Totalitarianism did not arise on its own, as an “incident of the political and civilizational metamorphosis of several Western countries, as something that cannot arise again. It is constantly current trend Western civilization and the inevitable consequence of the degeneration of liberal democracy into increasing militarization and neoliberalism within the genesis of modern capitalism. Today it appears in a new form, in its main and global appearance, in the appearance liberal totalitarianism.

The novelty of postmodernism or neo-totalitarianism is as follows.

1. One of the most important pillars of totalitarianism in the 19th century. is a model of the life of a “happy robot”, well paid, focused primarily on acquiring things and money, interested in limited negative freedom (freedom of interference in his private life), but not understanding that this privacy is significantly violated by means of manipulating his consciousness and his needs .

2. Postmodern totalitarianism, speaking under the flag of liberalism, denies it, since it imposes its understanding of these values ​​on the whole world, often in the crudest ways, including war. The ideology of neoliberalism has pronounced imperial properties, since it is the ideology of “conquering the world in the name of freedom and democracy,” the desire to forcibly make people happy according to the standards of their interests.

4. Liberal totalitarianism stems from the connection and interaction of three key factors: neoliberal capitalism, planetary violence and ultra-modern technology; on this basis, economic, political and military superiority is created, with the help of which the “new order” either rules the world or strives to rule. Ultra-modern technology is a direct function of capital, which is becoming increasingly militarized. In societies that consider themselves exclusively liberal, a new police state is emerging, increasingly intruding into the life of civil society.

5. There is a connection between liberal totalitarianism and the political meaning of globalization (“Americanization of the world”), which has the property of introducing a planetary system of fear. Only this type of totalitarianism, unlike its predecessors, has a planetary scale, it has the means (economic, technological, military, political and propaganda power) that support such ambitions more than ever before.

6. The manipulation of the consciousness of the masses through TV plays a big role. Therefore, to rule today, more than ever, means to own information, and therefore mass consciousness. The message shapes and destroys not only the consciousness, but also the subconscious.

The phenomenon of liberal totalitarianism of today and the near future emerged in the 50s of the 20th century.

But only after the collapse of socialism, along with the transformation of the United States into an unrestricted, dominant military force in the world, liberal totalitarianism begins to increasingly acquire the features of complete systemic, political and ideological qualities. Liberal totalitarianism today also strives for the planetarization of Western-style civilization, its American version, “depicting” tolerance and diversity. (3) The phenomenon of liberal totalitarianism seemed quite interesting to me. Otherwise, it could be called a “degenerating democracy”, where liberal values ​​are only visible externally, but internally the interests of the state are “ripening”, associated with a tendency towards global competition. What is characteristic of modern liberal totalitarianism is that it is aimed at fighting totalitarianism, but in essence strives for total conquest, even the destruction of others.

Afterword to the funeral

With all my almost animal disgust for Russian liberals, sometimes I feel a little sorry for them.

Not only did this entire huge political machine of the state, created with their active participation, acting not on the principle of the rule of law, but on the basis of political expediency, suddenly begin to work against them, but also the democracy they cherished turned against its champions.

It happens in life that for some time you forget about your principles, even to some extent you compromise them - sometimes for the sake of achieving agreement and peace, and at times, on the contrary, to rally forces in the fight against a common enemy. But there comes a moment when it becomes unbearable to act this way, and the knot connecting the incompatible is broken. And after this you feel not the bitterness of loss, but liberation from the shackles that previously bound you.

The assessment of the events of October 1993 is such a litmus test, checking who is a friend, who is an enemy, and who is not.

The 20th anniversary of the execution of Russian democracy was unusually (and joyfully) calm on pro-Kremlin television channels. If earlier, especially in the 90s, blessed by liberals, any television program about those events was filled with poisonous anger towards the half-dead red-brown scoops, and even if the latter were invited to the studio, it was only as a decoration, then 20 years later the picture became different. First!

I try not to watch the zombie box, so I cannot claim to have a comprehensive assessment of all the materials aired, but what I was able to watch was in the nature of an attempt to consider what happened in October 1993 calmly and as objectively as possible.

Indicative in this regard is the documentary film by Vladimir Chernyshev, “White House, Black Smoke,” shown on NTV on October 3. For the first time, probably, on the air of a federal channel it was openly stated that not a single person who died in those days was killed from weapons located in the White House, that the special forces soldiers who died in Ostankino could not have been killed by shots from the street, that a breakthrough the chain of police cordon on October 3, 1993 looked like a planned provocation, that Yeltsin, in his televised address immediately after the shooting of the parliament, lied from beginning to end...

And all this after 20 years of aggressive lies about the red-brown rebellion and an attempt at communist revenge.

Apparently, the new crop of journalists are tired of being content with the liberal stereotypes imposed 20 years ago, which turned out to be completely false. And it is completely natural, for the sake of objectivity, to turn to primary sources - direct participants in the defense of the House of Soviets: deputies or ordinary defenders - it doesn’t matter.

After all, no matter how much we spit at the word “democracy” today, the country has lived for at least 22 years in a regime of proclaiming the priority of democratic values. And freedom of speech as well. And freedom is the same for everyone. Both for liberals and red-browns. Let the viewer, reader, listener judge who is right. And Baburin and Alksnis, Konstantinov and Shurygin flashed on television screens. Not to mention Rutsky and Khasbulatov, without whose participation not a single story on this topic could be done. And this is just the territory of occupation - television. And what can we say about the Internet – the territory of freedom.

Surprisingly, it was precisely this principle of universal freedom that was always hated by Russian liberals, both then and now. Protect us from the damned Constitution (Akhedzhakova, 1993), they missed Hitler with their democracy (Satarov, 1996), no freedom for the enemies of freedom (Sobchak, 2013).

It was disgusting, although at the same time it was funny to read and listen to all these cries of liberals on their media territory. A little more, and they will start calling to stop this whole apparent red-brown renaissance of Putin, who is fiercely hated by them, whose pardon after the overthrow they are already considering on certain conditions (Piontkovsky).

