Adrian Zandberg at the solidarity demonstration with protesting nurses in Warsaw. Razem photos. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski. All rights reserved.Alex Sakalis (AS): Could you start
\noff by telling us a bit about Razem, what distinguishes it from the other
\npolitical parties in Poland and how it came about?<\/i><\/p>\n
Adrian Zandberg There had been attempts to organize an In the elections we crossed the 3% Rosemary Bechler (RB): When you AZ:<\/strong> We simply don\u2019t have much choice. It\u2019s not that there is a RB: We have been exploring Podemos\u2019 AZ: <\/strong>I This voters\u2019 cynicism is not something This lack of hope is something absolutely This is what happened in Poland. The transition As a result, they gradually turn to the Celebrating the election results during the election night, October 2015. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski. All rights reserved.RB: Razem has found quite a AZ:<\/strong> <\/strong>For For instance, in Poland, you have this In order to fight for these rights they Razem protests in front of the Prime Minister's office in March 2016. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski. All rights reserved.RB: But how AZ:<\/strong> We need So what we try to do is to step into the When we set up our network of party What combats apathy towards politics RB: The fake self-employed people AZ:<\/strong> In RB: It could be a great advantage, AZ<\/strong>: What I\u2019ll give you an example. In Poland, RB: What are the features of your AZ:<\/strong> We Take the Brexit debate. As far as I And the problem is still there. Many If we want to win majorities, we need to March 2016 protests. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski. All rights reserved.RB: So many people seem to AZ:<\/strong> Yet, AS: There\u2019s a stereotype about the AZ:<\/strong> I The problem we have in Poland, and I Polish Razem Party calling the Polish Prime minister to publish Constitutional Tribunal verdict, PM's Office in Warsaw, March 11, 2016. Czarek Sokolowski \/Press Association . All rights reserved.RB: Can you explain how the main AZ:<\/strong> The division is often inside institutions. Take RB: Do Law and Justice do this to AZ: <\/strong>That\u2019s It is feasible. Law and Justice sells a The main opposition camp around Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) and RB: Even if they are middle class? AZ<\/strong>: Some March 2016. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski. All rights reserved.RB: Yesterday you were talking AZ:<\/strong> The RB: Particularly, perhaps, your AZ<\/strong>: Yes. The last chap who really attempted such a RB: Another history of Poland is AZ<\/strong>: It\u2019s AS: I\u2019d be interested to know how AZ<\/strong>: We Just to name a recent example: When recently There have been calls on Razem to \u201cfight Protests against the proposed total ban of abortions. Hangers were symbols of the protest action. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski. All rights reserved.RB: Can we return to Razem and ask you about the kind of leadership that the leaders of Razem seek AZ:<\/strong> We It\u2019s obvious in the media-dominated RB: How do you stop the middle AZ:<\/strong> There are some tiny tricks we try to use Voting during a general meeting of the Warsaw branch of Razem. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski.All rights reserved.RB: It must make it a considerably AZ:<\/strong> Less RB: Why do you have \u2018party AZ<\/strong>: The two forms of membership reflect this RB: And your regional AZ:<\/strong> We want to ensure that the organization is not dominated by middle This is important for us too. Last month, every week practically, I spent A few If you look at the Polish GDP, you might really believe that we are a March 2016 protest. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski. All rights reserved.RB: Who do you look to as allies in the international AZ<\/strong>: We see ourselves as a part of the wider movement The new The problem is that the European Union unfortunately bears no resemblance RB: D<\/em>oesn\u2019t Europe<\/em>an solidarity<\/em> have a crucial role to AZ:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think there is any contradiction between left patriotism This also And in the long run it also means an end of the big promise of Europe as a Adrian Zandberg at the solidarity demonstration with protesting nurses in Warsaw. Razem photos. Micha\u0142 Radwa\u0144ski. All rights reserved.Alex Sakalis (AS): Could you start off by telling us a bit about Razem, what distinguishes it from the other political parties in Poland and how it came about? Adrian Zandberg (AZ): Razem is an attempt to construct…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n(AZ):<\/strong> Razem is an attempt to construct a left-wing alternative
\nin Poland. What has actually never materialized in Poland to date, is a
\nfully-fledged left-wing political party. The field for years and years was
\noccupied by the post-communists.
