Salute Polish Workers Struggles

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The strike action that has erupted all over Poland against the government's price increases shows yet again the determination of the Polish working class that they will not allow their living standards to be driven down.

At each point of its crisis, the Polish bureaucracy has tried to raise prices and the working class has resisted, particularly in 1970 and 1976 when the resistance developed quickly to violent forms of struggle such as blocking railroads.

On Iboth these occasions the bureaucracy was forced to retreat. The form of the retreat was to defuse the struggle through international loans.

These have now reached £8,000 million. The cost of servicing these loans is rising all the tinne with the rise in internation al interest rates. A great part of the Polish Gross National Product is simply used for repaying capitalist money lenders.

The result of peaceful coexistence is the attack on the Polish working class. The capitalist crisis goes alongside the bureaucracy's inability to involve the masses in planning.

The 1980 mass strikes have developed in a similar violent manner to their predecessors. But their demands have gone further; the workers of Lublin not only blocked the railroads but only returned to normal work on the basis of a 10% wage rise and further discussion of their democratic demand of the right to strike, which of necessity means independent trade unions.

This demand hits right at the base of the power of the bureaucracy. It cannot allow any form of expression to the masses, the most basic form of which is the right to strike. Once workers are allowed to act independently of the bureaucracy then all the privileges of the bureaucracy will be challenged.

Once workers begin to strike throughout cities, regions and even the whole of Poland, then the basis for the formation of Soviets is laid. The most likely time for such a formation is in a direct confrontation with This is the danger that the bureaucracy sees; this is why they have great fear of the working class. Despite appearances, they 'are extremely unstable.

We salute the Polish workers. They are in the forefront of the struggle of the proletariat of the whole of Eastern Europe. Reports of strikes in the Soviet Union show they are not alone.

Soviet democracy

The Fourth International's programme of 1938 spoke of the struggle for freedom of the trade union and factory committees unfolding in the struggle for Soviet democracy.

The Polish workers have never ruled through Soviets as Russian workers did in 1917. These are the only forms of power that can lead the "revolutionary uprising of the oppressed masses" to a political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy inside Poland and estaDIsn an unaerormea workers' state.

This will not be led by a "reforming" section of the bureaucracy such as Dubcek in Czechoslovakia. Polish workers must be on guard against false leaders who try to direct their struggle so that it is contained within a continuing bureaucratic Only under the leadership of Trotskyist party will the future soviets lead the political This means also defence of the nationalised property relations in Poland and the USSR against imperialism.

*Salute the Polish workers' struggles!

*For genuine independent trade unions and the right to strike!

*For the formation of Soviets!

*For the political revolution to overthrow the Polish bureaucracy!

*Against intervention from the USSR!

*For the building of a Trotskyist party in Poland!

*For the defence of Poland and the USSR against imperialist intervention! Polish workers uprising, 1970