Regime takes a leap into the
THE ROUND-TABLE ACCORD signed on
April 5 in Warsaw between representatives of the bureaucracy and Solidarnosc leaders is unprecedented in the history of
Unlike what happened in August 1980 in
Gdansk, it is not a concession wrested from a regime threatened by a general strike, whereby the government
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KAYSKA upsurge.
In making this move, the regime is taking the risk of opening up a breach through yielded to some demands of the masses in order to preserve the essential, that is, its power. Nor is it an initiative taken coolly by a regime recognizing that it has reached the limits of its way of running the economy and the society, on the model of previous attempts by the bureaucracy at self-reform, such as the Prague Spring or
Gorbachev's reform.
General Jaruzelski's regime is determined to take the leadership of a profound transformation at once of its form of political domination, the mechanisms governing its economic system and especially of society.
CYRIL SMUGA
HREE SCENARIOS may be envisaged now. The first (the worst, and I hope it will never come to pass) is sharp conflicts in the enterprises, an escalation of demands by the unions, mass protests, demands and strikes; disruption of production and the market; the loss of all the political capital gained by the round-table, both for the government and for Solidarnos and for the OPZZ; a disastrous impact of these developments on perestroika in the Soviet
Union; and, as a result of the growth of these conflicts, the need for a tough counter-attack....
"The second (optimistic) scenario is the new unions operating without clashes; the differences being settled without confrontation in the name of higher social interests;
the unions competing for the good of the enterprises (that is, to produce more and better so that there will be more to distribute and so that people will steadily earn more); new lines of foreign credit being opened up and restructuring of the debt;
and as a result of this a rise in the threshold of what the society can endure (a threshold that it is impermissible to exceed), making it possible to accelerate the reform process.
"This second scenario, however, seems to me to be unlikely. Undoubtedly, the events will follow a third scenario combining elements of the two preceding ones. " 2
Such was the official point of view expressed shortly after the signing of the round-table accord by one of the leading figures in the regime in a weekly regarded as the semi-official organ of an influential faction of the bureaucracy. It has the merit of highlighting the fears and hopes of representatives of the Polish bureaucracy.
General Jaruzelski's regime initiated this process after exhausting all the resources of its traditional form of domination and under the threat of a vast social rebellion foreshadowed by the strike waves in the spring and summer of 1988. In pursuance of this, it decided to make an alliance with a trade-union and political leadership — the Walesa leadership - which, while weakened and out of step with the aspirations of the working class, still symbolizes the continuity of the mass workers' movement from the 1980-81 revolutionary which all the potential combativity and radicalization of the Polish working class can burst. And this at a time when it has no economic margins for maneuver that would enable it to buy social peace, and when only massive economic aid from the imperialists can enable it to avoid exceeding the "threshold of what the society can bear."
Imperialists fear of revolutions
The Polish bureaucrats are fully aware of the fact that today the imperialist leaderships fear above all "having to face in an undetermined but probable future a chain of revolutions upsetting the raw-materials markets, trade and regional political alliances. " 3 revolutions generated by the growing indebtedness of third world economies and some workers' states. Therefore, it is counting on massive aid, and in return is declaring its readiness to open up a crack in the Polish market to imperialist capital, and holding out the prospect of other openings in the East.
The initial reactions from the imperialist leaderships seem to justify the Jaruzelski regime's wager. For example, on April 17 US president George Bush announced an economic aid plan estimated to be worth a billion dollars. Besides granting Poland most-favored nation status, enabling it to export its products to the US without paying tariffs, and the support announced for 1. The National Entente of Unions (OPZZ) was set up by the Polish bureaucracy at the end of martial law in order to occupy the trade-union space. In recent months, facing the threat of competition from a legalized Solidarosc, its leading personnel have taken more radical stands and tried, not without certain results, to take over the arena of action for economic demands. 2. "The Coalition of the Wise," a discussion with the deputy premier, Ireneusz Sekula, Polityka 15, April 15, 1989. 3. According to the terms of the international financial 2xper Piere-Yves Dugus, in Libration (Pans), Apri 3 25, 1989.
