Stalinism in hock

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Last week it was officially announced that the cost of servicing Poland's debt to the imperialists had reached more than a half of its convertible foreign exchange earnings.

Since then further reports have shown that, if Poland is an extreme case. other East European workers' states are increasingly facing the same problems.

A report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) estimates that the total debt of the "centrally planned economies" of Eastern Europe at the end of last year was $47 billion compared with $37-40 billion in 1977.

The persistent deficit increases the debt by a similar amount each year.

And repaymeni and interest (so-called "debt service") rises each year to The massive price increases announced last week by the OREC countries are a further blow to President Carter's attempts to cut back workers' living stand. ards and control price inflation in the USA, while at the same time cutting the oil deficit.

At' the last moment Carter was forced to sheive his sheduled television broadcast spelling out phase two of his "energy policy", since even his own advisors were divided as to how best to foist the latest crisis onto the backs of the working class.

Carter had originally been planning to cutback price controls in order to allow domestic oil prices to rise by around 15% by Spring of this year.

The object of such increases was to hold down oil consumption, and thus simultaneousiy ease the economic problems created by the oil deficit and the shortage caused by the cutbacks in Iranian oil production.

Electoral damage

To minimise the electoral damage that might result from eat up a growing proportion of hard currency export earnings, though the ECE says that this proportion has not yet (except in the case of Poland) reached what it calls the "permissible limit" of 25%.

In itself a trade deficit with the imperialist countries is not necessarily threatening to socialised property forms.

But the indebtedness to which it leads creates the conditions under which imperialists can begin to apply economic leverage and begin in the end to extract a political price from the bureaucracies.

Creditors

Already there is widespread speculation that Poland's creditors may be about to demand a say in the running of Polish economic policy.

Already they are receiving information on Poland's economy which no Polish worker has access to.

capitalist Democratic But if now faces its most decisive test as 300,000 truck drivers organised in the Teamsters Union come up for renewal of their 3-year contract on April 1.

The Teamsters' claim for wages and • fringe benefits The same pressures are building up elsewhere: East Germany now owes $3.7 billion to West German banks-plus another $10 billion to other imperialist financiers.

Stifled

The problem arises in the first place . because bureaucratic control of the socialised economies of the workers' states stifles their potential productive power.

They would possess such power only under conditions of genuine workers' management and of an authentic union of socialist states, in place of the narrow bilateral trade agreements which are the limits of the bureaucratic conception of a socialist international division of labour held by Comecon (the economic organisation based on the USSR and "friendly" workers' states). One of the responses of the East European bureaucracies to their growing Three years ago "a token stoppage by truckers brought gun battles with police, a climbdown by the employers, and a pace-setting pay settiement.

But it also showed militants within the union their potential strength in all-out struggle-and thus reinforced oppositon within the union to Fitzdebts to the imperialists is to try to restrict their own imports from the capitalist countries (as, for instance, Hungary is now doing).

This is not a move towards any true international socialist economic planning, but simply a defensive move which the bureaucracies see as a second-best alternative which is forced upon them.

And this trade too has its own difficulties. The Soviet Union now has a large annual surplus of $5 billion in its trade with the other workers' states.

Deeper in debt

So while Comecon as whole, including the USSR, gets deeper into debt with the imperialists, within Comecon itself the smaller countries get deeper into debt to the Soviet Union.

This has been accentuated by the fact that the Soviet Union has followed OPEC in increasing the price its oil exports to farmworkers organised in Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers union are on strike demanding wage increases for lettuce pickers in excess of the 7% limit.

On March 1, 6,000 marched through the streets of Salinas to protest at the shotgun murder of UFW member Rufino Comecon countries.

This situation of "socialist" indebtedness is exploited by the Soviet bureaucracy to bring into line any other bureaucracy tempted to • criticise Moscow.

workers Nonetheless, simultaneous indebtedness to the imperialists and Moscow is a situation used by the bureaucracies of the smaller Comecon countries to justify the only "answer" they possess to explain away the disastrous consequences which their own existence has for the economies of their countries.

They turn to blame the working class, 'and repeat their parrot-cry to the workers, calling on them to solve the problems by working harder, producing more and eating less.

But as-the bureaucracy weighs heavier and heavier on the backs of the working class, major events such as Polish leader Gierek the 1976 Polish uprising and growing evidence of less dramatic but important instances of resistance show that the working class see clearly the contradiction between the "socialism" practised by their unchosen "leaders" and the real needs of the workers.

There is evidence of a growing readiness to fight the parasites whose policies are leading to the destruction of the gains of the October revolution.

Only the revolutionary overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the establishment of governments based on " independent workers' councils can save; develop and extend these gains.