Odzyskać liberalizm. Recenzja książki Andrzeja Walickiego "Od projektu komunistycznego do neoliberalnej utopii", Warszawa: Universitas 2013
To Recover Liberalism. Review of a book by Andrzej Walicki Od projektu komunistycznego do neoliberalnej utopii (From the Communist Project to the Neoliberal Utopia), Warszawa: Universitas 2013

Summary/Abstract: This review discusses a recent book by Andrzej Walicki, Od projektu komunistycznego do neoliberalnej utopii (From the Communist Project to the Neoliberal Utopia) (Warszawa: Universitas 2013). The book features a collection of essays, interviews, and scholarly articles published by Walicki in academic and popular journals between 2001 and 2012. Topics include a history of the communist project in a broader European perspective; the significance and legacy of de-Stalinization in Poland, with a particular emphasis on what the author calls "the Polish road away from communism" after 1956; right-wing conservative politics in Poland after 1989, the politicization of the memory of communism; and possible directions for the development of the Polish Left as a necessary component of a healthy democratic system. The compelling scholarly discussion is often combined with autobiographical sketches of an intellectual who has been deeply engaged in intellectual and social life in postwar Poland. Walicki, a prominent intellectual and specialist on intellectual history, studied and worked in Warsaw until he emigrated to Australia and then the United States (The University of Notre Dame) in the 1980s. In that sense, Walicki provides a unique perspective on Polish history and culture, influenced by both Polish and American academic worlds and intellectual traditions. The strength of the book is its focus on the role of language and the manipulation of terms such as "communism" or "liberalism" by contemporary political leaders in Poland to achieve specific emotional reactions from the public. One of the central claims of the book is that Polish political elites have "distorted" the meaning of liberalism by connecting it solely to the free market rather than to the original idea of individual freedoms. In this way, the dominant conservative elites in Poland are able to depict human rights and the welfare state as alien to the “Polish” tradition, supposedly exclusively Catholic and socially conservative. Walicki points to the need to recover the rich history of the Polish Left as well as to restore the original meaning and value of liberalism in shaping Polish democracy.

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