From Labor's Champion
June 15-30, 1990
By Jim Rosenbaum
The revisionist countries in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are now rapidly moving from state-bureaucratic capitalism to classical "free-market" capitalism. These moves are being cheered on by all the anti-working class and anti-communist forces worldwide, from the capitalist press and politicians, to the labor traitors of Eastern Europe and the United States, to the revisionists, from Gorbachev in the Soviet Union to Gus Hall of the phony "Communist" Party U.S.A. However, these changes will only lead to worsening conditions for the working people of these countries. They are "jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire." This can be seen most clearly in the case of Poland, which is making the fastest and sharpest transition to the "free-market."
In the early post-World War II period, a beginning was made along the road to socialism in Poland. In particular, the big capitalists and landlords were expropriated. But only some partial steps were taken towards socialist construction and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The land was never collectivized, and the reactionary, political power of the church was never broken. By the mid-1950s, the revisionist Gomulka, who had earlier been discredited as a bourgeois nationalist, usurped power with the aid of the revisionists in Moscow, headed by Nikita Khrushchev. Poland headed along the path of state-bureaucratic capitalism.
In the early 1970s, the revisionist regime began a policy of borrowing heavily from the West to promote so-called "industrialization." The result was similar to that in other dependent countries such as Mexico - a huge debt (now amounting to about $39 billion) to the Western banks and international lending agencies. This was combined with military and political subordination to the Soviet Union, which had already restored capitalism.
In order to pay the debt service and curb the increasing inflation that this caused, the revisionist government introduced austerity programs to push the crisis onto the backs of the Polish working people. As production declined, the workers' real income fell sharply. This led to the wave of strikes out of which "Solidarity" was formed in 1980. But it is important to note that, just as the revisionist Polish United Workers party (PUWP) has not been socialist for over 30 years, Solidarity has never been a progressive organization. It has always been openly pro-capitalist and pro-clerical, headed by the Vatican. Its program from the beginning has called for placing Poland's state-owned industry in the hands of private capitalists, and for expanding the powers of the Catholic church. The leaders of Solidarity have always looked to the Western imperialists for salvation. They called for Poland to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a policy that the revisionist government carried out in 1986.
|
The revisionist regime first tried to crush Solidarity by declaring martial law in 1981. But the continuing wave of strikes, especially in 1988, led both the Solidarity leadership and the revisionist government to seek some form of collaboration, which was directed against the mass of workers. Discussions between these two reactionary forces led to Solidarity's legalization in return for its guaranteeing "labor peace." The multi-party elections in 1989, in which Solidarity gained a huge victory, led to the current Solidarity-PUWP government formed in August of 1989. Mazowiecki, a Solidarity leader, became premier, and Jaruzelski of the PUWP remained president. The fruit of this collaboration was already seen just before the coalition was formed, when Jaruzelski lifted price controls on food, and prices skyrocketed. Solidarity leaders were instrumental in getting the workers to call off the strikes they held in opposition to these price increases.
The new coalition government, in an IMF-sponsored move to introduce "free-market" capitalism, is seeking direct investment by Western monopolies in Polish industry. To make this attractive, they must make it super-profitable to the imperialists. As in any capitalist country, this means launching a full-scale attack on the wages and living standards of the working people, to promote maximum profits for the capitalists. This was done with the reforms of January 1, 1990, introduced as a "shock therapy" for the economy. These reforms, under the guise of "controlling inflation," involved the immediate lifting of price controls on all goods while severely restricting wage increases (the price of labor power) for the workers. They also involved the devaluation of Poland's currency (the zloty) to make it "convertible" and, most importantly, the end of any restrictions on factory closings and layoffs of workers and allowing sales of enterprises to the highest bidder.
As expected, results of these "reforms" have been drastic for the working people. With the end of state subsidies for prices of food and other necessities, costs have risen tremendously. The price of bread immediately jumped about 25-fold, ham over 50%, coal (widely used for home heating in Poland) increased 600%, and gasoline doubled. The value of the zloty, which was 500 to the dollar in the beginning of 1989, had already fallen to 6500 to the dollar by the end of 1989, and fell still further, to 9500 to the dollar, in March of this year. Real wages declined 40% as of the end of May. Unemployment at that time was already about 400,000, and is estimated by the World Bank to reach about 1.7 million people (about 10% of the labor force) by the end of the year. This allows the capitalists to hold down the wages of the employed workers, and to enforce "labor discipline" by threatening to dismiss "troublemakers," those who resist.
