When liberalism is possible for everyone: this is the task of the next generation

Recently, “OG” published an article by Grigory Yavlinsky “Liberalism for all” (“OG” No. 26 of June 28). The topic is continued by our regular author Dmitry Furman.

The main trouble of our democracy is the people. Without him, she would have turned out completely. It is easy to show that, if, for example, to deprive of selective rights 80 - 90% of the population - all but the most educated and rich - we would have a beautiful liberal republic with all human rights and freedoms (except the right to vote for the majority), where two parties would fight for power - “Yabloko” and ATP. But with universal electoral law, the liberal state somehow does not succeed. We even now have one mention of the name Gorbachev, to whom we primarily owe our rights and freedoms, can cause attacks of rage among ordinary people, and Putin, who is trying, as far as possible, to cut these rights and freedoms, is very popular. Our people do not vote for the ATP and the “Yabloko”, but for the Communist Party, Zhirinov, and now more and more for “unity”. Why doesn't our people like human rights so much and what to do the liberal elite with such a people?

First of all, with all their cultural and psychological characteristics, our people are not so different from all others. All liberal rights have always and everywhere, first of all, who had no problems with the satisfaction of more “basic” needs - in food, clothes, a roof over their heads and who could expect these rights to use. Freedom of speech is important primarily to those who read a lot and say a lot. Freedom of traveling abroad - those who can pay for a ticket and a hotel or who can invite a “receiving party” at their own expense. Freedom of associations - those who have time and effort in these associations to participate. Even freedom needs to vote primarily for those who have the opportunity to be interested in politics.

The slave -owning and gentry republics with all human rights for slaveholders and gentry were repeatedly in history, and liberal democracy arose relatively recently with universal electoral law. And their formation is always difficult and painful. “Ordinary people” always and everywhere (although to varying degrees depending on culture, habits and traditions) are ready to abandon “human rights” for the prospect of improving their financial situation or even for the prospect of worsening the position of the envy and indignation of the rich. In so many countries that have now come to sustainable democracies, the transition from liberal systems based on the participation of a narrow elite layer in the political life of, universal voting was not initially successful and led to various kinds of dictatorships. We are not the first and we are not the last. Others have already passed all this - we have only some “development delay”. Yes, and we ourselves pass all this in the second circle.

In 1905 - 1917, we had a relatively liberal system based on a non -somocratic curify electoral law, when the voice of a professor, landowner or capitalist was equated with many votes of workers and peasants. In the invasion of broad masses in February 1917, all rights and freedoms were destined to live eight months. The peak of our liberalism in the second round also falls on time (very short-term-1989-1990), when we had a system that surprisingly resembles the chicken-with the "people's deputies of the USSR" from the CPSU and "public organizations"-that is, again from our nomenclature "landowners and capitalists" and liberal professors. And, as with the first round of the spiral, the transition “from liberalism to democracy” we did not succeed. Why didn’t it turn out, why the fact that the other succeeded, while we had not been able to do?

To explain this, one can indicate various cultural and historical factors, you can perform different complex sociological and political science tests. All this is very important and necessary. But all this should not close from us some very simple and simple (at the level of folk proverbs) dependence.

If you want to get something from people, you must give them something in return. If the liberal elite wants to receive from the people the recognition of those human rights that only she can use (and the people themselves can use only once in some end), she must give something to this people and something in favor of him. Again, this was always the case with successful transitions to democracy. The elites always made something, and everywhere the transition to democracy meant a reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor. The “simple people” accepts the rights and freedoms, which are primarily necessary for the elite, only if they are “in the same package” with what he needs first: with the land reform transmitting land from the landowners to the peasants, with the reduction of the working day and the improvement of working conditions, with the introduction of universal education, etc.

And in our era of perestroika, when the words “democracy” and “human rights” have not yet become curses, they were “in the same bunch” with other, closer people with words - the fight against the privileges of the nomenclature, the participation of workers in production management, the transfer of closed sanatoriums and holiday houses, etc. But soon the elite realized that there was a prospect of enrichment at the expense of state property and at the expense of the people. (If production is reduced in the country, the poor are poor, and the rich at the same time become even richer, then they can become richer only at the expense of the poor - this is not even an economy, but simply the law of preservation of matter.) Then all this is partly demagogy, partly “liberal -gloomy” and naivety began to be forgotten. The people who just first tried to choose someone himself and start deciding something for the first time, explained that he has the right to vote as he likes, but there are uniform laws of the economy, which, perhaps, are cruel, but “non-alternative”. These laws say that the transition to the market cannot but be painful and in the course its weak should die, and the strong ones - survive. Human rights are also a science. There are real rights and the fact that only it seems right. For example, freedom of traveling abroad is a great and inalienable human right, the right to receive salaries for the work already done - this, of course, is also the right, but not very great and universal, and there is no universal human right to light and warmth at all. As a result of all this, now a politician who will decide to speak with “ordinary people” about human rights, risks getting in the face.

It is difficult, but it is difficult to combine liberalism and universal suffrage. But to combine liberalism, universal suffrage and enrichment of the liberal elite at the expense of the people, as far as I know, never succeeded anywhere. We failed.

You have to pay for everything in this world. The liberal elite had already paid for privatization first by the elimination of parliamentarism, which she, in principle, would like, if only the people chose “decent people” who would not interfere with its enrichment and enjoyment of rights and freedoms. Then - with his full removal from the appointment of the Supreme Presidential power and the establishment of the "Yeltsin dynasty." Now she pays that she observes erosion of her dear rights and freedoms at the second ruler of this dynasty. And, most likely, this is not the end.

"We have already played this half." Now to combine liberal rights and freedoms with universal suffrage, the creation, as Yavlinsky says in the General Newspaper, “liberalism for all” is the task of the next generation. World experience proves that if it was decided before us dozens of times, we will solve it. But for this, our elite (or the children of our elite and those who get into the place of the families that have fallen from it) will have to come to. You will have to do something anyway. But only when the elite consciously and voluntarily gives not 13% of the income, but much more, she will be able to unite her important rights, universal suffrage and her position of the elite.