ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the social impact of neoliberalization and the counter-hegemonic forces inculcated through that. The concern then becomes how events since 1989 have too frequently been to the detriment of those who struggled most to establish freedom and democracy. It is one of the great incongruities of post-communist Poland that a social movement, Solidarnosc, guided by the principles of worker self-government; self-management and the 'self-liberation of civil society' should have implemented the radical neoliberal reform package of the Sachs-Balcerowicz Plan. Resistance to neoliberalism in Poland has been centred on a set of anti-political, populist gestures associated with the emergence of a new right and the steady disappearance of the left since 1989. Recent Gramscian theorizing has been plagued by accusations of insufficient attention being paid to resistance and counter-hegemony, focusing instead on elite-driven hegemonic practices, analysing dominant social forces and the construction of an enlightenment project.
