Amanda Levi of Akcja Socjalistyczna introduces the group within the context of Polish left organizing and presents a translation of their recently adopted political program.
Introduction
Following the neoliberal transformation of the ‘90s and the decline of the post-communist center-left in the ‘00s, it became tremendously difficult to imagine the left coming to power in Poland independently – much less to imagine it being truly transformative. In 2015, the formation of the Razem party shed a little light in this darkness, but it was marred by its own defects. Inspired by the likes of Podemos in Spain,1 it didn’t position itself as a working class or a socialist party; instead, it mainly relied on populist thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe for its early intellectual basis.
While initially it failed to reach the electoral threshold required to gain any seats in the parliament, it nonetheless reached the 3% needed to receive state funding. This was an enormous achievement, though it didn’t necessarily reflect popular support for its policies – their “base” was highly unstable, comprised mainly of spontaneous protest votes. Four years later in 2019, coming up on another parliamentary election, Razem realized it wasn’t possible to repeat their 2015 success. In light of this, the party entered an electoral coalition with SLD – the same liberal post-communist party that it originally sought to overcome. While in the end this pact with the devil did allow them to enjoy parliamentary seats for the first time, it showed that Razem was unable to maintain its relevance as an independent party. No longer committed to asserting itself as a radical force in total opposition to the Polish political establishment, Razem instead focused their ambitions on cajoling one of the political camps into concessions, with the long-term goal of forming a coalition government.
Meanwhile, the further left had no real significance, with the notable exception of anarchists who always managed to attract a relatively large amount of people through their focus on street activism. However, due to their general hostility towards structured organizing, they never managed to transform that popularity into a consistent base. Their movements were also highly divided by interpersonal drama, and there was a sense of animosity toward taking theory and strategic debate seriously. This led to dogmatic decision-making and an inability to learn from mistakes. As for non-anarchist socialists, it was dire. There were certainly individual socialists, but there were seemingly no organizations counting more than 10 active comrades. Online, it wasn’t any better, with most of the groups still struggling to embrace social media.
In this environment of disappointment with the current state of the Left, with coalitionist politics on one hand and the utter irrelevance of the few tiny grouplets of the more openly socialist left on the other, Akcja Socjalistyczna (AS) was formed. In effect, it was a continuation of an informal network of socialists in Razem – it combined members who left Razem after it entered the coalition with others who wanted to maintain ties but nonetheless remained in the party despite its course.
We attempt to approach our difficult situation in a more measured way – trying to create a socialist pole of attraction by focusing on education and agitation, as well as involving ourselves in the already-existing leftist organizations (for example, we still allow for dual-membership in Razem). We knew back then that it would take a long time for our ideas to become relevant in mainstream politics, but that taking shortcuts would not serve our aims.
Since then, there have been some positive developments, though this must be prefaced by acknowledging that the socialist movement remains incredibly marginal in Polish politics. The extra-parliamentary socialist left, while still divided and mostly incoherent ideologically, has seen a significant growth in activity – almost entirely fueled by the youth. There has been an expansion of different tendencies’ willingness to cooperate with each other, though many groups are still hesitant to openly exchange ideas between organizations. Those of us in AS have been particularly focused on this coordination, as well as on the development of our own structures.
New Declaration of Akcja Socjalistyczna
Akcja Socjalistyczna held its 2024 congress on May 2-3. Over those two days, we discussed the last year of our activity, elected a new leadership and debated new proposals. The most important of these proposals was the revision of our unifying document – the declaration.
The text “What does Akcja Socjalistyczna want?”, adopted on the second day of the convention, is a major milestone on the road to qualitatively dispelling many doubts: doubts about our attitude toward the state, other workers’ organizations, or the form of organizing we aspire to. Over the past months, we have noticed a growing need to clarify certain issues at the organizational level. Our previous declaration was, in a way, only an isolated “maximum” program – it described the society we were ultimately fighting for. It was a program of socialism, understood more specifically than as conceived by many other socialist organizations in Poland. What it lacked, however, was an answer to specific strategic questions – “how do we want to reach this socialism?”
