State, Labor, and the Transition to a Market Economy. Agnieszka Paczyńska

was never made clear.⁵³ In particular, the party renewed its commitment to establishing better communication with workers, especially those employed in the large industrial enterprises, with the goal of enticing more workers to join the PZPR. Attracting more workers into the party was a priority because by the early 1970s, although the party claimed to be a representative of the proletariat, the percentage of workers and peasants within its ranks was dwindling.

      The next step in the far-reaching restructuring of the party-state apparatus was administrative reform. The new leadership believed that without putting an end to the factionalism of the Gomułka tenure it would be difficult to jump-start the economy.⁵⁴ The middle-level administrative units, the county (powiaty) committees, which previously exercised strong control over state administration, were eliminated and the number of provinces increased from twenty-two to forty-nine. Although the party argued that increasing the number of provinces was a way to decentralize administrative functions and bring citizens closer to the policy-making process, from Gierek’s perspective a more crucial goal was to undercut the power of the provincial bosses. However, the two goals turned out to be incompatible. Gierek, interested primarily in consolidating his power, pushed the reforms through rapidly, with little preparation. Consequently, rather than professionalizing the administrative apparatus, the immediate result of the administrative reform was a very high turnover of staff and the loss of many experienced cadres with personal knowledge and established relationships with local social groups.⁵⁵

      Ironically, Gierek’s attempt to attract and promote more qualified administrators exacerbated tensions within the party because it resulted in members of the nomenklatura gaining additional privileges and security of employment.⁵⁶ The proprietorial attitude toward occupied posts and the lack of effective control by the central leadership meant that over the course of the 1970s members of the nomenklatura began to engage in increasingly corrupt practices and more conspicuous consumption, which fostered growing public resentment.

      One of the reasons for the lackluster results of the reform effort was that the internal party incentive structure remained intact. That is, the lack of sanctions for disloyalty to the PZPR continued to plague the party. Although following leadership turnovers individual high-level party officers would be removed from positions of power and sometimes expelled from the party itself, such punishment was rarely meted out on a wider scale. Regional party bosses who at best ignored party directives and often promoted policies at odds with those directives remained in office and continued to build up independent power bases. Even those who openly challenged the party leadership were not penalized.

      The period between the emergence of Solidarity and the transition to democracy nine years later had the most far-reaching consequences for the relationship between the party and organized labor. During this period, party factionalism intensified and the deepening economic crisis meant that the PZPR was increasingly forced to turn to procedural concessions to satisfy labor demands. Furthermore, unlike during previous rounds of conflict between the state and labor, by the 1980s the PZPR no longer had the material resources to abrogate procedural concessions once the immediate conflict was over by providing additional substantive concessions, as it had done in the preceding decades.

      The worker mobilization that began in the summer of 1980 was triggered, as were previous such eruptions, by price increases, which were a part of an austerity package. Solidarity’s unprecedented challenge to the PZPR’s authority further deepened and publicly exposed internal party divisions. The main cleavages appeared between those pushing for far-reaching decentralization and liberalization of the party and state administration and saw in Solidarity a potential ally; those advocating taking a hard-line approach to the challenge posed by the Solidarity movement and who wanted to eliminate it, by force if necessary; and finally, those who wanted to implement some reforms but remained concerned about the politically destabilizing impact of Solidarity.⁵⁷