in popular perception. However, the cost for the Left was a surrender of its fundamental value system (the mainstream opposition could thus no longer be considered leftist), and in the long run granting the Right the upper hand in the ability to mobilize mass political support. The opposition's alliance with the Church (before 1989 and after, when it became the ruling establishment) is also responsible, according to the cultural philosopher Andrzej Leder, for the marginalization of the Left and its social concept in the political spectrum of democratic Poland. In 1977 Adam Michnik published his pivotal book Kościół, lewica, dialog ('The Church, the Left, the dialogue'). It marks the ideological transformation (capitulation in the political and cultural sense) of the opposition movement that soon resulted in the formation and domination in Poland of the liberal-conservative consensus. y.The old industry left behind well-qualified workforce. Its existence turned out to be valuable for a peripheral economy resource because Poland became a major (for international capital) source of inexpensive labor, both inside and outside the country. In Poland however, the availability of low-cost labor was used by entrepreneurs as a tool for competitiveness and discouraged investing in technical improvements, creativity and innovation. z.Unlike labor union members in the West, the Polish post-transformation unionist could not conceive of an adversarial or competitive relationship between themselves and the new capitalist owners of their places of employment. In a survey conducted in 1994, most Polish unionists, in both the Solidarity and OPZZ main unions, saw their proper role as promoters and facilitators of the market reform and privatization processes, not in protecting themselves from the shock therapy effects. Such attitude, conditioned by their historical experience and current government propaganda, rendered the workers unable to defend their class interests under the new system. a1.The philosopher Andrzej Leder wrote of the post-war "departure from the mentality defined by the village and folwark toward one determined by the city and urban lifestyle", which facilitated the later expansion of the middle class in Poland. Between 1956 and 1968 the modern urban culture was established, and the entire 1944–1989 period meant irreversible destruction of the previously existing social and class barriers, including the realms of culture and customs. b1.Andrzej Leder gives the following figures, quoting Andrzej Paczkowski and Henryk Słabek. Of the 4.7 million people who populated the Recovered Territories in 1945–1950, 2.9 million came from central and south-eastern provinces of