The king without a
The version of actually exist-
POLAND resentments are not essential factors of consciousness. remain live, but are elements only on the second, or indeed third level. (....) What shocks the workers the most today is above all the pauperization of their own social group and the appearance of a situawhere the communists, nomenklatura, appear less and less as ene-
THE POLISH presidential election has laid bare and aggravated the Intensity of the crisis of the process of peaceful transition to capitalls opened by the round table accords of April 1989. Although Lech Walesa has ultimately emerged victorious from the electoral battle, his margins of manoeuvre and his legitimacy have been reduced. CYRIL SMUGA T HE PRINCIPAL features of this ballot are the poor electoral score achieved by the candidates historically linked to the Solidarnosc movement, in the first round as much as in the second, and the appearance of an important section of the electorate which today rejects not only the outgoing government, but Solidarnosc as an institution. Lech Walesa, despite taking care over the past months to distance himself from Mazowiecki's policy, has suffered from the rejection inspired by the latter, identified by large sectors of society with Soli-
The policy of the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki has represented a frontal assault against the two fundamental aspirations which were at the origin of the first independent trade union in Eastern Europe in 1980 — the aspiration to decent living conditions and to democracy.
The first year of the Mazowiecki government was marked by the appearance of massive unemployment (more than a million unemployed estimated), a drastic lowering of the standard of living (the real average salary has been reduced by a third) and a proportional fall in household consumption (27% at least in the second quarter of 1990, in relation to the same period in 1989). It is estimated that 44% of workers' households and 51% of households of the retired live below the poverty line.
The increase in rents, which took place at the end of the first electoral round, was the straw that broke the camel's back. If a year ago the population was ready to pay the price for economic restructuring, the bill presented by the government has proved to be intolerable.
ing" democracy in Poland has also been a disappointment over the past year. In voting for the candidates of Solidarnosc in the partially free elections of June
1989, the Poles had voted against the dictatorship and for democracy as seen through the only concrete experience immense majority amongst them had known democracy inside Solidarnosc in
1980-81. Built from below, based on the election and recall of representatives, organized around workplace collectives sovereign over the higher bodies, offering alternatives developed through collective discussion, this democracy allowed everybody to influence decisions.
On the contrary, the parliamentary democracy emanating from the round table compromise has left decisions in a small political elite the hands of
(which, moreover, was 65% the result of cooption) all the more authoritarian in that it considered itself invested with a historic mission.
The chasm between this reality and the blurred and idealized memory of the democracy which existed in 1980-81 inside Solidarnosc, was a deep one.
In taking the road of capitalist restoration, the Solidarnosc leadership inevitably came up against its own social base, which is to be sacrificed on the altar of the creation ex nihilo of a new bourgeoisie. A recent sociological survey?
revealed that 62% of workers considered that nobody in the country represented their interests. A year before, the identificabetween the workers tion what they perceived as "their goverment" was total.
One of the authors of this study, explains thus the current state of working class opinion: "Asked who influenced the policy of the government, the workers cited most frequently the Church
(60%) and then the Jews (43%). (....)
However, the workers are not religious in the sense of an identification with the hierarchical institution of the Church, although 97% declare themselves to be believers. A distrust of the Church's political involvement is developing. On the other hand (...), contrary to what certain politicians think, anti-communist mies. This place is taken by the new middle class. (...) If there is a strong apprehension about the return of the old authorities (...) these opinions are geographically differentiated. around 70% [of those questioned] said they rejected the old regime, whereas in the provinces it was only 50-58%".
Only 20% of workers said they supported the government's policy. After a year of intensive propaganda confusing private property with "nature", 60% of workers declared that they wished to remain in a state enterprise and only 12% pronounced themselves in favour of privatization.
Note that, if the workers attach value to small merchant property artisans and small traders) they reject the "new middle class" assimilated in their eyes "to the speculators and grafters who enrich themselves unduly and who end up by reducing the workers to the state of an inferior class". Thus, after a year's experience of the transition towards capitalism, a considerable part of the working becoming conscious that the place occupied until now by their class inside society Sat me osc Moi
PLANTE
Estimated, in the second quarter of 1990, at
400,000 zlotys a month per person. See the article by
Janusz Rowicki in Slowo Powszechne, November 27,
1990. 2. The information on the results of this survey, carried out in October by a team under Professor Leszek
Gilejko, is taken from an interview given by one of his collaborators, Dr. Juliusz Gardawski, in the daily newspaper Zycie Warszawy, on November 27, 1990.
