Fighting bureaucratic privilege

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meal 'reform' or a reshuffle Poland needs to be the fight of groups of individual to assert workers' control leaders or managers, but a over the economy and every caste of bureaucrats must be look at this question in driven out and the adminis- some depth.

ESTOUA ruling Stalinist bureaucracy.

Within days of the strikes gaining their full strength in Gdansk, the demands had been widened to include an assault on the dictatorial powers and economic privil eges of the bureaucrats.

Strikers demanded the closure of the special "commercial" and "privilege" shops, selling • scarce. food and commodities at prices only top bureaucrats could afford.

They demanded the release of political prisoners, the reinstatement of victimised militants, access to the mass media, and freedom of the press.

And they demanded the publication of the full information on the social and economic crisis facing Poland-effectively calling for the 'opening of the books' on the whole nationalised economy and its dealings with the capitalist coun tries.

Developed

Such demands confirm the general line of analysis of the struggle against Stalinism mapped out by Leon Trotsky in the Transitional Programme of 1938:

"A fresh upsurge of the revolution in the USSR will undoubtedly begin under the banner of the struggle against social inequality and political oppression. Down with the privileges of the bureaucracy! Down with Stakhanovism [the glorification of speed-up in industry ] Down with the Soviet aristocracy and its ranks and orders! Greater equality of das for all forms of B.: .. 74 3 ASE: T.:: analysis Find revolution situation in Poland.

Firstly, the extension of Stalinist rule into Eastern Europe in the wake of World War 2 has left many weaker links in the chain of bureaucratic rule than the Soviet Union itself.

So while Trotsky writes confidently of the prospects for revolutionary struggle that will directly overthrow the Kremlin leaders, the post-war period has in fact seen major struggles along these lines only in the 'buffer' states of Eastern Europe-in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

A problem confronting each of these struggles has been the lack of any simultaneous uprising by the working class elsewhere in the Eastern countries-and particularly the absence of any substantial working class opposition to the Soviet bureaucracy itself.

This difficulty -a development since 1938highlights the need for an internationalist leadership in the struggle for political revolution, recognising the importance of links with workers throughout Eastern Europe.

Regeneration

Secondly the experiences of political revolution have all occurred in countries in which capitalist property elatoni were overturned •tor ste while bureau=: a sate machine This series on Poland Unlike the Russian Revolution, Eastern Europe after the war saw no cmergence of soviets as mass organisations of proletarian power.

Trotsky however had looked towards the regeneration of the Russian soviets as a key component in the struggle for political revolution:

"The struggle for the freedom of the trade unions and the factory committees, for the right of assembly and freedom of the press, will unfold in the struggle for the regeneration of Soviet democracy.

Spontaneous

The bureaucracy replaced the soviets as class organs with the fiction of universal electoral rights-in the style of. Hitler-Goebbels. It is necessary to return to the soviets not only their free democratic form but also their class content. As once the bourgeoisie and kulaks were not permitted to enter the soviets, so now it is necessary to drive the bureaucracy and the new aristocracy out of the soviets"

In the light of post war experience, a rather different conclusion must be drawn. Just as the soviets emerged as spontancous organisations in the revolutionary upheavals against Tsarism and capitalist rule in Russia. so new, independent organ¡sations have arisen in the viruggle agains the state abing ri the Stalinist .... .... i lavern The working class in Poland and Hungary has turned in the main not to the existing "trade unions" and bureaucratised "Communist" • Parties as vehicles for its demands, but to the building of independent unions and workers' councils outside and in competition with the old organs.

It is fair to assume that such developments would also be parallelled in the Soviet Union itself-by-passingg the ossified bureaucratised remnants of the former soviets and establishing new trade unions and workers' councils as a direct challenge to the Kremlin leadership.

Indeed it is necessary to recognise that the revolutionary overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracies is a task which requires the same kind of political preparation, programme and leadership as the struggle against capitalism.

In Poland, capitatist property is nationalised-a historically progressive development which workers must defend: but the state machinery is designed to protect the power and privilege of the party bureaucrats by repressive means just as brutal and reactionary as those employed in any capitalist dictatorship.

There can be no hope of the workers taking power in Poland without the smashing of that state machinery and the establishment of a new state power arising from the mass organs of the working class.

Far from being some kind of 'half way house' to socialism, the deformed workers' states are counter• revolutionary states, antagonistic to the working class at home and abroad.

They require not piecewholesale revolution which the whole parasitic tration must be taken into the hands of the working class.

To create conditions for this to happen requires political preparation, in which workers begin to focus their attention on what needs to be done to develop the nationalised economy in their interests, and recognise their ability to take the lead in these changes.

In other words the centre of political agitation in aspect of Polish society.

Next week's article will

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