Trajectories of Economic Transformations. Lessons from 2004 for 2024 and Beyond

Evolution of Strategies for Change

Economic reforms, filled with a market component, started in our country long before the collapse of the USSR and the socialist system. In 1955—1956, Nikita Khrushchev set the pace for the shake-up of the Soviet system. Although the reforms he initiated were essentially administrative and even voluntaristic, they to a certain extent paved the way for the inclusion of market mechanisms. A new quality of research (at least in the ideological sense) appeared with the start of market reforms in 1965 that were associated with the name of Alexey Kosygin, Soviet Prime Minister, as well as following a number of attempts at economic and political reforms in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.

If we talk about the Soviet Union in the second third of the 20th century, the frequency of reform initiatives seems to be synchronous with the growth of difficulties in socio-economic development. Accordingly, in the 1990s, the start of market transformations was conditioned by the need to resolve a huge number of fundamental contradictions within the socialist economy. However, it is still impossible to understand the driving forces and factors of these transformations only on the basis of an analysis of intra-system contradictions. It is also necessary to address the contradictory course of processes in global space.

The middle of the 20th century was characterized by many positive changes in the world, which promised great hope. A special place is occupied by a complex of phenomena that at that time acquired the title of a complex scientific and technological revolution (STR). Philosophers, economists, sociologists, and systems engineers from all over the world enthusiastically joined the study of this scientific and technological revolution. Turning to the topics of scientific and technological development has greatly changed not only the economy, but also attitudes. Prospects for accelerating socio-economic development in the field of scientific and technological development. They were seen both in the developed capitalist countries and in the camp of the socialist countries led by the Soviet Union. The modernization direction of economic development was a logical response to the situation of that time. On this basis, the concept of “competition between two systems” has developed in a quite serious and long-term direction. For a while, this competition became quite constructive. Scientific conferences of an international nature began to be held on this problem, and quite serious works were published. The concept of convergence has emerged and has been powerfully developed capitalism and socialism.

It is noteworthy that the ideas of convergence originated on Western soil, and its developers included not only objectivist figures such as Pitirim Sorokin or John Galbraith, but also the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski who were clearly ideologically biased against socialism and the USSR. This circumstance alone confirms the conclusion that the issue of competition between the two socio-economic systems at that time was by no means far-fetched, and its outcomes were a matter of serious concern for influential forces in the West.

In the USSR and other countries, hopes arose at that time for the objective presence in the depths of the socialist system of certain serious advantages in the sphere of the development of scientific and technological development. Studies have been launched on the problem of combining the achievements of scientific and technological development with the advantages of socialism (in which the author of these lines also joined with sincere intentions) and books and articles have been written. A set of “advantages” of this kind was multifaceted and characterized in these works. But it turned out to be hypothetical and did not manifest itself in practice. It can be argued that the unfulfilled hopes for the “advantages” of socialism in the sphere of scientific and technological development turned out to be a key factor in the rapid aggravation of many economic contradictions in the USSR and in the socialist system.

The long-term peaceful coexistence and competition of the two world systems meant that the USSR made strenuous efforts to maintain military parity with the United States (and NATO), for which the arms race and the unconditional priority of the defense and space complex in all economic policy were vital. This steadily maintained a relatively high level of science in the country, but, on the other hand, created the most complex structural distortions in the economy and society and prepared the way for the exhaustion of the economic system of the USSR. This exhaustion was largely the result of the extensive processes of expanded reproduction in the existing structure of industries and the inability of the Soviet system to respond to the challenges of innovative development.

At the same time, the long period of real rivalry between socialism (led by the USSR) and capitalism (led by the USA) and its inherent undoubted progress in the USSR in a number of areas – a breakthrough into space, the development of nuclear technology, the industry of modern weapons, the high class of the education and culture system, the general availability of many social services, etc. – had its impact on the world of capitalism. It was forced to respond to the increased cost of social components in the eyes of the masses of their peoples. These changes in public sentiment largely led to the emergence in the West of the concepts of the “social market economy,” the “consumer society,” the “welfare state” and so on.

These concepts influenced the practical policies of the governments of most developed countries, especially in the period immediately after the Second World War. They have also primarily served to intensify Western assistance to the underdeveloped countries. But the triumph of these ideas was short-lived, since the expansion of the number of people who wanted to live according to the laws of consumer society soon exposed the fundamental contradictions associated with the limited natural resources on Earth.

In response to the accelerated consumption of natural resources caused by the growth of production and mass welfare, social movements were formed to limit industrial development and economic growth. Especially famous was the activity within the framework of the Club of Rome, which formulated a firm socio-scientific position on the “limits to economic growth”.