But Putin remained silent. And he did the right thing. Sometimes it is better to remain silent than to speak. For example, at a wake. Although, if we take into account that the limits of freedom of speech in our country are determined by the will of one person who is responsible for everything, then we can assume that in the environment of this person, and perhaps in his head, the idea has matured that it is necessary to disown Yeltsin’s crimes. But at the same time continue the policy begun under his predecessor. After all, privatization, which became a stumbling block between the Supreme Council and Yeltsin and ultimately led to the shedding of blood in October 1993, is developing today according to the Yeltsin-Chubais version, and attempts to revise it are unacceptable, as the national leader has said publicly more than once. It seems that the sheep (the Russian population) are safe, and the wolves (the ruling bureaucratic-oligarchic clan) are fed. But the wolves want more and more, and the sheep also want to live well-fed and calmly, without looking back at the wolf’s teeth. The back and forth between these two subjects could lead Putin straight to another Ipatiev house. Because the communo-fascism of Barkashov-Makashov-Anpilov was (and remains) just a liberal bogeyman (after all, neither one, nor the other, nor the third were in power and even with a hypothetical victory of the Supreme Council would not have been at the helm), but the methods aggressive liberalism are well known - crush the reptile that prevents US from living freely.

Once again I am convinced that Russian liberals do not need true democracy. That they are able to impose their totalitarian ideology not in a competitive political struggle, but only by relying on the state apparatus of violence, to which they appeal even today, being in opposition to this state.

It would be nice for today’s sincere supporters of the charming and unblemished Alexei Navalny to take a closer look at his figure. Are the well-known pig snouts, stained with soot and blood, crawling out from behind his back? Will they not present us with a “democracy” in comparison with which today’s government of swindlers and thieves will seem to us only a mild form of family violence?

“To designate this new type of social pressure, Gramsci uses the term “hegemony,” which he borrowed from Russian Marxism, but filled with new content. The hegemony of the bourgeoisie is carried out with the help of a number of institutions - schools, trade unions, parties, associations, which gradually instill in the masses very specific ideas that justify the dominance of the bourgeois class and represent this dominance as the “natural, unshakable order of things.” Moreover, the conductor of such ideas is a special social group nurtured by the ruling elite - bourgeois intellectuals, the power of which is especially great due to the fact that it consists largely of people from the people. So, the main means of hegemony is the ideology created by the bourgeois intelligentsia and promoted to the masses, and it can be expressed in a variety of forms - from direct political calls to half-hints contained in apparently “apolitical” works of literature or in school curricula approved by ministries. Regardless of this, they are all aimed at creating a certain way of thinking that is beneficial to the hegemon.”

Antonio Gramsci - Italian philosopher, journalist and political activist; founder and leader of the Italian Communist Party and Marxist theorist.

“Representatives of the Frankfurt School or Freudo-Marxists were, perhaps, one of the first Western philosophers who seriously began to develop the definition and theory of totalitarianism. Already thinkers belonging to the older generation of Frankfurt residents - Adorno and Horkheimer - put forward a thesis about the connection between scientific rationality and political totalitarianism, the development of which led them to the conclusion that fascism is a kind of dialectical fruit of the Enlightenment paradigm: the hypertrophy of rationality led to self-disclosure in this rationality of its irrational, mythological nature. On the basis of this thesis, the social and philosophical theory of the Frankfurtians was built, describing the repressive mechanisms of modern society in all its varieties ( fascism, communism, neoliberalism). The younger generation of the school - Marcuse, Fromm, Habermas were precisely engaged in studying this side of the life of modern society, and the most prominent figure here was probably Marcuse - the recognized ruler of the minds of opposition-minded Western youth of the 60s, the ideological leader of student riots that received the name of the “revolution of the three M” (Marx, Mao, Marcuse), creator of the ideology of the Great Refusal, which had a huge influence on Western counterculture - the movements of hippies, punks, beatniks, rockers, environmentalists, neo-anarchists, etc. It can be said that Marcuse brought the “critical theory of society” of the Frankfurt school to its logical conclusion, and this is precisely why he is interesting for a researcher of the repressive mechanisms of postmodern capitalism.

Herbert Marcuse is a German and American philosopher, sociologist and cultural scientist, representative of the Frankfurt School.

Marcuse fully shares the position of Adorno and Horkheimer about the totalitarian nature of science and technology of the New Age. Experimental science is already infected with the virus of fascism. In place of harmony with nature, which people of pre-technological civilization strived for, and which was realized in myth and religious worldviews, the rationalistic paradigm of the Enlightenment offers the model “Absolute Master - Absolute Slave.” According to it, man is called upon to completely conquer nature, to reduce it to a passive and silent material that serves to satisfy our diverse needs. In this case, the most cruel methods are used: for example, one of the main tools of this science is experiment, which is nothing more than torture of nature (Galileo said that experiment is a “Spanish boot” that is put on nature in order to tear out she has her secrets).

Ultimately, the self-development of this logic leads to political totalitarianism. Man, after all, is also a part of nature, so from the thesis: “we must completely subjugate nature to ourselves,” the thesis directly follows: “we must learn to manage society and man.” Progress gives rise to totalitarianism, classical mechanics and the steam engine give birth to Auschwitz.

Thus, Marcuse proceeds from the definition of totalitarianism derived by the elder Frankfurtists, according to which it is characterized not only by the presence of state pressure on a person - otherwise there would be no difference between totalitarianism and classical ancient despotism, but also by a special worldview implicated in total rationality. Totalitarianism is a product of our time, which is accustomed to putting everything into categories, fitting everything into a general, rationalistic yardstick, making everything absolutely transparent and absolutely predictable. The ideal of a totalitarian project is a society-machine, where people play the role of cogs; of course, nothing like this could have even occurred to a person of antiquity or the Middle Ages, when a completely different, organic understanding of the cosmos and society prevailed; for this, a scientific revolution had to occur. So, the basis of totalitarianism lies in the absolutization of rationality, and if irrationalistic phenomena appear in this society - torchlight processions, book burnings, absurd accusations of espionage, then this is the price to pay for the hypertrophy of rationality, the dialectical degeneration of “logos” into “mythos”.

