Abstract
The author tries to answer the question about the mechanism of historic
events, which initially look unimportant but from the time perspective form
a logic of some kind of optimum, which for the revolt initiators turns out to
be the reverse of their initial intentions. The author highlights a noticeable
regularity, which he calls a ‘rule of a reversed optimum’: a characteristic feature
of great social changes is that they disrupt the commonly accepted values
but in consequence the new ones do not have to create a higher level and
optimization of individual parts of the system does not go hand in hand with
maintaining the optimum for it as a whole. That is what the social mechanism
of great breakthroughs consists in. Their essence is that they are mainly
connected with great property redistribution from former owners to the new
ones. The beneficiaries feel satisfied even if from the macro-economic point
of view the effectiveness of the whole system deteriorates. Contrary to the
moralistic interpretation of history, which suspects the existence of some
kind of ‘historic keynote’ supposedly aimed at achieving higher and higher
social optimum, the real changes take place abruptly and rather disorderly,
in accordance with a particular rule of a reversed optimum being a denial of
a macro-social optimum. The rule of a reversed optimum makes them play
the role of objects rather than initiators.