Toward overcoming
POLAND
Many signs can be seen already that the mood of the changed since the summer of 1981. In fact, a general discontent to be rising to explosive levels. The most minor incidents sometimes lead to major confrontations with the crisis of Solidarnosc repressive forces of the regime. A particularly eloquent example is the one at the Amjadieh football stadium in early October 1984. Just because the management sold than it had seats, and therefore could not accomodate all the people who THE FOLLOWING article was originally published in the Polish showed up, within a few hours Inprekor, No 19, summer 1985. It is the second part of a long article angry crowd, 60 thousand strong, was on the crisis in Solidarnosc, the first part of which was published on the rampage, beating up the hezbollahis, almost burning down the stadi- in English in International Viewpoint, No. 81, July 29, 1985. um, and demonstrating on the streets until late into the night.
Many clashes have taken place in the poor neighbourhoods between the forces of the regime and the urban poor over questions such as and electricity or housing, the latest [in Tehran] in June. In that case, the conflict was over water. For almost ten days, there were constant clashes between the people of the area and the pasdaran and the gendarmes. The incident ended with the arrest of over 200 people and the demolition of eighty houses. We are going to see a lot more developments like this. The regime is now trying to evict the poor from the shanty towns that they have built in the last few years. Such attempts have already led to many violent clashes, for example in Zoor Abad outside Karaj, and Shak-e-Ahmadyieh, Khak-eSephid, Nazi Abad, and Afsarieh outside Tehran.
These problems are being aggravated by the growing unpopularity of a war that the regime cannot afford to end. In March and April of this year, there were many anti war demonstrations in Tehran, Ahwaz, Tabriz, and other cities.
On April 10, in the south of Tehran (Kuy-e-Sizdah-e-Aban), a youth was killed by a basiji thug. The people went on the rampage, burning tires and blocking the roads. Slogans of "Down with Khomeini! Down with the war!" were heard until late into the night. Hundreds of people were arrested by the pasdaran.
It is in these conditions, moreover, that we are seeing a rise in workers struggles. If this trend continues, the explosion of a mass movement against Khomeini becomes more and more likely. The wave of terror in the summer of 1981 indeed dealt a severe blow to the revolutionary mass movement. But over the last four years, it has been shown that this defeat was not so deep as to prevent a new rise in revolutionary struggles by the masses. 12
In 1984, a book was published underground in Poland. Its title was Konspira, which might be translated "The Underground." It brought together and presented a series of discussions with several of the main leaders of the Solidarnose underground that were carried out in 1982 and 1983.
This book gave an idea of some of the debates around strategic and tactical options union movement. citing some extracts concerning the debate that has taken place on rebuilding the Polish social movement after the institution of the state of war on December 13, 1981:
"The idea of building organizational structures in accordance with the universal principle of the construction trade, that is starting from the foundations and not the roof, was accepted overwhelmingly. But differences appeared as soon as it became necessary to define what the foundations were. In one region, it was the plants that should be the basis for construction. In another, independent civic activity was to be based on a milieu, on relations neighbors or generational links.
regional commissions possible national center as upper floors to be built later, while ideas differed about how useful they might be. Thus, the organizational form adopted by the underground in a given region was mined by the view of the main trade-union leaders in that region.
"Zbigniew Bujak Wiktor Kulerski [Warsaw region leaders], opting for the old conception of the democratic opposition, chose the model of broad 'socialized' resistance. Wladyslaw Frasyniuk, who was preparing Lower Silesia for a general strike, perforce put the stress on the plants ...
"The two Warsaw underground leaders stressed mass activity, which took various forms. On the one hand, there was the fight in the plants essentially for the right to continue trade-union activity. On the other, there were divers social initiatives, such as the aid committees set up in the parishes - which took the responsibility for helping the victims of repression - the independent press and publishing houses, the national education councils, the councils for culture and science, or the networks of centers of the Society of Workers Universities. According to this conception, only such a mosaic of resistance could counterbalance the monopolistic nature of the regime. On the other hand, any attempt to give the underground cohesion, the cohesion necessary to prepare for a general strike would run the risk of failure...
