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100 Su'aili Mitter

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125 lllifia GlennY

I .1 I l)ennis Potter

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'I'he lmperitlus Austrian: Sclrumpetcr as

Bourge<lis Marxisr

Spectres of Marx

The Great l)eftlrrnatitln: Polanyi, Polantland che Terr<lrs of Planned Sponrane ity

Epitaph ftrr tlre Klttner Rouge /

What lWomen L)emand o[Technology

S(,ANNER

Roots of tlte Ptlsttnodern Rcllelli<ltt itr

Clriapas

f'he Retrrrn of the Great Powers

IN'I'ERVIEW'Ilre Present'fe nse

REVIEW

Scavenging by Night

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Maurice Glasman

The Great Deformation:Polanyi, Poland and the Terrors of

Planned Spontaneity

Labour is only another name for a human acriviry that goes with lifeitself ...To allow the market mechanism to be the sole direcor of the

fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even ofthe arnounr and use of their purchasing power, would result in the

demolition of sociery. For the alleged commodiry 'labour power'cannot be sh6ved about, used indiscriminacely, or even left unused,

withour affecting the human individuals who happen to be the bearersof this particular commodiry. In disposing of man's labour power thesystem would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and

moral entiry 'rnan' atrached to that tag. Robbed of the protectivecover of cultural institutions, hurnan beings would perish frorn the

effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute socialdislocation through vice, perversion, crime and starvation.

Karl Polanyi, T'he Great'I'rantformation

The central problem addressed in this essay is why the most successful modelof economic and social reconstruction in world history has been ignored inEastern Europe.' The 'West German posrwar settlement combined the crea-tion of a sustainable and efficient market economy, liberal-democraric insti-tutions and parties, the developrnent of a welfare srate based on cerrainideals of justice and the institutio nalization of trade-union responsibilities.Why has the social-market model in general, and codeterminarion in parric-ular, been ignored as a necessary part of the ffansition from a closed ro an opensociety? This question is all the more puzzling as the four conscious goals ofPolish transition, a) the construction of a rnarker economy with recognized

Property rights; b) the establishment of legitimate democratic political insti-tutions and parties functioning within a framework of rights enforced bylaw; c) the creation of social stability through the esrablishment of minimalstandards of justice and fair public procedures; and d) the integration of thecountry into \Western Europe, were all achieved by the Federal Republic of

Germany after the Second World War. Thus the model exists in themost politically powerful and economically successful state in Europe,which is also a directly neighbouring country. The question is all themore pressing as the principal agent of Communism's reiection, theSolidarnosc union, was based precisely upon those values of Catholicsyndicalisrn characteristic of the \West German consensus, of wlrichthe most fundamental idea was that the precondition of economicreconstruction is effective societal restoration.' lt will be argued tharKarl Polanyi's concept of the market utopia described in T'he Great'fransformation is the best available starting point for trying ro explainthis weird state of affairs.-l Polanyi's work provides resources for anexplanation of how it came to happen that a workers' movementbecame the guarantor of a reform programme that removed unions,solidarity and justice from Polish politics leading ro rhe re-emergenceof the Communist Party as the principal defender of labour. Polanyi'stwo general laws of transformation will be developed and rhenapplied in the second half of the essay.

I. The Shape of Human Association

This section has three purposes. The first is to define the basicelements of Polanyi's system, most particularly the role of labour inthe reproduction of a culture. The second is to develop his analysis ofSpeenhamland and the consequent introduction of a free market inlabour and to show that it is of comparative relevance in understand-ing the transition from Bolshevism to a market society in Poland.

I Paternalist authoritarianism, it will be argued, is a precondition oflsocietal commodification. The third purpose is to emphasize the

importance of reason in the framing of agendas, and the fundamentalrole that feasibility plays as a force in mobilizing political support.

Tradition and Transition

To separate labour from the activities of life and ro subject it to the laws of themarket was to annihilate all organic forms of existence and to replace themby a different rype of organization, an atomistic and individualistic one.4

Polanyi's work is framed by an idea that can best be summarized as.@!Jy,"Thisisthephilosophythathumantransform-ation does not begin ex n0a0 but from existing institutions and pat-terns of cooperation, and further, that human thought and acrion cancomprehend and influence these changes. It is an industrial philosophy

rTlris essay will also appear this year in an alternate version in C. Bryant, ed., Tbe

Neut Great Trantformatioz, published by Roudedge. The author also has four primarydebts to acknowledge. The first is toJeff lDUeintraub who insisted that I study Polanyi'swork after reading the first draft of my book Unneceuary Saffering" Verso, forthcoming.The second is to Steven Lukes who suggested the tide. The third is to Luisa Zanchiwhose study of inter-sectoral wage differentials in German industry underpins many ofthe efficiency arguments made here concerning trade-union participation. The fourtlris to Christopher Bryant who edited an earlier version of this essay.

'Solidariry" 'Programme Adopted by the First National Congress', in P. Raina, ed.,Poland t98r, Tou,ardt Social Rencwad London r98I.r Karl Polanyi, Thc Great Transformation (henceforth rcr), Boston 1944.4 rcr, p. r(r3.

(ro

in wlrich solidarity and freedom are both created and sustained byhuman labour, and thus work and its democrati c organizationbecome its distinctive central concern. 'Work is the means by which

'reason and community are reconciled in freedom. Through this ideaPolanyi tries to explain the paradox of modernity which can be sum-marized as the following process" As society develops in size, techno-logical power and complexiry, it tends to eliminate itself as rhecentralized state grows on one side, and the decentralized economy onthe other. Amorphously squeezed between the individual maximizerand the collective aggregator, society as a functional moral entirydisappears.

The emergence of the modern state with irs national currency and uni-formity of rariffs destroys the existing institutions of social orga.niz-ation such as cities, corporations, unions, parishes, municipalitiesand estates. The legal constitution replaces the ethical ties generatedby shared vocational institutions. The central bureaucracy andnational police replace more immediate forms of discipline andorganization. The market, in its turn, undermines racketeering andrigging, the central characteristic of all stable association, thus open-

f ing up che elements of society for sale on the open market. Confronted

I by stable patterns of production characterized by quality control and

I apprenticeships with the consequent barriers to entry, the marketlsolution is to abolish cooperation, not to democratize rackets. Thestate creates the conditions, the market makes the moves, the result isthe emptying of the body politic" Society, understood as a stable net-work of self-governing institutions as well as a web of self-regulatingsystems, disintegrates.

This nationalization of politics and markets produces a furtherparadoxical development. The new state becomes embedded in a

structure of international economic competition and retreats frominternal regulation, surrendering the principle of ordering socialrelations and distributing resources to the market. Simultaneously itbecomes increasingly hostile to the intervention of other states in itsnational market, and thus a state of war becomes the parallel politicalorder to that of international trade.t

fPol"nyi's first general law of transformation is that atomism andf '". --I nationalism are logically and structurally linked through their mutual

I contempt for societal institutions and traditions. The atomism of-classical economic theory is transformed inro the nationalism of stateconflict through the process of collectivism which disintegrates andthen aggregates without mediation" State intervention is oJrly morallyjustified in the affairs of other countries. The only form of patriotismleft is war, the civil life of the nation being characterized by competi-tion. An individualistic internal order is complemented by an anarch-istic global order with sovereignty doing the transitional work. Boththe sovereign agent of rational choice and the sovereign state ofpolitics see dependency as a weakness, a denial of autonomy, and are

t Tlris conflict can take the form of inrperial rivalry as an attempt to expand the size ofinternal markets, border disputes, or ethnic conflicts.

6r

constantly resisting the demands of social and economic cooperationbrought about by the division of labour, international markets and

che complex skills and knowledge required to survive in the modern

world. As " contequence of the Sovernment's attempts to maintaininternational recognition of its currency, which remains the last sur-

viving economic resPonsibiliry of the state, sociery is further subordi-nated to the demands of the market in the name of protectingpurchasing power. In a market society the necessities of life are made

dependent on international exchange and thus the value of money

becomes fundamental to survival. Labour and land, or in simplerlanguage human beings and nature, the substance of sociery are com-

modified to this end, and the particular forms of ownership, associa-

tion and tradition through which they were previously combined have

no rational or productive function left.6 People's sustenance'

employment and accommodation become dependent on the market.

I Invariably sociery disintegrates under the strain of relentless commod'I ificarion. The lack of intermediate institurions then leads to the con'

f srr,rctio., of an abstract community enforced by the $dte aPparatus in

I orde. to restore 'order' and the values of community. Nationalism is

the most abstract of ideologies, it is an attempt to revive an efnaciated

corpse by means of a central bureaucracy. It is also a necessity, for the

srate is the only institution left to which people can turn for relieffrom the market.

Polanyi's explanation of rhe savagery characteristic of the first half ofrhe twentieth century is primarily concepcual and boils down to the

thesis that once economic rationality and 'reasons of state' become

severed from an organized social base both democracy and stable

l-cooperation become irrational. Disembedded rationality and disem-

I boaiea poliries leads ro rhe relentless vacillation between these two

I extremely powerful abstractions, the state as the defender of order

I and the market as the arena of freedom. Thus the conceptual paradox-underpinning the construction of a market society is that while the

economic sphere, understood as a self-regulating system of exchange

grounded in individual choice and governed by prices (catalaxy),

Leco-"r increasingly autonomous and its idea of rationality domi-nates societal relations, it is based on an impoverished conception ofrhe importance of the economy and its institutions in the reproduc-tion of society. Polanyi's criticism of the Marxist tradition is that itsunderstanding of the economy is similarly impoverished through an

equally instrumental analysis of the role of labour in distributingknowledge, creating solidarities and generating trust. The problemis not a choice between economics and culture for the two aleindistinguishable. A society which does not transform the worldthrough its combined effort and knowledge has neither a culture noran economy.

