ARKA NOEGO / NOAH’S ARK: On Solidarity and Bitcoin

A Peaceable Revolution

Throughout the 1980’s, a real common motion arose in Poland that ended up toppling the communist regime in that nation. Though there have been many anticommunist intellectuals writing and being learn in Poland on the time, the spark that ignited the peaceable revolution that ended Soviet rule was lit not by the educated elite however by the working class: employees on the Lenin shipyard in Gdańsk launched a strike in 1980 that rapidly unfold to employees throughout industries and all through the nation. These employees shaped the Interfactory Strike Committee, which drew up an inventory of 21 calls for. Then, in a transfer harking back to the apocryphal story of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Church in Wittenberg, they wrote their calls for on picket boards and hung them from the gates of the Lenin shipyard.

The Gdańsk strike was triggered, predictably, by the federal government elevating costs in a price-controlled financial system whereas additionally denying wage will increase. To make issues worse, Lenin shipyard managers had simply fired a preferred forklift operator, Anna Walentynowicz. Her co-workers believed this was political punishment for her union organizing. “What?” You would possibly ask. “A communist authorities against labor unions?” Sure—all through the Soviet Bloc, solely government-authorized labor unions affiliated with the ruling communist events had been permitted. One of many key calls for of the Interfactory Strike Committee was the power to kind impartial commerce unions.

After all, the picture of employees hanging towards a communist authorities was horrible optics for the Polish authorities. As well as, as a Warsaw Pact nation, Poland confronted the continual prospect of army intervention by the USSR. Nobody knew if or when Moscow would resolve to “ship within the tanks” like that they had carried out in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Certainly, Brezhnev and the Politburo debated the thought in 1980. Finally, they determined towards it—partially as a result of the First Secretary of the Polish United Employees’ Occasion (PZPR), Edward Gierek, feared a nationwide massacre. The primary spherical of strikes and protests in Gdańsk had attracted over 700,000 individuals, and, merely put, the Polish state feared Polish society. PZPR management opted to declare Martial Legislation as an alternative. Thus started a decade of energy struggles between the federal government and the individuals which culminated within the overthrow of the communist system in 1989.

The outstanding factor concerning the Polish transition to a market financial system was how peaceable it was. That was largely a results of the overwhelming social consensus amongst Poles of all political orientations that authorities management of the financial system wanted to be dramatically lessened. The motion that emerged from the Interfactory Strike Committee was referred to as “Solidarność”, or “Solidarity”, drawing on the commerce union custom of employees standing in solidarity with each other to collectively discount for higher wages and dealing circumstances. Solidarity’s demand for impartial commerce unions was met: it did certainly grow to be the primary non-communist, non-government commerce union within the Soviet Bloc.

When the strikes in Gdańsk first erupted, a slightly employed graphic designer, Jerzy Janiszewski, designed a emblem for the union based mostly on graffiti that he had seen scrawled on partitions within the metropolis. He formed the letters of “Solidarity” to seem like individuals standing collectively in a crowd, and he added a Polish flag to emphasise nationwide unity. This emblem “went viral”—it rapidly started for use nationwide as an emblem of victory over tyranny.

The success of the Solidarity commerce union quickly impressed non-working class Poles to “stand in solidarity with Solidarity”, and on this method it turned a real mass motion. Folks from all corners of Polish society got here collectively to oppose dictatorship and financial management: Whether or not left, proper, or heart, non secular or non-religious, individuals—even many precise members of the PZPR—had been so disillusioned and sad with “truly current socialism” that, for an excellent decade, different social divisions began to matter far lower than standing collectively within the battle for financial and political freedom. In 1989, the Solidarity commerce union gained the primary partially free elections within the Soviet Bloc. This inaugurated the autumn of communism in Poland and generated momentum for a lot of related actions in different Warsaw Pact international locations.

