BEHIND CHINA'S
POLITICAL CRISIS
Just when general speculation had it that the anti"ightist" campaign was foding from the Chinese political scene, there was an unexpected eruption: the violent, spontaneous demonstration in Peking on April 5 (see INPRECOR, No.50, April 29), followed by the decision of the party Political Bureau to discharge Teng Hsiao-ping from all his posts, leaving him only his membership in the Communist party. What will be the consequences of these two political events? What is the reason for the anti-rightist" campaign? is it simply a continuation of the cultural revolution? What are the underlying social causes of the recent struggle and how will the masses respond to it? What is the nature of the contending factions within the Communist party? These are some of the important questions posed by the events. To attempt to answer them, we must first examine the situation that prevailed in the country after the cultural revolution. I. THE POST-CULTURAL-REVOLUTION
SITUATION The period that began with the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) in April 1969 and ended with the death of Chou En-lai in January of this year was marked by two charocteristics: first, the increasing power of the army in the state apparatus with the consolidation of Lin Piao's position, followed by its decline with his downfall; second, the quiet rehabilitation of an entire layer of "capitalist roaders" who had been deposed during the cultural revolution. This turn was accompanied by a number of political campaigns representing partially hidden factional struggles in the party. As former administrators regained their posts, the newborn elements" of the cultural revolution disappeared or were weakened and some pre-cultural-revolution domestic policies were reinstituted. The death of Chou represented the disappearance of the indispensable bridge through which the party and state apparatus had been able to reestablish their unity and functions, despite the temporarily concealed hostilities among various factions and groups. In fact, the cultural revolution had not established unity within the CCP. The only point on which all the various factions and groupings were united was the urgent 24 by S.S. WU need to uproot the independent political development that emerged from the rebellious Red Guard movement and to rebuild the party and state machine, fragmented during the cultural revolution. The Maoist faction did not win politically. In bringing the cultural revolution to an end, the Maoist faction was compelled to make two concessions. The army was recognized as the only effective instrument with which to reestablish social order and put an end to the mass movement. At the some time, concessions were made to the majority of state and party cadres, not a few of whom had been fought as followers of Liu Shao-chi's "block line. " Based as it was on a compromise, the new unity was bound to be short-lived. Two years after the Ninth Congress, Lin Pioo was suddenly purged under circumstances that remain mysterious. But considering the qualitative change that had occurred in China's foreign policy vis-d-vis the imperialist powers and the Soviet Union and the charge that Lin had been siding with the "Soviet revisionists, " it may be assumed that there had been a sharp conflict over foreign policy. This was one aspect of the background to the purge of Lin. The other aspect was that as long as the army retained its control over society, the party's weight in the running of the state would be reduced and the close ties between the party and the masses would consequently be jeopardized. This would be in contradiction to the positions, policies, and interests of the Maoist Faction. But apart from the details of the Lin Piao purge, the event itself confirmed that the cultural revolution had in fact ended in a compromise without which the entire fragmented bureaucracy would have been in grave danger. But it was a compromise the Moo faction would tolerate only temporarily and for purely tactical reasons. Back to the good old days In the wake of the downfall of Lin Piao, the pre-cultural-revolution order began to reemerge, as was most tellingly monifested in the return.of Teng Hsiao-ping in April 1973. In fact, almost all the "capitalist roaders" who had been purged during the cultural revolution, except for Liu Shao-chi himself, emerged from their political exite and returned to the party and state apparatus, in many cases in posts even higher than those from which they had previously been deposed. This was a
Since the dramatic clashes in Peking's Tien An Men Square last April 5, events in the People's
Republic of China have held the attention of world public opinion, particularly in the internafional workers and revalutionary movement. We are publishing below a contribution to the analysis of these events written by a revolutionary Marxist comrade active in the Asian region. Because of its length, we are publishing the article in two Installments. In this issue Comrade Wu deals with the situation in China after the cultural revolution and with the attempts of the Maoist faction of the Chinese bureaucracy to "continue" the cultural revolution. The second installment, which will appear in the next issue of INPRECOR, will treat the April 5 events themselves, analyze the ideology and crientation of the contending factiors in the Chinese Communist party;
