Anti Neo-Liberal Victory In Poland
By Bronislaw Czarnocha
17 October, 2007
Countercurrents.orgBus drivers of the regional city Kielce, Poland, had won their two weeks long Polish strike and obtained the permission from that city to form a worker self-governing enterprise where they will have decisive majority of the action package (8/31/07).
Bus drivers had closed themselves up in the city bus depot on July 14, 2007 protesting against the privatization of the firm, which had assumed large salary cuts. Striking drivers demanded 20% salary increase for every driver of the depot and 5 years guaranteed work with the requirement of payment 60 months salary in the case the agreement of employment is broken. After several days of battles with the police and private security forces, the agreement was reached with the establishment of workers management of the enterprise with the full decision making powers. „We reached the compromise we wanted.“ – asserted striking workers. Interestingly, the agreement and compromise was reacherd with the help of Kielce‘s catholic Bishop.
Despite seventeen years after the neoliberal „system tranformation in Poland“ had been introduced, the dream of breaking class barriers is not dead in this country which in the eighties of the previous century had produced one of the most succesful manifestation of workers power, The Trade Union Solidarity. The event in Kielce comes against the background of growing awareness of the betrayal of Polish workers‘ interest and power during period surrounding the Round Table of 1989 Agreements, which ushered neo-liberal entry into, then socialist, countries of East Europe.
On the record, there is the confession of one of the main leaders of the Polish dissident movement, Jacek Kuron, who appologizes to Poles for „Balcerowicz“, for the main architect of the strong regime of neoliberal economic policies , whom he, Kuron helped to install and to create a protective umbrella for those policies out of the Solidarity movement. More or less year ago, his old colleague dissident, Karol Modzelewski posted a short analysis of surprising victory of the presently governing party Prawo I Sprawiedliwosc (Law and Justice, that one that currently has called for new elections), where for the first time the voice of workers‘ dissapointment „Who stole our victory?“ appears.
Finally, last year‘s translation of a new book by David Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity had appeared in Polish, focusing precisely on the issue of destruction of the intelligentsia - workers alliance, which had led to the victory and power of the Solidarity movement of the eighties last century. Ost’s book The Defeat of Solidarity fulfills a very special role in Polish contemporary society. It’s the only book published in Poland, which had been allowed to bring a fundamental criticism of the process of neoliberal „transformation of the society“ 1989-present, to public knowledge and attention. Significantly the book is written by an American political scientist from the liberal perspective, it provides the extended evidence as well as theoretical considerations exposing the process of the betrayal of Polish workers by significant chunk of Polish intelligantsia, their allies in the Solidarity Union movement of the eighties. Why so critical book about the recent history would receive such a big aclaim amongst the criticised is one of the questions discussed in this short report.
Ost’s book is written from the clearly stated liberal perspective and can be seen as an advice of the seasoned New York liberal to its Polish colleagues:
The disregard of the interests and frustrations of the working class leads to loosing workers for the liberal vision of the democracy– consequently it is the threat for the democracy. The political disregard of Polish working class by the new Polish neoliberal elite, one of the main themes of the book, Ost sees as the fundamental political error of that very elite. The error for which liberal demokracy is endangerd in Poland by the victories, of what has been called the political right. „In order to stabilize inclusive liberal demokracy, liberals must attempt to organize the working people directing their dissatisfaction on the economic issues.“
Ost sees the fundamental error in their, new elite‘s process of systematically excluding Polish workers from participating, as a class, in liberal democracy after 1989; the error which must lead (and indeed led) to the weakening of that very democracy. Consequently his primary interest in the plight of Polish workers is more from the point of view of their role in preservation of democracy than from the concern for the workers well being and fulfillment as such in that very democracy. However, in order to unravel the ambiguous political content of the events in their 18 years long history he is forced to document the path from the close relationship between workers and intelligentsia originating from the creation of the Committee for the Workers Defence in 1976 till present state of enmity. As a result an unusual document has been created showing the full anatomy of the betrayal.The anatomy of the betrayal.
Ost’s book leads us through the intricate corridors of the socio-economical intrique whose origins he finds in the Polish underground created following the Martial Law introduced in December 1981, which had outlawed the Independent Union Solidarity. Four years later, in 1985, Solidarity movement receives the second strike, this time from one of its main leaders and „the most influential member of the liberal intellectual opposition“, the dissident Adam Michnik who writes the book Takie Czasy (These Times), with a vehement attack on its allies, Polish workers. With this attack, the break of that profund solidarity tie that joined the Polish social classes since 1976, from the creation of the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR) by his mentor Jacek Kuron to the victories in early eighties, is initiated.
