the capitalist press about the U.S. repayment to the bankers with regard to a default, it was not made clear whether Poland had actually defaulted or had merely conveyed a message to the U.S. bankers and government that it would not pay.

Although it cannot be said for certain, it is probably the latter which forced the hand of the Reagan administration in rather hastily declaring that it would pay the banks the money Poland owed in order to avoid a default.

Could it be that in refusing to pay interest, the Polish government declined to turn the other cheek and deliberately withheld payment because the U.S. had flagrantly promulgated harsh economic sanctions including the use of the food weapon, against Poland?

Were this the case it would be indicative of real independence and fearlessness in the face of tremendous economic burdens. Poland would be saying in so many words, "You can't starve us to death. Poland will survive and strengthen its real political independence in the renewal of socialist reconstruction regardless of U.S. attempts to strangle us economically and financially."

That's more likely what threw Wall Street and Washington in o consternation and helped the decision to avoid default. The ultra-rightists were therefore left hanging in midair and the Reagan administration was roundly attacked for its alleged softness toward Poland and the USSR.

Human Events, an ultra-right wing supporter of the Reagan administration, attacked Haig on this issue as a pussycat. " By implication it was an attack on Reagan as well. The New York Times, which in recent weeks has spoken from both sides of its mouth on Reagan's foreign policy, attacked, the Reagan administration on the default proposal. It asserted that the Reagan administration has come perilously close to confessing that all its fulminating about Poland is bluster.

The thrust of the capitalist press as a whole, so far as the Polish crisis goes, is to push the Reagan administration further to the right. This is not likely to let up, regardless of the immediate exigencies of the Polish financial crisis.

NO SOFTENING OF HARD LINE

While the Reagan administration's decision to repay the banks to avoid a Polish default seems like a retreat from its earlier position, it does not at all foreshadow a softening of the generally bellicose and extremely aggressive struggle against the USSR, Poland, and other socialist countries, as well as other oppressed people throughout the world. Witness El Salvador! The apparent retreat by the Reagan administration has to be seen in the light of the overall struggle of imperialism against the socialist countries and the oppressed peoples of the Third World.

If the bankers have decided that default was not an appropriate instrument in the struggle against the socialist countries at this time, it is based on their predominant fear that forcing Poland into default would trigger a worldwide capitalist financial crisis, it would have a domino effect throughout the entire capitalist world.

This is not because of the Polish debt as such. By imperialist standards it is not great at all It's that the world capitalist monetary crisis has now reached such an explosive point that it is literally waiting for any match, even one like Poland's financial indebtedness, to ignite it into a conflagration.

PROBLEM OF POLISH DEBT REPUDIATION

During the Kania administration in Poland, before the situation had reached the point of near economic collapse, we had urged a repudiation of the corrupt and extortionate loans and interest, which were the result of false policies of previous administrations-primarily that of Gierek and his predecessor Gomulka. Such a repudiation would have been in the classical Bolshevik tradition of the Soviet government under Lenin which repudiated the Czarist debts. To this day the Soviet government has never paid them.

But in the course of these weeks and months of capitalist destabilization and outright sabotage, Poland has become more dependent economically on the West than it was earlier when the repudiation would have been more appropriate as a revolutionary measure.

At the present time, however, repudiating the debt would be too difficult, particularly in the light of the fact that it would strengthen the more right-wing and extremist elements in the Reagan administration to push for a complete break of all economic relations if not a virtual blockade of the socialist countries.

It should be noted that while the indebtedness of Poland to the imperialist West, if measured by the needs of socialist construction for Poland within the framework of the narrow possibilities of taking advantage of the worldwide capitalist market, was exorbitant and ill conceived, it is nevertheless not at all abnormal by imperialist standards.

BANKERS WANTED INTEREST AND PRINCIPAL

According to Walter Wriston, who should know, "There are very few instances in history when any capitalist government has ever paid off its national debt. In the United States we sell Treasury bills every week and those bills cannot be paid except by selling another Treasury bill of like amount." (CBS transcript cited above.)

In other words the U.S. government merely pays the interest on its national debt by rolling it over continuously in the capitalist money market. The banks theoretically can throw the U.S. government into bankruptcy by refusing to roll over this debt, unless the capitalist government asserts its legal authority by issuing new money to pay it back. In practice however the principal is never paid just the interest.

What is different with Poland is that the imperialist powers' cannot stand to settle for merely the interest. They want the whole principal as well.

If the U.S. had not been intent on utilizing the indebtedness and its economic penetration of Poland generally to destabilize the economy in order to ease the way for a so-called peaceful counter-revolutionary takeover the Western bankers would have easily rolled over the Polish debt. They would have merely accepted the interest due, as is done in ordinary international banking transactions.

BANKERS HAD OVERALL POLITICAL OBJECTIVES

In other words, there would have been no problem at all in merely rolling over the Polish debt if it were not for the political objective of the U.S. in seeking a counter-revolutionary takeover through the medium of economic destabilization and sabotage.

However, as a result of the deliberate processes of economic destabilization of both a political and economic character, the imperialist private banks were as is admitted in a revealing article in the February 3 1982 New York Times induced "to withdraw more than $1 billion in short term deposits from Poland's central bank, making it impossible for the country to make the interest payments and perhaps speeding the Polish economic collapse which was followed by the military takeover.

So you see, at the root of the current problem is not just the normal economic processes of international banking, which resulted in the Polish debt problem. It was the political effort to pull the rug out from under the Polish economy by withdrawing suddenly and without cause the deposits in the Polish central bank so as to create the economic condition for a collapse.

How would the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, feel if the European and Japanese banks suddenly withdrew their deposits from the Federal Reserve Bank. That would certainly cause a financial crisis in the U.S.

The Western deposits in the Polish central bank were there for the purpose of paying for the normal imports from the West. They were suddenly withdrawn by the banks in October 1981 (when Solidarity was continually pushing for further and further political concessions which, if carried to their logical conclusion could only end up with a capitalist restoration).

As Poland's finance minister Marian Kracz explained to the New York Times at the time, "Withdrawal of the balances made it difficult to halt the industrial decline [induced by economic sabotage — SM] because we had no foreign currency for imports."

The decline was of such dimensions, according to this Times article, that it constituted a 300 percent drop in industrial production.

Clearly this called for a political solution-either a counter-revolutionary takeover which would solve the economic situation by making Poland an imperialist satellite or a suppression of the counter-revolution and the beginning of reconstructing the country in accordance with a socialist perspective.

The latter perspective is what the ruling class as a whole and the Reagan administration in particular did not anticipate and were not prepared for. They had believed in their heart of hearts that the military would stand by and allow the country to return into the Western imperialist orbit.

Background to the current crisis (cont.)

What's General Motors doing in Poland?

A significant development in economic relations between the Polish People's Republic and the U.S. may be in the making. It may profoundly affect the social structure not only of Poland but indirectly of other socialist countries in Eastern Europe and ultimately of the USSR itself. However, it is only the beginning of a trend and may be interrupted by counteracting economic and political events.

On September 28, 1975, the General Motors Corporation announced that it intended to sign an agreement with Poland to manufacture trucks there for sale throughout the world. GM said that it plans to begin work in Lublin in eastern Poland on a large plant to manufacture half-ton trucks. GM claims this would be one of the largest of such ventures in Eastern Europe by an American company.

It has also been reported that major operations in Poland are being considered by other American companies, including Westinghouse, The Singer Company already has a plant there.

The details of the GM-Polish deal are not available at this time in the U.S., but big business interests in this country seem pleased at the development. Such arrangements are deemed to be profitable to the U.S. and welcome by the Polish government.

DIFFERS FROM SOVIET DEAL

The GM-Polish deal differs fundamentally, it seems to us, from agreements that were worked out between the Soviet Union and several West European capitalist countries to help build the giant truck factory complex on the Kama River in the USSR.

In the Soviet deal, the capitalist countries are supplying materials, technology, and engineering to build a Soviet industrial complex, to be run, and of course owned, by the USSR. It is otherwise with the Polish deal.

The plants are to be GM plants. Of course, GM will have to abide by the wage and labor code of the Polish government. There are no details available as to whether the Polish government will own the plant ultimately. But the products of the plant — the half-ton trucks — will be sold by GM throughout the world and profits of course will go to GM subject to restrictions by the Polish government.

It is to be noted that the Polish government and the U.S. have also agreed in principle on a long-term grain deal. President Ford last week announced that the ban on the sale of grain to the Soviet Union and Poland has been lifted so far as Poland is concerned. It is also to be noted that the discriminatory trade practices which the U.S. has imposed on most socialist countries, including the USSR and China (denying them so-called "most favored nation" status), do not apply to Poland. It was lifted a long time ago following an insurrection in Poland and elsewhere in 1956.

OPEN DOOR TO MULTI-NATIONALS?

Whatever else the GM agreement may signify, the Polish People's Republic has opened the door, even if only slightly and temporarily, to the carnivorous multi-national corporations at a time when everywhere throughout the world and particularly in the underdeveloped countries they are under severe attack. Executives of these giant combines literally fear for their lives these days in a whole host of countries. They are everywhere a target of the wrath of the working class, especially among the oppressed people, but even in Western Europe, too.

It is no exaggeration to say that the multi-national corporations are having to run for their lives just to retain a foothold in areas previously treated as the private domain of American finance capital.

Trade and commercial relations between socialist and capitalist countries are of course unavoidable in the contemporary era and indeed absolutely necessary to avoid an almost total economic blockade such as the imperialists have imposed on Cuba, or earlier on the Soviet Union, China, and other socialist countries. There still is a virtual economic blockade by the U.S. against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Viet Nam, and Cambodia. There are still trade and economic restrictions against the People's Republic of China, the USSR, and Albania, as well as others.

It is the specific character of the GM-Polish deal that is potentially very damaging to the social structure of Poland. That is our concern, not the general principle of economic and commercial agreements between capitalist and socialist countries. The GM-Polish deal could possibly be the opening for a neocolonialist penetration of American finance capital, which the ruling class in the U.S. has long been looking forward to in all of Eastern Europe and the USSR. It is from that point of view that we ought to examine it.

This deal comes at a time when U.S. imperialism is particularly pressed by its world economic crisis, the drying up of old markets and sources of raw material, and its urgent need to reorient itself in a direction where it can recoup the surplus value which is elsewhere imperiled or even totally lost.

