We've reached the West! Around the book Jakub Dymek Revolution of ambition. How is Poland changing?

When we read that “in Poland present we live better than always and we do not deficiency reasonable reasons to be satisfied”, we begin to wonder whether we request specified a large dose of complacency. After all, ambition requires us to anticipate even more of ourselves, to be more critical of ourselves, to focus alternatively on what we are not satisfied with. So possibly James the Smoke book is not a book about ambition at all?

Smoke begins its A revolution of ambition a short memory of 1988, the year in which – as he writes – he was born. In this year the West was only a dream of Poles, and fewer expected that as early as 1989 the system, which after planet War II they built in Central and east Europe, would break down like a home of cards. Fortunately for all of us, it collapsed and our grandparents and parents entered a fresh era: the race of the West. If we talk about something that after 1989 united all Poles, regardless of their political, spiritual and worldview beliefs, it was undoubtedly a desire for Poland to be like in the West! Our grandparents and parents wanted to live like in the West, make money like in the West, enjoy their journeys like the people of the West. It is hard to criticize this attitude, and speaking about it present – almost 40 years later – with pity or embarrassment is exaggerated and definitely ahistoric. After decades of Polish miserry, greyness and complexes, it should not be amazing that Poles wanted to enjoy even a substitute for prosperity. Even if he were occupied by leaving his homeland, working below qualifications in British or German factories, thousands of broken families, and left at the mercy of the grandmothers of several-year-old euro orphans. Anyone who could, yet wanted to buy back, taste a better world, have something out of life!

However, the smoke in the revolution of ambition does not want to focus on the lives of these millions of Poles, who after 1989, or with even more strength after 2004, that is, after Poland's accession to the European Union joined this economical race. His book is written from the position of 2026 and it is Poland here and now he is curious in it most. It is about this Poland – about modern Poland and most present – that he writes directly: we are already the West, we have caught them, we have achieved what our grandparents and parents have been chasing for decades! This is the main thesis of his book, which focuses on all another considerations: both on migration policy and abroad presence, and on Poland's relations with neighbours; both on social and pro-family policies of the state, and on labour law and labour protection standards; both on energy transformation and climate protection, and on the current political-party dispute. Thesis about Poland's catching up with the West and Poles organizes further conclusions proposed by the author, but at the same time it seems to put the reader before a large dilemma: do we truly have something to enjoy? But this is simply a small later.

As mentioned above, the author comes from a strong thesis that Poland has already caught up with the West. Therefore, most readers will most likely face the question of the minute in which it was done. According to the author A revolution of ambition The minute of completion of the systemic transformation process was the turn of 2015 and 2016. The final consequence was to pay the Polish families the benefit of "Family 500+", which in 2016 cost the state budget PLN 17.6 billion. Importantly, in 2025 the government allocated as much as PLN 64 billion to the “800+” programme. Why should this moment, according to Dymek, be treated as the end of transformation, not just symbolic joining this mythical West? He believes that the introduction of this programme by the government of Beata Szydło led to the collapse of ideology on which Polish political elites based the management of the Polish economy and public policies after 1989. In this ideology, it was accepted as a general paradigm that catching up with the West must affect sacrifices – if we want to be rich in the future, we must agree to "poor" today. The formation of a healthy and efficient economy, like the Western one, assumed that during the construction of the foundations of Poland and Poles had to accept that they would not benefit from this improvement immediately – we gotta wait for profits.

Meanwhile, in 2015 Beata Szydło – we are aware that she is only a personification of the redefining of the meta-political paradigm of the Law and Justice in Poland – convinced Poles and Poles that they no longer gotta wait for these fruits, it is adequate to scope for them. The passing of the law introducing the "Family 500+" programme and the transfer of the fixed amount of this cash benefit for Polish children became a circumstantial earthquake for Polish political elites. During the first period of operation of the program, almost 4 million children from almost 2 million Polish families were supported and although the programme – looking at it in the long word – did not reverse bad demographic trends, it radically rebuilt the reasoning of Poles and Poles about the country, the actions of ruling politicians and the credibility of politicians. With the main thesis of Dymek, it is hard to argue – many political scholars in the last decade pointed to a breakthrough in the approach to relations between the ruling and the voters, whose symbol was the loudest of the 2015 electoral promises. In a tangible way, it was then shown to Polish and Polish people that promises can be fulfilled, that citizens have the right to anticipate this from power and that Poland can afford to make usage of the fruits of economical development.

The thought of the “catch-up” of the West – as Smoke points out – is not just a publicised clickbait story, but is reflected in economical and macroeconomic data, especially if we combine it with akin data for another European Union countries. In a peculiar way, Polish publicist compares these statistic with German, because, in fact, the author needs to be right again – “the subject of German troubles became a kind of fashion in the Polish public debate” (p. 27), while “a thousand-year painting of Germans collapsed in Poland in just a fewer years” (p. 32). The crisis of the German economy and the political problems of the Germans, which are caused by, among others, the increasing power of the alternate for Germany, seem to perpetuate in Poland and Poles the belief that we truly have nothing to be ashamed of today. Revolutions about which Dymek writes – a revolution of dignity, a revolution of aspirations and a revolution of ambition – which became the fruit of the first regulation of the Law and Justice, bring rebirth of national pride in Poland. At the same time they perpetuate the belief that improvement will always accompany us and that we are in specified a place of historical-civilization, from which no 1 and nothing will always expel us. Very gently, it is at least naive.