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the bureaucratic regime. dark
POLAND rescheduling the Polish debt, this plan is designed particularly to promote US private investment in Poland. It will contribute to exchanging Polish debts for stock, enabling US enterprises to become partners in Polish companies and support the Polish private sector.
Likewise, after the French foreign minister made statements filled with promises in Warsaw, the ministers of foreign affairs of the European Community, meeting April 24 in Luxemburg, decided to speed up the conclusion of a trade and cooperation agreement with Poland. Nonetheless, the country's needs are immense. Its foreign debt amounts to nearly $39 billion, and repayments represent 400% of its annual trade surplus.
Establishment of a new economic order
The image of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the impresario of martial law, shaking the hand of Lech Walesa, the historic leader of independent trade-unionism, should not obscure the fact that the round-table agreement goes a lot further than granting the legalization of Solidarnosc. What is at stake first of all is the establishment of a new economic order favoring the market and privatization of important sectors of the economy and, secondly, of a new political order through which the bureaucracy will try to coopt the elites that have come out of the independent social movement.
The deputy premier could not have been clearer about this: "We are modifying the philosophy of the state's activity. should not be all powerful, if it should not run everything, it cannot be asked to 'grant' things. Rather, the demand has to be that it create the conditions making it possible for social needs to be met through the operation of market mechanisms, well as the free activity of the enterprises, local collectives and citizens." 4
As regards the general features of the new economic order, the round-table agreement goes no further than asserting a few principles that were already present in various documents published in the context of introducing the "second stage" of the economic reform. Their essential function is to get oppositionists to take the responsibility for these choices. For example, transformations leading to the new economic order involve primarily:
"The development of self-management and worker's participation.
"The free development of the structure of
"The development of market relations and competition.
"The liquidation of the vestiges of the centralized system of management and the limitation of planning to the formulation of the state's economic policy, to be implemented with economic instruments. 4 enterprises. "A unified financial policy toward the International Viewpoint #163 • May 15, 1989
"The subordination of the mechanisms for selecting leading cadres in the enterprises to criteria of professional compe-
In fact, some of the developments enumerated go beyond what has already been put into practice. In particular, the document talks about "selling public enterprises or the majority of their components to the private sector," about transforming these enterprises into "limited companies or workers' cooperatives," about "issuing and
" about "shutting down enterprises chronically in the red," about"eliminating the rationing of goods and administrative directives on setting prices, exchange rates and discount and about "the creation by early 1991 at the latest of a stock exchange." All of this is put in the framework of establishing "constitutional guarantees of the perof the pluralist system of ownership in the economy."
This is not essentially to restore the confidence of the domestic capitalist sector, which is weak and does not have enough capital to achieve a rapid, substantial change in its role in society. It is rather to offer guarantees for foreign investment, which has been marginal up until now but which is expected to play a major role in the Polish "new economic order.'
Moreover, the final part of the accord, devoted to overcoming the debt barrier, specifies: "From Poland's foreign partners we expect understanding and concrete support for the turn undertaken in our country in all areas of public life" and, in particular, "a greater interest by Western investors in placing their capital in Poland" and "operations to reduce the debt with the help of unconventional financial solutions, including 'eco-conversion,' " that is, transforming debts into shares in the Polish
"Normalizing financial relations with the West"
In order for "Western investors" to be fully reassured, it is also stipulated that "the program of the International Monetary
Fund or any other program worked out with the international institutions and the creditors can be the basis for normalizing financial relations with the West." 6
The opening to the market economy and to foreign investment is, however, not really a surprise. The failure of centralized economic management of the recognized today even by the bureaucracy and demonstrated by the steady drop in the yield of fixed capital in state industry, has long left room for the development of a private sector on the margins of the Polish economy whose profitability is much higher than that of the state sector and in which wages are also much higher.
