The worst consequence of oligarchic state governance is extreme social polarization. This was noticed by Plato, who noted that in such countries people sell their property, but continue to live in the same state, not belonging to any class, “being neither a merchant, nor a craftsman, nor a horseman, nor an infantryman, but becoming what they call poor and destitute.” Through Socrates and his interlocutors, Plato shows that in the conditions where oligarchy, morality, education, culture, and military affairs decline because the minds and thoughts of both the rich and the poor are material prosperity, which the former have too much of, and the latter do not have at all. Karl Marx called almost the same destitute class “lumpen” who, unlike the bourgeois and the worker, did not realize their interests and, so to speak, were left to the whims of fate.
In 30 years there has been a mass lumpenation of the population of Armenia, not only material, but also of the mind and soul. Moreover, the special “lucky ones” who managed to get rich did not gain anything from that second, non-material point of view either. That experience, while somewhat inevitable, was traumatic for everyone. In the 20th century, such things have already happened, especially with the Russians and the Germans. The “trauma” of the latter was the defeat in the First World War, after which they began to brainwash themselves as if the Jews were to blame. Under the influence of this propaganda, many of the German “lumpens” became racists and SS officers and sent foreigners to gas chambers or crematoria without remorse.
A “lumpen” is easy to manipulate because the motive for their actions is hatred and revenge. From about the 2000s, the impoverished (poor in every sense) class of Armenia began to be convinced that the people of Karabakh were to blame for their misfortunes. The concept of “Karabakh clan” was sometimes used to cover up this racist propaganda, as if the members of a certain clan were able to get rich illegally just because they are from Artsakh.
The propaganda has yielded results, and the defeat suffered in the war, the catastrophe that befell that part of our nation not only does not cause pain in the mentioned mass, but on the contrary, causes hidden or overt satisfaction. Wasn’t that also one of the reasons for the defeat?
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Aram Abrahamyan
