Implications of globalization for the global economic avant-garde and the "global periphery"

1. Consumption Crisis and Globalization Crisis

At the beginning of the 21st century, the phenomenon that is commonly called “globalization” entered a period of crisis. If the previous decades of the world economy still corresponded to this name, then the first decade of the new century should rather be described as a crisis of globalization. This crisis, like globalization itself, is a multi-level phenomenon, it has both economic, sociocultural and geocultural aspects. In the economy, the crisis of globalization is indicated, in particular, by the dynamics of the development of entire industries and industries and the fate of entire product categories - including those that would seem to indicate the endless progress of globalization: consumer electronics, "gadgets" and what has become customary call the "Internet economy."

The causes of the crisis were originally present in globalization. The first group of reasons: copying (or imposing) one geocultural economic model - having its own specific origin, its own special system of values ​​and economic imperatives - in other regions of the world where the success, achievements and livelihoods of societies are based on other values ​​and imperatives.

In this sense, globalization was one of the possible forms of international competition - between the “world economic vanguard” and the “world periphery” - and the crisis of globalization, due to its initial contradictions, provides the “world periphery” with a number of opportunities and competitive advantages. The opportunities that have opened up for developing countries in the wake of the crisis of globalization deserve their analysis and should be the subject of separate work. One of the initial prerequisites of these advantages and opportunities is that although globalization as a form of competition actually involves scrapping (destruction, “deep reform”) of existing economic structures and environmental practices (theoretically, their unification based on a single model), this scrapping is globalization failed to implement.

The second group of causes of the globalization crisis is the discrepancy between the declared goals - including political goals, for example, the spread of freedom and democracy or the political and economic goals of commodity abundance and consumer satisfaction - with its essential economic foundations. “Ideal” globalization assumed the spread of a free market economy, in its most radical forms, to all regions of the world. Individual consumption, which in this specific model of the economy is the main driving force and value imperative, was to become the center of the new global economy.

For the main subject of globalization, the United States, individual consumption was indeed at the center of the process: globalization was designed to solve the problem of a consumption crisis. This latter is expressed in the main contradiction of "consumer progress" - the exponential elevation of needs and consumer desires, on the one hand, and a decrease in consumer utility growth with an increase in the quantity of goods, on the other. When both trends are superimposed, consumer desires can be satisfied by an equally exponential increase in the quantity and range of goods. Production of these quantities, in turn, can be achieved only by referring to the “global periphery” - to global resources of cheap labor, relatively inexpensive fixed assets (including production sites), to regions of low transaction costs. From the point of view of economics, unification within the framework of globalization did not take place: as a result, for the subject of globalization, it performed the macroeconomic task of stopping the consumer crisis, and in relation to its object, the “global periphery” - the microeconomic corporate task of reducing the cost of basic production factors, labor and land . Multidirectionality, the initial systemic discrepancy between the two tasks set by the “economic vanguard” did not lead and could not lead to global unification.

An important role in the globalization crisis was played by the idea of ​​the world economy and the world as a whole as a corporation and the desire, unconscious or expressed, to reform the world in the direction of its “corporatization”. This was partly due to economic theories about the international division of labor and international specialization, in which the advantages of low costs in the production of various goods in different regions of the world became the basis and cause of international exchange and trade.

By itself, international exchange does not entail a unifying globalization, with necessity and inevitability. On the contrary, the world exchange preserves the economic “multi-polarity” and multi-structuredness, supports geo-cultural features and natural economic identities of the regions, due to which the production costs of certain goods or groups of goods are reduced. Meanwhile, globalization in fact seeks to transform regional advantages into intra-corporate, turning individual regions and countries of the world into “departments” for the production of certain goods and thereby blocking the further development of countries and regions. A halt in development can be expressed in the fact that a country's specialization in a single product or group of products within the framework of globalization becomes its “fate” - becoming a “department” of a global corporation, a country is no longer able to use its advantages for the production and export of other groups of goods. For example, in the ideal version of globalization, Argentina should become a single global supplier of beef, becoming a global “cow farm”. In the same version, Brazil cannot (should not) produce its own passenger airliners, and Iran cannot develop its own energy industry, including nuclear.

The ultimate form of globalization, according to the author, is the so-called “single” specialization. As part of this specialization (it would probably be more accurate to call it “departmentalization”), individual countries and regions are excluded from the production of the final product and focus on individual production operations (parts, components, semi-finished products). According to various estimates, the international turnover of components amounts to half to two-thirds of world trade, and a significant part of this turnover is intra-firm deliveries within the framework of transnational companies.

