# Is it possible to create a fair people's state?

Юрий Михайлович Низовцев

The best minds of mankind have been struggling for several thousand years to solve the problem of establishing a fair people's state, but this tempting goal has not been achieved in any way, despite repeated attempts. What is the reason for the collapse of these blissful hopes?

Table of contents


Introduction

1. A look at Plato's model of the ideal state.

2. Evaluation of the model of the ideal state of Campanella - "The City of the Sun".

3. An attempt to implement the "The City of the Sun" by the Jesuits.

4. The Marxist utopia of a happy tomorrow.

5. The attempt to achieve communism in Russia.

Summary.


Introduction


The problem of a fair people's state has been posed since ancient times.

It was about fairness that Socrates reasoned in Plato's Dialogues, believing that fairness in public administration would arise if philosophers ruled the state: "Since philosophers are people who are able to comprehend what is eternally identical to oneself, while others cannot and get stuck in place, wandering among a variety of different things, and therefore they are no longer philosophers, the question is, which of them should lead the state" [1. Beginning].

And further: "Until philosophers reign in the state, or the so-called current kings and lords will not nobly and thoroughly philosophize and this will not merge into one - the state power and philosophy, and until those people are obligatorily removed - and there are many of them - who are now striving separately or for power, or to philosophy, until then, dear Glaucon, states will not get rid of evils, and it will not become possible for the human race and will not see the sunlight that state structure which we have only described verbally" [1. Book 5].

But, at the same time, Plato, judging by the following example, fully understands the problematic nature of philosophers being in power: "In relation to the state, the position of the most decent people is so difficult that nothing could be worse ... So, imagine such person who turned out to be the helmsman of several ships. The helmsman is superior in height and strength to everyone on the ship, but he is deaf, and also short-sighted and understands little about navigation, and among the sailors there is a strife over the control of the ship: everyone thinks that it is he who should rule, although he has never studied this art ... ... in addition, he declares that there is nothing to learn about this, and are ready to tear apart the one who says what is needed ... Having overcome the noble helmsman with the help of mandrake, wine or any other means, they seize power on the ship, begin to dispose of everything that is on they eat, drink, feast and, of course, direct the course of the ship exactly as it is natural for such people" [1. Book 6].

It was precisely such reasoning that moved Plato towards doubts about the reality of government by philosophers. Apparently, therefore, he called his model of a fair state ideal, that is, first of all, not in the sense of its perfection, but rather in terms of the possibility of its practical and successful implementation.

Similar doubts are inherent in Plato also in relation to fairness: "... the same action is sometimes fair and unfair? I will give this example: if someone receives a weapon from his friend when he was still of sound mind, and then, when he goes crazy and demands his weapon back, he gives it up, in this case everyone would say that it should not be given and unfair is the one who would give or wish to honestly tell the whole truth to a person who has fallen into such state ... Therefore, this is not what determines fairness: to tell the truth and give back what you took ... "[1. Book 1].

Despite the generally understandable ambiguity of the concept of fairness and the heterogeneity in all respects of the entire mass of people at all times, who too often do not understand or do not want to understand each other, and try to do everything in their own way, regardless of laws or are making laws, profitable for themselves, the topic of establishing a fair people's state is still on the agenda.

In particular, one of the interlocutors of Socrates speaks about fairness as follows: "Every power establishes laws in its own favor: democracy - democratic laws, tyranny - tyrannical, as in other cases. Having established the laws, they declare them fair for the subordinates- this is exactly what is useful to the authorities, and the one who transgresses them is punished as a violator of laws and fairness. So I say, most venerable Socrates: in all states, the same thing is considered fairness, namely, what is suitable for the existing power. But she is a force, so it turns out, if someone correctly argues that fairness is the same everywhere: what is suitable for the strongest" [ibid.].

In response to him, Socrates sarcastically remarks: "Because you think that shepherds or Bootes take care of the welfare of sheep or oxen when they fatten them and groom them, and that they do it for some other purpose, and not for the benefit of the owners and their own" [ibid.].

Having not figured out how to attract the decent people to govern the state in a legitimate way, without which it is not capable of being fair in his opinion, Plato, through the lips of Socrates, demands forcibly to force philosophers to govern the state: "So, good people therefore do not agree to govern - for no money , nor for the sake of kudos: they do not want to be called either mercenaries, openly receiving remuneration for guide, or thieves, secretly using its benefits; in turn, honor does not attract them - after all, they are not ambitious. In order for them to agree to govern, it is necessary to oblige them to this and apply punishments "[ibid.].

Therefore, it makes sense to consider further Plato's considerations about his model of an ideal state, created back in the 4th century BC. This model, despite its dubiousness, according to Plato himself, tried to improve on the basis of Christian dogmas Tommaso Campanella on the verge of the 16th-17th centuries AD, and to implement in practice this model in the form of a fair people's state have tried the Jesuits among the Indians in the territory of modern Paraguay in the XVII-XVIII centuries.

Moreover, in essence, Karl Marx has developed a similar model of a fair people's state, and they are still trying to implement it in various ways, despite the obvious meaninglessness of this occupation, which follows from the above statements of Plato himself.

Apparently, this process in the head of these followers is largely spontaneous because both they and the rest of the idealist enthusiasts really want it, regardless of common sense considerations.

And they can be understood: it is impossible for people who are worried about the good of every person and everybody at once to live in this unfair world without such a noble goal as the final solution to the problem of fairness by the onset of universal goodness.

However, in practice, however paradoxical it may seem, the absence of the onset of this goodness in the course of the struggle for the chimerical justice of idealists with oppressors-bloodsuckers, that is, in the conditions of the antagonistic states, leads to the accelerated development of civilization, making it more and more comfortable, and its natives - more cultured and conscious, and equipped with many of the fruits of an equally accelerated technological development.

Such is the result that a fair people's state has not been established, except for a few failed attempts that will be mentioned below.

It turns out that the point is not in the implementation of this project, with the implementation of which, by the way, all humanity would gradually fall into senility due to the lack of striving for the best, which has already been achieved, but the thing is that this project itself is the incentive for the development of the entire community, since the best representatives of humanity in the person of intellectuals - the fighters for the happiness of all others - must fight for something and somehow protect the offended, but no more noble than this goal as the acquisition of permanent happiness for everyone at once, despite the fact that this goal is like a carrot suspended on a fishing rod in front of the nose of a donkey, who stubbornly runs after this carrot, as he is prompted by the instinct of dissatisfaction with what is still consumed, while dragging at the same time somehow a cart of civilization.


1. A look at Plato's model of the ideal state.


So, Plato gave the seed to future generations who, in the person of his best representatives, tried to implement the project of a fair people's state, despite the fact that he himself has recognized the model of this state developed by him as ideal, first of all, in terms of the dubiousness of its implementation, although he cherished the hope of correcting the population in the future.

Alas, all future models and schemes of a fair people's state also remained ideal, that is, utopian, and if they were implemented, then in the form of non-viable formations that quickly disappeared, absorbed by their neighbors due to the lack of their development, or turned into a kind of antagonistic state with the same slickers-bureaucrats in power.

Let us now look at how Plato tried to resolve irresolvable contradictions in his model of a fair state, which, as we will show below, has not undergone fundamental changes either in Campanella's "The City of the Sun" or in the bright communist tomorrow drawn by Marx, which in no way manages to turn into today.

Plato has set himself the task, which was to establish a harmonious organization of the state both from the position of the internal consistency of life, where everyone will be satisfied with everything, and in defense from the external enemies: " ...we are founding this state not at all meaning to make one of the segments of its population somehow especially happy, but, on the contrary, we want to make the entire state as a whole so. After all, it was in such state that we expected to find fairness, and unfairness, on the contrary, in the worst state system ..." [1. Book 4].

The fallacy of the very setting of similar task is evident from the unattainability of happiness both in general and individually, since each person, both in a team and individually, is driven by dissatisfaction with the present, stimulating movement into the future. That is, development, and therefore life, is possible only in the struggle of contradictory and even opposite aspirations of different personalities and characters through a series of mistakes and disappointments, thereby bypassing satisfaction with the existing, leading to stagnation and death.

Nevertheless, Plato, within the framework of this deceptive model, has considered that satisfaction with beingness by all and, therefore, fairness for all, can be achieved. In order for fairness to cover everyone and everyone, Plato proposed to establish a certain kind of equality between citizens, who, of course, cannot be equalized in general because of their diversity and many points of application of economy and management, but you can try to narrow this diversity by reducing it to only three classes - aristocrats-philosophers, guardians, farmers together with artisans: "Wealth and poverty.

