An attack on capitalism: how artists revived the eternal confrontation of ideologies

Sergei Mitroshin

Today's attack on capitalism comes from art, which in this case could be considered "left" if it had only the characteristics of "left", but in fact, it is closer to the "right". So Trump is often in the frontmen here, and the “US Democrats” are presented as the incarnation of Marxist communists - the destroyers of proper capitalism.

Continued decay of the West

At the same time, the main reproach is that after the end of the competition between the main political systems that occurred with the destruction of the USSR, Western capitalism, as it were, lost the spirit of “correct capitalism”, returning to many imperfect practices of the 19th century.

In particular, he stopped striving to appear as a global democratic alternative. Public politicians have become smaller, until recently quite successfully corrupted by yesterday's opponent. The free press and investigative journalists have gone somewhere (they completely missed the “pandemic of the century”). The strange two-year pandemic, as it were, aggravated all these processes even more, forcing "free" societies to put on literally muzzles, and central banks to pump liquidity into parasitic financial structures (supposedly to prevent everything from dying). Which in turn led to the next stage of the unjust distribution of wealth.

The main people, by no means fattening, began to lose their savings in inflation, and financiers made fortunes literally out of thin air. For example, on June 18, 2021, the fortune of the French billionaire Bernard Arnault increased by $1.4 billion in a day and amounted to $200.4 billion. one and a half billion dollars.

Outer frame: strong currencies in our wallets have lost some of their strength, but weak ones have not gained it.

"Hello, I am your Chaos"

Cinema as the most mass art form, but also the most superficial one, did not remain aloof from all these phenomena. Films criticizing the growing social inequality and the ideology of uncontrolled consumption, widespread in the privileged classes of the "golden billion", began to seem significant. In 2022, the Palme d'Or at the 75th Cannes Film Festival was awarded to Ruben Östlund's Triangle of Sadness , which describes a rather banal for cinema situation of growing chaos from a seemingly super-stable social context of the social contract. Passengers of a sinking ultra-comfortable yacht (what a fresh metaphor!) are literally choking in the sewage of their toilets, and the attendants are rushing about from hatred for customers to the need to squeeze out of them the payment of the coveted contract, but also to save their own skin. Drowning, after all, all the same, all together.

Before the Triangle of Sorrow, the film Don't Look Up (2021) about the unprofessional work of modern "democratic media" that missed the death of the world in daily PR was successfully rolled. Four Oscars took the film "Parasite" (Gisaengchung, 2019), - about a family of Korean poor people who have infiltrated the family of rich people, in fact, the same, apparently, also parasites. The Franco-Mexican dystopian thriller The New Order (Nuevo orden, 2020) depicts the situation of a rich wedding, which is suddenly interrupted by bloody social conflicts.

The beginning is not accidental: a hired worker asks wealthy owners to help with paid treatment. And it costs them almost nothing. But what follows (after the actual refusal to help) looks like retribution for the lack of empathy among the ruling class. Although it is not entirely clear from what, theoretically, the obligations of third parties to pay for the needs of Imyarek could arise.

The rather murky Spanish thriller The Platform (2019) speaks of the defect in the distribution of wealth with even greater cynicism and, let's not be afraid of this word, lapidarity. From top to bottom in a skyscraper, a platform with food moves. And if the upper floors get everything in plenty, then on the two hundredth floor down - only leftovers, and even corpses.

But for me personally, this whole topic began with Federico Fellini's film "Orchestra Rehearsal" (Prova d'orchestra) in 1978, in which the orchestra (a metaphor for society) in the struggle to revise the social hierarchy (individual positions in the orchestra and relations with the Conductor) breaks social context. The idea that nice people, musicians, can break the social order, aroused my keenest interest in the late seventies. 1991 was ten years away. However, today, essentially anti-revolutionary cinema makes one wonder if the brilliant Fellini was on the wrong side then?

"You are a fascist". "No, it's you who are a fascist"

For some time now, there has been a rule: if the word fascism appeared in a discussion (“You are a fascist.” “No, you are a fascist”), then the discussion stopped. The "Chinese draw" is coming. Because it was believed that all the "fascist factology" was left far behind, in Nuremberg in 1945. Then it was determined who the Nazis were, what they did, how they should have been treated. Topic closed forever. However, time has passed, and "fascism" has not disappeared from discourse. The appearance of a new version of "Pinocchio" by Guillermo del Toro testifies to this.

In fact, it is more interesting to read an article about Pinocchio by Anton Dolin (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) than to watch del Toro's full-length puppet cartoon. At the same time, the story of the wooden dissident is visually unpleasant for me, and his disputes with the long-forgotten Mussolini do not arouse any interest at all, we have our own Mussolini here. The "crucifixion" of a wooden carpenter's son generally seems like bad taste. But the very emergence of "fascism" in today's artistic fantasy is hardly accidental. It testifies to the new forms of danger faced by Western society. The fact that modern fascism has gone beyond the forms of Nuremberg.

The West will not die. In any case not soon

So where did the idea of Western failure come from again? Yes, from the new price tag in a Western supermarket, from living and working conditions in modern Israel, and from the fact that jeans have become a luxury item again.

Or here is an argument: if you are not a tourist with a reserve of dollars and euros, then you will not fit into your vaunted West, it will fly you with all your dreams of democracy and reasonable order.

However, to be honest, if you are old, live on what you earned in the past, you will not fit into the economy of Voronezh in the same way. At least for the reason that there is no economy in conditional Voronezh, but the West still has an economy. In addition, the West does not have a global unspoken social contract, a la the one that the institutional economist Alexander Auzan once came up with: loyalty in exchange for stability. (By the way, it was torn apart unilaterally. Good, it turned out, a tacit agreement!) But so far there are thousands of different other agreements that ensure this stability in reality. This is a bus on schedule, and an abundance of goods, delicious bread in bakeries, clean water in an ordinary tap, compensation for medicines prescribed by a doctor (in France). No bloodshed at the wedding and a platform descending from top to bottom with leftovers. These are exaggerations invented by artists who are far from the historiosophical understanding of big politics. Often known. Often just buffoons. Although the West is being led to a choice: whether to let wild capitalism off the leash again on trade unions and social guarantees, or to give more rights to the democratic state in regulation, also calling it to account.

No matter how this issue is resolved, many processes have already received inertia. In the face of external threats, the West began to arm itself and is unlikely to stop even if the threats disappear. Awakened by the stupid politicians of the East and their fellow travelers - useful idiots in the West, the old ideological confrontation will not calm down by itself. I'm afraid the gun on the wall will go off in the third act.