The Class Struggle in Poland (1976)

From the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of June, following the announcement of huge increases in food prices, strikes and riots broke out in many Polish towns. The government subsequently altered its proposals. At the end of 1970 strikes and riots were started by the dockers and shipyard workers of Gdansk (Danzig), in which the police shot down and killed at least six workers. The 1970 strikes led to a change in the leadership of the “Communist” Party with Gierek, the present Party leader, replacing Gomulka (who had himself come to power following strikes and riots in Poznan in 1956 in which 38 workers were murdered by the police).

The Polish working class like workers the world over, has had to resist attempts by their capitalist rulers to reduce their living standards. If the protest has taken the form of rioting and looting, as well as going on strike, it is partly because there are no independent trade unions in Poland: though no doubt there are political axe-grinders urging workers that this is what they should do. The organizations calling themselves “trade unions” are merely government agencies for disciplining workers and getting them to work harder.

The strikes in Poland show clearly that, even in state-capitalist countries ruled by a dictatorial “Communist” party, the class struggle of the working class against their exploiters cannot be suppressed. It is a myth that the exploitation of the working class has been abolished and Socialism established in Poland, as claimed by the government. The workers of Poland are exploited by the privileged minority who, through their dictatorial control of the State machine, monopolize the use of the means of production just as much as the private capitalists of the West.

An increase in food prices without a compensating increase in wages means of course a cut in living standards; it was to object to the size of the cut that the Polish workers went on strike. For the present the government has postponed its plans, but it has no choice in this matter because the world crisis has led to Poland developing a serious trade deficit. Exports have fallen and import prices risen, so squeezing the profits of the country’s state-capitalist enterprises, the source of income both for capital accumulation and the privileged consumption of the Polish ruling class. As The Times (26th June) put it:

The increases had become an economic necessity. Since 1970, real wages have risen by about 7 per cent a year while food prices have been artificially frozen. At the same time, world inflation has been pressing in on Poland. Government subsidies for protecting the consumer have reached enormous proportions and became a particularly heavy burden because Poland needs desperately to pay off its heavy foreign debts.

So working-class living standards are to be reduced in order to pay off the debts of the Polish state capitalist ruling class! A familiar story and a proof that the establishment of state capitalism with a State monopoly of foreign trade, in place of private capitalism does nothing to free a country from the pressures of capitalism on the working class. A further proof that there is no national solution to working-class problems.

Our message to the workers of Poland is to urge them to recognize this and, while doing what they can and must to maintain their living standards, to join with their fellow workers in other countries with a view to replacing world capitalism, in both its private and State forms, by world socialism. 

Adam Buick