The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Social Policy in Interwar Poland

Paweł Grata

doi:10.2478/slgr-2021-0021

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this paper is to determine how the economic crisis, and the ad hoc attempts made by the authorities to counteract it, affected the Polish society and, above all, to prepare a multidimensional analysis of how the crisis impacted systemic changes in the Polish social policy. The author will examine both positive changes that followed the relevant global trends and also negative changes that resulted from the developmental lag, the country’s economic situation and especially the generally low involvement of the state via public funding in activities that were part of the state’s social policy. Assessment of Polish social policy during the crisis must be ambiguous. On the one hand, systemic changes in social policy introduced as a result of the economic collapse can be clearly distinguished, on the other hand, however, the severity of the crisis visibly affected many activities of state and local governments in the social sphere. These activities posed unsuccessful attempts to rescue the situation in the labour market. Additionally, an effective response to deepening poverty was missing, amendments adopted to labour legislation were disadvantageous to employees, and finally fundamental sacrifices in terms of social policy were made as the lawmakers passed the Unification Act during the crisis. Polish social policy was unable, for a number of reasons, to essentially redefine its approach to addressing the numerous social issues it had to face.

Highlights

At the end of the 1920s the greatest economic crisis in history flooded the entire capitalist world and it shook the European and global economy in a long-lasting way
Due to the social effects that the economic crisis brought in its train, the social sphere would play a special role, especially since Keynesianism ascribed it a considerable potential for economic recovery and the associated improvement of the situation of millions of families affected by the crisis
It is a common opinion that the Great Depression and the subsequent World War II became a decisive step on the path to building the post-1945 welfare state

Summary

Background

At the end of the 1920s the greatest economic crisis in history flooded the entire capitalist world and it shook the European and global economy in a long-lasting way. The measures taken during the years of ongoing economic slump laid the foundations for the later system of the welfare state They were enshrined in the social sphere of the American New Deal; Nazi Germany employed them just as extensively in the 1930s (see Łukasiewicz 1967; Morawski 2011; Nowaczewska 2009; Robbins 1937; Rothbart 2010). In expanding the instruments aimed at influencing the social sphere they changed permanently how governments impinged on the functioning of the market mechanism. It is worth examining how the economic crisis affected the social policy of interwar Poland, which had only existed for just over a decade at the time when the crises broke out. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Social Policy in Interwar Poland try’s economic situation and especially the generally low involvement of the state via public funding in activities that were part of the state’s social policy

Polish social policy on the verge of the crisis

Social consequences of the economic crisis in Poland

State response to the social effects of the economic crisis

Elements for reorienting social policy

Findings

Conclusion