"The conception of the struggle put forward by Wladyslaw Frasyniuk in Wroclaw was counterposed to the model of long-term resistance worked out in Warsaw. Frasyniuk judged Bujak and Kulerski's ideas about improving the society by changing the thinking of people to be very high-minded, but it seemed to him that they bordered on capitulation. In Lower Silesia, charitable committees, study circles, mutual aid among neighbors or members of the same social milieu, and councils for culture and science seemed important but not decisive factors. In fact, Frasyniuk said, it is the workers in the big plants, the shipyards, the steelworks, and the mines who will determine the future and not the intellectuals organized in friendly circles. This is why the main stress was put on building organizations in the plants in order to prepare the way for the general strike." (1)
To our knowledge, only Inprekor pointed out at the time that two dif-
1. Lopinski, Moskit, Wilk, 'KonspiraRzecz o podziemnei Solidarnosci", republished in France by les Editions Spotkania, Paris, 1984, pp. 53 and 69. International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
ferent strategic lines had appeared within the national trade-union leadership during the initial period of rebuilding Solidarnosc in the underground. (Cf. in particular, Zbigniew Kowalewski's article "The Line of the Factories") (2).
It is only with the publication of Konspira that leaders of Solidarnose have recognized the existence of these two opposed lines. This is a positive development because this divergence understanding the evolution of the
Poland after
In an article written in May 1985(3), we described the most recent symp toms of the grave crisis of the social movement as it was revealed at the time of the murder of Jerzy Popieluprice rise in February 1985. At the same time, we tried to causes of this crisis. In this we want to take this up again.
are convinced that a factor that contributed perhaps even decisively, to of the Polish social strike" put forward by the ship of Solidarnose in Lower Silesia did not prevail throughout the country, and that it was abandoned even in the region in which it had emerged. It can be stated today that this represented a grave setback for the social
This line aimed at preserving two gains, which were linked to each other, of the 1980-81 revolution. The first was the fact that the working class emerged as a subject, confirming its hegemony within the social movement. from the phase marked by the actividemocratic opposition to that of the mass movement, proletarian character was consolidated step through the forms of organization, struggle, and democratic functioning that were adopted. The second gain was the experience of selforganization, which an experiment in mass self-management, "The yeast for a future self-managed state of a self-managed society, "5 as Frasyniuk aptly put it.
In a period of counterrevolution in which every social activity runs up against obstacles a hundred times greater than in a time of revolution, the preservation of such gains depends on the determination of a conscious minority, on its resolve not to let itself be stopped by obstacles or to halt only to gather forces to surmount them. In a period of revolution, the self-organization and independent activity of the masses result from a as International Viewpoint 23 December 1985 spontaneous mass upsurge. However, is true that this facilitates the advance of a self-management consciousness in the mass movement, it contributes to the working class developing political consciousness, while it depends only partially on the level of consciousness previously attained. It is quite different in a period of counterrevolution.
In such a period, the factor of consciousness plays an absolutely decisive role, because the self-organization and autonomous activity of the masses depend on it, even if it is represented only by a minority. If the leading bodies of the movement are not the vehicles for this self-management consciousness, they will tend to retreat and bring on a retreat of the movement as a whole.
Thus, we have seen certain leaders move backward, going back to the positions of the pre-August 1980 democratic opposition, despite fact that the social base produced by the revolution of 1980-81 is incomparably broader than what existed before. The fact that the only concrete response the murder of Popielusko was the setting up of the Defense Committees Against Violence is the most recent demonstration of this evolution. "Where is the team that's going to weld the anti-tank barriers?"
The authors of Konspira state that in opting for the old conceptions of democratic opposition, the Soli"socialized" resistance. But this correspond to the since it is the opposite that has happened. Nonetheless, it is the orientation of these leaders that has prevailed within the underground national leadership (TKK).
do not claim that this was a conscious move from start although the Warsaw trade-union leaders obviously did everything possible to impose this line. Moreover, there is no need to have any strategy to achieve this. When you do not know what to do, to avoid problems, you adopt the line of least resistance. And, as Bogdan Borusewicz suggests, this is in fact what happened. clandestine leadership of Solidarnosc "lost sight of the goal" of the struggle. (4) The fact that this was the result
Implementation of the line adopted of Solidarnose in Lower Silesia (the RKS) proved much more difficult Frasyniuk had already realized this before his arrest at the end of September 1982. He explained that the long and patient work of organizing the underground union was coming into conflict with the Polish national character, which prefers "fireworks," when what was needed in this case was to construct one relay after another, to carefully plan the struggle, to prepare backups in case of failure.