A similar survey was carried out in 1987 by the same team and thus valid comparisons can be made.
Thus, for example, on November Gazeta
Wyborcza made public the contents of a letter from
Bush to Mazowiecki, announcing his intention to support the partial annulling of the Polish foreign debt and reaffirming his admiration for the reforms undertaken by the Polish government. "It is obvious that their continuation is the essential condition for the 15 reduction of the debt" commented the daily of Adam
Michnik.
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throne
International Viewpoint #198 • January 21, 1991
POLAND is menaced. This new awareness augurs badly for the future of the capitalist resto-
Tadeusz Mazowiecki had centered his electoral campaign on the defence of his policy and on stressing the value of the support which he amongst the world bourgeoisie?.
campaign of Lech Walesa, on the other hand, took account of the distancing of large sectors of society from government policy. He repeated in all his meetings that his programme would be whatever
Faced with the breadth of discontent, the Walesa leadership had also launched a nomenklaturist companies", established on a massive scale by the enterprise managements, which play a role of monopoly intermediaries between the state sector and the market.
These private companies live as parasites on the state sector and constitute an important source of primitive capitalist accumulation — exhibiting great dynamism, they have been tolerated by the
Mazowiecki government. Lech Walesa has promised to liquidate them, but can he do it without putting in danger the stabilization of the "new middle class" and the advances made towards capitalist restoration in Poland?
Convinced that he would win the elections, the Solidarnosc president applied himself to building bridges with the
Prime Minister's entourage. This duality of position has finally rebounded against him — his status as symbolic trade union leader did not assure him the massive support of the workers that he counted on.
And, above all, he had to face in the second round the anti-Solidarnosc candidate, returned from Peru more free to devote himself to demagogy in that he did not have at his disposal even the embryo of a political movement.
### Tyminski attacks
International Monetary Fund
This latter highlighted his own social success to flatter the aspirations of all those who, in Poland, do not understand why the advances made towards capitalism do not bring them opulence. harshly attacked the International Monetary Fund (IMF), describing its effects in Sachs, adviser to the Polish government and a devotee of the neo-liberal Chicago economic school, recounting his Bolivian exploits and, in particular, his role in the installation of the state of emergency in that country. He presented himself as the defender of a Polish and national road Mazowiecki who, Tyminski claimed, had sold himself to imperialism.
16 the strikes underway, the only means, Finally he declared that he supported all
according to him, of stopping the national wealth being devoured by the imperialist vultures. He finished by accusing Lech
Walesa of having betrayed the ideals of
Solidarnosc and declared himself to be in contact with Marian Jurczyk, a historic trade union leader from Szczecin, today at the head of a small union resulting from a split in Solidarnosc — "Solidar-
If Tyminski has thus come to occupy the vacuum which has appeared in after the adoption of a pro- capitalist orientation by the leaders of
Solidarnosc, it is highly improbable that he could (or indeed wishes to) structure the electorate that supported him as a
In the shadow of the Tyminski phenomenon, the 1.5 million votes that Wlodzi-
Cimoszewicz attracting pales somewhat. Nonetheless, the candidate presented by the Social
Democracy of the Republic of Poland
(SDRP), an organization descended from the Polish United Workers Party (the old ruling Communist Party), did better than
In disappearing from the political scene in January 1990, the party of which General Jaruselski had been first secretary had bequeathed its apparatus to the
SDRP, as well as its political and moral bankruptcy. The SDRP has had to face the revolt of the Social Democratic Union led by Tadeusz Fiszbach, which quickly returned to the bosom of Lech Walesa.
Meanwhile, the trade union organization
OPZL, founded under the cover of the emergency laws in 1984, attempted to steer its own course, appealing for a vote in favour of Mazowiecki or of Cimosze-
The electoral programme of Cimoszewicz was marked by his fear of being marginalized.
Pronouncing himself in favour of an "indispensable privatization of a large part of productive capital and of the necessity of "pursuing the market transformation of the economy", he stipulated "it is necessary to maintain the natural riches, heavy industry, the defence industry and also a portion of the other enterprises in the state sector". Significantly, the workers appeared in his programme only as future shareholders in the enterprises, and all reference to workers self-management was absent.