We must examine the GM-Polish deal in the light of Poland's historical evolution since the Second World War and the vast transformations that have taken place since then.

HISTORICAL SETTING OF OVERTHROW

The overthrow of the old ruling classes of Poland did not result from the type of socialist revolution that took place in the USSR, in China, in Cuba, in Viet Nam, or even in Yugoslavia. The old capitalist and landlord class was overthrown as a result of a military-bureaucratic transformation, where old Polish society and its ruling classes were destroyed but a great deal was also left intact.

The Polish People's Republic is largely a development that grew out of the revolutionary intervention of the Soviet army. Poland's old social order was transformed bureaucratically, and its possessing classes destroyed administratively. This is not to say that the Polish guerrilla forces, the Polish army, the Polish workers and peasants played no revolutionary role in this great social transformation. But it was the Soviet Red Army which was the dominant factor.

One need only remember that as late as 1949 Stalin could find no better way to deal with Polish defense against NATO than the appointment of a Soviet citizen (although of Polish extraction) General Rokossovsky, as Polish Minister of Defense. This was a humiliation of the Polish United Workers Party and was certainly grist to the mill of Polish anti-communist for which genuine Polish communists could only offer lame apologetics.

GROWTH OF SOCIALIST PRODUCTION

However, by 1974, when the Polish People's Republic celebrated its 25th anniversary, Poland had become tenth among the world's industrial nations. Poland claims that between 1938 and 1973, per capita income rose from $200 to $1300, and that 1973 industrial production was 20 times larger than before World War II.

Following the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, both industry and agriculture were collectivized. Here it is necessary to take into account the insurrections of 1956 and 1970 if one is to view the GM-Polish deal in its correct historical context.

1956 REBELLION LED TO DECOLLECTIVIZATION

The 1956 rebellion, which overthrew the established regime, was universally recognized by the bourgeoisie everywhere, and accurately in our opinion, as a counter-revolutionary development. Had not Gomulka been ushered into power, it might have turned into a full-scale counterrevolution. Khrushchev wanted to militarily intervene and stop Gomulka from assuming authority. It was, however, the advice of China's Chairman Mao, who counseled against military intervention, that helped to restrain Khrushchev. (Mao, however, was firmly for the Soviet intervention in Hungary.)

The counter-revolutionary insurrection, however, achieved some of its basic objectives. In the first place, agriculture was decollectivized. This is an exceptionally important development, which is frequently lost sight of or underestimated. Just as the change from individual farming to collective farming is a change in the mode of production in the sphere of agriculture, a transformation from collective to individual farming constitutes in effect a social counter-revolution in a vital sector of the nation's economy.

It is one thing for a workers' state to retain individual farming, that is, to retain the bourgeois mode of agricultural production, for a while, pending its collectivization at a later stage. It is something else again to reintroduce a bourgeois mode of production in agriculture after collectivization. To then go forward to collectivization is that much harder.

In Poland today about 85 percent of the agriculture is in private hands. Only one percent is collectivized; the rest is under some form of state control. Collectivization in agriculture for the most part has been abandoned and there is very little grounds to believe that it will be resumed on a large scale in the near future.

The existence of this bourgeois form of production side by side with planned economy in industry operates as a big drag on the population as a whole and the working class in particular. The struggle between the two sectors of the economy goes on continually.

WHAT KIND OF "WORKERS' COUNCILS"?

And it is aggravated by the existence of so-called workers' councils — a development which arose as a result of the 1956 insurrection.

Workers' councils as organs of political authority by the working class in the struggle to achieve a proletarian dictatorship and for a socialist society are, of course, a highly desirable phenomenon and everywhere have acted as battering rams against the old bourgeois order. But the workers' councils in Poland since 1956 were established to undermine the planned economy and not as organs of political power for the workers. They were a step in the direction of dismantling the planned socialist beginnings in Poland.

However, they ceased to be the widespread phenomenon that the Western bourgeoisie thought they would be, and the Polish government gradually reined them in, so that today they are little more than areas for more lucrative material incentive, especially for the industrial bureaucracy. But they are still subject to national planning, which is fundamentally socialist in character.

The planned economy of Poland is still a socialist economy — in spite of the existence of material incentive, in spite of the existence of "workers' councils," and in spite of the bureaucratic governmental apparatus. This is an achievement of the Polish working class and the Polish people in general and will not easily give way to capitalist counterrevolution. Surrender to capitalist economy will not come easily.

The influence of the capitalist mode of agriculture in Poland is easily seen by the toll it takes on the life of the working class. Take the matter of inflation. Inflation is a phenomenon typical of capitalist countries, which can only make itself felt in a socialist country as a result of the influence of the world capitalist market or of mismanagement. As such, it can only be of marginal importance and the socialist government can easily absorb it without hurting the mass of the working people.

In Poland, however, inflation is fed by the capitalist nature of farming, which as we said is mostly in private hands. As a result, the price of agricultural products has risen sharply at the expense of the workers and the rural poor.

Only recently the Polish government admitted there was a two percent inflation rate last year (New York Times, October 9, 1975). In order to continue private capitalist agriculture, the government has been forced to give "increasingly large subsidies to Polish farmers who earn more for many of their products than consumers in cities pay for them." (New York Times, October 9, 1975.) This enriches the growing agricultural petty bourgeoisie at the expense of the workers and distorts and weakens the socialized sector of the economy. It operates as a constant invitation for reactionary intrusions and counter-revolutionary developments of all sorts. These in turn are bolstered by the existence of a powerful Catholic hierarchy, which stands four-square as a guardian of private property, particularly in the rural areas, where it remains strong.

In Czechoslovakia, and especially in the German Democratic Republic, the two countries in Eastern Europe geographically close to Poland, agriculture is collectivized. It should therefore not be surprising, as the New York Times admits, that "Poles are painfully aware that shops in East Berlin and Prague are far better stocked then here, that food and clothing are better, that restaurants, hotels and other amenities are better abroad, and that the East Germans and the Czechs and Slovaks work shorter hours under better conditions." (New York Times, October 9, 1975.)

PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF 1970 UPRISING

These, then, are the conditions under which the Polish People's Republic has embarked upon an agreement with General Motors which may have far-reaching consequences. The agreement should also be seen against the background of the 1970 uprising of the workers which ousted Gomulka. It was a victorious insurrection and had the effect of reining in to some extent the depredations of the governmental bureaucracy against the economy and the workers.

The 1970 rebellion differed fundamentally from the earlier one in 1956. It was directed exclusively against high prices of food, particularly meat. It was purely an economic struggle of the workers against the insensitivity of the bureaucracy. It was not a reactionary attack against the socialist character of the state.

As such it was immensely effective, so much so that the government was thereafter obliged to freeze all food prices. They have now been frozen for the fourth successive year, even while industrial income has risen by an average of nine percent since 1971. This is a considerable achievement of the Polish workers. It has also thrown consternation into the hearts of the bureaucracy. Edward Gierek, who became the Polish CP leader after the workers ousted Gomulka, has learned to tread carefully since he assumed leadership.

OTHER TENDENCIES

Unquestionably, those who abandoned the Polish People's Republic long ago, calling it either a capitalist state or a satellite of the so-called "social imperialism" of the USSR, will merely regard the GM-Polish deal as confirmation of their viewpoint. In like fashion, the Socialist Workers Party, which nominally holds that the countries of Eastern Europe are workers' states but in practice treats them as capitalist states, will feel reinforced in its views.

We have never been uncritical supporters of any of the socialist countries. But our view of the 1956 rebellion differed fundamentally from that of the SWP which joined the bourgeoisie in hysterically hailing the "revolutionary development." We clearly recognized the reactionary character of the rebellion but also saw that the counter-revolution had only partially succeeded.

We supported the workers in 1970 precisely because their struggle reinforced the struggle for a healthier workers' state, unlike the 1956 rebellion.

The GM deal, in and of itself, has only a potential for counter-revolutionary developments. Whether the process set in motion is reinforced or halted depends on further developments not only in Poland and Eastern Europe, but also in the USSR. In the long run, it will depend on the outcome of the struggle between the two world systems — that of the socialist countries and that of imperialism, which is daily being battered everywhere.

A successful revolution in Portugal, in Spain, in France, or for that matter in any other significant area of the world, can reinforce the determination of the Polish working class to retain and strengthen socialism as against the willingness of the Polish leaders to accommodate themselves to imperialism.

In the meanwhile, our basic appraisal of the Polish People's Republic as a workers' or socialist state — though badly deformed — remains valid. The socialist sector of the economy, brought into being through the overthrow of the old landlord-capitalist class, is decisive. And it must be defended by class-conscious workers everywhere against the offensives of imperialism and internal reaction.

Imperialism and papal politics

In the midst of all the hullabaloo and blazing headlines about the "surprise" over the selection of a Polish archbishop as the new Pope, it shouldn't be overlooked that it was the U.S. delegation to the cardinals' conclave that made the nomination.

This fact wasn't in the headlines. It was tucked away in a rather obscure paragraph in the Washington Post (November 18, 1978). "The Polish cardinal had in fact been proposed by the Americans," says the paper, presumably as a way out of the impasse created by the struggles among the Italian candidates.

Nor is it surprising that the source for this information is given as French Cardinal Jean Guyot of Toulouse. France, it should be remembered, is one of the imperialist powers more independent of the U.S.

Another point that seems small but looms large under the circumstances is that the only one able to accurately "predict" who would be selected was an American, George Williams, head of Harvard Divinity School. His intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Vatican and his personal association with the Polish prelate can be presumed to have stimulated his "clairvoyance."

Thus the centuries-old tradition of selecting an Italian pope was breached not because of creative, innovative, and imaginative ideas coming out of the College of Cardinals, but because of the severe pressure of U.S. finance capital.

A PROFOUNDLY POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

One of the most pervasive myths regarding the Catholic Church is that its sole purpose is "to tend to the spiritual needs of the people." In reality the Church is, and for most of its existence has always been, a profoundly political organization.

Another myth, no less pervasive than the first one, is that the Church is "above the battle" in regard to the class struggle. The truth of the matter, however, is that the Church has always been allied with, or an instrument of, one or the other of the possessing classes.

