EARLIER THIS year we carried an article by Oliver MacDonald, editor of Focus Eastern Europe, on the left and the USSR. In this issue we carry a reply to the article by ZBIGNIEW KOWALEWSKI. was a leader of Solidarnosc in the Lodz region of Poland up to the union's banning by the regime in December 1981.
OLIVER MACDONALD reputation for problems of Eastern Europe and the USSR from the standpoint of the workers movement -Focus on Eastern Europe.
He has a good knowledge of the nature of the power structure, the state of the working class and the dynamic of the which periodically shaken up the Soviet bloc over the last 30 years.
For this reason was astonished when I read his "The left and the Soviet Union' which appeared in the 6. April issue Socialist Action.
In this article Macdonald aims at outlining a programme of action for the British wcsEctll general on the question of the USSR. There is a real and very urgent need to convince socialists and militants of the workers and peace movements in the West to take up the defence what remains as post-capitalist in the USSR and other similar regimes.
Unfortunately post-capitalist limited to ownership of the main means of production and more or less full employment. The only viable way of carrying out such a detence period is to determine what is blocking the development and destroying the potential inscribed in the postcapitalist nature of these societies and thereby monstrously distorting them to the point that their post-capitalist character is difficult to recognise.
Is it the external forces which use economic and military the restoration of capitalism or the internal forces that exercise totalitarian power? It is an important task of the western left to oppose the pressure of the former forces criticising the 'exterminism' theory. the last stage of civilisation, that Macdonald correctly denounces which leads to the reiection of the theory of the last stage of capitalism.
on Kowalewski Polish social have rather al licic of left Germany. remains as state pressed ucscul Aris argumenl gocs effectively pressure for capital' weslerl restoration of capitalism!
Ler seave this implies "models of socialism'.
not one of these 18110 spreading such a lie. Solidarnosc distributing leaflets in Gdansk Any reasonable socialist knows we are today a long way from anything similar to the build-up for an imminent invasion of the USSR by Nazi Nevertheless Macdonald asks for nothing more or less than that the western left raise the banner of defence of the USSR against the capitalist powers — not the defence of the working class and the other social groups in the USSR the against the totalitarian regimes.
as tollows: lt the Western left does not manage to defend Tiner TLNeN 'authoritarian-bureaucratic' model of socialism' will be reinforced in that country, NATO will be able to 'prevent any positive development within fast', the USSR' and this would lead to 'the opening up of the Soviet economy to that IS, on side these the The USSR is - and at least from someone like Macdonald we could expect that he will not contribute to What is more worrying is the fact that Macdonald gives no explanation of where this repugnant 'model' (the the USSR)
SYSICIIl historically came from. The context of the article suggests that the responsibility resides in the pressure of the capitalist powers. This is not true The Stalinist gang created its followers reproduced — the theory of a beseiged fortress to justity its counter-revolutionary action. In fact the contributing external factors were verv varied: deteats ot the workers movement in other countries, defeats that later, both in western capitalist centres and in the dependent countries were organised by the Kremlin camarilla as an indispensable factor in the consolidation of its totalitarian The problem is how to take that Such a way of presenting Soviet reality can only contribute to preserv- tion.
lallic general unal unc political regime in the USSR (and similar countries) can be reformed The word 'revolution' is strikingly ab sent from Macdonald's article.
Reject One knows that broad sectors of western left reject the idea revolution but is it by chance that the best thing Macdonald can leave the consciousness of these sectors in peace? We know the results: 'a standard formula....has been that Solidarnosc was an excellent thing but it was going too far, or travelling too as Macdonald notes in his article 'Solidarity and Socialism' (New Left Review no 139). He polemicises in a very particular way to try to demonstrate that 'large sections of working class....were politically won over to a perspective of anarcho-syndicalist (sic!) revolution' and that in general in Poland there was no revolution.
