Gorbachev uses crackdown in Lithuania to head off resistance to market reforms

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In last month's edition of Socialist Action newspaper, we took up the meaning of Soviet Foreign Secretary Eduard Shevardnardze's resignation and his cry of gloom and doom.

We showed that the attempts by the bureaucratic castes ruling over the bureaucratized workers' states in Eastern Europe to restore capitalism have been failing miserably.

We explained that without investment from abroad, the capital is not available to finance the modernization of existing plants and equipment and to construct new productive facilities with up-to-date technology. Also, without such new capital, the increased productivity which would permit higher living standards for all is impossible-irrespective of the social system.

Privatization, by itself, can lead nowhere without new sources of capital. Certainly, bureaucrats have shown an eagerness to transform themselves from parasitic "exploiters" into full-blooded capitalists. But they, and the legions of entrepeneurs who have sprung up in the soil of glasnost-pereStroika, have shown that they are neither willing nor able to pay anything near the real value of the enterprises they have so far privatized.

We summed up the situation in these countries this way: Without new sources of capital to power economic expansion and technological development—and the resulting higher living standards—the support for capitalist market relations by workers, who have lost all confidence in Stalinist-style "socialism," will evaporate.

This support, we explained, was based on a willingness by workers to trade off the guaranteed jobs, housing, medical care, food, shelter, and clothing of a planned economy for the higher living standards they see in West Germany and other prosperous capitalist societies.

Moreover, the East European masses are not oblivious to the kind of capitalism being imposed on their societies. They disdainfully call it "third-world capitalism," and more and more workers are saying they want no part of it.

We concluded with the assessment that when the belief becomes generalized that the future of Eastern Europeans under capitalism will be closer to the living standards of Brazilians than of West Germans, the temporarily sidetracked political revolution, and the struggle for real socialism, is certain to resume with renewed vigor and greater determination.

Bourgeois democracy

Gorbachev's wrangling of Bonapartist executive powers from an ineffectual and compliant parliament is clearly to anticipate and prepare to stifle or contain the coming work(continued from page 4: “The Gulf War: What it means and how to stop it”) with Iran, and partly from hostile economic action by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait took a course of action highly inimical to the interests of the imperialist world. [See the last four issues of Socialist Action for details.] This led to the ultimatum issued by George Bush to Saddam Hussein and the people of Iraq; he had to halt Hussein's course before it damaged the interests of imperialism in the Mideast.

That's the real meaning of the Americanled imperialist assault on Iraq. The stakes are far higher than a fight over just who shall reap the greatest share of the oil profits produced in the Persian Gulf. The very existence of the present world social order is threatened by an impending economic catastrophe that promises to severely aggravate the existing divisions between the ruling groups.

Only this economic reality can explain the present war, which has resulted in the U.S. President's decision to risk tens of thousands of American lives in the face of the most widespread and vigorous internal opposition to war in American history. ing class uprisings. In so doing, he continues to faithfully perform the Bonapartist function of the ruling Stalinist bureaucratic caste.

The upsurge of struggle and bureaucratic military repression in Lithuania-which confirms the fears of bosses and bureaucrats, alike-has also served to disillusion the Soviet masses and undermine their toleration of hardships connected with the restoration of market relations.

Parliamentary democracy only works when governments can rule with the consent of the governed. It is an axiom of history that bourgeois democracy flowers in prosperity, but withers and gives way to dictatorship in periods of crisis. In fact, the option for ruling by pure force has been built into all forms of parliamentary democracy developed during hundreds of years of capitalist rule.

In contrast to bourgeois parliamentary ARE YOU WITH The lesson of how these two workers' republics came into existence is extremely worrying to both bosses and bureaucrats. These forms of workers' democracy were spontaneously created by masses of workers in the course of their struggles to defend their class interests. And now the individual cells of the system of proletarian democracy are constructed in every strike committee and factory committee gestating throughout Eastern Europe.

Such institutions, are inherently democratic. Because the working class and its natextensive and complete than is possible under capitalism or any previous form of class rule.

Capitalists cannot willingly tolerate any degree of democratic rule in the workshops, factories, mines and mills anywhere in the Baltic Republics must also be seen in the context of the class struggle. There is no issue raised by oppressed nationalities that is not, in the last analysis, intimately connected with working-class interests as a whole. National oppression is the super-exploitation of such peoples.

Moreover, the abuses heaped on oppressed nationalities increase the rate of exploitation by lowering wages and living standards and divide the working class by playing one segment against another. Because of this, the bureaucrats inspire, foster and use the oppression of nationalities to generalize an increase in the rate of exploitation of all workers, as well as to intensify the exploitation of the oppressed peoples.

The nationalism of the oppressed It is no accident that Gorbachev sent troops to repress Lithuanians. This was a response to the eruption of mass opposition to a large increase in food prices (on Jan. 8 of this year) by both Lithuanian and Russian workers.

They surrounded the parliament in the tens of thousands to protest a decision by Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene and her cabinet to drastically raise food prices. The price raise was an attempt to move this republic further along the road to a market economy.

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ural allies constitute the great majority in modern society, workers' democracy is more