To this end, it is necessary to have of the Fourth International), "In the fight for an independent self-
"a centralized cadre organization conmanaged republic of Poland", first published in Zryw, No. 1, May tasks"
scious of its objectives and basing itself on the world proletariat and on all progressive workers' parties internationally that are fighting for the liberation of the working class, peace and social progress."
The
RPRS has announced its desire to become the Polish section of the Fourth International, which Zryw organization that describes as an fights "for socialism, but genuine socialism, meaning a self-managed society that can only be fully achieved on the international scale. This sort of socialism has nothing to do with the so-called actually existing socialism." (8)
For its part, the Executive Committee of the POR-S declares that the
RPRS is being built on the basis of the activity of the POR-S, and has its support and close collaboration.
It has expressed its full agreement with the desire of the RPRS to become a section of the Fourth
International, which it describes as
"an international organization fighting to overthrow the regime of the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy and to
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
1986.
Our struggle, as well as the objectives we have laid out, aims at transinto a sovereign country, economically and politically independent of any other state or political system. A people's right to chart its own path of development and decide on a political system in accord with its historic conditions and its needs is a people's right to independence. Our objective is to fight for an independent Poland.
We recognize established bases and principles of the socialist system, and oppose social exploitation bureaucratic dictatorship that exist in the East, as well as by private capital. We declare our support for the full realization of the principles of socialism, which have been deformed and degraded by the rule of the Kremlin bureaucracy. These principles include, for example, the right of the society to sovereignty, the right of the workers to the means of production, the right of the peasants to their land, the right of the people to independent thought and creativity. (1) Our objective is to fight for a socialist Poland.
We reject both the anti-social system of bureaucratic totalitarianism and the pseudo-parliamentarian antidemocratic regime of imperialism. We reject systems that are based on exploiting the workers, and regimes that rule over society on the basis of usurped power. We stand firmly for a democracy based on self-management, for a people's power, for the right of the society to make decisions for itself, both in the framework of democratic institutions of self-management as well as in a system of political democracy. Our objective is to fight for a democratic Poland.
The term "society" and "social" in the writings of the workers' opposition movement in Poland means the civil society as opposed to the state, that is, the masses as opposed to the bureaucracy.
19
Down with poverty and
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
We reject the illusory belief in the possibility of evolutionary change or reform of the Stalinist system or the capitalist system. The conflicts
66 of interest between the working people and the bureaucratic or bourgeois power elites are too powerful to be
ALTHOUGH PRICES went up recently, between December 1985 and March
1986, the regime imposed a new price increase on us. After the increase in capable of solution through evolurents last January, the regime is already announcing an increase in the cost tion or reform. The only road by which society can win its right to of house heating, gas, electricity, coal and urban transport. Undeclared increases, build socialism, the only road by running around 4 per cent, are already a daily reality.
which to overthrow the dictatorship
The fall in the standard of living is the price that the working people are of the degenerated party and state paying for the parasitism, the incompetence and the dictatorship of the apparatus is revolution.
Stalinist bureaucracy. Unless we resist, there will be no end to price rises. We arouse our fighting spirit and begin to put up energetic resistance.
Only an organized force of the workers can put a brake on the action of the authorities, who bear the sole responsibility for the economic crisis.
Revolutionary internationalism
To defend ourselves, it is necessary to form:
• Statistical Committees in the underground Solidarnose factory committees, in the workers' councils and in other bodies to evaluate the increases in the cost of living. We have to demand an automatic sliding scale of wages.
It is impossible to fight the
• Independent Tenants' Committees to organize rent strikes, if the recent regime of the totalitarian bureaurent rises are not rescinded, or if they are followed up by new increases.
cracy, to overthrow it and to found a
• Protest Committees to organize work on petitions to be directed to self-managed republic without collaorgans of the state administration, to the official pseudo-trade unions, and so borating and cooperating with revoluforth and to build mass actions against the price increases.
tionary progressive movements fight-
• May Day Committees to build actions that will make May 1 a day of the independence great battles in defence of our standard of living and of civil rights.
non-Russian peoples from the Kremlin
• Self-Supply Groups to make contact with farmers and obtain supplies dictatorship, for the independence of collectively from them at prices below the official rates.
the federation of non-Russian peoples
Moreover, it is necessary to declare a state of alert against hunger. Those from the Kremlin dictatorship, for the who live under the subsistence minimum, which is 9 thousand zlotys per month per family member, are invited to put lighted candles in their apart-
Czechs and Slovaks, for a united and ment windows during the night of the 13th of every month.
independent Germany.
Our best weapon is self-organization combined with the threat of strikes.
We need to have a political awareness of the meaning of our struggle, to underthe struggle of the workers stand that unless we overthrow a regime that is socially and nationally alien, entire world against exploitation by we cannot eradicate the causes of the crisis. We must be aware that the fundaprivate capital. Our ally can only be mental objectives of our struggle are independence and self-management and the world working class. That is the that we are waging it in the interests of the workers, peasants, intellectuals content of our revolutionary interbourgeoisie as the common enemies of the working people. History shows that the workers are adversarics of both systems, and that when the workers rise up to claim their rights, both systems are united by a common in interest drowned our struggle will be waged fronts - against the bureaucracy in the East and the bourgeoisie in the
West. In seek support or aid from the imperialist bourgeoisie. It is in the interest of all the workers of the world to fight against a third world war, to defend peace and to oppose the flareup of international our class needs or which are artificial in character. Therefore, we are for peace.
We recognize the need to assure the role of working class as a subject and the sovereignty of society. (2)
Therefore, we stand for social ownership of the means of production and for the right of the workers to selforganization and selt-management, and fight for social and national sovereignty. We are fighting for a self- managed Poland.
20 the dictatorship"
and small artisans.
There is no socialism without
Democracy means people's power, places, cities means that the society must be free of any dictatorship and that the state power must derive from the social power. The bureaucratic regimes in the East and the plutocracies in the West will never be a people's power. The basis of socialism is power by the people, that is, freedom for people and a role of political subject both collectively and individually. The absence of democracy has led the present system to degenerate into an anti-social actually existing socialicm." There is no socialism where there is no democracy. Nor is there real democracy without socialism.
no socialism without
The anti-social and anti-democratic bureaucracy bases itself on political subordination to the power of the Kremlin and on economic subordination to the also anti-social imperialist
Workers' Opposition Alliance Warsaw, March 17, 1986 monopolies. Without the support of these two systems, the present poliitself in Poland. In order to achieve socialism in our country by the revolutionary road, it is necessary to deliver the people from this subordination, which means subjugation. Socialism will be possible only if we win national independence. There is no socialism without independence nor is there any independence without socialism. self-management.
Only a self-managed society can guarantee a socialist system, democracy and independence. The right of independent organs of workers' self-management to make the decisions in the factories; the right of the society to decide about the environment in which it lives and works; the
2. "Subject"' means that the workers determine their own fate, instead of being an "object, that having their fate determined by someone else. IV'