[page 18]
Arguing for socialism We print here extracts from a document which has been circulated in Poland - in conditions where the crimes of Stalinism have built up enormous illusions in capitalism.
POLISH WORKERS AND YOUTH face an economic and social disaster. Rising unemployment, poverty and crime: this is the economic Frankenstein's monster created by the policies of Balcerowicz, Bielecki and Walesa. It's true. the government inherited a desperate economic crisis from Jaruzelski's Stalinist regime. But like doctors whose 'cure' for a sick patient is to amputate all his limbs, Balcerowicz and the other 'free market' economists want to chop away whole branches of the economy to make it 'healthier'.
In 1990 production fell by 25%. In light industry, sales fell by 37%. When Walesa says that a capitalist Poland can be like the USA he must mean the USA of 1929, at the time of the Wall Street crash and the depression! Working people have suffered a massive 40% fall in living standards since January 1990, while prices rose by nearly 700%. The Bielecki and Mazowiecki governments have produced the worst of all worlds: eastern European wages with western European prices! While the new ministers exchange their old Fiats for government limousines, working people. peasants, the unemployed and pensioners are paying a terrible price for this experiment in capitalism. At least 350.000 are now homeless in Poland. This includes 60,000 young people in Warsaw. Factories cutting back on emplovees have also closed workers' hostels. 700 sleep in the underground sewers of Warsaw every night in order to stay warm and stay alive. What kind of system is it that treats human beings like rats?
in Poland Polish workers don't want Stalinism. But the experience of the last two years shows us that capitalism is not the solution either. Unemployment has risen from 20,000 to 1.2 million during 1990. This is not an accident or a natural catastrophe.
This is the famous "plan'
of Balcerowice, although his plan only foresaw unemployment of 500,000 by the end of 1990. In fact the government have been so successful at destroying jobs and production, that more than twice as many people have been thrown on the unemployment scrap heap. Unemployment is expected, according to the same official forecasts, to reach 2 million this year. Faced with no prospects here, is it any wonder that polls show 40% of young people want to emigrate! A similar 40% believe the government's economic programme will turn most Poles into paupers! Even if emigration is a temporary solution for some. only a tiny number will succeed in going abroad. With growing unemployment in the west, there is less demand for cheap Polish labour. While a million are working illegally in western Europe, only a very few have a legal right to stay. The crime rate has doubled in Poland in the last 12 months. Burglaries are up 176%. Many young people are among this new generation of thieves - forced to try to solve their own problems at the expense of others. But who are the real criminals? — a government and system which wastes the abilities of its people. especially the young! 250,000 of the unemp. loyed have completed at least a secondary education. This means the most precious asset MIR O17
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180 MIR Summer Poland
Jacek Kuron.
of any society — the talent and enthusiasm of young people - is being thrown away.
The never-ending round of price increases has become unbearable for most ordinary working class families. Rents doubled again in January 1991. Train fares increased by 50%. In 1990, bread rose 13-fold, tea 14-fold and pasta 22-fold in price. Heating costs and food prices will rise again soon. Meanwhile the government are trying to hold down wages even further! They say all Poles must make sacrifices. But who is making the sacrifices? Not the rich few - they are actually profiting from the crisis. It is estimated that 5 million new dwellings are needed to solve the terrible housing crisis. Yet housebuilding was 11.2% lower in 1990 than in 1989. While few new homes are being built at affordable prices or rents, private developers are building $600-a-month luxury appartments for those with the money. BMWs and Mercedes are imported to satisfy the tastes of the new economic nomenklatura who have replaced the old political nomenklatura — in reality, a new class of capitalists in the making.
Most of the members of this new exclusive club come precisely from the old nomenklatura or former black marketeers and speculators. Like the old bureaucrats at the Gdansk shipyard - Solidarity's birthplace — who have, under the 'Solidarity' government, set up 70 private companies which feed like parasites off the yard They use the yard's workforce, equipment and facilities — all paid for with public money - to line their own pockets! Or, like the former Stalinist Industry Minister, Mieczyslaw Wilczek who wanted the closure of the Gdansk shipyard in 1988. This former 'communist, one of the richest men in Poland, has now launched a profitable joint-venture with a Japanese business. Like hundreds of former bureaucrats, Wilczek has exchanged his communist' creden. tials for capitalist ones with the ease of a man exchanging one library book for another. These are the people who have benefited from the policies of Balcerowicz, Walesa and co.
