Hobbes, stop!

Hobbes, stop!
Editor's Column


Publication date: March 27, 2003

The significant difference between the ratings of Putin and the “party in power” indicates not only a technical problem. Yes, there is, of course, a technical problem - it was discussed in detail at the last “Civic Debate” (03/26/2003, “Alexander House”). Konovalov spoke directly: “Who will the President’s supporters, who are sick of United Russia, prefer?” And he concluded: It is not beneficial for Putin to be associated with United Russia. Who then should we associate with? A proposal was even made: with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. There were other proposals of a technical nature, in particular, to use the current international situation for propaganda purposes. A. Fedorov pointed out the tendency to replace the anti-Chechen mobilization resource with an anti-American mob resource. Kurginyan clarified: the global struggle now is not between America and the world, but between “two Americas,” “relatively, between Brzezinski and Kissinger.” And since Russia has ceased to be a superpower, the President has to choose “whose hostage to be.” The idea, in a word, is that it is difficult even without parties, but if the President becomes a “hostage” of the party, then it will become completely unbearable.

If we were talking only about elections, one could agree with Kurginyan. But we are talking about government in general. Gleb Pavlovsky outlined the following alternative: either Russia will have an effective “party in power”, necessary for a “managed democracy,” or the President will have to rule authoritarianly. And here we move from a technical issue to a fundamental issue. Who to rule? The crisis of the Russian party system is only a symptom of the crisis of the social system. Our fellow citizens (except for representatives of some minorities) do not recognize themselves as belonging to one or another social stratum, class, estate. There is neither a picture of established styles, nor a picture of established interests. Accordingly, there are no real institutions for political representation of these styles and interests. In conditions of such chaos, people turn to “life according to Hobbes.” In fact, citizens of any large state turn to the “war of all against all”: Tennis also showed that the establishment of total formal connections in society (and the state is the hierarchy of such connections) leads to the disintegration of informal connections. Each person, thus, finds himself surrounded by strangers , that is, he finds himself in a “Sartrean” situation: “Hell is others.” Formal connections, however, restrain mutual aggression by distributing people into certain taxa. People are forced to act not “on their own behalf” (where “themselves” is understood as a certain group of “their own”), but as “typical representatives”, guided by the formal rules of, so to speak, “taxonomic community.”

The destruction of the system of formal ties means the destruction of the state - however, the destruction is reversible. At the seminar “RJ-scenarios”, held immediately after the Debate, V. Tsymbursky noted that the bulk of the Russian population turned out to be outside the interests of the “oligarchs”: the “oligarchs” are busy exploiting the subsoil, not the population. In essence, the situation that preceded the formation of the Moscow Kingdom is repeated. Then the “elite” exploited trade routes, and the “peasants” lived their own lives. And only the impoverishment of trade routes led to the need to closely deal with the people - in particular, with serfdom. The depletion of mineral resources will thus lead to the revival of Russian statehood, to the restoration of classes and to the emergence (in one form or another) of parties representing the interests of these classes. It is clear that in this real situation, the “party in power” is determined based on the results of the inter-party struggle, and is not “invented from above.”

However, the situation can be partially improved now if all lobbying institutions that exist today are completely legalized. Then, instead of parties with vaguely benevolent names, there will appear the “Gazprom Party”, the “YUKOS Party”, the small “AZLK Party”, the larger and more influential party “Russian Special Services”... Not only lobbying is carried out through these parties (the “corporation - power"), but also management (the "government - corporation" connection).

And the rest of the population, not employed in corporations and - from a state point of view - currently unnecessary, can (if necessary) be managed the old fashioned way, with the help of a “mobilization resource”. At least anti-American.

Kirill Yakimets