The circumstances above lead to a kind of “sublimation” of microeconomic intracorporate activity, to its theoretical and political elevation to the rank of a “global”, planetary exemplary phenomenon. However, at the moment when globalization becomes or is declared a model, its dissonances begin to manifest themselves in full. At the “planetary” level, a theoretical study of the world economy and practical attempts to postulate and apply uniform for the whole world economic laws and rules necessarily imply an appeal to macroeconomic (extra-corporate, supra-corporate) interpretations and analysis. From the standpoint of globalization, these latter are complicated by the presence in the environmental activities of countries and regions of historical, cultural and socio-cultural aspects and prerequisites. In the “global corporate” economic discourse, history, culture and sociality are taboo. Globalization either denies these concepts, or declares them to be unproductive and harmful, or, in practical terms, seeks to level and destroy them, including repression against carriers of a “non-global” culture. According to one of the theorists of post-industrial globalization, history and culture are “an obstacle to technical progress,” and “the content of culture is a combination of irrational moments connected by remnants of previous phases of the development of civilization.” [1]

Be that as it may, in practice globalization did not take place, despite the “corporatisation” of the world economy and the “departmentalization” of countries and regions, which was the essential content and goal of globalization. In fact, the world economy remains multi-layered, the production factors of land and labor of national economies were only partially involved in globalization, while a number of countries openly declared a departure from globalization by deliberately chosen political and economic course (creating new regional economic and political alliances, distancing from the main subject of globalization, USA).

In practice, national states and regional groups of countries are ready to be included in and included in globalization only on a limited scale and in limited spaces. The “open global free market” in real earthly incarnation exists mostly in the form of free economic zones - a kind of “reserves” of globalization. In all their formats and features - from duty-free retail and warehouse zones to innovative innovative ones - free economic zones are separated from the national economy by legal barriers reflecting and protecting the system of values ​​and geo-cultural attitudes adopted in the corresponding society.

The global financial crisis has become truly “global” and unified. The main contribution to globalization on the part of its subject was, as a result, the third production factor, capital. The growing production of goods on the “global periphery” required a simultaneous growth of the financial factor, which, in turn, directly or indirectly contributed to the “inflation of the financial bubble”, which has no commodity and raw material support either in the region’s subject of globalization, inside the “world economic avant-garde” or "On the world periphery".

2. Electronic gadgets, Internet and "consumer progress"

In the meantime, the above-mentioned appeal to global land and labor resources to increase the output of goods does not remove, but only accelerates the simultaneous decrease of their consumer utility. This dictates the need for "planned obsolescence" of goods, to support the utility and marketing of new models. "Outdated" models are sent to a landfill to make room for new ones. Thus, in the world within one year, about 50 million tons of “electronic waste” are “produced”, according to various estimates. The United States throws 30 million computers every year, Europe — 100 million mobile phones. No more than 20% of electronic waste is recycled, the rest goes to landfills on the ground or burned in kilns. The leader of e-waste is the United States, which produces it in the amount of 3 million tons per year; 70% of heavy metals in American garbage dumps fall into electronic garbage. Globally, Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, India and China are the main recipients of global e-waste.

The volume of global e-garbage is likely to increase. By 2017, the total global supply of computers of all categories, from desktop to portable, will increase, according to the forecast of the research corporation IDC, by 36 million units, from 346 million units. in 2013. Within one of the categories over the four years, from the beginning of 2010 to the first quarter of 2014, global sales of the Apple iPhone increased almost six times, to 50 million. for one quarter. The growth of consumption of electronic gadgets, despite the crises, occurred and is happening in all markets, from developed to developing. In one of the developed markets in the United States, the growth in the consumption of gadgets was accompanied by a drop in one of the main general consumer indicators: since 2000, the consumer confidence index continued to decline and for 10 years fell almost twice, from 140 to 70 points.

In addition to the planned obsolescence of goods, the consumer crisis of diminishing utility and the problem of "consumer shortage" are also partially arrested due to efforts in the field of marketing and advertising. The updating of product lines and models, in addition to some structural changes, is largely in the area of ​​product design, packaging and in the ways of announcing and communicating to the consumer market. So, unprincipled design changes in the new consumer model of the gadget are described as “new generation” of the gadget, “innovation” or “revolution”. On a wider scale, the consumer crisis is partially removed due to the proliferation of brands: the appearance of equivalent products from other brands - parity brands or parity products, for example, “me-too products” in the category of electronic gadgets, including the so-called “iPod killers”, “iPad killers ”and others.“ Reproduction ”of brands distracts the consumer from the diminishing utility of the growing number of equivalent products and“ installs ”a picture of choice, diversity and progress in his consciousness. The real global slowdown in scientific and technological progress, in particular, is connected with this: scientific innovations as such are increasingly replaced by “consumer progress”, and this last one — also to an increasing extent — takes place only in the field of marketing and advertising.