One leads to luxury, laziness, innovations, the other, apart from innovations, leads to baseness and atrocities... ...Be that as it may, they contain two states hostile to each other: one for the poor, the other for the rich... ...that fairness consists in that. so that everyone has his own and fulfills his own too ... ... the interference of these three estates in other people's affairs and the transition from one estate to another is the greatest harm to the state and can rightfully be considered the highest crime" [ibid.].

Understanding the insufficiency of this division of the population into a kind of castes to establish equality, which already looks like inequality, Plato comes up with some supposedly fairly clear criteria for evaluating progeny, suggesting, in accordance with them, to conduct a constant selection of this progeny in order to highlight the abilities, qualities of the mind and inclinations of each individual even in childhood and, thus, preliminarily determine the place of a given individual within the framework of one or another estate: "Although all members of the state are brothers ..., but the god who sculpted you, in those of you who are able to rule, mixed gold at birth, and therefore they are most valuable, in their assistants - silver, but iron and copper - in farmers and various artisans. You are all related, for the most part give birth to your own kind, although it still happens that silver progeny will be born from gold, and gold from silver; the same in other cases. From the rulers, God demands, first of all and mainly, that it is here that they turn out to be valiant guardians and that nothing more intensively protects as own progeny, observing what kind of admixture there is in the soul of their children, and

if a child is born with an admixture of copper or iron, they should in no way have pity for him, but act as his natural inclinations deserve, that is, include him among the artisans or farmers; if someone is born with an admixture of gold or silver, this should be appreciated and honorably transferred to guards or into helpers. After all, there is a prediction that the state will collapse when it will be guarded by iron guardian or copper ... "[1. Book 3].

"... the best men should mostly unite with the best women, and the worst, on the contrary, with the worst, and that the progeny of the best men and women should be educated, and the offspring of the worst should not, since our small herd should be the most selective. But that this is how it is done, no one should know, except the rulers themselves, so as not to bring the slightest discord into the squad of guards" [1. Book 5].

In addition to the selection of progeny, Plato proposes to completely eliminate private property, up to the possession of wives, bringing the diversity of citizens of the state in this respect to one denominator for the sake of their equalization, and thereby free them, as he believes, from enmity and envy caused by uneven ownership of property: "... no one should have any private property, unless it is absolutely necessary ... ... no one should have such a dwelling or storeroom, where everyone who wishes would not have access" [1. Book 3].

"Only in this way could the guards remain unharmed and preserve the state. And as soon as they have their own land, houses, money, they will immediately become owners and farmers from the guards; from the allies of the rest of the citizens they will become the hostile overlords; hating themselves and arousing hatred towards themselves, harboring evil intentions and fearing them, they will all time live in greater fear of internal enemies than of external ones, and in this case they themselves, and the whole state, will rush to their speedy death [ibid.].

"All wives of these husbands must be in common, and separately, let none of them cohabit with anyone. And children should also be common, and let the father not know which child is his, and the child - who his father is. "[1. Book 5].

As for the selection of progeny, even now there are no ways to identify the best and worst among children, since so much is mixed in the minds of each person that it is not possible to determine its quality, especially with regard to creative abilities that most contribute to social, cultural and technological development.

If we turn to property, which Plato proposes to eliminate having equated the citizens of the state in this respect, then the following should be noted.

Private property did not arise by itself and not as a result of the improvement of tools alone.

The basis for its appearance was the complement of the communal, or the collectivist self-consciousness, which completely dominated earlier in primitive communal communities, by the individualistic self-consciousness, which, having reflected emergence of new technologies (metal tools), allowing to increase the labor productivity and produce excess products, was able to encourage some energetic or holding important positions of individuals to seize certain resources to confirm and affirm of one's higher position in the new society.

Along with that, this redistribution of property has created antagonism in society, which could not but contribute to the struggle, and hence to progress, since the warring parties will certainly try to come up with and introduce those innovations that will contribute both to victory over enemies and to bringing life to a more pleasant and easy pastime.

The ownership relations, which took on different forms in different regions, have set a completely another pace for the development of civilization, and this type of economic entity took not millions of years, but only a few thousand years, and still exists today.

In other words, the proprietary relations became that external force that ensures social development, behind which stood the duality of human consciousness, namely: the rivalry between the animal form of consciousness inherited by man from his ancestors - primates, and the self-consciousness of each person, which gave him the opportunity to partly separate from nature thanks to aware changing one's own surrounding, and not only by adapting to it, as is characteristic of all natural beings.

The result of the interaction of both forms of consciousness was for the most part their struggle, since the considerations of these forms cover various spheres of life - the animal form of consciousness focuses on maintaining the body in a working state, striving to provide it with better nutrition and creating more favorable conditions for its existence and reproduction, whereas self-consciousness tries to determine the role of man in beingness, captivating him to the knowledge of new, interesting and unusual, due to which, moreover, the conditions of both his own and group existence can be significantly improved, for example, by landscaping life, creating a new weapon for victories over enemies, as well as having presented the surrounding world for himself with new impressive colors in the form of works of art, etc.

The extreme antagonism of the animal form of consciousness and self-consciousness, manifested exclusively in the possessive relations, which in turn initiate the emergence of civilization, and then states, is key to the existence and development of states. Therefore, with the disappearance of the private property, the technological civilization loses the antagonistic aspirations of the personalities that make up it, and ceases to exist.

More details about the role of property in the emergence and development of civilization can be found in my article "Property as the basis for the accelerated development of civilization" [2].

If we return to Plato's modeling of the harmonious structure of the state, then the inequality of people, both innate and in education, he proposed to eliminate as follows: to distribute them into three estates - a kind of castes, and pay main attention to the upbringing of citizens, which is absurd in itself, since upbringing does not affect the egocentric natural (animal) form of consciousness, which remains unchanged during life, which in most people prevails over self-consciousness that is blissful in many respects, filled by many delusions, in contrast to the animal consciousness, the instinctive-reflex activity of which was formed in primates for many tens of millions of years, reaching a kind of perfection.

According to Plato, the main group of rulers should include the most capable and intelligent, who are not inclined to simply consume various goods, but who are interested in the structure of Creation, relationships between people, strive for beauty - now they would be called by the creative natures.

Plato has called them philosophers, or the wisest of citizens, who therefore cannot but be aristocrats of the spirit.

In his opinion, it is they who are able effectively to lead the state, serving its interests due to their selflessness, broad views, deep intelligence and insights of favorable prospects for the state they lead: "The nature of the philosopher is distinguished by proportionality and innate subtlety of mind... ... The main property of the philosophical soul is to embrace the whole of time and beingness with thought ... ... A decent person, not greedy, and also noble, not boastful, not timid" [1. Beginning].

"So wouldn't it be appropriate to say in defense of our view that a person who has a natural inclination for knowledge strives with all his might for genuine beingness? He does not stop at a multitude of things that only seem to exist, but he goes on unceasingly, and his passion does not subside until he touches the very essence of each thing with what is appropriate to touch such things in his soul, and it is appropriate to their kindred principle. Having become closer through it and united with the true beingness, having generated mind and truth, he will both know, and truly live, and feed, and only in this way will he get rid of the burden, but not before" [ibid.].

"The philosopher has four basic virtues of an ideal state ... ... fairness, prudence, courage and wisdom" [1. Book 4].

If we judge in accordance with the rules of formal logic about Plato's choice of philosophers by the leaders of a fair people's state as the most intelligent, honest, not self-interested and knowledgeable persons from the entire population, then he seems to be as the most reasonable.

But, as Plato himself noted, such people are more interested in cultural values, knowledge of the world around them, and not in politics, not in managing a heterogeneous crowd of subjects who are ready to fight for certain benefits. Therefore, Plato has considered it necessary to punish philosophers who refuse to govern the state, and to equalize the heterogeneous crowd of envious and greedy subjects by the abolition of property.

All this at first glance looks quite reasonable and effective, but in practice it turns out to be its opposite.

The fact is that among citizens there are always subjects with a slightly higher level of certain individuality traits, which are mainly the product of the animal form of consciousness, which in this case can cause them to strive not only for a well-fed, calm and prosperous life, but also to domination among their own kind.

