A declaration issued by a workers' committee in Poland in 1989. Published in our pamphlet "Eastern Europe: towards capitalism or workers' liberty?"
Declaration of the Wroclaw Regional Workers' Committee of the Polish Socialist Party-Democratic Revolution
1. Getting rid of all the vestiges of the totalitarian regimes
• Abolishing the mechanisms of the state's domination over the society, and primarily, the dissolution of the SB (political police), the ZOMO (anti-riot police) and the ORMO (auxiliary police), as well as revising the penal code with the objective of guaranteeing democratic freedoms. This aim implies suppressing the privileged status of the PUWP and of all the groups linked to It, such as SD (Democratic Party), ZSL (United People's Party), ZSMP (Union of Polish Socialist Youth), ZSP (Union of Polish Students) and so on, and guaranteeing that everyone fulfilling leadership functions in both the administration and in the economy should be elected. Finally, the subjection of territorial administration to the structures of self-management elected In free, equal, secret, proportional and direct elections.
• Guaranteeing freedom of political and social activity, that is the unlimited right to strike and to set up unions, likewise In the police and the army (including among conscripts).
This is in accord with the second and seventh of the 21 demands put forward by the Gdansk inter-enterprise strike committee in 1980, for "a guarantee of the security of strikers and those who support them" and for "all strikers to be paid for strike days in relation to the rates for paid leave". The activity of political parties, who constitute the basis of modern democracy and the condition for the society to be the subject of history, cannot be limited by law.
• Guaranteeing total freedom of the press and of information by abolishing censorship and ending the material and judicial guarantees of the monopolies in these areas, and in particular sharing out the material means disposed of by RSW "Prasa-Ksiazka-Ruch" among all the political, social and cultural groups. Putting radio and television under the control of representative bodies at the corresponding levels, and guaranteeing access to them by all political and social groups.
II. Submitting the economy to social needs
The aim of economic policy on the eve of the 21st century must be to guarantee decent living conditions, that is, at least the right to healthy and sufficient food, to decent housing, to health care, to social services accessible to everyone (crèches and nurseries, for example), m well as to education and culture to all members of the society.
Putting the economy under the direct control of the producers is the indispensable condition for realising these goals. Only such a model of social life can guarantee to each human being the possibility of realising their aspirations and constitute the basis for the emancipation of the society.
Up until the last moment, Mieczyslaw Rakowski's government - following the path of its predecessors and acting in the optic of faits accomplis - has resolutely oriented the Polish economy in the opposite direction. It widened the possibilities for private appropriation by the nomenklatura and for the development of speculative-corrupt capital, and created conditions for the sale of the national means of production to foreign capital. In addition, it allowed an unlimited rise in prices for consumer goods by introducing market mechanisms in a situation of grave food shortage. Having done this, It continued the process of linking the whole of the bureaucratic economy with market mechanisms. thus worsening the material situation of the majority of the society.
Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government has to break radically with its predecessor's policy.
Ill. Link up the plan, self-management and the market
It is necessary to understand that the fate of the economy rests in the first instance in the collective hands of the workers themselves. Only self-organisation and workers' initiative can break the remnants of the old party-state apparatus and lead to a situation in which the new government could make economic changes beneficial to the majority.
As stipulated In the first point of Solidarnosc's programme, adopted at its first national congress In 1981: "We demand the introduction of a self-management and democratic reform at all levels of management, of a new social-economic order that will link up the plan, self-management and the market... The basis of the economy must be the social enterprise, managed by the workers' collective represented by their Council, and led from day to day by a director, appointed after a competition by the Council and recallable to it... The reform must socialise planning."
The realisation of such a reform demands the setting up of social control over production exerted by self-managing councils of workers, agricultural workers. and agricultural workers in self-managing chambers regionally and nationally. Conditions for such control are the following:
• Guaranteeing the same possibilities for action to self-management councils, to unions and to other workers' agents in all the sectors of ownership, and the unification of the legal system in relation to production, jobs, trade and wages and working conditions.
• Transforming work relations in the workplace, in the sense of liberating work, in particular by radically limiting the number of supervisors and administrators and ensuring that these posts are elective.
• Opening the books. Workers' control over the means of and goals of production is an indispensable step on the road towards the society taking total responsibility for economic management. The verification of production and cooperative links by self-management councils and the self-management chambers (reports on the state of the enterprise and on the economy as a whole) would permit a democratic national discussion on the principles of centralising the allocation of the economic surplus in a way that could increasingly guarantee the satisfaction of the needs expressed by the society. Although the use of market mechanisms in distribution cannot be abolished, insofar as economic development cannot ensure the total satisfaction of needs for different products, in conditions of serious shortage the decision to use market mechanisms must be subject to the choices of a society conscious of its needs.
IV. Workers self-defence In the face of the effects of the crisis
The gravity of the economic crisis means that the workers' collectives should immediately undertake acts of self-defence.
• Workers' control of prices. The regional structures of Solidarnosc, notably in cooperation with the union commissions in trade and the service sector, should ensure that rises in the cost of living are calculated and published every week. On this basis a weekly cost of living bonus should be established. The government must take measures to block price rises.
- Social control over food distribution. Following on from Point 7 In the Solidarnosc programme adopted by Its first national congress in 1981, in conditions of serious food shortages the rank and file structures of Solidarnosc must take the initiative in creating workers' commissions on the market and food supplies, coordinated nationally and cooperating with Solidarnosc's links with individual farmers. Tadeusz Mazolewski's government should give such commissions the absolute right of control over all the shops selling consumer goods, including those shops under the control of the ministries of the interior and of defence.
• Revalorising labour. Previous governments have undertaken the process of aligning prices in the internal market to the level of the world market. Labour costs have been drastically reduced as a proportion of total production costs. Tadeusz Mazolewski's government, in agreement with Solidarnosc, must undertake a radical reform of the wage system, and above all increase wages in relation to total costs up to the average world level.
• Guaranteeing the right to work. As Point 9 of Solidarnosc's programme adopted by the first delegate congress in 1981 puts it, "We declare ourselves for the general right to work and against unemployment ... In workplaces where reductions are foreseen, the union commissions must envisage the possibility of changing job descriptions or reducing working hours without loss of wages". Like the unions In Western Europe, we demand a 35-hour working week.
• Denouncing the debt. As the new prime minister correctly remarked in his speech before the Diet [Polish government]: "the economy has been strangled by the foreign debt." Since 1971, $49 billion in loans have been taken on. $44 billion have been repaid, but a debt of $39 billion remains even so.
The society cannot be responsible for debts contracted either by the nomenklatura or because of the waste caused by its rule.
• Regaining economic and political sovereignty.
1. Rejecting the IMF's conditions, the implementation of which would certainly lead to a drastic reduction in living standards and to the submission of Polish economic policy to foreign capital.
2. Revising the military and economic accords which, for Poland, derive from its membership of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon.
V. The self-managed republic
In line with Solidarnosc's programme adopted at Its first congress In 1981: "we want real socialisation of the system of management and of the economy. This is why we are working towards a self-managed Poland."
• From elections to a Constituent Assembly. The basic law must be the expression of a conscious and free choice by the society. The new government must organise free, equal, proportional, direct and secret elections to the Constituent assembly, in particular ensuring that all the candidates have the same material conditions for their electoral campaigns.
• The question of power. The road towards the self-managed republic implies the total abolition of the nomanklatura's power. This task can only be fulfilled by the self-organised workers movement, enriched by its experience under martial law and clandestine activity, struggling for workplace, regional and state power.
