Totalitarianism and liberalism in practical embodiment. Liberal totalitarianism at the forefront of philosophy

Today Russia again faces a choice: which path of development is preferable - liberalism or totalitarianism?

Having had plenty of “wild capitalism” in the 90s (which has retained many of its features even now), many Russians are advocating for a social orientation of the state, a return to the times of the USSR.

Liberalism arose in Europe during the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries as a reaction to the dominance of monarchs and the Church in the person of the Pope. Protestantism emerged from Christianity, which gave significantly more personal freedoms and encouraged the initiative of the individual citizen.

Liberalism proclaimed the equality of all citizens before the law, ensuring each person has natural rights given to him by nature (including the right to life, personal freedom, property), the establishment of a free market economy, government responsibility to society and transparency of government power.

Thanks to the adoption of a course towards liberalism and the transition to Protestantism, a rapid development of trade and industry began in a number of European countries: steam-powered cars appeared, railways began to be built, and shipping developed significantly. First, the Netherlands, and then England, France, Germany, and the USA became large economic and military states.

In Russia, in the 16th and 17th centuries, totalitarianism triumphed, one of the bearers of which was Ivan the Terrible. Under him, Russia significantly expanded its territory, and serfdom was finally established in the state.

Totalitarianism is a form of relationship between society and government, in which political power takes complete control of society, forming a single whole with it, completely controlling all aspects of human life.

Manifestations of opposition in any form are brutally and mercilessly suppressed and suppressed by the state.

Members of society are completely dependent on the ruler, do not have sufficient independence to make decisions, entrusting it to the ruler and thereby relieving themselves of responsibility. Since the ruler takes upon himself to provide members of society with vital resources, this is to some extent beneficial for ordinary members of society.

Hitler directly told his soldiers: “I take full responsibility!”

That is, don’t doubt anything, don’t think about anything: kill, hang, burn, destroy - you are not responsible for anything!
A very comfortable position for a subordinate!

According to an unwritten agreement between the government and the people, an individual citizen transfers to the government most of his rights, including the right to life, to personal freedom, to property (and there was also the right of the first night).
At the same time, the government is not accountable to the people.

The ideology of a totalitarian society is aimed at justifying the subordination of a person’s personal interests to the ruler, declares the unity of society and emphasizes the ruler’s tireless care for the people entrusted to him.

The illusion of complete approval by the people of the actions of the authorities is artificially created and fueled in every possible way. This could be observed during the reign of all Russian autocrats, Stalin, Brezhnev.

Thus, the totalitarian system is inherent in undeveloped societies, in which its members act as certain limited, mentally and physically disabled children, and their loving but strict father strictly controls the people, keeps them in check and in a black body, and sometimes something of the highest bestows from his bounty. For this paternal care, the subjects tirelessly admire the wise, caring ruler and tirelessly sing hosannas to him.

Thus, Nicholas II granted the State Duma to the people. But if in tsarist times representatives of the working class were present in the Duma, today the State Duma is exclusively occupied by proteges of oligarchs who live off the exploitation of the people. The main occupation of the Duma members is to invent laws that infringe on the rights of citizens and to carry out their own affairs.

In a liberal society, every citizen has the right to make their own decisions and bears full responsibility for them. The authorities are under the control of civil society represented by the opposition, independent courts and parliament.

Countries with liberal economies are developing successfully; they have created fairly acceptable living conditions for ordinary citizens. Any person has the opportunity to sue a government official or a wealthy corporation and win the case.

At the same time, totalitarian countries are not receptive to progress; the economy in these states is backward. A characteristic feature of a totalitarian state is the low standard of living of the population, which is often confirmed by the card system. Typical representatives of such countries today are North Korea and Argentina.

Until recently, China was a totalitarian state; the authorities called for food for two to be divided among three. Today, China is a state with a liberal economy, the largest in the world, and a constantly growing standard of living of the population.

If we look at the table of states by standard of living for 2015, the leading position in them is occupied by liberal states. The first three places are occupied by Norway, Switzerland and Denmark.
China ranks 52nd, and Russia is in 58th place, significantly behind Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago and even Argentina.

Apparently, Russia is destined to remain a totalitarian state until the end of time, since the bulk of the population is still in historical childhood and dreams of having a wise, caring ruler over them, who cares about the people's welfare day and night. Quite a naive reasoning.

As our ancestors said, turning to the Varangians: “Our land is abundant and great, but there is no order in it; come to reign and rule over us.”
Nothing has changed in the people's consciousness in a thousand years.

Table of countries by standard of living, 2015
http://gotoroad.ru/best/indexlife

Reviews

“and dreams of having a wise, caring ruler over him, who cares about the people’s welfare day and night.”
Of course, it is much more worthy to dream that the ruler is a fool, a bastard and cares only about his wallet))
Sorry, maybe that’s not what you wanted to say, but I prefer to read literally what is written.
As for totalitarianism, if it existed in modern Russia, you would not write your articles, and I would not read them. And there would be exactly one party in the country. But for some reason the people don’t understand their own good and keep swearing and swearing... They forgot that if they started scolding the government under Stalin or even Brezhnev, it would all end quickly and unfavorably for the scolder.
Sincerely,

And one more thing: You write that you like the existing order. What is there to like when people in Putin’s team shamelessly profit, rob the country of billions of rubles and remain unpunished, when the government is not accountable to the people?
The authorities are faced with a choice: either continue to chew at the expense of the state or improve the situation of the people. The authorities choose the first, as a result the people become beggars, and even those who work remain poor, and then they have to raise the retirement age.
I have an article “Putin stands up for reforms”, in which I wrote what Russians expect from the President. And they won't wait. Hence the protest rallies.
Yesterday's speech by the president was criticized by the media: he only glossed over the predatory, anti-people essence of the reform. The protest rallies will not fade away, they will continue. The point of the rallies: stop stealing, give something to the people!
Nabiulina fled to America with money. According to the media, Putin and Medvedev are also involved in this. IM - to believe?????

Afterword to the funeral

With all my almost animal disgust for Russian liberals, sometimes I feel a little sorry for them.

Not only did this entire huge political machine of the state, created with their active participation, acting not on the principle of the rule of law, but on the basis of political expediency, suddenly begin to work against them, but also the democracy they cherished turned against its champions.

It happens in life that for some time you forget about your principles, even to some extent you compromise them - sometimes for the sake of achieving agreement and peace, and at times, on the contrary, to rally forces in the fight against a common enemy. But there comes a moment when it becomes unbearable to act this way, and the knot connecting the incompatible is broken. And after this you feel not the bitterness of loss, but liberation from the shackles that previously bound you.

The assessment of the events of October 1993 is such a litmus test, checking who is friend, who is enemy, and who is not.

The 20th anniversary of the execution of Russian democracy was unusually (and joyfully) calm on pro-Kremlin television channels. If earlier, especially in the 90s, blessed by liberals, any television program about those events was filled with poisonous anger towards the half-dead red-brown scoops, and even if the latter were invited to the studio, it was only as a decoration, then 20 years later the picture became different. First!

