Secondly, our incorporation in the Western cultural world led to accepting certain "certain concepts and institutions in the social and political spheres." Thanks to these, we are aware of the possibility of "a social order democracy, which means the state has to
SAMORZAONE
ZANODOWE recognize the rights of the society, and of a type of state called a republic, which belongs to all citizens." This is supposed
"Poland did not set out a and enslavement," "here it never came to the rule of the army, the police or a bureaueracy."
Next, the authors of the Charter proceed to characterize those to whom the
GWARANTEM
ODNOWY
KRAJU appeal is directed. They base themselves "on the most recent events, thus, on the period in which, in our opinion, you showed your nature most clearly." events in question concern solely "Po-
"When, in an attempt to save the country, working people formed Solidarnose, you decided that the course of events in Poland had to be reversed, and the ruling group subservient to you in one night trampled on the accord reached
The authors conclude: "You did not permit us workers and
'Independent and self-managed trade unions — Solidarnosc - are the guarantee for the renewal of the country. (DR)
farmers to have even a share in the running of our country." They then proceed to make an indictment.
"We accuse you of doing everything possible to reduce us to being your slaves
"You are trying to block
A reply to charter 84 off our own course of historical development." "You are trying to take God out of our lives." "You want to drag us into the pit of your moral degradation." "You want to cut us off from the rest of our Western cultural
In April and May 1984 the text of a mysterious document entitled •Charter 84' was circulated by Radio Free Europe. Apparently put out by the underground trade-union commission (TKZ) of Solidarnosc in the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk, this document has a distinctly nationalistic and clerical flavour to it. The authenticity of the document has been neither confirmed nor denied by the commission in question.
by practically the entire underground press of Solidarnose but it excited a violent reaction on the part of the weekly Kos, paper of the Committee for Social Resistance (KOS).
Among other criticisms mainly addressed to
Radio Free Europe the paper published a lengthy analysis of Charter 84 written by one of the main organisers of KOS known under the pseudonym of Dawid Warsawski. Below we reproduce extracts from this article.
Dawid WARSZAWSKI
Charter 84 is made up of three sec-
"An Appeal to Poles at Home and
"An Appeal to the Governments of the USA and Great Britain, and "An Appeal to the Russians, That Is
All the Citizens of the Soviet Union."
The "Appeal to the Poles" concludes that "our strivings for independence are now gaining extraordinarily in purposefulness." On the other hand, "while the
Russians keep trying to force their disastrous domination over us, we hesitate to let them know clearly what is on our
The contents are as follows: In the
"Appeal to Governments,"
"the signatures the Western governments set on the Yalta Accords have served as tombstones weighing more heavily on the grave of Polish freedom
International Viewpoint 24 December 1984
Charter 84 was ignored and sovereignty. Indeed, they create the impression that the "Soviet Union is not the guard of the East European prison house of peoples but rather the maintainer oflaw and order."
The authors of the Charter say that failure to oppose the "Sovietization of East Europe" could help to open up the way for Russia to "swallow up the West
The main part of the document is, however, the "Appeal to the Russians." In the introduction, the authors stress that Poland's historical distinctiveness is due to two factors - its acceptance of Christianity from Rome and, with that, its incorporation into the world of West-
The first instilled into Polish consciousness the conviction of "the inviolable dignity of the human personality" and that "human beings are destined to live in freedom."
"You are dragging us down to the level of your own backwardness."
"We accuse you, finally," the authors write," of having the ultimate responsibility for all the shooting that led to our already blood-soaked soil being steeped with the blood of the workers."
The TKZ document goes on, picking
"You justify all this generally by saying that it is part of the established realities created by war. "However," the authors continue, "we do not feel bound decisions...that created those
In summary, the document compares the strength of both sides and concludes: "In terms of physical force, you have the advantage...but the situation is reversed as regards moral strength. It is you who are afraid that your society will become infected with our spirit of freedom. You are afraid of all free nations...and above your own countrymen, noble Russians who not only perceive the pared to suffer for it."
The authors end by saying, is knocking at your door. is only knocking; tomorrow it will bang with its fists."
This is indeed a strange document. In it there is a mixture of political naivete toward the West, dizzy glorification of
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NIEZALEZNE
our own past and present, and all in the context of arrogance toward the East. This is the stuff of all the nightmares in
Polish political life, starting from the attitude toward the Uniates (1) and concluding with the demagoguery of the Confederation for an Independent Poland.
To be sure, this melange is the last refuge of Polishness in moments of peril, but it is only one more nightmare. The fact that this view has gained the endorsement of what is certainly the most important TKZ in Poland is both significant and deeply disturbing. we must make a logical analysis of the contents of the Charter.
The basic idea is, of course, valid and important. The ultimate aim of our fight is regaining our independence. And we should speak clearly about this, even if immediate tactical considerations make it advisable to avoid raising this question in the union's official documents. Mobilizing Polish public opinion around this question at home and, above all, abroad is a very important and badly neglected task of our work. It deserves every sup-
Moreover, the view that the Yalta agreements are a basic source of our misfortunes is quite correct, if you consider Yalta as the conclusion of a certain historical process.
