A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism. Communist Manifesto

A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism
The first sentence is from The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848 by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). The Russian edition was first published in 1869 in Geneva; several illegal editions appeared in Russia in the 1980s. 19th century
The phrase usually serves for all kinds of paraphrases, with the replacement of the word “communism” with another one that matches the case, and is used to describe a situation where a potential threat can come true, some probable phenomenon can become a reality, etc.

Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. - M.: "Lokid-Press". Vadim Serov. 2003 .

See what "A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism" is in other dictionaries:

- (ghost is obsolete), ghost, husband. 1. What is seen, imagined, a vision, an image of something. “And two young ghosts quietly stand before me, two lovely shadows.” Pushkin. "The Ghost of Irrevocable Days." Pushkin. A ghost haunts Europe the ghost of communism ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

ghost- , a, m. ** A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism. // An expression from the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” by KMarx and F. Engels, 1848 /. 1. On the spread and triumph of communist ideas. ◘ While the specter of communism wandered nonchalantly... ... Explanatory Dictionary of the Language of Soviet Deputies

The Phantom of Freedom Le fantôme de la liberté Genre comedy drama parable ... Wikipedia

Le fantôme de la liberté ... Wikipedia

welcome ghost- an allusion to the Communist Manifesto (A ghost roams Europe, the ghost of communism ...): ஐ The only savior of the masses, I realized, can only be a tooth-grinding terrorist, who will rein in foul freedoms, captured by millions of greasy paws, ... ... Lem's world - dictionary and guide

- 'GHOSTS OF MARX' ('Spectres de Marx') Derrida's book, published in French in 1993, translated into English and published in the USA in 1994. Initially, a report under the same title was read by Derrida at a conference in ... ...

GHOSTS OF MARX- (Spectres de Marx) book by Derrida, published in French in 1993, translated into English and published in the USA in 1994. Initially, a report under the same title was read by Derrida at a conference at the University of California in ... Sociology: Encyclopedia

- (Spectres de Marx) Derrida's book, published in French in 1993, translated into English and published in the USA in 1994. Initially, a report under the same title was read by Derrida at a conference at the University of California at ... ... History of Philosophy: Encyclopedia

A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels This ghost ... wanders somewhere in Europe, but for some reason it stops here. Enough of the wanderers. Viktor Chernomyrdin Socialism is the opium of the proletariat. Graffiti (London, ... ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms

From French: Le spectre rouge. Literally: Red ghost. From the title of the political pamphlet "Red Ghost 1852" (1851) French journalist Auguste Romier (1800-1855), who warned of the threat of revolution and civil war. They are … Dictionary of winged words and expressions

A ghost haunts Europe - the ghost of communism. All the forces of old Europe have united for the sacred persecution of this ghost: the pope and the tsar, Metternich and Guizot, the French radicals and the German policemen.

Where is the opposition party that its opponents in power would not slander as communist? Where is the opposition party which, in its turn, does not throw the stigmatizing accusation of communism both at the more advanced representatives of the opposition and at its reactionary opponents?

Two conclusions follow from this fact.

Communism is already recognized as a force by all European forces.

It is time for the communists to openly state their views, their goals, their aspirations before the whole world, and to oppose the tales of the specter of communism with the manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities gathered in London and drew up the following "Manifesto", which is published in English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish.

The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, landowner and serf, master and apprentice, in short, oppressor and oppressed, were in eternal antagonism to each other, waged an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open struggle, which always ended in a revolutionary reorganization of the entire public edifice or in the common death of those fighting. classes.

In previous historical epochs we find almost everywhere the complete dismemberment of society into different classes, a whole ladder of different social positions. In ancient Rome we meet patricians, horsemen, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages - feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, apprentices, serfs, and besides, in almost each of these classes - there are still special gradations.

Coming out of the bowels of the lost feudal society, modern bourgeois society has not eliminated class contradictions. It only put new classes, new conditions of oppression and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, differs, however, in that it has simplified class contradictions: society is more and more splitting into two large hostile camps, into two large classes facing each other—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages came the free population of the first cities; from this class of townspeople developed the first elements of the bourgeoisie.

The discovery of America and the sea route around Africa created a new field of activity for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, exchange with the colonies, the increase in the number of means of exchange and goods in general, gave an impetus hitherto unheard of to trade, navigation, industry, and thus caused the rapid development of the revolutionary element in the disintegrating feudal society.

The former feudal or guild organization of industry could no longer satisfy the demand that grew with the new markets. Manufactory took its place. The guild masters were supplanted by the industrial middle class; the division of labor between the various corporations disappeared, giving way to a division of labor within the individual workshop.

