French press, Professor Geremek [Lech Walesa's main advisor] considers that it was a setback for everybody, because the government compromised the ideas both of the referendum and the economic reform.
If such views have been expressed, they are utter nonsense. The result of the referendum is a spectacular blow against Jaruzelski. It testifies to the fact that the Polish society no longer believes in any reform by the Communists. This is the result of 40 years of a Communist regime. Jaruzelski told Moscow that he had everything under control, and that he had achieved total normalization. He could even claim that there was general support for the economic reform, because it was supported by Lech Walesa, the Solidarnosc leadership and its experts. The referendum showed that all that was nothing but propaganda.
People gained confidence after the referendum. They feel more sure of themselves. Only they no longer think, as they did before, that there is a leadership and that it will lead their struggle. After I got out of prison in the summer of 1984, I travelled through the country for a year. I discussed with the main leaders of Solidarnosc, as well as with ordinary activists in the plants. I could see then that combativity was flagging, and that the leadership's authority was also on the wane — it was the TKK at the time. Today, the evolution of the situation will depend to a large extent on the correlation between these two processes. If the leadership's authority continues to decline, but not combativity, then people will begin to organize autonomously. Before, these two processes were parallel. Now, even before the referendum, the ranks had begun to think independently. The referendum result is the expression of • What do you think of the position taken on October 25 by the Solidarnosc National Executive Commission (KKW) on the referendum?
It was the worst imaginable. I was in a small provincial city at the time, and I discussed with a Solidarnose activist there. He told me, "You don't understand anything, because Walesa says that the reform is a 22 gooa thing, but that there is no need to vote." The whole Solidarnosc leadershir International Viewpoint • January 25, 1988 took the same position as Walesa, that the society is hoping for an economic reform, that this reform is necessary but that, despite everything, it was better not to go to the polls. Onyszkiewicz, the representative of the Solidarose leadership, said that it was better to go fishing or gathering mushrooms, because in any case the referendum results would not matter. That was very bad propaganda. On the other hand, the government conducted more intelligent propaganda than ever. But despite this, the people refused to give their support. They are starting to think independently.
• In your opinion why was the government so mistaken in its predictions?
Everyone is asking themselves that question today. Why did Jaruzelski hold this referendum? I think that the team in power today is taken in a lot less by its own propaganda than those that preceded it. But it let its head be turned by the Solidarnosc leadership's propaganda. It thought that this leadership faithfully represented the opin-
I have heard such an opinion voiced by a representative of party and police circles. All you had to do, according to them, was listen to Walesa, the Solidarnosc leadership and the church and you would know it all. That is what convinced them to hold the referendum. They did not realize that the views of the Solidarnosc leadership had diverged from those of the society. That is because the society has no way of expressing itself, not even in the underground press. The Solidarnosc leadership and the groups linked to it have established their monopoly over this press. The existence of the independent press and publishing houses is a marvelous thing. I say that without any irony. But the distribution of the press and independent publications is weak.
In Warsaw, it seems otherwise, because there is a plant press in the Ursus tractor factory, in the Huta Warszawa steelworks, in the FSO auto factory and in the Polkolor electronics factory. But there are provincial cities and more generally many regions that this press does not reach. So, despite the existence of this press, the Western radio stations remain the main source of information. But these stations are no less given to censorship than those of the Reds. A document not approved by Walesa, the Solidarnosc leadership or its experts has no chance of getting on the air.
Consequently, the Solidarnose leaderships have made the same error as the PZPR (the Polish CP) - they have imposed their monopoly on the independent press. Only their views are broadcast by Western radio stations; the others are eliminated. And so these groups are convinced that the whole society shares their opinions. This news monopoly functioned effectively for a period, as it did for the Communist system. Every individual thought, "I have a different view, but all the others think like the press" (the clandestine press in our case). Before the referendum, people said, "I will not go, but the others certainly will." It was not like that.
• What do you think of General Jaruzelski's economic reform program?
In the first place, the regime is basing this reform on an economic theory of the free market. The West demands that Jaruzelski base himself on this theory, and this is demanded above all by International Monetary Fund. But this is absurd, because there is no free market; this theory has no application here. Secondly, our economists, who are trying energetically convince us of the soundness of their reform, are people who have undoubtedly never seen a factory, who have no idea of what is going on in industry nor of how the production process
They imagine that a big drop in the standard of living will lead to an increase in labor productivity and to an improvement in the quality of products. Since they have nothing to do with productive labor, they think that if you drive the proles to get on with the job under the goad of hunger or the whip that they will work hard enough to raise the standard of living of the others. In fact, all those who are discussing how to get society to work have living standards several times higher than most.
