Organic work

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Organic work (Polish: praca organiczna) was a phrase adopted from Herbert Spencer by 19th-century Polish Positivists to denote the concept that the nation's vital powers should be devoted to labour ("work from the foundations"), rather than to fruitless national uprisings against the overwhelming militaries of the partitioning empires

The basic goals of organic work included educating the Polish masses and increasing their economic potential, which was intended to turn the Polish lower classes into a modern nation and to end the population's Germanisation and Russification, pursued by the partitioning occupiers.^[1]

History

Increasing oppression by Russia after failed national uprisings (the November Uprising of 1830–1831 and the January Uprising of 1863–1864) finally convinced Polish leaders that the insurrections had been premature at best and perhaps fundamentally misguided and counterproductive.^[2] During the decades that followed, Poles largely forsook the goal of immediate independence and turned instead to fortifying the nation through the subtler means of education, economic development and modernization. That approach took the name "organic work" because of its philosophy of strengthening Polish society at the grassroots level and was influenced by Positivism. For some, the adoption of organic work meant permanent resignation to foreign rule, but many advocates recommended it as a strategy to combat repression and to await an eventual opportunity for the achievement of self-government.

Methods

Neither as colourful as the Polish rebellions nor as loftily enshrined in