The KOR and the anti-popular, anti-socialist forces camped behind them have from the beginning looked outside Poland and in the first place towards the US and NATO secret services.
It isn't Walesa who leads the trade union - states L. Skonka - but Kuron. Modzalewiski, Michnik, Matcherevitch, Borouchevitch, Opychkevitch. Lipinski, Bloums tein, Steinbergova, Glaikhguevitch, Kentchik and other members of KOR and their supporters.
Those whom the KOR 'has not been able to attract with promises of choice posts in the future government (sic) or buy off with money, were excluded on various false pretexts. More often than not they were accused of collaborating with the security services or of secretly belonging to the PUWP'. At the same time - an ex-militant of Solidarnose testifies.— 'an atmosphere of fear, terror, suspicion and general, universal danger was created, where nobody could have confidence in the next person. everyone had to keep tabs on everyone else and on the least suspicion immediately file a report to the individual holding the post of local KOR 'fuhrer'
This testimony which comes from the 'inside' from an ex-Solidarnose militant is extremely significant. Such evidence helps us to understand the seriousness of the events.
The tactic of the 'creeping' counter-revolution has been brought out into the open by one of the KOR leaders, A. Michnik: the regime 'will concede only when you put a pistol to its head. That is why periodically it is necessary to bring out the pistol,' Well the KOR by manipulating Solidarnose 'places' on the 'forehead of the regime' a pistol which takes the form of unlimited strikes, confrontations or such and such a demagogic demand.
Poland and the bureaucracy
The central thesis of the Soviet bureaucracy concerning Polish events is that it is a question of a 'creeping counter-revolution' caused by a diabolical conspiracy of the KOR and other 'grouplets manipulated by the US secret services and NATO'. This thesis is summarised perfectly by Felix Kouznetsov's
First of all let us take up the 'manipulation' thesis at face value. So there are these 'grouplets' who succeed in manipulating millions of strikers, indeed nine million Solidarnose members, nearly 80 per cent of the Polish working class. Evidently the 'police mentality' interpretation of history is the same in the East and the West. How can 'grouplets without importance or influence' suddenly manipulate millions of people? Even the 'police conception of history' is hard put to jump over that contradiction.
The means of manipulation are the means of communication: going from word of mouth communication to the daily, weekly and monthly press and radio/television. In Poland the KOR and other 'grouplets' have no access to radio/television. They have no daily or weekly at their disposal. They publish small reviews which appear irregularly with circulations of several thousand. Since they were 'grouplets' they only had a few dozen members and several hundred sympathisers to distribute their 'dirty counterrevolutionary agents has had by and large a superior capacity of manipulation than a government party (in fact a party-state) disposing of hundreds of thousands of funetionaries, bombarding the whole population day and night with its media propaganda, with its daily press and the quasi-monopoly of the weekly press. But its millions of newspapers were hardly able to neutralise the effect of several thousand copies of the dissident press. Why
For Marxists it is social existence that determines consciousness, it is not
'manipulated consciousness' which determines existence. Therefore if millions of Polish workers have organised independently of the 'official' trade unions it is because they have manifestly acquired the conviction, resulting from the experience of their daily lives, that these 'official' trade unions do not defend their interests. If they increasingly challenge the decisions and power of the government it is because they have come to the con-
Poland and the bureaucracy
Ernest Mandel article.
revolutionary propaganda' by word of mouth.
But here comes not? It appears to be somewhat of a mystery.
the paradox:
77 this miserable pack of counter-
clusion that it is opposed to their interests. In limiting themselves to talking lightly of simple leadership 'errors' Kremlin ideologists such as Victor
Kouznetsov want to hide this elementary truth of historical materialism.
Once again we see who are the true revisionists and real anti-communists.
It is not manipulation of the workers by the KOR but the social and economic reality of Poland which explains the rise of struggle, mass movements, mass strikes and the independent unionisation of Polish workers for a year now. Before replying to the question of whether it is a revolution or a counter-revolution we have to begin by analysing this realiagainst it and the objective significance of this revolt. But the Kremlin ideologists are incapable of an objective Marxist analysis. The aim of their analysis is to hide the truth in order to justify repression. The police mentality conception of history must cover up the dirty operations of the police.