I try not to watch the zombie box, so I cannot claim to have a comprehensive assessment of all the materials aired, but what I was able to watch was in the nature of an attempt to consider what happened in October 1993 calmly and as objectively as possible.

Indicative in this regard is the documentary film by Vladimir Chernyshev, “White House, Black Smoke,” shown on NTV on October 3. For the first time, probably, on the air of a federal channel it was openly stated that not a single person who died in those days was killed from weapons located in the White House, that the special forces soldiers who died in Ostankino could not have been killed by shots from the street, that a breakthrough the chain of police cordon on October 3, 1993 looked like a planned provocation, that Yeltsin, in his televised address immediately after the shooting of the parliament, lied from beginning to end...

And all this after 20 years of aggressive lies about the red-brown rebellion and an attempt at communist revenge.

Apparently, the new crop of journalists are tired of being content with the liberal stereotypes imposed 20 years ago, which turned out to be completely false. And it is completely natural, for the sake of objectivity, to turn to primary sources - direct participants in the defense of the House of Soviets: deputies or ordinary defenders - it doesn’t matter.

After all, no matter how much we spit at the word “democracy” today, the country has lived for at least 22 years in a regime of proclaiming the priority of democratic values. And freedom of speech as well. And freedom is the same for everyone. Both for liberals and red-browns. Let the viewer, reader, listener judge who is right. And Baburin and Alksnis, Konstantinov and Shurygin flashed on television screens. Not to mention Rutsky and Khasbulatov, without whose participation not a single story on this topic could be done. And this is just the territory of occupation - television. And what can we say about the Internet - the territory of freedom.

Surprisingly, it was precisely this principle of universal freedom that was always hated by Russian liberals, both then and now. Protect us from the damned Constitution (Akhedzhakova, 1993), they missed Hitler with their democracy (Satarov, 1996), no freedom for the enemies of freedom (Sobchak, 2013).

It was disgusting, although at the same time it was funny to read and listen to all these cries of liberals on their media territory. A little more, and they will start calling to stop this whole apparent red-brown renaissance of Putin, who is fiercely hated by them, whose pardon after the overthrow they are already considering on certain conditions (Piontkovsky).

But Putin remained silent. And he did the right thing. Sometimes it is better to remain silent than to speak. For example, at a wake. Although, if we take into account that the limits of freedom of speech in our country are determined by the will of one person who is responsible for everything, then we can assume that in the environment of this person, and perhaps in his head, the idea has matured that it is necessary to disown Yeltsin’s crimes. But at the same time continue the policy begun under his predecessor. After all, privatization, which became a stumbling block between the Supreme Council and Yeltsin and ultimately led to the shedding of blood in October 1993, is developing today according to the Yeltsin-Chubais version, and attempts to revise it are unacceptable, as the national leader has said publicly more than once. It seems that the sheep (the Russian population) are safe, and the wolves (the ruling bureaucratic-oligarchic clan) are fed. But the wolves want more and more, and the sheep also want to live well-fed and calmly, without looking back at the wolf’s teeth. The back and forth between these two subjects could lead Putin straight to another Ipatiev house. Because the communo-fascism of Barkashov-Makashov-Anpilov was (and remains) just a liberal bogeyman (after all, neither one, nor the other, nor the third were in power and even with a hypothetical victory of the Supreme Council would not have been at the helm), but the methods aggressive liberalism are well known - crush the reptile that prevents US from living freely.

Once again I am convinced that Russian liberals do not need true democracy. That they are able to impose their totalitarian ideology not in a competitive political struggle, but only by relying on the state apparatus of violence, to which they appeal even today, being in opposition to this state.

It would be nice for today’s sincere supporters of the charming and unblemished Alexei Navalny to take a closer look at his figure. Are the well-known pig snouts, stained with soot and blood, crawling out from behind his back? Will they not present us with a “democracy” in comparison with which today’s government of swindlers and thieves will seem to us only a mild form of family violence?

The twentieth century has a persistent aftertaste. It ended a long time ago, but the feeling of the end of an era still does not go away. For the West, this is something new, but for us, born in the USSR, this phenomenon is well known: it is a state of stagnation. Today it is associated with the sphere of political ideas. More precisely, with a set of key political concepts that set the semantic atmosphere of the last two and a half decades.

Metamorphoses of political language

After the collapse of the socialist camp, a number of new concepts that were not previously relevant are introduced into political use.

One of them – “modernization” – was addressed to the countries of the former Soviet bloc and invited them to take a place in the global division of labor, being a soft and politically correct synonym for colonial dependence.

Another example is the expression “end of story.” It gained popularity thanks to the philosopher, political scientist and political economist Francis Fukuyama and his book “The End of History and the Last Man.” The concept of “end of history” also contained a clear and unambiguous message, and quite radical in content. This was not just drawing a line under the “bipolar” era and the so-called fashion for Marxism. The point was that world politics should abandon historicism altogether and clear political language of historical meanings. Refuse - in favor of what? In favor of a new political metaphysics, at the center of which was the concept of a global liberal consensus.

Of course, the idea was utopian. There was no “consensus”. The part of the world that was not part of the habitat of the “golden billion” did not accept the new order - tougher economic policies, a course towards Westernization, etc. - in some places attempts arose to take an active offensive position (remember Saddam’s Iraq). Then, from the point of view of the consensus supporters, it was time for police measures. These measures have long been described in detail by political scientists and military analysts. We are primarily concerned with that side of the international police regime, which is expressed in a global change in political course.

The main thing was that instead of the idea of the “end of history,” the concept of a “conflict of civilizations” came to the fore. We owe this concept to the American sociologist and political scientist Samuel Huntington. Such replacement (or substitution) of terms spoke volumes. First of all, of course, it pointed to the readiness of the world elites for war between North and South, but not only. No less significant is that this proclaimed a radical change in the political language. Instead of the language of politics and economics, the language of cultural and civilizational differences returned to world use. There is no doubt that this is a return to the past, or, more precisely, a remake of it. And it doesn’t matter who proclaimed this path first - Professor Huntington or the Iranian ayatollahs. Who is the aggressor and who is the victim can be understood based on the difference in the weight categories of the two conflicting subjects.

The ideological shift, hidden behind the change of concepts and terms, was not fully articulated (for the sake of political propriety), but was implied. Thus, a course was set towards the abolition of everything that had happened in the political vocabulary over the past hundred years.

Let's go back a little. Until the twentieth century, European imperial-colonial ideology was framed in romantic terms like “the white man’s burden” and statements about the “need to civilize savages.” This vocabulary became outdated when Marxism gained strength, under the influence of which such phenomena as global inequality and the dependence of some countries on others were translated into the language of political economic categories. Therefore, during the times of the USSR, it was about the confrontation between two socio-political “systems”, but not “two cultures” or “two civilizations”. The very existence of an alternative, even a Soviet one with its obvious flaws, forced a choice of expressions.

After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the liberal mainstream once again returned to the doctrine of open, rather than economically disguised, colonialism. And now a new “conflict of civilizations” is on the agenda. What it is? A sign that decorum has been abandoned. Liberal theory took a leap backwards and stopped somewhere in the middle of the era of the British East India Company. After all, it is half a step from the concept of cultural polarity (a variant of the previous “West is West, East is East, and they cannot come together”) to the idea of cultural exclusivity, and then biological superiority.