('The irony is thar sovereignry is a territorial concept and was central to the emerg-

ence of the narion stare, but its rise coincided with the dissolurion of all patterns ofassociation that linkecl the land to production through the imposition o[ a free ntarket

in land and its products. Thus the defence of a tertirory ceased to mean the protectionof a way of life, more a milirary defence of borders separating countries with homogen-

eous par(erns of regulation. It is at this point that rhe linguistic turn is ntade in the

distinction between nations.

6z

For Polanyi labour value is not an external effect of aggregation or a

surplus value accruing to goods but an internal cause of humandevllopment and survival. Economic activity is not an instrumentaloutcome of the arbitrary coordination of human decisions driven bygreed, but the creation of stable relations of dependency renewed by

.h^.tg.t in knowledge and the demand for cooperation. People's lives

and their livelihoods cannot be separated without damage being done

to both. As labour is the means through which the world is trans-

formed by human action, the relation of prodaction are fundamental toany conception of freedom, and it is this idea that is the fundamentalconcern of organic rationality. Economics as a substantive activityconcerns man's most fundamental relationships with others and withnature. As a formal discipline it is concerned only with means-endrelationships under conditions of scarcity. z 1'1tt formal meaning is

made substantial in a market society through the commodification ofsociety, but it cannot control or comprehend the consequences of itsimposirion. The bounded rationality of rational choice turns all

resistance into a form of irrationaliry. The state then arrives to clearup the mess. In the absence of self-governing institutions which struc-

tJre economic acriviry, the mess is centrally controlled and containedand thus both freedom and stability are undermined. Polanyi's ques-

tion is ethical as well as empirical and is: 'how can social continuityand solidarity be both rational and substantive so as to retain enough

of a society's traditional functions and shape to resist the claims ofboth state and marker subordination, while modernizing productionand renewing institutions?'8

f"Polanyi's idea of organic rationaliry, which he proposes as an alterna-

I tive to che domination of states and markets, is derived from that

I mor"l tradirion which seeks to reconcile the claims of reason with the

I demands of historical association. This philosoPhy has distinctive

| ,oo,r, the most important of which are the Catholic and socialist

\.rerponres to tiberalism defined in terms of competitive labour and-land markets in the newly created self-regulated economic sphere and

the centralization of political power in the state through the idea ofcitizenship. Both citizenship and economic self-regulation break the

power of intermediate institutions and solidarities while severingpolitics from economics through the elevation of private ProPertyclaims to rhe level of a human right. The constitutional separation ofpowers effectively meant the separation of people from power overrheir economic lives.

Ir will be argued that the twin components of s-ocialist svndicabased on the idea of self-organized democratic labour power and

@withitsstressonsolidarityandcooPeration

7 For a detailed analytic distinction between the substantive and formal meanings ofeconomics, see Karl Polanyi, 'The Economy as Instiruted Process', in G. Dalton, ed.,

Prinitiae, Archaic and Modcrn Economies, Boston 1968.I In this his answer is similar to Durkheim's and takes the form of a vocational

democracy. For Durkheim's attempt to render the idea of organic rationality amenable

to rational reflecrion, see Emile Durkheim, Profutional Ethiu and Ciuic Moralt, London

1992. For a long,er analysis of Polanyi's conception of tradition see my 'Liberty, Labour

and the Limits o[ the Market', ,jt/, Vorh.ing Paper,Florence t994. 6r

were the distinctive features of the Polish form of opposition roCommunism and the positive articulation of an alternative as devel-oped most coherently in the Solidarnosc document of r98r. r Tlretradition of organic rationality can thus shed light on the Solidarnoscmovement and the types of possibilities available for Poland roauthentically reconstruct its own traditions and ethical inheritancewithin the demands made by the global economy and new inter-national consensus.

Labour and the Body Politic

The most general category that Polanyi uses to frame his conceptionof society is'culture" Three elements form its 'substance'-'humanbeings, their natural surroundings and productive organizarions'.'oThey are the units around which societal resistance clusrers when theculture is in danger and they are all threatened by the demands ofmarket society. As regards the human being a necessary feature oforganic association is that it does not allow the individual to starve:

It is tlre al'rsence of tlre tltreat of individrral srarvation wlriclr makes grrinri-tive society, in a se nse, nrore lrurnan tlran tlrc rnarket ccononry. tt

People, Polanyi insists, are not produced by the market or for it,neither are they produced by the state and its laws and institutions.Human beings are humanized by the plurality of institutions (work,church, family) that recognize them as bearers of an identity based onthe possession of responsibility, skills and conscience.

The second element, land, is 'inextricably interwoven with man'sinstitutions".'' The commodification of land led to the breakdown ofmany of the characteristic institutions and practices of society, itsdistinctive way of life and meanings. Of the three commodity fictions(labour, land, money) it is labour which draws Polanyi's attention as

the fundamental element of social organization. This is what givessociety its 'human shape' and the lack of recognition of this fact iswhat leads to'degeneration".'t As labour is one of the primary activi-ties of any culture, the institutions of its reproduction are constitutiveof society itself for 'che organization oflabour is only another term forthe forms of life of the common people'.'a The development of a mar-ket in labour rneans the subordination of society to the economic sys-tem, and the foistin g of a market economy upon a differently organizedcommunity is 'only a short formula for the liquidation of every andany cultural institution in an organic sociery'.tl This is what hap-pened to Britain in the Industrial Revolution and involves theremoval of all the productive characteristics of the previous societythat functioned according to a logic other than that of a self-regulating

e Solidarity, 'Prograrnme ,{dopted by the First National Congress'"to TGT, p. t6z"tt TGT, p. 164.t'TGT, p. t78.rl t'r;t, p. 83.ta rcr', p" 7;.'5 1cr. p. rt9.(,

1

market with its necessary corollaries of the commodification of landand labour. In Britain, while every functional tradition was abolished,those traditions of community with no productive function such as

the monarchy and the national church were given a greater promi-nence than they had ever enjoyed. The particularly English traditionof symbolic political continuity and brutal economic dislocation was

lestablished. As every society must produce and transform, labour

I organizations prove the most vital and durable feature of its continua-

Ition, and it is these that must, above all, be removed if a transform-

lation is to be successful, or renewed if society is to survive. This is the

lcentral dilemma of every transition to a market order.

The key term in any transformation is the rate of chlggg, which is theresult of the .onili.t between tradition-?ilEi-i6rmation andexpresses itself in the delaying tactics and resistances that allow a com-munity to preserve its meanings, institutions, freedoms and practiceswhen confronted by challenges and changes that may be necessary butare extremely painful.'6 At issue is the renewal of existing institutionsand practices through effective functional redefinition. Each changetlrat society confronts is further distinguished for Polanyi by its.degenerative'and.ry'possibi|ities.Tlreformerareclrarac.terized by a combination of social dislocation compouncled by a

removal of freedoms, the latter by a clear recognition of dependencyand a broadening of the possibilities for liberty implicit in thatrecognition. Each significant change is characterized by a 'storm'during which the 'substance' of society is imperilled. The three stormshe analyses a're the enclosure movement of sixteenth- and earlyseventeenth-century England, the Industrial Revolution of the lateeighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the Great Depression andthe rise of autarchy that characterized the inter-war period culminat-ing in fascism and the Second \7orld Var.

His first aftempt to distinguish between organic rationality andirrationality through the notion of the rate of change is his apprecia-tion of Tudor and Stuart policy concerning enclosures. Polanyi arguesthat the Tudors and early Stuarts used the power of the crown to slow<-lown the social devastation caused by enclosutes so that they could be

made more bearable" The principal means of doing tlris was throughthe national enforcement of the Statute of Artificers of 1563 with itsseven-year apprenticeships, yeaily wage assessments and enforcementof labour starures. They also redefined the role of the national church,giving it a greater welfare function within the parish and less legalresponsibility. In this way the 'fabric' of society was re-woven withoutbeing rent, despite the commodification of land that ensued.

'6 Manfred Riedel claims that this is Hegel's idea in the Pbilonphy of Right, and he

might have a point worth developing for a proper understanding of organic rational-iry, but this is not the place. See Riedel, Between Tradition and Reaolilioz, Cambridge1984, particularly chapters 3,5 and 7. ln chapter lof Unncccttary Suffering I discuss the

role of unions in Hegel's framing of the revolutionary claims of the market and the

rraditional responses of society in the development of freedom; cf . Philosophy of Right,p^r^s 241 and z5o-256" Hegel's insights into the rational structure of societal tradi-tions an.l the relationship between institutions, labour and freedom should not be

negated by his identification of the state with the brain of the social organism and the

resulting primacy of bureaucratic politics as the end of man"

67

Polanyi's most original development of the idea of organic rationality,however, lies in his analysis of the Speenhamland scale that domi-nated British welfare policy from r7g, to 1814:

The justices of Berkshire, meeting at the Pelikan Inn, in Speenhamland,near Newbury, on 6 May q95, in a time of great distress, decided thatsubsidies in aid of wages should be granted in accordance with a scaledependent on the price of bread, so that a minimum income should beassured to the poor irrespective of their earnings. I.7

Superficially, Speenhamland appears as a classic means by whichsociety resists the claims of the market through the inrroducrion of a

basic income, or 'right to live'. It was the eighteenrh-cenrury equiva-lent of the citizen's wage in which each subject in Britain was given anunconditional paymenr.'8 It obstructed the commodificarion oflabour that followed the privatization of land holdings during the cen-tury of enclosures. It also undermined, or ignored, the fundamentalrole that human labour plays in the mainrenance and rransformationof society and culture. It destroyed standards of work rhrough sever-ing the link with qualiry rnaintained by apprenriceships and wages, itoutlawed the guilds as organizations thar taught and reproducedskills, and it ended up by transforming self-sufficient farmers intopaupers dependent f<rr their subsistence on rhe local parish burear.r-cracy.

rfspeenhamland had an effect on English culture similar to that oflBolshevik rule in Poland. It not onty led ro rhe pauperization of theself-sufficient, rhe erosion of personal morality, and rhe desrruction ofwork-skills vital to the health of the body poliric but irs applicationalso deprived labour of irs marker value. In consequence no self-organized class of employees was in place to resist the demands of the

f new commodified economy. A pacified, disorganized and demoral-

f ized society was helpless before the demands of the self-regulating

I marker. The eflfecrs of paternalism on rhe 'substance' of rhe comrnon

lculture were so devasrating thar anyrhing seemed better in compar-lison. In time rhe victims of the new regime either passively acquiescedor actively supported market utopianism so as to rescue their flreedomand digniry.