\nTheir economic policies were strictly neo-liberal. When they were in power,
\nthey introduced a flat tax rate for businessmen, cut corporate taxes,
\nliberalized labor laws. Not to mention that they eagerly supported the Iraq
\nwars and imperial policies of G. W. Bush. This all functioned under the name of
\n\u2018political Left\u2019. And it was extremely frustrating. If someone asked you \u2013 what
\nare your political views? \u2013 and you answered \u201cleft-wing\u201d, you were associated with
\nthose post-communist, neoliberal, right-wing politicians and policies.<\/p>\n
\nindependent Left in Poland, mostly on university campuses. Our major challenge
\nwas to expand out of the campus. And we have been successful \u2013 we have managed
\nto organize a viable political party. This is not exactly easy in Poland: you
\nneed to gather 100 thousand supporter signatures just in order to stand in
\nelections. <\/p>\n
\nthreshold. It means that we have no representation in parliament, but we gained
\npublic funding until the next elections. Passing this hurdle is crucial because
\nnow we can, for instance, organize party offices around Poland with considerable
\nand efficient tools for campaigning. And, most importantly, with our activity we managed to open the door for left-wing arguments in the
\nmedia, gaining a little space to question neo-liberal policies We
\nmanaged to open the door for left-wing arguments in the media, gaining a little
\nspace to question neo-liberal policies and the dominant conservative attitudes
\nheld by all the big political parties in the parliament. Of course these are
\nfirst baby steps. There is a long way from here to the moment when it will be
\npossible to implement a progressive agenda in Poland after a victorious
\nelection. <\/p>\n
\ntalk about this achievement, you often emphasize the fact that you are building
\nthe left from the ground up, starting from scratch.<\/em><\/p>\n
\ncollection of political organizations already existing and we just need to
\nbring them together to make a political impact, as was the case of the New Left
\nin various western European countries after 2008. Compare Poland and Spain,
\ncompare our experience and that of Podemos \u2013 these are two different worlds.
\nPodemos was born out of a wave of social mobilization that just needed a
\npolitical form to find representation. Poland is also obviously at a different
\nstage of capitalist development, we have a comparatively low level of
\nparticipation in terms of trade union and social activism. Razem cannot
\ncapitalize on pre-existing social movements: we must function as a party and
\nstir social mobilisation at
\nthe same time.<\/p>\n
\ninteresting negotiation with the social movements on openDemocracy. There is so
\nmuch ambition on all sides. But you talk about having a particular challenge
\nwith the lack of hope and political aspiration? <\/em><\/p>\n
\ndon\u2019t think it\u2019s unique for Poland. We share that problem with many European
\ncountries. There is a growing number of voters who do not have any expectations
\nfrom the political system, or hope that their votes could really matter, that
\nthe promises made them will materialize, that any political movement will stand
\nfor the issues important to them. <\/p>\n
\nthat \u201cjust happened\u201d. It\u2019s a direct consequence of a real lack of choice for
\nmany years, when under the pressure of globalization, centre-left and
\ncentre-right governments implemented very similar policies. If you don't have a
\nLeft that is able to question unjust social relations and give viable
\nperspectives on changing the world for the better, then politics dies. It just
\nbecomes an administration where faces and symbols change, but the policies
\ndon\u2019t. <\/p>\n
\ncrucial: if people don\u2019t regain their hope for a political change that is
\npossible through elections, political passivity will further weaken the progressive camp and contribute to the domination
\nof either neoliberal technocrats, the managers of the currently existing
\nsystem, or those who question it, but from the right. <\/p>\n
\nof the early 1990s was implemented under the banner of \u201cwe are now chasing the
\nWest, and we need to adapt our economy, so there is no alternative\u201d. As there
\nwas no credible Left to serve as alternative option, the authoritarian right
\nclaimed the field. This is of course a problem throughout Europe: social groups
\ntraditionally served by left-wing political parties saw that social democrats
\nhave given up on them. <\/p>\n
\nfar right which is very efficient in translating economic frustrations into
\nhatred against migrants, against gays, against minority groups of various
\nkinds. Poland is in no way different in this respect, it\u2019s just that these
\nprocesses took place earlier there and were much more acute. <\/p>\n
\nlot of support already. So how did you address that question of hope? <\/i><\/p>\n
\nstarters, we all need to swallow the fact that neoliberals
\nwere very good at giving hope, hope for individual success. We all need to swallow the fact that neoliberals were very good at
\ngiving hope, hope for individual success. But after years
\nand years of waiting around and no success materializing, this results in a lot
\nof social frustration. And the big political question is who will be able to
\nrespond to this frustration? <\/p>\n
\nphenomenon of people falsely referred to as \u2018self-employed\u2019. In fact, these
\npeople are just workers: they were made to register their own businesses, so
\nthat the corporations that hire them could cut down employment costs. And of
\ncourse they very often have false consciousness: they really believe that they are
\nventuresome self-made-men on their way to becoming millionaires. One of our
\ntasks is to tell them the truth, which proves them wrong in this, but at the
\nsame time gives them real practical hope of changing their lives: acquiring the
\nsocial security, due access to public services and long-term life stability
\nthat they are deprived of at the moment. <\/p>\n
\nneed to get organized, and leave behind the belief that the only way of getting
\nlifetime security is to excel as lone actors in competition against each other.
