Alexander Shchipkov’s So- cial Traditionalism

Abstract

Alexander Vladimirovich Shchipkov is a famous Russian Orthodox philosopher and public fi gure. A few years ago, his keynote monograph The Social Tradition was published. It is focused on the presentation of his concept of the social traditionalism. In it, Shchipkov notes that liberalism has ceased to be one of modernist ideologies. It actually has turned into the language of the modern Western world and absorbed the ideologies that were previously considered as its alternatives: socialism and rightwing conservatism. Guided by the ideas of Wallerstein’s world-system analysis, Shchipkov refutes the theory of two totalitarianisms. Shchipkov sees the Christian moral economics and the conservative socialism as the alternative to liberalism. The socialism is not reduced to the Soviet-type “real socialism”. Shchipkov points to “variations on the theme of social fairness” in the “Acts of the Apostles”, among teachers and fathers of the church. He also highlights Byzantium, the traditions of the Russian peasant community, and Western “general welfare” states. Shchipkov gives weight to the presence of a socialist stream in the USSR. Not in the Soviet Marxist state, but in the Soviet society, which adopted a lot from the spirit of the peasant world. Shchipkov considers the following disadvantages of the Soviettype socialism: the isolation from the national tradition and the attempt to use the proletarian internationalism instead of Russian national values when building the core of the state of social fairness. According to Alexander Shchipkov, the turn to tradition is now taking place on a global scale. However, tradition and traditionalism can be diff erent. Alexander Shchipkov counters the right-wing, guénonian and neo-Protestant liberal traditionalism with the leftwing traditionalism resting upon the apostolic Christianity, the idea of collective salvation, morality, creativity, technological progress, moral state, solidarism, egalitarianism, and democracy. This is what he calls the social tradition. The review suggests the idea that the Christian worldview expects one speaking not only about tradition, but also about social creativity.