Translated material
Levak march and liberal symphony
Boris Vishnevsky* entered into a polemic with Vladimir Pastukhov* regarding the ideas of liberalism
Photo: Peter Kovalev / TASS
18+. This material (information) was produced, distributed and (or) sent by foreign agent Vishnevsky Boris Lazarevich or concerns the activities of the foreign agent Vishnevsky Boris Lazarevich.
Vladimir Pastukhov* in Novye believes that Donald Trump’s arrival is a reaction to distortions and imbalances of “new liberalism”, which promoted “recognition of the priority of minority rights before the rights of the majority”.
And that the world awaits the “large -scale tramutting of liberal democracy”, and Trump, like Vladimir Putin, is “autocrats, called up to power by the majority in order to treat democracy with a sledgehammer of authoritarianism.”
Skews and imbalances really took place.
That's just everything that Pastukhov calls “new liberalism”, in my opinion, has nothing to do with liberalism.
How the politician, pursued in Russia in the 90s of the last century, with active participation, including Pastukhov, Anatoly Chubais with his calls for the “liberal empire”.
Liberalism as it is
The first international declaration of liberal principles was the “Oxford Manifesto” of 1947, where human rights and universal values were put at the forefront.
The Oxford Manifesto largely became the predecessor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in December 1948.
Half a century later, in 1997, a “liberal program for the XXI century” was adopted, where it was written: “Freedom, responsibility, tolerance, social justice and equality of possibilities - these are the main values of liberalism.”
And after 20 years, the liberal international, uniting 85 liberal parties from 63 countries of Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa (Russia is represented by the “Yabloko”), was adopted by the “liberal manifesto 2017”.
It confirmed the principles of liberalism - ensuring equal rights for all and protecting human rights around the world, preserving and protecting civil rights and freedoms, multi -party, free and honest elections, ensuring the rule of law, tolerance, equality of opportunities, social justice, freedom of trade, market economy, environmental safety and international solidarity.
It was stated that “liberalism is freedom of personality, as well as liberalism, tolerance and generosity” and that liberals advocate “such institutions and politics that open maximum opportunities to all people in the present and future”.
And that “the task of democratic states is to ensure this provision when citizens can use the freedom provided to them for all in safe conditions and when an effective mechanism for restraining and punishment of those who violate human rights and encroach on freedom of other citizens is provided ...
Equal rights, not privileges, quotas and "special interests"
The “new liberalism” described by Pastukhov, which seeks to “achieve the maximum possible equality between people, despite all the actual differences between them,” and promotes the “priority of minority rights with their special, narrow interests of the majority with its common and wide interests”, presented in the documents of the above documents. No relation!
Yes, the documents of liberals say - among other principles - about equality not only rights, but also opportunities.
But the desire for equality of possibilities does not mean "equality between people, despite the actual differences." This is, firstly.
And secondly, and this is the main thing-
Liberalism involves guarantees of equal rights for everyone and the inadmissibility of discrimination, and not the provision of quotas, privileges and recognition of some “special interests”.
He suggests that there are no special rights for representatives of any minority.
Human rights are general and universal - and the only question is that the same universal rights are in practice is protected by each person, regardless of whether he or the majority is in a particular situation.
And there is no and cannot be for the liberal of the priority of minority rights to the rights of the majority, nor the formation of most of the feeling of enduring guilt before the minority.
Liberalism involves the freedom of personality and freedom of speech, limited only by the rights of other people - and not a strict ideological discipline, intolerance to opponents, censorship and the notorious “abolition culture”.
The supremacy of the law and the law unit for all - and not the collective injury of those who are guilty of in advance without any court.
In the center of liberal policy is a person
In the Center for Politics, liberalism puts a person, claiming that his rights are individual - not a collective character.
Human freedom (quoting “liberal manifesto 2017”) “live life the way he wants, without limiting the freedom of other people,” his right to manage and bear responsibility for his life.