By beating Roman Bartoszcze, Cimoszewicz has also provoked a crisis inside the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), which originates in the fusion between a sector of the Agrarian Party, issued from Rural Solidarnosc, and the apparatus of the former Stalinist satellite agrarian party, the ZSL. The latter began to challenge the choice made and the place accorded to its allies originating from Solidarnosc. Evidence of the social malaise whose breadth was revealed by the elections, nationwide strike movements paralyzed the coalmines and urban transport on the eve of the first round. These strikes, generally launched spontaneously and benefitting from the support of the Solidarnosc enterprise commissions as well as the structures of OPZZ, advanced material demands but affirmed also — and in a growing fashion — the workers' dignity, ridiculed by the governmental policy. In three coal mines, teams of workers have undertaken hunger strikes. These movements were only halted between the two rounds, after the workers had obtained a partial satisfaction of their wage demands.
The national coordinations of Solidarnosc in urban transport and mining supported the strikes, against the wishes of the national leadership of the union®. The presidium of the National Commission demanded on November 20 that the leadership of the trade union strike these two branch structures off the register, dismiss their full timers, suspend their financing, and demand the cessation of all strikes and wage negotiations undertaken without its written mandate.
### Rebellion against
Solidarnosc leadership
The day after, during the meeting of the national commission of the coalmines of
Solidarnosc at Katowice, the climate was rebellious. The idea of separating from
Solidarnosc and founding a new trade union — "Solidarnosc 88" - was advanced. The leader of the Solidarnosc miners, Andrzej Lipko, interviewed by Gazeta Wyborcza, did not mince his words: "There is some question of sending busloads of miners to Warsaw and organizing pickets there. In my opinion there is an error of address. (...) The bus should go to Gdansk, to the national commission (of Solidarnosc) for it this which should concern itself with (the fate) of its militants. For six months, the government has not satisfied our demands and the national commission has done nothing since to help us"?.
It is not the first attempt at "normalization" of Solidarnos undertaken by its leadership. The national commission also declared that the national agreement of the enterprise commissions, better known 4. According to the German polling institute INFAS, 30% of young people under 24 and 26.5% of workers who took part in the second round of the presidential election gave their support to Tyminski, who achieved his best scores in the regions most affected by the cri5. All citations from the programme of Cimoszewicz are drawn from his text "Democracy and Justice", which appeared in the daily paper of the SDRP, Trybuna, on November 19, 1990. 6. It should be noted that a similar situation existed inside the rival federation OPTZ, whose president, Alfred Miodowicz, had denounced the movement, in contrast to the branch leaderships who adopted an attitude of understanding towards the strikers and have attempted to take initiatives — notably in organizing a demonstration of miners in Warsaw. 7. Gazeta Wyborcza, November 22, 1990.
New Left Current at the crossroads
January 21, 1991 • #198 International Viewpoint under the name of Network®, had "gone beyond the statutory accords of the agreements of the enterprise commissions in creating its own national electoral bureau and in attempting to create its own parliamentary representation".
The resolution adopted by the national leadership of the tread union rejected also
POLAND / GREECE the Network's demand to "constitute a
THE NEW LEFT CURRENT (Neo Aristero Rema - NAR') held social council of the property transforma-
Its second conference in Athens on December 8/9, 1990.
tions" to oversee governmental activities
Almost 300 delegates gathered to discuss the merits of two in this field?. Subsequently the holding of counterposed reports. The majority report reiterated and a national meeting of the Network at Poznan was forbidden.
elaborated themes introduced in the pre-conference document ("Socialism in our epoch"). The minority did not
Rejection of pro-capitalist submit a detailed alternative draft document prior to the orientation conference, other than a series of articles in Prin (the NAR'S
The shock of the elections can only weekly paper) critical of the majority document. However a aggravate the crisis inside Solidarnosc.
minority report appeared at conference Itself signed by three
For it is both the lack of independence of out of the 22 members of the outgoing National Coordinating the first free trade union in Eastern
Committee, including Kappos, ex-CC member of the KKE
Europe towards the government and the pro-capitalist orientation of its leadership which are being rejected.
