Poland: an Open Letter to the Communist Parti

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IN POLAND, Lech Walesa, the elected leader of the ten million strong organisation Solidarnose has been arrested, scores of the union's leaders have been jailed, and others like Zbigniew Bujak have had to flee underground.

In three quarters of the country's 49 provinces, concentration camps have been established, and tens of thousands of the working class's leading militants and activists have been interned in conditions reminiscent of the political ice age under Joseph Stalin.

Many unarmed workers have been shot down in cold blood resisting the armed forces. Hundreds have been injured, and miners and other workers have been killed in demonstrations, heroic occupations in the mines, factory sit-ins, and strikes.

And in these dark hours, the CPGB wrings its hands and appeals for *solidarity with the Polish Communist Party and people" (Morning Star, December 19) - solidarity with the Pinochets of Poland and their working class victims!

The British CP has rejected the position of French CP leader Georges Marchais, accepting the repression as 'the best possible decision, or, conversely, the least evil" (Morning Star, January 4). But has it clearly sided with the Polish workers? No.

The MS's first editorial after the clampdown bemoaned "on the one hand" the government's call for a ban on strikes, and 'on the other hand' Solidarnose's failure to "assist the search for compromise" adequately.

ON TUESDAY 29 December US President Reagan announced a series of economic sanctions against the Soviet Union, in response to 'Compromise' is indeed a key word in the MS's comments. It proposes: "establishing through dialogue a political partnership between the PUWP, Solidarity, the Church and other institutions. But this can only be a genuine partnership if it is a partnership of independent bodies" (Gerry Pocock, MS, December 19).

So the impasse could be navigated by the refloating of some type of 'National Council' representing all classes and groups in the country.

In the West such-alliances have often been tried -under the title 'Popular Fronts' , and on every occasion the workers' independent interests were sacrificed to those of the bourgeoisie.

The Polish bureaucracy is not a class like the bourgeoisie under capitalism. But it is an unnecessary parasitic imposition on the nationalised economy, a cancer fulfilling no progressive role.

It shares with ists the same savagely anti-working class sentiments. It has more in common with the bankers than with the proletariat it Claims to represent.

Indeed, the fact that it is an usurping matia, râther than a class with a definite historic role; makes it more brittle and incapable of major compromise.

The MS talks piously of democracy - but even a prominent CPGB member, David Aaronovitch of the National Union of Students, was refused entry to Poland last year because he was carrying typewriters for the independent union movement. What sort of democracy is that?

Most of the Polish CP leaders wanted compromise (which they hoped would allow them to gut Solidarnose gradually). Many of the Solidarnose leaders, like Walesa, wanted compromise (which they thought would allow gradual extension of democracy).

But coexistence between the bureaucracy and an independent workers' novement was impossible. That's the lesson of events. And that makes the MS's. pleas for compromise worthless as any sort of solidarity with the Polish workers.

When the MS says, for example, that special powers for the army might be necessary but should be voted by the Polish parliament (December 19), it is no help to the Polish workers. Elections to that Parliament have been completely controlled by the people who are now beating them down with guns and armour. For decades that Parliament has served as a rubber stamp for the very people against whom the workers' revolt was directed.

In France, CP minister Anicet Le Pors has distanced himself from the CP's support for Jaruzelski -no doubt wishing to placate the CP's critics from the Right. The Italian CP's round condemnations of the whole political system in the USSR and Eastern EurLETTER FROM DETROIT ope - whatever truth they contain - are aimed at improving its relations with the Italian government parties. (At the same time, the Italian CP accepts NATO).

The MS's appeal to the Polish Parliament can only serve similar purposes. None of the criticisms and condemnations is linked to a programme for real workers' power in Eastern Europe. But surely it is clear that the issue in Poland is not parliamentary good manners. It is an irreconcilable conflict between the workers and the bureaucracy.

In all the MS coverage it appears as an unquestioned axiom that the Polish CP has a right to rule and that it would be wrong for Solidarnose — i.e. the organised Polish working class - to reach for political power.

It is "reactionary'; it seems, to demand workers' control of the factories and the economy, it is reactionary to demand that the PUWP give up its political stranglehold.

It is reactionary to demand the organisation of a referendum for the establishment of a provisional government. It is reactionary to demand the withdrawal of Poland from the military straitjacket of the Warsaw Pact, which makes a mockery of the rights of Polish self-determination.

The MS insists on the danger of 'anti-socialist elements in Solidarnose' In truth, no section of Solidarnose (as far as we know) has demanded the break-up of the nationalised property relations. In fact the statutes drafted by Solidarnosc on workers' control continually stress the social nature of industry and the economy.

Solidarnose was not prepared to accept was the Party's control, veto and appointments in the economy, but their alternative was control by the direct producers themselves.

• The tragedy is not that the radical wing of Solidarnose was reactionary, but that they did not seriously and clear-mindedly prepare for winning these demands and for the backlash.

The CPGB is trying to serve too many masters -trying to placate the Kight, not to offend the Kremlin too much, and at the same time to show some solidarity with the Polish workers. But for militants who really support the Polish workers, the CP offers nothing.

We urge them to discuss with the Socialist Organiser Alliance and to join with us in building an independent labour movement campaign of class solidarity with the Polish workers. ALEXIS CARRAS MARTIN THOMAS SI of