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Election campaign in the Russian Federation. On the theoretical impossibility of democracy Not all democracies are the same true democracies

Eurasian specifics of Russian statehood

Our state is special, not the same as in the West. Just like society, we have it in solidarity, and they, as you know, have a “civil society”, it has its own specifics, which does not intersect with ours in any way, which means it does not suit us.

In all the large number of materials that have already been published on this topic, the main idea runs like a red thread: solidarism opposes discreteness - fragmentation, fragmentation, separation, alienation of atomized individuals, which underlies a liberal society.

But every time when we oppose our society to a liberal society, criticizing the concepts of liberalism, we immediately hear the main reproach in response: “But what about democracy?”

And here it is worth mentioning separately, dwelling on this concept, which, in fact, predetermines the emergence of both a civil society and a solidarity society.

As Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin once spoke on this topic, the West has its own democracy, and we have our own. But what does he mean when he talks about it?

Three democracies

The famous French philosopher and sociologist Alain de Benoit divided democracy into three types: conditionally, these are the democracy of freedom, the democracy of equality and the democracy of brotherhood.

The democracy of freedom (Liberte) is, in fact, the liberal democracy that dominates today in the West and which the West is actively imposing on the rest of humanity. It is based on the category of the individual, narcissistic subjectivity, and the entire structure of society is subordinated to this free individual, and in general - to the free consumption of the totality of trading individuals.

But this is far from being the case, because there is also a "democracy of equality" - Egalite - hence egalitarianism. This is when atomized individuals are summed up into a mass simply by mechanical addition. At the same time, the basis is the same atomized individual, only considered no longer separately, but as a mass of individuals.

Egalitarianism is a mechanical phenomenon in which the advantage is not given to an individual, as in liberalism, but to discrete masses, conglomerates. This form of democracy underlay, in particular, the Soviet society, the Marxist model, when society was artificially fragmented, atomized, and formed into faceless masses marching in huge columns - this is the essence of egalitarianism. And this is the second kind of democracy - democracy of equality.

But there is such a thing as "democracy of brotherhood" (Fraternite) - something that has a completely different nature of origin. In it, the people are perceived as a qualitative and organic community. It has a spiritual, cultural and political tradition of common coexistence, reproduced in its continuity, and demonstrates such an essence as collective will.

Thus, the democracy of brotherhood, or organic democracy, is a living organism, in contrast to the scattering of the democracy of freedom and the egalitarian mechanism of the democracy of equality, which are based on the mechanistic principle.

Participation of the people in their own destiny

The European philosopher and sociologist Arthur Meller van den Broek described organic democracy as "the possibility of the participation of the people in their own destiny." That is, organic democracy is not a form state structure, as is customary in an atomized, primarily Western, society, but participation in the life of the state is a living organic subjectivity of a single people.

In the West, on the contrary, a certain alienation is being cultivated. From here, the state is given mechanical service functions, and these functions are aimed at serving the interests of divided trading individuals. Hence the concept of a “hired manager”, who is hired by this discrete society to perform the official functions of the state, in contrast to service to society which is accepted within the framework of organic democracy.

Thus, we see that not all democracy is equally useful. Moreover, they are different in their essence and are the experience of different civilizational types.

Now it is clear that democracy in Europe is fractional, discrete. And what about us, in Russia? And in Russia, elements of organic democracy are still preserved. And, as the European sociologist Carl Schmitt pointed out, organic democracy is possible only in a homogeneous society, that is, in a society in which the "demos" is perceived as a single, homogeneous qualitative community, and not a set of atomized social units that represent Western society, a kind of artificial folded mechanistic organism. And the less homogeneous a society is, the more difficult it is to manage it, the more authoritarianism and totalitarianism are required to keep it.

Background of solidarism in Russia

Based on the fact that democracies are completely heterogeneous phenomena, and in Europe democracy developed in its own way, there solidarism is an attempt to unite an already atomized discrete society.

