The Power Of Poland's Powerless

In the five months since the workers' uprising began in Poland, events there have been thick with irony. Workers staged a sit-down strike for the right to form their own organizations at a factory named for Lenin, who led a revolution that was supposed to result in worker control of the means of production. The industrial proletariat has indeed become the agent of revolutionary change as Marx predicted, but it has risen against a system that calls itself Marxist. To top it off, the "opiate of the people," the Roman Catholic Church, has given important inspiration and support to a movement for worker power and democracy. Karl Marx, who during his lifetime insisted that he was not a Marxist, would certainly be amused.

No less ironic has been the spectacle of U.S. conservatives, who consistently support anti-union measures in this country, having suddenly become advocates of militant unionism in Poland.

In the U.S., the significance of events in Poland has been discussed almost exclusively in terms of its potential for weakening Soviet influence in the world or increasing U.S.-Soviet tensions. It is true that the situation, with the possibility of Soviet military intervention and Western response, is very dangerous. We should pray for Soviet restraint. As Christians who seek to support oppressed people everywhere, our response to the Polish struggle should also be one of rejoicing at the strides toward liberation that have been made and of listening for lessons it may hold for the struggle for justice in our own country and throughout the world.

When seen in this light, one important lesson of the Polish workers' movement is the practical power of nonviolent resistance as a weapon for social change. In a time when even some Christians are saying that violence is the only option left to the oppressed in many repressive societies, it is important to note that, whether they are finally successful or not, the Polish workers have brought an authoritarian state to the brink of collapse without firing a shot.

The nonviolence of the worker's movement does not seem to be the result of a religious commitment to nonviolent principles. Rather it is primarily the result of a pragmatic assessment of their chances against the Soviet army. The Poles, like most of the world's people, face a situation where the ballot is either non-existent or meaningless, and the military might of their oppressors is overwhelming. But they still have the power to sit down, to deny the state their labor or their cooperation.

So far the Polish uprising has presented almost a textbook diagram of what a nonviolent revolution could look like. Any social order ultimately derives its authority from the peoples' willingness to put up with it. When enough people withdraw their tacit or active support from the old order and give it to a new set of institutions, the system loses authority and can no longer govern. Even in revolutions like the one in Nicaragua where armed combat is part of the revolutionary movement, it is the non-cooperation of the masses with the old regime that has been crucial.

There can be a revolution without violence, as in India. But there cannot be a revolution, as opposed to a coup d'etat, without masses of people shifting their allegiance to new institutions. This is why the recognition of the final supremacy of Poland's Communist Party has been such a sticky point in the negotiations between Solidarity, the federation of independent unions, and the government.

In Poland the process of shifting allegiances has been helped by the historic role of the Catholic church as a rival to the authority of the state, and as an alternative source of national pride. This is what has led the workers to put up crucifixes and portraits of the pope at their meeting places and to hold daily mass in the occupied factories.

Buttressed by the church, Solidarity has emerged as a direct political challenge to the government's authority. It now has a membership of about 10 million out of a total population of 35 million and has demonstrated its ability to paralyze the nation through general strikes. Throughout Polish society, in the unions, the church, the professional and artistic organizations, and among students, there is a sense that the people have rejected the authority of the Party, in practice if not in proclamation, and are creating their own institutions and sources of authority.

Finally, whatever the motivation or the outcome of the resistance in Poland, it should remind us of the role our faith can play in bringing about concrete political change. For, in political terms, the way of Jesus is the way of nonviolent revolution. Christians are forbidden to hate or kill their enemies or the enemies of justice, but we are also forbidden to acquiesce in the face of injustice. We are called to withdraw our support from the oppressive institutions of this world and give our allegiance to the new order that Jesus inaugurated, to be its incarnation in our life as his body, and to work with him to bring it to fruition in our particular time and place. The struggle of the Polish workers should serve to remind us that nonviolent resistance can be more than a symbolic act of protest. It can be the power of the powerless to disrupt the old order and open the way for expressions, however flawed and tentative, of the new.

Danny Collum was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.