The tragedy of indusvializing Brirain, as can be said of contemporaryPoland,isthatthepeoplewerefacedon|ywith@,either the degradation of paternalisr sragnation without politicatliberty as s/as the case with speenhamland and Bolshevism, or theannihilation of solidariry in the name of freedom rhrough the com-modification of labour and land, as with rhe creation of an unregu-lated labour market in nineteenth-century Britain and the Balcerowicz'srabilizarion' plan in r99o. Polanyi purs it rhus:

lf Speenlramland rneant the snug misery of degradation, now the labouringpoor was homeless in sociery. . . . If speenharnland had overworked tlre

'7 Tcr, p" rg1 .

'8 For recent defences of rhis policy see Philippe Van Farijs,Incone, Verso, London 1992.

66

values of neighbourhood, family, and rural surroundings, now man was

detached from home and kin, torn from his roots and all meaningfulenvironment. In short, if Spcenbanland meant the rol of innobility, now tbe perilwat deatb throagh exposare.t9

Polanyi links the wrecking of labour value in the reproduction ofculture with the attempt to find refuge in the values of idealized com-munity and belonging, which are usually plundered by paternalists as

an alternative to confronting the demands of moderniry through the

f insrirutionalization of iustice. The rhetoric of lost community is iust as

ldangero,rs to society as the bestialization of man proposed by the

lpolitical economists.'" The coerced communiry of Communism iseven rnore injurious than the chaos of unregulated commodification.The tragic choice between communitarianism and economic liberal-ism is that of either rotting in subsidized decay in a crumbling homeor being left exposed and unprotected in that most inhospitable ofterrains, a cultureless desert ruled by the law of the jungle. The alter-native to communitarian oppression and stagnation, however, is notisolation. Polanyi cites Aristotle approvingly for stressing the self-sufficiency of domestic units (the oihos) as the non-contractualfoundation of society and his analogy to che person outside reciprocityas either a beast or a god. "rfThe two poles of the idiot dialectic that reappear continually inf Polanyi's work are stagnant holism and methodological individual-I ism. The former cannot explain change, the latter ignores society:

Iboth misunderstand people. The organically rational cast of his-thought is brought out in his approach to class, which he embeds inthe necessity of the reproduction of a functioning sociecy. Specificclasses take the responsibility for protecting the substance of societyduring times of change:

The fate of classes is much more often determined by the needs of societythan the fate of sociery is determined by the needs of classes. . . . The'chal-lenge ' is to sociery as a whole; the response comes through groups, sectionsand classes. . . . Purely economic matters such as affect want-satisfactionare incomparably less relevant to class behaviour than questions of socialrecognition.22

What Marxists call class consciousness is simply what the workingclass have to do to protect the nation from catastrophe when they have

19 rcr, p. r83. My emphasis.

'o It was one of the more rernarkable achievements of the New Right that they

combined an equal commitment to both. See chapter 7 of Unnecessary S{fering.'' Aristotle, The Politict, Book r, n53a,r-6" In many ways the problems of Aristotle arethose of Polanyi, and rhey are not trivial. They both identifr self-sufficiency with self-deternrination and conceive of the unit of freedom as the collectiviry. Thus bothindividual freedom within the state and reciprociry between societies are always a

threat and can never be adequately grounded. Freedom, for Aristode, can only beginwith a recognition of dependency. Aristotle's concern with the functional necessity of ajust social order, the mutuality of social life, the reference to common norms as thesource of social order, the idea of institutions as the embodiment of ethics and theprimacy of self-sufficiency as opposed to cash transactions in economic life offer a

philosophical backdrop ro many of Polanyi's unstated ethical assumptions.

" Soliclarity, 'Progranrm€ . . . ', pp. rj2-1.

ed., Arping for Batic

(r7

no allies.'1 Classes are a means of distributing responsibilities fornecessary activities within society and preserving rhe skills andtraditions necessarv for their effective fulfilrnent.

Communitarian Authoritarianism and Market Utopianism

The experiences of Speenhamland and Bolshevism indicate Polanyi'ssecond qenerat taw: that the prior desolarion of society in thc rrarne ofits protection is a necessary precondition for the creation of a market

fsociety. The act of destroying a culture precedes its willing acquies-

I cence to the devastation of its way of life" Authoritarian protectionism

I leads to pathologies so enormous that anything seems better in com-

I parison. The futility of resistance leads to willing surrender. In both-cascs there is a discrediting of intervention and democratic resistance

as 'paternalism", which is defined as injurious to civilization throughits ignorance o[ the basic laws of nature and immoral through itsdenial of freedom and responsibility. The paternalism of Speenham-land was imposed at the price of tlre self-organization of labour as wasalso the case in Communist Poland. The anti-combination laws ofr799-r8oo made worker association a criminal offence. The Bolshe-vik welfare system was similarly based on the denial of independenttrade unions. The abolition of Speenhamland was welcomed as an actof freedom just as the Solidarnosc movement has embraced marketutopianism as a means of achieving liberation from Communism. Inindustrializing England the dual process of legislative paternalismwith its exclusion of legal trade unions combined with the subsi<ly towages institutionalized through Speenhamland, desrroyed employ-rnent, quality of work, incentive and solidariry.

In the late eighteenth century a new order of societal organization wasjustified by the philosophical framework provided by the new disci-pline of political economy exemplified byJoseph Townsend"s Diuerta-tion on the Poor Laws. In this discipline the inheritance of humanismwas discarded and the animal put in its place. By approaching thelaws and order of human societies through the equilibrium achievedbetween dogs and goats on a fictitious island, rhis av<lided the needfor all political and nnoral arguments. l$(/hile Hobbes argued that men

':] Polanyi puts this in the following way: 'Unless the alternative to the social set up isa plunge into utter destruction, no crudely selfish class can maintain itself in the lead'(rcr, p. 156). In effect, Polanyi artr;ues that for all the claims of historical materialismand the denigration of both philosophy and political economy for their ahistorical and

abstract methods, Marxists simply abstract classes from society and adopt a rationalchoice model for the proletarian collectivity with all the mistakes assumed by game

theory, the rnost irnportant of which is tlrat other people are a hindrance to therealization of one's ends. Only if all other classes are abolished can the proletariatcease to be exploited and this rneans, logically, the destruction of society as a

superstructural form of domination that interferes with 'real interests'. lr is no wonderthat the'national'question remained one of the perennial issues in Marxism and was

seen as a question of state power and not social organization, thus continually failingto appreciate its appeal or dangers. Neither is it a coincidence that the grear Bolsheviktheorist on the national question was Stalin, with legacies that are becoming moreapparent now. For an analysis of the relationship between Bolshevism and dreinstitutional protection of nationality as the only form of institutionalized solidarityother than the Parry, see chapter z of Unnecettary Saffcring.

frR

belraved lihe beasr.s, Townsend believed thar they were realfi beasrs"Together wirh Ricardo, Malthus and Bentham a biological foundationrvas found for the political order. The body politic was replaced by thedemands of the body itself, and this g ve a society its order anddistribution. The naturalisric fallacy became the real foundation ofsocietal discipline through the legal and political recognition of thecommodity fiction as irnposed by force.

The appeal of this new science was based on irs ability to link freedomwith competition and survival. Ir resolved the opposicion betweennature ancl freedom by establishing global comperirion as rhe tesr ofsurvival. It so happened that the freest socieries were rhe strongest.Humanist sympathies for the poor robbed society of vitaliry and self-respect and distorted the natural laws of supply and demand, as

Speenhamland proved. The role of politics, understood in terms o[scace-enforced regulation in the name of the cornmon good, was toprotect freedom, defined as the uncoerced exchange of private pro-perty holdings. The idea of greed was transformed into an ideal and['recanre the organizing principle of a free society.2a'When all societieshad been subordinated to the market, there would come into existencethe optimal relation of freedom and scarciry in the form of one func-tionally inregrated global society of unrestricted human exchange andproductive distribution. The entire world would be based on the prin-ciple of 'cooperation without coercion'."

Polanyi underestimatcd the moral attractiveness of the marker as a

foundation for freedom and prosperity, and this forms a crucial partof its power in Eastern Europe at present. The market is presented byits defenders as the system that guarantees the greatest possible free-dom assuming the constraints on sustainable production in a worldcharacterized by scarciry.'6 They also point to the empirical fact thatalternatives to the market as an allocation principle not only havebeen unsustainable, but undermine morality through generating a cul-ture of mass dependence characterized by a lack of responsibility, a

proliferation of skivers and scroungers, the breakdown of family, self-respect and ethical relations generally. The institutionalization of Bol-shevism in the East and the accommodation to the market in the lfesthave linked the market to morality. There is no doubt that the West is aberter, freer, healthier and richer society than the East. Authoritarianprotectionism has done the work of Speenhamland on a European scale.

Reflections on this general law of paternalist pacification as a precon-ciition of competitive disintegration and their shared commitment to

'a tcr, p. 84.

" This is the definition of market relations given in Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to

Choov, London r98o, p. t4.