Hence the frequent comparison and juxtaposition of solidarism with fascism, which arose as a response to liberalism, to the erosion of the nation-state, the post-imperial nation-state as such. Fascism arose as a statement that the state is a value, in the face of the threat of liberalism, which stated that the state is not a value, the main thing is a trading individual, and states only perform service functions and, as a result, when all of humanity becomes liberal, they should die out altogether .

It was precisely in attempts to reassemble a society that had already largely crumbled into atomized individuals, creating the prerequisites for the triumph and dominance of liberalism, that in Europe the need arose to create artificial forms of solidarism against the backdrop of an already rather fragmented civil atomized mass.

But in Russia the situation is completely different. We still retain and coexist, coexist with us collective subjects, namely: a large people - Russians, which is a collective organic subject with its own history, tradition, culture, preserved in continuity. In fact, in our country, organic collective subjects are already a given, which means that we do not need to artificially collect disparate atomized masses, as in Europe, therefore, our solidarism has natural, organic prerequisites.

In fact, in the last two decades, we have seen an attempt to intensively fragment the collective organic essences of our peoples, to pass them through the liberal sieve of atomization in order to remove the ability of the people, in principle, to participate in their own destiny.

In return, organic democracy is always replaced by authoritarianism and rigid totalitarian forms of government, which, by the way, are quite common in the West. Despite the chimeras of freedom and democratization of Western society, we understand that Western society is absolutely not free, and today it is difficult to imagine a more totalitarian country than the United States of America.

The ambiguity of "civil society"

The concept of "the people of Russia" is actually a tracing-paper from the Western, European concept of people, that is, just people, an atomized mass. While the people as an organic subjectivity comes from the Greek concept of "Laos", which implies just a collective, organic essence. That is, the people of Russia are just a discrete mass, people, and the Russian people are a qualitative category. And hence the discrepancies in the concept of "citizen".

In liberalism, in essence, "citizenship" and the concept of "citizen" has become identical to the concept of "man". A citizen is anyone who has a passport, while initially a citizen, a city dweller, is someone who creates, develops a policy, that is, a certain organic political unit. These are two completely different phenomena, hence the difference in the understanding of “civil society”.

In the Western liberal model, "civil society" is just a random collection of people - people, loose biomass, collected at random. This is a civil society in which everyone strives for their own goal, and not for a common goal, as in the nation-state.

But initially the concept of "civil society", if it is based on the concept of "citizen", a member of the policy, is just a subjective organic concept. Therefore, civil society in Russia is an organic entity, while in the West it is a discrete entity.

But it is the Western concept of "civil society" that is being imposed on us, which destroys our organic unity. It is achieved by violating the homogeneity of society, blurring it. And first of all, this is facilitated by such a phenomenon as migration, when masses of people move from one place to another, losing roots, social ties, eroding the basic society in which they arrive, breaking these organic ties within itself.

Against mixing. For life

The mixture of cultural, religious, ethnic blurs the organic homogeneity of a solidary society. Most of all, this is facilitated by the concept of postmodernism, which dominates today.

Thus, the destruction of the collective unconscious, the creation of an artificial discrete civil society in the Western liberal manner threatens the principles of our statehood, which is based precisely on organic sobornost, on which our organic democracy is built.

The preservation and continuity of these ties is a kind of immunity from the destructive impact of Western liberal concepts, makes society more predictable, more stable, creating the possibility of its complicity in its own destiny, which is precisely characterized by the prerequisites that we actually have.

In order to survive as a state, we need to preserve this organicity and not allow liberal chimeras to destroy it.

Read the text and complete tasks 21-24.

Not all democracies are the same. True democracies are political systems in which certain people gain access to power and the right to make decisions as a result of free general elections. However, the mechanisms for electing a parliament and forming a government differ from each other depending on the national form of government ...

