Liberal Medvedev and his article

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Using the example of Dmitry Medvedev's article, Mikhail Delyagin shows that the presence in power of liberals serving global speculators and monopolies is incompatible not only with progress, but even with the very preservation of our country, our society and our very civilization.

On the eve of the defiant, diverse, but invariably serious, expectations of President Vladimir Putin's speech at the UN General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Medvedev recalled himself with a lengthy article "New Reality: Russia and Global Challenges", in which he shared "an attempt to analyze large-scale changes, what is happening today in the world economy and directly affecting the situation in our country."

And again he made us sincerely rejoice for a person who, even at the age of 50, demonstrates the pristine freshness of perception and liveliness of thinking, not burdened with knowledge or responsibility, which is more characteristic of a five-year-old.

"I don't know why and who needs it …"

The article begins with a statement that there will be no action plan: they are all described in old government decisions. That is, no matter what new we understand about world development and our place in it, this will not affect Medvedev's policy. A reasonable question arises: why then this article, if decisions have already been made? For self-affirmation? For a reminder of yourself, so beloved and smart? And what will the decisions made in the past lead to without taking into account the "new reality" revealed by the article?

However, looking ahead, one can reassure the reader: Medvedev did not reveal anything new, so there is really no need to adjust the decisions made in the deep past.

However, the recognition of the second person in the country that the Russian authorities have not yet defined "strategic goals for themselves, the tasks that we want to solve in the end," is shocking.

The Russian bureaucracy does not understand why it exists and why it runs Russia (apart from, of course, personal well-being), but, thank God, it begins to at least be ashamed of this, since immediately after his startling confession, Medvedev nevertheless names the goal: " join the group of countries with the highest level of prosperity."

This task is a mere periphery of the notorious "doubling GDP by 2010" (in turn copied from Gorbachev's "doubling the national income by 2000") 15 years ago.

The trouble is that welfare is only indirectly related to GDP per capita. The "zero" ones showed that if the GDP grows mainly due to the wealth of a small handful of oligarchs and their "effective managers", to judge the well-being of the people by this indicator means to embellish reality to the point of loss of adequacy.

Speaking about the unprecedentedness of this task, Medvedev is disingenuous, but rather demonstrates his level of knowledge: only in the second half of the twentieth century, at least Japan, "Asian tigers", China, Israel successfully solved it. It is another matter that within the framework of the liberal ideology of subordination of the state to global monopolies, professed, judging by his words and deeds, by Medvedev, this task cannot be solved.

Like the partocrats of late stagnation, fixated on the "birthmarks of capitalism," Medvedev is hurt by the era of the first five-year plans. Against the background of the achievements of that time, all of his 15-year-old fuss in power looks simply pitiful. It seems that trying to rehabilitate himself, he is still arguing with the "centralized-administrative economy with absolute domination of the state" and "the previous paradigm" to catch up and overtake "in meat, milk, tractors and cast iron", offering instead of them, as befits a selfie lover, just "learn to be better and faster."

He is silent about how to "learn" exactly this. This is logical: the Internet is full of free video courses of various business coaches, and you probably just need to choose someone more fun and understandable.

Medvedev's complaints about the difficulty of reforming with cheap raw materials are touching. What prevented him with expensive oil, at least in 2010-2011, when he was president? It looks like a "bad dancer is hindered by his legs": either an excess of money, or a lack of it. This is logical if you remember that the prime minister began his article with a frank admission of not understanding why he is leading Russia: "who does not know where he is sailing, there is no tailwind."

He, like other liberals, is organically characterized by such a trait of an "effective manager" as shamelessness. Indeed: who do you need to be so that, consistently and effectively destroying health care and education, which survived even in the 90s, depriving people of hope for the future by a principled rejection of any development, withdrawing taxpayers' funds into the financial systems of Western countries, which unleashed a "hybrid "war, without any hesitation to declare the need to" first of all think about how these reforms will affect people "?

Speaking about the need to "" try on "our future decisions" on "low-income families" less than 80%.