Meanwhile, simultaneously with the rise of consumer desires, a decrease in consumer utility of goods in the conditions of commodity abundance and with the growth of corporate globalization, designed to respond to these challenges, the period of globalization is marked by the emergence of consumer strategies to resist the growth of desires and ignoring commodity abundance.

The development of consumer resistance strategies can be methodologically described in the form of successive stages, using electronic gadgets as an example. Initially, and for the most part unconsciously, the consumer refuses to use a significant part of the functions of the gadget - even if its purchase was dictated by their abundance and ability to use them. (In fact, consumers in all markets regularly use on average no more than 50% of the functions of their gadgets). At the next stage, the consumer deliberately destroys (erases, uninstalls, deactivates) unnecessary functions - for example, those software functions of tablet PCs that are not related to the daily tasks of entering text, correspondence and arithmetic calculations. (In fact, at least 30% of tablet PC users erase the mobile applications of the factory installation in the first year of use, and then they are careful not to download new applications.) In the third stage, the consumer ignores (skips) the appearance of the next (“new generation”, “revolutionary” and others .) models of the gadget, applying in practice the strategy of “security by antiquity” - “security of obsolescence”, or “security of old models”. At the final stage, the consumer refuses to buy any gadgets at all.

Of course, the above is not universal and universal, because A significant number of users use gadgets for entertainment purposes, for the consumption of multimedia entertainment content, as well as for emotional and sociocultural reasons (prestige of possession), which generally supports the production and consumption of gadgets. Meanwhile, on the adjacent market of PC operating systems for gadgets, the situation is paradoxical from the point of “consumer progress”. According to the Net Applications measuring and research company, the “old” version of Microsoft's OS, Windows XP, offered to the market in 2001, occupied in April 2014 at least a quarter (26.3%) of the global computer fleet.

The decrease in consumer utility has led and leads not only to the forced "aging" of models or to conscious resistance to "consumer progress", but also to the disappearance or, at least, to the stagnation of entire product categories. In the recent past, consumer digital cameras became such a category: the “rush” exponential growth of the category in the early 2000s. it is replaced by absolute stagnation, as well as the reduction of individual niches within the category (reduction in demand for “professional” SLR digital cameras). The use of the concept of "progress" for this product category is very controversial: the quality of digital images is inferior to the "analog" film quality, and, apparently, will not be able to surpass it.

It is possible that digital cameras as a product category will have the same fate as video recorders in the past. On the one hand, the disappearance of entire product categories from the consumer electronics market would seem to be evidence of progress. On the other hand, new categories of consumer electronics and new gadgets, in fact, are just another way of delivering entertainment content to the consumer. Probably, stagnation takes place not so much in the field of science, as in the values ​​attitudes that it is subject to, not least of all, the imperative of “global consumer progress”.

The Internet, which has become habitual relatively recently and is still passing through the category of innovations, was initially understood as something infinitely distant from specific geocultural spaces and regions. They talked about him as “global virtual space”, “virtual reality” (not very clearly imagining what it is, outside of online games and adult sites). Nowadays, the epithet "virtual" in relation to the Internet is almost forgotten and is not used.

When the Internet took a step towards a real socio-cultural and geo-cultural space - it gained the first publicly accessible social networks - its cultural value began to take more tangible forms. The next step in integrating into reality was geolocation; the Internet has merged with the earth's surface - and the merging did not necessarily serve any practical or domestic consumer purposes.

Thus, the Google Earth geobuse browser in fact remained a “walker” and “letalka”, in which it is interesting to explore the earth from a bird's-eye view. At the same time, inspection, as a rule, begins from his home and its environs, which, in general, is at odds with the meanings that the Internet initially endowed: being a global, modern and highly rational phenomenon, erasing all boundaries, it should, on the contrary, level such values ​​as habitat or lineage.

В плане рациональности, мотивации пользователя геобраузера по большей части, напротив, иррациональны и продиктованы тем, что в обиходе назовут «простым человеческим интересом». Более того, пользователь Google Earth может руководствоваться мотивациями, которые по своей структуре являются религиозными: геобраузер – это, по сути, «ковер-самолёт», который даёт обладателю волшебную власть над пространством, точнее, «растворяет» обладателя в пространстве: он властен парить над землёй, опускаться, шагать по земле, взлетать вновь и др.

