Poland

...The proposed National Property Fund would be authorized to "dispose of state property only by selling it in accordance with principles set out in law...

...The Freedom Union has instead adopted the tactic of claiming that everything done by its predecessors in power (the Democratic Union and the Congress of Liberal Democrats) was aimed at realizing the ethos of Solidarity...

...Class struggle was replaced by the spirit of Solidarity...

...The movement continued to trust Walesa, who was in such a hurry to support the new power group that he accepted the Balcerowicz program without familiarizing himself with its contents, without any negotiations, and before it was publicly presented...

...I am not referring—at least, not only—to the fact that the industrial working class employed in "the fossilized mammoths of socialist industry" was bound to lose out because a developed modern economy demands a completely different structure...

...Luckily, this is not the only opinion of this period...

...In his opinion: SPRING • 1997 • 29 Politics Abroad The defeat of Solidarity occurred because government leaders, who emerged from the movement, declined to lead a mass movement in support of transformation...

...What would be needed is a lengthy public debate and radical reorientation of its program...

...In the worst case, it constitutes the persistent repetition of the myth of a "second Solidarity"—a populist, irresponsible opponent of market reforms...

...If one takes seriously the contemporary social teaching of the church, it is clear that the outcome of this revolution was the opposite of that intended...

...Lacking sufficient power to give the republics it had created a proletarian class character, the labor movement was unable to prevent them becoming bourgeois class states...

...This agreement between representatives of the then opposition and the ruling elite envisaged not only the restoration of market equilibrium through price liberalization (accompanied, it is true, by an excessively high level of wage indexation) but also "a new economic order...

...But this revolution was a revolution of epigones in yet another sense...

...Haven't they lost out...

...Kuron's text has now become even more inconvenient, since all political parties—except for the ex-Communist Social Democrats and the Union of Labor—are competing for the support of Solidarity...

...During periods of cyclical boom, unemployment may decline slightly, and the number of those who have been marginalized may fall somewhat...

...To state, however, that the Balcerowicz program was a happy synthesis of Solidarity's utopian vision and Anglo-Saxon economics, to present this program as an expression of the Solidarity ethic, is to undertake a heroic effort to eliminate inconvenient facts...

...But the paper neither published nor summarized this particular article...

...Polish workers, for example, were granted an eight-hour day and other rights...

...It was impossible, however, for anyone to have illusions about the nature of the social system that was to emerge...

...There was, after all, an alternative program, drawn up at the "Round Table" negotiations that preceded the 1989 elections...

...But it also experienced something much worse...

...This program proposed, then, the most radical of all reforms, but without "shock therapy...

...First, the revolutions in Central Europe about which Lange wrote were lost by the workers' parties at the political level— not at the social level: across the region, these revolutions ushered in the first major breakthrough in labor legislation...

...We must not forget that the Balcerowicz plan was passed (almost unanimously) by a parliament in which the opposition occupied only one-third of the seats, as a result of a preelection agreement between them and the communists...

...Translated from the Polish by JANE CAVE 30 • DISSENT...

...This complex question demands a lengthy answer...

...Sometimes this amounts "only" to unintentional one-sidedness...

...The temporary alliance between workers and intellectuals, who were put in charge of policy, together with the support of the Catholic church and international financial institutions, enabled the peaceful transformation of a workers' revolution into a bourgeois revolution...

...It is thus untrue that privatization was, as some people argue, "essentially ignored" in the Round Table agreement...

...No doubt, he failed to realize just how much this exclamation conveyed...

...This is the kind of subtle restriction that currently limits freedom of information in Poland...

...Meanwhile, in present-day Poland primitive capitalism of a nineteenth-century kind is flourishing...

...Solidarity found itself deserted by its intellectuals, seduced by the prospect of power and money...

...It is possible that some of these people deluded themselves about the severity of the recession that would inevitably emerge from the Balcerowicz plan...

...26 • DISSENT Politics Abroad During the years 1980-1992, Poland experienced a repetition, in virtually classic form, of this tragicomic situation (although many Solidarity activists and some advisers to the 1980 strikers—including this author–find it hard to discern anything comic about it...

...This same writer (Leslaw Maleszko) expresses agreement with a common complaint to the effect that the union is interested in nothing except "increasing wages and restricting the scope of lay-offs...

...I do not want to be misunderstood...

...After a few years of stormy intermezzo, the former rulers became the willing agents of an imitative bourgeois revolution...

...The new system has provided opportunities, first and foremost, to economists and lawyers...

...At the same time, there was a strengthening of populist attitudes and hostility toward the market economy...

...In 1989, Solidarity extended its umbrella to the first post-communist government and paid a high price in terms of the erosion of its own strength...

...Some people considered that the workers were bought off in this fashion at a time when revolution was knocking at the door...

...It seems incontrovertible that shifting perceptions of self-interest among the nomenklatura, many of whom had already begun to enrich themselves through the acquisition of state assets, provided a major impetus for approval of the Balcerowicz program...