and examine the prospects for the future unfolding of the struggle. natural trend. For one thing, who else could fill the vacuum after several years of semimilitary control followed by the sudden exit of the army from the political scene? For another, the policies of the Maoist faction became extremely ineffective, unable as they were to arouse mass initiatives under the existing bureaucratic control. Thus, there was growing discontent among the masses and at least doubts among many party cadres. In this sense, the late Chou En-lai's ascendancy in the state apparatus was not at all a personal achievement. Rather, it corresponded to the aspirations and mood of significant sections of the masses and many cadres who were then looking for "stability." This was a silent but very powerful tendency. The Maoist faction yielded to it, and it was further strengthened by the retum of many "capitalist roaders." Chou En-lai's last great "contribution" to the CCP was to lead it through this silent "revolution" while avoiding open confrontation. The Maoist faction began to cautiously resist this process through organizing political mass movements like the "criticize Lin-criticize Confucious" campaign, the "against the tide" campaign, the "anti-bourgeois-rights" campaign, the agricultural campaign, and the "educotion revolution" campaign, With the exception of the last one, however, all these campaigns remained on the level of propaganda and acted mainly to test the strength of the Maoist Faction within the party and among the masses. The Maoist faction avoided open confrontation with the returned bureaucrats and their supporters in the party, who in turn responded to the Maoist campaigns by containing and redirecting them. They were able to do this primarily because the major components of the state machine were on their side and the Maoist campaigns lacked popular support anyway. The masses received these campaigns with a sort of ritval and formal response at best. Thus, the returned bureaucrats and their supporters in the party (whom, for simplicity's sake, we will refer to as the "reversionists") held a better position than the Maoists in terms of the relationship of forces within the party and state apparatus and among the masses. The lower cadres: confusion and demoralization Throughout the post-cultural-revolution period, perhaps no other forces were as disturbed, confused, and demoralized as the lower-ranking cadres of the party and the state apparatus. Their dilemma was — and remains -rooted in the fact that they had no choice but to implement the policies decided on by higher authorities. To defy those policies would mean political extinction. But in implementing these policies they were liable to future punishment for having carried out a line suddenly deemed to have been false. This is a lesson they had learned from all the twists and turns and ups and downs of the line struggles of the post-liberation period, lessons that were learned most painfully during the cultural revolution. At the same time, the shifts in policy were
CHINA totally unpredictable. Yesterday American imperialism was the embodiment of all evil; today one had to give the warmest welcome to the chiefs of this same imperialism. Yesterday Lin Piao was the infallible revolutionary successor to Chalman Mao; today, as it turns out; he was a counterrevolutionary virtually since birth. These codres found the line struggles unfolding in the top leadership virtually incomprehensible, and this was more true than ever after the cultural revolution. There is no mystery about the reason for this. In the absence of democracy within the party, internal differences were never discussed and resolved by majority decision. In fact, the lower cadres were never even informed as differences emerged in the leadership. The strange evolution of the internal struggle remained an enigma to these codres, who were constantly compelled to guess which way the wind was blowing. And guessing was risky. One could always fall in with the wrong side and then be victimized. At the same time, these lower-ranking cadres had another dilemma to face. The third Chinese revolution, which won victory in 1949, did not give rise to a powerful bureaucracy comparable to that which existed in the Soviet Union after the Stalinist reaction. To be sure, bureaucratic control existed - and still does. But the mode of existence of this control still depends to some extent on the people's trust in the party, the party which led them to victory. Concurrently, the bureaucracy is sufficiently weak that in order to implement its policies, which are decided on in the absence of proletarian democracy, the cooperation of the masses is necessary. It is in this sense that even now China maintains a sort of horizontal democracy. The masses are allowed to discuss how best to implement the assigned policy (formulated outside their control) and to work out all details in doing so. Because of this, the lower-ranking cadres are compelled to remain closely linked to the masses and must respond to their moods in one way or another. In addition, in implementing the assigned policy, these lower codres are obliged to explain its meaning to the masses, for active implementation would otherwise be impossible. Hence, cadres who have no idea what the policy is all about have a hard time mobilizing the masses in its support. During the post-cultural-revolution period, and especially during the