IS THE INTELLIGENTSIA STILL NEEDED IN POLAND * Edmund MOKRZYCKI

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1 IS THE INTELLIGENTSIA STILL NEEDED IN POLAND * Edmund MOKRZYCKI Abstract : The intelligentsia is defined in terms of a social class constituted by educated people in the specific circumstances of 19th century Eastern Europe. What is the role this class in post-communist Poland? Can it survive the modernisation process? It is transforming itself into a modern knowledge class? Why has its political role declined so dramatically after the collapse of communism? One of the conclusions reached in this paper is that rapid increase in demand for educated labour has, paradoxically, resulted in the disintegration of the intelligentsia as a class. Making sense of the question In order to answer the question posed in the above title. It is necessary,unfortunately, to begin by making elementary conceptual distinctions. Intelligentsia is above all a collection noun for the possessors od certain social characteristics (higher education being most frequently among them) and as such represents a statistical category useful in various historical and constitutional conditions. In Poland (as well as in various other countries of the region) the term intelligentsia also has a deeper sociological meaning, namely as denoting a social class which, after finally taking shape in the nineteenth century, played a decisive role in the defence of national identity and the formation of modern Polish society. The text below is of course concerned with intelligentsia in the second sense. THere is no point in asking whether Poland still needs educated people, but it is worth asking whether the present crisis in intellectual circles represents the twilight of an entire social class 1. It is clear that Poland still needs educated people : the question is whether, given the present crisis in intellectual circles, the present class will fulfil this need. A class of learned people The formation of the Polish intelligentsia as a social class was a complicated process, but two factors were it seems, clearly decisive : 1- our backwardness, and 2- the lack an independent Polish state. * The first version of this text was introduced during the Polish-American conference Poland 200 years after the third partition : between east and west in her past and present organised by the Polish Studies Association. Polish Sociological Association and Polish Society for Political Studies, Waesaw 5th August cf. Joanna Kurczewska, Intelligencja polska : schodzenie ze sceny. Krytyka, 4, 1993 ; Marta Fik, Autorytecie wróc? Tygodnik Powszechny, 30 April 1995.

2 1- Among many historical conceptions of Central Europe only a few- and those the most arbitrary- give a basis for placing all of Poland (and any of the independent Polish states) on the western side of a line dividing the backward, agrarian East of Europe from the more developed transitional zone remaining linked economically with the West 1. In the social dimension, Eastern European backwardness manifests itself in (inter alia) the dominance of peasant culture, the weakness of bourgeois traditions, a strong dependence of social position on access to the means of state power and a low level of education of the society as a whole. The phenomenon the Polish intelligentsia fits perfectly in the latter social landscape, because it can be interpreted as being an answer to the modern challenge, the answer of a society, whose basic social strata were not ready for that challenge 2. CLearly decisive here is the coincidence of two sts of circumstances. On the one hand together with the devolpment of elements of a modern economy, education became of ever more significant vocational value. On the other hand the internal differentiation of the category of educated people (whether according to specialisation, reputation of school or position in the employment market) remains of secondary importance in the face of the basic division between learned people, a term still in use after the war, and the rest. It is natural that the rapid growth in the need for educated people in a backward society characterised by a low level of education results in that factor being an unusually powerful determinant of social position. In this sense the very existence of the intelligentsia as a social class is a structural symptom of backwardness and the evolution of criteria of membership of the intelligentsia constitutes a particular measure of progress. In provincial Poland at the time of the second world war possessors of a matriculation certificate merited the status of members of the intelligentsia, while according to research carried out under the direction of Professor Jan Szczepanski in the nineteen-sixties university degrees had replaced the matriculation certificate, and nowadays we tend the threshold even higher, thereby bringing the Polish conception of a member of the intelligentsia closer to the French conception of an intellectual. 2- THe lack of national independence affected the development of the Polish intelligentsia, its prestige and place in the social scene, in a different way from the effects of backwardness. Times of partition and occupation and in part, also of communist governments, by setting the Polish intelligentsia the task which in normal times belongs to the political elite, favoured the filling by this resulting in responsability for the fate of the national community. The combination of civilising leadership and political mission made the Polish intelligentsia an exceptional formation even at a European level. The practice of 1 Cf. eg Daniel Chirot (ed), The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe. University of California Press, Berkeley, Cf. Zygmunt Bauman, Intellectuals in East-Central Europe : Continuity and Change. East European Politics and Societies, Spring 1987, George Schöpflin, The Political Traditions of Eastern Europe. Daedalus, Winter

