Polish socialists launch newspaper, attack Walesa's reprivatization policy

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Polish auto workers protesting policies of Mazowiecki government.

'The Balcerowicz plan represents a conscious plan for pauperizing the society. Its aim is clear-to increase the profitability of the enterprises (in other words, increase the exploitation of the workers).' SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1991 11 The article reprinted below is an Englishlanguage version of the lead article from the first issue of Dalej! (Forward!), a monthly newspaper published in Poland. The editors explain that the paper is socialist, in the sense that "we see the possibility of solving the economic and social crisis through a struggle for a new order, one based on direct democracy and ongoing social control over the state and the economy."

"Our socialism," they write, "has nothing in common with the monstrous Stalinist caricature represented by 'actually existing socialism' under the rule of the Communist Party. It has nothing in common with the program of the Social Democrats, who accept capitalist exploitation and the market system, in which the economy is governed by the law of profit and not human need. "We are profoundly convinced that the interests of working people cannot be reconciled We have a year of the Balcerowicz plan behind us. Its effects have been tragic. Balcerowicz has led our economy to ruin. Production has fallen about 30 percent. State factories have been closing or laying off workers. The productivity of labor has fallen drastically—about 20 percent.

The Balcerowicz plan has become a program for destroying our industry. And not just our industry. Agriculture has become unprofitable.

More private production and service enterprises are going bankrupt than new ones are being founded. All areas of the social infrastructure are drastically reducing the scope and quality of their services-education, healthcare, social welfare. Virtually no municipal or cooperative housing is being built.

Every day our standard of living declines further. A few months ago, Balcerowicz bragged that inflation had been overcome. How does that look today? Everyone can see that inflation is raging again. Big price rises are coming one after the other, and wage increases are by no means keeping up with them. In recent months, many workers have seen a drop in their wages. And what are pensioners, single mothers, youth, and students supposed to do?

Balcerowicz's answer is, "You have to tighten your belts more." How much more? It can't be done! For more than a year, we have been the victims of his crazy plans for "marketization" and "privatization." These plans have brought us only destitution.

Profits before human needs Through lowering the standard of living of the workers, through mass layoffs, the Polish enterprises are supposed to become more profitable. The share of wages in production costs are falling more and more, and unemployment is creating strong competition for jobs, so as to keep wages at a low level. If you don't like it, there is a line of people at the factory gate hoping to get your job.

The Balcerowicz plan represents a conscious plan for pauperizing the society. Its aim is clear—to increase the profitability of the enterprises (in other words, increase the exploitation of the workers). Then they can "privatize the "reflated" profitable enterprises. Profits will be assured—not for us but for the new private owners recruited from the ranks of the nomenklatura and the layers of speculative business sharks, as well as for Western investors.

... Castro's speech (continued from page resting on our shoulders, we have a very important page of history to write, and that page can only be written with the will to fight and the will to win.

The most just ideas in the history of mankind are today flown on our banners. Our position is the most dignified that can be taken at this moment in the world.

The difficult times will pass! Truth will win out! The peoples will fight! The billions of human beings leading increasingly worse lives will become increasingly more aware and will fight increasingly harder! The with the previous Stalinist system or the capitalism that is threatening us. Recognition of this fact will enable working people to win in the struggles with the nomenklatura [bureaucracy] and the capitalists that are being waged today and that will sharpen tomorrow.

"An essential element in this," they continue, "is the political rebirth of the workers movement. Only an organized workers movement has the power to overthrow the rule of the nomenklatura and capital. The first step in this will be a return to the ideals of August 1980 [the emergence of Solidarnosc and the general strike to gain recognition of an independent union movement], and to the conception of a workers movement politically and organizationally independent from the government, from the nomenklatura, from the employers, from the Church, and all other forces outside the The statements by ministers and their journalist stooges that the worsening of our standard of living is the result of objective causes, which cannot be avoided, is a total lie. The most demonstrative proof of these lies is the celebrated popiwek [a punitive tax on enterprises that increase workers' wages]. This tax has been increased still more this year, and it does not at all arise from those "objective causes." It is the expression of an entire policy designed to keep wages down, to cut the real buying power of our wages.

Need workers' control

It is true that to a large extent we have a backward and inefficient economy, and that it needs restructuring. The question, however, peoples are our main allies nowadays.

Occasionally, we have been asked by visiting journalists whether we are alone. I explain to them that we've never seen so much solidarity from the peoples, that we've never seen so much admiration from the peoples.

The fact that our small country resisted the U.S. blockade, resisted U.S. threats when the USSR didn't have any problems and when the socialist camp existed in Europe, was quite a feat; but the fact that our country exists, that our Revolution continues at a time when the socialist camp in Eastern Europe has collapsed and when the USSR has enormous problems, this is indeed an unparalleled page in the history of mankind, this is indeed the proof of a revolutionary people, of a courageous people! workers movement...

The editors state that they would also like their paper to take up causes that have not been given sufficient attention by the workers' movement. One of these is the situation of women.

"Women today," they write, "are the first victims of the belt tightening, of unemployment, of cutbacks in social services. They are being subjected to scandalous attempts to deprive them of fundamental rights and freedoms-above all the right of choice.

"The struggle against the oppression of women is becoming a fundamental part of the struggle for a just social order. Dalej! will therefore be a feminist publication."

"A second such cause," the editors state, "is the struggle of working people in other countries in the East and West, North, and South. ... So Dalej! will be an internationalist publication." is how to accomplish that and at whose cost. For more than a year, Balcerowicz has been doing it at the expense of labor.

