IS by Brezhnev at the conference about not wanting to 're-institute an international centre' must not be read as a final and definitive climbdown by the Soviet leadership. It is remarkable how during the pre-conference discussions despite having no hope of success, the Societ leadership kept on trying to smuggle a 'general line' into the final document through the medium of the East German drafting commisSOl.
According to the Spanish CP leader Azcarate: "The tendency to press for a document of what may be called an "ideological type" reasserted itself. Faced with this the position of a certain number of parties was maintained very firmly DIVISIONS These divisions within world Stalinism, despite the utter bankruptey of both the political perspectives offered, are of real importance for revolutionary socialists. They provide the opportunity for a broad political debate on general questions of socialist strategy both in the East and the West, and while the dynamic of the leaderships of the independent parties is firmly to the right, the context of a growing economic crisis and resistance to it from the working class will almost certainly lead to the emergence of leftist currents which can be won to Trotskyism.
The "independent' parties rightly notice that times have changed since the pre-war and immediate post-war period. But not, as they say, away from the need for an international revolutionary movement, but on the contrary towards making it even more necessary. The Fourth International is the only organisation that can meet that need.
The Morning Star has some questions to answer about the Polish events. Does anyone believe that the price rises would have been cancelled without the strike move ment? Is it really conceivable that any covernment would announce bu per cent price rises one day and then cancel them the next, as an afterthought?
And given that the Polish workers strikes stopped the price rises, why was it felt necessary by those workers to take the considerable personal risks involved in striking and demonstrating? Is it really be cause these workers were all what a bureaucrat in madom called mem: nooligans and hysterical women? And if the strikers were such deviants, why does the Government bow to them?
No class-conscious Polish worker could take all tnis nonsense seriously.
All Gollan's phrases about a democratic system in countries like Poland are designed to conceal reality. Marxist ideas are a supreme instrument to reveal the underlying tendencies and processes within society. But in Gollan's hands these con couts become doorogerics tor tne rolish bureaucracy. And the Polish workers up surge has blown these soft-soap phrases Gollan has been in the working class movement tor torty years, and tor over fifteen years he was the leader of the British CP. During that time we have seen the Stalinist bureaucracy produce the East German uprising of 1953, the Hungarian revolution or 1yoo. the rollsn revolution of 1956, the brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the blood-bath in Poland's Baltic ports in 1970, and the bitter working class upsurge in Poland two weeks ago.
Yet Gollan is still trying to persuade us that these societies are socialist and democratic, socially homogeneous, without any basic contradictions, where the role of the people in decision-making is not 'primarily oy connice and struggle Such views simply indicate how deeply soaked in the traditions of stalinism the leaders of the British Communist Party remain. The fact that people like Gollan are increasingly shamefaced about their Stalinism does not make them any more trustwortny as nonest orincipled support ers of the struggles of the working classes of Eastern Europe for proletarian democracy.
The Polish workers' victory is nothing but an embarrassment for the editorial writers of the Morning Star. They wish the Polish workers had knuckled under. And they have so far carefully avoided expressing any opinion on the issue, far less express their support. test in the sharpest way.
the actions of the Polish regime are *100 per cent capitalist ..... a carbon copy of the infamous Social Contract'. But if so, why did the Polish regime back down in such panic when some thousands - but certainly not hundreds Do capitalist governments in the West and price rises bring a political challenge to the governments of Eastern Europe in such a swift. spontaneous way? In the last few months such political unrest over prices and food shortages has surfaced inside the Soviet Union and in Hungary, as well as in Poland, Yet after years of huge inflation in a number of Western capitalist countries, where the workers can organise much more freely, resistance to price rises has been far less explosive than in Eastern Europe clearly in we grasp ine tundamenta difference between the societies of Eastern and Western Europe. In the West, the power base of the ruling class lies right outside the political parties and the political system. It lies in the economic structure of society, in the orivate ownershe or roductive resources, held as capital; that is why we call inese classes caoitalist Whatever Socialist Worker may say, there is no class which privately owns the country's economic resources. The ruling social crous in rolane nas absolutely no independent power base outside the political system the political system: the ruling group in Poland is a collection of state and party on behalf of the working class, but in fact The International Socialism group has always stood on the side of the workers of Eastern Europe in their struggle against oppression at the hands of the regimes of these states. But the tasks of any Marxist political current go beyond being able to recognise and support any mass workers' upsurge. Socialist Worker claims to be able to explain what is happening in Eastern Europe, to expose the nature of the real forces at work in a country like Poland, and on this basis point the way forward to defeat the regimes dominating these states. And the IS tries to carry out this task by applying its theory that the East European states are capitalist. The Polish upsurge has put this theory to the Last week's Socialist Worker says that of thousands - of workers went on strike and demonstrated against the price rises?
abigdon central policies so quickly in the face of a few thousand workers on strike?
More basic still, why do food queues bureaucratic reaime These questions can only be answered Tion goes much deeper.
UTOPIAN The picture in Poland is very different.
Its power comes not from the nature of the economic system but from its control of bureaucrats. They claim to be ruling Poland they can hold onto power and maintain their privileged position only by preventing the Polish workers from winning There is no real mystery about this. In the capitalist world, price rises and unemployment appear to the workers as an act of god or a law of nature, because they are brought about by the private decisions or inaividual caoitalists, mey are not legislated by governments. But in castern curove une caoiraists nave beer swept away and the management of the economy is brought completely under the control of the government.