'6 For a discussion of Hayek and the moral claims made for open systems of exchange

see chapter 1o( Unneceuary S{fcring. This tries to explain the reasons for the'discredit-ing'of the postwar setdement and the rise of tlre New Right. For an accessible defenceof Hayek see Alexander Shand, Frec Markct Morality, I-ondon t99o, and AlexanderShand, Thc Caltitalitt Altrnatiae, Brighton 1984. For a more detailed defence see lsraelKirzner, Market Procctr: Eray in tbc Dcuclopmcnt of Modcrn Aailrian konomict, London1992. For the definitive statement see F.A Hayek, Lau,, Lcgiilation and Liberty. Vol. Tu,o:

The Mirage of SocialJatice, London t976. 6e

rhe irrelevance of organized labour lead Polanyi to make rhe crucialdistinction thac structures his work, and underpins his philosophicalscheme. It consists in an opposition fo both parernalism and

f-atomizarion and his explanation of their shared structure. Polanyi's

I point is not that people need Protection, but that they pcotect each

I other. Thar is what it means to be human. They do so in conditions ofI freedom by their mutual recognition of labour as the dynamic tie ofI their dependency. Society is not reduced to the state, which can be

fcoercive and reactionary. Neither is it reducible to the individual and

I the family. It is rather something human beings recognize as their own

I creation; something constructed out of the raw materials of nature by

I means of their combined energy and governed by reason, which is

lgiven by their freedom to think and cooperate. Rephrased, human'society is the transformation of exrernal nature through lrumannature, which is the realization of freedom through the moral rela-

tions creared by productive association. The relations of productionare the benchmark of liberty. The institutions of work-the firm, the

union, the city, the trade associations and the municipality-are thus

_the organizations that protect and renew both freedom and comrnun-

I ity. The marginalization of democratically organized vocational groups

I empcies society of all forms of association other than religion,

I territory or race which are often united into a single ideology and

I embodied in the state. The centrality of self-organized vocational

I groups to a free society, it will be argued in the next section, was

I precisely the alternative that the Solidarnosc movement proposed in

[-itr opposition to Communism.

In postwar Germany as well as in France, Denmark, Italy, Hollandand Belgium the market was subordinated to the needs of societythrough a myriad of regularions, restrictions, accommodations andmediations. The challenge for all those who believe that freedom is arelation that holds betueen people and is amenable to their reason andaction is to tease out the core elements of postwar success and tostrengrhen them. The present domination of the political agenda byeither organic irratio$ , in the form of nationalists and ecologists,or inorqanic rarionalist!, represented by the neoclassical commissarsof rhe lVorld Bank, is a result of the ideological breakdown of therVesr European Left, which seems to have lost faith in both its inherit-ance and its achievements.

II. From Solidarity to Disintegration

The result of rhe move from protectionist authoritarianism to atom-

_ism was the same in nineteenth-century Britain as in contemporary

l-notand. There was a move from coercive community to the commodi-

| fication of human labour, from stagnant holism to methodological

lindividualism, from decay to homelessness. Today, in the present move-from Marxist to market Leninism the institutional protection of civilassociations and cooperation, society in short, have been ignored. TheBalcerowicz 'stabilization' plan was not worked out with represent-atives of sociery, but imposed by the state in the name of the market.These were the only two institutions that mattered. The agent ofimposition was the \Western-trained manager who would impose the

rules of 'corporate governance' on a sociery roo backward to organizeirself.'7 lt is an unprecedenred artempt at crearing planned spontaneiry.

Solidarnosc was well named, in that the atomization of Polish sociallife through the abolition of self-organized social activity had been thegoal of Bolshevik rule. It is worth exarnining the Solidarnosc Programme

for tbe Nation't Reaiaal adopted in r98r in detail, for this documentexpresses the political, economic and ethical aspirations of a move-ment which enjoyed broad popular support and formulated a coher-ent programme of policies within a consensus which they transformedthrough their actions. It was the only public, democratically decidedand practically relevant statement of political and social philosophyproduced by the opposition movement in Eastern Europe and wasagreed to by an organization of almost ten million members.

The Inheritors of the Chartists

There are three distinct but complementary commitments outlined inrhe document:

a) \forker democracy within a decentralized competitive economy.

b) 'The self-governing republic' in which inter-parcy competitionwould take place at elections, but in which there would also bedemocratic control of the bureaucracy and the workplace.

c) Justice as fairness, in which the principles of liberty, equality andsolidarity were defined as equal basic liberties for all within a contextof fair opportunity, characterized by a 'maximin'-based equilibriumin which social and economic inequalities work for the greatestbenefit of the least advanraged.'8 This 'difference principle' is clearlyarticulated in Thesis 4 of the Solidarnosc document which states that:

The union recognizes the need for restoring market equilibrium within theframework of a reliable anti-crisis prograrnme, which should be in linewith the principle of protecting the weakest groups of the population.29

In short, Solidarnosc combined the different strands of Polanyi's phi-losophy of organic rationality, or freedom within an industrial society,and proposed them as a practical programme for rhe resroration ofthe body politic.

Solidarnosc analysed three related parhologies in the Communisrcommand economy; i) centralizarion, ii) monopoly and iii) bureau-cratic management.

'7 The idea of 'corporate gove rnance' was proposed as an alternative ro self-governmentin the Sachs proposal. See David Lipton and Jeffrey Sachs, 'Privatization in EasternEurope: The Case of Poland', Brooh,ingt Papert on Economic Actiaity, Washington oc:Brookings lnstitution, 199o.

'8 For the development o[ the idea of maximin in this contexr see John Rawls, AT'heory ofJatticc, Oxford ry7o, pp. rt2-t.'9 Ftrr otlrer expressions of this principle in rhe r98r document see pp. tt4, ,j6, j78,which expound the 'principle of protecting absolurely the weakesr groups in thepopulation.'

i) Centralization meant that calculations and forecasts were nradeon the basis of evidence that was unreliable due to the slteer volurtreof data, setting aside the veracity of the information received. Com-mand from centre to periphery destroyed the signals given by pricesleading to dysfunctional distribution, arbitrary allocation and sub-optimal networks of exchange. Initiative was subordinated todirectives, within the context of a career structure which rewardedloyalty not rnerit. For these reasons state-based centralization was seen

as an inappropriate, inefficient and unjust method of economicrcgulation.

ii) Monopoly ensured that there was no competition and therefore nonreans of innovation in the development of procluctive techniques.There could be no appeal outside the state apparatus in trying toinstitute new procedures, and no labour bargaining pon'er due to a

state monopoly of employment and the abolition of unions.

iii) Bureaucraric management referred to mechods o[ microeconornicdiscipline in which power was distributed according t<t politicalcorrectness and the dignity and efficiency of work was degracled andimpeded by a military command structure establishe<i wirhin the

economic system.

Monopoly and centralization were to be removed through a process ofdecartelization and redefined property titles. The new owner of the

decentralized firms would be the enterprise run by a tnanagementtearn which was appointed through the democratically elected workscouncils. This goal of competitive self-management was the means ofcreating both stable property relations and esttblishing a system

within which the responsibility for decision making, and knowleUgeof the complexities and demands made by market competition, were

facilitated by access to all records and information. Democracy was a

form of wage substitution during recession within the framework ofrestoring incentive structures, quality of work and firm loyalry. It was

a means of establishing a pattern of embedded market relations inwhich workers participated constructively in the transition from a

closed to an open society.lo

The decentralization and decartelization of Polish industry, within theframework of competitive self-management, was central to the r98rplan. The self-managed enterprise was to be the 'basic organizationalunit of the econorny'.ttThe plan for a self-governing republic, inwhich the self-managing of enterprises was to play a fundamental role,permeates the entire document. Its implementation was also thecentral demand made in the declaration of 8 September r98r in which

r" Tl're idea of embedded market relations is developed extensively by Diane Elson,'Market Socialisrn or Socialization of the Market'i NLR I72. She writes: 'ln actually

existing socialist economies the important thing seems to be to attack both the

bureaucracy's prerogatives over information and enrcrprise management's prerogative

over information. . , . Measures to create markets must be complemented by measures

to socialize markets' (p, ++).1'Solidarity, Thesis I, p. 33o.

"l2

thc worker councils were to have thc 'righr to nominare and disrnissntanagers'. ]2

ri/ork was parr of tlre 'common human values' that Solidarnoscclaimed gave them legitimacy as a 'force willing to build a jusr Polandfor everyone'. In what reads like a summary of Polanyi's central thesisthey wrote:

vork is for man, and what determines its sense is its closeness ro man, rolris real neecls. our national and social rebirth must be based on therestored hierarchy of those goals. vhile defining its aims, Sotidarnoscdraws from the values of Christian ethics, from our national traditions andfrom the workers" and democratic traditions of the labour world.3.r

S<llidarnosc retained a distinctive commitmenr ro the theory of labourvalue. Worker-democracy was the medns of restoring society on thefoundation of associational liberty and this lay at the heart of theirprogramme: 'Genuine self-management of employees will be the basisof tlre self-governing republic.' la

Tlre philosophy of the lur/Sachs plan of rggo w^s completely opposedto that of the economic reform programme of r98r. The Solidarnoscprogramme was the postwar Vest German industrial relations sysremof cocietermination in ernbryo in its combination of worker democ-racy, state regulation and the social-market system. The workscouncils would have control over the appoinrment of managers and a

shareholder function as the final court of appeal in the decision-making process; the appointed managers would run the enterprise ona day-to-day basis. The owner, or capiral side, however, could not befilled in r98l as there was no capiral, the only owner being the state.This problem was compounded in so far as the srate's claim to owner-ship was challenged by the ministries, the ministries were challengedby the industrial branch associations ro which each enrerprisebelonged, the industrial branch associations were challenged by theParry in the name of the people, whilst the people, in as much as theycould express themselves, supported Solidarnosc. The disorganicirrationality of Bolshevism led to the creation of institutions whichrepresented no self-organized group within society but whichemployed huge numbers of people and controlled societal resources.These institutions acted as a force ro block the development oforganizations which could represent the different classes and interests

P lbid., p. 32j.The iustification was that 'managemenr was the responsibiliry ofworkers'. The meaning of this is not that there should be no managemenr, but that self-discipline and efficient organization does not require an external enforcer withscientific techniques and abstract power. Self-management is the responsibiliry of eachmember of the enterprise, and as the people most effected by the decisions and whoknow their iob and industry best. workers should exercise the responsibility of deci-sion making. lt was a justification for vocational democracy based on the principles ofefficiency and not only on ethical principle or class power, and thus represenrs a signi-ficant conceptual breakthrough in arguments for democracy, linking freedom toknowledge.t3 Sofidarity, Thesis 2c, p. 327.14 lbid., p.)4i.

