On Populism and Class Politics: The Polish Union of Labour and the Workers’ Party of Belgium

ABSTRACT

This research note combines conceptual considerations on the relationship between populist and class-political discourse with an analysis of two parties that, in light of their origins, suggest affinities to both populism and class politics: the Union of Labour (UP) in Poland and the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PVDA/PTB). Taking up a discursive approach to populism with an established tradition of theoretical reflection on class politics, the analysis keys in on the interplay of populist and class-political elements in how these parties construct collective identities in their programmatic statements and related organisational practices such as links to trade unions. It finds that the UP largely abandoned its founding references to ‘working milieus’ in favour of a left-wing populism of ‘ordinary people’ vs. ‘elites’, whereas the PVDA/PTB has maintained a primarily class-political discourse centred on ‘working people’ with elements of populism, performatively embellished by its practices of workplace-level organising and trade union entryism.

KEYWORDS:

• Class politics
• political parties
• populism
• radical left
• trade unions

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Lazaros Karavasilis, Aurélien Mondon, Kolja Möller, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments. The author acknowledges financial support by the German Research Foundation (‘Between Populism and Radical Democracy, between Party and Movement: On the Discursive Afterlife of the Movements of the Squares’, DFG grant number 469527186).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Not to mention the voluminous literature on class voting and (especially far-right) populism, which is beyond the scope of this research note.

2 In Dutch and French, ‘arbeiders’/‘ouvriers’ refers to (blue-collar) manual workers and ‘bedienden’/‘employés’ to (white-collar) staff workers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number 469527186].

Notes on contributors

Seongcheol Kim

Seongcheol Kim is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen. His research encompasses the study of political parties, discourses, ideologies, and social movements in a comparative perspective straddling Central and Eastern, Southern, and Western Europe.