New South Korea?

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12 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1989 A section of the Gdansk shipyards, the birthplace of Solidarity, is to be leased for five years to a Polish entrepreneur who has teamed up with an Anglo-Polish company named Durainsul. According to the May 18 announcement, the K2 yard, which formerly employed 1000 workers, will be reduced to 100 workers, and any worker who joins a union will be fired.

"There will be no strike trouble in private yards," said Jersy Piskorz-Nalecki, the entrepreneur heading up the project. "We will get the unions out of the yards."

Piskorz-Nalecki said he was confident that the Polish shipyards had a bright future as the "South Korea" of Western Europe. "Our attractions are low-cost production, good workers, and experience in building all kinds of vessels."

The privatization of the K2 yard is just the beginning of what the Polish bureaucracy—now with the blessing of the top Solidarity leadership—has in store for the Polish workers. The increase of capitalist penetration will mean further unemployment, non-union labor, and an overall assault on the living standards of the Polish workers. This is the real meaning-and danger—of the roundtable agreement.

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strategy of the "communist" bureaucracy and capitalism was proposed by Professor Richard Portes of the influential British Royal Institute of International Relations.

This plan foresaw an economic reform of the Hungarian type (radically marketoriented), a restructuring of the ruling PUWP, the concession of a certain degree of pluralism within restricted spheres of social and political life, and the "bureaucratization of solidarity" by means of its integration into limited "joint-management" tasks of the system.

According to Portes, this would permit an effective blockage of the "disruptive forces of syndicalism and workers' self-management" and arrange a joint plan between East and West to "save" the Polish economy.

Today, this old plan of Portes seems to be reaching fulfillment. President Bush was the first one, immediately after the conclusion of the roundtable agreement, to lavish millions of dollars and numerous other initiatives of economic "salvation" on Poland. His example was rapidly followed by the ministers of the European Economic Community.

A Self-Managed Republic The national congress of Solidarity-which met in September 1981, three months before the state of siege was implemented— democratically adopted, through representation by the workers of the entire country, a plan for economic reform and a new system of state power. This project foresaw the construction of a Self-Managed Republic, which would be characterized by the widest democracy possible and by a real socialization of the economy.

After the imposition of martial law, in the autumn of 1984, the clandestine leadership of Solidarity reneged on this project, turning their backs on what had been the expression of the will and aspirations of the immense majority of the Polish people.

This leadership completely abandoned all reference to democratic planning, reducing the idea of workers' self-management to a caricature. It came out for economic market reforms.

It's true that there was, in this period after the defeat, an inevitable regression of social consciousness and an expansion of illusions in the "values" of the market economy. But this regression was much more limited than may seem.

According to a confidential report, produced by the Institute of Investigations of the Working Class of the Academy of Social Sciences (a body associated with the Central Committee of the PUWP), in 1985 more than 40 percent of workers declared themselves, more or less clearly, for a "workers' self-management-oriented economic reform."

Some 60 percent of the workers were for an economy oriented worldwide toward the satisfaction of social needs-and not for the satisfaction of the imperatives of the market economy.

Other studies carried out in 1988 by it declared itself from the beginning in favor of an index that would institutionalize the low standard of living of the masses.

The roundtable accord has produced a restructuring of state institutions. The State Council, of a completely decorative character, will be supplanted by a new institution-the President of the Republic-elected by the National Assembly and endowed with strong powers.

Jaruzelski, who obviously will be the first president, will enjoy among other things the right to decree a state of emergency. This will signify the institutionalization of a power that Jaruzelski had assumed in December 1981 in order to put down the revolution.

Parliament (the Diet), until now composed of a single chamber, will become bicameral. In addition to the Diet, a Senate will exist.

The next general elections, which will take place this summer, will be free for the Senate. But this chamber will have very limited powers. In regard to the Diet, the pact guarantees that the PUWP and its satellites receive 65 percent of the seats, while the opposition the seats.