3 open recruitment coupled with the principle of service to society protected it from class criticism from below. It is characteristic that the victory of socialism affected the Polish intelligentsia, called at that time the working intelligentsia relatively mildly, if one considers what happened in other countries under communist rule. It is this fact that primarily explains the development of Polish culture and science in the time of the Polish People s Republic in a way which was exceptional for conditions within a totalitarian state. A People s Intelligentsia The Polish intelligentsia is therefore both a structural and historical phenomenon. It was because of the historically determined social context that this class came into being and in so far as one can judge, only in this context does it have a social raison d être. Transformation of this particular social contextchanges in the conditions of social activity, national independence, the system of general education, introduction of the foundations of a modern market economyshould reduce the social role of the intelligentsia in favour of other formations answering to the logic of changed circumstances, such formations as the middle class, political elites, a knowledge class or intellectuals understood in the French sense of the term. Such processes actually began long ago, althrough there are various opinions about their causal power. I will mention here, simply as examples, two critical moments from the past. With the attainment of national independence in 1918, the intelligentsia lost some of its political mandate to a new political elite, frequently of military and party political origin. Change of political culture in the country was immediate and perceptible, and the character of the changes can be successfully explained in terms of class. After the Second World War the experiment of establishing a people s democracy brought with it a very real threat not only to the position but also to the very existence of the intelligentsia as a social formation (which had been heavily reduced during the war, according to some estimates by as much as 40 %). The origin of this threat is not so much the secret police and censorship as the new intelligentsia also known officially as the people s intelligentsia and by its harsher critics as the baling-twine intelligentsia 1. With all respect to the suffering of the Polish intelligentsia, particularly in the first decade of the existence of people s government, it should be said that a question mark stood against the future of this formation not so much as a result of the repressive activity of that government but as a result of processes of structural change set in motion by those authorities within the framework of their plans for modernisation. The new intelligentsia was a people s formation by pedigree, but its ideological and political links with the people s authorities were by any measure ambiguous. On the one hand the new intelligentsia was characterised by a servility 1 Szapagatowa inteligencja : in this case a reference to the rough string holding together the bundles of belongings carried by new arrivals from the countryside. 3

4 exaggerated by the perspective of radical upward class mobility, and on the other by a peasant conservatism ans small-town mentality- both fundamentally contrary to revolutionary ideology even in its Stalinist variant. This formation arrived on the social scene without political vigour, and looked to the traditional intelligentsia as its reference group, rather than as a target to attack. For the authorities, however, this rapidly mobilised and trained cadre of specialists ready to join the process of building a people s Poland was a substitute for the real intelligentsia. The existential threat to the traditional inteeligentsia resulted from the very existence of the new intelligentsia and its capacity as an alternative source of expertise- available and more suited to changing conditions. At the beginning of the nineteen seventies this formation had already many characteristics of a socialist counterpart to the western knowledge class -amorphous and non ideological, but a reservoir of competent specialists of all kinds, from high national officials to scientists. The collapse of the socialist modernisation plan led to a complexe disentegration of the new intelligentsia. Part of it reinforced the party nomenklatura and its fringes, part found itself in the circles of the traditional intelligentsia most firmly in opposition, while some constituted a connecting tissue between them. The period of the first Solidarity was for the intelligentsia a period of spectacular comeback to the social scene in its traditional role, and a triumph of its ethos, political and social values and even of its specific style of political conduct. The famous ethos of Solidarity was nothing other than the traditional ethos of the Polish intelligentsia reanimated under conditions of dramatic political struggle and taken up by a movement of several million people. I believe that only in those terms is it possible to find an answer to the often repeated question, what happened to the ethos of Solidarity? It left the movment together with the intelligentsia. Escape from the sector It is time for the key question : what happened to the Polish intelligentsia after the collapse of the communist authorities and what is its role in the new political conditions? Prime importance should be given to two empirical processes which are well documented in statistical data and in the results of sociological research. The first of these, is the ever deepening pauperisation of the state funded non-industrial sectors employing the majority of the Polish intelligentsia 1 ; the second is the rapid growth of demand for a workforce with the highest qualifications, which in the labour market brings with it a corresponding rise in its selling price. These processes should cancel one another out in so far as they occur together, but they do not and this very fact shows that the state funded sector, 1 In the year 1994 salaries in the non-industrial state sector fell by 3,3 % in the entrepreneurial state sector they rose by 4,2% while pensions ans annuities rose by on average 2,9 %. 4

