Workers' Paradise

Directed by Andrzej Chodakowski and Andrzej Zajackow At the Carpenter Center, Friday and Saturday

"YOUR'RE A FUCKING CAPITALIST! Does your daddy own a factory?" she yelled from atop the steps. "You like Stalin! You want to kill Jews," came the response, from a woman whose placard read "Feed Brezhnev to the Workers." For 45 minutes, a dozen from each side kept the shouting match alive, sometimes with a little shoving, the dialectic turned physical. For years, Harvard's Spartacus Youth League have held their weekly study session and speeches; for years they've been ignored by all but regular readers of Workers Vanguard. But last week they picked a topic explosive enough actually to draw some interest; their contention that Poland's Solidarity union should be busted before it replaced socialism with the profit system drew the fairly spontaneous and very angry crowd of protestors. After all, almost everybody in America (save the Sparts, who almost never agree with the masses) admires Solidarity.

And Workers '80 shows why. The propaganda piece is as gripping as old T.V. footage of the civil rights movements, for there actually is moral energy here, actually a righteous and unco-optable underdog, actually a clear, courageous and sharp challenge to all the bullshit. May be no other episode matches the Polish revolution of 1980-81 for demonstrating the power of people to act peacefully, but forcefully, to overturn the old and corrupt; for all its technical flaws, this movie captures the spirit and the fact of that revolution and should be seen by anyone who gives a damn about that country or this one.

All directors of propaganda films produced by states, especially conventional socialist states with their idiot stress on the homogenized man, fill their frames with crowds, great agglomerations shot from above, or from behind as they cheer some arm-waving uniformed leader. If individuals appear, they represent stereotypes--broad smiles, broader biceps. But the camera in Workers '80 singles out men. Some have the handome Walesa look, bushy mustaches, broad shoulders; some are bignosed, homely, dirty, or dumb-looking; for the most part, just people. Workers standing, arms folded, listening to the negotiations over public address systems. Workers knelling to receive communion. Workers smoking cigarettes, drinking, eating dinner, or looking bored.

If Workers '80 has a propaganda message, that is it--in Solidarity, men and women are more than replaceable cogs in an ever-progressing communist machine. Instead, they are the salt of the earth, using their own power to their own ends. Deputy Prime Minister Jagielski arrives, briefcase in hand, the little folds of far on his neck tucked into his collar. The government deputation he brings with him are all stamped from the same mold, and to a man they exhibit the same well-paded faces. Across the table are the strikers, looking very different from the officials and from each other. Walesa, in his sports jacket and open collar; Bogdan Lis dressed casually, almost sloppily.

Faces and clothes mark the workers in Gdansk's Lenin Shipyard as strikers and as individuals; the diversity is only skin deep, though superficialities are important: There is something much more essential here. Three things unite these men and women, and the 12 million more who have joined Solidarity since the heady days of August 1980: religious conviction, nationalism, and a sense of their own worth and dignity as workers.

The film opens with a dedication to Pope John Paul II, with the hope that he will bless the movement. From trendier elements in the Carpenter Center crowd last weekend, the humble words drew hisses, which reappeared during later scenes of Mass being conducted in the church grounds. Some of the hissers said later they were "feminists"; sure John Paul is bad on abortion, but so are all past popes and likely many future ones. It goes with the job, sort of like the hat. And some of the objections were from purebred members of the American ultraleft, the Sparts for instance. Their hissing made much more sense, for Catholicism, and in particular the rise of John Paul II from his Polish bishopric to the Vatican, made this revolution possible. If religion breeds docility in some places, and surely it does, it can also have the opposite effect--empowering, emboldening, bolstering courage to the point where men will take risks like these. Catholic Mass becomes political in two senses in this movie: Walesa's repeated demands for free worship are important, surely, but even more important are the actual fact of the church services themselves, carried on inside the shipyard when the cause is human dignity, the words of the Our Father or the repeated Hail Marys must take on new, hopeful meanings.

"WE ARE ALL POLES," Walesa (and for that matter Jagielski) repeats several times in the course of the negotiations; when the bargaining is over, they solemnly rise to sing the national anthem. The devotion of Solidarity to its nation is obvious (though in a country with its own pope, much nationalism is subsumed in religious fervor), Clearly, though, the hopes of union members for reform go well beyond the boundaries of Gdansk, and, more important, well beyond the boundaries of the working class. Again and again Walesa that there shall be no agreement unless dissident intellectuals are released; if harassment continues, "We will strike again tomorrow," he declares.

Such demands prove Solidarity's great promise as a model for change, in both socialist and capitalist countries. Should they succeed, they will have done what most called impossible--create a pluralist socialist state. Like revolutionaries of an earlier date, they are united partly by hate--not of capitalist overloads, but of distant state bureaucrats, who inflict as much pain and humiliation as any factory owner. More the unity of the oppressed than simply of labor. Solidarity represents a radical national ideal--a state where the citizens were really in control of all social facets of life. Walesa et al do not want to rid the country of socialism. They want to run the factories themselves (an idea which makes American conservative applause for the movement both hypocritical and ironic). And what is more, they want to guarantee individual liberties at the same time. No more the dichotomy between humane economy/inhumane society and brutal economy/laissez-faire society. (More often there is brutality all around, anyway.) But instead, a land where freethinkers support airing Masses on the radio.

Certainly nothing short of military conquest will reverse this revolution, for once men have gained control over their own lives they will not surrender it. Making the break is the key, for in the time before, surrender is a daily event, a subconscious and draining part of living. And then dignity is won in a moment, in that brief flash when you demand what is right and you are not thrown in jail, shot in the back, consigned to an asylum. For the Polish workers, their first demands were quite simple--the rehiring of one shipyard employee, and wage increases. But then solidarity--and from it Solidarity--worked its invigorating power, and soon there was an air of quiet confidence and a long, long list of demands.

As the talks pictured in Workers '80 wore on, the government representatives grew ever more feeble, ever more dominated. By the end, eager to sign an agreement,Jagielski tried to brush aside the dissident question with vague promises of inquiry. Rather than initial the document, Walesa said, "Why don't we take a ten-minute break?" "No, we're so close, let's sign," Jagielski responded. "Perhaps a 20-minute break would be in order," was Walesa's reply. Half an hour later, Jagielski delivered the goods on the jailed dissidents, and the pact was announced.

FOF SOME REASON, the world once singled out Poles for ridicule. No more; with the ascension of John Paul and the gutsiness of Solidarity, the men and women of Poland earned great respect. This movie shows how they have become what they are--one of the very few nations in the world where freedom and independence and guts mean anything at all. And it shows more--why each of us should pray each day for their success.