New developments
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
POLAND This group was formed outside the structures of the Solidarose underground leadership and the democratic opposition that holds hegemony within them. Its activity is threefold.
First of all, the POR is engaged in trying to consolidate those with a in the Polish left higher level of workers' self-management consciousness that have been left in an atomized state, since they have not found adequate expression in the leadership of Solidarnosc.
It is significant that the Solidarnosc leadership, which in the underground
THE CRISIS of Solidarnose has been discussed in a number of articles in International Viewpoint in the last two years. The relative decline of the anti-bureaucratic mass movement has been pointed out for some time by the capitalist press.
The following articles and documents describe steps by a section of the left wing of the underground workers movement to offer an alternative to the "self-limiting revolution" strategy of the Solidarnosc leadership. The next IV will take up the general political situation after the recent amnesty.
ARTHUR WILKINS
Poland is a country that presents end of surprises.
At the end of no
1984, a team of sociologists from the
University of Poznan did a study on a sample of workers from four big located heavy industrial plants
1n various parts of the country.
A part of the study had to do with what sort of political system most closely suited these workers' aspirations. Some 78% said that they were in favor of genuinely democratic elections for parliament, with ditferent electoral slates.
65% were in favor of
Around having various political parties, and
80% were for freedom of expression for all citizens, whether supporters or opponents of the political system.
Some 58% were in favor of social ownership of the means of production.
It should be noted that the latter two concepts, unlike those of free elections and political pluralism, sound average to the quite ambiguous are part of the worker, since they ideological language of the bureaucratic rulers.
But the most revealing fact was support that 87% expressed their for the idea of "full workers' self- management." The term is a bit vague, but in Poland it means no less than full power in the factories for workers' councils, democratically elected by the workers. Moreover, it is seen as being in total opposition to
"participation"
notion of any or
"co-management."
This massive loyalty to the idea of workers' self-management is undoubtedly the most formidable gain of the Polish revolution of 1980-
1981. If we leave aside the very special case of Yugoslavia, it would be hard to find any country anywhere in the world today where the great majority of the workers aspire to be the collective owners of the plants in which they are working.
Commenting on the results of this study, one of the underground journout that they what extent Polish workers are
"system different present one — for a human and democratic socialism." (1)
However, study also revealed something else, this time a disturbing fact. quite faithfully the behavior opinions of the workers," the editors of the publication closest to the underground national leadership of Solidarnose pointed out: "The very strong support for the ideals and values of Solidarnose dropped when it came to the underground Solidarnosc. Some 20 to 25 percent of the workers said that they supported the latter."
At the same time, "those people who support the regime make up about 25 per cent of the workers in while the rest established after December 13 — that is the conclusion at by the authors of this
In a nutshell, the study indicates that half the workers, while opposing maintaining their support for the democratic self-management project represented by Solidarnosc in 1980-81, do not see the activities and positions of Solidarnose as it is today as expressing their aspirations.
This contradiction is where the impulse has to be sought for the development of the Workers' Opposition Alliance (POR) after May 1985.
has moved away from its working-class base, has fallen under the influence of intellectuals who consistently offer only one remedy for the failure of bureaucratic management - "the values of the market economy."
Secondly, the POR is teaching the workers how to defend their basic material and moral interests, and how to organize themselves around their most urgent demands.
Thirdly, it is calling on them to establish minimum bases of support for a fight for workers' control over the organization of work, the use of resources and the quality of production. "These are our factories"
"These are our factories," the POR declares. "We cannot let them destroy our property, because the more the bureaucracy destroys the less the society will have to divide up. We have to track the irrationality and economic sabotage of the bureaucracy at every step, denounce it, protest against it, bring complaints against those responsible to the courts, and, if need be, strike in defence of our factories, of our common national inheritance. The less the bureaucracy squanders, the more there will be for us, the more quickly it loses power, the less it will squander. Let's keep our eyes on the bureaucracy's hands!" (3)
Spreading out from its first networks, in particular from its most important initial base, the Union of Workers Councils of the Polish Resistance Movement (ARP-PRO) in Upper Silesia, the POR expanded considerably in the first year of its existence. (4)
1. 'Obecnose (Wroclaw), No. 10, 1985.
