George Bush's trip, being reported here as a triumphal march into Eastern Europe, is bound to be seen historically as a nightmare for the imperialist bourgeoisie. This is especially so for those addicted to superficial appearances and short-term manipulated victories. The current of history runs very deeply against the domination of the countries in the socialist bloc by imperialist ruse and bribery.
Yet we need to look at the background to the trip in order to understand its significance.
The present government in Poland is rapidly emerging as, in fact, a coalition composed on the one hand of the Communist Party and its allies headed by Gen. Jaruzelski, and on the other the anti-communist forces headed by Lech Walesa and supported by the U.S. and all the other imperialists.
The world bourgeoisie would have us believe that all this is the result of the failure of communism and the preference of the masses for what in effect would be a capitalist government. Scorn and contempt are being heaped upon the Polish government for its alleged failure to implement the so-called reforms which were first introduced years ago. They say the reforms have proven ineffective because they have not gone far enough and because they are not administered by anti-communist, pro-Western capitalist politicians.
This development of a coalition between Communists and rightwing bourgeois politicians has gotten the blessing of Wall Street and the bankers. And now none other than the president of the United States has visited Warsaw and Gdansk. This should completely satisfy not only Washington, but also Bonn, London, Paris and Tokyo. All now have had their input into the coalition which they say will rescue Poland from economic collapse, induced again, we are told, by communist central planning and its hindrance of the capitalist market.
But let us see. This strange coalition did not come out of heaven. Its historic roots must be examined in order to see whether socialism or capitalism is in fact unviable.
Coalition government began at Yalta
The present coalition of Communists and pro-imperialist forces developed as an outgrowth of the victorious struggle against fascism in Poland but also as a historical survival of the coalition government forced upon the Polish people at the Yalta conference in February 1945.
Under the Yalta agreement the new government, known as the Polish Committee of National Liberation, had to include the anti-communist forces headed by Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. Ultimately they were allowed to widen their social and political base in the country.
Mikolajczyk had been the head of the Polish government in exile in London. The meager military forces under his control had been crushed in the Warsaw Uprising. Other bourgeois resistance forces had either capitulated or been defeated by the Nazis.
After a military victory by the revolutionary forces in Poland in alliance with the USSR, the Polish bourgeoisie was welcomed in London and established itself there with its main financial support coming from the United States.
This grouping was forced upon a regime which was basically supported by workers and peasants. They, in turn, were supported by the military and political forces of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.
Had the Polish government been able or chosen to carry out a class war to fight the bourgeoisie to the finish, to tear it up root and branch (to use Frederick Engels' famous phrase) as the French bourgeoisie had rooted out feudalism, there might be a wholly different social system in Poland. But that was not the case.
It has to be clearly understood that this new governing coalition of anti-communists and Communist officials did not just suddenly come into being out of the current economic crisis. Its roots go back to a forced marriage between pro-imperialists and pro-socialist elements of the population in Poland that came at the end of the war and which the Soviet Union agreed to under pressure of the rising cold war.
Poland was nevertheless able from the early 1950s all the way up to the middle 1960s to make tremendous strides in industrial development and to raise the living standards of the masses. For a while it did indeed look like Poland might become one of the leading European industrial countries. Socialist construction was fundamentally responsible for uplifting the economic plight of the masses and even allowing Poland to move out on the international arena.
However, enormous political and economic factors stymied Polish economic and social progress. The counterrevolutionary uprising of 1956 blocked the road to socialist construction and set Poland off in another direction, one oriented towards the imperialist market abroad and the decentralization of the Polish economy at home.
The 1956 uprising brought rightwing Communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka and his set of bourgeois economic planners and political leaders to power. They were intent on smoothing the road for bourgeois reforms. The result was the decollectivization of agriculture and, to a very large extent, the decentralization of Polish industry. This is what began the long economic and social downslide of the Polish economy.
Role of the Catholic hierarchy
The Catholic hierarchy has long had a central role in Polish political life as the ally of reaction. Despite Western accounts, it did not play a progressive role in the face of fascist aggression. On the contrary, it was second only to the Nazis themselves in disseminating anti-Semitic ideology. The traditional anti-Semitism of the Catholic hierarchy was enlarged when they began to aim it at the Communists and Soviet forces.
