ABSTRACT
THE COMING OF THE MIDDLE CLASS The biblical tone in the subheading is not accidental. In Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the middle class is often considered in eschatological terms. Polish neoliberals, for example, are convinced that the real renewal of Polish society will come with the development of the middle class-a ‘new middle class’—which will originate from various sectors of the postsocialist society, in a process of natural selection, activated by free market mechanisms. On the other hand, Polish neoliberalism is also empirical and pragmatic. It is said that the new middle class is experiencing a painful delivery, lacking local capital and strong traditions and in an atmosphere of growing social resistance to liberal reforms. The conclusion is that its birth has to be protected and expedited. The proper economic and institutional conditions have to be established for this new class to develop rapidly and efforts have to be made to change social consciousness, warped by decades of communist propaganda, which has been especially hostile towards the middle class.