2. Tygodnik Mazowsze' (Warsaw), No. 157, 1986.
3. The POR-S "Program for immedi ate struggle in defence of the standard of living and the national heritage" is scheduled for publication in the magazine 'Quatrieme Internationale.' ZRP-PRO For - today the POR-S of Upper more information on the Silesia see International Viewpoint," No. 100, June 2, 1986.
17
New POR groups have formed in many cities in the country, fundamentally through the adherence of nuclei of activists that previously worked in the framework of Solidarnosc.
While the POR is centering its attention on building its base organizations in the big factories among industrial workers, in some areas peasant and youth groups have also appeared.
Both the founding platform of the POR and its "Program for immediate struggle in defence of the standard of living and the national economy" are clearly attractive to radicalized sections of Solidarnose activists who are looking for a working-class and socialist alternative. (5)
Convinced by their own experience of the failure the "strategy of self-limiting revolution," such activists are turning toward the POR, prompted by a desire to offer the Polish workers' movement the perspective of a democratic workers' revolution.
This tendency is strengthened by the fact that the POR backs up such a perspective with a body of immediate, partial and transitional demands - starting with the most classical, the demand for a sliding scale of wages - that correspond to the everyday concerns of the masses.
For example, the call for rent strikes launched by the POR had a major impact in several neighborborhoods joined together in building this initiative, which is the first action of the Polish social movement in the explosive area of the housing crisis.
In the same section of the city, OBI, the neighborhood news bulletin published by the POR, has won a large audience. In its May issue, Tygodnik Mazowsze, the most widely circulated underground periodical and the organ of national leadership of Solidarnosc (the TKK) gave an account of the call issued by the POR, entitled "Down with poverty and the dictatorship. " [See box.]
Also in May, the first anniversary of its founding, the POR changed its Opposition Alliance (POR-S). In this way, it sought to indicate its historic roots in the
Solidarnosc during the revolution of 1980-81 as well as define its attitude to the union today, within the social resistance.
The existence of Solidarnose, statement of the POR-S Committee declared, is indispensable for the liberation of the working class but it is not an adequate instrument. It is necessary to build a workers' organization able to take on much more advanced political tasks than a union can. This is the role that the POR-S wants to play, in close collaboration with Solidarnosc. (6)
The chair of the POR-S Executive open letter to the TKK explaining that over six years of activity found himself forced to reflect "on the errors made in the struggle for the liberation of the working class."
reflection led him to take the leadership in the underground of "an organization that includes leftof the working class, trained and educated under a common banner, the banner of Solidarnosc."
To liberate the working class from bureaucratic domination, he says, it is necessary to combine the fight for trade-union freedom with a fight for a self-managed, democratic independent power in the state. Anti-Communist language
Dziubelski called the attention of the Solidarnose leaders to the fact that anti-Communist language abounds in many publications that claim to use the same sort of language. For us, the present 'people's power is pseudo-socialists, who have established a degenerate regime that has nothing to do with
Stressing that both Solidarnos and the POR-S aspire to build a self-managed republic, the POR-S leader the members of the hoods in North Praga, on Warsaw's right bank. All the local groups of
EZRYW
Committee, the young Silesian worker
Damian Dziubelski, has addressed an
"won't a free, self-managed and sovereign Poland, that is, one liberated from the bureaucratic dictatorship, be a socialist Poland?"
In his letter, Dziubelski insisted that the question be clarified. At the same time, he noted that over and above any difference that might exist, the underground leaderships of Solidarosc and the POR-S have a
ROBOTNICZA PARTIA RZECZPOSPOLITEJ
SAMORZADNEJ
SEXCJA POLSKA IV MIEDZINAROUUWKI
ZA LODY CIELSKI GO
TYMCZASOWEGO KOMITETU
PHASONI
Tymonasowy
RPR komunikat TKZ inteligenoj1.
oopsyatkim Medarnarodowy Ploretariar walosace* miedaynarodowe postep apoleorny.
duty to the working class to collaborate and to coordinate their activities. The fate of a new August 1980 will depend on the fulfillment of this obligation.