All the rest is only cobbled together propaganda which does not deceive
Felix Kouznetsov accuses the KOR of "suddenly today showing its preoccupation with the needs and interests of workers'. Here our opponent is caught red handed with his lie. The KOR had been founded with the aim of taking up the "needs and interests of the workers" and more exactly of those who were repressed, imprisoned, killed or just sacked from their workplaces - as a consequence of the 1976 strikes. It was a question of collecting money for the families of the detainees and of fighting for reintegration of the sacked workers. Every conscious worker, not to speak about anyone with minimum knowledge of the history of the workers' movement understands that the non-negligible influence the KOR has won inside the working class results from this taking up of immediate working class interests and not from any sort of 'demonic manipulation'
An embarrassing question for the Kremlin, its defenders and acolytes in
Poland - so why, did the 'offical trade unions' not take up workers immediate interests when they had 100,000 times more reasons for effectively doing so than the KOR and other grouplets. Answer - because the 'official' trade unions did not act as defenders of the workers' interests but as a transmission belt for the orders of the directors and the government - that is for the bureaucracy. An even more embarrassing question: so why hasn't the Polish Unified Workers (yes, sic, workers) Party taken up the defence of the repressed and sacked workers - their class brothers and sisters ended up in solidarity with them as shown by the big demonstrations at Gdansk,
Poznan and Radom in memory if the victims of these strikes? Answer:
because this PUWP is not the party of the working class but the party of the bureaucracy, whatever may be its continued working class base, because it was these very leaders that gave orders to fire on strikers:
The Ninth Congress of the PUWP, in the manifesto addressed to the nation which it unanimously passed (ultra-Stalinist 'conservatives' included), it confessed it had allowed itself to be cut off from the working class, that it had gone against the working class and promised (but who believes it?) that it would no longer do so. But it is an undeniable fact that on at least three occasions, in 1956 in Poznan in 1970 in the Baltic ports and in 1976 in Radom
78 ty, the reasons why the great majority of the anybody - at least in Poland.
Workers' Interests and 'Workers' Interests'
International Marxist Review proletariat are revolting
and elsewhere, the PUWP repressed strikes by firing on workers — all the while ritually proclaiming that they defended 'workers' interests'
Who are the KOR and Robotnik militants? They are nearly all militants who were imprisoned several times in the course of the '60s and '70s. Kuron himself had been arrested on numerous occasions and spent several years in prison. We have already stated that the most 'radical' and 'extremist' spokespeople of the workers are those who represent the strikers shot and repressed in 1970 and 1976. However through the Stalino-bureaucratic spectacles of Kouznetsov everything appears upside down. Prisoners 'terrare achievement of sinking below the degree of hypocrisy of the Established Churches. We must not raise grievances on behalf of prisoners but for their jailers! Shed tears for the informers and butchers - that is one of the
But such gross cynicism results in an unconscious revelation. The KOR is accused by Kouznetsov of recruiting on a basis of careerism and promises of highly-paid posts. However what this pen-pusher is describing is nothing but the practices of corruption and recruitment used by the bureaucracy among layers of office workers, technicians and highly-
Who ruled Poland during the last thirty-five years and who still holds power today? The KOR or other grouplets? Or isn't it rather the PUWP? Who has had, and continues to have, the means of distributing posts of ministers, editors, ambassadors, directors, mayors and members of parliament? The
KOR or the PUWP? Who has, and always has had, the money to 'buy people'? The KOR or the PUWP? Who produced a layer of ultra-corrupt leaders as was admitted at the Ninth Congress of the PUWP? The PUWP or
Let us move on from these ignoble calumnies which are an affront to all
Polish workers. The friends of Solidarnosc are supposedly people driving around in Rolls Royces with pictures of the Führer on their walls, associated with "fascists" and the Red Brigades'. It is known by everyone that foreign support (very modest at that) to Solidarnose comes from the international trade union movement. The Polish bureaucracy, for its part, has received 26 billion dollars from Wester banks (they in fact do drive around in Rolls
The irrational and even absurd character of bureaucratic ideology is not accidental. The bureaucracy is not a class. It does not have an indispensable or even autonomous role in economic activity. It can only govern in the name of the working class — that is in denying its own role in oppressing the workers — i.e. its very reason of existence. These are the extremely rational social roots of its irrationality. This is why black necessarily becomes white and vice versa for it. There is no other means for it to justify its role to itself or in front of the masses. As Bertold Brecht said with bitter irony - pushing this bureaucratic absurdity to its ultimate conclusion: when the working class no longer recognises the leading role of the party, the party has the perfect right to dissolve the working class and elect another one...