To Konspira's authors, Frasyniuk said: "I regret that in April 1982, the TKK did not set a target date with respect to the preparations for a general strike in the regions. The problem, obviously, was not to set an exact date for the strike, that would be idiotic, but to fix a time for setdeveloping systems of liaison, supply, and defense of the factories against the repressive forces, etc. Instructions, regulations, or established time-tables would serve no purpose unless there organization at the basic level. Likewise, charismatic leaders would not solve our problems.
"Since January [1982], we have not ceased our old refrain: Build factory structures, build factory structures .. Some people answered us by saying, 'It's being done,' but we don't at all know why. "The factory is organized, we are putting into practice the RKS's ten commanders
1981, we are helping victims of repression, we are collecting dues, we are putting our own journal, we printing a version of Z Dnia na Dzien (5), we are organizing
- and what then? We is everything ready already? Do you strike now, smoothly?' because we only have if the others pay without having to asked. And I insisted, I am asking you where is the guy who is going to ment to "Robotnik 83, Paris, May 1983, and republished in the Polish Inprekor No 8-9, 1983. This article was then republished again in French in 'Quatrieme Internationale, No. 11, 1983.
3. The article in 'Inprekor. No 18 WeS republished in International Viewpoint, No 81, July 29, 1985, under the title of Crisis of Leadership and of Perspectives.
Interview with Bogdan Borusewicz, 'Kultura', Paris, No. 11, 1984. It was cited in IV, No. 81, July 29. Bogdan Borusewicz, one of the founders of the KOR, later inspirer of the struggle for free trade unions on the Baltic coast, one of the leaders of the August 1980 strike in Gdansk, was subsequently removed from the regional leadership of Solidarnose in Gdansk. He went underground on December 13, 1981, and played an important role in restructuring the underground union in the region. After the arrest of Bogdan Lis in June 1984. he took the lead of the union in the region.
5. The central organ of the RKS in Lower Silesia. At the time it was published twice a week.
13
direct the defense of the gate, where team that's going to weld liaison with the other plants do you have?' Then they shook their heads, saying that it wasn't in shape yet, but in a month ... It is clear morethat the system of defense against the riot police will have to be different in Pafawag, or in Chemitex, or still more so in the port or the refinery. This is why no RKS, no Bujak, Lis or Frasyniuk can invent anything brilliant without the activists in the plant in question. It's up to them to show their inventiveness. But they are waiting, saying, there is Bujak, all Poland knows him, the whole world knows them, so let him tell us how to make a gun block a gate, or how many guys should along the factory wall. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I see already what is going to happen the moment the strike breaks out, workers wondering whether or not they should put on armbands ... And here's the chief of the RKS. We're going to ask him. But at that moment, it will be too late to discuss." (6) "Spontaneity prevails in periods of uprising"
In part, the difficulties were related to the fact that Frasyniuk had set rather ambitious objectives, which influenced the way heassessed the results. Moreover, the line proposed was quite static, too centered on the sole perspective of a general strike. It was only on the eve of his arrest that he started stressing the importance of struggles around partial and immediate objectives enabling the workers to accumulate a certain ex-
He was convinced, moreover, that it should be possible, with organization and a conscious and rational leadership, to limit the spontaneous element factor has played a decisive role in every mass movement, and it is necessary to take account of it in the strategy you adopt.
to eliminate spontaneity, it is necessary to try to take the best advantage of it by means of organization and an adequate leadership. Frasyniuk posed the question in the following terms:
"It would be easy to launch the strike only when we are really ready. But it may be that at that moment the regime will also be well prepared for a confrontation. And what then? Then it's either failure or paying too high a price for victory. So, it is necessary to wait for the precise instant when the chances will be best and the price that will have to 14 be paid is least. But in order to be able to decide on the right moment, people have to be conscious of the implications of this choice, they have to be organizationally moready and patient." (7)
This was undoubtedly the weakest element in his strategy. Such a high degree of rationality on the part of the mass movement and that kind of influence by a conscious leadership in determining the moment to enter into struggle are quite simply impossible in a living social movement. Regardless of the level of organization and preparation, or the political and organizational solidity of the leadership, spontaneity prevails in periods of uprisings.
