Translated material
Rollback norm
"Domestic notes": What do you think there is corruption?
Simon Cordonsky: There are many definitions of corruption. In everyday life and politics, this is the totality of everything bad, because of which life is not what it should be. Corruption is a universal explanation of the inconsistency of the expected (ideal) sensible (real) state of affairs. We live poorly because we have comprehensive corruption.
But I have never heard that people themselves - without irony - were defined as corrupt officials. Rather, one can hear: “He, she, they steal”, “They take everything.” It is quite difficult to prove that a certain corrupt official. Each fact of proven corruption is the result of a certain design. The investigator, the inquiry officer, from improvised materials in the presence of a social order constructs some action or their sequence and calls the phenomenon he constructed by corruption.
The logic and practice of struggle with what interferes with public administration processes was formed in the 30s of the twentieth century. Then they fought with the "enemies of the people." All political processes, as you know, were designed specially designed by people according to direct instructions of the CPSU (b). There were even outstanding scriptwriters of political processes, such as the famous Leo Shein, who was both a well -known playwright and senior investigator of the Prosecutor General. These actions were painted by roles, then the creators of the performances forced people to play the roles of enemies of the people and spies of various intelligence prescribed by them. And now this is happening in high -profile anti -corruption processes, as can be seen from the Magnitsky case. And not only in such processes.
OZ: There is a system of informal payments. What function do these payments make?
S.K.: Our state is mainly resource. Its main function is in the concentration and distribution of resources according to the principles of distribution social justice. We do not have money, but financial resources, not goods, but material resources, not power, but power resources, not information, but information resources.
In the market economic system, the volume of resources concentrated and distributed and distributed by the state is limited. Economic dynamics determine the price of money, bank interest rate, and the price of a loan. The price of money is assigned by central banks, the Federal Reserve System (in the USA). Other banks buy money and sell it to those who need it at the prices that are set on the market.
In our resource system, there is only formally money. But there are financial resources distributed by the state in accordance with its goals. In the idea of the state of distribution justice, these resources should be redistributed to end consumers through a system of various kinds of state offices for free. This is a kind of absurdity. In practice, resources are not distributed for free, but so that each recipient of resources must “roll back” the structure that distributes. If the resources in practice were distributed free of charge, then the system would simply freeze. In the resource organization of state life, the rollback norm is a functional analogue of the price of money in a market economy. Without a rollback, “nothing would stand” and did not move. This is the only way the system is spinning and working. Another thing is that the price of money is set centrally, and the rollback rate is not set centrally. It is regulated by the scale and severity of repressions for the fact that the rollback exceeds certain never certain sizes. After all, there is a tough rule - "take according to the rank." If a person does not take “according to the rank”, he falls under sanctions.
OZ: Is this intuitively determined?
S.K.: Of course. You can take ten, twenty percent. And this will be the norm. But if someone takes seventy, then this is no longer “according to the rank”, and is perceived as social injustice. Then the conditions arise for the criminal assessment of the validity of the rollback norm. If, for example, the cops roofing one business find out that, say, the State Directory Control, which roofs another business, takes more than it is considered possible in this environment, then raids begin.
OZ: Relations between groups are described above (officials - power, officials - officials). And what are ordinary citizens, doctors-teacher?
S.K.: We discussed the rollback as an action dynamizing the resource system as a whole. There are also groups in this system that have the right to perform some actions prescribed by the state. These are doctors, teachers, cops - those who have special workshop knowledge and to which the state, according to these groups, is underpayment. For them, status rent is specific as one of the forms of rollback. The rollback goes from the bottom up the hierarchy of the distribution of resources, and status rent, as a rule, is horizontally distributed.
Using status rent, a citizen can increase (buy) his status, in this way get the right to status rent (paying education at a university and a doctor’s position, for example).
Health in our system is also a resource that, until recently, was completely monopolized by the state. The doctor distributes the health resource to citizens according to some state norms (in the compulsory medical insurance system, for example). It can distribute low -quality health (queues, lack of medication, rudeness), and can distribute higher quality health. And for getting better health, citizens pay to doctors rent - as one of the forms of rollback.
