Post by pjotr on Jul 27, 2019 17:39:50 GMT 1
The present day role of the Polish and Central European Intelligentsia
A cadre of activist-intellectuals that call themselves Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique) represent a new left generation in Poland
The diminishing role of the intelligentsia in Central-European and East-European societies is current in transitional sociological analyses. From a historical perspective the decline of social vocation of the intelligentsia is caused by a overwhelming socio-political change. This could be regarded as a repetition of the process described for Western societies by Michel Foucault as a shift from "universal" to "concrete" intellectuals. This process seems to result in underming the cultural hegemony of both the former Old left Post-communist (PZPR) intelligentsia and the dissident KOR/Solidarność intelligentsia.
In ‘Truth and power’ (1980), Michel Foucault elaborates on different kinds of intellectuals – the ‘universal’ and ‘specific’ intellectual, respectively – in the context of the question regarding the political status of science and its potential ideological functions, especially within universities. The issues raised by this are summed up by Foucault in ‘two words: power and knowledge’. The ‘political significance’ of science has to be seen against the backdrop of what he says about propositions (scientific or otherwise) being ‘governed’ by a ‘discursive régime’ – broadly speaking, the implicit rules according to which certain utterances may be accepted as being legitimate and meaningful.
It is essential that Foucault’s understanding of ‘discourse’ be grasped, otherwise his distinction between the ‘universal intellectual’ and the ‘specific intellectual’ cannot be understood, in so far as each is situated within a different ‘régime of discourse’. Moreover, he believes that the ‘régime’ relevant to the universal intellectual has made way for a different discursive ‘régime’, within the ambit of which such intellectuals no longer have a place.
Hence, the two types of intellectual that he distinguishes correspond to different ways of using language in the promotion of specific interests (that is, specific power). The ‘universal intellectual’, in the guise of the individual ‘writer’, corresponds at the collective level, according to Foucault, to the Marxist figure of the proletariat, or worker-class, as the collective historical subject or ‘bearer of the universal’ – the people who shape the course of history. In other words, it is (was, really) through the moral, political and theoretical choices made by the writer in his or her writing, that the proletariat as inchoate, immediate embodiment of the universal (the dialectical telos or goal), is (or was) individualised and made conscious. The ‘universal intellectual’ (Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Franz Fanon and Edward Said, among others) was therefore in principle the spokesperson for the whole of humanity, whose interests were universally represented by such writers.
Foucault believes that this can no longer be believed to be the case. Instead, the ‘specific intellectual’ may be regarded as having taken the place of the ‘writer’ (its ‘universal’ counterpart). The ‘universal intellectual’ was appropriate to a certain historical situation, where a specific, broad distinction between different classes of people existed. This was inseparable from the kind of scientific, technological and cultural principles and practices which comprised a distinctive system of mutually cohering and corroborating concepts and propositions. But this historical context, within which the universal intellectual functioned, no longer exists, according to Foucault, with the consequence that today, we witness the functioning of ‘specific intellectuals’ who can no longer claim to be writing, speaking or acting on behalf of all humans, but at best to be the spokesperson for specific, clearly demarcated domains of social activity.
He gives one an important insight into this where he says that one should not think of the ‘political problems of intellectuals’ in terms of ‘science’ and ‘ideology’, but in terms of ‘truth’ and ‘power’. This is linked with his conception of ‘specific’ intellectuals as working within circumscribed domains – such as social or political theory, computer science, immunology, pharmacology, psychoanalytic theory, zoology or political geography, and even nuclear physics – where ‘truth’ has a clearly specifiable meaning. ‘Truth’ means something very different in physics as opposed to political theory, for instance, and therefore each discipline requires different procedures for verification, or what Popper called ‘falsification’ (‘testability’).