But the markets were growing, the demand was increasing. Manufactory could no longer satisfy him. Then steam and the machine revolutionized the industry. The place of manufacture has been taken by modern large-scale industry, the place of the industrial middle class has been taken by millionaire industrialists, the leaders of entire industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Large-scale industry has created a world market, prepared by the discovery of America. The world market has caused a colossal development of trade, navigation and means of overland communication. This, in turn, had an effect on the expansion of industry, and in the same measure that industry, trade, navigation, railways grew, the bourgeoisie developed, it increased its capitals and pushed into the background all the classes inherited from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, that the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long process of development, of a series of revolutions in the mode of production and exchange.

Each of these stages in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political success. An oppressed estate under the rule of feudal lords, an armed and self-governing association in a commune, here an independent city republic, there a third, taxable estate of the monarchy, then, during the period of manufacture, a counterbalance to the nobility in a estate or absolute monarchy and the main basis of large monarchies in general, finally , since the establishment of large-scale industry and the world market, it has won for itself an exclusive political dominance in the modern representative state. Modern state power is only a committee that manages the common affairs of the entire bourgeois class.

The bourgeoisie has played an extremely revolutionary role in history.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has achieved dominance, has destroyed all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. She ruthlessly tore apart the motley feudal fetters that tied a person to his "natural masters", and left no other connection between people, except for bare interest, a heartless "chistogan". In the icy water of selfish calculation, she drowned the sacred awe of religious ecstasy, chivalrous enthusiasm, petty-bourgeois sentimentality. It has transformed the personal dignity of man into an exchangeable value, and has replaced innumerable freedoms granted and acquired with one unscrupulous freedom of trade. In a word, it has replaced exploitation covered by religious and political illusions with open, shameless, direct, callous exploitation.

The bourgeoisie deprived of the sacred halo all kinds of activity, which until then were considered honorable and which were looked at with reverent awe. She turned a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, a poet, a man of science into her paid employees.

The bourgeoisie tore off their touchingly sentimental veil from family relations and reduced them to purely monetary relations.

The bourgeoisie has shown that the crude display of strength in the Middle Ages, which is so admired by the reactionaries, found its natural complement in laziness and immobility. She showed for the first time what human activity can achieve. She created marvels of art, but of a very different kind than Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; she made completely different campaigns than the migration of peoples and the crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly causing upheavals in the instruments of production, without revolutionizing, consequently, the relations of production, and, consequently, the totality of social relations. On the contrary, the first condition for the existence of all former industrial classes was the preservation of the old mode of production unchanged. Incessant upheavals in production, the constant upheaval of all social relations, eternal uncertainty and movement distinguish the bourgeois era from all others. All frozen, rusted relations, together with their accompanying, centuries-honored ideas and views, are destroyed, all newly emerging ones turn out to be outdated before they have time to ossify. Everything classy and stagnant disappears, everything sacred is defiled, and people finally come to the need to look with sober eyes at their life situation and their mutual relations.

The Communist Manifesto is the greatest programmatic document of scientific communism. “This little booklet is worth entire volumes: the whole organized and fighting proletariat of the civilized world still lives and moves in its spirit” (Lenin). Written by K. Marx and F. Engels as a program of the Communist League, the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was first published in London in February 1848 in a separate edition of 23 pages. In March-July 1848, the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was published in the democratic organ of German emigrants "Deutsche Londoner Zeitung" ("German London newspaper"). The German text was reprinted in London in the same 1848 as a separate pamphlet of 30 pages, in which some typographical errors of the first edition were corrected and punctuation improved. This text was subsequently put by Marx and Engels as the basis for subsequent authorized editions. In 1848, the Manifesto was also translated into a number of European languages (French, Polish, Italian, Danish, Flemish and Swedish). The names of the authors of the Manifesto were not mentioned in the editions of 1848; for the first time they were listed in print in 1850 with the publication of the first English translation in the Chartist organ "Red Republican") ("Red Republican") in a preface written by the editor of this journal, J. Gurney.

In 1872 a new German edition of the Manifesto was published with minor corrections by the author and with a preface by Marx and Engels. This edition, like the subsequent German editions of 1883 and 1890, came out under the title The Communist Manifesto.

The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party was published in 1869 in Geneva in a translation by Bakunin, who distorted the contents of the Manifesto in a number of places. The shortcomings of the first edition were eliminated in the edition published in Geneva in 1882 in Plekhanov's translation. The Plekhanov translation marked the beginning of the widespread dissemination of the ideas of the Manifesto in Russia. Attaching great importance to the propaganda of Marxism in Russia, Marx and Engels wrote a special preface to this edition.

After Marx's death, a number of editions of the Manifesto came out, reviewed by Engels: in 1883 a German edition with a preface by Engels; in 1888 an English edition translated by S. Moore, edited by Engels and supplied by him with a preface and notes; in 1890 a German edition with a new preface by Engels. Engels also wrote several notes to the latest edition. In 1885, the newspaper Socialiste (Socialist) published a French translation of the Manifesto, made by Marx's daughter Laura Lafargue and reviewed by Engels. Engels wrote a preface to the Polish edition of the Manifesto in 1892 and to the Italian edition of 1893. – 419.

