“If a society has lost the idea of sin and shame, the order in it can be maintained only by the policeman”. However the terrible logical result of the moral fall occurs when the policeman comes to be the product of the society that lost the idea of sin and conscience…
The problem lies not in the shortcomings of the state system, bad laws or omnipotence of dishonest officials. This is not just a problem of painful and distressful escape from chaos and collapse of the early 90s. In fact it is the result of moral fall and spiritual poverty of man and society as a whole. And therefore the objective of the society is spiritual revival of the nation, and if we do not succeed in it our nation has no future either in the economy, or in the sense of retaining Russia and the Russians as a phenomenon of history and culture.
Ten years after Perestroika demonstrated deep fallacy of both the Bolsheviks and the post-Soviet extreme Westerner liberals, who trusted in omnipotence of ideal institutional settings and “correct” economic doctrines, wonder-working market mechanisms, which allegedly by themselves stimulate in each person and in the society as a whole creative energy and constructive endeavour. They believed that under the situation of long-awaited “liberte” this energy would result in the flourishing of everyone and all. However the freedom devoid of the ethical frame of good and evil turned into enslavement to flesh and pride, enslavement to the basest instincts. It loses its creative potential, which is testified not only by the fall in the economy, but also the culture, which is born only by great taboos and ideals and not by “freedom” of mind.
Sheer rationalism does not distinguish between good and evil, so Russian philosopher P. Astafiev writes, “it does not go further than the question of expedient means”. Where there is no faith, no ideal, no aspiration for the highest meaning of life, setting of a goal does not presuppose the question of moral meaning of an action. Ethics of expedience is the only ethics produced by earthly, godless and involuntarily bestialised social life. One cannot even expect unconditional moral in it, for it is devoid of any motives to moral goal setting in personal life and history.
Such are the comments by the greatest Russian minds, not only by Slavophiles called by the modern post-Soviet Westerners “reactionaries”, who allegedly wanted to “shut Russia in a hut with a chimneyless stove”. In the middle of the 19th century a well-known Westerner and one of the greatest Russian historians K.D.Kavelin warned of the danger, which the atheistic economical theory comes to recognize only today: “personal property turns into the cause of downfall and destruction, if it is not kept down by a different organizing principle”.
In the reformers’ debates about the economy and social concepts a human is an applied element in them - a certain “homo economicus”. However to acquire the skills of participation in one or another field of practical life is no difficulty for an “economical human”. It is not by chance that so many former Soviet citizens overnight became successful tradesmen, dealers, managers and bank directors. But the ability of moral regulation of one’s actions and goals can be acquired only by nurturing a certain value system and not through mere education. And the foundation of morals in any society - Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim - have always been religious canons, setting a moral frame, clear concepts about sin and virtue also for the earthly life. N. Berdiaev’s comment: “One should always remember that productive initiative belongs to the spiritual labour, it should guide the economic life of the country. Economic basics of spiritual and cultural life in Russia are collapsing due to the degradation of spiritual basics of economic life, degradation of moral and religious discipline of a working individual” is quite topical for the sad result of ten years of our hopes for the market
This comment made in 1918 suits perfectly the present Russia, its criminalized economy on the background of medieval poverty of an enormous share of its citizens, a fact shameful for a civilized country in XXI century. This poverty exists alongside with a bacchanalia of the cult of “successful and rich” - an ideal that is absolutely alien to the Russian culture in general and to the Russian economic culture in particular. This image is not congenial to the Protestant culture either, which Max Weber defined in his classical work as the progenitor of “capitalist spirit”. Denial of hedonism - i.e. approach to life as a source of enjoyment, honest and even ascetic labour and parsimony, “religiously-messianic sanctification of methodically rationalized realization of one’s vocation” on the earth - this is, according to Weber, what developed the ethics of motivation to work and richness of Anglo-Saxon Puritans, who settled down in America.