The purchase that 'specific intellectuals’ discipline has on what one may call ‘universal’ political (that is, power) relations, also explains what Foucault means when he says that such intellectuals have moved closer to the proletariat and the ‘masses’, even if the specific, ‘non-universal’ problems they grapple with are often far removed from those of the masses. He gives two reasons for this: that the struggles in which specific intellectuals are engaged, are of a ‘real, material, everyday’ nature, and that such intellectuals frequently have to confront the same adversary as the proletariat, namely ‘the multinational corporations, the judicial and police apparatuses, the property speculators, etc.’ Clearly, the example, above, of zoologists submitting a report which goes against the grain of the dominant discourse of ‘regional economic development’, is a case in point: their work is in the long-term interest of the working classes, even if it seems to undermine their short-term employment interests.
Russia
Russian Revolution Factory meeting
The principal obstacle to the acceptance of Marxism by many of the Russian intelligentsia was their adherence to the widespread belief of the Populists (Russian pre-Marxist radicals) that Marxism was inapplicable to peasant Russia, in which a proletariat (an industrial working class) was almost nonexistent. Russia, they believed, was immune to capitalism, owing to the circumstances of joint ownership of peasant land by the village commune. This view had been first attacked by Plekhanov in the 1880s.
Plekhanov had argued that Russia had already entered the capitalist stage, looking for evidence to the rapid growth of industry. Despite the denials of the Populists, he claimed, the man of the future in Russia was indeed the proletarian, not the peasant. While attempting to apply the Marxist scheme of social development to Russia, Plekhanov had come to the conclusion that the revolution in Russia would have to pass through two discrete stages: first, a bourgeois revolution that would establish a democratic republic and full-blown capitalism; and second, a proletarian revolution after mature capitalism had generated a numerous proletariat that had attained a high level of political organization, socialist consciousness, and culture, enabling them to usher in full Socialism.
Moscow Helsinki Group members Yuliya Vishnevskya, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Dina Kaminskaya, Kronid Lyubarsky in Munich, 1978
Poland
In 1844 Poland, the term intelligencja, identifying the intellectuals of society, first was used by the philosopher Karol Libelt, which he described as a status class of people characterised by intellect and Polish nationalism; qualities of mind, character, and spirit that made them natural leaders of the modern Polish nation. That the intelligentsia were aware of their social status and of their duties to society: Educating the youth with the nationalist objective to restore the Republic of Poland; preserving the Polish language; and love of the Fatherland.
In the postwar years (1945-1989), the intelligentsia diversified into several categories of employment: highly educated professionals, government and party officials, senior civil servants, writers and academics, and toplevel economic managers.
Especially in the 1970s, many members of the intelligentsia established careers in the ruling party or its bureaucracy, joining the cause of the socialist state with varying degrees of commitment. By 1987 all but one of the forty-nine provincial PZPR (Polish communist party) first secretaries had at least a bachelor's degree. The strong presence of the intelligentsia in the party influenced the policy of the ruling elite away from standard Soviet practice, flavoring it instead with pragmatic nationalism. Then, as that force exerted subtle influence within the establishment, other elements of the intelligentsia joined with worker and student groups to express open dissent from the system. They objected to the system as a whole and decried the increasingly stressful conditions it imposed on Polish society in the 1970s and 1980s. The most salient result of this class alliance was the Solidarity movement, nominally a workers' movement that achieved broad support in the intelligentsia and finally toppled the last communist regime.
In the 1980s, the activist elements of the intelligentsia resumed the traditional role as protectors of national ideals from outside political interference. In this role, the Polish intelligentsia retained and gradually spread the values it had inherited from its nineteenth-century predecessors: admiration for Western society, disdain for contact with and reliance on Russia and the Soviet Union, and reverence for the prepartition commonwealth of the nobility and the romantic patriotism of the partition era.
As it had after Poland regained its independence in 1918, however, the intelligentsia reverted to its naturally fragmented state once the common enemy fell. In the early 1990s, the official communist leadership elite had disappeared (although in reality that group continued to control powerful economic positions), and no comparably identifiable and organized group had taken its place. In this atmosphere, a wide variety of social and political agendas competed for attention in the government, reflecting the diverse ideas proposed by the intelligentsia, the source of most of Poland's reformist concepts in the early 1990s.
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?
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.
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 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.
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 last in2015, 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 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.
