RONALD RADOSH
382
destroyed private capitalism, and created a welfare state." I had to
respond that in our view, F.D.R. had saved capitalism and had
managed to create a previously nonexistent social net for those
who suffered under unrestrained capitalism. And the assembled
editors also noted their opposition to feminism, which resulted in
a vigorous debate among the Americans, some of whom were
alone in defending the women's rights movement. We quickly
learned that in Cracow, at least, the advanced students and intel–
lectuals subscribed to the economic theories of F. A. Hayek,
Milton Friedman,and Murray Rothbard, all free-marketeers.
And in politics, as Pawel Kloczowski put it, they were influenced
by the writings of the American Founding Fathers, particularly
Madison and Jefferson.
Indeed, what struck us is that a major fear of these Polish
intellectuals is the unconscious acceptance of socialism by the
mass of workers. They seem to fear that particularly for many in
Solidarity, of which they consider themselves a part, there persist
the elements of a socialist mass movement that, as Polish political
theorist Andrez Walicki wrote some years back, opposes
"authoritarian bureaucratic collectivism not in the name of indi–
vidualistic values, but in the name of a democratic collectivism of
the masses." More directly, these free-marketeers fear that the
narrow trade union interests of many Solidarity members will
militate against the kind of economic productivity and market
system desired by the would-be entrepreneurs of the middle
class.
Yet, as Walicki wrote in a recent article, "Liberalism in
Poland,"
(Critical
Review,
Winter 1988), the most fundamental op–
position in Poland emerged not in Warsaw, but in Cracow,
where disciples of Hayek and Friedman argue not simply
against totalitarianism, but for market mechanisms in the econ–
omy and political liberalism in the polity. It is this group, as
Walicki writes, that has become "the most influential and dy–
namic intellectual group," one that has put socialists and others
on the political defensive. Ironically, since even the Communists
understand that a market economy is the only way out of the
deep economic crisis, these liberals, in spite of their deep aversion
to Communism and any form of Marxism, have become political
allies that the Party cannot do without.