From Marcuse’s point of view, the transition of a Western-style society to totalitarianism occurred with the beginning of World War I - it was then that the formation of mechanisms of social control based on scientific rationality began (before that, the government did not set itself the goal of subjugating the minds and will of all citizens, moreover, in a methodical, uniform way , and was satisfied with the necessary, episodic political and ideological violence). However, according to Marcuse, totalitarianism can be divided into two types - military-police, open, to which he classified the Soviet and fascist regimes, and liberal, non-terrorist, soft, finally formed in Europe and especially in the USA after World War II. Marcuse does not consider them mutually exclusive, they can grow together to varying degrees and complement each other - thus, Marcuse viewed the confrontation between the USA and the USSR in the Cold War as a symbiosis of two totalitarian regimes, which, by creating the image of the enemy and its propaganda exploitation, only support and strengthen each other.

If Marcuse explored Soviet totalitarianism in his work “Soviet Marxism”, fascist - in some sections of the book “Reason and Revolution”, then his work “One-Dimensional Man” was devoted to the study of neoliberal totalitarianism. This book begins with a phrase that brings its main meaning into focus: “In an advanced industrial civilization there reigns a comfortable, moderate, democratic lack of freedom, evidence of technological progress.” The most powerful mechanisms have been created to suppress skepticism and protest in the very bud - television, radio, newspapers, shows, advertising, lottery. A loyal “happy Consciousness” reigns everywhere, satisfied with controlled comfort, lulled by false freedom and unwilling to use even the critical institutions available to it. In this society there is almost no persecution for their beliefs, because there are almost no people who can think independently and have their own beliefs. The cult of unification reigns everywhere - they buy those goods that are advertised, repeat those thoughts that are recognized as “progressive”, dress in those things that are declared fashionable. A whole system of artificial needs has been created, with the help of which a person is drawn into a frenzied race in a circle, which constitutes the meaningless essence of the society of postmodern capitalism. If you don't buy a new radio and new jeans, you won't be considered "advanced" enough. But in order to buy them, you need to earn money. And they can be earned by working in a company, in a concern, in a factory and producing more and more new radios and jeans. Or in the newspaper, in a PR company, on TV and advertising these radios and jeans. Fashion changes, you need to keep up with everything, in the end a person is absolutely satisfied with his life, absolutely loyal to his government and has only one disturbing desire - to consume, consume and consume again.

Marcuse characterizes such a person as “one-dimensional,” pointing to the absence of “volume” and “complexity” in his spiritual configuration. It is easy to see that this is the pseudonym of the “man of the masses” Jose Ortega Y Gasset, a triumphant mediocrity, a self-satisfied bourgeois who is incapable of creative activity, but at the same time is sure that the whole world exists only for him, that the light in the lamps lights up on its own by itself, according to the laws of nature, and behind it there is no labor, spiritual dramas and insights of thousands of scientists and engineers, the sweat of millions of workers. Marcuse bitterly states that in modern Western society such people are in the majority and that in this sense the proletarian is no different from the bourgeois, the average intellectual from a vacuum cleaner salesman. Both the owner of the company and the Negro bellhop watch the same TV programs, hum the same popular tunes, they are representatives of the same culture, called pop or mass culture, although it would be more correct to designate it as postculture. She absorbed classical literature, painting, theater, digested everything and ended up with a mess that resembles pop art paintings, where images of Mona Lisa are side by side with cigarette butts glued to the canvas. In this “one-dimensional culture” there is no place for Truth, Goodness, Beauty - these are anachronisms for it, a relic of feudalism, there is only a commodity in it that draws into its field and absorbs everything, political views are now a commodity, talent is a commodity, a beautiful face - a commodity, genitals are a commodity, kidneys are a commodity, children are a commodity... The commodity paradigm unifies everything, monetary calculation averages everything, the difference between the law against drugs and a shipment of heroin is measured here in dollars.

Marcuse calls the world of "one-dimensional people" a "society without opposition." There really are no principled opponents of this system, and if some people call themselves that, it’s easy to come to an agreement with them. Each has its own price - for one a minister's portfolio, for another a prestigious literary prize. The assortment of this society is great, it is not for nothing that it is called a “consumer society”, however, in full agreement with the laws of dialectics, it is also the poorest, because it can only offer goods and nothing but goods... The freedom that this society so boasts of is generally illusory , this is the freedom to choose between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, the Democratic and Republican parties, in short, between goods of approximately the same quality.

And where will real freedom, real oppositionists appear in this world, because the power elite here has the most powerful mechanisms of suppression, a hidden ideology, “dissolved” in cinema, advertising, shows, strong precisely because the majority of people in this society are sincerely convinced that there is no ideology in It does not mean that they live in a “free world”.

Marcuse, like other Frankfurtians - for example, Fromm, sought to comprehend the essence of the psychology of this “one-dimensional man” and came to the disappointing conclusion that it should be characterized as a fascist type of consciousness. Its main features are narrow-mindedness, complacency, hatred of the other, the dissimilar, the original. Any dissimilarity is immediately included in the ideological discourse, begins to work for it, becomes a commodity, is absorbed - such as homosexuality or pacifism. For Marcuse and other Frankfurters, the United States served as an example of such a state of “hidden fascism,” where an aggressive, sanctimonious majority rules.

In his youth, Marcuse lived with hope in a change in the state of affairs, in the revolutionary charge of the “outcasts”, “lumpen” thrown to the margins in a consumer society, in the purifying power of surreal, avant-garde art designed to dispel the propaganda spell, in the effectiveness of the Great Refusal of all bourgeois values . But then, after the failed student revolutions of the 60s, he began to see the future more and more in black and gradually moved away from politics and plunged headlong into academic science. However, his analysis of the society of “liberal totalitarianism” has become a classic example of modern critical social theory, with which, perhaps, not everyone agrees, but which still cannot be simply dismissed, since it poses, indeed, “sore” questions and points to real problems."

