Compare aspects of two different worker-based social movements
Apply components of social movement theory to these cases
Introduction
The twentieth century was a century of labor movements. These movements were supported by ideologies such as those stemming from the theories of Karl Marx (1818-1883), which framed society as divided between capitalists and workers. The relationship between these two groups, or classes, is one of exploitation, whereby capitalists squeeze as much labor out of workers for the lowest wages. This is so capitalists might pocket the most profits possible and invest in global expansion; Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) famously observed the imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and declared it a time of high capitalism. Marx predicted that workers, in realizing the injustices of their situation, would eventually unite and revolt. They would then organize to create a socialist system characterized by economic redistribution. The socialist state would evolve to become a stateless communist society of liberated labor.
Ironically, workers of countries led by communist parties have continued to organize and press for more rights and better working conditions in the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. In communist party-led states, labor unions are typically controlled by the communist party. But in communist Poland, workers organized an underground free union movement known as Solidarność (hereafter referred to as Solidarity) that eventually toppled the ruling communist party. In China, blazing economic reforms beginning in the 1970s and the advent of a market economy and private enterprise have spurred workers to organize for stronger protections in the workplace and a more secure social safety net. While some policy concessions have been made toward workers in China, the ruling Chinese Communist Party remains firmly in control.
This comparative case study will apply the components of the social movement framework described in Section 9.3 to explore labor movements in Poland and China. The labor movements in each country have yielded very different outcomes: while Poland’s Solidarity movement was the spark for opposition to eventually overturn communist party rule, in China workers’ protests have remained on the fringes. In each case, we will examine the political opportunity structure, organization and mobilization, framing of the movement, and international factors to explore differences that might account for divergent outcomes.
Solidarity in Poland
From 1952 to 1989, Poland was under communist party rule. A mid-sized country located in central Europe, Poland today neighbors Russia and many republics of the former Soviet Union (USSR). During the time of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), Poland was part of the Eastern Bloc of countries which were led by communist parties internally and shaped by the USSR externally. Poland’s capital then and now is centrally located Warsaw, and it borders the Baltic Sea in the north.
Beginning in 1970, workers began to organize protests in Poland. One decade later, this movement culminated in a major strike in the port city of Gdańsk in 1980. The triggering event was the dismissal of a model shipyard worker from the Gdańsk shipyards, which are located in northern Poland on the Baltic Sea. The worker, Anna Walentynowicz, was a welder and crane driver who earned medals for her exemplary work, but she was dismissed for engaging in free union organizing in the shipyards (Kemp-Welch 2008, Chapter 10). Under communist rule, all unions were managed by the ruling party and free unions were forbidden. In response to Walentynowicz's dismissal, more workers organized and their resulting protests included calls for higher wages to offset the rising cost of basic foodstuffs in the state-controlled markets. Eventually workers also demanded the right to form free trade unions with the right to strike.
These protests came at a time of political opportunity. Poland’s economic situation was deteriorating, which placed communist party officials in a difficult situation. More and more workers joined the protests out of frustration with their material conditions. The protests spread nationally, which required a national-level response from the Polish communist party. Workers also found allies in Catholic Church officials and some media outlets. The movement gained momentum and for the first time in communist Poland’s history, protesters were allowed to negotiate directly with communist officials in the Gdańsk shipyards. The workers’ leader, an electrician named Lech Wałęsa, met with communist party negotiators, and the subsequent agreement led to recognition of the Solidarity trade union by the government.
Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Lech Wałęsa during the strike at Lenin Shipyard in August 1980. (Source: Lech Wałęsa by Giedymin Jabłoński via Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
Solidarity went on to attract millions of worker-members in the 1980s. Together with other opposition groups, Solidarity organized protests throughout the country for better working conditions and, eventually, political liberalization. At its height, 80 percent of state employees joined Solidarity. The popularity of this movement led Polish officials to declare martial law in 1981, and hundreds of Solidarity members were arrested. Within years, amnesty was declared and political prisoners released.
During this time, and until the end of communist rule in Poland in 1989, Solidarity led a non-violent movement that was robust in its organization and mobilizational capacity. Members and sympathizers could draw on a rich repertoire of non-violent tactics of civil resistance, including “protests; leaflets; flags; vigils; symbolic funerals; catholic masses; protest painting; parades; marches; slow-downs; strikes; hunger strikes; ‘Polish strikes’ in the mine shafts; underground socio-cultural institutions: radio, music, films, satire, humor; over 400 underground magazines with millions of copies distributed, including literature on how to scheme, strike, and protest; alternative education and libraries; a dense network of alternative teaching in social science and humanities; commemorations of forbidden anniversaries; and internationalization of Solidarity struggle,” (Bartkowski 2009).
The social movement anchored by Solidarity was framed in terms of human rights, with an emphasis on dignity for those groups traditionally championed by communist ideology: workers, peasants, and the downtrodden. This resonated with international supporters such as the Catholic Church’s Pope John Paul II, who was Polish and brought moral authority to the movement’s call for human rights and freedom of conscience. The geopolitics of the Cold War were also operative during this time, with the United States supporting the Polish opposition out of an interest in creating fissures in the Soviet Bloc.
