In my former country, the Communist Russia the official title of the ruling group was "an unbreakable block of communists and non-party members'. That emphasized that although the majority of the populous did not belong to the ruling party, all the people wanted to become the members of it and so far maintained the full alliance with the leadership. Obviously, there were no other parties and such "unbreakable unity' prevented ones from appearing. It was a perfect mechanism at least theoretically and it served its purpose quite well for a long time. That is until the iron grip loosened and the opposition sprung out. The opposition was basing itself on the only possible ideology in the country where all the ideological leverages were in the hands of the government- on local nationalism. That ancient force seemed to be the only spiritual power not only to counteract the governing ideology but also to make it possible for the different nationalistic groups and movements to work together from all sides on the destruction of the central government. The demise of the Soviet Union was accomplished through the coordinated action of nationalistic mosquitoes who could not offer anything economically better but promised to the "non-party members' that from now on they would be nothings no more. Just by birth, not by merit or anything tangible they were assigned a membership in the group forever. The push the for the self- identity overpowered the faceless internationalism.
Nationalistic groups called themselves Fronts. The title is referring to the workers' Fronts or Popular Fronts of the 1930s. Front means a unity of a group of people for the common goal. The people of the Front can differ in their ideology but there should be something common for them all, something which brings them together. In this case it was a proclaimed goal of national independence. That slogan in many cases was demagogic and wrong, it was sometimes ridiculous and nearly always mean, but it appealed to the very fabric of the people who for many years were deprived of their face, lumped up into a conglomerate with no definition other than "non- members'. That was the political strategy of the nationalists and as soon as their leadership believed in the cause they were up for success. The whole approach was in structuring every request of every demonstration as a request to secede, not the request to improve. Nationalists thrived on non- confidence;
That's how the nationalists won. They prevailed even more so because the "unbreakable block' lost. It lost because its leadership got tired of lying. They were in power too long and abused it too much. They themselves were the source of the destruction because in reality there had not been any alliance between the ruling elite above and the unnamed masses below. They, the rulers were actually the first people to abandon the ruling system, to betray it on every corner. With all the power in their hands they could mount a considerable ideological counter- attack; they could mobilize the people to the patriotic marches, they could condemn the nationalists as national traitors, they could threaten people with the haunting of the Civil War, they could unleash the media, etc. etc. But the whole morbid secret was that it was them who were weary inside and even fearful of the communist ideology because even in power they had to follow it formally, to hide their looting and their perversions, to lie to themselves. Their power was not secure and in order to gain that security they desperately rushed to the destruction of the country. That's how the internal interests of the elite coincided with external interests of the local nationalistic structures and the civilization collapsed.
Mind you, I am not exercising any moral judgments here but rather I am showing a mechanism, a technology of taking on and winning over something "unbreakable'. As such we can see that those who want to overcome must believe in their cause and willing to recruit the allies from anywhere. On the contrary, those who are there to defend the old order are to be indifferent and even hostile to their cause, ready to sellout to the highest bidder. Now, don't we see some symptoms of this in our current situation, in the country ruled by the "unbreakable block of Republicans and Democrats'?
This country is officially capitalistic and no matter what political group is in the official power, they all must obey the mantra of capitalism which says unequivocally that "greed is good.' Of course, the g- word is replaced by something more benign, like pursuit of happiness but as soon as happiness is associated with the certain amount of material possessions, we come to the same root. Same with independence, security, health and life itself. It is not an accident that w have privatized medicine. Privatizing is always associated with goodness, public ownership- with inefficiency to say the least. I would argue that the famous question of "How much money did Judas receive in the current currency?' had been in the head of nearly every person in the capitalistic environment. At the same time capitalism in its pure form requires the greedy to work hard to achieve their appetites and thus create products and services useful for all the society. In a nutshell, pure capitalistic ideology while acknowledging animalistic roots of greed and self- interest wants to put those features of character to the good use. Honest work for honest pay is a slogan of the capitalistic ideology which hoped to benefit from the human nature by keeping it at bay. That worked rather well for a while, during the expansion of capitalism and stopped working with the stage of the stagnation.
Our ruling elite, our 1% had discovered that in order to be rich and become richer perpetually, they do not have to risk and work hard; rather they have to adjust the human environment in such a way that it will be tuned to provide for them and only for them forever. They found out that instead of creating a product benefiting all people they can create a consumer slave cast to benefit only them. That new goal was much easier to achieve and maintain than to face the perspective of the constant competition and risk. In sorts, if the ruling elite in the Soviet Union got tired of the ideology which proclaimed equality, the ruling elite in the US got tired of the ideology that proclaimed an eternal struggle. They just wanted to have fun no matter what. As a result they directed their efforts towards achieving that exact goal which presumes turning the whole world into a large conglomerate of plantations with armies of slaves toiling on them. I am pretty sure in their dreams they call it an' unbreakable block of slave-owners and slaves.'
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