\nSo to give true hope, you need to crash the false hope that neoliberals gave to
\nthese groups, introduce them to reality – and show them a down-to-earth
\npractical way out.<\/p>\n
\nare we to create new agents for change on the requisite scale in our societies?
\nHow do you set about doing this?<\/i><\/p>\n
\nto fill the void. Once, if you were a worker and had a problem at your work
\nplace, you would go to the union and the union would help you. After Poland\u2019s transformation, numerous branches
\nof the economy don\u2019t have trade unions at all. There are millions of workers
\nwho do not have any kind of trade union experience, any kind of collective
\nexperience in the negotiation of their wages, or over situations at their
\nworkplace. Traditional trade unions can\u2019t break into the sphere of low paid or
\nprecarious work such as that of janitors or cleaners. <\/p>\n
\ngap. For instance, public universities outsource security services to private
\nbusinesses which then employ janitors on precarious contracts. What we managed
\nto do, because we are a political party, was to bring the attention of the
\nmedia and public opinion to these situations. We help the janitors to organize
\nthemselves so that their issues become a matter of public debate. We organised
\na campaign at the very time that the new heads of universities were elected and
\nat three different universities we managed to win the day: precarious contracts
\nwere transformed into normal labour contracts. We brought practical change and we
\nwon trust. <\/p>\n
\noffices, we want to make them social centres, places where you can come and
\norganize into a consumer cooperative or take part in educational activities. We
\nwant to put Razem at the centre of social life. In a way it\u2019s a return to one\u2019s
\norigins. We want to put Razem at the centre of social
\nlife. In a way it\u2019s a return to one\u2019s origins. How did the
\nsocial democrats win over the working classes, and convince labouring people
\nthat they were a class with common interests? If you look at 1900 Germany, you
\nwill see workers\u2019 cooperatives, workers\u2019 sport, workers\u2019 theaters, workers\u2019
\nself-education – all these spheres of life were politicized. We need to
\nreinvent this spirit. <\/p>\n
\namong the younger generation? It is when politics is no longer what \u2018they do\u2019
\nbut what \u2018we do\u2019. Neoliberals split the social world into millions of competing
\nindividuals, each of them holding the banner \u2018I will do it myself\u2019. It\u2019s not
\nenough to talk about the alternative, we need to show that cooperation works.
\nAnd that already happens. You see considerable numbers of these cooperative
\ninitiatives popping up in many places. I believe this experience is crucial.<\/p>\n
\nyou mentioned earlier will, however, be individuals in the first instance,
\nwon\u2019t they? How do you articulate what the bigger thing is that they might
\ninvolve themselves in?<\/em><\/p>\n
\norder for those individual strategists to survive, they need to organize. It\u2019s
\nnot the first time it happens in history – traditional left wing movements also
\ntried to bring the dynamics of individual striving into a collective
\nexperience. Artisans, in many countries farmers: these were the worlds where
\ncooperatives gave people an experience of collective action. Of course it
\ndoesn\u2019t happen overnight. We are perfectly aware that the social changes we
\ntalk about are not going to happen automatically once the Left wins an
\nelection. We do need to construct social actors on an everyday basis. \u00a0But it is obviously the responsibility of
\npolitical parties also to think how to make it easier for those social pockets
\nto grow and how to use the tools of the state to sustain their development. <\/p>\n
\nthe fact that individuals will have to opt into collective action rather than
\nsociety taking it for granted that this is the only thing to do in life.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n
\nis<\/em> promising is this new interest in cooperativism. That became stronger
\nafter 2008 when many people saw how those who organized cooperatively managed
\nto survive better. I think one of the huge tasks of the European Left is to
\nwork out how the state can be used to support those experiments in collective
\nactivity. <\/p>\n
\nideological love of individual entrepreneurship translated into very practical
\ninstitutions set up by the neo-liberals. If you are unemployed, you are offered
\na chance to start your own business, and you are given money from the state for
\nyour microbusiness start-up. Now why not turn it the other way around? Instead
\nof supporting individual businesses, why not help to gather 20-30 persons
\ntogether, organize democratically, and then you would qualify for receiving
\nbigger funds Why not turn it the other way around?
