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PARTISAN REVIEW
state apparatus, its functionaries and pensioners, and that conse–
quently the class struggle is still being waged in the alleged socialist
society, not between non-existent capitalists and landlords, on the one
hand, and the toiling masses, on the other hand, but between the
latter and the new class of Communist officials, managers and their
retainers. Rumjanzew attempts to toss this off with a laugh as a
reductio ad absurdum
too ridiculous to require refutation-and then
attempts one anyhow.
If
the workers by definition own the instru–
ments of production, he asks, how can they be said to exploit them–
selves? He is oblivious to the possibility that there may be something
wrong with
his
definition, and that to resort to it in the face of the
glaring facts of political and economic inequality is merely to fall
back on a question-begging definition.
Gomulka's discussion of the function of the workers' councils
is something else. He sees their development as one of the three main
elements
in
the Polish road to socialism. In his speech before the
Ninth Plenum of the Party Central Committee, Gomulka outlines
seven chief tasks of the workers' councils which if taken literally
would make them masters of the factories and, therefore, of all of
industry. He warns against conceiving the councils "as organs of
political power" but at the same time is fearful lest the political
leadership of the Communist Party fractions be displaced. He wants
workers' councils to be autonomous and at the same time seeks, in
vain it seems to me, to limit their functions to purely industrial is–
sues. Because of the nature of the Polish economy, he is undoubtedly
sensible in cautioning the workers' councils against a too near-sighted
and too decentralized view of the needs of production. But if they
are actually given the right to make mistakes in these matters, they
are being given very real powers indeed. And he is quite forthright
in acknowledging the right of the workers to strike, although he does
not regard this as the best way of rectifying grievances.
Gomulka has ambiguous feelings about increasing the power of
the workers' councils as well as that of the people's councils because
of his fear that they may work free of the influence of the Com–
munist Party, whose leading position he regards as essential to the
building of socialism.
As if
aware that all the elements which define
the Polish road to socialism, if given their head, may carry Poland
out of the Kremlin's orbit, as if to reassure the uneasy Russians, he
