Presentation Transcript

1. Polish Workers after Solidarity

   Lecture on May 11, 2009
2. Broader Context: from political revolution in 1989 to systemic revolution In considering how the transition to liberal capitalism affected Polish workers; how, in other words, that transition has been experienced ‘from the bottom up,’ it is important to keep in mind that 1989 and the collapse of communist rule was only the beginning of eastern Europe’s revolutionary era: “According to Bauman, the revolution is merely political if it shakes off a political regime dysfunctional in relation to the existing socio-economic system, whereas systemic revolution faces the task of dismantling the existing socio-economic system and constructing a new one to replace it. The political stage of the [revolutions in Eastern Europe] was only the act of site-clearing and condition-setting for the system-building task.”
3. Polish Workers: Casualties of Revolution? Whereas all post-communist countries suffered economically in the transition from communism to capitalism, it is in Poland that the socio-economic changes have arguably hit workers the hardest and with the most consequential political impact. Why? Not necessarily purely on macro-economic grounds as Poland was the first county in the region to recover economically and by 1996 had surpassed its 1989 level of GDP. Unfortunately, the high growth rates that have been sustained ever since have taken some time to produce lower rates of unemployment: from 2000 to 2006, unemployment rates ranged from 15% to almost 20% (often the highest rates in the EU) and have only recently started to come down (11% in the first quarter of 2009). Between 1995-2000 the workforce was set to increase by 7.3% as an est 443,000 workers would come of age (the post-martial law baby boom). The experience of Solidarity arguably rendered Polish workers more sensitive to the decline in their status and socioeconomic standing.
4. Politically Mobilizing the Workers’ Frustration Interestingly, Polish political actors including the leader of the trade union Solidarity Krzaklewski, have not mobilized the working class around their economic interests instead they have “mobilized class-driven emotions, organizing the economic losers around non-economic lines.” (Ost, p. 2) Solidarity has, in the process, turned into a self-proclaimed Catholic right-wing organization with a union membership less than 1/10th of its 1981 size. Social anger has been organized along cultural fault lines and “exclusionary solidarity” (e.g. ‘true Poles’ v. communists/Jews) to such an extent that the underlying causes of that anger have been obscured.
5. Electoral Instability The combination of socio-economic hardship and the political manipulation of the population’s fears and anxieties have produced constant electoral turbulence – to date, no incumbent governing party has been re-elected and, until recently, post-Solidarity political parties alternated power with the ex-communists turned social democrats (the SLD): 1989-1993 post-Solidarity cabinets under 3 prime ministers – Mazowiecki, Olszewski + Suchocka 1993 SLD forms a governing coalition with the Peasant Party the post-Solidarity coalition, AWS (put together by Krzaklewski), wins parliamentary elections with 32.8% of the vote SLD wins parliamentary elections again; two extreme populist parties, the radical right wing “League of Polish Families,” and the left-leaning “SamoObrona (Self-Defense), enter parliament 2005 the post-Solidarity party, “Law + Justice” wins the election and forms a highly unstable governing coalition with the two populist parties 2007 Early elections were held after the coalition collapses, another post-Solidarity party, the Civic Platform, wins; the two populist parties failed to enter parliament; the reformed ex-communists increased their vote from 11% to 13.15%
6. Stability of Historic Cleavages Even under the conditions of electoral instability, since 1989, Polish election results have fallen along the lines of the former empires that partitioned Poland with the most liberal, secular and pro-market electorate in the western territories ‘recovered’ from Germany after WWII and in the south-western portions of the Habsburg empire, and the more conservative, religious electorate in the east and south-eastern territories influenced by Russian rule. See, http://www.unitn.it/events/borderscapes/download/abstract/barwinski_paper.pdf
7. 2007 Electoral Map (Civic Platform = orange; Law + Justice = blue; Peasant Party = green; ex-SLD = red