I am working now as a painter on a heating center building site in Ciechanow in the center of the country. A welder of scaffolding earns 25,000 zlotys a month.? A top category welder with dozens of years of seniority earns 30,000 zlotys. This is what the wages of most workers are like. Of course, there are enterprises where wages are better - steelworks or shipyards. But I am talking about typical enterprises, like mine. Such wages are not enough today to feed a family, so most Poles are looking for supplementary jobs to do after their eight hours, obviously manual jobs.
For example, the boss on my building site clears away rubble after his workday, and the foreman at the end of his eight hours lays paving stones. And they are asking these people to let their real wages be cut in half! And they tell them, "If you want to keep your standard of living, you have to increase productivity." I don't doubt that they will manage it. I don't know how, but through their collective intelligence, they will do it. Only at that time, I will refuse to go up with my brush onto the scaffolding built by my fellow workers, because I would be afraid that it would collapse under
If the Polish economy is sick, this sickness is caused by norms that are too high and therefore lead to a false productivity and in reality engender immense losses. In 1980-81, I was invited to drink coffee with some ministers, because they wanted to know what I thought should be done to get 2. According to the calculations made by Solidarosc last October, to live on the "breadline" a person needs an income of 10,660 zlotys; and to live at a minimum social level, a family of four needs an income of 53,400
the economy moving again. I told them that before anything else they had to lower the quantitative production norms by 40 per cent without cutting wages and create the conditions for quality production. It is only after that we can start to increase productivity, while increasing wages proportionally. But the regime has always done exactly the opposite. And this produces nothing, because Polish workers are very imaginative.
I have been working in industry for thirty years, and the workers still surprise me by creased, and despite that they manage to maintain their wages at the same level. I am a worker with a number of skills. I have worked as a lathe-operator, a welder, and now I am a painter. So, I can judge how much time is necessary to make a given product. The norms are such that it seems totally impossible to do the work in the assigned time, but they manage it. Simply, they do not respect the technological process. From the outside, the product seems to meet specifications. It even has, if necessary, the indicated dimensions, but this product maintains its use value ten times less time than it should, because it is produced by eliminating 80 percent of the specified technical operations. All the workers' inventiveness is directed toward finding means for eliminating them.
The present economic reform will force workers to find more tricks of this sort. On paper, productivity will increase, and they will therefore maintain the level of their wages. But the economy will breakdown • You are one of the signatories to the letter of the 22 Solidarnosc leaders to Lech Walesa. In this letter you criticize the Solidarnosc leadership's lack of interest in defending workers' living standards and you demand the convocation of the National Commission elected by the union's congress in order to solve the problem of its leadership. Could you explain this demand?
The only document that defines what Solidarnose is and how it should function 1s its statutes. According to these statutes, the union leadership is made up of the National Congress of Delegates, the National Commission and the Control Commission. The tasks of the National Commission, the statutes indicate, are the following: to represent the union as a whole in dealings with the state, the economic administration, as well as with the other institutions and organizations, coordinating the activity of the regional union organizations and adopting
A demand for convoking the union's only statutory leadership should not surprise any member. It is the right and duty of every member to do this, and in particular of a member of the National Commission. If anybody were to ask us to justify our demand, they would only show their ignorance of the rules that govern our union.
Why did our demand make so many waves — even arouse hostility? The object of every rule is to curb individual and group interests in the name of the general interest. The statutes of Solidarnose are such rules. They oppose individuals' actions contrary to the interests of the union as a whole. It seems that we have people in Solidarnosc who are opposed to respecting the statutes. I am with those who demand that the statutes be respected and applied. The present leadership of Solidarnosc is not a statutory body. • But after the establishment of the state of war, it was not possible to act in accordance with the statutes. In the place of the National Commission, replacement bodies were to appear. The Provisional Coordinating Commission (TKK) was the first.
I was was very happy when the TKK emerged. I was in an internment camp at the time. The need for forming the TKK was clear to everyone, because then it was impossible do otherwise. However, the situation has changed since. When I got out of prison, I realized after a few months that there was absolutely no problem about convoking the National Commission. There were technical difficulties, to be sure, but they were far from being insurmountable. I have taken part in many meetings in which there were more than 200 unionists, and these meetings could be held. The National Commission has less than 100 members. Since then, conditions have become still more favorable.
If it is possible to apply the statutes, that should be done, if you want to stay in the framework of Solidarnosc. In such a situation, those who fail to apply the statutes place themselves outside the union Solidarnosc - not outside the social movement Solidarosc, but outside the union. That seems clear to me. If a group makes it impossible to call a session of the statutory leadership of the union, then that group is standing the way of the union functioning.
• Why do you think this problem
It is very simple. Monopoly conditions have appeared, and the group that has imposed this is doing everything it can to maintain it. The existence of groups aspiring to monopolize power is a natural thing.
