Polish Socialist
Party-Democratic
International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989
POLAND
HE NOMINATION the Polish People's Republic is an expression of the nomenklatura's system of domination. This result of social emancipation has its origins in the birth of Solidarnosc — a workers' movement independent of the bureaucracy — in August 1980. Eight years of attempts by General Jaruzelski's regime to try and crush the self-organized society have ended in failure.
The establishment of Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government, however, does not mean that the society has taken power. This government is based on "35% democracy" and on a guarantee that the foundations of the system will not be questioned, in spite of the fact that the electorate came out clearly on June 4, 1989 for the liquidation of the nomenklatura. The main ruling structures - the office of the president of the republic, the ministries of the interior and of defence and the national bank — not only escape any control by the society, but even by the prime minister. By accepting such conditions the leading opposition groups, represented by the new prime minister, have not made the most of the pressure of the strikes and the bankruptcy of the PUWP. Nevertheless, the establishment of this government opens up the possibility of realizing social aspirations: I. Getting rid of all the vestiges of the totalitarian regimes
• Abolishing the mechanisms of the state's domination over the society, and primarily the dissolution of the SB (political police, the ZOMO (anti-riot police) and the ORMO (auxiliary police), as well as revising the penal code with the objective of guaranteeing democratic freedoms. This also implies suppressing the privileged status of the PUWP and of all the groups linked to it, such as SD (Democratic Party), ZSL (United People's Party), ZSMP (Union of Polish Socialist Youth), ZSP (Union of Polish Students) 8 futiling, endearancing han every one and so on, and guaranteeing that everyone
Workers'
Revolution
administration and in the economy should be elected. Finally, the subjection of territorial administration to the structures of self-management elected in free, equal, secret, proportional and direct elections.
• Guaranteeing freedom of political and social activity; that is the unlimited right to strike and to set up unions, likewise in the police and the army (including among conscripts).
This is in accord with the second and seventh of the 21 demands put forward by the Gdansk inter-enterprise strike committee in 1980, for "a guarantee of the security of strikers and those who support them" and for "all strikers to be paid for strike days in relation to the rates for paid leave". The activity of political parties, who constitute the basis of modern democracy and the condition for the society to be the subject of history, cannot be limited by law.
• Guaranteeing total freedom of the press and of information by abolishing censorship and ending the material and judicial guarantees of the monopolies in these areas, and in particular sharing out the material means disposed of by RSW "Prasa-Ksiazka-Ruch" political, social and cultural groups. Putting radio and television under the control of representative bodies at the corresponding levels, and guaranteeing access to them by all political and social groups. II. Submitting the economy to social needs
The aim of economic policy on the eve of the 21st century must be to guarantee decent living conditions, that is, at least the right to healthy and sufficient food, to decent housing, to health care, to social services accessible to everyone (creches and nurseries, for example), as well as to education and culture to all members of the society.
Putting the economy under the direct control of the producers is the indispensable condition for realizing these goals. Only such a model of social life can guarantee to each human being the possibility of realizing their aspirations and constitute the basis for the emancipation of the society.
Up until the last moment, Mieczyslaw Rakowski's government — following the path of its predecessors and acting in the optic of faits accomplis — has resolutely oriented the Polish economy in the opposite direction. It widened the possibilities for private appropriation by the nomenklatura and for the development of speculative-corrupt capital, and created conditions for the sale of the national means of production to foreign capital. In addition, it allowed an unlimited rise in prices for consumer goods by introducing market mechanisms in a situation of grave food shortage. Having done this, it continued the process of linking the whole of the bureaucratic economy with market mechanisms, thus worsening the material situation of the majority of the society.
Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government has to break radically with its predecessor's policy. III. Link up the plan, self-management and the market
It is necessary to understand that the fate of the economy rests in the first instance in the collective hands of the workers themselves. Only self-organization and workers' initiative can break the resistance of the old party-state apparatus and lead to a situation in which the new govemment could make economic changes beneficial to the majority.
As stipulated in the first point of Solidarnosc's programme, adopted at its first national congress in 1981: "We demand the introduction of a self-management and democratic reform at all levels of management, of a new social-economic order that Will link up the plan, self-management and the market.....The basis of the economy must be the social enterprise, managed by the workers' collective represented by their Council and led from day-to-day by a director, appointed after a competition
PANCHO
October 16, 1989 • #171 International Viewpoint by the Council and recallable by it....The reform must socialize planning."
