New purge as Polis iunta tries to rebuild apparatus

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0. Tete GENERAL Motors' sales in the US dropped 7.8 per cent last year. So GM bosses want to cut prices and see if they can shift a few more cars.

Even if it meant a lower profit margin on each car, such a price cut could yield bigger profits in proportion to the great mass of capital which GM will have lying expensively idle unless sales revive.

But GM has scored an exceptional bonus. It need not even have a lower profit margın per car. The carworkers' union, the UAW. has volunteered to take wage cuts, on the sole condition that the full amount of the wage cuts is passed on in price cuts.

The UAW and GM are now discussing the details of the deal. GM is pressing for 25 per cent wage cuts and corresponding price cuts, while the UAW wants to limit the cuts to 10 per cent, and have it off extras, not the basic rate.

The UAW is also offering a similar deal to Ford (6.1 per cent sales drop last year), and negotiations are in progress.

The US unions have begun to talk more militantly against Reagan. But they remain ideologically tied to capitalism. And the GM/ UAW deal shows how destructive such ideological ties are in the midst of crisis.

A DEBATE has been raging in the letters page of the Morning Star.

Some writers approve the mealy-mouthed criticism of the military clampdown in Poland by the CPGB's Executive Committee, which has bemoaned the faults of everything and everyone in Poland, without coming down clearly on the side of the Polish workers. A lot of letters back Jaruzelski. But a significant minority call for sharper and more serious criticism of the military regime.

Tom Durkin (January 4th) writes: "The Morning Star, by becoming a mouthpiece of various rumourmongers and speculators is doing no service to the British working class and Poland in its hour of need.' Rages Even minimal and qualified support for Solidarnosc is too much for Durkin.

He rages against ' .•powerful forces in the leadership of Solidarity, internationally backed by a motley of reactionary forces including fascists, trotskyists, right wing Labour and trade union leaders, church bodies leven progressive forces) and such champions of 'free trade unions' as Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet etc etc.

Note that parenthesis: "(even progressive forces)' - in the midst of Durkin's outburst he has rememROW THE high-minded 'reformers' have fallen!

Mieczyslaw Rakowski, once the exponent of political renovation in Poland, has become a mouthpiece for the military junta.

On Monday 18th January Rakowski stated that 'the end of martial law could not be determined by any concrete date. We do not treat martial law as a normal state of affairs.' Despite earlier promises that martial law would be lifted 'in a matter of weeks' the message coming over is that Jaruzelski is here to stay. Some restrictions are being lifted (for example, restoration of the telephone system) but the greatest change foreseeable is for most of the martial law regulations to be made into civilian law regulations.

Even by official government claims, there still remain over 5,000 political prisoners, despite the recent release of about 1000 detainees.

Stiff prison sentences are being handed down. Last week, Radio Warsaw announced that Bronislaw Wiergosz, head of the Solidarnosc branch at the Gliwit factory, was sentencbered that the Church, un-.

like 'trotskyists' , is not a permitted target for Stalinist condemnation. So his list of reactionary forces includes 'even progressive forces' Difficult, this dialectics!

Durkin insists: It is naive to accept that workers are always right when they express aims of 'democracy and renewal' , as history and others used the label of 'National Socialism' to exploit discontent, win mass support and eventually hurl their working class stormtroopers at the throat of all progressive mankind."

Tom Durkin is no doubt speaking on behalf of this 'progressive mankind'.

In a more philosophical vein, Frieda Park from Glasgow (January 5th) approvingly quotes Marx: •Men make their own history, but not in conditions of their own choosing.

No doubt very, very true ed to three years imprisonment for having organised a strike of 2000 workers on December 14th.

On January 11th the President of Solidarnosc in the Huta Warszawa steel works was sentenced to 19 months for organising a strike (though two co-defendants were released).

In Radom, eleven activists were arrested on 6th January for distributing leaflets.

Destroy The resolve of the regime to destroy any vestige of independent working class power can be seen in a statement from the chief of the much hated Militia (a privileged paramilitary force linked to the tuling party, PUWP) in Radom. "The declaration of martial law has not resulted in the defeat of the enemy but only in its temporary paralysis. The enemy is always for the Polish working class - but Frieda seems to miss the irony and proceeds to lambast many of the leaders of Solidarity who were inspired by anti-socialist western-backed dissidents, who aimed not at solving problems and strengthening socialism but at its destruction'.

The more subtle apologists of Jaruzelski argue that once the Party glibly admits or recants its 'past errors", then this ritual excuses it and allows it to continue ruling on behalf of the working class. Until the next bout of 'mea culpa' But for Bill Alexander (London SE26, January 5th)

such superficial acceptance of "past mistakes" "is not enough. 'The tragic events in Poland compel every Communist, whether in the socialist or capitalist world, to tace up to fundamental questions concerning the ČPs themselves."

Correctly Bill states that •It is not enough to deplore the present situation and criticise past mistakes of the Polish CP" • For Bill the cause of the problem lies much deeper in "views which equate a CP with the state and place it above and superior to the state organs". • All that this lead to is a limitation of 'the rights of the majority of the people who are not members of the Communist He recognises that trying create ures • The enemy referred to is the ten million strong organised working class.

Even in the regime's dungeons, though, the resistance continues. At the Bialoleka prison near Warsaw (where it is rumoured Walesa has been transferred) prisoners began a hunger strike 2-3 weeks ago.

