Alexander Tomov. The Fourth Civilisation
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© Alexander Tomov, Sofia, 1996
© David Mossop (English Translation), Sofia, 1996
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Sofia 1996
Dedicated to the memory of my dear mother, Radka Tomova,
whose dream was to be able to read this book.
Contents
Foreword 7
Section One The Crisis
Chapter One
The Birth Of The Global World And The Crisis Of Modernity
1. Integration And The Transition Of Civilisation 11
2. The Birth Of The Global World 20
3. The 20[th] Century - The Search Of A Model For The Global
World 24
4. The Common Crisis And The Collapse Of The Third Civilisation 28
Chapter Two
Collapse No.I: The Explosion in Eastern Europe
1. Decline And Death Throes 33
2. Reform And Illusions 39
3. Two Options And The "Mistake" Of Gorbachev 43
4. The Collapse Of Perestroika 46
5. The Explosion In Eastern Europe 51
6. Return To A Difficult Future 54
Chapter Three
Collapse No.II: Global Disorder
1. The Danger Of Chaos 56
2. Geopolitical Collapse 61
3. Economic Turbulence 63
4. The New Masters Of The World 65
5. The March Of The Poor 67
6. A Number Of Pessimistic Scenarios 71
Section Two The Fourth Civilisation
Chapter Four
Theory In The Time Of Crisis
1. Forewarning Of The End Of The Two Theoretical Concepts 74
2. A Return To The Roots Or The Main Thesis 82
3. Main Conclusions And A Message To Alvin Toffler 85
4. A Similar Message To S.Huntington 89
5. The Need For A New Theoretical Synthesis 92
Chapter Five
The Fourth Civilisation
1. Why A New Civilisation? 96
2. Some Thoughts On The Transitions Of Civilisations 99
3. The Distinguishing Features Of The Fourth Civilisation 103
4. Inevitability And When It Will Happen 106
Chapter Six
The Dimensions of a New Synthesis
1. Socialisation And The Deregulation Of Ownership 108
2. Post-Capitalism 116
3. Post-Communism 120
4. The Approach And The End Of The "Third World" 126
5. Balanced Development 129
Chapter Seven
Obstructions
1. The Defenders Of The Third Civilisation 134
2. The Great Threat - Media Imperialism 136
3. Post-Modern Nationalism 139
4. The Egoism Of Politicians 141
5. Militant Religions 143
6. A Cup Of Coffee In Apenzel 144
Section Three Alternatives To The Fourth Civilisation
Chapter Eight
The New Economic Order
1. The Economic Heart Of The Global World 146
2. New Growth And New Structures 150
3. Who Shall Dominate The World Economy? 154
4. Is There A Need For Global Economic Regulation? 159
5. Vivat Europa And The Death Of The Introverts 163
6. The Levelling Out Of Economies 166
Chapter Nine
The Culture Of The Fourth Civilisation
1. The Beatles, Michael Jackson And The Bulgarian Caval. 170
2. The Travelling Peoples 174
3. Man Without Ethnic Origin Or The Rebellion Of Ethnicity 179
4. Global Awareness 183
5. Multiculture And The Global Culture 186
Chapter Ten
The New Political Order
1. The Twilight Of The Superpowers 190
2. From Imperialism To Polycentralism 193
3, The Fate Of The Nation State 195
4. After The Crisis Of Political Identity 198
5. The Global Coordinators 200
CONCLUSION
THE NATIONS WHICH WILL SUCCEED 202
APPENDICES
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
At the end of 1989 over a period of just a few months one of the two
world systems collapsed. Together with the two world wars this was clearly
the third turning point in the history of the twentieth century. For quite
some time now researchers and politicians in a number of countries have been
attempting to find an explanation for the collapse of the Eastern European
totalitarian regimes and the consequences for the world. Thousands of
publications and political statements have come to the concluded that
"capitalism swallowed up communism" and that "liberalism has conquered the
world". Fukoyama even went as far as to declare the end of history and the
establishment of a liberal world model. Others see it only as the end of the
Bolshevik experiment and the social engineering of a series of political
philosophers from Rousseau to Marx. After the victories of the former
communist parties in Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria in parliamentary elections
in 1993 and 1994, liberal passions grew cold and talk of the new ascension
of left wing thought has appeared on the political agenda.
What really did happen after 1989? Where is the world heading? To the
left or to the right? Towards unified action or to division into new blocs?
Towards long-lasting peace or newrisks?
Almost everyone - theoreticians, researchers and politicians in both
the East and the West were caught unprepared by circumstances. The map of
Eastern Europe has changed tragically beyond all recognition. Dozens of
bloody conflicts have erupted. Europe is being thwarted at every moment in
its attempt to unite peacefully. The United States now without an enemy in
the world has felt an increasing need to change its global policies. Germany
and Japan have also increased their economic power and their political
confidence.
In short, the collapse of the Eastern European communist regimes has
profoundly affected the present and the future of all nations and has
changed the entire world, not just small elements of it. These profound
changes have touched contemporary human history in so far as they were a
consequence of inexorable global trends. For this reason we have to go back
in history to look for more general processes in order to reinterpret the
dynamics of modern life. It is time to look beyond than the ideological
euphoria of the changes caused and to attempt to define exactly what
happened and what we can expect in the future.
This is not my first book, but it is the first which I have written in
complete freedom, without censorship or self-censorship, without the
patronage and supervision of academic councils and "political friends". In
this book I have searched for the truth from the point of view not only of
the cultural environment which surrounds me but also of the world which
revealed itself to me in its inimitable diversity after 1989. The changes
which have taken place in Bulgaria can not be seen purely in terms of black
and white. We attempted hastily to overcome the absurdities and limitations
of our past and now, five years on we are still at the very beginning. The
task has proven much more difficult than anyone could have imagined. At the
same time much of the dignity which the Bulgarian people managed to preserve
until 1989 has been sadly lost.
Today in Bulgaria and the other countries of Eastern Europe not only is
the value system in a state of chaos but there is also chaos surrounding the
interpretations of what has happened and what must happen in the future.
Many people are disappointed by the changes and they have rejected by
looking back to the system of social guarantees, voting for the past. I can
not say that all the votes cast for the former Eastern European communist
parties are votes for the past, but most of them are. Hundreds of thousands
of people in Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary have said to themselves "Under the
former regime, I managed to build a house and bought a car (albeit poor
quality). Now, I haven't the slightest chance of doing so." The comparison
of the benefits to the majority of the population in the 1970's and 1980's
and those of the first five years of emergent democracy, does not favour
modern times. In terms of concrete facts and figures, this is indeed the
case. However, this is far from the truth if one looks at the situation in
the future and tomorrow in terms of the potential possibilities which
freedom offers.
I remember life in 1989 well, because up until then I had lived for 35
years in a totalitarian society. At first glance everything seemed all
right. There was full social security during childhood and guaranteed
education. Everyone had a job and a salary. The population was able to live
in a society without crime. However despite this, in that world called
socialism, we still asked ourselves many questions: Why do we produce less
and poorer quality goods than the West? Why are our shops empty more often
than not? Why are there chronic shortages of goods? Why do we have money and
nothing to buy for it? Why are we forbidden to do things which seemed so
natural?
I have often observed my daughters' parrots at home. Just as in a
totalitarian society, they have everything they could ask for: guaranteed
food, security and hygiene. They are "happy", because they have everything
which they could ever imagine. But they do not have freedom and for this
reason when they are let out of their cage they cannot fly. Without freedom
progress is impossible. In his cage, man cannot reveal his enormous creative
potential to take the best from the past generations and to give the best of
himself to the future. In the old totalitarian system we achieved much, but
we lost much more. Sooner or later that world had to change, not only
because it was suffering from crisis of its own identity but because the
world itself had changed...
My first encounter with politics was at the age of 11. I was on holiday
with my father in the Rila mountains. In a remote mountain lodge, 2000
metres above sea level, a portrait of Khrushchev was being taken down. They
were a few months late doing this and were obviously in a hurry to get rid
of it. I asked my father who that man was and why until yesterday his
portrait had hung proudly in that spot and today - it was gone. I later
learnt that he had been a "revisionist". For a long time this was how I
learnt all truths - ready-made and without any commentary. I was taught to
believe that I was living in a perfect society and, what was more important
was that any problems existing today would certainly be rectified for the
future. The formula, "any imperfections are due to the fact that we are as
yet in the first stages of communism" must be the most exquisite piece of
demagogy and propaganda which I have ever encountered. We believed in the
glorious future of communism, just like others believed in life after death.
We were unable to compare our daily lives with anyone and with anything
because we all watched the same television, listened to the same radio and
read the same newspapers in which the truth was written by other people.
In the 1960's and 1970's there were many people who did not believe and
who heretically opposed the aggression of the regime. However, the majority
of the population knew nothing of this. In Bulgaria there had been none of
the civil unrest of the Polish workers, the Hungarian uprising and the
Prague spring. It was only late in the 1970's that we began to realise that
perhaps things were not as they should be and it was possible to live in a
different way, that Eastern Europe was not the proponent of supreme human
progress. One reason for this was the opening up of Bulgaria to the Western
World, the appearance of new audio-visual media and the expansion of
scientific and technological exchanges. We were then able to see another
model and were able to make comparisons. Another reason was the admission by
the existing regime of the need to improve economic mechanisms and their
recognition of the importance of primary stimuli.
However, even then in the 1970's and 1980's, even during the years of
perestroika under Gorbachev, when the entire truth about Stalin became
public knowledge, our notions of the future were limited to the idea of
convergence. What happened in 1989 and especially what happened subsequently
was totally unexpected by everyone, both in the East and the West. I am not
afraid to admit this because I know very well that even the best political
scientists in the world and the academic centres specialising in Eastern
European studies had no idea of the impact and the diversity of the changes
which were taking place at the end of the 1980's. Even Gorbachev himself did
not expect it. The chain reactions of turbulent demonstrations which took
place in the whole of Eastern Europe after perestroika and the mass
dellusions that everythong would be just like Switzerland, as well as the
obvious geo-political changes - these are all factors which lead me to write
this book.
The basic question, which I have endeavoured to answer is this: What
did really happen at the end of the 1980's and why did the changes which
took place in Eastern Europe have global ramifications? Some of my
conclusions I date back to as early as 1982. In particular this is my view
of the relationship between communalisation (socialisation) and autonomy and
of the insubstantiality of statism at the end of the 20[th]
century. Other conclusions were formed in the late 1980's after
participating in a series of discussions at the congresses of the World
Federation for Future Studies which helped me to understand the situations
in other countries and to make comparisons with the situation in Eastern
Europe and other parts of the world. The third group of conclusions are
based on my own political experience as Deputy Prime Minister in the most
decisive period of reform processin Bulgaria and as a member of the
Bulgarian parliament from 1990-1994. My meetings with dozens of the world's
leading politicians during this period were of enormous influence in the
formation of the conclusions in this book. I cannot express adequate
gratitude to my colleagues from the World Organisation for Future Studies
and to my colleagues from the 21[st] Century Foundation in Sofia
- a young and promising group of people who helped me greatly with ideas and
critical commentary as well as the practical work in preparing the book for
publication.
At the risk of being paradoxical, there is little in this book which
relates directly to Bulgaria, despite the fact that my main motivation in
writing it were the problems facing my own country. While working on the
book I realised that it is impossible to understand what is going on in
Bulgaria if we do not make an attempt to understand what is happening in the
world, and what we want to do, to a great extent depends on global
processes. Today, no-one can develop in isolation. Such a future would be
absurd, if we do not want to go back into our cage. The entire world is
bound with common cords which no-one who want to move with progress can
ignore. For this reasonI have left my analysis of Bulgaria to a separate
book which will be published later.