From time to time we began to hold conferences devoted to the life and work of philosophers who worked in the 60s, close in spirit to our wave of democratization and perestroika. The past cannot be overcome silently. But at the same time, it cannot be denigrated, because if new promises are not fulfilled, then it can return. The past is a glorious and dangerous thing at the same time. Just in case, it should be handled with care so as not to stain it and not to become infected with viruses that our pampered body can no longer grow. Perhaps we should learn to treat the departed with delicacy and courtesy from our ancestors, who honored and respected the dead and communicated with them on certain fixed days. In fact, we, as historians of the past and clinists of the present, original mediums that evoke the "spirit of ancestors", must observe certain rules for communicating with them. We must not forget about them, so as not to cut off the roots that give strength. But we should not importunately invite them or constantly think about them, so that they do not interfere with our creative work. There remains a certain paradoxical movement, which is regulated not so much by logic as by ethics. Oddly enough, the most difficult thing is to be polite in relation to the recent past.

"A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism"

These words at the beginning of the Manifesto are enchanting and alarming. If something seems to be, you need to be especially careful. Marx's attention is drawn to the ghosts of bourgeois society. This is an illusory world put on its head. The reality of bourgeois society is an abode of ghosts, illusory forms of consciousness. Therefore, criticism of economic theories leads Marx to the conclusion that its principles correspond to established social relations, which, being inauthentic, inhuman, distort the science that describes them. This does not meet the generally accepted criteria of scientificity, according to which the theory is tested by facts. Marx criticizes the "facts" themselves and exposes them as ghosts. Strictly speaking, his teaching is not scientific, if the word is used in the usual positivist sense of the word. The problem arises from the evaluative understanding of non-science, which is considered something bad. Marxism was understood by some as a science, by others as an ideology. Science is built on facts, not values. Many social science methodologists do not see much difference between them, considering values independent of individual consciousness. Both must be recognized.

In fact, the difference between facts and values is that the facts "do their job" even if we do not recognize them. On the contrary, values are reality if they are fulfilled not only in consciousness, but also in activity. Of course, their separation to some extent turns out to be artificial, and therefore science cannot be considered free from value judgments. This dream of M. Weber to free himself from values was critically perceived by Habermas, who in his well-known work “Technology and Science as Ideology” revealed in these objective forms, based solely on natural parameters and technical capabilities, a whole layer of implicit prerequisites of a value-ideological nature. Therefore, even positive science also turns out to be the home of ghosts.

The Manifesto characterizes communism as a ghost. But whose? Maybe this is the ghost of the innocently murdered Christ, who dreamed of equality and justice. Like the shadow of Hamlet's father, he called for vengeance. Christ was betrayed a second time at the dawn of bourgeois society, when the market destroyed the temple. The yellow metal burned the hearts of people with a thirst for profit, forced them not only to trade, but also to rob, exploit the labor of others. But it has always been so. Anyone who has studied the history of the Middle Ages knows that the division of property and the injustice that reigned in society was no less, and perhaps much greater, than in bourgeois society. A. Smith rightly argued that it is the market that ensures equal rights and freedom of people. If goods are produced, some sell and others buy, this means that they do not kill or take away. But the paradox is that in a society where living conditions were vastly less comfortable and more brutal, there was nonetheless much more unity than even now.

Communism was a ghost that roamed the intellectual fields of Europe. He became a ghost that haunted subtle, conscientious people. The utopian socialists undoubtedly considered themselves responsible to Christian values rejected by the market. Dostoevsky and Weber, each in their own way, carried out an act of repentance and reconciliation. The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky convinces Christ to return back to his kingdom and not interfere with ruling on earth like a human being. Weber, on the contrary, believes that Christian values were not betrayed, but became the basis of civilized capitalism. The question of the ghosts of Marx was recently raised by J. Derrida, who, as is well known, was fond of Marxism in his youth and, apparently, in his mature years, realized the traces of its influence. Communism has become a ghost for us - former Marxists, who, unable to recognize the new market ideology, nevertheless, no longer believe in the realizability of Marxism.

