The world community refers to all the countries that currently exist on the planet. Ties between states are becoming closer and closer, and they can be political, economic or cultural. The process of globalization is difficult to assess unambiguously. On the one hand, it helps to quickly and effectively solve problems arising from catastrophes, natural disasters, epidemics, gives people access to benefits that they did not even know about before. However, globalization also has its downsides. Unique cultural organisms, that is, individual societies, are losing their specificity, life is becoming more and more homogeneous and uniform throughout the world. And the developed states, under the guise of strengthening international relations, turn other states into “appendices” to their own economy, using them as a source of cheap labor and inexpensive natural resources.
Under globalization in sociology and others social sciences understand the formation of supranational structures in the sphere of economy, politics, culture, which have an impact on world processes. In the economic sphere, this manifested itself in the formation of such financial organizations as the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as transnational corporations, in the political sphere - the UN, UNESCO, as well as in the emergence of various military blocs. The sphere of culture is affected by this process to no lesser extent, since at present, due to the development of means of communication, there is a unification of lifestyle.
I. Wallerstein put forward the theory of the world system, according to which supranational economic factors acquire more and more power. Based on this statement, he concludes that nation-states are only elements of the global world system. Wallerstein also proposed the concept of the world economic system - a set of states united by economic ties, but politically independent of each other. He introduced this concept by analogy with the concept of a world empire - a state that subordinates and unites several other states.
According to Wallerstein, the world economic system currently covers the entire world, but the position of individual countries within this system is unequal. For this reason, the American researcher proposed to single out the core, semi-periphery and periphery in the world system.
The core, according to Wallerstein, includes developed economic countries(USA, Canada, Western European countries and Japan). These are the richest countries with the most developed technologies, characterized by the highest standard of living.
Periphery countries are the poorest countries in Africa and Latin America. Such countries are characterized by high political instability, complete underdevelopment of the processing industry; in fact, they are "raw material appendages" of the core countries, since minerals are only mined in them, but not processed.
An intermediate position between the countries of the core and the countries of the periphery is occupied by the countries of the semi-periphery. On the one hand, they are not so powerful as to be compared with the core countries, in relation to which they are also usually "raw material appendages". What they have in common with the core countries is that they perform the same role in relation to the periphery countries. For example, Brazil sells domestically produced cars, which are unlikely to be bought in the US: coffee produced in Brazil is much more in demand there. However, the countries of the semi-periphery are more developed than the countries of the periphery: Brazil differs from the latter because it is quite industrialized (if it were not, then it would not produce cars either).
The global world system in science is usually called the world community. The world community is not a society in the usual sense of the word, since it brings together many societies. And society is connected with the nation and the state, although it is not equal to them. For this reason, the world community is also called a quasi-society.
There are two main approaches to the phenomenon of globalization. Some scientists consider globalization as a process that can be a guarantor of the integrity of the world and its development. This approach involves the study of global issues, for example, the problem of providing the population of the Earth with water and food, the problem of diseases such as cancer, AIDS, which pose a great danger to humanity as a whole, the greenhouse effect, etc.
Other scholars, whose attention is more riveted to the study of the process of formation of global structures, see in globalization the process of Westernization, that is, the spread of values and norms characteristic of Euro-American culture. Naturally, in terms of evaluation, there is no unanimity here, since Westernization is seen as both a positive and a negative trend; in the first case one speaks rather of the development and assimilation of achievements, while in the second one speaks of cultural imperialism.
In connection with the problem of globalization, it should be mentioned that for developed countries that have reached the stage of a post-industrial society, this process is beneficial, while for the countries of the periphery and the so-called semi-periphery it is harmful and destructive. These countries turn out to be largely dependent on the post-industrial core countries, since at the present stage the development of society is determined not so much by contradictions and conflicts between different states as by internal conflicts of post-industrial states. The countries of the periphery (as well as the countries of the semi-periphery, but to a much greater extent) must now adapt to the needs of the industrial countries, since dynamic development is impossible outside the post-industrial perspective.
We note the main manifestations of globalization:
there is a formation of a single information space. The clearest manifestation of this is the emergence of the Internet;
the living space of nation-states is largely subject to the influence of transnational corporations as structures that have emerged along with the world system and global society. This has both positive (primarily economic) and negative (cultural, social, to a lesser extent economic) consequences for the "colonized" states;
the development of the modern world depends mainly on the availability of knowledge and technology. Since knowledge is predominantly owned by transnational corporations, its distribution does not depend on the boundaries of cultures and nation-states.
"Globalization" is an overused term that can be given the most various meanings. However, an indisputable fact is the awareness of global problems by modern mankind, which, in turn, gave rise to the very concept of globalization, now one of the most popular and most frequently used, and also led to the realization of the idea of the possible imminent death of human civilization, and from its own hands. . The turn of the XX-XXI centuries. was marked by the emergence and later by the aggravation of such problems as international terrorism, new types of diseases that claim the lives of thousands of people (AIDS, "chicken flu", etc.), etc. civil society post-industrial globalization
For the first time the concept of globalization was used in the works of French and American scientists in the 60s. XX century, and today, as already mentioned, it is one of the most popular in many languages of the world. The process of globalization can be considered both in a political aspect, and in an economic and cultural one, which makes it possible to speak of its socio-cultural nature. In its most general form, globalization can be defined as a historical process of convergence of nations and peoples, between which traditional boundaries are gradually being erased.
Globalization is by no means a new phenomenon. Globalization in the form of internationalization of economic relations and interethnic communication actively developed in the late XIX - early XX centuries. True, world crises, wars and decay colonial empires in the 20th century significantly weakened her impulses.
Since the middle of the XX century. and especially in recent decades, the trend towards globalization is predominant, leveling the importance of national and regional identity. This is manifested primarily in the formation of a single economic and cultural space, when the extreme diversity of the economic and cultural structure of pre-industrial society is replaced by relatively universal forms of economic and cultural spheres of life. Therefore, sometimes globalism is defined as the formation of a single capitalist system, within which the uniform laws of market relations operate.
Until now, the question of defining the essence of globalization remains unresolved. Many researchers have devoted scientific works to the study of this social phenomenon. Giddens E. Towards the global century // Otechestvennye zapiski. 2002. No. 6; Cassidy F.H. globalization and cultural identity// Questions of Philosophy. 2003. No. 1; Kuvaldin AT., Ryabov A. National state in the era of globalization // Svobodnaya mysl'. 2000. No. 1; Mnatsakanyan M.O. Globalization and the National State: Three Myths // Sociological Studies. 2004. No. 5; Population and globalization / Under the general editorship of NM. Rimashevskaya. M., 2002; Chumakov A.N. Globalization. Contours of the integral world: Monograph. M., 2005, etc., however, no unanimity was reached in the definition of globalization. Globalization can be thought of as “the process of expanding and accelerating world cooperation, affecting all aspects of modern social life-- from cultural to criminal, from financial to spiritual" Held D. etc. Global transformations: Politics, economics, culture / Per. from English.
V.V. Sapova et al. M., 2004. P. 2. In general, taking into account the versatility of the globalization process, it can be defined as the process of formation and assertion of the integrity, interconnectedness, interdependence, integrality of the world and its perception as such by public consciousness. The above definition belongs to M.O. Mnatsakanyan, who also notes that this phenomenon should not be identified with unification, expressed in Americanization: in this case, we are talking about the gathering, unity of humanity in a holistic world, where there is an interaction of heterogeneous and diverse national, religious, state-political, civilizational components Mnatsakanyan M.O. Globalization and the National State: Three Myths // Sociological Studies. 2004. No. 5. P. 137. In addition, the definition of globalization given by A.N. Chumakov, according to which globalization should be understood as "a multidimensional natural-historical process of formation on a planetary scale of integral structures and connections that are immanently inherent in the world community of people, cover all its main areas and manifest themselves the stronger, the further a person moves along the path of scientific and technological progress and socio-economic development" Chumakov A.N. Globalization. Contours of the integral world: Monograph. M., 2005. S. 365.
In political terms, globalization is manifested in the formation and functioning of supranational units of various scales: political and military blocs (NATO), imperial spheres of influence (the former socialist camp), coalitions of ruling groups (“Big Eight”), continental associations (European Union), world international organizations (UN). The contours of the world government represented by the European Parliament and Interpol are already obvious.
