ONE OF THE organizations making up the Workers' Opposition Alliance [POR - Porozumienie Opozycji Robotniczej ] is the Union of Workers Councils of the Polish Resistance Movement [ZRP PRO
- Zwiazek Rad Pracowniczych Polskiego Ruchu Oporu] in Upper
Silesia. This organization has existed for four years and is rooted among the workers in big industry. Its local units, which are called "workers' councils," are active in dozens of factories, mines, steel mills, transport enterprises and so forth, in which a total of around 100,000 people work.
The great majority of the activists in the ZRP PRO are young workers. Some 75 per cent of them are manual workers, and
85 per cent are under 30.
The ZRP PRO has headed up various mass actions in the enterprises in which it is rooted, such as struggles for higher wages and better working conditions. It has organized "strikes for healthy conditions and safety on the job." It has given an energetic lead to the boycott of the "new unions" and has forced the dissolution of several official workers' councils subservient to the plant managements.
The underground workers' councils of the ZRP PRO, which today are organs of working-class resistance, are preparing at the same time to lead a general strike with factory occupations, when the right moment comes, to establish a self-managing workers' power in the enterprises. The general-strike strategy defended by the ZRP PRO is intended to lead to the establishment of "workers' ownership of the factories," assuring the workers democratic and collective control of the basic means of production. Likewise, it is intended to lead to the overthrow of the political regime of "actually existing socialism" and the establishment of a self-managed republic.
An organization of activists, but not a political party, the ZRP PRO is one of the highest expressions of the political consciousness of Polish workers today. Below is its ideological-political statement, followed by an interview with a member of the executive commission of the POR.
The Zwiazek Rad Pracowniczych Polskiego Rucho Oporu of Upper Silesia: •Is not and does not pretend to be a political party. It is a workers' movement and relies on the allied liberating forces of the progressive intelligentsia and the society in general, which are in solidarity with the workers' struggle. It is a movement that arose on the basis of the ideology
International Viewpoint 2 June 1986 and programmatic achievements of the independent self-managed union Solidarnosc.
•Today, it is preparing the working class for self-organization and self-management, for an organized national general strike, under whose pressure workers' ownership of the enterprises could be established. •It is preparing the working-class cadres to lead the independent in-
Communist Party ], has seized the three pillars of domination in the state - the that should belong to the the power that should belong to a self-managed society, and the science that should be associated with free thought.
The Zwiazek Rad Pracowniczych Polskiego Ruchu Oporu: • Recognizes the struggle by the for a self-managed system, for a full democratization of the state for the right to independent •In the fight for ownership, power the ZRP PRO links to the people's fight for peace and national independence. • It considers that the working class is the only class that can assure victory building of a self-managed society, as well as the development of free thought and of national dignity. The basis of these revolutionary changes will be the right of the workers to ownership of the enterprises. The workers must be not only producers, transformers and extractors, but also owners.
• The ZRP PRO adheres to the folfive points: the factories to the workers, the land to the peasants, power to the self-managed society, science to free thinkers, the state for an independent nation. To achieve these objectives, it is essential that the society organize itself and assure freedom of action for political parties, that trade-union pluralism be that a free parliament be elected through free elections and that it exercise control over the state ap• It recognizes all the organizations, structures and associations existing in the country whose programs or platforms include support for at least one of the five points enumerated above. •It does not seek to change the existing social system but to remove from the road of progress the obstacles erected by the totalitarian bureaucracy and to reestablish the principles on which the present system is based by ousting the antisocial, antiworking-class, antinationai and antisocialist rulers of so-called
15
POLAND actually existing socialism, which is a version of the Stalinist system. •In its work, it takes inspiration from the best traditions of the workers' struggle and their revolutionary assaults on power. • It supports the struggle for social identity and national independence of the countries under the domination of the totalitarian bureaucracy, in particular the sister peoples of the German Democratic Republic, Czecho-
•It supports the struggle of the union Solidarnose to regain legality and recognizes the underground Solidarnosc as a union and as a social • It recognizes the right of all churches and religious institutions to work, in separation from the state, to offer spiritual services to the people. • It does not accept the dictatorship of the proletariat in any form or the power exercised in the name of the working class. • The ZRP PRO considers that the working class, a component of of the nation, has the right, together with other components, on a basis of equality, to exercise the its delegates elected to a free parliament.
slovakia and Ukraine.
•It supports the struggle of the