Poland and the bureaucracy
Kouznetsov does not say a word about all this.
rorise and sow fear' ten commandments of the bureaucracy.
else qualified workers.
the KOR?
Royces and back the CIA).
'. The jailers are 'terrorised'
79
'. Mr
'. Kouznetsov brings off the
To give a semblance of 'theoretical' cover to his demonological analysis,
Kouznetsov accuses the KOR militants and other Solidarnosc 'extremists' of being anarcho-syndicalists. He draws up a severe indictment against anarcho-syndicalist ideology (it would be more exact to say revolutionary syndicalist). But this indictment only brings out even more the contradic-
First of all, Kouznetsov presents things as if anarcho-syndicalism had been 'once again put into the circuit of history... in order to deceive the tion of history according to which different ideological and political tendencies of the workers movement - except the correct one, the Kremlin - are the inventions of the bourgeoisie, introduced among the workers in order to deceive them. Lenin however had quite a different conception — a Marxist and not a police mentality - of the origins and function of anarchosyndicalism. He wrote on this in Left-wing communism: an infantile
'It is a well-established theoretical fact for Marxists and entirely confirmed by the experience of all revolutionary movements and revolutions in
Europe - that the small owner, the small boss undergoes continual oppression and very often a very sharp aggravation of his conditions of existence or his very ruin pushes him easily into revolutionary extremism. But he is incapable of being consistent, organised, disciplined and firm... Anarchism has often been a sort of punishment for the opportunist sins of the workers' movement.' (Vol.II p.701 of the Selected Works in 2 Vols. French Edition.)
In the second place the general strike with factory occupations is not at all an anarcho-syndicalist hobby horse which revolutionary Marxists dismiss!. History has confirmed on several occasions the utility and effectiveness of this powerful weapon of the proletariat. It is the reformists inside the workers movement which have tried to push the idea that 'the general strike is general stupidity' (General Streik ist General unsinn). Their
'intelligence' of course is to limit workers action to 'useful' partial sectoral strikes and to well-behaved electoral campaigns. The Stalinist and eurocommunist neo-reformists with the latter-day Bernsteins are in complete agreement on this — as too is Kouznetsov. We feel we are infinitely closer to
Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Gramsci as well as the Communist International on
Furthermore to call each and every general strike an 'economic general strike' as Kouznetsov does is to make a colossal error, which Marx and
Engels derided on several occasions, including in the 'Communist
Manifesto'. Kouznetsov is neither literary nor even very literate. But what can you expect from a 'cheap-rate' writer who is simply motivated by
'interesting material' and not by any sort of conviction and who doesn't give a fig about any sort of Marxist-Leninist principles? Any important strike, not to speak of a general strike, is eminently political because it sets into direct
In the third place what is at the core of Marxist critisisms of this
'strikemania' of revolutionary syndicalists? The general strike objectively poses the question of state power. Anarcho-syndicalists refuse to pose this
80
Anarcho-Syndicalism and Workers Power tions and inanity of all bureaucratic-Stalinist ideology.
workers movement' disorder:
this?
confrontation social forces, in struggle.
International Marxist Review
. Once again we are in the domain of the police concep-
question, or indeed to resolve it, in the only way the proletariat can resolve it: by the dismantling and destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, starting with its repressive apparatus; the construction of a workers state apparatus of a new type, based on soviet bodies of the Paris Commune type;
and the replacement of the bourgeois state by a workers state.
Due to their doctrinaire and dogmatic hostility to the dictatorship of the proletariat of the workers state anarcho-syndicalists lead the big, revolutionary movements of the proletariat they influence into a dead end. The general strike poses the question of state power. Anarcho-syndicalists refuse to resolve it. Due to this fact, despite their good intentions they contribute to the maintenance or reconstruction of the bourgeois state. Such was the conclusion of the ideological debate. It has been confirmed by history. The only mass revolutionary movement that they dominated for a certain length of time - in Spain in 1936-7 — led to the reconstitution of a bourgeois state which had been 90 per cent dismantled at least in Catalonia,
Levant and elsewhere in July/August 1936, and this was a consequence of the CNT refusal to form a new, centralised workers power in the country.
