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Workers and the Radical Right in Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2018

David Ost
David Ost*
Affiliation:
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
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Abstract

How has the Law and Justice Party in Poland (PiS) been able to get significant labor support to introduce far-right policies that undermine pluralist democracy? We look at PiS in the context of the “left fascist” traditions of the past, when redistributionist policies won wide support among workers who were accepted as part of the favored “nation.” Labor support breaks down along three lines, with industrial labor most closely aligned with PiS, white-collar labor (in education and health) mostly opposed, and the marginalized small-city precariat being mobilized by PiS, but also finding a place in explicitly fascist parties further to the Right. Left alternatives, weakened due to the collapse of class discourse, are slowly reemerging, but the Right will likely command most labor support for the near future.

Type
Workers and the Radical Right
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 93: Workers and Right-Wing Politics , Spring 2018 , pp. 113 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2018 

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References

NOTES

1. Sternhell, Zeev, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

2. See Sheri Berman's discussion of leftists becoming fascists—most notably the Belgian socialist de Man, Hendrik, The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2006), chapter 6Google Scholar.

3. Meardi, Guglielmo, Social Failures of EU Enlargement: A Case of Workers Voting with their Feet (London, 2013)Google Scholar.

4. Daniel Tilles, “Prosperity Instead of Freedom,” on his blog, Notes From Poland, accessed on September 24, 2017, https://notesfrompoland.com/2017/09/24/prosperity-instead-of-freedom-the-left-wing-economics-that-make-polands-conservative-government-so-popular/.

5. Berman, The Primacy of Politics, 149.

6. Mann, Michael, Fascists (Cambridge, 2004), 142CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. For a list of Polish state-owned firms, see https://www.export.gov/article?id=Poland-State-Owned-Enterprises; accessed on November 26, 2017. On the government's use of state-owned firms to further its agenda, see Marcin Goclawski, “Poland's ruling party tightens grips on big state firms,” Reuters News Service, October 10, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-economy-politics/polands-ruling-party-tightens-grip-on-big-state-firms-idUSKBN1CF0B5.

8. On how today's radical or populist right evokes classic themes of Bolshevism, see Ost, David, “The Surprising Right-Wing Relevance of the Russian Revolution,” Constellations 24 (4) (2017), pp. 516–27Google Scholar.

9. Legutko, Ryszard, The Demon in Democracy (New York, 2016)Google Scholar.

10. Finchelstein, Federico, From Fascism to Populism in History (Oakland, 2017)Google Scholar.

11. In Hungary, consequently, social policies have mostly been directed to the middle class. See Szikra, Dorottya, “Democracy and Welfare in Hard Times: The Social Policy of the Orbán Government in Hungary between 2010 and 2014,” Journal of European Social Policy 24 (2014): 486–500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Ost, David, The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe (Ithaca, 2005)Google Scholar.

13. For a more careful discussion of this, in eastern Europe as a whole, see the collection edited by me, “Class After Communism,” Eastern European Politics and Societies 29 (3) (2015)Google Scholar; on Poland see my essay in this collection, “Stuck in the Past and the Future: Class Analysis in Postcommunist Poland.”

14. These examples taken from an unpublished 2017 conference paper by researchers at the University of Wrocław, Justyna Kajta and Adam Mrozowicki, titled “Labour and nationalism in Poland: exploring the (missing) links.”