Was Poland’s socialism ‘real’ socialism?
Poland was not a failed attempt at “real socialism.” It was socialism operating under real-world constraints.
By Mani Basharzad, Junior Research Associate at the IEA
When the famous French socialist novelist Jean-Paul Sartre visited the Polish People’s Republic, he described it as a kind of socialist surrealism: “a socialist country where church festivals are public holidays.” Although Sartre was himself a socialist, he inadvertently made a powerful argument for public choice theory when he added: “a country where one can talk with the waiter in English or German and the cook in French, but the Minister only through an interpreter.1”
This “socialist surrealism” has led many to argue that the Polish People’s Republic was not really socialist. Jan Toporowski, writing in Jacobin, claims that “Poland’s road to socialism was blocked.” Toporowski argues that economists such as Oskar Lange and Michał Kalecki developed sophisticated models through which socialism could have achieved both efficiency and equality, but that the Polish United Workers’ Party ignored their insights and instead pursued policies that led to failure. To assess this claim, we must first understand what Lange himself proposed.
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