Both are for a privatised capitalist economy. Yet in an election-day opinion poll, in reply to the question "What should be the dominant form of economic ownership?" only 18 per cent of SP voters gave the answer "private ownership" - indeed it was chosen by only 46 per cent of Free Democrat supporters.
This tells us a lot about the yawning gap between the new political elites and the working people of eastern Europe.
In Poland the ex-Stalinist SdRP (Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland) has now been in power for over half a year. What conclusions can we draw from these six months?
Since winning the elections, the SdRP has embarked on a wildly errațic path of political manoeuvres designed to gain the approval of the West and forge alliances with the reactionary right. The effects have been disastrous.
Firstly they approached the largest of • the rightist parties to establish a coalition When this offer was rejected, they formed a coalition with the Polish Peasants Party, the second largest party in the parliament.
Wooing Walesa Worse, the reform Stalinists set out to woo president Walesa, who was open to co-operation following the disastrous showing of the party he had backed in the election, which got just 5 per cent of the vote. The SdRP allowed Walesa to nominate his own candidates for the key ministerial posts of internal affairs, foreign affairs and defence.
Since then, Walesa has utilised these ministers to outwit and embarrass the SdRP at every turn. He has also made skilful use of his veto powers: in particular Walesa has used the threat of veto with respect to the government's budget legislation and a bill continuing the hated payroll tax (in effect a partial public sector wage freeze).
The results of all this have been tragic. After last September's elections Walesa was ridiculed. Now the SdRP has given him a new lease of life, allowing this arch-reactionary pawn of the Catholic hierarchy to pose as a "friend of the workers" because of his opposition to the payroll tax.
Over the last month the SdRP has suddenly changed tack completely, provoking Walesa by postponing the parliamentary debate on Poland's concordat with the Vatican, and allowing a private what's happening in Poland. members' bill liberalising last year's draconian anti-abortion law.
All this is evidence of huge confusion among the ex-Stalinists. profound dilemma in attempting to "prove" themselves to the "sensible" partners in the transition to capitalism.
They face three major problems. First is popular resistance to the effects of further capitalist restoration. All these effects will deepen - and so will resistance Scant capital The second is the difficulty in imposing the domination of capital when scant domestic capital exists, and while western imperialism, in trouble with its own recession, prefers to dump goods, or speculate on east European markets. rather than actually invest there. The victory of the social democratic wing of the former Communist party in the May 29 Hungarian elections was a recent example of a phenomenon that has already occurred in a number of east European countries - sweeping electoral victories of "reform Stalinist" parties that have adopted social democratic programmes. One of the most important examples is Poland, where the reform Stalinists have been in power for six months. Here JAN SYLWESTROWICZ looks at They face a West as present basis. emerging private sector.
capacity.
The third problem is the current deadlock in the attempt to restore capitalism. This process has now lasted five years. Capitalist restoration has run up against being won. objective structural constraints. Not only is there no more capital for privatisation, but the whole economy is incapable of withstanding a substantial extension of the private sector on the At present privatisation is mainly being carried out by the state. It is the state sector of the economy that is materially supporting the privatisation, functioning as a giant life support system for the The fundamental problem is that any major expansion of privatisation on this basis (without an immense lowering of living standards) would represent an unsustainable drain on the state sector, producing mass bankruptcies and economic collapse. The resources just do resistance.
the wealthiest layers of society have been scrapped. After a six-month grace period, workers' opposition to the present government is beginning to mount. For some months labour protests had been limited to a well-advertised but ineffectual. national campaign mounted by Solidarnosc. The union did succeed in organising several large demonstrations (attended also by the extreme right!) but industrial action took off only in the mines. There the protest was directed chiefly against the payroll tax and the establishment of "commercialised" companies in coal industry. Unfortunately the Polish union movement remains fragmented and, above leaderless, with no clear socioeconomic alternative. The Solidarnosc bureaucracy has been captured by officials strongly linked to the reactionary right. The other main union, the OPZZ, is aligned behind the SdRP and has remained passive, while the smaller federations, although considerably more militant, present a much weaker organisational New struggles However recent weeks have seen the emergence of some new struggles not subordinated to the national union bureaucrats. Again the common theme has been the payroll tax, but straight pay demands have dominated the protests. At the giant Nowa Huta steel complex in Silesia, a 17-day occupation strike was suspended with a partial victory At the time of writing, strike action is underway in the two largest industrial plants to have attracted western capital, the Fiat car factory in Silesia and the Lucchini car plant in Warsaw.
Further strikes are likely over the summer. But the current organisational A and political disarray of the union movement makes it unlikely they can be co ordinated into a coherent fightback against the government.
But they will serve as a reminder to the reform Stalinists and other procapitalist forces that any attempt to relaunch a sharper offensive against working people to support intensified capitalist restoration will have to reckon with fierce
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 67, August 1994, Page 20