The fourth civilisation is a book about the global transition which is
taking place in the world, its basis in history, the consequences of the
collapse of the regimes in Eastern Europe, the danger of global disorder and
chaos in which we are living today and the future and ways in which we might
overcome them There are three possible directions for the world to develop.
For the greatest part of the twentieth century the world has followed the
path of division on the basis of culture, religion and political blocs,
aggression and dramatic conflict. This was the world of the cold war, of
confrontations between socialism and capitalism. This was the path of social
Utopia, imaginary models and politicalf ormulae. The second path is the path
of liberal development, victorious capitalism and the vested interests of
the richest social strata. This is the path of domination of people by other
people, of countries over other countries and nations over nations. I would
call this path, the "path of the jungle", where the strong eat the weak.
What these two models of development have in common is that they both belong
to the past, they both complement each other and cannot exist without the
other.
There is a third path which will be discussed in this book. It is not
on the immediate horizon, it may be a difficult path, even Utopian. However,
it is, in my opinion, inevitable. My conviction is based on the fact that
the modern technological revolution is leading to the creation of a
different world civilisation. It could be said quite confidently that the
end of the twentieth century will mark the end of an era in the development
of civilisation. The twentieth century was an era of nation states,
aggression and conflict between nations for more living space. It was an era
in which the historically dominant countries imposed their cultures with
force. The apogee of this anti-humanitarian absurdity came in the form of
theories about the superiority of one race over another and of the need for
the "lower" races to be destroyed.
Today, this is all over, but we are far from a state of affairs where
there is no longer any danger from new aggression. Although we could in fact
be moving forwards a new, free civilisation there is still the possibility
that may just be reproducing recidivists for the next century. We are living
in a dangerous world, requiring absolute coordination, where there is no
clear order or established principles. The question is the choice which we
shall make. The aim of the "Fourth Civilisation" is to be part of the
discussion surrounding this choice.
We could possibly change the fate of world development in an improbable
way. For the first time since man has come into existence, we are able to
view our own existence not through the prism of individual tribes, classes
or nations, but from the point of view of global perspectives. This is a
unique chance, but it is also the responsibility of the era in which we
live.
Section one
The Crisis
Chapter One
THE BIRTH OF THE GLOBAL WORLD AND THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY
1. INTEGRATION AND THE TRANSITIONS OF CIVILISATION
During its centuries-old existence, mankind has passed through many
stages. The uncivilised period lasted more than 100,000 years. The civilised
period has lasted for between 5-7 thousand years. his is a period which has
seen the realisation of the essence of humankind and consists of three major
stages. They are three epochs which are synonyms for the progressof
humanity. Three civilisations with distinct levels of progress. At the end
of the 20[th] century we are living through the final days of the
Third civilisation.
F
rom the first appearance of human society to the present day there has
been a constant growth in the mutual dependence of people, nations, their
customs and culture. The first manifestations of the human race, of tribes
and inter-tribal links, the first city-states show that throughout history,
from epoch to epoch mankind has become more and more integrated and the
people of the earth have become more and more dependent on each other. I am
not in a position to argue with anthropologists about the exact date when
human life began and since there are so many different criteria relating to
the transition between animals, humanoids and Homo Sapiens I consider this
discussion to be of little benefit. Evidently during the palaeolithic period
(about 100,000 years ago) man established his domination over the over forms
of life and began methodically to conquer nature. At some time between 70
and 40 thousand years B.C. man began to tend animals, to create stone
cutting implements and to form social relations which were untypical of
other types of animals.
In the late palaeolithic period human populations began to resettle
from Africa through Asia to the northern parts of America. I am not
convinced, however, that civilisation began from only one root disseminated
by ambulant migrants or primitive forms of transport. I am more inclined to
believe that in the earliest societies the spreading of the seeds of
civilisation was of secondary significance to the growth of local
civilisations in various regions of the world.
The first manifestations of civilisation or limited social relations
are not only to be found in Egypt or in Greece, nor are they the fruit of
only one root. Between 3000-2000 B.C. not only did the cultures of Egypt and
Mesopotamia begin to develop but also the culture of ancient India. During
the same period the cultures of the nations of the Andes, South America were
also in their ascent. Ancient Greece with its highly developed
manufacturing, culture and philosophy also flourished at the same time as
India. These phenomena can only be explained with the overall changes in the
natural environment and very possibly with the increased radioactivity of
the sun. Such a conclusion is very significant since it shows that human
civilisation appeared in different parts of the world establishing pluralism
and diversity as a natural law. In other words, the human race developed
from different natural and cultural roots at the same time and is moving
towards integration without destroying its diversity.
There is something else which has lead to the constant expansion of
communities and for people to seek answers to the problems caused by
integration. This something is the connection between the processes of
domination of man over nature and the process of integration itself. With
the expansion and development of transport, culture, manufacturing and
trade, our forebears began to realise that the fate of mankind is
indivisible from the processes of its expansion and integration. Over the
centuries, mankind dominated more and more new territories, populated more
and more regions of the world and subsequently linked these expanded
territories into unified systems.
There is a certain logic in the development of human life from its
earliest manifestations to the present day - that progress is indivisible
from the increase in human communities, from the growth in the compactness
of populations and the mutual dependence of people. Every historical epoch
confirms this conclusion - from the first signs of early civilisation in
modern Africa and the development of tribal communities, to the appearance
of cooperative grain farming in Eastern Asia and the appearance of the first
developed dynasties in Egypt and the Near East and the expansion of art in
the ancient world. The development of human integration has passed through
many different forms: tribal/warrior alliances and slave owning states,
imperial states combining religions and cultures. The overall trend has been
constant, each subsequent form of human civilisation is either greater than
the previous or more integrated and dependent on the environment in which it
exists.
There are two phenomena which clearly show this process:
The first is the population of the world. From its first appearance to
the present day mankind has been growing constantly: about 6,000,000 in 8000
B.C.; about 255 million in 1 A.D.; 460 million in 1500; 1.6 billion in 1900;
2.0 billion in 1930; 3.0 billion in 1960; 4.0 billion in 1975; 5.0 billion
in 1987 and over 6 billion in 1994.[(]
The second important phenomenon is communications. With the appearance
of human civilisation sounds and gestures then language and fire were the
main forms of communication. As society developed man began to develop more
intensive forms of communication. All the activities of man are directly or
indirectly linked with the development of new communications - roads, sea
and airways, all manner of forms of transport, postal links, telephones and
telegraphs, computers and optical fibres, satellite television.
Communications (transport, information exchange and processing) are the most
accurate bench mark for the development and progress of civilisation. There
is an obvious logic involved in this. Over the centuries people have been
building bridges between each other and have been using them to exchange the
fruits of their labour and to influence the world in which they live.
I consider that from the outset I shall have to draw a very obvious and
necessary conclusion: the further human society progresses, the more compact
and integrated human society becomes and the more nations and individuals
become dependent on each other. This is an incontrovertible law which we can
do little to stop. It is also clear that this is an element of the overall
development of the Earth and an accompaniment to the entire history of the
human race and the overall development of our planet.
This, perhaps, gives rise to the question whether economic development
and the general development of human civilisation has definable limits or
whether there are limits to the growth in world population. Will human
progress lead to the disappearance of the primary differences between races
and nations? Will mutually dependent human existence lead to new phenomena?
Will states disappear to be replaced by international communities? These are
questions which will have to be answered.
I believe that notwithstanding the cyclical nature of its development,
the human race will irreversibly and logically move towards a mutually
dependent and integrated existence and from there to constant structural
reformation. The main reason for this is that human progress is becoming
more and more profoundly dependent on nature and the unity of nature is in
its turn influencing the unity of life on earth. The unity of nature has
become transformed into a unity of independent social communities. Producing
and consuming, harvesting the oceans, the seas and the care of the earth and
space, people are beginning to find themselves living in a more integrated
community and are becoming dependent on each other. Individual processes of
production lead to general pollution. The exploitation of natural resources
has caused overall changes to the environment. The development of
communications has created a common environment for the transfer of
information.
It can be stated with confidence that the process of overall world
integration is universal. It includes manufacturing, culture and religion
and the processes of human thought. This process is directly connected with
the universal philosophical problem of the integrity and dialectical nature
of nature. There is no doubt that by revealing its diversity nature is
becoming more unified. However, any claimsof its absolute unity are as
absurd as claims of its extreme fragmentation.
When historical processes are in their initial stages and civilisations
are still poorly developed, they tend to reflect closely the conditions and
the specific nature of the local natural conditions with their climatic,
geographical and other particular features. People are born different, live
different lives and believe in different gods. In Africa people are born
black, in Europe - white, in America "red" and in the East "yellow". Today
these differences for the most part are disappearing. Races, cultures,
religions and values systems are merging. This is not because nature is
being outdone, but that its localisation is being outlived.
The closer people become to nature the more their lives, consciousness
and behaviour become dependent on the common essence of nature. Individual
and specific elements disappear to become merged in the common elements of
life. In my opinion this is the meaning and the dialectic of progress. In
order to defeat the lions and the wolves, man had to unite and to join
forces and ways of thinking, to build on what he has so far achieved in
order to make further progress. In this way, year after year, century after
century man conquered increasing areas of nature, reached its profound
depths, exploited its common natural resources - the earth, the forests, the
air and the water. These resources have been exploited for the same reasons
- that in order to make greater use of nature, it is necessary to use the
combined efforts of individual human resources. The opposite is also true,
the more we use nature, the more we become dependent (or place other people
in a position of dependence) on it.
This is the link between integration and progress, between integration
and civilisation. The entire existence of the human race shows that
integration is a constant process. Moreover, civilisations as forms of
organised social life are an expression and product of integration. When we
speak of civilisations, it should be noted that they do not coincide with
the five social and economic formations defined by Karl Marx or with the
three technological waves of A.Toffler. Marx divided world development into
five large "social structures" according to the forms of ownership. This was
an undoubted intellectual contribution but an artificial and unilateral
approach. The exclusive use of the criteria "forms of ownership" (Marx) or
"technology" (Toffler) or the criteria of "spiritual development" (Toynbee)
is misleading. The specific nature of the civilisation approach is in its
complexity, in the indivisible connection between economics, culture and
politics. This approach cannot absolutise either technology or property or
any other sphere of human activity. This excludes the possible creation of
artificial formations and social constructions in the aims of "progress"
being isolated within only one part of human existence. Civilisations cannot
be seen merely as branches which reflect one side or another of human life
but as a common cultural process. They are distinct in terms of the way of
life of the ancient peoples who lived in that part of the world and secondly
in terms of the differences in the historical epochs in the development of
humanity. Further on I shall return to the second of these aspects of the
definition of civilisation. This shall release me from the strictures of the
formational approach and the ideologisation of history. Such a method can be
used to show the graduality of transitions and to explain the general and
individual elements in the development of different parts of the world. To
this end I shall define civilisation as: 1. the common and connected levels
of human development; 2. the character of this development during the
various epochs of human existence. Civilisations are not divided one from
another on the basis of revolutionary acts, a change of monarch or president
or armed conflicts. "Civilisation", according the great historian A.Toynbee,
"is movement rather than condition; sailing and not the
harbour."[2]. For this reason, I consider civilisation to be the
common essence of human development and its different forms are the stages
of its development.
How many civilisations are there at the moment? Is it, indeed, correct
to speak of a multitude of different civilisations?
