Poland's rightwing PiS was economically redistributive. Is that a lesson for the left?

The last 15 years or so have seen a rise in support for far-right political forces across the Western world. Since June alone, elections for the European Parliament, the French National Assembly and the House of Commons in the UK revealed big gains for the Right.

Many are deeply apprehensive about this trend due to the experiences from the 20th century. This, however, poses the question what, if anything, can be done to try to deal with this issue?

Politically, the response across the Western world has been to adopt ever tightening anti-immigration measures. Arguably this has shifted politics in the West rightwards, normalising rhetoric and measures even by mainstream parties and actors, which in the past would have been deemed unacceptable.

This has been accompanied by the establishment of a dominant view that values and identity are the key factors behind this surge of support for the far-right.

Crucially, this has happened in an environment in which the Left, understood as the force that articulates political disagreements as seen through the prism of class struggle, thus emphasising the primacy of economic factors, has been at a historic low.

In other words, despite the momentous crisis of capitalism triggered by the 2008 financial crash and its fall-out, this has not resulted in a renewed political challenge to the fundamental principles of the Western economic system.

For left-leaning commentators and analysts, the rise of the far-right is ultimately a result of the absence of another political avenue for the expression of many people’s rightful frustrations with their stagnating and even deteriorating living standards.

So, following this line of thought, a crucial way in which the rise of the far-right can be halted is by the implementation of measures which will redistribute wealth, so that the ordinary citizens’ standard of living can be improved, and inequality reduced.

Syriza, Corbyn ... and the PiS?

Examples of politically significant forces that could have had that effect in recent years include the election of Syriza in Greece at the end of 2014 or Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the UK Labour party. Ultimately, so far at least, such efforts from the left have been unsuccessful.

This is why the Polish experience under the rightwing Law & Justice party (PiS) between 2015 and 2023 is all the more intriguing.

More specifically, a key reason for PiS’ repeat electoral success is that it delivered on many of its social spending pledges, which meant that the party gained the trust of voters on socio-economic matters.

One of its most popular programmes was the ‘500 plus’ that provided child subsidy; a programme that was extended during PiS’ second term in office. Contrary to the criticisms the PiS got for its socio-economic programmes as a strain on public finances, after its first term in office, economic growth was strong, unemployment was low, and due to increased tax revenues, there was in fact a reduction in the budget deficit.

Crucially, despite PiS remaining the biggest political force after the 2023 elections, Poland is now led by a mainstream coalition, headed by Donald Tusk.

A key reason for this outcome was that this time round an important coalition was mobilised against some of PiS’ other policies (i.e. anti-abortion, erosion of the rule of law).

Nevertheless, some analysts have speculated that the PiS’ electoral performance may have ironically also been hampered by the success of its redistributive policies. More specifically, these policies could have created a small aspiring middle class less supportive of redistribution by pulling voters in some regional areas out of the PiS’ target socio-economic group.

Arguably, this exposes the weaknesses in the dominant view that identity and values are behind the rise of support for the far-right, while suggesting that addressing economic hardship may be an important leverage in the struggle against the rise of the far-right.  

Perhaps the Polish experience isn’t so surprising if one takes into account research on the far-right supporters, which suggests that in distinction to its core supporters, who are motivated by cultural considerations, the numerically more significant support for the far-right comes from peripheral voters, whose key consideration is economic.

Crucially, although the Polish experience by no means suggests that the far-right has become an insignificant political force, it arguably provides evidence that addressing the voters’ economic concerns could help reduce the support for the far-right at the ballot box.