And all those “distortions and imbalances”, the reaction to which, among other things, was Trump's arrival - no liberalism, no matter how much stick the “new” label on it.
This is Levatskaya (I fully agree in her qualifications), a radical-aggressive “agenda”, advancing in the United States and a number of European countries, which became “mainstream” in many influential media and included in addition to the struggle against “colonialism” and the requirements of “decolonization”.
This “struggle”, we recall, began with the demolition and ugliness of the monuments to “slave owners” and “responsible for genocide” (the number of which even Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, William Gladston and Winston Churchill came into the number of anti -Semitic actions and supporting the Hamas terrorists.
In the same “agenda” - and “new ethics”, within which communication becomes a “mine field”, where “offended feelings” or “psychological injuries” can appear at any moment (despite the “culprit” did not intend to insult or injure), and turning a “reservation into a sentence” - when accusations that may be (and are) are immediately turned into a “progressive one. The public "verdict with subsequent persecution and" cancellation ".
Let's place the accents:
Not only liberal ideology, but also “old ethics” - the rules of human coexistence that has long been formed in the civilized world - implies a man’s respect for a woman and categorical inadmissibility of violence and coercion in relations.
But it does not bring this principle to the point of absurdity - the actual equalization of courtship and compliments with harassment and aggression with all the negative consequences that arise within the framework of “new ethics” ....
The gap between the liberal and the leftist
Deep - and fundamental - differences between liberal and Levatsky, Vladimir Pastukhov simply ignores, actually combining two opposites.
At the same time, he completely circumvents the question of the leftist forces, which, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the market transformation of China, were temporarily before the “end of history”, and it was the squeeze of the so-called “culture-marxism” and “critical theory” for the left new agenda and a new stage in their confrontation, liberal democracy and universal values as such.
Classes and class struggle were replaced by the policy of identity and the community community formed by it, allowing the left leaders to speak on behalf of all “oppressed”, in fact usurizing their voice.
It is for the sake of this that the ideas of the significance of the race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, and religion began to bring into public space again.
Instead of a key idea of a free self -determining human person for liberals, the idea of a personality, determined by all these factors (“identities”) and hung with accessories to the corresponding community, appeared.
The idea of a new, “reverse”, supposedly fair discrimination, when one who has never been a slave owner, has appeared, must be lifelong to those who have never been a slave.
There is no and cannot be anything more diverging with liberalism.
And here it is worth recalling BLM - with the pogroms of stores, the requirement of the kneeling of the descendants of the “racists” and “slave owners” as repentance for the sins of distant ancestors and the redemption of their “guilt of the White Man” and the grass of those who dared to publicly say that all lives are important.
As a descendant of those who at one time became a victim of the Holocaust, I still said: I categorically do not need that the Germans, as a sign of repentance for their ancestors, stand on one knee. I need this to never happen again - and not pathos gestures ...
Where is the "lack of democracy"?
Unlike Vladimir Pastukhov, the postulates of “new liberalism” are completely unsympathetic, unlike him, I do not consider them correct, and the “vector of change” with the imposition of the minorities of my will to most - inevitable.
And I do not believe that the spread in the USA and European countries that he calls “new liberalism” (as already mentioned, there is no relation to liberalism) and which, in his opinion, was supported by the state, although it was not divided by the majority, proves that the relevant states were not democratic.
It is characteristic that adherents of leftist ideology, these “new leftists”, in the same way criticize the parliamentary democracy for the lack of democracy and small accounting of what they take for the opinion of the masses, as Vladimir Pastukhov and the supporters of Donald Trump do this.
In his argument, Vladimir Pastukhov is remarkably illogical.
If Trump and other ultra -rights win with certain ideas, then this indicates a lack of democracy in the West, which allegedly did not allow you to express these ideas before.