He remains silent about all of the most advanced and radical aspects of Solidarnosc's struggle and reduces it to a constructive effort by Poland's industrial working class to overcome the crisis generated by the Gierek regime when in fact the dynamic of the Polish social movement tended to be something much more advanced and thoroughgoing - the overthrow o1 le tolallartan regime The programme on the USSR that Macdonald proposes for the western left is no use at all unless its objective is to invite people to join yet another USSR friendship society. Today the left must above all take up the tasks of political solidarity with the struggles of the working class in the USSR, the Soviet bloc countries, China....and partıcularly with the ulas. resistance being led by Solidarnosc, with the emerging independent peace movements in countries like East Germany, with the democratic opposiA solidarity anchored in the forces of the workers and peace movement of the west. weak solidarity movement up to now, especially in Great Britain.
mean being idealistic. For example it means explaining to the British miners that if Solidarnosc had succeeded in setting up a selt-managed republic, the Polish government would not be able to sabotage the strike being led today by Scargill's NUM through its coal exports.
final comment. alludes to the fact that somebody in the USSR — he does not identify who that corresponds to a nationalised ecnomy'. Who is he talking about if at the same time in New Left Review Macdonald maintains that a movement like Solidarnosc 'did not em. brace a mittment?' Perhaps it is the so-called not 'marxists' who are in power in the USSR, Poland, etc....?
the only standard bearer of socialism in these countries is what Macdonald describes in his article about Solidarnosc as 'the ideological trend growing witnın une maustrial working class towards an anarcho-syndicalist (sic) vision of a self-managed and at the same time self-governing republic'.
the terrible workers' revolution in Russia. today we must not be very confident about the analysis concerning nosc features of the Soviet state that make it inclined to support revolutions in the Third World can expect from the Kremlin leadership is that they organise yet another defeat!
about this in his article. Neither does he say anything about the revolutions social in the Soviet the tanks of that state, nor of the criminal war of aggression, that has already lasted five years, against a Third World people, the Afghans.
development USSR or any big advances in the the bureaucratic system producers.
Giyen heavily People's sent There has been a very Is....aboul wilal concern for presenting To call for this solidarity does not Macdonald da. nad an "ideologica. commitmen socialist ideological com- hours, Wing It is quite the contrary in fact -bitious egalitarianism Those are the external factors of degeneration of the Also enable the the first thing we does not exist?
Macdonald does not say a word bloc were crushed by Who is 'prevent(ing) any positive within the day. social position of the Soviet working class' and 'hit(s) the bottlenecks in the Soviet economy especialy hard'? According to Macdonald it is the NATO powers and western capital. I nIS l false. It is the social group which has exercised totalitarian power in this country for the last 60 years.
The existence of a nationalised economv should tacintate a tremen dous growth of social resources and a balanced use of them, if there is a democratic political system, if working people exercise power, if the enormous cconomic polental loday unac.
exclusive control of the apparatus passes into the hands of working people through workers selfmanagement; and if development is democratically planned by the direct such asystem big reductions could be made in military spending which today weighs down very the Soviet selt-defence developed in the place of today's par ticipation in the arms race. The USSR comseles m unal arms race Decause o. the reactionary character of the pre regime ol ine powerfu military-bureaucratic lobby whick acts outside of any social control. Interminable Macdonald thinks we have to stop the 'interminable debates on good or bad life is in the USSR' ' that is a dail ONURIU Soviet workers! After 'the social and economic that workig DCUDIC the USSR possess' he considers that 'the point is not how fully all these points are at present implemented or how high living standards are'.
That's a fine way of convincing the left of the uselessness of a socialist criticism of the USSR! A big number of the 'rights that working people in the USSR possess' according to Mac donald, in fact exist only as print on the paper of the Kremlin's propaganHow can Macdonald talk about for example cheap food, when to buy the same weekly 'shopping basket' for an average working class famil! the Moscow worker has to work 37 the equivalent worker in Washington 11 hours and in London 19 hours (1979 figures)? How can he speak of rising wages when real workWanti only reached the equivalent 1913 levels at the beginning of the 1960s and peasant income only recovered to the 1913 levels in the se cond half of the 1970s?
It is no less ridiculous to attribute plentiful cultural facilities, an amnusing programme in income distribution to the Soviet pople as Ma donald does. Even full employment 1 sufficient to guarantee real economic security.
"The point is (he says) that we want to seek political changes that working peoble of th USSR to strengthen their control over ine arlanrs or stale. As lougi ıl is possible to strengthen something thai Macdonald asserts that an ABC of politics for socialists is that in the USSR the 'working class can best exert its power in politics when it is in the strongest possible economic and social position' But the real ABC is ine inverse: anv economic and socia strengthening of the working class of this country will depend on its abilit! to take political power, that it does not possess to the slightest degree to
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editor of a review that has a good dealing with