Almost every article in the Western media, covering the recent developments in Poland, have followed the same script. How is it possible, they ask, that the supposed success story of the post-Communist transition has diverted from the political and economic road that has served them so well? There is a sense of exasperation, a feeling that Poland is acting almost like an ungrateful child. Despite healthy economic growth, rising living standards and new found freedoms, Poles are still not happy. These sentiments are replicated by many in the country themselves. They compare their lives today with what they had before and cannot fathom how anyone could not be satisfied. Yet over the past few months the population has elected a President (Andrzej Duda) and government (Law and Justice Party – PiS) that seem to offer a fundamental break from the past. However, rather than this new conservative turn in Polish politics being an anomaly, it is rather rooted in the practice and ideology that have dominated over the past quarter of a century.
After the defeat of the PiS
government in 2007, the former opposition leader and editor of Gazeta Wyborcza,
Adam Michnik, made a speech at Warsaw University. Expressing his delight at the
election results he claimed that “every nation has an intelligentsia that it deserves, however I believe
that our nation has a better intelligentsia that it deserves”. Michnik praised
the Polish intelligentsia for uncritically supporting the shock-therapy
reforms, claiming that the previous two decades had been the best in Poland for
over 300 years. Another such example of this thinking, was given by the leading intellectual authority on Polish
Liberalism, Andrzej Walicki, who once quoted Janusz Lewandowski (former Solidarity
advisor, liberal politician and then EU Commisioner) as saying that the Polish
intelligentsia will be able to fulfil its historical mission only by supporting
the “empire of capital” and that it would betray this task if it concentrated
on caring for the needs of the losers of the transition and socially excluded.
Such sentiments have deep roots in sections of the Polish intelligentsia. After Communism fell, it was believed that one could now serve the common good by becoming rich and embracing the new values of competition and individualism. By acting in their own individual self-interest and supporting the dictates of neo-liberal economics, the new middle class would strengthen the market’s invisible hand, which would help to raise the living standards of the whole of society. In contrast, those who sought to protect their jobs, increase social expenditures or retain public services were now acting according to narrow self interest.
Such sentiments have deep roots in sections of the Polish intelligentsia. After Communism fell, it was believed that one could now serve the common good by becoming rich and embracing the new values of competition and individualism. By acting in their own individual self-interest and supporting the dictates of neo-liberal economics, the new middle class would strengthen the market’s invisible hand, which would help to raise the living standards of the whole of society. In contrast, those who sought to protect their jobs, increase social expenditures or retain public services were now acting according to narrow self interest.
Despite its apparent liberalism, this
extreme individualism contains an inherent conservatism. The poor are to blame
for their plight, as they are lazy and disinterested in work. The state holds
back the market, which if allowed to act freely would bring prosperity to all
who wish to work for it. This Hayekian conservativism found fertile ground in a
post-Communist society, that was believed to have become infested with a
collectivist mentality of passivity and dependency. The burgeoning
entrepreneurs bemoaned those who continued to yearn for the securities of the
past. They resented paying into a social insurance system from which they
received little and pay taxes to support those who refused to work. They saw
their own failings on the market as being due to a heavily bureaucratised state
and the homo-sovieticus mentality
that ran through it.
The
liberal intelligentsia provided the reasoning behind the construction of a socio-economic
system ridden with inequalities, deprivation and lack of social protection.
Less than half of the country’s working age population is in paid employment; 27% of
those in work are employed on insecure fixed term contracts (10 years ago it was
15%); 19% of those working are self-employed and have to cover their own social
insurance costs; 9% of those under 18 years of age are estimated to live in
absolute poverty; just 16% of the unemployed receive any unemployment benefit; and a mere 2% of those working in the
private sector are members of a trade union. Despite all the wealth created in
the past couple of decades public services continue to decline. There are now
more than 170 fewer public hospitals than
there were in 1990; nearly 20,000 fewer public sector nurses; around 3,000 fewer state nurseries and 4km less train lines in the country.
