The Mazowiecki government is thus the final attempt of the bureaucratic leadership in Poland to keep ahead of events and gain a margin of manoeuvre in the face of popular opposition.
CYRIL SMUGA
HE ARRIVAL in the country's top
T position of a representative of Solidarnose marks a break with the
"round-table" policy agreed by the opposition leaders grouped around Walesa and the Jaruzelski leadership of the bureaucracy. The round-table agreement was conceived as a major concession that would head off the demands of the masses and provide the regime with a democratic façade. At the same time it would allow the implementation of a number of unpopular measures that involve more reliance on market mechanisms. But it failed to hold back the popular mobilization.
According to official statistics there were more days lost through strikes in 1988 than in any year since 1982. In the public sector there were 202 strikes in which 55,000 workers took part. In the first half of 1989 both the number of strikes and of strikers doubled, despite Lech Walesa's January 19 appeal when he stated: "Today, Poland cannot afford strikes and I do not want to see strike pressures developing .... Condi tions here are such that everybody can find a reason to go on strike, but common sense tells us that this is a road that leads nowhere."
In the first quarter of 1989 there were 254 strikes involving more than 100,000 strikers. In April and May there were 72 strikes, but their duration and the numbers involved increased. Finally, in June - the month of the elections! — and at the beginning of July there was a sharp increase in ceeded in establishing their state apparatus, relying essentially on the massive Soviet military presence and on bureaucratic repression.
In 1956 the mechanism of smooth deStalinization was disrupted by an explosion of workers' strikes. The Polish communists reinstalled at their head Wladyslaw Gomulka — previous party secretary, put on trial for "Titoist deviations" — then negotiated a compromise with the Catholic hierarchy and abandoned collectivization of agriculture. By isolating the workers' vanguard and emptying the workers' councils of their content, the bureaucrats managed to restabilize their system.
But once opened, the Pandora's Box of pluralism could not be closed. In 1960 faced with a youth radicalization and intellectual dissent inside the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR, the Communist party) itself, the apparatus resorted to a vile anti-Semitic campaign. Furthermore, cut off from the intelligentsia, the PZPR lost the ideological backbone that it had established with great difficulty at the time of de-Stalinization, sank into mediocrity and became a stamping ground for careerists.
In December 1970, faced with the strike that gripped the Baltic ports, the apparatus first sent in the troops, then changed its general secretary again, and finally gave into the material demands of the strikers. For 10 years, the new general secretary, Edward Gierek, tried to put over a consumerist ideology, holding out the mirage of an individual car for everybody, in response to a working class that aspired to the power that, on paper, belonged to them.
This experience ended in a big foreign
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International Viewpoint #169 • September 18, 1989
POLAND debt and an unprecedented economic crisis. At the same time, the consumerist aspirations that had been aroused but not satisfied led, in the summer of 1980, to the greatest upsurge in Poland's history. Solidarosc was born, and the break between the bureaucracy and the working class was finally completed. The movement rapidly became politicized and began to raise the question of power. In December 1981, the apparatus once more resorted to force.
The imposition of martial law did not succeed in stopping the spreading discontent. But, by disorganizing Solidarnosc as an open mass movement, the repression its leading circles to become autonomous. The Solidarnosc leadership gradually abandoned those elements of the union's programme of 1981 that opened the way for a socialist and democratic alternative — the aspiration towards the socialization of both the economy and the state, through a developed system of producers'
A new generation of militants
The attempt to resolve the crisis by reducing working class and peasant consumption and by the super-exploitation of the wage earners failed. The bureaucracy lost its remaining margin for manoeuvre and wasted all its reserves trying to damp down the smouldering strikes through gradual concessions on wages.
As popular radicalization began once again to rise and a new generation of militants appeared on the political and social scene, the top apparatchiks realized that their only hope was to reach a political compromise with the leaders of Solidarnosc, who, meanwhile, had become devotees of economic liberalism. The second requirement was to accept the conditions imposed by the imperialist bourgeoisie in order to open the way for foreign investment, to enable production to be refloated and ensure the survival of a state that was near to bankruptcy.
