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Aleksander Smolar - Studying the politics of power (117/201)

85 views · Published 19 December 2018 · 2:37 · Indexed 27 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2018 · News & Politics

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To listen to more of Aleksander Smolar’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFwlxPLurqAOCrabBgGrqLA7

Aleksander Smolar (b. 1940) is a Polish writer, political activist and adviser, vice-president of the Institute for Human Sciences and president of the Stefan Batory Foundation. [Listener: Vitek Tracz]

TRANSCRIPT: [VT] When you were at university studying, as a student, was there a division, a difference between learning new information through your academic work and the work you were doing by being politically active?

Well, yes, of course there was. That difference was there, it was a difference of levels. You could say that intellectual work is the fathoming of the complexities of social, economic, psychological or philosophical issues. It is the understanding at various levels of the comprehension and description of reality. Social activism, on the other hand, was for me in some sense the consequence of this or in any case, it was more superficial. It was the problem of taking up a stance in these great debates which were taking place, debates about the system of government, the future, international relations. They were about the politics of power and you could say that this was on a different level. Even if I were able to occasionally use some of the arguments which I gathered from these deeper, more theoretical levels, which I occasionally do, if I use them then I do so, in part, rhetorically. This way of legitimising what I'm saying was in part natural because intellectually I always functioned, and this is, in what you could say, my modest achievements, one of the characteristics that I always juggled: the elements of the various areas I studied. I mean, there were always several elements so it was never just pure economics and pure sociology or pure international relations because I always combined various elements as well as my knowledge about the situation in various countries at various periods, so in other words, I could arrange these Lego bricks which were all taken from different sets and I think this was one of the characteristics that was – original is too strong – but specific to my way of analysing reality and reaching conclusions which I obviously tried to convince others to accept.

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