Lech Wałęsa (front row, left side) observing workers in confession to priests. Decades of Stalinist mismanagement, corruption, and oppression drove 80% of Poland’s historically pro-socialist proletariat into the arms of the Catholic Church.
Original Facebook Note #18 published 22 February 2017
“We don’t strike for the Black Madonna of Czestochowa!”
–Italian workers refusing to join the Solidarity with Solidarity campaign of Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the pro-imperialist Italian Communist Party.
“I am opposed to Solidarity because I believe it is an anti-socialist organization which desires the overthrow of a socialist state.”
–Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, UK; 8 September 1983.
35 years ago, on 13 December 1981 the Polish deformed workers state was in chaos. Social inequality, economic mismanagement and corruption of the Stalinist bureaucracy had sowed the seeds for counter-revolution in Poland and in 1980 it sprouted in the form of a trade union calling itself Solidarność (or Solidarity). Solidarność managed to win over 80% of the Polish working class at its height in 1981 when it made putsch for power on a program of total counter-revolution under the umbrella of workers’ rights on a platform of rabid Polish nationalism, restoration of capitalism and an end to the secularization of Polish society. These objectives were outlined and declared in April 1981 by the “union’s” leader Lech Wałęsa and backed by the rest of the Solidarność heads with the full endorsement of the Polish Catholic Church. Although from its inception in the Baltic port strikes of August 1980, Solidarność stopped short of calling for outright counter-revolution, and even joining the government alongside liberal Stalinists. However, it was clear that clerical reaction had played an essential role in the strikes, as workers knelt before Catholic priests. The evidence of a counter-revolutionary movement piled up from then on.
Particularly in the Gdańsk (former German city of Danzig) Lenin Shipyard where Lech Wałęsa, then an unemployed electrician emerged as the head of the shipyard’s strike committee, made his first public appearance after negotiating with the Stalinists and obtaining the right to form “self-governing unions”. Prior to his speech Wałęsa threw pictures of the Virgin Mary into the crowd as he wore the Black Madonna on his left lapel, a signature feature in addition to his overly thick moustache. And thus, Solidarność was founded and would be the only “trade union” ever loved by the imperialists and the Roman Catholic Church. Since the days of the First International in the 19th century, the Vatican always supported strike breaking and union busting by the ruling classes in the name of defending “Christian values” against “godless communism” and has been the bitter enemy of any and all revolutionary struggles. Indeed, the clerical-nationalist Solidarność would be the sole exception.
In the Stalinist regimes of the East bloc there was no proletariat that was more rebellious and militant than the Poles, though they never attempted to seize power in their name but instead backing a liberal Stalinist bureaucrat who sold himself on false promises. Nevertheless, the lessons they learned from generation to generation beginning with the founder of Polish Marxism Ludwik Waryński, the Russian Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg, Wera Kostrzewa, Adolf Warski, Henryk Walecki, the Communist Party of Poland (no relation to the Stalinist Polish United Workers’ Party), and the works they were exposed to since the Polish deformed workers state was born. These proved useful lessons to the pro-socialist working class as was shown in upheavals of 1956, 1968, 1970-71, and 1976 in which better living and economic conditions were central, and against the rising prices of consumer goods. Polish Stalinist leader Edward Gierek (who took over Poland after the 1970 revolt toppled Władysław Gomułka) had mortgaged Poland’s wealth to West German bankers and placed the burden of the rising debts to imperialist banks on the shoulders of the Polish workers. The consistent let downs by each Stalinist strengthened internal counter-revolution which fed into the Catholic church, the only tolerated opposition in Poland.
In 1978, the Cardinal of Kraków Karol Wojtyła became Pope, taking the name John Paul II. Proud of a son of Poland becoming pope, the Polish Stalinists rolled out the red carpet for this reactionary pope to spread his anti-communist gospel in Poland. In the tradition of Waryński, not Wojtyła, and a Bolshevik Trotskyist leadership could have taken the Polish workers to total victory over clerical reaction, anti-Semitism, anti-German and anti-Russian chauvinism, Polish nationalism of both the Stalinist bureaucracy and Solidarność; and for workers’ political revolution based of workers democracy. In 1980 when the Warsaw Stalinists again declared their intention to raise food prices, sparked the general strike along the Baltic ports. Wage increases granted by Gierek in an effort to buy off the loyalty of the workers produced only high inflation. Shortages were widespread and getting worst. The grievances and the reasons for striking that the Polish workers had was very real, and legitimate. Communism by that time had become a dirty word in Poland, as pro-imperialist sentiment and bowing to priests offering the only form of salvation increased. A day after the start of the Baltic ports general strike, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński led pilgrimage of 150,000 to the sight of the Battle of Warsaw in 1920 to commemorate the Polish Army’s victory over the Red Army under the virulently right-wing general Józef Piłsudski.
