[Militant No. 582, 18 December 1981, p. 10]
Last weekend (12/13 December) the army moved to establish martial law throughout Poland.
The government of General Jaruzelski has arrested Solidarity leaders, „suspended“ Solidarity itself, declared strikes illegal „for the time being,“ and in effect clawed back for the bureaucracy all the democratic gains of the last 17 months.
Undoubtedly, Jaruzelski’s action has the warm-hearted approval of the Russian bureaucracy, who have long been pressing for a clampdown on the Polish workers. The intervention of the army has provoked a mood of anger and indignation amongst Polish workers, though perhaps also a mood of despair among some sections of workers and peasants.
The response of the workers in action is not yet clear. The regime has sealed Poland’s borders, imposed rigid censorship of press and television, and cut all telecommunications. links. Even the radio communications of foreign embassies have been jammed in an effort to prevent news leaking out.
However, it is clear that millions of workers stayed ill home on Monday and have not yet returned to work. Some factories have been occupied. Some of the big factories and shipyards, the bastions of Solidarity, have been surrounded by troops. Some of them, it seems, have been emptied by the threat of force, but others remain occupied.
There have also been reports of shootings in Warsaw and Gdańsk and other industrial centres.
The majority of Solidarity leaders have been arrested, although the regime claims they have only been „temporarily detained“. Wałęsa was reportedly allowed to go free, though he was urged to enter negotiations with Jaruzelski’s officials. Whether this was voluntary or not, is still unclear.
It is likely that Jaruzelski has attempted to split the Solidarity leaders, relying on the ‚moderates‘ around Wałęsa to try to pacify the workers and curb action against military rule. Jaruzelski will also be relying on the leaders of the Catholic church and the intellectuals associated with Wałęsa to play a pacifying role in the interests of the bureaucracy.
Shootings, clashes between workers and troops and other incidents, however, could still flare up and produce a major conflict, which could develop into civil war. If events moved in that direction, military invasion by the Russian bureaucracy is still not ruled out, though they would still prefer to rely on the Polish leadership to maintain control if they can.
The bureaucrats no doubt calculate that the Polish workers will be reluctant to take on the Polish army, but Russian forces would undoubtedly be met with bitter, armed resistance, with sections of the Polish army and police going over to the workers.
Jaruzelski has moved cautiously. Army units were sent around the country several weeks ago, supposedly to „help overcome production difficulties.“ Although there has been a big display of force, with armoured vehicles etc., army commanders appear to have tried to avoid provoking conflicts.
Whatever the tactics of the bureaucracy, however, they have only one motive: to restore their undivided rule over society.
The only effective answer is for the workers‘ leaders to call a general strike. This would have of necessity to aim at the overthrow of the bureaucracy. Democratic rights can only be restored through power being placed in the hands of workers‘ and peasants‘ councils.
To ensure success, the workers must appeal to the ranks of the army, taking them out of the hands of the officer caste. And it is fundamentally important for the Polish workers, who will not find a solution within the confines of their national boundaries, to appeal to the workers of both Eastern Europe and the West.
The regime’s latest move had an air almost of inevitability. „Only a few people felt things would end peacefully,“ commented one woman who left Poland on Sunday.
From the beginning of the Gdańsk general strike, Militant has itself warned that unless Solidarity led a movement to destroy the bureaucracy and establish workers‘ democracy, then the bureaucracy would inevitably re-establish itself and reimpose its rigid dictatorship.
As a result of that general strike, the regime was suspended in mid-air. Its mismanagement had produced an economic shambles, and the grotesque corruption of the top bureaucrats had built up enormous anger amongst the workers. Within a few months Solidarity had recruited over ten million workers. Meanwhile, since last August the Communist Party lost 244,000 members through resignations and expelled another 180,000.
The bureaucracy could not move without the consent of the workers. Real power was in the hands of the workers – if only the Solidarity leaders had carried through the struggle to its necessary conclusion.
Hard-line die-hards within the bureaucracy favoured immediate moves against the workers. The more farsighted leaders of the bureaucracy, like Jaruzelski himself, realised that brutal repression would provoke civil war, with a dangerously uncertain outcome.
Jaruzelski favoured a temporary retreat – in order to restore the power of the bureaucracy later. They had to bide their time. But the use of the riot police to evict striking fire cadets from their academy two weeks ago was a crucial test. The reaction was an indication of the way the workers would react to repression on a bigger scale.
In the event , Solidarity’s response was indecisive. There was some protest action, and the Solidarity national committee, against Wałęsa’s advice, called for a protest general strike which was due to have taken place this week.
The proposed general strike was brutally pre-empted by Jaruzelski’s imposition of martial law. The bureaucracy evidently felt that a certain weariness and exhaustion had set in amongst the mass of workers. As we warned, the mass activity of the workers could not be sustained indefinitely at such a high level of intensity. Unless there is a decisive change, there is inevitably an ebbing of the workers‘ energy and activity.
The overwhelming majority of Poles welcomed the democratic gains achieved by the workers‘ struggle. For the first time – apart from previous, brief, mass strike movements – they have been able to breathe freely.
Yet because the trade union rights gained through the mass movement only checked the bureaucracy and not replaced it, the economic problems remained unresolved.
These problems arise from the mismanagement of the bureaucracy, not the strike movement, as the Stalinists claim. But without a democratic plan of production under the control of the workers, the economic crisis has inevitably deepened.
Workers have been exhausted by the long periods of queueing for necessities. Food and clothing is in short supply. Fuel shortages have meant cuts in communal and individual heating. Most importantly, disillusionment had begun to affect many workers, with some sections despairing of achieving a permanent, fundamental change.
