It comes from a manifesto proclaimed by the Hungarian PM during the opening session of the current legislature. The manifesto is the founding document of the “Regime of National Cooperation,” a regime which constitutes a break not only with respect to the postwar decades of “occupation and dictatorship,” but also with respect to the political order which emerged from the political pacts together are commonly known as the bloodless transformation to liberal democracy. Those political pacts, according to Orbán, „ instead of bringing freedom brought helplessness, instead of independence brought indebtedness, instead of prosperity brought poverty, instead of hope and brotherhood brought a deep psychological, political and economic crisis.” In contrast, national cooperation should be build without compromises around such values as “work, home, family, health, and law and order.” Everyone, “regardless of age, sex, religion, political views, regardless of where they live” are invited to the the task of erecting these “pillars of a common future.”

The Fidesz MPs hailed the manifesto in a separate bill and the government insisted on putting it in a visible place in all public offices in the form of a poster which lacks only the effigy of its author. Alas, the conservative-revolutionary masquerade was followed by actions. And it is from the new Hungarian constitution, in force since January 1, 2012, that one can properly judge what the new regime is really about.

***

The new Fundamental Law begins with a preamble called “The National Avowal of Faith” which shall be the interpretative basis for the future rulings of the Constitutional Court. It declares that henceforth the Hungarian civic identity shall be funded on the values of  nationality, religion and family,  “loyalty, faith and love.” It emphasizes the special role of Christianity in the national survival (confirmed additionally by one of the recent legal acts which reject recognition ex officio of many non-Christian creeds). It defines the constitution in a religious fashion as a “covenant” of the Hungarians of past, present and future generations. The family, as understood by the Constitution, is an union of between man and woman.

The National Avowal of Faith also includes many references to history, which repeat some of Orbán’s theses from the above mentioned manifesto. It proclaims that “after the moral defeats of the twentieth century, our need for spiritual and intellectual renewal is paramount” and the concomitant necessity of re-establishment of Hungary’s reputation. Interestingly the nation, according to the preamble, did not take any part in shaping its own postwar history. All responsibility for the moral crisis is due to the totalitarian regimes: between 1944 an 1990 Hungary was “occupied” first by the Nazis and than by the Communists and “no statutory limitation applies to the inhuman crimes committed against  the  Hungarian  nation” by the occupiers. While the ex-dissident architects of the post-1989 republic are this time spared condemnation, it’s paramount to mention that the most recent constitutional amendment defines the Hungarian Socialist Party, MSZP, as the legal inheritor of the communist crimes. It is not certain what legal consequences follow for the faith of this mayor oppositional force.

While the preamble rejects the legal continuity with the 1949 constitution, it declares to draw its inspiration from the so called “Historical Constitution” – a medieval doctrine on which the Hungarian juridical order was based for most of its pre- World War II history, and according to which the country’s  sovereign was neither the people nor the king, but a metaphysical being, the St. Stephen’s Crown itself. This is how Miklos Horthy, an admiral without a fleet, could have become a regent without a king. It also served to lay claims to the territory lost by Hungary in the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.

The National Avowal of Faith is an expression of a  rather controversial moral views and historically inaccurate opinions of a certain part of the Hungarian political elite, but certainly cannot be said to resemble a legal framework for a modern pluralistic society that Hungary is. Doesn’t it follow from the preamble that in terms of faith and gender, some citizens are more equal than others, in defiance of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union which the previous government subscribed to?

After 1989 Hungary revised in depth the 1949 constitution (so that the only article left was “the capital of Hungary is Budapest”), but fell short of legally abolishing it as such. Does the rejection of continuity with the Communist constitution mean cancellation of the “invisible constitution” of the post-1989 republic, that is, all the rulings of the Constitutional Court?

And who actually rules Hungary: a people or a crown? And if the crown, on what territory? The latter question gains in political weight as the new constitution contains a possibility of granting voting rights to the Hungarian leaving outside the borders, an act which would enlarge Fidesz constituency, but would not do any good to the already tense relations between Hungary, Slovakia and Rumania.

***

Nevertheless, it is not the National Avowal of Faith, but the main body of the new constitution that contains the articles crucial for making a judgment about the nature of the new regime.

First, the constitution proclaims what the Regime of National Cooperation is not, changing the name of the country from “Hungarian Republic” to just “Hungary.” More importantly, it dramatically reduces the authority of the Constitutional Court in what concerns all budgetary issues, as well as grants to the government full liberty in appointing its members. Furthermore many of the most controversial new provisions will be possible to amend only when possessing a qualified majority of two thirds (the so called cardinal acts). In addition, the term of office of the institutions entrusted with the role of maintaining checks and balances, but now controlled by Fidesz, will now last for more than twice the electoral cycle. In order to be able to change the head of the Supreme Court, whose tenure was not bound to end anytime soon, the constitution renames it as “Curia.”  Finally, the new Fundamental Law sets up the Economic Council, an institution whose independence is being contested between Orbán’s government, in dire need of a new credit-line, on the one hand, and on the other the IMF and the EU. No less importantly, the Economic Council is empowered to reject the budget voted by the parliament, which in turn gives the president (also close to Fidesz) a possibility to dissolve it.

***

In the last analysis, it seems clear that the Regime of National Cooperation takes departure not only from the procedures of liberal democracy, but also its spirit. Democratic legitimacy, electoral algebra apart, is related to deliberation and the more it can stand to or assimilate independent critique, the stronger it is. Furthermore, modern democracy is a regime where – in the words of Claude Lefort – “the place of power remains empty” and thus is incompatible with lawmaking that empowers one part of the political establishment to occupy it indefinitely.

In contrast, in Orbán’s Hungary, not only the oppositional parties, but also the voice of the independent public opinion and the civil society organizations was excluded from the constitutional lawmaking.  The new regime supposes even more than a curtailment of the independence of all the institutions responsible of maintaining the checks and balances, now subordinated to the ruling party’s proxies. Fidesz will be able to control these institutions for more than twice the electoral cycle, that is, even after its potential removal from government. Incidentally, this last task has been made more difficult by recent changes in the electoral law, which gives Fidesz a great advantage in the next elections over its opponents. All this amounts in practice to a governance along the lines of the principle of après nous, le déluge. And due to the cardinal acts, even after the levee containing the popular anger brakes, all the harm to the constitutional fabric will be immensely difficult to repair.

Can one speak of a dictatorship? No, things are even worse. In principle, despite Orbán’s authoritarian style of governance, the constitutional guarantees of a democratic way of changing the government still persist. Nevertheless, even if Orbán goes, his departure can result in something worse than a dictatorship: a state of non-governability, a political impasse. Thus, paradoxically and by way of unintended consequences, the tendency of the Regime of National Cooperation towards concentrating all power in a few hands, can lead to a sort of bizarre anarchy from above.

In the new constitution, one article at least is undoubtedly democratic. It reads: “No one’s activities may be directed at the acquisition or exercise of power by violent means, or at its exclusive possession. It shall be the right and obligation of all to resist such activities by lawful means.” Even though Hungary is no longer a republic, the republican right to civil disobedience remains a right for all those who “do not like the system.” Under this clarion call around 70 000 citizens rallied in Budapest last October 23. On January 2, 2012, when the Fidesz elite was celebrating the coming of the new order inside the Opera House, outside, the Andrassy boulevard was flooded with protesters. That its numbers are said to have reached 100 000 means that in the era of the global civic awakening, the Hungarian society shall not get cowed gently into cooperation by Orbán’s design.

Dear Readers,

Year 2011 was a year of protests organized in the name of “people’s power”. Demonstrations sweeping through North Africa, Europe, the United States, and at the end of the year Russia, dominated the media. On “Foreign Policy’s” annual list of top 100 Global Thinkers the first 10 places were awarded to “Arab revolutionaries” and „TIME” magazine recognized “The Protester” as the “Person of the Year”. In other media it was often claimed that 2011 brought the biggest advance of democracy since 1989. Although the protests were held in extremely diverse places they were all considered to be closely interrelated.

But have we really just experienced the next “wave of democratization”? If so, what has it left ashore and what has it taken with it? Should democratic activists congratulate themselves on the events of the past 12 months?

(more…)

Joanna Kusiak: You’re a politically engaged philosopher. You’ve signed a letter of support for Occupy Wall Street and CUNY’s student protests, you talk about OWS during your philosophical seminar and at the same time you claim there is no political ontology. Why?

Susan Buck-Morss: My prejudice against ontology comes from reading Adorno and his virulent criticism of existential ontology as he sees it so powerfully expressed in Heidegger, but then leading to such disastrous political consequences: the impotence of his philosophy vis-à-vis fascism, if not its actual collaboration. By resolving the question of Being before subsequent political analyses, the latter have no philosophical traction. They are subsumed under the ontological a priori that itself remains indifferent to their content.