The result of the new awareness was entry into the International Monetary Fund (IMF); a resolve to get out of the diplomatic isolation into which the Polish regime had been plunged by the mobilizations in support of Solidarnosc, and forced the imperialist governments to take their distance from Jaruzelski; step-by-step internal liberalization; and, finally, the speeding-up of political and economic reforms once Jaruzelski managed to overcome the resistance of the apparatus. Confronted by a choice between the unknown and the certainty of failure, the Polish bureaucracy chose to leap into the unknown.
This leap however, insofar as it could be, was prepared by a slow but steady change in the respective roles of the various apparatuses within the regime. Thus, under the 8 cover of militarization, Jaruzelski's team took the party apparatus out of day-to-day management, re-organized the state administration, speeded up the transformation of enterprise directors into "managers" with considerable discretion in decision-making, and encouraged them to experiment, notably within limited companies.
The state's economic and administrative apparatus left Stalinist-style ideological hot air to the PZPR and developed its own pragmatic line of thinking similar to the free-enterprise theses promoted by the opposition leaders. The police and especially the anti-riot squads (ZOMO), as well as the bodies of plainclothes cops who make up the political police, were strongly reinforced. Under the leadership of General Kiszczak, and at the behest of his boss, these forces played a key role in the preparation of the political reforms. Finally, the Jaruzelski team got the Solidarnosc leaders to accept a modification of the constitution that would guarantee the president sufficient powers so that the bureaucracy would not be obliged to cling forever to the outmoded principle of the "leading role of the party." The Solidarnosc leaders acquiesced openly in the election of General Jaruzelski
It is clear that the formation of a government headed by a member of Solidarnosc was not part of the plan at the start of the round-table process. Certainly such a government will be trying to preserve the fragile compromise reached six months ago. Furthermore, Jaruzelski's people — in the PZPR but also in the two satellite parties that the leaders of Solidarnosc, for their own purposes, have presented as being fundamentally different from the PZPR, when they are in fact all part of the same family — will be keeping an eye on the new government. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the troops, this is the second defeat suffered by the bureaucracy, after the electoral "Diluting the basic principles of our movement"
This threatens to aggravate the tensions in the PZPR, perhaps even provoking some elements of the nomenklatura to go over to the "enemy camp." After his election as first secretary of the PZPR, Mieczyslaw Rakowski underlined this point: "We are living in a period when it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is new, necessary and indispensable for socialism, and what is an opportunist concession that leads towards the dilution of the basic principles on which our movement is founded and out of which People's Poland was
Even worse, there is a tendency for the party to cease playing its new role as an ideological link between the nomenklaturists in the various apparatuses. Rakowski pointed out that in many base organizations, activity has disappeared or is in the process of disappearing" before making the following appeal: "Comrades, while deeply analyzing the reasons for our weaknesses, errors and setbacks, we must not fall on our knees in front of our political adversary....There are two million of us! We are a great army. We possess great strength. Today we are to a large extent prevented from acting, but that need not always be the case. We should not allow anyone to suppress us or bury us with demagogy and the total denial of the historic results of the last few decades, which have seen revolutionary changes that have profited the nation, from which we originated and with which we are bound up forever." (Rzeczpospolita, July 31,1989.)
Conflicts of interest inside the PZPR
But this has not kept divisions from showing up in a party that is wasting away. The average age of the membership is nearly 50. Furthermore, according to Mariusz Gulczynski, a political scientist and PZPR ideologue, 900,000 of the 2.1 million party members are leaders at various levels. The rest — apart from a large number of pensioners — are in the apparatus of the official trade unions (OPZZ), discredited by its role after the dissolution of Solidarnos and with little base in the enterprises. apparatus has been trying to make its mark by criticizing the government, and by supporting spontaneous strikes and trying to take the leadership of them in the hope of gaining ground against Solidarosc. It also tried - without great success - to outbid Solidarnosc at the time of the round-table talks over the issue of the indexation of
There are objective conflicts of interest between, on the one hand, the pensioners, whose biographies, according to Gulczynski, "finished at the moment of the crisis of socialism", and for whom, "to admit that what has existed was unjust would be to deny the whole meaning of their lives"; and on the other the nomenklatura, up to its neck in the adventure of privatization, and the OPZZ apparatchiks. This is one of the roots of the party crisis that came into the open at the PZPR's thirteenth congress in
On resigning as Central Committee secretary in charge of economic questions, Wladyslaw Baka criticized policy on the struggle against inflation and the stabilization of the currency. He went on to explain that there was "a split over the conceptions and methods for the resolution country's socio-economic problems". While agreeing with the general policy — market economy, privatization - he criticized the way in which this was carried out. He denounced in particular "the creation of parasitic limited companies, who sell poor goods and raw materials, getting a fabulous profit out of them". He also insisted on the need to prioritize the development of workers' shareholdings. (Reczpospolita, July 31, 1989.)
