[The following was adopted by majority vote by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International on January 8.]
1. On December 13, 1981, the bureaucracy seized the initiative and unleashed the political counterrevolution in Poland. It thus declared a war without quarter on the workers to save its privileges as the ruling caste. It struck back to stop the rise of the political revolution, of a powerful mass movement that was moving toward the establishment of a democratic regime of workers power.
The imposition of martial law was a response to the imperative necessity of attacking Solidarity before the movement for an "active strike" developed, before the forthcoming reterendum and elections, and before a leadership of this movement capable of dealing with the question of power was really formed.
By imposing martial law the bureaucracy has liquidated the open existence of soviettype bodies (councils) which had been set up by the workers. The situation of dual power opened up in 1980 could not be indefinitely prolonged.
The bureaucracy was still able to count on a repressive apparatus which was very much intact and little affected by the antibureaucratic movement of protest. It chose the time and the terrain of the attack. For months all its efforts to turn the situation around were supported by Moscow and backed up with the Soviet bureaucracy's threats and material aid.
A defeat has been inflicted on the Polish workers, but at the present time the working class is not crushed. Solidarity is very disorganized as a result of the repression. A large part of its leadership has been removed. Nevertheless, the very broadly based support of this trade union and "social movement," the experiences it has gone through, and the depth of popular hatred against the dictatorship of the Military Council of National Salvation has meant that there is an extensive resistance, taking different forms - and underground networks are being set up. A long period of localized and fragmented clashes is opening up.
It is the duty of the international working class to put all its weight behind the struggle of the Polish nation and its working people to defeat the "diktat" of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski and Leonid Brezhnev. Through this solidarity with Solidarity, workers should themselves adopt the lessons of workers democracy and experiences of self-management developed in the heat of the Polish workers struggle.
2. During the second three months of 1981 all the factors involved in the mass mobilizations tended with increasing sharpness to pose the question of the workers taking over the management of the whole of society. The very needs of the people as well as the paralysis of the bureaucratic system of management showed that a project of "partial" self-management — a shareout of tasks with the existing regime — was unrealistic and impractical.
During this period open clashes broke out on many occasions:
• The "hunger marches" denouncing the sabotage of food supplies and the inept organization of the ration system. The initiatives, though still limited, taken by Solidarity to control the stocks and distribution of foodstuffs.
• The movement of protest against food price policy, with the demonstrative and open rejection by the first national Solidarity congress of the October increase in tobacco prices.
• A constant battle against government censorship and for Solidarity access to the mass media. The protest strike in September against ending the inquiry into the Bydgoszcz police provocation.
• From August 1981 there was the development of the "workers self-management movement" and workers councils, conflicts over the nomination of workplace directors, modification of production in various factories, and schemes linking the latter with the needs of rural areas (for example using coal within Poland that had been earmarked for export).
• Confrontation over the self-management legislation and over proposed economic reforms. In November the polarization deepened when the government liquidated the debate, as well as the proposed economic reforms, and took measures of an extreme "centralizing character. " In response to this escalation by the regime and the worsening of the economic crisis, there developed a debate inside various regional Solidarity leaderships on the idea of an "active" strike (keeping the factories going under workers control), the necessity of establishing an emergency workers plan, and setting up workers defense guards.
• The antagonism between Solidarity and the bureaucratic regime on the question of free elections at local and national levels, organized on the basis of political pluralism and therefore breaking with the practice of the single National Unity Front electoral slates. There was the challenge thrown down by the Solidarity leadership in proposing a "national referendum inside the trade union on the functioning and methods of political structures.
In this way the mass movement against the bureaucracy was demanding the application of the first article of the Polish constitution: "Power belongs to the working people of town and countryside." The dynamic of these workers" battles also tended to help it escape from the false dilemma: either a hypercentralized and bureaucratic managment of the economy; or a return to a "market economy," even given a "self-management" image, proposed by many "experts."
The workers had fought openly against the first solution since August 1980. The willingness and capacity for management and their egalitarian instincts clearly marked this process of struggle, and meant they were beginning to foresee the dangers of the second solution — unemployment, increased social inequality, and privileges given to management technicians in the framework of "financial autonomy for the workplaces." What workers were looking for was in fact to build a system basing itself on the initiative, management, and power of the producers, in other words, on the qualitative change of a socialization of all the means of production.
3. A. The declaration of martial law, the mass arrests of those who are politically active and think freely, and the imposition of an undisguised dictatorship demonstrate yet again that there can be no "reform" or "gradual democratization" of a bureaucratic regime. In fact, since August 1980, the bureaucratic apparatus's very survival instinct led it to reject the existence and development of an independent, mass, and democratic trade union.
Even if the sudden strength and size of the movement took it by surprise and forced it to sign the Gdansk agreements, it never really accepted their validity and refused to legally ratify or implement them. It did not carry out any real reform or "renewal." It maneuvered. The concessions granted were within a policy of immediate self-defense. It parried the most immediate dangers, while at the same time bringing together the elements for a counteroffensive.
The bureaucracy showed its determination to defend its monopoly of political power because that is the source and guarantee of its enormous material privileges, which the Polish workers had radically denounced from the beginning. Furthermore these Jaruzelskis and Olszowskis, by striking out against the Polish workers, also protect the overall interests of the bureaucracy on an international scale. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
and the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) made a joint declaration as early as April 1981 in Warsaw:
"The two parties emphasized the exceptional importance of rallying all the patriotic forces of the people to ward off the threats menacing the conquests of socialism in Poland and to fight back against attempts of opposition groups to establish dual power in the country. The CPSU is in solidarity with PUWP efforts to defend socialism and stabilize the social and economic situation."
The cynicism of the pretexts invoked and the violence of the charges made against Solidarity, accused of being "antisocialist" and "counterrevolutionary," are in strict proportion to the privileges that the bureaucratic regime wants to safeguard. It has not even attempted to prove that the 10 million workers organized in Solidarity wanted to reintroduce private appropriation of the means of production and of the social surplus. It is not surprising! On many occasions Solidarity declared itself in favor of collective appropriation and the socialization of the means of production. In addition more than 1 million PUWP members became Solidarity members, and this trade union organized the huge majority of manual and intellectual workers!
On the other hand the generals and various apparatchiks insistently accuse the working class of wanting to "seize power." This charge is by itself a denunciation of the bureaucracy's expropriation of political power.
Furthermore, the hundreds of thousands of police and soldiers from the second military force of the Warsaw Pact are not today fighting against "capitalist agents" or "imperialism," but are imprisoning and gagging thousands of representatives of the working masses. The bureaucratic regime is thus showing the same contempt for the collective interests of the working class that it proved in leading the country to economic bankruptcy. When it declares that martial law has been imposed to save the economy from disaster, its responsibility for this failure is further exposed. Indeed, in a country where private ownership of the main means of production no longer exists, the battle against an economic crisis of this dimension would necessarily entail deploying the initiative of the workers and peasants. Now in fact the Military Council of National Salvation has declared martial law against these workers.
