2.2.2. Fairness in the life of society: political ethics - mercenary or work
“About the current moment” №11(83), November 2008. Bureaucratic despair in Russia and global project “Obama” · перевод (English) · раздел 7 из 13
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2.2.2. Fairness in the life of society: political ethics - mercenary or work
And another un-politically correct subjects in Russionia - theme of justice in the life of society, “elite’s” approach to “simple people” and of people’s approach to “elite”.
But before showing how the subject of social justice is given in “The Audacity of Truth” and in the public speeches of Russian political “elite”, we’ll focus on some specificities of socio-political life of the USA and Russia, that characterize each of the countries.
In general, comparing US life with ideals mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and in the Bill of Rights, than undoubtedly, the USA are progressing in the task of turning their cult ideals to life; racial inequality they have already overcome de jure, and are working on overcoming it de facto; many other problems were solved as well.
And the source of this progress is - public discussion of the real divergence between declared ideals and real life, which, although it is often clouded by lengthy speeches of the participants and although the truth often gets lost in those speeches, still is a notable part of socio-political life of the United States, and Obama’s book is very clear example of that. Of course in the US, as in any other country, there is also a non-public discussions of the issue, which in many ways form country’s politics and business actions, but this part is forced to react on the public part of the process.
But along with such progress the USA created many problems both locally and globally, and in the historically defined shape, they became a problem to the rest of the world, that need a solution. One of the main reasons for this is that in the public and non-public politics even as free speech is a cult - free thinking in the US is still limited by their specific culture, which is why US in their demands on the role of the global leader and a wheel of progress are constantly faced with objections, which can be responded to only by force, following wisdom of the unrighteous: “Out force will be the true law, because powerlessness proves to be useless” (The wisdom of Solomon 2:11) - but not many people in the States know these words, because “The wisdom of Solomon” is excluded from the Canon and is not in the standard Bible.
Russia is indeed not America. For the centuries of it’s historical past (starting at least from the “Words of Law and Prosperity” of Kiev’s metropolitan bishop Illarion, dated 1037-1050) its socio-political life is characterized by:
· In public politics the desired is often taken for the real
· In public politics the subject of power abuse and other problems are often left unspoken, as if they do not exist
· And when problems become critical, and force to be openly discussed, then
O Discussion of them is often far from the point (e.g. mass media discussion of the global financial crisis during the tenth meeting of “United Russia”)
O Or the discussion is substituted for by official declarations like “yes, there are some problems, but our father-tsar has already taken measures to solve then, and they might be already solved and the messengers have not yet reported on that…” (e.g. mass media coverage of the Tchernobul catastrophe and the first few days of rescue operation of the “ Kursk ” submarine sunk by NATO).
· And when some of the events move to the past, then an official myth is created, which in its content can be very far from the actual reality (e.g. official version of the establishment of post-soviet statehood of the RF or the official story on the “ Kursk ” submarine).
And overcoming development problems in Rus’ is taking place based on the non-public “underground-couloirs politics”, to which both the power and the opposition are equally adherent. In Rus’ everything is secretive, but nothing is secret, although along with non-secretive truth society has and spreads many rumors: that’s why everybody “knows” that Alexandr I officially publicly died in 1825 in Taganrog and was buried in Peretburg side by side with other emperors… After what he spent few more decades incognito living as in Siberia, where he died very old.
And if in Rus’ official declarations the power says that
· Everything is fine, that they have achieved some goals in life and that many problems have been solved
· At the same time many people do not see any proved of that in their everyday life
? then the powers, on the background of public, knowingly hypocritical declarations of loyalty by unbelieving and despising it people, faces politically amateur actions of the people - as un-public as the actual politics.
All of it happens because direct appeals to the power on the issues and ways of solving them, are ignored by it, because those issues do not fit in the format of public policy of the state.
The question is in:
· How much time will it take the state power to commit suicide by not being able to handle the problems ignored by it?
· And how much time after that will it take the underground opposition to become legitimate de-facto state power?
· In such circumstances de jure legitimacy of power - is a question that means little to both sides - to power and its social opposition.
The key reason for such difference in public and non-public approaches of socio-political lifes in Rus’ and in the USA is because:
· Russian “elite” is shameless anti-nation egoistic corporation that only wants the people to admit that they are rednecks in whose presence the “elite” does not have to explain itself.
Whether ‘elite’ takes this position consciously or unconsciously does not matter - it would have been just as comfortable in cast society: you belong to one group and therefore you have the right, if not -you don’t have the right, and all your talents and advantages worth nothing. It is almost impossible and very rare to work one’s way from the bottom to the top/ “elite’, because all the space in it has already been taken by representatives on historically formed “elite clans”, some of which manage to keep their status despite revolutions and counter-revolutions (e.g. clan of Mikhalkov). With the change of ‘elite’ after catastrophes, the process starts again (e.g. Yeltsin came from deep country, but where are his kids now - highly elite, but for what concrete talents or work? And besides Yelstin there were many other officials, whose children were ‘eliterized’…)
· And in the U.S. "elite", with all its flaws, prefers that people beleived that the "elite" responsible to him and is working in the general public interest, being an «avant-garde» of the people in their socio-historical development.
