Solidarnosc and socialism Carlos Guarita/ Reflex 13 Tony Benn
SOLIDARITY
VC One of the things which contributes to hostility to socialism is its popular identification with the system in Eastern Europe. How do you see the problem of democracy in these countries? How should the labour movement relate to movements like Solidarnoss which fight for democracy? TB Well I've just been to Poland for a week. Poland was under a very right wing regime before the 2nd world war. They lost six million people during the war, which is a higher proportion of the population than the Russians lost. It's frontiers were changed and the nation was all but dismembered.
I think that the way that the Polish Workers Party (PWP - the Polish Communist Party - ed) went about taking power and reconstructing Polish society was the only course of action which they could pursue under the circumstances. For us to look at them in a superior way, when we have never been invaded or suffered more than marginal troop losses abroad, has a certain amount of arrogance about it.
Having said that, Poland did of course have some of the negative features of Communist regimes - centralising everything and seeing unions as an adjunct of government policy. When Solidarnosc began the desire for a genuinely independent trade union movement it was very, very widely shared and understood, and indeed the Polish government now recognises this. VC But they did suppress Solidarnoss, didn't they? TB They wanted to reach an agreement with it. But at that stage Solidarnosc wanted to overthrow the regime, which would have meant a Soviet invasion, at great cost to the Soviet Union in terms of popularity. That was averted. I'm a critic of Solidarity because if you read their published material, well it's pure monetarism. They talk about privatisation and Catholic nationalism. Of course they had a radical element, an independent trade union element, but you have to see that the forces who gathered around them wanted to overthrow the state.
Then the question is what lessons have be learned from that? The Polish regime has abolished both the old trade unions and Solidarnosc and are now trying to build up new trade unions which are non-political — workplace branches where the thing comes up as a federation from the bottom and not from the top. They are trying to make the new trade unions and the parliament more independent so there is some kind of clash of ideas within the state.
I think that the Polish government have something of a market economic orientation, and there I would disagree, but much less than is proposed in Solidarity writings. The TKK (Solidarity National Co-ordinating Committee)
International No 8 January/February 1987
proposals could have come straight from Norman Tebbit! They talk about the need for bankruptcies, the talk about the need for more foreign credit — they are really talking about the dismantling of socialist planning
I've always been very sceptical about the uncritical support given to Solidarnosc by many socialists in the West because I think there are elements in it which have nothing to do with either socialism or democracy. One of the arguments which I felt had some validity was that there was an intellectual element in Polish society which was using the discontent among the workers to put themselves in power and that this was allied to some of the most right wing forces in Polish society -nationalist and Catholic in character.
I've followed the developments very closely. Following an apparent defeat for the workers it seems that a whole series of reforms which the left of Solidarity wanted will be incorporated into the new set-up. VC I think that Solidarnosc was a 10-million strong trade union and social movement which was demanding better conditions for the workers, International No 8 January/February 1987
SO L I DA RIT Y Strike at the Gdansk shipyards, August 1980 better living standards, freedom of the press and political organisation. democratic demands which should be supported by everyone claiming to be a socialist. Solidarnose was repressed and alternative, government-dominated, unions were established.
What you seem to think is the government responding positively to the pressure of the people seems to me to be exactly the opposite. The army has been used to stifle the movement for democracy in Poland, as happened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia before. Your argument that if Solidarnoso had been allowed to push ahead would have led to a Soviet invasion surely tells against the Soviet Union and not against TB Well, that may be so. The Poles of course are very proud of the fact that in none of the periods of conflict since the war has anyone been killed, which is true. You have to look at the actual forces at work and what they thought. Some of the support for Solidarnosc came from some of the most reactionary people in the world. You've got to answer the question of why Thatcher and Reagan supported Solidarnosc so strongly.
VC Enoch Powell supports Britian coming out of the EEC, but that doesn't mean that such a demand is reactionary. TB Well I know, but there's a little bit more in the Solidarnosc example than that. There were forces there supporting Solidarnosc whose objective was not directed at trade union freedom but at dismantling socialism in Poland, which of course NAto would dearly love to see. VC Yes, but the British government gave 'support' to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht during the first world war because they thought that these revolutionaries might weaken
German imperialism. That doesn't mean that it was reactionary to fight in Germany against homegrown imperialist militarism. That fact that the British might give opportunist tactical support has no more to do with an objective analysis of the role of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, than Reagan and Thatcher's opportunist 'support' for Solidarnoss should cloud our judgement about what happened in TB Do you support the ideas of privatisation, increased investment by foreign banks and of the dominance of market forces — because these are the arguments which the Solidarnosc intellectuals put forward? VC Well, there are lots of people, in Russia, China and eastern Europe, including Gorbachor, who are arguing for more use of market mechanisms. Bt in any case I don't think that these were the central demands of Solidarnoss. Their central demands were for the right of self-organisation, of freedom of the press, the right to organise independent trade unions and so on. TB Look, there's a certain näivety in thinking that Solidarnosc was a democratic socialist movement from top to bottom. I think it was made up of a whole range of different ideas, some of them extremely reactionary and right wing. Now, it's much to soon to say overall how the Polish system is going to readjust in the light of the pressure which was put upon it. But systems do retreat in the face of pressure put upon them. They fight it off, and then concede later. That's the way that change takes place.
Even in a system like the Polish one the pressures are there. Many of the original arguments of Solidarnosc I found being used by party and state officials when I was there. Some had been involved in Solidarity but were not prepared, when the crunch came, to go along with overthrowing the state. I think you underestimate the extent to which these aguments have penetrated and have registered. I'm not an apologist for the Polish regime. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't either be uncritical apologists for all that was espoused under the name of Solidarity D 14