Polish Workers Rise Against Bureaucracy

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The Polish working class has struck a major blow against the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy. The wave of stoppages and demonstrations which erupted across the country last Friday forced the government to back down on the savage price increases announced only 24 hours earlier.

The strikes, which began at the giant "Ursus' tractor factory in Warsaw rapidly spread, as huge queues formed outside food shops on Friday in anticipation of the price increases. At Radom, 60 miles from the capital, a large demonstration formed outside the Party Headquarters - which had to be protected by police, Railway lines, were blocked and strikes were reported in many other factories, shipyards and smaller plants.

TURNING POINT

These struggles mark a turning point in the European revolution. Polish workers, strengthened by the international gains and offensive of the oppressed masses (as shown in Indo-China and Southern Africa) have not only weakened European and world Stalinism but demonstrated to the world's working class that the labour bureaucracy which shackles their struggles can be defeated and the road opened up for the fight for socialism.

This is true in every country, including Britain, where workers confront TUC and Labour leaders collaborating with the employers to inflict a massive cut in real wages.

It is for this reason the capitalist press has played down last Friday's huge upheavals.

Yet confronted by what was tantamount to an uprising challenging their very right to rule, the Polish bureaucracy, headed by Prime Minister Gierek, held back from the routine Stalinist response of police and military repression.

NO ATTEMPT Unlike the strikes in East Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1953, the 1956 movements in Poland and Hungary, the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, or the shooting of strikers in the Baltic ports of Poland itself only six years ago in 1970, there was no attempt to confront the anger of the masses by guns and police.

Instead they withdrew the planned price increases (some of up to 100%) "for further consultation"

No doubt Gierek remembered only too clearly that he himself had only come to power in 1970 after his predecessor, veteran Stalinist Gomulka, had been brought down by mass riots, demonstrations and occupations sparked off by the shooting of dozens of workers demonstrating also against rising prices.

FROZEN

Since that time food prices have been officially frozen (though numerous unofficial loopholes have been found), and it has taken the Gierek regime over five years to pluck up the courage to attempt to reimpose the increases.

The last minute announcement made last Thursday, to go for. huge price increases, is the direct result of attempting to put the cost of the Stalinist policies of capitalism on the backs of the Polish working class.

These policies, which have led the Polish bureaucracy into a whole series of reactionary deals with imperialism, contain also opposition to socialist revolution in other countries.

This in turn has J8 Polish scab exports of used against Spanish miners' strikes.

The Stalinists' preference for seeking arrangements with capitalism rather than conceding any form of workers' control over the bureaucratically planned Polish and East European economies or giving support to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries in the struggle for socialism, has led to a massive TIM indebtedness of the Polis economy to an European capital.

The economic dislocation th has brought about - worsened b the slump in exports to the We caused by the recession - hi forced the hand of the Giere regime.

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