The western «Values» is a phenomenon immanently, structurally western. These fundamentally uncertain, necessarily parabolic abstractions serve as the pivotal notions of ideology, or, better, of ethical-ideological discourse, which is the vital nexus of «theoretical civilization» (Northrop's concept for the West), or of a «form of life» whose distinctive trait is (by Wittgenstein) argumentation. Its dimension directly constitutive of the social order is interparty discussion. So, «democracy» is nothing else than the political form peculiar to «theoretical civilization» — that is, to the West in its modern, post-Christian phase. Religion, or, more precisely, myth and the aesthetic generally in its actual socio-constructive capacity are isolated here within the pale of Temple. The today’s world owes its principal drama to the inherently expansive nature of the theoretical. That is, the West’s treatment of its «Basic Values» as all-human (and even, their hopelessly uncertain and parabolic nature notwithstanding, natural!) is, literally, just a reflex blind to any historical reality. The worst thing is that the «post-historical» West is decidedly closed to recognizing power in its historical quality — power, that is, which is not «formalized», not deprived of (in Weber’s terms) «enchantment», or simply of its own value which is (and was in the historical West just as well as anywhere) an aesthetic value. It cannot recognize power in its civilized form, that is, cannot accept it as the constitutive factor of a high-level social organization; e.g., it blindly ascribes to «democracies» modern Japan which is in reality an acme of the hierarchical, or autocratic. And still less can it recognize power as a legitimate, if only because vital, social force in cases less civilized, where power cannot help being at times fairly rude. In a word, the only certain (and obvious) sense of the ideas like «freedom», «democracy» or other current as «Basic Values» is the negation of power in its own positive value. Meanwhile, it is indisputably the main, if not sole, factor of order in places short of the western level of civilization (or organization). Consequently, the sole import of the West’s century-long moral message (not to be confused with things technical!) to the rest of the world is a blind destruction.

Despite its characteristically sharp essayistic tenor and scoffing passages, this article is a quite serious attempt at defining an historical-sociological meaning of the present moment of our history. More particularly, the subject matter is, on one hand, the debacle of «democratic forces» and strengthening of autocratic rule, and on the other — a rehabilitation of the normal, civilized ethic, human at large as well as in economic behavior, which was repressed by an ethos of the so called «primary accumulation». An organic interconnection of the two tendencies is demonstrated, along with an exposure of fundamental falsity of the «parochially liberal» outlook on the development of modern civilization, which prevailed up to now in the mind of Russian powers that be and which largely retains its sway.