Under a presidential republic, power is transferred through direct elections, and not as a result of promotion to leading positions in one or another influential party, as in a parliamentary republic. Parliamentary systems, unlike presidential systems, support and protect strong parties. Thus, when choosing a presidential or parliamentary model, one must proceed from what is preferable: to focus on parties or on individual candidates who won direct elections.

Another difference political systems consists in the method of voting for the election of candidates to the highest authorities: proportional or majoritarian (majority principle). Under a majoritarian system, one deputy is elected from each constituency. The winner of the election is the candidate who receives the largest number votes. Proportional representation systems involve the distribution of seats in parliament in accordance with the number of votes received in elections (according to party lists) ...

Often the voter, when deciding who to vote for, is guided by the following considerations. Citizens vote based on often accepted opinions and ideologies, rather than careful comparison of different political solutions to the problems facing the country. In addition, voters willingly listen to the opinions of others, including the appeals of the candidates themselves. The outcome of the elections is determined not only by the course of the pre-election struggle, but to no lesser extent by the personal circumstances, beliefs and preferences of each voter.

(M. Wallerstein)

The text mentions "considerations" that influence voter behavior. Name any of these "considerations." Using social science knowledge, indicate one positive and one negative consequence of a voter's choice under the influence of this "consideration."

Explanation.

1) Answer to the first question:

Common opinions and ideologies;

The opinions of others, including the appeals of the candidates themselves.

2) The answer to the second question (when indicating as “considerations” the opinions of others, including the appeals of the candidates themselves):

Positive: Most people are rarely wrong.

Negative: parties can deceive in their promises.

Which of the electoral systems considered by the author best protects strong political parties? Using the text and social science knowledge, explain how this protection manifests itself. Name and illustrate with an example any one function of political parties that is manifested in the electoral process.

Explanation.

The correct answer must include the following items:

1) Answer to the first question:

proportional.

2) Answer to the second question:

Under this system, a strong party is guaranteed to enter parliament, gaining a majority of seats in it.

3) Specifying a function and illustrating it with an example:

Electoral. On the eve of the elections to the State Duma, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation conducted an election campaign, which secured the support of 20% of voters.

Elements of the answer can be given in other formulations that are close in meaning.

Source: Unified State Examination in Social Studies 03/30/2016. early wave

3. A civil society based on the pluralism of people's opinions and interests is unable to ensure citizens' voluntary obedience to the law, to avoid sharp social explosions, and possibly even bloody clashes, unless state authorities are formed on a fair electoral basis with the participation of the citizens themselves.

Elements of the answer can be given in other formulations that are close in meaning.

In Democracy, the true meaning of the term

We all know how our government calls us to democracy.
The United States is also striving for democracy. Moreover, they aggressively seek to "democratize" all the countries of the world.

The true meaning of the term "democracy" is unknown to the vast majority, for history ancient greece delicate matter. Let's see what is the real meaning of this concept?

The concept of "democracy" originates from ancient Greece, from Athens.
"Demos", a word of Dorian origin, denoted a people living in a certain territory and associated with the history of this territory, the policy, the system of relations, social, ethnic and professional. The term "demos" meant something quite different from the word "laos" which also defines "people" in Greek. "Laos", in contrast to "demos", is the totality of the population, regardless of the presence or absence of ties in a given cultural area. And it is in this sense that we use the word "people." For us, the people are the whole population.

It turns out that the concept of "demos" comes from the name of the district of Athens, in which the richest representatives of society nested. Society was divided into three main strata:
1. ohlos- slaves, poor people, laborers - non-voting .
2. Plebos- free people, small owners, owners of their own houses and lands - can choose but cannot be elected .
3. Demos- large slave owners, residents of Demos - a rich area of the city, passing a certain property qualification. Only they could be elected to governing bodies .

Thus, the true meaning of the term "democracy" is the power of the elected and the rich, who have given themselves the right to be power. . This is unknown to the vast majority, who constantly choose "democracy" and naively believe that the people can manage somehow there. Already the Greeks, who owned logic, clearly understood that the people could not manage physically in any way (the principles of management themselves imply a hierarchical organization).