From the West they want a repudiation of the Yalta agreement. East, they want recognition of the bases of Poland's distinctiveness, doubt that it will with the pangs of guilt and It is striking that the TKZ directs its appeal to the Western governments on the one hand but to the citizens of the USSR on the other, and not the
In both the USA and Great Britain power is exercised, and was exercized at the time of Yalta, by democratic governments answerable to their own societies.
It is incomprehensible that appeals on this question should be addressed to governments. Today, as forty years ago, our bondage is the price the West pays for the sake of its own tranquility. There is little to indicate that they have come to think that this deal has ceased to be profitable for them, although lately there have been some new and promising political moves on the question....
The most astonishing section of the Charter, however, is concerned with the East and not the West. The title alone is mind-boggling. "An Appeal to the Russians, That is, All the Citizens of the Soviet Union." They choose to ignore the existence of the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, White Russians and Ukrainians, to mention only our nearest neighbors. And that's not the worst of it. They submit their grievances about the West to the governments, since the peoples of course love Poland and would not let any harm be done to it except through inadvertence. But they have the audacity to turn to the Soviet citizens and accuse them of crimes committed 18
MA CHI by their regime, a regime that before moving against Poland managed to slaughter about 15 million of its own
The picture of our country emerges from this TKZ document is a dishonest glorification. We do not have any reason to be ashamed of our history.
comparison with other European countries and especially our neighbors, we come out quite well. As to whether "Poland never set out on the road of ex-
" the Ukrainians and Lithuanians should be asked about that. As
"it never came to rule by the '" the victims of Brzese [the concentration camp set up by the dictator Pilsudski] and of the pacifications in eastern Poland [repression of Ukrainian peasant protests in 1930] should be
The worst thing is not so much that this picture is a false one but that the authors of the Charter seem sincerely to believe in it. That is the only way to explain the curious "indictment"
blaming everything happened in the People's Republic of Poland on the Russians. But it was Poles who fired on the workers in 1956, 1970 and 1981. It was Poles - heirs of democratic and republican traditions — who made workers run the gauntlet in police stations, who slandered defenseless people in the press, who tormented people in Barczewo prison. We could go on and on adding to the list, but this is
It is an obvious fact that the ultimate source of power in the People's Republic of Poland lies in Moscow. At the time, it is Poles who rule Poland, and with a considerable freedom of maneuver....
Moreover, it is not true that the citizens of the present USSR never fought for democracy. From the nineteenth century conspiracies through the revolutions of 1905 and February 1917, the civil war, the long tradition of anti-Communist guerrilla warfare (lasting in some regions up to the 1950s) prove, if any proof were needed, that these people are no less attached to the "distinctively Polish and Western" traditions of democracy and republicanism than any other nation. Nor has this involved only isolated cases, as the authors of the Charter suggest. Moreover, considering the incomparably higher level of repression there, I would like to be able to believe that in a similar situation, if it came to that, that we would be able to stand up as well....
It seems that the anti-Polish policies of the Czarist and Soviet authorities were and are still being carried out with the full approval of the population. But before getting carried away by righteous anger, we might recall the partition of the Ukraine between Poland and the Soviets by the Treaty of Riga [which concluded the Soviet-Polish war in 1921] and the fate of the Ukrainian minority in Poland in the past, as well as the fate of the colonial empires of the western democracies, the price that India or Algeria had to pay for its independence. ately, chauvinism is not something peculiar to autocracies...
The Charter's rhetoric is such that if the Soviets were to distribute it on a mass scale, it would efface the deep impact produced by the Appeal to the Nations of Eastern Europe issued by Delegate Conference of Solidarnosc [in darnose movement as a whole.
The publication of this Charter is not only morally reprehensible but a display of the most incredible political stupidity. If, to use the language of the authors of this document, history is knocking at someone's door, this can only mean the "knocking of Solidarnos" on the gates of the Kremlin. If history ever "pounds" there, it will only be with the fists of these so scorned, "degraded" Russian
Therefore, in my opinion, the Interim Regional Executive Committee in the Gdansk region should take stand on this document and distance itself from the contents. I also think that this matter should be discussed in the entire underground press and in the movement for Independent Education. deed, there are few matters so crucial for our future as whether the Soviet authorities will be able to keep alive the antag. onism between the "Polaks" and the "Ruskis" and thereby prevent these two nations from turning against their common enemy.
Uniates are catholics who are part of the Roman In the sixteenth century in Poland the we terri Poland were incorporated
The catholics of Greek tradition were the victims of discrimination by the feudal state in Poland which forced the unification on them in the framework of suppressing the aspirations of Ukrainian nationalists.
International Viewpoint 24 December 1984
'Jaruzelski does not defend socialism' parachuted in from Moscow.
taken over.
that the repressive measures they use, and the exploitation of waged work in the factories they direct, are anti-worker and anti-socialist.
Our task, the task of Polish socialists in the 1980s, is the political and economic struggle within the trade union and political parties. It is to take up the ideas
Below we publish two texts by the Robotnik group. The first appeared in January 1984 and explains the view of this group on the need for po litical discussion within Solidarnosc. It is in this context that Robotnik asserts that 'among political currents there is room for a socialist current.'
