2011 was a year of discontent throughout the world, but apparently not in Poland. Poland’s ruling classes were spared the challenge of massive protests which rose up in many places, from Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, through the Indignados of Spain, to the US Occupy movement. There is certainly much to be angry about. Life in Poland is getting harder, the privatisation-by-stealth of the national health service and education is ongoing, schools and kindergartens are being closed down (making life especially difficult for young parents), there’s no affordable housing, while the prices of municipal services and staple foods keep rising (both at least partly due to recent changes in tax rates). Poland is now the leading country in Europe in terms of non-permanent job contracts (having overtaken Spain), and the prospect of having a decent pension in the future is becoming increasingly unlikely.

There have been plenty of reasons to get angry, though nothing happened – at least nothing comparable to the Indignados or Occupy phenomena – until the recent protests against ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an international treaty aiming to protect “intellectual property.” The treaty is hermetic enough for professional lawmakers to get confused as to its consequences, and yet it was precisely this treaty which has sparked protests throughout the country.

The protests started the previous week, when it was announced that Poland was to sign ACTA on Thursday. Activists and NGOs working in the fields of human rights, open culture or privacy protection, sent protests to the government. They demanded that the government refrain from signing ACTA and organized genuine public consultations of the document. At the same time, tens of thousands of people debated the issue on the internet, sharing information and analysis concerning ACTA. Saturday 21st January saw an anonymous attack on the websites of the Parliament, Prime Minister and Minister of Culture, among others. On the PM’s website the hackers left the following message: “Prime Minister Donald Tusk is an evil man!” Oddly enough, the government proved unprepared to defend themselves against a cyber-attack, but at the same time they felt enough self-assured to raise the possibility of announcing a state of exception.

A couple of days later, the protesters flew out of cyberspace and into the streets. The first street demonstration against ACTA was organized on Tuesday in front of the European Parliament Office in Warsaw. Three thousand people came to express their discontent. Both left-wing and right-wing activists, free market libertarians, communists, human rights liberals, football supporters and teenagers of both genders gathered together. For many teenagers it was apparently the very first time they had taken part in a political event. They cried against ACTA, against censorship, and against the government. The event may well have marked the end of uncritical euro-enthusiasm among Polish youth; “EU, EU, screw yourself!” (“Unio, Unio, zwal se ch…!”) was one of the most ear-catching exclamations of the day. Clearly, for many people the case of ACTA means that the equation “European Union = freedom = modernity” no longer seems to be self-evident.

On Wednesday, there were protests in many other Polish cities, gathering between one and ten thousand participants (ten thousand protested in Kraków). On Thursday, a major protest was organized in Poznań. Four thousand people gathered on Liberty Square, with some then going on to the regional office of the Civic Platform Party to smash a few windows. It is estimated that up to 100,000 people took part in street protests during just three days.

Meanwhile, both the Polish Ombudsman Irena Lipowicz and the General Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski expressed serious concerns about ACTA and appealed for the government not to sign up to it.

The PM tries to play the role of a tough guy, but this time it does not seem to be working. When the hackers revealed how they broke into the PM Office website (login: admin, password: admin1), it made Donald Tusk’s situation all the more vulnerable. Many people find it ridiculous that those who lack basic computer skills should be responsible for creating laws in this domain. The government lacked a consistent PR strategy: when the Minister of Culture Bogdan Zdrojewski was assuring the public that the document had been indeed properly consulted, the Minister of Administration and Digitization Michał Boni expressed regret that it had not, and promised a thorough consultation process… after the signing ceremony. Let’s us add that the Pirate MEP Christian Engström exposed serious misinformation in Boni’s reassuring statement (see: Polish Minister Telling Lies to Get ACTA Signed). And that the government had 7,774 comments removed from the PM Office’s fan page on the ground they were “vulgar” (an independent investigation proved that only as much as 1.49% of them contained any vulgar words whatsoever, whereas 6.5% were weird or off-topic).

The whole situation may be a shock for the ruling Civic Platform party. In previous years, they succeeded in strengthening the powers of the state: they gave the police more powers against citizens, built major data bases containing sensitive data about citizens (System of Information in Education, System of Information in Health Care), enabled the Supreme Chamber of Control to collect any data it wanted about the citizens, including those concerning their sexual orientation or their genetic features. Some of those changes encountered opposition, others did not. But nothing prepared them for the resistance they are having to deal with right now.