And therefore, who should come forward from the people? Favorites! That's what they're called.
This is how subtle and cunning substitution happens. The people, thanks to deceit, believe that it is he who controls something. But you think, in fact, it is NOT the PEOPLE that governs !!! The people only vote (and even then, one appearance of voting, to remind you of how Medvedev was elected).

Let's repeat.
Democracy, when considered in depth, is only the promise of popular government. The people themselves do not manage in any way and cannot manage physically. What should be promised? Promise! Fools believe.
The "chosen ones" are in charge, whom the fool-people themselves put forward.

I was prompted to write this by a paragraph from a new article by B. F. Poltoratsky:
Thirdly, we are told about democracy in the “Judeo-Christian civilization”, and we discover something completely different through the history of the science of physics. Democracy is a self-governing system of the demos, i.e. people. And we see a system controlled by secret, underground organizations. This is no longer a democracy. And a civilization cannot be called such if all the media are controlled by thieving priests with morality hanging on the HPVG argument.

We still wouldn't have seen it. The trained eye of an experimenter, accustomed to seeing true phenomena, and not false promises, sees what is happening in reality. Namely - the "demos self-government system" in reality, in fact it is a system of the elect. All this is amazingly cleverly arranged. Deception, imperceptible, subtle substitution of meaning. Fooled people, as it were, fool themselves.

P.S.
an indispensable condition for the successful management of a complex system is the presence of feedback.
As applied to the management of society, this means that the ruling elite must at least somehow depend on the "lower classes" - that is, ultimately on the success of their management actions.

(M. Wallerstein)

Read the text and do the tasks

Another difference between political systems is the method of voting for the election of candidates to the highest authorities: proportional or majoritarian (majority principle). Under a majoritarian system, one deputy is elected from each constituency. The winner of the election is the candidate who receives the most votes. Proportional representation systems involve the distribution of seats in parliament in accordance with the number of votes received in elections (according to party lists) ...

(M. Wallerstein)

Based on the text, name two types of republican form of government.

Explanation.

1) the answer to the first question:

True democracies are political systems in which certain people gain access to power and the right to make decisions as a result of free general elections.

2) Parliamentary and presidential republics.

3) Thus, when choosing a presidential or parliamentary model, one must proceed from what is preferable: focus on parties or on individual candidates who won direct elections.

Karl Popper

Karl Popper(Karl Popper) (1902-1994) - one of the outstanding philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in Vienna, then lived in London, where he taught logic from 1949-1969. He wrote this article in August 1987 for the German weekly Der Spiegel and the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

The Problem of Democracy

The center of my interest is nature, science and, in particular, cosmology. Ever since I broke with Marxism in July 1919, I have been interested in politics and its theory, both as a citizen and as a democrat. However, the establishment in some countries in the 1920s and early 1930s of rigid totalitarian regimes, right or left, and Hitler's rise to power in Germany made me think seriously about the nature of democracy.

And although my book The Open Society and Its Enemies does not contain a single word about Hitler and Nazism, it was perceived as my contribution to the war against Hitler. This book is about the theory of democracy and the defense of democracy against old and new enemies. It was first published in 1945 and has since been reprinted many times. Its main characteristic, it seems to me, is the fact that only a few have been able to understand it correctly.

As everyone knows, democracy means popular rule or the power of the people, as opposed to aristocracy (rule by nobility) and monarchy (rule by one person). However, this literal meaning does not explain much, since the people as such do not rule anywhere. Governments rule everywhere, and also, unfortunately, bureaucracy - in other words, functionaries who never bear any responsibility or do so very rarely.

Also, while Britain, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are monarchies, they are also model democracies (with the possible exception of Sweden, where the bureaucracy has now become almost dictatorial). By contrast, East Germany, which calls itself a democracy, has nothing to do with this model.