Although this is not apparent in the following article, this group nevertheless idealises European social democracy a great deal. The second article declares itself in favour of the reconstruction of the Polish Socialist
Party (PPS).
Igor LEWY
Just before the December events,
Jaruzelski's propagandists thought up the slogan 'We will defend socialism as we do the independence of our country.
There is little doubt that, for most people in
Poland, the second half of the equation is a lie. The country is not independent, and therefore there is no independence to defend. But this slogan contains a further falsification: the pretence that Jaruzelski and the apparatus defend socialism.
This cannot be, since socialism does not exist in Poland, any more than independence does. Socialism is not some kind of ideal state. It is not a system that can be decreed to exist, in order to defend it later. There are no socialist states in the world, there are only states that are more or less constituted in accordance with socialist principles. There are certain institutional gains won in struggles by the socialist and workers' movements, such as the 8-hour day, social security, parliamentary democracy or even different forms of direct democracy, like workers' councils or the system of internal democracy in trade unions, as existed in
Solidarnose before December
13, 1981.
All visions of an ideal system in which we are asked to believe, which are sup.
sufficient to make us happy, posedly bring in their wake a dictatorship of one or another skilful ideological group, trying to legitimise their power by basing it on their own supposed infallibility.
The Polish workers' movement that organised itself into free trade unions at the end of the 1970s, still exists and has nose movement faces two essential tasks. The first is to break with the artificial notion of unity of thought, and consecond, just as important, is to preserve stitute different political currents. - The within the framework of Solidarnose the united front in struggle of different political currents, to achieve aims as elementary as that of the foundation of real direct democracy, that is to say, the implementation of the programme of the self-managed republic.
Among these political currents, there is certainly room for a socialist current. To be a socialist in the People's Republie of Poland and to argue for the principles of socialism is a particularly difficult and important task. The so-called socialists of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP), who call themselves communists, have not only taken our national property but have also illegitimately appropriated the traditions and demands of the socialist movement. Their regime is essentially anti-worker, in the same way
COLDAN and expressions which Ludwik
Warynski and Janek Wisniewski (1), the workers of the Paris Commune, and the
Polish workers of the shipyard 'Paris
Commune' gave their lives. The first step on this path is to take back our workers' festival of May 1. The next step will be the creation of socialist groups that, in discussion and in struggle, will determine the forms of the Polish socialist movement.
We are facing the task of building a free Poland, in which an elementary sense of justice will be linked with modernism, the effective functioning of the prises and the whole of the self-managed entereconomy. There is not such a state in existence in the world. But we can, through our unremitting work and our struggle, move towards such an ideal. Socialism is a movement and a way of thinking of the future, and not the automatic realisation of a vision thought up by doctrinaires.
Robotnik, No 45, Warsaw, January 30, 1984
Ludwik Warynski was the founder of the first workers' party in Poland in 1882, the Prowas murdered in 1970 in Gdynia and then his letaryat. Janek Wisniewski was a worker. He body was taken by demonstrators all round the town. He became a symbol for all those who struggled 1971. from December 1970 to January
Meeting with Lech Walesa in Wroclaw, July 1981 (DR) grown since the December coup by Jar- The road to a new party uzelski. It is a truly democratic movement, born of the rank and file, that leads the struggles against the system of economic exploitation and political enslavement that exists in Poland. The December defeat convinced all the working people of Poland that victory cannot be won in this struggle through negotiation, that the enemy will only bend when forced to do so, and that the only power that could so force it is the workplace and inter-workplace structures of Soli-
Jan MORAWSKI
In many social circles the question -should the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) be resuscitated and if so, between the Polish Socialist Party and the Polish Workers Party (PPR) in 1948(1)
state affairs has been made impossible. Many people have lost the ability to decide their own ideological identity. It is only thanks to August [1980] and Solidarnose that it has become possible to distinguish a social democrat from a Christian democrat, a liberal from a
This legacy must be safecommunist.
darnose, backed up by its system of pubguarded. It is a moral obligation for us to lications and clandestine education programmes.
founded at the beginning of 1943 by Stalinists
Today, as new political programmes are continually put forward, the Solidar-
International Viewpoint 24 December 1984 was nothing but the liquidation of the humanist, liberal and democratic current of Polish socialism. The banning of legal activity by opposition parties - contrary to the constitution - since 1947 has led to a situation where free discussion of in
Polish Workers Party (PPR)
The PPR fused
1948 with the PPS which the Stalinists had
19
Perspectives of a current develop this ideological gain and organisational experience. Political parties will undoubtedly the natural form of the democratic and libertarian ideas of August.
But it is a long road to the reconstruction of the PPS. To have political strength of the revolutionary left and authority it would have several hundred thousand members at least, and its leaders and programme would have to be widely known.
The article we publish below appeared in July 1984 in bulletin No 20 reach that point, we still need many of Wolny Robotnik (Free Worker), the organ of the Union of Workers months of hard work.
