The future is hidden from human sight. We do not know how state power will develop in Russia after the Bolsheviks. But we know that if it is anti-national and anti-state, subservient to foreigners, dismembering the country and patriotically without ideas, then the revolution will not stop, but will enter a phase of new destruction; and then everything we propose will be delayed. But the hour will come when the Russian national government will take the paths we indicate for the sake of saving Russia. We don’t know when this will be, but we know for sure what we should want to save Russia.
The formation of state power must be taken out of the hands of the crowd, the street, and the rabble and transferred into the hands of the best, state- and nationally-minded citizens. These citizens, as state-capable citizens, should be singled out as a politically mature and actively building core. Any further elections and voting will be carried out by them, and only by them. They will form that sober layer, that state-minded cadre who will be able to lead the people and the country to waters and the country to revival. All the rest will not become “slaves” at all. and will by no means cease to be citizens; but they will not have political activity, the right to formulate the state will, or participate in the construction of state power.
This is indicated by the words: their political capacity will be limited.
Jurisprudence distinguishes a person's legal capacity from his legal capacity. In property relations, there are many persons who do not have legal capacity, i.e. not having the right to independently perform legal acts. Roman lawyers already knew and understood that minors, the mentally retarded and the insane could not be included in normal and free property circulation. On the one hand, they are ignorant, helpless and defenseless, and any rogue can seduce them, deceive them, involve them in unprofitable deals and rob them: it is necessary to protect them themselves from unscrupulous fellow citizens and malicious foreigners. On the other hand, they are not able to be responsible for their expressions of will, promises and obligations (irresponsibility!), and it is impossible to impute their behavior to them (insanity); their capacity to act would be harmful or even disastrous both for themselves and for their fellow citizens.
Therefore, modern law places such persons (minors, minors, feeble-minded, blind, deaf-mute, drunkards and spendthrifts) under guardianship or trusteeship. They remain legally capable and have recognized and protected rights, but cannot perform legal acts.
This has been the case for thousands of years, and moreover in matters of personal property benefit, and no one even thinks of challenging or condemning the validity and fairness of such an order. And suddenly, in matters of public good, national benefit and state salvation, we see a complete oblivion of all caution, all sobriety and all realism in life. A country teeming with politically juveniles and minors, the politically weak-minded, the patriotically crazy (international Nazis!), the morally blind, the socially deaf-mute, party drunks and national wasters (dismemberers!), is trying to build its state with the obligatory participation of all these obviously irresponsible and insane persons. The legislation is silent about their political incapacity, and the people themselves are surprised; What is it that he can’t do anything? And he goes to his death, not understanding what is happening to him.
And so, just as in property matters people are recognized as incompetent - in the interests of the whole society and the dispossessed themselves, and no one screams about their imaginary lack of rights, it is absolutely necessary to recognize a whole number of people as politically incompetent - in the interests of the entire people, the state and themselves disenfranchised. A citizen and an active citizen are not the same thing. An incapacitated citizen retains all his legal rights: the right to state protection, the right to territorial residence, the general rights of initiative and inviolable personality, the right to work, all social rights, all property rights, all family and inheritance rights, he also retains all his public rights. legal duties with which he mainly builds the state, his state (duties: tax, military, in kind, etc.). He does not become a “slave” at all. He just has no say in government affairs.
The time has passed when people - either out of liberal naivety, or out of optimism, or out of stupidity - believed in the “free play of good and evil forces” (both in an individual and in the state) and believed that “from evil forces in life can be of great benefit.” Over the long years of the world revolution, we could finally become convinced that the “free play” of good and evil forces leads to the victory of the evil forces and that giving freedom to evil is either sentimental stupidity, bordering on betrayal, or a crafty and deliberate crime. Just as in the economy, liberals gradually learned that creative balance is not given to the multitude of self-managed people who flounder helplessly in their own greed, that an unregulated economy leads to anti-social phenomena, to the reincarnation of capital, to overproduction, to stock market crashes, to protracted crises and depressions, that the private initiative economy should not be suppressed or eradicated, but organized and introduced to purposeful regulation, without at all falling into socialism - similarly, an era is coming when such creative regulation will be recognized as necessary in politics. The freedom of man, his beliefs, his convictions and political opinions should not be suppressed, but it must be nurtured, formalized and spiritually guided.
An ordinary person, going to the polls, carries within himself a moral personality, a layman, a patriot, a self-dealer, a citizen, a careerist, a state-minded voter, and an insatiable class demander. "On top'' nothing is said to him out of respect for his “freedom,” but from the outside and from below he is openly and persistently told to establish within himself a class demander, a philistine, a self-seeker and a careerist, and to forget everything else. In countries of formal democracy, all kinds of tempters, political hucksters from different parties and even countries, are buzzing around the voter like flies, promising, inviting, worrying, frightening, hesitating, throwing propaganda leaflets or offering direct sops (either “bread” or “shows”). , then just a check). They make promises to the selfish, intimidate the average person, invite the careerist and incite the class demander. In the difficult, complex and extremely responsible business of voting, everything is done to bring down a person and steal his vote, to lower the political level of the voter, and all this in the name of “freedom”.
And to allow this order, in which there are elements of the bazaar, stock exchange, excitement and sports, in post-revolutionary Russia, would be insane and disastrous. For during the years of revolutionary humiliation and revolutionary filth - selfishness, careerism, class way of thinking, civic cowardice and corruption have become so widespread and rooted, such strength and have distorted the soul to such an extent, pushed aside the patriot, drowned out the citizen and extinguished state thinking that it will require awakening special long-term, educational efforts on the part of the national government. Sooner or later it will succeed. But salvation can only be expected from the selection of truly capable personnel from the best people.
How is it possible to accomplish this?