The political, economic and sociocultural changes taking place in the modern world involve virtually all countries without exception in a comprehensive transformation of the existing world order. An important means of realizing this goal in the interests of global management community becomes the establishment in the mass consciousness of pseudoscientific concepts created in order to protect the liberal social structure (as supposedly democratic and horizontally controlled), the existing global division of labor and the geopolitical balance of power. And if the self-identification of the West, starting from the 1950s, is carried out within the framework of successive doctrines post-industrialism(including such modern modifications as the “knowledge society” and the “network society”), which promise humanity a free and secure future through the development of technology, then the concept of “totalitarianism” persistently continues to be used to characterize alternative regimes, countries, and civilizations that resist Western hegemony "(in the sense of state arbitrariness, violation of human rights, etc.).

In fact, as noted V. Kamenev, “behind the totalitarian accusations lies a big ideological lie. If we take this point of view, then the modern West has already surpassed both Hitler and Stalin in the totalitarianism of its propaganda, this is evidenced, at least, by the revelations of electronic surveillance of the US intelligence services by Snowden, the revelations of American “economic killers”, the practice of secret prisons of the CIA and legalized ( !) torture of prisoners". Humanity is witnessing the triumph of aggressive ultra-liberalism, demanding total world domination at any cost, and the transformation of such– totalitarian – liberalism in liberal totalitarianism . No wonder that the phrase “liberal totalitarianism” and synonymous terms (“neo-totalitarianism”, “information totalitarianism”, “soft-totalitarianism”, “light-totalitarianism”, etc.) are increasingly becoming stable definitions when characterizing processes and phenomena in the modern world.

Under these conditions, the task of clearly conceptualizing the concept of “liberal totalitarianism” and defining its features becomes extremely important, which seems possible on the basis of a comparative analytical review and comprehension of scientific and philosophical works devoted to this topic. Here it is worth pointing out as worthy of attention and rather high ratings several works by modern Russian authors who have recently made attempts of this kind. So, R.R. Vakhitov reviews the criticism of the manipulative and repressive mechanisms of Western society by a number of Western European left-wing intellectuals of the mid and second half of the 20th century. V.A. Tuzova considers views on the problem of liberal totalitarianism as totalitarianism informational some modern Eastern European and domestic authors. Job K.P. Stozhko And A.V. Chernova overall provides a bibliography review of critical analyzes of the economic model of the new totalitarianism. However, in their conclusions these authors did not come to a conceptual synthesis, to highlighting an ordered list of signs of liberal totalitarianism, which becomes the main purpose of this article.

Let us recall that the concept of “totalitarianism” was first introduced into political science discourse by Italian anti-fascist liberals J. Amendoloy And P. Gobetti in the early 20s XX century to criticize the established regime of B. Mussolini. In reply J. Gentile made an attempt to eliminate negativity, an interpretation of totalitarianism relevant to the ideological needs of Italian fascism. In the next decade, the leading countries of the “free” world adopted rhetoric that tried to use any common features of fascism and Soviet socialism to unite them under one guise and thereby morally and ideologically discredit the latter (it, in particular, was willingly used L. Trotsky, W. Churchill, G. Truman). The next stage is the desire to put these statements under a solid theoretical foundation, which they tried to do a little earlier - F. von Hayek(fascism and Nazism are not a reaction to socialist trends, but their inevitable continuation and development) and K. Popper(contrasting “open” and “closed” societies), a little later - H. Arendt(the quintessence of totalitarian rule is terror, as well as an ideology that imposes a super-meaning that fulfills the laws of Nature or History), K. Friedrich And Z. Brzezinski (scroll defining features of a totalitarian society). By the end of the 1950s - mid-1960s, after the publication of works H. Linz, R. Arona and others, the “canonical” concept of totalitarianism already contained a dozen and a half features, and versatility Some of them (such as the denial of traditional morality and the complete subordination of the choice of means to the goals set, commitment to expansionism, comprehensive control of the ruling party over the armed forces and the proliferation of weapons among the population) raises some doubt or bewilderment.

Let us emphasize once again that almost all theorists of totalitarianism and their followers affirm the undoubted (for them) identity Communism and Nazism as anti-democratic regimes that exist in opposition to the “free” society of liberalism, “which does not know the goal that unites everyone, ... enjoys the process of life, not the result. Therefore, later attempts to create an empirical theory of totalitarianism built on the basis of real, verifiable facts did not have much success; they diverged more and more from reality as the political regime of socialist countries liberalized and, moreover, did not reflect the fundamental differences between various “totalitarian systems” (in matters of relations property, social justice, orientation towards nationalism or internationalism, etc.). Due to its very specific political orientation, this concept of totalitarianism turned out to be too simplified, in some ways even primitive, continuing to exist exclusively as an ideological weapon.

True, it was precisely for this reason that in the conditions of the capitulation of the socialist system in the late 1980s - early 1990s. In the post-Soviet information space, the classical concept of totalitarianism was at one time widely used in order to discredit the very principles of social justice and altruism.

A typical example would be ideas K.S. Gadzhieva, which, separating totalitarianism from absolutism, authoritarianism, despotism as a phenomenon belonging exclusively to the 20th century, produced its simple typologization into right(fascism and national socialism) and left(communism). The goal of totalitarianism, in his opinion, is not only the forced transformation of all types of social relations and institutions, destruction of social stratification(italics by the author of the article), the destruction of tradition, but also in the purposeful change of human existence itself, “a complete remake, transformation of man in accordance with ideological guidelines,” the constitution of a new type of person, atomization and fragmentation of society. Terror is considered by Hajiyev as an essential characteristic of totalitarianism, and is used not only for destruction and intimidation, but also as an ordinary tool for controlling the masses.

