Referendum
"We cannot let a handful of people prevent the elections being held. So, a word to the wise is sufficient!" asserted the CEP's president, while Monseigneur Romélus begged the Tontons Macoutes to "Seek rather to do what is good and beautiful, be
HAITI • POLAND blows up humble, change your behaviour, start afresh and things will be better for you".
in the Reformist leaders ignored generals' danger
The reformist leaders refused to listen when the Duvalierists said: "Without us, there will be no elections", and even talked
¡faces about civil war. They refused to see what was going on inside the army. The number of generals went up from two to five, and will soon be 16, allowing the Namphy/
THE JARUZELSKI REGIME suffered a grave
Regala duo to clinch their control of the setback on November 29. The Polish people were army thanks to a flood of hundreds of promotions. At the same time, military salaries expected to vote in the referendum for the have risen considerably. And on November government's so-called Second Stage of the
6, General Namphy — assuming the prerogatives of a president of the republic —
Economic and Political Reform. They did not, and designated himself "commander in chief of thereby denied legitimacy to the team in power.
the Haitian armed forces". He noted that,
The regime officially recognized its defeat the therefore, in accordance with the constitution, he would effectively be the real leader, and that the president would be only a nominal one. Hardly anybody denounced this outright power grab.
In fact, at that moment, the leaders of the
National Front for Collaboration were not only confident about the future, they were almost euphoric. This was because they were convinced that their candidate, Gérard
Gourgue, was going to win the elections — perhaps even in the first round. They failed to realise that it was this very factor that was going to finally sweep away any final hesitations that the army might still have had. *
ALAN THORNETT's book on workers' struggles in the British car industry from mid-1950 to the
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From Militancy to
Marxism is published by
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It can be ordered from:
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following evening.
ARTHUR WILKINS
V OTING WAS on two questions.
The first was, "Do you favor full implementation of the program for radical reconstruction of the economy presented to the Diet [parliament], which aims at a clear improvement in the living conditions of the society, knowing that this will require a difficult period of rapid changes over two to three years?" According to the official tallies, only 44.5% of registered voters replied "yes."
The second question was, "Are you in favor of a Polish model of thoroughgoing democratization of political life, with the goal of reinforcing self-management, broadening citizens' rights and increasing their participation in the running of the country?" Only 46.26% of registered voters replied "yes" to this question.
The remainder of the electorate answered "no," or abstained (there was a high abstention rate, 32%). Neither of the two questions got the 51% "yes" vote of registered voters required for adoption by the recent referendum law.
This was the first referendum in Poland since the one in 1946 that legitimated the establishment of the bureaucratic dictatorship. The situation today is very different. The 1946 referendum was a success for Stalinism thanks to a gigantic falsification of the results and police terror, but not only for these reasons. At the time, the bureaucratic regime was still on the ascendancy. It benefitted from the anti-capitalist transformations that had the support of the masses. The bureaucratic regime today is on the decline. Undermined and torn by contradictions, its system of ruling over the working class and society, as well as of running the national economy, is breaking down.
Referendum result also a blow for the Kremlin
Six years after the crushing of the 198081 Polish revolution, six years after the normalization of the regime, and despite the absence of independent legal mass organizations and political opposition, despite an extensive atomization and depoliticization of the society, the authorities have proven incapable of getting even passive acceptance of their policy by a majority of Poles.
The negative result of the referendum is not only a blow for the Polish bureaucracy in general and for its "reform" wing, represented by the "enlightened" Jaruzelski team in particular. It is also a blow for their protectors in the Kremlin, the Gorbachev leadership, since Jaruzelski is one of their main allies in the satellite countries of the "socialist camp." As for the experts of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they hoped that through the economic reform and political liberalization ditions for extracting from working people December 21, 1987 • International Viewpoint
POLAND the gigantic sums essential for payment of the debt to the Western banks.
World Bank campaigns for "yes" vote
The World Bank joined openly in the campaign for a "yes" vote in the referendum. Its director, Eugenio Lari, sent the following message through the official Polish Press Agency: "Poles should support the program of reforms presented by the government; this is a historic opportunity for the Polish people." (Polityka 45, November 7, 1987.) Moreover, before the referendum, Jaruzelski met Cardinal Glemp and submitted to him the program for the "second stage of the reform." It seems that he got, if not tacit approval, at least the benevolent neutrality of the church hierarchy.