With modern methods of manipulating public consciousness through electronic mass-media absolutely false stereotypes of a successful person, who has no scruples and is not burdened by moral doubts, play an exceedingly destructive role. In fact such a type is not typical in the West. So in the USA young people, especially students are one of the society groups most burdened with troubles and problems (repayment of credits for education, car, accommodation) and the cult of enjoyment and richness without honour is absolutely alien to them. However exactly this false hedonistic image (“Take all from life!”), successful and carefree, is offered to sympathize with in the movies and commercials, this image is surrounded by attractive attributes of the modern life. Russian middlebrows and intellectuals turned to be equally vulnerable to the temptation of the hedonistic ideal.
In Russia this is the inevitable result of abrupt decline in the comprehension of the environment due to the fall of the spiritual culture, caused alongside with other reasons by cancellation of Scripture lessons in the beginning of the century and piecemeal exclusion of works of the world classics that embodied traditional Christian values, condemnation of sin, distinct contrasting of sin and virtue, good and evil, human ideal and tackled sharp moral challenges. In Russia it had catastrophic results. In the West the restraining role was played not by a spiritual dominant, but by “civilization” - “order”. However just the moral canons, laid by Faith, the idea of eternal life, held even uneducated people back from bestialization under the circumstances of undoubted roughness of customs and economic lag in Russia.
Unwritten moral code and the commandments guarded the foundations of the society not worse than “rule-of-law” state, which is proved by an interesting archive document of Russian police department of the 19th century - police information by a nose about the narodnik (Russian populist) propaganda among peasants. A narodnik said to a peasant pointing to the estate: “Take an axe and tomorrow everything will be yours”. The uneducated man, who knew orally the Scripture and the Psalms, replied to this stroking his beard: “About tomorrow it is clear. An what happens the day after tomorrow? If tomorrow I break the law of God and the human law and do what you say, what will hinder you to do the same with me the day after tomorrow?”
The contemporary state of Russia is the result of not only natural difficulties, but also of the period of degeneration of the nation and its state dignity, encouragement of mixing up vice and virtue under the pretext of freedom, jeering at the national values. It is not far from the dangerous divide, where we lose our personal and national security, and if we pass it, it will be impossible to get back by democratic methods. It is pointful to remind that the Soviet totalitarianism grew up out of that bacchanalia of plunder and destruction, nourished by many years of pre-Revolutionary propaganda of contempt to the authorities and the state, to the traditional values - honest work and obedience to the law, hand and foot service, family, chastity, honour and honesty, unselfishness - and preaching of permissiveness under the disguise of freedom.
ECONOMY AND SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE SOCIETY
Post-Soviet “radical market” economic concepts seem to remain in the framework of materialistic social science: “The basis determines the superstructure - i.e. spiritual and political sphere”, the economy allegedly determines the politics. But the economy, according to Russian philosopher S. Bulgakov, “is a phenomenon of spiritual life with all the other aspects of human activity and work”.
The economy is not an independent part of the society, which can be repaired, changed or reconstructed separately from other social and spiritual relations. It is its structural, integral component, expression of general culture of the nation, its traditions, moral and spiritual values. It is not the economy that determines spiritual and cultural existence of a nation, vice versa, the latter determines, organizes and shapes the corresponding type and character of the society’s economic relations. The motto of the major business paper in pre-Revolutionary Russia “Birzhevye Vedomosty” (“Exchange gazette”) reads: “Profit is above all, but honour is above profit”. Word of honour given by a Russian merchant was more reliable than a signature in the contract. So it is no surprise, that an individual freed from all moral restraints acts in the economy according to the law of the jungle, and a policeman squares up with him.
Yammer of liberal ideologists about the barbarianism of the people is like “crocodile tears”. If they so heatedly advocate (under the guise of sacred freedom) freedom from the morals and freedom for sordid manifestations of human nature on TV, in the movies and literature, if they clamour against any moral limitations, against religious education, then they will get a society, where freedom is understood not as freedom from any violence, but as freedom to commit any unlawfulness and any violence.