Civilisation[3] and civilised behaviour are a synonyms for the
human essence, something which makes man different from the animal world and
the fundamental role of man as a transformer, harmoniser and creator of
nature. This role is fundamental to the essence of humanity and also a
measure of its development. Civilisation springs from more than one source -
in the ancient world there were about 26 initial
civilisations[4], or seen in another way, 26 sources of the same
civilisation. It is possible that there were direct links between them as
well as exchanges of cultural achievements and information. Even if this was
the case this was not the most typical feature of their development.
The ancient peoples developed in different ways since they were
reflections of their different natural environments. They formed the basis
for the appearance of a particular natural species and created the
preconditions for a unified civilisation while programming its diversity.
The more ancient the civilisation, the greater the differences between them.
Despite this, the way in which they appeared, their primitive economic
relations and their state and political structures speak of common elements.
This is why I use the term ancient civilisations or ancient
civilisation. The Egyptians, the Assyrians Shumerians, Greeks, Indians,
Chinese, Romans, American Indians etc. differ greatly in terms of their
daily life, culture, the colour of their skin but have much in common in
terms of the level of their development, their means of manufacturing and
their state-political structures. The zenith of the ancient civilisations
was attained no doubt by the ancient Greek city states and Rome. However,
India at the time of the Mura dynasty (322-80 BC) was also very advanced.
Together with the achievements of the ancient Chinese, Koreans, Mongolians,
Vietnamese and American Indians, they made up the culture of the first
civilisation of the first great epoch of human development.
To use Marxist criteria, the First civilisation can be divided into two
strata: primitive communities and slave owning. I am not convinced that this
is useful. First of all for reasons of the semi-human (uncivilised)
existence of the primitive community and secondly for reasons of the
non-social links within one "social" structure. The first civilisation was
replete with a diversity of forms of ownership, cultures and mechanisms of
government. These were its specific elements and what made it distinct from
subsequent civilisations. In Europe the first civilisation was primarily
slave owning, but this was not the case in Asia. Frequently, slave ownership
was accompanied by other forms of administrative and economic compulsion.
Europe during the first civilisation was mainly patriarchal, while ancient
China was until the second millennium B.C. matriarchal. Only the
civilisation approach can serve to explain these differences and at the same
time determine find the common elements in the lives of our forebears.
What the First Civilisation has in common and makes it distinct is the
undoubted dependence of the people on primitive production tools, the use of
force and the enslavement of some nations by others and the formation of
imperial state structures and the maintenance of permanent aggressive
armies. The peoples of the First Civilisation left us the first examples of
large-scale art which exist today amongsts the ruins of the Cheops pyramid
and Mayan towns, in ancient Chinese and ancient Indian architecture. These
decorations of human civilisation are at first glance different from one
another but they also have a lot in common. The materials, their dependence
on the gods and the supernatural, the philosophy of human life with
new-found self confidence can be seen everywhere and show once again the
common elements of the First civilisation.
The First Civilisation can be considered to have begun at some time
between 4500 - 3500 B.C. and to have come to an end during the
3[rd] century A.D. It would not be wise to place strict and
absolute dividing lines between the civilisations or the era of human
development since they tend gradually to merge one into another. Certain
peoples at certain times have tended to lag behind during the time of
transition but then somehow seem to manage to catch up. During the
5[th] or 6[th] century A.D. the Second Civilisation
began as a result of the structural, social and industrial changes taking
place first in Asia and then in Europe. The Second Civilisation is
frequently linked with the Middle Ages. If the First Civilisation lasted for
between 4000 or 5000 years the Second lasted only 1000 years from the
5[th] to the 14[th]/15[th] centuries. Each
subsequent civilisation as an era in the development of humanity is shorter
than the one which precedes it. This is a consequence of the accelerated
rate of progress arising from the accumulated material benefits of previous
generations. A very typical feature of the Second Civilisation was the
feudal nature of its manufacturing industries. However, as a defining
feature this is neither adequate nor sufficiently universal. Another key
feature of the Second Civilisation was the huge mass resettlement of peoples
and the inter-mingling of diverse cultures. During the First Civilisation
the processes of integration were manifested in terms of the concentration
of people and power in the city states and empires. These were destroyed by
the Second Civilisation which persued a process of integration of cultures
through the violent intermixing of ethnic groups, traditions and religions.
Between 400 and 900 A.D. new peoples begin to enter the annals of world
history. Integration at this time was a byword for aggression. At one and
the same time, as if on command, the Ostgoths and Westgoths, Huns and Avars,
Tartars and Mongols, Proto-Bulgarians and Slavs, Turks and Arabs began to
search for new lands and dominions. Although the intermingling of cultures
via war and aggression leading to the resettlement of peoples it was a
significant quality of the Second Civilisation, I cannot agree that the
Middle Ages were exclusively a period of destruction, plague and
Inquisition. It was also a time of the powerful integration of cultures and
production, new achievements in learning and art. There are many examples of
this, beginning, perhaps, with the magnificent architectural achievements of
the Byzantines, e.g. the wondrous cathedral of St.Sofia (532-537) in
Istanbul. Other examples can be taken from West European art, which has left
us magnificent works from its three most creative periods - pre-Roman, Roman
and Gothic: the court cathedral of Charlemagne in Aachen (795-805), the
castle of the Gailleurs on the River Seine (12[th] century) and
innumerable Gothic cathedrals, including Notre Dame in Paris built between
the 12[th] and 13[th] centuries. The Second
Civilisation created abundant cultural riches in the Near East and the
Middle East, North Africa and Mauritanian Spain, India, China and Japan.
The Second Civilisation was a time of the further rapprochement of the
nations which had been divided during the First Civilisation. In the
5[th] century, Samarkand was the heartland of a powerful culture
and a bridge between the Chinese, Turks and Arabs. The masterpieces of
Chinese culture and paper manufacturing technology reached Europe through
Iran, Byzantium and Arab dominions. If during the period of the First
Civilisation, the Romans, Macedonians and Indian copied technology, arms
manufacturing and methods of animal husbandry from each other, then in the
Second Civilisation a standard method of measuring time was established. An
important event took place in 807 when Charles the Great received a water
clock from the Harun al Rashid from Baghdad leading to the subsequent
arrival of Chinese and Arab clocks in Europe. People from all over the world
learnt to tell the time simultaneously. This lead to the further
standardisation of the criteria of life and history. During this period the
Chinese Empire further developed the achievements of the Greeks and the
Romans while the Arabs and the Europeans built on those of the Chinese and
the Japanese.
During the Second Civilisation forms of ownership and social relations
began to show greater universality. Feudalism began to establish itself over
the entire world in very specific forms, especially in China and Japan. To a
lesser extent, the Second Civilisation retained definite disparities in the
level of the development of its nations. A significant part of the world
continued to develop within the parameters of the First Civilisation and
even persisted to exist in pre-civilised forms for a number of centuries.
The Second Civilisation was a time of numerous conflicts and inevitable
crises for reasons of large-scale structural change - the destruction of the
traditional city-states and cultures of the First Civilisation and the
innumerable religious conflicts. This was also a time of large-scale state
and cultural development and the establishment of the pre-conditions for the
expansion of nations and nation-states. King Clovis (401-511) at the
beginning of the 6[th] century united the Franks, Justinian
(572-565) raised the level of state administration, taxation and the
application of law. Enormous progress was made in the fields of science,
medicine and mathematics in Baghdad, Cordoba and Cairo. In the Arab world,
Africa (Ethiopia and Ghana), Japan, China and America, great empires arose.
The new level of integration, typical of the Second Civilisation gradually
lead to the creation of national states. To be more precise these were not
single-nation states but the domination of a single nation or its symbols.
During the latter Middle Ages there was a gradual slowing down in the
processes of migration of nations and tribes which lead to the stabilisation
of populations and states. The intermingling of cultures typical of the
entire period of the Second Civilisation was gradually replaced by a period
of developing national cultures, national symbols and traditions and
struggles for the legacy of the cultural riches of the past. The formation
of national states and the gradual advent of the "modern age was the
beginning of the end of the Second Civilisation. It was no accident that the
Renaissance which was the symbol of this period of transition also
incorporated within itself a return to Greek and Roman art and the cult of
beauty and earthly passions. Civilisations follow the spiral of development
- each new civilisation destroys the previous while at the same time bearing
significant resemblances to it. The Third Civilisation can also be referred
to as a "Modern Age" - the age of nations states, factories and industrial
complexes. It began at sometime during the 13[th] and
14[th] centuries and will come to an end at sometime during the
20[th] century. The entire period of the Third Civilisation was a
period of the integration of manufacturing and spiritual life. In a similar
way to the First Civilisation, the forces of integration came mainly from
the most-developed states resulting from the accumulation of manufacturing
and cultural achievements, rather than as a result of the resettlement and
intermingling of nations at different stages of development as it was during
the Second Civilisation. The transport revolution which began in Europe was
of enormous significance during this period. An example of this were the
sailing ships with which Magellan circumnavigated the world and which took
Christopher Columbus to America and James Cook to Australia. The explorers
were followed by the conquerors hungry for plunder and easy riches.
Europeans and Arabs followed the Silk Road through Constantinople, Persia
and Tibet to China. The world was once more regaining its strength,
exploring the limits of the earth. European states begin to develop and
consolidate their power and expand their domination over the rest of the
world.
During the 16[th] and 17[th] centuries Europe,
the most powerful of world cultures, began to exert its power over the other
relatively less-developed nations. Over a period of three centuries as a
result of great geographical discoveries and their subsequent colonisation
European culture managed to exert its influence over half of the world. t is
far from the truth, however, that the only "heroic" discoverers were
Europeans, such as Columbus, Magellan, Vasco da Gama. By allowing ourselves
such a subjective attitude, we, Europeans often find ourselves guilty of
provincial ignorance. During the same historical period while the European
sailors, traders and soldiers were beginning to make their geographical
discoveries, a similar process was taking place in the East. Between 1405
and 1433, admiral Cheng Ho with hundreds of Chinese ships reached Zanzibar
and Ceylon. In the 15[th] century the population of China was
twice the size of that of Europe: 100-120 million in comparison with 50-55
million. Chinese civilisation was also comparable with European civilisation
in terms of its lustre, organisation and depth of philosophy. During this
period the great discoveries of Siberia and Africa were made. At the end of
the 15[th] century the conquest of America began. Arab caravans
reached the interior of Africa. Like the First Civilisation, the Third
Civilisation also arose from diverse and different roots. The difference is
that after the 15[th] century and in particular during the
18[th] and 19[th] centuries, the process of
integration had become universal in nature. Nations and cultures discovered
each other. The more developed began to impose their domination and culture
with violence. At the same time, a gradual process of mutual influence and
enrichment began to develop between the various cultures.
A typical feature of the Third Civilisation has been the significance
of the world integrity. Moreover, in ancient Greece, Theucidides, Aristotle
and Plato[5] searched for the common dimensions of life and
common rules for state administration amongst familiar nations. The Stoics
advocated the idea of moral and political unity of the human race. Some of
the thinkers of ancient Rome (Cicero and others) saw the world as a city
with the dimensions of the entire human race embracing all other nations and
cultures. The Renaissance enrichened this tradition. If the thinkers of the
First Civilisation were occupied mainly with the chronicles of warlords and
their victories, and the Second Civilisation with the defence of their
religious identity, the thinkers of the Third Civilisation undoubtedly
rediscovered man and his essence. Religion was of great importance to the
process of integration. K.Kautski referring to statistics states that in 98
A.D. there were 42 centres of population containing Christian communities,
by 180 this number had grown to 87 and by 352 - there were more than
500[6]. Ten centuries later the majority of the civilised world
was united by Christianity. Buddhism and Islam had a similar influence. Over
a period of about 1000 years, the major religions united the greater part of
humanity within large spiritual communities. The zenith of this process was
undoubtedly during the Third Civilisation. The unification of different
nations on the basis of value systems and spirituality was of was of great
historical significance. This lead to the building of bridges between the
different parts of the world at a time when manufacturing and commercial
links and communications were unsustainable.