past few years, the way these cadres responded to this dilemma was simply to avoid concretely implementing the policy, thus leaving themselves a cover in the event that a later turn deemed the policy completely wrong. This phenomenon was so widespread that time and time again the party and state had to call upon the cadres to implement the policies they received from the top. The codres did not dare to entirely ignore the various campaigns they were instructed to carry out, but they offered only ritualistic and formal responses. This is one of the reasons why the various campaigns initiated by the Maoist faction petered out ineffectively. The bureaucracy as a whole was thrown into real crisis by this 28 de facto sabotage on the part of local cadres throughout the post-cultural-revolution period, for it meant nothing other than the weakening of bureaucratic control, which threatened to effect the entire social structure of the country. At the same time, the vacuum that arose between the central outhorities in Peking and the grass roots offered room for independent development among the masses. The chain of events thus set in motion was to culminate in the confrontation in Tien An Men Square on April 5, 1976. The working class awakens The Chinese revolution of 1949, unlike the Russian revolution of 1917, was not a product of the ability of the working class to capture and centralize state power in its own hands. In this sense, the Chinese working class has never "won" in the full sense of the word. On the other hand, since it served as the party's main base in the transformation of old China and acted as the backbone of socialist economic construction, the working class was also never defeated politically. As the class that benefited most profoundly from the revolution, the working class tended to become dependent on the party and almost unaware of the rapid bureaucratization of the revolution. As far as the party was concerned, the submission of the working class was of central political importance in the implementation of its campaigns. Conversely, dependence on the party was the political weak point of the class. At the same time, this relationship represented a fragile aspect of the power of the party and the bureaucracy, since the bureaucracy could not risk an open political break with the workers. Consequently, any independent political development among the working class could have a direct and important effect and impact on the bureaucratic caste. For more than twenty-five years, the CCP did not have to worry about the political loyalty of this class. Last year, however, this state of affairs changed drastically. The decades-long docility of the proletariat came to an end. Workers struggles for better working conditions and pay increases were reported beginning during the second half of 1974. In Canton there were demonstrations by retired rank-and-file soldiers who went so far as to question the party's management and attack it openly as "bureaucratic. " These retired soldiers had been workers before joining the army and had become workers again upon leaving it. According to information received in Hong Kong, the 1974-75 wave of workers struggles was highly spontaneous and had chain-reaction effects. This indicated that the relatively high political consciousness manifested during the strike actions was not simply a local or regional phenomenon but was a national expression of the working class. The way the CCP intervened to end these strikes was significant, the events in Hangchow being the most revealing case. Wang Hung-wen, "rodical" rising star in the party hierarchy, a man highly touted for his proletarian origins, failed in a desperate effort to pacify the workers of Hangchow, The magic of Maoism, the
glorious "revolutionary" appeal, and the authority of the Communist party had lost their power of persuasion and moral authority. For the first fime, the working class said "No" - and strongly — to the party that was supposed to represent them and to which they had tendered their full trust and confidence. The strike was finally ended when the regime resorted to the intervention of the army, thanks to Teng. Hsiao-ping, who had meanwhile returned to his post. The wave of strikes must have been very extensive, for many units of the army were placed on full alert and national railway fraffic was in disarray because of labor disturbances. This is further confirmed by reports of substantial reductions in production as a result of strike actions. But above all, the workers initiatives signified that even the firmest segment of the party's political base had been eroded and gradually weakened. Moreover, the workers strikes represented the first appearance of a mass movement completely independent both of the party as a whole and of any factions of the party, for even the well-known ultraleft tendency of the rebellious Red Guard movement owed its emergence to the Maoist faction. "
Teng Hsiao-ping *We are referring here to the tendency that called for the complete destruction of the state and party apparatus.
This tendency was somewhat different from the more general rebellious Red Guard movement, ; for the latter never had any clear idea of what to do with the state. On the other hand, the rebellious Red Guard movement as a whole was quite different from the conservative Red
Guards, who wanted to shelter important portions of the bureaucracy from attack.