The realization of such a reform demands the setting up of social control over production exercised by selfmanaging councils of workers, agricultural workers and artisans organized in selfmanaging chambers regionally and nationally. Conditions for such control are the following:
• Guaranteeing the same possibilities for action to self-management councils, to unions and to other workers' agents in all the sectors of ownership, and the unification of the legal system in relation to production, jobs, trade and wages and
• Transforming work relations in the workplace, in the sense of liberating work, in particular by radically limiting the number of supervisors and administrators and ensuring that these posts are elective.
• Opening the books. Workers' control over the means and goals of production is an indispensable step on the road towards the society taking total responsibility for economic management. The verification of production and cooperative links by self-management councils and the self-management chambers (reports on the state of the enterprises and on the economy as a whole) would permit a democratic national discussion on the principles of centralizing the allocation of the economic surplus in a way that could increasingly guarantee the satisfaction of the needs expressed by the society. Although the use of market mechanisms in distribution cannot be abolished, insofar as economic development cannot ensure the total satisfaction of needs for different products, in conditions of serious shortage the decision to use market mechanisms must be subject to the choices of a society conscious of its needs. IV. Workers' self-defence in the face of the effects of the crisis
The gravity of the economic crisis the workers' collectives should immediately undertake acts of self-defence.
Workers' control of prices
The regional structures of Solidarnosc, notably in cooperation with the union commissions in trade and the service secror, should ensure that rises in the cost of living are calculated and published every week. On this basis, a weekly cost-of-living bonus should be established. The government must take measures to block Social control over food distribution
Following on from Point 7 in the Solidarnosc programme adopted by its first national congress in 1981, in conditions of serious food shortages the rank-and-file structures of Solidarnosc must take the initiative in creating workers' commissions on the market and food supplies, coordinated nationally and cooperating with Solidarosc' links with individual farmers. Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government should give such commissions the absolute right of control over all the shops selling consumer goods, including those shops under the control of the ministries of the interior and of defence. Revalorizing labour
Previous governments have undertaken the process of aligning prices in the internal market to the level of the world market. Labour costs have been drastically reduced as a proportion of total production costs. Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government, in agreement with Solidarnosc, must undertake a radical reform of the wage system, and above all increase wages in relation to total costs up to the average world level. Guaranteeing the right to work
As Point 9 of Solidarnosc's programme adopted by the first delegate congress in 1981 puts it: "We declare ourselves for the general right to work and against unemployment...In workplaces where reductions are foreseen, the union commissions must envisage the possibility of changing job descriptions or reducing working hours without loss of wages." Like the unions in Western Europe, we demand a 35-hour working week.
L'AiDE ALIMENTAINE DES ÉTATS-UNIS ViENT DEARTER
POLAND Denouncing the debt
As the new prime minister correctly remarked in his speech before the Diet [Polish parliament]: "the economy has been strangled by the foreign debt". Since 1971, $49 billion in loans have been taken on. $44bn have been repaid, but a debt of $39bn remains even so.
The society cannot be responsible for debts contracted either by the nomenklatura or because of the waste caused by its rule. Regaining economic and political
1. Rejecting the IMF's conditions, the implementation of which would certainly lead to a drastic reduction in living standards and to the submission of Polish economic policy to foreign capital.
2. Revising the military and economic accords which, for Poland, derive from its of the Warsaw Pact and V. The self-managed republic
In line with Solidarnosc's programme adopted at its first congress in 1981, "we want real socialization of the system of management and of the economy. This is why we are working towards a self-managed Poland". Free elections to a Constituent Assembly
The basic law must be the expression of a conscious and free choice by the society. The new government must organize free, equal, proportional, direct and secret elections to the Constituent [Assembly], in particular ensuring that all the candidates have the same material conditions for their electoral campaigns. The question of power
The road towards the self-managed republic implies the total abolition of the nomenklatura's power. This task can only be fulfilled by the self-organized workers' movement, enriched by its experience under martial law and clandestine activity, struggling for workplace, regional and state power. *
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The meaning of the Tela accords
International Viewpoint #171 • October 16, 1989