Too Much Shock, Not Enough Therapy: Transnational Capital and the Social Implications of Poland's Ongoing Transition to a Market

Abstract

In this article, an argument is presented for the return of labour to centre stage in the critical study of transition. The transition to capitalism in Eastern Central Europe generally, and Poland in particular, is discussed and the negative social impacts of transnational capital in post-communist development and the reconstitution of the Polish state in favour of (transnational) capital interrogated, through an exploration of the ever-deeper embedding of neoliberalization. There has been a reworking of the institutional infrastructures where the communist and post-communist political economy was grounded and transnationally oriented social forces in the EU continue to export the core of the neoliberal deregulatory programme to the east. Enlargement measures have further embedded a highly selective application of Europeanisation in what is becoming an increasingly vituperative variant of neoliberalism. The article concludes by assessing the recent neo-populist turn in Poland and how this might be reconciled with neoliberal strategies.