The ends of revolution: capitalist de-democratization and nationalist populism in the east of Europe

Abstract

The dissolution of Soviet-type socialism has been often taken to signal various ends: the end of history, ideology, and revolution; the foreclosure of the symbolic and epistemic space of emancipation opened up by the French, Russian, and anti-colonial revolutions. Yet, the celebrations of the march of liberal democracy and capital have soon given way to alarming observations about a new wave of right-wing populism that feeds on the contradictions of inequality and freedom, largely generated by neoliberal capitalist globalization. Based on my field research in Poland, my paper engages with this familiar problem, which is often discussed as the “crisis” of liberal democracy, or “dedemocratization.” I show how the ends of communism and revolutionary politics have contributed to the social environment of emptiness, nihilism or the void, in which right-wing groups were able to thrive and claim to be the real voice of social change and justice, as opposed to the liberal establishment. To explore the way that void has been historically and materially constituted, my paper traces the shifting conditions of collective action or revolutionary practice in Poland and Eastern Europe since the 1960s. Specifically, I focus on the tragic dissolution and absorption of the massive “Solidarity” worker movement into neoliberal state building in the 1990s and thereby engage with the often-invoked dialectic between insurrection and constitution, or movement and institutionalization that haunt the revolutionary struggles.