And ‘elite’ occupies this position as a corporation, knowingly or unconsciously - does not matter. In the American "elite" there is also a hereditarily-clan core (in particular it is widely known by its representatives such as Kennedy, Mc Cain, senior and junior Bush, Rockefeller, Ford), but a lot of those who withdrew from the American common people or the middle class (the most widely known, General Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice,- At different times were both U.S. Secretary of State; even B. Obama - elected president: all are black and would not have been able to make their career, have they been born at least 50 years earlier).And the influx of new mass flows of people into US "elite" has been going on throughout U.S. history in every generation, resulting in that "elite" of the US is more clever and more capable than hereditarily clans isolated from the rest of society "elites" of other countries, including Russia, and corporate discipline and lack of freedom (this is explained further in the case of B.Obama) in the USA "elite" are different.
Consequently, all political and ideological conflicts between the U.S. and Russia (except for the period starting from about 1930 to 1953) are - conflicts over good and civilized, refined ways to implement the "elitist" slavery on the basis of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights by the U.S. against the ancient unabashedly naked "elitist" slavery in Russia.
Now we can go back to the essence of justice in society and its implementation.
Notions of fairness and injustice in life of society if double-conditional:
· Firstly - from the Above, by humanity’s sole purpose (in atheist formulation - by genetic potential of personal development of all members of society, which it either allows to grow and realize in its full capacity or suppresses and limits it).
· Secondly - by historical facts - by what of the already predetermined from Above is already implemented, what needs to be implemented and to which implementation is blocked by greed of some or the others social groups, often supported in written and unwritten social laws influencing personal growth of people in this society.
Therefore notions of justice in social life are, firstly historically concrete and secondly are changing from age to age according to the character of social development of degradation.
Besides, in its cultural conditioning they are the consequence of the answer on the question about relationship between body physiology and biology of Homo Sapience species and a raison d’etre of humans and society. History knows only two answers to this question:
· Live to experience pleasure, including pleasure from food, sex, not necessarily aimed at reproduction.
Actually United States are programmed on it, and with more or less success are implementing it. This is a consequence of the fact that their cult Declaration of Independence and a Constitution, Bill of rights do not say anything about what objectively is dignity of a successful person, and even though the dignity is not defined, his pursuit of happiness can still be realized. Bus the USA do not know that [10]. In Russia “elite” also lives but this principle.
· Eat and procreate to live: meaning to implement some higher plan.
In Russia the “Smerdyakovs” among common people as well as among the “elite” are more or less active in that direction.
And both principles are objectively and inevitably antagonistic to each other, in addition adepts of the first one are aggressive.
Then social life in civilization of technical-technological nature, where production is based on the organization and collective work, one of the aspects of justice is linked to an opportunity for a person to receive sufficient (in one of the above senses) part of the product, manufactured by collective work - whether directly (sharing the product in its natural state - when where is no monetary exchange) or in financial equivalent (when monetary exchange prevails products exchange).
Societies that have realized in themselves the meaning of human existence in all its fullness do not exist at the moment.
Now let us move to Obama’s statements on the questions of economical justice in social life.
In 1980, the average CEO made forty-two times what an average hourly worker took home. By 2005, the ratio was 262 to 1. Conservative outlets like the Wall street Journal editorial page try to justify outlandish salaries and stock options as necessary to attract top talent and suggest that the economy actually performs better when America ’s corporate leaders are fat and happy. But the explosion in CEO pay has had little to do with improved performance. In fact, some of the country’s most highly compensated CEOs over the past decade have presided over huge drops in earnings, losses in shareholder value, massive layoffs, and the under funding of their workers pension funds.
What accounts for the change in CEO pay is not any market imperative. It’s cultural. At a time when average workers are experiencing little or no income growth, many of America ’s CEOs have lost any sense of shame about grabbing whatever their pliant, handpicked corporate boards will allow. Americans understand the damage such an ethic of greed has on our collective lives, in a recent survey, they ranked corruption in government and business, and greed and materialism, as two of the three most important moral challenges facing the nation (“raising kids with the right values” ranked first). Conservatives may be right when they argue that the government should not try to determine executive pay packages. But conservatives should at lease be willing to speak out against unseemly behavior in corporate boardrooms with the same moral force, the same sense of outrage, that they direct against dirty rap lyrics.” (p.62)
Is there any Russian politician that has publicly brought up such questions? - No, there isn’t
Publicly discussing greedy ethics of ‘elite” of Russia and its basic flawed morality of praising itself and other hedonism - representatives of “elite” in Russia (inc. politicians) tend to avoid, although in doing that they can theatrically reproach so-called “social greed” - discontent of those who did not receive “elite” positions. So-called “social greed” in fact exists, because as it has been known or centuries, a large part of slaves are not dreaming about freedom, but about having their own slaves. However, reproach os social greed should not replace discussions of issues of justice and reproach of other forms of injustice, besides the “social greed”. In particular this concerns economic aspects:
Justice manifests in the fact that statistics of distribution of finances in executive level of sate and business should not be different from statistics of financial statistics in all other fields. Justice in this sense is really economically functional despite the Wall Street Journal’s opinion that effective management is army of “fat and nice” executives, and to make sure they are nice and fat their incomes must be many times the average salary.