AT economic terms the process of globalization can be expressed by the concept of "world capitalist economy", in which the role of regional and world economic agreements is increasing, as well as a global division of labor, an increase in the role of multinational and transnational corporations, which often have an income exceeding the income of an average nation state. Companies such as Toyota, McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola or General Motors have lost their national roots and operate all over the world. Financial markets react with lightning speed to political and social change in various regions of the world. The world capitalist economy functions within the framework of the world economic system.
The world economic system is a set of territories of countries united by economic ties. This concept is wider than the concept of the world capitalist economy, since it includes countries with capitalist and non-capitalist economies in its orbit, but narrower than the concept of the world system.
Another form of the world economic system was represented by the countries of the so-called socialist camp, where in the 1950-1980s. included the USSR, Cuba, Romania, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Mongolia, Vietnam. These countries did not have a single government, each of them was a sovereign state, but between them there was an international division of labor, cooperation and economic exchange within the framework of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) created in 1949.
In a broad sense, the world system includes all the countries that currently exist on the planet. She received the name of the world community.
So, at the global level, society turns into a world system, which is also called the world community. There are two forms of such a system: world empires (many territories politically united into one state entity) and world economic systems (countries developing a similar economy, but not politically united into one state).
Civilization belongs to the type of world or global systems. Unlike the world system, civilization reflects the socio-cultural, and not the economic or political aspect of human development. This concept, like the concepts of "world empire" or "world system", is wider than "country" or "state".
Much attention in the socio-political science literature is given to the question of the future world order. Several points of view have developed, which, depending on their political and ideological views, are held by various political forces. For example, some believe that, on the whole, international relations are developing in the direction of a homogeneous democratic world order. Confirmation of this thesis, as well as evidence of the emerging uniformity of the main processes of world politics, can be the fact that in the early 1990s. For the first time in the history of mankind, the potential of democratic states exceeded the potential of authoritarian states. Ideologically close to this point of view is the opinion that state of the art and the foreseeable result of international relations will lead to the formation of a unipolar world (in particular, this point of view is shared by globalists liberal party Russia).
Supporters of the theory of "alternative multipolarity" believe that the current world order will develop in the direction of the emergence of several centers of gravity. But there is another interpretation of this concept, which is that the alternative pole will be concentrated not at the level of an individual state or region, but in society - in the attempts of anti-globalists, radicals, Islamists to oppose themselves to the United States, forming their centers of influence. At the same time, such centers may not coincide with the centers of state power, becoming, in fact, alternative centers of political influence in a globalizing world. Spaces and subspaces alternative to states, which are formed on the basis of the integration of production and capital of transnational structures, can become poles of influence.
How can the modern post-bipolar world be characterized? In some situations, it looks like predominantly unipolar, but in most cases it manifests itself as multipolar - from the point of view of different dimensions (national, transnational, supranational, cultural, civilizational, etc.). Scholars are also divided on this point. However, the growing power and political activity of the United States, aimed at establishing hegemony in the world, makes the majority tend to believe that the modern world order is characterized by unipolarity and forceful world regulation, and the United States is the main regulator, at least for now, in the world.
In the near future, the United States is likely to have undeniable economic and military superiority throughout the world. Most countries are not interested in joining any alliance against the United States, and events recent years confirm this. The danger of establishing just such a world order led by the United States is recognized by many modern politicians and theorists of political science. In particular, A.S. Panarin in his monograph "The Temptation of Globalism" says that "the Americans turned out to be ghostly globalists pursuing their great-power goals"1. Thus, he concludes that in the American interpretation, the world order and global power (world government) are their order and their power over the world. It's hard to disagree with this. The researcher expressed his views on the history of the development of globalism in his proposed classification of types of globalism:
the globalism of the Enlightenment, laid down at the origins of European modernity and leading to the formation of a single world space based on the universals of progress;
esoteric globalism of the ruling elites, forming a consortium of the world ruling minority and conspiring among themselves behind the backs of their peoples. The formation of the world order is taking place according to a specially developed scenario, far from the expectations of the people, who are not privy to the plans of this privileged club of globalists;
globalism based on the traditional procedure of turning one power into a monopoly carrier of world power, which marks the formation of a unipolar global system.
Each of these types of globalism, A.S. Panarin, was involved in Russia's transition from a bipolar society to a unipolar one, but with varying degrees of authenticity. Initially, at the perestroika stage, the propaganda form of enlightenment globalism was used, believing in the universals of progress and the unity of the world destinies of peoples, as a result of which the traditional national foundations, the ideology of the Soviet people were shaken and destroyed. The second type of globalism was used to manipulate the consciousness of the post-communist elite, which was to surrender their country to the "winners" in the Cold War, as a result of which the former, conflicting national elites united to decide the future fate of the Russian and other peoples. However, in fact, the previous stages were only a phase of the implementation of the third option, and as a result, the United States, remaining the only superpower, got the opportunity to dictate its own terms to the world community.
In order for America not to carry out its far-reaching plans to seize world power, it is necessary to develop a different concept of the development of the world community, which would oppose the American one and would not allow the United States to give the world a look that corresponds only to their national interests.
THE WORLD COMMUNITY AND THE WORLD SYSTEM
Today, the concept of "society" has become even broader than it was mentioned above. Indeed, a society can be understood as a separate country, or- all countries of the world. In this case, we should talk about the world community.
If society is understood in the sequence of two meanings- narrow and wide, then the transition from a single society, considered in the unity of its territorial boundaries (country) and political structure (state), to the world community, or world system, which implies all of humanity as an essential whole, is inevitable.
GLOBAL COMMUNITY
Under the world community understand all the peoples living on our planet. To avoid confusion with society proper, it should be called a quasi-society. Why? The fact is that the eight signs put forward by E. Shils are applicable not only to local, but also to global society. Indeed, the global community is not part of a larger system; marriages are concluded only between members of this association, and it is replenished at the expense of their children; it has its own territory (the whole planet), name, history, administration and culture. The governing body of the world community is the UN. All countries are subordinate to it, it provides humanitarian assistance, protects cultural monuments and sends peacekeeping forces (“blue helmets” of the UN) to almost all corners of the Earth. Today, as part of the world community, regional associations such as the European Community are being formed, which include 12 countries with 345 million people, united by an economic, monetary and political union. The Community has a Council of Ministers and a European Parliament.
The notion of a global or, as they say today, planetary unity of all people did not always exist. It appeared only in the 20th century. World wars, earthquakes, international conflicts made earthlings feel the commonality of their fate, dependence on each other, the feeling that they are all passengers of one ship, the well-being of which depends on each of them. Nothing like this happened in previous centuries. Even 500 years ago it was difficult to say that people living on Earth are united in some kind of single system.
The process of formation of the world system accelerated sharply, especially after the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries (although the beginning was laid earlier), when Europeans became aware of everything, even the most remote corners of the planet. Today we can only talk about geographical remoteness or separate existence of countries and continents. In the social, political and economic sense, the planet is a single space. The main factor in the development of world civilization is the trend towards multiuniformity. Facilities mass media (media) are turning our planet into " big village". Millions of people become witnesses of events that took place in different places, millions join the same cultural experience (Olympiads, rock concerts). which unifies their tastes. The same consumer goods are everywhere. Migration, temporary work abroad, tourism introduce people to the lifestyle and customs of other countries. When they talk about the world community, they mean the process of globalization, the result of which such a community became. Our world is gradually turning into a global communication system, in which societies break up into separate groups, flowing, depending on changing life priorities, from one social network to another. It is possible that the term “network societies” is more appropriate to describe the new situation, in which there is a continuous exchange of information and which are not closed thanks to global networks within their state borders.
As a result of Russia's accession to the global information community, the main content of social interaction in Russian society is the continuous exchange of information. This proposition was substantiated by A. N. Kacherov1:
♦ Since the breakthrough of information flows to Russia (starting from 1989-1992), there has been a reduction in the number of direct contacts or so-called face-go-face interactions;
♦ increased the number of contacts through means of communication (telephone, fax, computer networks);
♦ there is an exponential growth of "artificial" interaction based on radio and television;
♦ personal contacts between individuals are reduced in number and duration due to the fact that the increased speed of information flows makes people avoid excessive emotional stress and energy expenditure during personal contacts.
Russia's entry into the system of world communications to a certain extent (to a large extent or not, this remains to be seen by sociologists) has changed the traditional way of life, its channels and methods of communication. A modern resident of a large metropolis has at his disposal all the necessary means of communication and is connected to the global network. The more calls it receives or makes on the network, the more it corresponds to the lifestyle adopted in the global information community. The old content of communications - scientific conversations, conversations with friends and lovers, administrative or business negotiations - is clothed today in a new technical form.
