Behind Poland's Shortages

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drawn up.

The music starts... And so it goes on.

For those of you keeping score, the latest results are:

New on the hit list: 7: Gateshead, Hackney, Leeds, Leicester, Norwich, Sunderland, Watford. Off: 5: Barnsley, Burnley, Middlesbrough, Walsall, Waltham Forest.

No change: 8: Birmingham, Bristol, Doncaster, Great Yarmouth, Harringey, Hull, Wakefield, Greenwich.

Warned: 13.

THE PERFECT ISSUE THE GLC is yet again threatened with surcharge if it tries to implement its manifesto promise to stop the sale of new GLC flats and fill them with people from the 200,000 on the waiting list. And legal action has already been started by one purchaser.

The old Tory GLC included a clause in the contract guaranteeing that all flats in a block would be sold -i.e. buyers would not have to live alongside council tenants who would bring down property values. The new Labour GLC has been warned by officials that they could face legal bills of £½ million for breach of contract.

When the surcharge threat was raised over school meals price cuts, some 'Lefts' on the GLC argued it wasn't the issue to take a stand on. Well, if they want an issue, you couldn't ask for a better one than this: standing up for the homeless against Tory greed and middle class snobbery. ' It is well-known that the Polish government now tells capitalist bankers many more of its economic secrets that it gives to the Polish workers in whose name it claims with ever less conviction to rule.

But last week enough of the economic books were opened to give some idea of the extremities of the economic crisis.

Ironically, on the surface some of the figures look very favourable to the working class. For instance last year wages rose 26% while the official cost of living index went up only 15% - a rise in real wages, it would appear, of about 10%.

But not so fast. This is in fact a case of lies, damn lies and statistics.

What really happened was that wages did go up as a result of union militancy; and the bureaucracy did not dare prices as it wished for the same reason.

But there were simply no goods available to buy with the higher real wages. So workers either had to save useless money (saving increased by 17%) or spend it on the black market, where prices of course skyrocketed.

The most important part of the black market was in goods which could be bought only with dollars. So there is a roaring black market in dollars.

The official rate of exchange is one dollar for 33 Polish zlotys. In fact you now have to pay up to 240 zlotys for a dollar on the black market.

The combination of bureaucratic muddle and political upheaval has led to a drop production 8000 supplies of goods, which is much more serious than that in Britain, the advanced capitalist country most deeply scarred by the present economic crisis.

Poland's extraordinary slump is shown by the following list of production figures, which compare production in the first six months of this year with the same period of 1980:

Consumer goods, down 10%; Industrial production, 12.5%; Coal output, 22%; Oil refinery output, 19%; Animal feed supplies, 14%; Cattle population, 7%; Pig population, 13%; Exports to the West, 21.5% and Imports, down 21.8%.

Poland's economy can no longer even supply the population in the pathetically meagre style to which they have become accustomed.

The planners are not talking about economic 'reforms' (how euphemistic can you get?) which will raise many prices 3 or 4 times and which will cut back basic supplies.

Already this month the meat ration has been reduced by a fifth.

And although the Kania government has been forced to review this after a month as a result of threats of strikes and hunger marches, the fact is that it just doews not have the meat to distribute.

The decline in the animal population means that the situation is likely to get worse rather than better.

The only short-term answer is to go even further into pawn by borrowing more money• Easier said than done, when Poland is today the world's most precarious and troublesome borrower.

Poland's debt to the capitalist world, mostly to private banks, was last week estimated as somewhere around £27 billion, while its foreign exchange assets are negligible.

As far as the capitalist bankers are concerned, the question is not lending more money to Poland, but agreeing to temporarily waive the repayments which are already due. In reality Poland is already a massive defaulter since it does not have the money to pay its debts any more than it has food to feed its people.

But so far no bank has declared it in default. A series of panic meetings has been taking place to try to work out some agreement on rescheduling - i.e. postponing the repayment of due debts.

After extremely bitter negotiations an agreement has now been reached for debts which are due this year. But the same problem will arise for next year and so on indefinitely until the political crisis is solved.

At the same time, the latest figures released for the foreign exchange reserves of the Soviet Union make it almost certain that Brezhnev has also been lending emergency money to the Polish government to try to avert the complete starvation and destitution of the people of the country. But the basic problem remains, and gets worse every day as these emergency measures run out: the Polish rulers have so much lostg the confidence of those whom they rule that they can no longer guarantee production, even at previous low levels. does not represent any fundamental break with the politics that proved so bankrupt in the first two years after the fall of the Shah.

In other words, Bani of the bourgeoisie in Iran, has found himself a mass popular base on his own terms.

Meanwhile inside Iran, the authorities continue to hunt out oppositionists and execute them. The Guardian, for instance, reported that nine PMOI members were executed on 30 July. The fact that among those being executed are members of the ruling party and bazaar merchants indicates the depths of the political crisis of the IRP - something that the stage-managed election "victory" of the main presidential candidate cannot cover up.

Socialist Organiser has signed a petition circulated by supporters of the PMOI condemning the repression in Iran and particularly the death of Mojahed Sayed Mohammad Reza Sa'adati, a leader of the PMOI.

Sa'adati, who had been a prisoner under the Shah, was illegally arrested and tortured; after long delays and obstruction by the authorities, he was tried for spying and given a ten year sentence. According to the government, he was then retried and given the death sentence. PMOI sources believe that he was tortured to death during his imprisonment and that the government statement about a second trial and "legal" execution is a lie.

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- Wor news Socialist Organiser 6 August 1981 Page 4 KHUHMULDEN