By this time the majority of the great geographical discoveries had
been made. Transport and communications had made great progress and medieval
means of production had been succeeded by the first factories. Commerce was
no longer a haphazard accompaniment to life, but an indivisible part of
civilisation. Amsterdam had become a large scale cultural and commercial
centre. Venice and Genoa had become the major cities of the Mediterranean.
Peter the First and his followers had built Saint Petersburg and a number of
European cities had populations of more than 100,000 people. The First
Civilisation was a time of the great empires. The Second of the fall of
empire and unstable states and city states. The Third Civilisation was a
period a nation states. The gravitational centres of progress during the
First Civilisation were empires, during the Middle Ages city states and
during the Third - nation states. Nation states are one of the features of
the modern age distinguishing it from the Middle Ages and from what we can
now observe at the end of the 20[th] century. They did not
develop suddenly but as a consequence of a series of conflicts over many
centuries. Certain historians believe that this is one of the reasons for
the success of Europe, that it was these conflicts and the liberated spirit
of the Renaissance which guaranteed its domination. It is indeed possible.
In any event between the 15[th] and 17[th] centuries
France, Spain, England and Sweden and a little later Russia, began to
increase their power and might to guarantee their strategic advantage for a
number of centuries in the future.
According to P.Kennedy, between 1470 and 1650, the armies of the major
European powers expanded: Spain from 20,000 to 100,000; France from 40,000
to 100,00; England from 25,000 to 70,000 and Sweden from a couple of hundred
to 70,000[7]. These figures show not only the rise of the
economic power of the emergent major European powers, but also their desire
for the re-distribution of the newly discovered territories and the
domination of some states by others. The entire history of the period
between the 15[th] and the 18[th] centuries is a
history of war, battles for inheritance, colonies and riches. Armies and
Navies were expanded, military alliances were formed. As a result of wars,
trade and new conquests the whole world entered into a new phase of
integration. The Third Civilisation developed greater mass phenomenons in
all areas of life - transport, manufacturing, international trade and ideas,
the spiritual world and the world of ideas and religions. There is one other
important criterion which distinguishes the three civilisations - the forms
of production. The First was the age of agriculture and animal husbandry,
the Second saw the advent of manufacturing and crafts while the Third is the
age of industry and industrial giants. I accept A.Toffler's belief that
technological revolutions stimulated the progressionfrom onea ge into
another, but I do not believe that this is an exhaustive or adequate
criterion. There also another difference between us in terms of the
periodisation of history: A.Toffler divides history into two eras:
agricultural and industrial, while I have looked for the differences in a
wider and more civilisational spectrum. Technological changes are a
synthetic expression of the changes in forms of ownership. Typical features
of the three forms of civilisation were slave ownership, feudalism and
capitalism and it would be wrong to ignore them.
At the same time I believe that the transition between the various
civilisations was not abrupt and cannot be defined on the basis of one event
or another. New civilisations develop within a country and grow organically
as a number of trends. This usually takes place as a result of a change in
the instruments of labour and technology but at the same time as a result of
changes in social relations and means of government. This is the case with
the Third Civilisation and the period of its greatest prosperity during the
industrial revolution of the 19[th] century. Moreover, at the end
of the 19[th] century and especially during the 20[th]
century, there were a number of processes in world development which bore
innovations of the modern age and which were entirely different from the
first three civilisations. The most important characteristics of the Third
Civilisation - industry, nations, nation states began to change intensively.
In practice this meant the beginning of a process of the collapse of the
modern age and the Third Civilisation.
2. THE BIRTH OF THE GLOBAL WORLD
The industrial revolution in Europe at the beginning of the 19thcentury
brought with it a rapid process of economic and political
internationalisation. The borders of the nation states - the most
distinguishing feature of the Third Civilisation become too limiting for the
new manufacturing forces.
T
here is no doubt that the 19th century was a time of exceptional
technological revolution. In the 1850's and 1860's Great Britain, France,
Italy, Germany and Austria demonstrated significant increases in the growth
of their industrial output. The invention of the steam engine in 1769 by
James Watt and the locomotive by George Stephenson were of revolutionary
significance for world economic development and accelerated integration. At
the end of the 19th century the first experimental flights with an aeroplane
were carried out by Langley (1896). Enormous progress was made between 1885
and 1897 in the development of autmobile construction. In 1837 Morse
invented his communications code and in 1864 Edison improved methods of
electronic transmission. In 1876 Bell gave the world its first telephones.
The second half of the 19th century was a time of important discoveries
in the areas of transport and weapons systems. Revolutionary developments
were made in coal mining, mettalurgy and energy production resulting in the
increase of iron and steel production between 1890 and 1913: in the USA from
9.3 million tons to 31.8 million, in Germany from 4.1 to 17.6, in France
from 1.9 to 4.6 and in Russia from 0.95 to 4.6 million tons. Energy
consumption for the same period rose: in the USA from 147 million tons of
coal equivalent to 541 million tons, in Great Britain from 145 million tons
to 195 million, in Germany from 71 to 187 million tons, in Germany from 71
to 187 million tons, in France from 36 to 62.5 million tons and in Russia
from 10.9 to 54 million tons.[8] Energy and metal became the
major factors in the rapid development of railways and armies,
predetermining the development of entirely new branches of industry and
science.
A common feature of this process is that the industrial revolution of
the 19th century interlinked the interests of the developing nations in a
completely new manner. If until the 19th century, conflicts between nations
were of a purely localised nature and on mainly religious or territorial
grounds or for reasons of inheritance, after the developments of the
industrial revolution the main factors in the emergence of conflicts were
disputes for continental or world domination, cheap raw materials and
colonies.
These facts are perhaps sufficient to support the contention that the
Global World was born at the end of the 19th century. I interpret the term
"Global World" as meaning the level of development at which the majority of
countries and peoples become dependent on each other and, notwithstanding
their own national governments, form a common essence. If this is the case,
then the end of the 19th century was just the beginning of world
globalisation within the framework of the nation states of the Third
Civilisation. During the same period the world began an intensive period of
establishing common economic (export of capital), technological (transport,
communications, science) and cultural links. At some time towards the end of
the 19th century the great world powers were already unable to resolve their
own conlicts in isolation. Conflicts could no longer be limited to their own
borders but to the economic and political divisions already existing in the
world. A new world trend began to emerge, that of imperialism.
The trend towards imperialism was the first manifestation of the
globalisation of the world, a qualitative new level of world integration. I
consider imperialism to be a result of the intermingling of two intersecting
phenomena: the strong feelings of nationalism which existed everywhere at
the end of the 19th century and the objective trend towards integration as a
result of the export of capital and aspirations towards the economic
division of the world. In the 19th century, globalisation existed only as a
direct initiative of the nation state. However, during the second half of
the 19th century economic development began to transcend national borders in
the form of ambitions and aspirations towards national dominance. Such
belligerent nationalism within the conditions of internationalisation gave
rise to what J.Hobson, R.Hilferging and V.Lenin defined as
imperialism.[9]
Looking at the way in which humanity greeted the advent of the
twentieth century, one is suprised by their equanimity of spirit. Upon a
cursory examination of the major newspapers of France, Germany and Bulgaria
published on the 1st of January 1900, I observe a remarkable similarity.
Almost everywhere countries greeted the new century with fervent and
malcontent nationalism. The new century was seen as a century during which
individual states would satisfy their ambitions for new territory and
conquer and punish their opponents. The dominant atmosphere was of
nationalism and imperial aspirations and against this background, the
emergence of socialist ideas. National borders had become too limiting for
the expansion of industry. The Germans and the Bulgarians wanted to unite to
castigate their neighbours. The British rejoiced in their colonial dominions
and dreamed of an even greater Britain. The French reminded the Germans that
they would not stand for any more humiliation like that suffered in 1870.
Not one of the European nations or the USA are an exception. They were all
overcome by some level of imperialist amnbition. This was like a contagious
disease brought on by a need for raw materials and control over the railways
and the sea routes but it also penetrated political, journalistic and social
thought.
During this period, Fichte developed his idea of the exclusive role of
the Prussian state in the progress of humanity. Fichte was the greatest
proponent of the way in which nationalism and the need for
internationalisation becomes transformed into imperialism. But France was no
different. During the decades after the destruction of the French army in
1870, French nationalism reached unseen heights. Charles Morras defined
nationalism as the absolute criterion for every political action. In general
at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th European
nationalism flourished. In the USA at the end of the 19th century, economic
and demographic growth, albeit slower than in Europe also gave rise to a
similar explosion of self-confidence and aspirations for a new role for
America in the world. The idea of an international society, a common feature
of American political thought during this period, was also frequently
proclaimed as a right to domination and even war.
It could also be said that at the beginning of the 20th century
humanity was obsessed by the political paradigm typical of all world
empires: nationalism combined with imperial ambitions. In other words,
internationalisation and globalisation stem from the ambitions of isolated
nationalism and nation states. This was also reflected in the structure of
manufacturing, politics and life in general. Over a thirty-year period,
between 1880 and 1910 the standing armies of the world powers increased
significantly. The Russian army increased from 791,000 to 1,285,000 persons.
The French army increased from 543,000 to 769,000. The Germany army
increased from 426,000 to 694,000 and the British army from 246,000 to
531,000. The army of the Austro-Hungarian empire increased from 246,000 to
425,000. The Japanese army increased from 71,000 to 271,000 and the army of
the United States grew from 34,000 to 127,000[10]. Stockpiles of
weapons and huge amounts of human resources were ammassed in the event of
war, which was soon to break out.
The First World War was the first manifestation of an integrated world,
the first major demonstration of world globalisation. It was proof of the
growing interdependence of countries which did not allow them, apart from
rare exceptions, to stay out of the conflict. Practically the entire world
was sucked into the conflicts of the First World War. From this moment on
the world began to manifest itself as a mutually dependent system developing
within a common cycle. I consider this argument to be of particular
significance and I would like to develop it further.
The First World War linked the majority of the countries within a
common conflict but also formed the beginning of a common economic cycle in
the development of the industrial nations. What other explanation can be
given for the fact that in the 1920's all the major powers witnessed, to a
greater or lesser extent, advances in industrial progress? Taking 1913 as a
basis (100%) the indices of industrial output growth between 1921 and 1928
were as follows: in the USA from 98 to 154.5%; Germany - from 74.7% to
118.3; Great Britain from 55.1 to 95.1%; France - from 61.4 to 134.4; Japan
from 167 - 300%; Italy from 98.4 to 175.2 and the Soviet Union from 23.3 to
143.5[11]. All the developed nations, as though bound by some
common umbilical cord, suffered economic collapse at the beginning of the
1930's. Only those nations such as the USSR who had isolated themselves from
the world economy escaped the crisis. In 1937 Germany succumbed. This common
feature of world economic development also manifested itself after the
Second World War in countries with an open market economy.
Despite certain divergence in terms of the stages of development, it is
clear that after the 1920's the most industrialised nations of the world
began to develop in a more mutually dependent manner. Today at the end of
the century, this mutual dependence has attained unseen levels as expressed
in the indices of the world stock exchanges and in the unconditional mutual
interdependence of exchange rates. During the period between the two world
wars a new global essence began to develop entirely independently of
national governments. This began with the increasing in the level of mutual
interdependence between countries and gradually gained strength from the
growth in new technology, commerce and finance, transport and
communications, culture and science and armaments etc.
