Polish Solidarity is legalized - But at what cost for workers?

Scan page 11

SOLiDARY On April 5, after nine weeks of roundtable negotiations at the Magdalenka Palace, Solidarity President Lech Walesa and Interior Minister (and head of police) General Czeslaw Kiszczak announced they had concluded an agreement.

On April 17, the court of Warsaw assigned a place in the register of trade unions to the Independent Self-Managing Trade Union Solidarity. It was, in a word, legalized, after seven years in which its members and the masses of workers had kept up a harsh underground struggle.

Calm reigned in the factories and the streets during the days following the legalization. The Polish workers did not rejoice in the reconquest of their trade-union freedom. The fruits of victory for them were bitter.

The bureaucratic regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, despite having dealt a cruel setback to the working class and the Polish revolution in December 1981, had never been able to "normalize" this class. The bureaucracy's only remedy was to appeal to Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, in hopes that he would be the one who would make the working class governable again.

"Holding back rebellion"

On Dec. 18, 1988, Andrezej Gwiazda, former vice president of Solidarity and an opponent of Walesa's line, warned the Polish WARSZAWA at the roundtable that the situation was rapidly evolving toward a dynamic similar to that of the Palestinian Intifada.

If we don't put the brakes on this dynamic, they declared from the pages of the official press, the Polish political scene will degenerate. It will be reduced to two forces, the youth with stones in hand and the police with their truncheons.

"The man from Providence"

It was then that there appeared a "man from Providence." Lech Walesa met with Kiszczak, the head of the police. On the strength of a promise of opening negotiations, Walesa forced the strike committees in Gdansk, in the mines of Upper Silesia, and in the entire country to proclaim an end to the strikes.

The workers' leader Walesa showed a capacity to demobilize and disorient the workers that was 100 times more effective than that of General Kiszczak's "antiterrorist brigades." Many strikers threw a terrible accusation into Walesa's face-that of treachery.

Meanwhile, Jaruzelski named as new prime minister one of the key players on his team, Mieczyslaw Rakowski. The JaruzelskiKiszczak-Rakowski wing of the bureaucracy then undertook a political initiative of strategic dimensions—to arrive at an agreement with Walesa before more strike waves could explode in the factories and universities.

On Jan. 28, 1989, the influential weekly Polityka, linked to Rakowski, gave a stern warning: "We confront the question of to be or not to be.... The danger of loss of power by our party is real."

At this same moment, the third strike wave burst forth. According to the government's figures, in January 1989 there were 170 industrial conflicts in the country, three times more than in December. In the first three weeks of February, there were 800 conflicts, including 50 strikes.

Lech Walesa and his colleagues at the roundtable condemned the strikes as "provocations." They mobilized to put down the strikes in the name of "the good of Poland" and of "social peace." This was necessary, they said, for a successful outcome to the negotiations.

Radical market reforms

The basic premise of the roundtable negotiations-and agreement—was the common goal of the Jaruzelski wing of the bureaucracy and the "constructive" wing of Solidarity to implement a radical market reform of the economy.

The Jaruzelski leadership proposes expanding private initiative, dismantling a part of the state property in industry, opening the country to investment by Western capital and control by the International Monetary Fund, and subordinating the workers to the instruments of control and discipline lent by capitalism.

Jaruzelski and his cohorts want to atomize the working class in order to destroy their solidarity and their capacity for collective resistance and mass mobilizations—introducing among them great social inequality, bitter rivalries, and insecure employment.

Another aspect of the project consists in the formation of a new trade-union bureaucracy. The present one, during the strike waves of 1988, showed itself unable to rein in the workers. The Jaruzelski team has understood that an efficient sellout leadership can be consolidated only if this task is shared by the leadership of the independent workers' Finally, Jaruzelski's political project is looking to restructure bureaucratic rule itself, in order to base it directly on the needs of world capitalism. It is evident that the Polish bureaucracy's current governing team counts on Gorbachev's approval.

The West plans to "save" Poland The international bourgeoisie, with the rulers of the White House at its head, is ready to pitch in its support. Its major worry consists in making sure that Poland avoids a revolution whose victory could possibly upset the "order of Yalta"-that is, the system of domination established on the continent at the end of World War II.

Already, in February 1981, at the highest point of the Polish revolution, a common (continued on page 13)