New currents in
International Viewpoint 23 December 1985 the strategy of the general strike has to be linked to the question of power, and it has to be shown that the essential task of the coming Polish revolution will be precisely to solve the
POLAND question.
It is impossible to smash the system of totalitarian power without replacing the Polish opposition it by an independent, self-managed working-class system of rule arising out of the organs of a general strike.
Whether they are struggles or immediforms of selfate objectives or organization resulting from them, it is
FOUR YEARS after General Jaruzelski's coup d' etat, the bureauonly in the framework of such a strategy that mass struggles today and cracy is redoubling its attacks against the working class. Although in the future can be transformed into it has been weakened by the bureaucratic crackdown and faces a first conscious step toward the selfsystematic repression, Solidarnosc has maintained a level of organimanaged republic.
zation that is unprecedented in the states under bureaucratic domi-
Today, as in the past, the independent union Solidarnose is and will nation outside of periods of revolutionary upsurge. But this moveremain the essential form of selfment is in the grip of a crisis of orientation that is seriously underorganization for the workers, the main mining the working class's capacity for struggle.
springboard for the advance toward workers self-management. It is the
The failures of Solidarnose are today giving rise to a polarization basis today for having a minimum within the Polish opposition. Certain currents are, in varying degrees, of organization, coordination, and abandoning the gains of the 1980-81 revolution; others are trying, leadership in the mass struggles for by good methods or bad, to preserve them. In this context, the immediate objectives. In such mobilizations, it is Solidarnose that has to emergence of a current, the Workers Opposition, that identifies be built. It will be the basis for the with the working class, stands for its self-organization, and poses establishment of dual power in a prethe question of the revolutionary overthrow of the bureaucracy, revolutionary situation, as well as for organizing all workers for a revoluassumes an importance that cannot be underestimated. In the followassault on the totalitarian tionary ing article, we consider these various currents in the opposition to power system.
The unions and the social movement called Solidarnose is the gain of the working class and the Polish revolution of 1980-81. It is in it that
Jaruzelski's regime.
ARTHUR WILKINS and CYRIL SMUGA the workers are organizing and acting today. Without this movement, the workers are condemned to atomization, to impotence, and to passivity. Any notion that it is possible to turn your back on Solidarnose because there is some kind of alternative to it, whether it is a prayer circle or a political party, means deluding yourself and heading down a road that leads to defeat.
Even for those sections of the working class that are in full retreat, which retain only the idea of Solidarnosc, it is the only idea that can congeal into a material force when the time comes. Any form of independent social or political activity that is not designed to, or does not, help to build Solidarnose cannot be called working-class activity.
This is why the current for workers self-organization and self-management must seek to rebuild and reinforce the independent union in the enterprises, in the cities and regions, in the core of the working class. It is only on this basis that it will be possible to set more ambitious objectives.
It is Solidarnose that embodies the organization, unity, consciousnes, and the struggle of the Polish working class! D
"Anyone who does not strike is not going to eat or work any more," that the slogan launched by Hutnik, Solidarnose's bulletin in the Lenin steel complex of Nowa Huta. (1) It is a slogan that should be taken up by the Polish social movement as a whole. The underground leaderships of Solidarnose have proved incapable up until today of extending strikes when they have broken out in signifi. cant plants.
In order to overcome this incapacity, it is essential to get rid of the idea that prevails in these leaderships that you can call a mobilization of the workers without preparation for abstract or illusory objectives. A good example of this approach is the call for a one-hour general strike last July 1 to show that the "society" wanted an economic reform and to put pressure on the regime to carry it out.
What is needed is to orient toward patiently building a relationship of forces based on the workers' basic demands, and then using the first victories as a lever to set in motion a transitional dynamie. But the orientations of the national and regional leaderships of Solidarnose remain far from such a line.
For some months in 1985, the Solidarnose leaders devoted themselves more to building the boycott of the "elections" to the Diet than to organizing the fight to defend the material interests of the workers. One might wonder about such a choice of priorities. According to Solidarnosc's estimates, the October 13 elections to the Diet were boycotted by 34% of the citizens. This boycott certainly had a political meaning, because it showed that the "normalization" of the system of bureaucratic rule was far from being achieved. But it did not lead the bureaucracy to change its policy, because it could not. Such a "strategy of pressure" has proved ineffective more than once. And, in particular, it did not advance the selforganization of the masses one step.
The appearance in 1984 and especially in 1985 - in the period leading up to the Diet elections - of a new opposition current represented an important political development. This
1, "Hutnik' (Nowa Juta), No. 9 1985.