Relying mainly on such properties of one's own individuality as a sufficient share of ingenuity; sociability up to servility; a tendency to deception in the form of distortion of information and dexterity in its presentation; acquired professional skills; as well as on such personality traits as a sufficiently strong will; self-confidence; unscrupulousness, expressed in cunning and deceit; a significant proportion of irresponsibility, expressed in experiments that seem beneficial to themselves, but clearly harmful to the population, these subjects gain an advantage over the rest - more inert members of the community in the form of ordinary people, highly moral intellectuals of various kinds, which include philosophers, as well as other sluggish or concerned about other affairs representatives of the population, who are not able to deftly push back or slander the opponent, as well as really enjoy the humiliation of the lower ones, and at the same time endure the mockery of the higher ones.

Their personality is significantly reduced, since altruism, that is, kindness, friendliness, empathy, sympathy, mercy, expressed in disinterested concern for others, is practically not characteristic of them.

They compensate for the lack of mind by attracting numerous advisers, but since they eventually have to make decisions, as long as they, as the true creators of their own happiness, first consider them from the position of personal (corporate), and not the public good with a roll towards retaining power, gaining a greater degree of their own dominance and acquiring all kinds of benefits.

Thus, in the natural process of gaining power, it is not the sage-philosophers who gain the advantage, but the cunning, unscrupulous and clever rogues who expect to receive considerable benefits from it and are ready to push back honest managers by all possible means, who lose the advantage in maintaining their position in power due to decency. the inability to slander one"s neighbor, to push back rivals by any available means, especially since those in power are kept in it by deceiving the crowd with spectacular, but mostly unrealistic promises and small handouts as a so-called carrot, as well as pumping the imaginary and real threats - external and internal, like a whip, but on similar actions the honest and upright philosophers will never go to.

So wise and disinterested philosophers are unlikely to last long in this bank with spiders, which is politics and power, contrary to Plato's hopes, as a result of which a fair state does not work with this side either.

However, honest, disinterested, noble philosophers and scientists are quite suitable for the role of critics of power, protection of those oppressed by it, and they are, in fact, the only ones who are able to develop science and build culture. It is in this, and not in the management of the state, that their mission actually consists.

Philosophers as true sages who sincerely want the good of the people, that is, with the dominant of higher consciousness (self-consciousness), expressed in a high degree of altruism of their personalities, in fact, will never become a hypocritical and selfish governing elite of the state, especially since they are characterized by a sense of self-esteem that does not allow them to please those above them.

To commit vile acts, so characteristic of politicians who are possessed not by morality, but by interests, they will not be allowed by the already achieved level of higher consciousness (self-consciousness), expressed in the altruism of their personality, putting material goods in the last place among the values of life. Therefore, they will always expose the unscrupulous, hypocritical and thieving powers that be, fight for the rights of citizens, and not cling to power, and will not participate in political games based on deceiving the people for the sake of their own privileges and power over them.

At the same time, these people will always have hope for the reorganization of society towards harmony. This hope for a harmonious world order cannot ever disappear in their good consciousness: they, as true humanists, are not able to believe that the horrors of our world cannot pass into the prosperity of every person and of all mankind in the end.

Their creativity is most valuable not for leadership, but for the purposeful and proactive development of science and culture, which directly affects the masses, developing more and more minds and feelings of people, affecting the most sensitive strings of self-consciousness of each person, thanks to which both individual and collective self-consciousness gradually change: mores soften, the population's craving for knowledge grows, the number of intellectually and emotionally developed people increases.

The growth of culture and education of the population makes it possible to increase the percentage of creative people who are, in fact, the only effective lever for accelerating the development of society.

Returning to Plato's considerations about the bulk of citizens who do not have great abilities, which must be led, it should be noted that he proposes to engage them in the production of material goods. These people, due to their simplicity and lack of interest in high culture and knowledge of the surrounding world, in his opinion, should just as simply consume the ordinary material goods along with their primitive reflection in culture, and nothing more, doing only one thing all their lives.

Therefore, Plato attributed them to the lowest estate and identified these citizens for the production of consumer goods both for themselves and for everyone else within the framework of crafts or agriculture. He considered the main reason for referring them to the lowest estate to be their lack of striving for mental and emotional development - these people are now referred to as philistines - and assumed to educate them in moderation and a tendency to order and discipline, as well not to climb into someone else's garden, that is, to be attached to one occupation all their lives.

"Look," I said, "how the state can provide itself with all this: is it not so that someone will be an agriculturist, another a builder, a third a weaver? And should we not add to this the shoemaker and some other person who attends to our bodily needs?... ... in our state we will find that the shoemaker is a shoemaker, and not a helmsman, in addition to his shoemaking; that the farmer is a farmer, and not a judge, in addition to his agricultural work, and a military man is a military man, and not a businessman, in addition to his military occupations; and so on" [1. Book 3].

"In order for our shoemaking business to be successful, we forbade the shoemaker to try to become a farmer or a weaver, or a housebuilder; similarly, we have entrusted everyone else with only one task, to which he is suitable according to his natural inclinations; he will do this all his life, without being distracted by anything else, and will achieve success, if he does not miss the time. And isn't it important to perform well everything that relates to military affairs? Or is it so easy that a farmer, a shoemaker, any other craftsman can be a warrior at the same time?" [1. Book 2].

It is difficult to argue with Plato that a significant part of citizens should produce or extract this or that product, sharing it with other citizens who are not involved in the productive sphere of activity, especially since most citizens of the state especially do not strive for the "high" or "low" goals, limiting themselves to the desire for a problem-free and well-fed life. They do not feel the desire for new knowledge at the expense of their own efforts, seeking only a more comfortable life from the position of simple acquisition and consumption of its benefits.

The absence of aspirations for a hectic life is due to a low level of ingenuity, unwillingness to use one"s mind, even if it is relatively good, weak sensitivity in relation to other people"s troubles and troubles, insufficient impressionability, decisiveness, sociability, an unsatisfactory level of aspiration to pry and inquisitiveness, a low degree of dominance, as a result of which such citizens have a comparatively low-grade individuality and an unremarkable personality.

Such "plant" life, to which they quickly get used, partly resembles the existence of animals, which, as you know, are concerned only with the problems of nutrition, reproduction and achieving, preferably, greater comfort.

Naturally, Plato attributes them to the lowest estate, but falling at the same time into a contradiction consisting in the obvious impossibility of equating these simplistic subjects with wise philosophers.

That is, in this aspect, the equality of all citizens proclaimed by him for the sake of establishing fairness becomes ephemeral.

In addition, Plato was mistaken in the need to establish a permanent binding of each citizen from the lowest estate to one type of activity.

The fact is that this numerous estate of the ordinary people is actually a reservoir for replenishing and improving all other strata of society for the following reasons.

Competition in this, at first glance, calm sphere, at least for improving the quality of consumption and small life joys, forces these citizens to show such personality traits as self-confidence, self-criticism, will, but still their egoism and indifference to other people's problems prevails over altruism.

However, such traits of their personality and individuality for individuals as the quality of mind, curiosity, will, diligence-laziness, self-confidence-self-criticism, politeness-rudeness, responsibility-bad faith, conviction-unscrupulousness, as well as quick wits, sensitivity, impressionability, decisiveness, one or another degree of sociability can experience significant fluctuations, due to which a relatively small - fluctuating - part of the inhabitants is able to supply to others population strata are the products of these fluctuations.

In other words, the ordinary people are the main soil for representatives of intellectual, power, creative and other layers that grow out of this soil by chance, or thanks to certain skills, abilities, strong will, that is, individual distortions in consciousness, the external signs of which are individuality and personality. Such deviations can raise them above the average level of a representative of the lowest estate.

Therefore, Plato's binding of citizens to one type of activity, that is, the actual deprivation of their freedom to change their lives, if, for example, they suddenly have abilities for another field of activity, automatically deprives society of development, provoking stagnation and the death of a state based on similar principles.

Plato's idea of the selection of citizens is equally problematic. In particular, he pays special attention to the formation of the guard estate and the maintenance of its existence as an intermediate link between managers-philosophers and producers of material products, since these guards must protect the state from external and internal enemies.

Plato has proposed to select and educate more capable and strong-willed individuals in the spirit of striving for fairness and the elimination of dangers for the state, that is, to preserve it by constant exertion of will, strength and obedience to their leaders, making these persons a kind of guards of the state, who can also serve as a reservoir to extract from it with the appropriate education of the leaders of the state.

"Whoever expresses the ability to protect the laws and customs of the state, those should be appointed guards ... ... Meanwhile, the state system will be in perfect order with us only if it is observed by a guard who is knowledgeable in this" [1. Beginning].

