German and Austrian SPs
Block Solidarity with Polish Workers
By Peter Bartelheimer
When those who fight injustice are beaten,
That doesn't mean that injustice is right.
Our defeats show only that too few fight against baseness
What we expect from the onlookers is that at least they should be ashamed. Bertolt Brecht "Against Those Who Preach Objectivity."
Since the end of the second world war, no war has been fought so close to the borders of West
Germany and Austria as the one that General Jaruzelski declared on December 13, 1981, against the working class and the entire population of Poland. Nonetheless, in the Social Democratic parties and the unions in these countries-which besides France and Greece are the only two in Western Europe where Social Democrats are in government--there are far too many onlookers, too many who are staying "above the battle." And they are not at all ashamed.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, as in Austria, there is a solidarity movement with Solidarnosc. However, in neither of these two countries have the Social Democratic parties and the unions called for mass demonstrations in support of Solidarnosc, as the corresponding organizations have in Italy and France. Moreover, in West Germany and Austria, trade-union committees for solidarity with Solidarnosc have been having a hard time finding allies within the Social Democracy to help them build active mass soli-
The tens of thousands of food packages and shipments of medicine sent to Poland testify to the fact that the population is not indifferent to the events in Poland and that the Polish workers movement is arousing sympathy in factories and offices.
In both these countries, the Stalinist parties, the Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (DKP, German Communist Party) and the Kommunistische Partei Osterreichs
(KPO), which follow Moscow's line through thick and thin, have scarcely any support in the workers' movement. The existence in the unions and the SPD of supporters of the theory of state monopoly capitalism ("Stamikap"), who sympathize with the DKP, does not sway the policy of the
Social Democracy.
Thus, in West Germany and Austria, it is not the influence of Stalinism but much more that of the Social Democracy that explains the difficulties faced by those who are trying to organize an effective working-class movement of solidarity with Solidarnosc.
BRANDT, KREISKY:
"POLAND HAS TO WORK
HARDER"
At the time of the December 13 coup d'etat, the West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, was meeting with Erich Honecker, the general secretary of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (SED, Socialist Unity Party, the East German CP) at an East-West German summit on the shore of Lake Werbellin. Schmidt's response to the event was in tune with Honecker's.
The West German SPD leader described the state of siege in Poland as representing "a difference between opposing sections of the Polish people." He even expressed his "regret that such a solution became necessary."
On the same day, the Austrian chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, also a leader of a Social Democratic Party (the SPO), declared that General Jaruzelski's crackdown was "a last attempt to avoid the
Such statements are hardly surprising when you remember that the SPD chairman, Willy Brandt's comment on the First National Congress of Solidarity held in Gdansk last September was to point to the existing treaties and allineeds most is to work harder!"
In the same period, Bruno Kreisky, speaking to Austrian steelworkers in Linz, called on the Polish workers to strike less and produce more coal to assure that the trade treaties with Austria would be complied with.
The inborn fear that Social
Democrat rulers in Bonn and
Vienna have of a revolutionary developing not far from their frontiers combines with the special interests of West
German and Austrian capitalism in
East-West trade. For example, in 1980 West Germany exported 1.29 billion dollars worth of commodities to Poland and 4.3 billions to the USSR. In comparison with this, the U.S. exported 770 millions worth of goods to Poland and 1.5 billions to the USSR. Moreover, unlike the U.S., West German exports to East Europe and the USSR were almost exclusively industrial
With 4.3 billion dollars in outstanding loans to Poland, West German banks have twice the debts to collect that the American
To be sure, both the SPD and the SPO condemned the establishment of the state of siege in Poland. Bruno Kreisky sent a message to the solidarity rally with Poland that was held on January 29 at Vienna's Konzerthaus at which the balladeer Wolf Bierman appeared.
The Austrian chancellor said: "We must demand the same thing today that we demanded of the Austrian fascist regime after the February 1934 days--Release the Polish union leaders!" In the February 4, 1982, issue of the SPD journal Vorwarts, he wrote that in Poland "all the insanity of the Communist apparatus has been revealed."
For his part, Helmut Schmidt said on December 18 before the Bundestag, and repeated on January 31 at the SPD Lower Saxony state congress in Hanover, that he was "with all my heart at the side of the Polish workers."
### MODERATION
AND CIRCUMSPECTION
However, in a resolution signed by its presidium in December, the SPD leadership advised against any concrete actions: "With regard to the events in Poland, the SPD presidium calls on all responsible
23
forces in West Germany to adopt an attitude of circumspection and moderation.... The commitment to rapprochement and collaboration must be maintained in particular in these critical moments."
