Since the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) leadership’s attempt to cut the living standards of working people at a single blow in June 1976, Poland has been living through a new crisis. The most obvious, daily symptoms of this crisis are economic and social: rising prices, chronic and acute shortages, especially of agricultural produce, a severe energy shortage, dislocations in industry, great strain on the social services – the housing shortage, shortages of medical supplies – heavy indebtedness to the bankers of the capitalist West, and so on.