The defeat of the bureaucratic regime in a popular vote and above all the recognition of this defeat are unprecedented events in the "socialist camp." Why did Jaruzelski admit his setback, when he could have falsified the returns in the referendum by adding a few per cent more positive votes? There were three reasons for this.
First, in so doing, he would have been obliged to claim that a majority of Poles accepted the perspective of a sharp drop in their standard of living. A gross falsification of the results would then have led to a rise in social tensions and increased the dangers of a mass explosion. Secondly, such a falsification might have been opposed by the still influential conservative forces in the bureaucratic apparatus, who see a danger to their position in the schemes for transforming the economic system and also balk at a political liberalization of the regime. Finally, a false victory in the referendum would have put Jaruzelski in a difficult position with the World Bank and the IMF. The latter would have been able to step up their demands on the basis of the purported support of the Polish society. In all, falsifying the results would have exposed the regime to a combination of threats from every quarter.
The government's program of reforms was also rejected by the working people for three reasons. First, they realized that any reform carried out by this regime could only mean a brutal attack on their standard of living. That is, supporting the "program for reconstructing the economy" meant accepting the sharpest rise in prices ever seen in People's Poland (an average of 110% for necessities, as announced by the government). This would have plunged still more of the masses into the destitution already suffered by a quarter of the population.
Secondly, working people have no confidence that the bureaucratic regime will carry out any reform or promise, and so they could not take seriously the proposal of a "Polish model of democratization." On the one hand, Jaruzelski courts citizens with the idea of "socialist pluralism," and on the other he rules out not only the right to form independent political parties, but even trade-union pluralism. Jaruzelski says that he is ready even to consider the possibility of a legal "socialist opposition." But at the same time, he announces from the outset that he excludes legalizing the "anti-socialist opposition," that is, Solidarnosc and more generally any real opposition.
The announcement of the proposed price rises was accompanied by that of a meeting of the Committee for the Defence of the Country (KOK). Since 1981, the year that this sinister extra-constitutional institution was set up, every Pole knows what a meeting of the KOK means — a threat to establish a state of war if the masses react too sharply to the price increases.
### Working people fear increased poverty
Thirdly, broad layers of working people feel instinctively that the introduction of a radical market reform in the Polish economy will be a great threat to everything that remains of their social gains — that it foreshadows greater poverty, harder work, sharpened social inequalities and increased
Igor Lewy, editor of the independent journal Robotnik and one of the founders of the recently established Polish Socialist Party (PPS), wrote a few months ago: "It seems that the Polish version of perestroika will fulfill the dreams of some people by its free-enterprise character and the extent of the re-privatizations. We will then have an enlightened market communism in which — under the protection of tanks, as well as of the leading role of the party and its international alliances - limited companies and other corporations will spring up like mushrooms, and social protection for the disadvantaged will be considered as another 'error of the past." It is in that framework that we will have to live and act....The cost of the Polish road to capitalism that Jaruzelski and his team want to take in order to save the 'socialist camp' from bankruptcy has to be calculated and weighed up before it is too late." (Robotnik 123, May 1987.)
With regard to the referendum, the National Executive Commission (KKW) of the union Solidarnos made the following declaration on October 25:
"No one can take the rulers at their word"
"Everyone wants the country to democratize, for the economy to be based on the sound foundations of the market, for individuals' success to depend only on their work and their abilities....Unfortunately, we cannot forget that the people who govern us are the same as those who six years ago instituted a state of siege to crush the democratic aspirations of the Polish society...
"No one can take the rulers at their word. We need real political, social and economic guarantees. Will the referendum be accompanied by guarantees? The answer to this is clear: It will not." (Bulletin d'information Solidarnosc 178, 1987.)
The KKW did not call for a boycott of the referendum or for voting "no," but rather limited itself to called for a passive abstention, in conformity with the idea expressed by Lech Walesa: "It's the West that's interested in referendum, we Poles are ignoring it." (Libération, December 1, 1987). Solidarnosc may think correctly that the result of the referendum represents a success for it, but insofar as its leadership is specifically concerned, this victory is a highly ambiguous one.