71

of society and thus frame a consensus which could find a productiveplace for each of them.

Due to the parricular features of Poland in t981, Solidarnosc had toexpress worker and national interests simultaneously. The problem ofhow to represent che interests of a class, and the needs af a nationaleconomy, was posed in an acute form.lt To institutionalize the pre-sence of the state or enterprise nomenklatura on the supervisoryboard would have been a negation of the principle of efficiency onwhich the argumenr against management rested. The particular his-torical injustice is that during the transition, the nomenklatura werethe only force in the society with capical, and they dictated terms. Theexclusion of tlre worker councils from any positions of responsibilityand power led to the capital side, the previously nonexistent, becom-ing the only force with any authority in the enterprise. A constructivepartnership with the trade unions was denied both before and afterthe fall of Communism-an example of the move from authoritarian-ism to atomism without going on a detour through society.

Worker self-management was the issue over which the governmentand Solidarnosc broke off negotiations in 198r. The 'expert' econo-mists chosen to arbitrate in the dispure criticized the authorities fornot providing: 'authentic participation of trade unions and workers'self-government in management and control'.16 The union pursuedself-management as their top priority; they were prepared to make allorher goals subordinate to this one and threatened a general strike if itwas not implemented.rr The government-Solidarnosc talks wereresumed on this specific issue as'Warsaw Pact forces began extensivemanoeuvres on the Polish border and martial law was imposed. T'herewas no opportunity to organize publicly for a decade after that, atwhich point the population had been demobilized, the experts hadchanged their mind, the economy was in further ruins and freedomhad changed its meaning.

The decision by the government to abandon its previous cotnmit'menrs in favour of the enthusiastic enforcement of the lun/Sachs plan,rhus forswearing any state function in economic planning, welfare cre-ation and worker involvement, effectively closed any effective means

ffor Solidarnosc, as a union, to play a constructive role. As rWalesa

I recently said: 'If I build a strong union, I will be building an obstacle

Iro reform.'ls This has enabled rhe old/new capitalist managerial class-ro ..*oue Solidarnosc from any institutional power leading to thedestruction of Solidarnosc as a unionr a movement and a politicalparry. Ir had no constructive role except as a means of imposing the'stabilization' plan on a disillusioned and demobilized society.

It This is an example of Polanyi's conception of class and organic responsibility out-lined in the first section, also see rcr, pp. ri2-g.16 solidariry, p. )92.17 '\(e declare most emphatically that in case a law is passed that thwarts the will ofemployees the union will be forced to boycott such a law and unclertake acrion toensure the unfetterecl functioning of authentic self-management' (Solidarity, p. 39t)..18 Alexander Surdej, 'Politics and the Stabilization Plan', manuscript. rut, Florencet992, P.7.":.1

If worker-run enterprises were to be the foundation of economicrenewal, combining competition, decentralization and the institu-tional removal of arbitrary bureaucratic power, while redefiningproperty titles, enterprise functions and competitive discipline andinnovation, then rhis was only one aspect of the democratic reformsthat needed to be taken.

The Self-Governing Republic

f-rn" reform of the srate institutions in Poland had to obey two

I potentially conflicting principles: liberalism and democr^cy. A liberal

I dernocracy is a potentially incoherent amalgam, for the priority ofI rights limits democratic authority, and maioritarian domination can

I limir freedom. Polanyi's solution was to invert the usual relationship

I between liberalism and demo cr^cy by democ rarizing the economy and

I subordinating politics to individual rights. This was also Solidar-

I nosc's solution. The reform programme thus confronted this problem-by trying to reconcile the autonomous logic of different sub-systems in

so<.iety (the economy, law, politics, religion, science), without sutren-dering democratic aspirations to the control and supervision ofbureaucracies. Ic did this by introducing a plan for a 'systerns democ-rar.y' in which the legal system, the medical bureaucracy and theeducational apparatus would each run their own affairs without directstate interference according to the principle of professional self-government. In those areas where the state had a legitimate function,such as in the appointment of judges, the selection of a national sylla-bus, or the choice of medical technology, there would be an institu-tionalized democratic balance in favour of representatives of thesub-system in question on each committee. These rneasures were justi-fied according to the principle that experts know best, and that theirexpertise was best judged by their colleagues. In those cases where theexperts were divided, political considerations would be decisive.leThe Solidarnosc document is the only coherent and detailed statementof democratic theory provided by the opposition movements inEastern Europe that was both more conceptually sophisticated thanparallel developments in Western Europe, and more feasible.

John Rawls's A Tbeory ofJattice rests on the premiss that fairness is thefundamental value of modern political societies, and that reason mustsubordinate markets in the narne of society. It is Rawls who articu-lared the philosophical system closest to the ethics that characterizedthe rejection of Communism in Poland.4o A commitment to fairnessleads to a hierarchy of three principles which serve asground rules forthe regulation of societal institutions. The first principle states thateach person has an equal right to a full scheme of equal liberties,compatible with an identical right for all. The second is that of equalopportunitl, and the third is the 'difference principle'. This is the

19 For rhe outline of these self-governing measures in the legal, medical, scieotific andeducational systems. see SolidariryThesis, z4t(al, pp.3to,345, Thesis 3o, p. 355, andThesis 29, p. tt4. In effect they tried to give substantive meaning to Polanyi's idea offrcedom in a complex society.4o See Unneccrary Sulfering, chapter r.

7t

idea that in a society characterized by market relations and private

property, inequality is iustified in as much as improvernents in effi-

.i.n.y and wealth do not diminish the welfare of the least advantagecl"

Rawls's first principle is expressed in Thesis z3 of the Solidarnosc

document which states:

T5e systenr must gu.rrantee basic civil freedotns and respect tlre principles

of equaliry before the law as far as all citizens and all public institutions are

concerned . . . regardless of tlreir convictions, political views and org,aniz-

ational affi liations. 4l

The fundamental principle of reform was an assertion of basic human

and civil rights which were not oPen to political negotiation, violationor surrendir. These constituted the inviolable first premiss o[ Polish

reconstruction Which was the lexical priority of liberty-q'This recalls

the 'spheres of arbitrary freedom protected by u-nbreakable rights'

that Polanyi argues was the necessary condition of a free society.lt

The second principle, that of equal opportunity, was expressed in the

critique of institutionalized privilege based on Party rnembership and

geneialized subservience. The creation of democratically controlled

iorkplaces was an arrenr't to break the institutionalized dominationof the Party in the econolrtic sphere, democratic control of bureaucra-

cies a means of conrrolling the Party's domination of tlre instirutions

of state. Taken together, this would remove the Farty from its domi-

neering position in societal otga.nization. The argument for equality

of opfoitunity was based on a commitment to the developrnent oft"l"nti in a system of fair competition on the grounds that active

attainmenr was a superior principle of selection to either inheritance

or reward based on obedience. It was also argued that equaliry ofopporrunity is in the collective interest as it aids efficiency, maximizes

talent allocation, and increases the ability for each to increase their

self-respect by gaining recognized positions of Power and prestige in

I' Solidarity, p. 349.a, For the retarionship berween liberty and the other values see -fohn Rawls, 'Social

Unity and Primary Goods', in A. Sen and B. Villiams, eds, Beynd Utilitarianitm, Cam-

bridge 1982.ar Se-e rir, p. zti. Space does not allow an exposition and defence of Polanyi's ideal of

a liberal democracy based on rights at the level o[the state and democracy at work' ln

his conceprion of justice the right to work plays a fundamental role in giving access to

primary ioods and the fruits of social cooperation. Due to the domination of neoclas-

sical idLJs in the sphere of policy, and postmodern distaste for both rights and work

in what used to be socialist philosophy, the idea of the'right to work'has fallen out o[the frame of feasible poiicy options throughout the world. Such a right is not only

derivable from Rawls's idea of primary goods, it is of central importance in the

strengthening of liberal dernocracies and the creation of conditions of freedom access'

ible to each citizen. The present arguments for a basic income, or citizen's wage made

by liberals, socialists and conservatives are reminiscent of the Speenhamland debate

and could lead to sirnilar consequences as the distribution of power and responsibiliry

in sociery become increasingly narrow and each citizen is left in a state of subsidized

stagnation lacking the rneans to change their circumstanc€s and the skills to cooperate

with others. Once sociatists lose their distinctive insight into the relationship between

work, freedom and power they collapse into other traditions whether these be liberal,

statist, nationalist, romantic, racial or genderist'

j6

society on the basis of their work. This equality is not only formal, in:

the sense of equality before the law, fair procedures of iustice and

employment opportunity, but also has a substantive content in terms ofthe collective provision of what Rawls calls 'primary goods', defined as

the precondition of effective agency. ql In this lies the morality of wel-

fare provisions concerning health, education, housing and labourregulation. If the goal of Solidarnosc was to 'create decent economicand political conditions in an independent Poland, that is conditionsof a life free of poverty, exploitation, fear and deception, in a sociery

that is democratically and lawfully organized', then the role of the 'dif-

ference principle' can be clearly understood.4t lf changes in sociery

take place which secure iust legal procedures but ignore the contextwithin which starting points are distributed in an arbitrary and unfairway, rhen it is possible that a large number ofcitizens will be excluded fromthe benefits of societal activity. The principal means of exclusion is

unemplovment, which severs peoPle both from recognition as pro-Juctive partners and from material resources. Rawls"s solution to the

existence of formal equality and substantive inequality is to iustify the

redistribution of primary goods without which ^gency

would be

impossible. Both the right to work and the priority of primary Soodsturn each citizen from being an individual part of a political com-

munity, into an active participant in the social life of a society. Only a

democratically organized differentiated society can sustain the con-

sensus necessary to preserve individual rights.