As the strikes spread throughout Poland into other trades and enterprises, while the workers shook up the Stalinist regime, they engaged in Catholic social teachings offered by the priests. In fact, churches became centers for dissent. The teachings were laden with anti-Semitism, Polish nationalism, and traditional anti-German and anti-Russian chauvinism. After years of lies, work quotas, unpaid bonuses, and false promises that anger and grievances of the Polish workers at the Stalinist bureaucracy was just and true and were reason to strike. However, Solidarność stood for capitalist counter-revolution and clerical nationalism that sought to overthrow the collectivized and planned economy and the introduction to religion into public life that worsen a bad situation and slash jobs, particularly for women. Solidarność had to be suppressed at any cost. By the Polish Stalinists who sowed the seeds for counter-revolution being forced to defend their privilege. Or by the Kremlin who would for whatever stupid reason decided to mobilize Russian and Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Poland. An action in which the Kremlin Stalinists would have doubtlessly appealed to historical Russian anti-Polish sentiment.
In fact, mobilization of Soviet workers against Solidarność were taking place in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and throughout the USSR. On 12 September 1981, the New York Times quoted a worker from the Moscow Zil auto and truck factory saying, “They ask us to renounce ourselves, the results of our work, of our struggle, to betray millions of people who fell in battles against imperialism, to betray our Communist future.” The fundamental difference between the USSR and the deformed workers states such as the People’s Republic of Poland is that the Soviet Union was born from the Russian working people overthrowing bourgeois order and taking power for themselves under the democratically elected soviets (workers councils). Soviet power was dissolved by Joseph Stalin who replaced it was a centralized Bonapartist and bureaucratic dictatorship without reversing the economic structure, therefore the USSR was a degenerated workers state. This was not the case with Poland where bourgeois order was overthrown from above by Stalin in 1948 without any involvement of the Polish masses.
In the United States as the 1980 presidential elections loomed closer, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan competed over who was going to be the hardest on the Soviets, including over the unrest in Poland and invoking God. During the period of détente Carter kept the anti-Soviet war drums beating at home over “human rights violations” in the East bloc, shedding crocodile tears for pro-imperialist dissidents being jailed in the Soviet Union and East bloc states. This was when “human rights” imperialism was founded and has lasted to this very day when the U.S and NATO rulers sell justification for war. The Democrats needed to win the liberal anti-war crowd back to the side of imperialism after the carnage and mass murder Washington (under bipartisan leadership) inflicted on the Vietnamese people to “fight Communism”, and it worked. Reagan kicked off his campaign over Poland by posing with Lech Wałęsa’s father who emigrated to the USA, while Carter’s right hand man was his national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a vile anti-Communist and son of Poland who had already taken to arming the Afghan Mujahideen fanatics fighting the Soviet Army. Brzezinski worked nonstop with his fellow countryman Pope Wojtyła to rid their “holy Poland” from and rolling back “atheistic Communism”. Meanwhile Moscow observed the situation with alarm, and with good reason. Gierek was forced to resign and was replaced by Stanisław Kania.
