On Facebook recently I came across the expression “it is hard to fight for the happiness of the people against their will.” Fellini’s Amarcord immediately came to mind, and the scene where one Italian fascist complains to another: “they don’t understand that this is all for their own good!” This passage struck me at the time. Perestroika and glasnost were in full swing, and everyone around was fighting for the people’s cause. My question was where the line lies between “incorrect” intervention, embodied by Fellini’s fascists (and, as it turned out, also by Soviet communists) and “correct” intervention by honest, selfless, even somewhat liberal do-gooders.
Now I know for certain that in political life this line does not exist. Nazis, fascists, communists, feminists, anti-smoking and anti-obesity crusaders, fighters for the Ukrainian language and culture, protectionists, “greens” and all parties without exception are identical in their main essence. All these people fight for your happiness against your will.
And here is what is interesting. I am by no means against do-gooders and even not against civic enthusiasts. Moreover, I am categorically “for.” Fight for women’s rights, against men’s rights, protect whales and Negroes, learn the “Horst Wessel Song” and march in formation, but please, under two conditions—voluntarily and at your own expense. Convince us that smoking is harmful, that women are better than men, and so on. If you are persuasive, I might join your movement or donate to it. Myself. Personally. Voluntarily.
But the moment you bring all these ideas into the political sphere, enter elections, everything changes radically and you all become fascists, even if you do not think about it. After all, “going to elections” means precisely refusing persuasion, refusing the voluntariness and consent of other people to the behavior you consider correct. The purpose of elections is to gain access to the machine of coercion that will force others to act as you want. The content of political rhetoric here no longer matters. In this sense, the profound “economic” deliberations about how to organize “industrial policy” or properly use “export potential” are no different from exalted slogans like “every woman her man.” Both one and the other presuppose some people exercising violence over other people instead of voluntary adoption of this or that practice.
Well then, I will be asked, what should one go to elections with? Now that is indeed the right question. A democratic state is such a trap of egoism. After all, fighters for the people’s cause who try to get elected or, in the form of “public organizations,” demand that the state adopt various “correct” laws, are in reality playing on the most vicious and primitive egoism. Elections, political life and the state as a whole are such a universal answer to the question “how to make people do what I want without lifting a finger.” Everyone knows how. One just needs to pass the right law. The only inconvenience is that everyone has a different opinion about what law is correct, and this “dispute” constitutes the content of “political struggle.” The apparent simplicity of the solution to the question “how to make other people convenient for me” mobilizes human egoism and time and again directs it toward elections. After all, indeed, if elections determine who will operate the machine of coercion, then “going to elections” can only be done with ideas about how to force someone to do something. Truly, a brilliant scheme. If one thinks about the means of self-preservation of the machine of coercion, it is difficult to invent something more effective.