Socialist Consumption Revisited: Paternalistic Policies and Consumer Needs during the Polish Crisis

Abstract This article analyses the political economy of consumption in Poland during the crisis of 1980–1 through economic-policy debates among Communist Party and Solidarity experts. It asks how conflicts over everyday economic needs shaped political confrontation and the decision to impose martial law. The central argument is that the crisis resulted not from a simple failure of socialist production but from the erosion of a paternalistic system of allocating goods. This weakness was exposed both by Solidarity’s challenge to the state’s monopoly over defining scarcity and by the party’s own long-term consumer policies based on austerity as a recurrent instrument of governance whose implementation became politically blocked. The article outlines the systemic logic of socialist consumption, emphasizing accumulation, subsidized prices, and chronic allocation tensions, and examines late 1970s debates on needs and rational consumption. It then analyses the 1980–1 confrontation, showing how Solidarity legitimized consumer grievances yet resisted responsibility for stabilization, producing policy paralysis. Finally, it demonstrates how martial law enabled comprehensive austerity and price reform aimed at restoring financial stability and external creditworthiness. Based on Communist Party and Solidarity documentation, the article shows how struggles over consumption revealed structural limits of paternalistic governance under late socialism.