JK: What does it mean in terms of political action?

SBM: If you start from a claim of ontological position, everything has to follow from it. It doesn’t matter if you choose your ontology because of who you are (some identity politics) or if you begin with something like “All history is the history of class struggle” (which is an ontological principle, for example, Antonio Negri holds on to) – you fundamentally know the answer to anything, before you even start. The only criterion left for accuracy is internal consistency. I think it is true not only for leftist identity, but also for Anarch-ism vs. Marx-ism, vs. any other -ism. There may be times when anarchist politics is absolutely called for, but not because I have decided that ‘I am an anarchist’, not because anarchism is my principle, but because that is a powerful move right now. In order to do politics that way, you’ve got to make judgments every particular time, you cannot deduce anything from first principles.

JK: This reminds me of my favorite Walter Benjamin’s quotation. In one of his letters to Gershom Scholem, concerning political action, he says that in politics you have to act ‘always radically, never consistently’.

SBM: It’s absolutely true. Every time you have to allow for the possibility that you may be wrong and start thinking anew again and again. Then you have to pay attention to what’s going on. You can’t presume ‘Oh, it’s capitalism’ or ‘Oh, it’s neoliberalism’. It’s particularly important now, because some real shift is going on, a shift maybe bigger than the one which occurred in 1989.

JK: Why?

SBM: Because it’s not just a geopolitical shift, there is a real questioning of all the fundamental categories with which we’re dealing – literally all of them. Nation state, democracy, national identity (or any kind of political identity), solidarity, equality – all of these principles seemed to be synonymous with modernity and we actually shared them both in Marxist and in bourgeois science. But all of them are somehow not adequate any more. I haven’t seen such thing in my lifetime before.

JK: So there is no capital-ism now, just capital?

SBM: That’s not quite what I mean. Marx didn’t use the word capitalism very often. Rather, he wrote a book called simply “Capital”. It’s Werner Sombart who introduced the word capitalism in the late 19^th century and I think by that time it had become a belief system.

JK: When I think about my country – Poland – after the fall of communism in 1989, I definitely feel what you mean by ‘embracing capitalism as a belief system’. There trauma of real socialism’s oppression and the magical aura of the West produced a very special kind of non-critical, affirmative hope. What is really tragic, the biggest losers of capitalist transformation in Poland are not the nostalgic types missing the security of state socialism but the first and most ardent believers: the small-scale entrepreneurs who were everything that capitalism told them to be – flexible, self-sufficient and hard-working – and still they lost.

SBM: They believed that capitalism will bring them a free market, but capitalism as we have it today kills the market. Fernand Braudel in “The Wheels of Commerce” wrote about a medieval fair. The fair was taking place on the ground and upstairs there were the capitalists, people who came from far away and, behind closed doors were fixing the markets. Downstairs everybody was nicely bargaining and the market was going on, but up above the big players wanted to control the market, they wanted monopolies, they wanted to interfere with the free market. Braudel writes: that’s the real home of capital. He calls capital the ‘anti-market’.

JK: Last months the financial capitalists – again upstairs – were looking down from their high-rise offices onto the Wall Street’ occupation. I even saw a journalist joke suggesting that the bankers looking down at the protesters were placing bets on which protester was going to be arrested next. I would like to believe this kind of cynicism is not possible, but actually the events of last two years showed that it’s not an exaggeration… Nevertheless the very existence of OWS shows, that those from downstairs started to be more aware of what is really going on. Now the crucial question is how to avoid the typical trap. The revolutionary potential of both 1968 and 1989 was lost or, even worse, metabolized by the capitalist system which made perfect systemic use of people’s anti-systemic energy… Maybe this is a real reason to think about inconsistency as a political strategy.

SBM: You have to hack the psychological strategies of capitalism. There are two official elements in capitalism as a belief system: self-interest and rationality. But obviously there is a lot of irrationality in capitalism. Crisis seems irrational, and they themselves explain crisis by psychology, which works on less than fully rational principle. People believe something to be the case and then the price goes up or down. Then they believe the price will go further up, it does go up because they believe, and therefore, gives them a reason to believe. Capitalism recognizes a self-fulfilling prophecy that comes out of simple psychological belief.

JK: Does it mean that the only good strategy would be to become truly unpredictable? To start doing things that are breaking all the simple psychological rules and therefore appear entirely irrational but in fact, as a long time strategy, may fully hack the system? Maybe the real answer to an insane system that forages our belief in rationality is to act more insanely than the system itself?

SBM: Perhaps… Before the fall of the Soviet system there was at least an alternative – each side could point out that there is a possibility for human beings to live in a different system. After that possibility disappeared, everyone began to think the system we have is natural and rational, that it provides the only answer possible and that this is what freedom, equality and all the good things mean… No, it isn’t! We have to keep reminding ourselves that this it is a crazy system and it works against people’s interest! It’s supposed to bring wealth and it brings poverty, it’s supposed to bring equality and it brings a gap between reach and poor, it’s supposed to bring human well-being and it brings ecological disaster. So how can we have a rational politics in an irrational system?!

JK: So maybe these are the times to break up with the neat rationality and coziness of coherent academic thinking and – as intellectuals – simply let us go for the more radical, even if fragmentary thinking? You use the Bertold Brecht’s metaphor of ‘plumpes Denken’, a non-elegant thinking. I would go further – maybe there is also a non-elegant kind of political action? Can we treat a hippie camp on Wall Street as a material (and in a way materialist) equivalent of Brecht’s plumpes Denken? They seem to represent something very far away from official American politics made by men wearing suits or even far away from well organized, fully professionalized political NGOs and associations. Maybe it’s time for us to finally end the politics of aesthetically designed campaigns and political talks pre-recorded in high definition and start a non-elegant politics of grainy smart-phone-recordings and tents on the pavements?

SBM: The occupiers were not even hippies. Perhaps they could be defined as ‘Lumpens’ in a Marxist sense. But that’s not as important as the fact that everyone felt instant solidarity with their gesture. I don’t know exactly why, but just because these people were there, it allowed others to talk about things that were bothering them for a long time. There was some opening that wouldn’t have been possible before. By saying ‘We are the 99%’ this movement welcomes you, whoever you are. What differentiate this movement from all right populist movements is that it is international in character and it expresses international problems. It doesn’t only make you say: “Oh, aren’t the Arabs doing wonderful things?” – you take a lead from Arab demonstrations, it can be your movement too! It says that we are not excluding virtually anyone and yet we are not insisting that everyone agrees with us – it’s not presuming that everyone has the same interest.

JK: You do a symbolical shift calling it ‘comm-o-nism’ instead of ‘comm-u-nism’. 99% can be a symbol of commonness – but isn’t it too abstract? What is that is common? Is there enough left if you take away all the particular identities?

SBM: It’s only emerging and it’s important not to name it too quickly. You can reverse Schmitt’s and Agamben’s idea – the state of emergency is a condition of emergence. You shouldn’t look for the common thing among old categories. The nature of this movement is simply not to play the game and to move to a new place, invent a truly new space. In this sense it is extremely radical, it really is. Nothing convinces from the existing model – what could convince? Since capitalism has won the Cold War the whole discussion about public good has fallen out of respectability. And that was precisely the part of socialism that was most worth saving and that capitalism had to acknowledge so as not to lose the Cold War on a political and intellectual level. You know, Gandhi was asked once what does he think about Western civilization and he said “It would be a good idea” – we could say the same now about democracy or even the free market.

JK: The founding notions founding Western system became empty of meaning?

SBM: We don’t have the market, we have just capitalism, we don’t have democracy, we have plutocracy or oligarchy, we don’t have a national interest, we have a collusion of certain forces at international level. The words don’t live up to what they say they are. The symptom of that is cynicism in politics – no one expects politicians to live up to what they say and every politician is blatantly manipulative and opportunistic. When I was in Moscow in 1989-1991 people in the Duma were really saying important, true things about the political situation, about the war in Afghanistan, Chernobyl and so many different things. Now you cannot be a politician unless you talk in a hypocritical way. The election of Barack Obama seems to have been a lost opportunity. I think his very character makes him incapable to be radical enough.

JK: Maybe it’s precisely the failure of Obama that helped the new radical movement to emerge? Marx wrote once in a letter to Ruge that it’s only a desperate situation that fills him with hope. So maybe we owe the emergence of new political movement to Obama’s failure?

SBM: That is always a dangerous argument because it seems to advocate increased suffering in order to push people to respond.

JK: Is OWS a leftist project?

SBM: If left means progressive, they are left. But what does it mean ‘progressive’ in a time we don’t believe in progress anymore? Maybe it means to stop, in Walter Benjamin’s words, ‘to pull the emergency brake’, not to move forward with growth, development and all of that. You have to redefine what ‘progressive’ means and then this word may fit. But maybe in the other countries you should better call yourself ‘left’ or ‘independent’ or even ‘islamist’. Maybe these old words are not the best tool with which to build international solidarity today.