The Western allies, particularly the U.S. and Britain, paid little heed to the Catholic hierarchy until after World War II. But when they discovered what a tremendous social support the Church hierarchy could be in the struggle against the socialist government, they began to funnel resources into it.
In February 1953, when the Polish People's Republic became fully aware of what was happening, it enacted a law which considerably limited the Church's secular activities and required consultation with the government for high-ranking Church appointments made by the Vatican. By that time the Vatican was already working closely with Britain and the U.S.
This was presented here as a struggle between church and state, as communism versus religion. The truth is that it was an attempt by the government to limit imperialist intervention, especially Vatican appointments aimed at undermining the socialist regime. Gomulka's "contribution" in this situation was to virtually annul the legislation restricting the secular activities of the Catholic hierarchy.
As a result of this, the number of priests and churches was greater in 1971 than in 1939 (1987 World Almanac and Book of Facts, p. 608). The almanac doesn't give the number of priests now working full time, but it has grown to be a virtual army since Gomulka started the long series of bourgeois reforms, one succeeding the other, which set Poland on the road to economic deterioration and bound it hand and foot to the imperialist banks.
Each succeeding governing group since Gomulka has opened the doors wider and wider to the imperialist banks and their demands for economic reforms. The present government cannot disentangle itself, and invariably heeds the bankers' calls for austerity measures directed at the living standards of the masses.
The stranglehold of imperialist banks
The Polish government is caught in the trap of working with a coalition partner whose aim is to undo all the socialist gains of the Polish Revolution. In their eagerness to have an opening to Western capitalist markets, Gomulka, Gierek, Kania and the Jaruzelski regime have gotten more and more mired down in these reforms. They have only succeeded, however, in raising the foreign debt. It has reached the point now where Poland, with its $39 billion debt, is assuming the international status of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico as an oppressed country where the banks dictate the social and political policies of the government.
What will happen to Polish industry, which is publicly owned--a major contribution of the Polish revolution? Public ownership of the means of production is the great beginning of a socialist revolution. It is the one thing indispensable for the building of a socialist society. But public ownership can be eroded by a reactionary superstructure, by its governing groups and their alliances with hostile, anti-working class, anti-communist external and internal forces which prevent the regime from pursuing an orderly, planned social order.
Socialism has to be consciously planned. A governing group which gives its time and energy to foisting bourgeois reforms upon the people is bound to founder, lose the confidence of the masses and pave the road for its own dissolution.
Fortunately, precisely at the moment of the imperialist success in obtaining a coalition between pro-imperialist and communist political forces, it is at last becoming clear to some of the more progressive workers in Polish society that the bourgeois reforms are not the answer to the economic and social plight of the masses.
Bush's austerity talk not well received
President Bush's advisers had believed on the basis of all their information that the huge crowds which had greeted Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and others would turn out in such numbers for Bush that his trip could be regarded as a final triumphal march of capitalism right into the heart of Eastern Europe. But the New York Times of July 11, 1989, in an article entitled "For Bush, a Polish welcome without fervor" ruefully admits that "The emotional outpouring that the White House had expected never materialized." This is a small beginning. But great big oaks only grow from small acorns.
The reintroduction of capitalism and the wellbeing of the masses stand in utter and complete antagonism to each other. Bush didn't come with a trainload of money to hand out. Instead, he asked for sacrifice, a term that stunned his audiences. It's the medicine they have been taking ever since the reforms were introduced.
Indeed, perhaps the most prophetic statement was made by the CIA's own labor leader, Lech Walesa, while he was with Bush in Gdansk. A reporter from the New York Times (July 12) observes, "If any of the visitors were in any doubt about the [economic -- SM] gravity of the moment, they needed only to listen to Mr. Walesa. 'We are at the end of a rope,' he said, and then, switching metaphors: 'I am sitting on a powder keg, and I have doubts we will be able to do it.' Civil war could result, he said, if reforms demanded of Poland brought unemployment and reduced incomes."
One thing becomes crystal clear. The reforms demanded of Poland are not demanded by the masses, who will get only unemployment and reduced income from them.