Class Struggle in Poland: Notes on a Historic Compromise

Abstract

It looked like the signing of a peace treaty between two sovereign powers. It was nearly 5 p.m. on that Sunday when—amid flashes of cameras and the noise of the recorders—the two main protagonists, their brief speeches over, signed the 21-point protocol. True, the setting was not very typical of diplomatic occasions. The ceremony was being held in the Lenin Shipyards and beamed through loudspeakers to thousands of workers standing outside. Nor was it a traditional peace treaty; it was a truce in Poland's class struggles which Mieczyslaw Jagielski, a deputy prime minister, signed on behalf of the ruling establishment and Lech Walesa for the MKS, i.e., the inter-factory strike committee of the Gdansk region, standing on this occasion for the working class of Poland. The date was August 31, 1980, a date to remember.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.