WHILE grateful for voul coverace orono I think you should be givlug tal more space lo lne events there. These evells icorescul a Dulll112 ! turning point history and it is worid DOSSIDIe overrate their significance.
For a start, they confirm the correctness of the mainstream Trotskyist view that socialist property relations already exist in the East: the Polish workers do not raise because they cannot raise a single demand that implies fundamental ing of property-relations in their country.
They demand workers' democracy on the basis of the existing socialist Droocily Iciations.
Second, the events show how the capitalist' theoreticians have ignored a most important aspect of the West the chief to socialist revolution the bourgeois on the working Crass. the Hast LOUS obstacle does not exist ruling bureaucracies have had, willy-nilly, criticise bourgeois ideology over the years, and today they find themselves in the ironical position that they can only attack 'Solidarity' as... 'nonsocialist'!
Third, there is no way the Polish events can be contained. lhe wast today is not what it was in 1936 or 1968. Higher living standards, education, travel, and improved communications generally make impossible 'isolate' the Polish movement.
The same demands will be taken up in East Germany, Hungary, and, , of course, in Russia itself.
Che consequences are ncalculable: if the move ment successful, revolutonaries West will have, ITSL over years, model of convincing SOC CEV combines socialist properly delationsies workers' democracy.
ance will doubtedly the Western capitalism, we Cal and his like are already busy trying to subvert the movement by giving support to the obscurantist Lencerces romo the Church, the better-off peasantry, those 111tellectuals who hanker after the feudal past, and so on.
Capitalism can live June canc tatorships in the East; it cannot live with socialist economies plus workers' democracy.
READER crept into my review (12 Feb) of Mike Cooley's book Architect or Bee during the editing process.
First, the technical designers of the large Birmingham factory who demanded Dally the machine' were in the AUEW-TASS, not the AUEW Secondly, there is no