But democracy's purpose is precisely to make this impossible by establishing a balance between such groups and guaranteeing that they will keep a check over each
• Nonetheless, the leading group in
Solidarnosc contains members who have various points of view. For example, some give priority to the fight for a market-type economic reform, while others favor giving priority to the trade- union struggle in the plants, like the signatories to the letter of the 22, who consider that Solidarnosc is not paying enough attention to this question.
POLAND Release Kornel Morawiecki "WE CALL on all members of the union
Solidarnosc to undertake actions for the release of Kornel Morawiecki, our fellow trade unionist, a delegate from the Wro claw region [in Lower Silesia] to the National Congress.
For six years, Kornel Morawiecki has led Fighting Solidarnosc, an underground independent organization against which vast police forces have been mobilized. It is largely thanks to
Kornel Morawlecki's activity that the
Wroclaw region has become the most active in recent years. We can defend him only with firmness and solidarity.
Kornel Morawiecki's arrest is a new test of strength in the war against the
Joanna Duda-Gwiazda, Andrze)
Gwiazda, Ewa Kubasiewicz, Wieslawa Kwiatkowska, Kyryl Kramentowski, Roman Urbanski, Jan Kulas,
Halina Mikolajska. * It is not paying any attention to it at all. Solidarnosc may be a social movement today, but it is certainly not a union. Since the establishment of the state of war, the groups that have taken the leadership have not been carrying out trade-union activity. Henryk Wujec is an exception, because from time to time, timidly, he reminds people that after all we have to be a union.
I will give only one example: In the fall of 1984, I met in Warsaw with a group of 40 workers from a plant, rank-and-file members of Solidarnosc. The workers sat quietly through the whole meeting; they said nothing. Only the leaders talked Shortly before midnight, the leaders left, and then the workers started talking, until 5am. I learned from them - not from the leaders - that new contracts were in the pipeline. When I came out of prison, none of the regional leaders talked to me about that. Either they did not know anything about it, or else they weren't interested. In that meeting, we discussed how to defend ourselves against this looming threat.
Later, I travelled through the country, and I collected documentation about this question. I drafted a statement, and I intended to publish articles on this affair in the underground press. At that time, they were still publishing what I wrote, because I had just got out of prison and had to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, Father Popieluszko's murder diverted everybody's attention, and the regime then took advantage of that to force through the new contracts, without arousing any protests. This question simply did not interest either the TKK or the regional leaderships, because they did not 23 feel that they were in the shoes of union
January 25, 1988 • International Viewpoint
POLAND leadership. That has not changed.
• You are very hard on the present leadership of Solidarnosc.
Yes, that's so. I have a negative assessment of the work of the comrades who make up the KKW and the preceding leaderships. I am in complete disagreement with their political line, with their conception of an understanding with the regime and their attempts to orient to it. I should add that I am equally shocked by the attitude they took following the recent arrest of Kornel Morawiecki, the underground leader of the the Fighting Solidarnosc Organization. As you know, the regime accuses Morawiecki of terrorist activity.
The KKW poses the problem in the following way: Solidarnosc has never been implicated in terrorism, but despite that we have to protest. In fact, that means the
KKW giving legitimacy to the accusations made by the prosecutor and the propaganda of the government's representative, Jerzy
Urban, who say that Fighting Solidarnosc is a terrorist organization. That is an inadmissible and scandalous attitude. In common with some other independent activists
- including Halina Mikolajska — we drew up a statement on this matter that I would like you to publish alongside this interview [see box]. If the differences that exist in the opposition were to lead us to treat each other the way Walesa and the KKW did Morawiecki, then the government would very soon be able to put us all in prison, including the comrades of the KKW, because no one would want to defend us, and rightly so. • The Polish Socialist Party (PPS) was formed recently. What is your attitude toward this initiative?
This could be a historic event and a turn in the situation. Over the past five years all the independent groups enjoying some influence have evolved very far to the right. Even those that in the past were identified with the left have taken positions today that would be seen in the West as very right wing. And this is to say nothing of our right, which is something that must be hard to imagine in the West. It is an eighteenth or nineteenth century right!
On the left there is a vacuum that it is essential to fill. The PPS has a chance of filling it and of becoming the party of all the left. And there is an immense demand in Poland for left-wing thought. • Did you join the PPS?
