Poland

The workers' struggles in Poland constitute the most important movement of the world proletariat for over half a century One year after they began; the balance-sheet of these struggles is ric

"The theoretical conclusions of the communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

Once again the proletariat of Poland, faced with an unbearable degradation of its living conditions, has taken the path of class resis­tance: its struggles of the second half of Au­gust

1) In the International Review n.20, we defined the coming decade of the 80s as “the years of truth”, where the outcome of the historical al­ternative presented by the capitalist crisis would, in large measure, be determined: either world war or proletarian revolution.

This perspective could hardly have been more clearly continued by events during the first year of the decade. The first half of the year, despite important social movements like the steel strike in Great Britain, was dominated by the considerable aggravation of inter-imperia­list tension following the invasion of Afgha­nistan. But the second half of the year was marked by an unprecedented intensification of proletarian struggles, which in Poland reached their highest point since the beginning of the historical resurgence of working class strug­gle in 1968.

A breach has been opened in history which will never be entirely closed again: before the eyes of the whole world the working class in Poland has broken through the iron curtain to join the class struggle of all workers. Like 1905 in Russia, this movement emerged from the depths of the proletariat; its class nature is unambiguous. Its resolutely working class voice, its broad base and historical dimension make the mass strike in Poland the most important event in class struggle since the beginning of the reawakening of the proletariat in 1967-68.

In Poland, twenty years ago, in the summer of 1980, there began the most important movement of the world proletariat’s struggle since the end of the revolutionary wave, which broke out during World War I and continued until the beginning of the 1920s. In today’s conditions, when the dominant ideology dismisses the idea that the working class even exists, let alone that it can act as a force in defence of its interests, it is essential for revolutionary organisations to remind workers of the most extensive outbreak of working class struggle for almost 80 years.