Two forms of state

So what is the basis of democracy? De facto, there are only two forms of government: one in which a bloodless change of government through elections is possible, and one where this is impossible. Usually the first form is called democracy, and the second - dictatorship or tyranny. And there is no need to play with words (as in the case of the German Democratic Republic). The criterion is the possibility of a bloodless overthrow of the government.

The only way to overthrow the government is to vote

There are various methods to overthrow the government. Elections are the best: new elections or a vote in a freely elected parliament. Here is the base.

Therefore, in principle, the question is incorrect: who should rule? The people (plebs) or the best? "Good" workers or "bad" capitalists, how were they contrasted from the era of Plato to the era of Marx and beyond? Majority or minority? Left, Right or Centrists? All of these questions are incorrect. Because where a bloodless change of government is possible, it no longer matters who rules. Any government that knows that it can be removed at any moment seeks to please the voters. However, this trend is absent where government change is difficult.

Churchill

In order to demonstrate how important this theory of democracy is in practice, I would like to apply it to the problem of proportional elections. If I criticize here the form of voting established by the German constitution, it is only to start a debate on a problem which, as far as I know, is hardly discussed. The constitution should not be changed for any reason at any second, but a critical discussion in order to better understand its content will not interfere with it. In most Western European democracies, the current electoral system differs from the electoral systems of Great Britain and the United States, which are based on the idea of local representation. In the UK, each constituency sends one representative to parliament: the one who gets the most votes, regardless of party affiliation. He must represent the interests of the inhabitants of the constituency that elected him, regardless of their party affiliation. Of course, parties continue to exist and play an important role in the formation of government, but when a deputy from a constituency sees that in the interests of his district or even of the whole people he needs to vote against his party or even leave its ranks, he should do it. One of the greatest statesmen of our century, Winston Churchill changed parties twice and was never an obedient party activist.

The role of parties

In continental Europe, the situation is completely different. Under a proportional system, each party sends a certain number of its representatives to parliament, who are obliged to work out the votes received in the most devoted way. To this end, the role of parties is recognized by the Constitution, and the right to form them is considered one of the fundamental rights. A deputy is elected as a representative of one party or another. He is not allowed to vote against his party. He is morally connected with it, since he was elected only as a representative of this party (if he goes into opposition, it is considered his moral duty to resign, even if the constitution does not oblige him to do so).

Of course, I am aware of the need for the existence of parties. So far, no one has succeeded in creating a democratic system capable of doing without parties at all. Political parties are not the most "pleasant" phenomenon. However, without them political life stops: our democracies are not people's democracies, but party democracies, in other words, the rule of party leaders. Since the larger the party, the less democratic it is, as a result, those who vote for it have less and less influence on its leader and program.

It is wrong to believe that a parliament elected by a proportional system the best way represents the interests of the people. Such a parliament does not represent either the people or their interests, but only reflects the propagandistic influence of the parties on the population at the time of the elections. Moreover, it makes it difficult to turn election day into what it should be: a day of popular assessment of the government's performance.

There is no theory of democracy

Thus, there is neither an acceptable theory of democracy, nor a theory that recognizes the need for proportional elections. Therefore, we must ask ourselves how, in practice, the proportional system affects the formation of the government (which includes also the question of the possibility of the resignation of this government)?

Criticism of the proportional system

The more parties, the more difficult it is to form a government. This is an undeniable reality. Under a two-party system, government formation is very easy. But under a proportional system, even tiny parties can have a large (and often decisive) influence in the formation of government and, therefore, in political decision-making.

With this statement, no one will argue. And everyone knows that the proportional system leads to an increase in the number of parties. But as long as we believe that the "essence" of democracy is popular government, as democrats we have to put up with such difficulties, since the proportional system seems to many to be the most consistent with this "essence".

