In society

Transit (4)

November 28, 2007 George Satarov

Before continuing, I would like to thank the forum participants at www.ej.ru , who discussed previous articles. It seemed to me that it was an interesting and intellectually rich discussion. I admit, I hesitated whether this cycle of articles to start and whether to do it as I conceived and what it turns out. I am glad that the reaction is interested and adequate. Answering the often questioned question, I inform you that I will need another article, except for this, in order to agree with readers about the ideas that I will have to operate on. I can’t do anything about it. I warned in the first article that I was writing seriously. This is not a political stem or swearing. I am going to share very serious considerations, assessments, forecasts, and therefore I want them to be funded and convincing. This cycle is in no way timed to the "elections". And I am not going to campaigning anyone.

In the three previous articles of the cycle, we discussed the topic of elections as such. The next, very important, I will start with one curious and instructive example, borrowed from the wonderful book of James Scott to the “good intentions of the state”.

It was at the beginning of the 19th century in Germany. There, then they began to develop “scientific forest breeding”, predicting that in the next hundred years the main building material would be the forest and that the production of the forest should be put on a stream to the good benefits of the state. The project consisted in the fact that large spaces were cleared from the wild forest, which were sown in even rows by an alpine pine. The project provided, of course, the reclamation of the areas on which the grown forest was cut out for new landings and subsequent operation.

The first cycle gave a positive result: accessible production was easily cut and exported. Moreover, the volume of blanks and future revenue from the sale was easy to calculate and predict. And this is so important for any business, including state. However, the second cycle has already revealed unpleasant side effects. It turned out that in a regular neat forest, even small winds can easily roll trees. It is equally easy in the forest, blown by through winds, fires are spreading. Moreover, the lonely pines of such a forest became easy prey of pests. Not to mention the fact that this organized forest has lost all the diverse and pleasant properties of an ordinary forest, except for one, to be building material. In short, this forest turned out to be deprived of "immunity" in relation to the enemies, from which there was protection at an irregular wild forest. The project in this form had to be stopped, but the German language was enriched by the idiom of “Waldsterbe” (literally the death of the forest), used as a designation of large failure projects.

James Scott described this story as an example of one of the countless failure projects, hidden by the state with good intentions. For such projects undertaken by the state in the social sphere, the author introduced the term: "High modernism." We are talking about a very important and common phenomenon characteristic of the state of modernity, i.e. The type of state that began to form in Europe in the XVIII century and to which our native state still belongs.

The failures of large -scale social projects in the spirit of high modernism - according to Scott - are due to a combination of three circumstances. The first is the administrative zeal of the authorities, striving to put the order it designed by it in society. The second is the formation of strong national states, the unlimited power of which was considered as a means of implementing such projects for the benefit of subjects. The third is a weakened civil society that could not withstand administrative rag and control it.

High modernism arose as a result of the successes of European civilization in the natural sciences, which made it possible to sharply advance in the development of physical nature. There was a temptation to transfer these successes to the social sphere, and here the state as a potential global social engineer. The ideas of the transformation of nature began to melt into the ideas of the transformation of society. Following Saint-Simon and Comte, they rushed into a practical plane.

The ideology and practice of high modernism have their own heroes and their achievements. Here are a few examples. Walter Ratenau is an extremely interesting person. He was the author of a planned mobilization economy, which he introduced in Germany during the First World War. Lenin knew about his activities and admired her. The idea of ​​Lenin "State as a Factory" is inspired by the work of Ratenau. Le Corbusier is a pure ideologist of “high modernism” in architecture with his cities, similar to a dead crystalline lattice. Stalin and his collectivization are from the same test. Now about the fate of the projects of these heroes. You know about terrible, fatal hyperinflation in Germany in the 20s. This was a direct consequence of the Ratenau project. Nobody is building in Corbusier: it is impossible to live in speculative cities dead from birth. Stalin's collectivization turned into the fact that we still cannot restore agriculture in the country.

Now - about the easily recognizable properties of high modernism.

First: this is an unconditional desire for the good of people with complete neglect of an individual. When you want to bless humanity, then the personality is nothing for you. Second: the ideology of order and rationality, a victory of order over terrible and destructive randomness, chaos. Of course, there should be a scientific rationale helping to defeat chaos, there should be the only correct theory that all -conquering teaching. It can be global, it can be local, only to the project, but it is certainly the only and all -conquering.

