This you could read recently in the excellent Polish News Bulletin, 19
March 1998
Poland's Social Structure: The Differences Will Deepen
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The coming to power of Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government
in 1989 not only marked the political death of the communist
authoritarian regime but also the beginning of fundamental
economic transformations changing Poland's central command and
quota system in the direction of a free-market economy.
For enterprising individuals, those changes provided an
opportunity for upward mobility, primarily by improving their
financial status, the modern determinant of one's social
position. For others, unable to adjust to the new realities,
the changes brought a degradation in their social and material
position. An analysis of the current social structure in Poland
is presented in Polityka No. 10, which brings an interview with
Professor Henryk Domanski, head of the Social Structures
Department of the Philosophy and Sociology Institute of the
Polish Academy of Sciences.
The most characteristic feature of the changing social
structure in Poland is the dynamic stratification of particular
social classes caused by growing economic differences between
them, Domanski told Mariusz Janicki and Wieslaw Wladyka from
Polityka.
The very top of the social pyramid in Poland is made up
of a very narrow group of the money elite –the Polish
multimillionaires. They constitute only a fraction of a percent
of Polish society.
The second strata is made up of the class of
businessmen and of managers of prospering enterprises. Domanski
observed on the basis of relevant studies that, contrary to
popular belief and to the claims of certain political circles,
the post-communist nomenclature constituted a relatively small
percentage of fresh recruits to the new business elites. The
process of taking over lucrative posts in private business by
the nomenclature is a fact but it took place on a smaller scale
than in certain neighbouring countries. In Domanski's opinion,
the primary criteria determining recruitment to the new
financial elites were education, individual enterprise, and the
choice of an appropriate strategy; in short–individual merits
counted more than the fact of belonging to the nomenclature.
The third class in the social pyramid is made up of a
new type of intelligentsia. Member of this "new style"
intelligentsia have proven capable of taking advantage of and
economically adjusting to the new free-market realities.
Below them is the vast middle class of small
businessmen, white-collar workers, service sector employees and
the old intelligentsia.
The middle class is the broadest of all classes and the
most widely stratified. In a broad sense, trained workers and
farmers also form the lowest echelons of the middle class. As a
matter of fact, claims Professor Domanski, the term " middle
class" is not congruent with strictly class criteria but rather
denotes a wide collective group situated between the narrow
financial elite and above the lower class – unskilled workers,
peasants who can hardly make a living out of farming and various
under-classes, which are just beginning to form in large cities.
In a modern society, members of the vast middle class
are distinguished in the first place by their characteristic
life-style and aspirations. Members of this class wish first of
all to distinguish themselves from the lower class and they are
usually guided by ambitions and aspirations to move upward on
the social ladder. They fear a loss of their position and social
degradation. According to Domanski, they differ from the working
class in that they plan long-term investments.
This forces them to economise on consumer spending, in
contrast to members of the working class, who are more willing
to spend their earnings on more immediate consumer
gratification. Lacking the middle class's ambition to move
upward socially, the workers have less motivation to economise.
Who gained, who lost on economic transformations
At the beginning of the 1990's, in the first years of
free market transformations in Poland, small and medium-size
businessmen gained the most in terms of improved financial
status. This group was mainly composed of individuals who
quickly took advantage of the new economic possibilities and set
up private businesses, thus filling in the market niches left
empty by the bankrupt socialist economy.
Right now the financial position of this group is
getting relatively weaker, in favour of managers and the
new-style intelligentsia, embodied by successful professionals,
who know how to sell their professional qualifications on the
market.
Compared to the times of socialism, the material
situation of skilled workers has worsened. Before 1989, the pay
of skilled workers equalled and even surpassed the pay of the
intelligentsia. Right now the salaries of top professionals and
managers are decidedly higher. Skilled workers also lost in
terms of financial position in relation to medium-level
white-collar personnel. In the 1980s book-keepers, inspectors,
medium-level managers, etc., earned on average less than skilled
workers. In the mid 1990's this tendency was reversed,
After 1989 the greatest material degradation was
suffered by unskilled workers and small landowners who cannot
make a living solely out of farming and are forced to seek
additional employment outside the agricultural sector. Members
of these groups have little to offer on the labour market in
terms of professional skills
In the days of socialism, the natural correlation
between education, the prestige of a given profession and the
size of pay was obliterated in the name of egalitarianism,
practically reinforced by the central command and quota system.
In 1982, the aforementioned correlation was 0.12 on a 0-1 scale,
whereas in developed capitalist countries it equalled 0.40.
Since 1991, this correlation index has been steadily rising in
Poland and at present it oscillates between 0.30-0.36.
This large jump of the correlation index is a sign of
genuine breakthrough in Poland where it is at last becoming
profitable to invest in education and in raising one's
professional qualifications. At the same time this trend deepens
the financial stratification of society, but studies have shown
that most Poles accept the positive correlation between
education, social prestige and financial remuneration.
The very bottom of the social pyramid is made up of the
newly-forming underclass, a new phenomenon in Poland. According
to Domanski, this new group cannot be classified as belonging to
the lower class as its members live outside the labour market "
trapped in a cycle of hopelessness and lack of prospect, of
threat and pathology and of permanent dissatisfaction." The
underclass does not vote and, remaining outside the sphere of
politics, it is also forgotten by politicians until its
dissatisfaction escalates to a level which threatens to erupt
and to destabilise public order.
Domanski predicts that the financial and social
differentiation of Polish society will continue to deepen as an
inherent feature of a free-market economy. In his opinion,
social mobility in Poland will also become increasingly
difficult in a market economy, which rewards professionalism and
education. At the same time Domanski stressed that even in
socialist times real social equality was a fiction. It is true
that unskilled workers and hired agricultural workers, for
example those employed on state-run farms (subsequently
liquidated) were better off, but sociological studies show that
even in those days the percentage of university graduates of
working class background was much smaller than the percentage of
graduates from families in which at least one parent had higher
education. The strict relation between the education and
profession of fathers and the social position of children has
been manifest in Poland since the 50s and 60s onwards and is
congruent with global tendencies..
(Based on 7 March 1998 issue of Polityka No. 10, p. 60)