The intelligentsia had an extraordinary importance in modern Poland, but today, like in other European nations they struggle with their role in society, because the intelligentsia was often linked to the liberal and progressive leftwing political world and societies. And the left and the liberals lost ground in Poland to the conservatives, Nationalists and national conservative Rightwing Populists.
It is not a post-Communist problem. It’s a traditional problem for Poland since the 16th century: state-society relations. The Polish gentry at the beginning of the 17th century decided not to have a central budget. The gentry forbade the king from having a central budget. That meat that after 150 years there was no Poland: no army, no academy of science. The only thing that saved us as a nation was our ministry of public education, the first one in the world. Everything else was private. It was noble of us to give the world one of the first public libraries in Europe, but this library after 30 years was robbed by Russians. It became the basis of the imperial library of Petersburg. Then some part of it came here again in the 1930s from the Soviet Union. Several years later, another private library, the biggest Renaissance library in Europe, was burned by the Germans. This is the kind of problem that we have been dealing with for 300 years. Our society has not been able to beget modern institutions in order to shield its substance and, as a consequence, must periodically import the institutions to rebuild itself from scratch.
We are at a moment when transformation myths are falling apart. The Polish stock exchange is the fourth or fifth biggest in Europe. Spaniards are coming to Poland to study. We are called the “green island” of economic growth. Even if it’s not true, that’s what we are called in Europe. When I go to Brussels or other Western countries, I am fascinated at the way that Poland - once the sick man of Europe, with its bumper sticker of chaos, dirt, and anti-Semitism - is treated like we are the leaders of Europe. The French and German invited us to join EADS, the biggest military enterprise in Europe. That’s a fundamental change. The Russians wanted to join this EADS project, and they were politely rejected. The problem is that we’ve grown too big in economic terms. Our heads are too small to manage our big body. That’s the reason that the current political elites are not ready to govern this big body.
The world crisis destroyed some transformation myths and exposed new groups in this society, like groups of Polish proprietors who did business silently for 20 years and are now internationalizing their activities. I know a guy who owns 15 factories around the world. He’s the second biggest producer, after Germany’s Henckel, of construction glue. These people are the core elite of Polish society, but they are not part of the establishment. The establishment here is full of people who are incompetent but had the opportunity to be in the right place during the transformation.
For the last 30 years, the Polish Intelligentsia used Western intellectual tools to transform themselves. One part of the elite - the leftist parties - wanted to transform into something that is Western, European, pro-choice. And the Right part of the elite wants to rediscover, which means to anchor Poles in some parts of our history and recreate a new spirit.
Poland has a special history. Poland had periods that Poles call the First Republic and the Second Republic. These projects were very different. We know that, geographically and economically after the end of the Second Republic, Joseph Stalin was the creator of this state. Now Polish intellectuals somehow must make themselves into the proprietors of the processes that are going on in Poland. Being a proprietor of the process is the most difficult problem during an age of globalization. Americans strive to be proprietors of the processes of globalization by means of GE, Chevron, GM, Google. These are the instruments, the driving strategies for those who reap the value. You build enterprises on these processes, and you leave the lower part of the value chains for other countries -for those who do the work that is outsourced, like Poles. Governmental processes are the same. With the Lend Lease Act, the American Navy became the guardian of world trade. The price the world pays is that it must use the dollar for trade - that’s the role of a global empire. The question here is what is the role of Poland in this changing global landscape, with the deterioration of America’s geopolitical position, the rise of Asia particularly the demographic rise, and the blind alleys of European integration like the Eurozone. From an economic point of view, it’s a zero-sum game.
Poland is at a moment when transformation myths are falling apart. The Polish stock exchange is the fourth or fifth biggest in Europe. Spaniards are coming to Poland to study. Poland is called the “green island” of economic growth. Even if it’s not true, that’s what Poland is called in Europe. When Poles go to Brussels or other Western countries, they are fascinated at the way that Poland - once the sick man of Europe, with its bumper sticker of chaos, dirt, and anti-Semitism - is treated like they are the leaders of Europe. The French and German invited them to join EADS, the biggest military enterprise in Europe. That’s a fundamental change. The Russians wanted to join this EADS project, and they were politely rejected. The problem is that they have grown too big in economic terms. Their heads are too small to manage their big body. That’s the reason that the current political elites are not ready to govern this big body.