Recent reports indicate that attendance at Solidarity meetings has tended to fall off, with participation in the elections of workers‘ representatives down. Support for repeated protest strikes, and general strikes, has become less enthusiastic.
Jaruzelski and his bureaucratic cohorts clearly judged that the time was right to move to restore their position.
The bureaucracy, moreover, has recently been given more urgent reasons to move. At their recent national committee meeting just over a week ago, Solidarity leaders formulated a number of demands which struck at the heart of the bureaucracy: for free parliamentary elections this May (officially elections are not due until 1984); a national referendum on the future form of government, posing a clear choice between the continuation of the present regime and Solidarity’s proposals; and demands for much more democratic access to the newspapers, radio, and television.
In the national committee discussions, some of the leaders posed the need for Solidarity to take power, with the setting up of a ‚provisional government‘ based on the working class. There were also demands for „workers‘ militia groups“ to defend their gains.
Solidarity leaders threatened that if the government went ahead with its ‚Special Measures‘ law in parliament, which ‚guaranteed the right to strike,‘ but effectively suspended trade union rights and banned strike action ‚for the time being,‘ they would call another general strike.
Even Wałęsa, who originally argued that Solidarity should be limited to a trade union role, and who, by his own admission, acted as a ‚fireman‘ dampening down struggles, admitted that confrontation with the regime had become inevitable. Reflecting the enormous pressure of the workers, he apparently confessed that his „moderate approach“ had led nowhere.
In an effort to frighten doubtful sections of workers – and perhaps frighten Wałęsa himself – the government broadcast excerpts from tapes of Solidarity’s discussions which had fallen into their hands.
Clearly, for Jaruzelski it was the signal that the time had come for a demonstration of force.
The unprecedented situation that has developed in Poland over the last 17 months is a testimony both to the enormous energy and combativity of the working class-and to the Solidarity leadership’s lack of clear direction.
The movement, largely as a result of the constantly renewed spontaneous initiative of the workers, has in practice raised all the main demands of the political revolution. These were formulated theoretically by Leon Trotsky in the struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy in the 1930s. They have now been brilliantly confirmed by the spontaneous action of the Polish workers.
The organisation of Solidarity put into practice the demand for independent trade unions under the control of the workers. The ban on Communist Party officials taking positions in Solidarity confirmed Trotsky’s prediction that the workers would exclude the bureaucracy and its agents.
The workers have demanded the right to elect factory managers, and in some cases put this into effect. They have denounced the privileges of the bureaucrats, frequently forcing their removal by direct action. They have demanded access to the media, setting up their own local and national papers.
The demand has even been raised for a trade union for the police. Instinctively, too, the Polish workers have adopted an internationalist stand, appealing to the dissidents and workers of Russia and Eastern Europe. While all these demands have been raised, however, the workers have lacked a leadership with a clear programme and perspective capable of carrying them through. There has been strike after strike in defence of all the gains wrested from the bureaucracy – but they have often been sporadic and uncoordinated.
The Solidarity leadership has lacked the political understanding and coherence to organise the great majority of workers around a clear programme, and to coordinate and direct the tremendous struggles of the workers as they felt their way towards the overthrow of the bureaucracy.
Some of the Solidarity leaders have undoubtedly been trying to work out a pathway to the political revolution. But the the Solidarity leaders around Wałęsa, supported by the dissident intellectuals, have been an obstacle. Although attacked, and in some cases arrested and jailed by the bureaucracy, the intellectuals are in reality a liberal opposition to the bureaucracy, who believe that the regime can be reformed from within.
They have opposed an all-out struggle to overthrow the bureaucracy on the grounds that it could provoke repression, and possibly Russian military intervention. But the price of avoiding all-out conflict was compromise with the regime – which allowed the bureaucracy to remain on the workers‘ backs.
In the end, compromise has not avoided a confrontation.
The advanced workers will have also concluded that the leadership of the Catholic church in Poland also aims to uphold the status quo. The Polish primate has urged the bureaucracy to make concessions and avoid bloody repression – but it has also continually urged the workers not to go „too far“ . Despite the traditional role of Catholicism,and its connections with Polish nationalism, workers will be drawing their own conclusions from recent events.
Jaruzelski has been anxious to emphasise that the military rule is only „temporary“. Trade union and other democratic rights are only „suspended“, not illegalised. His regime may well attempt to maintain, and even extend, economic concessions to the workers, although this will be limited by Poland’s acute economic situation, particularly with a £13,000 million foreign debt. But Jaruzelski will not allow the restoration of democratic rights to the workers. His aim is to restore the power of the bureaucracy, the privileged, parasitic ruling caste which has usurped the workers‘ political control over the nationalised, planned economy. Workers who attempt to resist will undoubtedly be met with savage repression.
Whether Jaruzelski can stabilise the situation for the bureaucracy remains to be seen . His calculation of the exhausted and despairing mood of the workers may be correct. On the other hand, incidents and clashes – the submerged anger and frustration of the workers – may yet provoke all-out conflict.
Even if Jaruzelski re-establishes the bureaucracy’s control, however, he will have only won a temporary reprieve. The underlying crisis in Stalinism, in Poland, Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe, with the enormous power of the working class today and the explosive world situation, makes this inevitable.
Even if temporarily defeated, the Polish workers will have gained enormous experience from the last period. A new movement – which will inevitably come – will start on a higher level. The bureaucracy cannot for very long remove the political revolution from the agenda of the Polish working class.
Fight for workers‘ democracy must be linked to overthrow of bureaucracy
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