The Polish working people are facing desperate poverty. The number of homeless people has grown enormously, and soup kitchens have spread throughout Poland. In these circumstances, crime is also rapidly increasing.
Those who still believe that the revisionist PUWP is somehow better than Solidarity refuse to see what is happening with privatization. Many Western capitalists are still holding back on direct investment, fearing an upsurge in the workers' movement. But many of the party and state bureaucrats are buying up cheap shares of enterprises they formerly managed, or are joining with other new Polish capitalists and foreign investors in setting up "joint stock companies." From covertly looting the state economy under the guise of "socialism," these bureaucrats are now openly extolling the "benefits" - to themselves - of private industry. Similar things are happening in the other revisionist countries, particularly in East Germany.
Polish agriculture, too, is showing the effects of the move to open capitalism. Many of Poland's farms have been small, using only family labor. These are certainly inefficient from the point of view of production. But the only alternative possible under capitalism is the growth of large landlords and agribusinesses. This is what is developing now, with the encouragement of the government and Western bankers. The prices of farm implements such as fertilizers and tractors are rising much faster than the prices of food and other farm products. This is forcing many small farmers to sell their land to the rich farmers, who centralize their capital, buying more machinery and hiring more labor. The poor farmers who sell must then move to the cities, increasing the number of unemployed and exerting a downward pressure on wages. They also migrate to Western Europe, especially West Germany, where they serve as a source of cheap labor, as in the grape harvest. Thus, market capitalism has brought only more hunger and suffering to the working people of both city and country.
The Polish workers have not been taking these attacks lying down. There has been increased resistance, as their illusions in the role of Solidarity's leadership are breaking down.
Two weeks after the "reforms" were introduced, in January of this year, 35,000 coal miners in the industrial area of Silesia went on strike, demanding wage increases to compensate for the price hikes. They won small raises, against the opposition of pro-Solidarity Premier Mazowiecki, who claimed that the government couldn't afford them because of the austerity program. In May, a hunger strike by railroad workers spread across the north of the country, tying up the key ports on the Baltic Sea as well. This only ended when Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader, personally appealed to the strikers to go back to work. There have also been wildcat strikes in other industries.
These strikes have been mainly spontaneous, as the workers try to preserve their living standard from attack by the new regime. Although some have been led by rank and file Solidarity members and some by members of the revisionist trade union federation, none of the leaders have a program of genuine socialism, the only path for Poland's working people. Some still identify socialism with the discredited revisionist regime and martial law. But Solidarity's membership has been declining for some time. And workers at the Gdansk shipyards have criticized Solidarity for backing a program that they recognize as anti-worker, anti-union and anti-socialist. This is significant because the shipyards were the birthplace of Solidarity, and because both the former revisionist regime and the current Solidarity coalition have threatened to close them.
On the other hand, Walesa is now trying to distance himself from the austerity program and the government, by criticizing the intellectuals in it and putting forth a nationalist line. But this is pure demagogy to deceive the workers. In an interview last August Walesa made clear his views. He said: "We are setting out to... return to the pre-war situation when Poland was a capitalist country." He neglected to mention that at that time Poland was also a semi-fascist country, dependent on both the German and British imperialists.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government, bankers and trade union bureaucrats are working with the Polish government to push the workers along the path of a class collaborationist, pure and simple trade union movement. Last December, a U.S. delegation including the chair of Manufacturers Hanover Corporation, Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole and Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO,, among others, went to Warsaw. They symbolize the three main pillars of the ruling class: the capitalists, the government of big capital and the labor "lieutenants" of capital (i.e. traitors). Their aim was to promote free-market capitalism and establish a Polish American Labor Institute. They want to bind the Polish workers openly to an organization like the AFL-CIO, that would play the role of "loyal opposition" (that is, selling out the workers on economic issues), while leaving the government free to rule on behalf of the capitalists.
But the workers in Poland, as in the U.S. and elsewhere, must learn that the suffering they are now experiencing is a necessary consequence of capitalism. The Polish workers will eventually come to understand that bureaucratic state-capitalism, under the earlier revisionist regime, and classical capitalism, now under the Solidarity-led coalition government, are both enemies. Only by bringing about a successful, authentic socialist revolution, under the leadership of a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, can the workers establish their own rule, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the only way that the working people of Poland, or anywhere, can put an end to the misery of unemployment, inflation, austerity, etc., which are consequences of the capitalist system, in which a small minority gets rich by exploiting the labor of the great majority. The path that leads to prosperity and freedom for the Polish workers must lead back onto the road of genuine socialism.
Click here to return to the U.S. Index