Seminars 2021/22

As prof. Mitchell Orenstein writes:

“In the pension area, the World Bank/USAID coalition has been by a coalition led by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and International Social Security Association (ISSA) (…). The success of transnational advocacy coalitions thus depends not only on their own resources, ideas, legitimacy, and organisational behaviour, but also on their relative standing. In the case of pension privatisation, it is quite clear that the World Bank-led coalition has enjoyed much greater access to resources than the ILO-led coalition.” (s. 69).

“Interestingly, the European Union largely stayed out of the pension reform debate, though it issued several communications in the late 1990s that gave a subtle green light to pension privatisation experiments in the Central and Eastern Europe and the rest of the EU.” (s. 72).

“Pension privatisation has been advocated by a transnational coalition that spread these reforms as part of well-organised campaign. This campaign began when members of neoliberal epistemic community took positions of power in leading state and transnational organisations and worked to formulate a coherent global agenda to guide their activity. Ultimately, the campaign for pension privatisation encompassed a variety of transnational actors working in cooperation and conflict, whose actions have been driven by their own ideas, resources, and international decisions that have changed over time.” (s. 72-73).

“(…) pension privatisation ideas has been developed by a transnational advocacy coalition of policy actors including Chilean reformers, U.S. economists, U.S. government agencies, and the World Bank and other multi-lateral international organisations. This powerful coalition issued its manifesto in 1994 and gained the full resources of the World Bank at that time. This campaign has been organized and coordinated among the main actors through various international conferences, donor meetings, and individual contacts. Through the efforts of the individual proposals actors and their cooperation, this coalition has advocated the transfer of pension privatisation policies to countries around the world.” (s. 80).

“Poland is a country where transnational policy actors played a large role in putting pension privatisation on the agenda. The World Bank - sponsored the activities of the Office of the Plenipotentiary for the Pension Reform and even released one of its leading pension reform officials, a Polish citizen, Michał Rutkowski, to head this office. The World Bank was deeply involved in all aspects of reform planning.  The Bank and USAID were also critical in reform implementation, as Poland experienced severe administrative difficulties in its social security administration, ZUS.” (s. 149). 

As the autihors write:

“Almost overnight, more than 400 million people found themselves in nations transitioning form state socialism and central planing to liberal democracy (in most cases) and free markets. (…) For the prize of political freedom and economic abundance, no cost seemed too high (…)” (s. 2).

“Each unique data point, each unit calculated in GDP per capita, is someone’s mother or father, daughter or son, husband or wife.” (s. 155).

“The collapse of socialism meant not only the end of political and economic system but also sudden shift in norms, values, and expectations about how ordinary people were supposed to live their lives: whether to go to university, to get married, to have children, to stay home or emigrate abroad. What had made sense under one system became unfeasible under the other, and many post socialist citizens mourned these changes.” (s. 173).

“We, as people, all have moments of great strength and great weakness - moments of independence and moments of dependence. Economic systems must work to promote overall human happiness and flourishing. As the citizens in the nations of Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia have experienced twice in the last century, ideologically driven polices that wilfully downplay or ignore the social consequences of their state-led or market-driven imperatives will inevitably fail in the long run. To better serve the needs of humanity, a proper balance must be found.” (s. 205).

Prof. dr. hab. Joanna Jurewicz – an Indolologist and cognitive linguist (Chair of South Asia, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Warsaw), as well as a translator, poet and writer. At the center of her interests lies the philosophical thought of Hinduism expressed in the oldest Indian literary monuments (texts of Revelation, epics, c. 13 BC to the turn of the era). She is particularly interested in the beginnings of abstract thinking, as well as the inheritance of concepts and images during cultural transmission. In her research, she uses an interdisciplinary methodology combining philology with cognitive linguistics. Author of five monographs (On the Names and Shapes of One. Monism of Indian Philosophy of Tradition 1995, Rigveda Cosmogony. Thought and Metaphor 2001, Fire and Cognition in the Rgveda 2010, Fire, Death and Philosophy. A History of Ancient Indian Thinking 2016, Invisible Fire. Memory , Tradition and the Self in Early Hindu Philosophy, 2021), translations of selected hymns of the Rigveda under the general title (Wędrówka za przestrzenią 2013, 2015, 2017) and over 80 scientific articles. Vice-president of the Polish Semiotic Society, member of Academia Europaea.

Pani Prof. Monika Kostera: Polish sociologist, titular professor in economic sciences (2004) and humanities (2017). She works as a full professor at the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Warsaw, as well as a professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Södertörn in Sweden and the Institut Mines-Telecom Business School in France. She was also a full professor at Durham University in the UK. She has published over 40 books and a significant number of scientific articles devoted to the subject of organization and management. Her research interests include organizational imagination and disalienation of work. She also writes and publishes poetry in Polish, Swedish and English. 

Source materials:

Monika Kostera: “Większość edukacji na wydziałach zarządzania to pseudonauka. Uczymy jak psuć świat”

Monika Kostera, Anna Musiała, Jarosław Niemiec: “Pracownik czy wolny najmita”

Anna Musiała: “Nie ma wolności w polskiej nauce prawa pracy”.

Reference Material: Socialisation of Economic Risk and Redistribution of Responsabilities

Materiały źródłowe: Robert Chenavier - Simone Weil Philosophe Du Travail, 

Alexandre Massipe - La beauté du travail ouvrier chez Simone Weil

The text of the speech of Dr. Nelli Sołonko, delivered at the CBZ seminar on the November 4 2021 r.