[Militant No 583, 8 January 1982, p. 9]
By Lynn Walsh
With brutal efficiency General Jaruzelski’s military council has consolidated the reaction of Poland’s ruling bureaucracy.
Thousands of Solidarity leaders have been arrested and interned or thrown into jail. Military trials, for the „crime“ of fighting for trade union rights and political freedoms for the working class, are already under way, with vicious sentences being imposed on workers‘ leaders.
All the gains of the last 18 months have been wiped out in a few days. Solidarity is illegal, strikes are banned. The bureaucracy has re-established its iron control of the factories,. local administration, and the media.
Polish workers were shocked and stunned by the military coup on 12 December. There were spontaneous strikes, factory occupations, and demonstrations on the streets. Miners in Katowice occupied the pit for more than a week.
Jaruzelski was biding his time
Throughout Poland, particularly in the industrial centres, hundreds of workers have been injured in clashes, with scores probably being killed by the army or the police.
Jaruzelski’s forces ruthlessly smashed the workers‘ resistance, which was a desperate response to the military takeover.
Solidarity’s call for a general strike in protest against the coup, however, was a failure. Jaruzelski had correctly judged that the workers‘ movement was already ebbing. There was already confusion, disillusionment, and despair among sections of the workers. Solidarity had no clear alternative on which to call a general strike. The only alternative would be the complete overthrow of the bureaucracy.
Above all, the police, the militia, and even the predominantly conscript army acquiesced to the bureaucracy. At the time of the general strike Jaruzelski, arguing against the hard-line Stalinists, had understood that to use the army would lead to its disintegration. Then, force would have provoked a political revolution, with the complete overthrow of the bureaucracy and the establishment of genuine workers‘ democracy.
Power was in the hands of the working class, in reality, for a year or more. The demands that were advanced and fought for by the workers added up to the programme of the political revolution. But the working class was not conscious of its power. And the Solidarity leadership around Wałęsa, misled by the intellectuals and the Catholic advisers, far from drawing the necessary conclusions, argued against going „too far“.
Days before Jaruzelski’s coup, Wałęsa and Co. were still trying to compromise with the bureaucracy, even agreeing to plans to incorporate Solidarity within the bureaucracy. Some of the Solidarity leaders had already rejected Wałęsa’s policy, demanding an all-out struggle with the regime. But it was too late.
Sections of the workers had become exhausted through struggles that produced no tangible results. Checked by the workers‘ power, the bureaucracy was afraid to take decisions. Yet without control of the economy and a democratic plan of production, the workers could not overcome the crisis in the economy, which went -from bad to worse.
Our prediction, that Jaruzelski was preparing for a reaction when the time was ripe has now been borne out. The take-over by the military leadership is unprecedented in a Stalinist state (apart from the peculiar deformed workers‘ states which have appeared in a number of countries in the under-developed lands).
It is therefore a measure of the depth of the crisis in Stalinism that the generals have taken over in Poland. Ironically, following the Gdańsk general strike the Polish bureaucrats attacked Solidarity for refusing to recognise “the leading role of the Communist Party“. But Jaruzelski has unceremoniously pushed the party aside, and power is now being exercised through the Military Council.
The „Communist Party“ was not, of course, a genuine workers‘ party – it was an instrument, as in the other Stalinist states, of the bureaucracy’s rule. But in the events of the last eighteen months whatever basis it had was shattered. The party lost the best part of half a million members, either through mass resignations or expulsions. The lower ranks of the bureaucracy, and even some of the middle and upper ranks, were affected by the movement of the workers. After this collapse, only the army’s officer caste remained a reliable instrument for the bureaucracy.
The military takeover, moreover, underlines the failure of successive party leaderships to stabilise the regime through „reforms“ and „liberalisation“- Gomulka after 1956, Gierek after 1970 and 1976, and Kania’s brief and ill-fated attempt to head off the workers‘ demands after August 1980.
The failure of these leaders is rooted in the fundamental crisis of Stalinism, which is being expressed in an especially acute form in Poland.
Bureaucracy can no longer develop economy
Firstly, as Trotsky explained in the 1930s, the Stalinist bureaucracy is fundamentally incapable of allowing independent workers‘ organisations. Under capitalism, the ruling class, because it owns and controls the means of production and therefore the decisive levers of economic power, can afford to grant democratic concessions to the working class. But under Stalinism the ruling, bureaucratic elite retains power only by virtue of the fact that it has usurped the workers‘ political control over the nationalised, planned economy. Any element of genuine workers‘ democracy poses a dire threat to the bureaucracy’s power and privileges. That is why the Polish regime could not possible tolerate, for more than a very brief period, the democratic rights they were forced to concede to the workers following the events of August 1980.
