How Poland’s Road To Socialism Was Blocked
Polish economists like Oskar Lange and Michał Kalecki produced highly creative models of how a socialist system could work, balancing equality and efficiency. But Poland’s Communist government neglected their ideas, sowing the seeds of its eventual demise.
Solidarność marked the beginning of the end for Soviet-style Communism.
The fortieth anniversary of the emergence of the Solidarność trade-union movement in Poland is an occasion to celebrate workers’ self-organization and the dignity of labor, in the face of repression by a Communist government that had lost touch with its ideals.
However, it would be superficial and dishonest to do so without pausing to reflect on the nationalist and right-wing political legacy of Solidarność, as manifested in the two Polish administrations that have claimed descent from the movement: the government of Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność (Solidarity Electoral Action) of 1997–2001, and its successor party, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice), which ruled Poland from 2005 to 2007, and again from 2015 to the present.
This political heritage confounds any naive view that would imbue Polish workers and their movement with “natural” socialist virtues. For conservatives, that legacy reflects the maturity of Polish workers; for liberals, it reflects their immaturity (despite having been somehow “mature” in 1980). Among socialists, the legacy itself is an embarrassment only to those who have not understood the history of socialism, and the contribution of Polish socialism to that history.
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