In this regard, we can safely talk about the regression and archaization of all liberal semantics: the sublimation of political ideas is becoming a thing of the past. Social inequality is once again justified by culturally racist doctrines. At the same time, replacing the concept of “cultural inferiority” with “non-compliance with democratic standards” can hardly deceive anyone: euphemisms are a product of language, not political reality.

Moral and political maxim

The new policy paradigm that came into force after 1989, despite its extreme deterioration, still occupies dominant heights in the world. It is morally degrading and structurally simplified. But even the most caveman ideology needs moral guidelines. The concept of good and evil is present in every political doctrine, and the one we are talking about also has a clear system of ethics. This system, however, is quite old. It is based on the concept of “two totalitarianisms” (more broadly, “closed societies”), which appeared in the works of the philosopher and sociologist Karl Popper (“The Open Society and Its Enemies”), the philosopher Hannah Arendt (“The Origins of Totalitarianism”), the political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski and some other authors. The concept was born with the beginning of the Cold War, but turned out to be much more durable than political blocs. Its meaning is simple: communist and fascist regimes are politically related and oppose liberal democracies.

In the system of new thinking, which was talked about so much in the era of Gorbachev and Reagan on both sides of the decaying “Iron Curtain,” the maxim of “totalitarianism” occupied a place of honor. It was the theory of two totalitarianisms (or “double” totalitarianism) that served as the bridge that was thrown from the political yesterday to the political today. The current politics of power seem to have been redeemed by yesterday's victims. Totalitarianism served as an indulgence given by history to supporters of the new global world order.

Of course, from a logical point of view this position does not stand up to criticism, but psychologically it is very effective. The mechanism of influence on public consciousness is quite simple: it is a constant reminder of historical trauma. That is, the appeal is not to the rational, but to the emotional sphere. Without a picture of the dark totalitarian past, the picture of a bright liberal future does not emerge (due to too many costs in the form of “intercivilizational” wars, regime changes, etc.). That is why the image of a historical enemy is so necessary.

Dissatisfaction with the theory

Since the times of Karl Popper and Hannah Arendt, the general conceptual framework of the theory has not changed: we are still talking about “bad” totalitarianisms that oppose “good” liberalism. But over time, this Manichaean model began to increasingly come under fire in the West, and not just in the USSR. Which is not surprising: after all, the theory from its very birth resembled a catechism. It could either be accepted entirely or rejected entirely. Moreover, as in the vulgar version of communism, the “two-totalitarian” concept had a very noticeable emotional component (infernal symbolism, the motive of absolute evil, the categorical “never again”).

And this is an alarming symptom.

It is not surprising that already in the 60s political concepts appeared that ran counter to the “two-totalitarian” orthodoxy. Here, first of all, it is necessary to say about the representatives of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School. The school's senior representatives, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, saw fascism in particular as a by-product of two underlying historical processes. On the one hand, there is the dominance of the standards of rationality imposed on Europe by the Enlightenment. And another, counter process - Nazi archeomodernity - an affective reaction to these standards of irrational layers of European culture (fascist archeomodernity) (see: Adorno T., Horkheimer M. Dialectics of Enlightenment).

Researchers in the 1960s described the repressive mechanisms of all three ideological modes of Western society - Nazi, communist and neoliberal - as interconnected.

A representative of the second generation of Frankfurt residents, Herbert Marcuse, a cult figure of the rebellious youth of the 60s, the guru of radical students, came to the conclusion that the repressive apparatus of the liberal society of the postmodern era forms a fascist type of consciousness - a “one-dimensional person.” And he does this no less successfully than his “totalitarian” competitors (see: Marcuse G. One-Dimensional Man). This conclusion is all the more important because Nazism and liberalism, as is known, have the same social base - the middle class. An example of a state of “hidden fascism” for Marcuse and his like-minded people was, in particular, the United States with its mass of ordinary rednecks.

From this point of view, the ideological map of the twentieth century, drawn according to the principle of “two bad theories - one good”, already looked dubious. At the same time, it is important to take into account that the Frankfurtists did not at all question the very category of totalitarianism (“fascistism”) and did not even try to narrow it, like other conservative critics “on the right.” On the contrary, they followed the path of expanding the concept, expanding its scope and content. From this perspective, any repressive mechanism looked like a symptom of latent fascism.

Many opponents of the theory, as already mentioned, pointed to the different social preconditions of the two regimes. Communism appeals to the lower classes, fascism and Nazism to the middle class and big bourgeoisie. I think it was Antonio Gramsci: “The support of fascism is the enraged middle class.”

But this was not enough for a systemic critique of the “double” theory of totalitarianism. For criticism of theory to develop into a strategy and gain sufficient explanatory power, a systemic view of political history was needed. First of all, it was necessary to understand why the political mainstream of the 20th century—liberalism—was persistently excluded from the problem field.

Liberal socialism

Attempts to go beyond the usual framework of research on totalitarianism became especially noticeable in the 90s. Perhaps the most interesting is the position of Immanuel Wallerstein, outlined in his work “After Liberalism.” This book was published in New York in 1995. That is, just three years after Francis Fukuyama’s benign liberal utopia “The End of History and the Last Man” (1992) (there are still eight years left before the sinking of the political “Titanic” on September 11, 2001).

Wallerstein's focus was on a larger issue than the question of the criteria of totalitarianism - the history and death of liberalism as a two-hundred-year-old political project. But this, of course, is directly related to the theme of totalitarianism.

A distinctive feature of Wallerstein's position can be considered the perception of fascism and communism not as two ideologies opposed to liberal democracy, but as components of a large liberal project that dates back to 1789. This change of perspective is fundamentally important. It was she who set a new perspective for considering the old “near-totalitarian” problems. When you first open Wallerstein, you can't believe your eyes. He gives a picture of the events of the twentieth century, absolutely different from what we are used to seeing in Soviet and post-Soviet textbooks, as well as in the Western press.

The goal stated by the author is simple. He seeks to describe what has already begun, in his opinion, “the process of demoting liberalism from its post-geocultural norm.” And this requires tracing the close connection of liberalism with conservative and socialist ideas up to and including fascism and communism. Wallerstein defines “modernity” as an era of liberal dominance, which fits into two centuries - between the French Revolution and the collapse of the USSR - and undertakes to argue that the opposition of three political concepts from the very beginning was illusory, scholastic and subordinated to the needs of European and world Realpolitik.

Socialism in Russia, according to Wallerstein, was not an independent political project. And although October 1917 radically plowed the socio-political landscape, already in the 20s the Soviet regime secretly entered the consensus of the world elites. Talk about world revolution during this period degenerated into pure rhetoric, beneficial to all participants in the consensus. It was precisely because of this unspoken convention that the Cold War never entered a hot phase.

