When there is no one, organizing the full political field of the symbol, there are different and frequently conflicting concepts of what should be the force of the full society. What is more, thanks to this, democracy is inactive alive and fresh ideas are constantly appearing in it, it is, borrowing the word from 1 of its theorists, a large experimentation in which different ideas clash and re-create social groups.
Claude Lefort in his definition of democracy stressed that this is simply a unique strategy that is organized around empty space. Everything in it is to be constructed, including the definition of the people (demos) which is besides subject to constant change. At the same time, the French philosopher warned that this trait of democracy, which distinguishes it from another political systems, may contain the premise of its defeat. 2 temptations are built into it, 1 is the temptation of totalitarianism, the introduction into the center of something that could fill this void, specified as a nation or working class, the another is the temptation of anarchism, the balance of all voices, which leads to complete political chaos.
If we look from this position at the phenomenon of extremist polarisation in our political life, which has so clearly emerged in fresh presidential elections, we can recognise it as a mostly natural phenomenon for the democratic system. erstwhile there is no one, organizing the full political field of the symbol, there are different and frequently conflicting concepts of what should be the force of the full society. What is more, thanks to this, democracy is inactive alive and fresh ideas are constantly appearing in it, it is, borrowing the word from 1 of its theorists, a large experimentation in which different ideas clash and re-create social groups.
Having said that, however, I must draw attention to the fundamental regulation of this freedom of creation and transformation of the symbolic-political sphere. Undoubtedly, there must be mechanisms in democracy that do not let 1 of the temptations mentioned above to materialise. In another words, in addition to the protection of pluralism, there should besides be rules that let for the smooth functioning of political mechanisms. The question remains what rules are involved, what is the minimum essential for the strategy to function. Their collection surely includes the formal principles of democracy, first of all the acceptance of election results and many prominent theorists. For example, Adam Przeworski believes this is simply a adequate criterion. In my work, however, I argue that the requirements are wider, that an ethical/cultural decision to enter into dialog with the opponent is needed for the functioning of the democratic system. However, I do not think that it must lead to consensus or compromise. The dialog that I mean is non-consensual dialogue, the aim of which is not an agreement, but an increasingly better common understanding. Failure to agree does not put an end to the efforts of knowing the another side of the dispute, its perspective, concerns or hopes.
In any case, it is clear that democracy requires certain supporters, which are both organization and cultural and ethical. This issue can besides be viewed from the another side, namely the functioning of the state itself or more broadly, of society. Even with a very strong ideological-political division, the regular operation of society can proceed without disruption. An example may be Italy of the 1960s and 1970s with their clear and extremist division into Christian democracy and communist party. This extremist division, which sometimes approached civilian war (year of lead!), did not prevent economical development, although its price was undoubtedly the pathology of the functioning of the public sphere, which yet led to the extremist collapse of the bipolar order.
However, how do these theoretical considerations translate into the last years of Polish politics? The criterion of acceptance of the elections and the transition of power from hand to hand is surely met, although the confusion around the elections of the Presidency makes us question here. This is despite the apparent abuses of those who have power and control of the public media at a given moment. They are of little importance in the face of the expansion of social media, but investment in funds is increasingly important.
Another issue is cultural-political division, motivated, as any want, by alleged cultural wars. It seems to me that beating over almost equal division of votes in the last (and penultimate) presidential elections is somewhat excessive. The division is forced by the very structure of these choices, which requires 1 of the 2 candidates to follow, which means that deeper divisions in each of these electorates are covered. Nevertheless, as in lens elections have revealed the fundamental foundations of divisions, but reflections require their actual sense, due to the fact that mostly the answer to the question whether they could jeopardise the existence of a democratic state depends on it.
I'm going to analyse divisions using, with any modifications, the categories introduced by the prominent social theorist Nancy Fraser. In fresh works, it uses 2 concepts to describe politics in the United States: progressive neoliberalism and conservative neoliberalism.
The first 1 seems to be an oxymoron, but it is about a situation where neoliberal economics are linked in a policy of recognition. The paradigmical example is the politics of Bill Clinton or Tony Blair. However, Fraser reserves that the policy is limited to certain clearly defined social groups from mediate and higher classes and mostly overlaps with the rule of meritocracy. In the case of feminism, 1 example is to focus on women who have a career in administration and corporations and encounter a barrier to the "glass ceiling", while neglecting actions for women of the folk classes. The same is actual of racial or sexual minorities. The policy of progressive neoliberalism was very successful in the 1990s and the first decade of this century, replacing politics to any degree New Deal in the United States or the welfare state in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the ideology of the free market, the dominance of financial capital remained intact and the social sphere was not specifically expanded. The exception in the United States was Barack Obama's introduction of importantly expanded wellness insurance (Obamacare).