Globalization is a historical process of rapprochement of nations and peoples, between which traditional boundaries are gradually being erased, and humanity is turning into a single multidirectional system. Since the middle of the XX century. and especially in recent decades, the trend towards globalization has qualitatively affected society. National and regional histories lose their meaning.
Pre-industrial society was an extremely variegated, heterogeneous mosaic of isolated social units, ranging from hordes, tribes, kingdoms, empires, to the newly emerging nation-state. Each of these units had an independent and self-sufficient economy, its own culture. Post-industrial society is completely different. In political terms, there are supranational entities of various sizes: political and military blocs (NATO), imperial spheres of influence (the former socialist camp), coalitions of ruling groups (the “Big Seven”), continental associations (European Community), world international organizations (UN). The contours of the world government represented by the European Parliament and Interpol are already obvious. The role of regional and world economic agreements is growing. There is a global division of labor, the role of multi- and transnational corporations is growing, which often have an income that exceeds the income of an average nation-state. Companies such as Toyota, McDonald, Pepsi-Cola or General Motors have lost their national roots and operate all over the world. Financial markets react to events with lightning speed. The tendency towards uniformity becomes dominant in culture. A single, or at least generally accepted colloquial- English. Computer technology carries the same programs all over the world. Western popular culture is becoming universal, and local traditions are being eroded.
Along with the term "world community", other concepts are widely used in science, which are very similar to it, but nevertheless have their own characteristics. distinctive features: "world system", "world economic system", "world empire", "civilization".
WORLD SYSTEM
The term "world system" was introduced into scientific circulation by Immanuel Wallerstein 2 . He believed that the usual word "society", borrowed by scientists from everyday practice, is too imprecise: it is almost impossible to separate it in a consistent way from the term "state". Instead of both, he proposed the concept of "historical system", thanks to which, as he believed, two kinds of sciences would finally be reunited - historical (ideographic) and social (nomothetic). The old term "society" separated them, and the new one is designed to unite them. The concept of "historical system" coexists sociological and historical views of the world 3 .
In addition to him, Niklas Luhmann wrote about world society. He defined society through communication and communicative reach. But if this is so, then the only closed system that is not part of another, built on the principles of communication, is only the world society 4 .
Wallerstein and Luhmann are considered the most influential theorists of world society. They place the phenomena of production and reproduction of inequality at the center of their concept 5 . According to Wallerstein, history is not the history of the struggle of classes, but the change of world hegemons: Holland overshadowed Spain, Great Britain defeated Holland, Germany and the USA fought for the British inheritance. In his opinion, Russia was not a true adversary of the US, but rather its partner in maintaining America's economic dominance in its own half of the world, and Russia's in its own. But no hegemony can be eternal, since the cyclical nature of the development of the world economy inevitably leads to a decline in old industries and the creation of new ones, which gives other countries chances for revenge.
According to Wallerstein, there are three forms, or varieties, of "historical systems" - mini-systems, world empires and world economies (although other varieties can be distinguished) 6 . Mini-systems - small-sized structures, short-lived ( life path about six generations) and culturally homogeneous.
World empires are large political structures, culturally they are much more diverse; mode of existence - the collection of tribute from subordinate territories, primarily rural districts, which flows to the center and is redistributed among a small army of officials. World economies are huge unequal chains of integrated production structures, separated by numerous political structures. The logic of their existence is that the surplus value is unevenly distributed in favor of those who were able to seize a temporary monopoly on the market. This is "capitalist" logic.
In that distant era, which we can only judge from archaeological excavations, when gatherers and hunters lived on Earth, mini-systems were the predominant form. At an early stage in history, many social systems existed simultaneously. Since these societies were primarily tribal, many thousands of social systems must be assumed. Later, in connection with the transition to agriculture and the invention of writing, namely in the period between 8000 BC. and 1500 AD, all three types of “historical systems” coexisted simultaneously on earth, but the world empire dominated, which, expanding, destroyed and absorbed both mini-systems and world economies. When world empires collapsed, mini-systems and world economies reappeared on their ruins. History seems to resemble the cycle of substances in nature.
Much of what we call the "history" of this period is the history of the rise and fall of world empires, Wallerstein argues. The world economies at that time were still too weak to compete with the three forms of historical systems.
Around 1500, from the consolidation of disparate world economies that miraculously survived the next invasion of world empires, the "modern world system" was born. Since then “it has reached its full development as a capitalist system. According to its internal logic, this capitalist world economy then expanded and took over the entire globe, all existing mini-systems and world empires. Thus, to late XIX in. for the first time in history, there was only one historical system on Earth. We still exist in this position 8 .
The world system theory, created by Wallerstein in the mid-1970s, makes it possible to explain many historical facts that could not be
explanation by the traditional theory of society. Undoubtedly, the hypothesis of the cyclical emergence and collapse of world empires is very heuristic, among which it is necessary to include our country, which took the form of either tsarist autocracy or the Soviet totalitarian state. From the eternal cycle of historical forms of society follows not only the inevitability of the collapse of social giants and the emergence of social dwarfs, but also the hypothesis of the internal instability of “weakly packed”, loose in terms of specific gravity of a gram of “social substance” per unit area of world empires. Internal cultural heterogeneity did not allow the USSR to exist until the 3rd millennium, despite strict external political control.
All world empires were very unsteady and unstable. What is the empire of the Mongols in the 14th century, which included conquered Russia, if not a heterogeneous and internally contradictory association, where power was held only “on bayonets”?
world empires included several territories united by military and political power. The empires of the Incas, Alexander the Great, Darius I, Napoleon, and finally the USSR, which is also classified as a type of world empire.
were very heterogeneous (culturally, socially, economically, less often religiously), vast in territory, politically unstable formations. They were created forcibly and quickly disintegrated.
Europeans have long practiced transoceanic trade and economics. They were the pioneers new form"historical system" - the world system. The beginning of European hegemony can be traced back to the Crusades - Christian military expeditions undertaken between the 11th and 14th centuries. to retake the "sacred land" from the Muslims. Italian city-states used them to expand trade routes. In the XV century.
Europe established a regular connection with Asia and Africa, and then with America: the discovery of America by Columbus forever connected the Old and New World. Europeans colonized other continents, coming as sailors, missionaries, merchants, officials. Spain and Portugal mined slaves, gold and silver in foreign countries, pushing the natives to remote areas.
With the development of non-European territories, not only the nature of economic ties has changed, but also the whole way of life. If earlier, literally until the middle of the 17th century, the diet of a European was made up of natural products, i.e. what was grown on the continent by rural residents, then in the 18th and 19th centuries. the menu, first of all of the highest class (he is always at the forefront of progress), includes imported products. One of the first overseas goods was sugar. After 1650, not only the upper strata, but also the middle strata, and then the lower strata began to eat it (tobacco came to Europe a century earlier). By 1750, even the poorest English family could drink tea with sugar. From India, where sugar was first obtained by production, the Europeans brought it to the New World. The climate of Brazil and the Caribbean islands created ideal conditions for growing sugar cane. Europeans established plantations here to meet the growing demand for sugar around the world. Sugar demand and supply led to the international market, and with it the slave trade. Cheap labor was needed for the growing plantation economy, and Africa was the labor market. Sugar and cotton became the main subject of international trade, linking continents on opposite sides of the ocean.
In the 17th century There were two trade triangles of trade in sugar and slaves. First, English-made goods were sold in Africa and African slaves were sold in America, while American tropical goods (especially sugar) were sold to England and its neighbors. Secondly, alcoholic beverages from England were delivered by ship to Africa, African slaves to the Caribbean, and molasses (from sugar) to Africa. New England for the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. The labor of African slaves increased American wealth, which mostly returned to Europe. Food grown by slaves was consumed in Europe. Coffee, paints, sugar and spices came here from Brazil, cotton and alcohol from the USA.
Gradually international trade has become the main driver of development. Soon, capitalism began to be defined as an economic orientation to the world market in order to generate income. There was a concept world capitalist economy - a single world system engaged in production for sale and exchange more for the purpose of increasing profits than for the welfare of the people. Now it indicates in which direction to move individual countries. The modern world is a world system based on capitalism, which is why it is called the capitalist world system.