Mainly with K.S. I agree with Gadzhiev A.G. Tauberger, which, however, claims to search for objective patterns, interpreting totalitarianism as “a method of mobilizing the masses, a specific mobilization response to a sharply crisis situation,” inevitably following from the tasks of “catch-up modernization.” In his opinion, “the main essential feature of totalitarianism is the desire to create a “new man” with a change in his internal nature so that he identifies the interests of society (state) with his personal interests,” while permanent terror, the merger of all branches of power, subordination to the state the power of the media belongs to the minor elements of totalitarianism.

Such a picture of social structure models is justifiably criticized based on comparison with empirical reality. And here it turns out that O. Huxley derived his “brave new world” from the capitalist liberal democracy of his time, and the closed society described by K. Popper (as well as, say, the dystopia of J. Orwell) is simply a cast of the dark sides Western civilization itself. Liberalism today is an ideology that requires any state to serve not its people, but global monopolies. The United States, as a global geopolitical subject, has declared its systemic “moral” monopoly on truth, in which there is absolutely no hint of the possibility of the existence of other systems, ideologies and projects. The strategy of action proposed by the idea of ​​globalization is a priori considered absolute and superior to any alternative. From now on, topics such as the market or the pursuit of private interests appear as an expression not even of the best, but the only possible lifestyle. The market acquires a sacred character (despite the fact that in practice it has long turned into a fiction), the hierarchy of consumerism is likened to the divine hierarchy.

In a situation of clear detection of more and more new signs of totalitarianism in the social existence of precisely the leading states of the Western world (according to M.G. Delyagin, “...modern liberalism is fascism today, fascism not of the industrial, but of the information age”), it is precisely its “non-classical” versions that acquire current resonance.

As noted by R.R. Vakhitov, the phenomenon of this “soft, liberal totalitarianism” was deeply studied in the works of the “new left”, who sought to expand the boundaries of classical Marxism by synthesizing its humanistic content with other philosophical directions of modern times - psychoanalysis, structuralism, existentialism and revealing the very mechanism of action of capitalist ideology.

The origins of this trend in understanding the phenomenon of totalitarianism are A. Gramsci, who borrowed the term “hegemony” from Russian Marxism, but filled it with new content. The hegemony of the bourgeoisie is carried out with the help of a number of institutions - schools, trade unions, parties, associations, which gradually instill in the masses very specific ideas that represent its dominance as the “natural, unshakable order of things.” Moreover, the conductor of such ideas is a special social group nurtured by the ruling elite - bourgeois intellectuals, the power of which is especially great due to the fact that it consists largely of people from the people. The main means of hegemony is the ideology created by such intellectuals and promoted to the masses, expressed in a variety of forms - from direct political appeals to half-hints contained in seemingly “apolitical” works of literature or in school curricula. Regardless of this, they are all aimed at creating a certain way of thinking that is beneficial to the hegemon.

A huge role in expanding the view of the subject of totalitarianism belongs to Frankfurt school.

Already representatives of its “older” generation - T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer - put forward a thesis about the connection between scientific rationality and political totalitarianism, the development of which led them to the conclusion that fascism is a kind of dialectical fruit of the Enlightenment paradigm: hypertrophy ratio led to the self-disclosure in this rationality of its irrational, mythological nature. Based on this thesis G. Marcuse- a representative of the “younger” generation of Frankfurt residents - believed that from the thesis: “we must completely subjugate nature” the thesis directly follows: “we must learn to manage society and man,” in other words, technology cannot be neutral, but classical mechanics and the steam engine Auschwitz is born. The ideal of a totalitarian project is a society-machine, where people play the role of cogs. Nothing like this could have occurred to a person of antiquity or the Middle Ages, when an organic understanding of the cosmos and society dominated. The process of society's transition to totalitarianism accelerated during the First World War - it was then that the formation of mechanisms of social control based on scientific rationality began (before that, the government did not set itself the goal of methodically subjugating the minds and will of all citizens and was satisfied with the necessary, episodic political and ideological violence ).

The meaning of the liberal variety of totalitarianism is focused by G. Marcuse in the following statement: “In a developed industrial civilization, a comfortable, moderate, democratic lack of freedom reigns, evidence of technological progress.” The most powerful information and technical mechanisms have been created to suppress skepticism and protest in the bud (television, shows, advertising, lottery, etc.). The world of “one-dimensional people” is a “society without opposition”, since under the dominance of a loyal “happy Consciousness”, satisfied with controlled comfort, lulled by false freedom and unwilling to use even the critical institutions available to it, there are almost no people who know how to think independently. The cult of unification reigns everywhere - they buy those goods that are advertised, repeat those thoughts that are recognized as “progressive.” The assortment of this society is great, but at the same time it is also the poorest, since it cannot offer a person anything other than goods. The freedom that this society boasts so much about is illusory; it is the freedom to choose between goods of approximately the same quality. At the same time, the power elite has the most powerful mechanisms of suppression, a hidden ideology, which is strong precisely because the majority of people in this society are sincerely convinced that there is no ideology in it, that they live in a “free world.”

The doctrine of G. Deborah about modern capitalism as a “Society of Spectacle”. The performance is the apogee of capitalist alienation discovered by K. Mark (where a person loses not material goods, as during economic exploitation, but himself, his creative essence, becoming a passive, obedient object of manipulation, a thing, a commodity) - everything has turned - political debates in parliament, terrorist acts, sale of discounted goods. A specially mounted and thoughtful performance with its constant plots (plane crashes, terrorist attacks, sexual adventures of “stars”, etc.) powerfully invades life, deforms it, filling it with its own meanings, i.e. ideology and begins to impersonate life itself. As a result, it becomes impossible to discern where the Performance ends and reality begins, because the performance becomes so total that even those who create it begin to believe in it.

Later, in “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle,” G. Debord prophetically put forward the idea that the collapse of the USSR and the monopoly of the market would lead to the triumph of a new type of performance - integrated, which will combine the dictates of consumption and a strong repressive apparatus.

