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SOCIAL SOLIDARITY IN POLISH POLITICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC THOUGHT IN THE PERIOD 1918-1939

A. Laska

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze the impact and importance of social solidarity in Polish political and socio-economic thought in the period 1918-1939. The article explores the source of the idea of solidarity in Poland, with particular reference to the French and German concepts of social solidarity at the end of the 19th century, as well as the attitude towards them in selected political spheres during the development of regeneration after the period of the partitions of the Polish State. The idea of social solidarity in Poland, like in other European countries, grew in both secular and religious versions. While the first of these directions, taking into account the French concept in particular, was imitative, the religious version was the creation of an independent socio-economic system, which was created by Leopold Caro. In the area of policy, the ideas of social solidarity entered into the area of interest of the creators of political programmes, especially at the beginning of the period in question (1918-1922), and after the May coup in 1926, as a result of which JГіzef Pi?sudski took power. In the first of these periods of interest, social solidarity was associated with strong integration trends associated with the rebirth of Polish statehood after the partitions, the threatened Bolshevik invasion and German revisionism. However, after 1926 in the governing camp a debate began on the founding of a solidarity concept of the State, which at the beginning was to be an attempt to build social order in a situation characterized by the collapse of the ideology of liberalism and criticism of parliamentary democracy, and then became the basis for the construction of national unity in the face of the growing military threat from Nazi Germany.

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