OZ: Tell us about the bribe stability of laws, are some types of lawmaking to the READY REALSTION? Is everything known in advance and calculated by the lobbyists of these laws?
S.K.: You can calculate, but it is not known in advance. There is intuition and experience. Separate lobbyists supervise a separate piece of market. Of course, they may have the highest motives. They believe that some resources are incredibly and unfairly distributed and that there is not enough any regulatory act or office that would monitor this distribution. Lobibists want to make another office for fair distribution and redistribution of resources. As a result, another one is added to the fifty offices, in which there will be their own rollback standards.
OZ: It turns out that corruption in this sense is a certain total process common in all countries and associated exclusively with the resource economy and is not dependent on political systems?
S.K.: Yes. If there is a distribution of resources, then there is a failure rate. This exists in different countries, in state and private corporations, large businesses, wherever there is a resource system. Everyone knows everything at the same time.
There are no normal markets in these resource systems, but there is an administrative market. The more the state distributes, the higher the rate of rollback. When there were good times, the rollback rate was five percent, then it rose to ten to twenty, increasing all the time. Now the dynamics of our economy is low precisely because the rolling rate is excessively large, and the scale and orientation of repression - as regulators of the rollback norm, are situational.
OA: precisely because our economy is resource, has the social structure that has developed?
S.K.: Yes. To distribute, you need to know who to distribute. To do this, you need to allocate groups, name them, say how much they are supposed to, and register it to the budget. And then, when this is done, the system begins to live its own life, which is regulated by the norm of rollback.
In this logic, it turns out that anyone is a renter, that is, a corrupt official?
S.K.: Yes, all are corrupt officials, there are no others if you apply the criteria developed to describe and evaluate market economies to describe and evaluate the system.
OZ: What is the fight against corruption then in these systems?
S.K.: In general, the fight against corruption is nonsense, since it is a struggle against the system. The struggle begins when someone does not take "according to the rank." If one group does not take “according to the rank”, then other groups, having coordinated efforts, make the redistribution of the kickback market and displace the “overwhelming” from it. Usually, at the time of redistribution of the market, the rollback norm decreases, but then it gradually grows again.
OZ: Then it turns out that our ideal performances collapse?
S.K.: All ideal ideas are external, imported. Allegedly, there are social systems and economies in which there are no these phenomena. Now we will accept the laws, we will recover another president, and the system will come to the desired ideal state, so that there is, as it is there. Reality is not interested in anyone.
Oz: What can be done? We cannot traditionally get out of estate relations and the system of the resource state ...
S.K.: A lot of things can be done. You can greatly simplify the system. You can change the administrative-territorial division, for example. You can change the law on the system of civil service.
For example, there is a completely non-functional regional level of administrative-territorial division. After all, what is the region? This is a filter that collects resources from below - from settlements, ultimately - leads them from the bottom up (to the level of the federation) and back from top to bottom (to the level of settlement). On this filter there is a lot of, twenty percent of the total volume of distributed resources. The elimination of this level would free a significant amount of resources that can be distributed otherwise by breaking existing rolling chains.
Further, it would be possible to change the laws on public service, depriving the service classes of many functions of the distribution of resources and preferences that allow them to apply for kickbacks. You can try to abandon state social obligations in the field of education, healthcare, culture and science, which ultimately represent the distribution of the resources of education, health, knowledge and much more.
OZ: Attempts are already going on to do something like this-and the scream is heard terrible. Not so much from resource recipients as from ordinary citizens who are worried about a decrease in the level of education, health and culture.
S.K .: Because the familiar way of life is changing, status changes. Previously, there were Budget Teachers, now, perhaps, there will be just employees. Fursenko does a great matter - it eliminates Soviet education.
Our schoolchildren know about Tolstoy and existentialists, and they cannot and cannot read instructions for the technique. They also do not know how to follow the instructions. Unlike, say, from the American school, where they teach to read and follow the instructions.
There is a constitutional right to education, in the fulfillment of this right, there is a system of institutions and organizations of education, in which teachers according to the program approved by the ministry distribute educational resources approved by the Ministry, and teach children to be incomprehensible.
