[OVER the last few weeks, the coverage of…]

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OVER the last few weeks, the coverage of Solidarnosc has been good. But there are a number of points that I feel haven't been raised.

The first point of these is the nature of Solidarnosc. It is assumed that Solidarnosc is a trade union in the same categories as either British trade unions or French trade union confederations like the CGT. I would like to dispute this.

I think that if Solidarnosc is to be compared with any "union" then the comparisons should be with the ÍWW or the Spanish CNT. It is of course difficult to compare accurately the revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist unions with Solidarnosc but I think that important parallels can be drawn.

Firstly, it is a class movement rather than a sectional union. It is concerned with running society rather than reforming certain aspects such as wages.

Solidarnosc, even under Walesa's leadership, is involved in dual power relationships with management of factories and with the Stalinist bureaucracy, even to the extent of organising the distribution of material to factories so that production can carry on.

Why did Solidarnosc arise in its existing form rather than as workers' . councils which Trotskyists have mistakenly looked for as signs of developing organs of a workers' state? This is clearly explained by the lessons that the Polish working class learnt after 1956 when the workers' councils were incorporated into the official Stalinist state.

It was highly unlikely that workers' councils would re-emerge. Instead the working class would create a new form of organisation - and Solidarnose is that.

How should Trotskyists relate to Solidarnose? Socialist Organiser focusses on the struggle between the centre around Walesa and the left around Andrzej Gwiazda,