As the crisis in Poland increased and the Stalinist regime in total chaos, Carter authorized the CIA to covertly send funds to Polish “independent unions”, i.e Solidarność beginning at $2 million and would total to $1 billion by 1989. This excluded the larger amounts from “donations” by the National Endowment for Democracy ($10 million), a known CIA money laundering front, millions from other NATO members (especially Margaret Thatcher’s Great Britain), and plus tens of millions of dollars more from the bankers of Wall Street, Frankfurt and City of London, as well as subsidies to the Polish Catholic Church from the Vatican. The money from the CIA was funneled to Solidarność via the AFL-CIO (was known as the “AFL-CIA” in Latin America) to further their activities, and thusly their ambitions for total counter-revolution in Poland. The AFL-CIO was founded during the McCarthy era that purged American unions of militants and those deemed “Communists”. The heads Lane Kirkland, Albert Shankar, and Irving Brown were die hard right-wing Cold Warriors involved in sabotaging unions in Europe and Latin America: Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, and so on. In late 1981, all three were invited to Poland as honored guests by Lech Wałęsa. Not a single penny had been raised by the imperialists for Polish workers in the previous upheavals, nor for the Czechoslovaks in 1968, Hungarians in 1956, or the East Germans in 1953 contrary to Stalinoid slanders. Even less money raised for workers of any other trade union on the planet since Solidarność.
By late 1980 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops were conducting drills along Poland’s frontiers in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany as a warning to the Polish Stalinists to curb Solidarność or face invasion. In the CNN series The Cold War Episode 19: Freeze, Brzezinski boasted about American reaction: “The critical moment came in December of 1980 when the Soviets were poised to intervene in Poland. We did everything we could to mobilize international opinion. To galvanize maximum international pressure on the Soviets. To convince the Soviets that we will not be passive.” The translation was clear: invade Poland and suppress Solidarność, and we’ll launch World War III. A policy that was escalated when Reagan succeeded Carter, and subsidies to Solidarność increased to an annual $200 million. The most war-crazed president since Eisenhower, Reagan prophesized Armageddon according to biblical nonsense about Gog (godless Russia) being destroyed by fire and brimstone from heaven (American missiles), and that it was his duty to fulfill this prophecy.
Reagan and his secretary of state Gen. Alexander Haig and secretary of war Caspar Weinberger stopped at nothing to provoke the USSR into a first strike over Poland. Haig pressured NATO states to cut any and all economic ties to the Soviet Union, while Weinberger’s nuclear reaction threats went as far as to arm China, by then a stooge of U.S imperialism, albeit merely useful for the time. Reagan, Haig, and Weinberger wanted nothing more than to see Polish workers led by Solidarność, under the crowned white eagle and cross hurling Molotov cocktails at Soviet tanks, the conditions Washington would need to turn their anti-Soviet Cold War into a white-hot war. One Pole living in the United States angrily stated, “America seems to be playing some kind of game with a whole nation!” (New York Times, 6 April 1981). The same day Reagan was reported to have used “strong language” towards Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Solidarność with its papist zeal would provide the perfect opportunity since the 1950’s when the United States parachuted fascist exiles into the East bloc to foment violent counter-revolution. The difference being that now the counter-revolution was in the form of simple trade union non-violent activism.
But it wasn’t until April 1981 that Lech Wałęsa finally revealed the Solidarność program of counter-revolution: adopting a capitalist economy, privatization of all state-owned enterprises, abolish the separation of church and state, implement authority of the Catholic Church on Polish society, and declaring itself a “free trade union”, the U.S labor bureaucracy’s patriotic Cold War slogan. Tensions involving Poland was reaching a boiling point, as everyone expected that sooner or later the Soviets would respond in some form. In the face of the U.S war provocations, the aging Leonid Brezhnev had one card left to play: to force the Warsaw Stalinists to deal with Solidarność. After a year in which Kania failed to curb the growing unrest, he was ousted and replaced with Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski in October 1981.
On 12 December 1981, Solidarność made its grab for power. Now with 80% of the Polish working-class being members, Wałęsa announced a nationwide general strike to force the Stalinists to call for immediate elections, which would have handed the “union” victory, and thusly for counter-revolution. Gen. Jaruzelski declared martial law and mobilized the riot police known as the ZOMO, and the Polish People’s Army throughout Poland against any strikes that were taking place in the course of the week. Tanks, troops, and riot police took the streets, fierce clashes in Warsaw, Katowice, Poznań, and other towns and cities throughout Poland erupted as strikes were broken. Solidarność was banned, Wałęsa and its leaders were arrested and imprisoned along with the “union’s” countless activists. Jaruzelski made a televised speech of his intentions. The military was in full control over Poland. In response to the Polish government’s crackdown on their stooge, the United States imposed economic sanctions on Poland, worsening an already declining economy, and stepped up its war drive against the Soviet Union. As brutal as the tactics employed may have been, the gains of the collectivized economy were saved for the time being and society remained secular. Unlike in the previous pro-socialist revolts, in 1981 there were reportedly NO defections to Solidarność from the Polish People’s Army or the Citizen’s Militia.