The "New Normal" of the World and the Old Abnormality of Liberalism

Medvedev demonstrates a love for beautiful wrappers and a lack of interest in their contents. Having admitted that the term "new normality" he uses appeared as early as 5 years ago, he does not even try to reveal it and clearly show what exactly the "novelty" he proclaims lies in.

Like a crammer on an exam (or as a "victim of the exam"), Medvedev demonstrates a mosaic, "clip" type of consciousness: describing individual "cases" (examples) like the "Singapore miracle", the fall of the Chinese stock market, the creation of a global market for liquefied gas, the shale revolution, solar and small-scale energy (about the prospects of which in the USSR was written with might and main back in the 70s), he not only does not try to connect them into a single integral picture, but, it seems, does not suspect the very possibility of such existence.

Moreover, it seems that he has no idea that Russia should react to changes in the picture of the world.

Of course, despite his verbose and incoherent reasoning about the crisis, Medvedev cannot refrain from the standard liberal mantra that "a crisis is always both a threat and an opportunity." Even Gref, who is not brilliant with intelligence, became brutalized by its imposition from literally every outlet, six years ago explained that the opportunities granted by the crisis resemble those given by the collision of a car with a concrete wall: at least two weeks in plaster.

But for the Russian prime minister, this loud phrase seems to retain the freshness of novelty and originality. "What, darlings, do we have a thousand years in the yard?"

Serious discussion by Medvedev of "technological unpredictability" exposes not only his ignorance of elementary truths such as that technological progress is determined by the state, as even recent Western studies have shown, but "unpredictability" arises on the periphery of progress as a side effect of state policy. Managing the state, he really does not understand the meaning of its existence, does not know that it should direct movement into the future and thus create and organize its foundations, and not passively wait for the future that his competitors will create for him, in order to then adapt to it or die in it. …

By the entire policy of his government, destroying the welfare state in Russia, Medvedev recognizes as a global trend "the formation of a new welfare state", a feature of which is "the individualization of the services provided (education and health care in the first place)."

Although, perhaps, he considers the situation created by him as a movement towards "individualization", when a person who wants health must individually look for a rare normal doctor (who will heal, not pull money), and those who want knowledge must individually look for a randomly preserved normal school or university.

While recognizing the rise in inequality as a global trend, undermining socio-political stability and limiting growth, the Prime Minister does not think about how to protect Russia from this trend. He just calls it - and moves on to the next factor, not interested in the fate of his country. Although from the text it is not felt that he considers our country "his"; it seems that for him it is nothing more than one of many disparate and unrelated "cases".

Speaking of “production tailored to the needs of a specific consumer,” Medvedev ignores the fact that it is generated by the competitive environment in Russia, which is purposefully suppressed not only by monopolies, but also by the bureaucracy serving them.

The reasoning about "new financing instruments" from the lips of a person who maintains the prohibitively high cost of credit for the real sector looks like a primitive mockery.

The statement that "the dynamics of exchange rates are becoming a more powerful instrument of protecting markets than customs tariffs" exposes illiteracy (tariffs retain their significance as bastions of protectionism, simply not for countries that, like Russia, were "pushed" into the WTO on colonial terms) and lack of understanding of the negative consequences of devaluations indirectly justified by it.

In fact, promoting the practice of "currency wars", Medvedev, probably unconsciously, acts as a preacher of the destabilization of the world order, which not only undermines the image of the country, which unfortunately tolerates him in the role of prime minister, but also threatens us with new losses due to devaluations ruble.

Declaring that "instead of protecting its customs territory, the priority interest of the state is to protect the value chains generated by the national business," Medvedev does not suspect that such generation, like the very existence of national business, is impossible without "protecting the customs territory."

Describing the "growth of uncertainty" in the macroeconomic sphere, Medvedev does not think about the reasons (and even more so the consequences) of the unwillingness of Western business to "take" cheap money and the absence of inflation in the presence of its surplus. For the prime minister of Russia, it is enough to simply name well-known facts, say about "problems" and "uncertainties" - and flutter further.