The question of a parliamentary representation of the workers' base structures is being considered by very many enterprise structures and coordinations. At the same time, the question of an alternative economic programme to that imposed by the IMF is beginning to be discussed. For
Josef Pinior, spokesperson of the Committee of Inter-Enterprise Coordination
(MKK)10. "The result of the elections constitutes the last warning which has been addressed to us; if in the parliamentary elections a workers' platform of Solidarnosc does not appear, this will be the end of the trade union born in August 1980".
Lech Walesa and the trade union leadership which he has forged cannot continue to tolerate the democratic status of Solidarnosc, born out of the tradition of selforganization. Placed "at the service of the
Republic" after the constitution of the
Mazowiecki government, he is going to throw his immense authority into the balance when the social movements threatened to destabilise the regime — as he has already done several times.
Elected president and thus placed in the front line, he will no longer be able to rely on the support of a trade union leader enjoying an authority comparable to his own. If, as he has announced, he pursues the economic policy embarked upon by
Mazowiecki, he will have to bring Solidarnosc to heel, at the risk of seeing it torn apart by splits"!.*
8. On the creation of the Network, see IV 191, October
1, 1990.
9. Tygodnik Solidarnosc, no. 45, November 16, 1990.
10. See /V 195, November 26, 1990, for the positions of this trade union minority tendency.
11. All the more so when it seems that certain leaders of ROAD - the party created by the allies of Adam
Michnik and Jacek Kuron - are contemplating the constitution of a corporatist trade union movement which would recruit amongst the thin layer of relatively highly paid workers. The danger of a split does not then come only from the rebellious sectors of Solidamosc.
(Greek Communist Party). STAVROS ORFANOGIANNIS
NE indication of the political direction of the majority tendency in NAR can be gauged from the slogan adorning the stage curtain, taken directly from the title of the written report:
"Left radical front against the social war of capital;
"Anti-capitalist democratic revolution;
"For the new world of our epoch."
The minority document was headed
"11 points for the regroupments of the
Before looking at the points of friction in the conference debate it is worth summarizing the political character of the two competing tendencies within NAR. Given its origins, the majority tendency has made remarkable progress in the direction of revolutionary Marxism. Their pre-conference document represents an undeniable and qualitative break with the Stalinist traditions of this current.
Its authors go to great pains to develop an alternative analysis of modern capitalism coupled with a tempered critique of their past, in an attempt to develop a programme and tactics linked to a revolutionary strategy based on a class struggle
The document of course suffers from a series of major contradictions in analysis as well as omissions. The document claims that world capitalism has entered a new phase since the mid 1970s.This phase is characterized by the dominance of "Multinational Conglomerate Monopolies" but still within the overall framework of "State Monopoly Capitalism (SMC)". Although it sticks with the old Stalinist SMC formula, the document attempts to supersede its previous content by arguing that this qualified version of SMC does not imply a strategic adaptation to the non-monopoly sections of the bourgeoisie.
This new phase of capitalism is supposed to represent a "new epoch": "the development of the productive forces in previous periods...cannot be compared with that... being realized today."
Backwardness of Greek capitalism
This "explosive growth" in productive forces, worldwide and in Greece, doesn't seem to have affected the economic and political backwardness and dependence of the Greek bourgeoisie on foreign capital. This "dependency theory" is used in part to explain why a struggle needs to be waged to get Greece out of the EEC, and
"the labour movement must not downgrade the anti-monopoly... side of their struggle."
Again they attempt to go beyond the limitations of this analysis explaining that both the fight for withdrawal from the EEC and the anti-monopoly struggle "have to emphasize the anti-capitalist content" of these goals.
The above contradictions are compounded by major omissions. Neither the document nor the submitted report make any attempt to draw any balance sheet of NAR's political work since its last confer1. NAR came into existence following the mass expulsions from the KKE and its youth organization, KNE, because of their opposition to the class collaborationist trajectory of the KKE leadership which led it into a say pan in latince with the bourgeois New Democ 17 racy party in 1989.
International Viewpoint #198 • January 21, 1991
GREECE ence despite a loss of membership? and a poor electoral showing. Another major weakness is the almost conscious reluctance to analyze in depth the crisis of the countries of "really existing socialism".
Of course the majority document does criticize the bureaucratic and authoritarian nature of these regimes but does not quite reach the conclusion that the dramatic changes reflect the depth of the crisis of Stalinism.
