Unanswered questions for Polish socialists
"the clique around Mazowiecki, in alliance, for the moment at least, with the stalinist Polish United Workers Party (PZPR), aim to destroy the socialised economy. However this project is not without certain obstacles -principally a militant working class" Page 22
Previous issues of Socialist Outlook have referred to the promising political contribution of the Polish Socialist Party Democratic Revolution (PPS-RD). The party's congress met in mid-December in a period marked by swingeing attacks on the working class by the Mazowiecki government.
In what is probably the most developed marketisation/austerity programme in Eastem Europe, hundreds of thousands are facing the dole queue and soup kitchens are becoming widespread. Dire poverty is already the norm - but much worse is threatened by the IMF, who are calling the shots.
There is no doubt as to the aim of the clique around Mazowiecki, in alliance, for the moment at least, with the stalinist Polish United Workers Party (PZPR). They aim to destroy the socialised economy. However this project is not without certain obstacles - principally a militant working class.
Though Mazowiecki et al may hail from Solidamosc, there is nothing to say that they represent its base - the union federation has not had a democratic congress since 1981. Now we are starting to see working class resistance to these attacks begin, with tens of thousands of miners on strike - and we can be confident that others will follow.
However, in circumstances where openly pro-capitalist propaganda is the order of the day, such spontaneous militancy is clearly not sufficient. A clear, democratic socialist response is sorely needed. It was in this context that the PPS-RD met to discuss their programme to resolve Poland's crisis.
The congress confirmed the ideological diversity of the party, with numerous amendments and alteratives offered by different groups within the party. The programme adopted by the congress was "The Self Management Alternative*: another document submitted by the left leader from Wroclaw, Jozef Pinior, was entitled The Post Stalinist Bureaucracy". There were also other submissions, such as from
SUPPLEMENT the revolutionary Kret group. KRAJGUY
While the political diversity of the party is obviously healthy in many ways, and the democratic discussion between the different tendencies is surely the best way to develop programme for the Polish workers, this heterogeneity is reflected in the party programme. While socialists should clearly support the general thrust of the document, there are some vague areas and others that are absent. However, this should be seen as an argument for further, positive discussion using the programme as a basis, rather than carping criticism.
The programme challenges the premise that Poland is confronted by only two strategic alternatives: a restoration of capitalism or of stalinism. Their alterative is based around workers" self-management, a rejection of Poland's vast foreign debt, rebuilding democratic trade unionism. In a left amendment passed by the congress, the party identifies itself with the revolutions of 1956 and 1968, as well as with the Solidarosc of 1980/81.
Purther sections of the programme deal with the separation of the army, police and mass media from the state, and the beginnings of a solution to the ecological crisis facing the country.
The document's weaknesses lie chiefly in its sections relating to the state and the economy. While it correctly points to the domination of capital in parliamentary systems, nonetheless it calls for a parliamentary system and a state which 'does not express the interests of any social group*. Perhaps these are problems of phraseology in the document, perhaps a slightly utopian idea.
Again in the section on economy. the general thrust is one that we would have no problem in identifying with. Both bureaucratic planned economies and free market economies are rejected for an
PPS-RD Trotskyist gives greetings at PPS(RD) congress economy based on workers control. Yet the market is extolled as the least arbitrary instrument in ... the division of labour*.
However, the main problems lie not so much in the content of the programme as the omissions: the party's view of international politics is clearly a gaping hole that urgently needs to be filled; and the position of oppressed sections of society such as women and lesbians and gay men is more or less absent. These are clearly dimensions of the document that need to be discussed to make it a more rounded political programme.
Jozef Pinior's document is an assessment of the current position of he bureaucracy rather than an alternative programme. Pinior identifies a tendency on the part of the bureaucracy to seek a new role - neither as a new capitalist class nor a bureaucracy of the 'old type' - but rather maintaining its position while acting on behalf of foreign capitalist investors - a sort of semi-colonial role.
Pinior denounces both Gorbachevism and eurocommunist new times philosophies, reasserting a revolutionary altemative based around 'the destruction of the material basis of the rule of the bureaucracy and the socialisation of the economy mass political democracy from below, resting upon workers" committees'. This is indeed the alternative that needs to be put to the revolutionary movements of Easter Europe - a project that revolutionary socialists in the west must do all they can to support.
Patrick Baker SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
Emest Mandel on the Socialist Outlook platform: determined to avold euphoria on any quick or easy polltical revolution "Stalinism's historic defeat is our historic opportunity" We reprint here