Based on these positions, it can be argued that the meaning of World War II is that the most reactionary part of the liberal establishment (and not the socialist Soviet Union) went beyond the consensus and struck at one of its participants. But with the victory of the Soviets, consensus was restored, and on more favorable terms for the USSR, although at the cost of enormous sacrifices.

What, then, is the systemic mistake of Western Sovietology? In a monstrous overestimation of the Soviet project.

According to Wallerstein, Russian socialism, unlike classical Marxism, under the guise of class confrontation, developed a different idea - the idea of national liberation, or rather, the dismantling of the old colonial system on a global scale. But Lenin and Trotsky were not pioneers here. The project initially arose within the framework of the peacekeeping policy of US President Woodrow Wilson and his followers, only later receiving a second, socialist edition.

In both cases, it was about the destruction of the old world order. And here the USA and the USSR, despite the ideological confrontation, which in fact served as the tip of the political iceberg, solved the same problem. At the same time, “Leninism was a more energetic and militant form of anti-colonial struggle than Wilsonianism. And of course, the USSR provided material and political support to many anti-imperialist movements.”

The so-called rivalry between the two systems was beneficial to all participants. Why?

The desire to end the European form of colonialism for the sake of a new one - economic, global, planetary - is one of the reasons for the alliance of two ideologies, liberal and socialist. But not the only one. For a planetary doctrine to be considered legitimate, it must have a global opponent. And in order to maintain her status, she needed to ensure that she played by the rules with this opponent. Thus, according to Wallerstein, Soviet socialism played the role of a pocket alternative and a convenient sparring partner for world liberalism. The conclusion is somewhat unexpected at first glance.

Describing the period 1945–1990, Wallerstein does not use the concept of a “bipolar world” at all. He is confident: “The USSR can be considered as a sub-imperialist power in relation to the United States insofar as it maintained order and stability in its zone of influence, which actually increased the ability of the United States to maintain its own world dominance. The very intensity of that ideological struggle, which, in the end, was of little importance, played into the hands of the United States and was a serious political help for them (as, undoubtedly, for the leadership of the USSR). In addition, the USSR served the United States as a kind of ideological cover in the Third World countries.”

This thesis is indirectly confirmed by the history of oil-producing countries (OPEC). When they tried to create a cartel and blackmail the West, it was the USSR that came to the aid of the “world of capital” and opened the valve for it to the fullest, without raising the price too much. The indifferent attitude of the United States and its allies towards the forceful suppression of uprisings in the Eastern bloc (1953, 1968, 1980–1981) is also indicative.

Gradually this liberal-socialist consensus became more and more obvious. Only the USSR remained a reserve of pristine ideas that dominated both the camp of “loyalists” and the camp of “dissidents.” It turns out that Soviet orthodoxies, in essence, shared the anti-totalitarian theory of their opponents, only endowing it with the opposite meaning, changing the signs - plus to minus (“communism is good, capitalism is bad”).

But Western intellectuals have long recognized the real configuration of forces. That is why “the revolutionaries of 1968 protested against this consensus, and above all against the historical transformation of socialism, even Leninist socialism, into liberal socialism,” writes Wallerstein. Ultimately, “the 1968 revolution undermined the foundation of the entire ideological consensus built by the United States, including its trump card - the cover of the Soviet shield.”

And already “in 1989, those who were disappointed with the liberal consensus turned against the most prominent exponents of liberal socialist ideology, Soviet-style regimes, in the name of the free market.”

Consensus has run its course. The Soviet shield of the liberal project, having become transparent, disappeared as unnecessary.

What happened in 1989?

Wallerstein is confident: “What happened in 1989 was widely written about as the end of the period 1945–1989, considering it the date of the defeat of the USSR in the Cold War. It would be more useful to view this date as the end of the period 1789–1989, in other words, the time of victory and defeat, the rise and gradual decline of liberalism as a global ideology—I call it geoculture—of the modern world system.”

We can talk for a long time about the reasons for the collapse of the bipolar world. But the outcome of this process is important to us. And the author of “After Liberalism” defines this outcome very precisely.

“The Wilsonians,” he writes, “finally lost the Leninist shield that channeled the impatience of the Third World into a strategy that, from the point of view of the dominant forces in the international arena, minimally threatened the system that the Third World opposed.”

An important conclusion follows from the above. The so-called collapse of communist regimes had not internal, but external reasons, which lay not in the structure of the regimes themselves, but in the logic of the development of the entire liberal world system, of which these regimes were a part, existing as an imaginary and therefore safe “alternative”. Therefore, it would be more correct to define the end of the Soviet system not as a collapse, but as a dismantling.

Paradoxically, “the last people to seriously believe in the promises of liberalism were the old-style communist parties in the former communist bloc. Without their continued participation in the discussion of these promises, the ruling classes throughout the world have lost any possibility of control over the world's working classes other than by force... But force alone, as we know from at least the time of Machiavelli, cannot ensure political structures very long survival." , Wallerstein is sure.

It is easy to derive the main idea from this thesis: the liberal world, having no alternative, has no legitimacy. Losing ideological appeal and accumulating economic problems, he is forced to resort to military force, since there are no other ways to control the situation. We understand this today, following the news feeds of how the civil war is going on between the rich North and the poor South, and the events around Syria.

What is the future of the liberal world system after the fall of the communist shield? It will inevitably lose the remnants of legitimacy, become simpler, tougher and archaic. Or, in other words, fall into your own colonialist past.

In this sense, the phenomenon of neoliberalism, which essentially merges with the neoconservative trend, is very interesting. If previously in a liberal environment it was customary to talk about a society of equal opportunities, then neoliberals (successors of liberals) believe that “equal opportunities” are a threat to those with economic privileges. But moving away from the idea of “equal opportunities” is an obvious step towards a class state. That is, the very phenomenon that the European bourgeois revolutions of the 18th century called for to end, in the bosom of which the liberal project strengthened and grew.

Thus, liberalism came to deny its own “sacred” values. Today's liberal world, in terms of values, has fallen below the level of 1789. This allows us to characterize its economic model no longer as late capitalism, but as monetary feudalism, and all this, of course, indicates the deepest crisis of liberal theory.

However, there is nothing to be surprised here, given that liberalism today is considered a totalitarian system almost officially. Previously, he resorted to mimicry, shifting police (totalitarian) functions to daughter regimes, and channeled discontent in a safe direction. For this purpose, in particular, the theory of totalitarianism was used by the liberal elites. Today? Headquarters economy, cultural-racist discourse in politics, military strikes... All these costs and imbalances can no longer be justified by the presence of geopolitical rivals.

The liberal project, left without an additional political module, is becoming more and more aggressive. And this totalitarian liberalism will face an inevitable loss of legitimacy in the eyes of not only the oppressed nations, but also Western society (although the lack of alternative projects may extend this process for decades). But it is no longer possible to maintain the status quo any other way.

This situation marks the end of a 225-year historical project.

Liberal fascism as a historical tautology

The opinion that liberalism is something more than an ideology was expressed already in the twentieth century. In particular, the philosopher, historian and critic Benedetto Croce wrote: “The liberal concept is metapolitical, it goes beyond the formal theory of politics and, in a certain sense, also the formal theory of ethics and coincides with the universal concept of the world and reality” (B. Croce. The liberal concept as a concept life).