FEMINISTS, LIBERALS, LEFTISTS EMBRACED REAGAN’S/WOJTYŁA’S HOLY CRUSADE
Conservatives throughout the West viewed Lech Wałęsa as a man of faith whom with the aid of Reagan and God would rollback “godless Communism”. But to the liberals and leftish youth, Wałęsa since before martial law in Poland sold himself to millions of Westerners as being a simple trade unionist. Just as the Dalai Lama today is seen by his 10 million Western fans as a simple Buddhist monk. Not unlike the “Free Tibet” groups that have flourished in the most liberal and progressive cities and college campuses throughout the West, groups dedicated to supporting Solidarność sprang up throughout the 1980’s. In Italy, the staunchly anti-Soviet Italian Communist Party along with union bureaucrats founded the Solidarity with Solidarity campaign aimed at workers to strike for the imperialist proxy. Secular and class-conscious workers throughout Italy refused to strike for Solidarność, knowing what Polish “union” stood for. The campaign was also taken up in France, West Germany, and other NATO states as a war cry against the Soviet Union. The fake Trotskyist group Socialist Action even adopted the Solidarność logo for its logo that it still has today.
Overtaken by social-patriotism and anti-Communism, what these self-proclaimed “allies of working people” dismissed was the Solidarność disregard for the plight of workers in imperialist states, and its anti-woman positions. In Great Britain the Polish Solidarity Campaign was founded in August 1980 during the strike at the Lenin Shipyard. The PSC consisted of pseudo-Marxists, liberals, yuppies, Labourites, feminists, social-patriots, Tories, union bureaucrats, as well as Polish and Afghan rightists. After the Polish government’s crackdown, the PSC activities skyrocketed as they held anti-Communist rallies on college campuses and protests in front of the Polish embassy. They waved the Solidarność banner and signs bearing anti-Communist slogans such as “Free Poland!” and “Free Wałęsa!” They also demanded Margaret Thatcher to take the toughest stance possible against the USSR, while continuing to bemoan her domestic policies. Such actions of the PSC even won over exiles such as pro-imperialist Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. Even much of the left joined this chorus for counter-revolution. For example, the British punk band Angelic Upstarts who made a name for themselves rocking out against the Iron Lady stood firmly with her regarding crackdown on Solidarność with their song “Solidarity” glorifying the imperialist/Vatican front.
Religious zealot and actor Charleton Heston hosted a TV special Let Poland Be Poland which aired in January 1982 that featured a series of celebrities and heads of state championing Solidarność with crocodile tears. This included Thatcher who stated “We’re inspired by the people of Poland. Their longing and their struggle for freedom have kindled new hope in their country and all-over Eastern Europe.” Three years later during the British miners’ strike of 1984 the Iron Lady unleashed the police all over the UK against the striking miners by charges mounted on horseback. Clearly what inspired Thatcher about Solidarność was not its “workers’ rights” cover. The NUM leader of the strike Arthur Scargill had denounced Solidarność for the reactionary front that it was, which prompted a head of the Polish “union” David Jastrzębski to issue a faux condemnation of Thatcher’s tactics citing “a better future for the working class.” Lech Wałęsa said of Thatcher and her methods, “With such a wise and brave woman, Britain will find a solution to the strike.” So much for workers’ rights!
Meanwhile in the United States, the same actions by the same people were taken in addition to conservatives. By then American liberals had completely forgotten about California governor Reagan’s contempt for the Latino farm workers’ strikes led by reformist labor leader Cesar Chavez, describing the strikes as “immoral”. These liberals endorsed Ronald Reagan after his 1981 Christmas Day statement shedding crocodile tears over the Polish governments trampling on “the right to strike” and that “factories, mines, universities and homes have been assaulted” and demanded he make good on his threats of “serious consequences”. While Reagan used the Solidarność crackdown to portray himself as an ally of striking workers, none of the supporters of the Polish “union” gave him the slightest call on his smashing of the PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) strike in August 1981, 5 months before martial law in Poland! Solidarność spokesman Zygmunt Przetakiewicz took a neutral position and refused to condemn Reagan’s busting of the PATCO union, much less the drastic cuts in welfare programs. When asked his position in all this, Przetakiewicz replied, “I would not like to be involved in this kind of thing.”
