New developments in the Polish left THE CRISIS of Solidarnose has been discussed in a number of articles in International Viewpoint in the last two years. The relative decline of the anti-bureaucratic mass movement has been pointed out for some time by the capitalist press.
The following articles and documents describe steps by a section of the left wing of the underground workers' movement to offer an alternative to the "self-limiting revolution" strategy of the Solidarnosc
POLAND This group was formed outside the structures of the Solidarnose underground leadership and the democratic opposition that holds hegemony within them. Its activity is threefold.
First of all, the POR is engaged in trying to consolidate those with a higher level of workers' self-manage. ment consciousness that have been left in an atomized state, since they have not found adequate expression in the leadership of Solidarnosc.
It is significant that the Solidarnosc leadership, which in the underground has moved away from its working-class base, has fallen under the influence of intellectuals who consistently offer only one remedy for the failure of bureaucratic management - "the values of the market economy."
Secondly, the POR is teaching the workers how to defend their basic material and moral interests, and how to organize themselves around their most urgent demands.
Thirdly, it is calling on them to establish minimum bases of support for a fight for workers' control over the organization of work, the use of resources and the quality of produc tion. "These are our factories"
«These are our factories," the POR declares. "We cannot let them destroy our property, because the more the bureaucracy destroys the less the society will have to divide up. We have to track the irrationality and economic sabotage of the bureaucracy at every step, denounce it, protest against it, bring complaints against those responsible to the courts, and, if need be, strike in defence of our factories, of our common national inheritance. The less the bureaucracy squanders, the more there will be for us, the more quickly it loses power, the less it will squander. Let's keep our eyes on the bureaucracy's hands!" (3)
Spreading out from its first networks, in particular from its most important initial base, the Union of Workers Councils of the Polish Resistance Movement (ARP-PRO) in Upper Silesia, the POR expanded considerably in the first year of its existence. (4) 1985. Obecnose' (Wroclaw), No. 10, 'Obecnose (Wroclaw), No. 10,
"Tygodnik Mazowsze' (Warsaw), No. 157, 1986.
3. The POR-S "Program for immediate struggle in defence of the standard of living and the national heritage" is scheduled for publication in the magazine 'Quatrieme Internationale.'
4 For more information on the ZRP-PRO - today the POR-S of Upper Silesia - see 'International Viewpoint,' No, 100, June 2, 1986.
17 leadership. The next IV will take after the recent amnesty. ARTHUR WILKINS
Poland is a country that presents no end of surprises. At the end of 1984, a team of sociologists from the University of Poznan did a study on a sample of workers from four big heavy industrial plants located in various parts of the country.
A part of the study had to do with what sort of political system most closely suited these workers' aspirations. Some 78% said that they were in favor of genuinely democratic elections for parliament, with different electoral slates.
Around 65% were in favor of having various political parties, and 80% were for freedom of expression for all citizens, whether supporters or opponents of the political system. Some 58% were in favor of social ownership of the means of production.
It should be noted that the latter two concepts, unlike those of free elections and political pluralism, sound quite ambiguous to the average worker, since they are part of the ideological language of the bureaucratic rulers.
But the most revealing fact was that 87% expressed their support for the idea of "full workers' self-management." The term is a bit vague, but in Poland it means no less than full power in the factories for workers' councils, democratically elected by the workers. Moreover, it is seen as being in total opposition to any notion of "participation" or "co-management."
This massive loyalty to the idea of workers' self-management is undoubtedly the most formidable gain of the Polish revolution of 19801981. If we leave aside the very special case of Yugoslavia, it would be hard to find any country anyup the general political situation where in the world today where the great majority of the workers aspire to be the collective owners of the plants in which they are working.
Commenting on the results of this study, one of the underground journals pointed out that they revealed to what extent Polish workers are for a "system different from the present one — for a human and demo. cratic socialism." (1)
However, the same study also revealed something else, this time a disturbing fact.
Noting that the study "reflects quite faithfully, the behavior and opinions of the workers," the editors of the publication closest to the underground national leadership of Solidarnose pointed out: "The very strong support for the ideals and values of Solidarnose dropped when it came to the underground Solidarnose. Some 20 to 25 per cent of the workers said that they supported the latter."
At the same time, "those people who support the regime make up about 25 per cent of the workers in the big enterprises, while the rest reject the regime established after December 13 - that is the conclusion arrived at by the authors of this study." (2)
In a nutshell, the study indicates that half the workers, while opposing the bureaucratic dictatorship and maintaining their support for the democratic self-management project represented by Solidarnosc in 1980-81, do not see the activities and positions of Solidarnosc as it is today as expressing their aspirations.
This contradiction is where the impulse has to be sought for the development of the Workers' Opposition Alliance (POR) after May 1985.