I would also add that the most prominent right-wing intellectuals are of course nationalist, which means that they support the nationalist idea. But Professor Legutko specialized in English literature and is an Anglophile. Another one, Zdzislaw Krasnodebski, one of the most famous Polish sociologists, is a Germanophile and lives in Germany. Jadwiga Staniszkis, her father was one of the leaders of the national democrats, but she may be considered a neo-Marxist in her understanding of political economy. Another prominent intellectual, Professor Zybertowicz, has intellectual roots in studying Michael Foucault’s idea of social control. So, what kind of right-wing nationalist is that?
This is the generation that allowed Poles, as their pupils, to make contact with the most valuable intellectual structures to rediscover our heritage. That’s how Poles rediscovered republicanism. John Feffer, the writer of this essay, read historians of republicanism at Cambridge. They taught him about republicanism all over the world. He discovered that they know nothing about Poland, but Polish intellectuals and Western academics can still learn much about Poland through their works. Feffer's generation has no difficulty in making these contacts.
The next generation’s role is to build meritocratic institutions that reward people not through their historical positions but through their current positions, which they earned through working. This can be done in a liberal, republican, conservative, or socialist way - we just need the frame. This is the biggest problem in relations with social elites: the state-society problem. I believe Poles don’t want to have a strong state because they are afraid of it, especially in the area of justice. People know that they can do small bad things, like in southern Italy or Greece. But we won’t be rich that way. If we want to be rich, we have to have strict rules and a lot of trust. The biggest problem between state and society and elites and society is the lack of trust. This is the most valuable but the most expensive capital because you cannot buy it.
The Ending Studies Ceremony of the Radom Academy of Economics
In the last 30 years Poland belongs to the Western free world. Via a Transformation proces it changed from a etatist, state run, state socialist, communist Peoples Republic to a parliamentary, free market (Laissez Faire), open, free and democratic country with open borders and international connections, trade, commerce and development. The Polish economy showed a miracle and grew from a backward economy in 1989 and the early nineties to one of the most important economies in Europe. Due to the Erasmus exchange university and vocational university exchange program between European countries within the European Union and because many Poles went abroad as immigrants and expats, many young and older Poles managed to get Western expertise in British, French, German, Dutch, Belgian, Austrian, Scandinavian, Spanish, Irish, Italian, American, Canadian and Australian universities, scientific institutes, Research & Development centres, companies, Multinationals, corporations, firms and Financial institutions. They developed Poland from the inside and brought experience back from abroad and combined that domestic and foreign experiences and merged that in new forms. That is how the Polish miracle in my (Pieters) point of view developed.
Polish Yuppies in Warsaw
It is a Polish succes, but also due to German, Dutch, French, American, Israeli, Italian and other investments in Poland and joint ventures. Like the rest of the Western world Poland is very divided today, and has tensions between various political movements, affiliations and ambitions. Poles are an individualistic, pragmatic and realistic people, who have links to Western-Europe, other Central-European countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia), Northern Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland) and of course Southern-Europe.
Poland has certain relations with Slavic nations in Southern-Europe like Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and of course with Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Malta and Turkey.
A map of Central Europe with the Central European countries Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Turkey_relations
Central Europe or Mitteleuropa: usage recommendation by the Standing Committee on Geographical Names, Germany.