Besides, there no biological or cultural objective reasons to lift top executives and their families according to their consumption above social statistics to the heights unreachable to the rest of the society.
However Russian political “elite” is fundamentally against public discussion of problem of social justice. Here is a recent example: Once a well-respected Russian newspaper “Vedomosti” published an article discussing injustice in relationship between bureaucracy and common people in conditions of crisis, it immediately received a warning “on necessity of strict obedience to the law of counteraction to extremism” from Federal Service on Supervision over the Legality in the Sphere of Mass Communications (http://www.newsru.com/russia/22nov2008/ved.html). It seems that for Russian political ‘elite’ it is rather easy and common practice to issue a law of extremism counteraction. But it is a lot harder to raise and discuss the matter of social justice and expressions of injustice of system of social relations, inherited from soviet times, on the congress of “United Russia” and then take real binding decisions and implement them in life - for the ‘elite’ and its ‘entourage’, from party mass gathered at the congress. In such conditions issuing orders on “necessity of obiding the law of counteracting extremism” means purposefully charge revolutionary situation. And therefore it is those people who issued this order who should be taken to court.
More to the point:
From purely managerial point of view, price of a good in conditions of somewhat free market is a measure of its defecit. This also concerns the price of qualified personnel in all industries.
In other words, if a society is ready to pay executives according to “the higher in hierarchy - the deeper is the gap between your salary and average one” principle, then such society is experiencing an acute deficit of effective managers. Sittuation is aggravated by the fact that various aferists, that neither are able to nor are willing to learn to do anything useful, can successfully penetrate managerial field driven by greed for high incomes and irresponsibility in the face of their employees and hard workers.
This is exactly the reason, according to Obama, why it was namely high-paid executives that made the worst mistakes in their company’s management
It is no surprise that Barack Obama noticed this - at least for those who are familiar with articles of Concept of Social Security. They described this phenomenon already back in 1994 in the paper of IP of USSR “Short course…” giving examples of USA, then GDR and Japan.
However such materials are only an obstacle for Russian bureaucrats and top executives crushed by their ethics of greed in their work of dividing the budget and obtaining gigantic salaries on the basis of the laws taken by themselves and in their task of extortion of bribes.
And we repeat:
Subject of justice in specifics of displayed injustice - is also a banned subject for public discussion amongst all representatives of “elite” (political, corporate, “intellectual”) in post-sovier Russia, including editors of mass media under their control.
And if in non-public circle of representatives of political “elite” they were forced to address the issue of injustice in its full, then instead of dialogue and talking to the point we would receive only cheap talk of the sort “those people deal with increased responsibility, and therefore to reward them for taking such burden we have to pay substantially higher salaries”
But when directly asked “which of those bearers of “enormous responsibility” has actually been called up on their mistakes? Which of them have actually paid for making mistakes of strategic gravity?“ those adepts of inflated salaries get stunned, often turning to hysterical remarks that “repeats of Stalinism must not be allowed”. And even less often some of them start mumbling something incoherent on “guilty conscience” and mistakes they have made (M. Gorbachev, B. Yeltsin, A. Yakovlev, A. Tchubais, E. Gaidar, B. Berezovsky and many others - those are just victims of their conscious???). But agree with us, please, that real victims and real tortures of guilty conscience are actually beneficial and priceless and therefore cannot be financially estimated and paid and therefore - super-incomes of top executives as compensation for “damages caused by guilty conscience” are inappropriate.
Besides, in such extent of income comparison of top executives and other people manifests deviation from God. In particular, Koran clearly expresses on the choice of leaders: “Follow those who do not ask you for reward and who is on the straight path!” (Sura 36:20) - in other wards managers should be as righteous as possible and do not ask for any consumption privileges from the rest of society.
From above arguments it is clear that in public discussion of the problems of social justice Obama, if necessary, can beat any Russian politician (Putin, Medvedev, Zuganov, etc) either because for them social justice is a banned topic because of their “elite’-corporate obligations and deeply rooted psychological blocks, or because their understanding of the problem is very vague because they see the world from the window of their corporate cars and luxury apartments and from behind the backs of bodyguards, living in the conditions that everything they need is already prepared for them and paid from state funds.
Only one politician could adequately and convincingly stand up to Barack Obama - Joseph Stalin:
“You have the point, Mr. Obama, but you do not go to the limits in your argumentation: in economy, that operates in best interest of workers, increase in production will inevitably involve decrease of prices, as peoples needs in certain products are being met, and the state objective is to manage the extremes of profitability in industries, based on price dynamic. But in your countries economy usury and stock speculations. However you are right in general: to make economy work for people, and not for small group of parasites, it is necessary to increase general culture and improve upbringing of children, as you put it “in right value systems””
Now in your (Russia) country’s economy the main obstacle for this is the ethic of greed of all generations of post-stalin ‘elite’, multiplied by impudent parasitism and stupidity of economic science, and add here indifference of the majority of population too involved in their routine business or slaving on several jobs at the same time to somehow provide for their families.