From Marxism to Market without Mediation

If the conditions facing Poland in 1989 are seen in comparison with\Vest Germany in rg45 then the divergences and similarities can be

clearly apprehended. In Germany, as in Poland, political parties were

banned. The state bureaucratic class was implicated in the old regime

in both cases and had lost any clairn to impartiality" The Polish work-

ing class had traditions of militancy and self-organization which, ifanything, exceeded Germany's. They had an illegal, functionless butlegitimate trade union in the form of Solidarnosc and an officially

aa For detailed discussion seeJohn Rawls, 'The Basic Liberties and their Prioriry', in Tbc

Tanner Lectuns on I Inman Valae\ vol. 3, Cambridge 1982, tnd A Tbcory ofJa:ticc, pP. 9o-t.ar Solidarity, p. 3u(r.46 Roman Laba, T'he Social Roott of Solidarity, Princeton 1991.

aa

As Roman Laba shows in his empirical work on the l97os strikes and the

development of the Solidarnosc rnovement, worker self'organizationwas seen

^s the means of societal restoration and in this labour value

played a central role. Solidarnosc bore the burden of iustice fo-r the-

whole of Polish society as well as acting as the immediate defender ofthe workers' interests. The renewal of industrial relatiou in society, a

I'recognition of labour, was central to its concerns.46 The central

I challenge confronting Polish society as well as academics, is to explain

| *hy thi workers have remained unrecognized in the new regime that

I Solid"..tosc created. \{rhy is it that this Catholic syndicalist movement

I has adopted the market utopia as its central commitment with its

I notion of tt".u".ion-based incentives and its contempt for the tradi'I tions and values of Polish society?L

privileged, effective at bargaining but less popular union, the oPzz.The splic union is a legacy of Communism with debilitating effects forsocietal reconstruction. The inherirance of a state-sponsored union was

similaq the response of the new regime, however, was strikingly differ-ent. The leaders of the Dettrcbland Arbeiter Front, the Nazi-sponsoredunion, were prosecuted for war crimes, none of its middle-rankingleaders was allowed to hold office in the new union structures, andrhey were barred from employment. Their offices and assets wereseized by the state. In Poland, rhe oPzz has grown in strength and has

proved to be an organizational support of the renewed Communistsas the unemployment and poverty generated by the srabilization planhave grown. Property rights in Poland were as ill defined anduncertain as they were in Germany. The leading forces in Poland withcapital were the ex-nomenklatura whose legitimacy had been under-mined by Communist rule and were seen as the principal defendersand enforcers of the old system. In Germany the large industrialistswere similarly implicated with the old regime. Productive Powerexisted, as it did in Germany in 1945 where there was minirnaldamage to industrial machinery, bur the definition and future orSan-ization o[ the material contexr remained uncertain.

The Roman Catholic church was both morally respected and popularin both countries. [t was constrained as a political agent in thattheocracies were seen as an outmoded and inappropriate form ofgovernment, and by internal constraints on its explicit will to politicalpower. The foundation of a Christian Democratic party of the rWest

German variety was a possibility that the church in Poland didnothing to bring about. Unlike in Germany, where the churchconcentrated its attention on social issues, the church in Poland has

concentrated on matters of personal morality such as abortion anddivorce and has mobilized little of its power in pursuit of issues con-cerning labour, welfare or iustice. Solidarnosc was the only organiz-ation which could act as a recognized political agent enioying popularlegitimacy and support. The movement stood as a polirical party andwon all available seats contested at the election of 1989.

It was at this point that the Solidarnosc government met the NewRishr consensus, not ar the level of Cold 'War rhetoric where trade-union rights, democratic empowerment and real freedom were themain currency but on the level of reality where these played no role as

policy priorities defined by the dominant economic, political andmilitary institutions. The message was clear" No union deals, the dis-mantling of the welfare state, rhe abolirion of worker councils, a

renunciation o[ freedom of movement in the new Europe andenforced unemployment as a necessary feature of economic recovery.The ec closed its borders to both Poles and their goods and no signi-ficant aid was forthcoming. If the transformation can be defined as

fundamentally concerned with the integration of Poland into the\Testern sphere, at the moment of movement all the dominantinsritutions which could have facilitated such a move were consistentin their response. No integration, no partnership, no cooperation.aT

17 The ruF, in fact, acted as the representative of Polish creditors wirlr consequences

that are discussed below.

rR

The \0festern contribution can be summarized as follows: All we cangive you is a model, which has had no success in any developedindustrial nation, but whose implementation is the precondition ofreceiving any hope of recognition as even a subordinate partner in the'Free Europe' you have struggled for so long to ioin.qe

Perhaps the supreme achievement of 'actually existing socialism' is thatit gave plausibility to theories linking nationalism, racism and com-munity which had lost their rational appeal with the defeat of fascismwhile giving a credibility to market utopias that the postwar settlement

f was a rneans of disproving. As the unfair consequences of the stabil-

f izarion plan became apparent, the Polish people were deprived of rhe

f language of justice through which they could express their ethical and

lorganizational opposition. Appeals to iustice became identified withI defending the ancien regime, or were disqualified as populist, dema-

lgogic and utopian. Any alternative to an unregulated market was

f immediately defined as unfeasible. Social democracy has been the vic-

[_tim of Communism in a double sense. Having been murdered, impris-oned, tortured, banned, reviled and expelled by the Communists as

revisionists and class traitors, social democracy is now affirmed aswhat Communisrn was about all along, leading to the CommunistParty of Poland changing its name to the 'Social Democratic Party ofthe Republic of Poland' iust in time to associate the two ideas and tobe rejected by the electorate. It is now in power proclaiming its social-democratic orientation but seems to have neither a commitment todemocracy nor to the social and is merely consolidating the grip ofmarket Leninist managers on all maior aspects of economic and polit-ical life. The conflation of social democracy with Communism wasnot only a rhetorical strategy of the New Right, but a democratic

l-strategy of defeated Communism. The inability of social democracy to

I develop its traditions and commitments into a coherent whole and the

I subsequent inability to define itself as an alternative to, and not just a

I composite of Communism and liberalism lies at the heart of its prob-

I lem. Such ideas were either identified with failure and, therefore, had-to be'abolished'as a direct cause of ruin, or they were seen as irrele-vant to the 'needs' of society due to their unfeasibility.

The assumptions of market Leninism are still repeated in mostreports from Poland. In this the imposition of correct policy enforcedby scientific managers is the ideal, and any form of democratic oppo-sition is understood as demagogic, populist or worse. The most recentexample is a survey article in the Economist.le The author develops theargument that 'reform proceeds despite democracy, not because of ir.. . . Clearly policy works better than democrlcy. . . such policies lunem-ployment, budget constraints, welfare cuts, inequality, union margin-alizationl are good for Poland's economy and soul. . . . It is sometimesnecessary to insulate policy from the chaos of politics.'to The assump-tion is that correct economic theory musr subordinate democracy.

aB 7o per cent of the Polish national debt was to \(/estern governmenrs, not ro com-mercial institutions. This was widely expected to be cancelled. However, after a wait oftwo years it was only halved, thus leaving the new democracies wirlr the added burdeno[ Communist profligacy.ae Brooke Unger, 'Souls in the New lvlaclrine', Economitt, t6-zz April 994.10 lbid.

This is despite the acknowledgemenr that unemployment runs ar ov€rthree million, a third of whom have been jobless for more than a year,that over ten million Poles now live below the poverty line and realwages have declined substantially since 1989. He notes thar zo percent of GDP is derived from criminal activity and that levels of trustand honesty are so low as to undermine the legal pretensions of society.In arguing that Poland is not to be compared to the 'Asian Tigers' hecites the fact that only a third of Poles stay in school until eighteen andless tlran a tenth go to university, that levels of savings are nonexisrentand that tax evasion and fraud are so widespread as to be the norrn.He acknowledges that the big winners in the transformation 'areeither crooks or Communists and that every second top manager inthe private sector used to direct a socialist enterprise.' He notices theindustrial collapse and the consumer boom, the explosion of crime atall levels of society and the widespread use o[ organized thugs as a

means of extorting debts. His solution is not an improvemenr ineducation or welfare or a publicly organized distribution of theburdens of transition through the mobilization of unions, but rather a

strong resistance to the tendencies towards 'industrial policy and anunhealthy corporatism'. Throughout the article Germany is held up as

a warning concerning wage costs, tax levels, closed markets, closetsubsidies and democratic participation. The greatest danger facingPolish societyn Brooke argues, is social democracy, while all hisempirical observations seem to indicate that the preconditions offascism are the sole result of government policy. These are highunemployment, public disorder, democratic ineffectuality, intellect-ual irrationalism, the linking of socialism with tyranny and increasingunfairness at all levels of society.l'

An Abstract Model

f-tf on. accepts that agents act with rational purposes on the basis off commitments they consider to be both true and intelligible, an

I explanation of why reckless, inappropriate and damaging policies

I were adopted and pursued by an entire consensus, and were not

I limited to rhe activities of partisan groups imposing their claims onI society, is indispensable.LThere were two realities. One was failed Communism, located in East-ern Europe, the other successful capitalism located furrher S(rest. Therewas, howeve4 no direct access by Polish people to the realities of WestEuropean capitalism, it remained an abstract category defined byprosperity, the rule of law and democracy. It was an ideal, and it was a

model. The problem with models, as students of the social sciences arewell aware, is that they are by necessity ahistorical. They always assume

I too much and explain too little. The messy historical truth was rhat

I tJ?estern Europe, and most particularly West Germany, had inadver-

I tently stumbled upon a distinctive mode of societal organization that

tt The supreme exponent of market Leninism, however, remainsJeffrey Sachs, the archi-tecr of spontaneous terror. He argued that through the nationalizarion of industry andits control by Vestern-trained management school graduateso the neoclassical commis.sars would forrn a 'critical rnass' on all committees and thus society could be subordin-ated to the new orcler without any detour through either society or democracy. See

David Lipton andJeffrey Sachs, 'Privatization in Eastern Europe: The Case of Polantl'.

