Jan Bobrzyński (1882-1951), Polish conservative, writer, journalist, is an example of an highly insightful view of the situation of interwar Poland. True, in the days of Bobrzyński, fewer people thought that this period of the past of our Homeland would be described as specified – “interwarment”, it seems that erstwhile read at least Bobrzyński, any penetrating minds were able to sense the catastrophe that slow approached Poland.
The following passages of Jan Bobrzyński's essay published in volume 181 of the 1929 Catholic Universal Review "Is Poland a Seasonary State" (in the following passages we keep the first spelling; the fats come from the editorial board Procapitalism.pl), show that this Polish thinker belonged to such, while the title question can be scrupled besides today.
Jan BobrzyńskiBobrzyński submits ruthless criticism of partying of then Poland, the small-mindedness of politicians who care only to delight voters and to be re-elected, complete deficiency of realism in interior and global politics, the uproared etatism of sanctification governments, which leads to undercutting of healthy roots of the Polish economy, preferring state interventionism at the expense of the economical condition of average entrepreneurs. He asks an crucial question whether the Polish authorities are ready to prosecute an active and effective policy in a changing world. The biggest Polish neighbours do not have sympathy for her, and smaller states and regions will sooner or later be forced to associate with 1 of the powers. Can Poland become 1 of them? "When the power is not Poland, cut off from the sea and strangled from everywhere by the Russian-German pressure, we can start laying a cross on our independence," he states in the final part of his essay.
Important economical demands made by Bobrzyński – this is the part of the essay we would like to pay peculiar attention to. This analysis and argument would not be ashamed of any modern defender of economical normality. Had it not been for the date for the "Universal Review" – 1929, 1 would have thought that we read modern criticism of governments in Poland (whether it is PiS or PO or something else) written from pro-market positions.
Anything with you, nothing without you, you could say. It is sad that the presently ruling Poland does not even intend to learn from analyses, real heroes of the Polish independency thought, specified as Jan Bobrzyński. The current Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki in many interviews cited his bizarre economical idols, experts from the “sustainable improvement strategy”, which he himself is simply a believer (electric cars, etc.). Similarly, Jarosław Kaczyński, who believed so much that he was the second Marshal of Piłsudski, is willing to make all his mistakes.
Is Poland just a seasonal state? Jan Bobrzyński, since the publication of the essay on “The Universal Review, waited 10 more years for his forecasts to be fulfilled. He most likely felt no satisfaction in their fulfillment. How long do we have?
* * Oh, * *
Questions about whether we can handle...
‘(...) The Polish people must respond to the full planet with their work, politics, behaviour and vigor, whether they will be able to defend and keep the sovereignty of their country not only in political terms, but besides in economical terms, due to the fact that 1 cannot think without another. Will he be able to keep pace with the real advancement of the civilized world, gaining a prominent place in these fierce, feverish, sometimes ruthless competitions that take place internationally? Will he show adequate self-preservation, dexterity, civic discipline and creative qualities – in a word, can he draw out the thought of state-creation and implement it?
And it must do so under peculiarly hard conditions, due to the fact that in a position on all sides very exposed, surrounded by envious neighbours, especially in the east and west, who are waiting only for the chance of possessive retaliation, erasure of Poland from the map of Europe, due to the fact that they are severely hindered by their expansionary intentions."
We resisted the revolutionary element, but...
‘(...) Will this page of the balance sheet be able to balance the negative side: the possessive desire of respective 100 million increasingly powerful neighbours, whose existence of independent Poland is simply a salt in the eye, chronic paralysis of economical life, which has been hampered so far – can be said – deliberately and intentionally by organization and class doctrines in the name of indiscriminate utopian, and the unresolved issue of the relations of national minorities with the state (...).
... The miracle over the Vistula has saved us erstwhile before from the unpredictable consequences of the disaster. But it was only a charge with a saber in hand on a morally and materially disorganized enemy. It is hard to believe that specified miracles are to be repeated on all call and not akin on specified hopes to base the existence of the state on a further finish.
State-creation work present is not about feelings and kidnappings. This was the case in the past, where a large war effort, carried out with a fewer thousandths of an army, a decree granting certain privileges to any trade company raised the charm or prosperity of the state for many years. Today, in all fields of public employment and in all areas of interstate relations, the minute of mass action is unknown. In all departments of war and peace, in production, trade, money trade and economical or armed clashes, all societies, with all their creative energy and all resources, are affected.