19
current has sought above all to find an opening for legal activity in the framework of the bureaucratic system of rule. Thus, it is taking up a position on the border line between opposition to the regime and collaboration with it. "Loyal" opposition?
This current is very heterogeneous.
"neorealists, advocates of a so-called new rationalism, whose most well known figure is Andrzej Celinski, former secretary of the National Commission of arnosc, as as the nationalist linked to the Young Poland movement, and, finally, the "independent neoconservatives" grouped around the journal Res Publica.
has suffered a definitive and irrevocable defeat, that the present system of rule must be regarded as going to last, that it is impossible to change it, it is necessary order to get out of the tragic situation in which Poland now finds itself, they think, it is necessary to establish a political accord on the basis of which the regime" in the future into collaboration.
If the society agrees that Poland
La democratic would make it possible to reach a situation in which the regime would the laws, govern crisis. Along with this, the various social layers their interests in such a way as not of the ruling stratum and not to worry the USSR. The neorealists were ready, for the sake of all that, to put up agree to include them on the slates.
This "new rationalism" rejected unanimously by all the leaders of Solidarnose and of the democratic opposition (i.e., the old KOR). Jan Litynski, who August 1980 was one of the main forces in the journal Robotnik and is today in the underground leadership of Solidarnose the Warsaw region, has published a detailed critique of the positions of
From the cell in which he was awaiting trial in Gdansk, Adam Michnik realists: "We do not accuse anyone good faith. We assess in a proper and serious way those who decide to 20 accept nomination from the general and to sit in the seats of the parliament. But if we, the people of Solidarnosc, are offered a private cage or a separate house in this zoo, we answer with a calm conviction, 'play the game without us ...' Tomortrial may begin. Who gets Chamber, and who a seat in the dock? rather sit on the defendents' bench Rakowski and Siwak." (3)
Young Poland movement was formed in August 1980, and its main of support was Solidarnosc, and its members could be found in particular among the full-timers in the union
It presented itself as a national-Catholic organization, harking Dmowski, the leader of the National Democracy, the very right-wing big bourgeois party that collaborated with the Russian authorities under czarism.
After the proclamation of the state of war, the Young Poland movement gradually withdrew from the activity underground Solidarnose and sought "apolitical" means of legal activity, for example, in the managed university institutions.
The following is an analysis of the evolution of the Young Poland Movement and of the current around the journal Res Publica that appeared in Tygodnik Mazowsze, the weekly of Solidarnose in Warsaw:
"Today we are seeing a change in at least a part of the old of Young Poland. Seeking ways by which they can exert a real influence on the course of polievents, they have reached the -and on this point they identify with Dmowski -that it is necessary to collaborate with regime. Their critical attitude toward underground activity is only the logical consequence of that. They think that this activity is leading down a blind alley, and that the boycott of the regime organized by Solidarnose is a political error.
"The group that developed around the independent journal Res Publica, which also dates from before August 1980, has reached the same conclusion, despite different ideological premises, Res Publica harks back to conservative thought, the European tradition in which Christianity stood in the forefront. It was an elitist journal, with pronounced nationalist connotations. The people grouped around Res Publica aspired to produce ideology and, unlike the Young Poland movement, they avoided direct political commitment. But these two groups had a common approach to politics, which they treated as a sort of game for the top echelons.
"This is why these two currents rejected the program of social self-management so as to concentrate on political thought elaborated by an elite. The critical assessment of Solidarnose that was made news from these circles that a part tions with the government, proposing, the future Diet, does not come as a surprise." (4)
The leaders of the Young Poland support of the Catholic hierarchy for their negotiations with the regime.
dealings ended in a fiasco. The representatives of Young Poland did not get on the slates of candidates for the Diet, and Res Publica did not get legal status. The moves of these two groups have been criticized by Tygodnik the journal of the Social Resistance Committee, among others. (5) As a this fiasco and the danger they ran of being discredited in the eyes of the activists in the social movement, the leaders of the Young Poland Movement and Res Publica felt obliged to publicly disavow the
The critical attitude of the dominant currents in the Solidarnose leadership and the democratic opposition toward the neo-realists and other potdoes not, however, mean that the former have themselves abandoned the hope for a "national understanding." The old illusions and the conseious political options that derived
"strategy of revolution" are still present in these
However, when the positions of the leadership are criticized it cannot be forgotten that these are currents that are fighting, who stand on the right side of the barricades, facing the bureaucratic regime, and that they repthe social movement. the same time it has to be kept in mind that these currents also represent a political line that bears a very heavy
J. Litynski, "Nowy Racionalism czy stare zludzenia ("'New Rationalism or Old Illusions'"), Kultura" (Paris), No. 9, 1985.