Nevertheless, the 20th century witnessed only the birth of the global
world. The global revolution still only exists as a possibility. It will
take many decades to achieve the gradual and problematic development of
global structures within the model of the individual nation states.
Globalisation is a level of international integration at which
interdependence between nations and cultures exists at a planetary level.
Such mutual interdependence is not a matter for one or two or a group of
nations but between each individual state and the world as a whole, between
individual regions of the world, between all nations and cultures
simultaneously.
If upon the emergence of human civilisation, the processes of
integration affected only a number of individual tribes and was localised
and during the Middle Ages it took on regional proportions, then since the
beginning of the 20th century, it has existed within the framework of
mankind as a whole. All countries and peoples are involved in a common
system which is governed in a particular way and on the basis of certain
principles. This system arose spontaneously, via struggles for domination,
wars and violence. One should take into account the difficulties people
encounter in attempting to overcome the boundaries of their own environment,
religion and nation. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the
20th century people were little occupied by thoughts of the world as a whole
or the priorities of universal human interests. Of course, there were a
number of writers and businessmen, Henry Ford was a prime example, who were
exceptions to this rule. However, this was not the case for the large mass
of the active inhabitants of our planet, politicians and the influential
owners of large amounts of wealth.
The culture of the Third Civilisation is above all a culture of
national thought and behaviour and the 20th century will remain entirely
within its dominion notwithstanding the accelerated processes of world
integration. Its militant nationalism and militiary blocs created the first
models of the global world based on violence and conflicts and on the
familiar struggle for national domination which existed in previous
civilisations.
3. THE SEARCH FOR A MODEL FOR THE GLOBAL WORLD
The first model of the global world was the colonial system. It was a
product of the combination of 19th century nationalism and the acceleration
of globalisation. In the middle of the 20thcentury and as a consequence of
the two world wars this modelcollapsed to give way to a two-bloc political
and economic model.
T
he first model of the global world was colonialism. During the second
half of the 19th century the larger nation states, motivated by desires for
empire began gradually to conquer andto divide the world. Geo-politically
the world became integrated through the colonial system for the first time
into a single unity. By achieving pre-eminence in the seas and oceans and
possessing the largest fleet in the world, Great Britain after 1815 turned
its attention to the rapid conquest of territories from Africa to India and
Hong Kong. Over a period of between 50 and 70 years the British managed to
create the greatest colonial empire in the world. From 1815-1865, a further
100,000 square miles was added to the territory of the British Empire.
During this period France was the only other country to attempt to
compete with Great Britain. It was later to be followed by Germany, Belgium,
Italy, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, the USA, Russia and Japan. Starting from
the basis of the nation state and moving towards globalisation, the great
powers of the time began a process of the domination and re-division of the
entire world into a unified world system linked through imperial centres.
As can be seen from table 1, during the last quarter of the 19th
century, the largest colonial powers expanded their territories by almost
200 million head of population and 2.32 million square kilometres of
territory. Between 1900 and the beginning of the First World War this rate
decreased as a result of the satiation of the "colonial market"
Table 1
Size and population of the colonies
(1875-1914)
State
1875
1900
1914
sq.km.
pop.
sq.km.
pop.
sq.km.
pop.
Great Britain
France
Holland
Belgium
Germany
USA
22.5
1.0
2.0
2.3
-
1.5
250
6
25
15
-
[*]
32.7
11.0
2.0
2.3
2.6
1.9
370
50
38
15
12
9
32.7
11.0
2.0
2.4
2.9
1.0
350
54
45
12
13
10
All the most prestigious, accessible and wealthy colonies have been
conquered by the beginning of the twentieth century, resulting in the
establishment of the first model of the emergent global world - the colonial
world.
The colonial system itself gave rise to the second momentous event in
the globalisation of the world. Hardly had the system become firmly
established when it began to give rise to a series of almost irresolvable
world conflicts: the irreconcilable struggle for the re-division of the
world and the First World War in which millions lost their lives. The
resulting radicalisation of public opinion in Russia, Germany and to a large
extent in other parts of the world stimulated the growth in anti-imperialist
attitudes and provided an opportunity for the growth of the radical ideas of
socialist revolution.
These events in themselves gave rise to the second model of the
emergent global world - the model of the two systems which began with the
October revolution in 1917 and continued until 1989-91. Almost the entire
period of the twentieth century passed within conditions of the two opposing
systems and the existence of the bi-polar global model. During this period
the existence of the two systems was explained basically as the opposition
of two ideologies, the ideologies of the rich and the poor, socialism and
capitalism. This was also the view of Marxism-Leninism. After the collapse
of the Eastern European political regimes the existence of the communist
world was presented as an historical mistake, as the consequence of the
profound delusions of huge masses of people and the tyranny of dictatorship
etc.. This was of the view put forward by Z.Bzezinski[12], but I
find these ideas be simplistic and far too easy. In actual fact the
processes were much more complex and contradictory.
During the period of its mutually dependent development, the world
began to subordinate itself to a greater extent to the principle of
equilibrium, a principle which is based on the laws of nature. The lack of
social equilibrium leads sooner or later to serious conflicts and delayed
development. In the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th within the
process of accelerating industrialisation and rising imperialism two global
imbalances formed: the first - between the rich metropolitan countries and
the second - between the rich, ruling classes of the imperialist bourgeoisie
and the enormous masses of the poor proletariate. These large imbalances
were particularly developed in the poorer countries and the countries who
found themselves on the losing side in the First World War. In general
terms, in the 19th century and the first 50-60 years of the twentieth
century, class differences became much more marked and the ensuing class
struggle was a direct consequence.
It was these class conflicts and international disproportions which
gave rise to the radical revolutions in Russia, Germany and Hungary and a
series of other countries between 1917 and 1923. This also goes some way to
explaining the development of dominant political doctrines such as in the
USSR, Italy, Germany and a number of other countries. To take the example of
the USSR, the guiding aim of the Soviet economy in the 1920's and in
particular the 1930's was to overcome its backwardness and to undertake a
programme of rapid, accelerated industrialisation and to create a stable
armaments industry. Its initial ambition to achieve a balance with the rest
of the capitalist world and subsequently to overtake it was the dominant
strategy of Stalin in the 1930's and 1940's. This economic policy, while
defensible, can in no way justify the violence and historical absurdity of
totalitarianism. I am merely attempting to explain its roots. All my
academic research and my direct observations of the Soviet totalitarian
system show that millions of people were aware of the violence of the system
but that they accepted it as something inevitable, as a lesser evil than
poverty and misery. The illusions and the crimes perpetrated during the
regimes of Stalin, Hitler and Mao and the other violent regimes of the 20th
century are indisputable. These crimes were stimulated by the vicissitudes
of history, by the ambition to create an alternative model of social
progress. Are Robespierre or Danton or the British colonisers, or the
Russian conquerors of Central Asia any less culpable?
The deeply rooted reasons for these crimes need to be explained before
they can be resolved. There is no doubt that at the root of Stalin's
violence initially against the rural population and subsequently against the
whole of Soviet society after 1929 lay his ambition to achieve rapid
industrialisation. The strategy of rapid industrialisation and anti-colonial
conflicts in a number of less-developed countries should be viewed as a
reaction against emergent global imbalances. That which was considered by
many to be the struggle of the repressed nations for the freedom of the
proletariate was actually a struggle against economic backwardness, against
imperialism and the monopolies of most developed nations and the struggle
for national supremacy. In the 20th century, the poorer nations had no other
option to defend themselves against colonialism other than to concentrate
their force and might through powerful state structures. Slogans such as the
"welfare of the proletariate", "care for people" were always associated with
the power of the state. Poverty always generates Utopias. Communism was one
of them.
During the first half of the twentieth century the world had continued
to develop on the basis of liberal market doctrines and it persisted in
being a world of rich and poor peoples, metropolises and colonies and
profound class differences. When markets are free but imbalanced, the strong
easily swallow up the weak. Such imbalanced historical development allows
those countries with more rapid development to become dominant. Sooner or
later this was bound to lead to social revolutions. This, I feel, is the
explanation for the division of the world into two opposing blocs as an
alternative to the existing colonial model. After the two world wars and the
economic crisis of 1929-33, the liberal idea underwent a crisis and opened
the way for the radicalisation of the world and its division.
By 1925, two countries had yielded to "state socialism" - the USSR and
Mongolia - with a total population of over 150 million. 25 years later this
political system had spread into more than 20 countries and accounted for
more than half the population of the world. After the victory over Germany
in 1945 the power and the authority of the USSR grew immensely. Under the
auspices of its power the national patriotic forces of a number of countries
threw off the colonial domination of Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal,
Holland and other countries. At the beginning of the 1960's, with certain
exceptions the colonial model ceased to exist and was replaced by the
two-polar model. At the end of the 1950's the two world systems embraced
populations of about 1-1.5 billion people and possessed military parity.
Without achieving full economic parity or high levels of productivity, the
USSR managed to undermine the monopoly of the USA in strategic military
areas. Two basic centres of power became established in the world - Moscow
and Washington accompanied by other satellites with varying degrees of
power.
Since the Second World War the world has witnessed a number of local
conflicts. There have been armed struggles in the Near East, North and
Equatorial Africa, Indo-China, India and Pakistan, Chile, Bolivia, Cuba and
tens of other regions and countries. All these countries were directly or
indirectly linked with the two superpowers and their opposition. On the
other hand the achievement of nuclear parity between the USSR and the USA in
the 1950's brought an end to the trend towards
ultra-imperialism[13] and the possibility of the world becoming
subordinated to a single world power centre. Beneath the nuclear umbrellas
of the two super powers and carefully balanced between them, the countries
of Western Europe, Japan and a number of other Asian and Latin American
countries achieved great success.
I believe the achievement of nuclear parity to be a phenomenon with key
significance for world development. Napoleon with his ambitions for an
empire from "Paris to India" , Hitler with his "World Order" and Stalin with
his aspirations for the "victory of world communism" all longed for a
unified world empire. This was also the view of a number of other
politicians and thinkers who seeing a trend towards world integration and
the expansion of manufacturing came to the conclusion that a future world
would be a world of monopolistic unity, a unified manufactory for workers
and peasants (Lenin), ultra-imperialism (Kautski), permanent revolution
(Trotski) and so on. To this extent the bi-polar model is a higher level of
development than the model of colonial empires. On the other hand, the
bi-polar model is only a stage in the formation of the global world and the
actual peak of the crisis of the Third Civilisation. I defend the thesis
that the two bloc system has to be seen as a transitional stage from the
point of view of the development of the global world and the transition
between the Third and the Fourth Civilisation.
Until the end of the 19th century, researchers analysed world changes
through the prism of national thinking and the nation state. After 1917 and
especially after the Second World War, the main object of research was the
two world systems - socialism (communism) and capitalism, their competition
and the struggle for domination. This was a reflection of the realities in a
world which had overpowered the minds of billions of people. Henceforth,
however, any analysis of the structural changes within the world cannot be
based on the confrontational bi-polar model. Only the global, civilisation
approach is capable of providing the correct response to questions and to
reveal the common and, consequently, the local trends of human development.
4. THE COMMON CRISIS AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE THIRD CIVILISATION
The 1970's saw the Suez crisis, the increase in the price of oil
(1973-5) and the end of the Brent Woods system[14]. Everyone
began to speak of the crisis of world capitalism. At the end of the 1980's
everyone began to speak of the crisis of world communism. In actual fact,
the entire world had been overcome by a profound crisis.
