letter from the Polish workers' International Viewpoint, Issue
Solidarnosc, and the evolution of the resistance movement after
"The left and us"
From an underground militant have been imprisoned, brutalised, and
This article was published in the underground bulletin of Solidarnosc, Kos No 12, July 27, 1982. It was then published in the Bulletin 'Information of the Solidarnose co-ordination abroad No 35. Translation is by IV. Dawid WARSZAWSKI
When asked about his political opinions Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, for many years a prisoner in the Gulag, replied 'I am neither in the camp of the right nor the camp of the left, I am in concentration camp.' caused a stir in the West at the time. For any politically conscious inhabitant of the East, taking the Elbe as the dividing line, it is immediately evident and comprehensible.
tortured for having
The catagories of left and right only make sense when they relate to different political programmes and visions of society. When the political system makes it impossible to formulate such programmes and visions political conflict cannot be expressed in categories of left and right. There has to be a fight for right and a left to even be able to exist.
This is the fight which Solidarnosc has taken up during its existence. It was leading to, just before the military crackdown, a crystallisation of different political initiatives. However, the trade union itself was neither left not right. This is difficult to understand, and even more to accept, for a Western observer, particularly of the left. They are used to organisations which, like Solidarnose, declare themselves neither of the left nor the
WORKERS MOVEMENT right doing it most often in bad faith - to hide their real character, usually rightist.
What is more, the union led the struggle against a system which uses the notions and slogans of socialism. It did so, in the name of religious and national values, among others, which would put it decidedly on the right. But from another side Solidarnosc was unequivocally a workers organisation, which fought and organised strikes to defend the political and economic interests of the working class—a struggle of the left par excellence in the eyes of the left. Finally, while one could get one or the other reply from the trade union activists on this question it turned out that they were resolutely anti-Soviet, and often pro-American. More than one theorist tore their hair....
about in Poland. Only the left can in fact ally as he would like to appear. The
Internationally Solidarnosc has received the declared support of the AFL-CIO, which is in practice quite reactionary (for example it unreservedly supported US policy in Vietnam), and also people like the head of the Salvadoran junta, Duarte. This was quite enough to consider it - on the principle that the friends of our enemies are our enemies -as definitely in the camp of the right. In an overall view of the world where the forces of reaction are set against those of progress Solidarnose decidedly did not want to take a definitive stand. For some people this situation was the cause of revisions sometimes fundamental-of the criteria of political analysis, for others, much more numerous, a source of irritation.
The Polish reader will ask, But how can that concern us, living in Poland occupied by pragmatic Marxists? We know that this is communism, we only know the other left by hearsay, and the intellectual heartsearchings of people living in well being and security are the least of our worries.' I think that this attitude, although quite understandable, is fundamentally wrong for at least two reasons.
The first, although immediately important, is in the last analysis less essential. This is that a considerable proportion of the material aid coming to Poland from the West comes from different organisations of the left, and in particular from the trade unions. There was a rather unpleasant conspiracy of silence on this question in Poland. The regime did not mention it because this reality was inconvenient for it for ideological reasons. For society as a whole, it was not interested in the origins of this aid, because the left for us has unpleasant connotations and we do not want to be indebted to it. It is important for us that questions of ideology and doctrine, which are the speciality of the left, do not lead to a drop in aid. This could happen if those that send it, seeing our indifference, come to the conclusion that Solidarnosc is finally rubbish. This is equally the case with the Solidarity with Solidarnose committees abroad, which owe their existence to the different left organisations.
On the other hand the second reason is fundamental. The fate of Solidarnose and of the European left are indissolubly linked - although very few on either side of the Iron Curtain realise it. A longlasting victory of the Military Council of National Salvation (WRON) would result in political death for the left for many years. Because the first result of this victory would be a definitive weakening of Communism as a political doctrine in the eyes of all. One could rejoice in this if it was not going to affect all those to the left of Franz Josef Strauss. The massive shift of votes to the right and the apocalyptic vision of the WRON as the supreme stage of communism, would destroy in passing the socialists, social democrats, eurocommunists and all those on the left. Such a perspective is nothing to rejoice
SaLDANOSi
MIN be our real ally, because only the left considers Polish society, and in particular the Polish working class, as an independent political subject. For the right Moscow is the only real concern, and Poland only counts inasmuch as it is able to upset Moscow. Poland defeated by Moscow would cease to interest the right, as Yalta has expressed the best. As for the industrial and financial milieus (the social base of the right) they already support Jaruzelski in the hope that they can make us cough up 28 billion dollars.
The victory of Solidarnosc in the struggle against the regime would be in turn an enormous success for the European left. It would prove the strength and capacity for resistance of the working class. It would strengthen the hope of political co-operation among the European labour movement, which is the only hope of political independence for our continent, where today politics is a function of the global strategy of two powers. In the short term this victory would reanimate the theory and practice of the workers movement which, stifled by the scolasticism of Moscow, has become more and more a methodology of how to struggle for pink marble washbasins in factory cloakrooms on one hand, and on the other hand an incubator
What does this mean in practice? For us in Poland not very much unfortunately. It would be good to translate our Polish specificity into categories comprehensible to the European left. But this is a task for our militants abroad. For us there remains the knowledge that President Reagan is not necessarily as sure an
Polish workers occupy factory (DR) Western communists are not inevitably swine or fools
On the other side it would be good that in the West one remembers, in the leit and the milieus to which it is close, that the struggle 'to be or not to be' part of the progressive camp is today taking place on the banks of the Vistula. Be. cause in these circles we are beginning to feel there is a certain lassitude about Poland while activity in support of the victims of the Turkish or Salvadorean juntas - of which moreover they have great need — appears as a political alternative to support for Solidarnosc, this irritating and equivocal movement. Political aid from the left is indispensable for us today to ensure that a curtain of forgetfulness and indifference does not fall on our struggle. Only the left today remembers Chile, Eritrea, or the Tartars of the Crimea. The left in its turn needs our victory so that it does not perish itself.
A post script for those who do not like the left. This article is written by some. one who is sympathetic to the left and who, in the future, hopes to become a militant. This means that I myself would also like to fight in a free and democratic society, with political methods, against for example, the vision of society represented by the Confederation of Independent Poland (KPN - nationalist and pro-Western organisation). But for that to be possible I must fight today, side by side with those of the KPN, against the totalitarian regime, in occupation and abroad. Today still, the categories of right and left are meaningless in Poland. The struggle is going on so that they can have a meaning. The European left, in that struggle, is an ally for all of us!
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