general mass strike never breaks out the way, for example unleashed in August 1944, that is, in response to an order from above. That is impossible, because what is involved is not a clandestine organization, political or military, social milieu involving the workers or one or several plants or the working class in its entirety. In October 1982, Lenin shipyard in Gdansk went on strike without asking the regime was "well prepared" or not.
Moreover, this was not the sort of thing that the underground leaders considered, when trying to understand what had happened, they concluded that all that would have been needed to get a general strike going would have been for "Bogdan Lis [at that time, member of the TKK responsible for the Gdansk region] to go into the struck shipyard."
However, if it is true that everything then depended on what Lis did, this shows the decisive role of leadership in a struggle breaking out "unexpectedly." In fact, it is clear that the strike in the Lenin shipyard took the underground leaders by surprise. A poll carried out in the Gdansk workplaces shortly before October 8 "excluded any perspective of a general strike in response to the outlawing of Solidarnosc." (8)
When social tension mounts suddenly, no poll carried out prior to the event can give an indication of what reactions should be expected, because responses can change in a twinkling, they shift from day to day and evolve from hour to hour. It may be that the very workers in a factory that gave no sign of militancy 48 hours before will be precisely the ones that set the struggle rolling.
As for the preparedness of the enemy, in this case the Jaruzelski regime, at a given time, it has to be realized that the surprise effect produced by a mass action, with the disarray it provokes or the differences that appear in the leadership, can disorient the ranks of forces that are "well prepared for confrontation," demoralize them, limit their capacity for making decisions. It may also turn out that the preparedness of the regime's apparatus does not necessarily mean that it has much fighting spirit, and that only a struggle can 90 In a general way, it is always
- even if this involves unavoidable losses - when demonstrates the sort of readiness that could inflict
Does all this mean that organization, that preparation for combat have no importance? "In a word, should we improvise? That's fine for musicians and poets," Frasyniuk said. "As for me, I'm against improvisation. As a driver by trade, I can't see myself driving an improvised vehicle, with an engine and no brakes, or vice versa." (9)
You cannot go from one extreme to the other. Mass struggle has better chances for success to the extent that it is based on good organization and well prepared. But it may very well get started in a plant (or a region) that, however "explosive" the situation there may be, is not in the best position to take the lead of the movement.
In that case, it is necessary to extend the struggle as rapidly as possible to other plants or regions that are better prepared and which, while they may not be "explosive," are, nonetheless, ready to join in the struggle that others have initiated. It is on them, moreover, that will depend, until it becomes generali-
This is probably what have happened Lis had gone into the shipyard where a strike had gotten underway, and if Bujak had done what he was ready to that is, to go into the Ursus tractor factory and, together with the workers there, call a strike in Warsaw. could have touched off a general strike, according to what Piotr Bednarz (who succeeded Frasyniuk when the latter was arrested) told the members of the TKK. And since this was the only region, along with Nowa Huta, that was in any way prepared for a general strike, there is every bet that it would have played a key role in the struggle.
You cannot expect to achieve a high level of social organization and preparedness for mass struggle uni-
6. 'Konspiru, pp. 70-71. 7. Ibid. pp. 69-70. Ibid. p. 141 Ibid. p. 71 a8 International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
288 International Viewpoint 23 December 1985 formly within a single industrial center, and still less in a region or the country as a whole. The law of uneven and combined development applies fully in this regard. Combativity develops in an uneven way in a social
Those underground union organizations that at a given moment have shown that they were best prepared to go into battle, fall back after a certain time, if the struggle does not and such retreat is more or less prolonged. But at the same time other organizations that were behind come to a greater degree the "line of the factories and the general strike" worked out jointly by Frasyniuk and his comrades in Jozef Pinior, it is in a fraternal and constructive spirit, because we contin- May 1 in Wroclaw. Solidarnose marches under the noses of the military (DR) ue to think that the orientation have put forward represents essential gain achieved by underground Solidarnose in terms of a strategy for the social movement.