JK: I know some people defining themselves as ‘radical left’ who were very disappointed with OWS movement as it didn’t fit their image of revolution. For some people radical would mean more active resistance, which in many cases means more violence.

SBM: I think there will be some violent places during these protests. But I’m not ready to join a movement that is anticipating that and preparing for that and I don’t think that in the times of mobile media a violent strategy is that much needed. What you need is visibility. Even if the police denies doing something, when people are feeding the videos it starts to matter more than beating up one or two policemen. Non-violence here is not passivity, it’s definitely not Christian ‘love thy neighbor’. It’s defiant. Non-violent resistance is forceful, it uses force – be it the force of numbers or even the force of a good joke. I heard from my Greek friends they had a tactic of throwing yoghurt at police. To me it’s sort of saying ‘We know the revolutionary tradition, maybe this time it’s farce. Maybe this time we do it in a playful way, but we want to remind you that we haven’t forgotten and we still are in this revolutionary mode’.

JK: The yoghurt strategy reminds me the Polish movement of ‘Orange Alternative’ acting in the 1980’s. After the failures of regular protests and banning of certain kind of language people were dressing like dwarfs and organizing big manifestations with the same claims as usual – but now it wasn’t ‘Freedom for us’ but ‘Freedom for the dwarfs’. The official newspapers had to deliver the news that socialist militia has arrested 15 dwarfs… When you cannot fight the system, you can make fun of the system, shaking it structures with a good laugh.

SBM: (laughing) Here the Freudian joke works. If certain things can’t be said, you tell a joke about it that lets these things out and it meets a collective response. It can be very powerful as a form of protest. The problem with the cult of violent revolutions is the question, what you do after. People have killed people. No one from the families of those who have died will say ‘Oh, I am so glad he or she was killed, because now we’re free’. Also, violence is a fetish of male power.

JK: To roughly sum up: you are a non-violent but politically active philosopher who believes in good jokes more than in political ontology, reject all the -isms, thinks non-elegantly and on top of that defines herself as a theoretical pragmatist but neither Rortian nor Deweyan…

SBM: I was trained as a historian. In historical research, you look at certain trends that are long term, but you also discover certain things that are actual changes. Change does happen in history, surprises happen, events that radically rearrange things. Most people cannot see change at the very moment it happens. If you keep thinking that the present moment is simply a repetition of the past and nothing new is possible (as we tend to do in personal fights with those who are our nearest and dearest), you miss the little thing that is actually different and that can change the entire dynamics. For me theoretical pragmatics means to look for even the smallest potential for change, always to respond to what is suddenly possible, what was not there yesterday but is there today. As a theorist I don’t want to be stuck by saying ‘Oh, but I already am an anarchist (or any other identity), so this moment can’t mean anything new to me’. It’s important to notice what is possible at the moment that wasn’t there before – not only instrumentally possible, but also theoretically possible to think or to imagine. If something new appears, as a theorist I should give this change presence, actuality in the Hegelian sense.

JK: Do you think that conditions of what is possible lay more in materiality or more in new, radical imagination?

SBM: If you’re just thinking, you can produce whatever concepts you want but they won’t change material reality. If you’re just analyzing material reality, you become a simple empiricist. But having to discipline thinking by material reality and vice versa can lead to something truly important. Imagination is anchored in materiality. In “The Arcades Project” Benjamin wrote ‘Words are sails. The way they are set turns them into concepts’. That’s a great metaphor, but what is wonderful is that from his letters you know that he was sailing with a friend in Ibiza when he thought this. His thinking was typically sparked by the most concrete, personal experiences. Imagination and rational analysis are not antithetical, theory and reality are never disconnected.

Łukasz Pawłowski: A few weeks ago “Foreign Policy” magazine published its annual list of 100 Top Global Thinkers. 10 first positions were granted ex aequo to “Arab revolutionaries”. The striking thing is that among them there are two non-Arabs – you and Gene Sharp – retired professor of political science from Boston. Can you explain how you – a Serbian biologist – ended up listed as an “Arab revolutionary”?

Srdja Popovic: Well, back at the end of the 1990’s I was a revolutionary in Serbia. In 1997 with a group of fellow students we established an organization called “Otpor” – in Serbian meaning “Ressistance” – which aim was to topple the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic. In October 2000, using only non-violent means of political struggle, we finally succeeded. Thousands of Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade thus preventing Milosevic from forging the results of presidential elections and forcing him to resign. After that for a brief time I served as a Serbian MP but in 2003 I gave up my political career. With friends, Andrej Milivojevic and Slobodan Djinovic, we founded CANVAS – Centre for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies – and since then we have been devoted to spreading the experience we gained in opposing Milosevic all around the world. Because we organized workshops for people engaged later on in the Arab Spring and because we wrote a pretty popular non-violent struggle manual called “Non-Violent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points” – translated by now into 6 different languages and read by revolutionaries across the Middle East and Iran – “Foreign Policy” connected the dots and put us in the context of those events. We always repeat that it is the people actually doing the revolution who deserve all the credit for what is achieved. Yet, I believe we have a small role of passing to them the knowledge that is useful in their undertakings.

ŁP: And what about Gene Sharp? He is 83 years old now so I assume he was not so actively involved in the Arab Spring as you were…

SP: Sharp is a brilliant scholar who spent most of his life researching the phenomenon of non-violent struggle against dictatorships. His most popular book, “From dictatorship to democracy: A conceptual framework for liberation” has been translated into 28 languages and used by revolutionaries throughout the world, including us in Serbia at the time of “Otpor”.

ŁP: How did “Otpor” come across the ideas of Gene Sharp?

 SP: In May 2000 at a conference in Budapest I met Bob Helvey, retired U.S. army colonel who became a close associate of Sharp and a devoted promoter of his ideas. Gene’s work helped us structure what we had already been doing in Serbia for a few years. Up to that point we learned all the strategies of non-violent resistance simply by doing them. Suddenly we bumped into a man who had been studying this approach for over 30 years. By reading his books we learned that many of our techniques of fighting Milosevic’s regime were in fact invented many years ago and thousands miles away.

ŁP: For example?

SP: For example “pots and pans protests”. Back in 1996-97 we used to come out on our balconies at 7:30 p.m. – the time of state TV news which were the symbol of Milosevic’s propaganda – hitting pots and pans making as much noise as we could. Later on it turned out that this particular strategy was first applied in Chile 30 years before. This made me realize that there is a larger context to what we do and that we are not the only ones fighting a dictator. It did not have a large influence on “Otpor” because at that time we were at the last stages of our preparations for presidential elections in autumn 2000 but Sharp’s work inspired me afterwards. Most of his theory is based on one single sentence: “If people do not obey, rulers cannot rule”. The goal of our work is to explain it to those who live under undemocratic rule and want to change it.

ŁP: How precisely did you start doing what you do now? As you said in 2003 you ceased to be a MP and established CANVAS. Why?

SP: After the success of our campaign and especially after a documentary movie “Bringing Down the Dictator” made in 2002 we began to receive invitations and request for help from countries all over the world like Zimbabwe, Georgia and Belarus. People there claimed to be inspired by our struggle and wanted to learn more. We were very surprised because at that point we did not know that the Serbian revolution may and in fact will become a very strong international brand, the way Polish revolution of 1989 is. It is now a bigger brand internationally than it actually is in Serbia. After toppling Milosevic Serbians soon returned to business as usual. We don’t even have any official marking of the 5^th of October – the day Milosevic stepped down. And then suddenly we were contacted by people from places we sometimes couldn’t even find on the map and the clenched fist – symbol of “Otpor” – to our astonishment appeared on banners and T-shirts of protesters in Africa, Europe and Asia.

ŁP: What were you thinking when you replied to those people? How did you see your task at that time?

SP: At the very beginning it was more of a hobby for me and my friends – an opportunity to travel, meet other interesting people, and exchange our experiences. Only after the Rose Revolution in Georgia in November 2003 we sat down with Slobodan Djinovic and Andrej Milivojevic to plan and structure our work. This is how we first came up with the idea of actually teaching people non-violent struggle in a systematized way. We began to organize more and more workshops, later on our reflections developed into the book I mentioned and now we established a master’s program in non-violent social change at the Department of Political Science at Belgrade University We also give guest lectures at foreign universities – e.g. Colorado University and Columbia University in the United States – because we believe what we teach should become a common knowledge. Thus, our work covers three main fields: (1) working with activists; (2) spreading the knowledge at universities and conferences; (3) developing new practical tools for non-violent struggle.

ŁP: How is CANVAS financed?

