by Jancek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski
The following is an English translation of Chapter 10 of the French +
text of Kuron's and Modzelewski's Open Letter, entitled"Programme” Kuron
and Modzelewski are young Polish communists who are presently serving —
prison sentences for the circulation of this document, They were expelled
from the Polish Communist Party in November of 1964 and wrote the Open
Letter as an explanation of their views. It was addressed to members
of the University of arsaw sections of the Polish Communist Party and
the Young Socialists. Kuron and Modzelewski were tried in July 1965 and are serving three, andthree-and-a-half year sentences, respectively.
The present text is based on a copy of the Open Letter which was rece eived by the French Trotskyist movement late last year. A translation of the complete work is in preparation and will be printed by Merit Publishers this Spring. It will also include an introduction by Pierre Frank, a member of the United Secretariat of the Fourth Tnternational.
We have shown that revolution is the grave digger of the old society. At the same time, it is the creator of the new. The question now berore us is whether the working class, which by its very nature is the principal and leading force of revolution, is capable of offering a valid programme,
This would be true if the proramme is advanced by the social class whose particular interest is most in accord with the needs of ‘economic development and the satisfaction of the needs of other classes and soc} l layers= in other words, whose programme permits the realization of the interests of society as a whole. The class interest of the workers requires the end of bureaucratic ownership of the means of production. This does not mean that the workers! wages most be equal to the total value of the product of their labour, The level of development of productive forces in modern society creates the necessity of a division of labour permitting the existence of nonproductive sectors supported by the material product of the workers,
Under workers democracy it will alse be necessary to dedyct a part of the labour p®oduct for accumulation to sustain and develop. health services, education and cultures still another pvn¢ will be allotted for social be benefits, administration and goverment. But all of this will be carried out only to the extent that the working class considers it neccessary in its om interests. In reality, exploitation does not SOMS%5% in the fact that work as' wages represent only a part of the value produced, but in the fact that surplus product is taken away from them and used for ends that are foreign and antagonistic to thems the nonproductive sectors serve to maintain and reinforce the domination of the bureaucracy ( or the hourgaoisie as well ) over production, over society and the life of the working class, The end of exploitation means the creation of a system where the organised working class will be the master of its 1 Mis ce Fy its labour products; where it will determine the onal of <- See ee where it will determine the division of the ne ape ee menage the extent and dirartian AP tn PLOUUCT, 1% Wit i bee ee aoe OE investments, of expenditures for social
’ benefits, health services » education and culture » the budget of the
goverment apparatus, and the actual duties of this apparatus. Then the working class will exercise economic, social and political power in the state, |
I. The present level of productivity implies a social division of labour in which the function of production is seperate from that of management. There must be workers and managers. In the process of production, the working class is not destined to manage but to | produce. In order to manage, it must organise itself and be organised by the state, _ if there is no workers democracy in the factory, there can be still less in the state, In fact, it is only in the plant that workers are in their own element; it is there that they exeroise their essential socinl function, If the workers are slaves to their labour, then. freedom outside work is only "freedom on Sundaye,” that is, fictional freedom. The working class cannot be master of its work and of production if it does not have control over the conditions and goals of its work in factories. To this end,it must organise itself in the plants by forming workers couneils to manage the factories. It must make the manager a subordinate functionary to the council, supervised, hired and fired by it,
Today, all key administrative decisions in the factories are dictated by the central goverment. Under such conditions, workers councils lack any power in practice. The manager is linked by his very nature to the leading bodies and therefore to the central apparatus of economle administration.Under these conditions, **°workers councils take on the character of secondary managerial bodies, comparable to the Autonomous Workers Conferences. In ordef for the councils to be able to manage the factories, workers must make them independent of the factory. This * would establish the preliminary conditions for workers democracy and, at the same time, give new directives for the realization of the true class goals of production. ( As we have already shown in Chapter 3, centralization is necessary for the organization of the means of production sector, while the production of consumer goods requires decentralization. ) ;
In this way, the working class,by taking the first steps of its programme, would realize in passing what is quite progressive in the programme of the technochrats: the independence of factories. However, the working class and the technoc racy give totally diferent social contents to this concept. For the technocrats, independence of the factories places all power in the hands of management. Fo; the workers, it means independence of the working class. This is why they cannot limit themselves to the management of the factories through the intermediary of councils. It would only ar ount to carrying out the programme of the technocrats and thereby suomitting the workers to a new yoke. : Major decisions concerning the division and use of national revenue by definition have a general economic character, th,t 1s, they are made at the level of the national economy - they caf be made only by a central goverment, If decisions made by the goverment remain outside the control of the working class, it cannot direct production and consequently its own labour. Workers autonomy limited to factories would inevitably become a fiction to mask the power of plant man,gement and the domination of a new bureaucracy politically linked to the technocracy in the state
apparatus. Then exploitation would continue end the old discrder would repeat itself in a new form.