During the medieval period and up to the advance of the bourgeoisie it was allied with the landlords against the peasants enslaved as serfs. With the advance of the bourgeois social order and the rising might of the capitalist class, the Church and the ecclesiastical order came under sharp fire from the ideologists and politicians of the new possessing class.

When classical feudalism was overthrown, the Church slowly veered toward and was finally won over to the bourgeoisie. From then on it became an ideological and political defender of the new ruling class. It has been a reactionary opponent of liberal elements in the bourgeoisie, however.

At other times it has been involved in inter-ruling class struggles: how best to deceive the masses; how best to hold them in subjection; how to teach the masses humility and submission in the face of the aggressiveness and growing might of the giant industrialists and financiers.

It is impossible to weigh the significance of the new Vatican selection without taking into account these pertinent historical facts for it may have far-reaching importance in the world struggle of the imperialist ruling classes against the workers, the oppressed people, and the socialist countries.

A MOVE IN THE NEW COLD WAR?

The bourgeois press of the West, particularly that of the U.S., has literally pulled out all stops in praise of the Vatican's new selection to head the papacy. Much of the ruling class press has indulged in broad speculation on how the new Polish Pope will deal with Eastern Europe and the West European Communist parties.

Some regard the selection of Pope John Paul II as nothing less than a coup, a stroke of genius which will do much to dismantle and destroy the fragile socialist foundations in Eastern Europe via a "revitalized" and "vibrant" Church aided by new inspiration from the Vatican. Like many other diplomatic and political maneuvers of imperialism since the end of World War II and the emergence of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, this one, contrary to the expectations of the capitalist press, may fall wide of the mark.

It is also possible that the Vatican, in its attempt to overreach itself and in its haste to do the bidding of international finance capital, will meet unexpected resistance.

There is no question, however, that in the worldwide struggle between imperialism and the socialist camp Eastern Europe is vulnerable to imperialist penetration-economically politically and ideologically. And this is probably more true of Poland than other socialist countries.

FEUDALISM LINGERED IN EASTERN EUROPE

In Western Europe the bourgeoisie, when it was a revolutionary class in the eighteenth century, did much to undermine and expose the reactionary character of the Church and to combat religion in general. This was part of its progressive role in carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution. "In the West," said Lenin, "this task was to a large extent performed or tackled by bourgeois democracy in the epoch of its revolution. In Russia," he continued, "because of the conditions of our bourgeois-democratic revolution, this task falls almost entirely on the shoulders of the working class." (Lenin's "Attitude of the Workers' Party Towards Religion," May 1909.)

What Lenin said about Russia in general applied even more so to Eastern Europe. The bourgeois revolution was never consummated in Eastern Europe. The landed gentry, especially the big landlords, in union with the Church held complete sway over the masses. The rising bourgeoisie in Eastern Europe was only too glad to join the landlords and the Church and perpetuate an unholy trinity of exploitation, oppression, and ignorance over the masses.

It is to be remembered that it was only by virtue of Napoleon's armies that feudalism in its classical form was abolished in some parts of Eastern Europe. But basically the class structure and the political weight of the ecclesiastical authorities remained a heavy weight on the shoulders of all of society and it was only in the wake of the October Revolution that attempts to overcome it by revolutionary measures were taken. Unfortunately, they floundered under the prevailing difficult conditions.

The early Polish Marxists of Rosa Luxemburg's era, and later the Communist Party of the early 1920s, fought splendidly as the vanguard of the proletarian struggle in Poland.

Unfortunately, they too were not equal to the tasks imposed by the severe conditions of their time. Moreover, they did not avail themselves in time of the rich experience of Leninist strategy and tactics to promote the proletarian class struggle. This was especially true of Luxemburg who disregarded Lenin's teachings on the national question and defied his position on self-determination.

The liberation of Poland from the Nazi invasion unleashed by Hitler was accomplished in the main by the revolutionary intervention of the Soviet armed forces. The resistance of the Polish people against the Nazi invasion was strong, formidable, and heroic. But it was an auxiliary force to the main element in breaking the back of Hitler's invasion, which was the Soviet Red Army.

POSTWAR PROBLEMS

That would not in any way have militated against the healthy construction of a socialist state had this been done in the spirit of revolutionary class struggle, in the spirit of awakening and stimulating mass working class and peasant initiative, had free rein been given to the creative forces inherent in the proletariat and their peasant allies in the struggle against the sinister forces of bourgeois reaction.

However, the intervention of the Soviet forces was carried out in a military-bureaucratic fashion which tended to stifle initiative, especially of the workers and peasants. Moreover, the liberation was carried out in the spirit of compromise with Western imperialism which laid claim to Poland as part of the "free world," a claim which it has never renounced to this day.

If anything at all it inhibited the revolutionary process in Poland and gave a longer lease on life to the forces of bourgeois reaction under the cloak of religion and in the form of the Church hierarchy, it was the continuous compromising with the West in an effort to make the new Poland look "democratic" in the bourgeois sense of the word. Only history will be able to tell to what extent such compromises were necessary if at all.

Thus a large residue of reaction remained untouched during the entire course of the Liberation and the revolutionary struggle against the old regime in Poland. It was not the kind of thorough-going revolutionary class struggle which, if once unleashed, has the potential of making a clean sweep and a final reckoning with the bourgeoisie and its allies. Purely administrative and arbitrary measures unrelated to the mass struggle were taken from above, especially against clerical authorities, and had the effect of antagonizing large sections of the rural population and some sections of the urban population. In any case, they proved ineffective, and served to strengthen reaction and encourage international finance capital to make more and more inroads.

REACTION EXPRESSED THROUGH THE CHURCH

The Church became the principal bastion and rallying ground for bourgeois and reactionary elements. When the uprising of 1956 occurred, it made retreat by the socialist government inevitable in many fields.

Most significantly, the retreat in agriculture from collective farming back to bourgeois individual farming, which today accounts for as much as 90% of agricultural production in Poland, gave the Church a tremendous opportunity to ingratiate itself with the rural population and the peasants in particular.

The Church now regards itself as the defender of the rights of the peasantry, when in reality its interest is to defend and expand the rights of the rural bourgeois elements, the new petty-bourgeois independent artisans in the urban centers, and a good part of the disloyal and disaffected elements in the state and party apparatus.

Since the 1956 rebellion, all the efforts of succeeding socialist administrations to accommodate with the West and grant more and more concessions to the Catholic hierarchy have served to embolden domestic reaction and its imperialist masters abroad. At the same time this has continually weakened the socialist foundations of the country, notwithstanding tremendous technological and industrial progress as well as very substantial improvements in the standard of living of the broad mass of the people.

It should be remembered that the Catholic hierarchy, having become a legally recognized entity in Poland, demagogically appropriates all the improvements made in the living conditions of the mass of the people to its credit while at the same time it carries on an underground war of obstruction to socialist construction.

Twenty thousand priests for a country with less than 35 million people! What does this mean in a socialist country like Poland? It means 20,000 full-time political activists, cadres, against socialist construction in general and Marxist-Leninist ideology in particular. The clerical bureaucracy grows stronger and more numerous every day and consumes an ever larger portion of the gross national product of socialist construction. All this has emboldened the Vatican to take the plunge which it did in naming Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II.

While some in the bourgeois press present the new Pope as a pragmatist and conciliator in matters relating to the socialist countries and the international workers' movement, others see him as a hard-line anti-communist more likely to seek confrontation with the Polish government rather than conciliation. At any rate, it is interesting to note that the ultra-rightists in the U.S., such as the industrialist James Buckley, former U.S. Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan of New York, and Carter's "National Security" adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, were quick to see the political aspects of the papal selection, particularly as it refers to Eastern Europe and communism in general.

REACTION OF POLISH GOVERNMENT

The worst aspect of all this for all genuine communists concerned with the struggle for socialism is the initial reaction of the Polish government itself. It is understandable that for the moment at least both the party and the government may be in a defensive position in the light of the Vatican. imperialist maneuver of selecting a Polish prelate as Pope, and the nationalist frenzy that the imperialist press is trying to create by flattering the Polish people with the selection.

(Of course, the Vatican would never have thought of a Polish citizen even as doorkeeper at the time Hitler's hordes were subjugating Poland. But why would the imperialist press remember anything like that?).

No less than Edward Gierek himself, the First Secretary of the Party, sent a congratulatory message to the new Pope. He said, "We express our conviction that the election of the new Pope will contribute to the further development of relations between Poland and the Vatican."

However, at a mass attended by some 5,000 people in Krakow, one of the city's bishops prayed for "God to grant the church in Poland the struggle for human rights," which is a way of throwing down the gauntlet to the government. Clearly this bishop doesn't see the "development of relations" the way Gierek does.

The whole business of dealing with the Vatican, of recognizing it as a diplomatic power, and the way the party deals with the Church and religion in general is in complete contradiction to the Leninist conception of the struggle.

In May 1909 when the political reaction following the defeat of the 1905 revolution was still relatively strong but running out of steam and the forces of clerical obscurantism had raised their head, Lenin took time off to write an article critical of a speech made by a Bolshevik deputy in the Duma. The article is pertinent to the present course of the Polish CP leadership.

"By declaring from the Duma tribune that religion is the opium of the people," Lenin says, "our fraction [the Bolsheviks] acted quite correctly, and thus created a precedent which should serve as a basis for all utterances by Russian Social-Democrats on the question of religion. Should they have gone further and developed their atheistic arguments in greater detail? We think not. This might have incurred the danger of the fight against religion being exaggerated by the political party of the proletariat; it might have resulted in obliterating the difference between the bourgeois and the Socialist fight against religion. The first duty of the Social Democratic fraction in the Black Hundred Duma has been discharged with honor.

"The second duty," Lenin 'continues, "and perhaps the most important for Social-Democrats — namely to explain the class role of the church and the clergy in supporting the Black Hundred government and the bourgeoisie in its fight against the working class — has also been discharged with honor. Of course, very much more might be said on this subject. ..."

"The third duty," Lenin goes on to say, "was to explain in full detail the correct meaning of the proposition so often distorted by the German opportunists, namely that 'religion is a private matter.' This, unfortunately, Comrade Surkov did not do."

