Latest appointments in the center and on the ground, full of emotion letter to S. Glazyev, A. Kudrin, the wave of attacks on Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and many other recent developments have provoked a debate about whether the authorities refuse formally from their professed economic liberalism — the free movement of capital, emerging market exchange rate and relatively responsible fiscal policy.
This discussion, however, seems completely pointless as the question of who is now in the national elite in most “liberals” or “security forces”. There are two reasons.
First, it is impossible not to see, talking about the “liberals” in Russia as it often happens, do not understand (or rather, intentionally distort) the content of this concept. For more than 30 years liberals in the world are called not so much to adherents of the unlimited market (they often call themselves libertarians), but supporters of the welfare state in the economy, maximum transparency in politics and equality in public life. The content of the contemporary liberal approach, in contrast to the conservative and neoconservative — well above, for example, in the book of the Nobel laureate P. Krugman, Kredo liberala” and it shows all the charges inadequacy of local economists-market “liberalism.” In the Russian economy today, there is virtually nothing liberal is dominated by the absolute monopoly; the financial success of companies depend to a greater extent on the measure of their cooperation with the government, than anything else, the social inequality remains high, and the interests of the creative class in General is not represented at a political level (about other points below).
In the Russian economy significantly bizarre combination of state capitalism with financial openness, which is designed to provide the most favorable mode of its functioning: the influx of cheap investment and loan capital from the outside and output gains in other, more safe jurisdiction; preferential income tax rates even for very high incomes; relatively easy mode of creating new enterprises and is a fairly conventional struggle with a variety of tax evasion schemes. In this system the basic principle is not to help individual entrepreneurship and small business, and contributes to the large corporations. If you apply to us American terminology, we clearly do not live in the “liberal era” Great Society, but rather, in the Gilded Age, in which big capital was allowed almost everything.
Secondly, and much more significantly, formed in the country system does not involve any division into “liberals”, “conservatives” or “socialists”, “Democrats” and “statists”, “siloviki” or soft supporters of the “social contract”. All these conversations could lead as long as in Russia, there were elements of democracy and public opinion, though depended on something (like election results). Meanwhile, the history of the past 15 years is the history of the formation of the corporate state of the fascist type (which was built in Italy or existed in Germany almost all of the 1930-ies). In this system, the main quality of any person’s status is a “cog”, its functional suitability for the job in a single structure, the management company in accordance with the will of the leader. “Liberalism” in this case can be — and often is — nothing more than an image, which was worth nothing.
Whether, for example, “liberal” Russian FAS, which allows you to freely exist 100% monopolist in the market of aluminium in the face of the company “RUSAL”, “restricting” it to those that it can’t sell its products in the domestic market by more than 5% higher than that indicated by current quotations of aluminium on the London metal exchange, but actively presses Google for abuse of dominant position on the market of applications for smartphones running on the Android system? Of course not — this service fulfills the order to “do not touch” domestic oligarchs and “nail” of the company from a hostile Kremlin part of the world. Can you talk about the “liberalism” of the government, which has recently postponed the privatisation of the company “Bashneft” to sell its state structures of Tatarstan or “Rosneft”? Hardly — just the government is aware that the budget cannot be filled, shifting money from one pocket to another (and then increasing subsidies to the regions or by the tax concessions of “Rosneft”). It should be considered “liberal,” for example, Shuvalov, which acts as a typical use his official position official, earning ties with representatives of major companies that depend on the distribution of government contracts, insider dealing and other opportunities of the post he holds? I don’t think the mere rhetoric in support of market-based measures (most of which are not implemented) may earn him a similar compliment. And so on.
The debate Kudrin and the Glazyev, ostentatious confrontation between D. Medvedev and I. Sechin, no matter how much he paid attention to them have nothing in common with the struggle of “liberals” and “siloviki”. The Russian political elite today is much more cohesive than it has ever been. She United with money live and act by our officials; fear of possible destabilization of the situation; and, of course, conscious of the huge violations of the laws and the Constitution, forming a powerful mutual responsibility. Decisions made today will be accepted in the coming years are determined and there will be only one ideology — the ideology of personal and corporate survival of the current elite and its leader, and not liberal, conservative or socialist views of some “politicians”.
The liberal system — in any interpretation presupposes the existence of competition in the economy and in politics. This provides a, if not the stability, consistency and continuity. The problem of liberalism in its modern sense is the formation of a centrist and balanced position around which is able to consolidate minded citizens. The populist system suggests a mass of excitement and a minimal understanding of the processes from the population (ideally about it: Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism). The problem, however, is that the price of such system is its non-reproducibility in the absence of a leader. No superpersonality mode — even one that was not destroyed in the war, — could not exist without its Creator (you may remember Spain, F. Franco, Portugal A. Salazar, Paraguay, A. Stroessner, and a host of other). Experience 2008-2011 clearly showed the impossibility of preserving the system unchanged, even though its Creator is only slightly let go of the “reins”, while remaining an active political subject. This fact suggests that the domestic political system has long passed the point of no return ” and cannot be reformed.
All this, in my opinion, is pushing for the conclusion about the meaninglessness of a dispute concerning “the fate of liberalism in Russia. Today, inside the existing system, there can be liberals, and what will happen in a few decades, only time will tell.
