Dear colleagues,
I published a small paper in Futures Bulletin this April and today got its
electronic version. It is an echoe to the discussion on WSN Summer 1996 on
global praxis. I present here only first paragraphs and I will be
glad to send the whole paper (circa 8 Kb) for personal requests (please write
directly to me: rozov@cnit.nsu.ru).
Nikolai S. Rozov. Where is World Capitalism Going? Futures Bulletin,
vol.23, N1, April 1997. P.6-7.
(Futures Bulletin is published by WFSF - World Futures Studies Federation,
Brisbane, Australia, the Web page: http://www.fbs.qut.edu.au/wfsf/ is
currently updated)
Capitalism is now by no
means a fashionable word. Its reality is more wide and complex than
bourgeoisie-proletariat relations, wage-labour and surplus value (Marx), and
evidently more hardy than Lenin's "decaying imperialism". To name our
global world system capitalistic (instead of the neoliberal euphemism
"free market economy") is to emphasise the tremendous concentration of
power and control over all kinds of world resources by "the Big Three":
modern transnational corporations (TNCs), main banking groups (with the New
York-London-Tokyo axis), and governmental elites of the core states
(G-7). This global oligarchy uses institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO) and other US-controlled military unions as instruments
of its 'Realpolitik'.
The deplorable destiny of opponent countries, (such
as the USSR, Cuba, Panama, Serbia, North Korea and Iraq) and the financial
difficulties (collapse?!) of non-instrumentalised international
organisations (such as Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), UNESCO, the
global ecological programs of the Rio Forum, and now the UN) indicate the
real power of modern world capitalism rulers.
I wonder why futures studies
mostly avoids the problem of the global political economy. Scholars rush
into social and religious utopias, pink fantasies, environmentalism,
postmodernism, epistemology, interpretism, and now neomythology, but miss
the good old question 'cui prodest' (for whom is it profitable?). Any image
of a global future will fail if it does not fit the interests of the world
capitalism elites.
We can take three main views on this point: the neoliberal
'mainstream' position: free market economy and democracy are winning. They
are becoming stronger and stronger and are really worthy of this victory and
all further ones. It is nothing more but "ideology" (in a strict
Napoleonic and Marxist sense) of the Big Three.
The Left's expectations of
the decline of world capitalism: it is a world disease ("virus") and is
worthy of its forthcoming failure. My question is: what are the visible
signs of any decline or crisis, which should be stronger than all those
problems and crises that world capitalism successfully prevailed under in
the past (for example, in 1810-15, 1848-49, 1914-18, 1930-32,
1939-45, 1960, 1968-69)? the appeals (both Left and Right) for struggle
against strong and threatening world capitalism-imperialism. For example,
the appeals of Maoists and Trotskyists in Latin America, Russian communists,
"patriots" in Russia, USA and France, and fundamentalists in Muslim
countries. Also, the appeals of many Western university intellectuals
(especially against TNCs and the IMF) belong to the same bunch. Here also
some doubts and questions appear. Historical facts tell us that in most
cases the open 'hot' struggle against world capitalism did not succeed, but
all the local national 'successes' (for example, in Russia since 1917, China,
Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Albania) led inevitably to mass social
disasters, deep misery and poverty, and frequently mass terror. On the
contrary, most 'soft' and interior attempts to ameliorate national
'capitalism' were successful, or at least lacked social disasters (such as
the Second International and Social-Democratic reforms in Europe at the
beginning of the 20th Century, labourists in Great Britain, socialists in
Sweden, and the promotion of social programs in USA, France and Germany).
.....
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Nikolai S. Rozov # Address: Dept.of Philosophy
Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University
rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk
Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA
Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI
(PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history)
http://wsrv.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe
/philofhi.html
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