The new text makes it clear that only the working class is capable of taking over the means of production and turning them from private property into a social good – thus creating socialism – since by definition they do not own this property themselves. This also links clearly to the question of our relationship to the existing state and the struggle for true democracy, which, if introduced today, would also mean a kind of class rule – the rule of the working majority.2 What follows from this is our opposition to the currently-existing oligarchic state and to non-worker organizations.
The latter is a key issue for us. It was after the Razem Party entered into a coalition with the liberal-bureaucratic SLD that AS was formed as a separate organization. This fundamental belief in the need for workers’ independence was not made clear enough in the previous declaration, making it unhelpful in advocating the need to break with class collaborationism. Of course, the lion’s share of the left is still “collaborationist”, and thus we should not expect an immediate split with, for example, the so-called yellow unions – though this should remain our immediate goal.
Another important change to the declaration was the incorporation of our stance towards other workers’ organizations. Our previous declaration (as well as most similar documents of other groupings) assumed that we de facto exist in a vacuum without considering other organizations. This sometimes leads to an intuitive approach, according to which the only thing we would need to do is to grow and grow as an organization to the scale of the majority of society; to interact with other organizations for the sole purpose of converting their members to leave them and join us. This approach is often taken as the default in a society that treats everything as private property and political organizations as private fiefdoms. In order to lay a solid foundation for uniting the workers movement, we need to get out of this sectarian pattern.
Our new declaration shows that in the struggle for workers’ democracy we are part of a broader international movement, that within this movement (which also includes other organizations) we fight for our values, and that class independence and internal democracy are of paramount importance to us.
Of course, we cannot simply shoehorn ourselves into answering every issue. As our declaration says, “We do not strive for full theoretical agreement built around some specific ideological creed.” One important aspect addressed in the new declaration is that it is our unifying document, that we allow broad ideological differences around it, and that we support the right to internal factions. We often encounter assumptions that Akcja Socjalistyczna is a monolith, an organization with a strict theoretical line that we all adhere to – we need to openly explain that we don’t even aspire to become this type of organization – our internal structure is key to our politics. The problem with an overly broad declaration, however, was that we were already forced to answer many of these questions with our practice.
The new declaration clearly and succinctly answers the specific questions that have arisen in our activity from the beginning. We also left open many other strategic questions, and tried to limit ourselves to those that we have already answered with our practice. We do not want this to be the final form of this document; it should be, like socialism itself, treated as a work in progress.One goal that we set ourselves some time ago was to prepare a more detailed political program in the so-called “minimum-maximum” format,3 where the “minimum” part corresponds to achieving a political system in which the working class (which forms the majority in our society) takes over state control to then create a socialist economy (which describes the “maximum” part). In other words, this would be a program of democracy and socialism. At this year’s congress, we recommitted ourselves to this intention – the new declaration directly calls for all opposition workers’ organizations to unite into a mass party, united on a concrete programmatic basis.
We are still only a minority organization in the relatively small Polish workers’ movement, but we are a minority with great hopes. The struggle for independent class politics continues.
What Akcja Socjalistyczna Wants
Age of Contradictions
Capitalism, the current global economic system, is characterized by fundamental contradictions that are the seeds of its inevitable collapse. In its never-ending pursuit of profits, the system fails to take into account that the planet’s resources are finite. The exploitation of the world is already destabilizing the global ecosystem and it is increasingly exceeding the adaptive capacity of humans and other organisms. Despite decades of scientific awareness of the danger posed by capitalist abuse of the planet, it is not in the interest of the world’s governments to transform the economy into one which would not destroy the environment.
Moreover, because of the necessity of growing the national markets, capitalism has led to the division of the world into hostile imperialist blocs and the emergence of an international hierarchy of countries based on oppression and violence, maintained by international military alliances such as NATO, among others. Entire continents have been subjugated in search of raw materials to exploit. In today’s world, no human being or society is an isolated island. We are an interconnected world, environmentally as well as economically and socially.