"Our guards must discard all other occupations and engage only in the protection of the freedom of the state - in the most thorough manner and without being distracted by anything outside" [1. Book 2].

The importance of the activity of the guards, which implies, according to Plato, the impossibility of their engaging in other types of labor, obliges them to support the estate of farmers and artisans: "They should receive supplies necessary for prudent and courageous experts in military affairs from other citizens in payment for being guarded. The amount of supplies should be enough for the guards for a year, but without excess. Eating all together, as during military campaigns, they will live together" [1. Book 3].

However, the kind of activity of the guards, contrary to the hopes of Plato, does not in any way contribute to the establishment of equality of all citizens. On the contrary, they must be extinguishing the resistance and discontent, which is always shown by a part of the citizens of the state, who have their own ideas about the principles and system of government and economic management in it.

Therefore, no matter how you upbringing the future representatives of this estate, the very nature of their activity makes them feel superior to the lowest estate, whose behavior they must control.

If to try to estimate the level of consciousness of these guards which, in effect, determines their choice then these securities differ from representatives of the lowest estate, on the one hand, in a slightly higher level of an animal form of consciousness characteristic egocentrism. Therefore, their dissatisfaction by own subordinate position to the heads of the states externally looks tendency to aggression against weaker, and, on the other hand, a certain weakening of self-consciousness, as a result of which their personality does not suffer from excessive altruism, but differs in unscrupulousness, which appears due to the need to carry out often contradictory or even meaningless orders of own superiors. Therefore, they tend to conformism, which is not combined with self-esteem.

That is, their individuality is characterized by a significant share of quick-wittedness, decisiveness, sociability and dominance compared to representatives of the lowest estate, but they cannot but be unprincipled, uncritical, prone to pleasing and deception in the qualities of their personality, and in addition, they do not have much desire to engage in systematic or hard labor.

Their personality is generally unburdened by traits such as excessive kindness and mercy, and their cherished dreams are reduced to career considerations.

Intellectual studies are inaccessible for most of them due to the rapid "drying out" of the brain due to the specifics of the service that does not require reflection, since there is firmly established military routine.

Thus, we see that Plato, who as a basis of these three estates put on wisdom, moderation and strength, respectively, was fundamentally mistaken in that such distribution of citizens on the basis of their selection, education and deprivation of property will ensure the equality of all citizens, and also that that the representatives of these estates will do what they must and what each of them is most inclined to do.

The main omission in Plato's model of a fair state is that he focuses on the upbringing of citizens of all three estates, designated by him, thanks to which supposedly ideal and equal citizens of all these estates will appear, for each of which is being found a completely suitable occupation on all life.

Similar approach does not take into account the fact that upbringing presupposes the presence of some mentors, and they can be either some external forces pursuing their own interests, or their own enthusiastic guardians of fairness, who also have their own ideas about fairness, but these considerations often contradict the established way of life of any communities. Therefore, changing traditions, that is, the natural way of life by artificial ones, as a rule, fails because of its idealization.

In addition, upbringing has no effect on that part of the consciousness of each person that he inherited from nature, and if this animal form of consciousness prevails, then the egocentrism of the entire human consciousness will invariably dominate, despite all the efforts of the mentors.

It will also not be possible upbringing all people from childhood in the spirit of belonging to one of the three estates because of the difficulty of determining in offspring inclinations and abilities for philosophizing, security labor or traditional crafts, agriculture, mediation, all the more so since all occupations of a person are not reduced to them, and attaching a person to one business without his desire and without taking into account his interests, due to not always adequate considerations of mentors, deprives him of freedom of action with the greatest return and reduces his life prospects to zero, limiting him in development, that is, it actually places in a certain caste, which borders on violence and lack of rights in relation to free citizens.

It should also be noted that private property relations, once they have appeared, can only be eliminated temporarily and provided that they are in their infancy or practically absent, since property is fought to the death, and no one will give it away so easily, all the more, no one will give it away. his wife to the neighbors easily, as any owner believes, for her and his shame.

Therefore, if such state appears, then due to its artificiality and far-fetchedness, it will not be viable and will soon disappear or return to a natural mode of existence.

In addition, such state can appear only for undeveloped ethnic groups, who, possessing mainly a collectivist consciousness inherited from state of archaic still close in time, are a little capable of individualistic, initiative actions and easily succumb to suggestions about future happiness in a complete fairness for each and all in the form of ideas similar to Plato ones.

And indeed, a "fair" state in the form of a theocratic patriarchal formation under the leadership of the Jesuits on the territory of present-day Paraguay has been formed at the beginning of the XVII century from Indians in state of archaic. It existed for about 150 years without any spiritual development, except for some improvements in the sphere of management, participating in frequent clashes with neighbors, This state was liquidated as a result of the victory over it by the Spanish-Portuguese troops in 1750, and the Indians themselves returned to an archaic state after the removal of the Jesuits from their midst, which shows the artificiality of this formation.

Likewise, the Soviet Union, which has been formed on the territory of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, initially had the vast majority of the population in the form of unlettered and semi-literate peasants with a collectivist consciousness, since they led a communal economy, that as a result initially has gave the state with three main estates: the power elite, security forces and producers of material products, where there were no private property relations almost according to Plato - at the heart of this state at first were communes, which later transformed into collective farms.

The enthusiasm of the population with its desire for a fair community in the form of communism all over the world, which was opposed by equally aggressive neighbors, led to the fact that this state turned out to be a kind of aggressor with a poor population, in which in power were not philosophers and sages, but ordinary bureaucrats, who concentrated in their hands the disposal of all property and the corresponding aspiration to conquer the whole world at this expense.

Thus, they used the main resources of the state to fight their neighbors for dominance in the world, keeping the population in poverty and virtual lack of rights. This formation, reminiscent of the Persian satrapy, existed for about 70 years and ceased to exist due to its artificiality and economic incapacity compared to its Western neighbors, as well as due to the population's loss of faith in the coming of a communist tomorrow.

The result of the relatively short existence of this unstable entity, the kind of utopia, was its disintegration and the return of the remaining metropolis to the natural bosom of capitalism in an extremely weakened state.

China turned out to be a similar state in the middle of the XX century with an illiterate overwhelmingly population leading a semi-animal lifestyle. True, China, a few decades after the painful communist experiments that brought many victims, managed to move away from distributive socialism towards a more proactive and well-fed capitalism, however, with the coloring in the form of the leadership of the country by the oligarchic elite under the deceptive name of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, having acquired a significant incentive for development after that.

Thus, the analysis of the model of the fair state of Plato which appeared as a natural impulse of this outstanding representative of mankind to harmony and happiness for all citizens without withdrawal shows impossibility of establishment of harmonious communities in the conditions of a technological civilization which development is provided on the basis of the private-ownership relations only with contradictions practically between all its components.


2. Evaluation of the model of the ideal state of Campanella - the "City of the Sun".


At the beginning of the XVII century, the monk of the Dominican order Tommaso Campanella in his work "The City of the Sun" actually tried for the first time on the basis of the model of the ideal state of Plato to promote the idea of globalization of the world by establishing a world monarchical Catholic state, characteristic by the abolition of private property and equalization of all citizens, control over which was to be carried out with the help of their selection.

Campanella motivates the need for such state as follows: "They are clearly aware that great corruption reigns in the world, that people are not guided by true higher goals, that the worthy endure torment, that they are not heeded, and that villains rule, although they call their prosperous life a misfortune. for it is, as it were, an insignificant and ostentatious beingness since in fact there are no kings, no sages, no ascetics, no saints, since they are truly not like that" [3].

The utopian model of the ideal state of Plato came to the court not only of Campanello, but also of Karl Marx in the 19th century. Both of them, in essence, not only have taken it as a basis, but literally repeated all its main provisions, which is why their models of a fair state also remained utopias, which was demonstrated by attempts to implement them.

In particular, following the model of the ideal state of Campanella in Latin America, the Jesuits created at the beginning of the 17th century a kind of communist state of the Indians, which existed in continuous wars for more than a hundred years, but immediately collapsed after the expulsion of the Jesuits from this territory.

Also following the model of Marx's ideal formation in the form of a communist community, the basic principles of which were borrowed from Plato and Campanella, as shown below, the Bolsheviks in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century tried to create a state similar to "The City of the Sun", with a gradual coverage of the whole world on the basis no longer of Catholicism, but of a communist ideology close to it. However, their attempt failed due to the complete economic and political incapacity of this new formation in comparison with neighboring capitalist countries.