SP: It is financed in a way that guarantees our independence. It is a small institution with only 5 permanent employees and the costs of its regular operation are covered primarily by Slobodan Djinovic and a few other private individuals. Only when we engage in particular projects we align with many different organizations. For example, the next three trips I am preparing for now are going to be financed by respectively Heinrich Böll Foundation, Freedom House and OSCE. This is how we keep our independence which is crucial for our reputation and credibility. The problem is that we are already extremely understaffed and soon will not be able to respond to all the requests.

ŁP: How do you as an institution decide to cooperate with this or that group that asks for your help?

 SP: Basically, our only concern when responding to a potential partner is whether this partner has a history of violent struggle. If not, we usually accept the proposition. For that reason we ended up working with environmental groups, anticorruption groups, leftist as well as nationalistic ones. We don’t really care about the ideology and believe that the knowledge we possess should be spread to all the people for free.

ŁP: Nonetheless, you help groups that may become serious political forces in their countries. Do you somehow differentiate between democracy promotion and interfering with another country’s affairs?

SP: I believe there is a major difference between what we do and interference with another country’s affairs. First of all, we always operate per invitation. We don’t go out to search for commissions – it is the people that find us. Furthermore, we only give these people knowledge and do not tell them what to do with it. Teaching people how to organize themselves, how to manage their resources or how to send their message clearly is just providing them with tools. How they are going to use them is for them to decide. Besides, successful non-violent struggle is always based on large numbers of people so eventually each organization that we work with will have to gain popular support. If they cannot come up with some appealing programme they will never win. I wouldn’t therefore describe our work as interference. We rather tell people how to empower themselves. It is like teaching them a new skill, a new language for example.

ŁP: This does not change the fact that democratization is often thought to be merely a “cover” for Western imperialism. For example George Bush maintained that by removing Saddam Hussein in Iraq he wanted to democratize the country but it was widely claimed that his aim was simply to gain control over the country. Are you not afraid that your activity may be seen the same way?

SP: I am not, because of our emphasis on non-violent struggle. Democracy cannot be easily exported, nor can it be installed successfully after violent coup performed by foreign forces. In the book “Why Civil Resistance Works” Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, by analyzing over 300 conflicts between 1900 and 2006 came to conclusion that non-violent struggle is much more efficient than violent one. Then of course there is the question of maintaining democracy after revolution. Here again, non-violent movements have a greater chance of succeeding.

ŁP: However, it is sometimes maintained that some countries are not ready to become democratic, due to reasons of political, cultural, religious etc. nature. Do you share this opinion or do you believe that every non-democratic country can become democratic?

SP: I believe a country is ready for democracy the moment majority of the people wants it. I was shocked when at one point of the Arab Spring Israeli ambassador to the United States said on CNN that the Arabs were not yet ready for democracy. It is one of the most stupid statements I have ever heard, tantamount to claiming that Israelis are not mature for this or that. Not one single country or race is superior to another when it comes to democracy.

ŁP: Yet democracy is a very nebulous term. Virtually every leader in the world claims or claimed to be a democrat – Putin, Hu Jintao, Castro, Chávez, Kaddafi, Milosevic. What then do you understand by the term “democracy” and why do you think your definition is better than theirs?

 SP: I see democracy primarily as a contract between the government and the people which allows the latter to replace the former by means of elections. There is this popular saying in Serbia comparing the political class to underwear – if you don’t change it on regular basis it tends to get smelly. I agree with it and I’m saying this as a former MP. However, democracy is obviously not only about elections. The second aspect of it is constituted by a set of basic freedoms – freedom of the press, of speech, of assembly and independent judiciary. If all these elements are in place I believe we can speak of democracy. It is by no means some ideal political system in which economy always grows and the politicians are not corrupt. Democratic politicians are equally corrupt as those in dictatorships – the major difference is that democracy provides a mechanism to replace them.

ŁP: Not everyone would agree with that. The people from Occupy Wall Street movement say that replacing politicians can’t change anything because the new ones are bribed by big companies and lobbies even before they get elected.

SP: That might be true but then the main challenge for the Occupy movement is to propose some specific measures on how to remedy this problem. If they stick only to the list of the things they don’t like instead of suggesting remedies for their grievances they will never grow in numbers and never succeed. What they need is a clear vision of tomorrow. In this sense they face similar problems as the revolutionaries in Egypt. The reason why the Egyptian revolution is now being suppressed by the military is precisely the lack of clear vision of what is supposed to happen after Mubarak is gone. In every revolution, once the previous regime is toppled a major unifying factor is gone so that to retain the unity of the movement you need to tell people exactly what they are fighting for. They should know where the train they got on is going; therefore subsequent steps should be planned well in advance.

ŁP: But isn’t a revolution supposed to be a spontaneous, usually surprising outburst of people’s will? You seem to be saying something entirely the opposite – successful revolutions are well-organized ventures. They don’t just happen they have to be planned.

SP: Planning does not make a revolution less authentic. Developing strategies and coming up with particular tactics of fighting a regime is always only a first step. It may be taken by a small group of people but later on those people are always faced with a crucial test – will they be able to gain wider support for their cause? Without it success is impossible. One cannot simply export or implant revolution in one country or another, unless with violent means. For a military coup no wide support is needed. Non-violent change, however, will never come without mass support of the people. There is no way I could come to Georgia, Egypt or Tunisia and mobilize thousands by bringing the revolution in my suitcase. To be honest I would be the happiest person in the world if it worked this way and probably as we speak I would already be on my way to North Korea to overthrow Kim dynasty. Unfortunately this is not how things work.

ŁP: Tell me then, how do they work? What do you teach the people who ask for your help?

SP: First, they need to understand that power is never a constant asset. It may shift in every society, even in dictatorships. Then, they need to carry out a thorough analysis of a given society in order to be able to understand which institutions are crucial for making such shift possible – in case of Serbia these were the police and national television. If your revolution is to be successful you need to pull people out of them. We persuade our students that non-violent means of struggle are a lot more effective way of doing that, than a call to arms and violent rebellion. The potential revolutionaries must therefore develop a strategy for gradually “sucking people out” of the regime. Although these steps are usually taken by a small group, if successful, they turn it into a wide movement. The next point is therefore to teach people what a political movement actually is, what keeps its various parts together, why is it important to have common symbols and identity, etc. Generally speaking at this point we teach how to turn people’s fear into a mass enthusiasm for change. Most dictatorial regimes are based on fear. If you take it out from them, the whole structure begins to shake and may eventually come down.

ŁP: However, as you said before, even if the regime is overthrown it is not the end of the process. When Adam Michnik was once asked what the worst thing about communism is, he replied, “that what comes after”. Very often it is easier to topple a dictator than to destroy the structure of dictatorship. Georgia, Kirgizstan and even Ukraine are good examples of how difficult democratic change is to maintain. Do you advise on that subject as well?

SP: No, we don’t engage in that. Transition is quite often a very long lasting process and we are too small organization to be monitoring it in many different countries. Furthermore there are many other institutions out there which specialize in the area of democratic transitions. Nevertheless, at our workshops we point out to certain measures that may be taken before and during the revolution to make its outcomes more durable. In the case of Serbia there were a few factors that made our transition a reasonable success.

First, we knew what we wanted from the very early stages of our work and this vision of tomorrow was pretty clear throughout the whole process. We wanted free elections, freedom of the press, independent judiciary. We also wanted to improve relations with our neighbors and set Serbia on the way to the European Union. This transparency is very important not only to retain people’s trust; it also allows you to measure how much you managed to achieve.

The next thing is a smooth transition of power and for that good timing is crucial. The reason why in Serbia we were successful is that our whole campaign was centered on winning the presidential elections and we also knew what we would do if Milosevic tried to forge the results. Therefore the moment he finally acknowledged his defeat and stepped down, a new president was immediately sworn in and the transition could go on.

The third step that we took was to remind the new government that it was accountable before its citizens. After the elections we posted posters all around the country to let the politicians know we were watching them. There was a bulldozer on them – a symbol of Serbian revolution – and an inscription: “Serbia has 4500 registered bulldozers and almost 7 million potential drivers”. I think that turning a political movement into a watchdog is the best thing you can do after the fight is complete. You need to have a tool to constantly check the elites and not rely entirely on their good will.

ŁP: What motivates you to do what have been doing for many years now?

SP: First of all, you get a chance to meet really the best parts of different societies. You teach at prestigious schools and talk to very bright people who will be future decision makers and who by applying this knowledge may prevent many wars from happening. You also work with activists who are often the most valuable people a given society have. Those people risk – sometimes risk a lot – not for themselves but for the sake of the future generations. Secondly, it is also a great way to learn. I believe you can find out more about Egyptian society from a dozen of Egyptians than from a dozen of books on Egypt. In this way really become a citizen of the world which, in my view, is priceless.

Łukasz Pawłowski: The National Endowment for Democracy has an annual budget of almost 140 million dollars. How big does it make it among other democracy promoting institutions?