Today this fact is even more obvious. Liberalism is no longer an ideology. It has become a universal political and economic scenario “without options,” multiplying the number of victims of its policies around the world.

For the current state of liberalism, George Bush’s formula is quite suitable: “L-peace,” that is, the liberal world.” Bush used this concept as an image of a “soft” society, which, from his point of view, must be reined in by neoconservatives. But we tend to view American neoconservatism as part of the L-world.

The opinion that the totality of modern liberalism has increased many times in recent years has been expressed by many. For example, Samir Amin, a very popular anti-globalist author in the West, is absolutely sure of this. True, unlike Wallerstein, he gave his concept an American-centric sound, but this did not affect the content of his conclusions.

Amin considers liberal ideology a virus that arose as a side effect of the expansion of capital and leads to “permanent war.” He also emphasizes the religious-messianic component in the American version of liberalism, arguing that US politicians see Americans as the “chosen people”, which, according to Amin, is “synonymous with the Herrenvolk (master race), to use the analogous terminology of the Nazis.”

Now let's move to Europe and open Pierre Andre Tagieff's book “Color and Blood. French theories of racism." This is a kind of catalog of varieties of racist ideology using the example of France. We will find in it a list of concepts of the “racist world order” in France of the 19th and 20th centuries, including “ethno-racial nationalism”, eugenic racism of a “socialist” orientation, and also “evolutionary racism and social Darwinism”.

The last type of racism, as is easy to see, coincides exactly with modern neoliberal doctrine.

The study of Pierre Andre Taghieff, among other things, is valuable because it does not give reason to close the concept of “twentieth-century racism” within national boundaries, that is, to present it as primarily a German or “pan-German” phenomenon. By the way, such a point of view in itself would be racist. In essence, the classical concept of Hannah Arendt, who in her “The Origins of Totalitarianism” put forward a “pan-Slavist” theory of communism, also had a racist sound.

An even more interesting source that helps in the analysis of the pan-European roots of totalitarianism can be the book by Manuel Sarkisyants “The English roots of German fascism: from the British to the Austro-Bavarian “master race”. A course of lectures given at the University of Heidelberg." Despite the title of this publication, the materials collected by the author generally allow us to speak of fascism as a synthetic phenomenon of European rational culture. However, British examples predominate.

It is interesting to observe the views of the British elite during the period between the world wars. “Even after the end of the First World War, Britain could still afford to view the world through the prism of its special imperial status ... racial superiority and high national self-esteem ... By giving clear definitions of the characteristic features of the British “race,” the creators of books for young people decisively distinguished the British from representatives of other races,” recalled John Y. Norwich in the twentieth century.

So the author of the well-known utopia, George Orwell, had every reason to once say: “England is probably the only great country in the world in which intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality... In left... circles it is believed that there is something shameful in belonging to the English nation... »

In general, Sarkisyants’ book, in addition to the wealth of material, is distinguished by the accuracy of its conclusions. The merit of the author is that he found in liberal theory exactly that semantic layer that is transitional from ethnic to social racism. Thus, back in 1850, writes Sarkisyants, “Edinburgh anatomy professor Robert Knox... began to attribute to the Irish a number of qualities incompatible with the traits of the middle class,” that is, he defined the Irish (more broadly, the Celts) as an economically insolvent race. According to Knox, “The source of all the troubles of Ireland lies in the race, the Celtic race of Ireland... This race must be driven by force from the lands... they must go. The security of England demands this."

Sarkisyants has a lot of such examples, and not only him. And this is quite natural. Because an unbiased analysis of the moral and ethical foundations of liberalism and fascism reveals their complete identity.

First. Classical liberal theory and its non-classical, fascist version are united by a common moral imperative. Namely, total competition, that is, the principle of natural selection transferred from the animal world to human society. In the era of socialism, this doctrine was usually called “social Darwinist”. A very accurate definition.

Second. The common feature that unites classical colonial liberalism with Hitler-type fascism is the model of a split, divided world. One of the modern left-wing authors, Mikhail Magid, paraphrasing the positions of the famous representative of the left movement of the twentieth century, Professor of the University of Padua Antonio Negri, writes about it this way: “Colonial identity operated through the logic of exclusion... The white, civilized, organized, productive, reasonable were here opposed to the colored, natural , chaotic, ineffective, sensual, wild. As the Algerian scholar of colonialism Frantz Fanon noted, “the colonial world is a world split in two.” The colonized are excluded from the European space not only territorially, not only at the level of rights and freedoms, but also on the basis of thinking, values, and life goals. They are represented in the thinking of the colonialist in the image of “others”, thrown beyond the borders of civilization. The construction of identity is built on the principle of “us-them” and is based on the existence of a rigid border” (Magid M. “Postimperialism”).

You can't say more precisely.

Christianity and totalitarianism

A natural question arises: what ideological system lacks the logic of exclusion, the “us-them” principle? The answer is very simple. There is such a system; it is two thousand years old. This is apostolic Christianity. The definition “apostolic” is by no means superfluous: over the centuries, Christian teaching has experienced a variety of deformations, expressed either in the Crusades or in the escheat of the Protestant ethic.

The Malthusian principle of total competition is the opposite of Christian morality. That is why, as liberal policies become tougher (no doubt inheriting Malthusianism), the fight against religion, waged by the ideologists of the global secular world, becomes more and more active. Bans on the public wearing of crosses, desecration and destruction of churches, cutting down crosses, dancing on the pulpit and inciting hatred of religion - all this is welcomed by the “masters of discourse”.

Diametrically opposed values are one cause of conflict. But there is another one. Christianity stands guard over traditional social institutions, and they are an undesirable obstacle to colonial thinking. In the “globalized world” nothing traditional should remain – this is the principle of modern liberalism. Tradition hinders management, free manipulation of information and capital flows. Therefore, the liberal elites have taken a course towards militant anti-traditionalism, which threatens to surpass the “achievements” of Soviet-style state atheism.

But why did this happen historically? Why this dramatic discrepancy? And is there a hidden religious component in the liberal doctrine? This should be discussed in more detail.

Historically mature totalitarianism is the last link in a chain that begins with the rejection of traditional Christianity. That is, since the European Reformation.

It would be wrong to completely discount the theological aspect of the problem. Let’s make a reservation: today we are not talking about Protestant churches, but about the “Protestant ethic,” which has long been a political rather than a religious phenomenon.

Nevertheless, we note that it was within the framework of the European Reformation that a special type of European worldview arose, which is based on the idea of \u200b\u200bthe “chosenness” of some people in comparison with others. In the 16th century, this idea was commonly understood purely theologically, as “chosenness to salvation.”

In accordance with orthodox Christianity, salvation, as is known, is a category of unearthly life. However, the measure of “chosenness” within the framework of Protestant (especially Calvinist) ethics increasingly became material “success” in the earthly world. This concept became the starting point for the liberal project.