But Kouznetsov now overturns the terms of the debate. The error, if not the 'crime' of the anarcho-syndicalists is no longer the refusal to take political power but rather the fact that it wants to take it - through the intermediary of the trade unions. Minority trade unions? Not at all since the reference is clearly to Solidarnose which groups 80 per cent of Polish
Are trade union structures capable of playing the role of soviets? Absolutely possible and furthermore the Communist International explicitly
. On condition that they were centralised locally, regionally and nationally. On condition of not only getting involved in the management of the private sector but also in the public sector. They disarm the bourgeoisie and arm the workers. In other words if they destroy the
Kouznetsov thinks that he has parried that argument: 'Only, if previously these methods and aims were directed against capitalism (how could they therefore, from the beginning, be bourgeois while being directed against capitalism? - E.M.), the 'leftists ' and Trotskyists who have recently emerged in Poland have attempted to lead hard general strikes againt
But he does not bring the shadow of a proof in support of this affirmation. Have Polish workers, Solidarnose, KOR and the Fourth International demanded the suppression of the collective ownership of the means of production, the re-establishment of private ownership of the banks, factories, transport and foreign trade? Not in the slightest. Have they asked for the return of foreign capital? Isn't it rather the PUWP leadership, so dear to
Kouznetsov, who has done that? Have they endeavoured to rearm the bourgeoisie (where? which?) Have they even posed the question of breaking with the Warsaw Pact? No evidence can be given to back up this lying state-
To try and find a semblance of 'Leninist continuity' for his argument,
Kouznetsov makes allusion to Lenin's polemic (and Trotsky's but that is something he ignores or else dare not mention) on the Kronstadt question.
He declares that the KOR (or Solidarnosc) had supposedly put forward the workers.
forecast this?.
socialism...
ment.
IMA Spring 82 - F
Poland and the bureaucracy bourgeois state and build a workers state.
81
polemicist is caught red-handed with his lies. Neither the KOR nor Solidarnosc nor any of the local branches or factory branches of the self-managed trade unions have ever demanded the gagging of the PUWP or the exclusion of PUWP militants and cadres from the pre-soviet trade union structures
In the factories where Solidarnose has established a radio system with a mass audience the PUWP is given speaking time after the broadcast of communiques and conferences of trade union information and education. No
PUWP militant has been dismissed from their functions or prevented from being elected to posts inside Solidarnose on the basis of being a member of the PUWP. Anyway how could it be otherwise since it is a case of free elections and there are hundreds of thousands of PUWP members who have
We believe that our Polish brothers and sisters are absolutely right to defend the principle of workers democracy for all without exclusion or discrimination. It is only those people who are afraid of ideas who want to administratively repress ideological currents — which is furthermore ineftective and not realisable. False ideas are combatted by correct ideas, correct actions and mass mobilisations, not through bans. Kouznetsov, who does not want soviets without 'communists' (we would rather say without
Stalinists under remote control of the bureaucracy), demands 'soviets' without the supporters of the different currents present today ideologically and politically among millions of Polish workers - while at the same time they show themselves capable of maintaining a remarkable unity of action
Therefore once more Stalinist ideology gives us a topsy-turvey picture of
Poland. People who are defending the broadest proletarian democracy are accused of wanting to exclude from political bodies one tendency (the
Stalinist one). The 'true' representatives of the 'socialist' regime wants to exclude all the other tendencies - the immense majority of the proletariat.
Are Solidarnose and the Polish workers wrong to formulate demands and to initiate political actions because Poland is a 'socialist country'? So the proletariat has no right to free expression and political action in 'its' state? Why should the workers be any less capable than corrupt and inept bureaucrats who have governed the country for more than thirty years? Why should it be
Who decided that would Poland amass 26 billion dollars of debt with the capitalist banks? The bureaucracy or Solidarnosc? Who decided to import, at great cost, technology, patents and machines that the country was perfectly capable of building itself, while at the same time under-developing in a criminal way investments in agriculture? Who opened negotiations for the entry of Poland into the International Monetary Fund? In questioning this commercial policy do the trade unions harm socialism? By demanding a halt to useless investment, duplication of labour, the building of another factory of prefabricated units in an area where the already existing factory only functions at 50 per cent capacity - by discussing in other terms overall economic policy, does Solidarnose harm socialism? We do not think so. We
82 slogan 'Socialism... without the communists' which have been created in Poland.
joined Solidarnose?
despite this inevitable differentiation.