Ideological slogan of the early 1990s was taken from the speech of N.Bukharin at the Plenum of Moscow Council in 1921 which inaugurated “New Economic Policy”: “Get rich, go ahead!” The Bolsheviks were not going to mince matters with the private sector in economy and besides they kept the “commanding ground”. But the slogan of getting rich without moral guides alongside with encouragement of the Calvinists morals, according to which business success is the criterion of God’s chosenness, “the successful” despise losers, and “the successful” countries by force gain the right to teach the “unsuccessful” (all of these are manifestations of social Darvinism) was assumed as the basis of the long-term development of the Orthodox Russia - the country with spiritual foundations of the apostolic Christianity.
One can only wonder at the absolutely Bolshevik-styled expediency of the reformers who never took it into their heads that restoration of the absolute right of a human for property and entrepreneurship can not exist without the value paradigm, in which wealth is the result of creative labour, and labour itself is Christian’s duty before God and people, the highest vocation of human. In this combination the natural striving for the material competence “is moderated” by recognition of indisputability of the highest moral categories and national interests. This is what is called modern constitutional state with market economy. “Post-industrial society is at the same time a communal society where a separate commune rather than an individual acts as a social unit, and the goal is to reach a social solution”. These words are not taken from “Manifesto of the Communist party”, they belong to the foremost theorist of post-industrial society D.Bell.
Terrible consequences for Russia were aggravated by the fact that the cult of wealth and success without any moral limitations was cast on Russia after atheisation of three generations that resulted in the much lesser role of the unwritten ethical canons and devastating consequences to the public morals. The people with scruples found themselves in the situation of “miserable eccentrics”. They were morally not ready for the seizure of economic instruments according to the Anglo-Saxon credo: “what is not forbidden is allowed”, since for them it is not enough to act “correctly”, i.e. not to come within the purview of a criminal regulation, they have to act “honourably”, “decently”. One of the tragic consequences of this phenomenon to the nation is that the educated social class possessing these moral taboos lost its respected social status, involuntarily lost its social energy, and it results in the downswing/plunge of cultural level in the society as a whole.
A much more important consequence is that masses of people are falling out of the social hierarchy - this is the beginning of the pauperisation process in Russia. This social phenomenon means breaking of social bonds and social groups (strata), people’s alienation and their turning into outcasts. It is not equal with poverty. Pauperisation originated in England in the time of Cromwell and was unknown in the pre-revolutionary Russia and continental Europe even at the poorest standard of living of the lowest strata who managed to retain their social identification. When in Russia in some village the serfs began to die of hunger/starve to death, the estate was taken under trusteeship. In England the peasants were driven from their land and became vagabonds, outcasts. The English puritans, who considered their business success to be the sign of their God chosenness, developed ideological substantiation for cruel laws against vagabondism, flogging, branding, social repressions not against criminals, but against the “losers” who innocently suffered from expansion of the more successful.
In the 21st century the paupers are not locked up in workhouses, where the poor were kept almost like convicts, and they become a source of criminalization. One more socially destructive aspect of this phenomenon is lumpenization of large masses of able-bodied and socially active population. Pauper’s labour, even honest and devoted (e.g. labour of a constructor worker, who roves about towns) anyway produces consciousness of a lumpen, alienated from the society, country and its problems. It happens not only on the strength of property stratification exceeding the norms allowed by today’s criteria, but also due to falling out of the broken social structures, in which framework labour becomes a dynamic creative element of a progressively developing society.
The second aspect consists in the disability of such an outcast to use social guarantees. According to Berdiaev, “material labour separated from any spiritual foundation is unable to protect itself. Only organized productive labour that assumes moral self-discipline is able of self-protection”. Analyzing the failures of the Bolshevik revolution Berdiaev made some comments that are very useful to us: “The Russian revolution did not display this organized and self-disciplined labour… That is why today the working masses … deny the labour itself”.