\nInstead of supporting individual businesses, why not help to gather 20-30
\npersons together, organize democratically, and then you would qualify for
\nreceiving bigger funds to set up a functioning, viable
\ncooperative? It\u2019s perfectly possible, and practical, and easy to imagine. Such
\nexamples of functioning self-organization could be replicated. And that gives
\nvery practical hope when you see people who organize their labor in a
\ndemocratic way, who control their lives, because they do not fight each other
\nbut cooperate.<\/p>\n
\nparty that have somehow worked in addressing such problems?<\/em><\/p>\n
\ntry to revive what used to be the key strength of the democratic left: the
\ntension between being very practical in terms of political proposals, and very audacious
\nin imagining a more just economic system. The audacity helped to push
\nboundaries of what was possible, the practicality helped to grip people with
\nyour vision. Without that tension, which fuels real-world fights, the democratic
\nleft is dead, as we see today in many European countries. But balancing between
\nthe two poles is tricky. There\u2019s not much use for campus socialists, who just
\nsit and discuss the \u2018revolution\u2019. But we also don\u2019t want to repeat the road of
\nthose who were so practical that it made them supporters of the Washington
\nConsensus. <\/p>\n
\nunderstand it, the main problem of the British left in the Remain camp was how
\nto say, \u201cWell, we want to remain in Europe, but unfortunately not the current
\nEurope, which is a neo-liberal project.\u201d How do you build a campaign to defend
\nsomething you don\u2019t believe can work in the first place without a complete
\nrevamp? The general idea of a \u201cchange\u201d was there, but without details the
\ncampaign was completely unconvincing, too hypothetical to organise emotions, to
\nmobilise people.<\/p>\n
\nleft-wing movements talk about a democratisation of the EU. And rightly so. But
\nfor the moment what we have is a vague vision which touches the everyday
\nexperience of Europeans not in the slightest. Just now, what we desperately need
\nare symbolic but practical steps that can conquer mass imagination.
\nI fully support Varoufakis\u2019 proposals, but I\u2019m afraid that publishing online the
\nproceedings of the European Central Bank is not quite what we are looking for.
\nWe must find something as down-to-earth as possible, say the European
\nunconditional basic income, European minimum wage, or any other form of
\nguaranteed minimum income. Do the sums, discuss it, and name a number, say: 200
\neuros monthly for every household, coming from European social policies. Make
\nan emotional campaign around it, and it would definitely win more people to
\nEuropean integration than (however badly needed) institutional transparency. We don\u2019t want to repeat the road of those who were so practical
\nthat it made them supporters of the Washington Consensus. <\/p>\n
\ntalk to people who are not that much into political debates, people who are not
\naccustomed to deliberate on trade treaties, people who are living on a week to
\nweek, month to month basis, trying simply to find their way to stability in the
\nworld they live in. Direct transfers are great for this, as we can see from the
\nexample of direct payments to farmers which were the strength of the European
\nintegration process when it still had some social ambitions. For the moment we
\nare not moving in this direction and it\u2019s one of the reasons why the far-right
\narguments are so strong right now. They filled a vacuum. They give false
\nanswers – but these are very practical answers.<\/p>\n
\nexperience Europe as an abstraction.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nthe reason why social elites are so engaged in the debate is that for them
\nEurope is not an abstraction. It translates directly into their opportunities
\nto have higher incomes. That also tells us something about how the system is
\ncorrupted. You cannot point to a single European policy after Maastricht that
\ncould easily be identified as standing up for the rights of the common people. <\/p>\n
\nformer communist countries ever since the transition, that\u00a0 once told that there is no alternative to the
\nneo-liberal path they have to follow, these have become totally apathetic,
\ndepoliticized societies, despite their very precarious economic situation. But
\nrecently, in places like Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, there seems to be
\nsomething of a political awakening among people who were born in the late 80s
\nand early 90s? Is that true?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthink there\u2019s something in it. When you look at the people who come together in
\nRazem, these are mostly people in their 30s, who already had experience of the
\nprecarious labour market. That contrasted
\nwith what they were taught in school: that markets alone will solve all of our
\nconceivable problems, and that individual success is possible for everyone \u2013
\nthey have seen with their own eyes that it just doesn\u2019t work. On the other
\nhand, that\u2019s also a generation that has had a lot of international experience,
\ndue to the free movement of labour. The social systems of western Europe, while
\nthey are in the process of being dismantled and incomparably smaller than they
\nused to be in 70s and 80s, still contrast starkly with those from countries
\nlike Poland. All this is why groups looking for an alternative are on the
\nincrease. <\/p>\n
\nthink not just there, is that while this neo-liberal consensus is cracking open
\nand caving in, the Left is not yet an adequate political force to build on this
\ndisappointment, unfortunately. There are conservative nationalist forces who