A. Michnik, "Wybory do sejmu PRL" ("The Elections to the Diet), 'Kultura, No. 9, 1985.
"Tygodnik Mazowsze', (Warsaw), No. 124, 1985.
5. Ds dharaM, Was 74 and 24, 1985; 'Kos' (Warsaw), Nos. 1985. International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
responsibility for the present crisis of the social movement.
Michnik writes that Solidarnosc "is building a pluralist society in a totalitarian state and thereby seeking to impose an understanding, the essence of which is institutional recognition of this pluralism." Stressing that the social movement is not trying to overthrow the present regime through struggle, he says:
"You cannot exclude it if you are realistic, that even such a demand [for ousting the regime] could be formulated by the nation in another situation. The Communists have no divine right to rule Poland until the end of the world. Today, however, such a demand would mean a confrontation with the military power of the Big Brother." (6)
As was the case several times in the past, Jacek Kuron expressed an original political position. Before the "elections" to the Diet, he wrote that the "silent majority" of Polish society, which he estimates at 50%, today supports neither the regime nor the underground Solidarnosc. check by armed police during an unofficial ceremony to commemorate The supporters of the latter he said the fortieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising (DR) "come mainly from the proletariat in big industry and the intellectuals (and it is no accident if the best sections of Solidarnose are based in the big industrial enterprises and the research institutes). "
Kuron stated: *The crisis can only get worse. The silent half will have less and less reason to hope for improvements in its living conditions, and, once it reaches the depth of despair, there is always a danger of revolt. The authorities are certainly not unaware of this sombre reality. But this is not enough to get them to agree to resume contact with Solidarnose. In the meantime, they have chosen the road of repression. Do they think that they can lock up all the oppositionists, that is, a quarter of the population?
"There is reason to fear that such a tightening of the repression can lead to an explosion of anger. What then can we do to avert such a catastrophic course of events? What can we do in our situation, where the proximity of Soviet tanks rules out any idea of changing the regime? We must exploit all opportunities for putting pressure on the Communist regime in order to lead it to moderation and oblige it to take account of public opinion. Thus, for example, we are going to call for a boycott of the coming elections to the Diet in order to demonstrate our faith in a form of authentic social understanding. But can we convince the "silent half" of the effectiveness of our slogan?" (7)
Kuron feared that the answer to his last question would be "no,
International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
Identity that, while today it is paralyzed by fear of the regime and its repressive apparatus, this "silent half" tomorrow could impel a revolt, which he thinks could have catastrophic results, and which he, therefore, tears.
Zbigniew Bujak also takes seriously the possibility of a social explosion. He explains: "The scope of such an explosion, its context, and its dynamic cannot be predicted today. We do not know what line of conduct the repressive apparatus will adopt then, to what extent the authorities will be able to quell the explosion, or how far they are prepared to go in making conces sions. The leadership of Solidarnosc can limit itself to two demands -recognition of trade-union pluralism and, of course, stopping the repression of political activity. But will the social demands stop at that level? I suppose not. A lot will depend on the dynamic of the movement. All that the TKK can do is build a communications network nationally and organize the dissemination of information. That is why we support the creation of the greatest possible number of journals and publishing houses, because they will be able to take charge of this. We are also pre paring to give expression to the social demands and to offer the mean- to realizing them." (8)
It seems that while Kuron fears an explosion and wants to avert it. Bujak accepts that it is inevitable and is trying to assure that it will find •organization and leadership. However, it is difficult to say if these two approaches are really different in practice. That may be doubted, if you think back to past experienceThere is no question that if a socia explosion took place, its scope would far exceed the organizational frameworks and leadership capacities that can be built up in advance in underground conditions. "Only in the plants that the regime can be defeated"
In such a situation, it is unfortunately possible that Bujak and the leaders of the social movement politically closest to him will try to prevent the explosion of revolt and find themselves taking up positions similar to the one expressed by Kuron. Their behaviour at the time of the last major manifestation of social tension, that provoked by the murder of the priest Jerzy Popieluszko in October 1984, attests that such an assumption is not purely hypothetical. At the time, they left no stone unturned to prevent an explosion.
