Mikhail Delyagin: Saving Humanity Requires Rekindling the Most Basic Desire to Survive
The Forbidden Victory Significance of the Great Patriotic War —— The Same Problem We Face Today
Author:
Mikhail Delyagin
Image: Russian economist, commentator and politician Mikhail Delyagin
The Great Patriotic War was a great tragedy, the foundation of our social identity, and a core component of World War II. In the 80th anniversary of the Soviet people's victory over fascism, there are many writings about this war.
The crazy liberal barbarians who hate the Soviet Union for its justice, humanism and progress deliberately erase any mention of the victors — the Soviet people, just as they decorate the mausoleum of Lenin with Russian flags and flowers on the Day of Victory, concealing its spiritual origin.
The core meaning of the war was neglected by propaganda, just as President Putin deliberately downplays the positive term "Russians".
The essence of the war was a conflict between the Soviet society's progressive plan (using technological progress to achieve social humanization and individual liberation) and the European colonialist plan of social regression (using the same technological progress for the opposite purpose — enslaving humanity and dragging it into lawlessness and violence).
The pursuit of freedom and self-awareness — against obedience and cruelty; what we call humanitarian justice — against the barbarism originating from the British colonial tradition; culture as the basis of social and individual progress — against (as Goebbels said) the negation of culture to turn nations into herds of pigs.
Certainly, the war had other dimensions.
For economists, World War II was a way out of the Great Depression. In the 1930s, five macro-regions were formed: the United States, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, Hitler's unified Europe, and Japan's "Co-Prosperity Sphere". Except for the Soviet Union, each region's monopoly was decaying. The war merged the five macro-regions into two — the Soviet Union and the United States — greatly expanding the competitive space and weakening monopolies.
This brought a 20-year period of development — until the mid-1960s, when television technology expanded demand by creating new forms of entertainment and behavior patterns rather than new products, thus giving rise to the technology that shaped consciousness as the foundation of society.
For political economists, the war was a conflict among capital groups: British financial speculators pushed German industrial capital into two dead ends — a social regression plan that violated its technological level, and an attempt to conquer the Soviet Union (which was impossible in terms of resources), but ultimately they themselves lost to American industrial capital.
From an international competition perspective, the war was another attempt by Britain to destroy the European continent and the Soviet Union, trying to maintain its hegemony by controlling these regions. Thanks to our parents, the United States and the Soviet Union divided the defeated Germany, Japan, and the British Empire.
Notably, the license shock created by the Holocaust established Israel (thereby prohibiting the shock of genocide against the Soviet people as a carrier of Russian culture), becoming the beginning of the collapse of the British Empire. For this reason, the British bureaucracy tries (just like now) to destroy Israel through neighboring countries, while the Soviet Union and the United States help Israel against Britain.
From a class perspective, the war was an attempt to destroy the socialist society, that is, the people's government that denied the power of money.
Tactically, it failed, but strategically, it succeeded: the sacrifice of the best and the painful transformation forced for survival prevented the country from consolidating itself when the first technological revolution required freedom as a condition for development, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union two generations after Hitler's invasion.
When we recall the practical significance of the Great Patriotic War, we often compare patriotism, self-sacrifice, state governance and command efficiency, ideology, unity of the front and the rear, national policy, and attitude towards soldiers.
We remember that the party and government officials who became the ruling class tried to save themselves by directing the "generation of victory" towards the deceased Stalin as an inappropriate target — and think about how to use the energy of the new generation of victors.
But today, the practical significance of the war lies in the fact that the world again — although at a different technological level — faces the same choice between social progress and regression.
We have created a third living environment (in addition to the natural and technological spheres) — social platforms, which are social networks used for new governance. At this time, we make decisions based on information and emotions provided by the algorithms of these platforms.
Money is no longer a tool of governance, and the alliance of industrial and digital capital has buried the former world masters — the financial speculators (this is the essence of the 1920s).
The latter tried to drag the world back to the Middle Ages, which they considered a bright future. To this end, they destroyed families with decadence, destroyed industry with climate fraud, and destroyed nations with abstract thinking abilities with drugs and immigration.
This plan has been successful in Europe and may succeed in Russia, but it is destined to fail globally.
The key is the new social structure shaped by technology: the owners of social platforms and artificial intelligence (AI); professionals who serve social life; and 90%-99% of the members of society (social platform users) — they are useless for production and profit, so they have no obligations or rights.
In this system, the majority do not need rationality (let alone they are trapped in "comfort cocoons" by social platforms, excluding discomfort — and also excluding the driving force for development).
Yes, users' rationality is only used to train AI: to provide diversity for digital trajectories. AI becomes stupid by learning the digital trajectories of social media users, pickled cucumber mistake makers, or educational reform authors — and will be destroyed along with its macro-region by neighboring countries.
However, users' rationality cannot be guaranteed, because their energy needs to be consumed to maintain stability — preferably in the virtual world.
Those who describe this society (such as "electronic concentration camps", "cyberpunk", "technological feudalism") ignore its inevitability. Because knowledge is essentially open, it would die in a closed environment, resulting in the collapse of the survival system and disaster within at most two generations.
The fundamental error of this scenario is transplanting the old market motives — the need for survival — into the new society. After all, in the world of social platforms, the market is secondary to violence as in capitalism.
The emergence of digital capital marks the birth of a new reality.
The main product yesterday was information, and tomorrow it will be the psychological states and emotions generated by social platform algorithms. Both are essentially social products and cannot be private.
The disappearance of private ownership and the market is not as predicted by Marxists, but it is irreversible — along with its driving force. Finally, when wealth can no longer be accumulated, people will no longer pursue wealth, and instead, it may be replaced by futile virtual masturbation (and then extinction), or creation.
This is the basic social need of humanity: "creation and production," surpassing oneself both in one's own and others' eyes.
Creation — first of all technical creation — as a lifestyle and habit, will maintain the intellectual level of social platform users and give them value, creating technical solutions for their development.
We belong to the non-creative type of humans who are disappearing, so we cannot see the driving force of the transition from survival to creation: this should ask the young, but they have lost the ability to reflect due to digital poisoning, even without the college entrance exam.
Nevertheless, this transition is possible, and can only be achieved by the carrier of Russian culture: this is indeed a unique combination of abstract thinking ability (i.e., technical ability), humanism, and messianism.
The core contradiction of the fusion of collectivism and individualism makes us the key group — the source of creators and revolutionaries.
We are the only force that can save the world — given that humans have a dark survival instinct, our chances of success are high.
Original text: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7519418777289703977/
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