Therefore, dictator Stalin, approximately 10 years after the overthrow of tsarism in Russia, began to transform the country into a state similar to the Persian satrapy, and transformed the communist ideals into bureaucratic ones, transferring almost all property to the disposal of the state bureaucracy, with the exception of the collective property of farmers, attaching them , nevertheless, to the land in the manner of serfs, just as Plato proposed to attach every citizen for life to one occupation.

Naturally, this kind of quasi-socialist semi-finished product did not manage to exist for a long time, and after a few decades it fell apart, unable to withstand competition with the leading capitalist countries, and also due to a change in the vector of motion in the minds of the impoverished population of Russia and the ruling bureaucracy from communist tomorrow to a well-fed capitalist today.

The "City of the Sun" is not much different from the ideal state of Plato, which was to be headed by the wise aristocrats of the spirit.

Campanella called the main philosopher-manager the Sun-metaphysician, giving him the functions of a secular and spiritual ruler, who is assisted in management by three assistants.

One of them, strictly according to Plato, is in charge of all the security forces, the other is responsible for crafts, art and science, the third - for the selection of offspring, agriculture and cattle breeding: "Their supreme ruler is a priest, called in their language "The Sun ", in our we would call him the Metaphysician. He is the head of all, both in the secular and in the spiritual, and on all issues and disputes, he makes the final decision. He has three co-rulers... ...The Might is in charge of everything related to war and peace: the art of war, the supreme command in war... ...The liberal arts, crafts and all kinds of sciences are subject to the guidance of the Wisdom... ...The conduct of the Love is subject, firstly, to childbearing and ensuring that the combination of men and women gives the best offspring... ... the same ruler is responsible for the upbringing of newborns, healing, the manufacture of medicines, sowing, harvesting and harvesting fruits, agriculture, cattle breeding, the table and in general everything related to food, clothing and sexual intercourse" [3].

Campanella, just as Plato, holds the opinion about the harmfulness of private property for the existence of a fair state, bringing this consideration, like Plato, to the point of absurdity - the community of wives: "...the community of wives ... is accepted by them on the basis that they have everything in common. The distribution of everything is in the hands of officials, but since knowledge, honors and pleasures are common property, no one can appropriate anything for himself. They claim that property is formed with us and is supported by the fact that we each have our own separate dwelling and our own wives and children. Hence selfishness arises, because in order to achieve wealth and an honorable position for his son and leave him by the heir to a large fortune, each of us either begins to plunder the state if he is not afraid of anything, being rich and noble, or becomes a miser, a traitor and a hypocrite when he lacks power, wealth and nobility. But when we renounce selfishness, we will only have love for the community" [3].

"... the community makes everyone both rich and poor at the same time: rich because they have everything, poor because they have no property, and therefore they do not serve things, but things serve them. And that is why they praise pious Christians in every possible way and especially extol the apostles."[3]

Campanella copies Plato in relation to the supreme power in a fair state, believing just as naively that only wise and educated people can rule in it:

"We undoubtedly know better that such an educated man will be wise in matters of governance than you, who put ignorant people as heads of government, considering them suitable for this only because they either belong to a ruling family or are elected by the ruling party. But our 0 (ruler), even if he is completely inexperienced in the affairs of the state administration, will never, however, be neither cruel, nor a criminal, nor a tyrant precisely because he is so wise" [3].

Like Plato, Campanella attaches the crucial importance to the existence of the state to selection: "When everyone, both men and women, in classes in the palaestra, according to the custom of the ancient Spartans, are naked, then the chiefs determine who is capable and who is sluggish for copulation, and which men and women are more suitable for each other according to the structure of their bodies to a friend, and then, only after a thorough ablution, they are allowed to have sexual intercourse every third night. Stately and beautiful women unite only with stately and strong men; fat ones - with thin ones, and thin ones - with full ones, so that they balance each other well and profitably... ...scientists are combined with women who are lively, lively and beautiful. People are sharp, fast, restless and frantic - with women full and meek. And they maintain that the perfect physique, by which the virtues develop, cannot be achieved by exercise: that people who are vicious by nature work well only out of fear of the law or of God, and if not, they secretly or openly ruin the state. Therefore, all main attention should be focused on childbearing, and it is necessary to appreciate the natural qualities of producers, and not the dowry and the deceptive nobility of the family ... ...Less capable children are sent to the village, but some of them, who turned out to be more successful, are taken back to the city. But in most cases, having been born under the same arrangement of stars, peers are similar in abilities, and in disposition, and in appearance, which results in great harmony in the state, supported by constant mutual love and assistance to each other" [3].

"...the production of offspring has in mind the interests of the state... and since the private individuals for the most part both produce offspring badly and bring it up badly, to the destruction of the state, then the sacred duty of observation of this, as the first basis of state welfare, is entrusted to the cares of officials, and only the community can vouch for the dependability of this, and not private individuals" [3].

Duplicating Plato, Campanella binds each person to the duties he performs, no matter what: "Everyone, no matter what service he is assigned, performs it as the most honorable" [3].

From all this it is clear that Campanella did not introduce significant details into Plato's model of a fair state, except for the idea of globalization of this state, and it remained a utopia copied from a utopia of the same kind.


3. An attempt to implement the "The City of the Sun" by the Jesuits.


At the beginning of the XVII century, Spanish Jesuits appeared on the territory of present-day Paraguay, who, under their own leadership, created a kind of mini-state of the local Indians, and it had to fight off slavers from Brazil during the entire time of its existence, which it did quite successfully.

The Jesuits gradually achieved the actual independence of the resulting formation from the metropolis, but in the middle of the XVIII century, Spain transferred part of the settlements of this mini-state to Portugal, which contradicted the plans of the Jesuits. The war that began ended with the victory of the Spanish-Portuguese troops. The Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish possessions, their state fell into decay, and the Indians returned to an archaic way of life. Such is the short history of this state in short.

The Jesuits who appeared in this territory, who were guided by the ideas of Campanella, took advantage of the fact that the standard of living of the primitive Indians was extremely low, quickly distributed them among the settlements and organized the way of life in these settlements mainly according to the principles set forth by Campanella in "The City of the Sun" with a certain correction, because they understood the too idealized construction of the state proposed by Campanella.

As Campanella suggested, at the head of each education was a spiritual and secular leader (Jesuit) with assistants who were members of the city council, and the Indians under their leadership were engaged in crafts and agriculture. The works were accompanied by prayers. No work was carried out on Sunday and Saturday days.

Products were collected in special stores and issued to all those in need.

The chief military commander of the Indians was subordinate to the Jesuit-leader. The militia under his command was used for defense and suppression of uprisings in adjacent territories.

However, only part of the land was allocated for public use, and the rest of the land was divided into plots for the personal use. That is, reasonable Jesuits abandoned the extreme - the socialization of everything, including wives, and they also abandoned the selection of the offspring of the Indians.

The Jesuits managed to change the archaic way of life of the Indians rather quickly, teaching them many crafts and introducing a higher level of agricultural technology. As a result, the standard of living of the Indians in this mini-state has risen compared to the previous one.

However, the rigid routine of living with frequent prayers and attaching each Indian to a particular job site under the tireless supervision of local officials bore little resemblance to a fair state whose only positive was the free distribution of the labor products for all those in need.

Similar state, close to slavery, could be tolerated only by the Indians, who until recently led a half-starved lifestyle in their archaic.

It is difficult to imagine how long this theocratic republic would last, but its days were counted by the superiority of the enemies surrounding the Jesuit settlements, the troops of this mini-state were eventually defeated, the Jesuits expelled from this region, and the Indians returned to their primitive communal state, failing and even no trying to preserve the basic principles of the former existence.

Summing up, it can be noted that, despite the rather adequate correction of the principles of Campanella and the growth in the well-being of the population led by the Jesuits, this formation did not go beyond the patriarchal-theocratic, suitable only for the population, which practically did not depart from the archaic way of life, that is, with a predominance of collectivist self-consciousness.

It was for this reason that this artificial education, after the removal of the Jesuits, broke up, unable to stay at the achieved level of well-being, and returned to the previous half-starved way of life, characteristic of all primitive community communities, corresponding to the level of his collectivist self-awareness.

In other words, it is impossible to radically change the lifestyle of a community to another unless it itself has reached the level of self-awareness that corresponds to a new lifestyle.