В практическом плане, при встраивании в уличное пространство городов – в виде карт, навигации, StreetView и др. – интернет фактически стал дублировать наружную навигацию, а также рыночную коммуникацию и рекламу: розничные вывески, витрины и рекламные щиты. Он же стал одним из каналов продаж, взяв на себя часть розничных функций и превратившись по сути дела в «уличного зазывалу» для ближайшего к пользователю кафе, копи-шопа или доставщика пиццы.

В некоторых международных маркетинговых практиках 2010-х годов врастание интернета в пространство стало полным и абсолютным, вплоть до неразличения. Одним из ключевых типов тактических кампаний, своего рода «боевым стандартом», стало сочетание мероприятия (event), реального события на реальной местности и интернет-анонса, блоггинга (online seeding, blogging, crowdsourcing и т.д.) в поддержку мероприятия. Этот тип сочетания каналов коммуникации используют сейчас в том числе крупные международные компании, хотя поначалу связка event-online была уделом региональных или местных вендоров и проходила по разряду guerilla marketing / «партизанского маркетинга». При этом в связке event-online центральным является мероприятие, чьи смысл и география определяют масштаб и структуру сопровождающей его онлайн-активности.

Упомянутые выше социальные сети также обрели свою географию («геотэггинг» / geotagging) и вошли в земное пространство, обзаведясь функциями и кнопками «мероприятие», «пригласить на мероприятие», с указанием реальной местности, «отметить место, которое посетил» и др.

Для продвижения продукта в связке event-online во всех случаях без исключения главным полюсом является мероприятие. Помимо очевидных преимуществ, на которые в первую очередь укажет маркетолог – непосредственный опыт использования продукта во время мероприятия, формирование сообщества пользователей и «адвокатов» продукта – в мероприятии скрыт ускользающий смысл, который с трудом поддаётся рациональному анализу и мало описан в маркетинговой литературе.

Дело в том, что в любом мероприятии, собирающем сколь-нибудь значимое количество участников, всегда есть нечто от обряда, ритуала, т.е. религиозного действа. Внешние признаки обряда-мероприятия распознать несложно: люди могут становиться в круг, в центре на постамент помещается «виновник торжества» (продукт), модератор и участники произносят приличествующие случаю и обязательные к оглашению «священные» тексты. Так образуется пространство события, а находящиеся внутри него участники становятся свидетелями и носителями внутреннего смысла события[2], который при удачном сценарии совпадёт с темой маркетинговой кампании или со слоганом продукта (бренда).

Внутренний смысл, диктуемый пространством события на реальной местности всегда будет более глубоко прочувствован сообществом события, чем удалёнными друг от друга участниками удалённого виртуального события в глобальном виртуальном пространстве. Прямое количественное описание и измерение глубины и «градуса» этого чувства проблематично – отсюда малая изученность явления и двойственное отношение к событийному маркетингу со стороны сообщества маркетологов. Эффективность мероприятия трудно оценить – во всяком случае, во время его проведения. Гораздо менее проблематичны количественные измерения интернет-аналогов «сакральных текстов» мероприятия – ключевых слов поисковых порталов, «хэштэгов» социальных сетей и др. Тем не менее, норма прибыли компаний и агентств, организующих мероприятия, традиционно выше, чем в рекламных медиа-агентствах и компаниях, занятых в интернет-рекламе.

Вслед за физической геолокацией интернет начал врастать и в региональные геокультурные пространства, уже в масштабе планеты. Он стал дублировать её этнокультурное деление: возникли и продолжают возникать национальные и региональные подсети, более или менее совпадающие с ареалами мировых языков и культур. Ареал китайского языка, китайской культуры обрел свои поисковые порталы и социальные сети, русскоязычный интернет – собственный домен с использованием кириллицы и с недавних пор собственный поисковый механизм «Спутник».

Последнее обстоятельство, кириллический интернет, вызвало вполне земное, невиртуальное, а также понятное и объяснимое неудовольствие в стране происхождения интернета, США: он возник как англоязычный (и военный) проект, и некоторая ревность к возникновению в нем иноязычных явлений вполне естественна. Беспокойство по поводу кириллического русского домена было предсказуемо также в связи с мониторингом интернета правительственными агентствами. Как утверждает Wikipedia, «Russian is regarded by the United States intelligence community as a «hard target» language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy»[3]. / «Разведывательное сообщество США рассматривает русский язык как «сложный объект», как из-за трудности его освоения англоговорящими, так и в связи с ключевой ролью русского языка для американской внешней политики».