It is thus quite impossible for the workers of Eastern Europe to suffer from the illusions held by British workers that once rises are nevitabie. natural tes nat lust nave to be out up witn. every working class man or woman in Poland knows that every economic question is a matter for political decisions. That is why - even without their own independent trade unions, parties and newspapers -Polish workers could move into action absolutely spontaneously to enforce thei ow. poutical decision about orices on Ene All these crucial questions are a closed -DOOK TOr SOCIaNST OrKEr BUT ITS COnTUS Quite correctiy, socialist worker ridi cules the idea that socialism exists in Eastern Europe. But at the same time it seems to accept the same theoretical assumption as the Stalinists: both appear to believe that socialism, a classless society, can be reached in a world where the word capitalist economy Is stil stronger more avanced than the productive forces of the non-capitalist world. This is the only possible conclusion from Socialist Worker's definition of socialism as workers running society through workers councils they elect and Decades ago Trotsky and the Left Opposition denounced the Stalinist policy of avoiding trade with the capitalist world and argued that workers stetes must participate in the world capitalist market, in spite of the fact that it creates economic problems, disrupts planning and can dis organise prices. Trotsky proved time and time again that trving to turn vour back on the capitalist world was utopian, and unat une probiems would continue unti the victory of the international revolution Yet we tina socialist Worker taking over the bankrupt, nationalist notion of creating socialism in an isolated country which refuses to touch the world capitalist market| Instead of exposing the social reasons for the absence of democ ratic rights in Poland, Socialist Worker spends paragraph after paragraph attacking the bureaucracy for buying and selling on the capitalist world market. Scornfully it attacks the bureaucracy for doing something that Poland (or Britain) under workers democracy would have to do -joining 'in the international scramble to buy components ane raw materials The comrades of Socialist Worker must think this througn to the end. One or the biggest items bougnt on tne capitalist market ov rolane over the last five years has been a massive Fiat plant to produce cars for the Polish people at a cheaper cost. Should the bureaucracy not have joined this "scramble'? EASY The theory that the states of Eastern Europe are capitalist was adopted by IS at the height of the cold war when Marxists were under tremendous pressure from the bourgeoisie to-abandon a princip led stand against imperialist efforts to restore cabitaiism in corea. caina and Eastern Europe. An easy way of dropping defence of Korea against American intervention was to declare that Korea, China and the Soviet Union were themselves capitalist Today, in the face of gigantic capitaliIst crises and tne rise or workers struggles against the bureaucratic regimes of Eastern Europe, the theory of 'state capitalism' is being put to the test of revolutionary events. This apparently radical alter. native provides no coherent guide for the anti-bureaucratic struggle, and ends ur distorting the entire socialist perspective of the Marxist movement.
The letter from Ric Sissons in last week's issue of Red Weekly raises a central problem for Marxists - one which was merely brought to the fore by the withdrawal of the LCI/PRT candidate, but which becomes increasingly important atter the large vote for Carvalho, What is essentially involved in the choice of critical support for Carvalho or the CP candidate is the political relation of revolutionaries to the 'left wing' of the Armed Forces Move ment (MFA) and to the mass workers Partius.
The striking feature of the Portuguese workers is that through two elections (despite MFA calls for abstention) the maiority have continued to support the CP and SP, whose leaderships, while proclaiming their commitment to socialism, mislead and divert the working class through the forging of alliances with the bourgeois parties and wings of the military.
Every gain over the past two years has been imposed by the spontaneous mass upsurge, but every one of these gains risks being liquidated unless the rortu guese workers succeed in establishing their political independence and constructing a class front against the bourgeoisie. The principal task of revolutionary Marxists lies in bringing into systematic con tradiction the striving of the workers for class independence and the class collaborationist policies of the CP/SP leaderships. A key focus of this is the call for these leaderships to form an ions, the standing of a candidate by a mass workers party created favourable conditions for revolutionary Marxists to argue for a thorough-going political break with the military hierarchy. It was this need to assert the political independ. ence of the working class, rather than abstract comparison of programmes or support, that motivated the LCI decision to critically support Pato. Red Weekly 8 July 1976 the Portuguese workers movement. It highlights the lack of a socialist leadership in a period of acute crisis, and mounting attacks on past gains. The temptation will be strong for advanced workers to despair of finding a road to class unity and to throw everything into a vain attempt to by-pass the mass partThe victory of Eanes is a big blow to strongholds of power. ies in a 'popular offensive" against the Certainly the centrist groups will be feeding off this despair with their project for a revamped FUR. They have learnt nothing from the experience of last sum mer and autumn when, in a period of heightened struggle, the call for an SP. CP Government could have played a Communist Party candidate Octavio Pato decisive role in weakening the grip of the reformist leaderships. Their road is the road to disaster - with a colourful demagogue in the van wno is all the more dangerous precisely because of his chartsid The Portuguese Trotskyists have learnt a great deal from their mistakes of last year, and have an enormous responsi bility in combatting this centrist obstacle to the Portuguese revolution. JACKY GRAY, PATRICK CAMILLER, PAT JORDAN.