In 1987, the private sector employed 6% of labor and produced 17.2% of the national non-agricultural income (its share was
7.3% in industry and 27.7% in construction). Between 1980 and 1987, while the total labor force tended to decline slightly (again, outside agriculture), numbers employed in the private sector increased by 78%. The same phenomenon can be observed in the gross fixed capital formation in industry. In the nationalized sector, permanent fixed capital increased by 24% between 1980 and 1987. On the other hand, in the private sector, the increase was 58% (although this represented only 1.5% of total industrial fixed capital).
Thus, while the private sector remains very marginal (outside of agriculture and certain industries, such as construction and road transport - 42% of truck transport is privately owned!), the general trend is clear.? What is more, in 1987 and early 1988, there was a major acceleration in the growth of the private sector. I do not have statistical data for this period, but the phenomenon has been recognized by everyone. To cite only one example, of the 75 limited companies whose formation was authorized by the prefect of the small department of Skierniewice since 1986, 60 were formed in 1987! Some may be regarded as medium-sized enterprises, such as the Flamal company, employing 1,500 workers; or the foreign-financed Junopol, which last year, among other things, filled a government order for 300,000 pairs of shoes.® A risk for the bureaucratic regime
Likewise, while private bureaus, buying and selling hard currency at what was previously considered a "blackmarket" rate (3,000 zlotys per dollar, as against 600 at the "official rate" at the beginning of April), have only been legalized this year, trade in currencies grew considerably in the preceding years. In 1987, it reached a turnover of $596 million, corresponding to 3% (at the "official" rate) or more than 20% (at the "black-market" rate) of the turnover (in zlotys) of retail trade in the same year?
General Jaruzelski's economic plan in many respects represents a leap into the dark and a definite risk for the bureaucratic regime. Nonetheless, it is based on the trends that have been operating in the Polish economy for nearly a decade. The Polish bureaucracy, thus, has decided to go along with these tendencies or even to anticipate them instead of opposing them
4. Polityka 15, April 15, 1989. 5. "Attitudes concerning social and economic policy and the reforms of the system taken at the round-table," Zycie Gospodarcze 16, April 16, 1989.
6. It is specified, moreover, (in contradiction at least with the initial versions of the IMF's plans) that such a program "should not lead to a decrease in per capita consumption but even guarantee that it will increase on
7. All these figures are taken from Rocznik Statystyczny
1988, published by the Central Office of Statistics
8. Gazeta Premyslowa 4, March 16-31, 1989.
MERLORK
May 15, 1989 • #163 International Viewpoint by administrative means. It recognizes that such opposition would be condemned to failure, since the bankruptcy of its system of management is obvious.
The introduction of market mechanisms into a centrally managed economy has traditionally run up against resistance from the immense army of intermediary petty bureaucrats whose privi leges depend directly on
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1920 May
Day poster produced by the original
Polish
Socialist
Party (PPS)
tion that is underway. If the legalization of Solidarnosc has not for the moment been accompanied by an upturn in the independent activity of the working class, that does not mean that the workers have been pacithe old model.
However, in this area,
S the Jaruzelski leadership enjoys a more favorable situation. This multitude of those enjoying petty privileges experienced fied. The Walesa leadership itself is approaching the new period in a ticklish situation.
During the years of clandestinity, the various
[NiECH ŻYJE 1*"MAj! the onslaught of the mass movement in 1980-81. This layer has been profoundly destabilized. The decay of the Communist Party testifies to this. The regime that came out of the December 1981 crackdown has not allowed it to reorganize. More than in the other bureaucratized workers' states, the exercise of power has become the prerogative of the functionaries of the state apparatus, and the party has been relegated to a secondary position.
