Waiting for a handout: why Russia fails to build normal capitalism

The Russian authorities are considering allocating at least RUB 500 billion for social spending. to address concerns about falling living standards ahead of the fall Duma elections, Reuters reported, citing two government sources.

This seemingly happy news for the majority of Russian citizens did not at all inspire analysts. The fact is that this assistance does not solve the main thing: creating conditions for the normal development of the country.

Publicist Marina Shapovalova writes on her blog:

“It is interesting to listen to blogging polls on YouTube on the streets of different cities: fortunately, there are dozens and hundreds of them in free (so far) access. Of the bystanders who do not refuse to answer questions, 8-9 out of ten are unhappy with Putin and his power. Yes, they are so unhappy that they talk about it a lot and willingly. They say that everything is bad, there is no hope, life is becoming more and more difficult, and it is clear who is to blame.

What should be done to make it better?

We need to increase wages and pensions.

Something else?

No, almost no one - with very rare exceptions - ever thinks of anything else.

Not enough money. Not enough for life. It is clear that in such a situation there is no more important problem, because this is about survival. But there is only one way to add money - by increasing salaries and pensions. No other way. Putin could do it, but for some reason he doesn't want to. And people do not know other ways to increase their well-being.

Thirty years have passed without the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who "fed the people" with pay, twenty years after the 1990s, and the impression is that we are back in the 1970s. Raise our salaries and pensions, don't allow stores to raise prices, and nothing else is needed.

Therefore, such attention to the topic of so-called corruption, or rather, to those riches that have accumulated in the hands of the dominant elites and officials: this could be given to "ordinary people"!

Capitalism has clearly failed in our country. Nobody wants to work for themselves. And he is not interested in why there is no such possibility, nor in how it could be created. About this - not a word..."

Network analyst Dmitry Milin fully agrees with this conclusion:

“Yes, unfortunately, both with Putin and without him, Russia is facing a “left turn”. The paternalistic and dependent sentiments pedagogical by Putin have sprung up. The population does not have any thoughts about who should work to provide increased wages and pensions with goods and services. "Money is taken" from the nightstand, and goods from the store. "Alas! The vast majority work in budgetary, quasi-budgetary, or tightly connected with budget financing enterprises. Property is mainly concentrated in the hands of the ruling bureaucracy. The ultimate owner is the autocrat. What kind of capitalism are you? expect and from whom?"

Analyst Sergey Duvanov goes even further:

“These people do not need freedom and democracy, and it’s not that government officials do not steal - they need a freebie. In order not to work, without straining to receive a gift for free. And such, unfortunately, the majority. This mentality is part of the "cultural" heritage inherited from the totalitarian past. Therefore, the main question is how to overcome this freeiness in social psychology, how to teach people not to wait for handouts from the authorities and business, but to demand the realization of their civil rights ... "

And Sabirjan Badretdinov summed up the theoretical basis, revealing the origins of the current oligarchic system in Russia:

“In all corners of the planet, the land elite sooner or later gives the reins of government to the industrial elite, that is, the bourgeoisie. This is an objective and inevitable process associated with the general economic progress of society. On a personal level, it happens something like this: The landowner Ivan Ivanovich first falls into credit dependence on the usurer Samuil Iosifovich, and then goes bankrupt and becomes an ordinary clerk at Sergei Petrovich's soap factory.

Approximately such cases have been described more than once in classical Russian literature.

When the process of transition from an agrarian society to a capitalist one for some reason is delayed, a unique and rather rare in history moment appears when the land aristocracy has already lost power, but the industrial elite (bourgeoisie) has not yet taken it. In such moments of complete equilibrium, the bureaucratic apparatus (more precisely, the state apparatus, including the army), which usually obeys the economically dominant class, sometimes becomes completely independent and self-reliant.

An example of this is the many military juntas in Latin America in the 1970s and in Turkey at about the same time.

In Russia in 1917, with the coming of the Bolsheviks to power, the state apparatus also became independent of the economically dominant classes (since the landowning elite had already lost power, and the bourgeoisie could not yet appropriate it). Therefore, the Bolshevik nomenklatura itself became the ruling class. (For example, Mikhail Voslensky wrote about this in his book "Nomenclature" and, using the example of Yugoslavia, Milovan Djilas in his work "New Class").

In the early 1990s, the process of the coming of the Russian bourgeoisie to power began, and in the early 2000s, this process, in fact, ended. Now the state apparatus is only a tool in the hands of Russian business oligarchs headed by Putin. Of course, Russian capitalism is unusual in the sense that there has been a bond (or rather, even a complete merger) between the top of the state apparatus and the economic elite, as is usually the case in authoritarian countries. In normal capitalist countries the state apparatus and the bourgeoisie do not coincide, but exist (for the most part) separately..."