8. Partitions of Poland (Prussia = blue; Russia = seagreen; Habsburg = forest green)Partitions of Poland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
9. Continuous Right-ward shift in Polish Politics In a profound departure from Solidarity’s original doctrine which combined social democratic principles (e.g., workers self-government) with Catholic social teachings on the dignity of labor, all post Solidarity political actors have become increasingly conservative emphasizing cultural values over class-based mobilization. Examples: Even the first post-Solidarity governments in 1991-93 passed a highly restrictive abortion law and mandated Catholic education in public schools. From the outset, the Church under Glemp’s leadership demanded political concessions as the price for political support (or in the case of the SLD for a tenuous political truce). From the initial policy of drawing a “thick line” on the communist past under Mazowiecki, post-Solidarity parties have become increasingly focused on lustration and decommunization; anti-communism (or anti-ex-communist) has become increasingly virulent. Currently, both post-Solidarity parties, the Civic Platform and Law + Justice dominate Polish politics, both are strongly anti-communist; the latter is also very Euro-skeptic and more culturally conservative being allied with the Catholic nativist movement surrounding “Radio Maryja” See Radio Maryja - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
10. Explaining Poland’s post-Solidarity Rightward Shift: Ost’s argument Polish liberal intellectuals/politicians (many of whom once were Solidarity advisors) failed to engage the working class leaving the social anger of this class to be mobilized under conservative, right-wing auspices. Why? Ost points out that liberals are uncomfortable with emotions; to which one can add that Polish liberals in particular were concerned with the political consequences of addressing those emotions (e.g., encouraging the rise of populism and demagoguery). Following Rothschild (p. 186) one can also add that a certain amount of social snobbery may have played a role in undermining Solidarity’s cross-class alliance between workers and intellectuals. Ultimately, Ost concludes that “overreliance on economic liberalism [on the part of Polish intellectuals] leads to political illiberalism.”
11. Explaining the Shift, cont The economic reforms mandated by the EU accession process meant that Polish politicians actually had very little room to maneuver in terms of the policies they could pursue once elected. Given these constraints, Ost points out that those parties that make the strongest effort to differentiate themselves with nationalist, culturally conservative rhetoric may have an advantage in that they appear to offer a genuine alternative. See also: Anna Grzymala-Busse and Abby Innes, “Great Expectations: the EU and Domestic Political Competition in East Central Europe,” in East European Politics and Societies, vol. 17, nr. 1, 2003
12. Explaining the Shift, cont. Finally, Ost points out that workers themselves did not readily subscribe to a class-based understanding of themselves; they did not, for example, support worker-based trade union activism. Compounding the loss of a collective workers’ identity, internal divisions within the Polish working class further complicated the ability to formulate broadly shared economic interests: Skilled artisans, technically trained, skilled workers increasingly abandoned the ‘rank and file’ unskilled workers In general, gender divisions also became more evident as male workers apparently believed that women workers were indeed superfluous and should be laid off.
13. A Bleak Outcome for Polish Workers? Those workers who “made Solidarity” and who were thereby essential to the events in 1989 that brought communist rule to an end have, according to Ost, been abandoned by multiple social actors who once stood by them: By fellow workers at higher skill levels Women by men in general By intellectuals and professionals By ‘liberal’ politicians This then leaves the door open for conservative political mobilization. Ost implies that the turn to the right might have been avoided had Polish liberal elites made the right decisions and had labor been properly organized and mobilized along class lines. But were post-1989 conditions really so bad for Polish labor? And were workers even available for class based mobilization?
