[Asked "Did counter-espionage mean informing on people who were fighting against the communist project?"] That's what would be expected from me, but … - Zygmunt Bauman

[After an article by Bogdan Musiał was published in Poland alleging Bauman had worked for the Polish secret service] The fact that I for three years cooperated with intelligence - well, that's the only thing I never said.

Once governments exclude people you can stop them from being protected. Societies begin to manipulate fears about groups. When the welfare state is in crisis we have to be concerned about such a feature of [society]

The average person appreciates a value only “in the course of, and through comparison” with the possessions, condition, plight or quality of other persons. … The awareness that the acquisition and enjoyment of that value is beyond the person’s capacity … triggers two mutually opposite, but equally vigorous reactions: an overwhelming desire (all the more tormenting because of the suspicion that it might be impossible to fulfill); and ressentiment—a rancor caused by a desperate urge to ward off self-deprecation and self-contempt by demeaning, deriding and degrading the value in question, together with its possessors.