E. German elections reveal uneasiness over unification

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I 16 months for $4, I 11 year for $8 16 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1990 HAMBURG-On May 6, East Germans went to the polls for the second time in seven weeks. The election campaign for local city councils was marked by cautious, low-key campaigning in contrast to the media-hype spectacle of the national parliamentary elections held on March 18.

"Right now," one experienced observer commented, "East Germans feel like Little Red Riding Hood standing at the foot of Grandmother's bed." Misgivings about the costs of the pending capitalist German unification process were reflected in uneven election results.

The Social Democratic Party suffered only slight losses (0.6%) from the parliamentary elections and emerged with 21.3% of the total. The Party of Democratic Socialism (successor to the Stalinist ruling party that was swept out of power by the mass mobilizations of last fall) dropped 1.8% to a total 14.6%.

The big losers in the elections were the parties of the conservative Alliance for Germany, which heads the national government. The major group in the alliance, the CDU East (Christian Democratic Union), retained its position as strongest party with 34.4% of the vote. But it lost 6.4% compared to its total of seven weeks ago.

The big winners in the local polling were the farmers' parties. The Democratic Farmers party of Germany and the Farmers' Alliance scored only 5.7% of the votes nationally but captured between 20% and 25% in several farming areas.

(continued from page 15: “Eastern Europe on the brink as 'market reforms' clash with workers' social gains”) date in the election for president of Solidarity at the second national congress of the union. We told him of the impressions we had from our discussions with other Solidarity leaders and activists and asked him to comment.

He treated the question of foreign investment as necessary and welcome, and almost a foregone conclusion. He thought that it would become necessary to "experiment with many different forms of ownership." He said that with foreign investment will come "new forms of management, as well." These questions, he believed, were especially "complicated in the larger enterprises," and therefore it was not possible to "solve them all in advance."

Regarding the new forms of ownership, he said, "I favor a stock-ownership plan in which workers buy stock only in enterprises other than where they work." This struck us as another variation of worker ownership.

We asked him why? He explained that the worker as owner would conflict with the worker as employee and that this would divide the union and interfere with a healthy adversarial relationship between union and employer.

Working-class alternative needed Since our return to the United States, I came across a piece on Eastern Europe, focusing on Poland. It was written by AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. I don't think it is accidental that his line was almost identical to that of many of those worker leaders in Solidarity whom we interviewed.

I do not intend to imply that they are dominated by Kirkland. But the fact is that the AFL-CIO, in collaboration with U.S. governments since 1980, has played an enormous role in providing material aid to Solidarity and other forces which have emerged in opposition to Stalinism. It is therefore entirely understandable that the U.S. labor bureaucracy has gained great influence with Solidarity leaders and other opponents of Stalinism.

I will just quote Kirkland's opening paragraph to give the flavor of his position. It appeared in the May 16, 1990, San Francisco Chronicle. This newspaper noted that Kirkland was writing from Gdansk, where he was discussing "the May 27 election with leaders of Solidarity." Kirkland writes:

"Karl Marx said it was capitalism that created the working class. Now, it seems as if Marx has been stood on his head: It is Eastern Europe's working class that is creating capitalism. But in opting for a market economy, the region's workers will need real unions, on the Western model, perhaps now more than ever."

The role of the U.S. and European labor bureaucracies must be given due weight as a The reason for these parties' growth in popularity is that the farmers have been the first to feel the effects of the planned economic union between the two German states. While the amount of produce exported to the West is still strictly controlled by European Economic Community regulations, Western produce has been pouring across Germany's "green border."

A flood of goods from the West would major factor affecting the present orientation of worker opposition to the status quo in Eastern Europe. The labor bureaucrat is a close cousin to the middle-class intellectuals and professionals now in ascendancy in Eastern Europe. And despite their well-known opposition to "Communism," they are also cut from the same bureaucratic cloth as their Stalinist counterparts.

The middle classes are condemned by their intermediate economic position in modern society to be incapable of playing an independent social or political role in history. Therefore, they are only able to choose between the main contending social classes in the political centers of modern society.

Like their peasant counterparts, the urban middle classes, too, must look to one of these contending city classes for a solution to society's problems in periods of crisis. Furthermore, the choice that must be made is between the workers and capitalists in the metropolitan centers of world economic power, where their greatest force is concentrated.

In previous times-in the crises of the post-World War I period, during the Great Depression, and again following World War It—the turbulent upsurges of revolutionary minded working classes in Europe and Asia provided a powerful force attracting the middle classes to their side, especially the peasantry and the intellectuals.

The Russian Revolution, itself, with its dramatic demonstration of the great capacity of the proletariat to change the world, made a historic impact on intellectuals, many of whom cast in their lot with the workers of the world.