Classes
In the course of historical development, two major social classes have remained on the field of class warfare – the working class and the owning class. The working class includes every person who directly or indirectly earns a living from wages. Almost all of humanity belongs to this class, and in addition to wage earners, it also includes pensioners, the unemployed and those who depend on the income of others. It is in its immediate interest to further shorten the working day while satisfying its needs.
The owning class, the capitalists, consists of those who make a living from the profits of the means of production they control. The means of production are all the commodities necessary for the production of goods and services. The interest of the owners is to maximize profits at the expense of people, their work and nature. Their interests are therefore in direct conflict with ours.
This contradiction is most pronounced at work, when workers fight for higher wages and better conditions. Other forms of oppression, such as racism, sexism, oppression on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, are accentuated by this dynamic. Workers belonging to these minorities have to deal not only with the uncertainties and hardships of capitalist economics, but also with their own specific struggles. Therefore, the struggle against these forms of oppression is congruent with the struggle against capitalism.
Ending the above-mentioned contradictions of capitalism means liberating not only the working class, but all of humanity. However, it is only the working class, organized in opposition to capitalist society, that can accomplish this liberation, because it is the only one that does not stand on the basis of private ownership of the means of production.
Democracy
True democracy – majority rule – means not only equality before the law, but also real influence and active participation in public, social and economic life. The current arrangement is an oligarchy in which influence can be bought through lobbyists, advertising, or international institutions. In practice, it is the law of the stronger, depriving the working majority of voice and space in public debate. Moreover, economic decisions are overwhelmingly in the hands of the capitalist class. Workers have virtually no say in how the means of production are used. The state apparatus, through its ensurance of the continued functioning of capitalism and protection of the private property of the owners, is not on our side.True democracy would be tantamount to governing society in accordance with the interests of the working class, since workers constitute a majority. That is why the capitalist class constantly invents more and more bureaucratic ploys, and when they are not enough, it defends its interests with violence. The fight for democracy in modern capitalist society means at the same time the fight for socialism!
Workers’ Movement
In the struggle for democracy, we constitute an international workers’ movement. We organize in joint action, educate each other, and spread our perspective outward. As a part of this movement, we also work inside other organizations convincing them of our values, with the intention of uniting. Key for us are class independence, because we know that we will never consistently accomplish workers’ interests through class collaboration, and the internal democracy of the workers movement, because if we want to democratize society, we must start with ourselves. We also advocate freedom of speech, publication and information. All organs of our movement should be elected by a vote and remain accountable to the membership. We do not strive for full theoretical agreement built around some specific ideological creed, but for acceptance of different opinions and unity in action based on specific programmatic demands.
What is to be Done?
We refuse to let this world burn in the name of the interests of a petty elite imposing its terms on billions of people. We know that a great chasm of capitalist hegemony separates us from the world we want to create. Our most urgent tasks are to clearly define the goals of the movement and the strategy for achieving them, and to unite all workers’ formations in opposition to the system into an organization capable of conducting effective, independent, mass politics – a party of democracy and socialism. The realization of these tasks will enable us to oppose capitalist barbarism and bring about the liberation of all humanity. So, as we sing in the Polish Workers’ Marseillaise,4
Let the song around ring out victorious!
We for freedom go to battle!
- Dan Swain, “The Polish Right Can Be Defeated,” Jacobin Magazine, December 14 2015, https://jacobin.com/2015/12/law-and-justice-pis-poland-civic-platform-razem-jaroslaw-kaczynski.
- Akcja Socjalistyczna, “Demokracja – młot na wrogów pracy!”, February 15 2024, https://akcjasocjalistyczna.pl/demokracja-mlot-na-wrogow-pracy/.
- Donald Parkinson, “The Revolutionary Minimum-Maximum Program,” Cosmonaut Magazine, May 5 2021, https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/05/the-revolutionary-minimum-maximum-program/.
- Bruno Winawer, “Marsyljanka”, Śpiewnik Robotniczy PPS, 1920, https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Marsyljanka_(Nas_nie_zgn%C4%99bi%C4%85_Mejery,_Ska%C5%82ony…).