Glossary:
Zeref- a traditional person with rigidly set social actions, low reflection almost zero, hence the word zeref-reflection zero (zeref)). Has no semitones, serves the idols of the genus, communicates in the circle of native blood. Zeref has no semitones of perception, is categorical, irreconcilable, hostile to others and to another opinion in the development of rejection of “not your own”
Zeref’s loop – the baby boom, overheating of the population.
Zerot- the traditional feudal elite
Zerot’s loop creates a solid cast, impenetrable social barriers. None of the lower castes can enter the feudal elite – the lack of social mobility pre-revolutionary situation.
Remid – a new traditional elite, rulers, officials, authorities, teachers; Remid put actions for Zerefs, determine morality, laws, politics, reflection average-middle (remiddle).
Remid’s loop – the elite’s struggle with the brightest personality, the cooperation of second and third parties against the hero and the prophet.
Refag is a person of a trading civilization in several generations; reflection is high, selfish, utilitarian-refag (re + high).
Zeremid is a first-generation city person, has a half-rigid social reflex of custom and new skills of city life, half-urban, half-rural.
Zeremid’s loop – the Zeremids are approximate imitators. They imitate the elite, any idea, any direction just to be good for their families. Imitation, hypocrisy, and fanaticism harm any cause, state, or idea – the first generation of the tradition after industrial modernization.
Zefa is a man from the city’s first generation with a tendency towards the market and speculation, and to trade at least something, he was forced by circumstances.
Revcon – revolution conservatism
CHAPTER IX
THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS STATE!
When German Zerefs and Zeremids turned to their authority figures – evolutionary examples of how no one became someone: a doctor, a teacher, a lawyer – what were they told? Although they never communicated, I will assume here, for discussion, that they did – and that the doctors, teachers, and lawyers did have something to tell those following in their footsteps. How did this German solidarity come about?
All those doctors, teachers, and lawyers (not to mention the small merchants and street vendors defined in Marxism) were the bourgeoisie (also defined in Marxism). Or the middle class, as we call it today. So, who approached them, and why?
Recessions affect people regardless of their social class. But it is manual and office workers, peasants, and the poor who take the brunt. Bourgeois classes are different. As we can see, and as has been portrayed to us in the past, the uncontrollable greed of the upper bourgeoisie caused the market to overheat (as far as goods, capital, and speculation go). That adversely affects the market and agents and then the state itself. Mass layoffs result in unemployment. Small profiteers stand as good a chance of going bankrupt as major factory owners. The state cannot help them (except maybe by giving out soup). Prices first soar such high public servants cannot afford to buy things they can’t do without and then plummet as the market begins to lure buyers. Still, the public servants are essentially broke.
Times like these see everyone pointing their finger at the prime minister, not the largest exchange speculator. The prime minister is the one to blame! He has failed to prevent speculation. Ordinary people blame the recession on the government and, by extension, the state. Land-poor peasants and tenant farmers go bankrupt; they have to flock to cities, either because they don’t earn enough to pay the rent or because no one buys their produce. These Zerefs, heirs of tradition, join the army of unemployed urban Zeremids. The Zeremids know for certain the blame lies with the state. But the rural Zerefs go even further in searching for an answer to the question, “Who hung the government out to dry?” Those on your side could have never done such a thing. Only an enemy could. An enemy of the people and of the state.
To Zerefs, all the harm comes from the enemy of the people, of the ethnos; to Zeremids, the prime minister is the enemy. Doctors and teachers, however, have no enemies. With that said, they might have some enemy. After all, Remids are former Zeremids and Zerefs. They, too, may know what office the enemy holds and what ethnic group they belong to. But Remids are statists. They are the ones who weigh the public on their shoulders. That’s why they agree that public officials are to blame, but they don’t think the state shares that blame. The state is sacrosanct. The state – the land of the fathers, Alemania, Fatherland – is paramount.
Remids’ self-reflection is highly developed. They may disown the specific. But they save the state and declare it innocent. The confluence of the low notes coming from Zerefs and the high tones from middle-class clusters brings German statism to life in the form of Nazism. Silent appeals are then heard by Zeremid leaders – who also come as a rule from provincial regions and families of the rural intelligentsia – and the leaders turn those appeals into a choir, a cacophony of yelling throats.
German Nazism resulted from a combination of Zerefs’ grievances and Zeremids’ complexes on the one hand and the romantic haze of the German state (brought about by Remids) on the other. German doctors, teachers, and public officials were saving their state while Zerefs and Zeremids were inflating the enemy’s guilt. Each reflection group contributed to German Nazism. The concentration of the middle layer or the high urbanization rate blocked another way to outclass struggle. Tradition led the people, though they were unaware of it.
Everyone, not only Germans, wants to start a family, which requires taking your status up a notch. Some societies and peoples consider it to be the wellbeing of their families and ethnos; others, as the prosperity of their state. Thanks to Remids, the state can guarantee prosperity for the people and the ethnos, even though the initial groups of tradition (and reflection) do not concur.
In Russia, the middle class was insignificant. During a crisis, armed workers and sailors (peasants disguised) entered into a fateful dialogue not with doctors and teachers but with the nobility. Did they have no one to tell about the Russian state? And about what state, one of the tsars and the priests? The discussion revolved around the public, not the state. There was no state anymore. It had all been self-deception.
CHAPTER X
ARE THERE LEVELS TO TOTALITARIANISM
How many industrial generations was Germany ahead of Russia?
From the so-called average, we can infer the population’s self-reflection level. Which level was it – Zeref, Zeremid, or Remid?
The Remid level, as we have found out, gives the informal elite of civilization a chance to stay alive.
After all, Germany still was a country of tradition, something that all nations feels like a phantom pining for the past. This manifested itself most clearly in Italian fascism. But the Italian fascists didn’t annihilate the local socialists until 1920. Russia was close in all ways to agrarian Italy. For that reason, in 1919—1920, the Italian socialists seized factories in the industrially developed central and northern Italy, following the example of Russia’s proletariat. Italy was a country of active anarchism, meaning it didn’t need the state.
With that said, Italians had spent 300 years fighting to free their homeland and unify it into a single state. The state meant ownership, the state scale, and that there are Remids. Italy’s statism took the form of fascism. In two years, all socialists, advocates of a socialist community, were killed off (with some help from the residents). That left the upper bourgeoisie, factory owners, and latifundistas pleased. The local administration sided with the fascists. In Russia, the proletariat and the peasantry followed Lenin, not Savinkov. Italy followed the former socialist Mussolini precisely because of the Risorgimento. The Italians wanted to order: they had suffered for centuries because of the lack of a single state.