The self as a multitude: Edward Abramowski’s social philosophy and the politics of cooperativism in Poland at the turn of the 20th century
| Author | Bartłomiej Błesznowski |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885120955147 |
| Published date | 01 October 2022 |
| Date | 01 October 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
The self as a multitude:
Edward Abramowski’s
social philosophy and the
politics of cooperativism
in Poland at the turn of
the 20th century
Bartłomiej Błesznowski
University of Warsaw, Poland
Abstract
The article aims to analyse the thought of Edward Abramowski – a Polish philosopher,
pioneer of psychology and theorist of the socialist cooperative movement. It attempts
to reconstruct the impact that his social thought and his philosophical anthropology
have had on the political activity of Polish cooperativism. In keeping with Michael
Freeden’s thesis that an ideologist translates philosophical concepts into political prac-
tice, the author sees Abramowski as a thoroughly modern thinker who opened an
alternative ideological path to the great political narratives of the day. The article points
out the originality of the Polish philosopher’s proposition for the socialist movement,
the goal being to achieve the political emancipation of the popular classes through
economic activity undertaken by grassroots cooperatives operating outside state struc-
tures. The philosophical-sociological concept of ‘fraternity’ or ‘pu re socialization’ leads
Abramowski to formulate a doctrine of ‘stateless socialism’, in which popular political
organizations use primordial, human-based cooperation to create new oppor tunities
for community life. The last parts of the article show links between Abramowski’s
concepts and the modern school of commoning. The aim of this comparison is to
show the doctrine of cooperativism can make a contribution to determining the polit-
ical stakes of contemporary conflicts regarding biopolitical subjectivity.
Corresponding author:
Bartłomiej Błesznowski, Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw, Nowy
Swiat 69, 00-927
Warsaw, Poland.
Email: bartlomiej.blesznowski@uw.edu.pl
European Journal of Political Theory
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885120955147
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
2022, Vol. 21(4) 692–714
Keywords
Commoning, cooperativism, Edward Abramowski, experimental metaphysics, moder-
nity, sociological phenomenalism, stateless socialism
As a socialist and an ideologue of the Polish cooperative movement and, at the
same time, a sociologist and pioneer of psychological research, Edward
Abramowski belongs to a group of key Polish thinkers from the late 19th century.
His work is one of the most extensive and representative socio-political proposi-
tions for the development of Polish socialism, whose form was cooperativism – an
ideology wedding many ideas from contradictory registers whose common denom-
inator was the creation of grassroots institutions based on mutual aid, which
through economic emancipation would lead people to work for political emanci-
pation. The question of creating a network of such self-sufficient organizations,
which would also have a horizontal structure and economic efficiency, is the sem-
inal issue of Abramowski’s political philosophy. The doctrine of ‘fraternity’ – i.e.
the immanent essence of the human self, which constitutes a link between
Abramowski’s psychological and sociological reflections and the ideology of coop-
erativism – allows Abramowski to formulate a vision for worker institutions of a
new kind. The ideology of cooperativism was considered to be the main plank of
‘stateless socialism’ – a doctrine that differs from all versions of ‘taking over the
state’ as well as from the purely anarchist or syndicalist ideal of workers’
communities.
When investigating this theory, questions arise concerning the relations that
connect the ‘socialized soul’ – Abramowski’s fundamental concept – with the
idea of cooperativism as the meta-organization of the popular classes. Of key
importance for this article is understanding the way in which Abramowski con-
nects social theory (theory of the socialized soul) with political practice (coopera-
tivism). As Michael Freeden puts it, the ideologist is one who translates philosophy
into political practice (Freeden, 1996: 132). Abramowski’s ideological proposal on
the one hand constitutes an element of the ‘associationist’ trend present in the
European socialist movement of the day – Peter Kropotkin, Beatrice Potter-
Webb, the Nıˆmes School, the Belgian ‘people’s houses’ movement (Dardot and
Laval, 2019: 250) – and, on the other hand, makes it possible to forge an original
concept of popular modernization in a society oppressed by the Russian Empire.
Stateless socialism and modernity
In Western Europe and in Poland during the partition,
1
the 1890s was a time of
heated debate over the best shape for the working-class movement to adopt in
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