Our ancestors roam like restless ghosts. The descendants do not pay tribute to them, forget or denigrate them, and therefore, having already become dead, they get us and not only in nightmares. Today we are building capitalism, but its builders themselves constantly doubt it. In a hysterical fit of suspicion and hatred, they are able to destroy each other. The present not only did not become clear, but, on the contrary, became even more illusory. The idol of the market is also a ghost, and more and more people are becoming more and more aware of this. Sometimes I want to ask them together: is it really impossible to just live and learn from life itself? However, life is a complicated thing and it usually learns too late. The truths of life ripen when they are no longer needed. So you always have to listen to ghosts. Ghosts come from the past, they are the messengers of the dead who have not calmed down. These ghosts live among us and disturb us with their appearance. But should we trust them implicitly? Involuntarily, one has to remember the old rules of communication with the dead. The ancients felt the danger of death and at the same time wanted to use the "spirit of the ancestors" for the benefit of the living. So we must not forget our past, if we do not want it to get us in the form of ghosts.

It seems to us that the generation of the sixties did not know how to finally deal with Stalinism. In fact, they did not allow the denigration of the past and did not consider Marxism to be a false doctrine in principle; they tried to humanize it rather than discard it, as happened in the 90s. We can criticize the founders of "diamat" and "istmat", but the networks of concepts they developed still keep us their cells. So it was with the sixties. We must find a responsible and at the same time respectful and distant way of relating to our predecessors. To do this, we must, first of all, determine their degree of influence on ourselves. If someone, even reading only foreign literature and only in the original language, thinks that he is absolutely free from the philosophical discourse of the 30s, 50s, 69s, then he is greatly mistaken. The past lives and acts in the present not as a philosophical discourse, but as a form of life. This is the "historical necessity", which is given as fate. Philosophers should not embellish his face by peculiar cosmetic operations, although washing the clothes of the past is one of the duties of historians.

Marxism and its society

The question is, "what should we do today?" is not purely Russian. Any honest intellectual always thinks and talks about this, although our time is not conducive to posing questions about the meaning and purpose of being. It even prevents such questions, although in a different way than before. If earlier the state power, interested in self-preservation, acted as the main strangler of freedom, today the conformist system of order exists before or in addition to power. It is determined by the continual process of circulation of goods, knowledge, sexuality, in which a person functions without experiencing the pressure of forces alien to him that causes a sharp protest. In other words, before a person experienced drives, had natural needs and faced strong obstacles to their realization in the form of a simple lack or prohibition. Today, especially in developed countries, order has penetrated the level of the needs themselves, while they are not suppressed, but stimulated. But the paradox is that since there are no prohibitions, a person no longer feels attraction. There is no conflict between “I want” and “I can”, and thus the obvious, directly experienced by everyone experience of a collision with an alien force disappears. From a modern point of view, the society in which Marx lived was rough and even cruel, but simple and honest. It is characterized by exploitation, colonization, poverty, revolutions, wars and, finally, alienation. But the fact of the matter is that in today's affluent society, people feel that all is not well, but they do not have the pathos characteristic of the early critics of capitalism. After all, how can intellectuals criticize modern society if everyone is fed and happy? The violent dramas of early history were replaced by psychodramas. All are full, but neurotic. Therefore, in Freud, unlike Marx, the instance of order was not being, but consciousness, exploiting the energy of libido. Lacan noted the transformation of the authoritative instance, which Freud acted as the figure of the Father, into the form of the symbolic: the Other is language. From here, a subtle kind of “criticism of ideology” - cognitive psychoanalysis - comes to the forefront instead of the class struggle. But even this form of protest is no longer given to us. Sexual liberation, in which the current older generation has invested a lot of effort, has led to an unexpected result - the disappearance of sexual desire. Sexuality, having stepped over its artificially and forcibly kept from outside the boundaries of the matrimonial bedroom, poured in a wide stream onto the streets, onto the stages, onto the screens. Everything became sexual, and this completely drained the libido, bringing one step closer to the ideal of Eastern nirvana, which in fact is a radical threat to the active West. The teachings of Freud, like those of Marx, also obeyed the fateful formula: "we wanted the best, but it turned out as always." First, the working class "dissolved", and then the "men" and "women" themselves, who fought for emancipation.

The suspicion arises that the proletariat is no longer a class, that the forms of oppression in society are much more diverse than the capitalist exploitation described by Marx. Moreover, the mysterious "trickster" of Marx's formulas, strictly speaking, is not only the proletarian, but any person who lives on wages. Marx approached the assessment of bourgeois society not in a philistine way, with a suspicion of general deceit. It is unlikely that society would put up with deceit for a long time. In the end, those who are deceived and exploited find a way to be freed. The colonies have achieved independence, the proletarians have risen from their knees and are fighting for their rights. One way or another, the possibility of increasing capital by fraud and violence is constantly decreasing. Obviously, if the bourgeoisie lives by deceit and exploitation of the rest, then sooner or later it will be overthrown. Marx insisted on the inevitability of revolution, not only because of the Christian understanding of justice. Objectively, he evaluates bourgeois society in general and as a whole as "honest" and "fair", based on an equivalent exchange, pursuing all sorts of deceit, unscrupulousness in business. The essence of the market is not the ability to deceive the buyer, but, on the contrary, the possibility of a fair exchange. Due to the "wildness" of our current market, we do not understand even A. Smith, who considered the market a democratic institution. Marx could not adhere to the Christian-moralistic opposition of the temple and the market, the understanding of capitalist society as a kind of satanic regime, such as it is described in V. Solovyov's Three Conversations. Still, our so-called "Slavophile" position in relation to European bourgeois society turns out to be biased, infected with the ideals of Orthodoxy and, in general, the religious denial of worldly wealth, and even more so acquired through trade. It must be said that in the West, too, the moralistic approach to assessing bourgeois society has not yet been completely outlived. If morality claims to be absolute, then how can one evaluate morality itself and distinguish bad morality from good morality? The market removes the opposition between good and evil and wants to become the universal measure of all values that can be reduced to commodity value.

