[The following article appeared in the August 5 issue of the French-language Inprecor published fortnightly in Paris. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The Ninth Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP), which met July 14- 20, 1981, was certainly dramatic in some regards. It shows the depth of the political revolution that has begun in Poland and the scope of the politicization of the masses, which could not help but leave its mark on a mass party like the PUWP. Twenty-five percent of the delegates to the congress were Solidarity members. Under such conditions, the congress could not have been routine.
The most dramatic feature of the congress was its public character, with televised rebroadcast of the debates having been won through concerted action by 100 delegates. The congress was also more democratic than traditional congresses of bureaucratized Communist parties in power. The delegates did not limit themselves to making routine speeches approving the first secretary's report on the basis of their regional or sectoral data or results. Nor was the election of the Central Committee purely a sham, as is the case elsewhere, with the composition of the committee determined in advance by a commission of full-timers.
There were real, often stormy, discussions. The differences that surfaced were deepgoing. The Central Committee election, like the election of delegates, was a real one by secret ballot, with results no one could predict.
We all know the results: the immense majority of delegates to the congress and members of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau are new. The turnover rate was 80 percent for delegates, more than 90 percent for Central Committee members, and thirteen out of seventeen Political Bureau members.
Limits of democracy
This does not mean, however, that proletarian democracy—or democratic centralism as it functioned in the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International in Lenin's time -prevailed at the Ninth Congress of the PUWP.
Without the right to form tendencies, there is no real proletarian democracy. This golden rule of communist organizational principles was once again confirmed in Warsaw during the second week of July 1981.
Real freedom of speech, without clearly differing programs that propose alternative solutions to the great problems of the day, opens the door to confusion and to the substitution of verbiage for political consistency, and even opens the door to pure and simple demagogy.
Railing against the corruption of dignitaries who have been stripped of their posts, denouncing the regional inequalities in the way rationing is organized, proclaiming the need to use communist principles and morality to overcome the party's present discreditment-these are popular themes, fashionable subjects that evoke spontaneous applause. But they in no way clarify the question of how to remedy the economic situation, what methods and means to use. It does not tell us whether or not massive layoffs should be allowed, whether the unions should have veto power over the layoffs. It does not tell us who will guarantee maintenance of full employment on a national scale, despite these layoffs.
The election of the Central Committee by secret ballot—without the clarification of political tendencies, without the majority expressing a specific orientation, and without proportional representation of tendencies-opens the door to clique maneuvers that can prevent the election of "undesirables" by methodically establishing a bloc against one wing of candidates.
That is, in fact, what has happened. The most pronounced "liberal-technocratic" bureaucrats, like Mieczyslaw Rakovsky, were totally removed from the Political Bureau along with the best known "Stalinist conservatives like Tadeusz Grabski (who was not even reelected to the Central Committee).
The fact that the party first secretary had been directly elected by the delegates was celebrated in the bourgeois press as a triumph of democracy. But it is not a victory for democracy, far from it. This transforms the first secretary into a figure elected by plebescite, who is placed above the de facto tendencies, and is freed from any control or criticism by the Central Committee and Political Bureau.
Since the congress only takes place at long intervals, the fact that the first secretary is elected by the vote of the whole congress could make him virtually unremovable for years. Moreover, the first secretary has chosen the party Secretariat, which is the day-to-day leadership of the party.
The congress's undemocratic character was also expressed in a special area, that of international delegations. This is the first time in the history of "official" Communist parties that one of them held a congress without inviting the great majority of "fraternal parties." The only ones that were able to attend the Ninth Congress of the PUP were those parties that are in power in the countries that belong to
COMECON, and some ruling parties in Africa.
The reason for this exclusion, this glaring denial of proletarian internationalism, is obvious. It was to prevent the delegates of the Italian, Spanish, and Swedish CPs and of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia from
"revisionist" speeches from the giving PUP's podium, from providing arguments in favor of self-management, or expressing words of support for Solidarity:
The undemocratic thrust of this prohibition is obvious. The full weight of pressure from the Kremlin and its allies was brought to bear on the delegates to the congress. There was the letter from the Central Committee of the Soviet CP to the PUWP Central Committee. And there were speeches by Soviet representative Viktor Grishin and the representatives from the Czechoslovakian and Hungarian CPs, who openly raised the threat of military intervention and extolled its virtues in advance.
But the counterpressure from the international workers movement that is highly favorable to Solidarity, which the Italian and Spanish CPs express to a certain degree in their own way, could not be felt. A neat way of loading the dice...
