Państwo, demokracja i walka klas. Uwagi na temat udziału socjalistów w debacie konstytucyjnej w sejmie II kadencji (1928–1930)

Abstract

The following article discusses Polish Socialists’ participation in the constitutional debate conducted in the Sejm (1928–1930). In the first part, main motives of the criticism formulated by Socialists against constitutional project presented by the Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (BBWR) are reconstructed. The role played by the constitutional debate in Socialists’ tactic is also presented in this section. Subsequently, on the basis of Socialists’ statements on constitutional issues, I discuss their class-oriented interpretation of parliamentary democracy. I argue that their perception of the modern state and democracy was coherent with the theory of social change and class struggle established in the Polish socialist thought of that time. I notice roots of this theory in specific “optimist historiosophy”, distinctive for the European socialist movement in the 1920s. The beginning of the 1930s started a decline of this optimism and initiated an ideological crisis in the Polish socialist movement.