Councils, National Resistance Movement (ZRP-PRO) of the region of premature attempts now could harm the
Silesia. This text was preceded by the following introduction.
possibilities of future expansion of the party. This is why the task on the agenda now is to develop cooperation between
The abridged version of the article which follows is an introduction to the independent editors and journals, as a discussion aimed at working out concrete forms of action.
well as discussion on different aspects of subject to which we have returned more than once in our columns in the alternative programme to the policies order to explain the views and conceptions of the PRO.
of the PUWP, a programme of democratic board is in full agreement with the ideas of the authors in the article pubsocialism adapted to the real conditions
The latter estimates that the criticisms levelled at the end of the twentieth century.
editorial board of the journal Robotnik, which we have been collaborating
Democratic socialism should therefore with for some time, do not constitute an attack on a political adversary be first of all constituted as a current but are rather an attempt to promote a concrete discussion on the perspectives for the Polish left in the current situation, on the national within the existing structures of Solidar-
First of all, we have to elaborate a clear vision in the discussions of parliademocracy and self-managed mentary well as the numerous democracy conceptions of economic and social policies that are indispensable for Poland to emerge from the crisis, and avoid the danger of a further retreat of civilisation.
We need, not a declaration of principles of a few pages, as for example already exists in the documents of the WSN [see the introduction to the dossier] but developed programmes that really express the interests of the workers. We should have more ideas than necessary in relation to our needs, and the possibilities of implementing them. Only on this condition will we have the moral right to demand a new distribution of political power in the state, and the introduction of new management principles.
For the time being, we still do not have this overabundance of ideas, nor do
Nor are there we even have enough.
established links between activists or a socialist or social-democratic orientation.
We still have, therefore, a lot of work and
Every mistake consistent effort ahead.
inconsistent action by the elite in and power increases our chances.
But their weakness must not be the main source of our strength. An alternative conception of the system could only be serious and expect a kindly interest from the international social-democratic movement if it is based on the Polish experiences, on our internal traditions.
If this work is carried out during 1984, then perhaps the political council of the reborn PPS could appear publicly from the beginning of 1985.
Only an open, public presentation of the socialist alternative by people of public esteem, and known for their commitment to demo cratic socialism would be a challenge of historic importance.
Robotnik, No 44, Warsaw,
January 23, 1984
20 as well as the international level.
Robotnik, the Warsaw journal, published an article at the beginning of the year entitled The road to a new party' (see page 19). The article begins in the following way: In many social circles the question - should the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) be resuscitated and if so, when? - is being raised.'
The first part of the question, that is, should the PPS be resuscitated, indeed been raised by some activists in Solidarnose. This is an important question and implies another to which we absolutely must find a reply: What are the perspectives for the Polish left? Or, more directly: What are the perspectives for the revolutionary current within the Polish opposition movement?
To avoid any misunderstanding let us define straight away the main characteristics of this current. They are that it struggles for the revolutionary overthrow of the current system of power and for its replacement by a self-managed republic. It sees the working class as the motor force of such a revolution. It upholds the traditions of revolutionary thought of the workers' movement, counterposing workers' control and socialism as the alternative to the current Stalinist system.
Although still limited in strength, such a revolutionary current exists in Poland and is struggling within the structures of
Its views find a growing echo among members of the opposition.
of the latter would never define their views as revolutionary or to the left, but they, nevertheless, support the main proposals of the revolutionary current. This is because, in their eyes, these positions best answer the political situation in Poland and the conditions in which the working class finds itself.
The journal Robotnik has a clear and simple vision of the future of the Polish left: it will be necessary to reconstruct the PPS and to make it into a social democratic party. The first error of the
The editorial editorial board of Robotnik lies in the way they pose the question of organising the left.
For these authors, the party - in the case the PPS — is the only possible solution to the problems of organisation, and its construction must be undertaken immediately. And this must be done in several ways, mainly from above, by people with some social standing, who are known for their contribution to the cause of democratic socialism, presenting the socialist alternative.
The article in question states that 'the task on the agenda now is to develop cooperation between the independent editors and journals, as well as discussions of different aspects of an alternative programme to the policy of the PUWP, a programme of democratic socialism
International Viewpoint 24 December 1984
indispensable safety valve, defusing the out of the question that any European suited to the real conditions at the end of the twentieth century!
Unfortunately, we will not construct a workers' party with just an alternative programme to that of the PUWP. It is not this sort of programme that we need but a programme of struggle against the
PUWP and the bureaucracy.
It is significant that the articles on programme and organisation published in
Robotnik fail totally problems of the present struggle of the working class and of the strategy that the structures of Solidarnosc
For the authors of Robotnik there is a complete separation between on the one hand, the party and the programme, and on the other the perspectives for the struggle against the authorities.
problem of building a new organisation of the left no doubt seems very simple.
But this is just an illusion. The building of an organisation is not just a matter of raising a slogan 'Build the PPS' and putting out an attractive programme.
On the contrary, it is necessary to combine two levels of activity, to draw up a class-struggle programme and, on this basis, to build an organisation of the
Posing the question of whether it would be useful today to resuscitate the PPS, without raising the question of the role that this party should play in the perspective of overthrowing the totalitarian bureaucracy cannot amount to more than an abstract exercise. That is, unless the party they mean is one made up of a small group of intellectual dreamers...But we know that this is not the sort of party under dis-
The second major error committed by the editorial board of Robotnik has to do with the political character of any new party. The name itself - Polish Socialist Party - is not crucial. But the assertion that the new organisation of the left must have a social-democratic outlook involves a misunderstanding.