RELIGION A 'PRIVATE AFFAIR'

What Surkov should have made clear, Lenin said elsewhere, was that "religion should be a private affair as far as the state is concerned, but under no circumstance can we regard religion as a private affair as far as our own party is concerned. The state must not be concerned with religion, religious societies should have no connection with the state power. Everybody must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases or not to believe in any religion at all that is to be an atheist, as every Socialist usually is."

Now, no one would expect Gierek, when called upon for a statement on the selection of the Pope, to carry out the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist position which Surkov did so splendidly by comparison in his first two duties — explaining that religion is the opium of the people and explaining the class role of the church and the clergy. Indeed it would be surprising in the light of the current situation to expect him to take a revolutionary position on these two highly critical and sensitive issues, which were no less critical and sensitive in 1909 for Deputy Surkov in the reactionary Black Hundred (Ku Klux Klan) Duma.

But the least he could have done was to make the "mistake" that Surkov did, by asserting that insofar as the Pope's selection is a religious matter, it is a private affair. And he could have added that insofar as it is politically motivated, the Polish government will resist any attempts by foreign powers to interfere in the internal affairs of Poland. However, to have sent a congratulatory message was to validate brazen imperialist interference.

Gierek might just have said, "Religion is a private matter," when asked about the selection of the Pope. Although it would not have satisfied Leninist standards of communist conduct in relation to the papacy, it at least would have shown a slight contempt for an antediluvian institution which parades around as a world authority on moral and ethical affairs when in reality it is merely an instrumentality of international finance capital.

In this role the papacy is a reactionary force not only against Polish socialism but against the worldwide struggle of the working class and the oppressed.

'ADAPTABILITY' TO NEW RULING CLASS

There is a significant current of political thought, both in the Western CPs as well as in the summits of some of the ruling parties in Eastern Europe, which holds to the thesis that coexistence with the Catholic hierarchy and with elements of the bourgeoisie make a peaceful evolution into socialism possible. With respect to the Catholic Church, they may well say that the Church, as we pointed out earlier, was an instrument or ally of previous ruling classes and that it had shown an ability to adapt itself to new conditions.

This current of political thought overlooks the fact that the Catholic Church as a social and political phenomenon adapted itself to and became an instrument of possessing, exploiting, and oppressing classes, not of the dispossessed, oppressed, and exploited. Moreover, it completely disregards the growing acuteness of the worldwide struggle, the increasing aggressiveness and brazenness of imperialism, with its inability to accommodate itself or adjust itself to the peaceful transformation of capitalist society into socialism.

Whichever way one looks at it, a showdown between the forces that are genuinely struggling for socialism, to fully transform Poland into a socialist society, and the regressive forces of bourgeois reaction, hidden as well as open, will ultimately become inevitable. The destiny not only of Poland but of Eastern Europe and other socialist countries is tied to the outcome of this struggle.

Unquestionably the ongoing world struggle between imperialism on the one hand and the socialist countries, the world working class, and the liberation movements on the other will in no small measure contribute to the outcome.

Imperialist intervention in papal garb

The visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland on such an extended tour can only be regarded as a most blatant form of imperialist intervention by the papacy on behalf of world finance capital. The fact that the Polish government extended the invitation does not change this characterization to any measurable degree. It only indicates the difficult situation of the Polish government in general and of the Gierek leadership in particular.

Progressives throughout the world, the anti-imperialist movement in general, and the working class as a whole ought not to be thrown off balance by the seeming anomaly of the ideological spearhead of the international bourgeoisie being given free rein to preach anti-communism in a citadel of the socialist world. The anomaly can best be understood not only in the light of the general political situation in Poland today, but in its correct historical perspective.

POSTWAR POLAND

Contemporary Poland more than any other country in Europe, save for Yugoslavia, is the product of international conditions. More specifically, it is the result of the effects of the Second World War and the postwar struggle between imperialism on the one hand and the Soviet Union and its allies on the other.

As a result of the bitter and unrestrained struggle that Allied imperialism put up at the end of the Second World War to bring Poland within the imperialist camp, an extraordinary historic compromise arose after what appeared to be, in its initial stages, the full-scale socialist transformation of Poland.

The term "historic compromise," as used in this context, should not be confused with the so-called historic compromise entered into by the Berlinguer & Co. of the Italian Communist Party, nor in Britain by the Labour Party in the form of the Social Contract. This form of historic compromise, stripped of some of its vague rhetoric, is nothing more than a screen to cover a full retreat launched by the Italian CP and the British Labour Party and gives full rein to an assault against the living standards of the working class. The fruits of this we have already seen in the victory of the new rightist government in Britain headed by Margaret Thatcher. In Italy, the steady retreat of the PCI before the assault of big capital has resulted in substantial losses, not merely of an electoral character, but involving widespread disenchantment and disillusionment of vast sections of the militant working class, students, and intellectuals.

POWER TO BE SHARED AMONG HOSTILE CLASSES

The historic compromise of which contemporary Poland is the product was conceived more in the nature of a sharing of power among the proletariat, sections of the peasantry, and so-called patriotic elements of the bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the general bourgeois opposition often clandestinely represented by the Catholic hierarchy, on the other. Thus, from the point of view of the internal class forces, the historic compromise was to be a real one, not just a sharing of offices or ministerial posts. However, the military, police, and administrative control were to be vested in the state as represented by the United Workers (Communist) Party and its allies. On the basis of this constellation of class forces arose the term "people's democracy" for which Poland was regarded as the fundamental model.

The long, bitter, and often extremely confusing debate in the international communist press, particularly in Eastern Europe, over the meaning and significance of "people's democracy" was a deeply concealed struggle over how and through what forms the sharing of actual power could be established on a more or less durable basis. Consciously or unconsciously, this was the basic issue. Above all, the question was how to maintain the equilibrium, at least for a period of time, between the hostile class forces.

The whole concept of people's democracy, however, was predicated on the assumption that a stable, peaceful period would prevail for a more or less extended period based on an accommodation of "live and let live" between imperialism and the USSR with its socialist allies.

The political and theoretical premises for such a projection were that the postwar needs for capitalist reconstruction in the West were so urgent and the working class movement in such a militant spirit as to keep the imperialists busy at home, so to speak, for a considerable period. This, however, was a miscalculation.

NOT PEACE BUT COLD WAR

Notwithstanding all the attempts by the Soviet government to reach a variety of agreements with the West in pursuit of a stable, peaceful equilibrium between West and East, the imperialists under the aegis of the U.S. ruling class soon launched a series of coldly calculated, hostile moves which showed that they had no intention whatever of abiding by any "live and let live" formula. Even before the Truman administration proclaimed the Marshall Plan, they unfurled the counter-revolutionary banner of "liberation" for Eastern Europe, and the Cold War was in full swing.

It is in this historical context that present-day Poland has to be viewed. The historic compromise was based both on the relation of hostile classes within Poland and, in its external features, on a compromise among the Soviet Union, its socialist allies, and imperialism on a world scale. No understanding of present-day Poland is possible unless this central fact is first taken into account.

The bourgeois press has spilled tons and tons of ink in praise of Polish nationalism, as they put it, and on the struggle for Polish identity, etc., etc. But most of the talk in the West about Polish nationalism has been by and large a code- word for anti-Soviet, pro-imperialist, and pro-bourgeois sentiment cultivated by the world bourgeoisie. There is little mention here of the nationalism which seeks to identify the Polish nation with a thorough-going revolutionary struggle for a new social system free from the feudal and capitalist past.

FOUR PHASES OF POLISH DEVELOPMENT

In the 35 years of existence of the Polish government, there have been four distinct phases of development which explain its present precarious and unstable situation.

The first period lasted from the liberation of Poland by the Red Army in 1944 to the consolidation of the socialist government in 1947, the second ended in 1956 with the Poznan uprising and the fall of the Bierut government; the third lasted from the accession of the Gomulka government in 1956 until Gomulka's resignation after the 1970 Gdansk rebellion; and the fourth phase has been that of the present Gierek government.

The first phase covered the destruction of the forces of the Nazi invaders and the overturn of the old regime.

The social and political overturn in Poland was not the result of a socialist revolution such as took place in the Soviet Union, China, or Cuba. It was mainly the result of the revolutionary intervention of the Soviet Red Army. This was in part necessitated by the fact that the U.S. and the British were busy, especially after the victory at Stalingrad, trying to set up a government in Poland of their own choosing. This was their "contribution" to the war effort. It was the beginning of the long and as yet unfinished struggle of world finance capital for the control of Poland by use of downright reactionaries, landlords, and the clerical bureaucracy.

This phase ended in 1947. With the assistance of the indigenous revolutionary movement and vigorous support of the Soviet Red Army, the new government was set up following a general election which brought a huge majority to the supporters of the Polish United Workers Party and its progressive allies.

In its overall physiognomy, the social transformation was basically of a military-bureaucratic character and did not fully release the healthy, revolutionary creative initiative of the masses in a life-and-death struggle with the bourgeoisie, the landlords, and their allies. Instead, the first phase in the development of the new Poland ended not with crushing the old possessing classes and smashing the old state apparatus, but rather for the most part it contained the hostile class forces while enacting legislation which dispossessed at least in legal terms the old privileged classes in bourgeois Poland.

It was assumed that the class struggle would die out as a result of administrative measures and the education that comes with socialist reconstruction.

COLD WAR REVITALIZED CHURCH

The fury let loose by the Cold War, engineered by the U.S., kept alive all the old and decadent remnants of the ruling classes and sustained the Catholic hierarchy and its vast support both inside and outside Poland. The nourishment that the so-called revitalized church gets in Poland is preponderantly from foreign sources, not only coming through the Vatican as a political instrument, but from finance capitalism which funnels and supports Vatican activities in Poland.

Throughout the entire period of the Cold War, and particularly during its most difficult days, Poland was a target of imperialism far more than any of the other East European countries. As the Cold War wore on, the equilibrium of class forces in Poland became more unstable and socialist construction more difficult Poland was never proclaimed a dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry, and the broad masses were never rallied under such slogans and with such an objective. Instead the state structure established in 1947 was made official in 1952 with the promulgation of a constitution making Poland a "people's democracy."

The strict limits of "people's democracy" constrained the revolutionary energies of the masses while the hostile forces took nourishment from the unstable situation, even as they were repressed politically. Poland was becoming more and more a halfway house, a house divided between right and left, a house where on one side were all those who genuinely supported the socialist aspirations of the government, and on the other a motley crew of old-line bureaucrats inherited from the Polish past — opportunists who gave lip service to the cause of socialism — and the clerical bureaucracy which represented the general bourgeois opposition.

