Does Poland have a social market economy?

According to the present Polish Constitution, Poland is supposed to have a social market economy. That concept, a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching, is an attempt to create a market economy with a human face. Is that what Poland's current economic system is really like? Or is it ruthless, dog-eat-dog, run-away capitalism that creates a small privileged class which sucks the blood out of the rest of society? Poles sometimes call it 'dziki kapitalizm'. Does Balcerowicz epitomise a social market economy? Does PO, PiS or SLD?

Which it does.


Polonius, are you getting confused? You were decrying the Constitution as being an SLD piece of paper, and now you're saying that it is a cornerstone of Catholicism? Social market economies are a feature of social democratic countries - not Catholic ones.

A precursor was none other than the late Primate Stefan Wyszyński who already back in the 1930s had extensively researched and wirtten on the subject. It has been part and parcel of JP2's teachings and has been continued by his successors.

Why do so many Poles complain of the hearltessness of hte current economic system. If it were so social, its rapacious edge should have been blunted. Is Balcerowicz a social freemarketeer or a hard-nosed privateer?

That's because the system generally works - if it's implemented properly. A great example in Poland is with KRUS - how many uneconomic farms are still in business simply because of KRUS?

Catholicism and social democracy do tend to go well with each other.


Because they thought that they would immediately get rich after the change of the system and they didn't. Those complaining tend to be the ones who were quite unproductive in the PRL and who had no interest in suddenly working hard.

If it wasn't for Balcerowicz, we would have - at best - another Argentina.

A very uncharitable and arrogant statement by a have against the have-nots. Did anyone ask to be born in a town where the sole employer got balcerised throwing everybody out of work? Such a one couldn't move to another town because the situation there was the same.

Balcerowicz hand-over of the economy to foreign capital was a sell-out from whcih Poland may never recover. Rather than helping create a native entrepreneurial class, he sold off Poland's industries at a fraction of their value.

And a very truthful statement. There was a huge cadre of workers in 1989 who had no real interest in working properly - they had spent a significant amount of time in a system where it was nearly impossible to get fired for being bad at your job - and these are the ones who struggled immensely in the new era. Meanwhile, those that knew how to work found themselves in a much better situation.


Perhaps it wouldn't have happened had they been productive to begin with. Did you know that East German productivity still lags considerably behind the West, even all these years later?


What was the alternative? Poland had no money at all - and she had to make sure that her liabilities (pensions, etc) were still paid. The factories were often old and outdated - and unprofitable. I'm a huge supporter of worker self government in the Yugoslav model - but experience shows us that Solidarity management was every bit as awful as PZPR management.


Many of those industries were worthless.