The attitude of the underground leadership of Solidarose on that occasion has been criticized recentiv by Jozef Pinior, the former cha: of the Lower Silesia Regional St Ke Con-mittee: "They murder a pr+ * hefore the eyes of all Europe, they runically admit it, and we do n react. It is like testing a cake wa a knife to see if it is done. You str
A. Michnik, op. cit., pp. 9, 11.
7. statement by Jacek Kuron, 'Le Monde' of August 10, 1985.
"Wywiad Zbigniewem Bujak'Kultura', No. 9, 1985. p. 46.
21
as International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
They are clear around for off people tum situation the explode." (9)
political expressed
Slowik, chair of of such
Slowik was one line management leadership
December on necessity respected by present team ...
rural areas of that the nothing cept to
22 sink into poverty. And this is supposed to be a workers state? The handful who support the regime are cynics who are only looking out for their own interests."
What is the perspective for the future and what are the tasks that flow from this for the underground structures of the social movement?
of focusing it
Slowik gives a clear answer to this
"The 1980 scenario will question:
not be repeated exactly, but history will repeat itself, that is sure.
The
Communists can count on that like money in the bank, because there is one thing that they know how to do better than anybody, and that is
But arouse the discontent of the workers.
different from that » we have to be prepared for
What this means concretely, in
"the first
Slowik's opinion, is that task is to build and strengthen the structures in the enterprises so that when there is a new political crisis they can take the leadership of the are tody serious union," because "it is only in the
The position by
Andrzej plants that the regime can be deieated." (10)
Before the
The Alliance of the war,
Workers Opposition advocates
In the spring of 1985, a new in the national socio-political current started to form within the Polish
1981, he was
The editorial boards of four underamnesty.
ground journals set nating committee that took the name
"Alliance of the Workers Opposition
(PPOR). They published a draft program around which seeking to bring together those the forces that have declared themselves compromises are in favor of an antibureaucratic revolution, waged by the working class and aimed at achieving the full liberation of the working class.
the absolute
The PPOR wants to contribute to building and broadening the mass workers struggles around partial and accord would be organization of the workers themregime.
Today,
The following journals have joined the PPOR: Front Robotniczy, Sprawa
Robotnicza, Glosno, and Wolny Robotnik. The first two have been published the since the summer of 1984 by groups that are working for workers self- management and identify with the revolutionary left. In its first issue,
Front Robotniczy published excerpts from the "Open Letter to the PZPR"
in 1964 by Jacek Kuron and Karol Mozelewski. In so doing, it demonstrated its intent to link up with the revolutionary tradition of the have done antibureaucratic opposition, which, by the way, the authors of to that work have today abandoned.
For its part, Sprawa Robotnicza announced in its first issue that it considered itself "a link in the interworking class community." moreover, that it enemies with whom no accord or alliance can ever be concluded -they are the bureaucracy (that is, the social layer that exploits the workers); as well as the bourgeoisie, which bankrupt bureaucracy."
Wolny Robotnik is the organ of the Union of Workers Councils of the Polish Resistance Movement (ZRPPRO). This organization, which is on clandestine groups in the Silesia since 1982. In a draft program published at the start, the ZRP-PRO came out for overthrowing the bureau. cratic dictatorship based on a general strike led by workers councils formed clandestinely, and for establishing workers power in the state in order to guarantee the building of socialism.
Glosno is the organ of Provisional Coordinating of the Mines (TKKG) of Solidarnosc. It also operates in Upper Silesia. The TKKG has made itself known in the West by its support for the British miners' strike, which attracted important notice in the British left and far left press, in particular in the New Statesman and the London Labour Briefing.
The TKKG is a coordinating committee of the underground trade-union commissions in many mines, and is in conflict with the Regional Executive Commission (RKW) of Solidarnose, which represents the underground national leadership of the
The PPOR has formed an Execurepresentative of each of its components and functions by consensus in order to maintain their autonomy. This commission is responsible for the publication of a common monthly
Przelom ("breach") the first issue of which appeared at the end of the fall of 1985. (11)
emergence of represents an important step in the process of building the workers selforganization and self-management current in the Polish social movement. The existence of such a current is essential in order to overcome the crisis of political and strategic orientation in which the movement finds
The following are the documents issued by the PPOR at the time of its founding, as well as a selection of belonging to this coordinating body. D
'Obecnose (Wroclaw), No. 10, "Rozmowa z Andrzejem 'Dziennik Polski' (London), No. 43, 1985.
'Pzelom', No. 1, 1985.