Pologne : de la faillite d'une politique économique à la remise en cause du système

Abstract

Poland : Failure of an economic policy, and the system challenged. The depression through which Poland has been passing since 1979 is the result of serious imbalances caused by the economic policy of Edward Gierek during the 70's. This policy, introduced after the violent uprisings on the Baltic coast in December 1970, and the fall of Gomulka, represented a forward dash to escape the difficulties facing the regime. II was aimed at effecting accelerated modernization of the system of production, together with a rapid rise in the people's living standard — a thing which no socialist economy has ever been capable of achieving, the high level of investment being incompatible with accelerated growth in the production of consumers' goods, given low productivity and waste of productive resources. Massive recourse to credits and technology from the West was responsible for the success of the "model" until 1975-76. The disequilibria which were bound to arise from continued implementation of the system of bureaucratic management (internal disequilibrium caused by rapid growth in nominal incomes and the supply of goods and services at heavily subsidized fixed prices, and external disequilibrium due to a deficit in foreign trade and growing indebtedness) were aggravated by a certain degree of liberalization which encouraged the growth of multiple forms of corruption, pressure groups, and falsification of economic statistics. The "external constraint" which led, from 1977, to restriction of imports from the West, was largely responsible for the disorganization of production and the depression, these factors being further accentuated, from the summer of 1980 onward, by a social upheaval which challenged the very nature of the totalitarian State. The Polish military, on the 13th December 1981, succeeded only in halting the challenge to the system; but the extent of the imbalances which have yet to be corrected leaves them extremely little room for successful economic manœuvre within a framework of uncertain political normalization.