Dictator Ce Romania

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The Ceausescu clique-including his wife and family—transformed Romania's Stalinist regime into a personal dictatorship.

No one since Stalin has done more to discredit socialism, although he really had little to do with socialism. Even the Los Angeles Times admitted in an editorial: "Causescu's iron grip on government and his ruthless secret police force have less to do with socialist ideology than with raw personal power. He and a large network of relatives run Romania's government like a family business."

Ceausescu and Elena mixed aspects of the Stalinist prototype with qualities of Byzantine regimes like the 6th century bloodstained rule of Emperor Justinian I and Queen Theodora. Causescu's security group, the Securitate, answered to his direction only. The Securitate held higher priority than the army (itself the second largest in Eastern Europe) and received the best and newest equipment.

Bolstered in its loyalty by numerous privileges, the Securitate's benefits exceeded those of the Communist Party (CP). The arrests, internal exile, and executions of thousands-and the use of from one-fourth to one-third of the population as informers— are indications of the extent of political repression.

Golden supperware

Ceausescu's gaudy lifestyle made disgraced Bi East German leader Erich Honecker look like thi a pauper. Swiss banks report some $400 di: million in accounts in Causescu's name. Fr When revolutionists entered the mansions of the Causescu family, they found paint- .. di: tem nilijovFact, inst eeks tely nisS of seat. ting lize OIthat ion, the and ›wn 1 of 1alited 1 to lian heir inic heir :enday ince The ISCU the eed ed the the 'the nist aregrihipin fil fix SCI fai

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For the time being, the Lech Walesa lead- For four decades and longer, with few excepa general strike led to the resignation of top Communist Party officials but not yet to the wholesale removal of the government and central leaders of the Communist Party.

In Poland, at the other extreme, the Stalinist General Jaruzelski still rules in a coalition with openly pro-capitalist elements that, for now, have captured control over the Solidarity union leadership.

Poland's new economic measures Recent developments in Poland highlight most clearly and remarkably the course the Stalinist leaders of Eastern Europe have embarked upon to maintain their privileges, a course leading to the open restoration of capitalism at the expense of the working class.

The Mazowiecki/Walesa government today proposes deeper budget cuts and anti-working class measures than any contemplated by the Stalinist regime when it was the sole ruler less than a year ago.

This month, Poland's new crash economic program begins to take effect. Subsidies for goods and services, which last year accounted for 31 percent of public spending, will be reduced to 14 percent. Reduced subsidies will remain in just a few areashousing, public transportation, coal, bread, and low-fat milk and cheese.

Price increases of 25 percent to 50 percent each month are expected, as state enterprises lose their government support and are compelled to raise prices to survive. Coal and energy prices are expected to rise five to seven times. About 400,000 workers are expected to lose their jobs in the resulting plant closures.

The price increases and the cuts in govemment spending are expected to result in a 20 percent decrease in real income and a 5. percent decrease in industrial output. Finance Ministry officials say that the measures could push the inflation rate to nearly 1000 percent.

Hardest hit will be industrial workers. In the coal industry, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki has called upon Polish miners to work on Saturdays. The same Solidarity leaders whose "roundtable" talks with the Polish Communist Party soon led to their inclusion in the government, had previously demanded an end to the six-day workweek.

Under the joint Stalinist/Mazowiecki proposals, various state enterprises will be sold to the growing private sector, where they most likely will fall into the hands of the same Stalinist bureaucrats who previously mismanaged them.

Western bankers wait in the wings It would be a mistake to think that the Polish Stalinists have only grudgingly acquiesced to these measures. To the contrary, these are the very same measures they sought to impose on the working class over the past decade. The Stalinists calculate that the bitter pill of austerity and unemployment will be accepted with less resistance if it is administered by those the workers still have confidence in.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund, barely waiting for the ink to dry on the newly adopted "reforms," has begun to take action in support of capitalist restoration.

IMF Managing Director Michael Camdessus has announced that a letter of intent for a $700 million standby loan agreement with Poland will be signed soon. This will open the way for additional loans of $3.2 billion to $3.5 billion and a liberal rescheduling of Poland's $40 billion debt to Western nations.

While the world capitalist community and its petty supporters in Poland are counting on the Solidarity-led government to carry out its promised austerity measures, the Polish workers have yet to be heard from.

"In the name of freedom and democracy," they are told, "you must sacrifice for your own good and the good of the nation." But many Poles are bound to ask, "Why can't we have freedom and democracy and a decent dard of living as well?sia STALIN ership, in collaboration with the Stalinist bureaucracy, has managed to reregister the Solidarity union and in so doing, ignore the mounting calls in the ranks for the convening of a democratic congress of this once powerful 10-million-member workers' organization.

As the attacks on them mount, however, the Polish workers will begin once again to rebuild their unions as well as their own political parties to defend their class interests.

Roots of economic stagnation The current crisis of the economies of the Stalinist states—which has led to their near collapse-has two major sources.

The first and most important is the historic exclusion by imperialism of Eastern Europe and the USSR from the world division of labor. In simple terms, the Stalinist states have been subjected to a virtual Worladidè embargo since their formation.

PROLETARIAT!

tions, their economies have been distorted by the need to produce all commodities with the limited resources within their own borders.

The Stalinist bureaucracy itself is the second key reason explaining the recent economic stagnation. The obvious benefits arising from a rationally planned economy (where production is organized to meet human needs as opposed to production for private profit) has been negated by the exclusion of the working class itself from the planning process.

In the Stalinist states, planning is the sole prerogative of a corrupt layer of bureaucrats who have little or no way of evaluating the merits of their decisions-other than their own enrichment.

Real socialist planning, as opposed to its Stalinist caricature, requires the direct participation of the working class through its own democratic institutions. In the USSR before Stalin, these were known as factory (continued on page 12)

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