4. The Marxist utopia of a happy tomorrow.


Surprising at first glance, but Karl Marx - the founder of the theory, according to which, as a result of the organized struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors, a happy communist tomorrow should come - and billions of people fell for it - only reproduced in it the basic principles of Plato's ideal state model, slightly modernizing it in terms of Campanella, putting forward, like the latter, the idea of globalizing the world, but already by establishing a communist regime everywhere.

Like Plato and Campanella, Marx advocated the abolition of private property, the equalization of all citizens, and even some kind of selection of these citizens, which Lenin tried to implement in practice, and all this should have been led, however, not by philosophers or priests, as assumed Plato and Campanella, respectively, but the party wise men, who in the Soviet Union turned out to be just apparatchiks from the Central Committee of the Party, and the communists became their assistants, penetrating everywhere and controlling everything and everyone.

It turned out to be a reproduction of the model of the ideal state of Plato, in which, however, they were embarrassed to directly socialize wives, although at first there were such attempts, but Lenin after the revolution in Russia limited himself, in accordance with the ideas of Marx, by communes, which, due to their incapacity, were replaced ten years later collective farms (collective farms with workers paid by workdays, not money), in which peasant farmers, according to Plato, were also attached to the agricultural labor for life, since they were not given a passport and thus they were deprived of free displacement.

In this regard, it must be assumed that all these thinkers, recognized as the most outstanding intellectuals-humanitarians, have found no other way out for the gray mass of workers, as soon as forcibly leading it to universal happiness for everybody, in which they themselves certainly believed, which is rather stupid in itself, not only because happiness is unattainable in principle, but also because not everyone wants it, especially in this form, and even by methods that are contrary not only to freedom, but also to the natural nature of every person, which may be, especially the human brain in this nature, as far from another person as chicken brains are far from the brain of a monkey.

Nevertheless, it is not always harmful to want, if only because progress in the motion of the technological civilization is largely ensured by the struggle of these theorists - the guardians of the common good - with conservatives in power, parasitizing on it and at its expense.

So practice shows that sometimes also certain deceptive ideas are good for progress.

Marx and Engels have set out the idea of creating a kind of fair formation at the very beginning of their famous "Manifesto", seemingly, in adequate form: "The whole history of society has so far been the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, the patrician and the plebeian, the landowner and the serf, the guild master and the apprentice, in short, the oppressor and the oppressed were in eternal hostility to each other, waged a continuous, now hidden, now overt struggle, always ending with the revolutionary reorganization of the entire social edifice or the joint death of the struggling classes" [4, p. 2].

Indeed, the oppressors and the oppressed could not help but be at enmity with each other practically continuously, but revolutions and upheavals did not happen very often, apparently because something incomprehensible for these thinkers accumulated in the minds of people and from time to time was discharged in riots and revolutions.

However, if they did occur, then the change partly of the oppressors and the oppressed locally, as happened repeatedly in China and recently in Russia, Cuba and a number of other countries in Asia and Africa, has led to the fact that the new rulers from the oppressed rather quickly became oppressors. population of their own country in one form or another bureaucratic form, often more brutal than it was before.

This state of affairs, which history points to, clearly demonstrates the stability of antagonism in society, although few people like it. In this society, of course, different groups and estates are necessarily at enmity, since their interests differ, and property is by no means evenly distributed, and the invaders always want to protect and preserve it, whereas the deprived always want to take it away for themselves or divide it equally when the opportunity arises.

But some segments of the population should be leading in this struggle for power and property, right?

It is clear that the structure that has seized the main property and power in the state, the so-called power elite, is at the head of this struggle and is trying by all means to retain power with all its privileges.

But who always opposes any power?

Presumably, it is unlikely that this opposition represents oneself all oppressed in a row or separately such oppressed masses as clogged with life and propaganda the philistines, the semi-literate proletariat, or illiterate peasants who were capable only of local disturbances or rebellions which have happened quite often in history, but they all had only vague notions of fairness in their heads which should be installed for their reasons by some new good ruler.

That is, these almost always suppressed somehow spontaneous mass motions had nothing to do with the creation of a real and clearly structured a fair people's state.

Nevertheless, the rest are fundamental coups in the way of life of a society such as the French Revolution of 1789 were also reduced not to the creation of a fair people's state, but to the change of power elites in accordance with a change in property relations, which did not care about fairness and public disasters.

Nevertheless, even these revolutions that change social relations within the same framework - the oppressed and the oppressors - were led by ideological and competent fighters against injustice who have their own concept of a just state structure. However, in practice, all their efforts to improve the situation of the lower classes were reduced to the previous model of antagonistic social relations, and the new power elite turned out to be equally unfair to the oppressed.

Thus, a fully conscious opposition at all times of civilization has always been only a certain part of educated and cultured people who, due to accumulated knowledge and a considerable share of acquired altruism, could not help but want fairness for everyone, and they were disgusted the greed, hypocrisy, stupidity and arrogance of the nouveau riche of all times, at this, such people who are oppositional towards those in power, too, have always been enough in a more or less cultured community - even in a slave-owning one.

Their theories about improving the structure of society for the sake of a decent life for all without exception were different, but they all invariably thought about the public good.

Here, Plato, Campanella, Thomas More, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Chernyshevsky, Lenin and many others with their comrades, of course, could not tolerate such fairness against the oppressed masses of the people, as well as the methods of governing the state only for the benefit of the ruling elite, and they, at a minimum, they came up with models, ways and means to overthrow the oppressors and establish a just people's state, and even often fought with the oppressors, like Jan Hus.

In other words, the ruling elite tries to do everything only for themselves, spitting on all morality and coming up with laws to preserve power, and the intellectual opposition to it does everything possible to undermine the power of tyrants or cunning oligarchs, and calls on the oppressed to revolt and coups for the sake of restoring fairness, which for them, as a rule, boils down to the transfer of society to equality for all, that is, to utopia. As a result, despite all the efforts of the intellectual opposition to the authorities, fairness in their understanding is not being established in any way, and the antagonistic society still doing unfairness.

The ruling elites use all the power and legislative bodies of the state to retain power, the oppositionists-informals call for the struggle of the oppressed with the authorities for the sake of equality and fraternity, as the same Plato and Campanella proclaimed in their utopias. But, as it can be seen from history, social contradictions do not disappear from changing the places of the components.

Apparently, Marx, realizing from the results of the recent revolutions in France that there was no prospect of a change of power elites, and at the same time finding a rather organized detachment of proletarians which was being selected during the development of capitalism, decided to turn to the origins.

Knowing antiquity well, he most likely has seen in the ideal state of Plato the model that, with some adjustment, can be used to create not an ordinary state with ineradicable inequality of citizens, but a society of equal citizens, in which there are no proprietary, and, therefore, antagonistic relations.

But this did not seem enough to Marx, and he also borrowed Campanella's globalist idea of establishing a society without antagonistic relations throughout the world.

However, Marx, we must give him his due, somewhat updated the ideas of Plato and Campanella, proposing on his own behalf to make a smooth transition to these peculiar communes on a world scale without estates and classes by creating, as it were, intermediate states in which the proletariat would dominate, led by ideologists like to him. These states will pave the way for the establishment of real communism.

The novelty of this approach of Marx also consisted in the fact that he, perfectly imagining the resistance of the exploiters to such turn in social relations, has proposed to overthrow them by force with the help of the same proletariat and arrange society without any violence not immediately, but through states with the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would to act to maintain their own power and correct other citizens up to the gradual building of a non-antagonistic society.

All these constructions of Marx looked impressive and have made an unusually strong impact on society, inspiring its best representatives to feats for the glory of the realization of Marx's ideas.

However, both Marx himself and his followers have not understood that there is no real equality of citizens in their minds and ideas and it is impossible to establish it in any way. At the same time, they failed to realize that without proprietary relations, the development of society will cease and technological civilization with all its conveniences will come to an end [see, for example, 2].

In other words, Marx, like the previous idealist thinkers, was captured by the expectation of the inevitable arrival of a joyful and happy tomorrow for everyone at once, instead of the current misfortunes, with the help of a friendly and independent proletariat, if the proletariat will be working in the way indicated by him/ Then it will be created a truly just society, the foundations of which he borrowed from Plato, although Plato himself did not He was confident in the practical implementation of his own model of an ideal state, but Marx was confident.