But where does the “unearned” come from in bourgeois society? According to Marx, its source is a specific commodity, which is labor power. It is bought at a "consumer" value, and in the process of labor it produces a commodity that is sold at a different price. The problem with labor power is not its unfair use. In the end, no one will ever receive as much as he earned with his own labor, because the very assessment of labor and its results turns out to be fundamentally relative. Even the meritorious and almost sacred work of cultivating the land and producing the most essential products has environmental consequences and can therefore be considered redundant. The dual evaluation of labor becomes even more striking when it comes to war production or the production of luxury goods or other unnecessary things. It is clear that this work is more harmful than useful. No less problems arise with the economic evaluation of intellectual and creative work. But in any case, Marx's main argument against bourgeois society is not the deceit and exploitation of the worker, but general alienation, from which, Marx believed, only the proletarian revolution can save us, because, having freed himself, the worker will free the whole society. After all, it is he who, by his work, by going to work and then shopping, reproduces and maintains the existing order of alienation. Man has been turned not only into labor power, but into a commodity, and this is the source and consequence of alienation.

It can be concluded that Marx and other classical philosophers, supporters of determinism, materialism and the theory of reflection had serious objective reasons to adhere to a realistic attitude, which is now considered naive. In phenomenology, being disappears and cognizable “objects” turn out to be the meanings of consciousness. In linguistic philosophy, scientific statements about facts are declared a kind of myth, since observation is loaded with theory. But even modern philosophers are not born idealists. Modernity is characterized by a lack of reality. Symbols and signs have so enslaved things that the latter have become simulacra. Our images are like icons, behind which there is nothing, and they themselves are objects of worship. This forces one to be more careful about not only idealism, but also materialism. Simply restoring it is clearly not enough to deal with the illusions and ghosts that have enslaved us. An example would be the fate of the Marxist theory of liberation in the West.

one dimensional man

In his famous book, Marcuse, whose ideas, as a comparative analysis shows, are developed by many modern intellectuals, characterized modernity as an amazing unity of opposing groups, classes, generations, sexes, which from time immemorial have waged a war not for life, but for death. Power has always oppressed and deceived, and people knew this much better than intellectuals. Therefore, the criticism of ideology, which has become the business of the professional intelligentsia, is not so effective. It is no coincidence that Marx announced the end of criticism and the need for a practical change in the conditions that give rise to and reproduce illusory forms of consciousness.

The apparent social situation of the 19th century, of which the polarization of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was an explosive element, changed radically in the 20th century, when they began to converge so much that they started talking about the "dissolution" of the working class. Of course, even today there are many people who are unhappy with what they have and envy more affluent citizens. However, since the medieval state, which united people through compassion and forgiveness, there has never been a common interest for which different classes could overcome hostility. What is the reason for the fading of class battles, under the sign of which the 19th and early 20th centuries swept through? Undoubtedly, the increase in lifestyle has reached such a level that the difference between the rich and the poor has been significantly smoothed out. Democracy brought together the masses and power, and politics ceased to interest the population. But the main achievement of the twentieth century was that people began to value their well-being so much that they were willing to pay any price for it, up to the renunciation of freedom. Under these conditions, the criticism of ideology lost support from below and fell into oblivion. If earlier it was forbidden from above, and vice versa, supported by the oppressed, today it is assimilated by the authorities and does not cause support from those who are deceived. People have ceased to feel the pressure of power also because it has changed its form. Foucault called modern power "bio-power", defining it as concern for life. Indeed, today order is maintained not so much by threats and punishments (used to intimidate that part of the population to which the “ethics of discourse” does not reach and therefore there is a need to help the truth with a whip), but by advice and recommendations about a varied, healthy and long life. Who can throw a stone at the institution of advisers and experts concerned with the well-being and health of people?