Later, the philosophy of the Enlightenment was layered on this moral and ethical foundation. Moreover, in an everyday, non-philosophical understanding, the idea of “enlightening” the savages became a kind of indulgence for the policy of colonial conquest and went hand in hand with military-technical progress.

But what exactly were the values that the civilized world was so eager to “teach” to savages in exchange for living goods, jewelry, colonial exotica and cheap labor?

The values of European civilization during the colonial era included liberal ideas of "natural rights", parliamentarism and "free trade". Moreover, the term “free trade” was sometimes understood so broadly that it included the sale of living goods, “forcement to the market” (“opium wars” in China), oppression and humiliation of the native population, etc.

Thus, the “natural rights” of some were asserted by taking away the rights of others. The freedom of Europeans was paid for by the oppression of the world's outskirts. The technical arsenal for seizures was provided by the successes of European science, and the thirst for profit and material success was provided by the doctrine of the “Protestant ethic”...

The development of liberalism continued in this direction until the era of the “golden billion”. The Soviet project gave rise to the illusion of breaking out of this circle and for the time being saved the liberal world from the uprising of the outskirts. He gave the oppressed illusory hope and an imaginary opportunity to choose. At the same time, it served as a kind of lightning rod: liberals were always ready to declare that the Gulag was a consequence of communist ideas, and Buchenwald and Auschwitz arose completely by accident in the bosom of liberal society.

The question of the blood ties of liberalism and fascism has already been discussed above. Let us only add that the desire to dissociate “benign” liberalism from its malignant consequences encounters not only historical, but also moral and ethical counterarguments. After all, any critically thinking person “has a question: why is “free competition” (that is, the struggle for survival) acceptable within the liberal consensus, but the same free competition between nations, classes or social systems is bad and impermissible? What is the fundamental difference? (see: Belzhelarsky E. Logic and meaning of modern liberalism // FRACTURE. M.: Probel, 2013).

On the same occasion, the already mentioned Max Horkheimer, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School, once very precisely said: “A totalitarian regime is nothing more than its predecessor, the bourgeois-democratic order, which has suddenly lost its decoration.”

Today, the true genesis of totalitarianism ceases to be a sealed secret. Contrary to the opinion of Karl Popper, who wrote about the “closedness of traditional societies,” and Hannah Arendt with her thesis about the pan-Slavist roots of Bolshevism, totalitarianism is a product of Western culture of the New Age. This is completely obvious.

Liberal taboos

Now we can return to the main question: what happened to ideas about totalitarianism in the twentieth century and why such an unconvincing theory was born and became one of the persistent stereotypes of mass consciousness?

To disguise the unfortunate pedigree of totalitarianism, its defenders have always been ready to retain “strong power” in the list of criteria for a totalitarian society, but to obscure rationalism and the spirit of modernity. In addition, they continually strove to replace the corporate collectivism of the fascist system with the communalism and conciliarity of the Russian, Orthodox, or, more broadly, any traditional society. After a series of such substitutions, the theory of “double totalitarianism” became a convenient political weapon, sharpened against any tradition, including against European Christianity. Which, as we see today, has become a victim of the global secular project.

It was necessary to hide not only the origins of totalitarianism, but also the real reasons for its flourishing in the twentieth century. As a matter of fact, the adherents of the theory of binary totalitarianism chose not to study the phenomenon of German Nazism, but rather to exorcise it by hanging the sign “fascism.” In essence, it was an unspoken intellectual quarantine.

It is advisable to know the enemy by sight. But the European reflection on totalitarianism took a roundabout path, leading far away from the essence of the issue. The moral denial of Nazism and fascism has become mandatory (which in itself is correct), but their serious scientific research has become a social taboo.

Apparently this is natural. After all, even at a cursory glance, the meaning of the phenomenon is too obvious. Apart from paranoid anti-Semitism (characteristic of Hitler and his entourage, but, say, not at all of Mussolini), the fascists did not bring anything new to the political practice of Western society. They only changed the context - from native to intra-European.

For example, touching on the “eastern question” in his speeches, Hitler says that the eastern territories should become for Germany what India became for the British. A similar situation developed with concentration camps. They were first invented and implemented by the British during the Anglo-Boer War. But if, when applied in South Africa, this practice did not cause much concern among the European public, then the same methods applied in the center of Europe and to Europeans caused a real shock. What is acceptable on the outskirts of the “free world” is unthinkable in the “free world” itself...

One of the strange paradoxes of this situation is that the liberal rejection of Hitler’s colonial methods in Europe was itself colonialist in nature, since the same methods were considered something completely acceptable outside the European ecumene.

The obvious fact is that the regime of the 1930s in Germany - the legitimate child of European liberal imperialism - wounded European identity too seriously and was rejected. Communism suffered a similar story. Both phenomena were forcibly resettled into a theoretical ghetto, hence the reluctance to stir up the problem again.

Today, the theory of “double totalitarianism” is not only under fire from criticism (which for some reason they are embarrassed to talk about in Russia), but is also experiencing certain internal disturbances. Since this theory is not of a scientific, but of a purely political nature, as soon as it enters the field of open journalism, passions boil around it. For example, the concept of “normalization of German history” is increasingly heard in the course of discussions and is no longer considered indecent, although it clearly carries neo-fascist connotations (see about this, for example: Drozhzhin S.N. The Ghost of Neo-Nazism: Made in New Europe. M .: Algorithm, 2006).

Interesting observations on the evolution of the doctrine of totalitarianism can be found in many leftist authors. The article by Alexander Tarasov “Stirlitz’s Error. Why do they need the “theory of totalitarianism”?” We are talking about a discussion that was reflected in the collection “The Past: Russian and German Approaches.”

And here is the opinion of Thomas Seibert, a German activist in the movement against capitalist globalization: “In 1989, after the collapse of the USSR... a strong growth of fascist tendencies began in Germany. And one day, when I was sitting at home and reading a book, I said to myself: “You can’t just read books at a time like this, you have to go back to the streets again and give a worthy answer to the fascists” “(T. Seibert. The left has no ready-made answers to the crisis // Left politics. 2009. No. 9).

How and why the retrospective fascisation of liberal consciousness arises has already been said. But it is important to once again emphasize the psychological motivation of this process. Experiencing a crisis of content, liberalism forms a negative type of identity. Separating from himself his former constituent parts, he creates a convincing image of the enemy both in time (former USSR, Germany before 1945) and in space, represented by the dependent part of the world (“South”, “another civilization”).

The practice of liberal geopolitics is also extremely simple. An alien tradition is declared to not correspond to the “standards of democracy,” that is, socially inferior, and therefore supposedly doomed to dependence and poverty. In fact, the opposite is true: poverty is the cause of the underdevelopment of social and democratic institutions.

Decline of the theory

Today, the morally outdated theory of totalitarianism does not satisfy everyone. Liberalism is losing its ability to explain itself.

The question arises: was the liberal system in the twentieth century totalitarian from the very beginning? Of course there was. And because it created the infrastructure of world domination, including in it the Soviet “alternative” as a subsystem. And because the German counter-system, which existed for 12 years, had 100% liberal roots.