The inclusion of the representatives of the opposition in the new National Assembly is a concession as spectacular as the legalization of Solidarity. But in reality, it rips to shreds Solidarity's historic demand—the formation of a self-management chamber based directly on the institutions of workers' democracy.

Jaruzelski splits the opposition The openly declared goal of the roundtable was, for the Jaruzelski team, the division of Solidarity and of the mass movement-the definitive rupture between the "constructive" or "moderate" wing and the "destructive" or "extremist" wing. This objective seems to be completely achieved.

In the Polish mass movement there are many activists who-some in a rather confused manner and others in a more politically and ideologically defined manner— declare themselves for an intransigent defense of "the rights, dignity, and interests of the working class" (the historic statutory objective of Solidarity) by means of mass mobilization and struggle.

As a result, they defend the idea of a mass trade union, unified and democratic, loyal to the traditions of 1980-81; they refuse to renounce full employment and workers' solidarity; and they aspire to a social order without bureaucrats and capitalists-under a collective democratic power of the working class and an economy that would be oriented toward the satisfaction of collective needs.

Those activists who are most advanced politically are today organized in the ranks of the Polish Socialist Party-Democratic RevoJARUEELSKI lution (PSP-DR), led by Jozef Pinior, who was one of the national underground leaders of Solidarity after the implementation of the state of siege.

Others are operating inside the Fighting Solidarity Organization (FSO), in the groups of workers and radicalized youth in Gdansk that support the anti-Walesa dissident positions of Andrzej Gwiazda and Anna Walentynowicz, in the radicalized sectors of the antiwar youth movement Liberty and Peace (WiP), in the Independent Union of Students (NZS), and in the Federation of Combatant Youth (FMW).

Yet others can be found in such groups having dissident points of view in regard to the Walesa line as the Regional Strike Committee (RKS) of Solidarity in Wroclaw, the Interfactory Workers' Committee (MRKS) of Solidarity in Warsaw, or the Intercity Anarchist Federation (MA).

There are also many rank-and-file activists, strongly committed to the defense of the interests of the workers and of the basic principles of workers' democracy, who are active in the "official" structures of Solidarity, which follow the Walesa line.

Tasks that lie ahead The radical dissidents tended to group themselves around two central demands in regard to the Walesa line and the roundtable agreement: the defense of the immediate interests of the workers and the fight for full democracy.

The socialists of the PSP-DR raised more advanced slogansconcerning the plan of construction of a Self-Managed Republic (a state based on workers' democracy) that had been adopted by Solidarity in 1981.

They confronted illusions in the possibility of a democratic reform of the system of bureaucratic power by raising the alternative of a democratic workers' revolution. To the reprivatizations and the openings toward capitalism, they opposed the slogan of "the factories to the workers."

The slogan (put forth by the socialists as well as by other diverse radicalized currents) of full state democracy is tightly linked to the demand of full democracy in Solidarity itself. All these currents share the sentiment that those who have accepted 65 percent of bureaucracy and 35 percent of democracy in the state will also try to impose a line establishing 65 percent of bureaucracy and 35 percent of democracy in Solidarity.

This is the reason for the division that one observes today: While Walesa and his followers couldn't care less about rebuilding a legalized Solidarity in the factories—-concentrating instead on organizing the electoral campaign in the Diet and the Senate-the PSP-DR and several other radicalized sectors are calling a boycott of the "35-percent democratic" elections. They want to reconstruct Solidarity from below, on a democratic basis.

To achieve these tasks and to point the way forward, socialists must build a party of the anti-bureaucratic revolution, of workers' democracy, and of international socialism— counting on the programmatic and political support of socialists of the entire world.

Walesa, Kuron, Michnik, Geremek, and others who today monopolize the Solidarity leadership say "no" to revolution. It is necessary instead to dare to say "yes" to revolution. This is what members of the PSP-DR already have done—with admirable courage.

Management House that would directly

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