I. Wallerstein already after the capitulation of the socialist system, he not only substantiated the absence of confrontation between totalitarian ideologies, on the one hand, and liberalism, on the other, but also questioned the traditional presentation of the post-war history of the 20th century. as stories of a bipolar world. The confrontation between socialism and liberalism, according to Wallerstein, was part of a consensual political game in the interests of global world politics and the global liberal project, of which they were elements: “There was only one true ideology - liberalism, which found its manifestations in three main guises.” The collapse of socialism ultimately results in a deep crisis of liberalism, which is rapidly losing its legitimacy.

The presence of a direct connection between liberalism and totalitarianism establishes T. Sunich. He notes that by making people solely economically dependent on each other and destroying the more traditional ties of kinship and patriotism, modern liberalism will inevitably lead to the creation of a society where, in difficult times, everyone will strive to outbid, outwit and outmaneuver others, thus clearing the field for “terror of all against all” and preparing the ground for the emergence of new totalitarian systems.

Z. Vidojevic already states the onset of liberal totalitarianism in the modern world, due to the lack of a new philosophy of life in the Western world, since “the satiety of things and the exhaustion of the civilizational paradigm as an endless accumulation of objects and power make the Western project essentially unrealistic from a historical perspective, since it cannot offer anything something essentially new." Totalitarianism is not a stochastic social phenomenon, but is “an ever-present tendency of Western civilization and an inevitable consequence of the degeneration of liberal democracy.” The sources of liberal (or postmodern, in the terminology of Z. Vidojevic himself) totalitarianism are rooted in the political economy of modern capitalism, based on the global role of multinational companies seeking to act as de facto planetary power, planetary violence and ultra-modern technologies. The latter provide unlimited opportunities for manipulation of mass consciousness (and subconsciousness); At the same time, there is a constant methodological improvement of manipulations. At the same time, atomized individuals find themselves in the world of consumerism and “replication and networking of pseudo-reality, or, in postmodern language, “simulacrum.” In other words, modern totalitarianism has the property of “ideological self-distortion of its own essence.”

The systemic crisis experienced by post-Soviet Russia, the obvious discrepancy between the explanatory concepts of liberal globalism and the existing reality contributed to the awareness of the presence of a dominant ideology and aggressive strategy of the West by at least part of the scientific and philosophical community of post-Soviet Russia.

A powerful impetus was the dissemination of later works A.A. Zinoviev, in which the mechanisms of functioning, expansion and sustainability of Western civilization in Modern and Contemporary times were extremely clearly and frankly explained. The thinker constantly emphasized that the political stability of Western societies over the past centuries has been ensured not by the election of representative power and a multi-party system, but by a system of institutions "superstates". The superstate is formed by an overgrown apparatus of police, courts, prisons, and most importantly - special services, secret societies, elite clubs, transnational corporations, which in fact are not controlled by society in any way, in some cases not at all legalized, but wholly control visible power, possessing unlimited financial capabilities, ideological cohesion, discipline, the widest choice of means and forms of repressive suppression and elimination of opponents of the global world order.

Among domestic researchers of theory and practice totalitarian economy can be called S.N. Baburina, V.M. Mezhueva, A.S. Panarina, L.M. Martsev etc. Modern totalitarianism, according to representatives theories of economic discrimination, may well coexist with a market economy, mimic the conditions of “representative democracy,” and take the form of ochlocracy and bureaucracy. It's worth making a judgment R.L. Livshitsa that a market dictatorship has all the signs of totalitarianism and uses the most modern technologies: juvenile justice, special propaganda, manipulation of consciousness. The characteristic features of the dictatorship of the market are the following: market relations cover all spheres of human life, incl. private, turning the person himself into a commodity; market institutions “work” under strict state control, creating only the appearance of freedom of economic activity; market principles operate only during periods of favorable conditions, but completely or partially cease to operate in crisis conditions (when strict restrictions from the state become acceptable). At the same time, in the conditions of a discriminatory economy (separation from the production of material goods and knowledge in favor of the service economy), all spiritual values ​​are artificially devalued, which also receive a lower public status. Instead of spiritual benefits, they are reduced to the level of simple services: education, scientific research, health care, etc.

V.P. Pugachev in the concept of information-financial totalitarianism he formulated, he identifies two combined groups of methods of influencing human behavior: 1) informational based on the possibilities of total control over an individual using modern satellite, computer, and PR technologies; 2) economic, used by the state-controlling financial and political oligarchy. Wider opportunities, according to the political scientist, undoubtedly belong to information methods as more effective, in comparison with which the primitiveness of the methods of classical totalitarian regimes based on direct external violence becomes obvious. Moreover, modern methods of social control are often borrowed from other sciences, for example, the cybernetic trigger method of control, which involves managing the social system “... through control only over its key points, which in relation to modern society are primarily financial resources, electronic media, the most influential elites and organized groups". The author also considers the destruction of traditional axiological attitudes, the formation of a mass personality type, manipulation of consciousness and behavior to be the most important characteristics of information and financial totalitarianism.

Existential concept of the nature of totalitarianism V.Yu. Darensky is built on the basis of the following definition: “Totalitarianism is a type of socio-economic, political and cultural structure of society in which the holders of power try to unify people’s lives as much as possible in accordance with a certain ideological and worldview doctrine through maximum influence on the formation of personality.” The researcher does not consider repression to be a necessary attribute of totalitarianism, since its essence lies in the self-destruction of a person, the elevation of the state to a pseudo-absolute, and the belief that one is able to control the foundations of human life. The repressions of totalitarianism are conditioned by people's resistance to self-destruction, but in the absence of resistance they are unnecessary. Therefore, modern totalitarianism is “the totalitarianism of consumer society and total manipulation of consciousness,” hiding behind the ideology of liberalism.