As you know, Joseph Stalin, commenting on the results of the war, did not utter the word “fascism.” He spoke about German imperialism. The Kremlin highlander did not lie. The Third Reich was more inhuman, and therefore more liberal, than its opponents. But this liberal counterproject failed: the brave new world was destined to become a “Wall Street empire.”

The USSR became, although remote, a full-fledged part of the American project. The Soviet leaders were not free in their decisions and were subject to the “rules of the game,” while the Third Reich tried to break the system by taking possession of the European heartland. Therefore, calling the Soviet system a separate, independent totalitarianism is completely incorrect.

Thus, in the twentieth century we had three interrelated ideologies. These are the hegemonic ideology (liberalism), its radical offshoot (Nazism) and the cover ideology, a satellite of the hegemonic ideology (Soviet socialism).

It’s time to recognize the theory of “double” totalitarianism as untenable. In reality, there is only one totalitarian regime - the liberal one. Fascism and communism are not its competitors, but its components. The first represents the core, and the second the periphery. Therefore, building a system of “two totalitarianisms – one democracy” simply does not make sense. We can talk about three totalitarianisms, but in this case the word “totalitarianism” radically changes its meaning. It no longer denotes doctrines, but the state of the ideological space as a whole, which arose in the twentieth century.

Consequently, it is correct to speak not about individual ideas, but about the state of totalitarianism that European thought and European politics entered in the last century.

The “state of totalitarianism” is the end product of the development of European thought after 1789.

The only true competitor to totalitarianism was and remains only Christianity.

One Russian senator (!) recently proposed criminal prosecution of dissidents for “justifying” Stalinism-totalitarianism. This fact, as they say, is egregious, because it follows that at the very top in some heads there is a real mess. We understand, of course, that it reigns in liberal heads, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

To begin treating our liberals, we need to understand what the “positive program” of liberalism is, that is, the self-justification of the liberal in his own eyes. In an ideological sense, it is quite simple and (speaking in scientific style) follows from a “progressive” positivist linear view of the historical process. If we agree that the world is developing “positively and linearly”, then we will have to agree with the existence of leaders of progress - “civilized peoples”, and all other peoples automatically fall into the category of “developing”, backward and even barbaric and savage. By the way, the terms “developed” and “developing” countries are generally recognized by the “world community”, and this does not bother anyone, although, if you think about it, they smack of racism.

From the positivist “scientific” postulate, liberals draw a political conclusion, which they do not always talk about, but often blurt out when the situation becomes hot, as in Ukraine, that “Western civilization,” and in the person of its Bandera puppet, is always right. No matter what she does, no matter how she kills “pro-Russian separatists” in Ukraine, even children, because “Western civilization” is always right in relation to backward peoples and “barbarians,” in this case the Russians. Let us note that these definitions of the Russian people have become commonplace among Bandera’s followers, but this does not hurt Western ears at all.

The well-known “political scientist” Latynina from Echo directly stated that Western civilization must confront the “barbarians” from the Middle East, even if they are refugees fleeing the horrors of war.

Why? Very simple: because “civilization” is strengthened at the expense of “barbarians” and moves forward the cause of “world progress”. Therefore, any civilized atrocity is justified by liberals by the fact that it, one way or another, serves the cause of “progress of mankind,” which thus acts as a real bloody idol of liberalism. Accordingly, any success of the “barbarians” harms not only individual “civilized” countries, but also the cause of “world progress”.

Therefore, the West justifies all “civilized” sons of bitches, all their crimes against “undercivilized” peoples and countries, that is, not yet controlled by the West, since they act, ultimately, in the interests of “Western civilization” and “world progress.” Therefore, for the “world community,” “civilized” blood and tears are immeasurably more valuable than any non-European or non-American ones. Therefore, our liberal is always ready to clean the boots of a European liberal, according to F.M. Dostoevsky, only for the sake of “the progress of mankind.”

Although the linear positivist historical concept is nothing more than one of the earliest pro-European views on the historical process, and politically simply an ideological diversion, it still dominates the “scientific world community.” The alternative civilizational historical concept, presented, in particular, by world-famous historians Arnold Toynbee and Lev Gumilyov, is disparaged and denigrated by the liberal public mainstream as unscientific, although it is precisely this concept that makes it possible to harmonize international relations.

If we ignore liberal progressive-positivist speculations and draw on civilizational and other views on history, we will have to admit that dictatorial regimes were, are and will be: they inevitably follow periods of chaos and collapse of society, after unrest, splits and revolutions. In the Ancient world, dictatorships, democracies and oligarchy always coexisted with each other, and Aristotle did not see any particular advantages in any of these forms of society: they are all good in their own way.

Today it is fashionable to call dictatorships “totalitarian”, but this does not change the essence of the matter - it is still the dictate of a certain ideology, and we can only talk about the degree of technological effectiveness of its implementation. In this sense, the dictate of liberal “democratic” ideology in the world today is also totalitarian.

By the way, Karl Marx, apparently understanding the historical reality of dictatorship, equipped his theory of building a communist “kingdom of freedom” with the concept of “dictatorship of the proletariat.” And indeed, it was thanks to this dictatorship that Russian Marxists were able to overcome the chaos after the revolutionary coup of 1917 (socialist / communist revolution), retain power and preserve the integrity of Russia, at least in its Soviet form. Therefore, accusing Stalin and his Bolsheviks of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “totalitarianism” is simply stupid.

On the other hand, the term “totalitarianism”, that is, absolute total power, is of Western European origin, namely Hitler’s. It was Hitler who shouted to the whole world about a total war with Russia; he generally loved terrible and extreme epithets, in this case they meant a war of destruction with Soviet Russia.

Somewhere at the end of the twentieth century, the epithet “totalitarian” was adopted by liberal political scientists, and again with anti-Russian goals. In order to ideologically put Hitler and Stalin on the same level, they united them with the sonorous name “totalitarian dictators.” This, apparently, reflects the European love for vivid insults to their political opponents: they are always “bloody executioners” and “criminal regimes,” and Europeans, against such a background, naturally appear in white pants.

In reality, behind the totalitarian accusations lies a big ideological lie. If we take this point of view, then the modern West has already surpassed both Hitler and Stalin in the totalitarianism of its propaganda, this is evidenced, at least, by the revelations of electronic surveillance of the US intelligence services by Snowden, the revelations of American “economic killers”, the practice of secret prisons of the CIA and legalized ( !) torture of prisoners.

It must be borne in mind that Hitler is an ultranationalist dictatorship, a product of the “national revolution,” and Stalin is a dictatorship of the proletariat, a product of the international socialist revolution, feel the difference. After all, this is the difference that made them mortal enemies.

Let us note that in Ukraine in February 2014, it was precisely the “national revolution” that took place, according to its apologists, and today we are witnessing with our own eyes the dictatorial and total propaganda features of the victorious Bandera regime, which, having gained “dignity”, called its political opponents “Colorados” , “separs”, “donbauns” and “lugandons”.