Indeed, much of the anti-Vietnam War crowd in the U.S had by then made amends with American imperialism and embraced Jimmy Carter’s “human rights” war cry against the Soviets. Already having taken up the cause of Soviet dissidents, they too joined Reagan’s anti-Communist chorus over Solidarność. Among these were Jane Fonda, the misandristic feminist Susan Sontag who dubbed Communism as “Fascism with a human face” in early 1982 which earned her boos and jeers, and Joan Baez who wrote Wałęsa a song “Happy Birthday, Leonid Brezhnev”. In 1985 Joan Baez traveled to Poland and met with Lech Wałęsa in Gdańsk. She sang for this enemy of women’s rights, and on the same trip organized a concert in at the port city’s St. Brigida Church. United by their anti-Communism, Wałęsa and Baez spent much of her trip discussing human rights issues, the former who saw Reagan as the guarantor and the latter who allegedly saw the psychotic American president as its violator. The Canadian new wave band Rational Youth released a song “Saturdays in Silesia” attributed to Solidarność. None of the prior revolutionary workers’ rebellions in Poland or the Soviet sphere would ever receive such pop culture attention!
Western feminists such as American groups NOW (National Organization for Women) and Feminist Majority took up the Solidarność call even with its links to the Catholic Church with its history women’s oppression. They focused more on the Lenin Shipyard welder and crane operator Anna Walentynowicz whose unjust dismissal was a spark for the 1980 strike. She would declare herself a believer and promoted the role of women in Polish society according to Catholic social teachings, confined to the family and kitchen and total ban abortion. Nevertheless, Walentynowicz was depicted by Western feminists as a Polish Rosie the Riveter. They didn’t even acknowledge reports just before the putsch attempt by Solidarność that in the Lenin Shipyard male workers wrote in large lettering “Women, stay home! We are freeing Poland!” However, some feminists have been forced to notice what they saw as “little flaws” in Solidarność’ program regarding women. When visiting Paris in October 1981 Wałęsa was asked by a woman worker of the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) union why he tells women to stay home and not fight for their rights, Wałęsa replied that he meant only Polish women. Despite these “flaws”, the feminists wrapped in their bourgeois social-patriotism did not retract an ounce of sympathy from Solidarność.
Today even with “flaws” of his outspoken homophobia and opposition to abortion as he’s always been, Wałęsa continues to be placed on the high “human rights” pedestal by those who defend women’s and gay rights. In 2013 Wałęsa launched a verbal attack on the LGBT community: “They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking from the majority.” This was followed by the human rights icon saying that gays in Parliament “closer to the wall or even behind the wall.” Though in 2014 the city of San Francisco was forced to observe Wałęsa’s homophobia and change the street named after him to Dr. Tom Waddell Place, the founder of the Gay Olympics. But the head of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Jane Kim true to her bourgeois liberalism could not allow herself to fully besmirch the Polish “human rights” icon stressing that the renaming of his street “in no way takes away from Lech Walesa’s achievements.” In the last decade after the millennium Lech Wałęsa played a leading role in the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba, a reactionary group of capitalists, imperialists, and ex-Stalinists founded by Czechoslovak counter-revolutionary Václav Havel dedicated to total reversal of the Cuban Revolution.
AFTERMATH AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
Despite the suppression of the Solidarność counter-revolution in 1981, the Warsaw Stalinists still remained capable of selling out to capitalism. In June 1983, the Pope met with Jaruzelski who was persuaded to lift the ban on Solidarność in exchange for continued loans. This allowed the CIA to fully infiltrate the “union” without going through the AFL-CIO, and funds increased to $200 million a year. The bankruptcy of Stalinism could not have been more evident as in Poland in the 1980’s. This was exacerbated in 1985 with Mikhail Gorbachov becoming Soviet leader and the start of Glasnost and Perestroika, as the Soviet Stalinists were now determined for total appeasement of imperialism beginning with the withdrawal of the Red Army from Afghanistan. In 1989 Gen. Jaruzelski was the first in the East bloc to take up Gorbachov on market reforms. That summer Jaruzelski participated in talks with Lech Wałęsa and the Solidarność heads about elections and forming a coalition government with the “union”. Then he invited U.S president George H.W Bush to Poland in an appeal for an economic aid package beginning at $400 million. The price was total counter-revolution: further reforms and privatization, meaning the closing of factories, massive layoffs, rising unemployment, and de-secularization.