...Breaking with the freshly minted social contract, the new Solidarity-led government proclaimed in 1989 a great leap forward to private property and a market economy based on allegedly tried and trusted models and thus free of all experimentation...

...Things turned out to be positive with a minus sign...

...In proposing a radical reform, the agreement did not go into too much detail as to the precise shape of the new economic order...

...In fact, precisely because of the method chosen, this great leap forward turned out to be a major experiment, in many respects reminiscent of the postwar great leap to a centrally planned economy...

...not a word about the multifold increase in the number of the poor, about the widespread establishment of shady firms, corruption, and the creation of massive fortunes overnight...

...Citing these words of Kuron, I am unable to refrain from commenting on the functioning of the mass media in Poland...

...Indeed, Kuron's friends attacked him bitterly for the piece...

...The proposals cited here contradict these assertions...

...At that time he was still a manual worker and trade union leader, but the new social order soon brought an extremely high level of institutionalized and stable unemployment, a considerable increase in the number of poor, and "a real revolution in incomes...

...But for other social groups, this much-acclaimed freedom has little significance...

...Bourgeois revolutions of this kind are increasingly relics of the past...

...And he was the only one to disturb the complacency of the elite at a major gala organized by the Freedom Union in August 1996, when he argued that yet again the costs of Poland's transformation had been borne by the workers...

...To quote our ex-president: "We were supposed to create the rule of law, but we have created the rule of lawyers...

...Emerging only recently from the underground, preoccupied with organizational matters, weakened by the exodus of intellectuals, Solidarity believed that it had won the revolution because people it trusted were in power...

...Leszek Balcerowicz forged a synthesis between Solidarity's utopia and AngloSaxon political economy...

...In fact, if we take account of the scale of the afflictions that have befallen the working class, we can only marvel at its restraint...

...The spectacular collapse of the communists helped to instill repugnance for anything that was even remotely associated with socialism...

...But it is precisely this party that has the greatest difficulties in reacquiring legitimacy in the eyes of Solidarity...

...Nevertheless, the union has gone so far as to form an electoral coalition of at least thirty-five parties called Solidarity Election Action, which includes political parties and programs that make even the right wing of the Freedom Union look pinkish...

...It was this that Kuron demanded, unsuccessfully, during 1994-1995...

...The same principles, formulated more generally, were reiterated in the electoral program of the opposition, so the notion of gradual but steady privatization of state enterprises was widely endorsed by opposition groups...

...This is an enormous plus...

...Alas, we have won...

...More often than not, they are deprived of the most elementary workers' rights, of the right to organize unions...

...What about small-scale farmers...

...This is even more startling than the "peaceful" relinquishing of power on the part of the country's former rulers...

...Thanks to a combination of circumstances, however, this is exactly the kind of revolution that took place...

...Those who had been proud worker-revolutionaries were once again viewed as uncouth laborers...

...The sources of this frustration are not always clear, but one seems indisputable: the church shares Solidarity's sense that what once looked like a victorious revolution has turned out to be a defeat...

...In the grip of this latest friendly embrace, Solidarity may find itself not just further weakened but finally suffocated...

...The union is perceived as the only organization capable of standing up to the ruling coalition...

...There emerged . . . a tragicomic situation: workers' parties created republics that were in essence bourgeois class states...

...Their material existence is now so shaky that they are unable to take advantage of their newfound freedom...

...For the same reasons, it was no longer necessary to impoverish some in order to increase the capital of others...

...Only a few years later, we have overtaken many countries of western Europe in income inequality...

...Such a development was possible because, on the one hand, capital was dispersed among shareholders, and, on the other, because these more recent revolutions took place in countries which already possessed large-scale industry and thus had no need of the legendary first million dollars derived from speculation, theft, or fraud in order to make the transition from manufacturing to industrial production...

...If one assumed, for example, increasing European integration and increasing internationalization of the world economy, it could have been argued that a great leap forward into Europe was a precondition for the modernization of Poland's economy...

...But it is too late...

...It could also have been argued (again, I emphasize, if we adopt such assumptions) that we were condemned to undergo a form of shock therapy...

...Of course, these latter professions' material decline and loss of prestige are partly offset by the freedom they have regained...

...elections will be held in the fall of 1997, and time is pressing...

...Under certain assumptions, there was some basis to the assertion that Solidarity's vision of the new order was nothing short of utopian...

...In this regard, Balcerowicz's pronouncements were brutally frank...

...Such assertions are part of the new legitimating ideology...

...The centrist Freedom Union is among those seeking its support...

...The first is related to the Catholic church's farreaching involvement in bringing about these changes...

...While national income is now greater than it was under the previous regime, anyone who demands the restoration of previous wage levels is considered a troublemaker, an opponent of reforms and the market economy...

...It has recently become commonplace to consign the agreement to oblivion or to present it as just one more attempt to reform the previous system...

...In many countries (for example, Austria, Finland, and more recently Spain), modern economies based on private property emerged without the primitive accumulation that was charSPRING • / 997 • 27 Politics Abroad acteristic of the United States, Britain, or even Germany...