So it stands, the "emperor without any clothes" — the Military Council for the Salvation of . . . the bureaucracy!
B. The bureaucracy had a limited social base that was being continually eroded, but it had a finely tuned consciousness of the stakes involved in the battle and the inevitability of the confrontation. So, it was preparing for it.
On the other side, Solidarity, which grouped all the "honest" forces of the nation, squared up only partially and late to the radical challenging of the bureaucratic regime that its actions encouraged. On the one hand, among the cadres of the movement, the process of becoming aware of the imperative necessity of preparing a central battle and putting the movement forward as a contender for power was developing. But this process was very uneven and had not yet produced a nationally organized current, although significant advances in this direction had been made on a regional level.
On the other hand a series of currents that were active and had a significant audience in Solidarity's leadership bodies developed (above all with the advice of the "experts") a strategy of "self-limitation" of the movement. According to this strategy, the moment of truth was to be postponed until the time when the powerlessness of the central power would allow a de facto solution proposed by Solidarity (whatever the different content they wished to give this solution).
Beyond the differences expressed among these sectors of the leadership, none of them was preparing the workers to attack the capacity for action of a regime that, despite its apparent paralysis, still held a centralized striking force and an infrastructure (telecommunications, media, transport, etc.) covering the whole country.
During all these events the Catholic hierarchy, which is influential among the leading circles of Solidarity, continually played a role of mediation between the antagonists and backed positions favorable to this "self-limitation" strategy. It sought, through various compromises, to "stabilize" . . . instability!
Through this mediating role it has gained an increased influence and political weight that it hoped to use to obtain new concessions from the regime, such as the creation of a Christian democratic party. On the other hand, the victory of a struggle making Solidarity the instrument for the Polish people to gain real sovereignty on the political, social, and economic levels would have in fact very much reduced the church hierarchy's role in society. The latter was conscious of this historical challenge.
4. Over the last eighteen months a broad leadership was forged in the crucible of this vast movement. On various issues it evolved in a positive direction. It was able, on several occasions, to give expression to the forward dynamic of the workers upsurge. Faced with the traps set by the PUWP, it maintained the overall unity of the movement. Solidarity reacted firmly to the regime's repressive measures. It rejected, despite some indecisiveness and very partial compromises, any overall collaboration with the bureaucracy. It proved its capacity to organize democratic discussion on an exceptionally broad-based scale. The ability of certain forces within Solidarity to give a response to social and economic problems progressed rapidly.
Nevertheless, a series of weaknesses and deficiencies remained. Thus when confronted with the police provocation at Bydgoszcz in March 1981, the Solidarity leadership showed its capacity and willingness to prepare a general strike in order to defend itself against the bureaucracy's attacks. But it finally deactivated the fightback and did not utilize the enormous potential force represented by its millions of active members. Since the strike did not go beyond this stage of preparation, the masses were not able to go through an important experience.
Since summer 1981, the cumulative effects of the economic crisis, the regime's sabotage, and the dynamic of a large number of spontaneous struggles were going to place on the agenda the need for a positive response on the social, economic, and political level and the creation of structures centralizing the masses' efforts at social control and workers self-management.
Faced with these types of tasks the full inadequacy of a self-limiting strategy becomes clear. Tactically such a conception was justified at the start, given the millstone of the Soviet intervention threat that hung around the neck of the workers movement, the relative isolation of the Polish workers, and the need to build a trade union organizing a majority of the working class.
After months of continued upsurge of the mass movement, which greatly increased the price the Soviets would have to pay for an intervention, this strategy resulted in an impasse. It refused to take into account the very needs arising both from the collapse of the bureaucratic system of management and from the activity of the masses that was roused by the generalized disorder itself.
Consequently, the Solidarity leadership vacillated and hesitated. The main spokespeople of the union were obliged, more than once, either to go along with the strikes of militant sectors (whose demands and actions did not constitute a response to the disorganization of economic activity and its effects on the population), or to recommend the ending of strike movements. In both cases the trade union and its leadership ran the risk of losing some credibility and authority among workers in struggle and layers of the population who were expecting a response to their problems. The bureaucracy sought to take advantage of this situation.
If the "active" strike had been put forward and the workers councils reinforced, as those sectors very much in a minority inside Solidarity had been proposing since the summer, the struggle would have acquired an even greater legitimacy. It would have been carried onto a terrain where bureaucratic repression was more difficult to use. The struggle of the masses could have been linked to a will to resolve social and economic difficulties. A new advance of self-organization would have emerged from the very needs of the battle against bureaucratic sabotage and incompetence.
The "active" strike was conceived as a means which, in the first phase, could give economic power to the workers. But to limit it to this did not permit a preparation for the approaching showdown. Such an orientation had to be complemented with an overall response on the political level: facilitating the centralization of self-management bodies (second chamber of parliament for self-management), preparing an alternative solution to the government plan, and, within this framework, taking up the task of self-defense and preparing for confrontation.
The first national Solidarity congress expressed the contrast between the breadth of the movement, its authority and alternative legitimacy, and the weakness of the action proposals capable of coordinating the energy of the working masses.
From the beginning of November 1981 there was a speedup in the process of differentiation inside Solidarity. Tendencies favorable to the initiatives of regional coordination of the workers councils and the active strike grew stronger — above all inside the trade-union leaderships of some big regions and among the workers of key factories. The setting up of workers defense guards was envisaged. The question of power was becoming of such immediate relevance that nearly all the National Committee of Solidarity (KK) had to recognize this and frankly discuss it in Radom and Gdansk at the beginning of December.
The majority concluded that they were not ready to cope with the problem. However, they continued to think that the bureaucracy did not have the possibility, in the very short term, of actually choosing the time of the showdown.
Moreover General Jaruzelski, like the Kremlin, was quite conscious that even if the masses did not yet have the instruments capable of centralizing all their forces, a maturing of political consciousness was taking place which favored the creation of such bodies. The leadership of the bureaucracy therefore chose to intervene rapidly and brutally. Centralized power and the buraucracy's will to act permitted even a very shaken parasitic caste to impose its initiative over a movement of millions of workers, intellectuals, and youth, but which was not prepared to oppose its own centralized counterpower at all levels.
