Australian Left Review
Article Title
Poland's Revolt
Abstract
The Polish people's revolt is now a year old. That, in itself, makes it unusual in attempts to develop socialist democracy, for example, in Czechoslovakia. But perhaps the single most important and unique aspect of the Polish experience is that the momentum for change came from the base from the organised working class itself. The workers, organised in Solidarity, remain the force for change. In Poland, the working class is officially the ruling class. This is consecrated in the national constitution and in the Party's ideology. But the reality of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was, and remains, a dictatorship by the Party and the state apparatus in the name of the working class. It, in fact, became a dictatorship over the proletariat.