As far as Western society is concerned, in Russia we tend to confuse the attribute with the cause. Namely, the tranquillity and wealth of this society are inferred from its commitment to ‘individual rights and freedoms’, although this commitment is a sign, not a cause. It may even be the case that the power and wealth of the Western world only allows it to tolerate wide-spread ‘rights and freedoms’… In any case, where one sees the answer, there are in fact hidden questions. Private enterprise does not tolerate constraint, it is true; but this enterprise has not been constrained in the West even before — so is this the cause of prosperity? The ‘domination of the middle class’ is also seen as a favour, but why should the domination of ‘lawyers, doctors and bourgeois’, as Konstantin Leontiev said, be particularly favourable? Especially since in our time we are not even talking about ‘lawyers, doctors and bourgeois’ themselves, but about the class of their hired ‘representatives’, about the lifelong and irremovable aristocracy of money and elections… Where is the reason? What is really going on in the Western world..?

What do we see if we take a closer look at this world? First and most noticeably, there are no strong and influential social movements in the West anymore. That movement which may be called the equalising movement; which demanded that the lower classes should be given the rights of the higher classes and the higher classes the duties of the lower classes, has, after two hundred years of struggle, achieved its goal. If there is a social struggle in the West, its aim is a still more equal distribution of liberty, a still greater equalisation. (For the struggle for ‘freedom’ is essentially a struggle for its equal distribution, the end result of which can be a very, very uncomfortable society, where all the freedom that was available is equally distributed, with very little for everyone.) The final goal of recent social movements is the final equalisation, a completely homogeneous society…

It is impossible not to ponder the reason for this surprising urge. It is generally believed that at the beginning of the new age, the masses finally ‘awakened’ and demanded for themselves the same rights and opportunities that their rulers had previously enjoyed. For two hundred years the nations have been clamouring about ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’, and experience shows that neither equality nor fraternity is becoming more and more, and as for liberty, it is sometimes there, sometimes not. I think it would not be wrong to say that the notorious ‘freedom, equality and fraternity’ are distorted, flattened and simplified ideas of Christianity. In other words: this motto embodies what an atheist can read in the New Testament.

They might say, ‘So what? There have been atheists before and even the New Testament has fallen into their hands from time to time, but nothing like the French and Russian revolutions happened’. Quite right. Before, there was not the straw that was lit by the candle of ‘enlightenment’, namely, a numerous and unburdened with social responsibility semi-educated class. Until the beginning of the new age, the education lived in an environment characterised by humility, that is, in the Church. The impossibility to spread culture to everyone, i. e. to create a semi-educated society of ‘mass culture’, led to a sharp separation between knowledge and ignorance. There was almost no middle ground between them; I say ‘almost’ because, in fact, the dark area between education and ignorance existed even in the Middle Ages: it was there that heresies, the forerunners of today’s false religion and pseudoscience, were born. It was only with the change of circumstances that a wealthy, numerous and presumptuous class was born, which, not being engaged in any sciences or arts, and not ruling the state, considered itself capable of judging on sciences, arts and politics… (We Russians can easily recognise the Milyukovs and Kerenskys in this description.) It was this class that was set on fire by the candle of ‘enlightenment’. As for the ‘masses’, they took an active part in the events, which manifested itself in what the ‘masses’ were most capable of, i. e. in the riot.

Some may think I am drawing a caricature of enlightenment and revolution. Not at all. If the events themselves are caricatures, it was not I who put that trait into them. The movement towards universal equalisation was a purely mental movement, it cannot be denied; the masses took part in it not because they were ‘tormented by the damned old order’, but because they internalised the middle-class compulsions. With the same success it was possible to raise the masses before — for the sake of this or that heresy or, on the contrary, for a campaign against the infidels. In general, the participation of the masses in a certain movement does not give it a aura of sanctity, but only speaks of the strength and success of the propaganda underlying the movement.

The former secular and spiritual authorities were arrogant beyond measure — there is no dispute; but the same can be said of the selfish citizen of modern times: he was arrogant beyond his merit. In the set of the latest ideas there was no thought at all of qualitative selection, of rights given according to merit. Medieval Europe knew this idea. Actually, the origin of political freedom in Europe is this: freedom is a right given by merit. The most valuable service gives the greatest freedom. New times opposed this thought with another one: freedom is a natural right; merit means nothing. If merit means nothing, society must become a society of equals. The Bolsheviks differed from the others only in their consistency. Intelligence and talent also mean nothing, hence there can be no special respect for their possessors; ultimately, they recognised respect for the individual as superfluous. ‘An idea must rule’, said the Bolsheviks. ‘Personal whim must rule’, the liberals answered them. Social and liberal utopias are the two faces of newfound freedom. Either subjugate society to an iron idea, or let go of the bridle and unleash personal enterprise and personal whim, in the hope that ‘things will work out’. The Bolsheviks were essentially trying to revive the old society, the old power of mental and governmental authority; the liberals were trying to get as far away from such power as possible. J. S. Mill says that ‘political liberty’ was understood by the ancient peoples, but ‘mental liberty’ has become comprehensible only in modern times. For the Bolshevik this unlimited mental freedom was a harmful luxury, for the liberal it was a banner. As subsequent experience has shown, the Bolshevik victory in Russia did create (albeit not immediately) a society that in some respects was closer to the ‘old world’ than the society of the liberal West. It had values, inequalities, and spiritual authorities. In general, as I have already said, Russian socialists never read Konstantin Leontiev, but fulfilled the sociological tasks formulated by him…