Protests against this terrible injustice are rarely heard over the deafening roar of propaganda in favour of the 'free market. In what is now supposed to be a democracy, the government are monopolising the press and TV in the same way as the Stalinists before them. When the TV programme Obseruator dared to show the miners' protests outside Belweder (Walesa's presidential palace - Editor) which no other TV programme showed - its producer was dismissed and its news reporters were 'offered' jobs in other areas by the directorate.
Workers will struggle to hear any alternative. All that can be heard on TV, radio and the press are professors and economists telling us there's no alternative to the market. The sackings, the factory closures, the price rises and the grinn-
ing ex-bureaucrats who are now getting away with the national wealth in the form of new 'private businesses' - all these things are 'unavoidable', 'it's the market', 'there's no alternative'. . All the parties and groupings in the Sejm sing a similar tune. This includes the old Stalinist PUWP leaders who as the 'Democratic Left' have also been converted to the market.
MANY WORKERS STILL hope against hope that by the great sacrifices they are making today, a capitalist market will somehow lead to an improvement in the long-term. Although this view is changing fast: 82% supported Mazowiecki's government in January 1990, but 10 months later Mazowiecki could only get a humiliating 19% to come third in the presidential election. Bielecki took over with support at the level of Mazowiecki when he left! Those workers who still have illusions in the market are mistaken and will come to realise this through the bitter experience of further betrayals and disappointment.
Then, increasingly; they will demand that their trade unions, strike committees and workplace organisations fight to defend them. Polish workers - potentially a mighty force, as was shown in the mass movement against Stalinism in 1980 - will not accept these attacks on their jobs, wages and their very livelihood without a fight. But we must also learn the lessons of the defeats in the past. If the future struggles of working people are to succeed, we need a clear programme and a fighting leadership. This programme must spell out an alternative to both Stalinism and capitalism - an alternative developed from the standpoint of the workers and their interests.
Unfortunately, the fact must be taced, at this stage the leaders of the trade unions are offering no alternative. NSZZ (Solidarity) has lost members and aroused anger and opposition in many areas because the union's leadership has taken sides completely with the government against the workers. It has allowed itself to be used as a shield to protect Balcerowicz and co from the anger of the workers. Jacek Kuron stated this bluntly: "Balcerowicz and I have agreed to work as a team. I'd be responsible for social security, social policy, trade unions persuading people to accept the (Balcerowicz) plan."
OPZZ opposes some aspects of government policy in words but does not put forward an alternative policy. Consequently, the leaders of OPZZ have not organised an effective national campaign to defend jobs and living standards. They were pushed from below into supporting the strikes against popiuek. (A tax on state owned companies which increase wages beyond government pay limits - Editor) Their leaders' association with the old Stalinist regime
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means many workers distrust OPZZ - an obstacle to building a strong and united workers' opposition to the government's attacks. There is therefore a need for a clear fighting alternative, a policy and programme of action to guide the struggle of workers throughout the country, which must be fought for in every factory, shop, office and every workers' organisation. A policy for the defence of jobs, decent wages and real democratic rights is needed. Only a society of workers' democracy can guarantee these things.
Workers' democracy doesn't mean the horrific dictatorial regime that existed between 1949-1989 in the name of 'socialism'. The Stalinists twisted and misused the ideas of Marx, and the experience, ideas and literature of the international workers' movement, in an attempt to justify their mafia rule. Real workers' democracy - genuine socialism - is completely different. It is a society where socialised industry, the government and the state are controlled by workers themselves. and managed democratically by elected representatives who earn no more than a worker's wage. get no privileges and can be recalled at any time. All parties can freely organise and governments are decided by free elections. In this way we put an end to the greedy, parasitic bureaucrats who climbed up on the backs of the working class in the past. At the same time, workers' democracy means defending state ownership of Polish industr! which was built up by the sweat and toil of workers - against attempts to sell it to capitalists and ex-nomenklatura.
who gains and loses?