“The unit of analysis of the modern world system is the capitalist world economy,” writes Wallerstein. .
a set of territories or countries united by economic ties. This concept is broader than the world capitalist economy, since it includes countries with capitalist and non-capitalist economies in its orbit, but narrower than the concept of the world system.
The world capitalist economy is the highest and last form of the world economic system. It has existed for almost 500 years, but has never turned into a world empire. Transnational corporations are outside the control of a single government. They freely transfer huge capitals across state borders. The type of world economic systems should also include socialist camp, where in the 1960s-1980s. included the USSR, Cuba, Romania, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam. They did not have a single government, each country is a sovereign state. So it's not an empire. But between them there was an international division of labor, cooperation and economic exchange within the framework of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
In a broad sense, the world system includes all the countries that currently exist on the planet.
Analyzing historical views on society, one inevitably notices the following feature: since antiquity, the concept of society has constantly expanded - from the family and the union of tribes to a world power. Today it has grown into a global community.
The ancient Romans, who created the world empire, expanded the concepts of public and social. No longer a union of tribes, but a huge power was to be called Roman society, because both the capital and the distant outskirts were governed by the same laws, the inhabitants adhered to the same laws, traditions and ideals. But is it possible to become a world power. what was the Roman Empire, to build on the model of society? At one time, Plato believed that 5040 families are enough to form a real political society. Aristotle called it excessive. In the XVIII century. Rainal called a society of 20-30 million people monstrous. But what about modern superpowers (USA, China, Russia) or ancient roman empire, in which Asia and Africa were modestly listed in the provinces?
It is clear that in the superpowers the type of relations between the population and the authorities should be different. The power of the emperor is established from above by himself, therefore it is called autocratic. But in the Greek polis or the Roman Republic, power grew from below - from society. In autocratic states, rulers rule not by the will of the people, but by the grace of God. They are only governors and sit at the top of a huge pyramid of power, which, according to the descending hierarchy of ranks, is very indirectly connected with the population. Is it possible to call such relations between the authorities and the population social ". 1 In the ancient sense of the word, no. Rather, state or political. The state was increasingly moving away from society, which is more related to the population - the lower part of the pyramid.
The ancient Romans could not decide for themselves the question of where society begins and ends. Modern thinkers tried to answer it and introduced a new concept into everyday life - global community.
STRUCTURE OF THE WORLD SYSTEM
As mentioned above, at the global level, society turns into a world system, which is also called the world community. There are two forms of such a system - world empires (many territories politically united into one state entity) and world economic systems (countries developing a similar economy, but not politically united into one state).
world system should be understood in a narrow and broad sense. Wallerstein proposed to distinguish between: a) world empires; b) world economic systems. world empire includes several territories united by military and political power. These are fragile formations that are vast in territory; they are created forcibly and quickly disintegrate.
World economic system - a set of territories or countries united by economic ties. In ancient times, they practically coincided with world empires or served as their source. What is the empire of the Mongols in the XIV century, which included the conquered Russia, - an empire or an economic system? If many territories are united only by the fact that taxes or tribute are collected from them, then this is an economic system. It does not have a single political center and governing body. And where should the British, Spanish and French colonies in Africa be placed? More like systems than empires.
Wallerstein divided the world system into three parts: core, semi-periphery, periphery.
Core includes the most powerful and powerful states with an improved system of production - the countries of Western Europe, North America, and Japan. They have the most capital, the highest quality goods, the most sophisticated technologies and means of production. These countries export expensive and high-tech products to the periphery and semi-periphery. States semi-peripherals and periphery - These are second and third world countries. They have less power, wealth and influence.
Countries periphery - these are the most backward and poorest states in Africa and Latin America. They are considered a raw material appendage of the core. Minerals are mined, but not processed locally, but exported. Most of the surplus product is appropriated by foreign capital. The local elite invests money outside their state, it enters the service of foreign capital and serves only its interests (even if these people do not go abroad). Political regimes are unstable, revolutions often occur, social and national conflicts constantly arise. The upper class is not separated from the lower by a wide layer of the middle class. The peripheral society is characterized by sharecropping in agriculture and extractive industries. Since the well-being of the countries of the periphery depends on the export of raw materials, technology and capital come only from outside. To a certain extent, the state apparatus is an intermediary of foreign capital. Enclaves modern technology, imported from abroad and controlled by foreigners, side by side with archaic methods of production and massive underemployment. The bureaucratic system monopolizes not only state administration and the function of suppression, but also the direct provision of social privileges, acts as the largest employer, exercises direct control over the main branches of production and (or) exports, control over the media, etc. The exceptionally high degree of exploitation in developing countries often coexists with the spread of repressive regimes, lack of consensus, and often with military dictatorships and semi-official death squads as a day-to-day system of government.
Governments (under dictatorial or authoritarian regimes) exist and are able to more or less intelligently run the country as long as foreign investment comes. But even Western aid often ends up in the pockets of government officials or on their foreign accounts. Such governments are unstable, they continually unleash international conflicts, internal wars and rebellions. This often happens in Latin America, Iran and the Philippines. Even after the revolutions, it does not get easier for them. The new governments turn to repression, show their incompetence, and are soon removed.
The shift by multinational companies of labor-intensive production to countries with cheap labor is a decisive factor in the modern rise of industry in some developing societies. The masses of unskilled workers, the often impoverished "lumpen-bourgeoisie", together with most of the local bourgeoisie, have practically no influence on the real political life countries, despite parliamentary procedures, which usually serve only as a means of creating legitimacy 12 . The demographic situation of the Third World countries is characterized by contradictory processes: high birth rates and high infant mortality; migration from overpopulated villages to underdeveloped cities in search of jobs.
Since the 1960s third and fourth world countries borrowed several billion dollars from developed countries. Loans were taken during the economic boom of the West, therefore, at low interest rates, but they have to be repaid in completely different conditions. The total debt to the West exceeded $800 billion, but there is no way in which borrowers could repay their creditors. The largest debtors are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Nigeria, Peru, Chile and Poland. Trying to keep the economies of these countries afloat, Western lenders are forced to refinance loans. But more often they are faced with partial or complete non-creditworthiness of a particular country. Debt defaults on such a large scale are destroying the international financial system.
Experience has shown that abundant foreign investment in such countries does little to help them out of the crisis. To improve the situation, an internal restructuring of the economy is needed.
In 1998, Russia declared itself uncreditworthy to Western investors. A scandal broke out, and then a world crisis, which the world had not known since the end of World War II. Some Western banks that bought government bonds (GKOs) in Russia went bankrupt or were on the verge of ruin. Russia, which had previously been firmly among the developed economic powers, in essence showed that it belongs to the countries of the “third world”.
If we transfer Wallerstein's classification in terms of D. Bell's theory of post-industrial society, then we get the following ratios:
♦ core - post-industrial societies;
♦ semi-periphery - industrial societies;
♦ periphery - traditional (agrarian) societies.
As already mentioned, the world system evolved gradually. Accordingly different countries in different time could play the role of leaders in the core, roll back to the periphery or take the place of the semi-periphery.
Usually one state dominates the core. In the XIV century. world trade was dominated by northern Italian city-states. Holland was in the lead in the 17th century, England after 1750, and the United States after 1900. In 1560, the core of the world system was located in Western Europe (England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain). The northern Italian city-states, which had hitherto been the most powerful, joined the semi-periphery. Northeastern Europe and Latin America constituted the periphery. Many societies (especially in Oceania and the interior of Africa and Asia) until recently were outside the periphery. For a long time they could not join the world capitalist economy, producing and consuming their own products, i.e. conducted subsistence farming. Today, there are virtually no such countries. The countries of the former Soviet bloc (Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, etc.) are classified as countries of the "second world". For a long time they were fenced off from the world capitalist system. Now they are classified as periphery or semi-periphery.
The concept of the center-periphery, which has found many adherents among scientists, has received a vivid expression in the recently published book Europe Before History by K. Christi-ansen 13 , and is interpreted in a special way in the articles of the English scientist Andrew Sheratt and the French archaeologist Paul Brun.
The latter distinguishes three concentric zones, due to the influence of the Mediterranean economy in the VIII-VI centuries. BC. The first zone included Greek and Etruscan urban centers - "engines", the action of which determined the formation of a hierarchical system of concentric zones; the second circle was based on the complex of the Celtic civilization; the third covered the northern peripheral cultures, where development was much slower 14 .