While General Jaruzelski has secured control of the party's central bodies, at the base he has systematically favored the state institutions. Only the trade-union apparatus, the OPZZ, set up after the rescinding of martial law, can afford today to express differences. But its position is precarious, in view of the competition it will undoubtedly face from Solidarnosc. Thus, the weak social roots of the Polish bureaucracy have today become a source of strength for its leadership.
Regime preserves the essential levers of power
The agreement on reform of the state's functioning, which General Jaruzelski's team put above all else, is intended to enable the bureaucratic elite to preserve the essential levers of its power, while offering guarantees (all of which are instruments of cooption) to the Walesa leadership. First of all, the constitution has been modified to establish a strong presidency. Elected for six years by a joint session of the two houses of parliament, President Jaruzelski (because it is assumed that he will inaugurate this office) will be able to rule by decree, refuse to sign laws passed by the parliament, dissolve parliament and declare a state of emergency. He will retain sole responsibility for foreign policy and defence.
This institution will thus be a useful complement to the "leading role of the party"
inscribed in the constitution, and can serve as a last resort for the bureaucratic elite. It is not, however, an "American-style" presidency. The president must stay out of day-to-day politics and leave running current affairs to the government and to parliament.
The Diet (and to a lesser degree the Senate, whose powers are more limited, even if it is to be elected in a more democratic way) are to serve as the mechanism for coopting the opposition elites. Within parliament, the governmental coalition is guaranteed a 65% majority of the seats, which from the outset excludes any possibility that it might kick against the traces in the coming four years. As the text of the agreement says, "free election to parliament will be limited by the division of the seats worked out at the round-table."
The new parliament, nonetheless, will serve as an institutional bridge for the oppositionists elected, making it possible to get them to share in the responsibility for decisions, or even to entrust certain posts to
Moreover, the two contracting parties agreed at the round-table that "the indispensable reforms of the state will have to be achieved through evolution, with respect for the national state interest." This also concerns future elections, in which "the two parties...pledge to keep their election programs and campaigns within the limits of the accord signed at the round-table."
Thus, the institutional framework for collaboration between the two parties has been established, and the Walesa leadership has already demonstrated its determination to conform to it by denouncing the strike mobilizations that developed during the negotiations or by taking control of them in order to halt them as soon as pos-
However, the goodwill shown by the Solidarosc leadership is not in itself a guarantee of the success of the transformaunion apparatuses largely detached themselves from rank-and-file workers. The union structures in the plants often shrunk to their hard core, or disappeared altogether. After 1983-84, they no longer provided an indispensable material base for the union leaderships. The latter got the bulk of their resources from the aid provided by the Western trade-union organizations, in large part by the AFL-CIO." They even went so far as to use these resources to put pressure on the rank-and-file activists, by turning on and off the resources essential for their work. Signs of bureaucratization inside Solidarnosc
The dependence of the central union structures on aid from the Western trade-union bureaucracies in turn produced signs of bureaucratization inside Solidarosc
The legalization of the union has considerably altered this situation. If they prove capable of rebuilding mass trade-unionism, the factory organizations will again have weight in Solidarnosc. In this respect, it is significant that, while in the first days after the signing of the accord, the Walesa group leaders were essentially preoccupied with the future electoral campaign and preparing to run, finally not only Lech Walesa but also Wladyslaw Frasyniuk (a historic leader in Lower Silesia) and Zbigniew Bujak (Warsaw) announced that they would not be candidates.
For his part, Bujak did not hide the fact that his decision was linked to resistance among the ranks: "I have problems in the union," he said. "I am not covering up the fact that the round-table and participating in the elections, all that, has been very 11. AFL-CIO, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Indistina, Organizase ons in principal rs enin 5 organization, with a close relation to the government.
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MAJOYA
POLAND much attacked in my region." 12 The Walesa leadership's decisions have been the object of considerable criticism among opposition activists.
