252
..
PARTISAN ' REVIEW
We have hands and brains, we want to build socialism in Poland–
build it, not imagine it in terms of dogmas"
(B.
Drozdowski,
Zycie
Literackie
("Literary Life"), No. 44, 1956).
The Polish intellectuals do not confine themselves to
reje~ting
dog–
matism: they criticize specific dogmas. The
Po Prostu
group attacks
the whole view of man as a "productive element" used to serve "the
impersonal economic interests of the state." They point out that
s0-
cialism becomes meaningless if the fate of the individual is ignored.
They also point out the fundamental fallacy in thinking "that the na–
tionalization of the means of production provided a sufficient basis for
creating a socialist attitude toward work, a new socialist morality, a
new internal discipline.... Everything that contradicted these pre–
sumptions was accounted for by the survival of a petty-bourgeois men–
tality. . . . But the expropriation of the bourgeoisie does not of itself
transform the minds of men. The workers will respond only to the
whole complex of measures embodied in labor legislation, in the or–
ganization of production, and of social life in the factories"
(Nowa
Kultura,
No. 29, 1956).
It is worth noting here that Polish economists and intellectuals in
general had from the outset advocated the system of workers' councils
in the industries. This has affected the economic program of Gomulka's
Poland: industry will not be denationalized, but its organization will
be decentralized, with most of the decisions being made at the factory
level. The purpose of this is to create almost independent industrial
units that will be as flexible as but less aggressive than the corresponding
capitalist units: they will determine their own production quotas and
se~
their own prices in a market that is to become progressively freer.
The workers' councils will have a voice in decisions-this is only natural
considering the part some of them played in the October revolution.
These moves will put an end to forced industrialization and programs
of excessive investment. In agriculture, forced collectivization will be
replaced by genuinely voluntary cooperation, as, for instance, in the
kinds of farming where machines are used.
1
The crops will be sold in
the free market, and compulsory deliveries will be abolished.
The Polish intellectuals, including even some young Polish econo–
mists, regard this economic program as a panacea.
It
is interesting to
note that certain of its elements (the workers' councils) were borrowed
1.
The first stages of decollectivization brought certain surprises. Contrary
to expectations, it was not the members of the poorer collective farms who
decided to disband, but those of the more prosperous ones-for only the latter
had sufficient livestock and machinery to divide up among themselves.