The Polish Stalinists hosted Bush and even sang praises to him in the parliament with Jaruzelski standing next to the American president. The Polish workers state was the first to fall to the capitalist counter-revolution in1989 when Solidarność was voted into power. While most felt the need to rejoice when Wałęsa raised his hands in victory, the reality of capitalism was already being felt. Unemployment rose to 20% before the year was out, prices continued to rise, wages remained low and would soon become unpaid wages. In the illustrated book Red Express written and shot by two Australian journalists in 1989 noted that by this time Polish workers who once were striking for Solidarność, were striking against it. An unemployed worker Piotr Górniak from Gdańsk, where the legacy of the Polish “free trade union” began, was photographed on a hunger strike against Solidarność and engaging in debates with its supporters. Soup kitchens sprang up all over Poland to feed those who received the shortest end of the stick from the “democratic” reforms. Even at its worst during the 1980’s soup kitchens, unemployment, and homelessness were unheard of in Poland. Inflation was at an all-time high. In 1990 Wałęsa was faced a nationwide miners’ strike over the capitalist shock treatment as their living and work conditions worsened, and layoffs continued. The strike was able to slow down the reactionary social and economic reforms but did not stop them.
In 1990 Gen. Jaruzelski was officially ousted, replaced by Lech Wałęsa who was elected president and began drastic changes to Polish society. Changes that involved his most ardent liberal and left-wing supporters including Joan Baez running for cover. The primary targets were working women, especially single mothers. As per Catholic doctrine confining women to the family and with the rising unemployment, women were the first to be laid off from jobs, the last to be considered for a job (which still continues today). State funded childcare centers for the children of working mothers were closed overnight throughout Poland. This was particularly hard on single mothers who lost their only means of childcare, those that still had jobs. Women also lost the right to obtain divorces from abusive husbands. Abortion and contraceptives were banned in Poland by the 1989 Unborn Child Protection bill by Solidarność deputies. The bill outlawed abortion in all cases including if the pregnancy was the result of rape, incest, or the mother’s health/life was endangered. A law that Wałęsa was forced to moderate in 1993, though his successors today with the Church are pushing for the bill to be reintroduced amidst strong opposition. The bill was opposed by 60% of the Polish people, with only 10% in total favor of it. The purpose was made clear by Solidarność functionary Marcin Libicki when he stated, “We wish to return to the ethos of woman as a mother. Nature created women to bear children.” No wonder the Pope, Reagan, and Thatcher loved Solidarność!
Further attacks continued on the separation of church and state that had come with the liberation of Poland by the Red Army in 1944. In the education department, mandatory Catholic teachings and training was reintroduced in 1991 by the new Solidarność government. The backlash was serious and swift. Demonstrators in Warsaw gathered at the monument to astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus to protest against it to no avail. Anarchists and the newly founded Trotskyist Spartacist Group of Poland were active among the protesters.
The question then arises: why did millions of Polish working people including women flock to Solidarność and the Catholic Church? Małgorzata Taraszkiewicz, the former head of the Solidarność Women’s Commission turned Anarchist gave a good answer in the August/September 1991 issue of Off Our Backs: “It was a common belief that as soon as we got rid of communist rule that aid and investment would start pouring in from the Western countries. It turned out not to be true. The majority of Western businessmen interested in Eastern Europe are interested in quick profits only. They do create jobs but on their conditions: no trade unions, no complaints about work conditions and low wages.” In the end the Stalinists of the East bloc had been right about the dangers of counter-revolution. It is what awaits the people of North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba should one occur. But the Stalinists with all their privilege, pretentions, and betrayal had forgotten about socialism and its democratic and egalitarian principles. Nevertheless, the suppression of Solidarność in December 1981 by the declaration of martial law was an extremely rare case where strikebreaking and suppression of demonstrations by the military and police forces was very progressive and served the interests of the working-class.
Red October Goth 