T
he ideologues and politicians of the two superpowers always maintained
that the system of their opponents was in crisis. In the communist countries
students attended lectures about the "common crisis of capitalism" while in
the West Kremlinologists talked of the "crisis of world communism". In
1960-2 Nikita Krushchev frequently was heard to say that the "collapse of
the colonial system is an historical victory over imperialism". In 1989-90
the victory of world capitalims over communism was declared. Was this really
the case? I have come to a different conclusion. I believe that the problem
cannot be reduced merely to the collapse of one system and the victory of
another. In actual fact during the second half of the twentieth century, it
was not only the communist system which was in a state of crisis but the
whole of the two bloc political system in the world, the entire structure of
the Third Civilisation. Industrial technologies, nation states and their
alliances, the culture of violence against the individual and nature
suffered serious repercussions.
What was the world like before the 1980's? There were two giant groups
of nations within which 99% of the weapons of mass destruction and 80% of
manufacturing industry were concentrated. Each group was closely connected
with military, political and economic alliances (NATO and the EU, the Warsaw
Pact and COMECON) with common military and economic infrastructures, with
joint institutions and education of personnel. All other countries and
peoples were dependent in some way or another on these groups. It is no
accident that hundreds of local conflicts during this period were waged with
the weapons of one or other of the military blocs and regarded as the
continuation of their undeclared war. On the other hand, the two bloc system
existed in the conditions of continuing integration and the growing
dependence of countries on each other. This was the main reason for the
general trends of world development to enter into contradiction with its
existing structures. The extent of these contradictions was so great that
there are justifiable grounds to speak of the common crisis of the two bloc
system and, in broader terms, the crisis of the entire modern age.
The first cause which lead to this crisis was the character and
structure of world economic growth.
After the Second World War, the global economic product of the Earth
increased four-fold. The total manufactured output of the period between
1950 and 1990 is equal to the growth of production from the beginning of
civilisation to the present day. There had never been such a turbulent
period in the development of the manufacturing powers of humankind.
Humankind had never witnessed such a period of dynamic processes reliant on
mutual cooperation, discoveries, the multiplication of discoveries and their
by-products. The other side of the coin was that such economic growth gave
rise to enormous deformations. The competition between the two super powers
and their allies assisted in the acceleration of progress but also lead to
previously unknown levels of unbalanced growth. In the 1980's the average
national product per head of population in the industrialised countries was
more than 11,000 dollars. In the majority of African countries this figure
was between 250-300 dollars.
While in the most developed countries of the world post-war development
had lead to an enormous abundance of goods and the domination of
consumerism, in the Third World more than 1.9 billion people were suffering
from malnutrition and disease. The level of consumerism in the developed
industrial countries rose to a level 40 to 100 times greater than in the
developing countries. This process of world development gave rise to the
most unexpected paradoxes. The money spent by today by the French on pet
food would be sufficient to feed the starving children of Ethiopia and
Somalia.
The iniquities in world development have increased during the last
couple of decades. Under colonialism, capital was re-directed towards the
poorer countries. After the war, however, it began to move in the opposite
direction. Large investments began to be made in the USA, Western Europe and
Japan. In the 1980's alone, direct investments in the developing countries
fell by about one hundred percent - from 25 billion USD in 1982 to 13
billion in 1987. As a result of this the poorer nations began to rely on
large amounts of credit in order to be able to feed their people, resulting
in the crippling debt burden which exists today. At present the countries of
Latin America owe international creditor banks and a number of governments
more than 400 billion dollars. Over 100 billion are owed by the Eastern
European countries. These statistics are proof not only of enormous
deformations but of the profound crisis which is affecting the foundations
of the world financial system. While the processes of international
integration do not permit the development of a monocentric world, the seven
richest nations of the world and the 300-400 wealthiest banks control the
lives of the majority of humanity via debt management.
On the other hand, the disproportionate economic development resulting
from the mad rush to purchase armaments and conflicts led to the economic
overloading of the two superpowers. As a direct result of the exisiting
two-bloc geo-political structure the USA managed (or some say was obliged)
to amass huge internal debts of more than 4 trillion dollars. In the 1970's
and 1980's the debts of the USSR increase enormously and delayed the rates
of its development.
A second characteristic problem of the two-bloc model of develoment was
the increase in environmental problems. For the entire period of post-war
development, as a result of uncontrolled industrialisation and the blind
faith in political and ideological ambitions the world lost practically one
fifth of its cultivable land, one fifth of its tropical forests and tens of
thousands of species of animal and plant life. During this same period the
level of carbon-monoxide in the atmosphere increased more than ten-fold. The
level of ozone in the stratoshpere has diminished and humanity is faced with
the threat of global warming. Talk is now of a global ecological tragedy.
Even today despite the growth in ecological awareness and "green" movements,
the world environmental crisis is seen as something of secondary
significance as something less important than the struggle for economic
growth, military strategic stability or national domination. Global warming
as a result of the industrial boom has already had serious, possibly
catastrophic, consequences. The reduction of irrigated agricultural land,
the increase in the levels of the oceans, the dessication of entire regions
which produce the majority of the world's grain - these are just a small
part of the possible consequences.
Despite the potential serious consequences for the world the leaders of
the two systems did not want, nor were they able to take any decisive
measures to allocate more funds for the conservation of the environment and
to reduce military expenditure or to pass common legislation to guarantee
the priorities of human needs.
The third and no less important cause of the crisis of the two-bloc
system was the fact that in the 1950's mankind surpassed all logical
extremes of military growth. The cold war and the opposition of the two
world systems lead the two super powers into a ceaseless race for
domination. This contest reached such a level that in the mid 1980's the
USSR and the USA possessed enough nuclear and strategic warheads to destroy
life on earth several times over. The eight most economically powerful
nations on the earth - the USA, USSR, China, the UK, France, West Germany,
Italy and Japan continually and deliberately increased their military
budgets during the entire post-war period.
In 1984, world arms export reached record levels of 75 billion dollars,
several times greater than the amount of money necessary to buy food and
medicines for the hungry and sick in the world and for investment in the
poorer countries. As a result of the opposition of the two blocs in the
1980's between 13 and 15 million people were employed in the arms industry.
In 1987, the global military budget of the world was more than 1 trillion US
dollars. This extreme overarmament lead to the overall deformation of entire
world development and distorted the structure of industrial production. It
caused enourmous deficits in the budgets of the industrialised nations and
created serious pre-conditions for the future of world finance. No less
important was the fact that as a result of the constant increase in arms
production and nuclear weapons in particular, the level of nuclear security
fell to very low levels. The danger of a nuclear Third World War loomed
greater than ever. At the end of the 1980's the two super powers - the USSR
and the USA had over 12 thousand units of nuclear arms - which from the view
point of common humanity was beyond the realms of common sense.
Thus, the deformation of economic development, the world environmental
crisis, the wealth of the North and the poverty and disease of the South,
the demographic booms, overarming - all these factors are the clear symptoms
of a profound crisis. It is true that all these critical phenomena have been
frequently discussed before and that some of the problems which I have
mentioned here have been the subjects of international summit meetings and
research groups but it is also true that they have been looking for
explanations to these phenomena in the wrong places.
In my opinion the most profound reason for the crises in the
environment, manufacturing and population growth can be found in the growing
inadequacy of the entire two-bloc structure of the world. On the one hand,
during this period, following the logic of confrontation and the struggle
for domination, the two super powers, their allies and all the remaining
smaller countries established structures oriented towards the development of
the economic and military power of the bloc to which they belonged. On the
other hand, the inter-bloc and inter-state power-struggle created a
manufacturing capacity which lead to the internationalisation of the world
and caused world problems which until then had been unknown.
The contradiction is manifest. Institutions, politics, propaganda, the
training of personnel, the links between manufacture and defence were
directly dependent on the profound ideologisation of thinking, while the
globalisation of humanity lead to the destruction of the confrontational
structures of the two blocs. In the 1970's and 1980's the bi-polar world
could no longer cope with global and world trends. This contradiction still
exists today notwithstanding the collapse of the two world systems. The
reason was the impossibility of bringing a sudden halt to the inertia of the
past based in the instutitions, upbringing, education and thinking of
people.
There is no doubt that in the West, and in particular in the East,
humanity has taken too long to come to terms with these problems. Moreover,
subsequent generations will bear the consequences and will discover new
disasters particularly in the environment and as a result of the abnormal
military competition between the two world systems. A number of academics
and politicians issued warnings in the middle of the century. The
scientists' rebellion against atomic weapons in the 1950's, the courage of
Sakharov in the USSR, and the actions of Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russel
and Jacques Cousteau are just a few examples. However, the conditions of
political opposition continue to exert an enormous power of inertia. This
inertia comes from the cultures of the existing civilisation, the
nationalism of the modern age and the world conflicts of the 20th century.
One of the main reasons for the acceleration in the crisis of the
two-bloc system and the collapse of the iron curtain was the growth in world
communications. In simple terms, the growth of radio, television, computers
and satellite dishes destroyed the iron curtain, pierced the armour of the
tanks and lead to the formation of a common culture of integration. The
revolution in communications which began at the beginning of the 1960's
brought about incredible political and spiritual changes throughout the
entire world. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones became a world phenomenon
not only as a result of their musical talent but also due to the new methods
of information transfer. In 1971 I went abroad for the first time, to the
German Democratic Republic. I asked my hosts why all the television ariels
faced west and he answered "It makes the German people feel united."
Television had begun to erode the Berlin wall even then.
After the 1960's and the 1970's people felt a new wave of integration
and discovered their common humanity. This was, however, in sharp
contradiction to the collapse of the world and the structures of the
political regimes. The new generations began to grow up in an atmosphere
which was no longer dominated by the dogma of ideology but by music and
spirituality and the thirst for contact with progressive cultural images.
Clearly this was in contradiction with the two-bloc division of the world
and the division between capitalism and socialism.
On the other hand, computers, communications and new world media began
to exert a direct influence on the human conscience and to create the
beginnings of a new previously unknown global culture. Together with the
globalisation of commerce and financial markets, this raised questions about
the basic structures of the third civilisation - nations and nation states.
There is no doubt that their borders had begun to change giving rise to the
problem of the formation of another world structure and of another political
and economic order.
In the 1960's when the cold war emerged from the ice age and the
peoples from the two sides began to get know each other, the first barriers
in their consciousness came down. In the Eastern bloc, intellectual
movements and calls for more freedom caught the leaders quite unawares. In
Czechoslovakia the Prague Spring blossomed, Hungary began a process of brave
economic reforms and in Poland the workers began to fight for their rights.
This period produced the indefatiguable spirits of Vladimir Visotskiy in
Russia, the "Shturtsi" in Bulgaria and Ceslav Niemen in Poland.
Many people in the West also realised that military, political and
cultural confrontation was of little benefit. In the 1960's and 1970's in
the USA and in particular in Western Europe movements for peace and
understanding gained momentum. The demonstrations against the war in
Vietnam, the youth movements in 1968, the hippy peace movements and a number
of other phenomena were manifestations not only of the political status quo
but also of a new emergent culture. The bearers of the new spirituality in
the West in the 1960's were born not so much in the academic environments of
Eaton and Harvard but in the fields of Woodstock and amongst the millions of
fans of John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Ian Gillan.
At the beginning of the 1960's the president of the USA, John F.Kennedy
was the first American statesman to evaluate the Eastern European nations
not merely as the incorporation of evil but recognised that they had
attained certain social achievements from which much could be learned. Of
particular significance was his attempt to build intellectual bridges with
the East and to break the ice of the cold war. Without accepting the
violence of the totalitarian regimes, many intellectuals in the West began
to perceive more clearly not only the mistakes and errors but also the
successes of the Eastern European countries and to propose the application
of certain of the benefits of state socialism, particularly in the social
field.