The problem of agrieulture Agriculture is a severe problem for China. For a quarter of a century the party leadership has faced the problems of ownership, of how to make collective agricultural labor workable and effective, of how to achieve primitive accumulation based primarily on a subsistence level of agricultural production, and finally, of how to begin to mechanize and modernize agriculture. After twentyseven years of rule, the CCP still confronts these same problems, although in altered forms. History has shown that what is involved in these problems is not merely the question of agricultural production, but political and social problems as well. Before the cultural revolution, there were two different approaches to agriculture. The Maoists' approach was a sort of "voluntarist" one, arguing that high political consciousness would enable the masses to solve all problems. This policy ended in the ruins of the Great Leap Forward and the economic catastrophes of the early 1960s. The policy advocated by Liu Shao-chi placed greater emphasis on increasing the material gains of the peasantry and even allowed the temporary development of capitalism in the countryside, so long as agricultural production could be put on a sound footing. During the post-cultural-revolution period nothing in the countryside has been substantially changed or improved. The development of industry is still too weak to render very much support to the countryside. On the contrary, industrial development has continued to rely on "squeezing" the peasantry. The black market still flourishes, at least in southern China, Private exchanges of products between brigades or production teams still exist. Private plots, distinct from the collective lands, sfill thrive, and the peasants continue to exert greater efforts in growing their own crops than they do in the collective fields. It would be extremely difficult to speed up agricultural production without raising the standard of living of the peasantry and without an elementary industrialization of agriculture. At the same time, the CCP, which continues to pursue the policy of maximum accumulation at the cast of holding down the living standards of the masses, is unable to improve conditions in the countryside substantially. Moreover, there is another burning problem in the countryside: that of unemployable urban youth who are often forcibly sent to settle down in villages for the rest of their lives. According to official figures, there are now 12,000,000 such people. During the early and middle 1960s many youth volunteered to go to the countryside in response to romantic appeals issued by the party. But this idealism lost all its attraction as it ran into the hard facts. Life in the countryside proved miserable. The urban youth who arrived there encountered hostility from the peasantry, found it difficult to support themselves (let alone marry and raise families), and have often been compelled to seek monthly stipends from their working-class parents, financially hard-pressed in any case. In fact, many of these youth illegally mode their way back to the cities. The deep-seated political discon-
CHINA
Chinese factory workers being sent to labor on farme tent among them (particularly since they hod been politically active and experienced the upsurge of mass movements during the cultural revolution) serves os a fertile ground for the spread of revolutionary thought and action. II."CONTINUATION" OF THE CULTURAL
REVOLUTION Long before the present "anti-rightist" campaign, the Maoist faction had initiated abortive attempts against the "reversionists." Two of the most obvious ones were the "against the tide" campaign and the "anti-bourgeois rights" campaign. They were abortive in the sense that they were blunted by the "reversionists" and lost their political content. In order to understand these campaigns it is important to remember that political polarization first appeared within the top leadership of the party. Moreover, the process of polarization and the resulting conflicts take place in a bureaucratic structure within which there is no internal democracy. It was therefore difficult for any faction formed on the leadership level to accurately judge to what extent it could draw on support from the party, partially because codres often hesitated before affiliating to one or another faction. Because the relationship of forces between the two factions has been unclear, the struggle between them has taken a peculiar path. The grouping taking the offensive generally launches a tentative and educative campaign, tentative in the sense that the results of and responses to the campaign would allow for calculation of what sections of the bureaucracy had understood and positively responded to the campaign's message, educative in the sense that the campaign would serve as a signal to the whole party bureaucracy that another line struggle was shaping up, At the same time, the positions and arguments would be conveyed to the party cadres. But the practical Implementation of the campaign would not yet be fully explained. This is the social mechanism of the factional struggles in China. 28