The former are the bitter enemies of pluralism.
ed ecnomy or indeed 'socialism' itself?
International Marxist Review
. Once more our unfortunate
Poland and the bureaucracy 83 believe that all these demands contribute to a recovery of the economic situation in the interest of socialism. Kouznetsov is of another opinion. That is his right. But it is not his right, nor that of the PUWP brueaucrats, to impose this conclusion on the immense majority of Polish workers who do not accept it - who demand the right to free expression and to take action on their demands - including on political questions.
The basis of the problems is that the Soviet bureaucracy and its acolytes want to suppress freedom of expression for 80 per cent of the Polish proletariat organised in Solidarnose. The Tass agency clearly declared this on the 27th March 1981 when it waxed indignant at the fact that 'Polish television broadcast before the strike Solidarnosc appeals to down tools. Speakers read texts giving instructions from the trade union confederation'. The same agency obviously conceals the fact that 'Polish television broadcast, at the same time and even more extensively, the government and PUWP appeals against the work stoppages. But according to these bizarre defenders of the 'leading role of the working class' the country has the right to know the party's opinion - but has no right to hear the opinion of the working class and the independent organisation it has freely chosen.
It is true that there is a strong syndicalist (or anarcho-syndicalist) influence in Solidarnosc. We regret that. We criticise it on the political level. But Kouznetsov should rather be happy about this influence. For the concrete expression of this in practice — helped by the KOR and comrade Kuron who is not Trotskyist — is the thesis according to which Solidarnose should not pose overall political questions. Therefore it should not pose the question of power, leaving it in the hands of the PUWP. It is a big error - due allowance being made — equivalent to that made by the CNT in Spain. If this position is held to it would result in the same outcome as in Spain - that is the victory of the counter-revolution - which this time would be a political counter-revolution, that is the bureaucracy regaining its control.
Today a situation of de-facto dual power exists in Poland. The workers can practically impose what they want at the level of the factories and in the towns. But they do not have state power. The bureaucracy is by and large powerless in its regular confrontations with the proletariat. But it still holds onto the main reins of state power.
Such a situation can only be resolved in two ways - for no country can maintain itself in the long term without a governmental power which is effectively exerted each day. Either the workers create their own bodies of political power — for example on the basis of factory workers councils and local sections of Solidarnosc — centralise them regionally and nationally and impose, by the generalised arming of the proletariat, a government which carries out a workers counter-plan which can resolve the crisis. In this case we will see the victory of the anti-bureaucratic political revolution ahd the road will be opened up towards a new leap forward towards socialism. Or else the bureaucracy will claw back one by one the workers' gains of the last twelve months and will finish by liquidating the self-managed democratic structures that the working class has constructed in the workplaces and on a local level. In this eventuality we will see the victory of the bureaucratic political counter-revolution.
The weakness of the KOR and a part of the Solidarnosc leadership is to believe in a long term compromise with the bureaucracy — to think that one
can dismantle the bureaucracy's monopoly of political power piece by piece in the same way one peels an artichoke. It is the gradualist illusion which has caused the defeat of a big majority of both contemporary social and political
Socialism, Political Revolution and Social Counter-revolution
The issue at stake in the unfolding Polish revolution is not the alternative
'Socialism or Capitalism' unless one means that in an extremely indirect and mediated way - which would have to be precisely defined. The real issue is to know who will govern the workers state? The bureaucracy basing itself on a total monopoly of power and party/state? Or else the working class itself, organised in bodies of direct power of a soviet type, guaranteeing the broadest possible ideological, cultural and political pluralism under its own
If we stick to classic Marxist terminology Poland is not a 'Socialist State'.