The readiness of the workers, as well as the dynamic of their struggle, made another outcome objectively possible. The origin of this absence of centralized counterpower did not reside in an intrinsic weakness of the masses or in their lack of willingness to fight. It concerns the lack of a conscious and organized political party, or at least a revolutionary tendency having national influence and capable of grasping both the objective logic of the showdown arising from the workers struggle and the real nature of the bureaucratic enemy. The existence of such a current would have greatly limited the effects of disorientation caused by all the diversionary maneuvers — such as the proposals for a "national agreement" administered by the PUWP, the church, and Solidarity - and the surprise provoked by a frontal counterattack.
A centralized counterpower would have represented the necessary framework for a resolution of the showdown in favor of the workers.
For this objective, a revolutionary force was needed to put itself forward within the structures of self-organization, one capable of stimulating political and practical initiatives to neutralize the bureaucracy's repressive intervention and facilitate the real exercise of workers power.
5. A. By imposing martial law and setting up a Military Council of National Salvation, the bureaucracy has modified the traditional forms of its rule. This indicates the extreme weakness of its social base and the accentuated crisis of the institutions (PUWP, National Unity Front, Sejm, etc.) that established its political hegemony.
The PUWP is one of the ruling "communist parties" that has most been subject to repeated shocks to its stability. After the experiences of Wladyslaw Gomulka in (1956) and Edward Gierek (in 1970) it was very difficult to play the card of a "renewal" of the party and the "savior figure." The brief career of Stanislaw Kania illustrates the fragility of alternative solutions lifted from the framework of past experiences.
Under the shock of the mass upsurge, the party, which was bloated and undermined by corruption, began to fall apart. Thousands of apparatchiks had to be expelled. According to official figures, which underestimate the real state of affairs, 400,000 members turned in their cards and about 1 million spontaneously joined Solidarity. The party had 3 million members, 45 percent of whom were workers concentrated mostly in 170 big factories - which became the strongholds of Solidarity. Many PUWP branches in these big factories dissolved themselves or were de facto dissolved because the workers refused to continue to finance them out of the workplace budget.
The ninth so-called renewal congress of the PUWP did not amount to much. Factions such as the Katowice Forum, which openly rejected all compromises, encountered extreme difficulties in increasing their influence. Although the PUP held the resources of the state apparatus and based itself on Kremlin aid, it appeared disoriented and even paralyzed.
However, it was not on the verge of loosening its grip on the reins of power. This capacity for reaction of the cornered beast was underestimated by thousands of Solidarity militants.
In addition to the very great weakening of the PUWP, the bureaucracy underwent a relative loss of control of the Sejm (the Polish parliament). As in Czechoslovakia at the time of the "Prague Spring," one saw a process of intitial autonomization of this parliament. Parties that were traditionally aligned with the regime began to take some distance from it when such social explosions took place. Thus on October 3 the Sejm refused to adopt the emergency measures proposed by General Jaruzelski, then already prime minister, while at the same time issuing a stern warning to Solidarity to end the strikes.
B. This dual institutional crisis left only the army as the last resort — the "party in uniform," a reliable instrument for the planned and centralized actions of the bureaucratic caste's counteroffensive. In this domain the army acted in close liaison with the armed forces of the Soviet Union.
Since 1980, the Warsaw Pact, under the leadership of Soviet generals, has almost continuously been involved in numerous combined military maneuvers. In the framework of these military operations it was preparing the installation of a parallel system of telecommunications permitting it to isolate Poland and then cut off all domestic communications. There were many meetings at the highest level in autumn 1981 between Polish military officers in the government and Kremlin military and political leaders.
The accession of Jaruzelski, minister of defense and prime minister, to the leadership of the PUWP on October 18, 1981, reflected this drift toward bureaucratic rule openly and directly based on the military-police repressive apparatus. It was a sign of a large-scale counterattack. However, the real meaning of this nomination was far from understood inside the Solidarity leadership. Some members even thought "that the situation would be better than before" (Lech Walesa). According to them, there would now be a "serious" person to negotiate with, and it would consequently put off the threat of a direct Soviet military intervention.
On October 19 a meeting of the military council of the Ministry of Defense outlined "the tasks of the Polish armed forces on the basis of the October 18 PUWP resolution." Already in September a plan which envisaged putting soldiers in the mines to "help production" had been set into motion in a limited way. On October 18 it was also decided to prolong military service for conscripts by two months. The generals, all PUP members, did not look kindly on the arrival of young conscripts who had directly gone through the experience of the struggle during this period. A particularly large number of people were exempted from military service at this time.
On October 23 Jerzy Urban, government spokesperson, announced the deployment of 883 military units, each composed of three to four persons and one officer, throughout the country to resolve "local conflicts" and "take measures against the deficiencies of local administrations." In reality this military operation, which lasted some weeks, was to facilitate the preparation of a direct takeover of the administrative apparatus and the working out of a precise and effective repressive plan.
Finally on December 2 the militia attacked the Academy of Student Firemen, which had been occupied with the support of Solidarity. This movement directly reflected the impact of Solidarity within a sector of the military forces. General Jaruzelski and his ilk had to react.
By breaking this occupation by force they chose to test the determination of Solidarity on a terrain not directly linked to the working class, but which, due to its nature, constituted a "sensitive" sector for the regime. The Solidarity leadership hesitated to immediately trigger a general fightback of the type it had prepared in March 1981. Consequently the regime seized the advantage and relaunched vehement attacks against the "coup d'etat" and "liquidation of the communists" supposedly being prepared by Solidarity.
The leadership of the bureaucracy, whatever its weaknesses, understood from this moment that it could take the risk of pushing to a test of strength on the terrain, in the conditions, and at the time it judged the most favorable. On Saturday, December 12, at midnight, at a time when workers were not in their factories, the PUWP and its generals brutally silenced the working class.
C. The bureaucratic apparatus, to ensure its own survival, has reorganized its monopoly of power by unambiguously basing itself on the paramilitary forces of the specialized army units, with backup from the conscripts. But this is not the case of the army coming onto the political scene as a third actor independent of the bureaucracy and the PUWP.
The top officer corps represents the hardline nucleus of the party. All the generals and colonels are members of the party, and the overwhelming majority are graduates of Soviet military academies. General Jaruzelski is the first secretary of the PUWP, the party assigned the leading role in Polish society by the terms of the Polish constitution. Florian Siwicki, general and deputy minister of defense was nominated to the Political Bureau on October 28. Miroslaw Milewski, today responsible for internal security, is also a member of the Political Bureau. Czeslaw Kiszczak, head of the Polish internal intelligence services, is chief of the "operational units" of the security services and is a collaborator of General Jaruzelski in the PUWP leadership. Apart from this, since spring 1981 the role of the military in the PUWP "cadres section" was extended.