Moreover, the weak sides of this were corrected as the experience of the movement of the political situation demanded 1982, demonstrations that affected concert with the Solidarnose leader at Nowa Huta, Wladyslaw Hardek, "insisted on going forward" towards a general strike, although they were aware that in most of the major industrial centers, the level of organization and preparedness were quite inadequate, and that even in their own regions, the situation was far
That means that they were relying to a large extent on the spontaneous factor. Pinior, the RKS of Lower Silesia took a big step forward in working out strategy and tacties for the mass struggle in the winter and spring of 1983. In an energetic way this leadership took the initiative in struggles around partial and immediate objectives. This approach was concretized in the week of protest in March 1983, in which the central slogans were for immediate and unconditional amnesty for all the political prisoners and for fighting the price increase.
Moreover, in the framework of preparing for an active defense of the plants during a general strike, it was proposed to set up a special tachments of a Solidarnose workers guard in the main factories that would play the role of executive organs of the RKS.
Finally, Pinior thought that establishing social control over the economy would be one of the essential tasks that would determine the success or failure of a general strike. The arrest of Pinior and the adoption by the leadership that succeeded him of a diametrically opposite line led the Lower Silesian RKS to follow quite another course. Two opposing lines
"Success of the strike line also depended," Frasyniuk said, "on its acceptance and implementation in other regions. Wroclaw alone, isolated from the rest of Poland, could not win. The RKS thought that its tactic was the best, but it realized that if the other centers did not put it into practice, social activity would off in Lower Silesia as well." (10)
That is what happened as Frasyniuk recognized immediately when he came out of prison at the end of the summer of 1984. Analyzing the state of the underground movement that he found,
"It is hard to talk about Solidarnosc as a multilayered organization covering the country. Here, I am thinking about plant, enterprise, regional, or inter-regional structures.
*I even have the impression that the question of setting up and building such structures has been put into the background in the work of the union. Likewise, as regards news on the problems of the plant, the space accorded it in the trade-union press is very limited. These are negative or breakdown of structures of the union that until recently were one of its foundations, that is the union committees in the factories and the factory news networks." (11)
In a taped statement played on September 6, 1984, in the Zolibroz neighborhood
"We cannot be satisfied with the fact that Solidarnose remains alive in our hearts. It has to be alive in our factories. Each one of us has to help to bring that about. Only what you do in your workplaces will count and will decide the future of Solidarnose. All of you have to go back into your factories with that conviction."
This could be applauded, if it were not just preaching at the workers, since, unfortunately, to our knowledge, this orientation was never that of the Warsaw Solidarnosc leadership before or after that statement. And it is this leadership whose line prevailed in the social movement after 1982. Unlike the Lower Silesian RKS up until the spring of 1982, the Warsaw leadership never tried to focus the the factories, on building and activating trade-union and self-management structures in the core of the working class.
These two orientations did not simply reflect two different approaches, ideas and conceptions that could be analyzed on their own, leaving aside their social context. In fact, one was a working-class line, while was the product mainly of a milieu
It is made clear in Konspira that the Warsaw Solidarnosc leaders, with the project of building an "underground society," opted for by the pre-1980 democratic opposition. You have to realize that the conceptions prevailing in this opposition came from the democratic intelligentsia.
What is more, it was no accident that a small faction of this opposition,
10. Ibid. P. 70
11. '2 Dnia no Dzien, No. 1/345, 1985.
15
grouped around the journal Robotnik, class and played a decisive role in preparing the way for the outbreak of the revolution of August 1980, acted not only independently of the rest of the opposition but remained on the
In the new post-December 1981 context, a return to the orientation that prevailed within the democratic in the past could not fail to have a social meaning. could only favor the circles that had originated these positions, above all their inclinations, assure that their needs would be and reflect their limits.