But, paradoxically for many, including for all followers of Marx, the pace of development of society, more precisely, the current technological civilization in the conditions of the incessant struggle of both strata - the power elites and the informal intellectual opposition, - involving the rest of the population into this struggle during critical periods of the existence of civilization, are increasing, that is, the own time of this civilization is accelerating: one epoch replaces another, developing with increasing speed, which is clearly visible by the number of centuries of existence of these epochs, and civilization is gradually blossoming, gaining more educated, cultured and living in a more comfortable environment of citizens, who are finding more and more degrees of freedom in society with all its antagonism.

Thus, it turns out that the basic position of Marxism about the decisive role of the class struggle in social development turns out to be untenable, and the true driving force behind the development of society is the dissatisfaction of the dual consciousness in its individualistic and collectivist forms, which is reflected in the struggle of the ruling elites with the informal intellectual opposition to them.

In the course of the struggle of natural consciousness and self-consciousness in every head and in all heads at once, their collectivist form gradually gives way to an individualistic one, and society from slaveholding through feudalism comes to capitalism, in which the individualistic character of all social forces is most clearly expressed, that in turn leads this society through ever-deepening crises due to its own imperfection to decline and decay, and it tries in the person of its elites, under the threat of loss of own power to be returned to the former collectivism that flourished in the archaic, through the abolition of property, but this attempt cannot to be successful due to the decomposition of the entire structure of society, which should disappear like a house on rotten piles [see, for example, 2].

If we return to the foundations of Marxism, we can clearly see that they are not far removed from the principles of the Platonic ideal state by comparing Plato's Dialogues and Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto.

In the leading place from all citizens, Marx puts assistants of the main sages, like himself, imbued with the ideas of these sages: "...the Communists, in practice, are the most decisive, always striving forward part of the workers' parties of all countries, and in theoretical terms they have the advantage over the rest of the mass of the proletariat that they understand the conditions, progress and general results of the labor motion" [4, p. 17].

Like Plato in relation to private property, Marx states: "Communists can express their theory in words: the destruction of private property" [4, p. 17].

True, to console the public, Marx declares: "... this will not be the transformation of the private property into the public property. Only the social character of property will change. It will lose its class character" [4, p. 18].

Developing the idea of the destruction of private property in the future, Marx admits that in this way the personality is also destroyed, but, apparently, the impersonality does not frighten him, just as it did not frighten Plato, who on this basis introduced true, in his opinion, equality, against which Marx does not object: "In bourgeois society, capital has independence and individuality, while the worker is dependent and impersonal. And the bourgeoisie calls the destruction of these relations the destruction of the human personality and freedom. And she's right. It is really about the destruction of the bourgeois personality, bourgeois independence and bourgeois freedom. Under modern bourgeois conditions of production, freedom is understood as freedom of trade, freedom of purchase and sale" [4, p. 19].

All this sounds loud and convincing as a true struggle for fairss for the majority of working people, but, alas, Lenin has faced similar idealism in Russia in his time, when communes, the abolition of trade, buying and selling led to the practical collapse of the state and famine, forcing the main sage Lenin to re-introduce these bourgeois prejudices, as Marx estimated them, in the form of the NEP (New Economic Policy), which was in fact a salutary return to the old methods of management.

Quite in accordance with Plato's ideas about the ideal state, Marx believes that the destruction of the family will solve the problem of raising offspring in the spirit of collectivism, exposing the pretext for this measure that the family is the basis of the bourgeois system, also offering, in accordance with Plato's ideas, to raise children not at home, but in a public way: "On what does the modern bourgeois family rest? On the capital, on the private profit. In its fully developed form, it exists only for the bourgeoisie, but it finds its complement in the forced celibacy of the proletariat and in open prostitution. The bourgeois family will naturally have to fall with the fall of this addition, and both of them will disappear together with the disappearance of capital ... Bourgeois rhetoric about the family and upbringing, about the tender relationship of parents to children, inspires all the more disgust, the more family ties are destroyed among the proletariat thanks to large-scale industry, and the more children of workers are turned into mere commodities and working tools ... Communists could be reproached except in the fact that they want to put the official community of wives in the place of the hypocritically concealed one. But it goes without saying that with the destruction of modern conditions of production, the community of wives created by them, that is, official and unofficial prostitution, will also disappear" [4, p. 21-22].

Marx also uses Plato's idea of the compulsory attachment of a citizen to the workplace in the following formulation: "The same obligation of labor for all, the establishment of armies of labor, especially for agriculture ... The combination of agricultural labor with factory labor, the gradual elimination of the difference between town and country" [4, p. 26].

As for the Platonic selection of citizens, Marx believes that capitalism itself has selected the most determined citizens, who will overthrow it. These are hired workers in factories and factories - the proletariat: "The proletariat will take advantage of its political dominance in order to take away all capital from the bourgeoisie in a series of attacks, in order to centralize all the tools of labor in the hands of the state, that is, the proletariat organized as the ruling class ..." [4, p. 25].

Oddly enough, but Marx, brought up on the ideas of Hegel, including, in particular, the struggle of opposites as the driving force of social development, comes to the conclusion that this struggle will eventually be eliminated in the form of the elimination of class antagonism: "When class differences are destroyed over time, and all production will concentrate in the hands of associations, social power will lose its political character... If the proletariat, in its struggle against the bourgeoisie, unites as a class, achieves dominance through revolution, and, as the ruling class, forcibly destroys the old conditions of production, then it also destroys the conditions for the existence of class antagonism, classes in general, and at the same time their own class domination. The place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonism will be taken by an association in which the free development of each will be the conditions for the free development of all" [4, p. 26].

If for Plato faith in an ideal state was justified by the fact that he did not suspect the need for a struggle of opposites, then Marx knew about this, but preferred to believe in the coming communist earthly paradise, having opposed it to paradise in the other world, which sinners can lose, and communism will remain for everyone, however, only during their lifetime, but this, as many believe, is not bad at all. It is precisely because of life, disgusting for the majority and so beautiful in the paradise painted by Marx, that this obvious utopia has gained such popularity among the population.

As a side note, we note that Hegel himself was just as inconsistent as Marx, having considered at the end of his life the Prussian state contemporary to him as an ideal.

So they both came into conflict with reality, succumbing to the charm of each of their own utopias: Hegel, having believed in the ideal in the form of the Prussian state with its, as it seemed to him, perfect order, and Marx, having believed in the Platonic ideal of a just community without struggle and passions.


5. The attempt to achieve communism in Russia.


This idea, which has been inspiring the masses of working people to this day, appeared immediately after the emergence of private property, which was clearly unfairly distributed.

The extant Chinese chronicles testify to a number of uprisings of the disenfranchised population against the mandarins several thousand years ago.

Some of these uprisings ended in victory for the oppressed. However, these victories, instead of establishing justice, as it was understood by those deprived of it, or rather, deprived of property, led only to the formation of new dynasties within the same antagonistic system, in which the masses of the poor again work for the rich and noble.

Karl Marx in his Manifesto [4] and subsequent numerous works tried to impart a scientific character to, in essence, the eternal dream of the destruction of the oppressors and the establishment of a kind of paradise on Earth.

On this formed basis, charming and in addition seemingly scientific, in Russia, at the beginning of the 20th century, the large-scale attempt was made to establish truly the just state.

The peasant masses who fought for alien interests, realizing this fact after several years of deprivation and victims of the First Imperialist War, turned their rifles against power, having changed it eventually as if to the power of the working people in accordance with the teachings of Marx, but, just like in ancient China, due to the low level of collectivist self-consciousness of this mass of the population and even lower level of individual self-consciousness, gradually came to the formation of a semblance of Asian despotism, led by the first secretaries of the Communist Party - a kind of alpha-males, who succeed each other, and a new religion in which the desire for heavenly grace was replaced by the desire for earthly grace under the name of communism, where everyone will finally get enough, and will live without grieving and happily.

This naive belief aroused an unprecedented sacrificial enthusiasm of the population, which led at first to a significant technological and cultural breakthrough, but, like any utopia, which ended pretty soon with a complete ideological collapse in the form of a loss of faith in communism and the subsequent destruction of an artificially created supposedly nationwide socialist power with a rollback from some achieved modernity to medieval methods of government and existence of a population divided again into estates, as well as widespread corruption, since in a short time it is impossible to raise a low level of collectivist self-consciousness of a heterogeneous population, until recently illiterate or semi-literate, with its archaic notions of a way of life based most of all on natural consciousness, and all the more is impossible forming in the majority of the population of a level of individual self-consciousness high enough to become prevailing over collectivist.

