Solidarnosc: searching for a second wind
POLAND
WeLL OR New
HAS LIFTED PRICE
OH GREAT! THAT
MeANS We HAVe
TO PAY TWICE AS
MUCH FOR ITEMS
We CANT FIND!!!
¿ 1989 STANTIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL
S OLIDARNOSC is the direct
product of the bringing together at the national level in September 1980 of the regional strike committees, themselves the result of a similar process of unification from below in the regions and cities. It has since its foundation been the dominant social organization in the enterprises, where it often organized 90% of the wage earners as well as in the broader society. All oppressed socio-professional groups and everyone with the exception of the top levels of the bureaucracy had reason to consider themselves oppressed - saw in it the only force capable of creating a relation of forces that would allow them to realize their aspirations.
The union's structure has been shaped by its origins: the enterprise commissions have enjoyed real autonomy in relation to
LECH WALESA was triumphantly reelected as leader of Solidarnosc with 78% of the votes at the Union's second conference, held in Gdansk between April 19 and 25 — nearly nine years since the first congress. In this time Solidarnosc has changed profoundly, marked by the traumatic experience of the years of repression in the name of "defence of socialism" by General Jaruzelski's dictatorial regime. Now, Solidarnosc has two million members rather than ten million in 1981. Furthermore, the programme adopted by the union this year contains only vague echoes of the project "For a Self-Managed Republic" adopted in autumn 1981. Finally, and above all, the Polish union movement has now to face not only the power of the bureaucracy but above all an unprecedented attack on living standards and the structural gains of a post-capitalist economy. These attacks, furthermore, come from a government that the union itself has helped to put in place and in which a leading role is played by some of its own most prestigious leaders and advisors. "Solidarnosc has overcome. It has won the longest war in the communist part of Europe. The collapse of the totalitarian system in Poland and the beginning of the construction of a new democratic order is the measure of its success. This incredible victory has its price: the twilight of Solidarnosc." Thus wrote the central Solidarnosc weekly on the eve of the second congress. The report concluded: "The need for the ideologically diverse currents, grouped until now in the same anti-totalitarian movement, to find a new self-determination and choose their own political direction has given rise to a serious crisis of identity. This crisis also affects the independent self-managed union, Solidarnosc." CYRIL SMUGA International Viewpoint #185 • May 21, 1990 the higher bodies. They are coordinated horizontally at the level of regions, which have been designated acording to the geographical spread of the coordinations of strike committees that appeared in August 1980 rather than the administrative boundaries in the country. Furthermore, the national leadership was at first a coordination of regional representatives and even today its ability to interfere in the internal affairs of the regional unions and enterprise commissions is limited
Solidarnosc's bottom-to-top structure is reflected in the union's financing: the enterprise commissions keep the lion's share (80%) of the dues for their own use and the regions, in their turn send only a small amount (5%) to the centre. Shipyard negotiations held in public
The August 1980 strike was an example of workers' democracy, in particular in the Gdansk region, where the strike lasted 18 days. The workers ensured that the negotiations took place in the Gdansk shipyard itself where the inter-enterprise strike committee was based. The negotiations were entirely public, thanks to a system of loudspeakers throughout the shipyard.
The delegates of several hundred other enterprises recorded all the debates and these were then transmitted to workers in other workplaces. Each striker was able to control her/his representatives and intervene to modify their conduct during the general assemblies at which report-backs from the negotiations were given.
The efficacity of these democratic mechanisms was proved by the successful outcome of the strike and the rules of the
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union were modelled on them. During the first national congress of Solidarnosc in September and October 1981, extensive reports were transmitted by telex to each region and large enterprise, and union militants were able to intervene by the same means and influence their delegates.
The birth of Solidarnosc owed a lot to the activity of the Polish opposition since 1976, in particular to the current around the Committee for Social Self-Defence, formerly the Workers Defence Committee (KSS-KOR), which popularized the forms of self-management and promoted the slogan of free trade unions. Its militants played an important role in the August 1980 strike in Gdansk.