CIVILIZATION
Scientists have repeatedly, almost since ancient times, tried to systematize the geopolitical space of the Earth, for example: to divide it not only into countries and continents that exist quite realistically, but also into systems (capitalist and socialist), worlds (“the first world”. “ third world, etc.), core and periphery, regions (East Asian region), basins (Pacific Ocean basin), zones of influence (Soviet zone), civilizations (Chinese, Islamic, etc.), whose borders are in no way documents were not fixed, but rather existed as scientific concepts. The traditional way of dividing all countries and peoples into integral, homogeneous zones within themselves is the so-called civilizational approach.
Civilization reflects the global level of human society, which is the integration of social systems. Scientists continue to argue about its content. The concepts of "state" and "country" are narrower in meaning. than "civilization" and "world system". The concept of "society" occupies an intermediate position: it can be very specific and local and abstract and global (all of humanity). Civilizations belong to the type of world, or global, systems. But unlike the world system, civilization reflects the socio-cultural, and not the economic and political aspect of human development.
Scientists have not come to a consensus about what is civilization. Some attribute this concept to historical eras and speak of ancient, medieval and modern civilizations. Others relate this concept to a geographical place, meaning local, regional and global civilizations. Still others rely on religious and socio-cultural criteria and analyze the Eurasian, Muslim, Christian, Eastern, European, Western and other civilizations. Sometimes culture is understood not as a synonym for civilization, i.e. something equal to it, but as its aspect, part, side. Therefore, they speak of culture as a symbolic code of civilization, whether materialized (in books, monuments, etc.) or non-materialized (norms, etiquette, knowledge).
Ancient China, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Babylonia, medieval Europe and Russia belong to the same historical type society - to the traditional. Undoubtedly, each country had its own culture, unlike the others. Within the framework of a traditional society, there is a variety of civilizations - ancient, medieval, Christian, eastern, ancient Egyptian, Eurasian.
Civilization is also understood as a degree of cultural development, which far from all countries have reached. There are many indicators of civilization: the death rate (especially for children), the sanitary condition of cities, the environment, and so on. Historically, the most important indicator is the presence of writing: although all cultures use a language, not all of them have a written language. Note an interesting detail: the word "civilization" comes from the Latin civilis- civil, state - and in the Middle Ages it had a legal meaning - “related to judicial practice". Later, its meaning expanded. “Civilized” began to be called a person who knows how to behave well, and “civilize” meant to make well-bred and polite, sociable and amiable. It was possible to civilize barbarian tribes or lower classes, for example, peasants. In secular society, "civility" meant courtesy. In one of the most authoritative publications - the book by R. Williams " Keywords: Dictionary of Culture and Society" it is said that culture was a kind of alternative to "civilization", which was associated with social progress. The concept of "culture" embodied the idea of national and traditional cultures, the whole complex of phenomena that we usually associate with folk culture 15 . Russian ethnographers, in particular Yu.I. Semenov, believe that signs of the transition to civilization are: in the field of material culture - the appearance of monumental stone or brick buildings (palaces, temples, etc.), in the field of spiritual culture - the emergence of writing. Both monumental architecture and writing are a vivid manifestation of the culture of the "upper", or elite culture 16 .
For anthropologists, civilization is just a more complex or higher type of culture. And if you follow the etymology of the word, it turns out that civilization is the culture of people living in cities. Citizens have a complex way of life and a written language. Anthropologists, unlike sociologists, did not make any other distinction between culture and civilization. “Civilization” is the totality of “means” created by man, and “culture” is the totality of all human “goals”.
What is civilization then? How does it differ from the other two fundamental concepts - society and culture? When we talk about society, we remember the social structure, social institutions, social stratification. And culture means the environment of society - norms, laws, manners, etiquette, customs, traditions, etc.
What is left for civilization? What important aspects of human life does this concept cover? What distinguishes, for example, eastern civilization from the western one? Most likely, understanding the meaning of life, justice, destiny, place of work and leisure, etc. Both civilizations are based on different systems of social values, philosophy, lifestyle and principles, attitude towards nature. This is primary, and their embodiment - in the types of housing, lifestyle, ways of communication - is secondary. The understanding of civilization should, apparently, include the attitude towards progress, rational science and technology, and the interpretation of human nature.
In the palette of very different approaches, sometimes very contradictory, two central ones can be distinguished. Most experts prefer to consider civilization in two senses - as a historical (time) and geographical (place) formation.
Today, the concept of "society" has become even broader than it was mentioned above. Indeed, a society can be understood as a separate country, or it can be understood as all countries of the world. In this case, we should talk about the world community.
If society is understood in two meanings - narrow and wide, then the transition from a separate taken society, considered in the unity of its territorial boundaries (country) and political structure (state), to the world community, or world system, which implies all of humanity as an essential whole, is inevitable.
The notion of a global or, as they say today - planetary unity of all people did not always exist. It appeared only in the 20th century. World wars, earthquakes, international conflicts made earthlings feel the commonality of their fate, dependence on each other, the feeling that they are all passengers of one ship, the well-being of which depends on each of them. Nothing like this happened in previous centuries. Even 500 years ago it was difficult to say that people living on earth are united in some kind of single system. In the past, mankind was an extremely colorful mosaic, made up of isolated formations - hordes, tribes, kingdoms, empires, which had an independent economy, politics and culture.
Since then, the process of creating a world system has accelerated dramatically. This became especially felt after the era of great geographical discoveries (although the beginning was laid earlier), when Europeans became aware of everything, even the most remote corners of the planet. Today we can only talk about geographical remoteness or separate existence of countries and continents. In the social, political and economic sense, the planet is a single space.
The central governing body of the world community is United Nations (UN). All countries are subordinate to it, it provides humanitarian assistance, protects cultural monuments and sends peacekeeping forces (UN Blue Helmets) to almost all corners of the Earth. Today, as part of the world community, regional associations such as the European Community are being formed, which include 12 countries with 345 million people, united by an economic, monetary and political union. The Community has a Council of Ministers and a European Parliament.
The main factor in the development of world civilization is the trend towards uniformity. Mass media (media) are turning our planet into a "big village". Millions of people become witnesses of events that took place in different places, millions join the same cultural experience (Olympiads, rock concerts), which unifies their tastes. The same consumer goods are everywhere. Migration, temporary work abroad, tourism introduce people to the lifestyle and customs of other countries. When they talk about the world community, they mean the process of globalization, the result of which such a community became.
Our world is gradually turning into a global communication system, in which societies break up into separate groups, flowing, depending on changing life priorities, from one social network to another. It is possible that the term "network societies" is more appropriate to describe the new situation, where there is a continuous exchange of information and which are not closed, thanks to global networks, within their state borders.
As a result of Russia's accession to the global information community, the main content of social interaction in Russian society is the continuous exchange of information. This is the position of A.N. Kacherov substantiated using the results of an empirical study, as a result of which he came to the following conclusions:
Since the breakthrough of information flows to Russia (starting approximately from 1989-1992), there has been a reduction in the number of direct contacts or the so-called "face-to-face" interaction;
The number of contacts by means of communication has increased (telephone, fax, computer networks);
There is an exponential growth of "artificial" interaction based on radio and television;
Personal contacts between individuals are reduced in number and duration due to the fact that the increased speed of information flows makes people avoid excessive emotional stress and energy expenditure during personal contacts.
Russia's entry into the system of world communications to a certain extent - to a significant extent or not, this remains to be seen by sociologists - has changed the traditional way of life, its channels and ways of communication. A modern resident of a large metropolis has at his disposal all the necessary means of communication and is connected to the global communications network. The more calls to the network it receives or makes, the more it corresponds to the lifestyle adopted in the global information community. Old content of communications - scientific conversations, complaints and bickering, conversations with friends and lovers, administrative or business negotiations - clothed today in a new technical form.
Globalization- this is a historical process of rapprochement of nations and peoples, between which traditional borders are gradually erased and humanity is turning into a single political system. Since the middle of the 20th century, and especially in recent decades, the trend towards globalization has qualitatively affected society. National and regional histories no longer make sense.
Pre-industrial society was an extremely variegated, heterogeneous mosaic of isolated social units, ranging from hordes, tribes, kingdoms, empires, to the newly emerging nation-state. Each of these units had an independent and self-sufficient economy, its own culture. Post-industrial society is completely different. In political terms, there are supranational entities of various sizes: political and military blocs (NATO), imperial spheres of influence (the former socialist camp), coalitions of ruling groups (the “Big Seven”), continental associations (European Community), world international organizations (UN). The contours of the world government represented by the European Parliament and INTERPOL are already obvious. The role of regional and world economic agreements is growing. There is a global division of labor, the role of multinational and transnational corporations is growing, which often have an income that exceeds the income of an average nation state. Companies such as Toyota, McDonald's, Pepsi-Cola or General Motors have lost their national roots and operate all over the world. Financial markets react to events with lightning speed.