More or less explicitly, adopting this orientation was a way of turning the working limiting its role as the leading element activity, and the political would pass more and more into the with the working class being relegated again to its traditional passive
In pointing this out, we are not of course advocating a vulgar sociological approach that mechanically derives all ideological and political activities from a given social base. The idea of counterposing workers
There have been, and still are, many examples of fruitful collabgroups in the underground Solidarnose. Away from the working class
Frasyniuk pointed out the important role played by the independent groups in the schools of higher education in Wroclaw in building the underground trade-union organization in the region. "They included doctors whose titles did not keep them from running a mimeograph. The university printers then trained the guys in the big factories so that they could bring out their press autonomously." (12)
For the democratic intelligentsia that takes its stand resolutely alongside the working class, convinced that the transformation of the society depends on the workers, the essential task is to transmit their own knowledge or skill to the workers so that they can be as independent as possible.
However, this has nothing to do with the notion that the workers have to swallow the elucubrations of the intelligentsia passively, or even with a practice of teaching them a series of useful things without giving them the means to manage for themselves. 16
Unfortunately, relations between the two social groups have evolved in this second way rather than in the first, perpetuating a division of labor contrary to the nature and aspirations by chance that in the current vocabureference to class has replaced the was defined by factory
At the beginning of 1985, one of our Polish readers wrote us, saying: "During the past year, Solidarnose has moved further away from trade-union and working-class positions, to turn its eyes more toward the *national mysteries.' The concept of the nation is introduced into everything, with the class conflicts being melted down into this stew. Maybe this year has been a positive one from the standpoint of certain social regards the growth and reinforcement of areas of independent cultural and political life, but from the standpoint of the interests of the proletariat it was a setback. This is one more proof that the underground leaders have diverted Solidarnose onto the wrong track by focusing on the national question instead of mobilizing the masses of workers on the class interests. While the first question is very important, it is the second that is decisive."
Another problem is created by the fact that certain church cireles are clearly trying to assert their dominance over the social movement. This does not refer, of course, to ordinary
For even some members of the hierarchy have devoted themselves entirely to the service of movement. It refers to elements of the that want to transform the movement into an appendage of the religious institutions.
Pointing to the experience of a region in eastern Poland, reader wrote us: "You can see an offensive by a part of the church and its ideologues in the union to get the tasks that belong to the union taken over by the institutions linked to the church - the Family Pastorate, the Family Mutual Aid, the Workers Pastorate, the Youth Oases, the Independent Scout Movement, etc. These institutions enjoy advantages such as the moral support and collaboration internees and historic' leaders of the union, an extensive publishing and distribution network, well-tested educational structures.
"The existence alongside those of information and independent activity - in particular semilegal institutions protected by the church - is leading more and more people to the latter. I do not think that this phenomenon is limited to my region. The - Church is aiming openly to take Solidarnose's place in the political game with the regime. The union is tolerating the Church's maneuvers, which are disarming it to the extent they are obliging it to moderate its fight against the ruling class. I am afraid that this process is cutting deeper and deeper, because no one is calling for putting a stop to it."
Moreover, we have seen an undermining of pluralism and democracy within the underground Solidarnose as a consequence of the imbalance that has appeared between the leadership bodies and the base of the social movement, the weakening of the links between the leading organs and the factory commissions, and given the influence that the conceptions of nonproletarian currents have acquired in the underground leadership.
There are more and more cases of leading bodies putting material pressures on rank-and-file structures of Solidarnosc in order to bring them to heel. Some structures, considered too independent in their activity or their political orientation, have found themselves isolated by a cut * of information concerning them. On several occasions, notably when the balance sheet of the boycott of the was drawn up and when Konspira was published, the organ of the Warsaw Interenterprise Committee of Solidarnose (MRKS) has protested against
However, the most brutal and most significant attack against pluralism within the union has come in Upper Silesia. In the fall of 1984, the Regional Executive Commission (RKW) of Solidarnosc, represented in the TKK by Tadeusz Jedynek, who is today in the history of Solidarnosc. Among other things, it said active in the same region was "operathe union," because "the contacts and composition of the commission in question are unknown
In fact, the organ of the RKW (14) showed clearly that what was involved was political differences between the two structures, specifically the TKKG's support for the British miners' strike and the RKW's accusing it of "ultraleftist-anarchist deviations." The latter "concept," moreover, is taken straight out of the regime's propaganda.