The necessary means for restructuring the Polish economy, however, can be found elsewhere—by trimming the state and economic bureaucracy; by taking money from the nomenklatura and the new-rich elite; by recovering the wealth that they have stolen from the society; by liquidating the bureaucrats' companies, which are parasites on our economy; by reducing arms spending; by doing away with the secret political police; by turning over the factories to self-management bodies and thereby increasing their efficiency; by eliminating the enormous waste of resources and labor caused by the present combination of bureaucratic planning and And the peoples of Latin America, the peoples all over the world admire such courage,admire the greatness of the Cuban people. And we'll not only endure the special period but will also develop and move ahead.

Now we are indeed showing the world the stuff Cubans are made of! For quite a long time we were slandered, they claimed we weren't even independent but rather a satellite of the Soviet Union and now they have come to realize, without any doubt, that we're a satellite to principles, a satellite to ideas, a satellite to an ideal which is like a sun of justice around which we are revolving and will always revolve. carried further in Poland than in the other East European countries or the Soviet Union and to a considerable extent have been a model for such policies now favored by the bureaucratic rulers of all these countries.

In Poland, these policies are most identified with Balcerowicz. He was the economic czar of the first non-Communist government, which was headed by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, and again is the economic czar of the government headed by Lech Walesa, who overwhelmed Mazowiecki in the recent presidential elections.

The unpopularity of the Mazowiecki government was underlined by the fact that a populist adventurer-Stanislaw Tyminiski, who criticized the government's economic decisions-got a higher vote than its chief, Mazowiecki. Tyminski even took a lot of the working-class vote away from Walesa, the most prominent leader of the first independent working-class movement since the imposition of Stalinism.

The following article calls for a conscious political rejection of Balcerowicz and his policies and, by extension, other such policies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The translation is by Socialist Action.

-the editors free-market anarchy and by establishing a rational plan of economic development drawn up by a national council of workers' selfmanagement; by defending Polish industry and agriculture through state control of foreign trade against the aggressive economic policy of the West; by stopping payments on the Polish [foreign] debt.

We can be sure that Balcerowicz will not take any of the steps mentioned above. He is simply blinded by his dogmatic vision of private capitalist property.

Balcerowicz must go!

We cannot suffer patiently any longer because the Polish economy is being run by a deluded fanatic, and moreover, a fanatic who three months ago lost any social mandate. The fact that only 18 percent of the voters— that is, barely 10 percent of the electoratevoted for Mazowiecki in the first round of the presidential elections means that the policy of the previous government was rejected by the society. The voters rejected its economic policy, and thereby the Balcerowicz plan.

Balcerowicz is back in government solely because of the pressure of the World Bank and the United States, as well as the arrogant stand of Walesa, who cynically ignored the will of those who voted for him.

Balcerowicz must go! And his economic plan must go with him. No more belt tightening! The Polish economy has to be restructured in the interests of the majority of society, above all so that the economy serves people and not people serve the econIn the longer term, this means socializing the economy, putting it under social control. The economy will serve us when we can decide ourselves, democratically, about the allocation of resources, the establishment of developmental priorities, about means for protecting the weaker and eliminating social inequalities.

Today, immediate demands are in the forefront. We have to protect ourselves against further pauperization. In the first instance, the trade-union movement, the workers' self-management councils, and all of labor have to fight for:

— eliminating the punitive tax on wage increases — full, automatic cost-of-living increases — an end to layoffs and a guarantee of the right to work NO MORE BELT History has given us the chance to prove how independent we are, history has given us the right to proclaim we are today the most independent country on earth. If you don't think so, look at what is going on in the United Nations, how big and small powers are reacting to the manipulations of the government of the United States and how there is one country which knows how to say, "No!" and saying "No!" to the empire today is one of the most glorious actions ever carried out.

Because all of that, my answer to some journalist who asked me if we were alone was: "yes, we are alone, but at the top!"

I congratulate our young people for making the call to their congress, and I congratulate them for their 29th anniversary.

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used pretext of Gulf War to attempt suppression of the Intifida. Der Spiegel Palestinians have been left tragically isolated. You can understand their bitter reaction, their deep disillusionment with those in whom they had placed great hopes (1 would even say, sometimes a little excessive hope).

A leader of the Palestinians in the occupied territories had proclaimed 1988 the year for dialogue and winning over Israeli public opinion. And he waged a fight for that—not an easy one when the Islamic fundamentalist currents were raising their heads and saying that there were no good Jews, that there were no good Israelis.

With great patience, the United National Leadership of the Intifada, including all tendencies within it, said: "We could see during the Lebanon war that there were cracks, that the national unity could be breached. We have to be patient. We have to win over Israeli public opinion.' "Where are your friends now?"

Today, the Islamic fundamentalist currents are saying: "Where were your Jewish friends during the month-and-a-half long curfew? When the children were dying because they wouldn't even let them go to the hospital? Where are your interlocutors who say that the PLO is finished?"

Those of who you read Politis [Parisian commercial left magazine] have seen that one of the best known nationalist leaders in the Gaza Strip, Mary Khas, announced in very violent terms that she had nothing more to say to Israelis, that the dialogue was finished. Since I know her, I can say that she will resume the dialogue. Perhaps it will be a bit better one.

Despite this isolation, despite the restrictions and despite the hunger, the battle that

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ZRUBIM PORZADEK. F