The Book of Smoke is not meant to be a treatise of good humour and temper for us, like any prima facie It might seem. Of course, it is good to adopt the position that Poland is already a full subject of relations in the Western European world, it can enjoy faster economical improvement than another countries of our continent, and Polish and Polish people enjoy the effects of this development. The "revolution of ambition" is, however, summa summarum A alternatively pessimistic prophecy. The smoke seems to show us that we are already part of the West, or de facto We realized the ambitions and aspirations of our grandparents and parents. On the another hand, it clearly proves to us that we are besides taking the way of the Western states in the management of public policies, and unfortunately it is expected that in 10 or 20 years we will face the same problems that Germany, the French, the British or the Spanish face today. An example of this is the migration policy which Polish governments have cultivated in fresh years. The paradox is that "the government, which won on the slogans of not welcoming refugees and migrants to Poland, actually opened the doors to them the widest in history" (p. 179). The smoke shows a number of facts, data, decisions, and regulations that actually prove it. I don't want to quote all this narrative, due to the fact that it does. A revolution of ambition is simply a book worth reaching out to and allowing the author to follow the way outlined by him.

For those who perceive to the "Two Left Hands" podcast co-hosted by Smoke, many of the conclusions in his book will not be surprising. any of them may have heard and guessed the reasons for them. This does not change the fact that he managed to make a rather engaging communicative whole. Importantly, this interesting position devoted to contemporary Poland addresses a number of topics and issues that do not necessarily go to the front pages of newspapers, and surely do not become the subject of major releases of major news services. And not due to the fact that no 1 watches tv or reads newspapers in Poland anymore. Just any topics – and it is hard to disagree with Dymek again – are hard to get into the media mainstream in Poland. An example is the author's "classism, that is, the emotion of contempt or superiority towards others based on the class difference" (p. 119) or "the strengthening view in Poland that EU membership has ceased to be the origin of subsidies and improvement programs which Polish business has utilized and becomes the origin of regulation on which Polish business is losing" (p. 288). The book Dymek is full of interesting themes concerning contemporary Poland, which is worth deepening, to at least reflect on them, even if it does not precisely share its diagnosis.

To be honest, erstwhile I reached for the revolution of ambition, I expected a higher concentration of "antilibrary phobia" than I received. Not due to the fact that I think of Smoke as an offensive ‘libcophobe’. alternatively due to the fact that on the randomly open side of the book, erstwhile I reached for it in a conventional bookstore, I found a paragraph in which the author will avenge this terrible liberalism and capitalism, which, like a hurricane, swept through Poland in the last 30 years. But as the classical said, nothing more wrong! The criticism of liberalism in Smoke is alternatively a consequence to the problems facing modern national states in the realities of the global economy. This is mostly justified criticism, but in rule – at least to my opinion – it is not a criticism of liberalism strict sense, but alternatively this version of it that leads to the transformation of any societies into hypnotized montage or cosmopolitan hordes of rats of materialism. The Liberal attached to the axiological sources of this ideology will not blindly defend the criticisms of Smoke status quo, but rather, he will ask himself, ‘How do we defend the individual present from modern tyrants who are entering our lives through fresh ways?’ The question is not answered by Smoke, but I don't think it's primarily about giving answers. A revolution of ambition.

For a reason, I have not yet referred to the subtitle of the book Smoke. It sounds rather innocent and seemingly uncontroversial: “How is Poland changing?”. Why innocent and uncontroversial? After all, change is simply a natural component of social life, due to the fact that change is simply a key origin in scientific, technological and civilisational development. We are all accustomed to change and although it is happening present faster and more unpredictable than it was a fewer decades ago, it would be hard to find those who would question the very naturalness of the changes. Although the smoke in his book does not resolve many of his observations and doubts, he answers the question contained in its subtitle in a alternatively strong and uncompromising way. So how does Poland change? Which corresponds to the author A revolution of ambition? Poland is changing just as Germany, France and the United Kingdom have changed. Modern Poland is going the same way present as another Western European countries. Poland makes the same mistakes, commits the same omissions, is blind to the same problems and threats, accepts the same risks.

Does this mean that we are doomed to have our social, political and economical scenery in 10, 20, or 30 years to be anything different from the social, political or economical scenery of today's Germany, France or large Britain? Is it essential that Warsaw in 10, 20 or 30 years is like present-day Berlin, Paris or London? These questions will cease to seem completely abstract if we realize that we entered the European Union more than 22 years ago, while those who straight observed this historical minute – like those writing these words – seem to have happened only yesterday. So it is worth reasoning about Poland in 10, 20 or 30 years, due to the fact that in reality it is already tomorrow.