• fubo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          In classic Marxism, the economic conditions of a class generate political ideology as a superstructure.

          Liberalism is the political ideology of the Western bourgeoisie, generated by an interest in both private property and social and industrial innovation. The bourgeois capitalist seeks to preserve private ownership of property while securing independence of his investment venture from the disapproval of earlier elite classes; thus the bourgeoisie favors liberal ideas such as “freedom of contract” and “freedom of the press” while scorning both traditional authorities (the church, the aristocracy) and populist or “Digger” radicalism.

          The Russian oligarchic elite is not in that sort of socioeconomic situation, and so they don’t generate the same sort of ideology.

            • fubo@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I hope you’ve noticed that there’s not really any separation between Russian “industrial capital”, Russian “government”, and Russian “organized crime”. That is not the case under bourgeois liberal capitalism; those things are normally at least somewhat separated from one another by rival interests. In modern Russia those interests are united.