Davydov D. A.

Stumbling Socialism, or Problems of Left-Wing Populism

The first quarter of the 21st century became a time of revival of the idea of socialism. However, the working class is no longer the assumed main subject of the progressive change. The rise of left-wing populism is replacing workers’ movements and corresponding parties. The key feature of such populism is its desire to unite all the oppressed and exploited in the struggle against capitalist “hegemony”. This attitude is reflected, in particular, in the idea of intersectionality, according to which different “systems” of oppression (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) and capitalist exploitation are intertwined and can reinforce each other. This idea leads to constant allusions to the general, so to say, “people’s” struggle against capitalism and various forms of oppression. Moreover, some leftist theorists directly insist on the necessity to turn to populism and build strategies for leftist “counterhegemony”.

The author thoroughly analyzes modern left-wing populist concepts and reveals serious flaws. The desire for justice and equality often disguises a thirst for privilege and radical hostility towards those who are viewed — often unfairly — as oppressors. Moreover, the struggle for socialism often means emphasizing freedom from labor for some, while ignoring economic hardships of others. The author classifies the contradictions of left-wing populism as insurmountable due to the impossibility of disentangling between the struggle for equality and for the private interests of individual groups. According to his conclusion, under the conditions when zero-sum games are inevitable, for the poor and socially vulnerable strategies for defending their own interests will become increasingly profitable and attractive in contrast to both populist projects and the idea of socialism per se, which increasingly implies the abandonment of these interests without guarantees of any returns in the future.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2024-112-1-29-44

Pages: 29-44

Virtues against Communism Fishman. L.G. The Age of Virtues: After Soviet Morality. Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2022

The article is dedicated to comprehending the ideas set forth in the monograph by Leonid Fishman The Age of Virtues: After Soviet Morality, which raises the question of the reasons for the rapid destruction of “high” communist morality in the USSR, as well as the sliding of the Russian society in the 1990s into a state of “war of all against all”. Setting himself the task of tracing how “evil” is born from “good”, Fishman draws attention to the fact that the communist morality of the Soviet Union contained an internal contradiction due to the combination of what can be called virtue ethics and the ethics of principles. Virtues consist of values that are relevant to certain communities. At the same time, virtue ethics has a dual nature. Under certain social circumstances, it contributes to nurturing a harmonious individual who strives for high social goals. This happens if the ethics of principles rises above it, setting higher goals and general ideas about how to treat other members of society. But if the ethics of principles ceases to function, nothing prevents the virtues from serving pure evil, for even members of mafia clans are not strangers to heroism, devotion, and honor. Fishman demonstrates how the virtue ethics gradually replaced the ethics of principles, bringing closer the collapse of the great communist project.

According to Dmitry Davydov’s conclusion, the value of Fishman’s research is greater than just historical. No communist project can exclude either its humanistic core, with the focus on the liberation of the individual, or its emphasis on the socialization of the individual in these or other communities. But any “harmonious” personality and any community that serves “the good” risk transforming into their opposites: into a selfish individual and an association of “friends”, for whom everyone “who is not with us” is an enemy.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2022-107-4-186-196

Pages: 186-196

From “Power of the Worthy” to “Power of the Popular”: Splendors and Miseries of Meritocracy in a New Technological Era

The article is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of meri tocracy, which arouses considerable interest today both in political journalism and academia. The article shows that meritocracy has largely become the ideo logy of modern neoliberal elites, and therefore often serves as a cover for the actual plutocracy. Although the framework of cognitive capitalism witnesses a certain movement towards meritocratic principles of the formation of elites, it simultaneously prepares ground for the emergence of a kind of “trap of meritocracy”, when, for a number of reasons, the layer of “educated and talented” turns into a hereditary caste.

At the same time, according to the author, the future hardly belongs to meritocrats, no matter how well they fit into the realities of the high-tech economy. New developments in artificial intelligence are jeopardizing many forms of intellectual work, leading to a cut-throat competition for a decreasing number of high-paying jobs. In turn, the bourgeois world of labor is being replaced by a post-capitalist world of idleness and creativity as the production of intangible goods. The rapid development of social media makes emotional and social intelligence, as well as the ability to achieve popularity and influence through media activities, increasingly important. In other words, modern technology makes life difficult for cognitive elites, while opening up enormous opportunities for very different social groups. In this regard, the author puts forward a hypothesis according to which popularity will become a key criterion for the formation of elites in the foreseeable future rather than merit. Postcapitalist personocracy will gradually replace bourgeois meritocracy, which, however, does not exclude the possibility of the preservation of the myth of meritocracy, implying that those who can skillfully attract attention will be assigned various merits.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2021-103-4-100-114

Pages: 100-114

Revolution of Personality, or the Rise of Personaliat

The idea of the post-capitalist society has long been associated with the “grassroots” struggle of the exploited classes for a society that is free from all forms of domination and exploitation. D.Davydov does not consider this approach scientific and proposes one should change the lens of research and focus on what is happening at the level of the elites, where the new world is slowly maturing and new relationships are often intertwined with the old ones.

The article is devoted to the justification of the argument, according to which the development of the post-capitalist social relations has been going on for a relatively long time — as the rise of people who “possess a personality” (personaliat). The author demonstrates that the unfolding processes can be explained by the deep economic changes — the transformation of creativity into the predominant source of consumer values. The author elaborates the idea that the essence of the knowledge economy is not capitalist or even is anti-capitalist, but at the same time he suggests that it is the nature of social relations around creative activity that should be considered rather than creative activity per se. From his point of view, despite the fact that the consequences of such activities complicate the functioning of the capitalist economy, the demise of the old economy does not mean that somewhere beyond the horizon we will have a cloudless non-antagonistic future. It is much more relevant to view post-capitalist transformation as the gradual rise to dominance of those who possess power over public attention.

The author starts the article with a brief “history of personality” and after that demonstrates how the depersonalized world was gradually “colonized” by creative public figures. According to his conclusion, today we witness a large-scale transformation of the Political, which is associated with the trend that representatives of personaliat assumed roles of key actors in the political process. Power is transferred from those with money to those with personality. However, this shift in itself hardly guarantees the establishment of an egalitarian social order that has overcome all forms of alienation and inequality. Moreover, at the moment such prospect looks doubtful.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2020-99-4-68-89

Pages: 68-89