Event Recap

The second session of the Flying Seminar presented the opportunity for a comparative historical dialogue about key issues of radical political engagement. Adam Michnik, a leading Polish dissident intellectual of Communist Poland and founding editor of Poland’s major newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Occupy Wall Street activists compared notes. There was much that separated Michnik from the Occupiers, which gave the discussion its critical edge. But there was also much that connected them: a commitment to democracy and experimentation, a critical attitude concerning political elites disconnected from society, an understanding of the importance of creative social action.

Capitalism separated Michnik from the occupiers. They often invoked the term to summarize what they were against. This was also clear and shared at our last meeting between OWS and Shiroto no Ran. Michnik was quiet on this issue. Capitalism is a normal economic situation, what the previously existing socialist system was not.

There was also a difference in the assessment of utopia. Michnik spelled out three characteristics of Poland’s self limiting revolution. It was against violence. It was anti-utopian when it came to political ends. And it was geopolitically realistic, aware of where Poland is on the map. (Here he was referring to Poland’s proximity to Moscow and what then seemed in 1980 to be the solidity, overwhelming power and steadfastness of the Soviet Union.) The tension between taking up political activity versus remaining “splendidly isolated” from mainstream politics dominated the meeting, evolving in different directions – both pragmatic and philosophical ones.

Against his realism (he is the author of a brilliant essay “Grey is Beautiful”), an OWS activists asserted that being against utopia means accepting the unacceptable, rejecting the need for fundamental change. The struggle for imagination against realism, for achieving desirable change without new forms of tyranny provided a fertile field for discussion, with broad agreement.

Michnik recalled how the older generation was sure that the protests in Poland in 1968 and of the seventies lacked clear political goals and, therefore, was doomed to failure. But he and his fellow students and activists persisted. He told an interesting story about the rejection of a self appointed leader in a tram workers strike that occurred weeks before the emergence of . . .

Read more: Oct. 29th: OWS Meets Poland’s Self-Limiting Revolution in Conversation with Adam Michnik (Video)