The fight for peace and
PEACE MOVEMENT Western imperialist circles or let ourselves be taken in by cynical declarations about peace from the bureaucratic regimes in the East. In Poland, the peace movement is farce and a facade, behind which the totalitarian bureaucracy of the People's Republic of Poland and the Kremlin want to hide their actual antiworking-class and militarist face.
THE FOLLOWING is from Przelom, No. 2, 1985, an underground publication of the antibureaucratic opposition in Poland.
In our times, the fight for the of wage labor cannot fail to be waged parallel to the fight for peace. The military means of destruction in the hands of the monopolist bourgeoisie bureaucracy give them the power to kill every inhabitant of the planet several times over, to destroy totally all higher and intermediate forms of
Therefore, the fight for full individual, social and national liberation of the industrial workers and all people working for wages and, through that, the fight of all humanity for progress and development must be accompanied by a fight against the preparation and possible unleashing of total genocide. The fight for progress and the fight for peace have become identical.
It has been and remains a delusion to think that in conditions of conflict within societies and conflict over the division of the world, in conditions where the rivalry of geopolitical blocs leaves the earth balanced on the brink of world war, it is possible to achieve real — that is, lasting — peace and security in the world. As long as social and political forces exist that have an interest in maintaining conflicts within individual nations and in relations among nations, peace will be threatened. This follows, in fact, from the very nature of the interests of classes or groups that monopolize economic and political power and carry out exploitation and oppression, and in line with that, incite to war and are ready to unleash it.
The momentary balance of forces between the United States in the West and the analogous structure dominated by the Kremlin in the East is only a temporary truce, which is insecure and very shaky. Only a lasting elimination from social life both in the West and in the East of groups that could become instigators and initiators of war can offer a guarantee of real peace. The road to this peace leads mainly through revolutionary struggle but also through combating today the processes of the Cold War, such as the arms race, the war psychosis or the spread of hatred among peoples.
International Viewpoint 24 March 1986
The only real and overall alternative to World War III is international, world revolution to overthrow the rule of capital in the West and the South and the governments of the nomenklatura [bureaucracy] in the East. Today this end is served by the fight for limiting the arms spiral, for international detente and for the ability of society to place limits on exploitative and dictatorial
At present, this is indeed the fundamental immediate task of the revolutionary workers' movement, in particular here in Europe.
It is the historic and human duty of the revolutionary left in the broad sense to conduct an active policy in defense of the existing state of peace and to prevent it from being undermined by tendencies threatening to unleash war. Without losing sight of the strategic aim, which is lasting transformations to be laid after the revolution, it is necessary today to take part in the struggle to eliminate
Just as the fight for freedom and is at the same time a struggle for lasting peace, so the fight for peace, to prevent the ruling classes and castes from unleashing national conflicts, and thereby also from undermining class struggles, is a factor contributing to the revolutionary liberation of labor.
Peace in the service of revolution, revolution in defense of peace - that is our slogan.
We cannot give way to the pressure of Cold War blackmail from the
For example, at the head of the Ogolnopolski Defenders of Peace] is the likes of Jozef Cyrankiewicz. He shares respon-
- as chief of state of the People's Republic of Poland
- for the repression the workers in 1956, for the repression pation of Polish troops in the invasion finally for the massacre of the Baltic workers in December Nobody believes that this hangman of the Polish working class and dependable stooge of the Kremlin suddenly transformed himself into a dove of
However, because of such propagandistic manipulation, in Poland, the other East European countries and the USSR, the theme of the defense of peace has become identified en bloc and incorrectly in the eyes of the societies of these countries with the policy of the regimes, and therefore is not all that popular. This state of affairs must of course be changed as soon as possible. And it can be changed only by independent, genuine peace movements opposing both the militaristic monopolistic bourgeousie and the totalitarian bureauwill participate in working and strug gling to build an independent genuine peace movement and we appeal to opposition in Poland - who do not warheads and arms of mass destruction into "good" and "bad" ones depending on whether they are held by the West or East - to militarist policy of the US and imperiwe support totally and without reservation, we add the complementary slogan, "Down with the militarist policy of the Kremlin and totalitarianism.
We appeal for international solidarity in the fight for peace!
goverments, for the people's peace.
Czestochowa, July 1985
Komisja Wykonawcza Porozumienia
Prasowego Opozycji Robotniczej
[Executive Commission of the Press
Alliance of the Workers Opposition]
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