The tendency towards uniformity becomes dominant in culture. Mass media (media) turn our planet into a "big village". Millions of people become witnesses of events that took place in different places, millions join the same cultural experience (Olympiads, rock concerts), which unifies their tastes. The same consumer goods are everywhere. Migration, temporary work abroad, tourism introduce people to the lifestyle and customs of other countries. A single, or at least generally accepted, spoken language, English, is being formed. Computer technology carries the same programs all over the world. Western popular culture is becoming universal, and local traditions are being eroded.
Along with the term "world community", other concepts are widely used in science, which are very similar to it, but have their own distinctive features. You can meet them by reading not only special literature or textbooks, but also the press, listening to radio and television. Let's look into them. It will be about the world system, the world economic system, the world empire, civilization.
Term "world system" Introduced into scientific circulation by Immanuel Wallerstein. He believed that the usual word "society", borrowed by scientists from everyday practice, is too inaccurate, since it is almost impossible to separate it in a consistent way from the term "state". Instead of both, he proposed the concept of "historical system", thanks to which, as he believed, two kinds of sciences would finally be reunited - historical (ideographic) and social (nomothetic). The old term "society" separated them, and the new one is designed to unite them. In concept "historical system" sociological and historical views of the world coexist.
In addition to him, Niklas Luhmann wrote about world society. He defined society through communication and communicative reach. But if this is so, then the only closed system that is not part of another, built on the principles of communication, is only world society.
I. Wallerstein and N. Luhmann are considered the most influential theorists of world society. They put the phenomena of production and reproduction of inequality at the center of their concept.
According to I. Wallerstein, there are only three forms, or varieties, of historical systems, which he called mini-systems, world empires and world economies (although other varieties can be distinguished). Mini systems small in size, short-lived (the life path of about six generations) and homogeneous from a cultural point of view. world empires are large political structures, culturally they are much more diverse. The mode of existence is the withdrawal of tribute from subordinate territories, primarily rural districts, which flows to the center and is redistributed among a small stratum of officials. world economies - they are huge unequal chains of integrated production structures, separated by numerous political structures. The logic of their existence is that the surplus value is unevenly distributed in favor of those who were able to seize a temporary monopoly on the market. This is "capitalist" logic 1 .
In that distant era, which we can only judge from archaeological excavations, when gatherers and hunters lived on the earth, mini-systems were the predominant form. At an early stage in history, many social systems existed simultaneously. Since these societies were mostly tribal, one must assume that there were many thousands of social systems. Later, in connection with the transition to agriculture and the invention of writing, namely in the period between 8000 BC. e. and 1500 AD e. all three varieties of “historical systems” coexisted simultaneously on earth, but the world empire was dominant, which, expanding, destroyed and absorbed both mini-systems and world economies. But when world empires collapsed, mini-systems and world economies reappeared on their ruins. History seems to resemble the cycle of substances in nature.
Most of what we call the history of this period is the history of the birth and death of world empires, I. Wallerstein believes. The world economies at that time were still too weak to compete with the three forms of "historical systems".
Approximately in 1500, from the consolidation of disparate world economies, miraculously surviving after the next invasion of world empires, was born modern world system. With since then “it has reached its full development as a capitalist system. According to its internal logic, this capitalist world economy then expanded and took over the entire globe, absorbing all existing mini-systems and world empires. Thus, by the end of the XIX century. for the first time in history, there was only one historical system on Earth. We still exist in this position."
The theory of the world system, created by I. Wallerstein in the mid-70s, makes it possible to explain many historical facts that could not be explained by the traditional theory of society. Undoubtedly, the hypothesis of the cyclical emergence and collapse of world empires is very heuristic, among which it is necessary to include our country, which took the form of either tsarist autocracy or the Soviet totalitarian state. From the eternal cycle of historical forms of society follows not only the inevitability of the collapse of social giants and the emergence of social dwarfs. But also the hypothesis about the internal instability of "weakly packed", loose in terms of specific gravity of a gram of "social substance" per unit area of world empires. Internal cultural heterogeneity did not allow the USSR to exist until the third millennium, despite strict external political control.
All world empires were very unsteady and unstable. What is the empire of the Mongols in the XIV century, which included conquered Russia, as a non-heterogeneous and internally contradictory association, where power was held only “on bayonets”?
If many territories are united only by the fact that taxes or tribute are collected from them, then such an association is doomed to disintegration. Even the presence of a single political center and governing bodies does not save. Although the Russian princes went to the Horde to ask for a charter to rule, this ritual remained an empty formality, since none of the Mongolian "top managers" ever interfered in the internal affairs of the specific princes. Similarly, in the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet party functionaries ceased to control the abuses and freethinking of the "feudal princes" in Uzbekistan, the republics of Transcaucasia, and even the Volga regions. The autonomy of the periphery in relation to the center turned out to be a tragedy for the entire system.
world empires included several territories united by military and political power. The empires of the Incas, Alexander the Great, Darius I, Napoleon, and finally the USSR, which is also classified as a type of world empire, were very diverse (culturally, socially, economically, less often religiously), vast in territory, politically fragile formations. They were created forcibly and quickly disintegrated.
Europeans have long practiced transoceanic trade and economics. It was they who became the pioneers of a new form of "historical system" - the world system. Over time, people all over the world fell into the European sphere of influence. The beginning of European hegemony can be traced back to the Crusades - Christian military expeditions undertaken between the 11th and 14th centuries in order to reclaim the "sacred land" from the Muslims. Italian city-states used them to expand trade routes. In the 15th century, Europe established regular communication with Asia and Africa, and then with America. Europeans colonized other continents, coming as sailors, missionaries, merchants, officials. The discovery of America by Columbus forever connected the Old and New Worlds. Spain and Portugal mined slaves, gold and silver in foreign countries, pushing the natives to remote areas.
With the development of non-European territories, not only the nature of economic ties has changed, but the whole way of life. If earlier, literally until the middle of the 17th century, the diet of a European was made up of natural products, that is, what was grown inside the continent by rural residents, then in the 18th and XIX centuries the assortment of items, primarily of the highest class (it is always at the forefront of progress), includes imports. One of the first overseas goods was sugar. After 1650, it is eaten not only by the upper strata, but also by the middle, and then the lower. A century earlier, a similar story happened with tobacco. By 1750 even the poorest English family I could drink tea with sugar. From India, where sugar was first obtained by production, the Europeans brought it to the New World. The climate of Brazil and the Caribbean islands created ideal conditions for growing sugar cane. Europeans established plantations here to meet the growing demand for sugar around the world. Sugar demand and supply led to the international market, and with it the slave trade. Cheap labor was needed for the growing plantation economy, and Africa was the labor market. Sugar and cotton became the main subject of international trade, linking continents on opposite sides of the ocean.
In the 17th century, two trade triangles developed, including the trade in sugar and slaves. First, English-made goods were sold in Africa and African slaves were sold in America, while American tropical goods (especially sugar) were sold to England and its neighbors. Secondly, alcoholic beverages from England were shipped by ship to Africa, African slaves to the Caribbean, and black molasses (from sugar) was sent to New England for the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. The labor of African slaves increased American wealth, which mostly returned to Europe. Food grown by slaves was consumed in Europe. Coffee, paints, sugar and spices came here from Brazil, cotton and alcohol from North America.
Gradually, international trade has become the dominant factor in development. Soon, capitalism began to be defined as an economic orientation to the world market in order to generate income. There was a concept world capitalist economy - a single world system engaged in production for sale and exchange more for the purpose of increasing profits than for the welfare of the people. Now it indicates in which direction to move individual countries. The modern world is a world system based on capitalism, which is why it is called the "capitalist world system".
“The unit of analysis of the modern world system is the capitalist world economy,” writes I. Wallerstein.
World economic system- a set of territories or countries united by economic ties. This concept is broader than the world capitalist economy, since it includes countries with capitalist and non-capitalist economies in its orbit, but narrower than the concept of the world system.
