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attitudes. The first and least consequential would be if the Church were
pushed into a relatively limited and publicly unimportant position, such as it
has in Spain or Italy, and took on conservative tendencies. In the long run,
the Church's position indeed may become similar to its place
in
France, as the
strength of Catholic traditions in Poland is greatly exaggerated in our own
country and abroad. We could easily have a repetition ofthe prewar situa–
tion: there was strong anticlerical opposition to the Church in Poland, and the
Bishops declared allegiance to more or less unpleasant nationalist movements
that never gained power A second possibility is that the Church could pre–
vail over the liberal-democratic tendencies, not likely except in the unwel–
come event of general political and economic chaos. The result would be a
demand for a political party that could restore order, backed by the Church
and a nationalist (but not communist) military. Lastly, we may hope that the
Church
will
live up to our expectations and fulfill the need of the new middle
class for moral values; otherwise their behavior may overreach anything we
have ever seen in history. The monstrosities of capitalism in early nine–
teenth-century Great Britain are nothing compared to what future social
relations in Poland might turn out to be like.
If
the Church were to respond
by giving a moral support and a moral dimension, by being a spiritual guide
to the growth of a new capitalist economy, it would be for the first time. I
have many doubts that the Church in Poland is prepared to take up this re–
sponsibility.
I could point out other Eastern European developments that are not
visible in the American media, but I do not wish to be overly critical. There
is, in fact, a lot of news, and who really wants or needs more? I would like
therefore to raise a subject that has a more universal connotation and reveals
a bit more of the general Western
Weltanschauung.
I have not counted, but
I am fairly certain that at least seventy percent of all that is said and written
in the West about Eastern Europe has something to do with the economy. I
know that economy is important, but it is really that important? Coming from
a country where Marxist thinking has practically disappeared, I tend perhaps
to minimize the importance of the connections between economic growth, the
development of democracy, and the well-being of a society. Being an
historian of a sort, I recall that democratic or undemocratic tendendies have
not been very closely connected to the political culture of a given society and
that the popular notion that economic crisis gives birth to authoritarian,
if
not
totalitarian, regimes is often untrue.
I think that the importance given to economic problems
in
Eastern Eu–
rope by Western observers reveals more about their own outlook than
about the real problems. Once the surrealistic system of so-called socialist
economy has been left behind, and people are on the path of reconstruction,
much like Lincoln's after the American Civil War, the economy will take its
natural course. This is not enough for the numerous Milton Friedman fol-