Such a situation could not exist for long. The historic compromise proved itself to be unviable as a transition stage to a socialist transformation of society.

MUCH MORE THAN MERE CONCESSIONS

It is one thing for a proletarian dictatorship to grant certain privileges as a concession to bourgeois layers of society, or to make limited economic reforms in a bourgeois direction in the interests of rapid socialist construction. It is another matter entirely if the whole conception of state power is based on a historic compromise, that is, on hostile classes sharing power on a durable basis. There is no precedent in socialist history for such a development.

Even broad concessions made to bourgeois elements by some of the socialist countries and the continuation and widening of a capitalist market economy hold untold dangers for the existence of a socialist state.

By contrast, the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the feudal lords was able in England, for example, to carry through its revolution by making historic compromises and sharing power with the landlords. But the difference between their historic compromise and the one in Poland is that the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy had the common bond of both being property-owning classes and both being hostile to the interests of the working class. But a workers' government which embarks upon a historic compromise with the bourgeoisie is of necessity confronted with antagonistic, not common, class interests. One or the other is bound to conquer.

POZNAN REBELLION OF 1956

Thus, the Bierut government fell in 1956 at the time of the first Polish rebellion which, incidentally, came on the heels of Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and the confusion and panic which that caused in the Communist parties, particularly in Eastern Europe. But that, however, was merely the symptom. The real cause of the 1956 uprising at Poznan lay in the nature of the historic compromise and the consequent inability of the socialist government to properly deal with economic issues in the face of the demagogic opposition of the Catholic hierarchy and the bourgeois intelligentsia.

The Poznan uprising ended the second phase of contemporary Polish history. With it ended the collectivization of farming and the return to a virtually bourgeois economy in the sphere of agriculture. There was also an enormous increase in so-called independent producers, petty-bourgeois craftsmen and traders, who now began to feel their oats with the accession of the Gomulka regime. The latter, however, did not go as far to the right as originally was thought in the tumultuous days of the late 1950s. He tried to contain hostile class forces while extending more concessions, so-called incentives, of a bourgeois character in the field of industry and trade.

GOMULKA HEIR TO UNSTABLE STATE STRUCTURE

There is no point in demeaning Gomulka as a Communist, or playing him up as a nationalist, as the bourgeois press did. The truth of the matter is that he, like his predecessor, was a prisoner of a state structure that was inherently utopian since it was based on antagonistic classes.

Rapid industrialization, development of industry, transport, and technology does not bring socialism or even ameliorate the living conditions of the masses. Given the contradictory character of the state structure, given the assumption of the coexistence of hostile classes within the framework of a socialist state and a hostile political opposition catering to the needs of the bourgeoisie, no smooth path to socialism can ever be achieved. The political struggle of the classes in Poland dominates over the needs of society as a whole, particularly over the need to move in a socialist direction.

A workers' and peasants' government may also be said to be a contradictory phenomenon. Lenin many times pointed out that the peasantry as a class was concerned with individual private property, while the proletariat is the only class that is consistently revolutionary and socialist to the end. The proletariat is based upon industry, and the more developed industry is, the greater the weight of the proletariat and the greater the tendency towards socialism.

The peasantry plays a progressive and revolutionary role when it accepts the leadership of the proletariat in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and the landlords, when it accepts the proletariat as the leading force in the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.

Of particular importance in relation to Poland is the general fact that the peasantry slowly begins to cease to be a peasantry the more it accepts collectivization, which harmonizes its interests with the socialist perspectives of the proletariat. Decollectivization in Poland, as happened after the 1956 rebellion objectively propels the peasantry into opposition to the proletariat and into the arms of the bourgeoisie. It makes the peasants the prey of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which champions bourgeois agriculture against the socialist economy in general — and the more primitive, the better for the church.

CHURCH A DEFENDER OF POSSESSING CLASSES

The church hierarchy is irreconcilably opposed to socialism. It is in reality an intensely political organization and an agent of the "free enterprise" system. It has been the friend and defender of the possessing classes as a whole for nearly two thousand years.

That is its religion. All else is hypocrisy and a deception of the masses.

Not having dealt with the church as a political in the first place made it all the harder for each new succeeding Polish government to deal with the hierarchy. Each new concession the hierarchy won emboldened it and strengthened the general bourgeois opposition.

Under the guise of religion, fundamental property rights are being fought for and the rights of bourgeois property are being defended ever more vigorously in the struggle against socialism.

Hasn't religion always served as a cover for this or that ruling class, for this or that propertied class? Where is there a church hierarchy that has not befriended the landlord, the manufacturer, the militarist, the judge, the executioner, and the prison guard? The revival of the church in Poland is a religious disguise for the general bourgeois opposition. This is what has to be understood first and foremost.

The Gomulka regime made strong headway in heavy industry and consumer goods, and in general uplifted the standard of living of the masses. But the existence of hostile classes, for the most part disguised in clerical garb, cultivated the opposition, gave it sustenance and guidance.

WHY DID THE WORKERS REBEL?

Bureaucratic mismanagement and inefficiency along with infiltration into a large part of the state apparatus by elements that are thoroughly bourgeois in their outlook is not an inconsiderable element in the ever-expanding difficulties of the succeeding Polish governments. Thus, the Gomulka regime was eventually overthrown by a new rising of workers in the port city of Gdansk.

It would be difficult for anyone with the least amount of sensibilities not to have sympathized with the workers. Yet the fundamental cause of it is due to the original scheme of setting up an unviable state structure in the name of socialism a state which cannot consistently lead the economy in a thorough-going socialist direction.

Between it and the workers stand layers upon layers of bureaucratized civil servants, managers, and technicians, whose conception of socialism is not based on the principle that the working class is the agent for the transformation of society, nor that it is the leading class in constructing a socialist society, nor that power should rest with the workers in alliance with the poorer sections of the peasantry.

Indeed, they regard the workers more in the nature of a category of bourgeois economics. The workers are dealt with from a technocratic and not from a revolutionary Marxist viewpoint, not from the point of view of socialist direction via the class struggle but from the viewpoint of harmonizing all elements of society in the same way as one would the parts of a machine.

From the viewpoint of the technocrat, the machine was functioning well. Poland was moving ahead industrially and technologically — until the Gdansk workers reminded them that Polish society is not a machine, it is a society divided into classes.

The fact that the present first secretary of the party had to be reminded of this again in a none too polite way, as was his predecessor, by another workers' rebellion in 1976 shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is something vitally and fundamentally wrong in the Polish socialist system.

At this stage it would be pure speculation to say what might have been had genuine Marxist-Leninist tactics been employed. But so far as the results are concerned, it was a shift in the direction of bourgeois pragmatic practices. And in the field of theory, it was a detour into experimental bourgeois sociology.

A FAILURE OF BASIC POLICY

The invitation extended to the Pope to preach anti-communism in a citadel of socialism is an abject confession of the failure of a fundamental policy. It's not just inefficiency, it's not just mismanagement, it's not the religious sentiment of the masses. It's not that the Polish people are more religious than others.

It's that Poland is a halfway society, and it has given free rein to the bourgeois opposition in the guise of religious freedom. The Polish state structure is in reality a concealed form of dual power. The tendencies toward bourgeois restoration are strong and politically vocal. The socialist administrators of the state are commanding less and less respect, even from ardent supporters of the socialist cause.

A fundamental realignment of class forces is necessary in Poland. The continued existence of a concealed form of dual authority will prove unendurable if the economic situation becomes aggravated, especially by unforeseen developments.

It is difficult to foresee what form the struggle, which will surely break out into the open, will take. But whatever its form, it is the creative initiative and resourcefulness of the class-conscious workers of Poland that must be relied upon to play the leading role in charting a new course for socialist reconstruction.

Yalta and the Polish anti-fascist movement

If you are a worker, Black or white, Latin or Asian, gay or straight, young or old, you are affected by the crisis in Poland. Surely you must know that the headlines in the newspapers and the stories in the media are dominated by the events in Poland.

This diverts attention from important news which workers are concerned with most immediately and directly — insecurity on the job, layoffs, and the rising cost of living. There is also the fear underlying everything else that the events in Poland may lead to military conflict which would involve all of us in a new, terrible conflagration.

It would be no good at all to close our eyes to what is going on in Poland.

If you heard President Reagan's Christmas Eve address, you surely would have noticed how emotional he seemed to be about the Polish workers and their hardships. By contrast, he never said a word about the nearly 10 million unemployed workers here in this country.

Again, while he seemed so deeply moved by the hardships of Polish workers, he never said a word about the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strikers whose union he broke illegally, whose members the government has harassed, fined, and imprisoned.

Reagan mourned the loss of life in Poland, but the four who committed suicide during the PATCO strike as a result of hardship and harassment are passed over in silence.

Again, he talked about the many refugees coming out of Poland. Again, by contrast, he never said anything about the thousands of refugees from Haiti who are in U.S. concentration camps, many dying of hunger and living in dread of being deported to one of the most brutal dictatorial regimes in modern times.

Okay, you agree on that. But do two wrongs make a right? This question must be answered.

It cannot be properly answered unless we take into account how the Polish government was created. No understanding of the Polish problem can possibly be arrived at unless we first ask ourselves this question again and again.

The Polish government is the product of the Second World War. It was created in 1945. The manner in which it was created is of supreme importance to understanding what is happening now.

It was created as the result of an agreement at the close of the Second World War between, on the one hand, the Soviet Union represented by Stalin and, on the other, the United States represented by President Roosevelt and Great Britain represented by Prime Minister Churchill.

YALTA AGREEMENT

This agreement was reached at the Yalta conference in the spring of 1945. You can look this up in any book, newspaper, or magazine of the time and you will find these facts to be true.

Yalta has since become a dirty word in the jargon of all the right-wing reactionary elements in the U.S., especially those in the Pentagon. Roosevelt himself has since been vilified in terms of near treason.

Why? The Yalta agreement constituted the basis of a compromise between the Soviet Union as a socialist state (or communist state, however you wish to call it) and the principal Western allies — Great Britain and the United States — as capitalist states.

