letter was written in October by a Solidarnose activist to the Polish language Imprecor, which is published in Paris but circulates widely in Poland. The working class is the basis of every society and the means of production belong to it by right. The means of production have never and can never belong by right to bureaucrats or capitalists.
In our country, the bureaucracy, a monster that grew by feeding on the work and sweat of the strata that are the foundation of society, has denatured the idea of socialism by violating the basic principles of democracy in the way it runs the state.
Mouthing socialist slogans, the bureaucracy got the workers in our country to lower their guard and then reduced them to the role of human robots, whose only right is the right to work.
In the constitution of the People's Republic of Poland it specifically says that in our country power is exercised by the working people of the cities and the countryside. It follows from this clearly that power should not belong to a small group of people whose only link with the people is that they were born in working-class or peasant families.
So, it is essential that the working class struggle to realize the ideas of socialism, because no one is going to hand it power voluntarily. We have to recognize that what is essential for the genuine development of socialism is a combative working class that, whenever the government established by it fails to rule in accordance with its will, can throw out that government and establish another.
tal goal, but it cannot be the only one. We have to work out, starting right now, a plan of action for the future. A general problem now is the lack of coordination and letting ourselves get locked in to the life of conspiratorial circles is limiting the circulation of the independent trade-union press. This state of affairs is promoting confusion among a significant section of workers.
Printing tacilities are limited, but the possibilities for the spreading of independent publishing are not, and these possibilities should be exploited to the maxi-
One worker said: "OK, the next apple has started to ripen. To be a good one it will need a lot of sun. If it gets that it will be big and sweet. But it will not fall on ground gently as the one did in August. It will fall with a loud noise."
If we are ready for a struggle, we cannot play around with trying to reach an understanding with the bureaucracy, because there can be no understanding with people who have driven us into destitution. They must go. And they will go. No one can fool us about that.
In the debate over orientation that is going on today, Jacek Kuron suggests that we should seek an understanding with the Soviet bureaucracy. That is a false idea. What we need is an understanding with the working class of the USSR. The working masses of the USSR have the same problems as we. It is logical for us to unite our forces in a struggle against the totalitarian rule of the bureaucracy, although this is a long and difficult road.
The power that we are fighting against in Poland oppresses many peoples. What because the working masses all over the world want the same thing - equality, justice, freedom, and democracy. The world workers movement is watching our battles against injustice attentively. But the mass media in Poland are blacking out the support of workers in other countries for us. Nonetheless, news of it still reaches us. And the knowledge that we are not alone gives us strength. It lifts our morale. We are grateful for everything the workers in other countries are doing to make it possible for us to win.
Although we have many problems, we are confident that we will win, although it is hard for us to reassemble our forces after the blow the bureaucracy dealt us on December 13, 1981. Every demonstration supporting our struggle for our union, Solidarnosc, reinforces our confidence that we are on the right road and we are going to follow it to the end.
Working people united in the fight for their rights cannot be defeated. Even if the parliament voted laws every day denying Solidarnosc legal status, it could not expell Solidarnose from our minds and hearts. That is why we are confident of victory. The fact that we have lost a battle does not mean that we are defeated. Having learned from experience, we will get rid of what was wrong and rise again.
We will not let ourselves be fooled a second time. We will take our fate in our own hands, and we will not surrender it to anyone. We ourselves will determine what is good and what is bad for the working people.
Signed: Wiktor
For this, it is necessary that the work- Police teargas demonstrators on second anniversary of Gdansk accord (DR). ers understand that we have to win freedom, democratic rights, equality and justice ourselves and that victory is possible by building a mass movement. An example of this is our struggle in August 1980.
At that time, we were united by a common grievance. This led us to put aside antagonisms arising from different philosophies and political views.
Today, we have to unite. Any division in our movement weakens us. In order to take up building the general strike, we have to eliminate divisions. We should be united by a common aim, getting the state of war lifted, getting those jailed and interned released, regaining the right of the trade unions to function.