A logical continuation of this line was also the advancement of the concept of post-industrial society, which put the factors of science, innovation, and human intellectual activity at the center of socio-economic development. In literature, the ideas of forming a “knowledge-based economy” began to be actively developed. This concept fits well into the emerging trend of globalization of the world economy, which is characterized by the displacement of many elements of the world economy. material production (especially dirty industries) from the territory of highly developed countries to the periphery of the world economy, to less developed countries. The displacement of the “factory pipe economy” (according to Alvin Toffler) opened space for a “knowledge-based economy” and for a post-industrial society, but only in certain parts of the world economy. Material production did not disappear because of this, but only moved to other spaces. Therefore, the thesis of a knowledge-based economy cannot be interpreted as an absolute global trend. From the very beginning, it has been prepared for borders that close to the economic interests of highly developed countries.

While in his book Future Shock Toffler fundamentally revealed the fundamentally new place of the factor of science and knowledge in the economy and society, at the same time he touched upon the new power functions of this factor. In The Metamorphoses of Power, he examined how the three main components – knowledge, violence, and wealth – are at different stages and the relationship between them determined the power in society. At the stage of post-industrial society, it is knowledge, according to his data, that becomes the determining factor of power. In this regard, Toffler cites Winston Churchill’s “prophetic” remark that “the empires of the future are the empires of the intellect.” Today, this has become true, writes Toffler8.

As we can see, one of the strategists of the domination of the capitalist economy has long drawn attention to the potential of the imperial functions of an order based on intellect (knowledge). Consequently, the post-industrial conception of progress does not at all exclude but presupposes the scope for the intensification of exploitation by one part of the world community of other parts of it. Failure to understand this delicate circumstance obscures the objective boundaries inherent in the dissemination of the concept knowledge-based economy. In any case, it is impossible not to notice that at the present stage its establishment is accompanied by an increasingly rigid division of the world in the socio-economic sense into highly developed and underdeveloped parts. At the same time, the implementation of a policy of deriving unilateral advantages from the possession of knowledge potential is far from an absolute trend.

The informatization of the economy and society, which has engulfed the world for some time, creates both the prerequisites for the realization of the power of the strong over the weak, and the prerequisites for the alignment of countries and regions at the socio-economic level. Many technological processes in industry and communications, in trade and finance are changing radically. On the one hand, the network structures that complement the matrices of vertical and horizontal relations complicate the trajectories of managerial impulses, make the subjects of control implicit, and thus weaken the resistance to pressure on the part of the governed, and, on the other hand, make it possible to form and implement actions in the depths of the controlled mass that compensate for and prevent their subordination to the centers of power.

Thus, the trend of widespread informatization of society based on network technologies leads to the possibility of eliminating the foundations of the centuries-old problem-free division of the world into the elite and the plebeians. Controlling the illiterate and uninformed is one technology, but controlling the masses, who already have wide access to information, including information about who exploits them and how, is a qualitatively different type of problem. Under these conditions, “feedback” can turn into a powerful force that counteracts the ambitions of contenders for absolute leadership in the world.

Resource Scarcity at the Heart of Transformation

The turn between the second and third millennia was marked by a series of achievements and crises caused by uneven access to natural and, above all, energy resources. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the energy problem came to the fore among all the world’s problems. The developments of scientists and the analysis of specific practice show that the level and quality of life of the population, the scale of production of GDP per capita, consistently correlate with the level of energy consumption per capita in the respective countries. The relationship between these parameters is not simple, non-linear, and it largely depends on the structure of the country’s economy, its territory, and natural and climatic conditions. But one thing is certain: all highly developed countries are guided by high levels of per capita energy consumption. This is typical not only for countries with low winter temperatures, such as Norway, Canada, Finland, but also, of course, for the United States, as well as Australia, Belgium, Sweden, etc.

If we take the United States, a country with a far from cold climate and focused not on the predominant development of raw material industries, then they, nevertheless, in the aggregate, not only consume, but also produce more energy resources than Russia. The data for the year 2000 given by Aleksey E. Kontorovich in one of his public analytical reports are interesting. At that time, the U.S. produced 495 million tons of fuel equivalent, while Russia produced 459 million tons of fuel equivalent, while Russia consumed 1,256 million tons of fuel equivalent, while Russia consumed only 173 million tons of fuel equivalent. At the same time, gas consumption in the United States was 753 million tons of fuel equivalent, while in Russia it was only 434 million tons of fuel equivalent. Up to 1991, as follows from the materials of the above-mentioned author, Russia was steadily developing (by the nature of the relationship between the level of energy consumption and the dynamics of GDP) in line with global trends, but as a result of the collapse of the USSR and the economic crisis caused by it, In the words of A. E. Kontorovich, “described a peculiar loop of hysteresis.” And from the trajectory of development typical of developed countries, over the ten years of reforms, Russia “has decisively moved to the trajectory of the most backward countries, in which the growth of energy consumption does not affect GDP growth in any way.”

The increase in the energy supply of life in developed countries has caused such an increase in the production of energy resources that has come into conflict with the stability of the Earth’s ecosystem. And today it is already a characteristic sign of the limits of the evolution of the old (and especially Western) economic system. An extremely difficult situation has emerged, when developing and post-socialist countries are trying to catch up with the trajectories of the economies of developed countries, which is impossible without a significant increase in energy consumption. But this (and maybe even larger) “delta” of energy resources is no less claimed by highly developed countries, since maintaining the existing lifestyle requires it. The Earth, on the other hand, will not be able to sustain the simultaneous development of these aspirations.

