ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how Poles imagined capitalism in the final decade before it was actually introduced in 1989. It focuses on the emotions reflected and stirred up by these imaginaries, which proved to be crucial for popular expectations of the major transformation to come. While a growing number of Poles had gained first-hand experience of Western consumerism and capitalist economies as working migrants from the 1970s onwards, petty entrepreneurs, who had been granted limited freedom by the Polish authorities at the same time, were a focal point for emotional attitudes towards the domestic harbingers of capitalism. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including official journals, the oppositional underground press and contemporaneous sociological research, this chapter analyses the significant affective changes in popular discourse on really existing as well as imagined capitalism that occurred over the course of the 1980s. It fleshes out how capitalism and entrepreneurship came to be regarded as “the real thing,” as the sclerotic realities of the late-socialist economy were contrasted with dazzling images of cold objectivity, subversive dynamism, and fervid greed for profit. In doing so, the chapter highlights the role of emotionalized images of capitalism in preparing the ground for the post-1989 neoliberal takeover.
