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On the Genealogy of the Polish Left

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On the Genealogy of the Polish Left The Landscape After a Disaster and Even Two: On the Genealogy of the Polish Left Leszek Koczanowicz (Wroczlaw) 2015: At the bottom elections showed how deeply the Polish Left was dispersed and disoriented. Of he Polish parliamentary elections course, the left-wing political parties Tin October 2015 marked the first and organizations had made a lot of time after the fall of communism in foolish tactical errors. The beginning 1989 that the Left proved unable to win of the catastrophe could be traced back seats in parliament. The results of the to the presidential elections earlier the same year. The leader of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) Leszek Miller, himself a very experienced politician who had started his career in Communist Poland and had survived the most ferocious political storms, decided to put forward a very strange presidential candidate. His surprising pick was Dr. Magdalena Ogórek, a 36-year-old historian who had hardly any political experience and was not even Old (Leftist?) Boys Network a party member. Her political Marek Belka and Leszek Miller views were an enigma as she © Kocio (GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2) kept saying that she would Page 87 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) The Landscape After a Disaster and Even Two: On the Genealogy of the Polish Left reveal her agenda in due time. It is the SLD, but for some small groups such little wonder that she got only 2.38 collaboration seemed to offer attractive per cent of the votes, which was the prospects as the party’s well-established worst result ever for the party. After the structures, wide network of contacts elections, she cut off all ties with the and considerable funds, all promised Left and embarked on a new career as at least some seats in parliament. a right-wing journalist in TV and press. Nevertheless, these groupings did not want to be identified too closely with ollowing the disaster of the the SLD, so they formed a coalition. Fpresidential elections, the Democratic According to the Polish law, while Left Alliance decided to assemble as many the electoral threshold for individual small left-wing parties and organizations parties is 5 per cent, it is as much as 8 as possible to augment the chances of per cent for coalitions. Eventually, the the left in the parliamentary elections. Unified Left coalition fell short of the It was never going to be an easy task. threshold, achieving only 7.55 per cent. Emerging from the Communist period, This result gave the right-wing party the Democratic Left Alliance had been a Law and Justice (PiS) an independent hegemon on the left nearly throughout majority in the Polish Parliament. the democratic transition. However, in 2015 the situation changed. New, f course, this catastrophic defeat emerging movements, such as the urban Owas not only caused by the activists, which focus on the local issues, tactical mistakes and ambitions of more often than not preferred keeping various leaders of the left-wing parties their distance from the “discredited” and movements. The main reason party. This was especially true about behind it was the ideological weakness Together, a new party founded in May of the Polish Left. The Left, at least its 2015. Initiated by well-educated young dominant party, has never been able to people who were disappointed with the present a consistent social programme economic policies of Poland’s liberal of mitigating the social consequences government, the party was supposed of the transformation which could tell to be a response to the inactivity of the it apart from the variety of the liberal official Left and to promote a radical movements. On the other hand, in order programme of changes not only in to fulfill the demands of its electorate it culture (which by that time had come had to pay lip service to the progressive to be a traditional field of left-wing agenda claiming their involvement into action), but also in labour relationships. working for the diminishing the social Together refused any cooperation with and cultural inequalities. This situation Page 88 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) Leszek Koczanowicz made the Left always, even in the strict separation of church and state, and heydays of its power, ideologically fragile. voiced a very positive attitude to accepting This failing has haunted the Left since migrants. Although eventually Together the beginnings of the transformation did not win any seats in Parliament, it and eventually caused its collapse. got 3 per cent of the vote, which was a great achievement for a new party and s such, the SLD could hardly come also the required minimum for obtaining Aacross as distinct from the ruling public funding. But it was exactly this liberal Civic Platform (PO). Additionally, margin of the vote