OA: Then it turns out that in general, the idea of a state of prosperity (social state) in a crisis?
S.K.: Yes, because there are not enough resources.
Oz: But the political elite does not dare to turn the distribution of social benefits?
S.K.: They are unlikely to realize the problem as a whole, outside the resource distribution system.
The tasks are partially set, sometimes even partially solved. When Fursenko came to the Ministry of Education and Science, the task was to modernize, destroy, Soviet education. He did a lot for this. Another thing is that the positive that arose as a result of its activity is local and not yet visible. Although it is, education in our country is no longer completely distributed by the state resource.
The situation develops with healthcare. The health resource is no longer completely distributed by the state, but the financial resources necessary for healthcare are monopolized. The Ministry is engaged in budgeting, distribution of health resource in limited categories of the population. As a result, state health care disappears at the lower levels of the territorial hierarchy. The space freed from the state is replaced by private healthcare, self -medication, healership, pharmacies and many other institutions.
OA: That is, we return to Chekhov times ...
S.K.: Until the end of the 19th century, there was no institution of health care at all, such as it developed in the USSR ... Yes, maybe the return to Chekhov’s times or daughters, even more primitive.
Oz: Will people survive?
S.K.: People always survive, sometimes they survive perfectly. Instead of the state, other institutions appear, there is freedom of choice and risks associated with this freedom. And people do not like to take risks, they prefer to exchange freedom for dependence on resources distributed by the state.
The smaller the state in all areas, more than the market, less levels of administrative-territorial division, less preferences in estate groups- the fewer reasons for talking about corruption.
OZ: Why is it so fashionable to talk about the fight against corruption now if no one is going to change anything in essence?
S.K.: Resources from the budget are allocated a lot to combat corruption to those who are fighting with it.
The state was formed by relations between specific budget corporations. Corporations fight for a place in the market. There is an administrative market for the fight against corruption. It is divided between cops, Chekists, prosecutors, Investigative Committee, etc. Naturally, all these classes are interested in the influx of resources to this market from the state. Therefore, there is talk that we have a huge corruption, so that more money from the budget stands out to fight it. The resources are traditionally not enough, so the market has been redone periodically. For example, the stalls were first under the cops, after the cops fumbled, declaring corrupt officials, the lower requisitions switched to other estates.
OA: somehow everything sounds hopeless, it seems that in the coming years it will not be possible to reduce this rollback rate ...
S.K.: To reduce the rollback rate, mass repressions are needed. The Soviet government had already tried to compete with corruption: “Uzbek business”, “Krasnodar business”, investigators of Gdlyan and Ivanov - some still remember how it was. Repressed territories and social groups were selected as model objects. As a result, the social structure was broken in the former Central Asian republics. There is still no stability there, in some places there is a latent war. The local societies broke up into a set of corporations warring among themselves.
OZ: It turns out, it’s better not to touch?
S.K.: Well, touch - do not touch - you have to think first, is it necessary to touch ...
Oz: Well, what is so bad in this system of relations to touch?
Are these negative assessments of the so -called corruption - naked moralization?
Everything seems to work, everything is spinning, what is the problem?
S.K.: It works, spins. But in this system, innovation is impossible, the so-called scientific and technological progress.
Oz: But then the question is not in corruption, but in general in the resource system? And why then are we talking about innovation if they are impossible?
S.K.: Because they are necessary for development. But innovations are possible in the resource economy only by the allocation of a certain zone where ordinary types of rents have been removed. Where the rollback rate is low.
OZ: How to create this zone?
S.K.: Highlight the zones, put a thorns, KSP and checkpoints, prohibit collectors of rollback go there, and that’s it. You guys do your bomb and do not pay anyone, as it was under the Soviet regime. Innovations were made in areas free from kickbacks.
OZ: If we talk about the big world outside of Russia, where there are rather market relations and not such a resource system as ours ...
S.K.: There are resource systems everywhere. For example, in the States there is a huge military budget and a huge corruption related to the distribution of this budget. There are banks as a corporation with an internal distribution of resources and appropriate kickbacks.
OA: That is - do you want to eradicate corruption - change the structure?