However, the proportional system and the multi-party system have another huge drawback when the question arises of changing the government through popular will, for example, by holding parliamentary elections. With a large number of parties, it is difficult to ensure that one of the parties has an absolute majority. And even the most marginal parties cannot be "fired", no matter how many votes they get.

Secondly, election day under this system does not become a day of popular evaluation of the government's performance. It happens that the government turns out to be a minority government. And for this reason, he cannot do what he considers necessary to do. It has to make concessions. Or it becomes a coalition government in which none of the participating parties bears any responsibility.

Thus, people get used to the fact that neither the government nor the political parties and their leaders bear any responsibility. And no one perceives the party's loss of 5 or 10 percent of the vote as a condemning verdict. In this regard, they think only of a temporary drop in popularity.

Therefore, even if the majority of voters want the resignation of the government, this does not mean at all that the resignation will happen. Because, even if the party that has hitherto had an absolute majority (and, it would seem, the greatest responsibility) loses this majority, under a proportional system it still remains the most influential force. It can form a government coalition based on some small party. And even if it loses the election, its leader continues to rule against the will of the majority, relying on the decision of a small party far from representing the "will of the people."

In addition, a small party can lead to the fall of the government without holding new elections and form a new government with opposition parties. But this goes against the very idea behind the proportional system: the idea that a party's influence should be matched by the number of its voters.

We often see situations like this. And where there are a large number of parties, and where they form coalitions, such situations are more than common.

Two party system

Of course, similar situations can arise in countries where there is no proportional system. But in countries like the UK and the US, there is a tendency for two competing parties to fight. In this regard, Winston Churchill said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." By this he wanted to emphasize that none of the forms of government is ideal and free from corruption. And yet, democracy is the best form of government found so far.

Based on this logic, I would say that a two-party system is the best form of democracy. Because it leads the parties to a self-critical evaluation. When one of the two big parties fails, it usually initiates sweeping domestic reforms on its own. This is a consequence of the competition and the unambiguous position of the electorate, which cannot be ignored. Thanks to this system, parties are forced to learn from their mistakes. Otherwise, they are finished.

In criticizing the proportional system, I am not at all trying to advise all democracies to abandon this formula. I would just like to start a debate on this issue. The belief that the moral superiority of the proportional system can be logically proved is naive and does not stand up to deep analysis.

Morally flawed theory

In conclusion, I would like to say that I do not agree with the idea that the proportional system is more democratic than the Anglo-American system, since it relies on the outdated theory of understanding democracy as the rule of the people (which refers us in turn to the so-called sovereignty theory). states). This theory is morally erroneous and obsolete, since it has been replaced by the theory of the possibility of displacement, which leads to the creation of a new majority.

The moral argument, I believe, is even more important than the practical argument that there is no need for more than two parties, responsible and competing with each other, to enable the voters to pass judgment on the government with their votes. A proportional system carries the danger that the decision of the majority will be reduced to a minimum and that the party that is defeated in the elections will not learn from it the necessary lessons that are necessary for the existence of democracy. In order for the majority to be able to make decisions, it is important to have a strong and skillful political opposition. Otherwise, voters are often forced to maintain bad government simply because there is no better alternative.

The true function of political parties

But isn't advocating a two-party system contradictory to the idea of an open society? Tolerance for different opinions and theories, called pluralism, is it not a characteristic of a free society seeking to find the truth? And isn't this pluralism manifested in the existence of a multi-party system?

I will answer as follows. The function of a political party is to form a government or, as an opposition, to exercise critical control over the government. To critically control means to control the tolerance of the government towards different opinions, ideologies, religions.

Some ideologies will try - successfully or unsuccessfully - to dominate the party or change it. Thus, there is an alternation of opinions, ideologies, religions, and, on the other hand, competition between large parties.

But the idea that pluralism of opinions must necessarily lead to a multi-party system seems to me politically incorrect. And not only politically, but also philosophically. Because too close connection with party politics does not agree well with the purity of the doctrine.