Between modertnistic optimism and antimodernistic utopia : a turn in the political thought of Roman Dmowski

This article analyses the upheaval in political thought of Roman Dmowski (1964-1939), leader of the Polish National Democratic Party or National Party. Dmowski’s later doctrine was partly a counterpart of his earlier thought. Before the First World War, Dmowski supported social and economic modernisiation, but became a cultural pessimist after the war. The sources of this attitude were, however, his economic concepts. Dmowski expected economic catastrophe for industrialised European countries and the quick growth of industry in Asia. As a result, Dmowski prefered economic autarky as an adaptation to the new world order. In his opinion, autarky would give Poland a comparative advantage to the fallen industrial powers like Britain, France or Germany. However, autarkical order is incompatible with a democratic and parliamentary government, and thus Dmowski proposed rule of the "national elite" and politicised Catholicism as the main tool for the political mobilisation of the masses. This way of thinking paved the way to utopian antimodernism ruled by vision of a homogeneous, static and autarchic society ruled by a "national elite"