Continued from page 1

Western media is consumed with the notion
of a “non-Communist government” in
Poland, as if the specific status of the Polish
United Workers Party and the socialist sys-
tem are one in the same. It has to be admit-
ted that many Communists as well have
viewed the rule of the party as synonymous
with working class political power.
__ Here is one of the basic issues for social-
ists that is part of the Stalinist legacy. The
working class makes socialism, not the
Party or the state. But as a result of the
centralized model that arose in the Soviet

nion and which was transplanted into
Eastern Europe, the party and the state
became inseparable and the two came to be
the expression of almost every aspect of
Socialist society.

In Poland, over three decades of state and
Party bureaucracy, and the corruption and
abuse of power that came with it, led to the
emergence of a mass protest movement in
1980. A number of party and government
leaders were subsequently convicted, and a
Process of economic and political reform
was launched. The PUWP. today recognizes
the need for national reconciliation with
that mass movement, which is why the
Party has agreed to participate in a govern-
ment led by. a Solidarity premier. But sadly
this was a lesson learned only after the bitter
experience of martial law failed to restore
the political confidence of the working class
wip the PUWP. government...

The Polish party has itself recognized
that it paid the price for that history in the
elections this year. The results of the election
Showed indisputedly that the working class
had opted for a new government. The new
Polish government affirms that decision by
the Polish working people, and that too is
an expression of working class political
POwer,

But will the new Poland be socialist?
here is no indication yet that it will not.
he new government intends to approach

the International Monetary Fund for cred-
its and to use them to stimulate the private
Sector. However, basic industry in Poland
has been socialized for over 30 years and
Polish workers overwhelmingly oppose the
Privatization of the economy.

One of the sources of political crisis
affecting the socialist world has been the
distorted political economy — modeled
after Stalin’s GOSPLAN — which elimi-
nated all forms private interest and all forms
of social Ownership except centralized state
Ownership. The broadening of forms of
Social Ownership, and finding as Lenin put it
that degree of combination of private
Interest, with state supervision and control
Of this interest, and that degree of its subor-
dination to the common interest which was
formerly the stumbling block for very many
Socialists,” is central to the economic
teforms throughout the socialist countries.

The most important part of this eco-
Nomic reform is to break bureaucratic, min-
iSterial control of the economy and to put
€Conomic power in the hands of workers
through self management of enterprises.

There is apparently broad agreement on
this general path of economic reform today,
and that is why the PUWP was so insistent
On Solidarity sharing responsibility for its
Implementation.

The economic reform, in Poland as in the
USSR and other socialist countries, will
Pose a host of new problems that are likely
to focus sharper divisions over economic
Policy in the future. The inflation in Polish
food prices as a result of free market pricing

one

is just the first taste of the new problems.
The issue for socialists will be to ensure that
the socialized economy remains the basis
for broad economic justice, and that private
interests remain subordinate to the com-
mon interest. But how and when these basic
class issues will come to the fore remains to
be seen.

The stability of the socialist world is also
not likely to be an immediate issue. The

Tadevsz Mozowiecki after his election
by the Sejm as prime minister.

Solidarity Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazo-
wiecki, deliberately called for friendship
with the Soviet Union in his inaugural
address to the Sejm.

However, there is clearly a resurgent
nationalism throughout Poland and its Bal-
tic neighbours which is the result of the
unequal relationship with Moscow that also
has its roots in the Stalin era. And this fact
necessitates a re-ordering of international
relations within the socialist camp which is
an urgent requirement to strengthen work-
ing class internationalism. Earlier this year,
Gorbachev visited Poland and used the
occasion to acknowledge and to apologize
for the 1939 agreement with Hitler which
divided pre-war Poland and for the criminal
murder of many Polish Communist leaders

by Stalin.

There will be acknowlegment of histori-
cal injustices, an outpouring of nationalism,
and a re-assertion of the independence of
socialist countries and of the self-determina-
tion of the national republics within the
Soviet Union. But as we view this process
unfolding — with the obvious risks it poses
for the unity of the Soviet Union and the
socialist camp — socialists have to be
guided by their basic principles: the absolute
self determination of nations, and that polit-
ical, economic and cultural assimilation
must always be completely voluntary.

History is proving anew that departure
from these principles will leave problems of
national relations that simply won’t go
away. That was the unmistakable message
of the million or more Soviets who held
hands across the Baltic Republics on the
anniversary of the Aug. 23, 1939 Soviet-
German Non Aggression Pact.

Soviet Politbureau member Alexander
Yakolev also used the occasion of the anni-
versary to acknowlege that there was a
secret protocol attached to the pact which
provided for the advance of Soviet armed
forces west and Nazi forces east to an agreed
line through Poland, Byelorussia and the
Western Ukraine. According to Yakolev,
that division of spheres of interest was mod-
ified a month later in the “friendship and
border treaty” which remade Poland’s
borders and put the Baltic states in the
Soviet sphere of influence.

