3 - The Solidarity movement as emancipatory praxis

Summary

To argue that the Solidarity movement of 1980–81 is a case of emancipatory praxis is deliberately provocative. Praxis is normally associated with Marxist discourse, and is understood in that context as conscious human activity that enables life and reproduces structures. It is also conscious activity that transforms structures, thus creating new forms of life (Petrovic, 1983). Emancipatory praxis refers to such transformative activity that produces greater opportunities for freedom and human self-realization.

Few associated with Solidarity would dispute an account which describes their movement's goal as greater freedom. But emancipatory praxis is normally associated, given its Marxist roots, with the struggle for socialism. Few in Solidarity would argue that they struggled for socialism. Nevertheless, in many of its aspects, from its working-class base to the struggle by workers to realize greater control over their enterprises, Solidarity resembled a socialist movement in all but name. But the differences which Solidarity raised with really existing socialism are as important as the similarities the movement had with socialist principles. As such, to label Solidarity a form of emancipatory praxis invites socialists to reconsider their own critical perspectives and find within Solidarity material for the reconstruction of their theoretical and political frameworks. Solidarity provides a case that can illuminate the pragmatist critique of Marxism in which the link between class struggle and emancipation must be inductively determined, not deduced from laws of history (Dewey, 1938 ([1973]).