There is only one way to get out of the crisis of the social movement.
Cf. 'CDN-Glos Wolnego Robotnika,
80, 1984, and No. 104, 1985.
RIS, No. 11, 1984. International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
Dispersion of a demonstration of Solidarnose in August 1983 (DR)
It is to build the self-organization and workers self-management current formerly embodied in the "line of the factories and the general strike." But this does not mean simply returning to this line, because today the conditions are different from those that prevailed during the first year after the establishment of the state of war. The social movement then was still to a large extent being "carried by the wave" of the pre-December 1981 period, drawing its strength from the gains of the period of the revolution. But this impetus has long since become exhausted. The need to organize the workers self-management current
For a long while, the TKK has not included a single regional leader that could be considered to represent the "line of the factories" current or to be close to it. This does not mean that the situation may not evolve, but it is better not to have any illusions that things will improve on their own in this respect. In fact, as we have seen, the spontaneous trend is exactly the opposite.
So, there is no point of departure or natural springboard for building this current. The TKK and the regional leaderships, which are tending to move further and turther away from the working-class foundations of the movement, are under growing pressure from milieus that are pushing, consciously or not, in the opposite direction.
The self-organization and workers self-management current cannot be
International Viewpoint 23 December 1985 built today from below and horizontally. It can base itself only on scattered union groups, as well as on political or political-trade-union groups in which self-management consciousness remains strong, and which in turn base themselves on the workers or take on the task of defending the immediate and historic interests of the working class. What has to be done first is to end the dispersion of these forces, achieve coordination and cooperation among them on the basis of programmatic conceptions worked out in common.
This current has to adopt an orientation different in three aspects from the line of Lower Silesia. The first question that needs to be asked is why the latter orientation was not maintained, and the requisite conclusions have to be drawn from that fact. Indeed, those who put forward this line failed to realize that in a period of counterrevolution it would not be possible to maintain such an orientation, much less gather forces around it in the social movement, unless it were embodied in appropriate forms of organization.
Different forms of consciousness have to be matched by corresponding forms of organization. It is unconceivable that the union as a whole could be the carrier of a self-management consciousness. As a mass organization, the union includes workers with very different levels of consciousness - from those who are sensitive only to the immediate material and moral interests of their professional group or social milieu, to those who are conscious of the general and historic interests of the working class and who are struggling for its liberation.
Therefore, there is every reason to bet that in the long run self-management consciousness may disappear, if it does not find its own organizational expression in the social movement.
This is why the coordinating committee (the "alliance," to pick up the term used in the debates underway in Poland) which is to provide a foundation for the selforganization and workers self-management current must have its own political and ideological identity and be based on a separate organizational structure.
However, the fact that such a current exists and organizes itself separately must not in any way alter the status of its components, in particular the various trade-union structures that may adhere to the alliance. The latter must remain what they are, that is, links in the Solidarnose chain. For them, participating in such a coordinating body should be only to enable them to better accomplish their responsibility, to better carry out the tasks required to defend the rights, dignity, and interests of the workers. This coordination must arm them to better defend the program of Solidarnosc. It must aid them to work out effective tactics for the immediate struggle, so as to place the latter in the framework of a strategy designed to achieve the objective of its program, that is, to set up a self-managed republic.
In the second place, without losing sight of the question of the general strike, the "line of the factories" today has to be primarily an orientation of fighting for immediate
17
• International Viewpoint 23 December 1985 objectives, both partial and transitional. The wave that carried the mass movement ebbed finally in October
1982, when the leadership proved incapable of seizing the opportunity represented by the strike at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk in response to the outlawing of Solidarnose. That was the last moment for blocking a relative stabilization of the totalitarian regime and for assuring the continuity of the August revolution.
The question that is posed today for the social movement is how to assemble the preconditions for a new revolutionary upsurge starting from a more or less consolidated counterrevolutionary situation.
At the time, the problem was how to rekindle the flame of a national general strike from the fire of the
Gdansk strike. Today, it is how to use a spark, such as the strike at the
Rosa Luxemburg factory in February-
March 1985 (15), to light the fire of a broader struggle in some other plants.