Marcuse calls the modern form of power instrumental: technological progress creates forms of life (and power) that seem to reconcile the forces opposing the system, but in fact sweep away or refute all protest in the name of the historical perspective of freedom from toil and domination. Modern society has the ability to restrain qualitative social changes, as a result of which essentially new institutions, a new direction of the productive process and new forms of human existence could be established. Since the Marxist program to eliminate the conditions of false consciousness has failed for reasons of achieving effective forms of social consent based on increasing well-being, both in the capitalist and communist worlds, the idea of changing the critical project arises. But, first of all, it is necessary to justify its necessity, and most importantly - the social base. Why destroy such a “good society”, where citizens are promised in words and gradually put into practice the age-old dream of an earthly paradise? Dostoevsky in his famous "Legend ..." and V. Solovyov in "Three conversations ..." described the onset of the kingdom of Antichrist, which is similar to the critical reconstruction of post-industrial society, carried out by such famous philosophers as Jaspers, Heidegger, Ortega y Gasset, Adorno, Marcuse , Fromm, etc. Of course, the moral impulse of an intellectual is concern for a person. Marcuse is concerned about the dangerous trends that determine the development of post-industrial society: unemployment, weapons production, man-made overload of nature, non-observance of human rights, oppression of women, children, and the elderly. But he is especially concerned about the fact that society has learned not only to give out, but also to turn its shortcomings into virtues.

But is it possible that this protest of intellectuals against mechanization, marketization, massification, lack of spirituality, consumerism and conformism will be able to wake up people who are concerned about improving the comfort of their own lives. Marcuse himself did not really believe in the effectiveness of his critical theory. All the more pessimistic is Foucault, who considers the protest of intellectuals inconsistent, since it is they who produce power, moreover, they themselves are entwined with it from all sides and do not know how to fight it. But the question can be put even more radically, is it fair to call for the destruction of a society that has been able to provide a high standard of living for its fellow citizens?

It would be wrong to consider the protest of the intelligentsia completely empty. In fact, the kingdom of the Antichrist is not so safe. Marcuse believes that the standard of living of people in a post-industrial society has long exceeded the line of a heavenly minimum, and the authorities could begin enlightenment and emancipation. However, it has become automated and thinks solely about its own self-preservation. This point was well revealed in the works of J. Habermas, who pointed out that today the strategic orientations of the development of society are taken on the basis of technical capabilities, and not from the vital interests of people. Marcuse also pointed to the integration of multidirectional institutions: the category "society" expressed an acute conflict in the social and political spheres - the antagonism of society and the state. In the same way, the concepts "individual" and "class", "family" denoted spheres and forces not yet integrated into established conditions. But the increasing integration of industrial society, by depriving these concepts of critical meaning, tends to turn them into operational terms of description or deception.

Marcuse noted that the technology of modern power has become so perfect that it uses even the negative for its support. It neutralizes not only intellectual criticism, but also its own miscalculations, limited attitudes, human and natural disasters caused by the unprecedented acceleration of the system. Luli are moving faster and faster, although there is no target. The goal was the movement itself, reminiscent of the movement of a corpse.

What Marcuse said in the 1960s is even more evident today. However, the critical theory of society did not gain more supporters. Not only ordinary people, but also intellectuals have resigned themselves to their fate and are trying to achieve liberation within the framework of private life. The state and the market can no longer be corrected. These are machines that cannot be broken, because the losses will be too great. At the end of the reforms, nostalgia for the past woke up in Russia as well.

So, everyone knows the truth about the modern consumer society. The authorities should not even spend large sums of money on camouflage, because people tolerate it because they see no other way out. The price of such agreement is still high. But now we pay not with slavery, poverty, lack of rights, lack of education and lack of culture, and not even with psychodramas, which turn into melodramas not without the help of psychoanalysts, but with the loss of the energy of life, a sense of hopelessness. We do not have a guilt complex and we have nothing to repent of, but there is a hopeless sense of fate that we accept because we have lost faith in any recipes for emancipation.

Perspectives on Critical Social Theory

The rescue program announced by the Frankfurters, even if carried out, would not bring positive results. Everyone began to care about human rights, about saving nature, and even cultivated a love for high art (at what time did tens of thousands of people gather in stadiums to listen to opera arias?).