Carl Gershman: Although we are an independent and private institution, our budget comes primarily from an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress. Compared to the amount of money United States spends on democracy promotion through such agencies as the USAID and the State Department, the NED budget is not that large. It represents about 5 or 6 percent of the total amount spent by the U.S. on democracy assistance. There are also other public and private institutions like George Soros’ Open Society Institute that is rather large as well. The NED is thus only one of a number of players. The European Union also spends a great deal of money on democracy promotion and is actively considering the creation of an institution parallel to our own, called European Endowment for Democracy. This is a Polish initiative, by the way.

ŁP: What means of support do you usually provide for countries you are assisting? For example in what ways were you involved in the Arab countries during the Arab Spring?

CG: Obviously you should not start getting involved only during “the spring.” You have to be present during “the winter” as well. We were very active in supporting many groups in Egypt and other Arab countries: independent labor unions, election monitors, nongovernmental organizations advancing women rights or protecting human rights in general, and especially independent media and groups using new communications technologies. In the countries that were relatively open like Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Yemen, we were able to do more than we could in closed societies like Libya, Tunisia, or Syria. But we were even able to be active in these dictatorships, supporting some human rights organizations and groups working from exile. You cannot just enter when things open up – you have to be there before that. That’s certainly the way it was in Central Europe in the 1980s when the NED got started. We didn’t wait for Solidarity and other independent groups to succeed. We supported them when they were underground organizations.

ŁP: In what particular activities do you engage?

CG: There are three forms of help we can offer. One is grant support to NGOs. Second is training and technical assistance, largely provided by NED’s four core institutes, which are international democracy support organizations associated with the Democratic and Republican Parties, the AFL-CIO, and the Chamber of Commerce. They provide aid to their counterparts abroad, whether it is organizing political parties, training election monitors, helping parliaments o develop their committee structures and oversight procedures, helping business associations develop and promote more open and transparent economic processes, helping workers organize – all those things are done under this second category of training and technical assistance. The third aspect, which is especially important in dictatorial countries, is what I would call moral support and solidarity for people who must operate in very difficult situations. These people often face arrest, and of course their lives are threatened as well.

ŁP: What do you mean by “moral support”?

 CG: We defend human rights, we help give people in closed societies political recognition and visibility, we put out alerts when they are in trouble, we let them know that they are not alone. Václav Havel, who just passed away, did a great deal of work providing what I have called moral and political solidarity with dissidents in danger – the very same solidarity he received from the West during communist times.

ŁP: How do you choose countries and initiatives in which to engage?

CG: All of our work is demand driven. We are responding to particular situations on the ground. They differ from one country to another, depending on the political circumstances, the amount of political space that activists have to work in, and many other factors. For example, in a very dictatorial country like North Korea, there is not much work that can be done on the inside. We can support human rights organizations working from the outside to try to protect people and increase political space, or groups that are trying get information into and out of the country, thereby helping to open it up. Burma is a little more open then North Korea, so there we can engage in more activities inside the country. Eventually we hope we will be able to support directly some nongovernmental organizations there. Once we move from dictatorial countries to countries that I would characterize as hybrid or semi-authoritarian, like Russia or Venezuela, we have much more space in which to work with indigenous groups fighting for human rights, or for free and fair elections – though I must emphasize that democracy work in such countries is always very difficult. Still, international organizations can provide a great deal of support in trying to level the playing field for different political and social actors. Finally, there are countries that I describe as emerging democracies – countries that are undergoing an extended transition, that are having problems with developing the rule of law, reducing corruption, or strengthening political pluralism. In such countries we work with civil society, local organizations and independent media, trying to create conditions of respect for the rule of law, human rights, political freedoms or other aspects of democracy that are weak.

ŁP: Do you wait for organizations in those countries to come to you or do you engage on your own and actively look for potential partners you could cooperate with?

CG: It works both ways, but more the first than the second, since there is a huge demand for our work. Obviously, if our institutes go into a country they are going to look for appropriate partners that want support. But the institutes don’t act unilaterally. They try to respond to indigenous needs and desires. You need to remember that although there are institutions like NED that can provide significant moral, technical and even financial support, at the end of the day democratic progress in a country is the responsibility of indigenous movements. We exist simply to support those local forces.

ŁP: You differentiated between many different types of regimes: very dictatorial as the one in North Korea, semi-authoritarian as in Russia, and those which seemed to be stuck on their way to democracy. What standards do you apply to assess which kind of regime you are dealing with?

CG: This is a matter of common sense and good judgment. We take into account a whole range of issues. Is there a free press? Are there political prisoners? Is there some degree of freedom of association? Can NGOs exist and carry out their work free from government harassment and control? How dominant is the central government? These are some of the questions we ask when analyzing a country. Obviously the more dictatorial a country is, the less those freedoms and rights are protected. The annual survey produced by Freedom House, “Freedom in the World,” is also useful. It assessed countries on two dimensions – political rights and civil rights. Freedom House uses a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 signifies highest degree of freedom and 7 the least amount of freedom. The countries given the numbers from 1 to 2.5 are essentially considered to be free or democratic; those graded from 2.5 to 5 are considered partly free; and below that are dictatorial countries with the most serious deficiencies.

ŁP: It is sometimes said that this measure is unfair because it does not account for local differences and applies Western standards to the countries which due to their religious, social and cultural background should be governed in a different manner.

CG: In my view, this argument is most often used by authoritarian dictators to justify or legitimize their rule. Former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew used it to defend “Asian values.” Hugo Chávez uses it now to defend his “Bolivarian democracy.” The Islamic dictatorship in Iran extols its “Islamic democracy,” and of course there is Putin’s “managed democracy,” and so forth. I think that the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen stated it well when he said that the issue is not whether a country or a people is fit for democracy, but rather how they can become fit through democracy, because democracy is a learning process by which people grow and learn how to solve their problems. Any country, any society in the world has the capacity to do that. The question is what are the next steps they need to take to get there. These steps will differ depending on the starting point – North Korea has a much longer route to democracy than Russia or Venezuela, though frankly, with a successful Korean democracy right across the border, it might progress with surprising speed if North Korea ever opens up.

ŁP: You mentioned Amartya Sen, who once wrote the famous article “Democracy as a Universal Value,” published in the Journal of Democracy which you as NED sponsor. In this article Sen argued for democracy promotion all around the world and he opposed cultural relativism in this regard. I understand you share his view that democracy is a political system that can be implemented everywhere.

CG: Indeed, it is a universal value in the sense that all people can aspire to democracy by virtue of their humanity, their human dignity. While their circumstances may differ, they all have the capacity to strive for it. When you hear people claiming the opposite, you should look closely at who they are because usually these are the people who have a great stake at maintaining an undemocratic system – Putin, Chávez, Ahmadinejad or their apologists.

ŁP: All of them, however, claim they are running democratic countries. It is merely a different kind of democracy from the Western one, better suited to local conditions.

CG: Well, it only shows how powerful the democratic idea is when even dictators and autocrats want to be regarded as democratic leaders. Nevertheless I’m very suspicious of their “hyphenated” versions of democracy. I prefer not to have an “Islamic democracy”, a “managed democracy”, a “Bolivarian democracy” or “socialist democracy,” as they call it in China. I prefer the real thing. What we strive for as NED is democracy itself, a system that respects and helps protect certain fundamental values like human rights, the rule of law, freedom of association and expression, an independent judiciary, free and fair elections, and so forth. It is pretty straightforward, and you know it when you see it.

ŁP: Are you active only in the countries you recognize as undemocratic or would you be willing to support an organization claiming to fight for improving the quality of democracy in a seemingly democratic country? Let’s assume, for example, that representatives of the Occupy Wall Street movement came to you asking for help in fixing democracy in the United States. Would you cooperate with them?

CG: No, we wouldn’t. First of all the U.S. Congress does not want us to use public funds to operate in the United States or other well established democracies but only in undemocratic countries. When you have limited funds you have to work where the needs are greatest. In a country like the United States, if people have a problem they can organize themselves politically to try to solve it. They don’t need us. We exist to help develop democratic processes and institutions where they don’t exist, so that people can have the opportunity to fight for their rights. If these institutions are already securely in place, there is no need for our assistance. It is one thing to occupy Tahrir Square in Egypt where people don’t have democratic ways of exercising their rights. It’s an entirely different thing to occupy Wall Street in the United States where you can pursue your political goals in a legal manner. Where people have the opportunity to use democratic processes to improve the system, they should do so. Of course there are occasions when nonviolent civil disobedience is appropriate to the situation. The Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960’s used civil disobedience to change unfair laws that gave legal protection to racial segregation and denial of voting rights to black people in seven southern states. But such tactics don’t work when you’re trying to change an economic system. There you need organization, politics, and coherent policy ideas.

