9 - Physicians in Solidarity

Summary

Critics of the class analysis of Soviet-type society emphasize the internal heterogeneities of the working class and the intelligentsia. They argue that there are more significant lines of division within each class than there are between them. There are considerably different conditions of life and work even within professions, as the analysis of engineers suggests. Engineers are nevertheless commonly dependent on the authorities for both delegated power and privilege. Physicians occupy a different niche in Polish power relations. They are also professionals, and might be considered part of Konrád and Szelényi's ruling class in statu nascendi. But if we are to consider their place in a power relations defined in terms of autonomy and dependency, physicians are different from either skilled workers in large factories or engineers. Their extensive participation in Solidarity also has different structural roots, derived from their continued dependence on the authorities for power of broader scope despite a capacity for a relatively autonomous individual power.

Physicians and other medical personnel were very active in this independent trade union and social movement for democracy and independence. For the August 31, 1980, agreement which led to Solidarity, physicians and other medical personnel compiled an extraordinary list of thirty points delineating the demands of the health sector. A separate medical section of Solidarity was subsequently established, which continued and broadened the activism of the original health-sector activists.