Participation in the round-table was denounced, among others, by the Fighting Solidarnosc Organization (OSW); the Polish Socialist Party-Democratic Revolution (PPS-RD); the historic leaders assembled in the Working Group of the National Commission of Solidarnosc; a number of regional coordinating structures; and a
Likewise, while the leaders grouped around Lech Walesa seem to be orienting toward a campaign focused on calling for participation in the future elections, many an appeal for a boycott of what they regard as an attempt to legitimize General Jaruzelski's regime. This is the case, notably, of the Regional Strike Committee (RKS) of Solidarnosc in Lower Silesia (the underground leadership that has maintained continuity and and which influences a good part of the union activists in the region), the OSW and the PPS-RD, as well as the former vice-president of Solidarnosc and the present head of the Working Group, Andrzej Gwiazda. The unionists at the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk have also threatened to call for a boycott of the elections, if the procedure for shutting the yard down is not rescinded. A section, undoubtedly a minority but not an insignificant one, of the Polish opposition is standing up against the process that is underway.
This opposition can count on an echo among the population, and mainly in the working class. In fact, the workers' material situation has continued to deteriorate. Inflation is expected to go over 100% in 1989, while the agreement signed at the round-table provides for a coefficient of 0.8 for adjusting wages to meet cost-of-living increases. In other words, the sliding scale will offer only 80% compensation for the rise in prices.
Major cuts in the social wage
Worse still, the system is supposed to be run by the enterprises, without any subsidies from the central budget. It is projected, moreover, that in enterprises in a precarious situation the coefficient of adjustment may be lower.' At the same time, there is a provision for limiting or even eliminating redistribution funds (for example, the housing fund will be abolished), which amounts to a major cut in the social wage.
Furthermore, after 1990, subsidies to hold down the prices of food products will be gradually reduced, and already this year their structure will be modified. In fact, right after the accord, in honor of the occasion, the price of bread was increased.
Recent studies carried out by the team of sociologists headed by Wladyslaw Adamski suggest the beginning of a turnaround International Viewpoint #163 • May 15, 1989 in working-class opinion regarding market/economy reform. A member of this team, Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, has pointed out, among other things: "In 1984 and 1988, in the group of specialists and technicians, people with higher education, support for the market increased. On the other hand, skilled workers are beginning to withdraw their support for this sort of economic order." She also noted: "The fullemployment policy that had been losing supporters is now beginning to regain
Another Polish sociologist, Wladyslaw Markiewicz, in an article commenting on the results of various recent studies of Polish opinion notes: "In Polish society at the end of the 1980s, the conviction is becoming general that under the conditions of the present system of government and of the functioning of the state administration, it will not be possible to carry out a deep-going reform of the national economy, and therefore that it will not be possible to improve either the material condition or the situation of the workers. "A rejection of socialism in its current form"
"The society cannot believe in the regime's ability to resolve complex problems, such as those of building housing, achieving equilibrium in the market, protecting the environment and so on because successive governments have proven themselves incapable of settling many simple problems....While the society accepts the principal values of socialist ideology, it rejects socialism in its present form." 15
The evidence of the failure of the bureaucratic system of management is the driving force of radicalization, which is particularly marked among the youth. This also has contradictory aspects. According to the "Poland 88" study already cited, "acceptance of privatization is much greater for those industries where social needs have been least satisfied...for example... housing construction." 16 The experience of the crumbling of the bureaucratic model has produced at once an acute awareness of the conflict of interests between the
19230p
bureaucracy and the workers and a "false consciousness" about the ways out of this situation.
"Guerrilla warfare" of strikes will continue
This complicates reactions to the bureaucracy's economic reform projects. But, at the same time, as the authors of this report note, when the bureaucracy's projects begin to be applied you see spectacular turnabouts of opinion. As long as full employment was seen as an empty slogan of bureaucratic propaganda, it was massively rejected, in particular by the younger generation. But the moves to close some enterprises have led to a reversal of the trend.