And yet, in some way, this should not have been unexpected. All of the previous reforms effectively deprived people of many entitlements, but they were consistent with the overall message of the present-day system: the state is not responsible for your well-being, no one has an automatic right right to a “good life”, you can only expect to be left alone. Like it or not, the internet policy is the ultimate test of this promise. Internet users, especially the youth, understand that with ACTA the “System” is breaking even this modest promise to leave people alone. And now they have taken to the streets and discovered what it feels like to be a “we.” Will this experience empower a new generation of activists? The question remains unanswered, but the hope is out there.

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On the second of January, a hundred thousand people gathered in front of the Budapest opera house on the prestigious Andrassy Boulevard to demonstrate against a new constitution due to come into force in Hungary. This choice of location was not a coincidence – inside the building, the ruling Fidesz party were celebrating their latest victory over the opposition (and, as a result, over Hungarian society as a whole). The event appeared to mirror Hungary’s political situation in miniature. Ruling independently, the Fidesz party (which has a two-thirds majority in parliament), are capturing more and more ground on the way to absolute power. The opposition, helpless in parliament, can only shout in the streets. Waiting in the wings is the extreme right-wing Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary, becoming a force to be reckoned with as they gain more and more political influence.

Two different perspectives offer the clearest explanation of the current situation in Hungary.

First, the anticommunist perspective relates to the discrediting of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) in 2006, after the then leader and prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted, with disarming honesty, that his party had lied to the voters in order to win the election. The wrath of the electorate, furious about the corrupt post-communists (the MSZP), then brought Fidesz to power. This reaction is hardly surprising and the responsibility for the current situation is blamed on the post-communists.

The second perspective, of the “liberal” variety, concentrates on immature post-communist society which wanted prosperity after the period of transformation without agreeing to “necessary reforms”. All sides lacked the courage to introduce the necessary cuts. When, forced by a drastic budgetary situation, the prime minister Gyurcsany agreed to make the cuts, numerous money-minded citizens voted against him in protest, only having themselves to blame as a consequence.

The dilemmas of “simultaneity” and the end of “goulash post-communism”

The problem with these two perspectives centres on the fact that even when combined they only tell part of the story, while taken in isolation each further obscures the actual situation.

To understand the current scenario, one has to look at it from the perspective of the changes over the last 22 years, their beginnings rooted in the “dilemma of simultaneity” with which the democratic reformers in Hungary were confronted. Seeing the results of the sudden liberalization of the national economies in the Latin America in the 1980s, many of the theoreticians of democracy and democratisation were afraid that political transformation in Eastern Europe would also end with outbursts of violence.

In 1991, the German sociologist Claus Offe wrote that although, generally speaking, democracy needs capitalism (on the one hand, capitalism facilitated the internal diversity in societies necessary for the functioning of democracy and, on the other, it brought prosperity, allowing citizens to engage in politics), in the “old democracies” capitalism and democracy were not introduced simultaneously. Simultaneous introduction of capitalism and democracy was, according to Offe, in principle doomed to fail, because citizens would not accept a market economy.

The social anger in Hungary was pacified in a way that, according to Offe, was least likely – by selective, though extensive, welfare reforms. Income redistribution in Hungary is the highest in the The Visegrád Group and the level of social inequality is the lowest. The Hungarian economy was not capable of keeping such high level of social expenditure, but the prospect of joining the European Union made Hungary appealing in the eyes of foreign investors and potential loan providers. Additionally, Hungarian governments from the right and the left introduced mechanisms which facilitated private debt. It seemed that Hungary had escaped paying for the cost of transformation. However, in 2006 it turned out that the bill, though late, would be delivered after all.

“Ballot box revolution”

Following the parliamentary election 2006, the second government of Ferenc Gyurcsany announced a savings package which completely contradicted the pre-election promises of the MSZP. The cuts included welfare benefits, while electricity and gas prices would also be increased. The well-known tape scandal – revealing the recording in which Gyurcsany admitted lying to citizens in order to win the election – did bring a lot of people out into the streets, but didn’t significantly affect the popularity of the MSZP. Even corruption scandals starring the most senior socialist party politicians didn’t affect the party’s rating too much.

The post-communists lost support mostly due to the budget cuts introduced in 2006 and the later cuts from 2008, when in exchange for financial help, Hungary had to satisfy the painful criteria of the IMF and the European Commission. Only in this context did the tape scandal and the corruption affairs cause the socialists to lose their voters’ trust, which in the long run made it impossible to make up for their losses. What, just after the election in 2006, could have been called “the necessary cuts” made for the sake of the future prosperity, became a payment for the lies of corrupt politicians.

