[The following article appeared in the October 17 issue of Inprecor, a fortnightly news bulletin of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.]
In the great ports on the Baltic Sea - scene of the workers insurrection of December 1970 [see Intercontinental Press, January 11, 1971, p. 12]—several thousand dockers and shipyard workers initiated a strike movement at the end of August to protest against application of a new wage system. After a week of work stoppages and slowdowns, the Polish leaders provisionally suspended these measures, which by tightening up work rules and linking wages to productivity had challenged the wage gains that had been won previously.
Since 1971 the Gierek team has been trying to avoid a new open confrontation with the working class by developing an economic policy that would sacrifice improvements of the standard of living less than in the past. Without being able to do away with any of the factors underlying the precariousness of its power, the Gierek team sought to give the Polish economy a second wind through introducing cautious changes in the system of management and planning. But at the same time, social pressure persisted, as the August strikes, among other things, testify to. The 1558
exact nature of the solutions put forward by the government can be seen more clearly if they are compared to the demands the workers raised in December 1970, demands that still retain all their currency.
Gierek and the 1970 Demands
Immediately after the 1970 workers revolt, the new government team tried for some time to defuse the movement of militancy as quickly as possible. The measure calling for a 30 percent increase in basic foodstuffs was lifted; the crisis was blamed on Gomulka's autocratic individualism; sanctions against leaders of the strike were cleverly postponed (the head of a strike committee was a delegate to the congress of 1972; later he was removed from his job on charges of "drunkenness" and forced into exile).
The first of the fundamental demands of the Polish workers during the 1970 strikes dealt with wage increases and improvements in the standard of living. In fact, concurrently with a new upturn in industrial production (which rose 9.4% in 1971 and 1972 and 12% in 1973), real wages (and certain social services) went up 24% in three years; that is, at a rate greater than the 18% called for during the entire five-year plan. But the real meaning of this progress is limited by the low wage levels that prevailed to begin with in 1970 and is further limited if compared to certain other official figures released at the fourteenth plenum of the Central Committee in 1974 (figures that must be regarded with some suspicion): the increase in productivity for 1973 was 10.2%; salary increases stood at5.7%.
The price freeze on basic foodstuffs, continued from year to year after the strikes in Lodz in 1971 [see Intercontinental Press, March 1, 1971, p. 175] and Rybnik in 1972, was nevertheless accompanied by partial price increases carried out by substituting one product for another under the pretext of improving quality. And the very high prices of appliances like washing machines, refrigerators, radios, etc., should not be forgotten. Furthermore, although official price increases amounted to only 2 percent a year, food consumption, which still accounts for 50 percent of the budget of the average working-class household, was satisfied thanks only to supplies provided by the private market at "free prices." This was a result of shortages in the state commercial network, especially of meat, dairy products, and fruit. The persistent housing shortage is another index of the difficult material and cultural situation of the majority of the population.
Conscious of all these problems, the Polish bureaucracy proved anxious to hasten to improve living standards, which would provide a safety valve that the regime lacked during the last days of the Gomulka period. The bureaucracy is seeking to link that improvement to the growth of the productivity of labor, which is necessary for expanding the economy. Hence, along with the introduction of technical innovations, there has been an extension of piecework wages. Individual consumption is favored at the expense of social consumption, which is less easily adapted to direct material incentives. This wage poliey of "socialist emulation" has been accompanied by propaganda boosting an ideal of consumption that points people's aspirations in the direction of acquiring durable goods as symbols of work well done." A "new look" ideological education drive has been launched aimed at gaining acceptance of the resultant social inequalities and justifying the establishment of a hierarchy of needs based on the varying skills and contributions to the growth of the national income made by different social layers. (In bureaucratic language this is called "the social utility of labor.")
'For Independent and Representative Unions'
The bureaucracy is counting on the atomizing effects these measures will have on the working class and on the development of antagonisms between the workers and other social layers. Since 1970 there has been no change in the ridiculous functioning of the trade unions and the "councils of workers self-management." While the 1970 strike committee demanded representative and independent workers bodies, the trade unions, with their reorganized leaderships (composed of personalities less discredited and more adapted to the new Gierek style), hold privileged control over productivity and labor discipline. As for the "workers councils, " while the new labor code evasively refers to their "concrete rights," their role has in fact been reduced to overseeing security and sobriety in the factories.
On the other hand, in order to solidify its social base, the bureaucracy is seeking to attract technocratic layers and the intelligentsia by consistently paying them off for more rational managing by supervisory personnel and factory managers and for improvements in economic output. (The payoff comes in the form of bonuses, housing priority, possibility of making trips abroad, ete.) Anxious to divide November 25, 1974
GIEREK: Deplores "lack of labor discipline."
and rule, the bureaucratic caste is throwing overboard the egalitarian principles proclaimed by the shipyard workers, who in 1970 demanded wages for industrial workers equal to those of supervisors and personnel of the party and state apparatus.
'For Regular and Honest News'
The bureaucracy has interpreted this demand of 1970 in its own peculiar way. Euphoria is obligatory in the press, which reports (and exaggerates) only the positive aspects of events that occur. Downright prolix when it comes to some success in shipbuilding or a football victory, the press clamps a blackout on strike movements. At best, it registers embarrassment when the facts manage to break through. Trybuna Ludu, for example, reported after the August strikes that the "fleeting difficulties" in the ports were a result of bad weather! The elimination of centralized censorship has only condemned journalists and editors to an even more effective self-censorship. The only notable change under Gierek has been that striking workers are no longer referred to as "hooligans," although they are said to be afflicted with "absenteeism," "lack of labor discipline," or "drunkenness"! Real news and authentic freedom of expression are banned. Hostile propaganda will not be tolerated under the guise of free circulation of ideas, Gierek asserted at the Central Committee plenum on youth held in 1973. The writa political sector somewhat iners, sensitive to the charms of bureaucratic realism, are currently paying the price.
"The Right to Struggle for Our Just Demands'
In 1970 the strike committee of the shipyard workers denounced the bloody intervention of the army and militia and demanded the right of the Polish workers to struggle for their demands. The bureaucracy, however, counterposes its conception of "socialist labor discipline" to the right to strike, which is recognized by the constitution. The latest of the measures of dissuasion (the law of June 1973) calls for suppression of bonuses -that is, a significant reduction in wagesin cases of participation in "unjustified work stoppages."
Since they directly attack the central power of the bureaucracy, the strikes of the workers have never had a purely "economic" character. The August 1974 strikes in the shipyards, where the workers' wages are higher than the Polish national average, testify to the high level of combativity that has been attained. The opposition to the new wage policy intended to incite workers to greater productivity, which was applied without any reaction from the trade unions or the "workers councils," is indicative of the skepticism of the working class in face of the ambiguities and enlightened pragmatism of the Gierek team. These strikes came shortly after the movements among the Silesian railway workers and the student youth (launched after the bureaucracy regained its control of the youth organizations); they came at a conjuncture during which the standard of living was going up and the economy was developing. The economic concessions the bureaucracy accorded to the students (significant increases in educational grants) and to a part of the intelligentsia testify to its fear of a fusion of the discontent of the various social layers. Such a fusion, coming after the isolated struggles of the youth and intelligentsia in 1968 and of the working class during the past four years, could increase the breadth of the antibureaucratic opposition tenfold.