Overcoming Inertia: Opportunities for Progress

The problem of the objective limitation of the natural potential and the insufficiency of energy resources for the extension of the lifestyle of highly developed countries to all the inhabitants of the Planet is constantly hidden behind other problems that periodically come to the surface, although it is precisely this problem that is a concentrated expression of the content of the dead-end path imposed on humanity by the inertia of the experience once formed in a group of countries that have hitherto had the opportunity to grind down the overwhelming majority in production and consumption. part of the world’s total resources.

For many years, the 80-to-20 ratio has characterized the distribution of total resources between the rich and the poor (between the highly developed countries and the rest of the world), while the proportion between them is the opposite and looks like 20 to 80% in terms of population. This correlation seems to be known to everyone, but it is not considered to be the fundamental cause of the impasse to which the world has come.

With the exhaustion of extensive growth opportunities within the socialist countries, the problems that aggravated the socio-political situation in them in the 1980s were perceived by the masses and interpreted by the advanced politicians exclusively in terms of the vices inherent in the economic and political system of socialism. These vices did exist and irritated society. They had to be overcome. But the big look at the situation turned out to be superficial. Under the influence of this circumstance, the beginning of the restructuring of the economic and political system followed a simplified, although seemingly logical path – the path of copying the order that had developed in the developed countries, and in fact it was reduced to an adaptation to the system of capitalism surrounding the socialist countries.

In Russia, the problems and contradictions of the external environment immediately overwhelmed domestic needs. In this context, it is no coincidence that Russia’s transformations resulted in the accelerated entry into the world market of only one sector of the Soviet economy, the oil and gas industry, which was further aggravated in post-reform Russia. In 2002, the share of export supplies in oil production in Russia reached 47% and gas – 31%, while in 1990 19% of oil and 13% of gas were exported from the USSR. The rapid inclusion of Russia’s energy resources in the balance of global deficits was a direct response to the key needs of the external environment. But this also contributed to the import of a heavy bouquet of deep contradictions of the world economy into the country. And they became an invisible companion of the motivations that guided the transformation processes.

Unbeknownst to many inside the country, these processes have become dominated by more powerful economic interests. Outwardly, these interests appeared to be equilibrium market interests, but in fact they reflected the hidden balance of power in the new configuration of the global world. There was an increase in the subordination of energy flows to the needs of highly developed countries. At the global level, this trend reveals a quite understandable motivation for the behavior of the key actors in highly developed countries, which is conditioned by hopes for continuation of the usual evolutionary development of the world (Western) economy through the implementation of transformations similar to a systemic revolution in a number of “insufficiently market” countries.

Considering the awareness of all these latent mechanisms within the transition countries, and in Russia in particular, there is a desire to single out in the adopted programs of systemic transformations those components that are not directly related to the service of national interests. Of course, before they are rejected, they must be analyzed from the standpoint of compliance with global interests, because Russia is a significant part of the world’s potential. But in the current conditions of Russia, when correcting programs, priority cannot but belong to the goals and objectives that correspond to national interests.

With all the innovations of globalization, international economic relations are still based on competition, including inter-country competition. And although the above-mentioned growing contradictions in the economic structure of the world objectively require new turns in the relations of all agents so that they are based more on constructive cooperation and even altruism, in reality, the success of countries in the field of economics can now be ensured only by a rigid attitude to their competitiveness and a consistent struggle for their national interests. Altruism in economic relations cannot be implemented in any one economic platform of the world, its development requires a difficult rethinking of worldview approaches in the entire world community.

At this stage, Russia’s contribution to the establishment of new economic relations in the world cannot but be based on a more aggressive national economic strategy. Therefore, Russia’s economic policy can no longer be passive and imitative. Objectively, it should include the motivations of our society to an increasing degree, determined by our own vision of the future of the country and the world.

First, it is necessary to strengthen the conceptual influence on the world’s ideas about the future, contributing to the assertion of the still veiled truth that it is not only the countries with “transition economies” and developing countries that will have to transform their economies and lifestyles, but also the current space of the “countries of the golden billion”. And to have such a conceptual impact, we need a groundwork of research based on creative practice.

Secondly, during the transformation of Russia’s own economy, it is extremely important to strengthen the component of real success that extends to the entire Russian society. In this regard, the policy outlined today by President Putin to accelerate the pace of economic growth can act as a powerful catalyst for moving forward. And here a very important point is the overdue transition to a new quality of economic growth based on scientific and innovative factors.

In fact, humanity has no other reliable resource than science and knowledge that can be counted on as a life-saving component in the policy of sustainable socio-economic development. Only the aggregate knowledge that summarizes the experience of all earthlings can ensure the finding of satisfactory answers to the aggravating problems of the universe, suggest acceptable ways to transform the economy of both individual countries and the world.