14. Post-1989 Conditions for Polish labor At first glance, broad statistics do support the assumption that the socio-economic conditions for Polish labor deteriorated dramatically, especially the unemployment rates (which are higher for those with lower skills and education levels). It is important to consider, however, some mitigating factors: Regional unemployment figures show tremendous differentiation in employment opportunities with metropolitan regions experiencing much lower levels of unemployment (Warsaw, Krakow + Poznan in 1996 unemployment = ranging from 4 to 6.4%) Opportunities to work abroad (especially after EU entry in 2004) while collecting unemployment at home – in 2006 Pres Kaczynski complained about 1 million Poles working in the UK still collecting unemployment Opportunities for work in the private sector especially evident in high self-employment levels in the mid to late 1990’s. By 1995 81% of construction was privately owned; trade and repair = 94%; hotel and restaurants = 84%; real estate + business activity = 63%. By 2004 over one and a half million small, self-owned were firms registered (1, 651, 200), employing 3,389,234 persons. See, http://www.rrsa.ro/rjrs/N2-WJANIK.PDF
15. A more vibrant picture? Once we consider these additional opportunities for Polish labor to adjust to the transition to capitalism and the extent to which political elites did attempt to ameliorate that transition by, for example, increasing social expenditures (from 12.2% of the budget in 1990 to 21.7% in 1992) and by slowing the rate of privatization (in 1995 50% of industry still in the public sector), perhaps workers were not as badly or as uniformly adversely affected by the post 1989 systemic revolution. Organized labor capable of being the carrier of West European and Solidarity’s social democratic traditions was clearly negatively impacted. Having made the political revolution, organized labor failed to survive the systemic revolution. But Polish workers, the Polish labor force experienced the transition to capitalism in very differentiated ways – those, for example, with skills and entrepreneurial spirit adapted better than those lacking such qualities.
16. Solidarity’s Real Legacy Ost, Dunn and many other scholars concerned with the fate of Solidarity as the vehicle of organized labor in Poland may well be overlooking a critical dimension of the Solidarity experience, namely the extent to which the movement inspired its participants to take ownership; to value independence and individual responsibility. As Janik concludes in his study of small enterprises, “the majority of the owners of such companies want to achieve personal and economic independence.” They are less motivated by profit and more by fulfillment – fulfilling hobbies, dreams and the creation of fulfilling jobs for themselves and their families. See, Steven Stoltenberg, “An Underground Society: the evolution of Poland’s Solidarity 1982-1989,” PhD dissertation, 1993, on the turn to private enterprise.
17. Revisiting Poland’s rightward turn Polish politics have undeniably taken a turn to the right; a turn that was supported and even initiated by the leadership of the trade-union Solidarity – a move that betrayed the movement’s past traditions and that failed to address workers’ very real economic concerns and interests. But how much of this dynamic can be explained as the result of the failure of Polish intellectuals turned politicians to mobilize workers along class-based lines? Perhaps large numbers of workers simply did not want to be mobilized along such lines opting instead to respond to their post 1989 decline in status by becoming self-employed. Why, then, has the Polish electorate, including these newly self-employed, supported the rightward shift in Polish politics?
18. Deeper Legacies? According to Polish sociologist Mira Marody, there may be deeper legacies at work that can help to explain contemporary outcomes in Poland where society has been “shaped by some historical processes, the permanence of which in longer periods of time have resulted in experiences common for successive generations and, hence, have become the basis for the identities of societies living under communist regimes. In the case of Poland, the consequences of such processes are – amongst others – the special role played by the Catholic Church in the institutional structure of Polish society, the specific tendency of Polish people to opt for ‘situational innovativeness’ instead of building more institutionalized forms of social life, as well as their tendency towards making political divisions into the moral ones.” See, http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~intlsa/en/meetings/reports/East-Central%20Europe/Chapter%203.pdf
19. In conclusion From Marody’s observations, it is possible to conclude that Polish society, including obviously Polish labor, has responded to the post 1989 systemic revolution according to deeply embedded collective identities that Privilege the role of the Church – accordingly, once the Church moved to the conservative right and abandoned the progressive social teachings of Pope John Paul II, that decisively set the political tone Do not readily sustain “institutionalized forms of social life” like trade unions – in that sense Solidarity was misleading in that it exemplified the spontaneous, “situational innovativeness” inherent in Polish society and was not a firm basis upon which to build a West European style trade union or social democratic political party Transform political cleavages into moral ones – in that sense political actors are simply following a conventional script or narrative that is consistent with Polish political traditions. Should we be as concerned as Ost is about the resulting rhetoric of exclusion? Possibly not, in that the Polish electorate has consistently punished political extremism; Polish voters may have flirted briefly with populist alternatives in 2005 but rapidly voted them out once they became intolerable. Poland’s historic cleavage between a more liberal west and a more conservative east may well provide something of a checks-and-balances system in which neither tradition can gain ultimate political hegemony.