Even so the main opposition leaders did not become leaders of the union.? On the contrary the great majority of the latter were rank-and-file workers who were selected through the strike. They represented both the concerns and consciousness of the great majority of Polish workers. For this reason, in the first period of its existence, there was little ideological or political differentiation in
It was only during the debates at the first Congress that the outlines of a strategic debate became apparent — between the defenders of the strategy of the self-limiting revolution formulated by Jacek Kuron and those who wanted a struggle for power. This latter recruited both among the combative wing of the self-management movement and currents referring to prewar political traditions. Radical ideas implemented at local level
The divisions that appeared over this question had not led to the crystallization of clear tendencies in Solidarnose by the time of its defeat on December 13, 1981 with the imposition of the state of war. This was despite the fact that the radicalization of the masses in the face of the worsening of the economic crisis had led the union in practice to implement ideas coming from the radical currents at a local and regional level. We saw the prepstrikes in several regions, the organization of the expulsion of the representatives of the bureaucracy from some of the enterprises, sacking of managers and development of workers' control. In general the union leaderships were not in control of these radical spontaneous actions and were unable to coor-
The largely spontancous character of
Solidarnosc's development in 1980-81 also gives us a good view of the evolution of the class consciousness of the Polish workers, the obstacles that this has confronted and the particular forms that it has taken.
In the social formations that have resulted from the degeneration of the Russian revolution, the process of the formation of class consciousness has a specific fea-
On the one hand, owing to the centralization of political decisions in the hands of a bureaucracy which is itself extremely hierarchical and centralized, collective workers struggles lead rapidly to confrontation with the state apparatus and thus quickly come to pose the question
On the other, since these formations are the result of a defeat of the working class in its first effort to build a socialist society, it is particularly difficult for the workers to grasp the historic meaning of their struggles. Furthermore, owing to the parasitism of the bureaucracy and its lack of roots in the productive process, it becomes the target not only of the working class but of almost the whole of soci-
State and society
Even if, as was the case in Poland in 1980-81, this clash is marked by the dominance of working class forms of struggle - occupation strikes - the workers' identity tended to dissolve into the amalgam of the apparent opposition between the state and "the society". This is all the more true in that decades of autarchic isolation have totally wiped out the collective memory of working class opposition throughout the world, includthe notion of the contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat and the whole historic tradition of the workers movement.
Finally these regime have failed in the historic competition with developed capitalism regarding the development of the productive forces. They have failed to "catch up with and overtake Europe and
America". The blatant character of this failure, after decades of bourgeois and Stalinist propaganda affirming that these social formations were socialist, has also had its effect on class consciousness in
The bureaucracy has never had a dominant ideology of its own with which it could justify its power in the eyes of the masses. Stalinist ideology was constructed out of distorted borrowings from the socialist tradition, patched up whenever reality could no longer be concealed — in particular during each mass revolt, of which Poland had had four before 1980
- by more and more blatant borrowings from classic authoritarian and elitist ide-
The totally illegitimate character of its rule produced a growing rejection of the bureaucracy's self-justifying language and contributed to the rehabilitation and idealization of the bourgeois ideologies that the former was meant to refute. Thus in Poland the renaissance of Catholicism, in particular its most irrational and backward aspects, such as the Marian cult, and the growth of its grip on the masses
POLAND has developed in close correlation with the collapse of the Stalinist ideology. The same can be said about the idealized resurgence of the most backward tradi-
"Pilsudskism" and National
As Jozef Pinior has put it: "Since its
Solidarnosc has not been able to cross the barrier of the language in which it has expressed its message. organized against the nomenklatura and rejected the existing system. the workers have also rejected the left-wing vocabulary which in current consciousness degraded by the years of bureaucratic indoctrination - is identified with the newspeak of the bureaucracy.
"Thus the whole left-wing and socialist tradition has been made responsible for Stalinism and the movement has rejected the natural language in which it could leaders have been looking for inspiration in places outside the control of the state and party: in the Church and in the liberal intelligentsia which has been evolving ever further from its roots which it is for-
"This has resulted in a curious incoherence between Solidarnosc's practice and the perspectives it has opened for the whole of society on the one hand and the consciousness of its leaders on the other. After the establishment of the state of war, this process has deepened from year to year as the leaders have become separated from their involvement in the enterprises, as was inevitable in conditions of clandestinity, with its attendant deformations and dependence on propaganda from the capitalist world. "4
Liquidation of democratic conquests
The defeat of the Polish working class after the establishment of the state of war in December 1981 meant the liquidation of most of the democratic conquests won in August 1980. Freedom of organization, freedom of the press (relative, given that censorship was never abolished), free speech and travel were called into question.