Poland today has a much more influential, dominant and essential role than it had in the past hundreds of years since the start of the partitions in 1772. Poles are normal Europeans today and not only weird Eastblock people, primitive peasents, occupied and opressed people, guestworkers, Eastern-European migrants (as they were called or labeled in the USA, Canada, Australia and Western-Europe). They are proud and respected expats, have become native European Germans, Dutch people (like me), British people, Americans and Australians.
fpif.org/meet-polish-activists-cutting-edge-possible-left-resurgence-eastern-europe/
A cadre of activist-intellectuals that call themselves Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique) represent a new left generation in Poland
The diminishing role of the intelligentsia in Central-European and East-European societies is current in transitional sociological analyses. From a historical perspective the decline of social vocation of the intelligentsia is caused by a overwhelming socio-political change. This could be regarded as a repetition of the process described for Western societies by Michel Foucault as a shift from "universal" to "concrete" intellectuals. This process seems to result in underming the cultural hegemony of both the former Old left Post-communist (PZPR) intelligentsia and the dissident KOR/Solidarność intelligentsia.
In ‘Truth and power’ (1980), Michel Foucault elaborates on different kinds of intellectuals – the ‘universal’ and ‘specific’ intellectual, respectively – in the context of the question regarding the political status of science and its potential ideological functions, especially within universities. The issues raised by this are summed up by Foucault in ‘two words: power and knowledge’. The ‘political significance’ of science has to be seen against the backdrop of what he says about propositions (scientific or otherwise) being ‘governed’ by a ‘discursive régime’ – broadly speaking, the implicit rules according to which certain utterances may be accepted as being legitimate and meaningful.
It is essential that Foucault’s understanding of ‘discourse’ be grasped, otherwise his distinction between the ‘universal intellectual’ and the ‘specific intellectual’ cannot be understood, in so far as each is situated within a different ‘régime of discourse’. Moreover, he believes that the ‘régime’ relevant to the universal intellectual has made way for a different discursive ‘régime’, within the ambit of which such intellectuals no longer have a place.
Hence, the two types of intellectual that he distinguishes correspond to different ways of using language in the promotion of specific interests (that is, specific power). The ‘universal intellectual’, in the guise of the individual ‘writer’, corresponds at the collective level, according to Foucault, to the Marxist figure of the proletariat, or worker-class, as the collective historical subject or ‘bearer of the universal’ – the people who shape the course of history. In other words, it is (was, really) through the moral, political and theoretical choices made by the writer in his or her writing, that the proletariat as inchoate, immediate embodiment of the universal (the dialectical telos or goal), is (or was) individualised and made conscious. The ‘universal intellectual’ (Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Franz Fanon and Edward Said, among others) was therefore in principle the spokesperson for the whole of humanity, whose interests were universally represented by such writers.
Foucault believes that this can no longer be believed to be the case. Instead, the ‘specific intellectual’ may be regarded as having taken the place of the ‘writer’ (its ‘universal’ counterpart). The ‘universal intellectual’ was appropriate to a certain historical situation, where a specific, broad distinction between different classes of people existed. This was inseparable from the kind of scientific, technological and cultural principles and practices which comprised a distinctive system of mutually cohering and corroborating concepts and propositions. But this historical context, within which the universal intellectual functioned, no longer exists, according to Foucault, with the consequence that today, we witness the functioning of ‘specific intellectuals’ who can no longer claim to be writing, speaking or acting on behalf of all humans, but at best to be the spokesperson for specific, clearly demarcated domains of social activity.
He gives one an important insight into this where he says that one should not think of the ‘political problems of intellectuals’ in terms of ‘science’ and ‘ideology’, but in terms of ‘truth’ and ‘power’. This is linked with his conception of ‘specific’ intellectuals as working within circumscribed domains – such as social or political theory, computer science, immunology, pharmacology, psychoanalytic theory, zoology or political geography, and even nuclear physics – where ‘truth’ has a clearly specifiable meaning. ‘Truth’ means something very different in physics as opposed to political theory, for instance, and therefore each discipline requires different procedures for verification, or what Popper called ‘falsification’ (‘testability’).