В целом интернет имеет шанс повторить судьбу радио. В начале 20-го века радио приветствовали как новый наднациональный, глобальный тип медиа, который, в частности, положит конец всем войнам (потому что благодаря радио люди в разных концах земли станут больше знать о других людях, лучше их понимать). Однако в наши дни «глобальное» радио является таковым в наименьшей степени – это подчёркнуто национальные станции, транслирующие на остальной мир свои особые смыслы, свое понимание мирового пространства и своего места в нем (или, в более узнаваемой формулировке, ведущие пропаганду на остальной мир). Несмотря на технические возможности, глобальное радио фактически перестало существовать, так и не возникнув. Подавляющая доля радиовещания сейчас – это вещание местных станций для местных аудиторий, иногда в пределах нескольких кварталов или университетского кампуса.

Радио также дало первые примеры того, что впоследствии, в связи с интернетом, сочтут инновацией и назовут «краудсорсингом» (crowdsourcing) – получением услуг, идей или контента не от традиционных поставщиков, а за счет добровольных усилий больших групп людей. Первый искусственный спутник Земли подавал сигналы на частотах ham radio, любительского радио, его орбита была засвидетельствована и зафиксирована радиолюбителями во всём мире – что помешало отнести новость о советском спутнике на счёт «большевистской пропаганды». Сигнал спутника был принят, например, любительской радиостанцией Колумбийского университета: студенты записали сигналы на магнитную плёнку и первыми ретранслировали запись на территории США[4]. Обратим внимание, что этом примере успешного «краудсорсинга» в центре события снова было пространство: планета Земля, её география, попытка осмысления земного пространства.

IT-индустрия и потребительские электронные гаджеты, интернет и «интернет-экономика» – пожалуй, самые «глобальные» и наименее «национальные» секторы экономики, во всяком случае на этапе возникновения. В них в значительной степени отразились потребительский, финансовый и экологический кризисы глобальной модели свободного рынка. Для ухода от кризисов глобализации интернет фактически стал дублировать геокультурное деление планеты: возникли и продолжают возникать национальные и региональные подсети, совпадающие с ареалами мировых языков, конфессий и культур.

3. Мировая экономика: ценностные основания

Автор утверждает, что все и любые экономические теории, направления и школы экономической мысли, экономические модели, хозяйственные уклады и производственные практики являются геокультурными в плане вещественного выражения и религиозно-этническими по своей природе.

They are based on ways of understanding regional societies of the world, from the immediate habitat to adjacent geographical spaces, and on the peculiarities of the relationship of societies with the surrounding nature. Relations with nature, geocultural values ​​arising from them and social practices of environmental management underlie the life activity of societies, support their economic advantages, allow them to successfully interact and compete with neighboring societies (national states, regional unions of states).

Economic theories and cash, actual economic structures are religious-ethnic, not only by origin, historically, but also every minute - in the current daily economic practice, work ethic, in organizational forms of production and in the structures of management of the latter. The idea that the religious-ethnic essence of an economic model has been withdrawn and “canceled” by time, old years, the “antiquity” of occurrence, etc., is incorrect. It is wrong both in essence and methodologically: the denial of the ethno-religious nature of the economy imposes significant restrictions on the analysis of economic life, interferes with macroeconomic forecasting and planning, reduces the efficiency of microeconomic optimization of economic practices or makes optimization completely impossible.

In addition, in this denial, the advantages that are embedded in the ethno-religious nature of each economic system are ignored (or destroyed, at least at the verbal level of theorizing).

The reasons why the ethno-religious hypothesis of the economy can be considered extravagant or cause protest lie in the “aberration of proximity” - a close acquaintance with the most studied and described economic models in the limited geographic space (North America, Western Europe) and for a relatively short period of time. (last quarter of the 20th century). The economy is seen as the most refined of geo-cultural aspects when extensive areas of space and time are excluded from consideration, processes occurring on other continents and in other regions are ignored - for example, the economic rise at the end of the 20th - early 21st centuries India, China and Russia in Asia, Brazil and neighboring countries in Latin America, the economic success of individual countries in Africa.

Another reason to object to the ethno-religious hypothesis of the economy (it is also a consequence of “proximity aberration”) is a belief in the exclusively materialistic nature of the economy, in which there is no place for “inaccurate” sciences and disciplines. Belief in the exceptional materialism of the economy is dictated by close acquaintance with the materialist political economy of Marxism, as well as the lack of doubt about the absolute strength of materialistic consumer motivations, which follows from radical market concepts and from literally understood Darwinism (evolution and progress are based on the competition of individuals for resources and, further, on desire for physical and emotional comfort). In both schools of thought, Marxism and radical market liberalism, the ultimate goal and motivation of economic life is consumer satisfaction (“everything in the name of man”), and it was in this area that the competition of both political and economic systems went. Both schools insist that the economy (production, distribution, consumption) as a result is an objective “basis”, and spiritual culture is a subjective (as if “secondary” and variable) “superstructure”. Both schools also declare themselves emphasized atheistic, although they, as will be mentioned below, also have a religious and ethnic origin. And both schools insist that any association of people (Marxist classes, barter unions of liberal schools) is dictated by a common economic interest.

