| dc.description.abstract | CLASS CONFLICT IN STATE SOCIALISM? THE CASE OF POLAND. COMMUNIST PARTY AND TRADE UNIONS 1981-89.
Was it possible to discern a class conflict based on the specificities of state socialism?
The study argues that classes exist an sich in state socialism. In order to answer the question whether they exist, für sich this case-study investigates the conflicts in the Polish ruling party and the official trade unions in the period from December 1981 to the spring of 1989.
State socialism compensated the lack of market mechanisms by strictly hierarchised coordination. The two main classes in state socialism are constituted by their access/non-access to this organisational control.
The two main classes are called 'the collective manager' and 'the collective producer'.
By testing hypotheses drawn from the presupposition of perfect state socialism, i.e. with a collective manager having the party and the trade unions at its disposal as instruments of central coordination, all aberrations from state socialist calm would be possible to trace.
Our hypotheses were meant to trace strifes over internal organisational structure, as well as strifes over economic policy, in both the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) and the official trade unions.
In short, the results showed a Communist Party with a collective producer component not acting as a class für sich since the imposition of martial law in December 1981. This is explained by the changes role of the party in a period of reforming state socialism. The party becomes less important as a tool for the collective manager, and therefore less relevant to conquer by the collective producer.
But nevertheless, the PZPR was involved in class conflict. However, this has not been internal conflicts in the PZPR between collective manager and collective producer. Rather it has been conflicts where the PZPR appeared as the instrument of the collective manager against a collective producer about to act für sich outside the party. The case of workers' selfmanagement, an officially approved sort of state socialist enterprise democracy, showed a PZPR eager not to let this body take control at the enterprises. This resistance was not due to a fear of enterprise autonomy, as the PZPR at the same time launched a campaign just in favour of such autonomy. Rather the resistance was due to a fear of democratic control from below.
In the new, official trade unions, unlike the PZPR, the collective producer was present as a class für sich. A strong resistance to integration and streamlining was interpreted as a result of a collective producer eager to keep some organisational control beyond the reach of the collective manager.
The initial question of the study was answered by 'yes', a class conflict was discernible. But the overall effects of the conflict was small, except that Poland got an official trade union structure that was uncentralised and unhierarchical. But the class identity of the collective producer in the official trade unions led to a struggle for grasping an organisational control that the leading component of the collective manager slowly and hesitatingly was giving away anyway.
Therefore, even if we found two classes für sich operating in the official trade unions and in the PZPR, we did not find much clashes between them. | nor |