The Polish Socialist Party and all its members are unable to take part in the round-table discussions. This flows from the fact that the PPS does not recognize the constitution of the People's Republic of Poland, which is the judicial foundation of the post-Stalinist form of government. *
The
closure of
the
Gdansk
shipyards
WHAT HAS happened in Gdansk? On October 29, the Polish government announced the closure of the Lenin shipyard on the grounds that it was unprofitable. For at least two years, shutting down badly managed enterprises has been talked about in connection with the schemes for reforming the economy. A list was drawn up of factories that were were to be liquidated outright. The Gdansk shipyards were on it, but nowhere near the top. JOZEF PINIOR T SEEMED that there was nothing concrete in this talk, that a decision by the government on such measures was still a long way down the road. Solidarosc had tended rather to push the government to take a more radical line in this area, and we were endlessly inundated by naive freeenterprise capitalist arguments about the need for liquidating the big enterprises.
Then it happened. Three days before Margaret Thatcher's arrival in Poland, Rakowski did what the British prime minister did in Glasgow a few years ago. Everyone was shocked. Of course, the closure of the shipyard was primarily political — it was a provocation by the authorities against the opposition that had agreed to take part in the round-table talks.
The Solidarnosc leaders decided to discuss with those who bore the political responsibility for the destruction of the union. And, lo and behold, instead of getting the union legalized, they got a blow dealt to the symbol of Solidarnosc, to those workers
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November 28, 1988 • #152 International Viewpoint who had never abandoned them. The regime had upped the ante.
The price that the union is paying for the round-table gets higher every day. But, at the same time, the center of the opposition does not have an alternative, one that would accept the breaking off of the round-table negotiations, for example. In the National Executive Commission of Solidarnosc there is no alternative policy capable of laying the foundations for a defense of the shipyards. Polish trade-union leaders forgotten their roots
This is precisely the source of the disarray of the present leaders of Solidarosc, who for some time have been dazzled by the resources of the capitalism of the 1980s, of which Margaret Thatcher is the most eloquent symbol. In this regard, the Polish trade-union leaders have forgotten their roots — they have been unable to see what the Thatcher period represents for British
POLAND
"Comrade" capitalist trade-unionists and in particular for the workers' movement.
Rakowski has given these Solidarnosc leaders a lesson in modernism. In one deci-
WHO TOOK the responsibility for liquidating the Lenin shipyard in sion, he has made clear what it means to
Gdansk, cradle of Solidarnosc and bastion of the Polish workers' subordinate labor to capital, and how much humiliation and moral poverty the modern-
"I own 20 per cent of the capital of the Lavril enterprise, which is curist model of economic development holds rently worth 800 million zlotys and $200,000," the new Polish minister out for the workers' movement.
of industry, Mieczyslaw Wilczek, stated in proposing his candidacy for
Fascination with the efficiency of this the post. This capitalist "comrade" - because like any successful model and a total incomprehension of its
Polish operator, Wilczek is also a member of the PZPR — symbolizes costs, above all the abandonment in practhe aspirations of a number of Polish bureaucrats. The inspiration of his tice of the self-management alternative that ideology becomes much more a digest of the writings of the Chicago emerged so clearly during the period when
Solidarnosc was legal, has led the leaders
Boys than the Short History of the CPSU.
of the union into a blind alley.
We might quote a few phrases from his speech to the parliament. "l
If they respond seriously to the closure of want to protest against the strangling of the enterprises by the tax ofthe Gdansk shipyards —and the only fice...The weak enterprises should be allowed to die, in fact some of choice is breaking off the round-table negothem should be put out of their misery.... We have to open up the way tiations and staging strikes in some form - for foreign capita..... am going to demand an increase in the salaries of they will have to reject the whole tactic that managerial and technical professionals. How can you expect workers they have been following in recent months.
to respect engineers who earn 50 per cent less than they?...There is no
If they fail to respond seriously, their strateother initiative but private initiative...No entrepreneur can be happy gy of compromise with the nomenklatura about having strong unions. Me neither."* will go beyond the point acceptable to a large part of the society.
The workers who have been thrown on the street in Gdansk will not be prepared to accept such a reform. The movement will have to face problems for which it is in no way prepared.
Unfortunately, the Polish government seems to have a much more determined political leadership and a much clearer strate-
In Wroclaw, the trams on Line No. 0 have been decorated with publicity posters for the Pewex [hard currency] stores — advertisements for quality cigarettes on a cloudy blue background, plus the addresses where all this can be bought in dollars. The technicolor world, the modernity they all dream
I happened to take one of these trams from Grundwaldzki Square to the station. I had to catch a train, so I was in a hurry. The fuses blew; the driver had to change them at every stop, which of course slowed everything down. The passengers started to get impatient when the doors got jammed in the first car. They had to go out through the driver's small door. The people waiting at the stops insulted the driver, thinking that the closed doors were a sign of his illwill. Tempers rose, and the trip became a nightmare.
The Solidarosc leaders have to ask themselves the question whether they may not be in such a tram. A cloudy-blue tram going nowhere. *
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International Viewpoint #152 • November 28, 1988
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