A liberal is a supporter of liberalism. What is liberalism? The easiest way to answer, based on the name: it is an ideology that protects freedom. But the key question is WHOSE freedoms and WHAT freedoms? There is no freedom at all, just as there is no man at all. Liberalism is the ideology of protecting very specific freedoms and those who are hungry for these freedoms. Let's try to figure out which ones.
TO THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION
Historically, there are three stages in the formation of the ideology of liberalism.
First stage originates from the 18th century. Then in England for the first time a party arose, the adherents of which somewhat later began to call themselves liberals. These were - attention! - representatives of the big bourgeoisie, which came into conflict with the large landowners-landlords. The interests of the landlords were expressed by another party - the Conservatives, who, together with the Liberals, formed the world's first two-party system: both of these parties, replacing each other, ruled the British Isles for more than a hundred years - until the beginning of the 20th century.
At that time, Great Britain, ahead of other countries in the industrial revolution, was economically and politically the leading power in the world. Since exploitative societies are usually dominated by the ideas of the ruling class of the ruling countries, liberalism (like its twin brother, conservatism) during the nineteenth century spread throughout the capitalist world. The bourgeoisie of many countries, and especially the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, converted to the liberal "faith", seeing in it an alternative to "violence and arbitrariness" - both on the right, in the face of monarchical absolutism, and on the left, in the face of Jacobinism, which was then considered the same scarecrow, like "Stalinism" today. Many people mistook for liberalism any struggle for freedom. Our compatriot V.G. Belinsky even wrote: “For me, a liberal and a person are one, an absolutist and a whip-breaker are one.” Revolutionaries in France in 1830 considered themselves liberals in a similar sense, and in Latin America until the beginning of the 20th century.
Second phase in the history of liberalism is associated with late bourgeois revolutions: from European 1848 to Russian 1905-1917. By that time, revolutionary democrats had already departed from the liberals, gravitating towards socialism, albeit utopian for the time being. The liberals of the “second call” are, as a rule, representatives of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. Speaking against the "old order", for reforms or, in extreme cases, "revolution from above", they most of all feared the revolution of the people, workers and peasants. A classic example of “second wave” liberals is the Russian Cadets (“People’s Freedom Party”). Lenin summed up the ideal of such liberalism with the words: "the combination of freedom (not for the people) with bureaucracy (against the people)." In all revolutions, the liberals of that time suffered a political collapse, because they were alien to both the working people and the mass of the bourgeoisie, who preferred a more “firm” dictatorial power.
Finally, third stage in the history of the “liberal idea” – neoliberalism (approximately from the 1970s to the present). This is the ideology of transnational corporations that oppose the regulation of their activities by the national state (not only socialist or people's democratic, but also national capitalist). At first glance, they are "anti-state", which does not even remind the former liberals, but rather anarchists. But, looking more closely, it is easy to see that the neo-liberals are not at all against the punitive and repressive functions of the bourgeois state in relation to the people (which is exactly what caused the greatest protest of the anarchists and was often condemned even by the former liberals). Neo-liberals are in favor of curtailing the economic and especially social functions of the state, leaving behind it precisely the punitive ones. How else to impose on the majority of society a clearly anti-popular, anti-social and anti-national program?
Thus, there are significant differences between the liberals of the three “calls”, and it is a pity that in today's Russia it is customary to smear them all with the same paint (for example, in Latin America, the left rightly sees the main enemy not in “liberalism” in general, but in neoliberalism) . But they also have common features.
WHO IS A LIBERAL?
If we try to define liberalism as briefly as possible, then this is an ideology that protects the interests of private property. The focus of liberalism is not a person in general, but the owner (as if it does not matter who he is - the owner of a shop or a large corporation). The freedom he defends is the freedom of property and proprietors; political and all other freedoms, strictly speaking, can only be theirs. It is quite logical that the liberals of the first two calls provided for property qualifications for political rights: for the right to be elected - higher, for the right to vote - lower, but the proletarians and other poor people who did not have any property did not have any rights under this scheme. For example, in the “democratic” republics of Latin America in the 19th century, on average, ... 1% (one percent!) of the population enjoyed the right to vote. And this right was expanded later, under other rulers, with different views.
