"If Marx were alive to see it, he would not believe his eyes." So said a Polish émigré in London last week. A strike by 16,000 employees of the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk had spread to about 400 factories and enterprises along the northern seacoast and affected key industrial centers in the south. By week's end an estimated 150,000 workers had walked off the job, and there were rumors that Warsaw would be hit by a general strike.

Labor unrest started eight weeks ago with a series of scattered strikes protesting a sudden rise in meat prices. But the strikers are now also insisting on free labor unions, the abolition of censorship and freedom for all political prisoners. The Lenin shipyard's committee had accepted a $50-a-month pay raise and agreed to return to work. But the decision was overturned by the rank and file, who refused to "betray the other strikers." In an abrupt about-face, Solidarity strike leader Lech Walesa, 37, told shipyard workers, "We must fight alongside them until the end."