Translated material
Marx warning. Is it possible to combine the monarchy and democracy?
We live in modes that call themselves democracies. Here you need to emphasize two things. Firstly, people live like in democracy-as it is written in the Constitution, so the members of the government say, this is emphasized by the president-but at the same time they have no feeling that they live in democracy. Secondly, despite this, people are still forced to believe that their political regime is a democratic one. The situation of internal contradiction arises: we must believe in something that contradicts our experience. When we feel it, this suggests that ideology works here. To cope with her, we must ask ourselves why life within democracy is such a non -somocratic experience? This is the very first question that you need to ask in order to get out of an ideological trap.
So, it is assumed that we live in democratic societies, while we know very well that objectively each of us has approximately zero influence on how these societies are controlled-both in Russia and in any standard liberal-democratic system that exists in America, Europe and parts of Asian countries, that is, in most of the world. It is assumed that something depends on our democratic will, while we know that no voting results will result in significant changes in the structure of society. It is assumed that we will believe that the leaders represent our democratic will, but in reality we feel a deep distrust of those who, in theory, were democratically chosen. All these are the symptoms of the disease that impressed all modern liberal-democratic systems.
In Russia, the situation is even more perverted. On the one hand, we know that there is no democracy in Russia, so we do not have to believe that it directly contradicts our experience. On the other hand, in Russia, we are forced to believe not that we live under democracy, but that “they live there” under democracy, while in Russia, that political scientists have thought to describe the words “electoral authoritarianism”, “hybrid regime”, etc. Because of this, we can feel bad at once in two ways. The first option - we begin to imagine that people in Western countries really live with democracy. But it is obvious that they have no serious influence on their own lives, even despite the fact that they are supposedly somewhere high on this ladder of democracies. Before us is a gloomy prospect: we have to democratize for a long time, only in order to find ourselves in a situation in which we, in turn, will not feel power over our own life. This perspective is skillfully exploited by official Russian propaganda, which sometimes deftly exposes the real dysfunctions of liberal regimes in Europe and America. But there is a second option that most often takes place in Russia: people simply wave their hand on the idea of democracy, accept a cynical attitude and cease to think about politics in a normative plan. This is the installation of a normal average Russian citizen: the policy is dirty and it will never lead to anything good. This gives rise to a state of melancholy, powerlessness, depression.
Nevertheless, we believe that systems controlled by a small number of political leaders, who have enormous power in comparison with the power of the people, in a sense are democracies. Where does this belief come from? Cornelius Castoriadis called these systems modes with chosen kings - why do we call them democracies? I would like to turn to this issue with the help of Marx.
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