5 and even more so the part most heavily manned by the intelligentsia, constitutes an anomaly from the point of view of the principles of market economy. The mining industry is also an anomaly in this sense. Although, whereas the price of the labour force in mining is artificially high in relation to the market price as a result of state subventions of various kinds (overt and covert), in the state funded sector the price is artificially low. In other words, from the point of view of the principles of market economy members of the intelligentsia employed in the state sector are the objects of exploitation by the state. This exploitation is possible because of the state s effective monopoly in this area of activity (science, higher education, the hospital service, etc.). On the other hand, we observe a phenomenon which can be interpreted as an escape from this exploitation. Those insolved might not choose to call it that, and some of those involsed, for example a significant portion of academia, are against such escape as a matter of principle. I have in mind, of course, the abandonment of a vocation, something which takes various forms and extents in different areas. If for example we take the case od science and higher aducation, according to various estimates up to 30 % of academics have left. Unfortunately this is a matter of positive selection, in general the yougest and the best leave. Some go abroad, the majority take up other activities. Those who remain carry on dual professional lives, often regarding their academic activity as of secondary importance, legitimating a higher professional standing. In many departments and in many institutes there are practically no academics below the age of forty. The social consequences of this state of affairs will only be fully visible after several years. If something exceptionally favourable to Polish academic activity happens, a further several years would still have to pass before the best young graduates began again to choose academic careers. During this time the youngest amont the representatives of the still relatively numerous age groups in Polish academia would be reaching their fifties.political changes with espect to science and higher aducation, among them the inevitable radical reform of this area, will only be politically possible when the results of present policies affect certain working class circles by blocking the road upward through free education 1. In a few years a Polish diploma from a state university will probably have less value in the Polish market place, yielding its position to diplomas of private and foreign universities. In Poland, academic activity along with art and culture, and in contrast to agriculture and industry, ahs retained in many areas (among them the social sciences, something particularly noteworthy for communist countries) a good European standard. The unavoidable collapse of state run higher education in Poland (this thesis arises from demographic data) is in the context of our present considerations doubly important. Science and higher education constitute not only 1 For a more detailed analysis of the negative effects of working class opposition to reforms see Edmund Mokrzycki, Class Interests, Redistribution and Corporatism in : Christopher Bryant and Edmund Mokrzycki (eds). Democracy, Civil Society and Pluralism in Comparative Perspective : Poland Great Britain and the Netherlands, IFiS Publishers, Warsaw,

