Marcin Król was one of the leading oppositional thinkers during the last decade of communist Poland, in the 1980s. He set himself the task of reviving conservative political thought, not for immediate application in politics, but rather as an exercise that allowed for a discussion of political purposes beyond the pressing demands of the moment. He remained a very prominent political and social thinker of the first three decades of the Polish transformation. This interview, in which Marcin Król points to neoliberalism as a founding error of postcommunism, was a turning point in east European discussion of the transformation. It cannot do justice to the sense of adventure and erudition on display in his thirty or so books and countless essays. It does however give a hint of how a ceaselessly critic spirit can cohabit with an unbroken desire to ask the deepest questions.
Marcin Król was a friend of this Institute from the beginning. Among many other services, he helped to organize the Tischner Debates in Warsaw.