What kind of a government could possibly emerge if the Soviet Union was concerned with establishing a socialist government in Poland and the U.S. and Great Britain were interested in reestablishing a capitalist state in Poland?

Can there be a state which is half capitalist and half socialist? That was one of the questions presumably settled by the Yalta agreement.

There were many other questions left open. There were, however, certain pertinent facts that had to be taken into account if there was to be a new Poland erected as a result of an agreement between the USSR and the capitalist West.

It was agreed by the powers participating in the Yalta conference that Poland should have a democratic form of government. Both sides agreed to that.

Elections were to follow and a parliament set up. All this did subsequently take place.

The Yalta agreement was therefore responsible for having set up, or helped to set up together with the Polish people, a new Polish republic.

TWO CURRENTS STRUGGLING FOR LEADERSHIP

Inside of Poland, however, there were two divergent political currents struggling for leadership of the future government.

On the one hand there was the Lublin group which was supported by workers and by the strong resistance forces organized in the struggle against the Nazis. The Lublin group was in support of and alliance with the Soviet Union.

On the other hand there was the group headed by Stanislaw Mikolajczyk which had its headquarters in London and was called the Polish Government in Exile.

Note this very important fact. The Lublin group, composed of the progressive resistance forces allied with and cooperating with the Soviet Union, had their headquarters located directly in Poland during the entire war. Mikolajczyk and his principal supporters fled and established themselves in their headquarters in London. The difference is important.

The strong, indigenous anti-Nazi forces were clearly lined up with the Lublin government. Mikolajczyk's group was small, weak, and his armed supporters negligible.

Toward the close of the war, while the Nazi forces were still strong in Poland, the Soviet Red Army launched the final offensive to liberate Poland. Yes, it was the Red Army that liberated Poland. This, too, you can find in any book, magazine, or newspaper of the time.

It cost the Soviet Union 900,000 men and women — nearly twice as many dead as the U.S. suffered in World War II Korean war and the Viet Nam war combined.

That's the measure of concern the Soviet Union had in guaranteeing the establishment of a new, independent Poland.

The Yalta agreement had to take this into account in arriving at the compromise between Mikolajczyk who was in alliance with the U.S. and Britain, and the broad anti-fascist, progressive and socialist resistance movement of Lublin. The compromise agreement was for Mikolajczyk to join the Lublin government and thereby form a coalition of both the socialist and capitalist political interests.

It would be a coalition government. A parliament was established in 1946 as a result of a referendum vote of the people.

Opposition parties were legalized, especially what was called the Peasant Party which was the name Mikolajczyk chose for his party. He became a vice-premier of the coalition government and was put in charge of the ministry of agriculture.

Thus far, the Yalta compromise agreement was carried out. A referendum vote was held, a parliament established, an opposition party legalized.

The Lublin supporters won an overwhelming majority. The Mikolajczyk opposition also scored heavily in the elections, but as a minority party.

What happened to this compromise which was aimed to maintain stable, peaceful relations between the Soviet Union and the Western capitalist countries after the war against the fascist powers?

This agreement, as we said, was a compromise in which both sides gave some ground. Among those in the Left, many thought Stalin gave too much ground in Poland (and elsewhere) when in fact the Red Army with the native resistance forces could have easily taken all of Poland and established it as a full-fledged socialist government.

The reactionary Polish exiles' forces under Mikolajczyk were negligible and were composed mostly of right-wing and ultra-rightist forces who before the war had supported the fascist dictatorship of Pilsudski.

The attacks on the Yalta agreement from the Left were negligible and had little effect.

The Yalta agreement, it must be remembered, was signed, sealed and delivered by Stalin for the USSR, Winston Churchill for Britain, and President Roosevelt for the U.S. Whether this was a viable agreement that could stand the test of history was left to the Polish people to decide.

The antagonistic internal class forces were left to work out their own destiny without interference from either East or West. And for a brief period, very brief indeed, it seemed that it might work.

SHARP REVERSAL OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

But something happened early after the agreement was signed which smashed it to bits. It began with the death of Roosevelt and the sharp reversal of foreign policy during Truman's and succeeding administrations in the U.S.

The attacks, which began against Roosevelt after the Yalta agreement, took on a wild momentum during the Truman-Acheson period and reached a crescendo in the following years. Nothing less than repudiation of the agreement was called for.

By the time of the Potsdam conference, which took place between July 17 and August 2, 1945, the U.S. had perceived that the balance of world forces between the imperialist powers of Great Britain and the U.S. on the one hand, and the USSR, on the other, had greatly changed militarily to the advantage of the U.S.

It should be remembered that by this time Truman had succeeded Roosevelt at the conference and Prime Minister Churchill was succeeded by Prime Minister Atlee. The conference agreement resulted in a long but vague statement that the U.S. at the time no longer had any military reason to honor its commitments.

Certainly that's the way it was perceived four days after the ending of the conference. Four days after the conference was over, the U.S., which had long prepared the development of the atomic bomb, dropped it on Hiroshima.

This was mostly an attempt to intimidate the USSR, the militant working class of the world and the impending upsurge of the oppressed people of the world. It was not at all an attempt to save U.S. lives, as Truman claimed at the time.

It was an attempt to present U.S. military dominance with the aid of the atomic bomb, which the U.S. held in monopoly, and, in the jargon of the right-wingers, "roll back the red carpet in all of Eastern Europe."

Thereafter, a vicious anti-Soviet offensive was opened up in the U.S. on foreign policy along with a domestic witchhunt of frightening proportions against the progressive movement and the trade unions that were in any way sympathetic to the struggle for workers' rights, civil liberties, or socialism.

Overturning the Yalta agreement became a cardinal principle of all the ultra-rightists McCarthyites, Birch Society neo-fascist, and others. Thus, no sooner had this agreement really been signed than the U.S. administration attempted to undermine it, repudiate it, and commence covert as well as overt operations to undermine the existing legal government in Poland.

Mikolajczyk, who had become a vice-premier of the coalition government then saw a new opportunity for the possibility of the U.S. and Britain openly intervening to establish a capitalist government. He therefore resigned from the coalition government and came to the U.S. to organize all the reactionary Polish exile groups in the U.S. and try to coordinate all the Polish-Americans behind a "liberate Poland" campaign.

As the New Columbia Encyclopedia (one-volume 1975 edition) states, "He left behind him nationalists rightists and some other opponents operating as underground forces in 1946, a year after Yalta."

The slogan of "liberation," by which they meant overthrow of the existing Polish government, became the battle cry not only during the Truman but also the Dulles-Eisenhower period. In addition to these overt and covert measures of subversion, the Western capitalist powers took advantage of the devastated conditions resulting from the Nazi invasion and war to withhold not only economic assistance but trade in general, unless the Polish government agreed in the first place to certain so-called liberal reforms.

Such reforms were understood everywhere in the progressive world to mean the rejection of socialist construction and the establishment of capitalist relations.

WHAT WEST MEANS BY 'REFORMS'

When the word "liberal reform" is used in the West, it means a capitalist reform. It does not at all have anything to do with free speech, freedom of religion, and so on.

What they mean by "liberal reforms" are the introduction and strengthening of capitalist private property in industry, in agriculture, and in all other phases of life.

The communists, socialists, and Progressives were for socializing Poland with production for use, not for profit. But they were willing to compromise on a live-and-let-live basis if the Western capitalist powers would agree not to intervene by subversion, economic blockade, or the deprivation of financial credits for commerce badly needed as a result of the country's economic status resulting from the war.

This is the ABC of the Polish crisis today.

What the U.S., British, and later the German and French imperialists did over the years was a continuation of the same subversion by covert means and economic penetration. The inability of succeeding communist leaders to put Poland's economic house in order is due basically to the intransigence of the capitalist powers in not letting Poland get economically on its feet to build socialism. They used both overt and covert subversion through the medium of financial penetration.

Poland may have disappeared from the headlines for some years, but the effort to destabilize it and return it to the capitalist camp was never abandoned. Therein lies the basic cause of the recent crisis in Poland.

Imperialism and the socialist countries

U.S. imperialism's economic policy toward the socialist countries

At a time of rising international tensions, instigated by a new round of U.S. aggressive moves in the international arena, particularly in the Caribbean, it is most important to pay the closest attention to the complicated array of military and diplomatic moves which the Carter administration has set in motion under the pretext of responding to an alleged "Soviet combat brigade" in Cuba.

It is the overall political struggle between imperialism, together with its motley crew of allies, clients, and puppets on the one hand, and the socialist countries, the world proletariat, and the oppressed peoples on the other which will ultimately determine the fate of decadent monopoly capitalism.

Precisely because the struggle has been of such long duration and its nature is of such an all-encompassing character, it is important that certain other aspects of the struggle not be overlooked in the course of acute political, diplomatic, and military encounters.

Such, for instance, is the economic policy of world finance capital in relation to the socialist countries. It is very well known, of course, that the imperialist powers have for many decades employed economic sabotage, blockade, and attempts at strangulation against all the socialist countries. It is equally well known that the socialist countries, virtually without exception, have attempted to normalize relations with the imperialist powers and have sought out all avenues to develop trade, commerce, and general economic intercourse with a view towards strengthening socialist construction.

What is not so well known and what has not been given adequate attention are the varied methods and devices of imperialism to undermine socialist construction. Open economic warfare, of course, has been one method. Economic subversion and sabotage, another.

IMPERIALISM'S OTHER CHANNEL FOR PENETRATION

These have more or less been exposed over the many years of the struggle. There remains, however, the area which in contemporary economic literature goes under the name of "trade and commerce for mutual benefit based on cooperation." This is very important. It covers a multitude of processes which on the one hand have held out hope for the socialist countries and on the other hand have formed the basis for the penetration of finance capital into the more vulnerable socialist countries.

Marxists are not economic determinists. Marxists take their initial starting point from the anatomy of the class structure which governs a given society. Marxism teaches that while the basis for the exploitation of the masses lies in the search for super-profits by the ruling monopolies, economic and financial gain lie at the root of the constant chase for profits. If finance capital can penetrate the economies of the socialist countries on a more or less agreed upon basis, it will pursue its goal as feverishly as it has done throughout the history of imperialism. In underdeveloped countries.

