This article discusses the question, to what extent the late and post- socialist transformation in Poland can be considered a key stage in the decline of industrial modernity. Setting out from the premise that state socialism constituted a paradigmatic version of industrial or high modernity, it addresses the major discursive rupture that preceded the regime change of 1989: While the workers’ mass movement of Solidarity had embraced political and social imagina-ries typical of industrial modernity in 1980/81, these came to be re-placed by new socio-economic and cultural frameworks by the end of the 1980s. By outlining the spectacular rise of informal trading, as well as the Polish and transnational input into the promotion of grassroot capitalism, the article indicates how Poland’s late and post-socialist transformation was intrinsically linked to the down-fall of industrial modernity and reflects on the historiographical po-tential of this approach.