This interpenetration between the summit of the PUP and the higher levels of the army rules out any idea of the emergence of a "third force." Nevertheless, the present change in the bureaucracy's system of domination expresses the PUWP's very deepgoing loss of legitimacy and the extreme rupture between the bureaucratic caste and the honest" forces of the nation. This is a sign of a new stage in the crisis of the bureaucratic dictatorship.
For the Soviet Union the imposition of martial law by the national militia and army to try to get the situation back to "normal" is the less costly solution in every respect. It is true that the autonomy of the Polish military may be only apparent. But this appearance has a real importance on the political level, nationally and internationally.
6. A. The Military Council of National Salvation's immediate objective was to break Solidarity as a nationally organized apparatus — an apparatus which furthermore was little prepared politically and therefore organizationally for this type of showdown — and to sufficiently intimidate a rather broad sector of the population to persuade it that any resistance is in vain. Furthermore, it propagated the idea that the military crackdown was the last chance of avoiding a direct Soviet intervention.
The illusion existed, even inside Solidarity, that the Polish army would only "loudly bang its fist down on the table," without changing the situation very much. Now all the measures decreed since Saturday, December 12, at midnight brutally prove the contrary:
• mass roundup of Solidarity leaders and militants, the majority of whom were arrested at home;
• arrests of intellectuals and students;
• Rural Solidarity, the student organization, the journalists association, and even the Polish Hunters Association have been suspended or dissolved like Solidarity:
• three Catholic organizations have been suspended;
• the offices of Solidarity and other organizations have been ransacked;
• urban, interurban and international telecommunications have been cut;
• only the party (Trybuna Ludu) and the army (Zolnierz Wolnosci) newspapers are authorized to appear;
• radio and television has been put in the hands of the police;
• travel within the country and the sales of petrol have been forbidden;
• the key sectors of the economy are militarized and workers there will be subject to martial law.
The bureaucracy was counting on the effect of surprise and directly using only the repressive paramilitary forces closely integrated into the distribution mechanisms of the privileges of the bureaucratic regime. These troops, from the militia to the frontier guards, form a body of 350,000 government or uniformed employees.
It has added to the directly repressive instruments the resources that grant it control of the supply of basic necessities (food and clothes). It has established obligatory labor. Thus all those who do not have a "normal" job must present themselves to the authorities and accept the post assigned to them. It is a means of tracking down those who had a job as a fulltimer (there were 40,000 in Solidarity). It has introduced, under the cover of the financial autonomy of workplaces, a relationship between productivity and wages, in order to undermine workers' resistance and sow divisions.
The management of workplaces, aided by military commissars, are organizing the handing in of everybody's passes, allowing for mass redundancies, and then selective rehiring. In the civil service and factories salaried personnel have to sign loyalty statements in order to keep or to get a job. Trials in the Stalinist tradition are being held where the justification for the charges does not have to be argued and where there is no appeal of sentence.
B. Given the still limited degree of centralization, self-management bodies, and the lack of political clarity of the leading circles of Solidarity, a rapid and coordinated response to such a series of measures was impossible. In effect the military crackdown itself made full use of these weaknesses. However, the spontaneous reaction of the Polish workers, who defined the military takeover of the country by the Polish armed forces as an occupation, expresses the political failure of the attempt to justify the military crackdown as a "nationalist" solution.
The extraordinary spirit of the mass movement and the gut rejection of the restoration of bureaucratic order led to a strong semispontaneous wave of strikes and a very broad resistance:
• more than fifteen days of strikes and occupations in the mines of Silesia (a Solidarity stronghold with 1.5 million members);
• strikes, occupations, and clashes in hundreds of workplaces and in the most important towns: Warsaw, Katowice, Gdansk, Lublin, Wroclaw, Lodz, Radom, Poznan, Elblag, Gdynia, Torun, etc.
• appeals for a general strike by the vanguard workplace committees (Ursus, Huta Warszawa, Warski Naval shipyards in Szczecin) and by five members of the Solidarity National Committee (KK) on December 14. They declared:
"In line with the resolutions adopted on December 4 at Radom and by the KK on December 12 at Gdansk . . . we respond to violence with the general strike.••. No trade union, no organization can allow its leaders to become victims of repression, deprived of their rights, nor tolerate restrictions on citizens rights, without reacting. • . In taking this strike action we recall the need to show discipline and calm, to respect state property, and to avoid as much as possible unnecessary confrontations with the security forces."
• students and intellectuals who refuse to compromise with the regime showing their opposition (demonstrations, defiance of the militia, distribution of leaflets to commemorate the 1970 struggles).
To neutralize a certain entrenchment of the resistance, the Military Council of National Salvation did not hesitate to lock out the workers at the Warski shipyards in Szczecin and the Gdansk yards until January 4.
After a first phase of active resistance a passive resistance is taking shape. Workers try to use the control they do have over the productive apparatus to the maximum in order to hold in check the "normalization" plans being carried out on the point of the bureaucracy's bayonets. This resistance aims to keep slowly ticking over a part of the economic machine that the military commissars want to get on full steam again. It seeks to isolate those who collaborate with the regime and prove that this productive apparatus — formally the people's property — cannot function at all satisfactorily against the express will of the workers.
Within the resistance Solidarity uses its traditions of organization and struggle at the workplace level, such as the thousands of ingenious subterfuges of passive resistance used for years by the workers (scrupulous application of rules, especially when they are absurd, respect for the limitations put on all workingclass initiative). Such resistance becomes a factor of permanent disorder which profoundly undermines the image of a regime that wishes to inspire order itself.
This opposition can facilitate a myriad of actions favoring the setting up of clandestine networks, fueling in this way the total discredit of the bureaucratic caste, of what social base it has, and freeing a space for action in the factories and the churches.
The "spirit of Solidarity" - according to the terms used in the underground appeals made by the trade-union — is already apparent in the support organized for the prisoners and their families, which forms an open opposition to the military-bureaucratic dictatorship. Direct actions against the militia, certainly of a limited character, could also develop, particularly since these are motivated by the spirit of the "struggle against the occupying forces."
This type of passive resistance on such a broad scale cannot last beyond a certain time. The constraints of daily social and economic life will weaken the solid front of hostility to the regime and in the long term diminish the intensity and breadth of the resistance. It is not, however, totally excluded that this resistance could be combined with some fragmented explosions of mass action against the extremely tough social and economic measures which have just been added to the martial-law decrees. But any open, broad-based mobilizations against the regime will require a minimum of overall perspective.
Whatever may be the various phases of the resistance, there can however be no doubt that the very breadth of the movement of workers organized in Solidarity means that it cannot be totally liquidated. A whole generation of young workers, students, and intellectuals have just gone through a relatively long experience of organization and struggle. Furthermore, the four years' preparation for this struggle — which can essentially be summarized in the history of the Committee for Social Selfdefense (KOR) and the workers networks linked to Robotnik (The Worker) bulletins — have acquired a tremendous prestige in the light of Solidarity's emergence.