That is, liberalism is the ideology of private property. Accordingly, a liberal is a supporter of the supremacy of private property. In order to ward off the reproaches of those who do not understand what private property is and may be indignant that I am against personal ownership of toothbrushes and shorts, I will only say: private and personal property are fundamentally different things and personal property is not private. But this is a question that requires separate consideration.
Such an ideology has an important consequence - everything that is outside private property, and even more so that it can violate it, is perceived as hostile. For example, the Argentinean liberal President Bartolome Mitre, sending punishers against the rebellious Indians and semi-proletarian gauchos, called for "not sparing their blood" and "make them fertilize the fields." The people of neighboring Paraguay - the then "rogue country" with the state capitalist regime - Miter and his allies exterminated 80 percent. Is it really so different from Hitler's "Plan Ost" or from what NATO invaders are doing with Iraq, Libya, Syria ?
WHO IS A LIBERAST?
And here we move on to what a “liberalist” is. A liberalist is the most aggressive, chauvinist form of upholding and broadcasting liberalism (today neoliberalism). I would say a fascist form of neoliberalism.
For liberals, a friend and brother is another owner, they consider only themselves and other owners to be worthy people. Those people who find themselves outside the property (and such, in fact, is the vast majority) are perceived as working material, as a means for property and the owner. Those liberals who consider non-owners to be second-class people, subhuman, turn out to be liberals. Liberalism taken to its logical conclusion, to its apogee, is a form of social "racism". If in classical fascism the criterion of exclusion is belonging to a particular race, then in liberalism such a criterion is belonging (possession or non-ownership) to property (often both criteria coincide in practice - take at least “quilted jackets and Colorados” in the perception of the advocates of the “European Ukraine's Choice"). Those liberals who broadcast such views in the most aggressive form turn out to be liberals.
There are, of course, liberals and "softer". They focus on criticism of all kinds of repressions (in our case, from Lenin to Putin), bureaucratic arbitrariness, militarism, clericalism (church interference in secular affairs), and, most recently, corruption. They also criticize the anti-social measures of the authorities, sometimes scolding even "their own" ultra-liberals for such encroachments. With all this, as events in a number of countries show, they can win over a part of the working people to their side. No one is enthusiastic about repression, bureaucracy, corruption, and so on. But for some reason, from the people's support of even such "honest" liberals, this people very soon becomes not better, but worse.
THE RHETORIC OF THE LIBERALS AS A SCREEN
And no wonder. After all, all those manifestations of bureaucracy, militarism, corruption and other ulcers against which they are trying to raise the people did not fall from heaven. Can the "state in the proper sense" (F. Engels), while remaining alienated from society, be completely different? Can the people, as long as they are unable to free themselves from class exploitation, seriously control state power "from below"? And, finally, does this mean that such a "bad" state does not nevertheless perform the functions of socially necessary - primarily socio-economic, which are vitally necessary for the working people and which neo-liberals encroach on? On reflection, it is impossible not to answer all these questions in the negative.
What follows from here? That it is not necessary to fight arbitrariness, corruption and other things? We must, of course. But in a smart way, to the best of real strength, soberly realizing that under capitalism all these evils can only be slightly reduced, but they cannot be eliminated without a revolutionary transition to a qualitatively new society. Yes, and then this is a long and difficult business. And whoever promises "in one fell swoop of seven beatings" is just a demagogue. If he combines this with the exaltation of private property, which is characteristic of even the best of liberals, in modern conditions he will only clear the way for the fascist "liberals". Whether he wants it or not.
AND FINALLY:
You can also come across such an interpretation of liberalism, as if it is an ideology that considers the personality and the specific person as its priority. But this is already a distortion and confusion of concepts, because in reality such an ideology turns out to be humanism, which has nothing in common with liberalism.
But that's another conversation.
Starting today, we are starting to publish a series of articles about anti-Russian personalities. Posts will come out irregularly, as material accumulates.
User initiative is welcome. So, let's begin!liberalist(lat. "liber" - free and universal. "bugger" - literally, "hollowed freedom in the zh..u") - spoiled by the housing problem (post)Soviet version of a liberal, a representative of the "liberal" oriented political class of this country, as if fighting for freedom, equality, fraternity and standing in opposition to modern power, but in fact fighting against anyone who dares to have a different opinion than the patient on this or that event.The author of the term is a well-known underground publicist of the Soviet period Ilya Smirnov.