In 2010, the opposition party Fidesz won the election, gaining 53 percent of the vote. The new prime minister, Victor Orban, called the victory a “ballot box revolution”. It gave him an unprecedented majority with two thirds of the seats in the Hungarian parliament.

Is there method in this madness?

When one looks at the Orban government’s actions, at first glance it is difficult to find any sense or order. While everything it does makes public reference to its democratic mandate, at the same time it openly ignores the demonstrations of tens of thousands in the streets of Budapest. The same politician who criticized the socialists for their painful budget cuts has since introduced (among others) a flat rate of tax and one of the most oppressive workfare programs (the unemployment benefit is awarded for a month and then the beneficiary has to take any job that is offered, even if it is different from his/her qualifications and doing it means going to the other end of the country). Orban stresses the importance of national sovereignty all the time to such an extent that the International Money Fund broke the negotiations about the health package for Hungary; at the same time privatisation is progressing full steam ahead, with Hungarian companies ending up in the hands of the Chinese. The independent institutions which are supposed to guard the democratic order – the constitutional tribunal, the ombudsman, the prosecution office and the central bank – are losing their independence. There are also new institutions being created ad hoc, such as the Budgeting Council, which will have a right to veto the budget bill.

All these seemingly chaotic acts make more sense when seen in the context of the new constitution which has now come into force. From the preamble, “the National Creed”, we can find out what makes, or is supposed to make, the Hungarians proud (the Christian heritage of the country and their contribution to European culture), what their most important values should be (loyalty towards the nation, the Catholic faith and the family) and what the source of a person’s individual worth is (“work and intellectual achievements”).

At the same time, Hungary has broken the bonds with their communist heritage (occupation started in 1944 when Hungary was taken by the Nazis and finished in 1990) and is a continuation of the political and constitutional tradition from before the World War II. The recent bill, recognising the MSZP party as the heir of the communist party (MSZMP), and thereby deeming them as a criminal organization, is a part of the politics of memory. It is difficult to predict what the exact consequences will be, but two things are certain. In a symbolic sense, it is an attempt to delegitimise the post-communist left and at the same time all the actions of the governments that the MSZP was part of. More pragmatically, it may simply be the beginnings of the end for Hungary’s biggest opposition party.

Orban’s actions and the new constitution combine to create a whole, seemingly paradoxical, entity, an organic political community built on strong values and which, in the constitutional sense, has little in common with liberal democracy (lack of clear division of power, excess of executive power, etc.). Meanwhile, the economic basis for this community leans towards classical liberalism (low taxes, work ethics, workfare – Orban openly speaks about creating a “national middle class”). There is no contradiction in these actions, as long as we accept that political liberalism does not necessarily correlate with economic liberalism.

The future of the Hungarian democracy

Although the opposition’s demonstrations attract tens of thousands of participants, the situation in Hungary is not easy for at least a couple of reasons (and I am not here referring to economic factors, although it is not encouraging that the state only has enough money to function until February of this year).

Firstly, although Orban’s chaotic actions weaken his popularity, it is not the opposition who profit from this, but Orban’s rivals inside the Fidesz party, mainly the mayor of Budapest.

On the other side of political spectrum one cannot see an alternative for Fidesh party – the MSZP party split during the previous term and, despite being the key force in opposition, they lack ideas on how to regain public support. If the thesis on “the Warsaw express” proves to be true in this case, the MSZP party together with the Politics Can Be Different party (LMP) will share the same sorry fate of the Polish Democratic Left Alliance Party (SLD) and the Social Democracy of Poland Party (SDPL). Alternatively, if recognition of the MSZP as a criminal organization finishes with the actual destruction of the biggest opposition party, the only alternative to Fidesz will turn out to be the Jobbik movement, who for the time being have been monopolizing the language of economic anti-liberalism.

Thirdly, the structure of the support for political parties doesn’t give cause for optimism. The supporters of the central-left opposition are, to a great extent, older people. The Jobbik movement’s voters are mainly younger people, to whom the party’s nationalist demonstrations are the first and the most politically meaningful development. Although, since the 2010 election, Fidesz are in principle a catch-all party, their voters actually tend to belong to the middle and upper middle classes. In the 20th century, no right-wing dictatorship got to power without the support of these social groups.