\nquite efficiently capitalized on the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism. These
\nare two fronts on which we have to confront our political enemies: the
\nneo-liberal camp defending the status quo and the nationalists who are trying
\nto become the<\/em> force challenging Poland\u2019s current model which developed
\nover the last two decades. Tough as it is, to confront them means to address
\nparts of their constituencies with our message, in order to attract them to our
\nnew left-wing project.<\/p>\n
\npolitical parties and Poland\u2019s social movement fit into that dual trajectory? <\/i><\/p>\n
\nthe governing party, Law and Justice. It is a right-wing conservative party,
\nwith a former Santander Bank CEO serving as minister of development, and with a
\ncertain authoritarian streak. But it is now trying to sell itself as a party
\nthat will expand social policy. And one should say here that they have
\nimplemented one important policy change: \u00a3100 (500 zloty) benefits for every
\nchild, for families that have two or more kids. According to data gathered by
\nthe World Bank this will have a really huge impact on childhood poverty, and
\npoverty in general. <\/p>\n
\ndifferentiate themselves from the Civic Platform and show that they do fulfil
\ntheir promises?<\/em><\/p>\n
\none thing. But they do it because they want to keep pro-social voters. When you
\nlook at what enabled them to win the elections, they did more than just mobilizing
\nsocial conservatives and national Catholics, the traditional camps that stood
\nbehind the party. First, they capitalized on the fact that people were tired of
\nthe corruption and political inertia. But crucially, they also sold themselves
\nas exponents of social change, those who will make a turn in social policy, and
\nmanaged to drag into their camp an important body of pro-social voters. And
\nthis is the group we need to fight back for the Left. <\/p>\n
\npackage: a certain, quite incoherent pro-social turn, bound together with
\nauthoritarian attitudes towards democratic institutions. This includes anti-gay
\nsentiments and attempts to introduce harsh anti-abortion laws. If it were to
\nmaterialize, it would be a complete disaster. And many people who voted for Law
\nand Justice will simply stop supporting them when they start putting women in
\njail for abortion. <\/p>\n
\n.Modern (.Nowoczesna) is simply a 100% neo-liberal throwback to the world of
\nthe 1990s. They believe that our economic transformation was a great success:
\nNowoczesna wants to introduce a flat rate of taxation; they want to change
\ntaxes in a way that would privilege the richest 10% and take this money from
\nthe rest. The huge street protests against the government are organized around
\nthese political powers, but on the other hand, huge groups of people
\nparticipate in them not out of attachment to regressive taxation or out of love
\nof the compromised Civic Platform politicians, but simply because they\u2019re angry
\nat what Law and Justice does. And the Left can win them over, too.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\nof them are middle class indeed. But the middle class in central and eastern
\nEurope is very different from western Europe. Is a teacher who earns \u00a3400-500
\nper month a middle class person or not? I\u2019d rather say they\u2019re remnants of what
\nused to be intelligentsia. And many of them, I believe, are future voters for
\nthe Left. We want to win them over \u2013 but not at any price. One thing that we at
\nRazem will not do \u2013 and this frustrates Polish media pundits a lot \u2013 we will
\nnot stand on the same platform as the neo-liberals and say: \u201cThe only problem
\nwe have is Kaczy\u0144ski. If we just get together and oust him, everything will be
\ncool\u201d. No, it won\u2019t be cool. Returning to the world order before the last
\nelection is not a solution. Kaczy\u0144ski is a symptom showing that these policies
\nsimply did not work. <\/p>\n
\nabout the socialists in Poland\u2019s history who inspire you. <\/i><\/p>\n
\nstrength of the Polish Right is in large part a result of the fact that they
\nmanaged to sell their symbols and their narratives of history and it has made them
\nso popular that it went mainstream before they capitalized on that in
\nelections. I think one of the biggest mistakes on the left in Poland, was that
\nit did not engage in creating a historical counter-narrative. We rarely tried
\nto retell the history of Poland, show off our good guys and how they were
\nright. The Polish Socialist Party (PPS), I was suggesting, is a perfect example
\nof this neglected tradition that could be used to form a leftwing narrative. It
\nwas a democratic socialist party, born in the late nineteenth century, created
\na mode of patriotism that was inclusive and anti-nationalist in so far as it
\nwas multicultural, multi-ethnic, based on the common good. If the Left had not
\nvacated this terrain, the Right would never have been able to colonize it and
\nclaim patriotism as \u201ctheirs\u201d. If the Left had not vacated
\nthis terrain, the Right would never have been able to colonize it and claim
\npatriotism as \u201ctheirs\u201d. And this is an emotionally important
\nsphere: people are attached to the place they live and think about this attachment
\nas something very important.<\/p>\n
\nchosen target constituency?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nImagined community is often the only community that many of them have. Now the
\nproblem is that nationalists have coopted this symbolic sphere to turn it into
\na hate-mongering, anti-minorities political project. We need to take it back. <\/p>\n
\nrevival was Jan Jozef Lipski in the late
\n1980s and early 1990s. He tried to rebuild the Polish Socialist Party.