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
New POR groups have formed in many cities in the country, fundamentally through the adherence of nuclei of activists that previously worked in the framework of Solidarnosc.
While the POR is centering its attention on building its base organizations in the big factories among industrial workers, in some areas peasant and youth groups have also appeared.
Both the founding platform of the POR and its "Program for immediate struggle in defence of the standard of living and the national economy" are clearly attractive to radicalized sections of Solidarnosc activists who are looking for a working-class and socialist alternative. (5)
Convinced by their own experience of the failure the "strategy of self-limiting revolution," such activists are turning toward the POR, prompted by a desire to offer the Polish workers' movement the perspective of a democratic workers' revolution.
This tendency is strengthened by the fact that the POR backs up such a perspective with a body of immediate, partial and transitional demands - starting with the most classical, the demand for a sliding scale of wages - that correspond to the everyday concerns of the masses.
For example, the call for rent strikes launched by the POR had a major impact in several neighborhoods in North Praga, on Warsaw's right bank. All the local groups of *NR 1+*. *RPRS-**
ROBOTNICZA PARIA
SAMORZADNEJ
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Solidarnose active in these neighborhoods joined together in building this initiative, which is the first action of the Polish social movement in the explosive area of the housing crisis.
In the same section of the city, OBI, the neighborhood news bulletin published by the POR, has won a large audience. In its May issue, Tygodnik Mazowsze, the most widely circulated underground periodical and the organ of the national leadership of Solidarnosc (the TKK) gave an account of the call issued by the POR, entitled "Down with poverty and the dictatorship."[ See box.]
Also in May, the first anniversary of its founding, the POR changed its name, becoming the Workers' Opposition Alliance - Solidarnosc (POR-S). In this way, it sought to indicate its historic roots in the struggle of Solidarnosc during the revolution of 1980-81 as well as define its attitude to the union today, within the social resistance.
The existence of Solidarnose, the statement of the POR-S Executive Committee declared, is indispensable for the liberation of the working class but it is not an adequate instrument. It is necessary to build a workers' organization able to take on much more advanced political tasks than a union can. This is the role that the POR-S wants to play, in close collaboration with Solidarnosc. (6)
The chair of the POR-S Executive Committee, the young Silesian worker Damian Dziubelski, has addressed an RZECZPOSPOLITEJ POLSKA IV MIEDZINARODOWKI open letter to the TKK explaining that over six years of activity he found himself forced to reflect "on the errors made in the struggle for the liberation of the working class."
This reflection led him to take the leadership in the underground of "an organization that includes leftwing sectors of the working class, trained and educated under a common banner, the banner of Solidarnosc."
To liberate the working class from bureaucratic domination, he says, it is necessary to combine the fight for trade-union freedom with a fight for a self-managed, democratic independent power in the state. Anti-Communist language
Dziubelski called the attention of the Solidarnose leaders to the fact that anti-Communist language abounds in many publications that claim to represent the union. "We do not use the same sort of language. For us, the present 'people's power' is in the hands of pseudo-socialists, who have established a degenerate regime that has nothing to do with socialism."
Stressing that both Solidarnose and the POR-S aspire to build a self-managed republic, the POR-S leader asked the members of the TKK "won't a free, self-managed and sovereign Poland, that is, one liberated from the bureaucratic dictatorship, be a socialist Poland?"
In his letter, Dziubelski insisted that the question be clarified. At the same time, he noted that over and above any difference that might exist, the underground leaderships of Solidarosc and the POR-S have a duty to the working class to collaborate and to coordinate their activities. The fate of a new August 1980 will
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The POR-S leader expressed the hope that Solidarnosc leaders "among whom there is no lack of persons with a broad outlook," such as Zbigniew Bujak and Jan Andrzej Gorny (member of the TKK for Upper Silesia), would respond positively to his organization's invitation. (7)
As its program proclaims, the POR-S considers its main task to be to assure that the Polish workers movement maintains total independence from "any organization or
5. The text of the founding platform was published in 'IV', No. 89, December 23, 1985.
"Przelom' (official bulletin of the POR-S), No. 3, 1986.
7. 'Wolny Robotnik' (publication of the POR-S of Upper Silesia), No. 38, 1986.
International Viewpoint 27 October 1986
18
institution outside the working class." This means political and ideological class independence not only from the totalitarian bureaucracy but also from the Church.
In this latter respect, the POR-S leaders diverge from many Solidarnosc activists, who see the Polish Catholic Church as an institution independent of the bureaucratic power, and today tend often to lean on it, coming under its ideological influence.
While the POR-S welcomes religious activists without any discrimination and is open to collaborate with priests who take the side of the workers, it considers that the Church hierarchy is a tacit but powerful ally of the bureaucratic regime, and that this "red and black" alliance, as it is called, is a major obstacle on the road to the liberation of the working class.