Last month thousands of people defied a government ban and joined a heavily-policed Pride march in Warsaw to protest ongoing discrimination against Polish lesbians and gays. The Warsaw Equality March was given the go-ahead by Warsaw city officials who, bizarrely, also gave permission for a “counter-protest” by the far-right All-Polish Youth (MWP) to follow the same route! Read more...

The election of a new government in September will herald an attempt to make a final push to capitalism. Will they succeed? Martin Suchenak weighs up the odds Read more...

Jan Bielecki is Poland’s Prime Minister. Ten years ago he was a Solidarnosc member in Gdansk, delivering lumber for his living. Under martial law he was an underground activist, assisting the Gdansk shipyard to keep its printing press going. In January 1991 Bielecki was chosen by President Lech Walesa to oversee the country’s transition to capitalism. Another 13 of Bielecki’s cabinet have Solidarnosc membership going back to 1980 when the ten million strong mass movement pitched itself into a battle against the Stalinist dictatorship.1 Read more...

Theses agreed by the Gruppe Arbeitermacht, Irish Workers Group and Workers Power, July 1982

The bureaucratic caste that usurps political power in the workers’ states and parasitically lives off the planned property relations cannot co-exist with independent organisations of the working class.

Neither can it tolerate the erosion of its privileges, its political power or the destabilisation of the repressive internal security apparatus upon which its power ultimately depends. Read more...