\nUnfortunately he died at the beginning of the Polish transition. And for many
\nyears I\u2019d say that the independent Left neglected this episode. We try to make
\nit obvious that this is the tradition that Razem is a part of. Indeed, we are
\nprobably the first attempt on the Left to implement this historical policy on a
\nwider scale.<\/p>\n
\npossible?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nbadly needed.<\/p>\n
\nyou approach the issue of the Catholic Church, such a dominant institution in
\nPolish life. They have a huge amount of power, even over legislation. Do you
\nengage with them, oppose them or ignore them?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nneed to distinguish two things: on the one hand we have the hierarchy of the
\nchurch, the bishops, on the other hand we have people who describe themselves
\nas Catholics. Of course the hierarchy, the top tier of the Catholic church is
\nvery right wing. They support policies that are lunatic, we say that openly. But
\nif you look at the opinion polls, you will see that the majority of Polish
\nCatholics do not agree with what the hierarchy teaches about sex, abortion,
\ncontraceptives. The influence of bishops over Polish society is overestimated
\nand much weaker than it used to be ten or fifteen years ago. The Polish
\nCatholics are internally differentiated: mostly traditional and conservative,
\nbut rarely very dogmatic, and you can easily find among them groups that
\ndiscuss gay marriage and women\u2019s rights, and which are open for dialogues with
\nthe Left. <\/p>\n
\nthe church hierarchy and Law and Justice leaders supported a law to totally ban
\nabortions, we organized big street demonstrations in twenty cities in Poland. Some
\nCatholics of course supported the new law. But at the same time, there were very
\nnumerous voices from within the Catholic community saying that this proposal is
\nan error, that it should not be implemented in state law, that those Catholics
\nwho want to promote sexual ethics and their attitudes towards abortion should not
\nuse the state to exert pressure on those who are not members of the church. <\/p>\n
\nthe Church\u201d, to become an \u201canti-Catholic force\u201d, on the grounds that otherwise
\nRazem would never be able to realize its programme. I don\u2019t buy that. My answer
\nis: we are as clear as we can be on the policies that we promote, on gender
\nequality, on minority rights, on a secular state, but the confrontation about
\nthis takes place in the sphere of politics. Razem will not let itself be put in
\nthe position of blanket opposition to the church. Our main political opponent
\nis on the Right, and our allies are often progressive groups within the
\nCatholic Church who are themselves critical about the unholy alliance between
\nclergymen and the right wing. We want a secular state where both those who are
\nCatholics and those who are not, feel at home. That type of proposal will, I
\nbelieve, gain more and more support among active Catholics. It is visible
\nalready now: there are active Catholics who are openly saying that they don\u2019t
\nsee Razem\u2019s programme for the secularization of the state as a threat, but
\nrather as a chance to revive their mission. These voices are still minorities,
\nthat\u2019s clear, but very interesting minorities and ones deserving a mention.<\/p>\n
\nto provide?<\/i><\/p>\n
\ntry not to build the party around a leader. This is the political model that
\nquickly kills democracy within an organization. If an organization is centered
\naround one person and that one person is a real ruler, as often happens in
\nPolish political parties, it erodes. If you look at the level of participation,
\nthe level of intellectual debate within the organisation, it is surprisingly
\nnon-existent. This is a consequence of the one person leadership model that
\nmany parties adopted 10 \u2013 12 years ago. <\/p>\n
\npolitical landscapes in which we now operate, that you do need some
\nrecognizable figure who can play the role of a symbolic anchor for people
\nasking, \u201cwho are those guys and what do they want?\u201d But this does not mean that
\nthis phenomenon should be automatically reflected in the structure of the
\nparty. So we don't have one person leadership on any level. We have collegiate
\norgans. On a central level, we have a 9 person executive group in charge, and
\nthat\u2019s similar at the regional level. Another mechanism we use to secure us
\nfrom this strong leader model is to say that no one can hold one party position
\nfor longer than a single parliamentary term, that is 4 years. That ensures that
\npeople are replaced, so that we have change internally.<\/p>\n
\nclass elite from rising to the top nevertheless?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThat\u2019s a huge problem, the typical domination of a movement by the
\nintelligentsia. That\u2019s because it\u2019s the intelligentsia who have acquired all
\nthe cultural capital, they have time on their side and all those tiny elements
\nthat contribute to their domination of movements. And it\u2019s not easy to control.
