Solidarity Bid to Solve Crisis

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The newspaper produced after lengthy struggles by the Polish union Solidarity has taken up a new fight -for increases in food prices!

They argue that basic food prices are subsidised too much, and say that if prices go up then the queues for food will get smaller.

This is obviously true, since the poorer sections of the working class would no longer be able to afford even the inadequate diet they currently receive.

In taking this line the Solidarity leaders have been dragged into attempts to "solve"' the economic crisis caused by Poland's Stalinist It is true that production costs of milk and other basic foodstuffs are much higher than their price - but such anomalies cannot be resolved while the bureaucracy retains its exclusive grip on the nationalised economy.

What is needed is a political revolution to establish a planned economy answerable to the needs of the workers in factory committees and workers' councils.

The Solidarity leadership however seeks only reforms within the present bureaucratised system.

Meanwhile the leaders are seeking a base of support amongst the more prosperous farmers by ending subsidies to the state farms - and thus strengthening the private sector.

This reactionary step could create a substantial force in society pressing for the restoration of capitalism.

But the movement against the bureaucracy in Poland remains strong. An exhibition of 'underground' books has just taken place in Warsaw in the teeth of official censorship.

And both former CP leader Gierek and former Prime Minister Babiuch are to appear before special commissions investigating the crimes carried out while they were in office.

Solidarity leader Walesa

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LESSONS OF OCTOBER..... £1.45 IN DEFENCE OF MARXISM ... £2.60 include post and packing. All available fror 1917: The Russian Revolution. The Bolshevik Party, with Lenin and Trotsky at its head, leads the Russian working class to the overthrow of the Provisional government, the defeat of the counter-revolution and the repulsion of the imperialist armies of intervention.

Leon Trotsky heads the Military Revolutionary Committee which plans the insurrection, and he builds the Red Army. 1919: Lenin founds the Third (Communist) International following the betrayal of the Social Democratic Parties which had all supported their own ruling class in 1914. The conditions of membership specify acceptance of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the rejection of all theories of peaceful roads to socialism.

For the first five years the Communist International works to build revolutionary parties • throughout the world.

While the first two Congresses focus on delineating the Communist International from the social democratic Second International, the Second Congress also saw Lenin take up the struggle against ultra-leftism with the distribution of his pamphlet Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, to all delegates.

The Third and Fourth Congresses in 1921 and 1922 saw the elaboration by the Comintern of the tactic of the United Front in. the struggle to win to the banner of Communism the millions of workers who remained loyal to the social democratic parties.

These Theses on Tactics, spell out the necessity to win the working class through intervention in mass struggles and the fight for transitional demands which lead beyond militant reformism to make workers conscious of the need for socialist revolution. 1924: Lenin dies. His last Testament calls for the removal of Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

A bureaucracy has begun to emerge in the Soviet Union as a result of the pressure of world imperialism on an isolated revolution in an economically backward country.

Stalin becomes the political spokesman of this bureaucracy. He retreats from industrialisation and collectivisation of land at home and from revolutionary internationalism abroad.

He eventually crushes revolutionary democracy in the CPSU.

This rising bureaucratic caste had been consistently opposed by Trotsky and the 28, Left Opposition from the time of Trotsky's publication in 1923 of The New Course, spelling out the dangers in the economic and political situation in Russia as a whole and within the Communist Party.

His publication in 1924 of Lessons of October underlines the political gulf between Trotsky and the increasingly powerful bureaucracy now heading the CPSU and the Comintern. 1927: Stalin manipulates the bureaucratic machinery and expels Trotsky from the Communist Party. Trotsky had opposed Stalin-not only over the direction of domestic policies but also on international questions.

In China, Stalin had favoured subordinating the Chinese Communist Party to leader the leader Chiang Kai-shek- the icactionary nationalist with the resultant mass slaughter of Communists by Chiang's Kuo Min Tang in 1926-7.

In Britain, Stalin had directed the Communist Party into a bloc with "left' TUC leaders-resulting in the CP taking up the bankrupt slogan of "All power to the TUC General Council" while the General Council sold out the 1926 General Strike.

Trotsky's book Where is Britain Going?, forewarning of the General Strike, had been published by the British Communist Party in 1925. 1928: Sixth Congress of the Communist International upholds the expulsion of Trotsky, who is exiled to Turkey. His appeal against expulsion is suppressed, but is smuggled out of the Soviet Union by James P. Cannon.

Taking the form of critique of the Stalinist Draft Programme of the Communist International' it challenges Stalin's new "theory" that it is possible to build "socialism in a single country" , and the counter-revolutionary implications this has for the policies of the Comintern. (Now available in The Third International After Lenin).

Under pressure from internal economic and political crisis, Stalin switches course, suddenly proclaiming the advent of a new "Third" period of revolutionary struggle- "class against class". . In Russia, this means the mass liquidation of the prosperous peasants (Kulaks) and crash plans for industrialisation. Abroad, it means denouncing social democracy-and its supporters-as "social fascist" (worse than fascism). 1933: Despite the struggle by Trotsky and the Left Opposition, the Third Period policy splits the German working class and permits Hitler to come to power. Trotsky's writings, collected in Trotsky on Germany, warned of this and called for a United Front of workers' organisations to stop Hitler.

Atter this experience and the failure of any Comintern party to question the correctness of Stalin's line, Trotsky concludes that Stalinism is on the side of counter-revolution and Mau International would have to be built.• 1934: The assassination Kirov by Stalin's agents provides an excuse for a witch-hunt of political opponents in the Soviet Union.

In the Moscow Trials that followed (1936, 1937, 1938) leaders of the Russian Revolution are tortured and forced to confess to being agents of Hitler acting under Trotsky's direction. Thousands of Bolsheviks are murdered.

Trotsky offers to return to Russia to stand trial if an independent inquiry finds he has a case to answer. (I Stake My Life'.) The Commission headed by John Dewey finds there is no substance in Stalin's accusations. 1935: The Comintern abandons its sectarian Third Period policies and adopts the tactic of seeking Popular Front alliances not only with social democratic but also "progressive" capitalist parties.

Trotsky completes The Blessiu analysis or ted soviet his Union as a degenerated workers' state. 1936: Social democracy, supported by the Stalinist Popular Front (see Trotsky's Whither France?) saves French capitalism from the working class. 1937-39: The Stalinists, again carrying out Popular Front tactics enable Franco to defeat the Spanish workers and instal fascism. (See Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain In union opponents a little of Trc attempts to conferences and redress the balance. by Felix Morrow). 1938: Founding Conference of the Fourth Internațional takes place near Paris with 30 delegates from 11 countries.

Trotsky's programmatic document for the Conference is published as The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International' (The Transitional Programme).

Two Polish delegates present a resolution drawn up by Isaac Deutscher opposing the founding of the Fourth International.

Shortly before the conference Leon Sedov, Trotsky's son and Rudolph Klement, secretary of the Bureau for the Fourth International, are murdered by the Stalinist GPU. 1939: The Stalin Hitler Pact. Stalin seeks to defend the Soviet Union by an alliance with Hitler.

Meanwhile the purges in the Soviet Union decimate the Red Army. Following the Pact, Stalin ships back to Germany Communist refugees from fascism.

World War II breaks out and the Stalinists argue for a negotiated peace with Hitler. 1940: Trotsky murdered by Stalin's trained assassin, Ramon Mercador. His last political fight is against James Burnham and Max Schachtman who opposed the defence of the Soviet Union and rejected dialectical materialism.

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