These humiliating and dehumanizing nicknames speak not just of the Bandera dictatorship, but of the Bandera-Nazi dictatorship. Which is not surprising: it has the same roots as the Hitler dictatorship in the “national revolution”. Moreover, the absolutism of Bandera’s followers in the information and cultural sphere has reached the point of idiocy, such as compiling international “white” and “black” lists based on the criterion of “Ukrainianness” (Banderaism).

Only external pressure from Europe forces the Bandera regime to observe at least some decency and mask the Hitler crosses of its Shukhevychs and inhumane intentions towards its opponents. It is noteworthy that the Rada adopted a law on “decommunization”, condemning totalitarianism in general, but pro-fascist parties are not persecuted by Kiev at all, which only confirms its Nazism of the Hitlerite kind. By the way, Hitler would also have signed up for “decommunization”; here Poroshenko achieved the goal set by Nazism.

...It follows from this that in the “totalitarian question” common sense and logic “do not rest,” as observers sometimes say, they are deliberately ignored by both Europe and America. To prove this to the world, you need to show the poverty of liberal ideology, its totalitarianism, and turn your face to a normal, truly universal civilizational view of history, sending linear positivism to the dustbin of history.

P.S. Several photos to illustrate practical technologies.

"Zombie Parade", the living dead. Young people, having watched enough relevant movies and television productions, read books about vampires, zombies and orcs, and tested “harmless and funny” gaming applications, are preparing en masse for the “grave.” It’s a joke, of course, it’s so funny to copy the heroes of your favorite films and books.

And this is not Ukraine, Karl, this is St. Petersburg, the cultural capital of Russia.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Posted on http://www.allbest.ru

Federal Agency for Education

State educational institution of higher professional education

"Izhevsk State Technical University"

TEST

discipline: "Philosophy"

on the topic: "Liberalism and totalitarian regime"

Completed by: student gr. 4-60-4/З/

Vasilyeva E.P.

Checked by: Dzheiranov F.E.

Izhevsk, 2011

A totalitarian regime is based on the complete domination of the state over all aspects of social life, violence, and the destruction of democratic freedoms and individual rights.

The Soviet period is one of the most difficult and controversial periods in Russian history, which today is commonly called totalitarian. According to Dzheiranov.F.E. The Soviet version of totalitarianism is presented as a phenomenon associated not only with the processes of industrialization and the corresponding processes of human change, but also with the archetypes of Russian culture, with such stable constants of national consciousness as faith in a messianic destiny, the charisma of the supreme power, the egalitarian spirit of the community with its mutual responsibility and etc.

The phenomenon of totalitarianism is characterized, first of all, by three main features, interconnected and interdependent:

1. absolute power, complete dominance of the ideological, socio-political system over man, the state over society;

2. very powerful targeted indoctrination, based on myths and appealing not so much to reason as to emotions and with the goal of making people believe in the truth of the ruling doctrine and the justice of its slogans and goals;

3. fundamental immorality and complete contempt for man.

Totalitarianism is ready to sacrifice everything and everyone: what is moral is what helps strengthen the system, even if this requires the destruction of millions of people for one reason or another.

Soviet totalitarianism as a historical and sociocultural phenomenon has some characteristic features. One of them is the distance between the form borrowed from the external global context and its filling, taken from the depths of the archaic tradition. Using semantics, a set of images, nominations of political institutions, the Soviet regime fills them with natural content, which leads to the alienation of their real essence: legalized arbitrariness is clothed in the form of law; representative institutions take the form of parliamentary councils; a specific mythology, involving semantics and forms of scientific knowledge, appealing to scientistic ideas and, in fact, philosophical values, forms itself in the forms of philosophy, ideology, and humanitarian knowledge. The other is the fundamental non-optimality of the system, which should be considered as an alienation of substantial rationality. The logic of the system is technological and organizational - in principle, it is not focused on optimization, but on some non-rational guidelines. Finally, unlike other options, the Soviet version, in a certain sense, became a product of the social creativity of the majority of the population, an illusory embodiment of its age-old ideals, aspirations and hopes. This regime was not only deeply rooted in the fabric of social relations, but also, as a result of various long-term manipulations, changed the “human material” so much that rejection of a free and civilized way of life will be characteristic of many social strata for a long time.

When making a philosophical analysis of such a complex phenomenon as Soviet totalitarianism, when trying to give a more or less adequate philosophical interpretation, it is important to find a research method that would allow us to consider in unity the objective social structures and the corresponding ideologemes, as well as those ideological ideas that were generated by the combination of ideological and public structures. To designate these components, the term prism should be used - theoretical sketches of certain fragments of social life that highlight the facets of social totality - “developed concreteness, reveal their actual and semantic unity, but do not destroy the integrity of the subject under study.” Dzheiranov.F.E. argued that, at the same time, it is important to keep in mind the position that socio-philosophical understanding expresses a transition from describing external forms of unification of people to the approval of internal forms of consolidation through dialogue, communication, hidden socio-psychological processes, through all the diversity of social structures. This process can be called the transition from the classical to the non-classical type of rationality and its philosophical comprehension. totalitarian regime liberalism

In the mechanism of totalitarianism, one can distinguish a number of methods of manipulation that were successfully implemented in Soviet society. This is, first of all, complete disorientation and the cultivation of imaginary interest in totalitarian orders, as well as instilled one-mindedness and transformation into an enemy. Taken together, they represent the existential dimension of the way of life in a totalitarian society, covering all the basic motivations of a person’s life - his value orientations, individual interests, thinking and beliefs. The ultimate goal of all types of manipulation is “to establish such a multidimensional connection between the alienation of a person and his self-alienation, which would hide both the first and the second, would create a false reality, the illusion of harmony, or, in extreme cases, a positive compromise with reality.”

Liberalism is an ideological and political movement that unites supporters of democratic freedoms of free enterprise.

Liberalism is an ideological society and political movement that arose in European countries in the 17th and 18th centuries. and proclaiming the principles of civil, political, and economic freedoms. The origins of liberalism are in the concepts of J. Locke, physiocrats, A. Smith, C. Montequier and others, directed against absolutism and feudal regulation. The ideas of liberalism were first embodied in the US Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in France. In the 19th-20th centuries. The main provisions of liberalism were formed: civil society, individual rights and freedoms, the rule of law, democratic political institutions, freedom of private enterprise and trade. Modern liberalism proceeds from the fact that the free market mechanism creates the most favorable preconditions for effective economic activity and regulation of social and economic processes; at the same time, constant government intervention is necessary to maintain normal conditions of competition. In recent decades, there has been a convergence of the ideas of liberalism, conservatism and social democracy.

Literature

1. Dzheiranov F.E. "The phenomenon of human alienation in historical sciences"

2. Ermakov Yu.A. "Personality manipulation. Meaning, techniques, consequences"

3. Ozhegov S.I. "Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language"

4. Borodulin V.I., Gorkin.A.P., “Encyclopedic Dictionary”

5. Gaida.A.S., Kitaev.V.V., Socialism today: a situation of choice // Socialism and Russia"

6. Vasiliev L.S. Instead of an introduction: Discussion "Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the 20th century"

7. Yu. Borisov, A. Golubev, “Totalitarianism and Russian history // Totalitarianism as a historical phenomenon”

Posted on Allbest.ru