Now let’s find out, what exactly had happened? Was there capitalism at all? In the second half of the XVIII century, when the British completely conquered India, they seized enormous treasures: precious stones, gold, became the owners of cotton plantations. It is precisely this looting of India that made possible (in addition to the skills of the protestant puritan ethic: labor and thrift) an unusual burst of the business activity in Great Britain. Treasures + raw materials. The robbed material valuables and the robbed raw materials made possible the industrial Revolution. Let’s recall that the first “capitalist” enterprises in England were weaving mills. What did the “Luddites” break, what did they destroy? Right, machines and more precisely weaving looms. Because the looms took the salary from the artisans-weavers. All this information was once provided by the soviet textbook on history. It provided it talkatively because it concerned the most precious and cherished: capitalism. Without which Marxism has nothing to do.
Marx was over-modern, super-modern. Even hasty. He described in “The Capital” a phenomenon that wasn’t present even in England yet. Only its elements existed. “The Moor” as the relatives called him for his olive skin, was by his mentality a black romantic. Isn’t the “Communist Manifesto” published in 1848 a romantic work? “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Communism…” Specters are present in romantic literature, the gothic novel is full of specters. I don’t intend to poke fun at the serious scholar-theoretician, whom Marx was all his life. What I want to say is that Karl Marx was too fast with his discovery of capitalism. In real fact capitalism as a social-economic phenomenon worthy of attention, appeared after Marx’ death. And in essence even later – after the success of the Russian Revolution, conducted under the flag of Marxism. It is then that the word realized: capitalism exists. Without the convincing success of the Russian Revolution all the activity of Marx, all his conventions, internationals (we know how this is done, 30-40 friends arrive from diverse countries of the world) – would have remained mice scuffling. As if not enough societies, organizations, parties were founded in the XIX century! Sometimes historians timidly grind out the words that Russia was not a developed capitalist country, that its proletariat was not numerous at the moment of the revolution. But, I mean, excuse me, The First Proletarian nevertheless happened, despite the rules, violating all the rules! And also happened in a country that Marx openly disliked, did not care for. Possibly because in London’s emigrant circles he always ran into the energetic, colorful Russian lord, the anarchist Bakunin. Maybe from his confrontations with Bakunin, from his wrangles with him Marx came up with his biting opinion about Russians: “A mix of the psychology of a slave and of the Mongol world conqueror”. Today many are taken aback by the fact that the first social revolution happened in not quite a capitalist country. Explanations appear that essentially, they say, the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a bourgeois revolution, however if its first stage – the February revolution was a classical bourgeois revolution, then in October the power was seized by a radical sect, similar to the Jacobins. We already know that all revolutions are made by misfits. Therefore the question, who did it, falls off. Under which flag did they do it – we also know. We are interested in the fact that Russia was not a capitalist country in 1917. The power belonged to the tsar, the social regime was called “autocracy” and the Russian factory-owners and merchants though they were wealthy, did not possess the power. The majority of the population consisted of poor peasants, period. A question appears: and what countries were capitalistic, that is, where did the capital rule, banking or industrial? An answer also appears: In Marx times there were no such countries on the globe. Neither in Lenin times. The steel-foundry combination of Krupp was important during the times of William I and William II in Germany, but Krupp did not govern Germany. And England, in which the industrial revolution took place, in the XVIII century, when India was looted and in the XIX century when factories’ and plants’ chimneys smoked all over the place, was a parliamentary monarchy. Capitalists did not rule it. That is, Marx ran ahead of time. And Lenin demonstrated the existence of capitalism as a social system. Since his Marxist socialism had to defeat someone. “We knocked down autocracy and capitalism,” the Bolsheviks said. They knocked down the autocracy but there was no capitalism.
In 1997, if I’m not mistaking, in the press-center of the Tretyakov Gallery was held a meeting with George Soros. The meeting of the capital’s society and the “Institute of an Open Society”, headed by this eccentric American philanthropist. We came there with Dugin, and both made an appearance, after signing up beforehand. Our presence and appearance was beforehand discussed with the Russian Soros helpers and Soros himself was informed: two dangerous revolutionaries will come. He could have said: “Lord have mercy, no!” But he said – let them come.
Oh, how animated he became both times when we appeared. He instantly wake up from some indifferent sleep, hauled himself in the armchair, seated himself straight, straightened his glasses, neatly putting them on his nose. He smiled, put out his ear. From the forty-eight presenters he was interested only in the opponents – both of us. Because all of the others presenters were favored by him, were either employees of the “Soros Fund” in Russia or intelligentsias who had received aid from him. Beside him was seated Peter Aven, former minister, head of the financial group “Alpha”. When I was talking I clearly saw – before my eyes a dead was resuscitated! The “Open society” of Soros demanded that people like me die out. But without an enemy it’s boring and disgusting and one does not feel like himself. Soros was happy that I was alive and from the second row, looking in his thick glasses I was telling him nasty things. The thick glasses, chopped, bad English language, potato nose of this capitalist-billionaire reminded me my first publisher – a Rumanian Jew David Daskal. In 1979 in New York Daskal decided to publish my first novel in Russian. Explorers and conquistadors, lippy, nosy, these guys differentiated only by the quantity of dollars they had earned. Conquerors from Eastern Europe, they came in the 50s to the Yankees who already got lazy, however, they easily passed them by.
But let’s return to socialism and capitalism. In his last book Soros – a philanthropist and financial man, and as people tell, a brave and aggressive speculator, who ruined Indonesia’s currency, an entire country, suddenly comes forth as almost an enemy of capitalism, states doubts in capitalism. (Unfortunately, of course, no citing of Soros’ book can be considered. Yesterday the chief of the isolation ward refused me a table lamp, for which I asked the permission to be brought me from outside.) In any case he declares himself enemy of the capitalism that formed in Russia. Simultaneously the philanthropist spends a wild quantity of millions of dollars (a hundred only on science!) in support of Russian scientists’ activities, in publishing of Russian textbooks that explain to the students how the word is made according to Soros. It is a person with a colossal megalomania, with the desire to impose himself on the world. And with huge money, which makes his desire realizable.
At the end of that press conference Soros made a speech. Doing that he looked at me. Because I, more impudent than Dugin told him that he is our enemy and we will fight with him.
Soros spoke like Zuganov. In his speech all the terminology was socialist, Marxist, like in the Petit Robert dictionary. Peter Aven smiled mystically and happily to the rhythm of his speech, his eyes glowing through the darkened thick glasses, the same as Soros’. (Here, mystically, like on some kind of order, the “Russian Radio” declared that Soros appeared on a press conference in Moscow today and indignantly waved the circular of the Academy of Science, which obliges the scientists to keep their secrets during contacts with foreigners.)