Bitcoin as Solidarity

At the moment, I see many resonances between Solidarność and the rising social motion behind Bitcoin. Like Solidarity, Bitcoin crosscuts ideological and cultural divisions. Whether or not you might be left, proper, heart, or unaligned; non secular or not; a proponent of “custom” or of rethinking conventional social roles; and whatever the type of authorities you favor (democracy, republicanism, monarchy, theocracy, occasion rule, and so forth.)—Bitcoin has enchantment. It’s because, no matter what kind of presidency or tradition individuals favor, they typically wish to spend their very own cash at any time when and nevertheless they select. In addition they need that cash to maintain its worth over time, in order that they’ll put it aside profitably for themselves and for future generations.

For many years, governments around the globe have been chipping away at each of those human wishes: they insist on controlling how individuals spend their cash whereas devaluing it on the identical time. This destruction of the financial savings and financial freedom of total populations can solely proceed for therefore lengthy earlier than individuals come collectively to say, “sufficient.” That’s the reason Bitcoin may be seen as a much-needed financial reformation: the separation of cash and state.

Like Solidarity, Bitcoin is a grassroots motion rising from beneath. It has a reputation, a emblem, and open supply code which can be used worldwide however are usually not owned by anybody. Whereas the mainstream media pays quite a lot of consideration to “Bitcoin billionaires”, the overwhelming majority of Bitcoin homeowners are peculiar individuals—largely working class—who see in it hope for a greater future: A future the place the fruits of their labor, their life financial savings, are usually not frittered away by irresponsible governments engaged in schemes to devalue foreign money and management financial life. Extra symbolically, the 21 calls for of the Interfactory Strike Committee mirror absolutely the shortage of the one 21 million bitcoin that can ever be in existence, a quantity arduous coded into the Bitcoin protocol.

Noah’s Ark: Surviving the Flood of Cash

Throughout the rise of Solidarity, a bunch of poets and musicians had been touring Poland, performing songs to remind those that a greater life was doable. Their names had been Jacek Kaczmarski, Przemysław Gintrowski, and Zbigniew Łapiński. They recorded many “protest songs” whose messages needed to be fastidiously worded and hid to keep away from being censored. Nonetheless, regardless of their use of poetic metaphors and allusions to historical past, literature, artwork, and the Bible, everybody understood what they had been actually speaking about. Their songs loved immense reputation all through Poland.

I grew up listening to the songs of those three troubadours. My mother and father, like many of their technology, had been lively within the Solidarity motion and introduced that ethic with them once they immigrated to the US, the place I used to be born. A few of the trio’s songs have specific resonance for our personal historic second and for the Bitcoin motion. In that spirit, I needed to share with you one in all Kaczmarski, Gintrowski, and Łapinski’s nice songs, “Noah’s Ark”. It references the Biblical story of Noah, who survived an enormous, months-long flood by constructing an Ark.

One solution to interpret the “flood” the trio sings about in “Noah’s Ark” is because the “flood” of foreign money that accompanies intervals of hyperinflation. Governments which can be politically in bother or collapsing at all times face extreme financial issues, they usually usually print dramatic quantities of cash with the intention to “increase financial exercise” inside their borders. This tends to backfire, nevertheless, as the worth of the cash plummets and other people grow to be more and more reluctant to make use of it. This solely compounds the political and financial woes of the regime, accelerating its demise. Because of this, intervals of hyperinflation are inclined to accompany turnovers of political regimes. After I first visited Poland in 1990, for instance, it was in the course of a hyperinflation accompanying the transition between a communist and a capitalist mode of political financial system. The nationwide foreign money needed to be solely re-based and reissued with the intention to restore public confidence in it.

Those that have survived “floods” of hyperinflation around the globe understand how devastating they are often. Thousands and thousands of Polish individuals misplaced their total life financial savings because of the collapse of a politically and economically non-viable system of presidency. However Kaczmarski, Gintrowski, and Łapiński’s track reminds us that the deluge is survivable—if we now have deliberate forward and if we imagine in our personal energy, as people and as a group, to navigate the storms.

Please get pleasure from their music and lyrics, which I’ve translated into English beneath.

This can be a visitor put up by Natalie Smolenski. Opinions expressed are solely their very own and don’t essentially mirror these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.