The main danger is the softening of the bodily, natural substance of culture, separation from the roots, the loss of not only the soil, but also the body. A person living in a sterile environment (society has become a giant dispensary) has lost the ability to resist viruses. People capable of experiencing a sense of responsibility for what is happening began to disappear. The souls of people, trembling with sweet horror in front of TV screens, but not really experiencing any hardships, have lost a sense of compassion and solidarity. The market economy gives rise to a mobile individual who masters the whole world in search of profitable deals. It sets in motion goods, money and ideas. But today it looks like the engine starts to run wild: the ignition is turned off and communication with the transmission is interrupted, but the fuel burns out as a result of overheating of the cylinder walls. So the market begins to work for itself and literally everything is evaluated by the speed of circulation. It is no longer regulated even by the law of value, and today few people understand the reasons for the jumps in the Dow Jones index, because no one knows how much the dollar “really” is worth. Goods are sold according to the principle “more expensive than expensive”, and money, which has lost its connection with material support, becomes a purely speculative sign, symbolic capital. I recall A. Tolstoy's description of the process of speculation during the First World War: a merchant takes out a bag of sugar and resells it to another, that third, and so on. So, there is only one bag of sugar, and it does not increase (especially since the invoice is being resold), but the money grows like a snowball. The modern financial system functions in the same strange way. The crisis of 1987 on Wall Street, and finally, the events of 1997 and 1998 on the stock exchanges of Asia, Russia and South America - all these are such financial crises that are not generated by some destructive processes in the real economy. In this they differ sharply from the crisis of 1929, which was caused by miscalculations in industry. If earlier money depreciated following the decline in material wealth, now, on the contrary, goods are depreciating as a result of financial fraud. This means that today money functions as tokens that are no longer backed by real value and are not regulated by labor and wealth. No one knows how much a dollar "really" is worth. The idea of a gold or other natural backing of money today seems too archaic. However, the separation from the laws of value leads to the fact that the economy turns into pure speculation - the production and circulation of symbolic products.

The world has become a landmark, virtual reality. This is evident even in such a serious matter as war. The current generation lived a life without war, but the fear of a military threat was a very real reality. Even before, people were afraid of war, since not a single generation could do without being affected in one way or another. This fear referred to absolutely real events - death, destruction, hunger, captivity. The war was on the ground. Today they talk about the nuclear threat. So many weapons, including nuclear warheads, have been accumulated that it is possible to destroy the entire population on the planet several times. And yet the third world war is a virtual reality, it does not exist, and it may not come. But the paradox is that the fear of war is perhaps more significant than the war itself. There are two points of interest here. On the one hand, the concept of "star wars" is being developed, and thus the war is transferred from the territories of the Earth to starry space. On the other hand, the escalation of fear is growing, which is an important form of maintaining the regime of power and order. Without it, the work of the war industry would have no internal justification. These seemingly contradictory tendencies, since the transfer of wars to outer space reduces the intensity of fear, are nevertheless complementary. War remains an unshakable justification for the existence of the state and at the same time turns out to be a virtual reality. Cinema replaces the real war. It just seems like we live in the world. In fact, every day great battles unfold on TV screens, cities are destroyed, human blood is shed. This has led to the fact that real wars, such as those against Iraq and Yugoslavia, are perceived in the West as cinematic events. The dramatization of some events disturbing public opinion is carried out primarily by the means of mass communication. The military themselves no longer meet in "close combat", and see the targets of destruction exclusively on the screen. Today, reality is becoming iconic, and a computer stands between a person and reality. Freedom in the West is defined as democracy and the Internet in every home. Evil in its direct form that generates Manichaean sentiments becomes invisible. But he doesn't disappear. The war has moved, as promised, to the screens of monitors, and real death, destruction, suffering of the civilian population are perceived as a movie. Hence the particular cruelty of our wars. Against the background of all this, the contradictions of classical society look cruel, but, so to speak, “honest”. Real and obvious suffering stimulated the search for ways to overcome them. And in a sense, obvious injustice is even better than camouflaged and painless. Today, people can no longer rely on direct experience of cruelty, oppression, suffering, alienation. The young do not understand or hear the warnings of the older generation until they themselves experience it. In Russia, the situation is aggravated by the fact that the forms of evil in it are, so to speak, multiform. On the one hand, diseases and poverty, which seemed to have long been overcome, returned. On the other hand, due to the inevitable modernization in society, new invisible viruses have arisen that are not familiar to representatives of the older generation. Today, no one can foresee the consequences of "telematic", "sexual", etc. revolutions.

After the rejection of Marxism, the Russian intelligentsia began to rely mainly on moralizing discourse. But, I think, the sense of justice can be trusted no more than "class instinct". Since, thanks to the intervention of the mass media, it is precisely the obvious that is deformed in our country, a revival of critical social theory, which was the most important component of non-dogmatic Marxism, is necessary. In this regard, the appeal to the works of the Marxists of the 60s looks quite natural.