World capitalist economy- the highest and last form of the world economic system. It has existed for almost 500 years, but has never turned into a world empire. Transnational corporations are outside the control of a single government. They freely transfer huge capitals across state borders. The type of world economic systems should include the so-called socialist camp, which in the 60-80s included the USSR, Cuba, Romania, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam. They did not have a single government, each country is a sovereign state. So it's not an empire. But between them there was an international division of labor, cooperation and economic exchange within the framework of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). In a broad sense, the world system includes all the countries that currently exist on the planet. She received the name the world community.
So, at the global level, society is turning into the world system which is also called mi community. There are two forms of such a system - world empires (a set of territories politically united into one state entity) and world economic systems (countries developing a similar economy, but politically not united in one state).
Civilizations belong to the type of world, or global, systems. But unlike the world system, civilization reflects the socio-cultural, and not the economic and political aspect of human development. This concept, like a world empire or world system, is wider than a country or a state. It is also expedient to talk about civilization specifically.
Civilization, like the previous concepts, it reflects the global level of human society, where the integration of social systems takes place. Scientists continue to argue about its content. Civilization is understood by them in two meanings.
In the first case, civilization denotes the historical epoch that replaced "barbarism", in other words, it marks the highest stage in the development of mankind. O. Spengler's definition adjoins it: civilization is the highest stage in the development of culture, at which its final decline occurs. Both approaches are related by the fact that civilization is thought historically - as a stage in the progressive or regressive movement of society.
In the second case, a civilization is associated with a geographical place, meaning local, regional and global civilizations, such as eastern and western civilizations. They differ in economic structure and culture (a set of norms, customs, traditions, symbols), which includes a specific understanding of the meaning of life, justice, fate, the role of work and leisure. Thus, Eastern and Western civilization differ precisely in these fundamental features. They are based on specific values, philosophy, principles of life and image of the world. And within the framework of such global concepts, specific differences in people's behavior, manner of dressing, and types of housing are formed.
Scholars today agree that the first and second approaches are applicable only to societies that are at a sufficiently high level of difference, wherever they are geographically located. In this case, the primitive societies of Polynesia and Oceania, in particular, are outside civilization, where a primitive way of life still exists, there is no writing, cities and states. It turns out a kind of paradox: they have a culture, but no civilization (where there is no written language, there is no civilization). Thus, society and culture arose earlier, and civilization later. In the entire history of existence in the conditions of civilization, mankind lived no more than 2% of the time.
The combination of place and time gives an amazingly rich palette of civilizations. Historically known, in particular, are Eurasian, Eastern, European, Western, Muslim, Christian, ancient, medieval, modern, ancient Egyptian, Chinese, East Slavic and other civilizations.
The same I. Wallerstein, mentioned above, divided the world system into three parts:
semi-periphery,
Periphery.
Core- countries of Western Europe, North America, Japan - includes the most powerful and powerful states with an improved production system. They have the most capital, the highest quality goods, the most sophisticated technologies and means of production. These countries export expensive and high-tech products to the periphery and semi-periphery.
The states of the semi-periphery and periphery are the countries of the so-called "second" and "third" world. They have less power, wealth and influence.
The term "Third World" was coined in 1952 by the French to describe a group of countries that in the era cold war between the USA and the USSR (respectively, the first and second worlds) did not join any of the warring parties. Among them were Yugoslavia, Egypt, India, Ghana and Indonesia. In the second half of the 1950s, the term acquired a broader meaning. It has come to mean all the underdeveloped countries. Thus, its meaning was filled not with geographical, but with economic content. All of Latin America, all of Africa (excluding South Africa), and all of Asia (with the exception of Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Israel) began to be classified as underdeveloped countries. And some countries, such as the countries of the African Sahara, Haiti and Bangladesh, burdened with excessive poverty and destitution, were even included in the category of the fourth world. They have been separated from the third world, which has already chosen the path of economic progress.
The countries of the periphery are the most backward and poorest states in Africa and Latin America. They are considered a raw material appendage of the core. Minerals are mined, but not processed locally, but exported. Most of the surplus product is appropriated by foreign capital. The local elite invests money outside their state, it enters the service of foreign capital and serves only its interests (even if these people do not go abroad). Political regimes are unstable, revolutions often occur, social and national conflicts constantly arise. The upper class is not separated from the lower by a wide layer of the middle class.
Since their well-being depends on the export of raw materials, technology and capital come only from outside. Governments, most often dictatorial or authoritarian regimes, exist and are able to more or less intelligently run the country as long as foreign investment comes. But even Western aid often ends up in the pockets of government officials or on their foreign accounts. Such governments are unstable, they continually unleash international conflicts, internal wars and rebellions. This happens every now and then in Latin America, Iran and the Philippines. Even after the revolutions, it does not get easier for them. New governments turn to repression, quickly reveal their incompetence and are soon removed.
The demographic situation of the third world countries is characterized by contradictory processes: high birth rates and high infant mortality; migration from overpopulated villages to underdeveloped cities in search of jobs.
Since the 1960s, third and fourth world countries have borrowed several billion dollars from developed countries. Loans were taken during the economic boom of the West, therefore, at low interest rates, but they have to be repaid in completely different conditions. The total debt to the West has exceeded $800 billion, but there is no way that borrowers could repay their creditors. The largest debtors are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Nigeria, Peru, Chile and Poland. Trying to keep the economies of these countries afloat, Western lenders are forced to refinance loans. But more often they are faced with partial or complete non-creditworthiness of a particular country. Defaulting on your debt obligations on such a large scale is destroying the international financial system.
In 1998, Russia declared itself insolvent to Western investors. A scandal broke out, and then a world crisis, which the world had not known since the end of World War II. Some Western banks that bought government bonds (GKOs) in Russia went bankrupt or were on the verge of ruin. Russia, which previously held firmly in the ranks of developed economic powers, has essentially shown that it belongs to the countries of the third world.
The worst thing is that, as experience shows, abundant infusions of foreign investment in such countries do very little to help them get out of the crisis. To improve the situation, an internal restructuring of the economy is needed.
The semi-periphery occupies an intermediate position between the core and the periphery. These are quite developed industrial ones. Like the core states, they export industrial and non-industrial goods, but they lack the power and economic power of the core countries. For example, Brazil (a semi-peripheral country) exports cars to Nigeria and car engines, orange juice extract, and coffee to the US. Production is mechanized and automated, but all or most of the technological advances that arm their own industry are borrowed from the core countries. The semi-periphery includes rapidly developing countries with dynamic politics and a growing middle class.
If we transfer Wallerstein's classification in terms of D. Bell's theory of post-industrial society, then we get the following ratios:
The core is post-industrial societies;
Semi-periphery - industrial societies;
Periphery - traditional (agrarian) societies.
As already mentioned, the world system evolved gradually. Accordingly, different countries at different times could play the role of leaders in the core, roll back to the periphery or take the place of the semi-periphery.
Usually one state dominates the core. In the 14th century, northern Italian city-states dominated world trade. Holland led in the 17th century, England after 1750, and the United States after 1900. And in 1560, the core of the world system was located in Western Europe (England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain). The northern Italian city-states, which had hitherto been the most powerful, joined the semi-periphery. Northeastern Europe and Latin America constituted the periphery. Many societies (especially in Oceania and the interior of Africa and Asia) until recently were outside the periphery. For a long time they could join the world capitalist economy, producing and consuming their own products, i.e., engaging in subsistence farming. Today, there are virtually no such countries. The countries of the former Soviet bloc (Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, etc.) are classified as countries of the "second world". For a long time they were fenced off from the world capitalist system. Now they are credited to the periphery or semi-periphery.
I. Wallerstein's theory of the core and periphery, put forward in the 1980s, is today considered correct in principle, but in need of a certain correction and addition. According to the new approach, the basis of the modern international community, which is sometimes referred to as the "transnational world", is made up of leading international organizations, 50-60 major financial and industrial blocks, as well as about 40 thousand TNCs. The Global Economic Federation is permeated with close economic, political and cultural ties. The largest Western corporations, creating branches around the world, primarily in third world countries, entangle the whole world with financial and commodity flows. They make different regions of the world economically dependent on each other.
In this global space, the post-industrial North, which controls trade and financial channels, the highly industrial West - a set of national economies the leading industrialized developed powers, the intensively developing new East, building economic life within the framework of the neo-industrial model, the raw-material South, living mainly due to the exploitation of natural resources, as well as the states of the post-communist world that are in a transitional state.