It seems that the incoherent description of a random set of interesting "trends" and news (including half a century ago) serves as a pretext for Medvedev to return to the fantasies of the past decade about "stimulating creativity, enterprise, continuity of education." It is strange that the prime minister did not remember the national project, which he was proud of, nicknamed "inaccessible crooks," the ban on incandescent light bulbs and the four "I's": infrastructure, investments, institutions, innovations, - the tales of which he told back in 2008.

True, it is possible that by "stimulating the continuity" of education, Medvedev understands its destruction: training for the Unified State Exam will indeed doom you to study all your life - so as not to forget your literacy. Ignorance of basic fundamental principles and concepts dooms a person to study each new question anew, "from scratch", instead of immediately seeing specific manifestations of general, universal rules in a new sphere. Those who know these principles, mathematicians, physicists and engineers of the Soviet school easily study the formally new spheres of activity and branches of science, remaining a mystery for the illiterate (albeit trained on certain issues) victims of Western education.

Recognition of the state's task to encourage the inclination of people to create in the mouth of the Russian prime minister, whose government policy is objectively aimed at suppressing creativity, at destroying freedom and initiative by strengthening monopolies and lowering people into absolute poverty, looks like a cynical mockery.

As well as dreams that "sooner or later the sanctions will be lifted" - without any attempt to do anything real to overcome their consequences or force the Western countries to lift them.

Medvedev's statement about the formation of a "common economic space" with the West as a "strategic direction" of Russian policy gives the impression of either a hallucination or a hope for the elimination of President Vladimir Putin in accordance with the wishes of the West.

Yasin was summoned?

Medvedev's dreams of "ensuring dynamic and sustainable rates of economic growth" amid the growing decline in production sound nonsense. He does not want to consider the reasons for the recession, so as not to be forced to describe self-evident throughout a quarter of a century of national betrayal measures to overcome them, incompatible with liberal dogmas, and as a result warns Russia against the "risk of artificial acceleration"! In cynicism, this can only be compared with a sermon on the inadmissibility of overeating, addressed to those dying of hunger.

As a lifesaver, Medvedev sees "a comfortable environment for participants in economic life": this is the very "favorable investment climate" that liberals have been talking about since 1994.

"Creating a comfortable environment begins with ensuring macroeconomic stability" is the standard IMF mantra that has been killing our country since 1992. The "trifle" in which the devil of liberal destruction lies lies in ensuring macroeconomic stability by an overly tough financial policy that destroys the real sector and encourages only speculation. Submission of economic policy to lower inflation turned the 90s into hell, and now Medvedev wants to turn the second half of the 10s into the same hell!

Following the liberal scholastics of the early 90s, Medvedev, contrary to reality, rejecting the experience of not only China, but also the European Union, Japan, and even the United States (where the share of government spending, and, consequently, the presence of the state in the economy is higher than the Russian one), asserts: " the high share of the state in the economy becomes … the reason for the limited resources available for investment. " And the reluctance of the Russian bureaucracy to play the role of the owner of state-owned companies is interpreted by the head of this bureaucracy as some kind of objective law.

By consistently implementing liberal policies in the style of the 90s, bringing people to poverty, and business to panic flight from the country, Medvedev babbles "with a blue eye" about the importance of private investors. Not realizing that a private investor will invest his money only when the state sets an example for him.

Repeating the liberals' mantra of 1992 about the importance of foreign investment, Medvedev rejects the entire world experience and all more than 20 years of Russian experience, which proves that foreign investments enter the country only in the footsteps of national ones. Without massive national investments, only speculators, oriented towards forced plunder, come, and Medvedev seems to be ready to call on them as earnestly as Gaidar and Yasin.

Completely ignoring the entire world experience, Medvedev selflessly talks about "technological transfer" - probably not suspecting that such transfer is, in principle, impossible without special government efforts and a very tough policy towards the "foreign investors" deified by liberals.