Russian intellectuals in exile analysed the reasons of the collapse of their ideas in the storm of the Russian revolution, unleashed by them: “The prevailing simple explanation, which every average “repenting” Russian intellectual arrived at, is “people’s unreadiness”, S.L.Frank wrote in the “repentant” collection “From the depth”. “According to this explanation “people” due to their ignorance and lack of education in state issues, where the same the “old regime” was at fault, turned out to be unable to realize excellent reforms planned by the intellectuals and ruined the country and the revolution with their rude and awkward behaviour.
Today there is a tendency to explain all the faults of “democracy” and market and criminalization of the Russian economy again with the primeval Russian habit of slavery, irresponsibility and paternalistic role of the state, Russian inability of self-dependence and unreceptiveness of civilization. Such explanations are a diagnose of irresponsibility of the politicians, who developed their programmes and actions counting on some invented ideal people, and not the existing one.
But such statement of the question is inherently false. It goes without saying, that it depends on the cultural and moral consciousness which ideas and mode of operation will be most effective. But the general total is always determined by the interaction between the public consciousness and the course of ideas of the minority that becomes the herald. If Frank is not surprised that in the course of the revolution “people’s passion” in its straightness only tested in real practice the given ideas, and uncovered “the intellectuals’ slogans from the wraith of philosophising and moral-free tactical distinctions”, so one should not be surprised at the mass moral lapse in the 90s. Double experience in the 20th century shows the rule: in the same society and the same individual there always co-exist anarchical, anti-state and socially destructive passions and instincts as well as great creative, conservative-protective, spiritually healthy, nationally uniting forces.
During the 90s there was much done for the gradual extinction and scattering of the latter forces. This process was carried on under the systematic and pertinacious pressure of the propaganda of unlimited freedom and preaching up the idea of quick enrichment. Frank in his work writes about the revolution, but it seems to be written about the post-Perestroika Russia: “It took drastic work of unbridling the anarchical instincts, so that the people finally lost the conscience and the common state sense and gave themselves up to the power of instincts. Ideologists of revolutions and reforms, before starting to blame the people for their failure, should recall all their activities aimed at the destruction of the state and civil discipline”, “at the trampling down patriotic ideas”, ”at the unbridling of mercenary instincts and class hatred under the name of the “worker’s and agrarian movement” (we can change the last words for “market”).
Fight with criminalization of life in Russia can be won only by consolidation of efforts of the whole society and the revival of spiritual foundations, laid earlier by the faith and upbringing, for through the latter in contrast to the education a person acquires not only knowledge, but also learns lessons of social intercourse, which is impossible without honour and duty, without the ideas of shame and sin.
The fact that the Russian society as a whole has not lost its moral foundations is proved by sociological polls that show powerful momentum of traditional values, developed in the Christian civilization. The polls showed retrieval of principles and values of Orthodox-Christian origin as the notional dominant of mass consciousness, the principles and values that affirm superiority of spiritual foundations over the exterior arrangement of life and unlimited striving for material comforts. If in the beginning of market reforms the share of Russian citizens who preferred conscience and harmony to influence and power started to decrease sharply (1993 - about 84%, 1994 - only 74%), since 1995 the trend changes for the reverse. In spring 2000 92% set good relations in the family and with friends higher than public recognition and success in contrast to 81% in 1993 and about 71% in 1994. According to sociological standards such a high index is categorized not as the opinion of the majority, but as an integral characteristic of the whole Russian socio-cultural milieu.
Besides Russian citizens show evident adherence to the democracy - the form of organization and functioning of the society (for example, equality before the law) and at the same time indifference to the ideological “values”, to which the post-Soviet Westerner liberals give so high priority, for example to the “right for non-involvement with the activities of the country”. High degree of unanimity about the object of national pride is also impressive. Victory in the World War II ranks first. Over 80% of Russian citizens are proud of it as the major event of the national history, and this is the opinion of not only senior group, but also the youngest one - with the peers of Perestroika and market reforms. Liberal “freedoms” are evidently left outside of the list of national values: they are the object of pride for about 7% of the youngest citizens and only 2-3% of the elder people.
