Stalinist regimes face crisis

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CP headquarters after riots in Poland 1970 Price rises of basic foods followed immediately by labour unrest. "

The pattern is a familiar one, and it occured again last week in Workers all over the country confronted managements angrily demanding pay increases to cover the newly raised prices of meat and other foods.

In many cases, according to reports, the terrified managements agreed to pay up-thus negating the whole purpose of the price rise which is to curb the standard of living of Polish workers.

The Party newspaper could only lament the state of the economy and call on the government to launch a programme of economic reform.

Last month's meeting of Comecon-together with growing reports of disruption of supplies and strikes in the Soviet Union-suggested that things are similar throughout the Stalinist-ruled states of Eastern Europe.

Difficulties

Last year their average rate of growth of production envisaged in their economic plans was 4.7%.

The actual rate of growth achieved was less than half of this-only 2.3%.

The once boasting Sovict leader Leonid Brezhni was obliged to admit that th was suffering significant economic difficulties.

Sanctions

He blamed them, needless to say, on the economic sanctions taken against the Soviet Union by the imperialist countries.

He did not, of course, mention the other possible sources of shortages and economic disruption-the vast diversion of economic resources into the Olympic Games in Moscow, and probably much more important, into the invasion of Afghanistan and the maintenance of the hard pressed army of occupation.

Brezhnev volunteered nothing at the Comecon meeting about how the Soviet bureaucracy would set about resolving these problems.

But his junior partners in Eastern Europe all gave evidence of moving rapidly in the same direction.

This involves abandoning the paraphernalia of Stalinist Polish leader Gierek centralised planning and turning towards the use of market forces and profitability criteria.

Speeches about the need for profitability, controls of consumption and rises in workers productivity from the mouths of Hungarian, Czech and Romanian leaders would not have sounded at all out of place from Thatcher or Barre.

From Brest to Vladivostock austerity is now the rule-always of course, for the workers.

Parasitic

Nothing could more clearly demonstrate that, contrary to Stalinist mythology, the greatest danger to the nationalised property relations in the deformed workers' states is not the danger of imperialist attack but the sabotaging role of the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy itself.

Opposed to revolutionary socialist solutions to the economic crisis that arises from the isolation of the workers' states, and in fear of mobilising the potential of their own working class, these bureaucrats turn instead to capitalist solutions and greater links with world imperialism. • This is why the fight for parties capable of leading the revolutionary political overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy is a paramount task of the world Trotskyist movement.

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Thousands of Namibiabased South African troops, Wednesday July