However - and this is the new element linked to the changing role of the party in
September 18, 1989 • #169 International Viewpoint the bureaucratic power structure - it proved possible to avert the explosion forecast by some of its well-known representatives, such as professor Jerzy Wiatr or Central Committee secretary Leszek Miller, by changing the norms of functioning. The resolution adopted by the congress specifies that: "Unity is only possible in conditions of developed internal democracy. This implies freedom of discussion, and the possibility for various tendencies and political positions to arise, including the right to put forward alternative programmatic platforms. This also does not exclude retaining the right of the minority to defend its positions." (Reczpospolita, August 2, 1989.)
The designation of Tadeusz Mazowiecki as prime minister is also going to exacerbate the tensions inside Solidarnosc, including in its leading circles. After their surprise at their overwhelming electoral victory, those leaders closest to Lech Walesa did everything to stick to the framework of the round-table accords, which were already partially obsolete.
Opposition helped elect
Jaruzelski
The episode of the July 19 presidential election, as told by a Polish journalist, demonstrates this: "An analysis of the vote shows that Wojciech Jaruzelski's candidature was passed thanks to the joint effort of the coalition and a part of the opposition....The coalition lost 12 votes against and 16 abstentions, 28 votes in total. These losses were made good by the opposition votes of one for, seven no-votes and the absence of 11 deputies....The no-votes were made by representatives of the opposition who were at the bottom of the list of Assembly members (for example, Paszynski, Stelmachowski, Stomma, Trzeciakowski, Wielowieyski) - in other words, being the last to come to the ballot box they knew that their vote would be decisive. Their decision was therefore a choice in favour of Jaruzelski, which also meant the implementation of the guarantees that the opposition elite had given not to obstruct this election". (Preglad Tygodniowy, July 30, 1989.)
"Nothing has basically changed"
When it was learnt that Jaruzelski owed his election to the votes of members of parliament elected on Solidarosc's ticket, an angry wind blew through the union. It is significant that it was following this event that, contrary to the decision to stick to an attitude of constructive opposition towards the government that General Kiszczak had been given the task of forming, Lech Walesa surprised all his collaborators by declaring in a communique dated August 7 this year: "The most recent decisions taken by the government concerning the nomination of the new prime minister demonstrate that the present monopoly will be maintained. This reinforces the crisis of confidence and, in the eyes of the society, represents the confirmation of fears that nothing has basically changed....
"Once again, I protest against the formation of the new government by General Kiszczak. The only solution in the current situation is the nomination of a council of ministers based on a coalition of Solidarnosc, the ZSL and the SD." (Rzeczpospolita, August 8, 1989.) What is more, in a speech he had said that he was a supporter of a government "without the Communists", something that the parliamentary leaders of Solidarnosc seemed to have willingly forgotten.
The individual behaviour of Lech Walesa is also the object of numerous public criticisms from other Solidarnosc leaders.
POLAND Thus, in the weekly Tygodnik Solidarnosc (issue 10, 1989), Maciej Poleski wrote:
"The symbol of the two dangers [the "arbitrariness of leaders' and 'orthodox syndicalism'] could be embodied in Senator Andrzej Machalski. Here is a man who..., from spring 1989, has become head of the Executive Bureau of the Civic Committee. And although in the electoral programme of this committee one can read that Solidarnosc is opposed to the nomenklatura's appropriation of the means of production [the "privatization' of the bureaucracy], Machalski, who had 'privatized' himself, becomes a member of Walesa's team. After this, the ORTUS limited company was founded by the ex-secretary of the CC, Waldemar Swirgon, who manages the economic activity of the LZS; and the UNICUM cooperative run by Andrzej Machalski. Is this not a typical case of 'privatization' of the nomenklatura?