POLITICAL REACTION BOUND TO FOLLOW

These economic processes of finance capital, which are developed slowly, are often given less attention than they deserve, but they are nonetheless extremely deadly if permitted to run their course. Of course, at a certain stage of development in this process of capital penetration, this or that socialist country will be confronted with a formidable politicaldevelopment which in turn can threaten the very fabric of the nascent socialist order.

It is precisely this eventuality which must be given more attention. Thus far only the capitalist press has carried endless columns in the economic sections of its newspapers which boast of the inroads they have made in some of the socialist countries.

These inroads are not confined to Yugoslavia or Poland but reach also into other socialist countries. At this historical conjuncture when the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has virtually become diplomatically and militarily allied with imperialism, it is important to examine its economic relations with the latter. China's immense role in the world dictates this.

While its military and diplomatic relations, such as they are with imperialism, are of course key to any political attitude to the PRC, in the long run it is the economic relationship with imperialism which may ultimately decide whether or not China will survive as a socialist country and regain its stature in the socialist community or become integrated into the capitalist orbit as the bankers and generals have long been planning.

It would be easier for the PRC leaders to break a diplomatic alliance with the Western powers and Japan than it would be to reverse long-standing economic integration with the economic structure of world finance capital.

When the Soviet Union in 1939 effectuated the Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact and made an alliance between the USSR and Germany, whatever its merits from the point of view of gaining time against Hitler (while at the same time disorienting the world working class), there was one facet of it which stood out rather clearly in spite of all the confusion it caused. There was no element of economic dependence and no aspect of economic integration on the part of the USSR with Germany. The non-aggression pact was preceded by a trade agreement, but it did not assume the dimensions of a far-flung plan for economic integration.

Similarly, Japan's agreement with Nazi Germany was purely of a military and diplomatic character and merely amounted to parallel plans to divest the Allied imperialist powers of their colonial booty in Asia and in Europe.

CHINA'S ECONOMY AN IMPERIALIST TARGET

The situation between the PRC and Western imperialism as well as Japan at the present time is altogether different. The aim of imperialism is not merely a military and diplomatic alliance against the USSR, which they still fear that China may at any moment reverse. The more fundamental aim is of a long-range character. It is to bring China, an economically and industrially undeveloped colossus, solidly into the orbit of imperialism.

Many steps have already been taken over the years by the PRC leadership in that direction. The trade relations, in and of themselves, do not constitute the fundamental linchpin which would make for unbreakable economic links. It has been many years now since the PRC abandoned Soviet Aeroflot engines for U.S. aircraft. It was the reactionary senator from Boeing, Senator Jackson, who first saw the significance of this move.

Following this rather unheralded move, China over the years has steadily leaned in the direction of banking its future on Western trade, commerce, and technology. This was true to some extent even during the Cultural Revolution.

Rolls Royce engines from Britain or DC-10 engines from the U.S. in and of themselves may seem to be small potatoes when one considers the vastness of world capitalist trade and technology. But given their strategic significance in the framework of the contemporary period they can create considerable dependence on the West, especially if the trend continues for a number of years, as it has.

It is worthy of note that in the growing challenge from Western Europe and Japan to U.S. economic domination in other fields, the U.S. has retained overwhelming control in this strategic field, in the vital aircraft industry in the imperialist world. The recent collapse as a challenge to the U.S. of the British-French Concorde project, the largest technological undertaking in Western Europe, and the announcement that the Boeing Company and All-Nippon, Japan's largest domestic airline, have agreed on the purchase of up to 40 of Boeing's new 767 aircraft at a value of $1.5 billion, underscore the dominance of the U.S. in the aircraft industry. This leaves China little room to maneuver elsewhere for strategic aircraft.

Vital as China's shift years ago from the Soviet to the U.S. side in the aircraft field was, it is merely one instance of the shift in the economic orientation to the West. This shift is vastly overshadowed by far more significant moves which China is embarking upon in the broader economic and financial field. These foreign policy shifts are intimately related to the vast reforms in the economic structure of China which are of a wholly regressive character, notwithstanding a progressive development here and there.

CHINA READY TO JOIN WORLD BANK

For instance, on September 28, 1979, Deputy Premier Gu Mu said that the PRC is ready to join the World Bank, also known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is technically a part of the United Nations organization.

It is in the interest of any socialist country to seek out and apply for membership in any number of international organizations where this can be useful and helpful in promoting the cause of socialist construction and the welfare of its people. There are literally dozens of world organizations which range all the way from meteorology to oceanography, world health, communications, and so on, where there are advantages not merely in exchanging information but also in acquiring know-how and technical expertise, aside from broadening contacts with the rest of the world.

The purpose of socialist construction in any country is not to hermetically seal itself within its own boundaries, but to expand economic, political, and cultural relations, always with the view of retaining sovereignty and independence from imperialism.

It is otherwise, however, with notorious organizations such as the World Bank, which is an instrument of imperialist domination and subjection. One merely has to look through the old issues of the Beijing Review for some of the most enlightened documentation on this score.

THE WEST WANTS AN 'OPEN DOOR' POLICY

The New York Times of September 28, in its story on China's announcement that the PRC will file a formal application to join the organization, correctly headlined its story, "China set to join West's loan units." There could scarcely be any doubt that it is indeed a Western device to economically subjugate the loan applicants and tie them to the chariot wheels of Wall Street, Lombard Street, the Bourse, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The Times characterized China's move as "a major step in Chinese policy toward both full Western economic citizenship and greater openness." Just what does this greater "openness" mean? It means compliance with the infamous disclosure requirements for all loan applicants. It means not only to give your life history but an unambiguous declaration of intents and purposes for which the loans are required.

Deputy Premier Gu assures us that the application shows that "so long as it does not affect China's sovereign rights and the terms are appropriate, we are ready to accept credits and loans from all friendly countries and financial groups." But this is precisely the point. It does infringe, it does affect China's sovereignty. The terms are not appropriate. And the countries are not at all friendly but as antagonistic as ever and only mean to use China as a wedge against other socialist countries and to bring it into the imperialist fold. This has been one of the causes of the bitter conflict between Mao and his followers and the Deng-Hua grouping which is now at the helm.

MAO TRIED TO AVOID DEPENDENCE

From its earliest days the Chinese leadership under Mao tried to avoid any sort of dependence upon imperialism, particularly in the light of the long history of China's oppression and exploitation at the hands of the colonialist imperialists. Getting loans and credits from the imperialists was not on its agenda. It had little choice, in the light of the announced policy of U.S. imperialism not only to isolate but to contain China and ultimately to virtually engage in an open war as a result of U.S. aggression in Korea and the friendly assistance that the PRC gave to the Koreans during the war.

It is also true, however, that during the course of this long struggle with imperialism, the Chinese leadership went to the other extreme in making it more or less a dogmatic article of faith not to participate in any of the economic or financial undertakings of the imperialist powers which would involve loans and credit, even if it were on terms that were truly acceptable and appropriate to a revolutionary socialist government.

LENIN'S POLICY

The Bolsheviks, under Lenin, also had declared their intention of seeking loans and credits and even, as Lenin later said, allowing "the most powerful imperialist monopolies" — Lenin's word — concessions in the USSR under the vigilant eyes of the Bolshevik government. The imperialists turned down the terms demanded by the Soviet government.

It is not inconceivable, however, as subsequent history of the USSR shows, that loans and credits to a growing socialist country from the imperialist powers could turn out to be of considerable material assistance, if the leadership of the socialist country can hold the imperialist wolf at bay in this area of conflict, which is merely another form of the struggle between imperialism and the socialist countries.

But whereas the Chinese leadership under Mao had gone too far in eschewing any kind of broad loan or credit agreements with the imperialists, born mostly out of fears that these would impinge upon the sovereignty and independence of the country, this new reactionary grouping which is in power now has gone all the way to the other extreme and virtually opened the floodgates to imperialist penetration.

Like Beijing's attempt at accommodation with the European Economic Community (EEC) the move to gain membership in the World Bank, should it become consummated, means, in the words of the Times, "full Western economic citizenship," which is another way of saying economic integration into the imperialist orbit. When an admittedly weak, underdeveloped socialist country becomes fully integrated into the economic orbit of imperialism, what does it signify? It signifies the subordination of the nascent socialist economy — of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the PRC would say — to the dictatorship of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Should all this happen, could the result be any different?

Such a sweeping move could not possibly be contemplated by the Chinese leadership, were it not for the reactionary reforms at home which the Beijing regime has been carrying through under the guise of eliminating excesses of the Cultural Revolution.

NEW CHINESE LEADERS REVIVE CAPITALIST ELEMENTS

While one need not go to the lengths of exaggerating the sharp turn to the right, as do John Fraser of the Toronto Globe and Mail or Fox Butterfield of the New York Times in describing the virtual free rein that the government has given to the collectives in agriculture and small industry, it is nevertheless clear that what the new leadership is doing is reviving long-dormant capitalist elements in the economic life of China.

Of course, where excesses have taken place and where industry and agriculture have declined, forced concessions to private initiative may be necessary. This has long been understood ever since Lenin's New Economic Policy. But what is taking place in China is the wholesale dismantling of incipient socialist projects both in agriculture and industry in favor of bourgeois enterprises.

"Collectively owned shops and trades," says John Fraser in his article which is also syndicated in the Christian Science Monitor of September 17, 1979, "are now being given an extraordinary amount of encouragement from the government." This may be wholly necessary and effective, if it is indeed oriented towards strengthening the socialist economy and eventually converting the collectives — which are semi-bourgeois — into full-fledged socialist property wholly run by the state. Collectives are in reality a form of group ownership in which the state merely retains a certain percentage of the profit and where state control may be only nominal.

It is worth noting, however, that Fraser, who has been in China for a considerable time, sees in the bourgeois degeneration of the collectives "the emergence of free enterprise in China" and ventures to predict that such a development "may turn out to be one of the landmark events of our time." In a word, a full-scale counterrevolution.

STILL IN PROCESS

There are many who believe that such a development has already taken place. In our view, the judgment is wholly premature and not warranted by the facts. The headlong shift to the right is most obvious in the diplomatic and military fields. That's where the greatest danger lies and the most attention must of course be given. The more ominous aspects, however, in the long run lie in the slower, quieter economic processes, both domestically as well as in the world arena.

But it is still only a process. It can be overtaken by political developments either at home or abroad.