The abortive results of these campaigns showed that the Maoist faction was not in a good position within the party and state apparatus in terms of the balance of forces. But because of the very abstract character of these campaigns, their failure did not entail the defeat of the Moist faction in the struggle. At most, they may be defined as setbacks for the Maoists. There were many such setbacks before the present "antirightist" campaign was launched. Nevertheless, last November the Maoist faction launched yet another campaign, one with a more directly confrontationist and provocative nature than most of those of the past several years. The 'education revolution" The "education revolution" exploded in November 1975. Its ostensible aim was to oppose changes in the "newborn" educational line that had followed the cultural revolution and to attack Chou Jung-Ising, minister of education, in particular. Of the "new-born things of the cultural revolution, two features stand out. One is the dogmatization and vulgarization of the arts and literature - Chiang Ching's "model operas" provide the best illustration. The "cultural" campaigns have enabled the Maoist faction to gain tight control over propaganda channels. The second feature is the overhauling of educational policy. Under the new policy, institutions of higher learning no longer recruit students directly from the high schools. Enrollment is limited to young people already at work, who are not necessarily high-school graduates. They must be recommended by the party committee of the unit they are working with and then must gain the approval of the institution to which they apply. Obedient political activity, not scholastic achievement, is the main criterion. The new university students tend to support the "new-born things" in the field of education, for otherwise they would not have been able to get into universities. In other words, they are the ones who have benefited from the system introduced by the Maoist faction, which explains why it was on the basis of this new system that the Mooist faction once again took the offensive against the "reversionists. " In this milieu the Maoists could count on positive and obedient support. Even before the campaign, two orientations had clashed within the universities. An open letter to Mao from graduates of Chao Yang Agricultural College, which is under the guidance of Mao's nephew, stated that "last year, during the three months of July, August, and September, there appeared in the educational field various kinds of grotesque talk and strange theories, and a wind of rightist attempts arose to reverse the verdicts. " (People's Daily, January 26, 1976) From the attacks organized by the Maoists, it seems clear that the "reversionists" wanted and perhaps tried to remodel the educational system because they believed that the present education was considerably lower in quality than that of the pre-cultural-revolution period.
The new campaign on the campuses had two specific features that distinguished it from previous campaigns. First, a particular official (the minister of education) was selected as a target. Second, there were hints that the Maoist faction might try to haul others into the net as the campaign proceeded. The target was not yet Teng Hsiao-ping. But those who experienced the unfolding of the culfural revolution remembered that Liu Shaochi was not singled out as the target at the beginning of that movement. This is another particular Maoist tactic, which is quite easy to understand. If the top representative of the opposing faction were challenged openly from the outset, the campaign would have no room for maneuver, which could become fatal if it turned out that the tide of battle was going the wrong way. The Maoist tactic allows for the following flexibility: IF the situation develops favorably, the Maoist faction can step by step encircle the top leadership of the opposing side and eventually eliminate it; on the other hand, if the situation after the launching of the campaign turns out to be not so positive, the Maoists con retreat without having openly challenged the other side (thus restoring a kind of "peaceful coexistence") and wait for a better moment for renewing the attack. LAXE Before the death of Chou En-lai it seemed that the "education revolution" was already being contained by the "reversionists" and that if would very soon be diluted into another harmless political campaign of virtually no real effect. The People's Daily of January 14 toned the campaign down, saying that "in the preceding period, the grotesque talk and strange theories of the rightist attempts to reverse the verdicts hod created ideological confusion, and if that situation had not been changed in time, it would definitely have resulted in splits and damaged the state of stability and unity. Through this great debate the rights and wrongs of the line have been cleared up and the people's thought is united. Today, on the basis of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line, comrades who had ideological differences in the past few months are uniting again and carrying out the struggle side by side. They are saying, "Again we are fighting in the same trench.""