Rapprochement and collaboration with whom? Polish deputy premier, Mieczyslaw Rakowski was making his first visit to a Western capital after the where he was achieve "understanding." The columns of the liberal magaand Der Spiegel were being opened to the spokesman of the Military Council of National Salvation (WRON), Captain Gornicki, for long interviews. union leaderships were following the wishes of their Social Democrat comrades in the government. it was only at the end of December that the national labor confederation, the DGB, and IG-Metall called on their eight million members to give humanitarian aid to the Polish population.
The slogan of this campaign was not, however, "Solidarity with Solidarnosc!" but "Solidarity With Poland! " On January 30, the day of solidarity endorsed by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the presidents of the DGB and IG-Metall, Vetter and Loderer, explained why before December 13 they had carefully avoided calling for solidarity want to cause any problems for their Polish colleagues, it seems.
The DGB supported the ICFTU's call for actions on January 30. the same time, it showed how its subordination to the Schmidt government had undermined its capacity to mobilize even basic trade-union
A call for street demonstrations was launched only after Willy Brandt and other Social Democrats had solemnly declared in Bundestag debates with the Christian Democrat opposition (the CDU/CSU) that they would march in the front ranks of the DGB demonstrations for the victims of the state of siege.
In some places, the DGB even let representatives of the bourgeois parties--the Christian Democrats and Social Christians of the
CDU and CSU and the liberals of the FDP--march together with the
Social Democrats and trade-union leaders at the head of demonstrations.
After six months of "moderátion" in the big cities only a few
24 hundred persons responded to the calls of the DGB. In some big cities, such as West Berlin, Cologne, and Frankfurt, the DGB leaders did not lift a finger to organize actions, and once again left this task entirely to the solidarity com-
As a result, January 30 appeared to public opinion not as a day of trade-union solidarity but as a propaganda move by U.S. President Reagan and the right.
### SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC
On October 19, 1981, about 300, 000 persons demonstrated in Bonn against the Social-Liberal coalition government's support for basing more NATO missiles in the country. Some 70, 000 trade unionists marched in response to the call issued by the Stuttgart regional leadership of I. G. - Metall against the austerity policy of the Social Democrat ministers. SPD members of parliament (e. g., Hansen) have been expelled from the party for criticizing the Schmidt government. Others have left the party (e. g., Coppik). Social Democrats and trade-union activists have destop its financial aid to the pro-NATO junta in
However, the SPD's "reserve" in the face of the military dictatorship in Poland has the almost unanimous approval of the party, including its left wing.. Eppler, who spoke as a member of the party presidium at the anti-NATO missiles demonstration in Bonn, has said that General Jaruzelski is a "tragic figure, " whose promises of reform should be "taken seriously," because the WRON is the "last chance for
Even militant union activists who are not ready to accept the austerity program and economic policy of the Social-Liberal coalition headed by Schmidt have the illusion that the SPD-led government is defending the "detente" against Ronald Reagan's policy of sanctions against the Soviet Union.
Even the union activists who criticize their leaderships for their inability to mobilize against the bosses and the government share with these same bureaucrats the idea that Solidarnosc had framed demands that were too advanced, that were based "on a wrong assessment of the relationship of forces," demands that "bent the stick too far. " The only chance to achieve political change in the countries of
"living socialism, " according to these views is a "process of reforms and renewal, " a compromise between the workers and the Stalinist bureaucracy.
The Polish workers' struggle has raised questions that can only be answered in a positive way on the basis of an overall socialist alternative to Social Democratic reformism. Can the workers movement make a link between the defense of its bread-andbutter interests with the struggle for a different kind of society, for workers self-management and socialist democracy? Can the working class govern by itself? Is it possible for a revolutionary workers movement to win in Europe and thereby break down the spheres of influence into which the world was divided at the Yalta conference in 1945.
For thirty-five years, the West German and Austrian workers have had little experience of struggle. In the unions the peace movement is only beginning to raise the question of the independent role that the workers movement could play in international politics.
Since the summer of 1980, the revolutionary Marxists have worked to the limit of their strength consistently to show that the struggle of the Polish workers was a demonstration in life of the possibility of an alternative to bureaucratic socialism. Since that time, the German and Austrian sections of the Fourth International, the Gruppe Internationale Marxisten (GIM) and the Gruppe Revolutionare Marxisten (GRM) have played an important role in building the movement of solidarity with Solidarnosc.
Today the West German and Austrian Trotskyists are working to promote active trade-union support for the Polish resistance as an alternative to Reagan's policy of economic sanctions. At the same time, they are calling for a peace movement united around the demand for unconditional disarmament.
In particular, the Trotskyists are fighting the illusion that the workers movement and the peace movement in West Germany and
Austria today can ignore the war that the bureaucratic dictatorship is waging against the Polish workers.
What is at stake is the chance for building an alternative to crisis and war, not only in Poland but also in the consciousness of the workers movement in Western Europe.