The purchase that 'specific intellectuals’ discipline has on what one may call ‘universal’ political (that is, power) relations, also explains what Foucault means when he says that such intellectuals have moved closer to the proletariat and the ‘masses’, even if the specific, ‘non-universal’ problems they grapple with are often far removed from those of the masses. He gives two reasons for this: that the struggles in which specific intellectuals are engaged, are of a ‘real, material, everyday’ nature, and that such intellectuals frequently have to confront the same adversary as the proletariat, namely ‘the multinational corporations, the judicial and police apparatuses, the property speculators, etc.’ Clearly, the example, above, of zoologists submitting a report which goes against the grain of the dominant discourse of ‘regional economic development’, is a case in point: their work is in the long-term interest of the working classes, even if it seems to undermine their short-term employment interests.
Russia
Russian Revolution Factory meeting
The principal obstacle to the acceptance of Marxism by many of the Russian intelligentsia was their adherence to the widespread belief of the Populists (Russian pre-Marxist radicals) that Marxism was inapplicable to peasant Russia, in which a proletariat (an industrial working class) was almost nonexistent. Russia, they believed, was immune to capitalism, owing to the circumstances of joint ownership of peasant land by the village commune. This view had been first attacked by Plekhanov in the 1880s.
Plekhanov had argued that Russia had already entered the capitalist stage, looking for evidence to the rapid growth of industry. Despite the denials of the Populists, he claimed, the man of the future in Russia was indeed the proletarian, not the peasant. While attempting to apply the Marxist scheme of social development to Russia, Plekhanov had come to the conclusion that the revolution in Russia would have to pass through two discrete stages: first, a bourgeois revolution that would establish a democratic republic and full-blown capitalism; and second, a proletarian revolution after mature capitalism had generated a numerous proletariat that had attained a high level of political organization, socialist consciousness, and culture, enabling them to usher in full Socialism.
Moscow Helsinki Group members Yuliya Vishnevskya, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Dina Kaminskaya, Kronid Lyubarsky in Munich, 1978
Poland
In 1844 Poland, the term intelligencja, identifying the intellectuals of society, first was used by the philosopher Karol Libelt, which he described as a status class of people characterised by intellect and Polish nationalism; qualities of mind, character, and spirit that made them natural leaders of the modern Polish nation. That the intelligentsia were aware of their social status and of their duties to society: Educating the youth with the nationalist objective to restore the Republic of Poland; preserving the Polish language; and love of the Fatherland.
In the postwar years (1945-1989), the intelligentsia diversified into several categories of employment: highly educated professionals, government and party officials, senior civil servants, writers and academics, and toplevel economic managers.
Especially in the 1970s, many members of the intelligentsia established careers in the ruling party or its bureaucracy, joining the cause of the socialist state with varying degrees of commitment. By 1987 all but one of the forty-nine provincial PZPR (Polish communist party) first secretaries had at least a bachelor's degree. The strong presence of the intelligentsia in the party influenced the policy of the ruling elite away from standard Soviet practice, flavoring it instead with pragmatic nationalism. Then, as that force exerted subtle influence within the establishment, other elements of the intelligentsia joined with worker and student groups to express open dissent from the system. They objected to the system as a whole and decried the increasingly stressful conditions it imposed on Polish society in the 1970s and 1980s. The most salient result of this class alliance was the Solidarity movement, nominally a workers' movement that achieved broad support in the intelligentsia and finally toppled the last communist regime.
In the 1980s, the activist elements of the intelligentsia resumed the traditional role as protectors of national ideals from outside political interference. In this role, the Polish intelligentsia retained and gradually spread the values it had inherited from its nineteenth-century predecessors: admiration for Western society, disdain for contact with and reliance on Russia and the Soviet Union, and reverence for the prepartition commonwealth of the nobility and the romantic patriotism of the partition era.
As it had after Poland regained its independence in 1918, however, the intelligentsia reverted to its naturally fragmented state once the common enemy fell. In the early 1990s, the official communist leadership elite had disappeared (although in reality that group continued to control powerful economic positions), and no comparably identifiable and organized group had taken its place. In this atmosphere, a wide variety of social and political agendas competed for attention in the government, reflecting the diverse ideas proposed by the intelligentsia, the source of most of Poland's reformist concepts in the early 1990s.
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?
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.
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 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.
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 last in2015, 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 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.