A view of economics as an exclusively and completely “exact science” is also inspired by the general method of economics (study of the concrete, data collection; analysis and synthesis; synthesis and known return to the concrete). The initial stage, data collection, is primarily an exercise in arithmetic — subjective and “inaccurate” here can only be sociocultural preferences and views of the researcher, dictating the choice of objects of measurement. At the next stage, when analyzing and generalizing, great importance is also given to measurable quantitative indicators, although the role of the subjective here increases - the researcher largely determines what and how it is measured, what “is included in the equation” and what is excluded from it; Sometimes, generalized measurements can be motivated by a range of results known in advance — this is indicated by the abundance of various political and economic “ratings”, “statuses” and their replication. Finally, the synthesis stage is almost completely an interpretation problem and mainly depends on the geo-cultural and ethno-religious context in which the interpretation takes place.

In addition, the concept of economics as a completely “exact science” can also arise when the central and fundamental importance of secondary disciplines serving economics is given centrality, for example, business accounting, corporate finance.

The ethno-religious hypothesis of the economy indicated above is not innovative. Thus, the religious and national-ethnic nature of capitalism - the Protestantism of the northern, non-Catholic part of Europe - and the economic advantages that this nature has provided the Protestant cultural area, thoroughly analyze M. Weber (1864-1920) in the work "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" [5 ], the most famous, fundamental work of the scientist.

“We are referring to the undoubted predominance of Protestants among capital owners and entrepreneurs, as well as among the highest skilled workers, and above all among the highest technical and commercial personnel of modern enterprises. <...> The Catholics employed in the craft are more inclined to remain artisans <...>, while Protestants in a relatively larger number rush into industry, where they join the ranks of skilled workers and employees of enterprises. In these cases, undoubtedly, there is the following causal relationship: a peculiar mentality, instilled by upbringing, in particular, the direction of upbringing, which was due to the religious atmosphere of the homeland and family. <...> Protestants <...> criticize the ascetic (real or imaginary) ideals of the way of life of Catholics, while Catholics, in turn, reproach the Protestants for the "materialism" to which their secularization of the whole content of life led. <...> Individuals and groups of people combine virtuosity in the field of capitalist business relationships with the most intense form of piety; such cases are by no means isolated, moreover, they can be considered characteristic of those Protestant churches and sects that had the greatest historical significance. <...> So preaches Benjamin Franklin. <...> The peculiar ideal of this “philosophy of stinginess” is a creditworthy respectable person, whose duty is to consider augmenting one’s capital as an end in itself. The essence of the matter lies in the fact that not only the rules of everyday behavior are preached here, but a kind of “ethics” is stated, a deviation from which is viewed not only as stupidity, but also as a kind of violation of duty. It is not only about “practical wisdom” (it would not be new), but about the expression of a certain ethos. <...> <...> It is obvious that we are talking only about Western European and American capitalism. Capitalism existed in China, India, Babylon in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. However, he lacked, as we shall see from the further, precisely that peculiar ethos that we find in Franklin. <...> Franklin’s moral rules, however, have a utilitarian rationale: honesty is useful, because it brings credit, so is the situation with punctuality, diligence, and moderation - all these qualities are therefore virtues. ”

Weber was the first sociologist who thoroughly described and articulated the set of geo-cultural values ​​that arose before him and modern, in which economic concepts coincide both with the religious ideal and with the area of ​​settlement of the respective ethnic groups. Weber's work, created in 1905, remains relevant to this day: it gives an internal understanding of how it arose and on the basis of what values ​​the economic life of entire regions of the planet passes.

Subsequently, some sociologists and economists made a number of significant additions to Weber's ideas about the nature of the economic success of Protestant Europe and Protestant (Puritan, Anglican) North America. They pointed out that the economic history of Europe, including its Protestant regions, includes an era of violence in relation to the existing economic structure (as a rule, to the peasant-artisanal, cf. "fencing" of land in England, etc.).

The “cleansing” of the population, its removal from the land, the legal enrollment of large masses of the population in the category of marginal “rogue-idlers” were provided by European manufactures and English workhouses with forced and cheap labor, which caused rapid economic growth and accumulation. Subsequently, the migration of large masses of the Protestant population (English, Dutch, Germans, as well as Irish Catholics, "squeezed out" of their habitat by English Protestants) to the North American continent was accompanied not only by "mopping up" and driving away the local population from the land, but also by its physical knowledge: The “unsuitable” indigenous people possessed skills and knowledge that differed from those that could be useful for working at the manufactory.