 ŁP: The protesters from the Occupy movement would disagree with you by claiming the system itself is corrupt to the extent that makes equal and transparent influence on political decisions impossible.

CG: I disagree with that. We have a democracy, and one has to appreciate its advantages and make use of them. There was a time during the Cold War when some people were contemptuous of American democracy and believed there was a higher form of democracy in the Soviet Union. In the end, it became clear that communism was not a higher form of democracy but simply a form of totalitarianism. Therefore, one should not treat with disdain or take for granted the “bourgeois” democratic freedoms we have at our disposal. They should be cherished and used to strengthen and improve democracy.

ŁP: You said that NED operates only outside United States in countries considered to be undemocratic. The problem is that your activities are sometimes described not as democracy promotion but rather as illegitimate interferences in other countries’ politics. You often support very small groups of dissidents, while the majority of people might be perfectly happy with the undemocratic regime they live under.

CG: It’s true that dissidents may not always have broad popular support. Did Andrei Sakharov speak for the entire population of the Soviet Union? Probably not. Was it a mistake to support him and other anticommunist dissidents? Well, I don’t think it was. The question we ask before helping anybody is: Are they fighting for genuinely democratic rights? If they are, they deserve support form an organization like ours. We are not interfering with people’s choices, we are not favoring one party over another. We are simply helping people create an open and fair political process so that people can have the opportunity to choose, so that the people’s will can be fairly determined and exercised freely. There is a difference between supporting the establishment of democratic political processes and trying to influence the outcome of these processes. I hope you understand the distinction.

ŁP: I do, but as you know the National Endowment for Democracy is sometimes accused of being an instrument of American foreign policy, not a neutral organization promoting democracy.

CG: Although NED funding is authorized by the NED Act that Congress passed and the President signed in 1983, it was clearly stated from the very beginning that we are an independent and private organization. We are not part of the U.S. government, and the State Department exercises no control over our decisions. I believe people all over the world with whom we work, or who are familiar with NED programs, realize that NED is not a branch of the U.S. government and does not carry out U.S. policy – we are a private organization using public funds to advance U.S. democratic values and broad national purposes.

ŁP: Are there any specific means by which you maintain your independence?

CG: It is inscribed in our by-laws. NED decisions on grants and policies are taken by an independent and nonpartisan Board of Directors made up of very distinguished people. They are not appointed by our government, which has no role in determining the kinds of programs we will support. It is always the decision of the Board, which is the way the Congress wanted it. Therefore, although the grants we make and our various activities – for example, the World Movement for Democracy, which is a global network of activists – are financed by public funds that are appropriated annually by the U.S. Congress (we can and do also raise private funds), we are overseen by an independent governing body. Of course, we are also publicly accountable and entirely transparent, so that if we do something wrong, it cannot be hidden. Congress, for example, made us subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The independent and non-partisan nature of this process is essential to NED’s effectiveness, because we could not support democracy consistently over the long run if we got entangled in U.S. policy decisions or diplomatic initiatives.

ŁP: Speaking purely theoretically, however, could the U.S. Congress shut down the National Endowment for Democracy if they didn’t like the policies you were pursuing?

 CG: Not so much shut us down as to deny our appropriation. As a private institution we can accept money from individual donors, but the Congress wanted us to use public funds to support democratic groups around the world. It’s an expression of America’s support for democratic values. Certainly Congress can change its mind, but for the past quarter of a century they have seemed to like what we do and think we’re doing an honest job in a manner consistent with the NED Act.

For a moment it seemed that winter would cool down the protesters’ zeal when, for many quite unexpectedly, demonstrators appeared on the streets of a city where the biting cold makes not the slightest impression on anyone: Moscow. Although it is too early to tell, we may have just entered the Russian Winter. The problem is that all these protests seem to end just like the seasons do—they pass. While for years it was believed that in countries such as Egypt and Libya protests could never occur because of state repression (or in the U.S. because of individualism and consumerism), 2011 can be called a year of newly launched but uncompleted revolutions. Seeing that currents events have provided an answer to the question “How to start a revolution?,” reasonable and pragmatic Harvard scholars have posed a new question: How to finish a revolution?

Finding answers to questions (political as well as scientific), is an essential element of the construct known in the West by the proud name of “knowledge society”. According to the old philosophical logic, the difference between knowledge and wisdom is that knowledge consists in a set of responses (which more or less popular sophists were always ready to deliver), while wisdom (represented by Socrates) is the ability to pose really good questions. A really good philosophical question can be recognized by the fact that regardless of whether or not we can give an answer to it, it fundamentally changes the way we look at the answers that have already been given. The knowledge society is not necessarily a wisdom society and it might in fact be quite a foolish one. Contemporary educational systems as well as the media shape the political debate in a way that promotes answers similar to those give on TV quiz shows: fast, witty and in line with the existing rules of the game.

The most serious accusation against Spanish “indignados” and American “occupiers” was their refusal to provide concrete answers. The protesters concentrated on questioning, which is probably the most philosophical part of political activism, and by doing so radically changed the language of public debate. The most interesting intellectual activity in all the seasons of 2011 was to observe how certain issues, concepts, ideas, and events moved from the domain of mere political speculation to the realm of ordinary conversation at the kitchen table and in subway stations. And yet, after a hundred days of the occupation and several thousand arrests, after many hours of general meetings and full days of discussions and, finally, after numerous police actions evicting occupation camps from public spaces of American cities, the mood among occupiers is like the mood on a still ship: we are in the middle of a lake, nobody wants to paddle back to the shore but the wind has somehow stopped blowing in the sails. Not only does nobody know the answers, but we do not seem even to know how to begin responding to the revolutionary question, “What is to be done?”.

Actually, there are a number of tempting replies, but none of them seem plausible or even thinkable within the limits of existing system, and so we think them quietly, knowing that there is less reason in them than imagination (and imagination was never highly prized in the knowledge society, so that we who imagine are a bit ashamed). Get rid of Wall Street? Cancel all public debts? Eliminate credit rating agencies and financial markets? Put bankers on trial? Introduce a guaranteed income everywhere? Dispose of all politicians and replace them by lottery? Most of potential responses either fall into the category of political fiction (like during the Cold War it was a political fiction to imagine the Eastern bloc collapsing), or else are completely unsatisfactory. The fantastic character of the first lies in the fact that there is no group and no state with the power to implement them, while incompleteness of the latter in the fact that implementing them in one country would be simply quixotic. For example, though many people readily agree that the enormous power of credit rating agencies is illegitimate and extremely harmful, no government has the courage to publicly announce that it will disregard their demands and not make any further painful cuts. The huge disappointment with Obama was caused by the fact that his “Yes, we can” turned out to be limited only to what was allowed by Wall Street financiers and global capitalist networks. While history knows stories of the successful decapitation of tyrants and dictators, the decapitation of a many-headed Hydra still remains in the domain of mythology.

In the absence of meaningful answers, it would be easy to ignore the newly instigated revolutions if it wasn’t for their unique coincidence in time—after years without protests they keep erupting one after another in totally unexpected places and even if they are populist, they’re not xenophobic: the universal dimension of challenges we face is highlighted and rather than “outsiders” (e.g. immigrants) the system itself is blamed. If, as Susan Buck-Morss claims, the essence of political thinking lies in being able to capture novelty in a world where we think that everything has already happened, the question concerning the end of the revolution seems to be premature or simply ill-posed, because it refers to the perspective of particular revolutionary events rather than their universal significance. If the question of “How to finish a revolution?” is to be truly revolutionary, the most appropriate answer should be “Do not finish, but properly start”. It’s easy enough to imagine a history book from the future in which the year 2011 figures as the beginning of the beginning, and the end only coming twenty or fifty years later. If the global system requires a new, global kind of revolution, the question about the end must be replaced by the question of the beginning: how particular protests may contribute to building global solidarity and how to synchronize the revolutionary timeline; how to feed the revolutionary fire during many coming seasons in which—hopefully—more revolutions will be started.

The answer may lie in combining the various strategies of action presented in the interviews published in today’s “Liberal Culture”: the strategy of the philosopher and that of an activist. When asking great questions about what seems impossible today, we should also do everything possible to legitimize them by everyday actions, small but arduous struggles for the well-being of particular individuals and societies. So instead of New Year’s resolutions for 2012 I propose a political-philosophical exercise: on December 31^st think with all the power of your imagination on the one thing that you would like to change in your city, in the political system, or in your politics (even if it seems impossible) and then tell ten people about it. Five of them will probably not believe it but together with the other five try to do three things which with a little bit of effort can be accomplished and which will make that first great thing just a tiny little bit more possible.

Dear Readers,

“Kultura Liberalna” is proud to present you with the first Anglo-Polish issue of our magazine, devoted to the Polish presidency in the European Union. Although it has already been three weeks from the time government in Warsaw took over this position we still don’t know how the Polish authorities will cope with the challenges brought by it and how they will try to make the most of the opportunities it offers.

