Beat the right, Gottfried!

I have long been extremely frustrated by one fact. Why in Russia left intellectuals, which, by the way, are not so few, cannot unite in a single powerful force - in what could be called a "political monolith"? The energy and passion of many Russian leftists are so great that, I am convinced, united, they would be reduced by the mountains, constituting a force that we did not have equal, and no. However, this does not happen ...

Instead, we can only observe the absolute disunity of the left intellectuals with some ephemeral unity. And this is with the unity of views! Without naming names, in favor of my thesis I can only give numerous examples of the ironic statements of the left about each other or mutual hostility, unknown from nowhere, as well as serious competition. The latter is especially noticeable in the field of publication of literature - just the point where the discrepancies in the domestic left are the greatest. They publish books for distillations, buy the rights to publications and sit with them, not publishing anything, “chop” the Western left -wing intellectuals behind them, and if suddenly someone encroaches on a stranger, they will be offended deadly. "Regional Marxists" act in their own counties and especially do not want to know with the capital's comrades.

But the unity of the right can only be envied. The efforts of several people were able to create a single organ that would unite publicists, journalists, thinkers, and there may be different beliefs, but at the same time the same general view of the world - the league of conservative journalism (LKZh). Indeed, in LKZH, one can meet nationalists, terry monarchists, and religious publicists, and the “left -wing right”, the so -called young conservatives. Moreover, this league was able to unite people of uniform views throughout Russia: many of its members live in the regions. And so it turns out in our Russian, that the left is disintegrated, and the right ones are integrated into a single force.

However, I, frankly, is convinced that the intellectual potential of the left is many times superior to the right. This, of course, is by no means offenders. Simply, it turns out that we are actually more engaged in intellectual activity, we are actually more intellectual. However, their desire for "high matters" turns into the other side. It seems that there is no dialogue between the left and right. Not just constructive, but even destructive, which may make the impression that they generally live in different semantic planes. However, this is actually it.

While the right ones are trying to achieve any results in politics, express their opinion on topical issues, write articles on topical topics, have their own views on the political structure of Russia, and even more so on the political process, the left-wing publishes, go beyond the borders, translate the table, sell books. Thus, in a sense, the left ideology, remaining predominantly cultural, is not political in the proper sense of the word . Our left, as it were, despise politics. (And in this, by the way, they can be understood!).

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But all these things are obvious, and, it seems, without my lamentations to everyone clear. However, I would like to notice one curious detail. Today's Russian ideological and political situation is strikingly corresponding to the book of the American pale-conservative of Paul Gottfried "The Strange Death of Marxism", published in English about four years ago. Today, she is about to appear with the heat of the heat on the book shelves of Russia.

And this book is just about how the left in the West almost ceased to participate in politics and engaged in "cultural activities." This is all the more noteworthy that this composition is written with the right about the left. And the questions raised by Gottfried did not arise today, and not five years ago. In the distant 1987, having read the book of a very famous American homosexual conservative Alan Bloom, Gottfried could not sleep at night, being intellectual confused. It was not that he doubted the correctness of the conclusions that Bloom came to, watching the modern American culture, students and youth, at all. (And the conclusions of Bloom were today that long had become common ideas, as if America picked up a terrible virus called "relativism"). Not a single sane American right -wing one would argue with this. Gottfried, located in his right mind and solid memory, did not dispute this opinion. But the Gutrifs could not agree with the Blum's conclusion premises. Bloom, like many critics of “left -oriented youth” before him, believed that the US relativism was picked up from decaying Europe, and especially from Germany, since the main carriers of the deadly infection were Frederick Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, representing the “last wave of our time”, which must have perished in the tsunami postmodernism. (It was these philosophers, who considered Bloom and all after him, protected the path for the Nazis and American "new left -wing").

And indeed, why could Gottfried be called into question precisely these premises, and not the general conclusions? Submitted to thoughts on this score, Gottfried came to the conclusion that by no means Europe infected the United States relativism, but quite the opposite - all the ideas of the "new left -wing", which changed the good old Marxism, condemned to Europe from the United States after the USSR ceased to exist .