In his book of 1985 Michnik asserts, quoting Ost:„Far from being the guarantor of democracy, labor activism is one of the main dangers to democracy. The rational elite, he argues, would have to take the place of workers in the Solidarity leadership if the organization was truly to be the agaent of democratic transformation. In 1980 we might, he argues, to have thought about them as sensible and rational actors. In fact they are really irrational hot heads, hostile to reason and common sense, contemptuopus of the notion of the compromise, and incapable of recognizing the „limits and realities“ of the real world. „This reintroduction of the rational-irrational dichotomy into the political discourse became the main tool with the help of which the educated Polish intellectuals had taken the hold of the consciousness of not-so-well educated Polish workers. In other words, the Polish „transition“ to neoliberal socio-economic structure had taken place exploiting the intellectual socio/cultural advantage over the worker, ultimately in order to render him helpless in understanding and succesfully resisting the „neoliberal“ colonialization. Finally, Polish workers were taken away the langauge with the help of which they could succesfully understand the new situation they have found themselseves. Since the framework of the „social class“ and „social justice“ had been compromised by the previous regime on one hand, and eliminated by the liberal ideology,on the other; instead of help from the „educated“ in formulating „uneducated“ workers‘ stance there were charges of irrationality in the context of manipulation through the ambiguities of the language.
During the underground years when, as Ost describes, the leaders and intellectual consultants were rapidly preparing the blueprints of the economy based on the private property and the free market, there was close to no one investigating the economical possibilities of the system based on worker self-governing factories, the dense network of which had been created during the Solidarity times. There was no one, or close to no one investigating what kind of market one would have to create so that such self-governing companies have equal chance and knowledge in using this chance to compete and develop. What kind of economy would have to exist so that selfgoverning structures can thrive? What is the minimal self-sustaining sector of the economy made of such self-governing eneterprises? No one in the Solidarity underground had investigated these questions. In fact Balcerowicz, the main constructor of neoliberal economy in Poland, was also, 6 years earlier, during the Solidarity times, one of the originators of the self-governing network of workers‘ factories. This direction was abandoned because, as he says, once there was a possibility for independence one didn’t need to stop at the level of worker Self-governments. Short reflection upon his words betrays the fundamental, if old, deal being made here: „national independence“ instead of „social justice“.. It was the absence of a theoretical socio/economical vision, which integrates the individual freedom and national independence with social justice.
Ost leads us through next several chapters to show how the war on „labor“ and labor had been executed. How the ex-Solidarity leadership had emptied and redirected thousands of Polish strikes of the nineties having manipulated workers into abandonment of their right and power in favor of neoliberal dependence which is lasting till present. In accordnace with the blueprints of the nineties, the act of work in Poland is explicitly downgraded, the salaries are established so that millions of Polish workers have left Poland to other countries of EU looking for better job and some dignity..as workers. So profund is the crisis at present with the labor supply that the neo-capital is bypassing Poland going more East. This way Polish workers are not only forced to emigrate but the whole working class is being eliminated from Polish socio/economic stage, exactly as Ost suggests in the book.
Anger and Politics.The subtitle of Ost’s book is Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe, because the central methodological concept with which he analyzes the events in Poland is that of of anger, and its relation to class and democracy. „Politics in capitalist society – Ost repeats after Valerie Bunce – is all about the organization of anger.“ That relatively new methodology serves him well, up to the points. It allows himto assert that from the liberal point of view, it’s much better for the liberal democracy if the anger formed on the economic basis be recognized and addressed as such instead of being „organized“ along tangetial but passionate issues.Consequently, according to Ost, the main error committed by his Polish colleagues, „young“liberal democrats has been their inability to come to terms with the anger of Polish workers exposed to the shock therapy of Balcerowicz , which led the transformation of Polish society into the system where suddenly workers are at the bottom and intellectual/technocrat elite at the top. Instead their anger had been „organized“ and redirected into many substitute targets, neither of course, resolving its source, and as Ost suggests, resulting in pushing workers into the hands of so called right. The methoodology of anger looses its charm however, once one realizes the characteristic feature of this anger management approach - its bearers are constantly seen as the human mass, as objects which are being pushed, pulled, directed, re-directed but never acquiring their own power, never seen as having something new to offer the whole society. To the contrary, for Ost, „class consciousness entails the recognition of labors subordination, and thus of labor particular interests in a system skewed against it….the class consciousness starts when workers give up illusions about imminently eradicating capitalism and devote their efforts to getting better deal within it.“ Now one can understand why this remarkably critical of Polish politics book had acquired such a strong appraisal in Polish liberal circles - it offers a better, „cooler“ way of keeping Polish workers in their subordinate state.
Bus drivers from the regional city Kielce inform us that the basic capitalist contradiction between workers and owners had been eradicated in the Kielce City Bus Comopany by creating new workers self-governing enterprise.
The author can be reached at [email protected]
Leave A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Digg it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So, as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.
Get CC HeadlinesOn your Desk Top
