Collectivism is an instrument of despotism

Yakov Krotov, priest

Non-freedom breeds collectivism as theft generates clans and gangs. Collectivism is an adaptation to unfreedom.

Such is the totalitarianism generated by the Leninist putsch and preserved to this day.

Collectivism has two aspects: an instrument of despotism and a remedy for despotism.

Collectivism is an instrument of despotism, because the "power vertical", the "dictatorship of the center" are built on the denial of self-organization. One item is not taken into account.

Even in the army it is freer than in the collective, and the army - as much as despotism needs it - was and remains in Russia an island of relative freedom. Freedom, which is absolutely aimless (except during the fighting, when the initiative, albeit very local, is still needed). Freedom, from which they become animals and drink, but still autonomy.

Collectivism as a whole allows despotism to minimize the costs of dominance. One hundred million hostages train themselves and discipline themselves. Circular hostage with his motto "Do not drive the wave." Do not rock the boat if it rolls over!

Despotism proclaims a monolithic unity. It's a lie. Unfreedom stands on divide and conquer. "Separate," but not free people. Divide into collectives, into clans. It starts at the top. The Marshals of Napoleon were not too friendly with each other. The henchmen of Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev, Putin and that bank of scorpions.

The second hypostasis of collectivism: self-defense against despotism. People serve despotism, but bargain for themselves certain rights within unfreedom. Despotism makes such a deal, but with one condition: these are only those rights that are realized in a collective, in a clan. This is the meaning of "gardening partnerships." Khrushchev granted the right to poke around in the garden, but he granted it not to man, but to the collective. Such "partnerships" exist in any field of activity. True freedom - “private enterprise”, “individual business”, “free-lanserism” remains under great suspicion and pressure. And rightly so, because this behavior is dangerous for unfreedom. Within the framework of a clan, gang, battalion, certain liberties can be allowed - not a will, but specifically liberties.

As a result, the formation of “cotton wool”, “scoop”, and “homo sovieticus” - a collective person, takes place. This person perceives through the collective. The simplest example: a person declares, then does not believe in God, because "the church is deceiving me." By "church" he means the state religion. Which, in fact, deceives him, but in exchange provides a safe "satisfaction of spiritual needs." Man and "turned to faith" as part of a collective model of behavior. He did not replace atheism with faith, he replaced collective atheism with collective faith. He values faith for introducing him into the collective; he believes in God and in the collective at the same time (“trusts the Church”). The collective is national, the collective is family, the collective is state.

Such collectivism is sharply different from normal group behavior, when a person maintains critical thinking in relation to others, builds these relationships rationally, and deepens as he draws closer. Collectivism does not know the deep relations between its members. Collectivism is organized individualism, surface solidarity, forced. Hence, collectivism is always strong element of bitterness, discontent, often unconscious, but even more so destructive.

A collectivist man emigrates from Russia to Israel and seems to make a quantum leap. He had been an ordinary Russian anti-Semite all his life, but after becoming (formally) Jewish, he began ardently to hate the "dirty stinking Arabs" who "only occupy a place, poison the air." This is not even a transition, and certainly not an outcome, it is a leap from one clan to another.

One of the symptoms of collectivism is the principle of "do not get personal." Nomina sunt odiosa. True, this principle applies only to members of the collective, clan. They can not be criticized "in the forehead", both during life and after. But those who are not members of the clan can and should even be scolded by name, trampled, bulled and trolled to prove allegiance to the clan. Some complexity arises only where clans are something like nested dolls nested one into another or sheltered under one umbrella. Here the “wisdom of the collective” is required, which by touch determines how much one can “be friends against,” and how much one needs to maintain pseudo-unity so as not to be eaten.

The terrifying stories of how the whole clinic - or, more precisely, the clinic’s doctors — are being remade to fight the cove. Remade the building of the Tajiks. The bosses are stealing money for remaking. Cement mortar is poured into the toilet, the sewage system stops working. There is no ventilation, the authorities: "Heat, open the windows." Tajiks become infected and die. Doctors lack masks, etc. They become infected and die.

This is not the most heartbreaking, after all, doctors. The most is the transformation of librarians and teachers into medical orderlies.

The screams overwhelm the Internet: let them pay the families of the dead doctors as much as they pay in Britain.

The problem is different: people - doctors, librarians, teachers, Tajiks - meekly go to death. The thought of a strike does not occur.

Because there is a non-zero chance to survive? No. Because people think of themselves as a whole, like a clan. The clan has a very limited resource of resistance: it should not disappear, this is a boundary condition.

This psychology is already in the subconscious - or rather, it was formed from the first days of life, it is imposed in the family, in books, in household prescriptions.

It is dangerous to sympathize here, empathy is unacceptable. You can not sympathize with abstraction - but a clan, a collective is an abstraction. Moreover: these clans are part of not just despotism, but a huge military power. Krymnash. Not "mine," but "ours."

Woe to the one who will be excommunicated from the clan. Ostracism is worse than Athenian. The youth Vladimir Ulyanov survived this ostracism when his family from the clan of pedagogical apparatchiks was cursed. Ulyanov found a way out: he created his own clan, ruling Russia to this day ("Lake cooperative"). Clan clan kicked out. But this is a bruise, exacerbation of the drama, not overcoming. Therefore - if we are talking about the clan "gosoreligiya" - the creation of the clans "foreigners", "ancient Orthodox", etc. is not an option. They will take over, tame, make clans of the second and third levels. The way out is only in the development of the personal principle, the good old personalism. Do not grumble about "Western individualism", but learn to be ourselves and from ourselves, and not from the clan to cooperate, build, develop a common life.

Original is here