Participation and Interests

Abstract

The official vision of the “socialist social structure” was constructed on the “two-plus-one” principle well known in Poland. It is possible to analyze the problem of the social and political structures in Poland in terms of two contradictory hypotheses. Both concern the emergence of these structures and the relations between them. The peaceful character of the changes also paved the way for some criticism: there are those who believe that the evolutionary nature of the changes helped the old “nomenklatura” social actors to survive, especially on the level of local power. Due to the massive political support, open rejection of the program was less probable than the informal ways in which some groups and enterprises were trying to avoid or modify it. The philosophy of the second stage of the economic program requires a completely different type of social participation and involvement. The peculiarities in the representation of interests results from the weakness of the interests themselves.