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People in all totalitarian societies know the difference between members of the power structures who are “with them” or simply “among them.”
The first refers to the true believers (or sociopaths) who make up the hard core of the regime.
The second are the “good on the inside”—mostly decent people who, while in the power structure and playing its game, are nonetheless well-intentioned pragmatists who make life comfortable for others. Often they are talented, and they needed to join the party and make the right votes to be allowed to pursue a career – like the fictional and possibly real Valery Legosov.
The system never fully trusts them, but relies on them for its existence, so it must constantly keep them on the defensive.
They are a sane element involved in an insane system.
To make matters worse, they are included in the calculation of villains.
Acting intelligently and responsibly in an irrational and irresponsible system, they blunt the sharpest edges of her madness and protect her from herself. Facilitators and enablers, they clean up management’s messes like a self-destructive celebrity’s personal butler, always cleaning rooms, paying bail, and dealing with reporters.
Here’s my provocative thought: maybe not?
The standard narrative is that they are the good guys who make life in a crazy system tolerable. But perhaps making the system tolerant makes them complicit in keeping it running. Perhaps they legitimize and stabilize it, protect it from real reforms.
Instead of a quick flu, society is stuck with a chronic infection that lasts for decades, like when you suppress the urge to puke after eating bad barbecue and feel sick for days instead of feeling VERY sick for twenty seconds.
It’s easy for me to speak from a relatively free country, but maybe the right strategy in this situation is accelerationism – to let the madness run its course as quickly as possible, to encourage spirals of purity and ideological singularities, perform maliciouslymake the system drive itself over the cliff in the shortest amount of time. To make things truly better, sometimes you have to make them worse. Much, much worse.
A quick, dramatic collapse, even if there is blood in the streets (it’s easy for me to tell when it’s not mine), might entail less overall suffering than the survival of the Soviet Union for 60 years. In the parable of the bad barbecue, it’s sticking your fingers down your throat, because the alternative is worse.
Maybe good people in bad systems actually help bad systems exist. Maybe the bad guys at the top of such systems are counting on them to do that. It depends on them to do it. It’s not like thugs and bigots can actually run anything.
It may be unfair to name this principle after Legasov, as he was an arsonist and troublemaker throughout his career. However, his name will lead to clicks and website traffic, so live with it.
You can help prevent nuclear disasters and eliminate authoritarian regimes by clicking here.
Postscript:
This distinction between “with them” and “among them” was central during the Nuremberg trials. It was recognized that many members of the National Socialist Workers Party were not actually Nazis as such, but played along for a number of reasons, from opportunism to talent and experience they were not allowed to use unless they joined – the typical deal with the devil that all totalitarian systems try to impose on people. and one of their identifying features. This is why Rudolf Hess was treated differently than Albert Speer Werner von Braun. (It was also too useful to hang.)
Postscript 2:
There are other kinds of “carpenters” who are not true believers or sociopaths. Perhaps they are careerists. They are different from “Legos” who have to join to get the career they deserve, while careerists join to get the career they deserve. no need deserve.
Or they can be warm supporters of “the idea as a whole, despite the flaws in the implementation and some bad people at the top, and hopefully we can reform it.” It’s idiots – bad people at the top – it’s a feature, not a bug, it’s not about a few bad apples, it’s about the fundamental evil of the whole building, and such systems are unreformable. No socialism with a human face this is not a PR ploy by hard core.
Postscript 3:
1. The system’s tolerance for dissent is proportional to the dissenter’s value to the system – great scientists can get away with more than rank-and-file workers. So Sakharov dodged a bullet – literally.
2. Every “good person inside” constantly balances between self-preservation and higher principles, which has tipping points in both directions – when the personal stakes are high enough, most good people sacrifice all moral principles. I know you’re thinking no, but try to follow that line of reasoning when your children’s future is at stake. But faced with sufficiently high moral stakes – for example, with the danger of new explosions of nuclear power plants – they are equally capable of high heroism.
