Can't get from rags to riches. Why our elite are ashamed of their wealth

The economist Dmitry Prokofiyev drew amusing analogies when he studied the book of the greatest Marxist historian of the twentieth century Eric Hobsbawm "Bandits", published in English back in 1969.

It outlines the concept of the "social bandit", who, in the mind of Hobsbawm, is primarily a peasant who is faced with the realities of the capitalist world and responds to its challenges with arms in hand. Moreover, as Hobsbawm notes, the Middle Ages for a significant part of the world around us (even the European one) ended at best after World War II. It is also noteworthy that Hobsbawm saw social and economic progress as a "cure for banditry".

“In its broader sense, 'modernization', that is, the combination of economic development and effective communication and public administration, deprives any banditry (including social) of its breeding ground”, - Hobsbawm points out. - For example, in tsarist Russia, where robbery was endemic or epidemic in most of the country until the middle of the 18th century, by the end of it practically disappeared from the urban environs, and by the middle of the 19th century, in general, it retreated to restless and unpacified areas in particular, inhabited by national minorities. The abolition of serfdom in 1861 marked the end of a long line of government decrees against banditry, the last apparently issued in 1864”.

The most interesting for the Russian reader in Hobsbawm's book is the chapter "Economics and the Politics of Banditry" in which he explains how bandits are embedded in the economic system, and why the authorities, despite all the "anti-bandit" rhetoric, welcome bandits and support mutually beneficial relations.

The “bandit” himself, paradoxical as it sounds, is not “an enemy” for a corrupt government, but an important element of a power structure that guarantees the subordination of those who have nothing to sell but their own labor. And in itself the existence of a "bandit" is, first of all, a political decision of the "power".

“From the economic point of view, the bandit is not the most interesting figure... He contributes to the accumulation of local capital - and, moreover, almost certainly in the hands of those who parasitize on it than in their own hands. When he steals from transit trade, his economic impact can be compared to the tourism business, which also profits from foreigners, in this sense the robbers from the mountains of Sardinia and the developers of the Côte d'Azur are economically similar phenomena. This is about what it all comes down to...

...The key moment of the bandit's social position is his duality. He is an outsider and rebel who refuses to follow his usual beggar role and achieves his goal with the only resources available to the poor - strength, cunning and determination.

This puts him next to the poor: he is one of them. This puts him in opposition to the hierarchy of wealth and influence: he is outside of it. Nothing will turn a peasant robber into a “gentleman” in the circles where he moves. You can't get into the know from the bottom.

At the same time, the bandit is inevitably drawn into the web of wealth and power, because, unlike other peasants, he acquires wealth and exercises power. He is "one of us" in a constant process of assimilation with "them." The more successful he is as a bandit, the more he simultaneously represents and protects the poor and becomes part of the system of the rich..."

According to Prokofiev himself, “Hobsbawm gives an almost exhaustive explanation of what is going on in the head of the Russian top-1000 ruling families, which - at the same time (!) - successfully squeeze the“ Soviet legacy ”they have inherited, ship the extracted to the same“ conditional West ” ", With whom they are demonstratively" at enmity ", and at the same time position themselves as defenders of the" national interests "invented by them. The bandit is a systemic representative of the “periphery” who seeks to become a part of the “center” and does not understand why, having brought a lot of money to this “center”, he still does not become a part of it..."

And here is what the journalist Pavel Pryanikov thinks about this concept:

“Russia is not an exception, but is on a par with many countries of the Second World. This dynastic nomenclature is the same property of our fellows on the historical track of Turkey and Mexico. Indonesia or Brazil.

But in Russia the situation is aggravated by the fact that there is (so far) no dynastic property. Simply because of a short historical process (private property in the Russian Federation is only 30 years old).

Therefore, I write every time that the real Transit, which endlessly discusses the political class, is not a transfer of power from Yeltsin to Putin, but from Putin to a new successor, but a transfer of legal property.

And here we see full seams. The nomenclature is ashamed of its ownership. He writes everything to offshore companies, and his real estate in Russia - to the "Russian Federation" or LDYBSH. A person who is ashamed hides his assets - it is impossible to build capitalism with him.

The nomenklatura still cannot understand that, for example, relatively honest courts and a parliament with discussions and broad representation are not a threat to the authorities, not an instrument for the “fifth column,” but a help to the nomenclature. That real courts and parliament legalize power and property. And this is also an additional support to their status: the courts and parliament will help an official, and even more so his children and relatives, who recorded everything on the "Russian Federation", much more than the riot police and the FSB.

Those. until the nomenclature of Russia, with the consciousness of temporary workers, did not understand and, moreover, did not demonstrate a course towards bourgeois reforms, there is no real Transit..."