POLAND'S LAYABOUT PROBLEM

'If you discover any connection at all, let the company know your distaste,' the article suggests. What sort of working-class solidarity is that supposed to be?

British workers must support the struggles of their African brothers against the Vorster regime in South Africa. The best assistance they can give is to end the capitalist system in Britain which means exploitation for the workers of both countries. 'Layabouts' and 'loafers' are causing problems in Poland, according to a radio report. Thousands of people find pretexts for not turning up for work and many flock into cafés for a beer or a coffee.

The other day an outside broadcast reporter followed them in and interviewed the 'loafers' for the edification of listeners. The report went like this:

It is 11.30 a.m. and you are sitting in a café drinking beer' — I have a medical certificate.' This is the Karmazyn catering enterprise, it is full of men.

'Gentlemen, it is in working hours, and you are sitting here drinking beer.' - 'Occasionally you have to have a beer; you work hard, and if you manage to knock off for 15 minutes its nice to drop in for a beer.' 'Do you think your neighbour is right?'-I don't think SO.

"Then why are you here'— 'I'm all right. My wife and daughter are ill and I have been excused work' 'Are you unemployed?' -'No.' 'Why are you at Karmazyn and not at work?'-I've been sent to buy certain things and dropped in; ten or 15 minutes don't matter.

Why shouldn't we be allowed to pop in, when the managers spend two or three hours drinking coffee in various places? Wc've got the right to quench our thirst too.' The broadcaster did not draw any moral about the habits of the bureaucracy or go on to drop into the places where it guzzles coffee-and no doubt other things. But she did promise to return to other drinking places in the campaign against 'loafers':

Autumn 1932, on the eve of his coming to power. Hitler swears Nazi members of the Reichstag to allegiance. The Communist Pa If the majority of the working class still continued to support the Social Democratic Party (SPD) when Hitler took power 40 years ago yesterday (January 30, 1933), this was mainly the fault of the Communist Party (KPD).

In 1923 it had failed to rise the great revolutionary opportunity then presented. Within the next few years the party came under the control of the Stalinists and had to accept the policy which was laid down in Moscow.

After the 6th World Congress in 1928 the KPD, under the direct instruction of Stalin, embarked on the ultraleft turn required by what was called 'the third period'. The main struggle was supposed to be against the SPD, dubbed for the occasion social fascists' and with whom, therefore, there could be no co-operaFrom 1930, in a brilliant series of articles. Trotsky denounced this policy as bound to open the way for the Nazis and bring about the defeat of made it impossible to break made it impossible to away the social democratic workers from the SPD and the trade unions dominated by the reformist bureaucracy which ignored the fascist danger and had no way of meeting it.

The bankrupt theory of 'social fascism' made it impossible to grasp the real danger represented by the Nazi movement and to understand how fascism differed from other kinds of bourgeois rule, including the 'Bonapartist' type governments which ruled Germany after 1929.

In his writings of the period Trotsky made these questions perfectly clear and appealed to the communists who wanted to fight Hitler to change their party's policy before it was too late.

In defining the historic role fascism, when capitalism requires the complete destruction of the workers' organizations in order to deal with the economic crisis, he pointed to a number of characteristics which sharply differentiated it from other forms of bourgeois rule. uprooting of all elements i of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society. The task of fascism lies not onlv in destroving the communist advance guard, but in holding the entire class in a state of forced disunity. To this end the physical annihilation of the MOSU revolutionary section of the workers does not sufice lt is also necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organizations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three quarters of a century by social democracy and the trade unions. For, in the last analysis, the Communist Party also bases itself on these achievements.' These points obviously have for workers today as of the Tory government.

At the time, although Trotsky's writings were quite widely read and discussed, his supporters Germany were few and he was not able change the course of either the Social Democratic or the Communist Parties. . To the end they blindly pursued a policy which could only to disaster and the complete destruction of both organizations.

As for the Stalinists' fatuous writings on the theme of 'social fascism', they. reprinung today and they try to draw a veil of oblivion over them. In fact the KPD, on Stalin's instructions, carried out a policy which opened the way for Hitler and brought a terrible and undeserved punishment down upon the heads of the German workers.

The suicidal policy of the 'third period' thus made it impossible to build a united front as of all the working-class defence basic rights against mounting brown tide. Instead confusion and desperation.

How could there be an alliance with one sort of fascist ('social fascists') against the full-blooded variety? Social Democratic workers could hardly ne to trust those who described their own leaders as only a 'left' variety of. Nazi.

Though the responsibility of the Social Democrats for January 30, 1933 and its terOf course, the Social Democratic leaders were treacherous and did not want to fight. But that had to be demonstrated to their own members and supporters. The responsibility for doing this lay upon the KPD leadership—it could come from nowhere else.

The only way to erect a barrier to fascism and to prepare the working class power was to propose a united front programme directly to the SPD leadership. The mobilization of all the strength of the SPD, the KPD and the trade unions could have made a Nazi defeat certain. of the movement. Once the working-class movement had demonstrated its strength and determination it would have attracted to its side many hesitant elements in the middle class and broken away a section of the Nazis' support.

In fact, the 1932 elections showed, as already pointed out, that the Nazi movement had reached its peak as far as the ballot box was concerned. It was not able to hold its supporters. The Nazis themselves admitted that in some places they were losing members and supporters to the KPD.

Although the Nazi Party itself was deeply divided on underestimated the Nazi danger. The whole theory of 'social fascism' led to such a conclusion. If Bruning, Papen; Schleicher and the SPD leaders were all varieties of fascism, why should the Hitler variety be much worse? Indeed KPD secretary Ernst Thaelman and the others thought that Hitler's accession to power would be his undoing. Or, as another KPD leader, Remmele, put it: 'After Hitler, our turn.

If the KPD spurned the "social fascists', it entered into tacit combinations with the Nazis on a number of occasions. In 1931 it supported the referendum, initiated by the da wi its tio Hi