Furthermore the very term 'Socialist State' is absurd. Socialism is classless society, as Lenin said. The state is an oppressive apparatus of one class against others. When there is no longer any classes there is obviously no
One can easily find an area of agreement with people who in good faith talk of 'Socialist Poland' — what they mean by that is obviously a country where the bourgeoisie has been expropriated and no longer exerts political power, where the economy is socialised and planned and defend against domination by the world capitalist market thanks to the state monopoly of foreign trade (that is to say where the law of value contines to influence economic development but no longer determines it). Only a social counterrevolution could modify this state of affairs by re-establishing bourgeois state power, abolishing the state monopoly of foreign trade and economic planning, by re-establishing in practice, if not legally, private ownership of
For anyone who is of good faith let us repeat that that is not the issue of the political and social struggle underway at the moment in Poland. In these struggles the working class and its independent trade union Solidarnose is opposed to the bureaucracy. It is not the case of a practically non-existent bourgeoisie against 'popular power'. In fact in his own way Kouznetsov
'...the essential paradox of the Polish situation consists in fact that the anti- socialist extremist forces, in their struggles against socialism have based themselves on the very qualities of the working calss and the Polish people inculcated through socialism. In trying to manipualte the consciousness of the working class they have speculated on its sense of being the leading force, on its sense of social and civic responsibility of the working class for all that happens in its own country, on its rejection of the violations of
Leninist norms or at the least injustice 5, on the real disapproval of the workers towards the bad inconsistent and wasteful leadership of the
But if we leave the police-mentality interpretation of history on one side and return to a materialist interpretation, what do we deduce from all this except the fact that the Polish working class is deeply attached to socialism, it has a very big sense of social and civic responsibility and that it feels itself
84 revolutions.
armed control.
longer any need for a state.
big industry, banks and the key transport authorities.
recognises this since he writes:
country.'
International Marxist Review
to be the leading force of the country? It is absurd to think that it is going to exert power in the workplaces and in the state (if it conquers power)... and
The French newspaper Liberation published a series of articles on
Poland which resulted in a rather sombre picture of the perspectives in that country. One of these articles was entitled 'Polish Workers want Social
Democracy': This formula does not say an awful lot. In capitalist countries
Social Democracy is the maintenance of capitalism with some reforms. In a country where capitalism has been abolished would not Social Democracy be the restoration of capitalism? The Liberation journalist is indeed obliged to say the opposite. Also he adds the following statement from a Polish economist, Christof Starzek, who has recently emigrated to France:
'In a self-managed economy it would be difficult to do just about anything which goes against the immediate interests of the workers.... One could not make anybody redundant or get them to accept wage
Does that mean to say that there is no danger of a restoration of capitalism in Poland (or in all the other bureaucratised workers states) - obviously no. If there was a strong expansion of the private sector (not only agriculture, artisans, small services, but also small and medium-sized industry, wholesale and foreign commerce for example; if through the suppression of the state monopoly of foreign trade this private sector could link up with the world capitalist market; if even before the suppression of the collective ownership of big industry and the banks there was a total autonomisation i.e. the distintegration of the planned economy, capitalism could be restored. The bureaucracy, due to its wastefulness, corruption, incompetence and the discredit that it casts on the very idea of planning objec-
But is lays the grounds for that only in the long term particularly since it would be necessary to defeat an enormous working class resistence in order to achieve it. Also the more the working class organises, becomes active the more the resistence will increase. It is up to Marxists to tirelessly point out to workers that the suppression of planning, the triumph of the market economy, would strike a mortal blow to the values that the independent trade union have elevated to the level of a supreme ideal: solidarity, equality and justice. In Poland the triumph of the market economy would only destroy independent trade unionism and workers democracy, as the Pilsud-
It confirms therefore that the question posed by the Polish events is not
'capitalism or socialism' but indeed: workers' state governed by the working class itself - with all of the political forces that had developed in its ranks
(or at least all those who do not put into question, in actions, the social character of the ownership of the means of production and the state).
In State and Revolution Lenin states: 'The transition from capitalism to communism must inevitably produce an enormous mass and diversity of political forms; but the essential thing will inevitably be its unique feature:
the dictatorship of the proletariat' (Selected works in 2 Vols, II, p3).
But for the bureaucracy and its ideologists there is only one form of 'tranthe proletariat possible and conceivable: that of the monopoly of power by a
Poland and the bureaucracy then given it back to capitalists!
practically austerity.' tively prepares for such a restoration.
ski regime did.