There is still danger of falling into the abyss as well as the opportunity to reverse the process. Unquestionably the intervention of the Chinese workers and peasants on a revolutionary scale would be the most potent answer to the reactionary ruling group at home and to the imperialists abroad.

Notwithstanding the current state of affairs between China and the Soviet Union, and not for a moment forgetting the possibility of another attack by China against Viet Nam, it is important to bear in mind that in its fundamental aspects the economic policy of world finance capital in general and American finance capital in particular has in substance the same objective in China as it does in all of the socialist countries.

The form of it may differ but in essence it's the same. The multi-national corporations and giant banking combines which the U.S. government serves, have specialized approaches to each of the socialist countries.

In the very midst of the hysteria which the Carter administration fomented against the USSR over the phony issue of Soviet "combat troops" in Cuba, the U.S. government announced that it is ready to sell the USSR up to 25 million tons of grain, 10 million more than the Soviet Union bought in the crop year just ended. This is seven million tons more than the purchases in 1972 under Nixon over which such a big hullabaloo was raised, claiming that the wheat deal and not the general inflationary trend sent domestic bread prices soaring.

Presumably the wheat offering was a conciliatory move by the Carter administration. In reality it was nothing of the kind. The fact of the matter is that this year the U.S. had a surprisingly big bumper crop. Coming at a time of recession or near-recession, the bumper crop was a manifestation of capitalist over-production and the huge grain corporations would be at total loss as to how to dispose of the surplus. The USSR is one of the few customers which can be relied upon to pay promptly. In other circumstances the U.S. might be forced to dump the grain into the ocean or burn it. Making it available to the USSR at a price is a lesser evil.

By contrast, however, the hostile character of Carter's diplomacy in this period was vividly demonstrated when the U.S. government's International Trade Commission suddenly ruled that imports of anhydrous ammonia from the Soviet Union were taking away business from U.S. producers. The ITC recommended to Carter that he impose duties or some combination of penalties to stop the USSR from "dumping" its ammonia products on the U.S. market. It goes without saying that it was 13 big U.S. chemical producers and distributors who sparked the move and found a ready ear not only in the Carter administration but in Congress.

Ammonia is one of the few manufactured products for which the USSR is able to gain a market in this country, but this has continually been undermined by both economic and political pressures in the U.S. The economic and political pressures come from factional groups having a competitive interest against the USSR and from a broad bourgeois political opposition mounting a constant anti-Soviet campaign which increases during periods of high tension between the Soviet Union and the U.S.

TRADE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST USSR

The USSR, in spite of its more than 60 years of existence, has not been able to have its relationship with the U.S. normalized to the extent where it can be treated equally along with other countries with respect to tariffs and import and export controls. The ban against trade with the USSR still exists in the form of the so-called "most favored nations" clause, which permits discrimination against Soviet products and trade in general.

In selling grain to the USSR, the U.S. relieves itself of a renewable resource, so to speak, and in return gets hard cash which the Soviet Union has to purchase with its gold stock, which is not a renewable resource. It is not trade on an equal basis.

The sale of technology to the USSR is mostly forbidden, not on economic grounds but on political grounds, and is aimed to undermine the USSR, both economically and politically. Nevertheless, the USSR has been able to obtain large credits from Western imperialist banks. The credit, however, has been on the basis of having maintained an impeccable record of payments on time. This is unquestionably due to the economic strength and viability of the USSR as well as to its tremendous resources such as gold, oil, and others — but even more so to its ability to take credit on wholly acceptable terms for a socialist country.

Nonetheless, the economic warfare against the USSR continues as part and parcel of the overall broad political struggle. The hopes of imperialism of using trade and economic intercourse as a means of reviving bourgeois trends among the economic and technical intelligentsia in the USSR and thus cultivating a broad grouping of "liberalizers" of the economy have faltered, and if recent literature in the Western press is any indication, their hopes of such a prospect have become rather dim.

The same, however, cannot be said of the East European socialist countries. To each of these the U.S. has a specialized, particular approach.

WORLD BANK MEETS IN YUGOSLAVIA

Recently Belgrade became the site of a world conference of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. It was deliberately chosen by the bankers to underscore that Yugoslavia can scarcely be called a socialist country. It was a symbolic gesture and even a defiant one to the USSR and other socialist countries. There was little that the Yugoslavs could do but to haul out the welcome mat.

What the Yugoslav leaders are most of all interested in is to persuade the leading bankers to refinance the staggering sum of $600 million of indebtedness that is coming due and which the Yugoslav officials are at a loss on how to meet. For the refinancing of the $600 million debt to be successful, it would mean that Yugoslavia must have renegotiated over the last four months debts of more than a billion dollars. The interest on such debts is staggering when one considers that the total indebtedness to the bankers amounts to $13 billion.

The need to renegotiate the debts signifies that the Yugoslav leaders have been unable to meet their indebtedness on time and are on the verge of defaulting unless the bankers agree to extend the terms of the debt — for a generous fee, of course. Thus Yugoslavia's debt service "will rise from $1.8 billion this year to $2.9 billion before dropping off after 1982 more than 22% of the country's projected total hard currency earnings." (New York Times, September 24, 1979, page D1.)

This aptly sums up 30 years of the Titoist way of building socialism, of the meaning and significance of the Yugoslav so-called "self-management economy" and of the real worth of the participation of the "workers' councils" in the "innovative" economic structure of Yugoslavia.

LOANS GEARED TO CAPITALIST MARKET

What was the indebtedness mostly for? Of course, there are many construction projects which are valid and appropriate. But in extending loans for industrial projects the bankers do so after approving what they consider the need for such projects and the potential for the Western markets. In the Yugoslav case, at least so far as current development goes, the marketable products from many of the projects in Yugoslavia are not at all salable in the light of the economic crisis in the capitalist countries.

First the bankers insist, before lending money, that the construction of a certain installation or industrial project fit in with their overall conception of its desirability in the world capitalist economy. They then proceed to lend the money, sometimes in installments, with a view toward market conditions in the capitalist West.

Of course, over a period of many years, some of the money lent and credit extended are for genuine and sorely needed industrial and agricultural improvement. But the pattern that has emerged over the years — and it is now 30 years — clearly indicates that the integration of Yugoslavia into the capitalist orbit of imperialist finance and economics has grown far more than the socialist sector.

TITO'S 'INDEPENDENCE'

The independence of Yugoslavia, of which Yugoslavia officialdom boasts so much, is mostly a fraud. To the extent that it is true, it is based on the fact that in moments of crisis and danger, notwithstanding all the anti-Soviet postures of Tito at the recent Non-Aligned Conference in Havana particularly, the Yugoslavs can lean back or rather fall back on Soviet aid of both an economic and, when need be, of a diplomatic and military character.

The truth about the Yugoslav "experiment" is that it has rested upon Tito's penchant for exploiting the class antagonisms between imperialism and the USSR, thus eking out an existence for his sociological innovations.

If Yugoslavia is the clearest example of precisely what a socialist country should not embark upon, Poland is the second runner-up. Its indebtedness to the imperialist banks exceeds that of the Yugoslavs by more than 3 billion. It was not long ago that the imperialist press disclosed that Western bankers were now "monitoring," to use the choice phraseology of the New York Times, the economy of Poland.

BANKERS' GRIP ON POLISH ECONOMY

Poland in effect had reoriented a good deal of its economy toward the West following the unfortunate uprisings which began with the 1956 insurrections, then overturned the Gomulka regime in 1970, and as it turns out now pushed the Gierek regime, following the 1974 strikes, further towards the West. Poland's economic planners were faced with a choice of reshaping the economy in either a more thorough and planned socialist orientation, including collectivization of the land, which is now on an almost thoroughly bourgeois farming basis, or in an orientation towards the West. They chose the latter course. They sought and obtained huge infusions of Western capital.

But as with Yugoslavia, and as surely will happen in China with far more devastating results, they capitulated to the very same demands of the bankers which are standard for all socialist countries. These demands mean attaching strings which make the borrowers' plans self-defeating.

An illuminating example as to the approach of the bankers in Poland goes as follows: The Polish officials needed a loan to reconstruct a factory which could produce small machines of various types. The bankers had a suggestion. Poland should produce golf carts. But, said the Polish officials, golf carts are salable only in the United States, not elsewhere. Well, that is too bad. It's golf carts or nothing.

Much of Poland's $16 billion indebtedness to the Western bankers has been for projects destined for the Western capitalist market. The latter, however, has been unable to absorb the Polish products due to the erratic character of the capitalist economy. In addition, much of the indebtedness is for large-scale construction which will not be completed for perhaps years to come and which needs constant refinancing. This again brings about greater and greater reliance and dependence on the banks.

It is no wonder that some of the capitalist newspapers have begun to use the phrase "control of the Polish economy by the West." Of course this is an exaggeration. But the fundamental fact of the matter is that, were it not for its close and intimate relationship with the Soviet Union, the Polish economy would fall lock, stock, and barrel like an overripe fruit into the hands of the imperialists.

SOLUTION LIES IN STRENGTHENING SOCIALIST COOPERATION

Indeed, it is not the domination of the USSR which the Polish workers have to fear. Rather it is the domination of the imperialist monopolies. If there is any solution of a fundamental character to the ailing Polish economy it lies in strengthening its relationship with the other socialist countries and disengaging itself, to the extent that it is possible and desirable, from the tentacles of imperialist finance capital.

Of all the socialist countries, it is the USSR and the German Democratic Republic which have advanced economically and industrially in a socialist direction. Indeed, when one surveys what in better days used to be called the socialist camp, and which sociologically is still the socialist camp, it is the USSR which has made greater strides and which stands as a mighty fortress of socialist construction and anti-imperialist assistance.

It is not to be wondered at, then, that the imperialist monopolies and the Pentagon war machine have made the USSR the target of the struggle. In a real sense the struggle between the USSR and the imperialist countries is a struggle between two opposing social systems — one based upon capitalist exploitation and the other based on socialist construction. In this sense Brzezinski is right, the two are competitors, not in the imperialist sense but in the sociological sense.

It is a competition not unlike that between the old feudal system and bourgeois society at its dawning. But both feudalism and capitalism were exploiting societies and both were based on the retention and strengthening of private property in the means of production. The fundamental aim of socialism is not only the abolition of private property but the liquidation of all class rule. It therefore has as its aim the liberation of all humanity.