In fact, there are many political ideas put forward in Robotnik direct contradiction, and justifiably so, to the programme and the practice of social
Nonetheless, the authors of the articles published in this journal not only state that social democracy must be the political creed of a future PPS, but they are full of praises for the achievements and work of these Western social-
In another article, the author draws the attention of the reader to the intrinsic stability of the capitalist system, comparing it to the instability of the Polish system. Then drawing the conclusion that 'the communists and their system cannot be negotiating partners for the PPS comparable to what the capitalist system is for the Western social democrats.'
Such a gross oversimplification cannot be allowed to pass without comment. The capitalist system is not merely in partnership with the West European social democrats. grated into the system; they provide an International Viewpoint 24 December 1984 uprisings of the working class and diverting social protest into the parliamentary road.
Moreover, the main leaders of these
Western social democratic parties often occupy leading posts in the banks and in the large capitalist enterprises. It would be more accurate to compare the Western social democrats to the liberal currents in the PUWP.
Western social democrats criticise certain socio-economic whilst fiercely defending the system itself.
Is the Robotnik editorial board trying to fool its readers or fool itself? Because in other articles about the current situation in Poland and about the problems of the opposition movement, one finds ideas that are a million miles away from rmist conceptions of social y. •...the task of Polish socialists in the 1980s is... to take up the watchwords and ideals for which Ludwik
Warynski and Janek Wisniewski, the workers of the Paris Commune, and the
Polish workers of the Paris Commune shipyard gave their lives, Igor Lewy in an article reaffirming that Jaruzelski is no defender of socialism (see page 19).
In another article, the same author talks about 'a total transformation the power system', because 'no compromise is possible any longer today'. These words express the political conceptions of the revolutionary left.
absolutely nothing, in common with social-democratic ideology. So why has the editorial board of Robotnik, a journal which, without doubt, is one of the best currently produced by activists in Solidarnosc, decided to launch this proposal for bullding a new party immediately and what is more for building a party of a social-democratic character?
Perhaps the determination to form such a party as soon as possible derives in part from a loss of faith in the effectiveness of political struggle now being waged by the underground mass movement. Some texts published in Robotnik, suggest a certain feeling of disillusion with the attitudes of Polish civil society: "The silent majority watch television, drink vodka, spit, sigh, hate and pray for lightening to strike from a cloudless
Civil society allows itself to be easily frightened by the thinking of the vanguard, and that is true in all strata'.
But the choice of a social-democratic orientation for the new party seems even more bizarre. One might accept that in present conditions the editorial board of Robotnik considers the term 'social democrat' to be less repellent than the terms 'socialist' or 'left-wing' or 'revolutionary, even though they frequently use these words themselves as synonyms - except for the last one of course.
Perhaps the position of Robotnik is explained by the hope expressed in the article entitled "The road to a new party' that the new PPS 'could count on a lively from the international social-democratic movement.' However, it is social-democratic party would undertake the risky operation of giving material help to an opposition party in Poland that no one is familiar with.
The reality is that the Western social democracy remains one of the biggest obstacles, in these countries to revolutionary changes similar to the building of workers' self-management as called for in the programme adopted at the Gdansk congress. (1)
The questions raised at the beginning of this article still remain: What are the perspectives for the revolutionary current in the Polish opposition? What are the organisational forms necessary for the consolidation of this current? The time has not yet come for building a revolutionary socialist party. But the class struggle itself forces us to build and develop, within the structures of the union, a broad tendency that declares its support for a revolutionary solution to the Polish crisis.
Such a tendency - the workers' opposition to the totalitarian bureaucracy will not be united organisationally. The workers' opposition will be made up of various structures, commissions, jour nals, publications, bound together by a common strategy of struggle for a workers' republic.
Forming such a workers' opposition, which is basically a form of the working-class struggle, is becoming a more and more urgent task. But this requires organisers, a group of activists who will get down to the job of building the work. ers' opposition as a tendency within the union. The first task of the revolutionary left in Poland is to set up such a grouping
Let us end by quoting from an article which appeared in issue No 13 of [Polish] Inprekor, the journal of the Fourth International: What is needed is to develop agreement between people willing to take action and united around a common conception of immediate and long-term tasks for the movement, which flow from the objectively revolutionary dynamic of this movement, as well as by a determination and capacity to work together to accomplish these
This conception seems to us to be quite correct. The construction of the first organisational structures of the Polish left created on the basis of an understanding among the revolutionary left can only be carried through successfully if we concentrate on the needs of the class struggle itself.
Any elaboration of programme must be linked to this and the struggle itself will show us the right time to transform the revolutionary left into a qualitatively superior form of organisation.
Wolny Robotnik, ZRP-PRO of Silesia, July 1984
The first national congress of Solidarnose which took place in Gdansk, September-October 1981.