The violence was probably one of the consequences of the Weberian “ethos” - the Protestant ideal of a “good person”, religious respect for property, thrift and accumulation. The antithesis of this ideal was, apparently, deprived of property and the “irresponsible”, “idle” loser-vagrant, who could not save and accumulate — that is, the antisocial “dehumanized” individual, who either was considered superfluous and useless, or was subject to use in the manufacture and religious and moral re-education by heavy forced labor. Similar to enclosures, the “cleansing” of the indigenous people of North America was also justified, among other things, by its incompatibility with the Protestant ideal of rational accumulation - the indigenous people did not have the “right” attitude to land, land ownership and “incorrectly” dispose of natural resources (“they mismanage their resources”) .

It is curious that Weber was also the first sociologist who formulated the role of the state as an institution that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Probably, in this he was “the son of his time” and his geo-cultural space: besides sociological and political-economic research, the scientist was engaged in a lot of current “field” politics. Here his activity was rather contradictory: he was a member of the Evangelical Social Congress organization, was a member of the far-right Pan-German Union, participated in the drafting of the 1919 Weimar Constitution. This last episode, as well as Weber’s definition of the state as a “legitimate rapist”, gave grounds for assumptions about his active role in consolidating the extraordinary powers of the President in the Weimar Constitution. Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution actually contains a similar provision - it was subsequently used by Adolf Hitler to abolish a number of other constitutional norms, suppress the opposition and establish a totalitarian regime.

The direct connection of Weber's ideas with the subsequent evolution of Germany to political fascism remains controversial - here one can only point to indirect typological similarities. German fascism, unlike Marxism and liberalism, did not develop its own political economy, the economic school and generally remained within the national Protestant market model, in which, in accordance with the laws of economic liberalism, one of the central places is assigned to individual accumulation and, further, consumption . Hitler's campaign on the “eastern front” was essentially motivated by individual dreams of a prize — a respectable “cozy” (cf. Gemut — coziness, comfort, pleasant mood) life based on acquired agricultural and fossil resources and cheap (free) labor. This probably explains the ultimate, “orderly” and “exemplary” cruelty of fascism in the occupied lands outside the Protestant and European cultural area. In the typologically similar episodes of the end of the 2nd World War, the American post-war Marshall plan for Germany was preceded by the Anglo-American carpet bombing of German cities.

Probably, the above circumstances and episodes of the economic and political history of Western Europe and North America contributed to the fact that a hierarchical interpretation of national and regional economies was added to the binary opposition of the “right” (global, free market) and the “wrong” economy. This view does not directly deny the right to existence to “wrong” economies, does not “dehumanize” them as inappropriate to a religious (cultural, political) ideal, but arranges (“rates”) them according to the degree of decreasing signs of proximity to the ideal. At the head of the hierarchy is the ideal itself (free market, world economic avant-garde), followed by countries and regions that are on the way to a free market, closing the hierarchy of the country and regions whose independent and independent approach to the ideal in the foreseeable future is difficult.

As in the case of the “sweeps” mentioned above, to the second and third echelons of the hierarchy, the global economy (“world avant-garde”) applies the “clean slate” tactics - a revolutionary cleansing of national economies from cultures and practices that do not correspond to the free market ideal. Cleaning is carried out either in the form of economic reforms that are deep and painful for societies, invariably leading to the degradation of societies, including physical degradation (decrease in demographic indicators, depopulation) - or through literal purification: regional conflict, revolutionary regime change, intervention.

An important feature of this hierarchy is its constant advance along the linear time axis. This is the key to preserving the hierarchy: in the culture of monotonous linear progress, the national economies of the second and third echelons do not approach the “world avant-garde”, at each moment they are predictably lagging behind it by a certain distance, since the avant-garde has time to move forward on the progress line. Evidence of this is the actual transition, in the 2010s, of a number of Western European countries to the second echelon - these are countries of the non-Protestant Mediterranean Europe, which received the collective name PIGS in connection with the transition to the category of “lagging behind” (formal decoding: Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain).

At the same time, the hierarchical stratification of national economies reflects an indirect and partial rejection of the idea of ​​the world economy as a single global model - which is quite natural, since this view is incorrect and is refuted by direct empirical observation. The modern economic life of the planet is characterized by multi-structuredness - this is its essential basic feature. Isomorphic economic phenomena and typological similarities observed in different parts of the world are secondary nonessential features that confirm global diversity.