The authorities hit back by reducing the amount of time the prisoners could spend outside their cells, and contact between prisoners has been stopped.

The Militia has also been put in charge of guarding the prison because the soldiers on duty had become too friendly with the prisoners.

Solidarity's former National Press Officer in Rome reports that 'three thougand workers at the Gdansk shipyards, members of the "only the fullest involvement of all the people can ensure continued all-round progress of society, check and if necessary control the work of the CP", but he does not yet clearly say how this power should be exercised, through what channels and organisations and he remains ambiguous as to how far "the leading role of the party" should be challenged.

Tom McNally (Birmingham, 13th January) quotes Brecht's comment on the East German state's suppression of the 1953 uprising. "If the government has lost confidence in the Hlas people then surely it must dissolve them and elect a new lot • This is what the military are doing with Solidarity's 10 million workers, and Rural Solidarity three million peasants. He notes that 'this is the third wave of repression in 20 years including the murder of Gdansk shipyard workers".: He lists the independent been sacked, Union, have But the repression is not only directed against the working class. One of the main preoccupations of Jaruzelski and his Kremlin masters is to rebuild a viable political apparatus. The 18 months of revolution shook the Party to its foundations. When it came to the clampdown only a few of the Politbureau itself knew of the military's plans.

A purge is now on. Polish foreign affairs minister Czyrek recently met Mikhail Suslov, the Russian Communist Party's annointed 'theoretician' ', in Moscow and was urged to ensure 'that the Polish Party undergoes a radical purge before once again assuming the role it had to hand over to the army!

atrocities commited . in supposedly "socialist and anti-imperialist regimes"

from the 1930s in Stalin's Russia, right through to the Kampuchean experiment in creating a 'new man' (unfortunately few were left).

Tom McNally however clearly believes that the CPGB with "The British Road to Socialism' programme has finally found a way to avoid all these tragedies, but that even now " ...some in the CP...

still refuse to accept these postions.

Subordinate

David Searby from Nottingham (January 15th)

takes up where Bill Alexander's letter left off.

''The fact is that in the socialist states of Eastern Europe, what we have is not the dictatorship of the proletariat but the dictatorship of the Communist Party. All the institutions of the state, from the top to the lowest level, including the trade unions, are subordinate to the Communist And the way out of this dictatorship? "Workers must be allowed to form alternative political parties if they feel it necessary and to freely contest elections.

They must be allowed to produce their own newspapers and so on. Above all they must have truly free and independent trade Meanwhile, a vicious attack has been launched in Zolnierz Wolnosci, the army's daily paper. It pompously announced that the working class 'had been duped and that the main aim (of the extremists) had been, according to the plans and decisions of the 'brains trust advisors' (i.e. KOR), operating under the protective umbrella Solidarnose, to raise to power people such as Kuron, Michnik, Geremek and such 'defenders' and 'representatives' of the working class as the deserter Rulewski and the adventurer Bujak...' Zbigniew Bujak, who used to work at the Ursus tractor plant and was leader of Warsaw Solidarity, is one of the major Solidarity leaders still free. From the underground he has called for resistance to the regime since 'if this decisive resistance continued and there is a chance (that) it will escalate, I see a real possibility of stifling the dictatorship, or at least bringing about its liberalisation and returning rights to the dissolved and suspended organisations' Alexis Carras over Poland i Party's daily This will be the only way to prevent a privileged bureaucratic stratum from crushing society. "Comrades have also referred to corruption. Of course there will be corruption when the only avenue for 'getting on' is under the patronage of the CP, when to be a member is a shortcut to the best in houses, jobs, education and medical care. Naturally in such conditions the most opportunist and corrupt will flock to the CP."

To obscure reality and the logic of the class struggle in Poland, many CP members are still dragging out myths of ''Trotskyite" sabotage and perfidy from the shameful archives of Stalinism in the 1930s - or the hoary and irrelevant assertions of CIA infiltration.

Bujak has openly atl ed all the bourgeois pu in the West and those il workers' movement have accused Solidarno 'going too far': 'My an will be brutal. I know many western politir believe that if we had wiser we could have a ed this tragedy.

'But I also know what they call wisdon us meant collaboration the state and party au ities, a collaboration would have been dire against the workers, th tellectuals, the men of ture and the arts. We v have become another a of the totalitarian sys creating only an impre of democracy.

'This must not be manded of us or our ! arity union.' The paid hacks of nierz Wolnosci and other mouthpieces o bureaucracy may wel minate against workel itants of Bujak's statu prison or in clandest they represent the wo class's hatred of its ressors and its figl destroy the bureauc that have ruled Es Europe for thirty year:

looks at the deba n the Communist paper Often Tories incap understanding the forces pitted agains clas rule end up si out 'provocateurs' and "infiltrators' .it that this 'police mer and skewed view world is alive and • the CP as well.

Realistic Under the imj successive revelatio cracks in the s camp" since the di the infallible Joseph many CP members:

empting a more "

assessment of states.

The Italian CP ha:

accepted that the the 'socialist state incapable of renew renovation. The C erships have adapt superficially radica ions only to furthi quest for respe with their domestic evisies and to pror 'democratic crec (read subservience bourgeois der state institutions).

But for many t file militants both West and the Ex gradual and painf isation of the nee away with these state/party mons can mean a move the fight for a working class powr on democratic class institutions.

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Socialist Organiser no. 69 January 21, 1981 Poze Wor a tewsi

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