Thus, beyond the demoralization which can affect many militants, there is no doubt that underground resistance and reorganization will develop and a continuity will be assured. In the course of new phases of struggle against the bureaucratic dictatorship new cadres will come forward. Political clarification will take place. This is a significant difference with what happened in Hungary after 1956 and in Czechoslovakia after 1968. Particularly since the level of economic crisis affecting all the bureaucratic regimes today is unprecedented - without comparison in the 1960s and 1970s.
7. After more than three weeks of martial law, of absolute control over the means of communication and all the resources of the state apparatus, the Military Council of National Salvation has not succeeded in winning over any Solidarity leaders. It finds itself constrained to conceal the names of the few lowlevel leaders with whom it claims to be negotiating! No results have been obtained despite all the pressure exerted on Walesa - detained in order to "discuss the future of the independent and self-managed trade-union movement within the framework of constitutional principles."
No sector of the intelligentsia has yet agreed to back the "savior of the nation" role the dictatorship claims for itself. The latter has not even attempted to organize psuedosupport demonstrations - one of the cherished customs of the Stalinists!
On the other hand, the diehards of all types have found nothing better than to beat the chauvinist drum with the launching of a new anti-Semitic campaign on a large scale. Of course the "orchestrators" of such a campaign are found at the top level of the regime, in persons of Olszowski and Gornicki, spokesperson and adviser for General Jaruzelski. Everything is tried to end the unprecedented isolation of the regime - the chasm between those who "are saving the nation" and . .. the nation itself.
It is clear that the regime is in a dead end, but the essential thing has been saved - its power has been safeguarded, the basis of the bureaucracy's privileges. The bureaucracy will make every effort in the coming phase to get out of this impasse, while maintaining the most rigorous police-style control over the country.
It is counting on the aid the Catholic hierarchy can contribute to carry out this difficult task. The bureaucracy also expects a very understanding attitude from its imperialist creditors, now that "order is restored." The Military Council of National Salvation is making numerous declarations on its determination not to renounce the fundamental principles of the democratization process." This ought to assure the moderate approach of the Vatican and its Polish acolytes and politically facilitate the task of West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
In the new conditions established by martial law, the Military Council of National Salvation is trying once more to divide the workers — to get a cosmetic agreement and relaunch an "independent" trade union. . . but independent of course of Solidarity's experiences. Given the very needs of the functioning of the socioeconomic system that exists in Poland, it will attempt to create the conditions for a political hegemony that does not directly and openly depend on the brute force of bayonets.
Furthermore, in the medium term the Kremlin's leaders cannot lightly tolerate a situation where the second army of the Warsaw Pact is seen to be absorbed by more directly political tasks, whose demoralizing effects are likely and which will consequently limit its operational capacity in the framework of this pact.
However, a modification in the present mechanisms of domination and a reorganization of the political scene would require a series of preconditions that are very difficult to achieve:
A. A real stabilization of the party - whether it is still called the PUP or some other name, and a minimum of credibility for this formation is necessary. The imposition of martial law and repression against the workers has led to a new hemorrhage of its worker members. The battle being carried out by the ex-"forum" hardliners is not only against Solidarity militants but also against all PUWP members who were "soft" on or collaborated with the independent trade union. The purge is proceeding at full steam. The reconstruction of the party is likely to be painful.
Moreover there is a systematic effort to reactivate the party structures, to publicly project it again, and to balance up the distribution of leading public roles between the generals and Mieczyslaw Rakowski, Hieronim Kubiak, Kazimierz Barcikowski, and Stefan Olszowski. On Wednesday, December 16, Olszowski already announced publicly that the party "supports these energetic measures which were indispensable to save the socialist regime.
Party members are participating in "citizen's committees for national salvation" — i.e., which cooperate with the police. In fact, the only party perspective seems to be to embody the restoration of order. Through that it will achieve legal status but not legitimacy.
B. Any even slightly viable project of political recomposition would require a very much better economic situation. It is precisely on this level that the crackdown has to facilitate the imposition of a vast austerity plan, resulting in unemployment, price increases, reduction of social spending, and increased work discipline. The first decrees of the Military Council of National Salvation indicate such an orientation. The economic situation itself foments a permanent discontent. In this context, an "independent" trade union, tightly controlled and co-managing the regime's plans, would not meet a positive response among most workers.
Indeed, the other facet of such an economic reform," in addition to austerity for the masses, would consist in reserving the biggest part of the planned bonuses for the directors and the managerial or administrative staff. Through this method the present leaders could try to win themselves a social base and present themselves as the partisans of economic renewal. But once again this perspective only has any chance of success to the extent that the resistance greatly declines and/or demoralization takes an extensive hold. Only then could they end police-style social control and the hypercentralization of the present regime, which is contradictory with the internal logic of a Janos Kadar-type economic policy (which, besides, did not get off the ground immediately after 1956 in Hungary).
Finally, if the present supply difficulties and refusal of the peasants to release agricultural and animal products were to persist, the requisition of agricultural products would be necessary. The chasm would widen even further between the peasantry and the regime. At the same time its hopes to win a sector of the peasantry through various concessions (better prices for the produce bought, preferential deliveries of fertilizers, etc.) would be dashed.
C. The church hierarchy remains one of the master cards which General Jaruzelski must keep in his hand. It has already been congratulated for its moderating role. The military crackdown has put the church leadership in a delicate situation. Since 1956 they have obtained a series of advantages and privileges (money, infrastructure, printing presses, their own organizations, increased possibilities of educating and influencing the population).
For the Vatican, the Polish church represents a stronghold and a bridgehead in the Eastern European countries. In Rome, just as in Warsaw, there is a fear that a more active workers' resistance would lead to violent confrontations and that the Soviets would intervene even more in "Polish affairs" - thereby cancelling out all the concessions.
This is the material basis for Polish Archbishop Josef Glemp's constant search for a compromise solution. But compromise is not near at hand, not only because the regime does not have a great deal to offer, but because this contains a risk of rupture with the workers the church influences. The tensions inside the church reflect this, even more today since the churches are used as places of organization and resistance.
It was certainly easier to declare martial law than it is to win the war of "normalization." Never before has a bureaucracy had to reorganize its system of power at all levels and on such a vast scale — in the workplaces, at government level, and in the regions.
8. A. The imposition of martial law has struck a serious blow against the whole of the international proletariat. Since August 1980 the struggle of millions of workers in Solidarity was one of the most advanced examples of proletarian struggle on a world scale. It represents an unprecedented experience in the history of the struggle against bureaucratic dictatorships and in the workers" march toward a real socialization of the means of production and of social resources.
