Contradictions of state socialism: the case of Poland*

This article originates from an invitation to give a paper at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw m the Autumn of 1980. As then drafted, the paper consisted mainly of a discussion of the writings of selected Polish and British sociologists on the structure and workings of contemporary state-socialist societies, and it was my intention to revise it for submission to the Sociological Review as a sequel to, and commentary on, the article by Christopher G.A. Bryant published in the issue of February, 1980.¹ On return from Warsaw, I decided against doing so for two reasons: first, it seemed to me that the writings which I had taken as my starting-point were too remote from the actual course of events in Poland; second, I did not see how I could use the many informative conversations about those events which I had had with Polish sociologists and others in an academic journal article. On further reflection, however, I do not believe that either of these reasons should prevent my attempting to set out and justify my view of the implications for sociological theory of the Polish case, even though it is based in part on non-documentary sources and (more seriously) I lack the knowledge of the language which would give me direct access to the documentary ones. In what follows, accordingly, I first outline the framework within which the forms and distribution of power in state-socialist societies in general and Poland in particular can, in my view, best be analysed; I then set out in slightly more detail what I see as the reasons why events in Poland between 1956 and 1981 followed the course they did; and I conclude with a brief discussion of what I believe to be the principal weakness in the recent British sociological literature on state socialism insofar as it relates to the Polish case.