Translated material
Kleptocracy as the worst form of state power, a vicious public structure and a disgusting estate
What can be called kleptocracy is a form of state power, a kind of social structure or class. Or all this together. In the latter case, we get kleptocracy in the most complete form. In the modern world, kleptocracy arises everywhere on the periphery of the Western liberal-democratic civilization and are closely associated with it. In this article, I am trying to outline with the quality of the ideal type. There is reason to believe that the kleptocracy has been established seriously and for a long time in Russia and around the world.
Kleptocracy as a form of state power
In his well -known classification of forms of state power, Aristotle identified three correct and three wrong forms. The correct ones are those that exercise state power in the interests of society as a whole. The wrong ones are those who exercise power in the selfish interests of the rulers themselves. Correct forms include monarchy, aristocracy and politics (a variety of responsible democracy). They have either a virtuous king, or a virtuous elite (Aristos-Greek “best”), or virtuous citizens who exercise power together. The incorrect include tyranny, oligarchy and ocherocracy (power of the unbridled crowd). Another way of the same classification is the division of all possible forms into Res Publica (the Power of the Society of the General) and Res Privat (the power of private interest), which represent simply other names for good and poor forms of power, which, in turn, can be realized by one person, several or all. The oligarchy is a bad form of power by definition. It is bad not because it is carried out by few, but because it is carried out exclusively in the interests of these few. It, in turn, can continue to be determined in accordance with what the ruling elite is. Aristotle believed that the most disgusting form of the oligarchy is plutocracy - the power of the rich and in the interests of the rich.
But the power of the rich, plutocracy, can also be different. Since one of the forms of wealth may be theft, one of the varieties of plutocracy can be the so-called kleptocracy (kleptos is Greek “thief”), that is, the power of rich thieves for the purpose of theft. Obviously, it is she who is the most disgusting of all possible forms of state power. Kleptocracy and kleptocratic rule are nothing new. In history, such power is found everywhere. One of the classic examples is the battery mode in Cuba before overthrowing it with Fidel Castro. At present, this form of power is represented extremely widely, and it arises almost always and almost everywhere where citizens are deprived of the possibility of control over their “elite” and where there are no moral and political norms formed by the former political culture, which imply honesty and respect. These two subjective conditions are supplemented by two objective. The first of them are the country's large natural wealth. The second objective condition is the potential accumulated by the previous authority, the looting of which can be a source of enrichment of the new elite for many years. When these four conditions are connected together, we almost inevitably obtain kleptocracy as a form of state power.
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