Final confirmation of traditionalism of the Russian civilization with parallel adherence to democracy are the following data: 91% of respondents in all social, demographic and age groups believe that betrayal of the Motherland is the gravest offence, which cannot be justified under any circumstances (the results of the Centre of Mass Consciousness Studies at the Independent Institute of Social and National Problems). This is the opposite of the liberal credo: “Where it is good, there is the Motherland”.
In the opinion of the militant Westerner liberals, who turned out to be the “right” due to the curious post-Soviet political semantics (in the whole world liberals are always called the left, right ideology means religiousness, protective conservatism), such facts look like a relict of the “traditional society”, like “failure of modernization” and “return to archaism”. But exactly these results let us hope for the convalescence. For we do not need great shocks, we need great Russia with a strong sound economy and healthy society, with the nation, which is the creator of its own history.
CONSTITUTIONAL STATE
Let us reflect on the deep philosophical content of what is called “constitutional state” and “civil society”. Its impotence in fighting the crime is not accidental, but appropriate to it. In the sense of justice the concept of the so-called Anglo-Saxon right began to prevail, and even in quite a vulgarised form. It is based on the postulate: “ Everything what is not forbidden is allowed”. It logically adds to the slogan of a moneylender during the French revolution - “Let me pass, let me do the business”. In such a concept the right and law are separated to the maximum from the moral evaluation.
However the philosophy of any legal system in all civilizations without any exceptions is based on the identity of sin and crime. The source of absolute moral canons always lay in the basic concepts of good and evil, acquired originally from the Faith, and culture can be born only by high taboos imposed not by law, but by moral foundations. The dilemma of ethical confrontation of the form of the statute and the moral canon ceased to worry the atheist “homo economicus” though it worried even the ancient Greeks (Antigona in the Sophocles’ tragedy). Such a concept determines only the forbidden things without pointing to the morally due things.
It turns out that it is moral what is allowed by the law, and the law allows what “does not disturb the others”. Material progress neutral in itself gives more and more opportunities “not to disturb the others” in strictly formalized terms. This contributes to the final loss of morally restraining ethical canons of social life. But the law - i.e. the lowest limit of allowed compromise between the moral commandment and the circumstances - maintains the compliance of outward behaviour to the inner moral state only in combination with the authority of the canon. It is not by chance that the idea of “dishonourable behaviour” (behaviour that violates the canon) disappears, with the correlation of it to the good and the evil, leaving space only to the “non-correct” conduct that offends certain rules.
Constitutional state is unfeasible if the true source of morals disappears - the idea of sin, and instead of it dispassionate laws themselves are taken for such a source, that reflect only a compromise with the circumstances. They are only the limit, the lowest divide, when the misdeeds are already dangerous for the society. But an honest person stops much earlier than the law comes into action, and a man of honour stops even earlier.
Synthesis of legalism and moral dominant of any law is inherent to the Russian school of legal philosophy, including jurisprudence of the end of the 19th - the 20th centuries: “Natural law is a synonym of the due in the law… it is the moral foundation of any concrete legal order” - duke E.N.Trubetskoy reasons, a great legal philosopher on the beginning of the 20th century. “Any positive law can demand obedience from people only in the name of the moral right of one or the other social authority, one or the other power; since the existing order is really good for the given society, the natural law sanctions it and supports it”. Historians find such understanding in the legal and political theories of duke Kurbsky and even Vladimir Monomakh.
It is not surprising that the primate of the positive law with its cold legalism torn apart from the idea of sin and the duty before God and people in respect of good and evil proves its inability to keep back criminalization of the society and the economy. Even the most branching legal and punitive system cannot hold a person back from committing a crime, but only the moral law. Vow to the state where the citizens do not commit offences only for the fear of criminal penalty!