This situation puts obstacles in the way of an alternative emerging to the policy pursued by the bureaucracy with the support of the Solidarnosc leadership and, it seems, that of the imperialist leaders. For the moment, opposition is focused on rejecting what is seen as an electoral farce, where the conflict between the democratic aspirations of the masses and the "new political" order are directly perceptible. In the absence of a credible alternative to the economic reform supported by Solidarnosc leaders, we cannot expect to see the immediate emergence of a mass movement rejecting this policy.
However, "the guerrilla warfare of strikes" will undoubtedly go on in the plants, along the lines of the situation that has prevailed since early this year. In the immediate future, the bureaucracy will try, as far as possible, to avoid any head-on attacks on the standard of living of the working class as a whole in order to frag. ment the picture, and to be able to counterpose exemplary successes in some enterprises to the disastrous situation of others.
Plant closures - at the moment there are plans to close at least 15 pits and several foundries — will undoubted by accompanied at the beginning by social measures to re-employ the workers concerned. But the situation will remain explosive for a long time, since the fact is — and no one denies it - that the market economic reform will involve privations for the greatest number. This is a difficult situation to juggle with, even for a government that is a past master in the art of social manipulation. * 12. Quoted by Sylvie Kauffmann, Le Monde, April 25, 1989. 13. This was accepted by the Solidamose negotiators at the "round-table" in the name of the need to combat inflation. It offered the OPZZ leaders the chance for a bluff that was all the more demagogic because their attitude had no influence on the decisions taken. Nonetheless, this made a very bad impression on a good number of rank-and-file Solidamose activists. 14. Interview published in Zycie Warszawy of December 15, 1988, which relates some results of the study entitled Poland 88. 15. "The Consciousness of Poles," Wektory Gospodarki 1, 1989. 16. Zycie Warszawy, December 15, 1988.
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6
PPS-RD document on the elections
IN ITS LEAFLET for May Day, the PPS-RD explained Its attitude toward the new elections provided for in the round-table agreement:
Since the establishment of the state framework of the People's Republic, the elections to parliament and the National Councils have served to legitimize the
Communist Party's monopoly of power. The SD, the ZSL and PAX, along with the CHSS and the PZKS [legally recognized parties supposedly representing non-Communist sectors allied with the CP], are no more than a decoration designed to give the impression of democracy.
As a result of the accords at the round-table, some opposition groups will be participating in the coming elections. They have agreed to do this, despite the
POLAND fact that the function of the elections has remained the same. The opposition's role will be to help the Communists' regime acquire a new legitimacy. The function of the new parliamentary groups, which will be kept in a minority of 35 per cent, will be even more limited because their members, for obvious reasons, will represent a range of views, while the so-called Coalition [the CP and its satellites] will vote as a bloc on the important questions.
The Polish Socialist Party-Democratic Revolution calls for boycotting the
THE INTERVIEW below elections to the Diet and the Senate for the following reasons:
with Lech Walesa was
1. You cannot have democracy by percentages. Either it exists, and in that published in the April 20 case we elect a Diet that represents us, or it does not, and in that case the only response is a boycott. Thirty-five percent opposition in the Diet is enough to issue of the Italian daily legitimize the electoral farce but too little to influence the fate of the country.
Corriere della Sera on the
2. The creation of a Senate whose powers are too limited and too poorly defined will not change the parliamentary relationship of forces. In that case, we occasion of the will be faced with an archaic construction, less and less common in modern
Solidarnosc leader's visit constitutional systems. Instead of a Senate, we demand a return to the proto Italy.
gram of the Self-Managed Republic and the creation of a Self-Management
House that would directly represent the workers' interests.
3. The establishment of the office of president guarantees the continuity of the present system. The president will be elected by the parliament controlled by the PZPR [United Polish Workers Party, the CP] and not the voters. This
UST BEFORE you came to Ita-
J institution makes it possible to make arbitrary decisions such as dissolving parly, you met General Jaruzelski, liament, imposing martial law and changing laws.
the man who outlawed Soli-
The struggle for free elections continues!
darnosc in 1981. What did you