21
The international logic of the situation
It is not national antagonisms that frighten the Nomenklatura people in the Kremlin and Warsaw contrary to what might be thought. They exploit these antagonisms, setting workers of different nationalities against each other, and thereby keeping them from organizing joint workers action on an international scale. This has made it possible, for example in the USSR, to build up an ideological underpinning of Great Russian chauvinism for the rule of the Nomenklatura, in addition to the regime's base in the administrative and police apparatus.
Moreover, this has a reciprocal effect. Anti-Russian phobias serve as a "national" compensation for the oppression and exploitation suffered at the hands of the native Polish totalitarian bureaucracy. The Russians are fed on descriptions of the hatred that the Poles have for them. In this respect, unfortunately, the Soviet Communist Party propaganda does not have to make up a lot. By way of reaction, this fosters a still greater aversion to Poles among Russians, and so on. While all this is going on, Chernenko and Jaruzelski are having a good time. They would rather not think about what would happen if the workers on both sides of the River Bug [the river running along the Polish-Russian border] got together one day and stopped hating each other.
The Nomenklatura people are not worried about the lack of friendship and still less by hatred among nations, in particular in those countries under the domination of "fraternal parties." Because this is an essential precondition for the functioning of reciprocal interventions (1) within the framework of the "camp." What they are afraid of is that people will take the official friendship seriously, because from that it is only one step to internationalism, that is international solidarity among the workers and revolutionary struggle against the Nomenklatura and capital.
If we do not want to see antibureaucratic movements and uprisings continually end in an impasse, it is necessary to combine social and national objectives with a clear definition of an international strategy. In the present geopolitical situation, we should regard every sort of noninternationalism as — to call things by their proper name — the concentrated expression of political cretinism. And this is both from the standpoint of the struggle for the liberation of the working class, as well as from the standpoint of the national struggle for the right of peoples to self-determination.
The national gulf deliberately widened by the totalitarian bureaucracy, that 22 separates Polish workers from Ukrainian, Czech or Russian workers represents exactly the distance that separates these workers from freedom and these nations from independence, both internally and externally.
There is an objective need for internationalizing the dynamic of the processes of the August revolution that have arisen in Poland, which, as history has shown, is the weak link in the chain of the rule of the totalitarian bureaucracy. The only alternative to this is suicide in isolation. We do not have the means to afford the luxury of a philosophy of struggle confined to a national ghetto in the conditions of a determined political geography in the international arena.
Despite the bureaucratic counterrevolution initiated by the December 1981 putsch and which is continuing today, the revolutionary forces set in motion in August 1980 are continuing to operate. But whether they will be the spark that lights a future flame or the slowly dying embers of the past depends on solving the principal dilemma. Despite the metaphorical way this was put, the dramatic choice before us is quite clear: Either these forces will continue to develop along a revolutionary axis of internationalism, or they will continue to decline in the downward spiral of isolationism.
If we do not want to see Soviet tanks sent against a workers' revolution in Poland or in some other countries, we have to begin eliminating the antiworking-class repressive forces and their social base in the Soviet Union itself. Exactly forty years after the export of the bureaucratic anti-imperialist revolution from the USSR to Poland, we find ourselves obliged to begin to export the antibureaucratic workers' revolution from Poland to the USSR. This is not only possible and feasible, in particular considering the means at the disposal of the leading bodies of Sottdarnose and if there is a strategic reorientation and an attempt to find the concrete way of relating to the working class as the fundamental protagonist in the struggle. It is also necessary.
The present phase can, and must, be characterized as a "revolution halted at the crossroads." The revolutionary situation has to be defined as one that demands a choice between two alternatives - internationalization or continuing self-limitation. Internationalism, so much besmirched by fools and rightists, is first of all a historical social question of achieving the essential precondition for the workmovement to act to emancipate labor. But it is also, in the striet sense, a practical question, how to fight so as not
Transport strike in Warsaw, August 1981 (DR) to lose again. It does not matter very much in fact whether defeat is the result of foreign intervention, as was the case in Hungary or Czechoslovakia, or of a domestic counterrevolution. The latter was possible in Poland as a result of the revolution being paralyzed by a general awareness of the external threat posed by the Soviet totalitarian bureaucracy.
If our fight for freedom and independance is not to resemble a labor Sisyphus, we have to reject the substance of nationalism that leads inevitably to isolating the struggle that we are waging and to defeat. Historical and ethnic antagonisms cannot replace the struggle for social and national liberation in its international dimension.
To be sure, we do not want to revive the errors of [Rosa] Luxemburgism, that is, a mechanical notion of internationalism that leads to underestimating the question of national independence. But it will not do either to fall into the opposite extreme, underestimating the importance of international workers soli darity. Without the latter, and we cannot have any illusions about this, we have no chance of overthrowing the system of
In 1969, the Polish army intervened il Czechoslovaka to crush the Prague Spring along with the armies of East Germany and the Soviet Union. Now, if the Warsaw Pact undertook an intervention against Poland, Czechoslovak forces would probably be included - IV.
The birth of the people's republic
Debates on nationalisation rule of totalitarian bureaucracy. And we are not exaggerating!
As an appendix, we present some concrete proposals for exporting the revoluagitational campaign directed at the Soviet military units stationed in Poland (for example, distribution of leaflets and press statements in Russian on the bases of
Stalinism has reduced historical science to the level of a method for these units, either by dumping them there justifying their errors at any particular point in time. It is also used to or passing them from hand to hand).
muddle society's awareness of history, by separating it from its real roots.