1. Tygodnik Solidarnosc no. 16, April 16-20, 1990, 5 With the exception of Andrzej Gwiazda and Bogdan
Boruszewicz. from Gdansk, Karol Modzelewski from
Wroclaw and some worker militants tied to the opposition of the time — such as Walesa himself and Anna
Walentynowicz. from Gdansk, and Zbigniew Bujak from Warsaw - the oppositionists were confined to the role of experts or technical roles journalists and printers) in Solidamose in 1980.
3. Jozef Pilsudski, leader of the nationalist wing in
Polish socialism before 1914, became head of the new
Polish state after independence in 1918 and after the coup d'etat of 1926 established a Bonapartist regime comparable to that of Peron in Argentina. The National
Democracy was a Polish right-wing, anti-semitic and semi-fascist party, that formed the opposition from the right to Pilsudski's regime after 1926.
4. Nowa Lewica no. 6 November 1989.
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POLAND
The losses were equally serious as regards living standards and social legislation. After the January 1982 and subsequent price rises real wages fell by nearly
30%. The social security system has been attacked - with the non-payment of the first days of sick leave — as well as the labour code. The eight hour day has been de facto abolished via a law on labour flexibility and the number of extra hours permitted per annum has been doubled.
Finally, the powers of the self- management councils have been greatly restricted, notably by the militarization of a large number of enterprises.
Thus the most immediately perceptible social gains which originated at the time of the destruction of the capitalist system after the second world war have been to a large extent liquidated al the very moment when, under the pressure of the workers movement, they have been stabilized, or even extended (working time, paid holidays) in capitalist Europe.
Here also, the bureaucratic regimes have not "caught up with and overtaken"
Europe. They have ben defeated in the competition with the most developed capitalist regimes. These defeats have had a disastrous effect on working class consciousness, by undermining any hope for the construction of a society able to victoriously compete with capitalism.
Since 1982, the bureaucracy has been trying to implant market mechanisms in its economic system. It has done this in its own way — that is to say, with the aim of increasing the share of the social product al its own parasitic disposal 5 rather than in order to develop the circulation of goods.
Reduction in circulation of goods
Thus a paradoxical situation has arisen: the start of a break with the centralized management of the economy — of Stalinist origin - has been accompanied not by an increase but by a reduction in the circulation of goods and a limitation of economic relations between the rural and industrial economies. Solidarnose theoreticians have concluded from there can be no reestablishment of market relations without the reestablishment of private ownership of the means of production. Bureaucratic management thus nourishes the neo-liberal offensive.
This evolution has been reinforced by a drop in union activity in the enterprises, resulting from the repression after the December 1981 coup and by Solidarnosc's inability to find a strategy based on self-management and mass self-activity adequate to the new situation. As one of the members of Solidarnosc's clandestine provisional leadership (TKK) explained in November 1982: "The members of the TKK faced a dilemma. On the one side • there were the expectations of the society, convinced that the junta could be beaten, International Viewpoint #185 • May 21, 1990 and on the other an awareness of the price that would be paid for such a victory or for a defeat. The absence of an unambiguous decision, the TKK's hesitations over the choice of methods of struggle (general strike or long-term activity) and fear of responsibility all meant that the WRON 6 broke the resistance and gained victo-
After the failure of the appeal for a general strike made by the TKK on December 10, 1982, the line of long-term resistance and the search for compromise with the bureaucracy came to the fore among Solidarnosc's leaders. This choice contributed to weakening unspectacular but very efficient repres sion. The weakening of mass activity in its turn led the majority of Solidarnosc leaders to search for ways other than that of class struggle to weaken the bureaucracy's power. Market mechanisms seemed to them a way of fragmenting bureaucratic control over the economy.
