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The Regime of Violence in Socialist and Postsocialist Poland

2011; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 102; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00045608.2011.620512

1467-8306

Michael Fleming,

Political Conflict and Governance

Abstract This article seeks to contribute to the geographical debate about the nature of violence in socialist and postsocialist Poland. It responds to Bradshaw and Stenning's (2004) call to account for the uniqueness of postsocialism. By comparing "regimes of violence," which characterize particular socioeconomic formations, a clearer conception of postsocialism can emerge, showing how different configurations of violence have dominated the socialist and postsocialist periods, respectively, and how violence has been directed toward non-Polish ethnocultural groups. The article indicates the important role that representational violence is playing in making postsocialism, where class-for-itself subjectivities are specific targets of marginalization. Este artículo pretende contribuir al debate geográfico relacionado con la naturaleza de la violencia en la Polonia socialista y postsocialista. El artículo responde al llamado de Bradshaw y Stenning (2004) de tomar en cuenta el carácter único del postsocialismo. Al comparar los "regímenes de violencia", característicos de formaciones socioeconómicas particulares, puede emerger una más clara concepción del postsocialismo, mostrando la manera como diferentes configuraciones de violencia han dominado los períodos socialistas y postsocialistas, respectivamente, y cómo la violencia ha sido enfocada hacia grupos etnoculturales no polacos. El artículo indica el importante papel que está jugando la violencia representacional en la construcción del postsocialismo, donde las subjetividades asociadas con clase en sí misma son blancos específicos de marginalización. Key Words: classPolandpoliticspostsocialismviolence关键词: 类, 波兰政治后社会主义暴力Palabras clave: clasePoloniapolíticapostsocialismoviolencia Acknowledgments I would like to thank Professor Audrey Kobayashi and the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions and criticisms. Notes 1. The terminology to describe the system that existed in East--Central Europe after World War II—socialism, really existing socialism, communism—is problematic. Socialism and postsocialism are the common terms used in Britain, whereas communism and postcommunism dominate in Poland. Both describe the same phenomena. Here I follow contemporary British practice without prejudice. 2. Stark and Bruszt's (Citation1998, 3) call that "capitalisms must be compared vis-à-vis each other" was therefore an important intervention. It is justified to speak of capitalisms in the plural to reflect the different articulations of various regulation frameworks and cultural practices with the fundamental free labor–free capital relation, but it is also fair to speak of capitalism in the singular to emphasize the key social relations. Clarity on this point helps overcome the problems, identified by R. Brenner in the mid-1970s, with Smithian definitions of capitalism. See R. Brenner (Citation1977). 3. Interestingly, Arendt's (Citation1948) work on totalitarianism, on the other hand, implies a notion of structural violence. 4. Structural violence has been explored by Galtung (Citation1969) and Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (Citation2004), among others. 5. As Bourdieu and Wacquant (Citation2004, 273) pointed out, symbolic violence "is not a logic of 'communicative interaction' where some make propaganda aimed at others. … It is much more powerful and insidious than that: being born in a social world, we accept a whole range of postulates, axioms, which go without saying and require no inculcating." Also see Bourdieu (Citation2000). 6. Bohle and Neunhöffer (Citation2006, 97), for example, chart how neoliberalism in Poland was promoted and argue that neoliberalism was "facilitated through long-standing transnational networks … [and] … emerged as a separate opposition trend, shifting anti-communist radicalism from political to economic views and attacking democratic socialist ideas for their egalitarian and collectivist values." This process involved the mobilization of representational violence against particular groups, as I show. The normalization of economics in its neoliberal guise has been particularly pernicious. Peet (Citation2007, 81) highlighted the class bias of neoliberal theory: "the neoliberals … by the free individual [mean] … the boss." 7. Indeed, processes of neoliberalization are likely to produce differential configurations of violence as legacies and geographies of uneven development are encountered. 8. See, for example, the way in which Laitin (Citation2007) explores violence, and how Lawrence and Karim (Citation2007) frame violence in their introduction to their edited collection of essays on violence. In their discussion of neoliberalization and globalization, Peck and Tickell (2003, 163) pointed out that "what [neo-liberal] politicians are trying to depoliticize, [opponents and critics] seek to repoliticize—and the use of the label 'neoliberal' suits [opponents and critics] because it is they who wish to underline the political origins and character of the program." Violence needs to be recognized as one of those key issues that are subjected to processes of depoliticization. 