The movement of the world towards a new type of unification is called the geo-economic or geopolitical restructuring of the planet. The new international space is characterized by two trends: a) the concentration of important strategic decisions in a small group of leading powers, such as the G7 (after Russia joined it, it became the G8), b) the erosion of centralized regions and formations into many independent points , the sovereignization of small states, increasing their role in the world community (for example, the events in Yugoslavia, Palestine, etc.). Between the two tendencies there is confrontation and misunderstanding.
Important political and economic decisions taken by a narrow circle of people can lead to serious consequences in various parts of the globe, sometimes affecting the fate of the population of entire countries. An example is the US influence on the events in Yugoslavia, when America forced almost all European countries to join the military pressure on the Serbs. Although this decision itself is beneficial to a small handful of politicians in the US Congress.
The global community has tremendous power. Prior to the application of economic sanctions against Iraq in its social structure, a small part was rich and the same - poor. The main population lived at an average level, even by European standards. And after a few years of the embargo, the national currency depreciated. The bulk of the middle class has fallen into poverty.
Being the most powerful economic state in the world. The US also behaves like a political monopoly. Dollars make politics on the principle of "one dollar - one vote." Decisions made on behalf of international organizations, such as the Security Council, the IMF, IBRD, WTO, financed again by developed countries, hide the intention and will of a narrow circle of leading powers.
Pushed to the political and economic periphery, the countries of the South, or developing countries, are fighting the hegemony of the superpowers with the means available to them. Some choose a model of civilized market development and, like Chile and Argentina, are rapidly catching up with the economically developed North and West. Others, due to various circumstances, deprived of such an opportunity, embark on the "warpath". They create branched criminal-terrorist organizations and mafia formations scattered all over the world. Islamic fundamentalism, Medellin cartel...
In the new world order, everything is connected with everything. The world monetary and financial system, the fortress of which is set by world leaders, primarily the United States, Germany, Japan, England, is no longer as stable as before. financial crises on the periphery of this system, to which its whales may not have paid attention before, today they are shaking the entire world system. Crisis of 1997-1998 in Indonesia and Russia had a strong impact on financial markets around the world. Industrial giants have lost billions of dollars.
The global community has tremendous power. Prior to his application of economic sanctions against Iraq, in the latter's social structure, a small part was rich and the same - poor. The main population lived at an average level, even by European standards. And after a few years of the embargo, the national currency depreciated. The bulk of the middle class has fallen into poverty.
term of the theory and practice of international relations, indicating the maximum degree of generalization of the perception of the global international legal situation and denoting the systemic totality of all existing subjects international law, both state and other, who are members of this community The concept of "S.m." has firmly entered the political lexicon of modernity and serves as an object of appeal, as well as the subject of the highest motivation for international initiatives of a global nature. A reference to the will of S.M., as well as an indication of actions performed on his behalf, motivated by his interests, are present in the texts of official documents of the UN and other international organizations. Members of S.m. are peoples, states, public structures, groupings, unions, and other associations of this kind, religious associations and movements, organizations, governmental and non-governmental, incl. The UN and other international organizations and institutions of a global nature, as well as regional interstate political, economic, military alliances, transnational economic institutes and structures, international scientific institutions, etc. Political, economic, social, diplomatic, legal, military, humanitarian ties and relations between members of the S.m. collectively constitute the system of international relations, the subjects of which they are.
Before acquiring its modern meaning, the concept of S.m has passed a long historical path, and its evolution continues. Reflections on S.m. are also found in antique. authors, and later - the thinkers of the Renaissance, although both of them meant by this something significantly different from the current understanding of this concept. For a long time, the concept of "S.m." meant primarily the relationship of monarchs. Legal mechanisms were formed only to the extent that they were necessary to maintain interstate relations.
After the First World War, the modern concept of "S.m." is formed. An important factor in the development of the concept of "S.m." was the condemnation of the war as a way to achieve the state of its goals. The split of the world at the same time into two opposing camps, socialist and capitalist, did not beg the significance of this factor, since Soviet Russia recognized most of the principles of peaceful coexistence of states.
The concept of S.m. in the nuclear age, it acquires a meaning and quality that is fundamentally different from the ideas of the past. Understanding the objective interdependence of the common destinies of mankind in the second. floor. 20th century led to the fact that it was during this period that the largely contradictory, but nevertheless real S. m. The realities of the Cold War created unfavourable conditions for a stable all-planetary community of countries and peoples, but the threat of total annihilation turned war from a universal means of redistributing the world or establishing world domination into a means of strategic balancing and contributed to the mutual deterrence of the two blocs, limiting their activity. The factor of moral assessment of the actions of this or that state by S.m. acquired more and more tangible weight. Against the backdrop of intersystem ideological confrontation, a pragmatic thesis about the peaceful coexistence of socialism and capitalism developed, which became the foundation of the detente policy.
A new stage in the formation of S.m. began after the collapse of the world socialist system. The elimination of global ideological antagonism made it possible to talk about the development of a strategy for the development of all mankind. Cm. today it has a multi-component structure, replete with a variety of regional associations, but at the same time, a system of diverse ties between regional entities and individual states is developing and steadily expanding, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the Paris Club of creditor countries, etc.
political science power legitimacy state
The world community is a political term often used in works on political science, speeches statesmen and in media to refer to the interconnected system of states of the world. Depending on the context, it may indicate different groups of countries, united according to various economic, political and ideological characteristics. Sometimes means existing international organizations, primarily -- UN, as an organization uniting almost all countries of the globe. Often used as rhetorical technique for opposing one state and its policy to a group of other states, called in this context the “world community” (for example, “ Iran and the world community" or " Israel and the global community).
AT XIX-- early XX century the term "civilized world" was used in a similar sense, which is now considered politically incorrect.
International relations are the sphere of interstate, interethnic communication. In the course of interaction between states and peoples realizing their interests in this area, various relations are formed: diplomatic, economic, social (their subjects are not states, but various non-governmental organizations), cultural, informational, etc.
Modern trends in international relations:
- -- internationalization of almost all areas public life. It is expressed in the growth of contacts between people, international exchanges and relationships, and therefore, interdependencies in the economy, education, culture, science, healthcare, protection of human rights and in ensuring all aspects of its security;
- -- the formation of global problems, the solution of which is possible only as a result of successful interaction and cooperation of all peoples living on earth. These include the preservation of peace, the minimization of military danger, the preservation of the environment, the fight against epidemic diseases and crime;
- -- demilitarization and democratization -- gradual rejection of military force methods of solving problems arising in this area (as they turn out to be less and less effective and more and more dangerous, including for the side resorting to them), as well as respect for the rights of all involved in these relations of subjects, however small they may be.
World politics-is part of the system of international relations, the activities of states to secure their interests in power in solving problems that arise in the field of international relations. The modern dominant of world politics is the desire to maintain security in its various aspects: military, environmental, legal, technological, informational, etc.
World politics is structurally represented by the foreign policy activities of nation states, the global activities of the UN, international unions, organizations and institutions authorized by states and peoples.
The sphere of world politics covers the entire field of political relations that develops between states and supranational frameworks. Since the main elements of world politics are interconnected, it is possible and necessary to talk about world political relations, about a single world political-temporal space, during which or in its constituent parts, the main international political actions are unfolding. The main priorities of world politics are due to the need to solve common problems facing humanity and the national interests of its subjects.
The leading role of politics in international relations is due to the following factors:
- 1) the subjects of world politics have colossal resources and opportunities to influence the entire world around them, possess powerful levers of control over both political and non-political international processes. These include the activities of the UN, the foreign policy activities of sovereign states, leading and authoritative international organizations, bodies, and public groups. It is political decisions and agreements of an international nature that act as the basis for the entire world order; they serve as guidelines for the development of the entire complex of relations between states.
- 2) international relations have a pronounced tendency towards globalization, complication and expansion, which requires the improvement of international political mechanisms for their regulation.
- 3) as never before, the issues of the security of all mankind, the problems of its survival, are acute. It is on this direction that the main direction of world politics in the nuclear age is concentrated.
- 4) it is becoming increasingly important to resolve the contradiction of modern world development, between the growing diversity of the world and the political and socio-economic systems functioning in it, on the one hand, and the current trend towards the integrity of mankind, towards the development and expansion of mutual relations between peoples and states - with another. The unity of humanity also means a deepening of the freedom of human practice, freedom of choice and orientation in the direction of progress. Landmarks and paths for such unity on the planet are outlined and paved by joint efforts by all members of the world community.