Labor Militancy and Working Class Consciousness in Communist Societies: A Comparison of Socio-political and Organizational Factors in the Soviet Union and Poland

Abstract

This article explains different modes of working class formation in communist societies by comparing socio-political and organizational factors of labor militancy in the Soviet Union and Poland. The main arguments of the study are as follows. First, the party and the official trade unions relatively successfully incorporated the Soviet workers in the Brezhnev era. By contrast, the Polish regime and trade unions failed to co-opt and control the workers. Second, the conventional civil society argument fails to explain the cyclical pattern of the Polish workers massive strikes. Evidence shows that the role of dissident intelligentsia and the Church was ambiguous or limited. Third, the cyclical breakdown of the tacit social contract was the main catalyst for working class mobilization in Poland. Therefore, in addressing Polish exceptionalism, we need to be careful not to make a jump from shop-floor to civil society. Instead, the author argues, more attention should be paid to the complex nexus of shop-floor politics as the micro-foundation of class consciousness, macro-economic cycles of investment and real income, and class alliances related with the politics of economic reform.