"One misses the time when a leader of the August 1980 strike was seen to be forced to quit the National Commission because, to be able to buy a car, he had taken a voucher on the sly from the hands of the prefect of police in Gdansk....!" according to all the signs, will follow the economic policies of its predecessor, Mieczyslaw Rakowski. Lech Walesa has reaffirmed this in a recent interview with the Italian daily, Il Messaggero:
"Until now nobody has adopted the road that leads from socialism towards capitalism. And that is what we will try to do: return to the pre-war situation [when Poland was a capitalist country], after having gone through a long period of socialism.... Our economic and political models obtained good results." (August 22, 1989.)
Walesa group follow IMF
This is reinforced by the fact that, well before taking on governmental responsibilities, the leaders of the Walesa group had announced that they respected the IMF's Witold Trzeciakowski had for several months been pushing an economic plan that was intended to meet with the approval of international financial institutions. It came out in favour of converting debts into shares in Polish companies - "this won't mean self-management, but rather a more modest form of participation".
The plan also explained that austerity policy was the only thing possible because "if the society does not agree, we risk being totally cut off from Western technology, which will mean a continuing collapse of 1. The ZSL (United Peasant Party) and the SD (Democratic Party) were founded by Stalinist leaders in order to give some reality to the regime's supposed pluralism and to compete with the historical political formations. As satellites of the PZPR, they played practically no cole total he P9. R, has hi them as bureaucracy. 9 which affects the PZPR, has hit them also.
NO, YOU DRIVE...
NO, I INSIST! NO, I INSIST!
BUT YOU MUST...
WELL... YES... IF I MUST...
International Viewpoint #169 • September 18, 1989
POLAND
DANZIGE The Christian Science Monitor Los Ang the Polish economy." (Gazeta Wyborcza, May 29, 1989.) And it is probable that, inside a future cabinet, Witold Trzeciakowski will obtain one of the important economic portfolios.
"Privatization of the nomenklatura"
At no time did Solidarnosc's leaders envisage refusing to pay the external debt! Poland received $48,000 million in various loans from the beginning of 1971 through to the end of 1988, during the same period it paid back $44,000m. However, its debt remains at $39,000m, of which nearly $12,000m represents unpaid interest rescheduled as principal.
Until now, the leaders of the Civic Parliamentary Group (OKP) have reaffirmed their general agreement on the direction of the market economic reform and on the need for privatization, while strongly underlining their differences with the "pathologies" of the privatization process that is underway.
Thus, when introducing the parliamentary debate on the record of the Rakowski government in the name of the OKP, Ryszard Bugaj, a well-known Solidarnosc economic expert, pointed to: "the pathological transformations in the ownership of the economy", and, in particular, "the rapid development, inside the state sector, of a number of limited companies that bring more losses than benefits to the economy" as well as "the known facts that show disrespect for the acknowledged principle that the leasing of state enterprises will be done by inviting tenders". Another OKP deputy, Adam Matuszczak, recalled that according to one recent study, nearly 13% of limited companies had only played an intermediary role. 10 anger among workers aroused by manifes- These criticisms echo a great deal of
YOU DRIVE....
AND
JARUZELSKI
14=0 tations of "the privatization of the nomenklatura", criticisms that have also been taken up recently by the PZPR. Moreover, combine an idealization of market mechanisms with a revulsion against their concrete results. Testifying to the naivety of the conception of the market widely held among Solidarnosc's elected representatives, one of them, Marek Jurek, stated: "A number of us want privatization based on generalizing access to ownership, on a normally functioning stock exchange, and also on the participation of wage earners in ownership. What worries us is the fact that workers remain proletarian and that the 'nomenklatura' transforming selves into capitalists." (Quoted in Reczpospolita, August 2, 1989.)
