Średnia klasa jako gwarant stabilności politycznej współczesnego społeczeństwa ukraińskiego

Abstrakt

The article concerns the middle class in Ukraine, which is a determining factor of the political stability in any democratic society. The middle class is a complex social formation that has a political dimension and determines the level of citizen social and political activity, which is determined by their status of the working owner, which denies populism, political indifference and political exclusion. The criteria for belonging to the middle class are not only the high level of material security, but also the way of life, independence and the labor nature of income sources - a certain standard of living.

Due to the lack of opportunities to realize their economical potential in their own country, millions of ukrainian citizens have left to work in other countries, where the process of the modern ukrainian middle class formation is taking place. In the ukrainian society due to the availability of the lowest social standards in Europe by income, to the middle class, not so much representatives of mental labor belong, but as so-called «servicemen of the oligarchs». Deepening in the income inequality is largely the result of the development of not so much market, European mechanisms, as many pseudo-market, that make the formation of  the middle class impossible.

Further functioning of the Ukrainian society political system in the format of its commitment to the interests of not the middle class, but a handful of oligarchs, only preserves the neo-feudal division of society into an absolute majority of the poor - hereditarily poor, and an unaccountably rich minority.

It is therefore logical that the political system should deviate from the paradigm of state use, its organs and finance to enrich the ruling class. A serious problem arose before ukrainian politologists and sociologists - the problem of studying the conditions of the middle class formation, which should include the presence of a clear and understandable for everyone normative base, which determines the process of the middle class formation. This, in turn, provides for the deprivation of the petty care from the state, which makes impossible the neo-feudal principle: friends must have everything, and enemies deserve the law. It is clear that the institutions of the political system must establish equality of everyone before the law, which is an important way of the middle class formation in modern Ukrainian society.

Until political institutions remain channels for collecting corrupt rents from the Ukrainian population, which is considered as a natural resource from which you can rent for owning it, it is impossible to talk about the effectiveness of reforms and the success of the middle class formation.

The leading way not only of quantitative growth but also of widespread strengthening of the economic, social, political, and spiritual positions of the middle class is a significant limitation of the political power of the clan-oligarchic groups, the reliable basis of which is the shadow economy, which concentrates millions of able-bodied Ukrainians and is an essential brake on the establishment of European civilized market relations and civic structures based on labor private property. An important way of a middle class formation  and development in a transformational ukrainian society is the creation (with the state’s sake) a large number of enterprises, firms, producing material and spiritual values, whose employees demonstrate high motivation to work. Now the middle class is replaced by the lower class and does not perform in practice its socially important functions, does not act as an effective guarantor of political stability and the basis of democratic transformations in today’s transformational Ukrainian society.

Therefore, one of the priorities of the Ukrainian state should be firstly, creating the necessary conditions for the widespread development of the middle class, first of all, through real economic reforms aimed at realizing socio-economic, political, and spiritual interests. Secondly, the middle class should embody the best features of professionalism, individualism and tolerance, which are based on its strong positions as a working owner as a reliable guarantor of stable and sustainable social development. Thirdly, in order to form a middle class as a guarantor of political stability, there should not be a huge mass of poor people alienated from power, property and social respect.

A characteristic feature of modern Ukrainian society is that those who would have belonged to the middle class, are very close to the lower class for their low incomes and the level of satisfaction of their needs. Without the practical implementation of these logical processes, it is extremely difficult to imagine any positive prospects for the development of the middle class as the political stability of modern Ukrainian society.