Revolution in China: 'The first barrage'

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LOS ANGELES-On July 7, about 100 people attended a Socialist Action forum here about the uprising in China. Ralph Schoenman, Mya Shone, and Nat Weinstein spoke about their recent visit to China to assess the exact nature of the uprising. The speakers described the deteriorating conditions—unemployment, inflation, and homelessness-brought about by over a decade of economic reform.

Weinstein, co-national secretary of Socialist Action, noted that they went to China having heard reports in the U.S. press that there were general strikes in Shanghai and Beijing. In discussions with workers and students in China, the character of these strikes "We were told," Weinstein said, "that the workers organized chaotically—not through any unions, organized strike committees, or factory meetings. They organized in support of the students rather than around their own independent demands. On the other hand, the students advanced economic demands to attract the workers to support their movement.

"But independent trade unions were beginning to be organized. Our Hong Kong co-thinkers concluded that these events constituted "the first barrage" of the coming political revolution-which will see the self-mobilization of the Chinese workers reach an even higher level on the basis of their own demands."—M.D.

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Workers were pictured in the press carrying banners reading "All Power to the Peoples' Soviets." The entrenched, normally slow-moving bureaucracy was desperately concerned that the independent strike committees would develop an even broader political alternative to the government. For that reason, rapid steps were taken to settle the strike in the Siberian coalfields with an infusion of money.

Coal Industry Minister, Mikhail I. Shchadov, rushed into Mezhdurechensk carrying a pledge of $80 million in pay hikes and the promise of more local control over the mines. Other concessions included increasing the area's regular food supplies by 20 to 30 percent and more shipments of soap and washing powder.

"It looks like within these two days more attention was paid to Mezhdurechensk's problems than within the last two decades," acknowledged Sovetskaya Rossiya, the Communist Party (CPSU) Russian Federation newspaper.

Yet, despite the concessions, workers initially rejected even the pleas of strike leaders to return to work. They insisted that Gorbachev personally explain the settlement offer. Instead, he sent a personal appeal on behalf of the Supreme Soviet to end the strike.

JEWPONT Bloody baptism of workors' struggle for democracy ar subscription: $47 2 rue Richard Lenoir Montreull, France treading very carefully, in order to avoid provoking the miners.

For example, Sovietskaya Rossiya, reported that "it is a pity that objectively [the strike] gives a negative result for the economy. But can the workers be blamed for that? People who ignored these workers demands...these people are guilty."

Actually, of course, the finger should be pointed at the government itself. Most of all, perestroika's failed promises.

"People were at my throat"

Siberia and the Soviet Far East produce two-thirds of the oil and gas, 40 percent of the coal, 20 percent of the electric power, and 37 percent of the industrial timber exports.

Gorbachev last visited there in 1988 and also got an extremely cool response. His reform policies were challenged across the board. People there were "at my throat," he said on Soviet television.

He had to recognize that the "shortage of many light industry goods, and even durables, is still considerable and acute. And I felt this during these days, talking to the residents of cities, villages and workers' settlements." (Moscow News Supplement, No. 39, 1988.)

The cold shoulder Gorbachev got during his 1988 visit shook him up so much that it was considered the main factor convincing him to turn up the heat on his reforms. He made some rapid-fire political moves aimed at removing his "hard-line" opponents in the bureaucracy.

Last fall, Gorbachev called an emergency meeting of the Supreme Soviet, got himself unanimously elected president, and dumped around 33 percent of left-over central committee members from the Brezhnev period.

The costs of bureaucratic rule Even before the miners' strike in July, there were reports of a dozen wildcat strikes by miners, bus drivers, librarians and other workers protesting "pay cuts resulting from new laws that require factories to be more cost-conscious and peg workers' pay to their output." (The New York Times, July14, 1989.

Factory managers began laying off and cutting pay but did not permit workers' participation in solving the problems of mismanagement. Workers know they are being asked to pay the costs of bureaucratic rule and they are finding the price too high.

Gorbachev realizes that his pet project of market reforms has antagonized large sections of the population. He is mindful of public resentment against entrepreneurs who have become rich in private business.

The private cooperatives now charge about three times as much as state enterprises for their products and about five times as much by for services, according to a recent study by Moscow's Institute of Sociology. Two-thirds of the Muscovites queried in the study also said they cannot afford cooperative prices. (Business Week, Jan. 30, 1989.)

The government is quite alarmed. "Society will be destabilized" if the economy does not improve within the next two years, said Leonid Abalkin, Deputy Prime Minister. Other warnings are even more dire. Peoples' Congress deputy and economist Vladimir Tikhonov predicted "famine in the very near future" unless radical changes are made. (The New York Times, June 18, 1989)

Under these circumstances, the miners' became clearer. strike was no fluke.

The Soviet working class took its first giant step during the miners' strike in reclaiming its past role as political leadership for the nation.

It represented the biggest challenge to Gorbachev's economic policies so far and also showed that the workers were not yet willing to cede all their power to the revamped Congress of Soviets, where the CPSU still maintains majority control.

The most successful and powerful strike in modern Soviet history has laid the basis for a national independent union which can fight of an BOLO - OSOBREROO CAMPECTOS WAN MASTARTI to implement the self-managment perspective of the miners.

Throughout the struggle, workers' growing confidence in their own power contrasted sharply with their widening mistrust of the government. The formation of independent strike committees—one step on the road toward independent trade unions—is also only a few steps away from organizing working-class opposition parties.

Ultimately, the working class will once again create genuinely democratic worker's councils—or "soviets."

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