Speaking about import substitution, Medvedev brilliantly ignores its impossibility without a fundamental change in the entire state policy: without cheap loans to the real sector, without training by the education system of a qualified workforce (and not crazy hipsters and "Internet hamsters"), without accessible infrastructure, without a real sales market …

Speaking about the development of competition, Medvedev managed not even to mention the need to limit the arbitrariness of the monopolies. Still would! - after all, for a liberal who earnestly serves global speculators and monopolies, the longed-for freedom of entrepreneurship, as far as one can judge, comes down to the freedom of speculators and monopolists to rob the country, its consumers and its business.

Organizing the destruction of Russian health care and education, Medvedev declares the normality of the desire to study and receive medical treatment abroad. I think that the emergence of such a desire in Russia he considers his merit. His discourses on healthcare and education indicate that he has no idea about the activities of his own government to destroy these areas, or he has a cynicism that even Chubais is far from.

At the same time, he is not aware of the specifics of these industries, considering them as ordinary business, ignoring their essence as tools for creating a nation and human potential, in which the consumer is not able to assess the quality of "services", and the cost of an error is unacceptably high both for him and for society …

Speaking about the pension system, Medvedev, along with the rest of the liberals, ignores both the fact of an increase in labor productivity (due to which one worker, with a normal organization of the economy, must withstand a greater pension burden than half a century ago), and the cause of the pension crisis.

While campaigning in a hidden form for raising the retirement age, Medvedev does not want to discuss the regressiveness of the scale of taxation of wages, because of which a Russian pays the more the poorer he is.

Liberals have turned Russia into a tax haven for millionaires (including themselves, loved ones) and a tax hell for the rest. A rich person can reduce the taxation of income to 6% (as an individual entrepreneur) and even lower (transactions with securities), and a person with incomes below the subsistence level will give more than 39%. Having established a prohibitively high level of income taxation for the majority, the liberals are pushing it "into the shadows", and now they want to deprive them of the opportunity to live up to retirement.

Medvedev, judging by his dreams, considers this to be normal, and to the best of his ability he supports this process.

The prime minister’s statements about the need to develop courts and the responsibility of the authorities vividly highlight, for example, the Vasilyeva case, which showed that corruption is the most effective business. Do not forget the efforts of Medvedev himself, who allowed corrupt officials to pay off for bribes they were caught in, from bribes they were not caught, and, probably, consider this a "system of responsibility for decisions made."

Claiming that Russia "is a developed country in many socio-economic parameters," Medvedev tactfully does not name these parameters: if they really survived, it is mainly in spite of, and not thanks to, his works.

And, finally, summing up the “conclusions about the changes taking place in the world and in the country” in a tongue-tied manner, Medvedev does not notice that the “number of priority tasks that must be solved for the sustainable development of the country” that he enumerates does not “follow” from these conclusions.

It seems that this is not a problem of the level of education or intelligence, but of the very type of consciousness, which the Americans politically correctly call "alternative".

The catastrophe of liberal consciousness

In the "intellectual kitchen" of Prime Minister Medvedev, so trustingly and narcissistically open to readers, the most striking is the pathological inability to carry out the analysis stated in the first paragraph.

It seems that for him, in principle, there is no cause-effect relationship, or the need to substantiate the thoughts expressed.

He enumerates the changes in the world - like a surfer, sliding on the surface of phenomena and not wondering what caused them and what they mean.

He talks about the increased uncertainty - it seems, without realizing that it is caused by the transition of the world to a new state, for which the old ideas do not work, and testifies not to some immanent intellectual helplessness of humanity, but only to the desperate need to develop new ones as soon as possible, adequate to the new reality theory and tools of knowledge.

He makes fundamental statements (such as the impossibility of rapid deterioration or improvement in the state of Russia), seemingly unaware of the need to substantiate his statements at least with something.

This energetic and self-righteous intellectual catastrophe guides us and largely determines our life, and most importantly, the life of our children.

What else can you say about the liberal clan, whose frontman in power remains Medvedev?

What other proofs are needed that the retention of liberals in power, serving global speculators and monopolies, is incompatible not only with progress, but even with the very preservation of our country, our society and our very civilization?