In Soviet Russia there was no concept of a liberal and a democrat. There was a so-called dissidence, implying them. The occupation of dissidents at that time was to engage in anti-communist propaganda, fap on Europe and Pendostan, be persecuted by a bloody hell and victims of punitive psychiatry. The most ardent representatives of the soviet underground leiberast were expelled in exchange for the persecuted communists in the tolerant-democratic West. All Soviet dissidents came from the intelligentsia, and a little less than all of today's old-school liberals are Soviet dissidents. The most famous are Valeria Novodvorskaya, Lyudmila Alekseeva, Vladimir Bukovsky. The latter is known for the fact that in 1976 he was serving a term for anti-communist propaganda and in the same year he was exchanged for a Chilean political prisoner - the former leader of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Corvalan. It seemed that the award found its hero - he was extradited from Sovka to Switzerland, which was then considered impossible for a simple layman under the curtain. , 5 years links. He went on a hunger strike for a record 117 days and still became a hero. Marchenko's death had a wide resonance in the dissident environment of the USSR and in the foreign press. There is an opinion in the liberal anti-Soviet environment that his death and the reaction of society to it prompted Gorbachev to begin the process of releasing prisoners convicted under “political” articles. It is worth noting that many of today's liberals before the then Soviet dissidents are like a turtle on foot to the moon, because at one time they fought not for loot but for an idea (some until the end of their days, never having visited the UWB and not having received a penny from the State Department ) under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, the Soviet information monopoly of agitprop, bloody hell. In order to become a dissident then, you had to be able to think with your own head, be brave and independent in order to express your opinion, because there were no Internet, the relevant literature was banned a little less than completely, and being an opponent of the Soviet system was equated with mental illness, both officially and in a zombie society . Today's liberals are either armchair political bloggers, or kitchen theorists, or grant-suckers imitating violent activity.
Liberals, unlike liberals, are not capable of any real creative activity, of fruitful participation. If the liberals, in addition to tearing the veils, are still capable of doing something, then all the activities of the liberals have been reduced to denouncing authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. At the same time, even more terry totalitarianism reigns in their narrow circles. A striking example is the St. Petersburg branch of Solidarity, in particular general meeting May 15, 2011 , where liberals in the amount of 300 people terribly quarreled among themselves, which of them is more liberal, and for 6 (SIX) hours were engaged in voting for the exclusion of each other from the organization. In addition, some liberals, hating the scoop, at the same time fiercely fap on the tsar-father-autocrat who existed in Rus' before 1917, solely because he was against the Bolsheviks, and it doesn’t matter that he was even further from liberalism (for example, the group " Anti-communists "Vkontakte).
Many liberals are trying to have pronounced FGM, which causes epic fights. There are frequent clashes between atheist liberals and church-going liberals, inevitably accompanied by the lighting of virtual bonfires, the convening of virtual crusades against the infidels and accusations of heretics of deviating from the only true liberalism. Everyone completely forgets that they are here, as it were, for freedom. A vivid example is the bathert of an activist of the Moscow branch of the "Party of People's Freedom" - Dmitry Pankov , moar . The reason for the links was that some liberals did not like the congratulations on Orthodox Christmas on behalf of the group, and other liberals did not like the fact that the first liberals did not like their Orthodoxy. As a result, the first liberals destroyed their common group in spite of the second liberals, after which the offended PGM-liberals in the face of Pankov began to shout that they had been hacked by Surkov's agents. This whole circus disgusts the masses.
Many well-known representatives are former Soviet dissidents who are forever stuck in their dissident past and, due to their advanced years, have lost all connection with reality. The new representatives tend to be made up of college students or recent graduates who picked up liberal ideas from the literature of the 1990s. Liberal is not a political choice, but a way of thinking. In order to rightfully be a liberal, simple tolerance for same-sex marriages and Novodvorskaya is not enough, the main thing for him is not the ideas themselves (a truly ideological person works daily to implement the idea), but the ability to use ideas for his own psychological relief . The liberalist covers up with an imaginary ideology an ordinary bull hatred", furiously defending the only true point of view, that is, his own, however, like all stoned and phimous.
