'glasnost' to ...In short, Gorbachev is in 'perestroika' 'glasnost.'

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SOCIALIST ACTION SUPPLEMENT 7 food subsidies and said that it had become "a major problem how to get out of this mess." This messy problem for the bureaucrats—in reality one of the major social achievements of the socialist revolution-costs approximately $91 billion a year.

Another policy shift that has caused great concern among Soviet workers is the gradual introduction of unemployment.

According to Soviet economist Vladimir Kostakov, Gorbachev's economic "modernization" program could result in the loss of between 13 million and 19 million jobs within the next 10 years.

In June 1987, the government adopted a law stipulating that all laid-off workers will obtain the wage of an average Soviet worker (approximately 200 rubles) for three months. Those who cannot find a job in the same branch of industry will be "recycled," that is, retrained for another job.

But Kostakov warned that the service sector and other industrial branches might not be able to absorb the large numbers of unemployed manual workers. "We are already experiencing difficulties with reemployment of the released workforce," Kostakov stated.

Indeed, Gorbachev no longer acknowledges the Soviet state's historic responsibility in assuring everyone a job. Advocates of perestroika, in fact, continually refer to unemployment as a "natural" part of life.

Profit or planned economy?

But the negative impact of perestroika is not limited to the standard of living of the Novosti-Sipa altogether with genuine forms of soviet democracy. This would more rationally and equitably determine production for social needs. [See accompanying article on soviet democracy.] Reorganizing agriculture Bureaucratic mismanagement of the economy is probably most acute in the countryside. Peasants neither have a sufficient quantity of equipment in good running order nor a sufficient quantity of desirable consumer products. This eliminates two key incentives for high productivity.

Why should peasants produce more if there are not enough quality goods flowing to the countryside?

Gorbachev thinks discovered contract as long as he without earning it."

This statement by Gorbachev, in addition to being condescending, places the blame for low productivity in the wrong place. The major problem stifling production in the Soviet Union is not the workers-but the parasitic bureaucracy that rules the country. This is a privileged social layer that has amassed great material benefits through its monopoly on political power.

Risks of agrarian policy Production of foodstuffs should be planned according to the democratically decided needs of the population. The primary use of the profit motive in agriculture runs the same risks as those already incurred in industry.

The result of these hallucinations is that the Stalinist bureaucracy is cutting aid to Nicaragua, Angola, Cuba, Vietnam, and other liberation fighters-using them as poker chips to deal with imperialism.

Although this is the same essential foreign policy Moscow has followed for over 60 years, it is an even greater counterrevolutionary threat when combined with increased reliance by the Soviet Union on the capitalist world market.

Political revolution

It would be a widely different world had the socialist revolutions spread from Russia, as the Bolsheviks expected. But that did not happen. Instead, a political counterrevolution occurred, with Stalin at its head.

Today, the heirs of Stalin still rule over the workers, parasitically feeding on the gains of the 1917 revolution. The bureaucratic degeneration of the first victorious socialist revolution was the result of the tragic isolation of the Soviet Union due to the delay in the world revolution-and not, in any sense, a logical result of Marxism.

The current Soviet misleaders— "reformists" and "hard-liners" alike-must be removed through a political revolution which preserves the anti-capitalist social character of the country. To accomplish the task of establishing genuine socialist democracy, it will be necessary to build a new communist party based on the revolutionary program defended by Lenin and Trotsky.

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Zbigniew Kowalewski and Dave Walsh (chairperson, -CAR FUNT AN NEED BOSTON seated) Sc TION cialist Actio fort im in Boston The following greetings were presented to an El Salvador solidarity meeting of 300 people in Boston on Oct. 14.

I am pleased to give greetings to this meeting. For many years, I have followed with admiration the struggles of the Central American people against imperialism and capitalism, and for national and social liberation. One year before the victory of the Sandinistas' popular revolution, in my book published in Poland, I explained the history of the struggle waged in Nicaragua by the generations of General Sandino and Carlos Fonseca.

In 1980-81, as an activist in the Polish workers' movement, Solidarnosc, I experienced the formidable force and creativity of the mass mobilizations of the workers, followed by the students and the farmers, all of whom were fighting in defense of their rights and interests against the ruling totalitarian bureaucracy.

They demonstrated their capacity to take their destiny in their own hands and to design a project of the true socialism—socialism based on the full workers' and mass democracy, on the power of the workers' councils, and on the people's self-management of the economy, the society, and the state.

I am sure that the Salvadoran workers and masses are able to organize themselves in a similar manner and to generate a similar project

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Kowalewski greets El Salvador rally