In our pages we present four answers to these questions. All our authors emphasize that after the reforms introduced by the Lisbon Treaty the significance of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union has been largely diminished and we should not expect any revolutionary plans to reorganize the EU being proposed by the Polish government. The reforms introduced in Lisbon do not, however, mean that the next six month of presidency may be treated half-heartedly. This is a time that should bring Warsaw real benefits – the question is what are these benefits and which of them should be considered a priority.

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Poland should therefore focus more on administrating the current European affairs rather than initiating new ventures. That is the role of a country running the presidency which now serves as a kind of secretariat for the meetings of the Council ministers. That is by no means a trivial task and judging from how the other countries have handled it lately, it may actually prove quite difficult. Polish supervision over all the major events within the European Union will make hundreds of European civil servants from many different levels focus on Poland and that is in itself very important. It will be a big challenge for Polish administration which needs to present itself as reliable, communicative and well-organized. If we get to the end of December with a successful Eastern Partnership summits and no major fiascos I would consider Polish authorities to have done well.

Presidency is a great chance to put Poland in the spotlight and thus underline the economic progress it has made over the years. Many people in the West still hold a view of Poland as a bizarre and backward country. Presidency may help to dispel those stereotypes. We should not underestimate that goal yet I have the impression that it is precisely what is often being done. Especially in the Polish press there is a tendency to think of the Polish role in black and white – if it is not brilliant then it must be disastrous. That is not true.

But does it mean that Poland has to abandon the great problems of our time as for example the crisis in the eurozone? I think it would be difficult for Poland to come up with dramatic and original idea on how to deal with this predicament and then push it through. This is a job mainly for France and Germany – because it is the biggest problem for them – and Britain since it is the third biggest economy in Europe. These countries are already discussing it very intensively behind the scenes. It would be a mistake to see Poland as a prime mover in this debate since it is not yet in a position to do that. I suspect that the best Poland can do is to facilitate the debates already in progress.

All that I have just stated here may seem to be in contrast with what Prime Minister Tusk said just a few weeks ago in his speech in the European parliament. Tusk said the goals of Polish presidency were very ambitious and he also presented himself as a convinced euro-optimist when he claimed that the best solution for the current crisis is not less but more European Union. I agree that such statements may lack credibility in the eyes of many European politicians or Europeans themselves but let’s imagine Tusk saying exactly the opposite – what would then be the reaction of MEPs and other member states? Poland has taken over the presidency at a difficult time, its space for maneuver is not great but that does not mean the Polish Prime Minister should go to the European Parliament and say the European Union is doomed to fail. That would be both ridiculous and disastrous. Donald Tusk’s remarks on the dangers of the new wave of euro-skepticism and the necessity of regaining faith in the European project may have limited direct impact on the EU but they were nonetheless encouraging and necessary. It would be infinitely more difficult to have as a president of the EU a country like the Czech Republic that was actively euro-skeptic. In this sense having Poland in the driving seat of the Union for the next six months is very important.

Polish presidency may prove significant for yet another reason – its end may be the beginning of the eclipse of the rotating administration. It is worth noticing that after Poland no big and politically influential European country will take over the presidency for the next few years. It will be held by a series of minor, peripheral member states – Cyprus, Ireland, Lithuania and Greece – until it will be passed to Italy in the second half of 2014. Poland is thus the last big and above all Europhilic rather than Eurosceptic country to hold this position for a long time. After Poland the role of the presidency will probably be diminished. It does not mean that the European Union will collapse but it will probably need to change.

This is not to say, however, that Poland is extremely unlucky. I cannot think of any member state that would take over the presidency at a “good” time – there is always a lot going on in the European Union.

A year ago it was Belgium which presided in the Council of the European Union and it managed to perform its duties very well despite deep domestic political crisis. This was undoubtedly a great success but on the other hand Belgium has already been in the driving seat eleven times and one cannot say it has significantly changed either Belgium or the EU. It would be therefore wise to look at the Polish new role from a Belgian perspective and not to expect a breakthrough for there will be none. Presidency is yet another administrative duty of all the member states. It ought to be performed decently but we should not build castles in the air believing that in six months we can change Europe.

Due to these difficulties and limitations it is sometimes said that Poland would be better-off to abandon ambitious plans of influencing the policies concerning the whole Union and to focus solely on local tasks, most important for our national interest. Such conceptualization of this problem is alike asking whether it’s better to wash one’s hands or feet. Both elements of Polish foreign policy within the EU – i.e. having a say in issues distant from us in geographical and political sense, as well as promoting our own local initiatives – should be pursued simultaneously. Poland has to show that EU presidency means presiding over the entire European Union and that it is not a time to deal solely with our own problems. We should encourage such model of presidency in which the presiding country is responsible for the whole organization. Looking from this perspective, Eastern Partnership – one of the chief Polish initiatives – is still very important, yet it has to be discussed in the context of other challenges facing the EU, above all the financial crisis and the war in Libya.

Polish government decided not to become involved in the Libyan conflict when it broke out and maybe that was a reasonable decision – due to for example the lack of financial resources. Nonetheless Polish government has never successfully explained this decision neither to Polish nor to European public opinion. As a president of the EU Poland now has to focus on promoting common European policy in the region and this means mediating between Germany – which opposed this intervention – and France and Great Britain. Nevertheless we need to admit our scope of action is rather limited. I see no space for Polish initiative in this area.

Although from the Libyan war we excluded ourselves, from the other major issue – discussion on the eurozone crisis – we were excluded by France which vetoed the proposition of Polish finance minister participating in the negotiations. Poland is however not entirely blameless in this case. If the Polish authorities had precisely determined the date of Polish accession to the eurozone and had undertaken all the possible means to achieve this goal, it would have been considerably more difficult for France to justify its decision. It has to be acknowledged that Paris did not solve this issue tactfully, yet its decision was to some extent justified – Poland was excluded from the meetings of the club to which it does not belong. Now we need to make sure that this minor disagreement will not dominate other aspects of Polish presidency.

So far this has not happened, which doesn’t mean our presidency up-to-date was free from mistakes. Polish idea, according to which potential border controls within the Schengen Area would apply only to citizens of the countries which do not belong to it, was disastrous, for how can we tell those people from other European and non-European citizens? By the color of their skin? Such propositions suggest a fundamental incomprehension of European rules and values and we are lucky this slip-up was not used to undermine Poland’s capability for leading the EU. It seems other member states agreed to treat it only as a “slip of the tongue”.

Polish presidency has thus still a great chance of being remembered as relatively unproblematic – not because Poland will solve all the problems EU is facing but because it will not add new ones to this list. Hungarian presidency was dominated by domestic affairs and so it will be remembered, Danish presidency may be dominated by the growing reluctance towards immigrants in this country and the Cypriot one by this state’s difficult relations with Turkey which will de facto lead EU negotiations with Ankara to a standstill. Against this background Poland may be seen in the future as a calm and competent president.

This will be very important above all for the Poles themselves. Public opinion in Poland still seems to believe that Polish political interest should be taken into account because of some historical injustices rather than because of our current place among other European countries. Our position in the EU does not result from the fact that we challenged Hitler first or that it was in Poland that “Solidarity” movement was born but from the fact that if we divided Europe in two parts – the one that is efficient and raises hopes and the one that is inefficient and raises anxieties – Poland would undoubtedly be in the first one. In the light of the fears that the European project is defective from its very nature Poland is a proof for the opposite. From the Polish perspective all the advantages EU has brought to its members are more clearly visible than from the perspective of Belgium or Germany where they were belittled long time ago.

I believe Poland to be well-prepared for its role. However, the very nature of the presidency after the Lisbon Treaty makes it a post by which not much can be gained but to which all the failures are very easily attributed. Despite all that we have a great chance to say when the time comes that we have used these six months wisely. Advantages from that will contribute mainly to improving Poland’s image – hopefully not only in the eyes of other countries but also in the eyes of the Poles themselves.

The conflict in Libya is prolonging, the Arab spring is far from a happy ending, the specter of Greek bankruptcy still lingers on, the Schengen area wobbles and the idea that used to keep the whole institution together seems to have got lost somewhere. Can Poland – the biggest post-communist country in the community which has just taken over the presidency in the EU – breathe some fresh air into the European project and maybe make the EU “admissible” again?

Polish authorities seem to have no doubt about it. In an article published on the first of July Prime Minister, Donald Tusk has identified the following goals Polish administration wants to pursue when at the forefront of European politics:

“The task I consider to be most important is reviving trust towards Europe among its citizens. The first message of our presidency will be therefore to rebuild common language and faith in European politics. […] Our plan is ambitious. We will strive for deepening the integration of European market, since it will increase the pace of economic growth. We will be advocating for further EU enlargement and better cooperation with its neighbors since it will guarantee stability at the continent’s gates – both southern and eastern. We will strengthen the security of Europe in terms of energy and food provisions as well as militarily. Finally we will commence a discussion on a new European budget”.