But why then did this imaginary lack of democracy prevent both Trump elections, especially the second? And what interfered with such a non-commissive in the eyes of the US Vice President Jay Di Wans (like Vladimir Pastukhov) not to hold a referendum on Brexit or prohibit participation in the Alternative for Germany elections?
Yes, both in the USA and in Europe in recent years, the left -handed “distortions” and “imbalances” specified by it spread.
But to name the states that supported these “distortions” is non -democratic is a clear stretch. By this logic, the Russian state, headed by Vladimir Putin, should be called democratic-it did not allow itself to be such “distortions” ...
So with democracy in the West, everything is in order, especially in comparison with Russia. Its mechanisms work.
The question is different: in the 90s and zero years, the support of the extreme right was niche. Jean-Mari Le Pen's exit on the second round of the presidential election in France became a sensation and caused national consolidation against fascism.
But then the situation changed - and public opinion changed. This is a completely natural and constantly going process. In 2016, Trump won, in 2020-Biden, now Trump has returned, and each time the outcome of the struggle depended literally on hundreds of thousands, and sometimes only tens of thousands of votes in several separate states.
And therefore the idea of Pastukhov looks so strange that if some mood is popular now, then they were popular and two or three decades ago, but then they were disturbed by the damned “lack of democracy” ...
Trump's arrival, as already mentioned, is largely associated with the irritation of so many in the United States described above with the leftist “agenda”.
The fact that instead of the problems of rising prices, employment, illegal migration, the fight against drug cartels and crime, the problems of minorities, “inclusiveness” and state intervention in the market economy to combat global warming were endlessly discussed.
That in the labor market more and more professionalism was replaced by forced "diversity" (at the request of the state, the advice on its support was created even in private corporations, not to mention the civil service).
That the number of “oppressed” and “victims” multiplied, requiring considerable compensations for their (or ancestors) suffering at the expense of a public pie, and the number of those who, demanding empathy and tolerance, were not going to show them themselves.
So, it was the democracy of the state that it was manifested in the fact that the post of his head was a politician who opposed this “agenda”, not supported by the majority.
Vulgar "liberalism" instead of modern
If we talk about Russia-returning to the beginning of the article, then in it in the 90s of the last century a specific idea of liberalism was also inspired (except without the “new” sticker).
Then, during the “radical economic reforms” for liberalism, its vulgar and long -outed version was given out.
When it was believed that liberalism is freedom from the fulfillment of social obligations, that the state owes nothing to anyone, that the strongest survive, and the weakest itself was to blame - could not adapt.
Let me remind you that the split of the once unified participants in the democratic movement on the “apple” and “democratic choice of Russia” (and then - ATP), which occurred in 1993, was just associated with a fundamentally different attitude to the methods of economic reforms.
Some stated that the reforms should be carried out in the interests of the majority - others assured that it was necessary to bet on an active minority. Some believed that the reforms leading to a continuous deterioration in people's lives are unacceptable - others believed that the social “price” of reforms does not matter, and declared “lumpen” and “impudent poor” those who required increased salaries and pensions. Some, considering the freedom of unconditional value, stated that the unjustly organized society could be neither free nor stable - in the vocabulary of others the main danger for the “young Russian capitalism” was declared “social dependency” ...
The principles of modern - social - liberalism, combining freedom and justice, corresponded to the first of these points of view. But in Russia there was a substitution of concepts: liberals began to consider those who professed the second.
This is exactly the same - and for a long time - discredited in Russia the word “liberalism”, as the identification of democracy with Boris Yeltsin and his environment discredited the word “democracy”. Although it was about the fact that in fact it had nothing to do with liberalism - how "new liberalism" did not have a relationship with it.
Distinguish the right from the wrong
If we turn to recent history, we can recall the first in the West for several decades in the West, the 2008 difficult economic crisis, which destroyed the feeling that globalization, market neoliberalism and multiculturalism are identical to prosperity. The struggle for limited financial resources in society has worsened, and xenophobia has grown in relation to potential competitors.
