A new element in the process of the recomposition of the Polish workers movement initiated by the POR-S is the public appearance in May of the Workers Party of the Self-Managed Republic (RPRS) and of the periodical Zryw ["Take Off"], published by the Provisional Organizing Committee of the RPRS.
The Organizing Committee of the RPRS points out that a self-managed Poland can only be the achievement of an organized and conscious working class allied with the working people as a whole and progressive intellectuals. It notes that "the Polish people, oppressed, humiliated and deprived of dignity by a totalitarian bureaucratic regime, are obliged to achieve their aspirations by means of revolution."
To this end, it is necessary to have "a centralized cadre organization conscious of its objectives and tasks" basing itself on the world proletariat and on all progressive workers' parties internationally that are fighting for the liberation of the working class, peace and social progress."
The RPRS has announced its desire to become the Polish section of the Fourth International, which Zryw describes as an organization that fights "for socialism, but genuine socialism, meaning a self-managed society that can only be fully achieved on the international scale. This sort of socialism has nothing to do with the so-called actually existing socialism." (8)
For its part, the Executive Committee of the POR-S declares that the RPRS is being built on the basis of the activity of the POR-S, and has its support and close collaboration. It has expressed its full agreement with the desire of the RPRS to become a section of the Fourth International, which it describes as "an international organization fighting to overthrow the regime of the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy and to
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986 restore a lost socialism to society and in particular to the workers and to all working people." (9)
What is the reason for this position toward the Fourth International? In the pages of the Upper Silesian Wolny Robotnik, "Kryki," a member of the Executive Committee of the POR-S, answered this question in the following way:
"This international organization, while small, is very sound ideologically. I am convinced that its ideals correspond to the thinking of the current in the country that has not lost its head, either under the pressure of the Kremlin's propaganda or of pro-Western propaganda. Both these forms of propaganda threw the heritage of all communists into the same mire. The purveyors of one kind denounce the totalitarian bureaucracy as 'Communist. The purveyors of the other kind, supporters of the regime, wave the revolutionary banner of the com"For an indepe munists, although they are a flagrant negation of all the values this banner represents."
It is thanks to the Fourth International, Kryki said, that a worker can understand what, over and above their different nature, unites the systems of the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy •- domination and exploitation of the working class -and that therefore "the fate of the workers is the same the world over." (10)
Below we are publishing an interview in which Kryki explains why in his opinion the Polish workers' movement needs a revolutionary party, along with the draft declaration of the principles of the Workers' Party of the Self-Managed Republic that was published in Zryw.
8. 'Zryw,' No. 1, 1986. 9. Ibid. 10. 'Wolny Robotnik,' No. 33, 1986. endent
» self-managed republic THE FOLLOWING is the draft political-ideological statement of the Workers Party of the Self-Managed Republic (RPRS - Polish section of the Fourth International), "In the fight for an independent self-managed republic of Poland", first published in Zryw, No. 1, May 1986.
Our struggle, as well as the objectives we have laid out, aims at transforming Poland into a sovereign country, economically and politically independent of any other state or political system. A people's right to chart its own path of development and decide on a political system in accord with its historic conditions and its needs is a people's right to independence. Our objective is to fight for an independent Poland.
We recognize the historically established bases and principles of the socialist system, and oppose social exploitation by the systems of bureaucratic dictatorship that exist in the East, as well as by private capital. We declare our support for the full realization of the principles of socialism, which have been deformed and degraded by the rule of the Kremlin bureaucracy. These principles include, for example, the right of the society to sovereignty, the right of the workers to the means of production, the right of the peasants to their land, the right of the people to independent thought and creativity. (1) Our objective is to fight for a socialist Poland.
We reject both the anti-social system of bureaucratic totalitarianism and the pseudo-parliamentarian antidemocratic regime of imperialism. We reject systems that are based on exploiting the workers, and regimes that rule over society on the basis of usurped power. We stand firmly for a democracy based on self-management, for a people's power, for the right of the society to make decisions for itself, both in the framework of democratic institutions of self-management as well as in a system of political democracy. Our objective is to fight for a democratic Poland.
1. The term "society" and "social" in the writings of the workers' opposition movement in Poland means the civil society as opposed to the state, that is, the masses as opposed to the bureaucracy.
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We reject the illusory belief in the possibility of evolutionary change or reform of the Stalinist system or the capitalist system. The conflicts of interest between the working people and the bureaucratic or bourgeois power elites are too powerful to be capable of solution through evolution or reform. The only road by which society can win its right to build socialism, the only road by which to overthrow the dictatorship of the degenerated party and state apparatus is revolution. Revolutionary internationalism
It is impossible to fight the regime of the totalitarian bureaucracy, to overthrow it and to found a self-managed republic without collaborating and cooperating with revolutionary progressive movements fighting for the independence of the non-Russian peoples from the Kremlin dictatorship, for the independence of the federation of non-Russian peoples from the Kremlin dictatorship, for the independence of the federation of Czechs and Slovaks, for a united and independent Germany. Our struggle cannot develop in separation from the struggle of the workers of the entire world against exploitation by private capital. Our ally can only be the world working class. That Is the the world working class. That is the content of our revolutionary internationalism.
We see the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie as the common enemies of the working people. History shows that the workers are adversarics of both systems, and that when the workers rise up to claim their rights, both systems are united by a common interest in seeing their struggle drowned in blood. Internationally, our struggle will be waged on two fronts - against the bureaucracy in the East and the bourgeoisie in the West. In our struggle we will not seek support or aid from the imperialist bourgeoisie. It is in the interest of all the workers of the world to fight against a third world war, to defend peace and to oppose the flareup of international conflicts contrary to our class needs or which are artificial in character. Therefore, we are for peace.