9. The constitution of class and class transformation in postsocialist Poland has been explored by Stenning (Citation2005b), Ost (Citation2005), and others. Stenning, in particular, has explored the everyday lives of working-class communities, and it is important to recognize the changing complexion of various socioeconomic groups both through the socialist and postsocialist periods. A. Smith and Stenning (Citation2006) drew attention to diverse economic practices under postsocialism and in doing so highlighted some of the ways in which class is being rearticulated. 10. Also see Sartre (Citation2004, 596–97: "[Terror] always arises in opposition to seriality, rather than to freedom. In fact, both in its origins and in its manifestation, it is freedom liquidating the indefinite flight of the Other, that is to say, impotence, through violence." 11. Sartre's views on violence display a consistency over the course of his career despite the varying ethical emphases. Arguably, the tension between, for example, Being and Nothingness (1990) and The Critique of Dialectical Reason (2004), which prompted Aron (Citation1976, 160) to declare that Sartre had transformed "a philosophy of human liberation into a philosophy of violence" was due, in part, to the expansion of Sartre's scale of analysis from the individual to a deeper focus on the dynamics of the social and of history. 12. This categorization of the various forms of violence can help highlight the extent to which a particular set of social relations is dependent on directed coercion and could provide the basis for an ethical and normative critique. Some systems seem to rely more heavily on intentional structural violence of varying intensities, whereas in others nonintentional structural violence dominates. 13. It should also be noted that some forms of "self-expression" within society are deemed to be illegitimate, for example, murder, rape, and robbery. Illegitimate forms of self-expression tend not only to challenge the legal basis of society but transgress the ethical boundaries of what specific societies deem to be acceptable conduct (itself subject to contestation). The sanction against illegitimate activities varies across time and space. This might be due to, on the one hand, the limited ability of law enforcement agencies to curtail them, and on the other, it might be the result of some actors seeking to benefit from the concomitant widespread social dislocation and apprehension. But, as Blomley (Citation2003) reminded us, the law also defends certain types of violence for example, the property system. Thus, any assessment of violence needs to be historically and geographically grounded and acknowledge the ambiguity of violence itself. It should be clear that I agree with Galtung's (1969, 168) view that "violence is present when human beings are influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realisations are below their potential realisations." 14. In his Rome Lecture of 1964, Sartre charted out criteria for judging the acceptability of counterviolence, which offers a way to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate self-development and self-expression. Violence can be accepted if it does not produce an exploitative system that re-creates subhumanity; it does not produce ideologies that function to preserve or re-create subhumanity; it must not alienate the end (producing humanity). The synthetic unity of means–ends (i.e., the end infuses the means; ends and means should not be judged in relation to each other, but rather against the structures that the unity of means–ends seeks to overcome) demands that violence is limited; it must have popular support, but violence must be recognized as problematic by leaders of the popular movement and continually critiqued. See Bowman and Stone (Citation1997, 305). 15. Our response to various forms of violence and possible endorsement of counterviolence are intimately connected with our projects. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi, frequently and correctly cited as a pacifist, also advised violence "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence" and argued that forgiveness (which he endorsed) for a wrong committed only makes sense when there is power to punish (Gandhi Citation1961, 132). Arguably, pacifism is as much a strategic choice as a point of principle, and Nojeim's (2004, 9) point that violence and nonviolence "exist along a single continuum of political action," and that the boundary between violence and nonviolence is not sharp, is timely. 16. This includes domestic violence. Giles and Hyndman (2004, 4) rightly noted that, "violence perpetrated at home is increasingly understood as part of broader, social, political, and economic processes that are embedded in state policies, public institutions, and the global economy," but it is also important to understand acts of domestic violence in their individuality if personal agency is to be recognized. In short, it is necessary to hold in tension the simultaneous vacuity and wider social significance of such acts and to acknowledge that many acts of subjective violence are dialectically related to structural violence. 17. See Harvey (Citation1999, 32, 159–60), for example. 18. The notion of representational violence, however, unlike Bourdieu's idea of symbolic violence, also describes a "logic of 'communicative interaction' where some make propaganda aimed at others." 19. Benjamin (Citation1997, 239–40) discussed the general permissibility of the individual strike, and the impermissibility of the general strike, which challenges the legal system that permits individual strikes. During a general strike, unless the state is prepared for a reconfiguration of social relations, intentional structural violence is highly probable. 20. The particular manner in which structural and subjective violence relate to each other often militates against the eradication of subjective violence, however. 