COMMODIFICATION OF SOCIAL RELATIONS AND DISINTEGRATION OF VALUE SYSTEM IN CONTEMPORARY POLAND

Commodification of social relations, i.e., extension of the number of goods and services which become commodities and can be sold on the market is one of the main characteristics of the post-communist transformation and modernization in Poland. The rules of this commodification are, however, unclear and ambiguous, which in turn blurs the borders between subsystems of society, produces the low level equilibrium between the deformed market, inefficient democracy and private informal social networks and leads to many tensions and pathologies. It also disintegrates the cognitive and normative system of society and weakens the social legitimization of the new order.