... In specified a structure of the modern civilized planet there is no longer much area for emotional programs and fits. State work is now a sober economical calculation with a pencil in its hand. Today, those who think that emotional slogans can build anything lasting are delusional. For the moment, a superficial effect can be achieved, e.g. electoral, but not only will it make nothing positive, but it will even destruct or inhibit for a time what it has done before sober, subjective works."
Who should regulation Poland: emotions or work?
"(...) whether Poland is to proceed to govern political-emotional or economic-objective assumptions. In another words, do we gotta choose whether Poland is to be a site for detached socio-political experiments, which bend the reality and the laws of nature to imposed any theoretical programs, or a workshop of economical work, whose applicable results can only be an indicator of specified or another socio-political system? In short, the nation must choose whether or not it is intended to be a model democracy or a model economy, due to the fact that 1 cannot be rationally reconciled with the other, but, on the contrary, it inactive conflicts with 1 another.
... Social-political slogans inactive service and service for any time as the usual electoral key and as a lid of various individual ambition, but in a country with a higher culture they are little and little taken seriously. And this sober knowing of the situation differs between permanent and shaky – seasonal countries."
Where 2 fight, there's a third. Where's forty?
‘(...) The first condition for perpetuating the existence of the state is the evolution of the psyche of the Polish society towards greater objectivism and realism in all fields of public work, with the denial of our native Poles' tendency to emotional reasoning and action, which makes Poland a political player in economically mediocre Poland as many as a fewer twelve sides, each with a claim that its alternatively tight worldview and program, made up of pious wishes, prejudices and sometimes drown, will be the only salvation for Poland. Can each of these forty parties, even in their best conjectures, bring you durability and rebirth, and can real state thought and creative work make with specified a distraction of public opinion? Where 2 argue, there is simply a 3rd one, and where forty argue, how many will then benefit from Poland? And can we, Poles, occupying specified an exposed and threatened facility, afford specified an extraordinary luxury even in powerful and rich countries of particularity? Is this not involuntary reasoning about our past fall and the seasonal state?"
What must be done to save Poland...
‘(...) It is time for the Polish people to be firmly shaken from this anesthesia, due to the fact that in it it loses the power of energy, time and money for things not only unreal, but simply harmful.
Description of the geopolitical situation of Poland and the question of whether we can usage it decently (source: Universal Review, 1929)... Firstly, to comply with real economical laws and demands. Without money, nothing can be done, and the most beautiful purposes and laws, without the means to implement them, are only written down in paper, and even an obstacle to the gradual accomplishment of certain results. (...) Poles who are inclined to fly frequently think that the state can be built with gust, feeling and political slogan. We learned that, unfortunately, from possessive relations. In many directions, however, dismemberment states have supplied us with capital, many products of industry, means of communication, and cannons if necessary. Therefore, we needed little to think about this, and the spirit of the nation took a large part out of our feelings. Now we gotta do everything ourselves. And that's why the first guideline of perpetuating our independence, the guideline on which everything else depends is removing from the strategy and the temper of all that can hold back the healthy improvement of economical life and the accumulation of capital needed for all interior and external purposes. Everything that hinders the implementation of this cardinal request for sustainability and independency of the state, no substance what the assumptions and programmes would consequence from, is simply a grave mistake that can take revenge terribly in the close future.
... And here we must establish ourselves, we must, as the primary principle, as a dogma, the proven experience of the full history: a state that shows no expansional momentum, wilts and dies. It is simply a law of nature, universal in nature and besides applicable in politics. Why, in fact, the old Rzeczpospolita has fallen, but it is not that she did not desire anything, that she has stuck to quietism, and thus allowed her to be desired by expansive neighbors. The state can only be permanently with a certain healthy imperialism. Healthy, that is, not brawling, aggressive, mindless possessiveness and national pride based. due to the fact that specified ends sadly, as the fresh example of Germany and Russia indicates.
Healthy imperialism, on the another hand, is the 1 that discharges itself through the political borders of the state with entrepreneurship, capital, trade, culture and skillfulness in establishing beneficial alliances, with the foundation before all economic...