The conviction held by the majority of
Solidarnosc leaders that only the large- scale introduction of private ownership of the means of production can permit an increase in the circulation of goods and get production moving again, has sounded the knell of the project of the "self- managed republic" that the union began to develop in 1981. In September 1985, the TKK published a document entitled
"The Economic Demands of the TKK"
which marked a fundamental break with the choices made at Solidarnosc's first congress. In this text, the TKK proposed the introduction of a capital market and the privatization of the enterprises as well as guarantees for foreign investment in Poland. One can also read here that "our union is not favourable to a price freeze" and that investments must be subject to the criteria of market efficiency. "10
Historic compromise with bureaucracy
This economic orientation also marked the end of the evolution of the positions of the majority of the Solidarnosc leaders towards accepting a historic compromise with the bureaucracy to be obtained without a big social mobilization. Any such mobilization would be limited to creating the conditions for an accord between the leaders of the bureaucracy and the opposition." The reorganization of the national leadership occasion of its emergence from clandestinity, and the choice of public spokespeople, allowed Lech Walesa and those who supported him to definitively stamp their authority on the union and get rid of insubordinate leaders. The spontaneous strikes by the Polish in the spring and summer of signalled the emergence on the social scene of a new generation of workers not marked by the defeats of their elders. These strikes thus opened a new political situation in the country.!? The
Solidarnosc leaders — in the first place
Walesa himself — were however able to get control of these movements. By showing his ability to stop the strike movement without the workers demands being satisfied, Walesa was able to appear as a valuable negotiating partner in the eyes of the bureaucracy. Negotiations were thus got under way on the conditions for the relegalization of Solidarnosc, and this was finally achieved during the Round Table of April 1989.13
The union leaders then accepted the introduction of a clause limiting the right to strike into the rules of the legalized union, as well as the organization of parliamentary elections that would guarantee the ruling Polish United Workers Party
(POUP) and its allies a majority in the future Diet as well as the implementation of an economic policy meeting the wishes of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF).
This compromise, aimed at guarantee ing a controlled change in the mode of bureaucratic domination, was upset by the masses' rejection of bureaucratic rule.
In the parliamentary elections, the bureaucracy suffered an unprecedented defeat in which only one of its representatives was elected — Senator Stoklosa, a very rich private entrepreneur - in all the seats where there was competition from independent candidates. This upset the mechanism controlled transition and provoked new divisions inside the bureaucracy, diverse factions of the apparatus trying to save their positions by direct agreements with the Solidarnosc leadership.
### Solidarnosc regains hegemony
At the same time, the militants emerging from clandestinity grasped the newly acquired union freedoms with both hands. Solidarnosc's sections once again became the dominant force in many of the big enterprises, even if they did not regain the importance they had in 1981. Thus the process of reconstructing 5. See /V no. 66, December 24, 1984. 6. WRON: the Military Council of National Salvation, which took power on December 13, 1981. 7. Quoted by M. Lipinski, M. Moskit and M. Wilk, Konspira, recz o podziemnej Solidarnosci, Paris 1984, 8. For example, in Lower Silesia, Solidamose had to rebuild its enterprise network four times in 1982 after militants were arrested and/or sacked. 9. After collapsing in 1978-81, production stagnated for a decade, before starting to fall again after 1989. 10. Tygodnik Mazowsze, no. 141, 1985 11. This evolution has been traced in articles by the editors of Polish Inprekor, reprinted in /V no. 81, July 29, 1985 and no. 89, December 23, 1985, as well as the article summarizing the debates in Solidarosc in IV no. 125, September 14, 1987. 12. See IV no. 133, January 25, 1988. 13. See /V no. 159, March 20, 1989, and no. 163, May
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The heritage of a workers uprising
POLAND lead to hitherto unseen and dispersed conflicts. To adapt to this situation the union will emphasize the activities of its enterprise commissions and the freedom to create horizontal structures and flexible organizational solutions on the level of
ACCORDING TO the Solidarnosc programme adopted at its first congress: "We demand the introduction al every level of management of a self-management and democratic reform establishing a new economic order connecting the plan, self-management and the market... It Is necessary to abolish the command-distribution system of management of economic life which makes a rational economy impossible. In this system the party apparatus and the bureaucracy have accumulated enormous power in their hands. The structure for organizing the economy that serves this system must be destroyed....
"It is necessary to abolish the hierarchical dependence of enterprise directors with regard to the ministries and liquidate the practice of nominating managers based on the party's nomenklatura system. The reform can only be carried through if its supported by a mass movement of workers...