Secondly, crisis has followed crisis in Poland because the bureaucracy has now outlived its relatively progressive role in developing production through the planned economy . Although at enormous cost, the bureaucracy transformed Poland from a backward economy into a modern industrial state. But the waste, inefficiency, privileges and corruption of bureaucratic planning can no longer cope with the needs of a more sophisticated, economy. In their effort to buy acceptance of the workers with more and higher quality consumer goods the bureaucracy was forced to turn to the capitalist west, thus incurring the crippling foreign debts which now amount to $27,000 million.
And the gains of the planned economy have produced a socially preponderant, overwhelmingly youthful working class no longer prepared silently to carry the bureaucracy on its back.
Thus the bureaucratic reaction in Poland has revealed Stalinist totalitarianism in its most naked and brutal form – that of open military dictatorship.
No bureaucracy, however, can rule indefinitely by force alone. The mass arrests of workers‘ leaders have already made it clear that there will be brutal and systematic repression of all opposition. Apart from jail – and possibly exile – a bureaucracy which controls the factories, education, housing, and all aspects of cultural life has a thousand and one ways of intimidating, harassing and victimising its opponents.
Preparing for the next time
Nevertheless, Jaruzelski will in the next period almost certainly attempt to refurbish the Communist Party, attempting once again to penetrate the working class in order to secure a base for the regime. Jaruzelski apparently intends to continue with the trials for corruption and mismanagement of members of the old Gierek leadership. This is aimed at giving the impression that there will be a „new start“, although Jaruzelski may well, for the time being, curb some of the worst excesses of corrupt officials.
Jaruzelski has also promised that trade union and other rights will be restored later. These are completely hollow promises, which cannot be fulfilled by the bureaucracy, though they may try to refurbish the official state „trade unions“.
Commentators have suggested that Jaruzelski will attempt a policy of „Kadarisation“, that is an approach similar to that of the Hungarian leader Kadar who attempted to restore the bureaucratic regime after the workers‘ uprising of 1956. This was based on economic reforms aimed at buying the acquiescence of the workers through improved living standards, more consumer goods, etc.
Jaruzelski no doubt intends to attempt such a policy. But the conditions are entirely changed from the late 1950s and 1960s. Since then, growth of production in the Stalinist states, 10% or even 15% in the former period, has fallen to 3%or 4% percent or less, lower than some of the countries of the capitalist west. In the era of sophisticated technology, computers, etc., the bureaucracy can no longer take the economy forward. In the short term, Jaruzelski’s regime will probably stabilise the economy. Some of the shortages of previous months were due to the deliberate sabotage of the bureaucracy, who were deliberately trying to undermine the morale of the workers. Within hours of the military takeover, according to some reports, food and essential goods appeared on the shelves of many shops. The message was that the military could deliver the goods.
In the coming months, go-slows, non-co-operation and even sabotage by the workers will continue in many of the factories, shipyards, and mines. But with no alternative, there will gradually be a return to „normal“. With the help of the foreign banks, who fear a collapse of the regime in Poland, the bureaucracy will be able to some extent to restore the economy. In time, Jaruzelski may well take off his uniform, or even hand over to a civilian replacement.
But Jaruzelski’s new „normalcy“ will be built on the crushed hopes of millions of workers who have been involved in an active struggle against the bureaucracy and who have had a taste of workers‘ democracy. Repression may smash all opposition for the time being, but beneath the surface the bitter anger of the workers will continue to smoulder. The military will not expunge the hatred of the working class for the privileges of the bureaucrats and their ruthless defence of their dictatorial powers.
As Jaruzelski consolidates the bureaucratic reaction, there will be moods of despair amongst sections of the workers. Many will turn to religion or vodka for consolation and “escape“. Some workers, inevitably, will be bought off by positions and perks.
But the experience of the last eighteen months can never be wiped out. The advanced layers of the workers, particularly the youth, will be pondering the lessons – and waiting for the next time. They will be drawing the conclusion that next time their aim from the outset must be the overthrow of the bureaucracy as the only path to workers‘ democracy.
And there will be a next time. Of that there can be no doubt.
The Polish workers have suffered a crushing defeat, and for the time being reaction will prevail. But the underlying crisis in Stalinism, both in Poland and Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe, makes a new upheaval absolutely inevitable. The wounds inflicted on the Polish workers will slowly but surely heal-and they will assimilate the lessons of the last eighteen months. The bureaucracy, even through military rule, will not break the will of the working class to struggle to overthrow the bureaucracy and establish workers‘ democracy. The next upheaval, of course, may come in another Stalinist state – but the Polish workers, whose courage, determination, and tenacity in struggle has been established beyond all doubt, will not be lagging far behind in the struggle for the political revolution.
Schreibe einen Kommentar