The term “Oligarkhiya” is an apologetic term to conceal the true state of things

This is the video of Gagik Tsarukian’s “house”. (if you have issues with high blood pressure or anger management, then don’t watch)

But what you see there is only the front reception room… I know that there is a whole huge palace complex with latin-american style piazza behind it.

When I first watched this video, the first instinct was Anger — pure anger!  But then one needs to sober up and look at all this in calm analytical and historical perspectives.  This is not Oligarchy!!! “Oligarkhia” is a stupid apologetic term applied by the social scientists to some post-Soviet republics, with a connotation of “a peculiar case of capitalist development that went *slightly* off track” … as if Capitalism is designed to deliver general prosperity and long-term balance for all, but in some rare cases small anomalies such as oligarkia are possible.  Bullfuckingshit.  This is Capitalism, and that’s all there is to it.  And oligarchy is the integral and inseparable part in its development.

From this point onwards I refuse to use the term “Oligarkhiya“.  Let’s name things as they are: this is Capitalism!  Yes, it’s a simple and banal point, but nevertheless an important one: revolution must start from a refusal to participate in the usage of the terminology and the language of the enemy.  And Gagik, Serzhik, Robik, they are not oligarchs – they are Capitalists — the rulling elite of this capitalist regime — the Labrador Class acting on behalf of Global Capital.  There is nothing new or original in the way that capitalist structures develop and integrate in Armenia — a same old story that we have witnessed time and time again.

As I watched this video the second time, I couldn’t help but recall the videos from pre-Castro Cuba… it was all the same. Cuba was a satellite puppy of America with very small white minority owning everything there was to own and indulging themselves in endless endeavours of bourgeois decadence, while the vast majority of population was living in shanty-towns and townships with no education, healthcare, regular food – toiling in sugar cane plantations and tobacco fields.  And sooner or later people did rebel – people rebelled and as we have seen in so many other places the Communist forces hijacked the revolution.

My instinct is to wait – wait until the conditions have matured to the point when people will see that it is not the Individual leader or the Will to do good that is the question, but the Structure of the economical system that cultivates these material and cultural conditions, and the social and political contradictions and paradoxes.  Until people themselves realise it that capitalism is not the right path to democracy, free-entrepreneurship and participatory-politics, until that day revolutions will either be shipwrecked or replaced by dictatorships.

I wonder what would happen if a video like this was broadcasted on Armenian TV?  Yes, Armenia definitely needs alternative channels of Information whereby the info can flow openly and with no restrictions or privileges.