No. But I took part in its founding congress, and I look on the creation of this party with a lot of sympathy. If I did not join it, that is because I think that the PPS has to resolve a series of questions that I consider
First of all, after the experience of the communism that appeared under the name of socialism, we have an immense concep24 to do in defining the concepts, in develop- tual confusion. The PPS will have a big job International Viewpoint • January 25, 1988 ing a language and recovering from the
Communists the symbols that they have appropriated. To take only one example, the goal the PPS set itself was to establish socialism in Poland. In 80 to 90 per cent of people, that immediately arouses a negative emotional reaction. So the PPS has to clearly define what it means by "socialism"
This is not a concept with only one meaning, because various socialist parties and currents in the world give it a different content, and, what is more, in Poland it is a concept that has been emptied of all content. The same is true for the red flag, the traditional banner of the socialists, which has been usurped by the Communists. In
1981, when the National Commission of Solidarnosc was discussing what attitude to take toward May 1, and how to celebrate it, I said, "Comrades, the question is not how to celebrate it, but how to clean away the
Communist imprint from the flag of the workers' struggle for a better future." The PPS must take its distance from the compromised slogans, but maintain their real content and translate it into a new
Secondly, the PPS has to take a stand on the socialist tradition. The history of the Polish Socialist Party and its program are known today only to historians. Our knowledge in this area is very limited. We know that during the partition of Poland, this party placed the fight for social justice and for independence on the same level, that it organized strikes, and that for years Jozef Pilsudski was one of its leaders.4 Few people know about this party's attitude toward Marxism, and few know that the keystone of the Socialists' program was social ownership of the means of production.
It is not enough today to identify with the tradition of the Socialist Party, not only because it is little known in our society, but also because this party had several traditions, among which you have to chose. For example, in 1906, the PPS split into two parties. The PPS-Revolutionary Faction led by Pilsudski took up an armed struggle for independence. On the other hand, the PPS-Left fused with the SDKPiL to form the Communist Party of Poland, an agent of the USSR.
During the last war, there existed the PPS - Freedom - Equality - Independence (PPS-WRN), which fought the German occupation and, after the war, opposed the Bolshevization of Poland. At the same time, there was the Workers' Party of Polish Socialists (RPPS). After the war, it founded the "new" PPS, which collaborated with the Polish Workers' Party (PPR), fusing with it in 1948 to form the PZPR.
Which tradition does the present PPS identify with? There are a lot of possible choices. Concretely, it has to say whether this is the tradition of collaboration with the Communists, that of the PPS-Left and the KPPS, and whether it should aim for legality, that is, recognition as a party by the PZPR, and seek to govern in common with the Communists? Or whether, conversely, it will organize the society to fight for democracy and independence in accordance with the tradition of the PPS-Revolutionary
Faction and the PPS-WRN? These are essential questions. Maybe they are troublesome ones for the founders of the present
PPS, but they have to be asked and
Thirdly, it has to be remembered that
Marxists and non-Marxists coexisted in the historic PPS. The new PPS has to define its attitude toward Marxism. That is hard. The
Communists have tried to sell us the idea that Marx and Lenin invented everything, maybe even the multiplication table. We have believed a number of propaganda claims along these lines. For example, what we are offered as Marxist economics is really only the economic theory worked out by Ricardo. Marx only added the idea that under capitalism wages have to decline continuously, and on this thesis he based his social theory. The same is true as regards philosophy. Certain theories cannot be rejected for the sole reason that Marxists lay claim to them. The others can, and must, be abandoned. The PPS has to make a choice and present it in two versions — a popular one and a theoretical one. This will also be difficult, and maybe troublesome, but it is necessary.
Fourth, it is essential that the PPS explain how it views social ownership of the means of production. I think that it is infantile to think that state ownership leads only to bad things and social ownership only to good things. The PPS should be in favor of democracy, of normal parliamentary democracy. In a free and democratic country, the state apparatus is a sum of functionaries that society employs to handle the matters determined by the institutions that represent it. In such a country, state ownership is
There are other questions of this sort that must be clarified. I hope that the PPS will clarify them in the best way, and provide answers that will induce the maximum number of people to join, and make it possible for me to join also. * 3. Helena Mikolajska is an actress and recipient of two state prizes for her artistic activity. She was formerly a very active member of the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), which was victimized for the 1976 Radom strike and became the political nucleus of the Polish 4. Jozef Pilsudski (1867-1935). Initially a prominent figure in the workers' movement, editor of the PPS
After the 1905 revolution, he launched terrorist actions against Czarism and evolved toward bourgeois nationalist positions. At the time of the First World War, he was one of the commanders of the Polish Legions formed under the sponsorship of the Central Powers. After Poland regained its independence, he was chief of state (1918-22). He provoked a war with Soviet Russia. d'état of May 1926, he ruled the country as a dictator 5. The discrediting of communist traditions by Stalinism has often impelled Polish anti-bureaucratic activists to identify with the anti-Communist currents in the history of the PPS. 6. Like many Poles, Andrzej Gwiazda obviously bases his view of Marxism on the courses taught by Stalinists that he had to endure in his youth.