This is the basic difference between Hungary and Poland. In Poland, the Law and Justice party (PiS) never gained the support of the higher social strata – it was a party of the “mohair berets” (a reference to the signature headgear worn by its elderly, conservative Catholic supporters) and, in a wider sense, the losers of the transformation period. Which is why comparison between PiS and Fidesz are pointless, as are threats of the phantom of the second Budapest striking Warszawa. Besides, many Fidesz activists refuse to follow the example of Jarosław Kaczynski’s party (PiS), preferring instead to follow the example of the competing Civic Platform (PO).

Orban’s rule is still fundamentally different from a dictatorship (allowing demonstrations attended by a hundred thousand protestors is best proof of that). Also, Hungary is not the first European Union country starting to employ anti-liberal policies (see Sarkozy’s expulsion of Roma Travellers from France or growing Islamophobia in Holland). However, it is the first country in the EU to introduce anti-liberal measures on a constitutional scale. Even if the Fidesz party finally loses power, the changes introduced by Orban may be practically irreversible.

The only chance at present is non-parliamentary opposition, part of who are planning to establish a new political party. The new formation will have to convert the energy of a hundred thousand people gathering in the streets into success in the election in 2014, which won’t be easy.

First of all, they will need access to media channels which, since the recent introduction of new broadcasting laws, are under strict control by the ruling party. Secondly, the new electoral system gives an advantage to the biggest party – Fidesz. In this context, the list of accusations made by Fidesz against MSZP as the heir of MSZMP (the former communist party), beginning with the charge of trying to establish a single-party dictatorship, now seems like an ironic twist of fate.

Translated by Katarzyna Abramowicz

While following the events in Russia these days, what strikes me most are the lists of ‘most read
articles’ on Russian portals. For instance, that’s how this kind of list looks on one of the popular
left-liberal Russian websites:

Boris Akunin calls for the boycott of presidential elections. (In the same call one of Russia’s
most popular writers suggested Putin to resign from starting in the next year’s elections, ‘before it is
too late’).

Pianist Fyodor Amirov is under arrest. (Performer of experimental music, arrested during the
demonstration against the stolen vote, is likely to miss his own concert).

Activist of Voina group is declared wanted internationally. (Natalia Sokol, who is eight months
pregnant, is accused of violence against the policemen).

A journalist proposed his colleagues to throw their proffesional awards into dustbin. (Political
commentator Stanislaw Kucher has stated that ignoring of mass actions by the leading channels of
Russian television is not a sign of censorship, but rather of unprofessionalism).

Head of Hermitage museum resigned from his place on the list of the ruling party. (Although
he did not do so for political reasons – rather ‘according to the will of the collective’).

For some time after reading these news I was ready to resign from the contempt to the Western
stereotype entitled ‘Sooner or later Russia will get its own colour revolution’. At first the current
events in Russia may really seem as a repetition of Ukrainan Orange revolution. In response to
surprisingly impertinent falsifications a completely unexpected amount of people takes to the
streets . The powers try to frighten the people with the sight of military technique in the streets,
which only activizes those of their opponents who were passive beforehand. As a result of the
power’s brutality more and more public figures allied with it withdraw their support. The system
starts to decompose.

Luckily, situation is a bit more complicated. The arrests of hundreds of peaceful protesters all
over Russia mean that Putin and Medvedev believe in the possibility of ‘color revolution’ in
Russia more stubbornly than any liberal think-tanks do. The mass arrests are the clear sign of the
Russian government’s fight with a completely out-dated and impossible scenario. What is a ‘color
revolution’ in the optics of Cremlin? It’s an assembly of the deceived voters (more or less directly
inspired by the evil West), who are trying to change the elections’ results through occupying the
central squares of the capital. In Russia this demand would mean the inclusion of several small
liberal and right-wing parties into the new parliament. Who would fight for something like that in
the creeping cold of Moscow?

In fact, the recent events in Moscow have something in common with a bit different episode of
Orange revolution in Ukraine. Precisely, it is the first round of Ukrainian presidential elections,
when the violence and falsifications deployed on a full scale by the government resulted in the
mobilization of civil disobedience. The basic difference in the Russian case is that until the ‘second
round’ of elections (i.e. until Putin’s planned return into the presidential office) there are three
months left – not three weeks, like it was in Ukraine. The Russian government, used to ‘crisis management’ techniques, will definitely try to divert the people’s attention from the current wave
of protest. If I were a Russian oppositionist, I would immediately declare that I’m not planning any
explosions in Moscow’s sleeping districts and subway stations. It is very likely that in the nearest
future the Russian opposition will be accused of something like that.