In his first comment on the referendum results, Walesa did not consider it useful to talk about a defeat for the regime but limited himself to noting that the vote testified that "Polish society is deeply divided." He judged that it was "imperative" that Solidarnosc and the government appeal "jointly" to the people to "save Poland," because "time is running out." His main political
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advisor, Professor Bronislaw Geremek, considered: "This a setback for everybody, because the authorities have compromised the idea of a referendum and of reform." (Le Monde, December 2, 1987.) Other opposition leaders — Adam Michnik, Jan Litynski, as well as Zbigniew Bujak — declared 24 hours after they learned of the results that they were "still stunned" and unable to "understand what happened." They asked for some time to find an explanation for the "totally unexpected" and "very grave" situation. (Libération, December 2, 1987.)
"Radical market reform of the economy"
Another sort of response could hardly be expected, inasmuch as the Solidarnosc leadership's present program for economic reform is close to what Jaruzelski wants to put into practice. It represents a radical modification of the program adopted at the First National Congress of Solidarnosc in 1981, which called for "the introduction at all levels of management of a self-management and democratic reform and of a new socio-economic order that would combine planning, self-management and the market." At the same time, he declared that "the reform must socialize planning" and "the central plan must reflect the aspirations of the society and be freely accepted." (Tygodnik Solidarnosc 29, 1981.)
The present program of the Solidarnosc leadership is a "radical market reform of the economy," which "must lead to the reestablishment of a genuine multi-sectoral [mixed] economy," and "assure equality of all forms of sectors of ownership, and limit the role and function of the state in the economy, restoring the fundamental role to the market mechanisms." (Widnokrag 6П, 1987.) Central planning was no longer envisaged.
According to the leadership of Solidarosc, the deeper and deeper and more and more irreversible crisis of bureaucratic planning in Poland, the USSR, and in other countries of actually existing socialism" testifies to the historic collapse of the planned economy. Opposition to Solidarnosc leadership
But the more the social situation of the masses worsens, the more the government seeks to impose its economic reform, the more a feeling of opposition to the orientation followed by the Solidarnos leadership has developed among a section of the union's leaders. The first open attack against this orientation came in the spring of 1986 from Andrzej Slowik, chair of Solidarnosc in Lodz. Last December, his criticisms were taken up by 22 members of the National Commission elected at the 1981 congress. In an open letter to Walesa in September, they wrote:
"The union has no clear program common to all its members, and it reserves very little space in its declarations and its actions for material social problems. This threatens...to cut the leading bodies of the union off from their base in the factories. Everyone is well aware that Solidarnosc has to be a social movement, but it would make a grave error if it also let itself no longer be seen as a union.
"A social movement...neglecting the classical trade-union tasks would lose a large part of its social base within the country and the support given by foreign unions and trade-union confederations. Solidarnosc could no longer be considered as the representative of workers' interests, and it
POLAND would cease to be an important factor in the evolution of Polish internal affairs." (Bulletin d' Information Solidarnosc 178, 1987.)
In addition to Slowik, other historic leaders of Solidarnosc in several industrial regions signed this letter. They included Andrzej Gwiazda and Anna Walentynowicz in Gdansk, Marian Jurczyk in Szczecin, Seweryn Jaworski and Zbigniew Romaszewski in Warsaw, Miechyslaw Gil in Nowa-Huta and Lech Dymarski in Poznan. "Solidarnosc is going back into the factories"
Lower Silesian Solidarnosc leader and also a founder of the PPS, Jozef Pinior, demanded in September the adoption of the following orientation: "Solidarnos is going back into the factories, it is with the nameless ones, those who are tied to the assembly line, with those who are in the very depths of oppression and poverty. Its vocation is to defend the oppressed. This vocation will not be abandoned in exchange for a warm place in a sacristy nor for the free market." (Robotnik 129, September 1987.)
The question that is posed is whether all the Solidarnosc leaders who declared for such a position will be able to unite their forces and convince the others, who at the moment are dazzled by the deceptive glitter of the market economy.