The message here is clear: As a kind of "great debate, "
the "education revolution" was finished. Although the campaign had begun at Tsinghua and Peking Universities as early as November 3, 1975, as of November 18 it was already under the control of the party's university committees, party committees under the leadership of the very same minister of education who was under attack. In oddition, under the leadership of these committees, the formation of combat groups and linkups with other university groups was forbidden. The results of the "education revolution" indicated that the Maoist faction was unable to continue to deepen its campaign and confront the other side, while the latter was compelled to temporarily dampen its own rhetoric in the field of education. Thus, the "reversionist" foction retreated during this battle, but at the same time the Maoist faction was unable to press ahead with it own offensive. The conflict therefore headed into a deadlock, and peace could have reigned for some time, had not the death of Chou En-lai occurred just at that moment. Tersion in the party mounted with the death of Chau. The conflict centered on a burning question: Who would succeed Chou as premier of China? Formally, this was a question of power and not of line. But in a structure as highly bureaucratized as the CCP, in substance the question of power is the question of line. Both sides understood the simple truth that any line could be realized through the seizure of the leoding posts. The succession struggle seems to have been fierce. According to foreign news dispatches from Peking, a general meeting of the party Central Committee held at the and of January and beginning of February was unable to pursue its scheduled agenda after running into a deadlock on the question of Chou's successor. The fact that Hua Kuofeng, a man of little prominence, won the position instead of Teng Hsiao-ping or a well-known leader of the Maoist faction indicates that neither side was able to impose its will on the otherNevertheless, the death of Chou, who had enjoye great support among both the party cadre and the masses, broke the inner-party balance between the two sides at various levels. Freed from having to contend with Chou's great personal influence, the Maoist faction moved swiftly into position for another offensive aimed at uprooting the other side. The uneasy truce fell apart. The 'anti-rightist campaign
The signal for war came on February 6. It was unmistakable. An article appeared in the People's Daily with the ominous title "Continuation and Deepening of the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." This article defined the January campaign on education and science as a great struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. It even specified that "the capitalist roaders are still there, and so are the capitulators. They are the power-holders within the party who insist on following the revisionist line of Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao and who still refuse to correct their mistakes. " The article ended by issuing a warning: If these "capitalist roaders"
refused to properly atone for their sins, they would share the fate of Liu Shao-chi. In issuing this warning, the
Maoist faction was brandishing both a carrot and a stick.
A carefully escalating wall-poster movement began, first in Peking and later in other major cities, a gesture
CHINA quite similar to the initial phase of the cultural revolution. Students from Peking were organized into Study Teams and sent to Shanghai to agitate among workers and students there. Movement meetings were held in universities, high schools, and factories. Workers were bused to Peking's university campuses to study the wall posters there. Throughout the world, people began asking, Is the second cultural revolution on the way? The answer to this question depends on how one views the cultural revolution. If one characterizes it simply as a power struggle among factions and individuals, then a second cultural revolution is indeed possible. In our view, however, the cultural revolution, although initiated by the Maoist faction, was characterized by a release of mass spontaneity that managed to some exrent to escape the control of any faction of the party; it led to a mass assault on the bureaucracy and resulted in an independent political mass movement that directly threatened the continuation of the rule of the CCP and the bureaucratic structure it had built. This is precisely the factor that wos locking during February and March of this year. Despite the noisy politicol activities, independent mass activities and organizations were officially forbidden throughout February. The shape and forms of the movement were set down beforehand by the Mooist faction, and the mosses were to merely follow directives issued from above. There is no mystery about the reason for this. Before the cultural revolution the Maoist faction had good reason to be confident of mass support, for the Maoists were able to make use of the prestige of Mao himself, who personified the victory of the Third Chinese Revolution. But the cultural revolution itself produced the antithesis of the bureaucracy: the far leftists of the rebellious Red Guard movement, who called for the complete destruction of the state. This was a painful lesson for the Maoist faction. The obvious conclusion was that the mass movement must be held under very tight control at any cost; otherwise there is great risk of the Maoists" being overtaken by events. This is the weakness of the Maoist faction as long as it attempts to use the mass movement to put pressure on opposing factions or power holders. On the other hand, while the "reversionists" appeared not to realize this weakness before February 1976, by late February they clearly did. Accordingly, in March the tone was changed. The Maoists simultaneously scaled down the campaign and zeroed in on a single target. No longer did they aim at extirpating all the "capitalist roaders" in the party; insteod they centered their broadsides at one person, Teng Hsiao-ping. But the "reversionists" remained strong, their numerical base and posts not yet undermined by the Maoist faction. The movement initiated by the Maoists began to lose momentum. Although the personal fate of Teng Hsiao-ping still hung in the balance, all signs were that the "continuation" of the culfural revolution was fading away.