8o

f has been clumsily labelled welfare, warfare or social capiralisrn 1,, ilris

I the goal of societal, and not simply marker equilibrium, !s:-l;c rg!Lrrit

I ive ideal. Political and class-based institutions intervene, or rather

I become entangled in market operations. Democracy and corporare

I recognition become part of the constitutive rules of economic life. Noone 'designed' posrwar Germany, it was the resuk of the dynamic con-sensus achieved by the different legirimate agenrs within the space ofrnanoeuvre given by international constrainrs.tt The relationshipbetween the market systern, corporare organizations (of borh kinds),industrial relations, democratic structures and military constraints ledto a 'spontaneous order'. There developed a stable societal equilibriumcharacterized by interdependent bur autonornous sub-systems com-posed of the institutionalized representation o[ different inrerests.tVithout stable structures there can be no transition. there cannor beanything, merely the self-fulfilling Hobbesian vision of the state ofnature with the inevitable consequence of an authoritarian srare roclean up the mess. Polanyi's first general rule applied.

In the absence o( otganized vocational structures within the formerCommunist countries, in the further absence of stable parties, interesrgroups and associations, the conception of !ustice, progress anddemocracy provided by the international consensus played a crucial

lrole in the internal development of Polish politics. The institutions ofIthe tVest misdescribed, or more bluntly, lied, to the countries of thelEast concerning the role that free markets played in their society. TheEC, far from admitting its origin in protectionism, racketeering,market rigging and myriad interventions in the form of steel quorasand farm subsidies, was indistinguishable from rhe tllr or rhe \lforldBank when it carne to describing itself and giving advice to other

fpeople. All aid to Poland was made conclitional on its pursuing a

I reform strategy the likes of which no \Testern nation had ever

I considered imposing on itself for fear of the effects this would lrave on

I people's lives and livelihoods. unfortunately, the entire debate during'this transformation has been structured around the idea that

economic reforms have a social cost, a human dimension that has tobe tacked onto the basic economic changes and is thus pursued as a

-'social' policy afterthought. This is to put the cart before tlre horse.

lThe truth about Vestern Europe is that trade unions, the welfiare

f state, regional government, industrial democracy and access to skills

I and professions did not trail along in the wake of central bank policy

[and economic reform after 1945. Not financial b,rt i@.!_po!Sywas the motor of successful societal restoration, and this involved newinstitutionalarrangements'@wasestablishedintheGerman iron, coal and steel industries in 1948 before they hadresumed effective production. lt was a condition and not an effect ofthe successful reconstruction of large-scale German industry in a

decentralized framework. The same goes for trade-union represent-ation on the boards of all Gerrnan industries, as well as the highpriority given to the funding and autonomy of universities, technical

t' For a detailed analysis of the relationship between

agency in the development of codetermination between

Republic see chapte r 3 of Unnecessary Saffering"

consensust recognition and1945 and 1948 in the Federal

colleges, craft skills, apprenticeships and self-organized quality-controlassociations characteristic of the Patterns of production throughoutVest German society.tl Human capital investment seems a rathermeasly and technical term for such a necessary thing. The result of the

market utopianism presently pursued is that the market in Eastern

Europe ri being organized, it is characterized by institutional struc'rures, and these are criminal ones. qgdzedldlqg is the key to under-

standing economic order and growth in the new Polish economy, and

I many of the rnost basic cornmodities are in its hands. My conclusion is

lrhat with the strange death of coherent and compelling left-wing or

ICacholic thought in rVestern Europe and the subsequent domination ofI rhe policy agenda by free-market fanatics, Bolivia and not \?'est Ger-

[ *"ny became the model for Poland in che form of the Sachs/Bal-

cerowicz/$/orld Bank/tt*lr stabilizacion plan which succeeded indestabilizing any force in Poland which could have played a constructiverole in building the necessary democratic institutions that would setve

as a social buffer in the rnarket storm that is denuding Polish culture.

f'lndeed, it has led logically to the dominance of the old Communist

| "pp"rar.rs as an economic and political elite, thus re-centralizing old

I po*.. structures and discrediting freedom simultaneously. The only

ieffecrive anridore to such forms of social organization is the buildingf uo of democratic inrermediate institutions within the economir realmlr

| ,ti", c.Ete-t."st and responsibility through the redistribution oflknowledge and power. \Without these, both the market and democ-

[.acy can be blown ^w^y

at the first breeze. !7hat is happening inEastern Europe now is the responsibility primarily of \West Europeanpolicy makers and politicians, and most particularly of their left-wingstrand which has lost all faith in any of the commitrnents that made'Western Europe humanly functional for the Past forry years'

The problem for Solidarnosc was how to conceptualize its construct-ive, productive and patriotic role. Due to the model of economicreconsrruction assumed by the Sachs/Balcerowicz/lUr plan, the onlytask it could effectively fulfil was to dissolve itself as an economicagent, while acting as a societal pacifier and government apologist.\S(lhile Solidarnosc was a necessary force in political reform, it was

seen by orhers and viewed itself as a parasitic and obstructive organiz'ation in tlre economic sphere" The other forces which could have

opposed both the stabilization plan and the undemocratic way it was

conceived and imposed were either discredited or organizationallyweak. The opz.z kept its head down, fearful of Solidarnosc revenge.

The Contrnunist Party was more concerned with survival and reorien-ration. The Farmers' Party mistakenly assumed that the reformswould be to its benefit. The IMF enioyed an institutional monopoly ofaid and recognition, the EC, the World Bank and the Gz4 all handedover their money to it. There was thus no balance of power wirhinwhich Poland could gain room for manoeuvre, nor any competinginterests wirhin which it could frame its own balance between tradi-tion and revolution. There was merely one model, one Programme,

tt Suclr was its sr.rccess in encouraging responsitrility among gr()ul',s dcfined as collect-

ive actors rhat in 1954 the German miners relused a wage increase for f-ear of its intla-

tionary consequences.

tt2

and this W'estern ideal served as both a rneans of iustifying the ration-aliry of the plan to society, and a guarantee of its legitimacy andrationality-even though no country in rWestern Europe had devel-oped a structure which conformed to it in the slightest. The plan wasunopposed, and this led to its extreme ahistorical and inappropriatecharacter. It was the result of the sovereignty of the government in theabsence of organized opposition, its greatest achievement was todestroy its disorganized societal support. t4

It is in the definition of what it is rational to pursue that Solidarnoschave been led to negate all of their previous policy commitments, andto revise their economic policy on the basis of what they thought wasright. It was not betrayal, corruption or weakness that led Solidarnoscto their present policies and projects, but the intellectual frameworkavailable to them in r99o when confronted by the prevailing orthodoxparadigm of economic, political and societal progress institutional-ized in rhe dominant international organizations of political and eco-

nomic regulation"

Polanyi argued that feasibility was the benchmark of a morality andthar social order was rooted in consensus. The condition of freedom isgiven by the possibility of iust association under circumstances alwayscharacterized by dependency and power. Only through stable associ-ative control over societal resources can the demands of preservingthe traditional ethical structures of societal reproduction be recon-ciled with the new demands of technology and production. What is

happening in Poland has happened before in Europe, always with

f-calamirous results. The choice before society is understood as only

I between stagnation and disintegration, between the state and the

I market; the possibility of renewing the social order as a vocational

I democracy is seen either as unfeasible utopianism, or as part of the

I repressive past from which escape is craved. This leaves the institu-

I tions of a constitutional democracy without a stable social base and

I thus renders both freedom and market reforms vulnerable to ovet-

I rhrow. The \West German postwar settlement was never articulated as-an ideal or as a model. Its features of market subordination andfacilitation through the institutionalization of industrial democracy,subsidiariry and subsidy were unknown in Eastern Europe. Therethus seemed to be no alternative to market Leninism.

III. 'Free to Freeze'

I Marxism presented itself as the defender of community against the

I ravages inflicted by capitalism, but it proved ultimately to negate both

I freedom and solidarity and thus throughout Eastern Europe theremoval, not the revival of the Party was understood as the necessary

I precondition of societal renewal. This is the central parallel to Speen-

lhamland but does not mean that a commitment to the social, the idea

ta In r99o real wages fell by J2 per cent! cDp by rz per cent, industrial output by over20 per cent. Unemployment rose from virtually zero to r,rz6,ooo. From this level, bythe e nd of r99r production had fallen by a further 12 per cent, inflation rose ro 70 percent, and unemployment rose to 2,ro8,ooo. Government revenues declined leading toincreasingly severe cuts in unemployment benefit.

8\

f of living in a stable society governed by ordered just relations atrcl

I laws in which work is given respect and protection, is weak" It finds

f expressiorr in nationalism, Cacholic social doctrine, conservative

I rnoralism and a residual sympathy for unreftrrmecl Communist par'

f'ries masquerading as social democrats.st Socialism, howevero is no

I lo.tger an ideology but a necessiry in a market society. It takes many

I forms but always ends up in a resistance to unregulated markets in

I labour, money and property. ln rational choice theory this is under-

I stood as either collective irrationality or tribalism. To those with a less

I Panglossian approach to spontaneous equilibrium it mcans not starv-

I ing, securing a rninimal level of life security, access to educational

I oplrorttrnity and the means to surviving in tlre modern worlcl gener-

I ally. l'he impr)rtant question is what florm does associational sel[-

I protection take, and this in turn becomes a question of rational and

I irrational solidarity. Here lies Polanyi's importance for he combines a-moral philosophy with a social theory and thus allows a conceptualiz-

ation of the role of ethics in reality and the means of restoring andmaintaining its institutionalization.