"A new structure for organizing the economy must be built. The basic unit of the economy must be the social enterprise, managed by the collective of the workers, represented by the workers council and led on a day to day basis by a director named by the workers council after a competition and recallable...
"The bureaucratic barriers that block the functioning of the market must be abolished. The central administrative organs of the economy should not be able to impose the regions and spheres of activity on the enterpris es nor their commercial partners...
"The reform must socialize planning. The central plan must reflect the aspirations of society and be accepted by it. This implies that all debates on this subject should be made public. It should be possible to guarantee the possibility of presenting all the plans in the form of variants, worked out by social and civic initiatives. This requires access to good quality economic information, which demands the establishment of social control over the Central Office of Statistics. " (according to the supplement to
Tygodnik Solidarnosc no. 29, October 16, 1981.)
took place at two levels: at the top, on the initiative of the regional leaders supported by Walesa and the union's national leadership, and at the bottom, by the initiative of militants resuming the traditions of self-management unionism of 1980-81.
Election of Mazowiecki seen as victory
The nomination of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a well-known Catholic intellectual and head of the Solidarnosc weekly publication, to the prime ministerial post was perceived by the workers as a victory.
This fact has allowed the new governeconomic ment to get underway reform which meets the IM's diktats while partially dismantling bureaucratic control of the economy. For the workers the first results of this policy have been disastrous: price rises and a partial freezing of wages have reduced purchasing power by nearly 40% in eight months, while the suppression of subsidies to industry, limitations on credit and the general inflation have provoked a serious recession.
production was
In March industrial
30% down on the previous year. Unemployment, unknown since the war, has steadily increased and in several branches of industry factory closures are on the cards. Finally — although for the moment these projects have not yet been made announced a big wave of privatizations, which, in the existing framework of Polish law, implies the liquidation of the forms of self-management in the enterprises in question. This at a time when, after eight years in which they had played a largely formal role, these bodies have begun once again to function as workers
The programmatic project submitted to at Solidarnosc second congress 4 reflects the contradictions that are eating away at Polish trade unionism and the state of the discussion. It is the fruit of a situation where the working class has already lost to a large extent its capacity to control the struggle to defeat the power of the bureaucracy and liquidate its power as a privileged caste. the fact that the working class is the only force capable of carrying this struggle
The programme is thus result of the half victory, half defeat that the workers have experienced over the
Some extracts from the draft show its main thrust: "The union will take part in the transformation of the political and economic system in Poland, but it will put the defence of the interests and rights of the workers to the fore [in its activity].
The transformation of the economy will the region or the country. Without giving up the right to strike, the union will attempt to deal with conflicts by means of negotiations and agreements. Such methods of activity demand experienced militants, expert help and access to indispensable information.
"Opposing the reduction of the worker to a passive tool, the union is in favour of the development of diverse forms of workers democracy. It is thus going to endeavour to obtain the right for unions to participate, in the framework of their prerogatives, in the development and exercise of laws and in economic decision-
As can be seen, each proposition that expresses the fact that workers are to be subjected to a process in which they can play little role is balanced by a counterproposition, reaffirming the importance of democracy and workers control in line with the tradition and symbolism of Soli-
The same ambivalence is found over the question of the economic changes the union supports: "The Polish must be based on models tested in the highly developed countries which guarantee the growth of the living standards of all the citizens. The main responsibility for the transformation of the economic system rests with the parliament and the government. The union will support the transformation, but it wants to consider its direction and influence its development in line with its vocation which is that of protecting labour and the workers.
### "The economic transformation aim for a market economy which will tie the freedom to accumulate capital, free economic initiative and freedom of employment within the limits set down by the laws, with elements of state intervention that will correct the faults in the market mechanism.... We consider it a task of the highest importance to transform in a many-sided way state property into more efficient forms of property.... The transformation of state property must be carried through with respect for economic laws and logic, under the control of state institutions, the social organizations and workers' representatives."
Restoration of capitalism in
Poland The project is therefore clear: even if
14. At the moment of writing the author does not have the final version of the programme adopted at the Second Congress of Solidamosc. The quotations that follow are taken from the draft programme, published as a supplement to Tygodnik Solidarnosc, no. 13, of 7
March 30, 1990.