... The Treaty of Versailles now holds inactive seventy-million German people trapped, and the weakening revolutionary paralyzes the 150-million Russian world. But erstwhile these brakes are relaxed, erstwhile both these powerful neighbours are strengthened and implemented by them any independent abroad policy, which is unconditionally hostile to us, will a 30-million-dollar state defy them? Therefore, we request to strengthen them internally and extend our network of economical and cultural influences, so that economical Poland reaches far beyond today's political Poland.It’s okay. ”
Marx's doctrine ate our brains...
"It would seem that our country, so late formed from the ruins of the planet war, is expanding miraculously. Cities, factories, railways, even ports increase at American speed. This is an object of unmistakable admiration in strangers and could fill each of us with pride and peace for the future – if not the other side of this medal. Because that's all we admire, does and takes on ever-wide state etatism, or institutions, including legal or at least financially based tenure. And etatism is simply a direct avant-garde of socialization in modern conditions. Marx's doctrine, so seemingly fought in our country, has, however, devoured so far into the brains of broad civic spheres and into the full state apparatus that present even utmost opponents of statism and socialism, not only live, but even think not statistically. It's besides with any of our smallest programs or businesses we're utilized to counting on the state and hanging from the government handle. The state or institutions financed by them build tenements and factories, the state has seized its hands with the main banking turnover, the state dictates and regulates everything, industry, trade, private ownership and monopolizes more and more economical life. In request of more and more resources, it draws them from the citizens, who thus undermines the means of existence and closes the further fields of creative action. So the state draws from a well, which it simultaneously dries.
It is clear that the economy cannot take long, and there will come a minute erstwhile not only the device of private initiative but besides the state economy will simply stand out of the deficiency of resources that it will no longer be able to extract from the impoverished and paralyzed citizens in the initiative. The explanation of enriching the state by this way is so a completely erroneous and modeled involuntaryity on socialist doctrine.
What should Catholics do in the face of upcoming events? (source: Universal Review, 1929)That is why, while standing in line to defend the sustainability and prosperity of the country for which we should sacrifice our petty differences in organization whims, we should, on the another hand, be determined to fight the same country as a full-time entrepreneur for his own good. Too large is the scope of the state and self-government budget, as they take on the handling of matters which should not be dealt with, creating fresh taxes, sucking all the vital juices out of civic work, preventing capitalisation and turning citizens into increasingly passive state officials. Our statistic boast the digit of little than a billion zloty savings in all financial institutions. This is on average PLN 30 per capita. Of course, with specified ridiculous capital, saved after 10 years of work, struggles and severe poverty, nothing can be done. The same amount is in the tiny Czechoslovakia many times higher, and in Germany it is respective milliyards of gold brands, so respective twelve times more. This poorness of ours is mostly the consequence of a greedy statism and a mindless socializing economy, which in our midst is subject to a shameful inactivity.
Therefore, if we have put forward previously, as a cardinal condition for the recovery and consolidation of the state, the removal of the fundamental obstacles that hinder economical life, We are reasoning in the first place of a strong battering and socializing strategy which, in our view, causes chronic anemia of state life and weakens society in terms not only of material but besides of morals. Therefore, reducing state interference in economical life to the limits that are truly necessary, while expanding private entrepreneurship and facilitating the accumulation of private capital is for the minute the most effective spell, taking distant the spectrum of seasonal Poland from us".
Do Poles even think about their future?...
"I do not know if there are many citizens in Poland who sometimes wonder a small about what awaits us and what tasks we gotta do. I think there are very few, due to the fact that it is fashionable and interesting present to discuss direct updates, about accidents of the day. The thought of next day is not in fashion, as supposedly unrealistic and uninteresting.
Yet, there cannot be a lasting nation that does not think about the future and consistently does not build it, especially a nation that is so crucial and so interesting and dangerous. We may already be standing on the eve of the large events that may not happen overnight, but they must, of necessity, and which will drag us relentlessly into accidents. In this faith, Poland can play either an active, pre-prepared role, rising to a truly powerful power, or a passive function of an unfortunate patient, inactive occupied by the party's colour of his tie, while others will execute the vivisection on it for the second time" ...
Contribution by Paweł Sztęberek