The Jaruzelski regime will certainly continue to implement its economic reform program. That is what the Diet decided in the wake of the referendum. The price rises will be spread out over time, depending of course on the social resistance the regime runs up against. But, at the same time, the crisis of the regime will continue to deepen, and this will tend to open up possibilities for the Polish working people to regain confidence in their strength and in their ability to resist. In Le Matin de Paris on December 2, Jacek Kuron predicted: "We have to expect increased social agitation." * December 21, 1987 • International Viewpoint
Strike movement
YUGOSLAVIA deepens
ON NOVEMBER 17, Macedonian steel workers took to the streets of the capital city Skopje in the largest demonstration of workers' anger seen in the republic since the war. MICHELE LEE
O N THE PREVIOUS day, the
workers had been informed by their workers' council that their wages would be cut since the enterprise was making losses (all this in accordance with the current federal law on loss-making enterprises).
When the workers protested, they were advised to elect delegations from every shop and negotiate with the management. Instead, they marched the following day to the building housing the city assembly and the republican government. Estimates of the number involved vary from 3,000 to 10,000. The steel workers' march was joined by workers from the local glassmaking factory and by city employees, as well as by workers from several other enterprises and a considerable number of Skopje citizens. The march was led by furnace men: the steel furnaces had recently been shut down, leaving 1,500 men awaiting redeployment.
"We want a wage, not charity!"
The workers complained that they were not responsible for the parlous state of their enterprise: the government's recent decision to increase the price of steel products by a mere 60% (in a situation of roughly 180% inflation), while raising the price of electricity by 69%, meant that the steel works would have to be closed down, leaving 12,000 people without work. The steelmen wanted the federal government to allow steel prices to rise by 113% and the wages of those involved in direct production by 100%. The demonstrators shouted: "We want a wage, not charity!", "Those who live off our work should also share our fate!", "Down with the government!"; and "Out with incompetent leadership!" They also demanded the dismissal of their managers. International Viewpoint • December 21, 1987
At first, the functionaries refused to appear before the crowd and the tension rose steadily in the square before the assembly building. Finally, the presidents of the city party committee and of the Skopje commune assembly emerged through the door. In the absence of any sound equipment, the dialogue began with those in the front lines, but very soon the functionaries' explanations produced a wave of shouts and protests all round.
A loudspeaker was then brought, but the workers demanded that the whole area be properly wired for sound so that everybody could hear and participate. They refused to send in a delegation and began to pelt the two representatives of the authorities with rotten fruit and vegetables. Two hours later a proper sound system was installed, which allowed this particular and novel public debate to proceed.
### Steelmen win wage increase
However, despite the fact that night fell and it began to rain, the demonstrators refused to disperse until their demands were satisfied. The Macedonian republican government then went into an urgent session, with the result that the workers' demands were largely satisfied: the steelmen's wages were to be raised to the Yugoslav average for the industry, those on low incomes would have their wages doubled, and the value of work points would be raised by 50%. Only then did the square empty.
A qualified worker explained to the Belgrade Politika's correspondent that, although he had been working in the steel works for 24 years, and although he and his comrades were over-fulfilling the norm, he earned no more than 120,000 dinars a month [about $32]. Yet he had a fourmember family to support, including a grown-up daughter who has been unemployed ever since she left school seven years ago. Talking to the press, the workers complained about the lack of self-management, the high salaries of the functionaries and their own low living standards.
Within two days of this demonstration, the steel workers were followed by aluminium workers in a march through Skopje streets. Stopping before the republican assembly building, the Alumina workers shouted that they were not responsible for the bad state of their enterprise, for which they blamed the previous management, the leadership of the Skopje commune and the current federal government. They demanded that their enterprise by made financially secure and that their wages be doubled.
Once again. their demands were largely
The following day, November 22, workers employed in the oil refinery, the local dairy and glass and timber factories, as well as electricity workers, went on strike. They, however, remained within their enterprises, so less is known about their demands. In another Macedonian town, 2,500 workers employed in the Bitola mining and electricity generating complex refused to accept their October wages, saying that the management had reneged on a wage agreement: despite increased production, had been cut. A commission was set up to investigate their demands.