\nTo be honest, we have thought about organizational forms that might restrict
\nthis, but we haven\u2019t come up with any good technical solutions. <\/p>\n
\nto mitigate this domination, though. During national council meetings, where
\nall the major political decisions are made, we have a rule that no contribution
\nto the discussion can be longer than three minutes. This is important in terms
\nof making politics a bit more equal because the people who have middle class
\nbackgrounds have enormous power as a result of their eloquence. Plus,
\nrestricting the time also forces you to go straight to the point.<\/p>\n
\nmore pluralist organization?<\/i><\/p>\n
\nthan we would like. But it gives a bit more space to more people who will have
\na chance to have their say, rather than just listen. Another tool we sometimes
\nuse is a quota on the basis of gender for a discussion.
\nThat makes some kind of compensation for those inequalities that confront
\nsociety at large, while impacting on how we function internally. We experiment
\nwith these mechanisms.<\/p>\n
\nsympathizers\u2019<\/em>? <\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThere is always the question, do you want to have an activist organization or a
\nmass political party? There is always the
\nquestion, do you want to have an activist organization or a mass political
\nparty? Mass political parties were very efficient in promoting
\nsocial change over the twentieth century, but they have their own problems,
\nmainly with the passivity of the base. And we all know how that ends. On the
\nother hand, the sense of commitment is extremely important. It is often
\nneglected, but the political strength of democratic left movements in the
\ntwentieth century was mostly due to its ability to attach communities to the
\npolitical project. This was lost after the wave of deindustrialization \u2013 and we
\nneed to rebuild this mechanism. <\/p>\n
\ncomplex situation, but they arose not from some highly theoretical thinking,
\nbut for a very practical reason. We saw people who wanted to help, who wanted
\nto pay fees, but who openly said they would not be able to participate in the
\ndecision-making processes. Many other people simply can\u2019t be official members
\nof a political party because it would threaten their jobs: in Poland it\u2019s not
\nunusual to be sacked for your activism. Being a sympathizer, if they are asked
\nwhether they are a member of any political party, they can say, \u201cNo, I\u2019m not\u201d. <\/p>\n
\nrepresentation?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nclass people living in Warsaw, so we have this regional mechanism that does not
\nallow one part of the country to dominate the national board and the national
\nexecutive. Much of the mass political strength the
\ncurrent governing party was able to gain traded on this strong sentiment of people living outside big cities that they were not represented. <\/p>\n
\ntwo or three days in smaller towns, in those areas where politicians rarely
\nshow up unless there is an election in the next thirty days. Then they arrive
\nby coach, spend ten to fifteen minutes shaking any available hands and move on. So what we do is to regularly organize
\nopen meetings in those places. We meet with groups of people who sympathize
\nwith Razem, who may have voted for Razem or who are just curious about what we
\ndo. We talk for an hour or two and by the time we leave, it\u2019s not unusual to have a new branch of
\nRazem in that town. Often that\u2019s the only branch of any political party in this
\nsmall town. <\/p>\n
\nweeks ago in Ma\u0142opolska region I was in a town where there is this local
\nmayor who has ruled it
\nliterally for the last
\ntwenty-five years. In the last elections there was no opposition candidate,
\nbecause everyone
\nwas too afraid to set one up \u2013 the mayor openly threatened them saying, anyone who tried would know soon
\nenough why they shouldn\u2019t. So that\u2019s the kind of political life we have outside big cities: the interconnections
\nbetween local political elites, local business elites, also the local church
\nsimply dominate the governing set-up and make it impossible to have any
\npolitical debate on budgets, on what should or shouldn\u2019t be
\nsupported by the public fund and so on.
\nThis is the kind of world
\nwhere we try to make an intervention. <\/p>\n
\nsolitary green island in the sea of countries that saw their economies shrink.