"THE STORY OF the first five companies now being sold shows that this is not the way to expand private ownership" — Janusz Lewandowski, Ministry for Ownership Transformation, February 1991.
The plan to privatize most of the economy is central to the government's programme. Bielecki claims that 80% of the economy will be in private hands in five years' time. Again working people have been surrounded by propaganda arguing that privatization is in everyone's interests and will make the economy more efficient. Many workers have accepted the arguments for privatization because of the terrible mismanagement of state enterprises by the Stalinist nomenklatura. They say 'anything must be better!'. But the recent experience of privatization in Poland, as well as international experience, demonstrates that workers have nothing to gain and a lot to lose.
But here too. we see the enormous problems the government faces in its attempts to reintroduce capitalism. The sale of the first five big companies (Exbud, Slaska Fabryka Kabli SA, Prochnik SA. Krosno and Tonsil) in January 1991 was a near-disaster. Despite spending S1 million on advertising telling people to realise the power of your money', three of the companies couldn't find enough buyers and the deadlines had to be extended again and again. In the end, the state insurance company Weste bought 20% of Prochnik shares. As with Krosno
Walesa, then and now.
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200 MIR Summer Poland
Premier Beileckí.
and Tonsil, the state is left holding most of the shares. Former Privatization Minister, Krzysztof Lis, tried to present the sale as a success saying 'Over 100,000 people used their money to vote for capitalism' by buying shares. But this is just 0.25% of the population. So much for spreading ownership among the people!
These companies were chosen to start the privatization process because, as Lis himself said, they were 'the best'. What problems are they likely to face selling the rest? The fundamental problem facing the privatization prog ramme is who to sell to, especially if the 'best' five attracted hardly any foreign buyers. Clearly Poles can't afford to buy. According to Warsaw Voice, the value of all the money resources of the country's population, in the form of bank deposits and other savings at the end of 1990 was worth only 5 to 10% of all state assets.
In an attempt to get around this problem, some of the Government's economic 'experts' have come forward with the idea of vouchers, given free to every citizen, to be exchanged for a certain amount of shares. During the presidential election campaign when votes were needed, Walesa said everyone should get a voucher worth ZL100m! However, this idea was quickly dropped. The Ministry for Ownership Transformation are talking of a maximum value of ZL870,000!
The voucher scheme is a confidence trick! It is an attempt to overcome resistance to privatization. Despite all the government's propaganda, polls show that 60% of workers prefer to work in state enterprize. Vouchers will probably only be valid for shares in 'high-risk companies which the government cannot sell for real cash. These companies, without state support, would probably then collapse leaving 'share holders' with a Z1870,000 share in... nothing! It is unclear how the scheme will be administered, but it's possible that a black market for the vouchers will develop long before they can be exchanged for shares - with families tempted to sell their vouchers at below their official value just to get some immediate cash. If this happens it will mean that again the ex-nomenklatura and black marketeers are the only ones to profit from privatization.
Whatever form this scheme eventually takes. one thing is absolutely certain - vouchers do not represent real wealth. They will not make possible the massive investment needed to re-equip Polish industry. This is the Achilles heel of the whole privatization programme: it
does not solve the desperate need for invest-
ment and new technology. Even when the
companies are sold for hard cash, the revenue
goes not to the enterprize concerned but to the
Treasury: It does not generate a single extra
zloty for investment.
Neither will it advance
workers' rights. On
the contrary, it means the replacement of one gang of parasites with another. In most cases the same cheats and swindlers who were in charge yesterday stay in charge today. In some cases criminal activities may be involved.
IS WORKERS' SHARE ownership a solution? Supporters of workers' share ownership argue that this can give workers the control of their workplace that was denied under Stalinism. This view is mistaken. Unfortunately these ideas only confuse the issue, and by giving the impression that workers too can gain from privatization, actually help the government get through its anti-working class privatization policies. The government have made clear their total opposition to anything more than a token shareholding of no more than 20% to be sold to employees.