This naive idealization of capitalism, equated with an abundance of goods, is widely held among Solidarnosc militants as well as more generally in the society as a whole. It is a by-product of the model of a society launched during the 1970s by the bureaucracy, at the time led by Edward Gierek; years of Stalinist propaganda around the theme of "catching up and overtaking" the West; and, lastly, of the ideology developed by Polish economists from both Solidarnosc and the gov-
Potential divisions among trade unionists
It can, in the first instance, give a boost to hopes for capitalist restoration. backlash risks being as great as the disillusionment, because the model of the market economy Polish-style — that is, an economy at the mercy of the IMF's demands — will be far removed from today's naive
In addition - and Solidarnose militants are very sensitive on this point — the realization of these projects is a potentially divi-
No. NO, YOU MUTST... sive factor among trade unionists. This is illustrated by one recent event during the discussion to prepare the warning general strike of August 11 in the Gdansk region, whose goal was to force General Jaruzelski to accept a Solidarnos member as prime minister. Alojzy Szablewski, the leader of the union at the Lenin shipyard who was opposed to the strike and then found himself in a minority, explained that, in any case, he would not apply the decision because "I haven't struggled to save the shipyard, just to have it endangered today. A strike like this could upset the interests of Basia Piasecka-Johnson [the American multimillionaire who proposed taking over the shipyard in a joint venture]". (Quoted in Polityka, August 19, 1989.)
"I am not looking to build a strong union"
The political and social choices of the Walesa leadership have not for the moment allowed Solidarnosc to profit from its legalization in order to rebuild a hegemonic unionism, as existed in 1980-81. Solidarnosc presently has 2.7 million members and many union branches balk at sending their dues to it, testifying to a lack of trust
Lech Walesa is satisfied with this situation. On August 19 this year he declared to a journalist on Polityka: "I am not looking to build a strong union, because a Solidarnosc with ten million members would be a club against the government, and I do not want to hang anybody.
"Today, you have to be Polish before being a unionist, and such an attitude imposes a different scale of values: first of all the economy, and after that everything
So, the crisis of the regime and the concessions that it is forced to make today are out of all proportion to what happened in
1981. But the level of self-organization of the masses is much weaker. During the strikes workers formed their own committees, but, without any impetus to centralize them and with distrust of Solidarnosc's structures remaining strong, these primitive forms of self-organization could not develop any further.
The question of power, objectively posed by the result of the June elections and the incapacity of the bureaucratic leadership, finds no political solution in the workers' movement. The broad coalition government that Mazowiecki is preparing to form will not be seen by workers as being their government, even if it could enjoy goodwill for a time.
Alternative policies for a workers' government
What policy would allow the working class to strengthen its self-confidence and the activity of the masses? This is the question that is faced today by radical political militants who are opposed to Lech Walesa's orientation.
It is easy to present a list of demands that a truly workers' government should meet, and that trade-union organizations, self-management councils and political groups could put up front.
Firstly, there are demands relating to the current economic situation, which are reminiscent of those advanced nine years ago, in August 1980: sliding scale of wages and social benefits; reduction of incomes above the level of double the average wage; suppression of privileges, and so on. Linked to this is the refusal to bow to the dictates of the IMF and other imperialist centres, and the non-payment of the debt.
And the demands concerning freedom should not be forgotten: ending censorship; dissolving the political police; union rights in the army and the police force; ending the monopoly over the media; election of all the economic leaders and, in the first place, of managers.
Then there are demands concerning the elimination of the PZPR's privileges as a political organization, and, in particular, those already put forward in 1981 during the referendums in a number of enterprises: that the enterprises should not pay the wages of the PZPR fulltimers inside them.
Finally, there are demands concerning the question of political power: free elections to a Constituent Assembly, elected basis of proportionality - a demand that is more relevant than ever given that the PZPR is preparing to propose a constitutional change via the present National Assembly which, it must be remembered, was only partially elected.
If the self-organized mass movement could be given a new breath of life around such demands, it could raise the question of a Solidarnos government accountable rank-and-file charged with implementing these dem-
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