The main thesis that Gottfried defends in his book is simple, and, in general, is supported by everyone who paid at least some attention to the fate of the left idea after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The communist ideology, which has long cemented the European left into a single movement, went to the periphery of ideological and political disputes, the program of levocentrism, which no longer aims to build an egalitarian society, but involves the struggle for the rights of different minorities (ethnic, cultural and, of course, sexual).

Nevertheless, there are nuances here. According to Gottfried himself, the reason for abandoning the communist ideology based on economic determinism was by no means the collapse of the USSR, but the triumph of "cultural Marxism", which had nothing to do with classical Marxism-Leninism. Gottfried, who was a student of Dr. Herbert Marcuse, writes that although his teacher was sacredly convinced that his studies were in the canonical vein of the teachings of Marx and Lenin, he was still deeply mistaken. (I wonder if today there will be at least anyone who will say that Marcuse is a type of orthodox Marxist?)

So, the “strange death of Marxism” from that is strange, which, with the visible “flowering” of left ideas, does not exist the former Marxism anymore. Gottfried indicates that “the strange death of Marxism” is not the death of Marxism in the literal sense of the word at all, but its certain transformation into a kind of post -marke, making the left ideology more flexible and attractive to numerous intellectuals.

This very “post-Marxism” not only made the history of the left-wing XIX-XX centuries exclusively with its diocese, he also seeks to “pole” Marxism in every way, to save him from accusations of excessive cruelty with instructions that the danger of fascism and Nazism, which are, are, without a doubt, the phenomena of the “right ideology”. However, both fascism and Nazism have long been overcome. Their criticism by modern levocentrists, as Gottfried believes, is just an attack on modern right, now resting on the laurels of winners in the Cold War. Therefore, Gottfried rejoices, the right -wing people have a new enemy, and the sooner they realize it, the sooner they will enter the struggle for the future of Christian civilization, and, therefore, the more likely their new victory will be. Gottfried convinces us that the right ones should not spray their forces in the internecine struggle for supporters and the electorate, but they should unite in the struggle against the most terrible enemy that threatens modern civilization - cultural relativism , which is professed by "cultural Marxists."

However, Gottfried, giving out what he desired as real, is as if he is afraid to face the truth. Obviously, along with the "strange death of Marxism" in the United States, no less "strange death of conservatism" occurred. Once united right, soldered into a single whole in the early 1950s, scatter in the corners. Christian traditionalists hate neocons, neocons - paleocons, paleocons - Libertarians, who in turn hate religious fanatics. Unconconders hate everyone together. So there is almost no time left to polemic with external enemies. And by the way, in addition to the electorate and the authorities, all the same cultural issues remain - abortions, minorities, marriages, relations, free market ...

So Gottfried, aiming at the left as such, in fact, as if striving to speak out a united front, uniting against a single enemy, offering to "be friends" not against each other, but against the "cultural Marxists." And Gottfried struck the "strange Marxists" not on their own behalf, and not even on behalf of the Pale -Conservatives, to which he is usually ranked, but on behalf of the whole movement of the right. However, it is worth recognizing that the right in the USA remains closer to the current policy than their ideological opponents, concerned about cultural issues.

What thoughts can we bring to the ideas of Gottfried? Remembering what we talked about at the very beginning, let's try to draw an analogy. If you simplify, then we can say that our left -wing men are fully consistent with the Western "cultural Marxists", while the worldview of domestic conservatives and their Western colleagues cannot be identified . (The latter, by the way, is not in favor of our right).

We have very few orthodox Marxists. Most of the young left, having received a good education, having learned a lot from the West, seek to keep track of the last trends, thereby causing some damage to classical Marxism. Our conservatives in this sense are "Slavophiles", which do not borrow from the corrupted West, neither a common spirit, nor corrugated ideas. The left - "Westerners" who do not want to participate in the political life of Russia and continue to translate Badya and Jamison.

Of course, in the domestic left movement there are different groups striving to participate in the struggle. Someone issues all kinds of newspapers, there is an educational item "Phanster", which to some extent plays the role of an integrating link, there are still unintelligible mailings that periodically cllate my mail (of which it is strongly difficult to remove something valuable), but is that enough? Of course, this is not enough. The slogan, which brought the left idea of ​​world fame, is still relevant for the domestic left movement, albeit in a paraphrased form: "Left Russia, unite!".