6 of the most important occupational spheres of the intelligentsia, but also the area in which the intelligentsia perpetuates itself. In the case of science and higher education two phenomena are clearly visible. Firstly, a change of social position is taking place on a massive scale i.e. a mass transfert from one social-vocational position (e.g. educated ) to another (e.g. politics or industry). The scale and character of this process makes it a process par excellence of social tranformation, giving rise to a significant regrouping of the social scene. In our case the regrouping is resulting in a partial disintegration of the social fabric constituting the traditional intellignetsia, and the formation of a new structure driven by the market mechanism. Without going into detail it is possible to state that as a result of unfirtunate policies with respect ti the state sector and of profitable changes in the labour markert 1 a partial and spontaneous transformation of the traditional intelligentsia into a post socialist counterpart to the western knowledge class is taking place. A second phenomenon is connected with this development. The part of the state sector manned by the intelligentsia ever more clearly constitutes an undefended social space (to borrow a term from Thomas Heller), that is, a space which does not attract the attention of poweful political actors and strong interest groups. As we have seen, in view of the situation in the labour market, people with the highest qualifications adopt individual escape strategies in response to the pauperisation of that sector. The weaker part of the intelligentsia from the state sector, having neither strong suits to play in the market place, nor political capitaln is helpless. Although the latter are clearly the object of exploitation, their plight is of interest neither for the political class nor for the trades unions (if you do not take into account general declarations of understanding ans support). It is characteristic that the single serious attempt at protest from this milieu, the strike of teachers in 1992, met with a surprising ans single-minded reaction from the more important actors on the political scene, in spite of the fact that the action of the teachers from the point of view of content (the economic and legal basis of their demands) and in the context of the mores of Polish strike action took and exceptionally positive form. People s power? In a modern society, particularly in a democracy, political power does not only belong to those who exercise it. The second, more profound, dimension of political power is founf within society. Here, in the arragement of relations between interest groups, the processes deciding the fundamental directions of state policy, take place over generations rather than months or parliamentary terms. In post-communist Poland a particular a arrangement is taking shape. The class of workers in heavy industry occupies an absolutely commanding position, 1 According to research carried by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences under the direction of Prof. H. Domanski, the socialist divergence of the two basic factors of status, ie education and income, is systematically disappearing. 6

7 well-organised and parctised in the struggle for its class interest. From there impulses flow on to political scene, which in the highest degree determine the behaviour of the political elite. Deprives of their own organisation the peasantry influence political decisions through the post-communist PSL (Polish Peasants Party), which at present gives them an important share in the formation of state policy. The political elite meanwhile engage in what Leszek Balcerowicz has recently called 1 `small politics, the essence of which is the primacy of electoral arithmetic. As a result of the elite opportunism a significant influence on the politics of the country is, conversely, beginning to be strongly exerted by the differentiated category of the professionally inactive (those receiving old-age and disability pensions, the unemployed etc. -together somme 11 million people among a population of nearly 39 million). The intelligentsia and the already numerous class of entrepreneurs each find themselves as body on the margins of the country s political life. From the point of view of liberal reform this is an extremely disadvantageous arrangement. In this context, above all its is necessary to explain the braking of reform by the present coalition? Especially unfortunate was the sudden withdrawal of the intelligentsia from the role of politically leading social actor. In part this withdrawal happened due to the paradox of Polish reform already outlined : suitable conditions for the individual careers of the educated weaken both the bonds within groups of such people and their need to defend group interest. The myth of Solidarity as a movement transcending class is by no means insignificant, and this myth has been transferred to the next, post-communist, utopia of people s government under the leadership of the working class. Empirical research from opinion polls to deep sociological studies show that there is a positive correlation between education and support for liberal reform, privatisation, mechanisms of the market economy, democratic institutions, the idea of an open society, and integration with Western Europe. Educated people are laso less suceptible to populist manipulation (cf. for example data concerning educated pensiones) authoritarian temptations, and the charms of ideology appealing to the herd instinct. It is necessary also to remember that in Poland barely 7 % of the population has higher education, one of the lowest indice of scholarisation in Europe, and to remember the structure of education in Poland is as levels that of a system still geared to meet the needs of the planned economy. Poland is as it always has been, a country of low general education in which an educated elite stands out the rest of society in its views, lifestyle, customs, values, aspirations, interests and, what is most important today, possibilities for development. In this situation, the disintegration of the intelligentsia, of the single social forum for articulation of the interests of the educated, and through it of the interests of national development, must be recognised as a most unfortunate event. 1 Master of `small politics are great players but small people. Leszek Balcerowicz, Barriers to Reform, Wprost, 33,

8 The intelligentsia is losing its position not only in Poland, but also in other postcommunist countries 1. This, it seens, is consitent with the logic of post-communist transformation. It might be possible to say that this has brought us closer to the model of modern society, were it not for what is happening in other segments of society. The political dominance of the (socialist) class of workers in heavy industry, and the strengthening of anachronistic peasant conservatism in the countryside, stand in the way of Polish society s conformity to that model. 1 Cf. Boris Dublin, The End of the Intelligentsia and the Emergence of a Professional Class, Fifth World Congress of Eastern and Central European Studies, Warsaw 6-11 August