Not by any means were or are all civil society theorists or practcianers rightist or neo-liberal. Rethinking Marxism a few issues ago interviewed HRW researchers Joe Stork, formerly editor of MERIP and Reed Brophy, who wrote, "Contra Terror in Nicaragua, " for South End Press in the mid-80's. In the Polish case, Adam Michnik, who I met at a conference at UCSC organized by Socialist Review on Social Movements in the early 90's, a contributor to, "The Church and the Left, " was a collaborator with Jacek Kuron on, "An Open Letter to the Polich CP, " a marxist critique of neo-Stalinis, mwhich was publicized by Europan Trotskyists in the USFI. (New Politics published it here around 1968.)
Here is an acct. from a history of non-violant protest. http://www.pbs.org/weta/forcemorepowerful/poland/organization.html Dissidents and "Self-Organization"
On August 20, 1968 Polish troops joined the armies of the Warsaw Pact (the military alliance of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies) in invading Czechoslovakia, ordered by Moscow to smash the democratic changes introduced by communist reformers there. For Poles intent on reforming their own society, the outlook was bleak. But in the early 1970s a number of people who had worked in the opposition during the 1960s moved toward a new strategy of political action, one better adapted to life after 1968.
Among the architects of this strategy were Jacek Kuron, and Adam Michnik. Each of these men had gone from faith in socialism, to disillusionment with the party, then into stark opposition. In 1956, Jacek Kuron had been a student protest leader at Warsaw University. He also had been a Marxist who believed that critically thinking people could work within the party - and he organized a scouting troop to imbue the next generation with communist values. But by the early 1960s he had become disaffected, and he and a colleague drafted an "Open Letter to the Party," saying it could not be reformed, only overthrown by a workers' revolution. In 1964 Kuron was ejected from the party; the next year he was arrested and sentenced to prison. Kuron was out of jail in time to organize rallies in March 1968, only to find himself under lock and key again in just two days.
Michnik, the son of communist intellectuals, had joined Kuron's scouting troop at the age of eleven. "A Communist is a man who fights for social justice, for freedom and equality, for socialism," he later recalled having been taught. "He goes to prison for years because of his beliefs. . .and, once released, he again undertakes his revolutionary activities." Like his mentor, Michnik discovered that the party had no room for idealists. In high school he was arrested for distributing Kuron's and Modzelewski's Open Letter. He led protests at Warsaw University in 1968; the next year he too was sitting in jail. [1]
In a series of articles in emigré and underground journals in the early and mid-1970s, these men diagnosed their own mistakes. They had assumed, Michnik wrote, "that the system of power could be humanized and democratized. . ." They had bet on "reformists" in the communist elite — but 1968 broke "the umbilical cord" that tied them to the party. [2]
Trying to overthrow the regime, Michnik noted, was unrealistic. The Soviet Union could intervene, just as it had in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Besides, a revolutionary underground would "only serve the police, making mass hysteria and police provocation more likely." The communists would be in their element demolishing a conspiratorial opposition. Even if successful, achieving power by raw force might only replace one dogma with another. "By using force to storm the existing Bastilles we shall unwittingly build new ones." [3]
Gradual reformism had turned out to be barren, and a frontal assault was also a dead end. But Kuron and Michnik believed something else could be done: Rather than trying to change the government, opponents of the regime could change Polish society - by resisting the party's propensity to control every corner of social life. Each independent initiative by citizens, each example of self- organization by people acting outside of party control, Kuron declared, "challenges the monopoly of the state and thereby challenges the basis upon which it exercises power." The immediate task of opposition intellectuals, Michnik wrote, was to build "a real, day-to-day community of free people." [4]
Paradoxically, the road to political change for Poles began with a dismissal of politics. "Our freedom begins with ourselves," Michnik proclaimed - and, in doing so, echoed the spirit of Gandhi's ideas sixty years before. "Self-rule" in the lives of Indians seeking independence from the British had to be achieved before the nation could rule itself. The patrons of the Polish opposition were borrowing two jewels from the crown of Gandhi's strategy: declining to use violent force and sparking private work to develop the habits of a self-responsible people. [5]
Independent self-organization did not, however, mean relinquishing the goal of reforming the state. Kuron and Michnik thought that the regime could be prodded to change. "Organized society is a power," Kuron wrote, "and a power every authority must reckon with." As Michnik put it, "Nothing instructs the authorities better than pressure from below." Democracy and civil liberties were the ultimate prizes; activating and organizing the Polish people were necessary first steps. [6]
To take them, intellectuals would need allies. The first accomplice had to be the Catholic Church, the one major institution in Poland with an independent voice, though it had not been on warm terms with Poland's intelligentsia. But now conditions were ripe for a rapprochement. The Church had spoken out in favor of human rights for all Poles, not just Catholics, and many intellectuals - disillusioned not only with communism but also with its materialism and hyperrationalism - began to seek new sources of moral authority. [7]
Kuron and Michnik also hoped to find partners in the industrial working class. They recognized that twice before, in 1956 and 1970, workers had rebelled and pried concessions from the regime. The party, Michnik wrote, feared workers more than any other group, and so they had to be part of any movement that would push Poland toward democracy. Intellectuals had done nothing in 1970 when workers on the coast had been repressed by the ZOMO and the army, a source of personal shame for Kuron. The next time they would have to show some solidarity. [8]
1 Peter Raina, Political Opposition in Poland, 1954-1977 (London: Poets' and Painters' Press, 1978), p. 179.
2 Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison and Other Essays (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985), pp. 135-136; David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 58-60.
3 Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of
Communism in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 22; Michnik, Letters, pp. 142-143.
4 Michnik, Letters, p. 148; Ost, Solidarity, pp. 64-69.
5 Stokes, Walls Came Tumbling Down, p. 22; Jan Kubik, The Power of
Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: the Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of Socialism in Poland (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1994), p. 256.
6 Michnik, Letters, pp. 142-144; Robert Zuzowski, Political Dissent and
Opposition in Poland: The Workers' Defense Committee "KOR" (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), pp. 67-68.
7 Michnik, Letters, p. 145; Zuzowski, Political Dissent, pp. 129, 132.
8 Lawrence Goodwyn, Breaking the Barrier: The Rise of Solidarity in Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 194; Michnik, Letters, pp. 144-145.
Drawn by permission of the authors from "A Force More Powerful," by Peter Ackerman and Jack
DuVall, published by St. Martin's Press, 2000.