Since the protests in Moscow started, Russian television refers to its oppression in the context of
police attacks upon the protesters in New York, London, Paris, Athens etc. The message is clear:
the West, which tries to teach us about democracy, is as evil as ourselves. However, this perverse
logic makes a little bit of sense: it localizes the Russian protests in its natural context. They have
much more in common with the Indignant movement that with the color revolution of any kind.
Russians took to the streets not because they want to change the balance of power in the parliament.
They took to the streets simply because they are outraged by lack of democratical procedures,
corruption that became a way of life, and crisis that seems to never end. In this sense, we are all
Russians now.

LONDON N30 STRIKES video report from Political Critique on Vimeo.

Here we are all together in the Colourful Independent Fair, which did not emerge just today, but has been lasting for years and has come back in its new, even more beautiful form,

We are gathered here also on behalf of those who did not come here today, who feel like immigrants in their own country, who meet insults and are afraid of football hooligans’ boots. We’d like to tell them that the Colourful Independent Fair is also for them. I address you with the words of Tadeusz Kościuszko: ‘Don’t be in fear, not to let any differences in opinions or rituals disturb us from loving you like brothers and fellow countrymen”. Also like sisters and countrywomen, added Szczuka.

This peaceful demonstration, conducted by Kazimiera Szczuka and Mikołaj Lizut, gathered around 2.5 thousand people, who enjoyed themselves to the rhythm of Afrykasy Sun System music. The colourful crowd was dancing and singing „All You Need Is Love” by The Beatles and „Strange is this world” by Czesława Niemena, playing with colourful balls, hula-hoops and soap bubbles. There was also hot tea for those who were frozen.

The amateur capital revolutionary choir (among others Mikołaj Lizut, Katarzyna Kwiatkowska, Sylwia Chutnik, Michał and Aleksandra Bilewicz, Agata Szczęśniak), sang a revolutionary song Varshavianka 1905, a song of Italian partisans Bella Ciao and a song of Jewish partisans Zog nit kehn mol, played in ghettos during World War II. Tymon Tymanski performed with his band as well.

During the fair many people gave speeches such as Stanisław Krajewski (a representative of the Polish Jewish community), Stanisław Obirek (a philosopher), Małgorzata Fuszara (Congress of Women), Malika Abdoulvakhabova (Rescue Foundation, a refugee from Caucasus), Robert Biedroń (MP), Tomasz Szypuła (the Campaign Against Homophobia), Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze (preparing a documentary about Polish Gypsies) and Karol Parno-Garliński (a poet, sculptor and activist). Also there were with us Renata Dancewicz, Jacek Żakowski, Piotr Pacewicz, Marek Beylin, Seweryn Blumsztajn, Piotr Najsztub, Wanda Nowicka, Anna Grodzka, Ryszard Kalisz and Janusz Palikot.

Unfortunately the atmosphere was not so nice and peaceful everywhere. The Independence March organised by the National Radical Camp (ONR) and the All-Polish Youth (MW) ended up with Warsaw streets trashed – burnt cars, wounded people, vulgar shouts, clashes with the police. We condemn the violence brought by the nationalists. Equally we condemn the incidents of violence, which happened among the anti-fascists, however incomparable they are to the aggression of right-wing fighting squads. Political Critique invited people to participate only in the non-violent events and only in such events did we participate.

The Colourful Independent Fair in pictures

On behalf of promoters of the Colourful Independence Fair affiliated with Political Critique, and also all people participating and publicly supporting this event, we declare the following:

1. We did not undertake any actions against the law. We did not invite any fighting squads, either from Poland or from abroad. We did not plan any assemblies of radical groups in Brave New World Cultural Centre. The group of anti-fascists was pushed into our premise by the police, which afterwards lead them out peacefully, without any complaints about us.

2. We organized and participated in the Colourful Independence fiesta. Everything proceeded calmly and in full cooperation with police forces.

3. We would like to emphasise that during the event and time of preparations, the organisers and speakers clearly distanced themselves from any violence and looked for a nice and joyful climate of the assembly. The motive of all our activities was to peacefully express an objection against xenophobia, racism and hate-speech. We condemn violence in any form!

4. Persuading public opinion otherwise and spreading false information about the Colourful Independence Fair or other Political Critique activities will result in us protecting our good name by means of actions of law.