The intelligentsia had an extraordinary importance in modern Poland, but today, like in other European nations they struggle with their role in society, because the intelligentsia was often linked to the liberal and progressive leftwing political world and societies. And the left and the liberals lost ground in Poland to the conservatives, Nationalists and national conservative Rightwing Populists.
It is not a post-Communist problem. It’s a traditional problem for Poland since the 16th century: state-society relations. The Polish gentry at the beginning of the 17th century decided not to have a central budget. The gentry forbade the king from having a central budget. That meat that after 150 years there was no Poland: no army, no academy of science. The only thing that saved us as a nation was our ministry of public education, the first one in the world. Everything else was private. It was noble of us to give the world one of the first public libraries in Europe, but this library after 30 years was robbed by Russians. It became the basis of the imperial library of Petersburg. Then some part of it came here again in the 1930s from the Soviet Union. Several years later, another private library, the biggest Renaissance library in Europe, was burned by the Germans. This is the kind of problem that we have been dealing with for 300 years. Our society has not been able to beget modern institutions in order to shield its substance and, as a consequence, must periodically import the institutions to rebuild itself from scratch.
We are at a moment when transformation myths are falling apart. The Polish stock exchange is the fourth or fifth biggest in Europe. Spaniards are coming to Poland to study. We are called the “green island” of economic growth. Even if it’s not true, that’s what we are called in Europe. When I go to Brussels or other Western countries, I am fascinated at the way that Poland - once the sick man of Europe, with its bumper sticker of chaos, dirt, and anti-Semitism - is treated like we are the leaders of Europe. The French and German invited us to join EADS, the biggest military enterprise in Europe. That’s a fundamental change. The Russians wanted to join this EADS project, and they were politely rejected. The problem is that we’ve grown too big in economic terms. Our heads are too small to manage our big body. That’s the reason that the current political elites are not ready to govern this big body.
The world crisis destroyed some transformation myths and exposed new groups in this society, like groups of Polish proprietors who did business silently for 20 years and are now internationalizing their activities. I know a guy who owns 15 factories around the world. He’s the second biggest producer, after Germany’s Henckel, of construction glue. These people are the core elite of Polish society, but they are not part of the establishment. The establishment here is full of people who are incompetent but had the opportunity to be in the right place during the transformation.
For the last 30 years, the Polish Intelligentsia used Western intellectual tools to transform themselves. One part of the elite - the leftist parties - wanted to transform into something that is Western, European, pro-choice. And the Right part of the elite wants to rediscover, which means to anchor Poles in some parts of our history and recreate a new spirit.
Poland has a special history. Poland had periods that Poles call the First Republic and the Second Republic. These projects were very different. We know that, geographically and economically after the end of the Second Republic, Joseph Stalin was the creator of this state. Now Polish intellectuals somehow must make themselves into the proprietors of the processes that are going on in Poland. Being a proprietor of the process is the most difficult problem during an age of globalization. Americans strive to be proprietors of the processes of globalization by means of GE, Chevron, GM, Google. These are the instruments, the driving strategies for those who reap the value. You build enterprises on these processes, and you leave the lower part of the value chains for other countries -for those who do the work that is outsourced, like Poles. Governmental processes are the same. With the Lend Lease Act, the American Navy became the guardian of world trade. The price the world pays is that it must use the dollar for trade - that’s the role of a global empire. The question here is what is the role of Poland in this changing global landscape, with the deterioration of America’s geopolitical position, the rise of Asia particularly the demographic rise, and the blind alleys of European integration like the Eurozone. From an economic point of view, it’s a zero-sum game.
Poland is at a moment when transformation myths are falling apart. The Polish stock exchange is the fourth or fifth biggest in Europe. Spaniards are coming to Poland to study. Poland is called the “green island” of economic growth. Even if it’s not true, that’s what Poland is called in Europe. When Poles go to Brussels or other Western countries, they are fascinated at the way that Poland - once the sick man of Europe, with its bumper sticker of chaos, dirt, and anti-Semitism - is treated like they are the leaders of Europe. The French and German invited them to join EADS, the biggest military enterprise in Europe. That’s a fundamental change. The Russians wanted to join this EADS project, and they were politely rejected. The problem is that they have grown too big in economic terms. Their heads are too small to manage their big body. That’s the reason that the current political elites are not ready to govern this big body.