The second concept is more hard to define. The origins of the phenomena marked by them date back to the days of Ronald Regan, erstwhile there seemed to be an improbable alliance between the extremist free marketplace economy and various fundamentalists specified as orthodox Jews, Christian fundamentalists, and conservative Catholics. These groups were previously hostile to each another as well as to leseferism. Conservative neoliberalism was able to take over full large social groups that felt left behind by its progressive counterpart. In economics, however, it mostly did not violate the free marketplace consensus, and its social program was limited to incentives for individual initiative or even for moral revival. The only structural promise, especially in the period of Trump's first rule, was to effort to revive the classical manufacture by introducing duties, which active moving distant from free marketplace orthodoxy. Trump's second presidency represents, on the 1 hand, radicalization of conservative neoliberalism, and, on the another hand, through a "technologyfeudism" effort to go beyond these 2 related but fiercely fighting ideology.
It is difficult, of course, to transfer virtually American categories to Polish soil, but I think the Fraser concept may be a good mention point, especially if 1 remembers the past of transformation. Undoubtedly, the free marketplace consensus accompanied her from the very beginning (Balcerovich's plan), although he was more or little softened by individual governments from the law (AWS) and left (SLD). The worldview war took the form of a post-communist division in the first phase to transform gradually into a nearly full version of the war of progressive neoliberalism with a conservative one, as illustrated by the fresh presidential election.
Real politics, however, never exhaust itself in specified universalistic schemes. There is always quite a few randomness, real flattering or imaginary voters' tastes and reactions to global contexts, both local and global. However, given that the main character was the category ‘change’, it turns out that the above analytical framework is indeed crucial. The "change" which, of course, referred to the breach of what is referred to as PiS/PO duopol, changed in all ways, I think, to the desire to break the neoliberal consensus. Both its progressive and conservative variations seem to be exhausted. If we look at the candidates who have achieved the top success among the young voters, Sławomir Mentzen from the Confederacy and Adrian Zandberg from Together, it links them, in all opposites, back to the ideology before the neoliberal consensus. In the case of the Party, this will be a return to the social democratic state of prosperity, mostly destroyed by neoliberal reforms. On the another hand, the Confederate programme is simply a radicalization of conservative neoliberalism: a libertarian task in economics and social life combined with the slogans of returning to the national state and conventional values. So it is possibly closest to the ideology of Trump's second term, with the fundamental difference that Poland is not a superpower, so isolationism is of course limited. On this political spectrum, Grzegorz Braun's programme is, in turn, radicalization of the Confederacy's programme in putting national issues on the agenda, which leads to the reactivation of chauvinism in its worst form of anti-Semitism, to which anti-Ukrainianism is now attached.
However, it is essential whether preachers of change, who, by the way, call themselves or are referred to as anti-system by observers, are able to endanger the democratic system. It is easiest to answer this question in the case of the Together Party. In this case, the strategy they are dealing with is understood as a neoliberal consensus and it is clear that its overthrow will not lead to the overthrow of the strategy in a broader sense as a set of procedures and democratic institutions, although it may alter the trajectory of their functioning. This besides applies, of course, to the fresh Left represented in the election by Magdalena Biejat. The difference between these groups, which in fact reflects the problems of the left on a global scale, boils down to the question of whether to operate inside the neoliberal consensus, changing it from the inside or proposing a clear alternate to it. The problem is, of course, that it inactive does not look like specified a holistic proposal will emerge, although it is rather likely that it will appear shortly from the integration of experiences of various types of social movements of a left-wing nature.
In the case of right-wing parties, the substance is rather apparent in the case of the Confederation of the Polish Crown, which advocates a change of strategy to monarchist and the actions of its leader seems to test the limits of the system, and thus the possibilities of its extremist transformation. However, generally, the organization and the Confederation of WiN were located on the outskirts of conservative neoliberalism. The Sławomir Mentzen organization is simply a mixture of extremist free-market demands with equally extremist demands in the worldview sphere, to which a pinch of meritocracy is attached, which is surely a shy announcement of technofeudalism.
The problem with writing political comments is that they are always a image of the past. erstwhile the situation is dynamic, and this is happening today, not only in relation to Poland, but besides the full world, 1 can only show certain trends, or even their roots, but it is hard to foretell how they will develop. Nancy Fraser in the title of 1 of the books evokes the well-known thought of Antoni Gramsci that the old could not die, but the fresh would be born, putting the thesis on the possible end of the fight of 2 varieties of neoliberalism. It seems that it can besides be applied to our conditions. The presidential elections have launched major changes in the political trajectory in our country, which we know for sure. In what direction Poland, the European Union or yet the full planet will move, we can only guess. In any case, strategy changes, the decay of the current strategy or its transformation can be predicted with large certainty, which will respond to fresh polarisation.