•(To be continued.)O 30
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EDITORIAL
POLISH
WORKERS
SAY NO cont'd from
Pg 32 the prices of prime-necessity consumer goods at a level not essentially different from that of December 1970 -that is, one of the lowest, if not the lowest, in Europe; in the capitalist countries prices have risen between 50 and 150 percent since that date! - the government had to grant enormous subsidies to the food industry, the peasantry, and the trode system, subsidies that will exceed the equivalent of $2,000 million for the current year. This phenomenon simultaneously reflects and fuels inflationary pressures. The failure of Gierek's economic policy lies not in the fact that the government failed to foresee this longterm effect of the price freeze, which the "Gomulkaist" technicians had called attention to ever since 1970. Rather, if results essentially from the failure to achieve a growth in the production of consumer goods parallel to the increase in the nominal wages of the toiling masses. The turn toward a policy of acceleration of growth and investment has not had the hoped for effects on expansion of production and circulation of consumer goods. Once again, that is the Achilles heel of bureaucratic planning. Secondarily, the Polish economy has paid its price for the international inflation and especially the rise in prices of oil and other imported raw materials, increases that were particularly virulent during 1972 and 1973 and were reflected in the price adjustments within the Comecon (which now occur annually) especially in 1974 and 1975. Polish exports were likewise hit by the effects of the recession. This is a sharp reminder to the advocates of the theory of "socialism in one country" that it is impossible to completely isolate a workers state from the perturbations of the world market, even though the dynamic of production and employment in Poland in 1974 and 1975 was completely different from that of the capitalist countries of Europe, which strikingly confirms the non-capitalist character of the Polish conomy -It will thus not be possible for the bureaucracy to simply and lastingly annul the price increases the way it wos compelled to do in 1970. The concession made by the Jarociewicz government the very night of the first strike must be considered a temporary one. It was forced above all by the necessity of averting at all costs an extension of the strikes and a bloody clash between the workers and the repressive forces so long as the conference of European Communist parties was in session in East Berlin. The threat of seeing Santiago Carrillo, Enrico Berlinguer, or even Georges Marchais, under the pressure of the workers and the political situation in their own countries, publicly take up the defense of the Polish workers was sufficiently real for Brezhnev, Gierek, and company that the Polish bureaucracy had to do everything to avoid it. Once the East Berlin conference was over, the tone hardened in Warsaw. Probably the hoped for outcome is a compromise that, while not reinstituting the increases originally decreed, will nonetheless reintroduce some of them. The workers would win something, but the goverment would nonetheless slow down the process of inflation. This is especially indispensable for the bureaucracy since inflation and supply difficulties are widespread throughout East Europe and the Soviet Union. The price for spectacular concessions to the Polish workers in these domains would have to be paid in part by the economies of the other countries of Comecon. According to all evidence, this would risk provoking a development in the consciousness of the proletariat in these countries, a consciousness that "struggle pays off." This could in turn provoke strikes and demonstrations in those contries for goals similar to those of the Polish workers. All this means that there will be enormous pressure on Warsaw from the Kremlin to prevent the Polish bureaucracy from going too far in making lasting concessions to the strikers. Moreover, the bureaucracy no longer holds a Gomulka in reserve as it did in 1956 or a Gierek as it did in 1970. There is no political personality in the Polish Communist party who is relatively popular among the workers but who still inspires the confidence of the apparatus in his ability to channel a powerful mass movement toward a simple change at the top within the bureaucracy. Under these conditions it is not astonishing that Gierek was cautiously held in the background during the events of past weeks, that he has not taken a public position either in favor of the price increases or in favor of their elimination. It is Gierek himself who remains the bureaucracy's "reserve." The bureaucracy has now mounted an operation aimed at regaining its grip through political means, that is, a combination of ideological bludgeoning through the mass media and agitational meetings and sessions. The immediate results do not seem to be very convincing, given the at least hesitant behavior of the party members who have been mobilized, particularly during the big meeting in Warsaw to support the government. It remains to be seen whether the workers are prepared to go further this time or whether they will be content for the moment to simply plant the seeds of the future. The next issue of INPRECOR will contain a more detailed analysis of the strikes and events in Poland. D
31