However, I have stepped far away from my initial thought. What is important is that over the course of time, the dream of a society freed from mental, spiritual, moral, and political authority, in which citizens, equal in everything except the value of their property, compete for the greatest possible share of happiness, that is, material success, has triumphed in the West. In the process of more and more equal distribution of freedom, in the process of more and more mental and moral equalisation of the masses, the West has come to a social peace unprecedented in history, to a society in which there are not only class boundaries, but also class contradictions, consisting of people of the same mental, moral, cultural level, whose rulers differ from their subjects only by the size of their bank account… There is aristocracy, and at the same time it is impossible to see it. No gilded carriages, no swords on the side — only a ladder of ‘prosperity’ going into infinity, which everyone, supposedly, can pass through. No wonder this society is characterised by an extraordinary stability. There is no social discord — but there is no society, only (if I may say so) a community of secluded individuals. Real society is a complex and often internally contradictory unity. A real society is characterised, for example, by the existence of social interests, social movements — which in the most developed countries of the West are barely visible and are limited, as I have already said, to the defence of the individual’s right to seclusion or the demand for further seclusion. The real society is layered; there are tensions between its layers: attractions and repulsions, striving upwards and the possibility of falling downwards… It’s all over. There is no longer, strange as it may seem to modern ears, a basis for fruitful inequality. The individual, in making his social journey, cannot expect to rise as well as to fall. There is no ladder on which he can climb and from which he can fall, and the only thing that distinguishes a citizen from a citizen is money as the measure of success. The last and only way to break out of one’s surroundings, to get out of the general rut is to acquire money, money and more money. This is the price at which the West bought its social peace. It is not surprising that all the forces of the ‘liberated’ society were directed towards achieving this success.

We are back to the question with which I began this article: freedom and wealth live side by side; is there a connexion between them or a mere neighbourhood? Let us look again at the Western society of our days. How to describe it in a few words? It is a society homogeneous mentally and morally, economically and politically extremely free, but it ‘exercises’ its freedom, as J. S. Mill said, mainly in the economic field, with no broad political aims, except one: the preservation of the present order. All spiritual, mental, intangible values are put ‘outside the bracket’ in it and recognised ultimately as a personal whim in which the individual is completely free and not subject to coercion. The only true and undeniable good in this society is recognised as ‘success in life’, in other words, wealth and the respect and power it brings. Here is a relatively complete and, I believe, true picture. Those who claim that wealth is a necessary consequence of broad freedom are mistaken because they do not want to see this picture. In fact, both wealth and broad liberty are only consequences of the same choice: the determination to let man ‘go wherewher he want’, abandoning the idea of perfecting his mind and conscience, but encouraging his labour morality in every possible way. Protestantism was of great importance here, which, before it died and weathered away, instilled in many peoples a true cult of labour — a cult to which even the Japanese, who are not Protestants and not Christians at all, but who were conquered not so long ago by the Protestant nation, are now faithful… Without this ethic of honest labour, the poetry of legitimate profit, the liberal dream would have borne very different fruit.

A society of equal rights cannot but become a society ruled by money. Equality is contrary to human nature. Vanity and simple self-esteem demand differences, advantages, elevation. Where all differences between people have been smoothed out, where the differences in origin, upbringing, education have disappeared, only money remains, and economic enterprise is the main, though not the only way to acquire it. The personality thrown into a flat, one-dimensional society has no former path of gradual elevation, no social steps on which it was possible to rise in former times. Only money and power, productive labour or a political career remain. All this does not speak in favour of dreams of transferring liberal orders to countries with a different past. On foreign cultural soil, everything bad in these orders will show itself more strongly; everything good will remain an unsuccessful graft. To be a good capitalist worker of the American spirit, one must first stop being Russian. Besides, it is psychologically much easier to adopt the love of money as the last, true and non-deceptive value, without adopting the ethics of honest labour — after all, capital does not become less because it is earned unjustly.

Timofey Sherudilo.
From the book Knowledge and Creativity. Essays on Cullture.

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