This complex educational and upbringing process, based on a general gradual cultural and technological upsurge, as the development of European countries, now leading in the world, has shown, takes not decades, but centuries.

Therefore, the population of Russia as a whole has not overcome the barrier between personal self-consciousness and collectivist consciousness, which includes the self-consciousness of the main part of the community and its natural consciousness, in favor of individual self-consciousness.

Free people - persons with a high level of individual self-consciousness - will never allow the alpha-male to rule them - as the sole ruler, what whatever he may be, and in Russia this has happened for a thousand years and is happening now.

What is the explanation for this development, which, as a rule, leads, after revolutions and coups, to the restoration of an antagonistic system?

It turns out that in the conditions of private property relations, this system is the most effective and even the only possible one, since it provides a certain pace of development, a certain order in the state, insuring it from chaos and disappearance, while its absence inevitably leads to the stagnation and disintegration of the state and its further absorption by other states.

The idea of reasonable selfishness of Hobbes, further supported by the concept of Pierce's pragmatism, in essence, is the basis of the ideology of the most advanced antagonistic system - capitalism.

Hobbes argues that the person, as a natural being, is egoistic, striving first and foremost to satisfy his own needs, but he is also reasonable, that is, he is able to understand with his mind that taking into account the interests of other people often turns out to be beneficial.

For illustration, we present a small excerpt from "Leviathan" by Hobbes: "... natural laws (as justice, equality, modesty, mercy and (in General) behavior towards others as we would wish them to behave towards us) by themselves, without the fear of some force, forcing to carry out them, contrary to the natural passions, attracting us to partiality, pride, revenge, etc..." [5, p. 192].

As for pragmatism, it is characterized by its founder, Pierce, as follows: "Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the object of your conception to have. Then your conception of those effects is the WHOLE of your conception of the object" [6, p. 331-346]

Reasonable egoism and pragmatism, on the one hand, liberate the productive forces of each individual, making him competitively free within the framework of the state that supports the striving of each person to improve the living conditions. Thus, the pace of development of the respective communities becomes the maximum possible.

On the other hand, the inequality of abilities and conditions under the domination of unlimited competition of individuals seeking to obtain benefits for themselves, cannot but lead to the separation of society with respect to the possession of property or its equivalents, at this, the difference in the size of this property can reach astronomical values.

The natural occurrence of permanent tension between the "offended poor" and the "rich people who are snickering" the power elite is trying to smooth over with a robbery of less developed communities, the funds from which are largely transferred to the additional pro-feeding of both the ordinary people and the middle class to avoid social cataclysms.

In a capitalist society, several main strata are formed. The majority are ordinary people (philistines), which include employees of various kinds, manufacturing and technical personnel of factories, plants and other corporations that produce products, including those in the field of agriculture, as well as retirees and housewives.

The ruling stratum is the power elite, which is opposed by the informal opposition. The power elite is supported by the bureaucratic apparatus of various kinds, as well as the group of law enforcement agencies and the army. The stratum of creative people, in whose sphere the development of science, technology and culture is located, is also subordinated to the power elite.

Except the philistines as well as the power elite, representing mainly the organizational- managing contingent from the highest officials and the most advanced business, in each community there is a layer of the people of brainwork, intellectuals of all kinds, as well as - relatively few representatives of the rest of the population, who managed in one way or another to rise in their self-consciousness to the level that dictates their aversion to the amoral and selfish behavior of the power elite.

These persons have the hope of reorganizing society in the direction of harmony, that is, equality, fraternity and at the same time liberty, without understanding that liberty always resists to equality, justice, destroying any stability. But this hope for harmonious world order can never disappear in their blissful consciousness: they as true humanists, are not capable to believe that horrors of our world cannot turn into prosperity of each person and all mankind eventually.

Informally-oppositional part of intellectuals, to which various educated people from this or that generation can be attributed, are active, honest, sincerely wishing good to the people, that is, with the dominant higher consciousness, have never joined and will not join to the hypocritical and self-interested governing elite of the state. Already reached level of the highest consciousness, putting material benefits on the last place among life values, will not allow them to commit similar. Therefore, they will always expose the unscrupulous, hypocritical and thievish individuals in power of this world, to fight for the rights and civil liberties of working people, involving them in this fight as much as possible widely.

Thereby, their opposition to imperious elite does not allow society to freeze in place, being reflection of antagonism of the lowest and highest types of consciousness in each person.

The struggle between them when the passive behavior the most part of the rest of the population occurs continuously with the dominance of a more energetic and unprincipled ruling elite, which is provoking self-hatred from everyone else, and thus forming that antagonism that does not allow society to stop in developing.

It is for this reason that any coup or revolution that overthrows or even destroys the entire power elite, as it happened, for example, in China repeatedly, relatively quickly leads to the reproduction of former - antagonistic - order in society, that is, restores the condition, under which is possible development of society.

In Russia, after seventy-year cataclysms, the same thing occurred. If this recovery does not happen, then the community will disintegrate, merging with neighboring states. True, there was no place for Russia among the developed capitalist countries, and it rather quickly turned into a semi-colony of the leading Western countries, ruled by the comprador elite bribed by them.

The imbalance in the confrontation of the power elite and informal intellectuals leads either to stagnation in the development of the community, or to disorganization of the control system and the onset of chaos with unpredictable consequences.

Thereby, the driving force of social development, as well as development of each person, is the hidden interaction of two forms of consciousness: the lowest, or natural (animal), and the highest, or self-consciousness [7].

The rest strata of society, significant in terms of the number, except for the layer of creative people providing scientific, technological and cultural growth, more or less close to the philistines. These conformist or inert layers include representatives of security forces, military, small businessmen, rentier and various criminals.

Therefore, due to the low level of self-consciousness and, as a result, only pragmatic aspirations, they are not able to independently influence the course of social development, but these layers, under the influence of propaganda, as well as under the influence of changed living conditions, can begin to act, either supporting a ruling regime which generally satisfies their rather squalid living needs, or joining the opponents of the regime if it deprives them of a well-fed and measured life.


Summary


So, the analysis showed that the communist ideas of Marx were almost completely borrowed from Plato: the destruction of property, the family, the introduction of labor communes for the sake of equalizing labor and consumption of citizens under the supreme leadership of the sages from the leadership of the Communist Party, as well as the selection of these citizens, some of which were recognized as leaders and the leading segment of the masses - the communists and the proletariat, respectively, and all the rest were called to work for the benefit of the working people, although they themselves were this working people.

True, the experimenter Lenin, in practice singled out former enemies, the former bourgeoisie and part of the intelligentsia into a separate group in order to deprive them of all rights.

A few years later, the new fair state of workers and peasants, created in accordance with the Neoplatonic model of Marx, showed its complete incapacity.

For the sake of preserving the state and saving citizens from starvation, Lenin had to first introduce NEP (primitive commercial capitalism), and then his successor Stalin returned the state to a form well known to him - in the manner of the Persian satrapy in the form of a dictatorship of supreme leaders, in whose charge all the property of the state was now, but from such absurdities as the destruction of the family, introduction of equalization of all citizens with their division into castes had to be abandoned willy-nilly, shamefacedly recognizing thereby Neoplatonic Marxism not quite suitable for the new era.

Over time, the permanent poverty of the population and the participation of the Soviet Union in virtually continuous wars and clashes with neighbors led the population to the idea that the achievement of communism was a chimera, in connection with which this dictatorship of the Communist Party, seven decades after the revolution, quite calmly switched to the rails of the musty capitalism, and remains in it for the time being, but the masses, having lived under this capitalism, turned out to be dissatisfied again and, in spite of everything, again cherish the hope of somehow producing a fair people's state.

It is also curious that the main bourgeoisie have turned to Plato's tempting utopia today - the supranational power elite, who, sensing the imminent collapse of capitalism due to its permanent crisis, of course, wishes to keep themselves in power as before, without having invent anything better than to produce, again, strictly according to Plato, total control over citizens, the destruction of families, the deprivation of citizens' property and the ranking of these citizens already in the form of some semi-thoughtless creatures according to the degree of obedience to the ruling elites with the help of artificial intelligence.

That is, the failure of all the utopias mentioned above does not teach anyone anything, apparently, because they really want something pleasant exclusively for themselves in accordance with the requirements of that form of human consciousness - animal consciousness, which, with the current lowering of the level of self-consciousness, begins to prevail and creates unthinkable stupidities in their aspiration for not bad preservation of themselves, hoping in their own unreasonableness that the inevitable end will never come.


Bibliography


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