The Kania wing's victory
The chaotic mixture of freedom of speech, deformed and limited though it was, and demagogy and manipulation that marked the Ninth Congress therefore led to an outcome that was undoubtedly the one most in the interests of the Polish bureaucracy. The "radicals" on both flanks were eliminated and the swamp of moderates was victorious. The renewal is quite limited. The ranks are disappointed.
It was a victory for the Kania-Jaruzelski wing, the faction of moderate reformers. These are bureaucrats who are trying to reconsolidate their power while avoiding, to the extent possible, a direct confrontation with either Solidarity or the Kremlin.
The aims of this wing of the bureaucracy could be summed up as trying to channel the desire for "renewal" in such a way as to regain control over the country. And we should not be deceived on this question: the desire to regain control, the sharp attacks on "anarchy" were as much present in the speeches of Rakovsky and Kania as in those of Olszowski and Grabski.
While there was certainly a lot of maneuvering, skillful maneuvers as well as poor ones, that by itself does not explain the outcome. The congress was, in fact, to a certain extent uncontrollable. The fact that the plan most in the interests of the bureaucracy finally won cannot simply be explained by their being able to maneuver far more behind the scenes than was apparent in the plenary sessions. Their plan also triumphed because the very nature of the "renewal" strongly helped them in the task.
The [rank-and-file] "horizontal structures" had already been beaten and had practically dissolved before the congress tock place. Their principal cadres had in fact withdrawn from work in the PUWP to go into the unions. Without clear political alternatives, without a program for the big problems of the day ("economic reform." political power of the working class, the relationship between economic selfdemocracy.
management, socialist and workers power), and without the right to form tendencies, the oppositional elements were by and large marginal to the congress. Toward the end of it, they also could feel a cold wind announcing repression. By contrast, the "conservatives" have set up parallel structures that already weigh on the apparatus.
The affair of the political prisoners-some ultranationalist activists from the Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN) who are, as such, hard for Solidarity to defend —well illustrates both the degree to which the bureaucracy has reestablished control over the PUP and the limitations it faces.
At Huta Warszawa, the big steel mill in the capital, the workers hung a banner proclaiming. "It is shameful for a people's republic to have political prisoners. " The leaders of the local party section tried every means to have the banner removed because the steel mill was on the route that delegates from "fraternal parties," including the Soviet delegation, had to travel to the congress.
The leaders of Solidarity at Huta Warszawa are PUWP members. But along with the workers in the factory, they refused to take down the banner. The local party section even tried to threaten the workers' families, but to no avail.
Solidarity at Huta Warszawa remains determined to defend the principle that all Polish citizens have the right to express their political opinions.
Nothing has been decided
If the party apparatus emerged strengthened from the congress, it is premature to talk of a consolidation of the power of the bureaucracy as such. The congress at most created certain preconditions for the bureaucracy to consolidate its power. But the congress itself did not change the relationship of forces between the bureaucracy and the working masses, especially the industrial proletariat. Such a change in the relationship of forces is the prerequisite for regaining control.
General Jaruzelski, the prime minister, made the real closing speech at the congress. In that speech he repeated the same sharp attacks on Solidarity that he had made several months earlier. He accused the union of fomenting "anarchy" through "political strikes." He rejected the demands that were behind the strike threats by the dockworkers of the Baltic ports and the workers at LOT airline. He even
UNIA PARTI LINIA SOCJALSTYCZNEJ ODNOWY
Emest HarschIP
PUWP billboard outside congress hall reads: "The line of the party-the line of socialist renewal."
threatened the unions with open repression.
All this was along the lines of the Kremlin and its allies, which had expressed their wrath against the LOT workers' demand to have the right to choose the enterprise's director.
But things actually developed differently. With the end of the congress July 20, the government began negotiating with the unions that were preparing for the strikes. In twenty-four hours a provisional agreement was reached. While we do not know its precise contents, new concessions have undoubtedly been made to the workers.
In the Baltic ports, the dockworkers won their demands concerning safety and hygiene, as well as vacation time. At LOT, the director elected by the workers provisionally remains in office, paralleled by a vice-director named by the government who will be responsible for the military side of the company. They are waiting for the economic reform law to specify the way in which each will be designated and what their jurisdiction will be.
Certainly the workers did not win a total vietory. There is no assurance that the agreement will actually be put into effect. In fact, the strike threat in the Baltic ports stemmed in large part from the nonenforcement of past agreements. The main agreements of early September 1980 in Gdansk. Szczecin, and Katowice-still have not been totally implemented by the leadership of the government and party. The right to strike still has not been officially legalized. Censorship still has not been eliminated.
All this allows the Kremlin and its direct representatives in Poland, the supposed "conservatives" and even the "liberal" bureaucrats, to accuse Solidarity's leaders and members of "violating the law, opposing the state, and being anarchists" (forgetting quite quickly that by making these charges they themselves are violating solemnly signed accords).