In an attempt to safeguard the delicate balance with the neo-Stalinist minority faction and its supporters, the majority tends to gloss over the past and concentrate on the counter-revolutionary role of Gorbachev. The authors of the majority document admit that a deeper and clearer analysis of their past is necessary - but say that this is an ongoing task that could not, nor should, be resolved at this confer-
Another glaring weakness of the majority (and minority) document as well as of the conference debate itself is the total absence of any discussion on women's issues. Not even passing made to feminism and this clearly reflects the male domination of the leadership bodies of NAR, not to mention the tradition of distaste for feminist politics in the
Towards revolutionary
However, despite these not insignificant flaws the dynamic of the majority tendency is clearly towards revolutionary Marxism —a term they use constantly to describe their politics. These comrades:
1. Reject the stages theory of revolu-
2. Accept the societies in E. Europe and the USSR as transitional societies;
3. Accept that all revolutions in the capitalist countries or our epoch will be "labour, anti-capitalist, socialist" in con-
4. See the construction of socialism as only being ultimately possible on a world
5. Believe in the need for a revolutionary workers' party, the need to smash the bourgeois state apparatus and to establish a regime of workers power;
6. Advocate a transitional method;
7. Wish to "develop institutions that will counter the tendency towards conter-revolutionary degeneration, bureaucratic centralism" and "to return to the Leninist principles to see how internal party democracy functioned then (tendencies, platforms, public differences of opinion and so on)";
8. Seek joint action against the neopolitical forces with whom they may not share the same strategic outlook;
9. Declare that an "honest position on 18 a precondition for us to overcome our the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes is own opportunistic, bureaucratic training and corresponding mentalities and practices."
The minority tendency on the other hand, claim to stand on "Marxist-Leninist" orthodoxy. Their report stressed the need to go back to the classics and to reject all flirtations with "neoMarxists like Mandel, who tail-end social democracy." 3
Inventing new epochs
They view what has happened in Eastem Europe and the USSR as a "tragedy" and reject any attempts to analyze recent trends in modern capitalism, which they see in terms of the pure and untrammeled SMC of Lenin's Imperialism, accusing the majority of wanting to rewrite Das Kapital and of inventing new epochs outside that of imperialism. Both of these accusations are of course patently untrue, but do exploit the majority's rather confused attempts to apply Marxism to recent developments.
The minority, basically, has nothing to say, so it relies on knocking down straw men, embellishing this with heated "anticapitalist" Marxist rhetoric. They then accuse the majority of denying the need for a revolutionary party, of rejecting the need to smash the capitalist state and of failing to defend "scientific socialism."
As for Eastern Europe, the minority sees no crisis of Stalinism (a word not mentioned once in either document) but simply a restoration of capitalism made possible because the regimes of these countries have been "abandoned by their traditional support - the USSR." It is not Stalinism revolutionary but perestroika. However the crisis of Stalinism has been so profound that even this dogmatic tendency have been forced to off-load some of their Stalinist luggage, as is shown by their limited criticisms of bureaucratic rule, their support for limited party democracy and so on.
There is no denying the positive direction in which the majority of the NAR is moving, even in assessing their own history. The speaker giving the majority report went so far as to admit that in the debate on the character of the Greek revolution in the late 1920s, "Pouliopoulos was right...but the
- and not only on questions of history. From the very outset the NAR as a whole opposed military intervention in the Gulf and called for the withdrawal of all imperialist troops including Greece's.
Furthermore, the NAR majority raised the question in its report to conference of whether "a possibility exists to bring together the revolutionary vanguard in Greece, linked to... and as a consequence of, a corresponding international formation?" Later on in their report they seem to offer an answer to their own question, announcing that they "will try to contribute to the realization of an international meeting of left forces and revolutionary Marxists in Athens during 1991, on the theme of the recent changes and contradictions in the modern world." The conference ended with a vote on the documents (about 170 to 50 in favour of the majority texts) and the election of a 33 member National Coordinating Committee.
A great opportunity exists in Greece for a real regroupment of revolutionary Marxists. Whether this happens will to a large extent depend on whether the NAR manages to break completely free of the constraining mould of its political traditions.
In a country witnessing a massive radicalization of youth, revolutionary socialist ideas can gain ground only if they are truly revolutionary, if they address the real aspirations of the emerging new generations of resistance, and if they can articulate a clear orientation and alternative way out of the social, economic and political impasse free of the language, practice and ideological cobwebs of Stalinism.
Irreconciliable clash with neo-Stalinists