It is no accident that there are so many of the extreme right in the United States and France and Germany, depressed working regions vote - there are often not many migrants, and they are not so much a direct threat in the eyes of the local population, but the extra applicants for a “piece of the pie”, which are local, as they believe, and there are not enough.
In modern liberalism-especially in modern Russia, where it is de facto declared hostile, anti-state ideology-many real problems, difficulties and challenges.
But do not hang undeserved shortcuts on him.
I will quote how the Oxford Manifesto begins:
“We, the liberals of 19 countries gathered in Oxford during a mess, poverty, hunger and fear caused by two world wars; convinced that such a state of the world is largely due to the rejection of liberal principles; We confirm our loyalty to this declaration:
A person is, first of all, a creature endowed with the power of independent thoughts and actions, as well as the ability to distinguish correct from the wrong. ”
Liberalism is freedom, not the persecution of disagreements; justice, not privileges; Equal rights for everyone, not “special interests”; Respect for a person, not the requirements to repent and atone.
The current crisis is not a crisis of liberalism and not a crisis of democracy, it is a crisis of concepts that deformed in the conditions of a technological revolution and manipulation using social networks and algorithms.
Liberal democracy does not need “Trumputation”, which is not at all inevitable.
She needs to return the words and the concepts of their original meaning.
This is not only necessary, but also possible.
Because a person is characteristic - although there are temporary "distortions" - the ability, as quoted, "to distinguish the right from the wrong."
Opinions of accomplices
"And does all this mean that there is democracy in Russia?"
Readers of "New" about the article by Vladimir Pastukhov* "Trumutation of liberal democracy"
"Too smart for two bastards ..."
“Regarding the article by Vladimir Pastukhov*“ Trumputation of liberal democracy ”: I can’t say anything bad about the article, it was written in a good language. I only note that I have the impression that Vladimir Borisovich was very inspired by the book of researcher Alan Carlson, “Swedish experiment in demographic policy”. As if he wrote his article, including under the impression of this book. It is very interesting, if so. And in any case, I advise the book to read.
Карлсон А. Шведский эксперимент в демографической политике: Гуннар и Альва Мюрдали и межвоенный кризис народонаселения / Алан Карлсон; per. from English. Б. Пинскера. М.: ИРИСЭН, Мысль, 2009. — 312 с. ".
- «Статьи Пастухова В., так же как и его блог, читаю постоянно, находя у него взвешенные объяснения закономерностей, происходящих в сообществах.
Самая простая приходящая мысль это то, что Америка была, есть и продолжает быть Америкой. Помощь помощью, но прибыль — прежде всего. Если помощь нельзя монетизировать, то можно получить влияние и преимущества, которые потом можно монетизировать и т.д. Итоги Первой мировой сделали Америку богаче. Ничуть не умаляя роль Америки во Второй, после завершения ее страна стала лидером Западного мира. А после падения СССР и развала Восточного блока — признанным мировым лидером. But not only. Мировым арбитром во многих аспектах. Гуру демократических идей. И то, что сегодня демонстрирует новый президент, укладывается в шаблон. Неважно, что предательство похоже на предательство, сделка должна быть выгодна. А партнера со слабой позицией нужно учитывать в степени его позиции. Но так просто может быть только на первый взгляд.
Мир находится перед входом в процесс экзистенциального выбора. Опять встает вопрос, что лучше: демократия или диктатура. Мир, сформированный правилами итогов Второй мировой, с развитием технологий и ростом значения других новых игроков, перерос эти правила. И второй приход Трампа неслучаен, в отличие от первого. Если первый — случайность, как протест, то второй — запрос на перемены и выбор от безысходности. Потому что нет приемлемых для выбора предложений. Нет их не только у Америки, но и у Европы. И беззубое и ведомое поведение ее лидеров лишь пример.
