“We are building Poland”

Slogans can tell us a great deal about the ways states attempt to legitimate their neoliberal reform policies and the contradictions with which the neoliberal project is rife. Civic Platform, the political force in charge of such reforms, governed Poland from 2007 until 2015, and deployed the slogan “We are building Poland” to convey ideas of solidarity and positive change in the face of widespread inequalities. The chapter pursues the argument that because slogans have a temporal dimension, understanding their appeal (or lack thereof) entails understanding the ideas about historical time that they mobilize amongst the people who are their intended recipients.