Obviously nothing is settled by reference to "rights" or "law." Everything is determined by the relationship of forces and by necessities. And the relationship of forces does not allow the bureaucracy, at least yet, to directly attack Solidarity, which is supported by 9 million workers.
From the PUWP congress to Solidarity's congress
Under these conditions, the bureaucracy's tactic remains what it has been over the course of recent months. It retreats in order to gain time. It makes concessions, but without giving them a concrete character. It steps up its probes to see just how far the initial attacks against the workers and unions can go without provoking a united counterattack. It tries to provoke divisions between "hard-line" and "moderate" unionists, between different regions and enterprises. It counts on fatigue and demoralization to lead to an ebb in the mass movement and mass mobilizations. And once that ebb takes place, the repression will increase and become widespread.
The bureaucracy's strategy is aided, in the first place, by the increasingly grave economic crisis. Already during the congress the bureaucracy announced new price increases as well as a reduction in meat rations. But even these rations are not always available in many regions. prompting Lodz housewives to decide to stage a mass mobilization protesting this situation. A hunger strike has already been organized in Kutno.
The bureaucracy is trying to blame the economic crisis and disruption on the "anarchy" caused by the strikes and "political" activities of Solidarity, meaning it places the blame on the working class.
This is obviously a shameless lie. The economic crisis and the disorganization of food supplies began before the July-August 1980 strikes and the creation of Solidarity. In some ways the crisis was responsible for these developments. Furthermore, in the congress's call to the nation, it clearly states that the former leaders of the party and government are responsible for the crisis, and that they will be punished.
But the bureaucrats are not concerned with logic or consistency in their arguments. This is a merciless political struggle in which the bureaucracy makes use of every possible weapon, without worrying about falling into the most flagrant contradictions.
When their agitators murmur in the food lines in front of stores that things were much better before Solidarity was formed and before there were "endless strikes," they know perfectly well what they are doing.
That argument does not work on the most politicized workers and those most loyal to their new organization. These layers generally respond, and not without truth, that if the situation has gotten worse, that is due to deliberate sabotage of supplies by the regime itself. They argue that the regime should therefore permit citizens to control stocks of essential products and their distribution and destination, pointing out that it would then be possible to rapidly determine the real situation.
But in less political circles, the insidious propaganda from the defenders of the bureaucratic order, aided by hunger and fatigue, finds a certain response. And if, as feared, the situation gets still worse in the months to come, the argument will get a further response. That is why Solidarity correctly opposes any law reducing meat rations that is not part of a total economic plan approved and controlled by the workers.
In this context it would be good to highlight the existence of a grave weakness in international working-class solidarity with the struggle of the Polish workers. A conference of capitalist bankers opened this week in Zurich to negotiate with the Polish bureaucracy over stretching out its own debt repayments. (The Polish state owes $26 billion to capitalist countries. This year S6-7 billion would fall due for repayment of interest and principal.) It is high time that the unions and mass workers parties of Western Europe and Japan, as well as the unions in the United States, put forward the demand: Immediate moratorium on the Polish debt service! Complete cancellation of that debt!
This demand is all the more pressing since the international banks, in return for stretching out debt repayments, are demanding that the Polish bureaucracy keep them regularly informed on the country's economic situation, that it submit its plans for "economic reform" to them, and that it deepen the austerity policy it is preparing to impose on the workers.
Support for Solidarity has its natural complement in the following demand: Capitalist bankers, Soviet and Polish bureaucrats, hands off the living standards and the newly won rights and freedoms of the Polish workers! In fact, the austerity policy cannot be carried out without severely limiting or even eliminating the right to strike.
Together with the economic crisis, Solidarity's fuzzy orientation regarding economic policy is another factor that in the long run threatens to change the relationship of forces. The people are worn out by the wastage and the economic dislocation this creates. They want something else to replace an economic policy that has manifestly failed. The questions of self-management, of workers job security, of the overall economic strategy are at the center of everyone's concerns.
In a general way Solidarity's leaders recognize that they must rapidly present a full alternative. But there is still an obvious lack of clarity regarding the concrete content of that alternative and the political premises for its application. The preparations for and the holding of the Solidarity congress will have to show to what extent the union is ready to fill in these blanks, and to what extent the bureaucracy will be able to use the absence of a counterplan and of a truly centralized workers counterpower.
The struggle for this counterplan and coun terpower includes defense of the freedoms and rights won, defense of the movement's unity, and a unanimous and conscious response to any attempt to divide and repress the movement. This is the absolute prerequisite for preventing the gains of August-September 1980 from being wiped out by the salami tactics so dear to the bureaucracy.