Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968

EIGHT: The Viability of an Accord

The Viability of an Accord Solidarity was created as a trade union and social movement rooted in an "anti-political" ideology of societal democratization. This was reflected in its initial focus on expanding civic rights and its rigorous eschewal of intervention in state politics. Solidarity became concerned with the state only in late 1980, when the state could no longer be avoided. Although the results of the movement of the 1970S demonstrated the success of this orientation as a strategy of opposition, the experience of Solidarity demonstrated that anti-politics alone, lacking a positive program for institutional reform, is insufficient as an overall programmatic solution. It fails because of its detached stance toward the state, precisely the aspect that made it a potent opposition movement in the first place. During the Solidarity period, the state was forced to retreat from its control of civil society. But since this was not accompanied by any institutional transformation of the state, which Solidarity, in accordance with its ideological foundations, did not demand, the result was a breakdown in the system, which led to the imposition of martial law. After martial law, however, the authorities were still faced with the problem that plagues all post-Stalinist state socialist societies: where to now? How are particular social interests to be represented in society at large? How will particular social interests interact with the collective interests of the state? The post-Solidarity authorities might have tried to prevent civil society from forming its own organizations. They might, in other words, have tried returning to the familiar totalitarian tendency, and most oppositionists initially thought that they would. But the totalitarian model has not been viable for some time, for its necessary preconditions are lacking. The conditions are that the population be extraordinarily submissive, convinced that the public arena is a sphere 188 / The Viability of an Accord in which ordinary people like themselves have no right to participate; and that there be a powerful repressive apparatus to contain the demands of citizens, as well as an elite that does not mind the inevitable stagnation resulting therefrom. As East European populations have become more educated, they have put greater pressure on the state to respect the basic rights of citizenship, to allow independent initiatives, whether economic or political. As KOR demonstrated, the Polish system already provided more opportunities for civic activity in the 1970S than previously . And in 1980 Solidarity was the catalyst for a genuine civic revolution, wherein all citizens suddenly felt that they had a right to participate in public life. In this context, the post-Solidarity authorities decided not to try to return to the totalitarian model. By 1986 the partystate itself was moving in the direction of greater societal independence and of institutional political reform. It was moving in the democratic direction that Solidarity had been pushing all along. Only now it did so without Solidarity. By the beginning of 1989, civil society had gained greater independence than ever before. But this had not yet led to political stability, because without a new governmental arrangement, the state still had no legitimacy. The Party faced the same problem-where to now? There is no existing model of an alternative socialism, where an independent civil society is combined with Party control of the state. Theoretically, there are two ways the state can obtain legitimacy from an independent civil society: state pluralism (polyarchy) and societal corporatism. In the former, social groups get their interests represented in the state by forming political parties that then compete for state power. This alternative has been unacceptable in Eastern Europe, chiefly because of Soviet resistance, but also because of internal Party resistance. And although changes in the Soviet Union and democratic electoral reforms throughout the Soviet bloc have made it increasingly conceivable, it is still not something the ruling Party can buy into in its own quest for reform. This leaves the neocorporatist framework, in which independent social groups obtain guaranteed input in policy formation in return for limiting their demands, upholding the authority of the state, and guaranteeing the continued rule of the Party. Once Solidarity realized it needed a program of state reform to go along with its "anti-political" politics of civic activity, this is the direction in which it inexorably moved. But if The Viability of an Accord / 189 the neocorporatist option did not work in 1981, is there any chance that it could work...