II, This is why it is necessary for the working class to organise,in addition to workers councils in factories, delegations. from plants throughout the country. That is it must organise councils of workers deputies with 2 central council of deputies at their head. Under this system of councils, the wor,ing class would set the goals of social production, would make the necessary decisions, and supervise carrying out the plan at every step. At each level the councils would become the instruments of economic, political, executive and legislative authoritye They would be truly elective bodies for the voters, organised on the basis of factories. Voters would be able to recall their representatives and replace them at any mome,;, without regard to regular election dates. Workers delegations would become the framework of the proletarian state.
III. If workers delegates in the central council of deputies had before them only a single project for the distribution cf national income presented by the goverment or by the leadership of a single party, their role would be limited to that of a perfunctory vote. As we have shown in Chapter I, monopolistic power cannot have a proletarian character. That automatically becomes a dictatorship over the working classj a bureaucratic organization serving to atomize workers and keep them and all of society in subjection. : Pere |
In order for the system of councils to become the expression of the will, of the thinking, of the activity of the working masses, the working class must organize itself into more than one party. That does a plurality of _ working parties mean in practice? The right of every political grow recognised by tne working class to publish its ow newspaper, to present its programme via the modern information media, to organise caé@res, to carry on political campaisns - in brief, to be a party. The existence of more than one workers party requires freedom of speech, press, assembly, the end of preventative censorship, complete freedom of scientific research, of literary and artistic creation, Yithout freedom of expression for } different currents of thought in the press, in scientific research. in literary and artistic experimentation, without complete Prsbtion ny aeenks there is no workers democracy. | Be es | = 9
eke the existence of more than one workers party, the different parties would present their proposals for the division of the national income in thecentral council of deputies; then the conditions “ould be created which would permit the reel elements of an elect oe to emerse: it would Hencfii te: une eo VeeCMOral programe
| ge; Would benefit both the central representative f th workers, and the masses, who elect and end Wie kas, ye af woes Sarria oo dees Me eatess A plurality rould be limited to workers alone, The vrolet eee ee Pee. _ Would reflect the nature of the state Stnigteiahicn character of the parties ounc?*Se Then parties seeking to exercise inf] wunve VOUld not co so except by winni
LOUNnC T
‘Gimes. The experience
guarantee against
dictatorship and that, even in the most perfect forms, they are not goverments of the people. In the parliamentary system, the parties fight only to be elected: The moment ‘the vote is cast, the electoral platforms can be thrown into the wastebasket. In parliament, the deputies feel themselves bound only to the party leadership which named them as candidates. Voters are grouped in arbitrary election districts according to pu,ely formal criteria. This atomizes them. The right to recall deputies is a complete fiction. Participation of citizens in political life amounts to nothing more than reading statements of the peaders in the press, listening to them on the radio, and seeing them on TV - and, once every four or five years, voting to choose the party to govern them. The re: t takes place by virtue of a mandate, without the voters participation. Furthermore, parliament only exercises legislative power. The executive apparatus holds the only real power, the power over those who control the. materialforce, that is, the power over surplus velue. _ Therefore the parliamentary system is one in which the working class and the entire society finds itself deprived of all influence on goverment ~ by virtue of voting. To formal voting every four or five years, we counterpose the permanent participation of the working class, organised in a system of councils, political parties and wions: Workers would assume the correction and supervision of political and economic decisions at all levels. : In the capitalist system, the bourgeoisie, which controls the surplus . value, is above parliament. In the bureaucratic system, the untrammelled rule of the central political bureaucracy lies behind the parliamentary fiction. In the system of workers democracy, if representation of the entire body of citizens takes a parliamentary form, the working class will be above parliament, organised in councils and contralling the material base of the existence of society, namely the product of labcur.
IV. The working class cannot decide on the division of the labour product directly, it can only do sq through its central political representation. Furthermore, the working class is not absolutely homogeneous in regards to its class interests. Conflicts between the decisions of workers delegations and the intergsts and tendencies of workers in particular factories and particular sectors of the working class are inevitable, The mere fact of seperation between management and production holds within it the possibility of the development of an elected power with a certain amount of independence, and this holds true as much at the factory level as at the state. If the workers were deprived = above and beyond the right to vote ~ of the possibility ef self-defense against the decisions of their representational system, the system would degenerate and act against the sntersts of those it is supposed to represent. If the working class were deprived of the possibility of defending itself against the state, workers democracy would become a fiction. The possibility of defense must be
i tate with the guaranteed by trade unions absolutely independent of the s :