Organizing radio broadcasts
For a long time now, their opponents have been trying to counterpose to
Poland for Byelorussia, Czechoslavakia, this official history some kind of 'true' history made up of the oral tra-
Lithuania, East Germany and the Ukraine, dition and of the official histories accepted in the past.
in the languages of these countries (for on a mass scale of the works of pre-war or emigre historians was an imexample, regular broadcasts from conportant phenomenon during the period when Solidarnose could operate moving transmitters, a means
The historical debate is an important comthat is already used in Poland).
Use of clandestine print shops and
The different left currents are not outside of this debate as this print shops outside the country for the article, published below, illustrates. (1) The article is anonymous and was needs of dissident and opposition groups printed in the form of a short pamphlet by the Warsaw journal, Robotnik, in our neighboring in 1984. Robotnik has also published several historical articles presenting organization of Solidarnose's own infordifferent views to the ones expressed here.
mation service for these countries.
The following article is interesting mainly for two reasons.
ority should be given to East Germany shows that forces in the antibureaucratic and Czechoslavakia, whose frontiers are combat the attempts of the Stalinists to claim all the credit for overthrow particularly penetrable, and where we will ing capitalism in Poland. Secondly, it represents an effort by the under get our first foreign readers.
ground movement to recover the truth about the mass revolutionary up-
The establishment of durable insurge in Poland, toward which the Soviet authorities and their Polish ternational contacts and coordination of acolytes in fact took a negative attitude, although they later went on, common antibureaucratic actions with for their own reasons, to abolish capitalism and set up collective econindependent groups in the nearest countries of the
The following document is not clear about the contradictions of the bureaucratic camp and the setting up for
Polish Socialist Party in the period in question. But since this party has them of an independent information sernot existed for decades and the official histories give only a Stalinist ver vice in order to counteract the sion ot its history, this is not the first concern of antibureaucratic opposi
Polish and antirevolutionary propaganda tionists in Poland today. It is, however, a question that oppositionists will conducted in these countries, for examhave to deal with more as the debates progress, as other articles in this ple, by disseminating the major docudossier indicate, for example, the article criticising Robotnik for identifyments of the August [Gdansk] accords.
Besides this "outward work,
The problem of assessing the West European Social Democratic parties important to undertake "inward work"
is a current problem for the Polish opposition. The contradictions of left also that will facilitate the former.
Social Democracy in revolutionary periods is not something that the postwar generations in Poland have seen, much less experienced. The funda-
Condemnation of Great Russian mental thing for them is to rediscover the objective, democratic and plurwas combatted by alist nature of mass movements for overthrowing capitalism.
Lenin in his time, and clear support for the fight for national independence by the Soviet nations dominated by Russia.
This should go hand in hand with stopping and condemning anti-Russian propaganda in the underground press.
earlier not every German was a fascist, today not every Russian is a chauvinist.
Combatting the national phobias, as well as having a critical attitude to tendentious nationalist literature and nation-
- Bringing pressure to bear from below on the Solidarnose leadership for developing international collaboration in countries, which should be accompanied by an extensive testing by Solidarnose of a political strategy and of public and active positions for relating to the national and social problems in the USSR on a fraternal revolutionary basis.
Proletarians of the world, unite for your liberty and ours!
Front Robotniczy (Workers Front)
No 1, Warsaw, August 12, 1984
International Viewpoint 24 December 1984 legally and it continues today. ing itself with Social Democracy.
In the official histories it is common to hold up the Polish Workers Party (PRP) (2) and the Communist camp as the only consistent supporters of the socialisation of the means of production, in contrast to other groups (legal or illegal) which in some indeterminate way had denied this principle by defending, to a greater or lesser extent, the old capit-
In reality even a superficial knowledge of the period 1944-1945 allows one to put forward an opposing argument. That is, there were only a small number of isolated individuals who defended capitalism as the future economic system for Poland, and amongst the political parties only the most right-wing (the National Party - SN) supported the idea. The vast majority were in favour of changes in the direction of socialisation of the economy. Amongst these the PRP was not by any means the most left-wing.
In order to counter the official lies it is therefore useful to recall the main ideas for tranforming the economy spelt out by the [World War II] underground in Po-
The rediscovery, movement feel the need to The proposals for reform were formulated on the basis of the objective
They cannot be assessed in abstraction from the reality of Poland between the wars and in the period of the occupation.
I do not pretend to be able even to sketch the history of the Polish economy here. Nevertheless, it is necessary to re-
The economic system of the Second Republic (3) was a capitalist one. But it was a specific form of capitalism. peculiarity lay, first and foremost in the weakness of indigenous private property.
Readers interested in the period 1944 to when the workers' state was established duced in Polish Inprekor and then reproduced Nos 20 and 21, October 29, 1984 and Novem-
1984, under the headline, 'A strategy The PPR fused with the PPS in 1948 to form the PUWP — the Polish United Workers Party, the Polish Communist Party.