5. We consider scandalous all attempts to dilute the responsibility for damages made in Warsaw resulting from the Independence March. We express our indignation at the opinions of some media and politicians that equate the peaceful assembly with the aggressive behavior of hooligans and fascist organizations.
We believe that the police forces and courts will determine without any doubts who is responsible for violent actions that ended up with the riots.

Stop fascism on Warsaw streets!

We would like to point out that nobody from Political Critique took part in clashes with the police or
with any other protesters. None of us caused any damage. Moreover we clearly condemned all acts of violence. The fact that the police led out a group of foreign protesters from our centre, without any complaints about NWS, is not a reason to question our statutory goals or the agreement we signed with the Agency of Properties Management.

Quoting some random views of our journalists from over a year ago won’t help the PiS councillors to prove their false statements. If premises were taken away due to controversial visitors or over-expressive metaphors, than PIS would suffer the worst case of housing crisis which has ever been seen.

It seems that the councillors have made themselves ridiculous, so we propose they turn their attention to those who devastated the city, not those who develop culture here.

Stanisław Brzozowski Association, 14.11.2011

Because – unlike the politicians and journalists promising us the Polish empire, cheap and quick (“vote for us only, read us only, believe us only”) – I think that the Polish government can be a little bit stronger or a little bit weaker, but the government’s true potential is determined by the potential of Poland and that can be measured.

Polish politics, or maybe rather the politics of deciding about the lives of the people living in Poland, is being settled in Europe, where currently governments are taking the risk of introducing a very cautious version of the Tobin tax,  the tax on the financial transactions which put speculative capital to the work for society. They may succeed. Despite Cameron’s hostility (was it worth destroying Blair and Brown? they could get persuaded into the cautious version of the Tobin tax and Cameron is just a London City’s puppet, so he’ll never put taxes on the City) and Obama’s preventive capitulation (it would rather be Bill Clinton who would risk the cautious version of Tobin tax, at least before the Monica Lewinski scandal; Obama is now too weak to challenge Wall Street, even with the back up of the people from the Brooklyn Bridge).

Even without London and New York, this attempt taken by the eurozone and its surroundings may still be a turning point. Obviously the main economists of investment banks and hedge funds are trying to convince us in the media that it does not make sense to introduce in Europe even the most cautious version of the Tobin tax  as “the capital will go away”. However, if Deutsche Bank or Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank moved out from the eurozone to the Bahamas where they have their richest clients, they would pay much more for the access to the European market than they will loose on the very cautious version of the Tobin tax.

So if the governments of the eurozone and its surroundings, the richest region of the world, try to introduce at least the most cautious version of the Tobin tax and if they succeed, the break in the global market power which is authoritarian, exclusive,not balanced by any policy and operated by all its political and medial puppets, will become a fact. And if it became a fact, the future support of the Tobin tax by America, England, Russia and China would be possible too.

Tusk and Rostowski, Sikorski and Lewandowski are not players in this game, but Tusk and Rostowski, Sikorski and Lewandowski won’t interfere in the game; after all they will benefit from the money received from the very cautious version of the Tobin tax over the next four years. And that’s enough, because another representation of the Polish state – such as MEPs from the Law and Justice party (PiS) or the Poland Comes First party (PJN) – together with the Tories would smash any attempt to create a political power to balance the influence of the global market and it could additionally weaken any European politics already being embattled. Thanks to the election results, the Polish government will not weaken European politics. It may even strengthen it, although this is just my private dream as this won’t happen so long as there is no left, no liberals and no conservatives in Poland.

The Civic Platform party (PO) doesn’t think about political economy at all or thinks of it in neoliberal terms. Palikot’s party doesn’t think of political economy at all or thinks of it in the neoliberal terms. The Democratic Left Alliance party (SLD) doesn’t think about political economy at all, the Polish People’s Party (PSL) doesn’t think at all, the Law and Justice Party (PiS) thinks in neoliberal terms despite their boss talking rubbish about Budapest. As long as there is no social-democracy in Poland, as long as there are no liberals and conservatives and only the people who either do not think of the political economy at all or think of it in neoliberal terms,  Poland, passively attached to the European Union’s chariot, to the eurozone, to Berlin and Paris is more useful than beyond the chariot and jerking it without any sense. That’s why I am happy about the election results.

Translated by Katarzyna Abramowicz

> See also pictures from Madrid, Warsaw, Stockholm and Frankfurt