Year after year the means of global integration - transport, commerce,
radio and television lead to to growth in international contact and slowly
lead to the blurring of the iron curtain between East and West. With the
appearance of the computer and satellite television in daily life and with
the intensity of world radio television and cultural exchange the barriers
between the two systems became more illusory. New means of communication
made the policies of isolation, concealment of truth and global division
absurd. The monopoly of information collapsed as a direct result of the
revolution in communications which in turn lead to the undermining of the
two-polar model.
Despite everything which I have mentioned until now, is it still not
overstated to speak of the collapse of the Third Civilisation? Am I not
attempting to impose original thought in an aggressive way onto the
evolution of human development? I am conviced that this is not so. My
arguments for speaking of a general change in civilisation will be developed
in the subsequent chapters. They involve technological and geo-political
structures, ownership and the transition from traditional capitalist and
socialist societies and the blurring of the concept of the nation state.
Everything which symbolised and represented the modern age - industrial
technology, nation states, capitalism and socialism and the bi-polar world -
has undergone change. As a result of the explosion of world communications
the process of cultural globalisation has begun to accelerate and what
emerged has taken on new sharper features. This trend has gradually created
more and more adherents of a new world and a new civilisation. Sooner rather
than later the two-bloc system of world civilisation was going to collapse.
The question was "when?" and "in what way?"
Chapter two
COLLAPSE I: THE EXPLOSION IN EASTERN EUROPE
1. DECAY AND DEATH
Between 1960 and 1990 a noticeable gap began to open up betweenthe
socialist
countries of Eastern Europe and the industrialisedcountries of Western
Europe.
At the beginning of the 1980's there was a growing danger that this gap
was going
to become insurmountable...
A
lthough the two-bloc structure of the world was entering a period of
common crisis its disintegration began not in the West but in the East. The
changes in Eastern Europe were revolutionary" while in the West they were
seen as "evolutionary". Why?
In my opinion the reasons for this can be seen in the greater
inadequacies of the Eastern European totalitarian regimes to adapt to the
new trends in world development and to adapt themselves to the new
technological and economic conditions which appeared in the 1970's and
1980's. The Eastern European totalitarian bloc was the weakest link in the
world of the Third Civilisation.
As early as the 1950's the Americans, the Japanese and the Western
Europeans had begun to look for completely new approaches to the way in
which their lives were structured. On the one hand, under pressure from the
new external and internal realities which had to be taken into account and
on the other hand as a result of competition with the Soviet Union and other
countries of the Eastern Bloc, the most developed industrial nations began
to improve their systems. Today the economies of the USA, Japan and France
have little in common with what they were in the 1920's and 1930's.
By preserving free initiative, the industrialised Western countries
managed to overcome the danger of monopolism within their economies and
extreme social stratification. In this way they did not allow the
predictions of Lenin that "imperialism cannot be reformed and will
disintegrate under the blows from its own contradictions"[15] to
come true. In fact the opposite was true, after the Great Depression of 1929
and during the post-war period the largest Western European states and the
USA undertook a series of measures aimed at overcoming the danger of further
monopolisation and achieving greater social equality and harmony. Economic
and political power were balanced through moderate state regulation,
anti-monopoly legislation and the stimulation of medium and small-scale
business.
The most significant changes undertaken in the USA and Western Europe
were in the structure of ownership. After the passing Legislation allowing
the transferring of share ownership to employees in 1974 in the USA hundreds
of thousands of employees began to acquire stock in the companies in which
they worked. Similar trends can be seen in Great Britain, Germany, France
and a number of other Wester European countries. They also undertook
programmes to stimulate the development of small and medium business.
Millions of small companies sprang up in the areas of services, tourism,
trade, electrical goods and a number of other branches of the economy. By
some accounts these small enterprises account for up to half the working
population of Western European countries.
At the same time the large family properties in Western Europe and the
USA have lost the position of monopoly and importance which they had at the
beginning of the century. Today neither Rothschild, nor Dupont, neither
Morgan nor Rockerfeller can exert direct influence on questions of national
importance as they could have done a hundred years ago. This has allowed
Western European societies to halt their deterioration and to stop the
growth of class contradictions and gradually to wipe out the gap between the
different social groups. Thirty years after the end of the Second World War
the nature of employed labour had changed beyond recognition and the
proletariate described by Marx dissolved within a entirely new social and
technological environment. If now at the end of the 20th century one is to
visit the factories of, for example, Zussler near Zurich or American
Standard New York, one will see a completely new type of work force with
different interests and a different mentality and, more importantly, a
workforce which is integrated within the decision making processes. These
are no longer the same workers which lead Karl Marx to write "Capital" and
who gave rise to mass political and trade union protests at the beginning of
the 20th century.
In the post-war period and particularly in the 1970's and 1980's a
process of change in the nature of property ownership began which continues
to the present. This in its turn has had direct ramifications upon the
nature of power. This revolution has allowed the USA, Japan and another
twenty or so countries to adapt much more quickly and effectively to the
needs of the modern scientific and technological revolution and to become
global leaders.
At the same time the development of the USSR and Eastern Europe has
been halted as a result of the totalitarian nature of their regimes. It is
true that when it was formed in 1922, the Soviet Union inherited a poorly
developed industrial base and a poorly educated population but it is also
true that the totalitarian regime established by Stalin at the end of the
1920's had destructive and devastating consequences upon all areas of life.
Tens of million of people lost their lives as a result of violence and
repression - this was as a dramatic feature of the Stalinist regime as the
complete repression of free creativity and private initiative.
Centralisation in the decision making process could only provide temporary
benefits in military and defence issues but in all other cases it halted
intellectual, technical and economic development. From the very outset
Stalinism contained within itself the thesis of forced, coercive growth. The
initial results did not hide the truth that, given time, coercive
development was to become transformed into stagnation and regression. The
destruction of private enterprise, the total and coercive collectivisation
of agriculture in December 1922, the substitution of market forces with
party and subjective criteria and the repression of the intelligentsia could
not do anything but leave a profound scar and cause serious consequences for
human development.
During the period between 1950 and 1960 total nationalisation could
still be explained using complex and serious internal reasons, the general
radicalisation of European regimes (especially in the 1930's) and the
necessity to achieve military parity. However, during subsequent decades the
totalitarian regimes became totally bankrupt. Many people in Eastern Europe
still believe that the collapse in the Eastern European systems was due to
the mistakes made by Mikhail Gorbachev and his programmes of "perestroika".
I, personally, believe that the historical role of Gorbachev was a direct
result of the overall negative trends in the development of Eastern Europe
and the universal economic and political crisis which had gripped this part
of the world.
This crisis above all manifested itself in terms of the dramatic
technological backwardness which began to become apparent as early as the
late 1960's and became most marked during the 1980's. Eastern Europe began
to lag behind in electronics, bio-technology, communications, environmental
facilities and many other fields. Because all these technological fields are
so closely linked Eastern Europe began to fall behind in every other
possible field from the production of nails to complex aviation technology.
The technological advantages of the West affected daily life, the workplace
and management. The rate at which the East began to fall behind in the
1980's was so dramatic that certain experts began to speak of a possible
"global technological gorge" opening up between the East and the West, or in
other words a "self-perpetuating backwardness".
With the appearance of micro-electronics, new communications and space
technology, the Soviet military, who had up until now played a key role in
the political life of the totalitarian state, began to realise more and more
clearly that their economic backwardness would sooner or later affect their
military and strategic position. This was also understood by those
politicians with greater awareness unencumbered by political dogma. Although
the USSR had achieved nuclear parity and, in certain areas, superiority,
with the USA, its backwardness in the field of micro-electronics and
communications at the beginning of the 1980's began to change this trend.
The enormous amounts of money expended on military causes undermined the
Soviet economy and doomed it to universal inefficiency.
In a comparison of figures, it can be seen that while in 1960 the GNP
of the USSR was only about $5000 USD less than in the USA, in 1980 this
difference had reached $10,000 and in 1990 - $20,000. In 1960 the
manufacturing output of the USSR was $1000 per head of population more than
in Japan. Only 20 years later Japan was producing goods to the value of
$11,864 per head of population in comparison with $6,863 in the USSR. At the
beginning of the 1990's the gap had widened to $30,000.[16]
A similar process was taking place in comparable smaller European
countries. The German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland
and Bulgaria were experiencing growing difficulties reflected in the drastic
increases in their external debt in the 1980's. Without the need for further
statistics, I believe, that the most obvious example was the difference
between the type of automobiles produced in East and West Germany. Whether
we compare Wartburgs with Mercedes or Trabants with Volkswagens it is quite
clear that we are dealing with two distinct generations of manufacturing
cultures. My example is based on motor vehicles since they reflect the
general level of industry as a whole: metallurgy, chemical production, heavy
machinery construction, electronics, textiles and so on.. While industry in
Western Europe was already using a new generation of production technology,
Eastern Europe was still dominated by a generation of production machinery
which was physically and morally at least twenty five years out of date.
The majority of Eastern Europeans lived in the conditions of
information deprivation. They were fed propaganda of constant progress and
achievement, the collapse of world capitalism and the greater and greater
victories of world socialism. In actual fact the reality was exactly the
opposite. Of course, many progressive leaders in Eastern Europe during this
period were aware of the problems but none of them were able to release
themselves from the common bonds of Eastern European imperialism. This was
made clear by the fate of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the Prague
Spring of 1968, as well as the unrest amongst the Polish workers and the
timid attempts at reform made in Bulgaria in 1986[17]. It was
quite clear that changes could only take place in the context of global
reforms affecting the USSR as well.
The negative consequences of technological backwardness were
exacerbated by the changes in the world economic situation in the mid
1980's. The collapse in the prices of oil and a number of other raw
materials lead to a sharp decline in the ability of the USSR and its allies
to function efficiently and to improve the standards of living of its
peoples. In the 1980's the member countries of COMECON experienced their
greatest difficulties in foreign trade and were obliged to increase their
external debts. From the mid 1980's the Soviet Union and its allies lost
their most important comparative economic advantages and were obliged to
cover their current account deficits with large external loans which even
then came to more than 100 billion dollars.
The nature of the technological changes of the 1970's and 1980's also
raised doubts about economic centralisation. In the 1930's and after the
Second World War technological innovation relied heavily on the centralised
accumulation and management of funds. Energy production, nuclear technology
and chemical production, large irrigation projects, heavy industry and arms
production were very strong arguments in favour of the need for centralised
planning and the active participation of the state in the economy.
On the other hand the technological wave of the 1970's pre-supposed the
decentralisation of the decision making process. The production of software
and personal computer applications, the appearance of tens of thousands of
different types of services and the progress in bio-technology stimulated
and continue to stimulate individual creativity. This was in contradiction
to the very essence of the Soviet type of system.
Consequently the backwardness of Eastern Europe in the 1970's and
1980's was not only a consequence of political and economic conjuncture but
had a long-term and objective character. It was connected with the inherent
backwardness not only of individual areas of manufacturing but of the
primary governmental and economic structures. As a result of the influence
of new technologies on the life of societies, the crisis soon spread to the
personal lives of the individual Eastern Europeans. In the 1970's and 1980's
personal consumption per head of population in Eastern Europe began
progressively to fall behind the average consumption figures for Western
Europe, the USA and Japan.
