Re: Reply to Paul Cockshott on socialist political economy

["dmschanoes" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Nits and the Grits of Poland:

When the Gierek regime first assumed power, Poland's hard currency debt was
less than 1 billion dollars.  In order to develop the economy, an economy
circumscribed by small scale agriculture, Gierek proposed financing the
expansion of Poland's steel, copper, electronics, and shipbuilding
industries through the good offices of the Western European and US banks.
The hard currency debt grew to 12 billion dollars in 1976 and doubled itself
in four more years to 24 billion dollars.  In 1980 interest and principal
payments of 7 billion were due.  In 1981 another 6 billion was due while the
total debt mass was expected to peak at 33 billion dollars despite these
payments.  Nice business if you can get it, and you can get it if you try.

Gierek and co. had calculated that export earnings from the expanded
industry would pay the debts while raising the standard of living.  But the
exports ran right into the limits of the world market.  By 1980, the markets
in steel, copper, and shipbuilding were suffering, to put it mildly, from
overproduction.  Through the international debt, the bureaucracy had made
overproduction the axis of events in Poland.


The banks told Gierek to reduce spending on state farms and on food
subsidies.  The creditor told the debtor to eat less.  In June 1980, the
Polish government doubled the price of sugar.  In July, subsidies were
reduced on meat.  In July, the Polish workers began their strikes.  In
August 1980, West German banks refused to provide further credits to Poland
unless all loans were guaranteed by....the West German government.  Talk
about the stabilization of international capital....

There was an active left among the workers advocating renunciation of the
debt, limiting the power of the church in education and property, and
suppression of the Polish Home Army, the Grunwald Organization and other
right wing anti-semitic formations.  But that left was not the product of
any wing of the bureaucracy-- the bureaucracy accommodated itself more and
more to the dynamics of capitalist restoration.  And thus it was made clear
that there can be no "defense of socialized property relations" separate and
apat from the success of the workers' revolution and the overthrow of the
bureaucracy.

dms



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