The economic and social disaster in Poland before the upsurge of workers' mobilizations already illustrated how much the bureaucratic caste undermined the basis for the construction of a socialist society. It made worse all the basic imbalances of the economy: between industry and energy resources, between industry and agriculture, and between material production and social services.
The bureaucracy accentuated dependency in relation to the international capitalist economy and thereby incurred an enormous debt. Incompetency, waste, corruption, generalized irresponsibility, and social inequality were its hallmarks. Genuine fiefdoms under the control of particular bureaucratic cliques appeared in industry. Planning could only suffer as a consequence.
All this resulted in a large-scale crisis that was evident from 1979. General Jaruzelski and Leonid Brezhnev, by eliminating all the democratic rights won by the Polish masses, by outlawing trade unions and strikes, have once more proved their savage resolve to block all progress toward socialism.
In this struggle between a bureaucratic government and the masses we have been, and we are, totally shoulder to shoulder with the masses. The workers state was not undergoing any imperialist assault to restore capitalism. No solid social force wanted to reintroduce private appropriation of the social surplus, and it would not even have been able to put such a scheme into practice, confronted with millions of workers who wished to directly manage the factories.
On the contrary, the bureaucracy and its dictatorship, which has usurped power within the workers state, was under attack. The proletariat was tending to radically challenge the power of a privileged minority — defended by a repressive apparatus. Eliminating the bureaucratic caste could only reinforce and not weaken collective property, reinforce and not weaken the workers on an international scale. Liquidating the bureaucratic regime would have demonstrated in practice, in the eyes of the masses throughout the world, that the economy and society could be managed by all the workers and not by a bureaucratic minority in an arbitrary and authoritarian way. A substantial step would have been taken toward the real socialization of the economy, toward socialism.
This is what basically explains the "sacred alliance" formed by Wall Street and the Kremlin. The Polish workers were preventing them from cosily coexisting. A stop had to be put to their extremist pretentions!
The Kremlin is only too happy to see its advice applied so diligently. It has not been forced to participate directly and massively in the repression. The price of such participation would have been very high, both politically and financially. General Jaruzelski and his fellow bureaucrats, by trying to break the back of Solidarity, are not just defending their own interests but also those of all the bureaucratic regimes. The sensitivity of the Soviet press to the "Appeal to the workers of Eastern Europe" particularly showed this:
"At the Solidarity congress at Gdansk the antisocialist forces, prompted by the American secret services, have announced a crusade against socialism in Poland and throughout the socialist community by adopting the infamous appeal to the peoples of Eastern Europe" (Pravda, December 25, 1981). East German party chief Erich Honecker confessed, "The evolution of events in Poland during the last months provoked growing concern among us communists...
The self-defense reflex of the bureaucracy is in top gear. Caste solidarity is total. This is what they dare to call "proletarian internationalism"!
In recent years the Cuban leadership has been involved in actively supporting the revolutions unfolding in Central America. It continues to support Angola against the South African racists' large-scale military operations. However in the case of Poland, the Cuban daily press has faithfully taken up the angle of approach favored by the Soviet agencies.
It has thus given its support to "the struggle" carried out by the Military Council of National Salvation "against the chaos and counterrevolutionary elements to safeguard socialist structures" (Granma, December 19, 1981). It presents Solidarity as being manipulated by imperialism.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua has followed the Cuban leadership in this line.
These explanations and doctored information can only miseducate the Cuban and Nicaraguan working class and vanguard on what proletarian internationalism is. They can only reinforce the blocking of any progress toward real socialist democracy. This orientation will have serious repercussions on the political consciousness of the workers vanguard throughout Latin America. It will create obstacles for the effective defense of the Central American revolution - as well as the defense of the Cuban workers state - against imperialist aggression.
B. The cynicism of imperialist forces confronted with the imposition of martial law has rarely been equaled by them in the past.
On Monday December 14 Le Figaro stated: "General Jaruzelski could not act any differently than he did during Saturday night and Sunday morning. It is the last gamble for an independent Poland." The Washington Post echoed this sentiment on the same day: "General Jaruzelski has tried a final effort to avoid confrontation. It is the last chance for Poland." A West German government spokesperson stated: "Concerning the Polish situation, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, considers it necessary to affirm that the important thing is that the Polish crisis is under control.'**
Poland's $27 billion debt to the West, of which $16 billion is to private banks, is the serious motive behind the imperialist leaderships" support for the "restoration of order" line. The 460 banks concerned had already called with some insistence for the implementation of a vast austerity program and suggested at the same time a reassertion of control. In their opinion the Jaruzelski solution allows them to have a "responsible" partner to negotiate with in a "responsible country." The Wall Street Journal unambiguously spelled it out: "Most bankers think that an authoritarian government is good because it imposes discipline."
This discipline is "necessary" so that the imperialist banks can continue to transfer a part of the resources produced by the Polish workers into their own accounts. In fact, the Military Council of National Salvation did not waste time in responding to the hopes of the imperialist bankers and governments — dozens of millions of dollars have been poured immediately into their pockets! This money has more weight than all those democratic rights! Besides, why should the imperialists defend the right to strike and trade unions when they are everywhere unleashing austerity programs and continually seeking to attack the free activity of trade unions?
Thus a common theme runs through all the declarations of bourgeois and imperialist forces: the Polish workers have gone too far — they do not know how to bow before the demands of austerity! In this sense they bear responsibility for this military crackdown! Order and discipline in Poland is an order and discipline required, they claim, by innate economic laws in general and repayment of the debt to Western banks in particular.
The imperialist powers, and more specifically the United States, are going to make full use of the bureaucratic counterrevolution of the Polish and Soviet bureaucracy.
• Washington, using the pretext of the necessity of resisting "Soviet intervention" and "totalitarianism," is going to profit from the international conjuncture to increase its aid to the bloody dictatorships in Central America, and to reinforce the coordination of the counterrevolutionary intervention in El Salvador and against the revolutions in Nicaragua and Grenada.
Ronald Reagan illustrates this imperialist policy when he calls for the definitive lifting of all restrictions on military aid to the Turkish dictatorship — a NATO stronghold — at the same time as he redoubles his demagogy on the defense of "freedom" . . . when it is in the opposition camp.
Israel, just as in 1956, has coldly used the climate created by the declaration of martial law in Poland to annex the Golan Heights.
• An imperialist campaign has been launched by various imperialist governments to justify their remilitarization drive — with the social spending cuts that go hand in hand. The Mitterrand-Mauroy government took advantage of it to announce the production of a seventh nuclear submarine. The Polish generals, the PUWP, and the Kremlin have offered the opportunity dreamed of by the reactionaries to try to disparage the antimilitarist mobilizations that had developed at the same time as the upsurge of the Polish masses.