From February to April 1989, the Polish political opposition, including Solidarity leaders such as Lech Wałęsa, sat down opposite communist party leaders for a series of negotiations. These resulted in the institution of democratic elections in Poland and other major economic and political reforms. In 1989, communist rule was overturned in Poland with the election of Wałęsa to the Polish presidency in free and fair elections.
Fragmented labor in China
China has been under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The country’s capital is Beijing, located in the northeast. China’s center of economic gravity is in the wealthy urban centers of its eastern coastal region, which includes cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. China’s western flank includes the Himalayan highlands of Tibet and western deserts of Xinjiang, both gateways to the larger Eurasian landmass. Today the CCP rules over a vast and complex country of over 1 billion, of which hundreds of millions constitute its national workforce.
Whereas the Soviet Union and many other communist party-led states collapsed during the turbulent years spanning 1989 to 1991, the CCP has remained firmly in control of the Chinese state. The CCP did not emerge from this period unscathed, however. Major protests erupted nationwide in 1989, and these were accompanied by popular calls for liberalization of the political system. At the heart of this national movement was a student-led nonviolent protest that lasted from April to June 4, 1989, in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The Tiananmen protests and the nationwide movement were violently suppressed in June 1989 when CCP leaders ordered the party's army, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), to clear demonstrators from public spaces.
Similar to other communist party systems, free unions in China are not allowed, and workers are instead represented through trade unions that fall under the CCP’s United Front. These bargaining units are subsumed within the state structure, which implies that workers do not have an independent means to organize for their rights outside of official channels.
Beginning in 1978, China embarked on a massive “reform and opening” program which entailed liberalizing the economy -- i.e., moving away from a command economy based on economic planning -- and opening up to global trade. These reforms have generated tremendous national economic growth, on the order of over nine percent annually during the period 1978 to 2020. This reform period has also seen significant changes in the employment landscape for workers. Prior to 1978, the dominant employment model for urban workers was the danwei, or work unit, where workers could enjoy firm-based benefits and fixed wages.
Since 1978, there has been significant privatization of the Chinese economy, and the danwei system no longer provides workers with the security and material benefits that workers once enjoyed. One estimate is that employment by private firms in China’s cities has grown from 150,000 in 1978 to 253 million in 2011 (Lardy 2016, p. 40). Related to the rise of the private sector are efforts to increase the productivity and profitability of state-owned enterprises; laying off workers is one tactic. When combined with the more volatile and unstable employment conditions in the private sector, this has spurred labor unrest in China.
Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): The Beijing headquarters of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a state-organized labor organization in China.(Source: ACFTU Building by N509FZ via Wikimedia Commons is licensed under is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
Throughout the reform period (1978-present), workers have organized protests in China. Workers were particularly restive during the 2008 to 2012 period. In one example of organized protest activity during this time, workers decided to strike at the Honda car factory in Guangdong province, which led to wage increases for workers. This and other protests may be due in part to shifts in the political opportunity structure (Elfstrom and Kuruvilla 2014). A labor shortage, new labor laws such as the Labor Contract Law of 2008, and greater media openness provided an opening for organized labor to press for gains. The Labor Contract Law, which remains the most significant labor-related legislation in China, provides a legal basis to support workplace rights such as a 40-hour week, payment of wages, and paid leave. Enforcement remains a perennial challenge, which provides the basis for worker protests.
Workers have been strategic in their framing of grievances. In response to the repressive capacity of the Chinese state, protesters have framed resistance in terms of rights accorded them by the law. Such “rightful resistance,” which has roots in rural China, draws on notions of justice that citizens should be entitled to in a society governed by laws (O’Brien and Li 2006). This legalistic appeal has deep roots in China, where the philosophical tradition of legalism (fajia) dates to the first millennium BCE.
In terms of organization and mobilization, there are key differences between the Chinese and Polish cases. At present, there do not exist free labor unions in China, nor are workers organized under the banner of a non-state organization with national reach. There is no Chinese equivalent to Solidarity. Internationally, there is limited support for workers’ rights in China due in part to laws which restrict the operation of foreign nongovernmental organizations within China. Because of these various factors, the labor movement within China remains fragmented and decentralized, with protests breaking out in localities but no overarching national labor movement.
Comparative analysis
These case studies of labor movements across two communist party-led countries illustrate the power of two key factors, political opportunity and broader organizational networks. Both labor movements framed their endeavors in terms of justice and dignity for the working class, which resonates with the dominant communist ideology in both countries. Yet the political opportunity structure varied significantly across Poland and China. In Poland, there was an opening for government leadership to compromise with labor leaders in Poland, especially as the economy weakened. By comparison in China, robust economic growth has supported the position of the CCP, which is to remain adamant in its state-organized union structure. In terms of organizational capacity, there are also stark differences. Chinese labor organizers have not had anything equivalent to the momentum enjoyed by Poland’s Solidarity in the 1980s, which could mobilize over three-quarters of workers in the country in a variety of non-violent actions.