A.G. Dugin, defining modern Western society as “the third totalitarianism,” writes the following: “Liberalism is totalitarian in a special way. Instead of direct physical repression against dissidents, he resorts to the tactics of “soft strangulation,” a gradual shift to the outskirts of society of dissidents and opponents, economic blackmail, etc. ... the dominant ideology of the West (liberalism) actively fights alternative political and ideological projects, but uses methods to achieve its goals that are more subtle, “softer”, more refined than previously known forms of totalitarianism. Liberal totalitarianism is not brutal, but veiled, illusory, invisible. However, that doesn’t make him any less cruel.” Dugin notes that the very fact of the promotion of the individual as the highest value and measure of things is a projection of society, that is, a form of totalitarian influence, ideological induction. The individual is a social concept, the person himself learns that he – a private person only from a society, and from one where liberal ideology dominates. Therefore, liberalism is a totalitarian ideology, insisting, through classical methods of totalitarian propaganda, that the individual is the highest authority. Liberal society, opposing itself to the mass societies of socialism and fascism, in turn, remains mass and standardized. The more a person strives to be unusual in the context of liberal paradigms, the more similar he becomes to others.

At the same time, A.G. Dugin (like Z. Vidojevic) was able to sense the complex connection between the ideology of liberal totalitarianism and postmodernist discourse. Let postmodernist philosophers criticize the claims of Western civilization to democracy, equality and tolerance, prove that all this – disguised forms of control and repressive suppression of the Other. In essence, postmodernity opens up as a new move in the strategy of modernity, which has realized the ineffectiveness of the fight against tradition through its direct negation, as its result. Hence the concept of the “end of history” and similar concepts of optimistic liberals who identified postmodernity with the final victory of their ideals.

A.V. Shchipkov, within the framework of criticism of the classical theory of two totalitarianisms as opponents of liberal democracy, and the assertion that there is only one totalitarian regime – liberal (the components of which are fascism and communism), destroying traditional Christian society, turns to the analysis of the moral and ethical foundations of liberalism and fascism. While asserting their complete identity, he directly reveals at least two common imperative: 1) total competition, that is, natural selection transferred from the animal world to human society; 2) a split world, divided into “higher” and “lower” (without human rights), easily excluding entire peoples, races, cultures from the concept of human, reasonable, civilized (at different times these could be the Irish, blacks, Asians, Slavs in general, Russians, etc.), the ongoing construction of identity according to the “us-them” principle.

Understanding the totalitarian evolution of liberalism, which has now turned into aggressive dogmatism that does not recognize any alternatives, leads to the conclusion that it has never been established as an ideology, but has turned into a broad way of “liberating” the individual from collective identity: first from religious and class-corporate, then from state, national-ethnic, family, currently - from gender, and in the near future - from genetic. In this - spiritual and physical - dehumanization everyone individual and this is the ultimate goal of the strategy of a collective superstate. An explanation of the motives for the radical reincarnation of liberalism is possible within the framework of the theory of antimorality.

The spread and evolution of antimorality attitudes in general were carried out within the framework of dual doctrine (only postulates – for “laymen”, others – for the “initiated” and “chosen ones”), through speculation with the concepts of “humanism”, “freedom”, “reason”, “democracy”, “progress”, etc. Along with focusing only on the negative sides and manifestations of tradition, its interpretation exclusively as prejudice, and novelty as progress and truth, the main inversion was the replacement of the concepts of “good” and “freedom” in the hierarchy of values ​​with the subsequent severance of their connection (which is quite correlates with the basic commandment of Satanism: “Nothing can be prohibited and everything is permitted”). The superstate, as a collective subject-bearer of anti-morality, makes a hierarchical selection of employees according to the degree of commitment to anti-values ​​and introduces “initiates” into the spheres of legal politics and management, mass media, etc.

What antimorality as a meta-ideology passes off as rationality is only external logic, its form. As noted K. Castoriadis, “in the syllogisms of the modern world, premises borrow their content from the imaginary. And the predominance of the syllogism as such, the obsession with “rationality” separated from everything else, forms a second-order imaginary. The pseudo-rationality of the modern world is one of the historical forms of the imaginary. It is arbitrary in its final goals, since the latter are not based on reasonable grounds." It is not without reason that throughout the last century, the theme of mental disorder has been greedily exploited in literature and art; madness has been elevated to a cult, since the sick consciousness perceives and creates a picture not of the true world, but of a parallel reality. In this situation, it is correct to talk about totalitarian schizophrenic logic.

The creation of the imaginary is achieved through pseudoscience . Antimorality today systematically resorts to pseudo-reality constructed by pseudoscience in order to smooth out and disguise cynicism and nihilism in some cases, and to present them as something natural, objective, and the only possible in others.

Thus, techno-utopian projects within the so-called. NBICS convergences are intended, first of all, to empirically substantiate the “naturalness” of anti-moral and anti-human doctrines of trans- and post-humanism; the concept of gender construction is directly related to the value nihilism of postmodernism; the libertarian approach in legal theory and monetarism in economic theory serve the ideology of social Darwinism and anarcho-capitalism.

Thus, “mirror” starting from the signs of totalitarianism, which during the Cold War, trying to identify Nazi Germany and the USSR, highlighted the classics of the totalitarian school, taking into account the “anti-demototalitarian” developments of world and domestic thought (including, in addition to the previously mentioned authors, those , who directly proves the pseudo- and anti-democratic nature of the entire socio-political system of the “free world”: L. Feld, J. Chiesa, A.D. Bogaturov, V.L. Avagyan, V.V. Sorokin S.G. Kara-Murza), we can highlight the following characteristic features advancing liberal totalitarianism:

Literature

1. INAllerstein I. After liberalism. M.: Editorial URSS, 2003. 256 p.
2. Vakhitov R.R. Liberal totalitarianism: repressive mechanisms of modern Western society and their critical analysis in foreign philosophy of the twentieth century. URL: http://www.situation.ru/app/j_art_20.htm (access date: 07/21/2017).
3. INIdoevich Z. Liberal totalitarianism // Sociological studies. 2007. No. 12. P. 39-49.
4. Gadzhiev K.S. Totalitarianism as a phenomenon of the 20th century // Questions of Philosophy. 1993. No. 2. P. 3-25.
5. Golovatenko A.Yu. Totalitarianism of the 20th century. M.: School-press, 1992. 96 p.
6. Gramsci A. Theory of hegemony. URL: http://politiko.ua/blogpost67770 (date of access: 07/25/2017).
7. Darensky V.Yu. Totalitarianism as an existential phenomenon // Humanitarian vector. 2014. No. 3 (39). P.122-129.
8. Debord G.