According to UN statistics for 1960, for every 1000 West Germans there
were 78 motor vehicles in comparison with 20 in Czechoslovakia and 17 in the
German Democratic Republic. In 1985 this figure had risen to 400 in West
Germany in comparison to 180 in East Germany and 163 in Czechoslovakia. In
1960 in the USSR there were 1.6 telephones per hundred people and in Japan -
5.8. In 1984 this figure was 9.8 for the USSR and 53.5 in
Japan[18].
In the late 1960's the economic backwardness of the USSR and its allies
began to spread to non-manufacturing environments. In 1960 infant mortality
per 1000 newly born infants was 26 in the USA, 31 in Japan and 35 in the
USSR. In 1985 this figure had changed to 10.4 per thousand in the USA, 5.7
in Japan and 25.1 in the USSR. Similar comparisons can be made in the area
of science, education, culture and cultural life in general. It would, of
course, be naive and imprudent to ignore the successes which the USSR and
its allies achieved in the area of space research, physics, chemistry and
molecular biology and in certain other areas of technology. These were,
however, rather oases within the overall system rather than its essential
features. They did not change the overall picture of backwardness or its
deepening character.
Clearly, against a background of increasing internationalisation and
more and more intensive exchange of information, the backwardness of Eastern
Europe began to become transformed into a universal moral and political
crisis. In the context of the boom of world communications, radio and
television, satellite communications and information transfer, the truth
could not be hidden for long. The attempts of the USSR and the other Eastern
European countries to propagate lies reached absurd extents to prove that
they were at the head of technological and economic progress. For more and
more people in Eastern Europe it was becoming clear that the backwardness of
their countries in manufacturing and consumerism was a direct result of the
vices of the system itself.
It should be noted, on the other hand, that right up until their demise
the Eastern European regimes retained certain benefits such as full
employment, a low crime rate, universal social guarantees and a number of
other features. The price of these benefits from the 1960's onwards,
however, had begun to manifest itself in the form of empty shops, the lack
of basic products, the low standard of living and the lack of personal
freedom etc.. Given such a situation, it was more and more difficult to
speak of the successes of the Soviet style system against the background not
only of a worsening economic situation but also of the moral and political
climate. The Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the uprisings and protests of
the Polish workers, the reforms in Hungary, the dissident movement in the
USSR, the mass movement in favour of emigration to the West was a
manifestation of the growing level of dissatisfaction or unhappiness with
the existing system.
In the 1970's the USA and its Western allies managed to impose a new
leading ideology: the issue of human rights and the rights and freedoms of
all citizens of the world. A number of "capitalist" countries such as
Sweden, Austria and others guaranteed more social benefits, including
pensions, unemployment benefit for young persons etc.. In general, in the
USA, Japan, Western Europe and a number of other smaller countries with a
market economy, life become more attractive and more in tune with the
growing diversity and increase in human needs. In contrast with this in
Eastern Europe and the USSR, there was a sharp increase in crime,
drunkenness, apathy and scepticism.
This lead to major geo-political consequences. After the collapse of
the colonial model, the Soviet Union, despite its concentrated efforts, was
unable to impose its system on the newly liberated countries. The majority
of them adopted systems and models closer to those of Western countries.
Attempts at "socialist revolutions" in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Ghana,
Somalia, Ethiopia and a number of other countries did not produce the
expected results. Poverty remained a problem. The promise of a rapid leap
into the "paradise of socialism" also remained an illusion.
While the USA and Western Europe and later Japan were keen on expanding
their influence in the world via investments, cultural influence and
education, the Soviet Union in order to expand its geo-political influences
concentrated on the support of "revolutionary" regimes, expending colossal
amountsof state money in the process. They maintained the point of view that
in states with poor economies progress could only be achieved via
nationalisation and centralised planning. Life, however, shows that this is
not the case.
The upshot was that in the 1970's and in particular in the 1980's the
Eastern European regimes were in the grips of a universal structural,
economic, political and spiritual crisis, both internally and externally.
Geo-politically this crisis was expressed in terms of the widening gap
between the role of the USSR as a world super power and its real economic
abilities. During the entire post-war period the military expenditure of the
USSR exceeded all permissible economic levels. Military budgets undermined
national development and seriously threatened the future of the system. On
the other hand, despite the economic crisis and evident technological
backwardness the Eastern European governments continued their policies of
universal social guarantees of employment and wages which in the 1980's in
particular lead to chronic increases in foreign debt. Consumption was
greater than production. Financial commitments to the military, price
subsidies and excessive state investments lead to the creation of enormous
budget deficits.
Essentially the system was consuming itself from within. While Western
countries were reforming and adapting to global technological problems, the
crisis in Eastern Europe was worsening. It was becoming more clear that
without radical reforms, backwardness would lead to death.
2. REFORMS AND ILLUSIONS
Attempts by the Eastern European totalitarian regimes to reformwithout
damage
to the foundations of their systems were illusory. These were merely
attempts to prolong the life of a civilisation on the wane.
T
he collapse of the Third civilisation, or if you prefer, its
"reconstruction" could have been an evolutionary process as it was in the
West, through economic reforms and the political evolution of the
totalitarian states. Since the creation of Soviet Russia in 1917 and most
notably during the last decades of its existence numerous attempts at reform
had been made. These reforms merit a general examination and can be divided
into five periods within the history of the Soviet model system.
The first of these was the period between 1917-1929 which I like to
refer to as a time of consolidation and the search for a model of
development. Notwithstanding the civil war and widespread violence the
possibility of returning to some form of democracy still remained. A certain
amount of private property, paricularly in agriculture, had been preserved.
The NEP programme (New Economic Policy) introduced by Lenin in 1921 provided
the opportunity for the use of foreign capital and private initiative.
The second stage of "pure socialism" began at the end of the 1930's
with the destruction of the remains of the NEP and a total assault on
economic, political and cultural life. The coercive formation of the
collective farms, the creation of an enormous army of labour camp slaves,
forced economic growth based on administrative and political methods and the
extermination of millions of political opponents - these were the
foundations of the Soviet Stalinist regime. During this period the Soviet
system developed as a monolithic hierarchical organisation in which the
violence of the party elite and its subordinated security organisations
dominated. From 1930 to 1953 every manifestation of private initiative and
free thought was punished with prison or death.[19]
The third period in the development of the Soviet system began with the
death of Stalin in 1953 and the "thaw" of Nikita Khrushchev. Although to
some extent contradictory, the policies implemented by Khrushchev during
this period were to leave a lasting mark on the further development of the
world. For the first time the truth about Stalin's crimes was revealed and
both Stalin himself and his system lost their authority as the proponents of
social justice and world progress.
The fourth period began in 1964 and ended at the beginning of the
1980's. It was justly named by Mikhail Gorbachev as the period of "zastoi"
(stagnation). During these years Leonid Brezhnev brought a halt to the
"thaw" begun by Khrushchev and began his attempt to immortalise the
totalitarian system through a series of internal and external cosmetic
changes. It was during this period that the USSR and its allies began to
fall behind their Western opponents in the areas of technology and
economics.
The fifth and final stage was the period of "perestroika" introduced by
Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) which was eventually to lead to the collapse
of the Eastern European regimes and the USSR itself.
My reason for this periodisation is that from the beginning to the end
of the Soviet system there were two contradictory political trends: one of
which saw totalitarianism as the essence of the utopian communist dream and
a second which aspired to more flexible, economic and political models.
The second trend appeared directly after the February revolution of
1917 in the ideas of local self-government by workers, the implementation of
the NEP by Lenin in 1921 and 1927, the "thaw" of Khrushchev and finally in
the policy of "perestroika" of Mikhail Gorbachov. The essence of this second
trend was the combination of party and political centralism with relatively
greater freedom for the private sector (especially in trade and agriculture)
and in the area of art and culture. Its origin can be seen in the traditions
of European socialism and social democracy.
In the 1920's the proponents of a more flexible and dynamic political
line - N.Bukharin, G.Zinoviev, S.Kamenev, A.Rikov and others lost their
battle for power, allowing the party bureaucracy to dominate all structures
of society. This was the decisive moment for the development of the essence
of the Soviet model. The victory of Stalinism transformed the USSR - and a
number of other countries after the Second World War - into bureaucratic
command societies.
During the period between 1954-1956 when N.Khrushchev was fiercely
critical of the Stalinist era, he found himself in conflict with the
Stalinist system in all sectors of life. As a child of the very same system,
Khrushchev was condemning not the system but the style and leadership
methods employed by Stalin and the cult of personality. He proposed a
reevaluation of the system and mechanisms of its leadership. Khrushchev's
illusion was that by changing the leadership and functioning of the system
he would make it more effective and resolve its major problems.
During the Brezhnev period (1964-1982) a considerable number of
"improvements" were made to the leadership. The attempts made to revive the
economy by giving greater freedom to industry and a timid embracement of the
private sector clashed with the dominant principles of the totalitarian
system. There was talk of de-centralisation, collective initiative and new
economic mechanisms. However, not a word was said about the party monopoly
on power and finances, banks and the market. It would, however, have been
impossible to have freedom or private initiative without major changes to
the banking system, price liberalisation, reform to the system of investment
banking and the removal of large funds from the hands of the party and state
elite. It was quite absurd to make changes to the structures of property and
administration without changes to the principles of political power or
without profound changes to the legislative system and the guarantee of
constitutional rights and freedoms of its citizens.
History frequently provides us with examples of the combination of
heroism and illusion. Frequently the intellect of leaders and the grandeur
of their objectives have been let down by the naivety of the way in which
they attempted to achieva them. Such was the case with Stalin's opponents in
the 1920's and 30's and the policies of Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950's.
Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rikov and Bukharin paid for their naivety with their
lives since they were up against not only Stalin's will and cruelty but also
the interests and power of the party-state apparatus. Khrushchev also paid
for his own naivety and was removed from power in October 1964. For the ten
years he was in office, Khrushchev wavered between the desire to put an end
to the Stalinist repressions and the preservation of the system. The same
man who was bold enough to reveal the crimes of Stalin to the whole world
allowed cruel acts of repression against Soviet art and culture. The same
man who had the fortitude to remove the body of Stalin from the mausoleum in
Moscow became a proponent of the super-Utopian idea of the "rapid leap" into
the "paradise of communism".
The enormous belief that good could be imposed from above and that the
system could be revitalised by "the enthusiasm" and privileges of the
nomenclature, were naive. Khrushchev was no less a believer in the system of
state socialism. By throwing Stalin and Beria onto the scrapheap of history,
he deprived the Soviet people of their Divine leader and was obliged to
offer them a new Utopia - the rapid advent of communism, industrial
dominance over the USA and a high standard of living for the people of the
USSR etc.. After Krushchev's removal from power it became more difficult to
delude the people with promises of new Utopias and illusions. The myth of
the infallible leader in Stalin had been shattered. Khrushchev's programme
for entering the era of perfect communism by 1980 had failed. The next
utopia in line was Brezhnev's off-the-peg theory of a developed socialist
society.
Despite all this the logical question arises of why despite its general
instability the Soviet totalitarian system survived for such a long time -
74 years? I believe that there are a number of reasons for this.
The Soviet totalitarian model arose during a period of general crisis
and the large scale transformation of world capitalism, during a period of
globalisation and a search for various models of existence in a new
inter-dependent world. The 20th century was a time of cataclysm, change and
transition and of two world and hundreds of local wars in which more than
150 million people lost their lives. Despite its Utopian nature, the Soviet
system was a model for potential progress which emphasised absolute social
protection, guaranteed the interests of workers andpeasants and total
nationalisation as a condition for concentrating resources and directing
them towards new construction. The belief that universal social guarantees
were the basis for progress provided temporary historical justification for
the centralised type of society.
The continuing existence of the Soviet totalitarian system can be
explained with the desire and t