"They are the anti-socialists."

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SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1986 13 form workers' defense guards in the factories and had access to arms. They planned to form units of Solidarnosc in the Polish army and to call for free elections to the Sjem, the Polish parliament, together with federations of workers' councils. This constituted a bid for state power.

But martial law took place before the workers could go over to the offensive. Many leaders of the Polish workers' movement like Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuron advocated a "limited revolution" and a "historic compromise" with Poland's bureaucratic caste. Precious time was lost debating strategy and tactics.

The military junta, however, did not vacillate and sent out the tanks to crush the workers. There was no compromise possible with the Polish bureaucracy. The dictatorial regime, like its capitalist counterparts in the West, has but one objective-the demobilization of the working class. They will alternate between concessions and repression in pursuit of this constant aim.

Even with so advanced a workers' Ralph Schoenman is the former director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. Immediately after the declaration of martial law in Poland, he was one of the coordinators of Workers and Artists for Solidarity, an organization that sponsored national meetings of trade unionists, socialists, and intellectuals in support of Solidarnosc.

At the founding congress of Polish Solidarnosc in September 1981, Professor Edward Lipinski, one of the founders of the Workers Self-Manage -ment Committee (KOR) and a leading adviser of Solidarnosc, explained the meaning of the struggle of the Polish working class for socialist democracy.

Lipinski, who died earlier this year at the age of 98, was given a standing ovation by the 900 delegates, who represented 10 million workers, when he said:

"I have been a socialist since 1906. The defense of socialism is a question of principles.

"They [the Stalinist bureaucrats at the helm of the Polish state] accuse us of being 'anti-socialist.' But who is threatening socialism in Poland? Who are the anti-socialists and anti-revolutionaries?

"Socialism was to be a better economy than capitalism. It was to be greater freedom than under capitalism. It was to be the liberation of the working class. It was to be the creation of conditions in which everyone is given an opportunity to develop fully and have unlimited access to the treasures of culture and civilization.

"However, they created a socialism with an inefficient economy, a wasteful economy. They created a system that has led to an economic collapse unparalleled in the last 100 or 200 years. Theirs is a socialism of waste, of prisons, of censorship and police. Their socialism has been destroying us for 30 years.

"For me, socialism is the struggle for economic democracy, for the collective and social ownership of the means of production. For me, socialism is the struggle for workers' democratic control of the factories. It is the struggle for political freedom, for the abolition of censorship, for the possibility of the full development of the Polish nation. These are the goals of true socialism.

"Today there are no significant forces in Poland who want to reprivatize the means of production...But there are anti-socialist and anti-revolutionary forces. In my opinion, it is their socialism that is anti-socialist and anti-revolutionary. They are the anti-socialists." martial law in Turkey shortly before.

Those in the United States who sought to reveal the counterrevolutionary cooperation between the imperialist rulers and the Polish bureaucrats will be edified by The Washington Post revelation on June 16, 1986, that Washington had advance notice of the timing and plans for Gen. Jaruzelski's martial-law putsch.

Reagan withheld this information from the American public and, of course, from the Polish people. As with gangster-run trade unions, the ruling class has a consonance of interests with those who usurp workers' power through the instrument of a coercive state.

And just recently, at the time the Polish regime was denouncing the formation of the Provisional Council, U.S. Con -gressman Stephen Solarz traveled to Poland, where he praised the Jaruzelski government and called on the United States to show "flexibility of our own."

Simultaneously, The New York Times urged upon the released Solidarnosc leaders a "new dialogue" with the regime. No doubt, both American leaders and the Polish regime hope to defuse the growing boldness with which the underground movement has posed the question of future struggle in Poland.

The concerns of the Polish regime and of its patrons in Washington are grounded in the reality of the permanent hold of Solidarnosc on the consciousness of Polish workers and the inability of the Jaruzelski government to crush them.

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While the Reagan administration recently lowered its projections for growth in the economy from 3.4 percent to 2.9 percent for 1986, it still conveyed the impression that the 43-month-long expansion would continue through 1987.

How accurate are the Reagan economists and what is the basis for their optimism?

The Reagan administration predicts that about 2 million jobs will be created in the next year, interest prospects Economy bananas, and metals. Since markets in virtually all Third