I would also add that the most prominent right-wing intellectuals are of course nationalist, which means that they support the nationalist idea. But Professor Legutko specialized in English literature and is an Anglophile. Another one, Zdzislaw Krasnodebski, one of the most famous Polish sociologists, is a Germanophile and lives in Germany. Jadwiga Staniszkis, her father was one of the leaders of the national democrats, but she may be considered a neo-Marxist in her understanding of political economy. Another prominent intellectual, Professor Zybertowicz, has intellectual roots in studying Michael Foucault’s idea of social control. So, what kind of right-wing nationalist is that?
This is the generation that allowed Poles, as their pupils, to make contact with the most valuable intellectual structures to rediscover our heritage. That’s how Poles rediscovered republicanism. John Feffer, the writer of this essay, read historians of republicanism at Cambridge. They taught him about republicanism all over the world. He discovered that they know nothing about Poland, but Polish intellectuals and Western academics can still learn much about Poland through their works. Feffer's generation has no difficulty in making these contacts.
The next generation’s role is to build meritocratic institutions that reward people not through their historical positions but through their current positions, which they earned through working. This can be done in a liberal, republican, conservative, or socialist way - we just need the frame. This is the biggest problem in relations with social elites: the state-society problem. I believe Poles don’t want to have a strong state because they are afraid of it, especially in the area of justice. People know that they can do small bad things, like in southern Italy or Greece. But we won’t be rich that way. If we want to be rich, we have to have strict rules and a lot of trust. The biggest problem between state and society and elites and society is the lack of trust. This is the most valuable but the most expensive capital because you cannot buy it.
The Ending Studies Ceremony of the Radom Academy of Economics
In the last 30 years Poland belongs to the Western free world. Via a Transformation proces it changed from a etatist, state run, state socialist, communist Peoples Republic to a parliamentary, free market (Laissez Faire), open, free and democratic country with open borders and international connections, trade, commerce and development. The Polish economy showed a miracle and grew from a backward economy in 1989 and the early nineties to one of the most important economies in Europe. Due to the Erasmus exchange university and vocational university exchange program between European countries within the European Union and because many Poles went abroad as immigrants and expats, many young and older Poles managed to get Western expertise in British, French, German, Dutch, Belgian, Austrian, Scandinavian, Spanish, Irish, Italian, American, Canadian and Australian universities, scientific institutes, Research & Development centres, companies, Multinationals, corporations, firms and Financial institutions. They developed Poland from the inside and brought experience back from abroad and combined that domestic and foreign experiences and merged that in new forms. That is how the Polish miracle in my (Pieters) point of view developed.
Polish Yuppies in Warsaw
It is a Polish succes, but also due to German, Dutch, French, American, Israeli, Italian and other investments in Poland and joint ventures. Like the rest of the Western world Poland is very divided today, and has tensions between various political movements, affiliations and ambitions. Poles are an individualistic, pragmatic and realistic people, who have links to Western-Europe, other Central-European countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia), Northern Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland) and of course Southern-Europe.
Poland has certain relations with Slavic nations in Southern-Europe like Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and of course with Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Malta and Turkey.
A map of Central Europe with the Central European countries Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland%E2%80%93Turkey_relations
Central Europe or Mitteleuropa: usage recommendation by the Standing Committee on Geographical Names, Germany.
Poland today has a much more influential, dominant and essential role than it had in the past hundreds of years since the start of the partitions in 1772. Poles are normal Europeans today and not only weird Eastblock people, primitive peasents, occupied and opressed people, guestworkers, Eastern-European migrants (as they were called or labeled in the USA, Canada, Australia and Western-Europe). They are proud and respected expats, have become native European Germans, Dutch people (like me), British people, Americans and Australians.
fpif.org/meet-polish-activists-cutting-edge-possible-left-resurgence-eastern-europe/