sition from capitalism to communism'
85
, a single form of the dictatorship of
single party, representing in practice a privileged bureaucracy which defends the material privileges of 'irremovable' cadre through this monopoly. Stalinist publications furthermore openly say this in capital letters: the establishment of political pluralism in Poland would signify the victory of
This opinion is confirmed by the highest bureaucratic authorities. This is the famous letter from the Central Committee of the CPSU sent on the 5th
June 1981 to the PUWP CC and signed by Leonid Brezhnev himself and this
' The struggle for socialism can only be won if the party controls all the mass media' (text of the Tass agency despatch 11th June 1981). Also Scinteia, central organ of the Rumanian CP stated on the 14th June 1981 that in
'the trade unions and the press must return to their principal role of mobilising the population with the aim of carrying out the programme (the line of
So if the big majority of the working class disagrees with this line of action and has not confidence in the leading role of the party? Well then the party (that is to say the bureaucracy) has the perfect right, if need be through repressive measures, to impose this line of action on a recalcitrant proletariat, to silence it and to prevent it from organising. That is the
The monopoly of political power must protect material privileges. But the monopoly of political power necessarily implies in a planned economy the monopoly of economic management. Now without socialist democracy, without the free political activity of the masses, without mass control over production and distribution, without the free determination by the masses of their own needs, there is no way of reaching a balance between the latter and current production. A bureaucratically managed and planned economy is therefore by definition an economy of shortages — an economy which remains far short of its potential. Socialist democracy is not only an elementary demand for justice and mass self-determination - i.e. the only way which leads towards the classless society and the withering away of the state. But it is also the pre-condition for a rationally planned economy.
We have to grasp what lies beneath this analysis. The working class is attached to socialism. The working class is convinced of its leading role in society. It is animated by a high sense of social and civic responsibility. It is ready to rise up against any injustice. But the working class is at the same time so stupid, unconscious, ignorant, blind and under-developed (after 35 years of ' people's power'!) that if it exercises power it will pass it over automatically ... to the bourgeoisie without any opposition.
At the basis of Stalinist-bureaucratic ideology of the single party system there is above all an under-estimation, denigration and contempt of the working class — a most pronounced anti-communism. The working class throws back this contempt into the face of the bureaucrats who deserve
Let us accept, for a moment, that the working class is in fact politically under-developed, that it has difficulty in finding the 'the correct way forward in the construction of socialism' in the conditions of political
86 the counter-revolution.
spells out clearly:
Poland:
action) of the party.' political philosophy of our neo-Stalinists.
this.
pluralism. It is necessary therefore to 'educate it'
International Marxist Revieu'
'. But who educates it? The
Has it found the correct path for the construction of socialism? Kouznetsov recognises himself (in much less clearer terms than the new PUP leaders) that these leaders have been 'bad, inconsistent and mismanagers' in terms of economic management. They have been a thousand times 'worse, inconsistent and mis-managers' in terms of political leadership, since after having 'educated' the working class for 35 years, the latter does not at all recognise its leading role and lets itself be manipulated by 'demonic' agents of the bourgeoisie. Do not the 'educators' themselves need to be educated in
The leadership of the 1950-56 period had been unanimously condemned by the 9th Plenum of the CC in October 1956. The 1957-1970 leadership was unanimously condemned when Cierek replaced Gomulka. The 1970-1980 leadership was unanimously condemned at the 9th Congress in 1981. In other words, all leaderships of the PUWP from 1950-1980 had been bad, worse than bad, criminal. This word was used on each occasion.
Is it surprising then that these days 'all Polish communists' feel a 'sense of guilt, of being at fault', as Kouznetsov puts it? If it is true that the fault of these errors (let's rather speak of' crimes' which have been committed 'do socialism but from its concrete administrators who were certainly not all mature on the level of ideas and morality for building socialism' (we quote Kouznetsov once more), isn't the conclusion the following: socialism, to which the workers remain attached, must be built by the working masses differently from those who have been established as being materially, morally and ideologically corrupt - that is to say all the
PUWP leadership teams from 1950 - with leaders freely elected by the workers themselves, in their own soviet-type bodies of self-organisation?
The true working class and communist vanguard will come out of this struggle for socialist democracy and self-managed planning, of the struggle against wastage, the corruption of the bureaucracy as well as against inter-
(1) See in particular: Theses on Tactics 3rd Congress of the Communist International.