POLAND / USSR the term is not employed, Solidarnosc has come out in favour of the installation in
Poland of the capitalist economic model through the privatization of an important part of the state-owned enterprises.
But at the same time, the proposed programme states that "the workers must have the right to influence decisions concerning the organization of work, the use of enterprise property, changes in the disposition of the labour force and the choice of leading cadres. The union will support initiatives by workers aiming to develop wage earners' democracy in prise, founded on diverse forms of property." To return to private ownership while maintaining institutionalized workers control over the economy; this is the circle to be squared.
Every sentence shows up Solidarnosc's contradictory nature. This union has leadership that has broken free from its base over the years and has made a compromise at the expense of the working class. At the same time it is a working class organization with its origins in a tradition of self-organization that has to a large extent rebuilt itself on the basis of that tradition in a daily confrontation with the ruling bureaucracy. This latter process, furthermore, was the work of real worker militants, even if they did not fully understand the stakes.
The union's programme is thus a compromise between on the one hand the demands of the world bourgeoisie and its institutions - the IMF, the World Bank and the European Community - and on the other the spontaneous aspirations and reflexes of a layer of bureaucratic resistance and the resistance to normalization, nourished by the rumbling discontent provoked in the country first effects of the Mazowiecki contradiction was sharpened by the profound bureaucratization of Solidarnosc, around a workers aristocracy that held the key positions in the union. Now, however, the austerity programme leaves no place for such a layer of privileged workers. The maintenance of the very structures of Solidarnosc shows this contradiction, even if the best democratic rules can become empty formalities in the absence of real mass activi-
No credible alternative to
Walesa
In the absence of an alternative political project to that of the Walesa leadership, these contradictions remained latent at the congress. The two candidates who stood against Walesa, Andrzej Slowik, a historic leader from the Lodz region, who has opposed Walesa for years over the issue of union democracy, and Tomasz Wojcik, spokesperson for the populist and extreme anti-Communist minority in International Viewpoint #185 • May 21, 1990
Lower Silesia, who obtained 9% and 4% respectively, made much of the inadequacies of the union's actions. Nonetheless, they accepted the basis of government's policies — "no salvation without capitalism".
Given such a framework, the delegates could only see their radicalism as demagogy, whatever their intentions might be.
This was all the more true in that Solidarnosc remains aware that there is still a battle to wage against the bureaucracy, and this is no small matter. In this battle, currently expressed in the desire to get rid of Jaruzelski from the presidency, support for Lech Walesa appeared as the only serious way forward. His massive
Without any political way out, the discontent of the workers- expressed by the behaviour of the delegates during the
- can turn into a reactionary radicalization, confusing the conquests obtained under the nomenklatura's rule with the bastions of Stalinism that have to liquidated.
Abortion vote raises danger
The vote at the congress - marked by a very high number of abstentions - for a motion demanding "the protection of life from its conception" - that is, the outlawing of abortion - is a first and very dangerous example of this. Introducing a division by sex into the ranks of the workers, Solidarity is undermining its own foundations.
If this vote is followed up by active involvement by the union in the campaign against abortion being conducted by the most backward forces and directed from behind the scenes by the Catholic hierarchy, Polish trade unionism will be faced with a split.
The search for ways to finally liquidate the tenacious resistance of the bureaucracy at every level obscures the issue of making a positive social choice. The mechanism of a semi-democratic transition that has resulted from the Round Table, and the apparent successes gained along this road, have contributed to the workers conceiving of anti-bureaucratic strategy as somehow separate from the question of social project.
Given its origins, Solidarnosc found it hard to squeeze itself into the framework of this compromise. The victories won keep it in this framework, but the material defeats being inflicted on the workers by the application of the IMF plan are pushing it to revolt. The resulting crisis of the union's identity can only be resolved through the struggle for the defence of the rights and gains of the workers and through the experience of the attacks that the bourgeoisie -through the mechanism of the Polish government - are making and will make on them. *
F OR THE FIRST TIME, in an interview published in Libération of May 10, the Lithuanian president felt it necessary to make a distinction between Moscow
Kremlin. "I say the Kremlin and not Moscow because the Kremlin is no longer