The POR-S leader expressed the hope that Solidarnosc leaders "among whom there is no lack of persons with a broad outlook," such as Zbigniew Bujak and Jan Andrzej Gorny member of the TKK for Upper Silesia), would respond positively to his organization's invitation. (7)
afe dyktatorom, resimon i nieludakim ayatomon
Goosesna
DEKLARACJA IDEOWO POLITYCZNA RPRS
Part 1a the
As its program proclaims,
POR-S considers its main task to be to assure that the Polish workers maintains total indepenmovement
"any organization or dence from
TY MC ZASOWA
Deklaraoja Ideovo - Politzosne
Robotafosel
/Sekoji Polskief IV Międzynarod
Proposyoja Komitatu Zatozyolelakiego
"Zryz", newspaper of the Provisional Organizing Committee of the Workers'
Party of the Self-Managed Republic (RPRS), Polish section of the Fourth
International
18 monsadnes
5.
The text of the founding platform was published in 'IV, No.
89,
December
23, 1985.
"Przelom' (official bulletin of the
POR-S), No. 3, 1986.
of
•Wolny
Robotnik'
(publication the POR-S of Upper Silesia), No. 38, 1986.
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
institution outside the working class." This means political and ideological class independence not only from the totalitarian bureaucracy but also from
In this latter respect, the POR-S leaders diverge from many Solidarnose activists, who see the Polish Catholic Church as an institution independent of the bureaucratic power, and today tend often to lean on it, coming under its ideological influence.
While the POR-S welcomes religious activists without any discrimination and is open to collaborate with priests who take the side of the workers, it considers that the Church hierarchy is a tacit but powerful ally of the bureaucratic regime, and that this "red and black" alliance, as it is called, is a major obstacle on the road to the liberation of the working class.
A new element in the process of the recomposition of the Polish workers' movement initiated by the POR-S is the public appearance in of the Workers Party of the restore a lost socialism to society and in particular to the workers and to all working people." (9)
What is the reason for this position toward the Fourth International? In the pages of the Upper Silesian Wolny Robotnik, "Kryki," of the Executive Committee of the POR-S, answered this question in the organization, while small, is very sound ideologically. I am convinced that its ideals correspond to the thinking of the current in the country that has not lost its head, either under the pressure of the Kremlin's propaganda or of pro-Western propaganda. Both these forms of propaganda threw the heritage of all communists into the same mire. The purveyors of one kind denounce the totalitarian bureaucracy as 'Communist.' The purveyors of the other kind, supporters of the regime, wave the revolutionary banner of the communists, although they are a flagrant negation of all the values this banner represents."
It is thanks to the Fourth International, Kryki said, that a worker can understand what, over and above their different nature, unites the systems of the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy. - domination and exploitation of the working class + and that therefore "the fate of the workers is the same the world over." (10)
Below we are publishing an interview in which Kryki explains why in his opinion the Polish workers' movement needs a revolutionary party, along with the draft declaration of the principles of the Workers' Party of the Self-Managed Republic that was published in Zryw.
8. 'Zryw,' No. 1, 1986. Ibid. 10. •Wolny Robotnik,' No. 33, 1986.
May
Self-Managed Republic (RPRS) and of the periodical Zryw ["Take Off"],
For an independent published by the Provisional Organizing Committee of the RPRS.
The Organizing Committee of the self-managed republic"
RPRS points out that a self-managed
Poland can only be the achievement of an organized and conscious working class allied with the working people as a whole and progressive intellectuals. It notes that "the Polish people, oppressed, humiliated and deprived of dignity by a totalitarian bureaucratic
THE FOLLOWING is the draft political-ideological statement of the are obliged to achieve their regime, aspirations by means of revolution."
Workers Party of the Self-Managed Republic (RPRS - Polish section