...I see Poland's revolution as a revolution of the epigones, as a pale imitation of an earlier revolution, in two senses...

...The program adopted at Solidarity's first congress was also based on this principle as well as on socialist tradition...

...In this situation, the liberals' favorite slogan about equality of opportunity has no meaning for a large proportion of the population...

...In doing so, it has fallen into the embrace of the most rightwing political parties, forgetting that the origins and ideology of some of them are rooted in extreme forms of anti-unionism, that in almost all countries, trade unions find political support in parties of the left or center-left...

...On the other hand, the agreement stipulated nothing that would be incompatible with, say, the Austrian or Scandinavian model...

...Here, I will say only that, in my opinion, the retreat of Solidarity is the most easily explained...

...An opposite view has been voiced by Jacek Kuron...

...A large proportion—perhaps the majority— of the union's former advisers went over to the opposing camp, distorting or even pouring scorn on the history of Solidarity...

...But income inequality, unemployment, and marginalization remain the defining characteristics of the new order...

...For example, Father Jozef Tischner, the main speaker at a Freedom Union gala last summer devoted to "The Polish August," answered a question about the nature of the Solidarity ethic as follows, in terms not of ideas but personalities: Lech Walesa was the leader of a revolution that took place without bloodshed...

...The largest labor movement in Europe brought about a social upheaval from which there emerged one of the most inequitable social systems that the continent has seen in this century...

...It could not have been otherwise, given that reform proposals were based on the assumption that the new system would be created in cooperation with the trade unions, on the basis of a social contract of the kind exemplified by August 1980...

...Things could have turned out differently...

...This was to involve, on the one hand, increased worker participation and, on the other, "the unfettered transformation of property relations," a process that was to be guaranteed in the Constitution...

...Solidarity, however, continues to treat the Freedom Union as its enemy, almost on a par with the ruling Social Democrats...

...The working-class nature of its demands and the social composition of the movement are systematically ignored...

...Kuron writes regularly for Gazeta Wyborcza, and the paper has often quoted his off-the-cuff remarks...

...The basic principle of the church's social teaching is worker participation as a precondition of equilibrium between capital and labor...

...Wage demands that are characterized as "socialist" or even "Bolshevik" would still leave workers with wages far below what they earned before the recession—in other words, below a level that many of today's liberals had criticized as being far too low...

...It was finally published in Zycie Gospodarcze, a paper whose circulation is far smaller than that of Gazeta Wyborcza...

...One more paradox...

...Oskar Lange's comments on the subject are especially perceptive: After the war, when the remnants of the ancien regime collapsed in all the countries of Central Europe—in Germany, Austria, Hungary, in the Czech lands, and in Poland—the bourgeois democratic republics that emerged from the ruins of the Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, and Romanov monarchies were created by the labor movement...

...This principle was codified in the papal encyclical Laborem exercens...

...Now, however, the situation is clear...

...28 • DISSENT Politics Abroad In the political sense, the Solidarity revolution also brought with it at least two paradoxes...

...The sale and lease of not only housing, land, and shops, but also workshops, factories, and shares were to provide a substantial tax base that would go a long way toward reducing the budget deficit...

...But the movement at least had the justification that it had not foreseen such a radical shift in attitude on the part of its former activists and advisers...

...One thing that was certainly not envisaged at the time was the privileged position subsequently accorded to newly created private firms...

...exclaimed Lech Walesa when the election results were announced on June 4, 1989...

...Positive for the lawyers and economists, and minus for everyone else...

...The rift between Solidarity and the government that occurred in 1991, and the workers' massive protests against the economic policies of the time have been described as follows: "This constituted the final parting of the ways for the union and advocates of reform...

...Jacek Kuron was the only member of the new political elite to confess publicly that the great defeat of the workers caused him to lose sleep...

...It was also proposed that a stock exchange be established no later than the fall of 1991...

...Instead they went over the heads of the population, implementing an etatist-technocratic program and forcing the majority of the population into left-wing demands, which were all the more radical the more painful were the costs of the collapse of communism...

...And nurses and teachers...

...A revolution based on mass unemployment, impoverishment, and glaring inequalities was thus by no means a necessary condition of further economic modernization in Poland...

...Not a word about the massive growth in unemployment, the sudden drop in real wages by at least one third...

...The Round Table agreement adhered to the principle of equal rights for all forms of property...

...The question is: why did Solidarity and the old official unions, which still retained some influence, as well as the old power elite, agree to this leap forward...

...One may even stand by such beliefs today...

...In the behavior of high-ranking members of the clergy I detect numerous signs of frustration...

...Tadeusz Mazowiecki brought together the spirit of Solidarity and Christian personalism in his efforts to construct the democratic institutions of a state based on the rule of law...

...But what about workers employed in the private sector...

...The least extreme of these distortions usually portrays the Solidarity of 1980-1981 exclusively as an anticommunist movement struggling for civil society and sovereignty...