As it turned out, a US citizen, holder of the "Keeper of the Flame" award (from the US Center for Security Policy), chess player Garry Kimovich Kasparov (Weinstein), turned out to be not the first to publicly slander Freud on the topic "the right to rob and enrich yourself endlessly"!
Navalny repeated the same phrase on Ekho Moskvy:
“We must once again demonstrate that the citizens of Russia are ready for a difficult routine political struggle. With these people, who in no case will give us (!!! - K.S.) their right to enrich themselves uncontrollably and usurp power in the country.”
Personally, even the first time I didn’t have the feeling that the reservation was accidental!
Someone might think that the phrases of the occupying liberals are taken out of context and there is manipulation and pressure on emotions, standard for the opposition, I suggest that these comrades arm themselves with the Internet and find all the phrases below these characters!
So top 20 best opposition quotes
littlehiroshima to Zuckerberg nah
The other day, my colleague, a volunteer in the Donbas, Galina Sozanchuk, was banned by Facebook. Zuckerberg closed her page with all 10 thousand subscribers and friends. Without the right to correspondence, comments and posts. For 30 days. The reason is unknown. Before that, she had already been banned, but at least it was clear because of what posts. And they didn't even give a reason.
I know Galka well - a wayward and harmful aunt, I must say. (Gal, well loving, loving)
Galya helped more than a dozen people. She is one of the few who carried and, most importantly, carries medicines that are unrealistic to smuggle across the border. And most importantly, she really helps, and does not scratch her tongue.
And here was the story.
Somehow one such Tarasco came to my Facebook page. Tarasco on his page was hung with swastikas, photo-toads with fighting Buryats and zigzagging ghouls. And he began to rage in the comments. I'm not Galya, who immediately gets banned like that. I collect freaks. Already a multi-thousandth collection is being prepared, I will publish it. "Hellraisers, or all the trolls of Orcain."
After the playfulness in the comments, Tarasco began to write to me in a personal and threaten me. With swear words and other delights of life. I ignored him. He threatened for two days, for which he was blocked. In the entire history of maintaining any networks, he became the second one to be banned! I complained about him on FB, pointing out that this guy is threatening to kill me. Facebook kindly replied: "in these messages, the management of fb did not find anything like that." NOTHING! Yes, I joked. Well, it's fun!
We all laugh.
Time has passed. It was January, and we left for the Donbass on the very day that Zhenya Ishchenko and three Moscow volunteers were killed. I didn’t take my phone with me, and then they buried me, thinking that we were these volunteers. Many of my readers still remember this day.
So, in VKontakte, another scum appeared, which suspiciously resembled Taraska. This bastard figured out my mom's account, and started writing to her, wondering if her daughter was banged. Mom was shaking and she was terribly scared.
Vkontaktik also considered him a darling and a cutie. It's funny, isn't it?
We all laugh.
By the way, Tarasco - you are reading this text - look, he has become famous!
This bastard has a bunch of accounts that have a lot of subscribers. Accounts are maintained for a long time, and not newly created. On each of his pages, a schizophrenic hell is going on, which people like. Some of them are alive, and not at all caught up with bots. I can't vouch for everyone.
So - for vkontashi and facebook - he is innocent. Complain, do not complain - zigging under the Ukrainian flag, cursing and threatening life - this is garbage. No rules are broken.
But to carry, bitch, diapers and medicines to Donbass is a crime!
Well, I realized that the whole thing is in the word Donbass. Helped the Donbass - helped the separator.
And he, separatist, is not a man. He is a separatist, cotton wool. And cotton wool is not fashionable now.
Dear owners of social networks VKontakte and Facebook:
You know, in the Donbass, although there are separatists, there are those who do not even know what this means. Children from orphanages, old people from nursing homes, old people just abandoned by their children. Many of them survive. Some have no money at all for medicines, anticonvulsants, and the like. These are patients with diabetes and other diseases. They may even be glad to be not separatists. So, by blocking the accounts of people like Galina Sozanchuk, you are depriving many of these people of the opportunity to survive.
The statistics of mortality from diseases, lack of medicines there are horrific. People are constantly dying, quietly burning down and disappearing. And this cannot be displayed in the reports - after all, formally, they died from a heart attack, stroke, etc.
We dragged this smiling girl from the next world. And not figuratively, but literally.