- an allusion to the "Communist Manifesto": ஐ "The savior of the masses, I realized, can only be a tooth-grinding terrorist, who will rein in foul freedoms, captured by millions of greasy paws,...
Lem's world - dictionary and guide
- When Jesus came to the disciples on the water, they mistook Him for P. ...
Brockhaus Bible Encyclopedia
- a ghost, a dream...
Brief Church Slavonic Dictionary
- This word was borrowed from the Old Slavonic language, where it was formed by the prefixal method zrak - "view", formed in turn from the verb zr'ti - "see" ...
Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language by Krylov
- Loans. from st.-sl. lang. Pref. derived from zrak "view", suf. formations from the same basis as to mature)) "to look, to see" ...
Etymological dictionary of the Russian language
- eyeless; bloodless; silent; restless; incorporeal; wandering; pale-faced; fearful; air-numb; fleeting; rebellious; unearthly; dumb; deceptive; vague; dying; cold; fragile...
Dictionary of epithets
- GHOST, -a, husband. 1. An image of someone-something that appears in the imagination, a vision, something that seems to be. Night ghosts. P. of the past. Ghosts of the old castle. 2. trans. Fiction, mirage, something seeming...
Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov
- ghost m. 1. What is seen, is imagined; a vision, a product of the imagination. ott. trans. unfold Someone or something that only resembles someone or something. 2. Vague, vague outlines, contours ...
Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova
- ghost n., m., use. comp. often Morphology: what? ghost, what? ghost what? ghost of what? ghost, about what? about a ghost...
Dictionary of Dmitriev
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Russian spelling dictionary
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Church Slavonic Dictionary
- Ghost in the castle. Jarg. arm. Shuttle. Duty officer. Maksimov, 145. The ghost of communism. Pub. Iron. Frightening notions of communism...
- Zharg. arm. Shuttle. Duty officer. Maksimov, 145...
Big dictionary of Russian sayings
- Pub. Iron. Frightening notions of communism. /i> Part of a quote from the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" by K. Marx and F. Engels. Mokienko 2003, 85...
Big dictionary of Russian sayings
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Word forms
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Synonym dictionary

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1. Formally, the document, which became the "holy scripture" of the communists of the whole world, was created Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels not on their own initiative, but on behalf of the radical left "Union of the Just", of which both politicians became members in 1847. Interestingly, after the entry of Marx and Engels, the "Union of the Just" was renamed the "Union of Communists".

2. The Congress of the "Union of the Just" instructed its new member, Friedrich Engels, to write the text of a policy document called the "Project of the Communist Creed." But, apparently, the atheistic convictions of Marx and Engels made it necessary to change the name of the final document to the "Manifesto of the Communist Party."

Painting "Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels". Artist G. Gordon. Canvas, oil. Reproduction. Photo: RIA Novosti

3. Officially, the authorship of the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" belongs to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but in fact it was written in Brussels, in January 1848, only by Marx. Engels made only a few remarks, but Marx insisted that two names of the authors be indicated on the publication.

4. The researchers note that, unlike many other programmatic political documents, the Communist Manifesto is as easy to read as a work of art. Karl Marx had a remarkable journalistic talent, which also manifested itself when writing this document - the “Manifesto”, which determined the history of human development for a whole century, fit in just 12,000 words.

5. The Communist Manifesto was first published in German in London in 1848. There are discrepancies with the date of its publication - different sources indicate February 15, February 21, February 26, and July 4. It is possible that the confusion is due to the fact that the "Manifesto" was published in different languages - except for German, in Swedish, and somewhat later in English.

6. The "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was written in 1848, when a number of revolutions took place in the countries of Europe. However, almost no one paid attention to the ideas of Marx and Engels - the number of their supporters did not exceed a few dozen people. The ideas set forth in the Manifesto would not gain true popularity until a few decades later.

7. The first edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in Russian was published in 1869 in Geneva. The authorship of the translation is attributed to a prominent anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. The second edition appeared in 1882 in a translation George Plekhanov. It is curious that the political views of both Bakunin and Plekhanov were sharply criticized by the main successor of the Manifesto ideas in Russia - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

8. There is no exact information about the number of editions of the "Manifesto of the Communist Party". In the USSR alone, as of January 1, 1973, 447 editions of the Manifesto were published with a total circulation of 24,341,000 copies in 74 languages. The total number of publications in the world exceeds 1000 in more than 100 languages of the world.

Title page of the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto, 1885. Reproduction. The original is kept in the Museum of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Photo: RIA Novosti

9. After 100 years, in 1948, another "Manifesto of the Communist Party" was published in the USSR - this was the name of a poem by the famous Soviet poet Sergei Narovchatov. In particular, it contained the following lines:

For a hundred years in a row you have been talking about him,

And, old, he again rises as news

Wherever you can't find it in the daytime with fire

Lost conscience in the dark...

And the White House is powerless before him,

That White House that ceased to be white

Ever since the tenants in it

Our white light is stained with black deeds.

The fear of the hundreds before the angry might of the masses

Legislated the twentieth century

I wish I could see old Marx

How we are now raging on the planet!

10. The creator of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, as already noted, was a talented journalist who knew how to attract the attention of readers with bright and juicy phrases at the beginning and end of the work. That is why even those who have never read the Manifesto heard them at least once in their lives - "A ghost haunts Europe, the ghost of communism" and "Proletarians of all countries, unite!".