We recognize the need to assure the role of working class as a subject and the sovereignty of society. (2) Therefore, we stand for social ownership of the means of production and for the right of the workers to selforganization and selt-management, and fight for social and national sovereignty. We are fighting for a self-managed Poland. 20
"Down with poverty and the dictatorship" ALTHOUGH PRICES went up recently, between December 1985 and March 1986, the regime imposed a new price increase on us. After the increase in rents last January, the regime is already announcing an increase in the cost of house heating, gas, electricity, coal and urban transport. Undeclared increases, running around 4 per cent, are already a daily reality.
The fall in the standard of living is the price that the working people are paying for the parasitism, the incompetence and the dictatorship of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Unless we resist, there will be no end to price rises. We need to arouse our fighting spirit and begin to put up energetic resistance. Only an organized force of the workers can put a brake on the action of the authorities, who bear the sole responsibility for the economic crisis.
To defend ourselves, it is necessary to form:
• Statistical Committees in the underground Solidarnose factory committees, in the workers' councils and in other bodies to evaluate the increases in the cost of living. We have to demand an automatic sliding scale of wages.
• Independent Tenants' Committees to organize rent strikes, if the recent rent rises are not rescinded, or if they are followed up by new increases.
• Protest Committees to organize work on petitions to be directed to organs of the state administration, to the official pseudo-trade unions, and so forth and to build mass actions against the price increases.
• May Day Committees to build actions that will make May 1 a day of great battles in defence of our standard of living and of civil rights.
• Self-Supply Groups to make contact with farmers and obtain supplies collectively from them at prices below the official rates.
Moreover, it is necessary to declare a state of alert against hunger. Those who live under the subsistence minimum, which is 9 thousand zlotys per month per family member, are invited to put lighted candles in their apartment windows during the night of the 13th of every month.
Our best weapon is self-organization combined with the threat of strikes. We need to have a political awareness of the meaning of our struggle, to understand that unless we overthrow a regime that is socially and nationally alien, we cannot eradicate the causes of the crisis. We must be aware that the fundamental objectives of our struggle are independence and self-management and that we are waging it in the interests and small artisans.
There is no socialism without democracy.
Democracy means people's power, workers' power over their workplaces, cities and communities. It means that the society must be free of any dictatorship and that the state power must derive from the social power. The bureaucratic regimes in the East and the plutocracies in the West will never be a people's power. The basis of socialism is power by the people, that is, freedom for the people and a role of political subject both collectively and individually. The absence of democracy has led the present system to degenerate into an anti-social "actually existing socialicm." There is no socialism where there is no democracy. Nor is there real democracy without socialism.
There is no socialism without independence.
The anti-social and anti-democratic bureaucracy bases itself on political subordination to the power of the Kremlin and on economic subordination to the also anti-social imperialist of the workers, peasants, intellectuals
Workers' Opposition Alliance Warsaw, March 17, 1986 monopolies. Without the support of these two systems, the present political regime could not maintain itself in Poland. In order to achieve socialism in our country by the revolutionary road, it is necessary to deliver the people from this subordination, which means subjugation. Socialism will be possible only if we win national independence. There is no socialism without independence nor is there any independence without socialism.
There is no socialism without self-management.
Only a self-managed society can guarantee a socialist system, democracy and independence. The right of independent organs of workers' self-management to make the decisions in the factories; the right of the society to decide about the environment in which it lives and works; the
2. "Subject" means that the workers determine their own fate, instead of being an "object," that is, having their fate determined by someone else. — TV'
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
right of creative thinkers to propagate their independent opinions; the right of parties, organizations, groupings, associations or interest groups to function, mean the right to socialism.
Only factory, industry, territorial, social and political self-management can guarantee socialism. Without self- management there is no socialism.
There is no socialism without revolution.
The experience of the working-class uprisings in 1956, 1970, 1976 and 1980-81 shows that the socialist reforms that have been demanded in the course of such upsurges cannot be carried out within the framework of the present ossified system. The notion that the creators of this system, the party and state apparatchniks, could turn over power to the society in accordance with the principles of socialism, carry through democratic changes or regain national independencer that they could not independence, or that they could play any part in all this, is pure utopianism. The regime has made it necessary several times already to pay a price in the blood of the Polish workers even for small concessions. Taking power is possible only by the road of socialist revolution, which at the same time will be a revolution for national independence. There is no revolution without organization.
As an opposition force to the regime, Solidarnosc has proved inadequate to carry through such a revolution. The spontaneous social upsurges have been channelled by the partisans of a self-limiting revolution or a revolution within the framework of the system. We need a revolution carried through to the end, that will overthrow and destroy this ossified system, generate structural changes and prevent a counterrevolution. Therefore, what is needed is a vanguard revolutionary organization conscious of its objectives and tasks, one that has a clearly defined program and ideology and which is based on the aspirations and support of society. We have to be democratic revolutionary socialists, organized internationally to fight for the genuine principles of socialism.
For the moment, we base ourselves on the ten general political principles set forth in the draft platform of the Workers' Opposition Alliance - Solidarnose (POR-S), until they are futher developed. On this basis, we have made the following decisions:
• To begin conscious organized work to build the Workers Party of the Self-Managed Republic (RPRS).
• To this end, to form a provisional coordinating body, the Provisional Organizing Committee.
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