The plans are grand, numerous and diverse and so are the expectations towards the Polish presidency. “Financial Times” went as far as to claim that from all the member states only Poland with its heritage of ‘Solidarity’ and the economic success of recent 20 years can reinvigorate the faith in European Union. Flattered as they may be politicians in Warsaw need nonetheless to remember there is a limited number of things one can do in half a year. Instead of promising too much Poland should focus on what is really important and avoid spreading itself to thin.

The crisis of faith in common Europe has reached such proportions that even pro-European analysts claim that EU can no longer be taken for granted. A growing number of EU citizens ask themselves a simple question: “What are we doing here?” and the more they ponder over it the less convincing answers they come up with. The narrative of international solidarity on which European Community was originally founded is clearly losing its social resonance. Europeans need a new account of what actually keeps them together. Does Poland have such a story to tell? I believe it does. The only problem is to get the message through.

This may be difficult since for most Europeans – if they have any opinion on the subject – Poland is still a far-east, poor state with hardly anything to offer to its Western European counterparts. It is also often seen as unable to transgress its petty interests and predisposed primarily to take rather than to give. This reputation was supported by Polish recurrent conflicts with Russia and Germany during the years 2005-2007. Only one year after joining the EU Poland found itself in isolation and in a serious conflict with major European players.
Since then a significant amount of work has been done to change this image. Relations with Germany are now probably the best in the last 20 years and even always difficult cooperation with Russia is running relatively smoothly – at least from Brussels’ perspective. The country has gradually freed itself from being perceived as nuisance and “conflictmonger”. Now the major task is to convince other EU members that Poland is not only capable of acting in its own right but that it may also manage pan-European issues. Only then will it be treated as a credible partner and that is why it should be a pivotal point of Polish presidency.

In order to achieve that Poland must not focus solely on regional affairs such as Eastern Partnership. Important as attracting East European states to the West is, it should not overshadow the fact that for the time being EU has hardly anything to offer to them. Expanding eastwards towards Ukraine – a second largest country in Europe – is out of the question since – as already said – the Union must first face a grave internal crisis and find a new answer to the question of what keeps it together. Europe should clearly indicate its will to cooperate with former soviet republics and gradually tighten the relations with them. “Gradually” is however a crucial word in this context. European Union is obviously fatigued with a growing number of tensions coming both from within and outside the organization. If Poland presses too hard on a single point of Eastern Partnership it may backfire and discredit Poland’s impartiality. Should this happen, all other plans will be doomed to fail.

Presidency must not be considered a good time to quickly get all the particular interests done. On the other hand, it mustn’t either be considered a time when all the pending problems can be solved. In everything it does the government in Warsaw should always remember about its priority that is, in the words of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, “reviving trust towards Europe”. This is certainly not a task to be accomplished in six months but these six months may be either a good start or a lost opportunity. How can we make it the first rather than the latter? By beginning to draw up a new narrative explaining to the Europeans why their countries should remain united. There is more to Europe than economics and if we don’t want the EU to break up or turn into a “living dead” someone will finally have to say it. Polish recent history makes the country a good place to start a new debate on the idea of Europe. First, however, we must convince others we are worth hearing out.

EU is also a community of citizens and although the presidency concerns mainly the authorities of the state running it, one should not forget about civil dimension of this particular function. The political domain in which decisions are made penetrates the democratic sphere linked both to European societies and civil activity itself.

The articles presented this week in “Kultura Liberalna” highlight above all the national and institutional aspect of the European politics. Let’s sum them up: a successful presidency needs to be professional, moderate and European. Edward Lucas writes about a “big challenge for the Polish administration”. It is true that the government in Warsaw – but to some extent the whole administration – have to adjust to coordinating European affairs. Every day thousands of people will be committed to this goal – civil servants, municipal authorities, experts, politicians – and this endeavor will probably significantly remodel Polish politics by binding the national strategy more tightly to the European Union.

Polish presidency from the perspective of Brussels – as Konstanty Gebert points out – is just “yet another administrative duty”, routine operation, to which both European as well as Polish institutions seem to be well-prepared. A real challenge and test for the country running the presidency are unexpected events, international crises, conflicts, especially those which divide particular member states. Basing on my experiences in the European Parliament I can say that Slovenian presidency made a big impression when the country had to face the Kosovan declaration of independence announced despite Serbian fierce opposition. Slovenia was the first post-communist country presiding in the EU and what is more a country that was created after the collapse of Yugoslavia. After all these years EU has not yet developed a uniform position on Kosovo but at that time disputes divided even the particular parties in the European Parliament. I looked with admiration on how Slovenia was leading the EU so that this conflict in such an important matter would not spread to the level of European institutions. After the Lisbon Treaty, with High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy running the presidency should not be exposed to such challenges any longer. Besides, from the perspective of Warsaw European politics may seem an oasis of peace and predictability in the light of the political situation in Poland after the tragedy in Smolensk.

Poland will have to prove its moderation, constant balancing its political ambitions with European reality, and be able to combine great goals of the Union with a realistic view on the financial, economic, and social condition of Europe in the autumn 2011. How difficult this task is going to be was proved by the last summit of eurozone countries to which no representative of the country running the presidency was invited. Polish government behaved as it should, remaining calm in the face of this affront. In his speech in the European Parliament Prime Minister Tusk was right to underline the enthusiasm for Europe and the faith in major foundations of the common politics. Polish presidency should at every turn emphasize the vitality of the European project, work calmly and persistently for such European Union in which deepening the financial integration within the eurozone will not automatically lead to creating a “two-speed Europe”. This is a fundamental issue both for Poland and the EU as a whole.

Łukasz Pawłowski asks whether Poland can “breathe some fresh air into the European project”. Let me get back to my experiences in the European Parliament again, this time to the German presidency in the second half of 2007. In the speeches given by the German Chancellor in the European Parliament one could sense her identification with the political system of the Union.

For Angela Merkel it was natural and gave the impression that she simply felt at ease in the European Parliament in Strasburg or in Brussels. I have to admit that her frequent – as for the head of the presiding country – presence in the European Parliament was inspiring and showed that the presidency does not have come down to bureaucratic correctness. Merkel was a leader who in everyday practice proved that through the European Parliament the presidency can refer to the citizens and societies of the whole EU. Polish presidency should in similar manner surprise everybody with Europeanism. The government, Polish political class and civil service should in the next few months naturally convince Europe about the sense of the European project.

Europeanism does not interfere with wise presentation of the issues crucial from the Polish perspective, nor does it mean one needs to give up particular interests. French presidency in the second half of 2008 is a good example of this. France put a special emphasis on the Mediterranean area and nothing prevents Poland in the time of its presidency from promoting science, culture and entrepreneurship of the Eastern European and Caucasian countries and thus bringing them closer to the Union. The art of politics in this regard lies in naturally linking one’s activity in the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East with this in the Eastern Europe.

Europeanism also means addressing Polish public opinion with the European message for which, paradoxically, electoral campaign in Poland before Parliamentary elections in October may prove useful. Regrettably a few years ago the majority of Polish political class marched towards Europe united by the slogan “Nice or death”¹ which lead to misunderstanding of the idea of the Constitutional Treaty and – embarrassing for a country in which “Solidarity” was born – rejection of all the points of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. These six months of the presidency give us a great opportunity to change this situation. It is worth to bring forth Polish conceptions of Europe developed in the 20th century, forgotten strategy for European integration proposed by General Sikorski’s government in exile during the World War II or political thought developed by the people contributing to the famous Polish journal “Kultura”, edited by Jerzy Giedroyc in France during the time of communism in Poland.

Even the most successful presidency will not solve all the problems facing the European Union. From the perspective of the civil society the main challenge is to overcome the discord between European institutions and democracy which is now limited to the nation state. On the level of the economy the main challenge is global capitalism which brought crisis to the EU and gradually makes the European welfare state disappear. As a result, after the failure of the Constitutional Treaty we observe renationalization of the European politics, rise of a populist tide or on the other hand, strive for deepening the integration within the eurozone which may lead to disintegration of the EU.

The most interesting things in the months to come will take place not so much on the governmental level but rather on the streets of European cities and will be caused by the trade unions and their struggles, the youth movements’ protests, by the confusion around traditional political divides between left and right, by disputes on the cultural identity of the EU and the conflict between populist and liberal Europe which begins to loom on the horizon.

Footnote:

[1] That was the sentence used in 2003 by one of the most popular MPs at that time, Jan Rokita, who in this way displayed his objection to the change of the vote weighting system in the Council of the European Union approved by the Treaty of Nice in 2001.