Behind the government's attitude stands the IMF and all their economic advisers. The capitalists have made it clear they will be even less prepared to invest in Poland if such schemes are tolerated. This doesn't mean that employee share schemes represent an alternative to capitalism. Even if a group of workers were successful in buying their company, this would not give them real control. The question of who controls the wider economy would determine this. Within a capitalist dominated economy they would be forced to manage their affairs in much the same way as other capitalist companies. They would be at the mercy of capitalist banks and the capitalist 'market' over which they would have no control or influence.
Some workers in relatively successful enterprises may be attracted to this idea, but this is short-sighted. Splits within the working class between those in profitable and non-profitable industries will only assist the government and the employers to divide workers, all the more easily to isolate opposition to their policies. This of course, is assuming that the government would agree to majority employee shareholdings in the first place. Given their opposition so far. it would require a massive campaign of pressure - of strikes, occupations and a virtual uprising - to force the government to change.
Such a campaign could achiere much more than win the mere 'right' for workers to get a majority shareholding. Workers don't need shares to prove their ownership of a company. The working class as a whole already oun all
of Polish industry: These enterprizes were
built up by the labour of working people over
decades. Privatization represents the theft of every worker's birthright. The problem has
been that for forty years the exact nature of the ownership of Polish industry has been obscured
by the wrecking role of the nomenklatura.
While the economy belonged to working peo-
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ple, with capitalist ownership eliminated, control and management was hijacked by the bureaucracy. Therefore, rather than looking to private share ownership as a means to wrest control of their workplaces from the old bureaucrats, the working class needs to fight to establish democratic workers' control and management throughout the economy, while at the same time fighting to defend social ownership.
It is understandable given the lack of any real workers' rights under Stalinism, never mind workers' control, that some workers now look to co-operative forms of ownership as an alternative. With a democratically planned economy under the control of the working • Class, co-operative enterprises would be possible where a clear majority of workers wanted this, although in practice this would probably be an exception. But such co-operative ventures could only fully develop under conditions of workers' democracy — where the economy is geared to the needs of the working class not in a capitalist economy geared towards private profit or a totalitarian Stalinist-run economy.
2. Why bureaucratic 'planning' failed THE 1970s AND especially the 1980s saw a long drawn-out decay of the Polish economy and the other economies of the Stalinist world. This is especially true of eastern Europe, and was a critical factor behind the revolutionary movements of 1989 which led to the collapse of Stalinism in the region. This process must be studied by the workers' movement east and west. It holds enormous lessons for workers' struggles during the next decade and beyond.
For the mass of workers and peasants, the smashing of eastern Europe's dictatorial Stalinist regimes was a huge step forward. The working class has begun to organise and press for the democratic rights which it was denied for decades. But another side of these events has had a confusing and contradictory effect on the newly emerging workers' movement in the east. For many, it has led to a rejection, not just of Stalinism, but of the very idea of the planned economy as well. Because the old nomenklatura fraudulently dressed their privileged bureaucratic rule in the clothes of 'marxism', 'socialism', 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' - these ideas have been rejected too. This is another crime to add to the long list of crimes committed by the Stalinists.
Years of economic stagnation and even absolute decline in the east European 'planned' economies seems to be proof that planning doesn't work. In the 1980s, this situation became so acute that the creaking economies of eastern Europe were clearly outstripped by capitalism in the west. This despite the fact that Share vouchers capitalism itself has entered a period of crisis will not create and slow growth. On the surface, it seems that new capitalism is a more dynamic and viable system. investment.
