The Socialist Corporation and Technocratic Power: The Polish United Workers’ Party, Industrial Organisation and Workforce Control 1958-80

In this book Dr Woodall analyses the political implications of the pursuit of industrial growth for the authority of the Polish United Workers’ Party. She argues that political constraints on the available options for economic reform have encouraged a policy of merger of industrial enterprises into large “corporate’ units since 1958. Although they are only a shadow of their Western counterparts, these socialist corporations’ nevertheless pose considerable problems for the role of a Marxist-Leninist party in industry. While this does not manifest itself in the emergence of a clearly identifiable ‘technocratic’ class of managers challenging the legitimacy of the Party, it does involve difficulties caused by an increasingly ‘technicist’ ethos of industrial management which eschews the possibility of meaningful workforce participation. Dr Woodall thus shows how the over-zealous pursuit of industrial integration and concentration in the 1970s was, despite attempts by the Polish United Workers’ Party to reformulate its ‘leading role’, one of the major factors contributing to the industrial unrest which brought about the fall of the Gierek leadership in 1980.