Third: these projects are always oriented to the future with complete ignoring the past. “We will destroy the whole world to the foundation, and then ...” - this is the typical slogan of “high modernization”. Fourth: these projects are always successful with the population for the totality of reasons. Firstly, of course, they are aimed at the good of people, and people value it. Secondly, all these all-conquering teachings are simple and intelligible, accessible to people, and therefore use folk support.

Fifth: the ideology of high modernism has no political coloring. It can grow on the basis of liberalism, form symbiosis with fascism or communism. This is a universal ideology. It is generated only by the pan -European faith in the omnipotence of the state. Modernist projects appeared in the United States in the same way as in the USSR.

Sixth: any all -conquering teachings are non -alternative; Who resists should be subordinated or destroyed. Well, think for yourself: how can you resist the project aimed at the good of people!? Of course, in different projects of high modernism, these components may not be present in full set. It is not necessary, for example, doubtful or resisting to shoot or forcibly convince; They can simply be ignored.

Do you know what is surprising? Still, the mastery of physical nature (I do not now assess the positive or negative consequences of this) was based on very serious scientific achievements. But this was not in the social sphere! There were fantasies and utopias. Primitive disagreed theories were. And on them, wretched, the social practice of modern states was based, which cost innumerable human sacrifice and grief. I believe that the countless failures of such projects allowed modern sociology to realize the limits of their extremely limited understanding of the social order and put forward the idea of ​​the unintentional consequences of social actions (Anthony Hiddens).

The underdevelopment of social knowledge led to the fact that all -conquering teachings have always simplified the ideas about the social order and the recipes arising from these ideas. Some of these ideas are close to us. For example, the company can be divided into exploiters and operated, or to indigenous residents and inferior foreigners. The simpler the idea of ​​the social structure, the more temptation to follow a simple recipe: suppressing some by others. Well, what could be easier!?

The state, which grew up during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, was rather a postmodern state: it did not drag subjects with power to a bright future, but provided the opportunity to look for him. Free. This did not happen as a result of a conscious plan, but spontaneously, as a result of the weakness of the recreated state, which did not seek to either become immediately strong or imitate power.

The state of the time of Putin returns us in the time of modern, to the social primitivism of the 19th century. When I read a quote from the first election book of the current president: “Life, in fact, a simple thing,” I realized: “Well, hit!” And then it began. Spontaneously adopting the signs of the tradition of high modernism, the authorities began to simplify everything. The separation of powers, federalism, the variety of political positions and pluralism in the press, the autonomy of countless public organizations - all these are aspects of terrible and hostile chaos, which must be destroyed in order to triumph the primitive vertical order. It all started as a standard project in the spirit of high modernism. Even a primitive theory was at hand: about authoritarian modernization.

It is not known how it would end. Maybe we were even lucky. The current government was not ideologized, did not strive especially for the immediate and all -winging embodiment of the next theoretical delirium. She was not harassed by total control over all spheres of life in order to mobilize society for great victories and suppress the grumbling of all doubters. The authorities temporarily limited this primitive idea of ​​modernization by the forces of a vertically organized bureaucracy. Quite quickly, convinced of the failure of their efforts, they focused on solving personal problems, limiting themselves to imitation of reform. But still, they managed to turn the political system, the management of the country, the economy into the forest, which died in even rows, WaldsterBe.

The chaotic, diverse, freely growing forest has the mechanisms of immunity - symbiotic protection, adaptation. The slender rows of the same pines are deprived of this and die easily and quickly.

The notorious Yeltsin chaos was adaptive and possessed reserves of resistance to internal and external influences. The Rigid Soviet Union could not withstand the tests of low oil prices. The young, rickets of the Yeltsin democracy withstood the onslaught of Defolt and the then followed by the cruel political crisis in 1998. The adaptive mechanisms of freedom and autonomy of the authorities worked. Free business, taking advantage of the devaluation of the ruble, rushed to make his pasta and broiler factories and quickly replaced the import. The diversity and independence of the institutions of power and political forces did not exacerbate the crisis, but allowed legal and public methods to get out of it. Now try to imagine the current regime in a similar crisis. Where are the authoritative authorities that could become an islands of stability in a crisis, how did the Federation Council succeeded in 1998? Where are the authoritative leaders like Primakov? But he then enjoyed the real (and not simulative, artificial) support, which helped his government accept the first tough, deficiency budget. Empty. No authorities, no politicians. Everything is uprooted with the mass silent consent of the subjects. WaldsterBe.

We will have to keep this in mind in our further reasoning.

President of the Indem Foundation

To be continued