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Solidarność 1980-1981 a working class revolution

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis is that Solidarność between August 1980 and December 1981 constituted a working class political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy in Poland, not a reformist trade union movement or a proto-capitalist rebellion. The article argues that the movement's historical purpose was to carry out a purge of the bureaucratic caste and a deep democratisation of the planned economy through workers' councils and self-governance — a struggle for a healthy, democratic workers' state. The revolution was defeated not because the working class lacked militancy or numerical strength, but because it lacked a revolutionary party armed with Marxist ideas, capable of providing national leadership when the conciliatory Wałęsa leadership repeatedly applied the brakes. The defeat in 1981 is presented as the key precondition for the restoration of capitalism in 1989, since it demoralised and disarmed the Eastern European working class.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws directly on Leon Trotsky's theory of the degenerated workers' state, as developed in The Revolution Betrayed. The Polish People's Republic is characterised as a Stalinist caricature of socialism, where the planned economy retained a genuine material superiority over capitalism but was crippled by the bureaucratic caste's monopoly on decision-making. The article deploys the concept of political revolution — the overthrow of the bureaucracy without changing the social relations of production — as distinct from a social revolution that would restore capitalism. This framework distinguishes the analysis sharply from both liberal historiography (which sees Solidarność as a democratic movement against totalitarianism) and Stalinist apologetics (which dismiss it as counter-revolutionary). The article also draws on Ted Grant's contemporary analysis in The Militant, which correctly predicted that no stable dual power could persist — the movement would either take power or be crushed.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in October 2025 and connects the historical analysis to the current conjuncture in several ways. First, it points to the organic crisis of world capitalism intensifying on all fronts, which will not leave Poland unaffected. Second, it notes that Poland's post-1989 growth is "contradictory, one-sided growth, built on the ruin of an economy destroyed in the 1990s, powered by skyrocketing debt and fuelled by intense exploitation of a large, developed working class." Third, it identifies the 2019 teachers' strike — which spontaneously revived the MKS (Interfactory Strike Committee) form across hundreds of localities — as evidence that the revolutionary heritage of 1980-81 is being rediscovered. Fourth, it highlights young women as the most advanced layer of Polish workers today, leading strikes and mass movements against the reactionary policies of the Catholic Church and the right-wing government. The article positions the coming period as one where the working class will face the choice of socialism or barbarism, making the retrieval of Solidarność's genuine revolutionary legacy a practical political task.

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves several questions open for further development. The most significant is the party-building question: the article repeatedly stresses that a revolutionary party cannot be improvised and must be built before revolutionary events begin, but it does not elaborate on the concrete steps being taken by the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) in Poland today to construct such a party. This is addressed in other IDOM articles on party-building and in Against the Stream episodes discussing the RCI's Polish section. The article also underdevelops the international dimension of the 1980-81 revolution — the appeal to Eastern European workers passed at the Solidarność Congress is noted, but the concrete impact on workers in the USSR, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia is not explored in depth. This connects to broader Marxist debates on the prospects for international revolution in the Stalinist bloc, which are taken up in IDOM's series on the Eastern European revolutions of 1989. Finally, the article's claim that the defeat of 1981 was the key factor allowing capitalist restoration in 1989 requires further substantiation through comparative analysis of other Eastern European cases, which is provided in IDOM articles on the Romanian and Czechoslovak transitions.

Connections

This article should be read alongside:

  • Ted Grant, "Solidarność: Poland — There can be no middle road" (The Militant, August 1980) — the contemporary analysis that correctly predicted the trajectory of the movement.
  • Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed — the theoretical foundation for understanding degenerated workers' states and the necessity of political revolution.
  • Leon Trotsky, "The Struggle for Poland" (1939) — on the Bolshevik position on Polish self-determination and opposition to Great Russian chauvinism.
  • Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski, Open Letter to the Party (1965) — the key opposition text that influenced Solidarność's early programme, despite its limitations.
  • David Ost, The Triumph and Tragedy of Poland's Solidarity Movement (Jacobin, 2020) — a non-Marxist account that the article engages with critically.
  • IDOM articles on the 1989 Eastern European revolutions — for the argument that capitalist restoration was made possible by the prior defeat of the working class.
  • IDOM articles on the 2019 Polish teachers' strike — for evidence of the revival of the MKS form and the continuity of working class struggle.

Key Quotes

  1. "The movement was bound to end with either Solidarność taking power or being crushed by the bureaucracy." (Ted Grant, August 1980)

  2. "The MKS played the role of a workers' council. It was a soviet in all but name."

  3. "The depth of the March 1981 strike rivals that of revolutionary general strikes such as in Barcelona in 1936 or in Paris in 1968. In that moment, the working class in Poland stood on the brink of power. All it would have taken was for the leadership of the KKP to give the word."

  4. "The historical purpose of this movement was to carry out a purge of the state and the bureaucracy through a political revolution, and a deep reform of the planned economy in the interests of the working class."

  5. "The defeat of the Polish working class in 1981 was a key factor which allowed the Stalinists in USSR and Eastern Europe to restore capitalism later down the line. The workers of Eastern Europe thought: if Solidarność went so far and it still lost, then what's the point in fighting back?"

  6. "The key lesson, however, is that it needs a leadership, a revolutionary party sufficiently rooted in the working class and armed with the ideas of genuine Marxism and workers' democracy, which is able to help it play the role of transforming society."