ABSTRACT

Few would deny that the events in Poland in 1980 and 1981 were among the most remarkable in recent history. The stance adopted was in fact quite the reverse, the movement being apparently determined to resist any definition of its activities or aims as 'political'. Such a stance might be open to at least two lines of criticism, both suggesting a problem of 'immaturity' or 'irresponsibility'. The trade unionists, in emphasizing autonomy for union activities, were not demanding an alternative form of state power. 'Depoliticization' strategy may represent a withdrawal from politics, but only from politics as it is officially defined by the state culture. Bauman defines Solidarity's refusal to engage in politics as a refusal to enter a discourse within which it would be powerless and illegitimate: 'the rules of the political game, the grammar of political language, are so constructed that they automatically reproduce and perpetrate the party's domination'.