И то, что произошло в феврале 22-го — отчасти реакция на слабость и высокомерие, проба на зуб не только мирового порядка, но и принципов, к формированию которых цивилизация шла не одно столетие и так дорого за них заплатила. Что будет происходить в мире в период формирования новых правил или обновления старых, неизвестно. Какие союзы будут формироваться? Какая игра будет на Великой шахматной доске? Some questions.
Точно известно одно — скучно не будет, турбулентность высокого уровня. Кто мог предсказать приход к власти маленькой неизвестной партии большевиков, развалившей огромную страну. Кто мог предсказать падение Германии в Первой мировой. Большевики отдали земли Украины и Белоруссии, Германия получала от них помощь, войска снимались с Восточного фронта и перебрасывались на Западный. Обескровленная Франция ждала худшего. Кто бы мог поставить фишки на ее сторону? Но вдруг все лопнуло. Германия проиграла.
Американская струна натянута. Там тоже все не так стабильно, как хотелось бы. И поведение Трампа — реакция на эту нестабильность. Хаотичность и неуверенность — суть одного явления. Неожиданные слова, неожиданные поступки. Решительность не есть взвешенность. А от Америки действительно зависит многое. Европе придется решать вопросы без оглядки на заокеанский одобрямс. Там, где Америка даст слабину, подхватит Китай. А у РФ, как всегда, свой путь. В американское буржуинство не возьмут, как ни гладь. Европа забор сама ставит. А китайские друзья — друзья только до кассы, а там сама, сама».
«Текст В. Пастухова — просто бальзам на израненную душу! Очень умный и по-настоящему глубокий. Давно не баловал себя такими умными текстами. В порядке полемики могу лишь заметить, что после ставшей с очевидностью абсурдной парадигмы равенства теперь с очевидностью встает поиск идеи критериев неравенства. Сам Трамп вряд ли озаботится разработкой таких критериев, он по умолчанию считает таковым критерием силу (военную, экономическую). Но довольно быстро станет ясно, что ведь все это человечество проходило, и эволюция поэтому хорошо известна. Хорошо известны также и многочисленные критерии неравенства, имевшие место в прошлом (имущественные, образовательные, родословные и др.). Думаю, эти критерии и есть «краеугольный камень» почти всех бед человеческих. Но хорошо уже то, что вроде стали понимать всю глубину ужаса идеи равенства (история СССР и многих социальных революций дала прекрасные иллюстрации). И, соответственно, начнется процесс поиска критериев неравенства. Тут есть где разгуляться мысли алчущей…»
«Не буду петь продолжительные дифирамбы В. Пастухову, отмечу, что его статья «ТрамПутизация» интересна, как всегда, и глубока. И что, вероятно, он лучший философ-политолог нашего времени.
Тем не менее в тексте статьи есть формулировки, которые у меня, по крайней мере, вызывают вопросы. И возможно, Владимир Борисович ответит на них.
V.B. Пастухов пишет: «Общий смысл остался прежним — истинная демократия противопоставлялась неистинной…
Соответственно, истинной, то есть либеральной, демократией признавалась та, где права меньшинств были защищены особым образом (можно сказать, что им обеспечивалась «инклюзивность»), а не истинной — демократия, в которой доминировало мнение большинства» .
Известно, что внутренняя политика в РФ проводится если не в интересах большинства, то по крайней мере с их молчаливого одобрения или безразличного отношения (апатии).
Означает ли это, что в России демократия? V.B. Пастухов пишет: « Эта политика не пользовалась общественной поддержкой, но поддерживалась государством . А значит, это государство было недемократическим».
Если перевернуть фразу, то получим: «Если политика поддерживается государством и пользуется общественной поддержкой, то это означает, что государство демократическое».
Очевидно, что СВО пользовалась (и до определенной степени пользуется) поддержкой. Это, как говорится, медицинский факт. Но пользуется ли СВО «общественной» поддержкой или все дело в «глубинном народе»? Означает ли это, что РФ это демократическое государство?» .