After all, who can argue with the sharp difference in living standards that now exists between eastern and western Europe? For many, the arguments of the pro-capitalist politicians appear an inescapable truth: 'the market works - planning doesn't!' But the reason for the protracted economic crisis in Poland was not the unviability of a plan of production, but the bungled bureaucratic way in which 'planning' was carried out. The nomenklatura's perversion of 'planning' has nothing in common with the real Marxist idea of an economy democratically controlled by the working class. Fearing the workers like death, the ruling bureaucrac! jealously protected their exclusive right to decide and to manage. The trademarks of bureaucracy are mismanagement. waste and corruption. Increasing!! the potential of the planned economies was drowned in a sea of bureaucracy. However, in the early years. these economies made big strides forward despite the bureaucracy. Poland achieved an economic growth rate of 8.6% per year between 1951-55. From 1956-60 the economy grew by 6.5% per year. This was a faster rate of growth than the capitalist economies Between 1951 and 1972 national income grew at an annual average of 7%, compared with a world average of 5%. Compare this with pre-war capitalist Poland. In 1931. only 29.t", of the Polish labour force were industrial or white collar workers. 60.7% were private farmers. By 1980, industrial and White collar workers accounted for 70.1% of the labour force while only 23.7% were private MIR •21
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220 MIR Summer Poland
planned
economy
needs a nocracy of producers
and consumers
farmers. By abolishing capitalism and introducing planning, even in the distorted and inefficient manner of the bureaucracy, Poland was transformed from a backward, mainly rural, economy to an industrialized society.
This progress is especially significant because of the devastation caused to industry during the war, in which one-fifth of the population died. In addition, the post-war reconstruction of the economy was greatly hindered by Stalin's 'fraternal' pillaging of important industrial plant which was transported to the USSR. Such actions, against the interests of the Polish workers, demonstrate how far removed the Stalinist bureaucracy are from genuine Marxism and international working class solidarity.
Of course not all the figures produced by the Stalinist regime are reliable. Statistics were compiled inaccurately and every bureaucracy has a tendency to exaggerate its own achievements. But there is no denying that the economy grew rapidly in this period. Workers undoubtedly felt a change in their own living standards. According to official figures, real wages rose by 24.2% from 1949-55 and by 29% from 1956-60. Even if we halve this increase to take account of the regime's manipulation of the figures, it means a growth of real wages of over 25% during the decade. Compare this, not just with the collapse in living standards in Poland today, but also with the fall in real wages or standstill experienced by most workers in the west during the 1980s!
However, wages are not the whole story. There was a dramatic improvement in social services. In 1950 138,000 were employed in health and social care. This rose to 226,000 in 1955 - a 64% increase! Similarly in education and culture 228,000 were employed in 1950, rising to 344,000 in 1955 - an increase of 50%. In 1958, 3.8% of the workforce were university graduates. By 1981 this had risen to 8.3%. In the same period the number of technical high school graduates in the workforce rose from 6.9% to 21.5% and vocational school graduates from 8.2% to 24.8%
These achievemenis show the possibilities arising from the nationalisation of the economy and a plan of production - even though its full potential could not be realised by the bureaucracy. This is just a fraction of what could have been achieved if the working class was directly involved in the management of industry and in democratically drawing up the plan...
In the 1950s and 1960s when industrialisation was concentrated on heavy industries like steel, coal, heavy engineering and the arms industry, the bureaucracy's wrecking role was not so obvious. But as the modern economy has become more complex, especially in the era of computerisation and new technology, the bungling of the bureaucrats is plain for to see.
This process was explained by Trotsky in 1936. "It is possible to build gigantic factories according to a ready-made Western pattern by bureaucratic command - although, to be sure, at triple the normal cost. But the further you go, the more the economy runs into problems of quality, which slips out of the hands of a bureaucrat like a shadow...
"Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery." (Revolution Betrayed, p276).
This has been the painful experience ot Stalinist 'planning' in Poland especially during the late 1970s and 1980s. This period saw a jamming up of the entire economy. Whereas (according to the regime's figures) 1971-75 saw an average annual growth rate of 9.8%, this had slumped to 1.2% between 1976-80. In 1979 national income declined by 2.3% and then by 6% in 1980. In 1981 national income plummeted by 12%, industrial output fell by 16% and coal production by 14.8%. Martial law couldn't arrest the economic decline. In 1982 real wages slumped by 25.1% as the military regime pushed through huge price rises. By 1985 industry was only working at 60% of capacity.
In addition, because of their slavish reliance on delapidated heavy industries and their inability to adapt and develop new technique, the Stalinists have created one of the worst ecological graveyards in the world. One-third of all Poland's population live in areas designated as 'ecological disater areas. These are areas so contaminated that the inhabitants should be moved...