S.K.: Yes, but people with disabilities remain outside the support system who do not survive if they do not receive resources from the state. Some reasonable balance should be observed, which, in theory, is provided by the political system. And the political system happens where there is a class society. There is no and cannot be in the resource state of the political system.
OZ: What is meant now by the political system?
S.K.: Parliament and party.
Oz: And what?
S.K.: And we have classes. The estates, unlike classes, have their own form of coordination of interests, cathedral. In Soviet times, there was a CPSU, the Congress of the CPSU and the Plenum. In the CPSU, all Soviet classes were statistically represented. These were the cathedrals on which in one form or another, the coordination of interests between the Soviet estates was achieved. The distribution of resources was determined: how much for agriculture, how much per defense industry, how much for an oil industry, how much for territorial development ... Now this is not. There is a completely meaningless structure called the Federal Assembly. It arose initially as a political institution. When the Soviet Union broke up, a class society began to form, a stratification appeared on the rich and the poor. Political parties began to arise, which in the 1990s took shape as institutions representing class interests. Коммунисты представляли интересы бедных, либералы — богатых, и какое-то согласование интересов при формировании и утверждении бюджета в парламенте происходило.
С приходом Путина, с формированием сословной идеологии, сословного общества, ресурсного государства, Федеральное Собрание потеряло только только обозначавшиеся функции согласования интересов классов, но не приобрело функций согласования интересов сословий.
ОЗ: А что было сделано Путиным, что все покатилось в эту сторону?
С. К.: Рынок сузили за счет превращения денег в финансовые ресурсы и концентрации их в федеральном бюджете. Но совсем не по злой воле, а реагируя на протесты разного рода обделенных сословий — военных, бюджетников, ВПК. Они протестовали, что ресурсов им не достается, что олигархи все забирают. Новая власть и пришла как форма установления новой распределительной социальной справедливости.
Эта власть создала социально справедливое государство — новое сословное общество. Для этого были приняты законы о государственной службе и сформированы новые сословия. При этом был потерян рынок. Деньги и товары с рынка в значительной степени ушли, превратившись в распределяемые ресурсы. И возник современный государственный аппарат, который теперь занимается справедливым распределением ресурсов. При этом не было создано формы согласования интересов между сословиями и сама сословная структура не была осознана, и до сих пор не осознана. Последние десять лет были попытки сделать из парламента и Федерального Собрания Собор. Так в Думе появились актеры, спортсмены и прочие представители постсоветских сословий.
В ресурсной системе неизбежно существование первого лица, которое становится верховным арбитром при распределении ресурсов. Первое лицо может называться как угодно: императором, царем, генсеком, президентом. Но если есть система сословного представительства, то представители сословий обращаются к верховному лицу, арбитру, и говорят, мол, батюшка, твои чиновники с нас много берут, или нам мало дают. А арбитр принимает справедливые решения, такие, что каждый чиновник понимает, что от тюрьмы и от сумы он не застрахован.
У нас до недавнего времени был один верховный арбитр, потом система раздвоилась, непонятно стало, кому жаловаться, что чиновники много берут или мало дают. А сейчас вообще непонятно, кто арбитр в межсословных конфликтах, кто даст по шапке тем, кто берет не «по чину». Этот бардак постепенно приобретает специфическую политическую форму бунта. Ведь без рынка и политической системы бунт выступает практически единственной формой социального протеста. Если арбитр не арбитр, то людям остается только выходить на площади.
ОЗ: Вся эта активность за свободные выборы?
С. К.: Некоторые совсем не такие уж глупые люди считали, что они обладают избирательным ресурсом. Они думали, что их голоса что-то значат, а их просто обманули. Им продемонстрировали, что у них ничего нет, что они не обладают этим ресурсом. Они обиделись, начался интеллигентский протест. И они, бунтуя, вроде бы выторговали (посмотрим еще) изменения представительной системы, возврат выборов губернаторов.
В целом система распределения ресурсов всегда дефицитарна и не может существовать бесконечно. Она всегда основана на каком-то базовом ресурсе. Когда базовый ресурс кончается, начинается дефицит. Сейчас пока с базовым ресурсом все в порядке. Let's see what will happen next.