\nBut the problem is that much of this growth
\nhappened in big cities only. It\u2019s
\nnot just about
\nthe impoverishment of the world beyond, it\u2019s about the total lack of
\nopportunity to render your life stable. This is a world where having the
\nminimum wage is the ceiling of your aspirations on the labour market, where a \u2018trash
\ncontract\u2019 (a Polish version of
\nzero-hours contract) is the typical form of employment. Our task is to bring some hope to places where there
\nisn\u2019t any.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\nmovement? <\/i><\/p>\n
\nagainst austerity that emerges after 2008. Some, like Podemos, attempt to build new parties,
\nothers \u2013 like Corbyn \u2013 try to win over traditional left-wing organizations. Some, like
\nPodemos,
\nattempt to build new parties, others \u2013 like Corbyn \u2013 try to win over
\ntraditional left-wing organizations. Noteworthy things have started to happen in central and eastern Europe too. I\u2019d say Zdru\u017eena Levica in Slovenia is
\na very encouraging phenomenon. Things that are happening now in Serbia and in
\nMacedonia are very interesting. And you can see a pattern in those movements \u2013 political mobilization of
\npeople who are in their thirties. Had you asked them five or six years ago \u2013
\nwill you be active in politics or do you have leftwing inclinations, many would
\nsay \u201cnah\u201d. But today precarity, the crisis of neoliberalism, the threat of the far right
\nturn them into activists. These new movements differ dramatically from the political behemoths that occupied the
\ncentre-left and that we have watched one by one fall into deep
\ncrisis. This has a special flavour in our region, with the bankruptcy of the post-communist parties.<\/p>\n
\nmovements often share a similar desire to reform the EU. When you look from the Polish
\nperspective, for years we
\nheard just two narratives about Europe. Liberals say: \u201cWe are modernized by the EU and this is our ultimate aim, so we\u2019ll accept
\neverything Brussels says to prove that we are worth it\u201d. And the right wing
\nbelieves Europe is a threat for national Catholic Poland which shouldn\u2019t have entered this horrible progressive thing in the first place. <\/p>\n
\nto a \u201chorrible progressive thing\u201d. The EU today is to a large extent an
\norganisation dominated by business interests. There is no vision of future
\namong European elites, let alone a progressive project. What we see is just a
\nnever-ending crisis management. Good
\nthings about the EU do exist, but these have been
\ncreated by previous generations. Since Maastricht it\u2019s a downhill ride on an inclined plane. But
\nthose on the Left who eagerly applaud
\nthe disintegration of the Union ignore that for any left-wing project to be
\nviable we need a
\nunited Europe in
\norder to exert influence on the global economy. Most nation-states are simply
\ntoo weak to efficiently counter the corporate
\ninterests. In particular that\u2019s the case of central and eastern Europe. Hence the dream of
\nsovereignty that the current governing party peddles in practice ends up with
\nthem supporting TTIP. The
\ndream of sovereignty that the current governing party peddles in practice ends
\nup with them supporting TTIP. <\/p>\n
\nplay <\/em>in <\/em>avoid<\/em>ing<\/em> creating a left
\npatriotism which is simply voluntaristic? <\/em><\/em><\/p>\n
\nand internationalism. Quite the contrary, I think in order to have a viable
\nEuropean project, we need exactly this kind of internationalism that mobilizes
\nthe energies that local patriotisms have and transforms them into something
\nlarger. And sure, such a Europe is badly needed. The EU may last without tax harmonization,
\nwithout a common social
\npolicy,
\nwithout a common investment policy
\ncountering the negative effects of the Eurozone \u2013 but we will see
\nmore and more cracks, and the EU
\nmight slowly evolve into an inert organism that no longer influences
\nreality. <\/p>\n
\nhas its geo-political
\nconsequences, very bad for countries like Poland. We are quite afraid that
\nBrexit might trigger what is sometimes called a multi-speed Europe. That means a zombie EU, and a strong integration of
\nthe western European core that
\nwould simply
\nunlink central and eastern European member states. For our
\ncountries that would be a major setback. All that has been lost due to European
\nintegration \u2013 markets wide open, practical inability to implement industrial
\npolicy, hardly regulated capital flows \u2013 would remain, but all the benefits,
\nlike structural funds, would
\nprobably gradually disappear. <\/p>\n
\ncontinent-wide peace project, guaranteeing us stability. Once again we would become a part of the
\nworld suspended somewhere between the West and Russia. That\u2019s definitely the
\nlast position we want to be in and the problem with the current government is
\nthat they absolutely do not understand that. They see themselves as an ally of forces pushing towards the disintegration of
\nEurope. They
\nare not aware of the long-term
\nconsequences of a
\ncoalition with
\nEuro-skeptical conservatives from Britain or Orban\u2019s Hungary that are actually
\nblinking with one eye to Putin. I think some of them believe that Poland might
\nbenefit from this
\nnew, disintegrated world \u2013 just like the
\nanti-European
\nTories\u2019 project for Britain. But
\nI doubt if Britain will be
\nstrong enough to play this game, and I\u2019m rather sure that Poland wouldn\u2019t. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"