Today Russia again faces a choice: which path of development is preferable - liberalism or totalitarianism?

Having had plenty of “wild capitalism” in the 90s (which has retained many of its features even now), many Russians are advocating for a social orientation of the state, a return to the times of the USSR.

Liberalism arose in Europe during the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries as a reaction to the dominance of monarchs and the Church in the person of the Pope. Protestantism emerged from Christianity, which gave significantly more personal freedoms and encouraged the initiative of the individual citizen.

Liberalism proclaimed the equality of all citizens before the law, ensuring each person has natural rights given to him by nature (including the right to life, personal freedom, property), the establishment of a free market economy, government responsibility to society and transparency of government power.

Thanks to the adoption of a course towards liberalism and the transition to Protestantism, a rapid development of trade and industry began in a number of European countries: steam-powered cars appeared, railways began to be built, and shipping developed significantly. First, the Netherlands, and then England, France, Germany, and the USA became large economic and military states.

In Russia, in the 16th and 17th centuries, totalitarianism triumphed, one of the bearers of which was Ivan the Terrible. Under him, Russia significantly expanded its territory, and serfdom was finally established in the state.

Totalitarianism is a form of relationship between society and government, in which political power takes complete control of society, forming a single whole with it, completely controlling all aspects of human life.

Manifestations of opposition in any form are brutally and mercilessly suppressed and suppressed by the state.

Members of society are completely dependent on the ruler, do not have sufficient independence to make decisions, entrusting it to the ruler and thereby relieving themselves of responsibility. Since the ruler takes upon himself to provide members of society with vital resources, this is to some extent beneficial for ordinary members of society.

Hitler directly told his soldiers: “I take full responsibility!”

That is, don’t doubt anything, don’t think about anything: kill, hang, burn, destroy - you are not responsible for anything!
A very comfortable position for a subordinate!

According to an unwritten agreement between the government and the people, an individual citizen transfers to the government most of his rights, including the right to life, to personal freedom, to property (and there was also the right of the first night).
At the same time, the government is not accountable to the people.

The ideology of a totalitarian society is aimed at justifying the subordination of a person’s personal interests to the ruler, declares the unity of society and emphasizes the ruler’s tireless care for the people entrusted to him.

The illusion of complete approval by the people of the actions of the authorities is artificially created and fueled in every possible way. This could be observed during the reign of all Russian autocrats, Stalin, Brezhnev.

Thus, the totalitarian system is inherent in undeveloped societies, in which its members act as certain limited, mentally and physically disabled children, and their loving but strict father strictly controls the people, keeps them in check and in a black body, and sometimes something of the highest bestows from his bounty. For this paternal care, the subjects tirelessly admire the wise, caring ruler and tirelessly sing hosannas to him.

Thus, Nicholas II granted the State Duma to the people. But if in tsarist times representatives of the working class were present in the Duma, today the State Duma is exclusively occupied by proteges of oligarchs who live off the exploitation of the people. The main occupation of the Duma members is to invent laws that infringe on the rights of citizens and to carry out their own affairs.

In a liberal society, every citizen has the right to make their own decisions and bears full responsibility for them. The authorities are under the control of civil society represented by the opposition, independent courts and parliament.

Countries with liberal economies are developing successfully; they have created fairly acceptable living conditions for ordinary citizens. Any person has the opportunity to sue a government official or a wealthy corporation and win the case.

At the same time, totalitarian countries are not receptive to progress; the economy in these states is backward. A characteristic feature of a totalitarian state is the low standard of living of the population, which is often confirmed by the card system. Typical representatives of such countries today are North Korea and Argentina.

Until recently, China was a totalitarian state; the authorities called for food for two to be divided among three. Today, China is a state with a liberal economy, the largest in the world, and a constantly growing standard of living of the population.

If we look at the table of states by standard of living for 2015, the leading position in them is occupied by liberal states. The first three places are occupied by Norway, Switzerland and Denmark.
China ranks 52nd, and Russia is in 58th place, significantly behind Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago and even Argentina.

Apparently, Russia is destined to remain a totalitarian state until the end of time, since the bulk of the population is still in historical childhood and dreams of having a wise, caring ruler over them, who cares about the people's welfare day and night. Quite a naive reasoning.

As our ancestors said, turning to the Varangians: “Our land is abundant and great, but there is no order in it; come to reign and rule over us.”
Nothing has changed in the people's consciousness in a thousand years.

Table of countries by standard of living, 2015
http://gotoroad.ru/best/indexlife

Reviews

“and dreams of having a wise, caring ruler over him, who cares about the people’s welfare day and night.”
Of course, it is much more worthy to dream that the ruler is a fool, a bastard and cares only about his wallet))
Sorry, maybe that’s not what you wanted to say, but I prefer to read literally what is written.
As for totalitarianism, if it existed in modern Russia, you would not write your articles, and I would not read them. And there would be exactly one party in the country. But for some reason the people don’t understand their own good and keep swearing and swearing... They forgot that if they started scolding the government under Stalin or even Brezhnev, it would all end quickly and unfavorably for the scolder.
Sincerely,

And one more thing: You write that you like the existing order. What is there to like when people in Putin’s team shamelessly profit, rob the country of billions of rubles and remain unpunished, when the government is not accountable to the people?
The authorities are faced with a choice: either continue to chew at the expense of the state or improve the situation of the people. The authorities choose the first, as a result the people become beggars, and even those who work remain poor, and then they have to raise the retirement age.
I have an article “Putin stands up for reforms”, in which I wrote what Russians expect from the President. And they won't wait. Hence the protest rallies.
Yesterday's speech by the president was criticized by the media: he only glossed over the predatory, anti-people essence of the reform. The protest rallies will not fade away, they will continue. The point of the rallies: stop stealing, give something to the people!
Nabiulina fled to America with money. According to the media, Putin and Medvedev are also involved in this. IM - to believe?????