The Second Republic is the term used to describe the national bourgeois state in Poland
The remarks of two well-known personalities representing opposite poles of opinion - R. Dmowski and J. Ryng (4) -defining Polish capitalism as a capitalism without capital' are symptomatic of this. In this situation, foreign and state capital played the key role. This is apparent in for company stocks and shares in Poland in 1935, where we read that state and foreign capital together made up about 72% of all company stocks in Poland, as well as 95% of all capital. Indigenous private property represented 28% of company stocks and shares and 5% of all capital.
It is therefore not surprising that the former minister of finance J. Zdziechowski concluded in his book The myth of the gold standard (1937) that: "The nullity of the sort of ownership that exists makes a mockery of the idea of Polish initiative in the private sector.? He added that this is the main reason for the of a system state control of the economy in Poland
It is true that state control of the A Solidarnosc headquarters with a poster of Lenin (DR) economy in Poland in the inter-war years had come a long way. The statistics for the year 1937 illustrate the role of the public treasury in the different branches of production and services: coal mining, 24%; oil refining, 20%; steel, nearly 70%; machine-tool industry, about 50%; car industry, 100%; chemical industry, 25%; electronic industry, 12.5% (but 84 % in the telecommunications industry; merchant marine, 97%; banks, surance, 48%.
Across all branches of the economy the participation of the state was estimated at around 44 percent, which put Poland ahead of all other European contries as far as state intervention was concerned (apart from, of course, the USSR).
In the opinion of Boracz, the publisher of Przebudowa, the theoretical organ of the Polish Peasants Party (PSL), state intervention in Poland in the inter-war period played a dual role: economic, insofar as it complemented the weakness of the private sector; and political in that it was the basis of the influence bureaucracy, which dominated the Sanacja regime. (5)
In conclusion, we can say that the system in Poland before the war upheld only certain elements of a classic capitalist system. Important limitations on free competition (a strong private monopoly held by foreign capital, state intervention and a high degree of nationalisation) gave it a peculiar character, typical of a majority of the countries of central and Eastern Europe.
The 1939-1945 war and the double occupation (in 1941) of Polish territory [by the USSR and Nazi Germany] led to a new weakening, from the economic point of view, of the foundations of private enterprise. In both the German occupied territories and in the Soviet part, a resolute policy was instituted of expropriating private enterprise and unitying the structure of property. This meant either takeover by the state, or in the case of territories seized by the Reich, incor24 poration into German businesses and monopolies. These enterprises were then subordinated to the war policy of the
This process was reinforced as the war
The remainder of private capital was systematically liquidated, and productive activity [that is, to meet positive human needs] was reduced to a
As a consequence, in those Polish territories that were later included the People's Republic of Poland, there came ready made, from the economic point of view, a state system dominated by state property and state capitalism, which were subordinated to political needs and to the war. This specific 'econrevolution involved an important challenge to the pre-war property arrangements, shaking the already feeble foundations of Polish capitalism to its roots.
this state of affairs, Economic Bulletin (organ of the Polish government in exile in London) wrote that a change in the economic and social fabric, which is revolutionary in its scope ised by the fact that the reestablishment of the previous state is not possible either from a technical or psychological point of change has remained incomplete and has not established a new state. act of this revolution has already been accomplished. What the second act will be, we do not know'.
The objective changes in the structure of property weakened impossible, the restoration of capitalist relations in post-war Poland, even to their pathetic pre-war level.
Alongside of these changes a perhaps decisive role was played by developments in the consciousness of the masses in an anti-capitalist direction. The process of radicalisation' which affected not only Poland, but nearly all of Europe (in a way similar to the revolutionary wave after the First World War) had several causes: internal, national and general. The majority of society, although recognising the authority of the underground state and the London government based on the 1935 constitution, without any hesitation, were not prepared to accept a return to the political and economic system of the pre-war era. These changes developed all over occupied Europe, linked to the struggles of the broad masses against fascism and totalitarianism. Transformation of the political and economic struc tures in accordance with the principles of democracy was a general aspiration, expressed by everyone. Everywhere, similar demands came up; for nationalisation, economic planning, extension of parlia mentary democracy, for social reform,
In Poland, where a majority of society was subjected to economic exploitation and fierce political repression, which created an almost completely exploited class of wage-earners, radicalisation developed rapidly (especially in 1943-1944), reaching a level which was easily recog nised by the bourgeois heads of the Army of the Interior (AK), as well as by the centre and right-wing components of the
In a special report to the commander-
May 22, 1944, the AK commander Tadeusz Bor Komorowski wrote, for example, that there was "a huge ideological turn to the left....A more or less general demand for control of economic life by society as a whole, for the ending of the concentration of wealth in private hands beyond a certain minimum and for the end to privileges for individuals or social groups. This is a strong radicalisation. The authorities who try 4. R. Dmowski was the main leader and ideologue OI the National Party (SN) - the main reactionary fascist party before 1939. J. Ryng was the leader of the Communist Party.
Sanacja, literally cleaning up', the general name given to the regime which emerged from the coup d'etat of Marshal Pil sudski in May 1926. It was a repressive regime. which did not succeed, however, in crushing political and social resistance.
International Viewpoint 24 December 1984
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