(2) See Lenin's position on mass strikes, Collected Works Vol 18 pp 80-87 (All references to French edition - Tr). Particularly the following passage (P.82): 'The working class during a political strike becomes the vanguard class of the whole people... The political ideas which emerge in the movement take on a national character, that is to say, they involve the fundamental and most profound conditions of the
(3) See Theses... ibid, particularly the passage on p. 100 on the 'industrial soviets and revolutionary trade unions' (Theses and resolutions of the first four congresses of the
Communist International. Paris 1934, Librairie du Travail). Also see the resolution of the same congress on 'The Communist International and the International Red
(4) Workers councils oriented to the management of the workplace are in the process of emerging in Poland since summer 1981. On the 12th and 13th of July 1981 an
'Inter-regional Conference of Founding committees of workers self-management,
Poland and the bureaucracy
PUWP? Let us look at the results.
their turn. By who if not the proletariat?
not derive from national capitalism and imperialism.
31 August 1981
Footnotes political life of the whole country'.
. This can be admirably applied to the July/August
1980 strikes in Poland.
Trade Union' ibid p. 133-4.
87
88 International Marxist Review Workers Councils with the particapation of the regional and workplace commissions of the NSZZ Solidarnosc' was held. (5) The moral, objectively communist, revolt against scandalous inequality, xenophobia and injustice is not the property of the workers and youth of Poland. It is also expressed in the Soviet Union. Thirty thousand people gathered together 'illegally' on the 25th of July 1981 at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow in order to celebrate the first anniversary of the death of one of the most popular Soviet songwriters/singers, Vladimir Visotzky. Visotzky wrote for example the following ballad 'They grumble and groan, the people want justice: We were the fits in queue but those who were behind are already getting stuck into their meals.' The answer is given: 'We do not want to discuss, we are asking you, dear friends, to go away. Those who are in the middle of eating are foreigners. And you, pardon us for asking, who are you?' (6) We can see to what extent the bureaucracy is calling for repression - look at what springs out of a text of a dispatch from the Tass agency on the 12th June 1981: 'In spite of the fact that the 11th plenum of the CC of the PUWP called for the persecution of (!) people distributing anti-socialist and anti-Soviet subversive material, in Warsaw people continue with impunity (!) to distribute clandestine (!) leaflets containing dirty and calumnious attacks and inventions against the USSR and the leadership (!) of the PUWP' . Not a word on the Gdansk agreements which guaranteed the freedom of the trade union press. (7) The scandalous privileges of the ex-chief of the party and the country, Gierek, that the whole Polish press has denounced are found to a ten times greater extent in the USSR and China and to at least an equal extent in Poland and East Europe.
France under Mitterand: results
Jeanette Habel and Jacques Kergoat
A new political period has opened in France. The left's social base became a majority in the country because traditional electoral behaviour was subjected to giant upheavals: as more women, who had been considered a bulwark of the right joined the workforce, their votes shifted leftward. Extending the youth vote to those aged 18 and over primarily benefitted the
Except for the laws on abortion, divorce and the 18-year-old youth vote, the Giscard-Barre government's pro-big business policy could only lead to a violent clash with the most immediate needs and aspirations of the laboring masses as a whole. On top of the economic crisis, worsening unemployment, government attacks on purchasing power, came restrictions on freedoms, corruption, attacks on women's right to work, the nuclear policy and so on, and all this in the framework of the persistence, despite the deep division of the workers parties, of the relationship of forces established by May '68.
Francois Mitterand was elected because he understood these basic facts.
By upholding the Union of the Left policy against the Communist Party
(PCF) and many socialist leaders, he made the SP triumph possible. After the breakup of the Union of the Left and its defeat in the 1978 legislative elections, there were many pressures to give up the Union of the Left political orientation which Michel Rocard labelled 'archaic'. At the April 1979 SP congress in Metz, Francois Mitterand received 48% of the votes (Michel
Rocard 20%, Pierre Mauroy 16% and the left wing CERES 14%). But Mitterand refused any compromise and in the end chose to ally with the CERES
His policy continues the plan he had clearly laid out on June 28, 1972, at the Congress of the Socialist International in Vienna, a few hours after signing the Common Program with the Communists: 'Our basic idea is to rebuild a great Socialist Party on the very terrain presently occupied by the CP and that 3 million out of the 5 million Communist voters can vote socialist..' This implied 'confronting the Communist Party on the field of analysis and action' and 'reconstituting the historical bloc of the Left in
The project is now almost completed. Francois Mitterand understood the was a mere accident. The SP's progression is not a recent phenomenon; it has been continuous and the result of a series of commitments in the cantonal, regional and municipal elections. The Socialist and prospects
Socialist Party (SP).
to get a majority.
show
1978 setback
IMR Spring 82 - G
89