T HE ANNOUNCEMENT of the opening of negotiations between General Jaruzelski's team and the Solidarnosc leaders around Lech Walesa and Jacek Kuron is no bolt from the blue. The regime's crisis has reached a point of no return:
• An economic crisis, with falling production, galloping inflation (60% in 1988, according to official estimates) and growing difficulties in meeting the interest on the foreign debt.
• A political crisis within the bureaucracy shown by the resignation threats made at the last Central Committee Plenum of the Polish CP by the four main leaders of the regime (first secretary and chief of state Wojciech Jaruzelski, premier and Politiburo member Mieczyslaw Rakowski, as well as ministers of the interior and defense Czeslaw Kiszczak and Florian Sawicki).
• A social crisis, of which the recent strikes in Elblag and Lodz are only the first rumblings.
• A crisis of social control, with the revival after the spring and summer 1988 strikes of independent mass structures of Solidarnosc in the factories, the weakening of ties between these structures and the union leadership grouped around Lech Walesa, as well as the appearance of groupings seeking to replace this leadership. In this context, the Rakowski government has chosen to accelerate the restructuring of its power base.
The government's objective, tacitly supported by the imperialist bourgeoisie and the IMF, is to integrate the country's econ28 omy more into the world market and, together with this, to open the way for the growth of a new private sector.
It is clear that such a reform will result in increased exploitation of the workers and the closing of many unprofitable enterprises — in short, in worse conditions for the workers.
In order to carry through this project, the regime needs the explicit support of recognized working-class leaders, who are the only ones capable of heading off an intensive social explosion. This is the meaning of the proposal for negotiations formulated by the recent CP Central Committee Plenum.
The regime suggested that there was a possibility of legalizing Solidarnose if the union leaders pledged to prevent a blowup, in particular a spread of strikes, over two years; supported the economic reform project; worked to increase production; condemned "extremists"; and promised not to accept material aid from Western unions.
Depriving Solidarnosc of political independence
In short, the proposal was for no less than "normalizing" Solidarnosc, as Rakowski said to the Plenum, by depriving it both of political independence (through the signing of a social pact) and material independence (through ending international trade-union aid).
In a telephone interview, Jozef Pinior, leader of the Polish Socialist PartyDemocratic Revolution (PPS-RD), noted: "Up until now, the nomenklatura has owned the country without having the attributes of ownership, which created a
International Viewpoint #156 • February 6, 1989