This is the Stalinists' miserable record of sabotage and needless waste. Capitalism will only bring more anarchy and make this disastrous situation worse. Only the working class can rectify this nightmare by establishing its own democratic control and management of the economy, It is impossible to organise a large and complex economy by bureaucratic or administrative methods. For the planned economy to succeed it needs to fully involve the talent, ideas, initiative and creativity of the mass of the population. Bureaucratism by its nature terrorises and destroys these things and seeks in their place 'agreement and conformity:
For the Stalinists 'the plan', drawn up in finished form in an office or ministry, was an infallible blueprint. Reality was never allowed to interfere with it. But real socialist planning requires the interaction of living forces. It needsto be studied and discussed at every level of industry, involving all the interested forces and all the workers' organisations. It needs to be altered and amended as neccessary, taking into account the views of workers, consumers
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and specialists. Trotsky explained...
"In a planned economy it is necessary to foresee all the necessary proportions. It is not possible to foresee by abstractions. It is neccessary to foresee, correct and perfect the plan by the opinion of the people, by the degree of satisfaction of their needs.." (The Case of Leon Trotsky, p2+8)
Today the pro-capitalist economists argue that capitalism is a more efficient system because the market leads to competition and greater decentralisation. But the capitalist economies are increasingly dominated by a few powerful monopolies which manipulate the market and eliminate real competition. In Britain, 200 companies control 85% of production. The Swedish economy is dominated by 20 companies. One tamily - the Wallenbergs — control seven of the ten biggest companies. In other words, the concentration and centralization of economic power is an inevitable process which occurs under capitalism. But under capitalism this enormous economic power is wielded by a handful of unelected directors. Through the democratic involvement of the people, real socialist planning would enable the full resources of the economy to be directed in the most effective way, to raise the level of production and meet peoples' needs.
Moreover, social ownership and planning must be international. An important tactor holding back the east European economies was the bureaucracy's failure to integrate and harmonise the economy in an east European plan. More integration was achieved in the capitalist European Community - carried through in the interests of the 500 big companies which dominate western Europe - than in 'socialist COMECON. Each economy in eastern Europe followed its own 'socialist road, meaning a wasteful duplication of tasks. Each built their own heavy industries instead of establishing a division of labour. This was because of the national limitations of each bureaucracy jealously guarding its 'own' terrority. A federation of east and west European workers' democracies and a European plan of production would release an immense unused economic potential which could transform Europe, raising living standards east and west.
Management. which is inseperably connected with planning. should not be the preserve of a handful of greedy nomenklatura. Under a system of workers' control and management, the managing boards would be elected. The privileges enjoyed by top managers under Stalinism would be stripped away: All managers should recieve no more than a skilled workers" wage. Any additonal expenses that they need to perform their tasks would be under strict supervision from the workers themselves.
The boards of national industries should consist one-third of representatives elected by
PREMIERE
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the workers in that industry, one-third from the entire working class elected by the trade unions, pensioners' organisations, the peasants' organisations and all genuine representative organisations, and one-third from the government. All these elected representatives would be accountable to those who elected them and subject to recall. This is what Lenin's and Trotsky's ideas would mean in today's situation.
On the basis of a dramatic increase in production, which could be realised quickly through a democratic plan of production, the working week could be reduced and education opened to all workers young and old. It would be possible to raise the technical level of the entire workforce and provide growing numbers of workers with managerial or specialist training. This would make the rotation of all official positions a concrete practicality and thereby prevent the formation of a permanent bureaucratic structure.
Not only would democratic socialist planning and a workers' democracy open up the full potential of the Polish economy and the skilled Polish workforce. it would be an inspiration to workers internationally. By linking with the workers' movement internationally and appealing to them to take power and introduce similar measures, the framework would be built for the integration of the economies of Europe and the world and an international plan of production. This is the new horizon opened by the possibilities of a democratically planned economy which neither capitalism or Stalinism can realise
Mazowiecki started with 82% support, ended with 19%
Social ownership and plannin must be international
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