that caused the defeat the right-wing PiS proposed a very of the Unified Left led by the SLD. comprehensive welfare programme of reducing poverty in Poland. The SLD was 1989-2003: The fall and the glory (at also on the defensive in cultural matters, a price, though) and, again, its programme, which was admittedly more radical than that of the he Round Table talks in 1989 and PO on questions such as abortion, same- Tthe partly free elections in June sex marriage, and the separation between 1989 marked the end of the Communist (the Catholic) church and state, was not regime in Poland. TheCommunist radical enough to attract voters from Party was officially dissolved in 1990, beyond the party’s traditional electorate. but it found its continuation in a new By the same token, the SLD was very organization, called the Social Democracy cautious on the issue of migrants, the of the Republic of Poland (SDRP). The hottest issue of the 2015 campaign. The leaders of the new party hailed from the PiS rejected any idea of taking migrants youngest generation of the old-regime and criticized the PO for complying apparatchiks who tried to save not so with European Commission directives. much the ideology of communism, in The SLD tried to find a “moderate” which they did not believe anyway, as way, which failed to satisfy anybody. the political influence and financial resources of the organisation. he turning point in the election Tcampaign came with the last n the same period, a plethora of various public debate of all the parties, which Ileft-wing organisations emerged was a success for Together’s Adrian as well. Some of them seemed quite Zandberg. He presented a well-balanced promising as they were heralded as a economic programme modeled on the continuation of pre-war, non-bolshevist Scandinavian welfare-state experience, socialism (e.g. the Polish Socialist Party), took a radical stance on cultural issues for but they proved rather ephemeral Polish standards, especially insisting on a and either disappeared or accepted Page 89 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) The Landscape After a Disaster and Even Two: On the Genealogy of the Polish Left the hegemonic position of the SDRP, from the Catholic Church, but accepted creating a federation. The ideology of the the concordat with all its consequences, SDRP was rather ambiguous. Of course, including special economic privileges for the leaders endorsed the inevitable socio- the Church (e.g. preferential taxation), economic changes, but promised to religious instruction in schools, and so “soften” the burden of the transition and on. They also spoke with great caution reverse the most onerous consequences of on matters such as abortion (in 1993, what came to be called the shock therapy, Parliament adopted a restrictive anti- that is, a rapid privatisation of the Polish abortion law which allowed only three economy, which saw unemployment exceptions) and same-sex marriages. soar and standards of living plummet for most people almost overnight. apitalising on growing C disappointment with the economic n fact, the SDRP did not have to work results of the transition, the SDRP/ Ihard on its programme; it was enough SLD was able to win the parliamentary that it was simply there. Sociological elections twice: in 1993 and in 2001, research suggests that the main political and was a senior partner in the coalition rift in Poland in the 1990s materialised in which it formed with a peasant party a “post-communist divide” (Grabowska by the name of the Polish People’s Party 2004), i.e., a gulf between people who (PSL). Probably, the greatest political (somehow at least) identified with the achievement of the post-communist Left communist regime and people who was the victory in the presidential elections rejected the old system altogether. of its leader Aleksander Kwaśniewski As this divide had shaped the Polish over Lech Wałęsa, one of the historical political scene for over a decade, the founders of Solidarity. The triumph of voters almost automatically supported the former Communist Party apparatchik, either option. Therefore, the agenda of the youngest minister in Poland’s the SDPR and later the SLD (which last Communist cabinet, was highly was founded in 1999 as the federation symbolic. To some extent, it exonerated transformed into a unified party) was the Communist period and it seemed to a strange blend of a nostalgic defence indicate that reconciliation was possible. of the communist past, neoliberal economic policies, and a staunch pro- waśniewski’s success and the American stance combined with an Kpost-communist party’s political equally determined pro-EU attitude, expansion came as a shock for the former which was not contradictory back then. dissidents. Some of them emphasised The SDRP leadership kept their distance in the press that although the SDRP gained a majority, it had no moral Page 90 Hard Times 103 (1/2019) Leszek Koczanowicz legitimisation.
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