21. Worker discontent was particularly dangerous to the Party. Intentional structural violence was frequently used to bring it under control, as in Poznań in 1956, Gdańsk in 1970, and again in 1981 throughout the country. It is also worth noting that peaks in representational violence, such as in 1968, often coincided with peaks in intentional structural violence. 22. Sikorski Institute. A9.Ie/15 doc 55. "Uwagi o naszej polityce międzynarodowej" [Comments regarding our international politics]. 23. National Archives FO 1052 /323 /36I, FO 1052 /323/ 41B. 24. Although there was armed resistance to the communist takeover of Poland, the targeting of members of minority communities by some groups was predicated on the idée fixe that members of national minorities were, or at least were sympathetic to, communists and that by attacking them "Poland" was being defended. 25. There is considerable merit, therefore, in considering that minorities were positioned as homines sacri in the aftermath of World War II in Poland. See Agamben (Citation1998, 73) for a discussion of homo sacer. 26. The number of those imprisoned is difficult to ascertain with accuracy. A report by the Ministry of Internal Affairs from 1979 states that in 1944, 11,063 were arrested, 45,148 in 1945, 44,411 in 1946, 30,521 in 1947, 24,443 in 1948, 22,848 in 1949, and 20,727 in 1950. These figures do not include the 80,000 to 100,000 who were detained prior to the "fixed" election of January 1947, which confirmed the PPR's leading position. See Dudek and Paczkowski (Citation2005, 272). 27. See Głuchowski and Polonsky (2008) for an extensive discussion of the 1968 events in Poland. 28. The 1950 census indicated that there were 50,000 Jews, 160,000 Belarusians, 170,000 Germans, 150,000 Ukrainians, and around 30,000 people from other minority groups including Lithuanians. These figures should be treated with caution, given the nationality policy of the PZPR. See Eberhardt (Citation2000, 76). 29. For a discussion of Poland's experience of marketization in the 1990s see Kowalik (Citation2001). "Shock therapy" was possible, in part, due to what Balcerowicz (Citation1995, 161–63) has described as a period of "extraordinary politics" following the Solidarity victory of 1989. Klein (2008) has shown how rapid commodification of previously public goods can take place in the aftermath of a crisis or disaster. 30. By describing representational violence as overdeveloped in Poland, I wish to highlight that elements of the previous regime of representational violence (including idées fixes about the other), although frequently reworked, coexist with the more subtle constructions of neoliberal discourse, which "actively manufactures the misrecognition of its violences" (Springer, Citation2009b, 47). This is not to argue that representational violence is any more, or less, "violent" than in established capitalist societies, although its often more visible. 31. In December 1948 the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) merged with the Polish Workers' Party, forming the PZPR. 32. The PPR and PZPR were not the only organizations attempting to guide representational violence. The Roman Catholic Church's ethno-religious policy also isolated minority populations and, despite its hostility to the communist government and contrary to much contemporary Polish scholarship, provided important support for the PPR's notion that some groups of people had no place in Poland. 33. For a discussion of the new minority rights regime in Poland, see Fleming (Citation2002). 34. And the reverse is true: The multicultural agenda challenges the transfer of social anger. Disabling the mechanism of anger transfer or, more precisely, enabling class conflicts to be expressed in a class register, would bring into question wider neoliberalizing processes, and clearly this is not what is sought by neoliberalizing elites. The multicultural agenda as it is presently constituted has clear limits and is frequently connected with particular towns and cities attempting to "regenerate" themselves through heritage tourism; however, some local efforts at retrieving the past and promoting cultural plurality are encouraging and are transforming the elite-driven multicultural agenda to one that resonates with living working-class cultures. 35. It should be noted that the role of trade unions fundamentally changed from socialism to postsocialism, and that understandings of the relationship of labor to capital were warped by the official socialist ideology of the state. 36. Hörschelmann (Citation2004, 237) noted that in 1995, 55 percent of the population were living below the social minimum as benchmarked by the World Bank, and the effort to maintain an adequate income often required longer working hours (Stenning Citation2005b, 121). 37. The intensity of representational violence directed toward the working classes also relates to the antidemocratic way in which "shock therapy" was instituted in the period of "extraordinary politics" since market socialism (an important trend within Solidarity) had to be thoroughly delegitimated if neoliberalization was to proceed. This has implications for how representational violence is differentially constituted in the wake of disaster capitalism (Klein Citation2008) around the globe. 38. Neoliberalism should not be treated as a monolithic force but varies across space with a number of distinct contradictions as the different experiences of Eastern European economies over the last two decades indicate. During the socialist period, as Mevius (Citation2005) reminded us, "patriotic socialism" was promoted throughout East–Central Europe, which privileged the ethnic majority (at the expense of minorities).