• Finally, the bourgeoisie will use every weapon it can on the ideological and political levels to try, with the invaluable support of the trade-union bureaucracy and reformist forces, to trap the working class in the following dilemma: either austerity with "democracy," or run the risk of a "totalitarian society" that also imposes austerity measures. The bourgeoisie will use this latter argument to increase its antisocialist and anticommunist propaganda.
Simply evoking the arguments which the imperialist forces construct on the basis of the Polish events is enough to indicate the extent to which the military crackdown is against the interests of the international proletariat.
The anti-working-class choir of the imperialists was in harmony. But in a context marked by the economic crisis and the developments of the colonial revolution, this "Polish crisis" has caused a new exacerbation of interimperialist contradictions. The West German bourgeoisie, at the head of the European imperialist powers, is resisting an escalation of the "cold war" which would endanger its economic interests tied up with the "peoples democracies" and the Soviet Union. It immediately put itself forward as the main provider of economic aid to Poland. It proclaims itself the most resolute defender of the maintenance of the postwar agreements on Europe made between the Kremlin bureaucracy and imperialism. Basically, these agreements aim to maintain capitalism in Western Europe and the hold of the Kremlin bureaucracy over the "peoples democracies."
9. The reactions of the Social Democratic and Communist parties to the defeat inflicted on the Polish working masses can only be grasped through the prism of the interlinked crisis of imperialism and Stalinism.
Beyond their very different positions with regard to the imposition of martial law, the reformist apparatuses have always expressed either the most extreme reticence or more or less open opposition to the struggles of the Polish workers. The dynamic of the unfolding struggle in Poland challenged too radically both their bureaucratic domination over the trade-union movement and their policy of capitulation to bourgeois demands for austerity. Whether they take a "prudent" position or one of opposition, one can detect, in a certain sense, a solidarity between bureaucrats.
Furthermore the reformists will use the defeat of the Polish workers to warn off workers against a central confrontation with the class enemy which inevitably results in the establishment of a "strong state." They will justify their policy of class collaboration in this way.
Faced with the imposition of martial law against the Polish workers, the Social Democratic parties of West Germany, Austria, and Great Britain lined up fundamentally behind the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisies.
The Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky declared for example: "I think the declaration of martial law in Poland is a last attempt to avoid the worst." The close relationship between Austrian capitalism, its state sector, and the markets of East European countries is the basis for this way of ratifying the crackdown and defending the status quo.
Some of the protests made by the Social Democratic leaders (in Italy, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and Switzerland) are limited essentially to proclaiming the defense of democratic rights in general. They avoid putting forward the need for active solidarity with Solidarity as an independent and self-managed trade union. They thus blur over any class content within the solidarity movement and swamp it in a campaign that the bourgeoisie can use to its profit. They refuse to use their resources to really mobilize workers, to take many initiatives, and to break the isolation that Solidarity has been plunged into.
The "official" Social Democratic left wing, as Tony Benn has shown in Great Britain and the left of the Socialist Party (SPD) in West Germany, was often the most muted in their response - basically accepting the political framework imposed by their apparatuses.
In France, however, the pressure of the workers, the extreme left's capacity of initiative, the competitive relationship between the CP and the SP, and the way in which the SP and French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) leaderships, in their own specific interests, have stimulated the movement, have meant that the solidarity movement has taken on, in a real mass way, a class mobilization in support of the Polish working masses.
The powerful rise of the political revolution in Poland and the launching of the bureaucratic conterrevolution have resulted in a new stage in the crisis of the Communist parties which had already been fomented in most countries by internal developments in the class struggle. Centrifugal tendencies inside the CPs of all the capitalist countries have been exacerbated. The contradiction between their reference to the Soviet Union and their insertion into a national reality has become extremely intense.
The play of these different factors - in the particular conditions of each country, the historic tradition and direction of these CPs, and their relationship with the Social Democratic parties — means that a spectrum of positions have been taken by different Communist parties. These different lines are also expressed inside each CP, as in France, Italy, and Spain.
At one extreme are the positions of the French, Portuguese, West German, and Danish CPs. Fundamentally they support the imposition of martial law, which is supposed to have "permitted Socialist Poland to escape the mortal danger of the counterrevolution." It is an apparent paradox, but in fact there is a convergence between the difficulties of the Soviet bureaucracy and their own organizational interests when some of these CPs present the "exceptional measures" taken by General Jaruzelski as "the best solution to avoid a possible Russian intervention"!
Their whole line consists in publicizing General Jaruzelski's promises, particularly the "limited and temporary aspect of the restrictions on democratic rights" or the fact that the right to strike "will remain an inalienable right." According to them, any mobilization in favor of Solidarity can only "throw oil on the fire" and prevent the Military Council of National Salvation from keeping to its promises. In this framework, to demand freedom for trade-union militants and the respect of democratic rights and trade-union activity would be to "push Jaruzelski to crime." The bureaucracy of these CPs not only firmly defends the status quo, but identifies socialism and the struggle against capitalism with the policy of the ruling bureaucracy and their regimes.
At the other extreme is the position of the Italian and Spanish CPs. The former has vigorously condemned martial law in Poland, called for the freeing of political prisoners and the lifting of measures outlawing trade-union activity. It is against the "blow the coup [use of military force] represents against the very cause of socialism." When it states that it is time to "recognize that the phase of socialism opened up with the October revolution, its dynamic, has been exhausted" and links the Polish events to the policy of the Soviet Union and the internal evolution of the Soviet regime, the Italian CP is going a long way in its conflict with Moscow.
However, the line of this CP exists in the framework of a "historic compromise" for Poland between all the "fundamental components of Polish society. " In its opinion it was necessary to carry the "renewal line forward more firmly and coherently." Therefore it is not a declaration in favor of the democratic power of the workers, but rather for the "co-responsibility" of workers within the structure of the regime, alongside the PUWP, the church, and the petty-bourgeois forces (peasants). This line fits logically into a policy of "international dé- tente." of the status quo. It results in an open appeal for collaboration with Social Democratic forces in West Germany, France, and Scandinavia, certain of whom openly accept the crime committed in Poland.
The Italian CP's position on Poland - whatever the elements which aid opening a thoroughgoing debate in the workers movement on the question of Stalinism - remains the faithful reflection of its class collaborationist strategy. It simply tends to revalue bourgeois democracy, by relegating workers power (the October Revolution) and socialist democracy to a dead end.
