More than 200,000 troops are still on maneuvers in Poland. Pravda, the Soviet bureaucracy's central organ, is now directly attacking leaders of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP). In a dispatch from the Polish capital, Pravda explained that "the party organizations in Warsaw have not mounted any ideological response to the oppositionists."
In addition, the PUWP leaders have clearly stated their view of what is at stake. In a report to the March 29, 1981 PUWP Central Committee plenum on the general strike projected by Solidarity, the reporter from the Political Bureau explained that "what we are seeing is no longer pressure on the government, but an open struggle against our party, the state, and socialism—it is already a struggle for power."
Confronted by a mass revolt, which is now also being taken up by an opposition movement within the PUWP itself, the Polish bureaucracy has less and less control over the situation. It will take advantage of any temporary weakening of the mass movement, any hesitation by the movement's leaders, to carry out its attempt to "reverse the course of events," as the Kremlin has asked it to do. Therefore the workers movement in Poland and throughout the world must prepare for a confrontation with the bureaucracy.
Safeguard Workers Unity, Extend Democracy Within the Movement
The fact that the call for a March 31 general strike was suspended by Solidarity's negotiating team, without consultation with the National Coordinating Commission (KKP), opened up a crisis within the union. The threat of a split in the movement has surfaced at the very moment when the union has the greatest need for unity to oppose the bureaucracy's maneuvers.
The only way Solidarity can emerge strengthened from this crisis is through a broad and democratic discussion on the current tasks and a clear demarcation of the role of its leaders.
Within this context, there must be a clear definition of the prerogatives of a national leadership, a leadership elected after such a discussion and composed, in its majority, of activists who agree with the decisions. In particular, the practice of secret negotiations must be done away with, as in the August 1980 strike.
In regard to the use of experts, they must be clearly at the service of the union: because they are not elected and not mandated, they cannot at any time substitute for the trade-union bodies. They cannot make contact with representatives of the authorities unless they have a mandate from the union. If they go beyond these prerogatives, it must be made clear that Solidarity will place no trust in them.
Strengthening Solidarity also means fighting to see that it grows in those areas where it still has a weak presence, for example among government workers. It means fighting for the right of all state employees to join unions, especially soldiers and members of the militia. It means supporting Rural Solidarity's fight for registration.
The Best Way to Avoid the Confrontation Is to Prepare For It
Today Solidarity encompasses the immense majority of the Polish working class, and it represents a hope for a large segment of other social layers. It is, therefore, a mortal threat to the bureaucracy. If necessary, the bureaucracy would not hesitate to use the Kremlin's help in breaking the union.
Preparing for the possibility of an armed invasion, which no one on the workers' side could wish for, involves opening up a discussion in Solidarity on the concrete ways to oppose intervention, carrying out the discussion from the ranks up, in all the factories and regions as well as on the national level.
It means asserting that the 10 million Solidarity members are ready to defend the gains of August 1980 by whatever means, including a general strike with occupation of the factories and the stoppage of all public services. It means vigorously reacting against any repression; against any arrest of national, regional, and local leaders, cadres, or militants. It means reactions against any constraints on the free functioning of the unions or on the free election of their leaders by the members and only the members.
Develop and Strengthen International Solidarity
The surest ally of the Polish workers is the international workers movement. It has shown this by lining up on their side since the beginning of the struggle in Poland.
Today, faced with the growing threats to Solidarity's gains, including threats to its very existence as a united union that is independent of the state power, the workers of all countries must intensify their support to Solidarity. Their interests are the same as those of the Polish workers: to build a society run by the producers themselves, meaning to build socialism.
The Fourth International calls on all workers organizations, parties, unions, and associations to develop and increase workers solidarity with Solidarity! Their victory will be your victory! If they were crushed it would be a grave defeat for all of us!
We must forcefully reject and publicly brand as a slander the pretext now being used by representatives of the bureaucracy to justify military intervention in Poland: the supposed "threats" that Solidarity poses to socialism and to people's power in Poland. Nothing could be further from the truth. Solidarity represents the overwhelming majority of the wage workers in Poland. The independent, democratically controlled union and its members have clearly come out for retaining collective ownership of the means of production, of all the basic elements of the economic system in force in Poland. Moreover, they have stated on innumerable occasions that they are for the consolidation of the worker-farmer alliance, the basis of people's power in Poland.
Under these conditions, those who assert that Solidarity's agitation is "antisocialist" are identifying socialism not with the abolition of capitalist property, not with the abolition of the bourgeoisie's political power, not with the leading role of the working class in the economy and the state, but exclusively with the bureaucracy's monopoly of power!
The Polish authorities are trying to blackmail the Polish workers. They are using the economic difficulties that they themselves are responsible for to tell the workers: "If you go on strike there will be famine in the country. If you go on strike we will not be able to pay our debts and foreign food aid will stop." The Western capitalist governments provide support to this blackmail. The workers movement must take up the challenge by demanding: an immediate moratorium on the Polish foreign debt and debt service! No use of famine as blackmail against the Polish workers! Unconditional food aid!
The Polish bureaucracy is trying to deprive the union of the resources needed to function. The union still does not have access to the official media. It has very few material means to be able to counter the lying statements of the government-censored media.
The bureaucracy is also trying to cut Solidarity off from the world workers movement, to prevent the Polish workers from being able to absorb the lessons of the experiences that the world workers movement has gained in decades of struggle. The world workers movement can, and must, stand up to that by developing direct factory-to-factory contacts, direct region-to-region contacts, direct ties between their trade-union branches and Polish union branches, using these contacts to provide the Polish workers with the material aid they need, especially printing supplies.
In face of the threats of repression against the Polish workers movement, the workers organizations around the world must immediately make a commitment. They must warn those who are ready to resort to repression that they will intensify their support to the Polish workers if those workers are forced to move to open struggle, that the international workers movement will defend the Polish political revolution, as it has defended the Russian revolution, the Spanish revolution, the Vietnamese revolution, as it is defending the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran revolutions.
Hands off the Polish workers! For a united front of all the workers organizations on the side of the antibureaucratic revolution in Poland!