Yakolev defended the Non-Aggression
Pact as a necessary step to protect the Soviet
Union from Nazi aggression, a step which
was taken only after Britain and France had
refused to a mutual security agreement with
the USSR. But he unreservedly condemned
the collusion with Hitler represented by the
secret protocol and the September friend-
ship treaty which re-drew the European
map and facilitated German expansionism.

Yakolev and other Soviet leaders have
pointed out that the decision of the Baltic
nations to join the Soviet federation was not
part of these agreements, and that the Non-
Aggression Pact in fact protected the Baltic
nations from Hitler’s planned occupation of
their territory.

What many in the Baltic republics,
including Communists, were protesting last
week as they formed their giant human
chain was an agreement made by Stalin that
violated their national sovereignty through
the demarcation of spheres of influence.
There were several factors which led to the
Baltic parliaments voting to join the USSR
in 1940, but the geo-politics of the day cer-
tainly must rank high among them.

We can only speculate where the present
national movements in the Baltic will lead.
But the Soviet constitution is clear that it isa
voluntary federation of national republics,
and Gorbachev’s present amendments to
provide for greater political and economic
autonomy are aimed at strengthening that
voluntary federation.

The smug obituaries on socialism’ being
produced by the Western media should be
taken for the self serving analyses they are.
The need for socialists to have their own
class analysis is an old truth, but it rarely has
been more poignant than now.

Socialism’s future is bound up in Soviet
perestroika, democratization and economic
reform in all socialist countries, and by ideo-
logical and political renewal throughout the
world socialist and Communist move-
ments.

Last week’s tumultuous events, each in
its own way, pushed us forward towards
that future.

new drama

By TOM MORRIS
Philosophy students are often taught that
“theory is grey, but the tree of life is green.”
Political events in eastern Europe are cer-
tainly bearing this out.

By the time this is being read, the nuts
and bolts of power sharing in Poland may
have been worked out and a government
put together composed of four political
groupings, three of whom — Solidarity,
the United Peasants’ Party and the Demo-
cratic Party — have united to head the
government, and the Polish United Workers
(Communist) Party (with 299 of the Sejm’s
460 seats) jockeying to retain as much lever-
age as it can.

The alternative to an arrangement being
worked out is dissolution of the Sejm and
the calling of a new vote, the outcome of
which is likely to mirror the June vote in
which Solidarity won every seat it contested
in Parliament and 99 out of 100 it contested
in the Senate.

The scenario is being played out under
extreme pressure of economic turmoil, food
shortages and hoarding — all in the fish-
bowl of public scrutiny in the international
arena.

Poland will eventually work through its
political crisis. But all agree that large and
complex issues underlie what is taking place
there, as well as (under specific national
conditions) in the other socialist states.

Citizens in a socialist state, theoretically
and practically, having won power decades
ago, are still determining how to exercise
that power and what political tools to use.
They are doing it in the absence, as they
often:see=it; sofeffective,.demacratic..and
competent government.

For Communists, this must give cause
and pause for serious re-evaluation and
examination of the role of the party in build-
ing a socialist society, how to view long-
term allies and how citizens’ democratic
rights are protected and guaranteed at all
times. This, quite logically, incorporates the
concept of the right of citizens to rid them-
selves of bad government (including bad
Communist officials) and replace them with
leaders in whom they have confidence.

If anyone needed proof that people will
eventually overcome what they see as poor
governments, will find ways to organize in

. their own interests, Poland has just pro-

vided another lesson in that reality.

And, in the wings, complicating the polit-
ical picture at every turn are the enemies of
socialism, those who will utilize ei or
and weakness to undermine and, they hope,
destroy socialism. :

The new Polish leaders are already being
advised by the West that “harsh medicine”
is needed; they’re told to prepare for wides-
pread unemployment and unrest. Western
analysts are saying only massive doses of
Western foreign capital will help, and that
Poland will have to undergo the classical
IMF formula (ask Argentina, Pakistan,
Brazil and Mexico) for foreign aid. More
sober-minded observers, however, point to
Poland’s $39-billion Western debt on which
it pays out $3.5 billion annually in interest
alone as part of the country’s ills.

At the same time, polls show only eight
per cent (and four per cent of industrial
workers) support privatization of Polish
industry and that Poles value the social net-

work that socialism provides.

What appears to be the overwhelming
feeling is that Poles would want a socialism
that not only has built-in public benefits
such as free education and health care but
adequate consumer goods, a more efficient
society and a democratic process that also
works consistently to ensure the will of the
majority is carried out in real life.

The socio-political drama in socialist
Europe is clearly only in the first act.

Pacific Tribune, September 4, 1989 e 9