The example of the workers at the
Rosa Luxemburg factory, was followed at the beginning of May by the workers at the Stella textile factory in Zyrardow, who fought for similar demands. On May 3, in the wake of the victory at the Stella factory, a strike for the right to Saturdays off broke out in the Pokires factory, another textile concern in Zyrardow. Every one of these strikes ended in a relative success.
However, these successes • could have been much greater if the following conditions had been met: If each strike had not started just as the preceding one was ending. If the demands put forward by the workers at the Rosa Luxemburg factory had been taken up, as the Solidarnose workers committee there had demanded, by a certain number of factories in Lodz with a mainly female workforce [most of the workers in all these striking factories were women. as well as by other enterprises. If the social movement's interregional struetures had at least provided a relatively rapid circulation of information in these enterprises, to say nothing of coordinating the struggles in prog ress. And finally, if the personnel in the enterprise had had a higher level of trade-union organization and had taken on the task of calling for negotiations on the demands that were common to the plants that went out on strike after Rosa Luxemburg. The task of the current for self-organization and self-management is to help to promote just such processes.
The alliance in question should, Therefore, work for advancing struggles around partial and immediate objectives that can open up the way 18 for struggles for transitional objectives, both socio-economic and political. It should promote the extension and coordination of such struggles.
It should disseminate the demands that underlie them, stressing those demands that can unite the workers, whether this is on the level of single enterprise, or several, or the working class as a whole.
The experience of past struggles and the forms of struggle that proved effective should be publicized. At the same time, the alliance should point up the slightest victories achie ved in one or another place in order to indicate the way forward. It should also give information about missed opportunities in order to draw the lessons from them.
Another task is to teach people how to analyze the relationship of forces in a workshop, factory, region, or the country as a whole, as well as the art of exposing the weak points of the regime and discerning the strong points of social movement on all levels in order to be able to take advantage of them to advance the selforganization of the workers, their independent activity, and the defense of their interests.
Colonel Stanislaw Kwiatkowski, the military chief of the center for testing public opinion, said a few months ago at a meeting with the regime's propaganda heads that the level of social tension reached "would have already amounted to a revolutionary
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to Czech Inprecor 93108, Montreuil. sure to mark them for Czech Inprecor situation if it had not been accompanied by a confidence no less high in the stability of the institutions." (16)
Quite right! What is needed is to alter this conviction, which is as false as it is widespread, starting in the factories. A mass struggle, even on a limited scale, well led and spreading rapidly to other factories and well coordinated is the means for getting workers to realize that the regime is far from being stabilized, and that it is possible through such a struggle to expose and increase its weaknesses.
Strategy for revolution
However, orienting to such strug gles, patiently building the conditions that will enable them to grow, cannot at all mean abandoning the strategy of the general strike or relegating it to some indefinite future. To the contrary, the current for workers selfself-management should be a constant and determined advocate of such a perspective.
workers in Solidarnosc, you often hear it said that the general strike is not "for tomorrow." It is easy to agree entirely with such a but a general strike is "for tomorrow." It was not in August 1980 either, up until the day that the workers at the Lenin shipyard decided to go into an occupation strike to win full satisfaction of their demands.
The main task today is certainly preparing the inter-enterprise trade-union organiza-
Solidarnose for a general strike. But in every one of the enterprise commissions set up, it is necessary at least to draw up a plan for occupying the plant, to maintain a minimum of contacts with the trade-union commissions in the neighboring factores, and prepare a system of self-defense for the plant in the event of a strike. As Frasyniuk said, it is necessary to find someone able to organize defense of the gate, someone who knows how to make antitank obstacles, how many are needed, and where to put them, ete.
The third and last point is that the programmatic foundations of the alliance should lay out clearer strategic perspectives, going beyond those that the RKS of Lower Silesia elaborated in 1982 and at the start of 1983. It is necessary to break from any notion of "self-limited revolution" and longlasting compromise with the bureaucracy. Starting from
15. On this strike, see "Crisis of Lead. ership and Perspectives, in TV, No. 81, July 29, 1985.
16 Quoted in le Matin de Paris' of July 1, 1985.