By cutting loose a section of society to
poverty and destitution, another section of society believed that their living
standards would rise. Their intellectual representatives assured them that
their success would eventually trickle-down to the rest of society, although
whether this actually occurred was generally of little concern. They drew
credit (often from abroad) to buy housing in gated communities; took out
private health insurance to escape the public health system (unless they
actually needed hospital treatment of course); paid for private schools or
tuition; etc. This social group came to believe itself to be the most tolerant and
open-minded section of society. When PiS was voted out of office in 2007, it
was this social layer that mobilised itself. It rejected what it termed the ‘mohair
revolution’ (which symbolised the berets favoured by some elderly women in
Poland) and joked that people should hide their grandmothers' ID cards so that
they couldn’t vote.
However, the situation in 2015 is very
different to that when PiS came to power 10 years earlier. At this year’s
parliamentary elections over 2/3 of those aged between 18 and 29 voted for the
parties of the conservative right. Over 16% of them voted for the party of
Korwin Mikke (which narrowly failed to enter parliament) which combines extreme
neo-liberalism and social conservatism. A generation has been brought up believing
in the principles of individualism and the free-market, but where the economic conditions
do not now exist for real self-advancement. This liberalism has transmuted into
a form of social Darwinism where any ideals of solidarity are absent. This was
most dramatically seen during the refugee crisis this year, where there was an extremely
hostile reaction amongst sections of society and politicians to Poland taking
in refugees (despite the government only being asked to take 7,000 from by the
EU). Young people are decidedly more likely to be against Poland accepting
refugees than the older generations and they are often attracted to the
ideology and parties of extreme nationalism.
It is in these conditions that the PiS government
is attempting to consolidate power, often through encroaching on the practices
and institutions of the democratic state. They are drawing on the dissatisfactions
in society, by presenting themselves as standing against Poland’s corrupt
elite. They claim that this elite wishes to use the Constitutional Tribunal to
block its social reforms (such as introducing new child benefits and reducing
the retirement age). Their economic policies are often aimed at the young and
the struggling middle class: the failed entrepreneur; the graduate who can’t
find stable work; the person struggling to pay the mortgage s/he took in Swiss
Francs. They offer more government intervention with the vision of a state that
prioritises and protects Polish businesses and tax-payers. It is an ideology
based on the frustrations of the many, who feel let down by a system many once
supported. And when the economic programme of PiS founders they will find new
external and internal enemies (imagined and real) to blame: refugees, the EU, Russia, Gays, Communists, Liberals…….
In response to the actions of the new
government a new opposition movement has arisen. The problem is that many of those now standing
up for democracy are the very people that helped to create the economic system
that excludes so many and serves so few. For the past 18 years they have
ignored the social clauses in the constitution that state such things as people
having the right to form trade unions; that citizens shall have equal access to
a health care system funded by the state and that the state shall promote
low-cost housing. They have spent the past 2 decades denigrating the state;
undermining its social rights and trying to avoid its obligations. And even
now, this liberal milieu – represented strongly in the Polish parliament –
propose yet more economic liberalisation and privatisation to cure the woes of
the country. However, as the sociologist David Ost has regularly pointed out, the
turning away of the Polish intelligentsia from the working class and poor
created an anger within society that helped to generate the growth of right-wing
conservatism that we see today. In the mainstream public debate it is now the conservative right that talk about such things social inequality and poverty.
With the Polish left presently weak and
divided, an alternative progressive and egalitarian voice is not being clearly
articulated or heard at the moment. But it will have to be, if the old mistakes
are not to be repeated again, that will further strengthen the resurgent conservative right and isolate the pro-democracy movement to a minority of society.
One of the more perceptive analysis of the problem.
ReplyDeleteWhat is happening in Poland is in many ways similar to political change in Britain since the ascendancy of Thatcher.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWell, I would say there would be nothing wrong with new Polish authorities in case they first wait for any sign of actual obstruction from the constitutional organs like The Constitutional Court or Media Supervisor BEFORE de facto rendering them disfuntional, powerless, and pointless.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that currently entire nation is pushed into the situation when there is nothing more than only hope that new authorities will stop before bringing all institutions of the contemporary state into model of operation we remember from the communistic times: strictly centralized, driven exclusively by the view of the ruling party with total neglect of the political opposition, minority rights or simply - individual freedom.
This is hardly acceptable in modern republic! Sorry, but the Poles are not homogeneous in terms of live styles, political views, religious belief etc. to be put into the position where they have to accept: "Trust us - those who are not guilty should not be worried" - without any institutional protection against abuse, simply because current rulers feel discomfort of each and every mechanism of control implemented in the cog-wheels of the state!