The only difference in the Spanish CP's position as compared to the Italian CP is over the reference to the October Revolution. The Spanish CP leadership explicitly maintains this reference, even if in a ritual manner. This plays a role in the internal crisis of the Spanish CP. In effect this reference to the October Revolution is used as a polemical argument against the "renewal" sector (accused of being Social Democratic) and aims to neutralize the attacks from the so-called pro-Soviet sector. Furthermore, it must be pointed out that neither the Spanish CP nor the Workers Commissions (CCOO - linked to the CP) have participated in, or called for, solidarity actions in support of the Polish workers.
The form and character of the mass uprising in Poland, as well as the contradiction between the CPs and inside them, provoke similar differences inside the trade-union movement of several European countries.
The impact of the "Polish events" on the international workers' movement is interconnected with questions of anticapitalist strategy posed by the crisis, the needs of a militant solidarity movement with the revolution in Central
America, and the struggle against the remilitarization drive. It becomes an important factor in the politicization of a vanguard sector of the working class. Particularly in France it has aided the growth of an opposition, above all in the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), helping it make a step forward in its political homogeneity.
10. The international workers movement must commit itself, in a massive and united way, to a campaign of aid to the Polish workers" resistance. The slogan "Workers of the world unite" must become the motto of the movement of solidarity with Solidarity. The Polish workers struggle continues! Their difficult resistance opens a new stage in the proletarian struggle against bureaucratic totalitarianism. The working class, youth, and intellectual leaders of the political revolution are in the process of being formed in this difficult battle. As the resistance becomes more effective, so the proof will be given of the impossibility for the bureaucracy of imposing its counterrevolutionary solutions, of imposing its silence, domestically and on the international level — and in turn hope will galvanize a mass rejection of the regime by the workers.
So we must cast aside any perspective which is limited to making solidarity just a simple "homage to the magnificent past struggles of the Polish workers." burying in advance any future perspective of a rising struggle, and thus leaving the present resistance in silence and isolation! Such an approach can only play into the hands of the bureaucratic apparatuses of all types.
The Fourth International will commit all its forces to develop the solidarity campaign with the Polish proletarian masses inside the international workers movement. All those inside the workers movement who today refuse to develop this mobilization divide the working masses — in their own country and internationally.
To mobilize against the banning of Solidarity means to simultaneously support the Polish workers and to defend the political and tradeunion rights of all workers — of Turkey, Brazil, El Salvador, the Spanish state, or Romania. To call for the lifting of martial law, immediate freedom for all prisoners, the elimination of all restrictions on democratic rights, for the right of meeting and of organization, is to defend these liberties against the attacks of imperialism and the totalitarian bureaucrats. To organize active solidarity with the Polish workers today is to facilitate and prepare the same active support of the international workers movement with the mighty struggle being fought by the Salvadoran people against the military-Christian Democratic junta and U.S. imperialism! These are the most elementary lessons of proletarian internationalism!
• All the links that have been forged over the past months between the independent and self-managed trade union of the Polish workers and the workers movement of the capitalist countries must be used to break the isolation in which General Jaruzelski wants to swamp the Polish masses. To send material, food, and medical aid remains an immediate task. That should permit links to be renewed, to pass on information, and to let the Polish workers know that their class brothers and sisters are their best supporters and not the imperialist bankers who welcomed the military crackdown with such relief!
This aid, if it is channelled through bodies independent of the Polish state (the church is the only legal independent institution of that type) can facilitate the reconstruction of links between Solidarity militants and sectors of the population. By doing everything possible to send trade-union commissions of inquiry to find out about the repression meted out to Solidarity militants, the workers movement can unmask the hypocrisy of both the bureaucrats. who speak of "respect for liberty" and the spokespersons of imperialism who shut their eyes to the fate of trade-union militants in Poland. • just as they do for Turkey.
• Within the workers movement itself, revolutionary Marxists must systematically explain the aims and actions of Solidarity. The democratic way in which the trade union functioned, the broad and public way in which its main political positions were discussed, its debates on self-management, and the experiences of workers and social control must become the property of the international workers movement. This is the most effective way to undermine "bureaucratic solidarity," which has been expressed so often since 1980, either in the form of calculated indifference from the tradeunion leaderships, or open hostility, or again in a way that deforms the workers objectives. The latter are artificially forced into the framework of class-collaborationist projects defended by the reformist apparatuses (comanagement, "historic compromise").
By doing everything to build this workingclass solidarity on the basis of class unity and independence, it will be possible to partly defeat the attempts of imperialism to use Polish events to reinforce its ideological and political positions.
• Revolutionary Marxists are opposed to all proposals for a boycott by the imperialist coun tries of Poland or the Soviet Union. Such a campaign can only play into the hands of the large-scale anticommunist political maneuvers of Ronald Reagan, who is trying to camouflage his criminal policy in Central America and elsewhere.
Supporting a campaign of "sanctions" which are effective, means in practice calling on the big banks and imperialist powers to squeeze Poland even more, with all the consequences that result for the Polish masses. A boycott does not affect the privileges of the bureaucracy. How can anyone believe that the revolt of the workers necessarily increases when they experience even greater misery?
Worse, such a campaign of "sanctions" ends up sowing the most mystifying illusions on the nature and role of the imperialist banks. Putting pressure on the banks to "help" Polish workers is set as the objective for the workers movement!
Finally any perspective of this type will facilitate, in the last analysis, the policy of the CP leaderships. The Soviet bureaucracy will mount a nationalist campaign and play the card of the "besieged fortress." It will produce the isolation of the Polish people, which is precisely what General Jaruzelski wants. History has proven that the development of Stalinism has been favored by the isolation of the Soviet Union.
• The Fourth International closely links its solidarity campaign with Solidarity with its efforts to stimulate mobilizations against the remilitarization drive, against NATO's policy of aggression, and against the criminal initiatives of U.S. imperialism, the real warmonger, in Central America and the Caribbean.
Within this perspective, the unity of interest of the working class on a world scale is crystal clear. Any reticence in giving support to the Polish workers can only hold back and divide the mobilization against nuclear rearmament in Europe, for a "Nuclear-Free Europe from Portugal to Poland" and against imperialist aggression in Central America. In the same way, any abstention or opposition — as we see among the Social Democratic parties — with regard to the mobilization against NATO or in support of the revolutionary struggle of the people of Nicaragua, Guatemala, or El Salvador can only weaken the unity and breadth of support for the resistance struggle of the Polish masses.
The building and strengthening of an international revolutionary organization, the Fourth International, represents, inside the proletarian vanguard, the conscious effort necessary for the accomplishment of all these tasks.
Solidarity with Solidarity!
Down with the bureaucracy's military dictatorship!
Freedom for all political prisoners, free all trade unionists, intellectuals, and students!
Reestablish all political, trade-union, and civil rights!
Long live the international solidarity of the workers of all countries with all liberation struggles, in defense of all the exploited and oppressed, which forms a single, united struggle for the socialist world of tomorrow!