Translated material
About Moscow elections. Part One
In the opposition
About Moscow elections. Part One
July 24, 2013 George Satarov
On July 19, on Facebook, I promised to write about the elections. The need for this was revealed precisely the events of the day counted from the moment the verdict was announced to Navalny and the Officer, and the discussion of these events through the prism of the Moscow elections. I am fulfilling a promise, and start, in the order of introduction, with a small fragment from a certain novel about the war.
- Comrade General! All! We must cancel!
- What is it suddenly?
- The enemy went deep into the dominant height.
- And what?
- So the height, dominant ...
- Where are you?
- You know: below, in a forest.
- Do you see the enemy?
- Like in the palm of your hand.
- And he is you?
- No, I'm in a forest, covered.
- So the lupi from him from all the trunks! You will beat it aimed at it and adjust the fire, and it is in the squares! And remember for the future: in the war the won is not the one who overdoled it, but who was overdoed by the last. Substance, come on. I throw you a couple of divisions and shells. Lupi, the fourth, and forward, as planned, according to their corpses. Adjust and report, two hours later. End of communication.
The moral of this military metaphor is not related to the use of artillery and in general something military. She is about something else, more important. Life is fantastic, inexhaustible complicated thing. Therefore, wisdom is not to reconstruct the no less sophisticated plans of the authorities that they see in its actions. The wisdom is how to use its actions and changes caused by these actions, to its benefits, to its profit and victory. This is to the question of countless reasoning on why Sobyanin tuned the slaves with municipal voices of Navalny, or why the latter, along with the officer, was released until time, or about what other sophisticated intentions and steps from them to wait.
And one more, in connection with this. I have to write this, although I have to repeat myself. When I worked in the Kremlin with Yeltsin, we had people there, if delicately, not stupid than the current ones. And the experts collaborated with us - God forbid the current; And they did not work for fear or loot, but for conscience, for general and open goals. Nevertheless, the overwhelming number of decisions made in a complex, constantly changing situation were reactive, unemned improvisations. I'm not sure that something has changed now. And then I was touched, knowing exactly how a certain decision was made on the move, and reading how political scientists and journalists explained to everyone our deep, multi -way ideas. Here certainly nothing has changed.
Once again: do not spend the pearls of the mind on an explanation of the causes of the actions of the authorities. We must think how to use them in your game. And play your game, forcing the power to make the following nonsense, no matter how wise the next stupidity may seem.
All this is to Moscow elections. I wrote about them repeatedly. And now I am writing again. One article is not enough for me. Please tolerate. This means that the answers I offer to the question "What is the point of participating in the Moscow elections?" cannot be given right away. After all, it is necessary to analyze the elections in their various aspects, including the utilitarian - what we will have from this, and we must have, and we can have, and different arguments against participation in them. And for this you need to understand something about the elections in general. In short, I want to talk about it seriously. This requires patience both from me and from readers. But I am sure that you and I have enough patience, since we are talking about things important for us. Finally, I perfectly understand that a situation is possible when participation in the elections becomes meaningless and impossible. And you need to understand how to diagnose such a situation. I will try to do that too. I believe that now there is no such situation.
Thus, in this series of articles, I intend to discuss the following plots:
- Arguments against participation in the Moscow elections (and elections in general) along with my objections against these arguments;
- my ideas about the desired - what we need to want from the elections and, more widely, from changes in the country that we count on;
- my ideas about the current situation;
- how, setting off from participating in the elections, go from the current situation to the desired; Here I will return to the military metaphor with which this series began.
Most likely for this I will need at least five articles. I'll start with arguments against participation in the elections.
1. Against the elections and for the election
Perhaps the most common argument sounds like this: “What is the point of going to the polls, if they do not change and do not decide?!” Some sincerely think so. Others use this argument to justify inaction. Here we are faced with a typical case of rejection in places of cause and investigation. In fact, the opposite is true: the elections do not decide anything precisely because all those who believe that they do not have to go to them do not go to them, since they do not decide anything. Here we see a special case of a universal thesis, to which lazy conformism constantly resorts to: why try, if it is clear that nothing happens? In fact, only one thing is clear here: if you do not try, then really nothing will work. And if you try, then we fall into the space of all kinds of chances that it is incomparably better than zero.
Even if everyone who resorts to the argument “What is the point of walking ...”, to justify their inaction went to the elections and nothing would have changed, then they would not have the right to resort to him. The Great von Hayek repeatedly explained in his books: the rules and principles are not checked by one -time application. After all, social evolution selects them for use in many times reproducible situations. Therefore, the experience of a single personal failure cannot serve as an argument. Therefore, another experience is needed: multiple collective action, in which conformism is reduced to an insignificant minimum.
Another popular argument: their elections are an illegitimate farce. You cannot play along with the authorities, taking part in them. If you slightly decipher the package, we get the following: elections are an event organized by power, which is illegitimate (undoubtedly). Pulling them, the authorities in massively violate the laws adopted by her (also undoubtedly). Our participation in illegitimate elections works for the legitimation of power and illegitimate results of illegitimate elections (very convincing, but not so indisputable). Let's move on to the investigation: do not participate in the elections. And here there are difficulties.
Firstly, here we are faced with the selective application of some general principle, which follows from the above argument, if other events are substituted instead of participation in the elections. For example: "Go to rallies and demonstrations provided for by laws and the Constitution." Or: "Participate in litigation." Or: "Pay taxes." Or: "Turn on gas stoves." However, we do not disdain to coordinate our rallies with the authorities and go to them, participate in trials and even starting lawsuits with power ourselves, inevitably use gas stoves (who has) and many pay taxes.
I can’t figure out that it knocks out elections from this series. Is the fact that normal elections are, among other things, the basis for the legitimation of power? But this is normal. But does our participation in the elections in itself make them legitimate? Illegitative elections are made illegal actions of the authorities. Here our participation does not change anything, except for one option: if such participation prevents a violation of the law and the elections become legitimate. But then this means that in the legitimate elections, the one who is undesirable for us, for example, is a representative of illegitimate power, has a chance to win. And this scares us, turns out (we admit honestly). We will discuss this later.
But there are still seconds: the argument I study interprets the elections in a deliberately and unjustifiably narrow sense-as a personal event of power. But this is not so. Firstly, different people go to the polls, vote, for example. And this is a personal matter for each of the voters, the fact of his biography. We participate in the elections, those who oppon (choose a mild expression) of this illegitimate power. And then, if we participate, this is also our event. We participate in crimes not when we participate in the elections organized by the authorities to achieve our personal goals, and when we humble fraud and theft and when, ignoring the elections, we will indulge in crimes.
Finally, the election is not only the procedure for the legitimation of the authorities in the person of a particular candidate today or some parties. If we look at the polls a little wider, then the argument stops working. But I will discuss this below, together with some arguments against participation in the Moscow elections.
To be continued