Liability of Police Officers and Other Contemporary Formations for Participation in the Secret Service of the Polish People’s Republic – Constitutional Aspects

The article concerns on a problem of social security and analyzes issue of the change of provisions which regulate pensions of officers of communistic security services, who served their duties after the communistic system collapsed in the Republic of Poland (after the year 1990). The amendment of statutory law has seriously reduced the amount of pensions of indicated above officers. Firstly the author of the essay criticizes the statutory definition (temporal limits) of the totalitarianism, which took place in Poland after the Second World War. It is found that provisions wrongly indicates that communistic totalitarianism ended in 1990, while historians officially claim that it had taken place in 1956. In the second part of the article the author argues that statutory changes seriously violate the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997. New, actually binding provisions are unfair, demoralizing and discriminate persons who legally preformed duties in security formations after the year 1990.

An important argument in favour of recognising the cultural relativism and against universality of dignity and human rights, is the claim that the concept of dignity is a genuinely modern one. An analysis of a passage from the Demiurge’s speech in Timaeus reveals that Plato devoted time to reflecting on the question of what determines the qualitative difference between certain beings (gods and human being) and the world of things, and what forms the basis for the special treatment of these beings – issues that using the language of today can be described reasonably as dignity. The attributes of this form of dignity seem to overlap with the nature of dignity as we know it today. Moreover, Plato proposes a response both to the question of what dignity is like, as well as the question of what dignity is. It is existential perfection, rooted in a perfect manner of existence, based on a specific internal unity of being. Dignity is therefore primordial in regard to particular features and independent of their acquisition or loss. Plato’s approach allows him to postulate that people be treated as ends in themselves; an approach therefore that prohibits the treatment of people as objects. Both the state and law are ultimately subordinated to the good of the individual, rather than the individual to the good of the state.

FAMINE AS A POLITICAL TOOL – THE POTENTIAL FOR USE BY THE AUTHORITIES OF TOTALITARIAN REGIMES

The phenomenon of long-term malnutrition has very serious physiological and psycho-social effects. In addition to impairing the immune system and physically weakening the body, starvation causes aggression, apathy and alienation of individuals. Famine-affected communities are atomised and individuals functioning within them are incapable of building interpersonal relationships. Given the consequences that the phenomenon of hunger causes for individuals and communities, it can be a political tool used by the authorities of totalitarian regimes. The paper presents experiments showing the physiological and psycho-social consequences of hunger sickness and then juxtaposes their results with socio-anthropological concepts of totalitarianism. On the basis of the analysis conducted in the paper, it is shown that there is a significant correlation between the social consequences of hunger and the social character of totalitarianism. Drawing on these considerations, the paper identifies areas where hunger can be used as a political tool by the authorities of non-democratic states.