Chapter 2. 1980

The ongoing crackdown in Poland, and our funding of the oppressors, is yet again the focus here.

August 22, 1980
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, the striking factory and dock workers—whose leaders have now been arrested by the Communist regime in Poland—must be admired for their courage in defying the dictators who control their country. I am sure the sympathy of the American people is with the brave workers who are protesting the injustice and lack of freedom that have existed for 35 years in this so-called “workers’ paradise.”

But what about the federal government? While the sympathies of the American people are with the oppressed Polish workers, the sympathies of the federal government seem to be with the brutal masters of Poland. The American people sympathize with the Polish people, and the American government with the Polish government.

For example, from the end of World War II until 1978, the federal government loaned and gave the Communist regime in Poland $677 million. In 1979, our federal government granted the Communist regime in Poland an additional $500 million in loans and loan guarantees. Arecent study published in the Journal of Social and Political Studies pointed out: “The availability of these Western credits is probably relieving the Soviet Union from the expensive task of propping up the Polish economy.”

Poland is, in fact, deeply in debt to Western countries, for the West, including the United States, has been propping up the Polish economy for decades. Poland’s current debt is estimated at $20 billion. It has not yet repaid even its World War I debts to this country, and the present Communist government has no intention of doing so. Why does our government continue to subsidize the Communists in Poland? Whose side is our government on, the Polish Communists or the Polish workers?

I believe that we should have a consistent foreign policy of nonintervention in the affairs of other countries. We should certainly not be subsidizing a dictatorial regime that is not supported by its own people. It is outrageous that taxes paid by the American people—people who sympathize with the Polish workers, not the Communist government—have been and are being used to prop up that government. I have introduced legislation that would end such foreign subsidies, H.R. 3408, and I intend to push for its passage through Congress. Our irrational policy of subsidizing those who hate freedom must be stopped.

The turmoil in Poland dramatizes so well the wasted, worn-out slogans of the Communist state. The paradise promised to the worker has never materialized, and the source of discontent with the oppressive state is, as one would expect, expressed by the workers themselves. Neither our government nor our businessmen have expressed real sympathy for the protests and the support coming from our workers here in the United States. In contrast to what has been so long predicted—the revolt of the workers against a brutal capitalism—we see the opposite: The Polish workers demanding liberty and receiving support from working people throughout the world. All I can say is: “Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.”