I

J

J

The market has been embraced because it is seen as a necessary

mechanism for improving standards of living, for facilitating integra-rion and communication with citizens and groups in other countries,and for breaking the old power elites. It has failed in all these areas.

[fn" problem is lhat ",

oppot"d to embedding the market in a web ofI social relations in which unions, corporate bodies, trade associations

I and regulation both constrain the market and facilitate social restor-

I ation, society in Poland has been destroyed yet again in the name ofI another unrealizable utopian proiect. The Bolshevik system was-unequal and unfair, leading to corruption and waste, thus negating inpractice what had been socialism's greatest appeal in theory-thepossibility of a fair distribution of society's resoutces, a recognition ofthe worth o[ all who work and the possibility of equal opportunityirrespective of class, national or ethnic background. It is because capi-talism is not a fair regulatory principle of societal organization thatthe logic of events will be opposed by the principles that have initiallygiven it legitimacy.

The commodification of labour, land and lodging, the subordinationof association ro accumulation that must take place in a transition toa market society, becomes a catastrophe in a country such as Polandin which the decomrnodification of the basic sphere of life throughsubsidized subsistence was the central feature of the previous regime.

tr SettingasidePoland"wherethereformedCommunistParty,havinginitiallyreceivedlessthan ; per cent of the vote in 1989, is now back in power in alliance with the Farmers'

Party, also see elecroral results in Lithuania where the reformed Cornmunists (Demo-

cratic Labour Party) are now dominant, Hungary where a solidaristic Christian Demo-

craric Party is playing a stalling role as regards market reforms, as well as Serbia,Slovakia and Romania where all kinds of organic irrationality are dominating politicaland economic decisions. The dilemma facing all these countries is that there is no alter-

narive to tlre market, but the market is no alternative" In all these societies, socialism as

reprgcs6lcll try the reforme<l Communist parties is a system for protecting interests

and intposing authoritarian lnanagement systems.'l'here is tro pretcnce at rcrlrgarrizilrg,

society on tlre basis o[ eitlrer democracy or liberty.

8,r

I-lousing, basic foodstuffs, educarion and lrealth care were all pro-vided either free of charge or with substantial subsidies. Tlrere aremany ways of conceptualizing rhis decommodified space rhar sur-rotrnded each citizen of tlre workers'republic like a c<lerced bubble ofprotection, but it had concrere results in terms of improvements in

lliteracy, nutrition, health and shelrer. The deal imposed by the Party-

I state on the Polish nation afrer the $Var was that people should

I surrender their freedom and culture in return for guaranteed subsist-

lence. Life might be meaningless, opportunity denied, unfairness insti-I tutionalizerl ancl reciprociry broken, but ar least it was life. Many were

lcold hut few were frozen.

r|

'l-lris stagnant paternalisrn has now been replacecl by libertarian arom-

I ization in wlriclr the bubble lras burst and each citizen faces the world

I in competition with all without any institutional solidarity or prorec-

I tion. tJfhat has happened in the transition is that the passive recip-

I ients of subsistence have had a conrexr imposed around them inIwhich everything is subordinated to the logic of the market. The-deregulation of rents and heating has led to homelessness and hypo-tfrermia; tlrey are free to fteeze. The rise in rhe price of food has led tohunger. The closure of factories has led to sudden unprece<lenredunemployment and to clairns for benefit that tlre state cannot affrrrd topay. The educational and health-care systems are crumbling, leadingto the development of private systems for the old and new rich and thevirtual abolition of welfare for the rest of society. The commodifica-tion of the basics of life, the destruction of the industrial secror, andtlre vacuum of self-organization that was the legacy of Communisr ruleleave only one outlet for the people to express their solidarity ofdespair-the nation state. Suffering in isolation they look to collectivesecurity and provision. Under these circumstances the functionalrationality of nationalism is not to be dismissed as atavistic tribalism.Understood in this way the re-election of the Communists in Polandwas an act of immense rational maturity given the range of optionsavailable" The disaster is that the one social agent that emerged fromBolshevik rule with an organization and programme capable ofrenewing the institutions and relations of society during the storm oftransition, the workers" rnovement Solidarnosc, formed the govern-

f-ment that has implemented the economic reforms. Polanyi's first

lBeneral rule, atomization as a precondition for collectivism in the

[_form of etlrnic nationalism, is already taking effect.

The ways in which the decline of social-democratic confidence andNew Right hegemony have combined to produce ahistorical andbizarce policy developments are best posed by asking the originalquestion. \Jfhy is it that the most successful and enduring economicand social reconstruction programme ever, combining economicgrowth, social justice, and fair institutional procedures, has been neg-lected in the discussion of Eastern Europe? Amid all the talk of a newMarshall plan, fiscal reform, debt-overhang rescheduling and joint-stock mutual pension-fund discount vouchers, the real preconditionof effective reconstruction-the simultaneous reactivation and stabil-ization of social agents as was aclrieved in lVest Germany-has beenentirely ignored. Through codetermination working-class power was

81

institutionalized and stabilized in German society, knowledge ofinvestment and procedure was Suaranteed, responsible mass move-

ments were legally created, controlled and enabled to grow. Incentives-

were not only linked to wages but to the cooperative development ofindustry basid on knowledge of the conditions, the sacrifices expected

of workers and iob securiry. This was balanced by their participationin the process of production, not as an advisory voice, but as an

organiz;d democratic force. By the time that Marshall Aid really got

going in r95r, codetermination had already led to the renewal of large-

i.ul. German industry within a market framework. The absence ofreference to this precedent indicates the power of a consensus in fram'ing an agenda and is the most significant consequence of New Right

hegemo.ty in the Past twenty years. In Poland there was no theoreticalalternative available.

l'fn. rragedy is rhat Polanyi's conceptualization of modernist alterna-

I tiues developed in the final chapter of The Great Tiansformarion temains

I fundamentally correct. The degenerative form of organic solidarity is-a society without freedom. The form of organic rationality he advo--

cares is rhe resroration of society through the institutionalization ofthe greatest possible freedom under conditions of democratic depend-

"n.J. This he calls socialism. Socialism, however, has been conflated

with Communism, an equally degenerative form of society-less regu'lation. The link between socialism and freedom has been severed leav-

ing the people of Poland without a language in which to exPress theircoilective yearning for freedom and stability based on iustice. Organicirrationality or aggressive nationalism are the only bases left fcrr

solidarity.

The sooner the constructivist fancasies of a market utopia are recog-

nized for what they are, and rhe ideals of political iustice and eco-

nomic democracy thar were the unique contribution of Solidarnosc to

political philosophy are reclaimed as the only authentic possibiliry for,

ih. r".r."tion of a free Polish nation, the sooner the destination oftransition can be changed from autarchy to democracy. In this the

idea of transition is given a substantive meaning through the institu-tional and moral framing of the dialectic of tradition and transform-ation in the renewal of society itself. The key Practice that can

facilitate and frame a transformation characterized by freedom and

solidarity is the democratic self-organization of economic productionas was understood practically and feasibly by the Solidarnosc move-

menr. lts hisrorical precursors in Britain-the Owenites and Chartists,the Cooperative movement and Labour party-were all defeated. Intheir defeat, however, they slowed down the rate of change, enlarged

the sphere of freedom, restored societal institutions and gave hope torhose who understood thac freedom was based on democratic associa-

tion. In shorc they ameliorated the excesses of market utopianism.This is the burden that Solidarnosc must assume once more if Poland

::J.""::,"t the freedoms it has struggled for throughout this century of

David Chandler

Epitaph for the Khmer Rouge?

Nineteen years ago last month, on 17 April r97J, Cambodia's capital,Phnom Penh, fell to the Cambodian guerrilla armies known as theKhmer Rouge. The city had been besieged for months. Since r97o,when the civil war began, at least half a million Cambodians, or onein sixteen, had been killed. By April rg7i, Phnom Penh was runningout of food. The government had ceased to function. Its Americanallies, reduced to a handful of embassy personnel, had been evacuatedby helicopter a few days before, leaving the Cambodians to their fate.Ciry-dwellers cheered as the silent, heavily armed young soldiersbegan filtering into the city on the morning of April r7th. After fiveyears of fighting, the inhabitants of Phnom Penh were on their lastlegs, but guardedly optimistic. Surely, they thought, peace would bebetter than war. Any regime would be better than the one in power.They felt certain that the Khmer Rouge, about whom they knewalmost nothing, would work with them as fellow-Cambodians toreconstruct the country.*

They were cruelly mistaken. tU7ithin a week, Cambodia's city-dwellerswere driven at gunpoint into the countryside and ordered to take upagricultural tasks. Thousands of them died over the next few weeks.\07hen rhey asked questions of the soldiers who accompanied them,they were told to obey the 'revolutionary or9anization' (angkar Po&-uat), without further explanation. The 'organization' in fact was theclandestine Communist Party of Kampuchea (cpr), formed in thergjos by the Vietnamese and led since ry$ by a reclusive formerschoolteacher named Saloth Sar, known to the world since 1976 by hisrevolutionary pseudonym, Pol Pot.

Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot waged abrutal, uncompromising revolution in Cambodia, isolating the coun-try from.the outside world. Between April ry71 and the beginning ofr97g, over a million Cambodians, or one in seven, died from malnu-

ff l:\I:':""*Tff :::::1.T",:';?,fi.'nXYJi:'iJlHAt* I am grateful to Robin Blackburn, Susan Chandler and Jay Tolson for their com-ments on an earlier draft of this paper.

8t