To this day, although this momentum has been largely dissipated by the treasonous policies of conservative petty-bourgeois leaders of the world's working class, the conquests that flowed from the October I'VE FOUND A SUPPLY OF IMMIGRANT WORKERS WHO SPEAK GERMAN AND DON'T LIKE TRADE UNIONS!

Footnotes: 1-We met no one on our tour, except co-thinkers, who today characterize Communist parties as "Stalinist." Every especially the Stalinists, claims to be : Stalinist. And while workers know the ference, they have not yet discovered a Acher Lace le fa 1018 КОНЦІ RESSiN quickly force East German industries into bankruptcy, creating massive unemployment. The effects are already being felt as managers cancel domestic contracts and place orders with Western firms to assure their own smooth transition to a "free market economy."

In a shoe factory in Erfurt, for example, 4000 workers manufacture 24,000 pairs of shoes a day. For the second quarter of the Revolution still shine as a beacon of revolutionary hope. This is despite the terrible crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which led many to throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater.

But the mass working-class upsurge about to erupt in Eastern Europe will be bound to mobilize the working classes for struggle in their own name and in their own class interests. The coming conflagration will eventually also catch fire in the West in the course of the unfolding crisis of world capitalism.

Newly combative proletarians will again attract to their side the best of the middle classes and their intellectual leaders. No one should underestimate the important role intellectuals have played in the development of revolutionary Marxism. Nor should anyone doubt that they are bound to play this role once again.

The middle classes in the bureaucratized workers' states, today, have rallied to the side of world capitalism, which is the immediate beneficiary of the crisis of Stalinism. But tomorrow, the world's workers will again be compelled to challenge the world's capitalists for power-opening up a new revolutionary period.

The best of the human race, including intellectuals and even individual bureaucrats and capitalists who are most subject to the influence of the revolutionary workers, will once again come to the conclusion that there is no way out of today's historic crisis of human existence other than through the world socialist revolution.

The alternative remains today as in the time of Karl Marx: With the workers or with the capitalists? Socialism or barbarism! There is no middle road.

OUI the one, antidifway Name Address to: 3435 Army St., Rm. year alone, orders for half-a-million pairs of shoes have been cancelled. The shoes are simply piling up and the plant will face closing within a few months, although the shelves in the shoe stores are empty.

The trade union movement, which has remained largely in the background of political events, is beginning to respond. On May 7, a delegation from the Free German Trade Union Federation met with Minister President Lothar de Maiziere to discuss their demands-which include 50% wage increases, a 30% cost-of-living increase, and a 38-hour week at no cut in pay. On the average, the work week in East Germany is currently 43 hours.

The increases would just about create parity between East and West German workers, assuming that the wages of East German workers are converted to D-Marks on a one-to-one basis (as planned) and that subsidies for basic food stuffs, clothing, and rent are abolished.

Predictably, the proposals brought forth howls of protest from governmental and business circles. All in all, the stage is set for a hot summer. Hard confrontations are in the offing, as the real costs of capitalist unification become clear and East Germans move to defend their living standards.

On May 10, textile and leather workers mounted a protest against cancellation of orders by selling shoes direct to the public in East Berlin's Alexanderplatz. Teachers and daycare workers marched to the Volksammer (parliament) to confront the Minister of Education. They demanded guarantees for job security and wage increases.

to distinguish between the ruling bureaucracy's version of "socialism" and its true meaning.

2—The nobility of feudal times was also a caste endowed with sweeping privileges, but not an inherent property right. The right to own land was restricted to the landlords at the pinnacle of the feudal hierarchy. The fundamental class relationship in the feudal system of production was between landlords and serfs. Capitalism developed within and alongside the feudal system of production and ultimately clashed with it.

3—"Socialism in one country!" was the slogan advanced by Josef Stalin for abandoning the strategy of extending the socialist revolution to the advanced countries. Since socialism can only be built on the foundation of the highest levels achieved under capitalism, this slogan is a contradiction in terins.

4-Leszek Balcerowicz is the Polish Finance Minister.

5-Nomenklatura: bureaucracy, privileged elite.

6—The problem of motivation is explainable other than as the result of public ownership. A far more convincing explanation for this flows from alienation due to bureaucratic mismanagement and the systematic misappropriation of the fruits of the workers' labors to support the privileges of the bureaucratic caste. This bitter fact of life under bureaucratic dictatorship is reflected in the oft-quoted phrase: "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."

7_"President" is used interchangeably with the term "chairman" in Poland and other East European countries.

8—KOR: Workers' Self-Defense Committee. One of the earliest radical movements in opposition to Polish Stalinism. It was led by Jacek Kuron and Karel Modzelewski, who initiated a left-wing break from Polish Stalinism. Kuron, currently Poland's Minister of Labor, is now in charge of disciplining the workers to enforce the IMP austerity measures.

9Gwiazda: co-founder with Lech Walesa of Solidarity. He subsequently broke with Walesa and his Working Group over the issue of internal democracy in the union.

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