The assertions that any single economic model is desirable or advanced, existentially “correct” and “suitable” - unlike other, “incorrect” and “unsuitable” models - are themselves caused by religious-ethnic and regional origin. These statements generally represent one of the possible interpretations of the origin (“correct” or “exemplary” origin and, accordingly, the “exemplary” model of the future) and can be the subject of a positive anthropological analysis (for example, as a way of verbalizing cultural and domestic racism that lies in the sphere of the collective unconscious).

In turn, the idea that the religious-ethnic origin and nature of economic models and theories is removed and “zeroed out” by linear time also has an ethno-religious nature. Типы социального времени (линейное, циклическое, нулевое и др.) вместе с соответствующими хозяйственными практиками и трудовой этикой характеризуются региональностью и нормативной для каждого региона совокупностью взаимоотношений с местообитанием, коллективными представлениями об окружающем мире и природе.

В целом, выражение «глобальная экономика» в его буквальном понимании и вместе со связанными с ним представлениями принадлежит в наши дни скорее к области политической эссеистики, чем объективной науки. «Глобальная экономика» является по большей части либо пожеланием, целью, либо, напротив, представляется нежелательным будущим последствием.

В прямом эмпирическом наблюдении, очищенном от политических программ, текущее соотношение глобального и регионального в национальных и региональных экономиках по факту выглядит так.

К глобальному также относятся отдельные аспекты потребления: электронные гаджеты, быстрое питание, предметы одежды, рекреационный и развлекательный туризм, предметы роскоши, индустрия развлечений, включая кино, компьютерные игры и др. В целом мировое потребление не может быть описано как глобальное, т.к. упомянутые аспекты, будучи глобальными, не являются необходимыми и достаточными для жизнедеятельности какого-либо социума, практикующего эти отдельные виды потребления. Так, например, доступ к глобальной интернет-сети не представляет собой «предмет первой необходимости» или обязательное условие, от которого зависит жизнь и воспроизводство социума; кроме того, современный мир демонстрирует тенденцию к де-глобализации и «многоукладности» интернета, его эволюцию в мозаику региональных и межрегиональных суб-сетей, создаваемых на основе этнорелигиозного, геокультурного и языкового единства.

Глобальные аспекты потребления должны быть упомянуты рядом с категорией «накопление богатств», через запятую, в том числе и по функциональному признаку. В конце 20-го – начале 21-го вв. накопление существенно мотивируется индивидуальным стремлением к расширенному («гедонистическому», «креативному» и др.) потреблению, представленному в его глобальных аспектах, а также стремлением к эмансипации от этнорелигиозных «лояльностей», к независимости от местообитания и свободе от региональности.

Между тем, частичное подтверждение этнорелигиозной гипотезы экономики автор видит в том, что при всех типологиях и стратификациях наука продолжает выделять различные геокультурные типы экономики. Это американская (или англосаксонская), германская, японская и шведская модели экономики, а недавно к ним добавилась и китайская модель. Каждой из перечисленных геокультурных экономических моделей соответствует своя особая совокупность и система региональных конфессиональных и социокультурных характеристик: протестантизм, лютеранство, англиканство, конфуцианство и др.

Выражение «глобальная экономика» по преимуществу соответствует упомянутой выше англосаксонской модели и во множестве случаев является её самоназванием. Хотя к началу 21-го в. англосаксонская модель уже традиционно описывала себя как «глобальную», очевидно, что она является региональной или межрегиональной подсистемой мировой экономики как множества геокультурных моделей.

«Глобальная модель» может быть описана следующей совокупностью признаков.

Потребление

Центральная роль индивидуального потребления (выросшего из самоценного индивидуального накопления). Экспоненциально нарастающее количественное возвышение потребностей при убывании потребительской полезности в условиях товарного изобилия и при отсутствии качественных изменений в потребностях. «Кризис смыслов».

Окружающая среда

Замена естественной среды и устойчивых антропогенных ландшафтов на техногенную среду. Деградация ландшафтов и естественных сред (в начале 21-го в. – fracking, или гидроразрыв пластов при добыче углеводородов).

Население. Качество жизни

Частичная маргинализация и пролетаризация собственного «среднего класса» через скрытую безработицу. Снижение степени участия больших групп населения в производстве товаров и услуг (diminishing workforce participation). Нарастающий разрыв между богатыми и бедными. Одновременный отказ части населения («среднего класса») от участия в производстве. См. тж. «кризис смыслов» выше.

Лишение других социумов естественного местообитания через деградацию устойчивых сред и снятие геокультурных и природохозяйственных идентичностей. Снижение демографических показателей в «реформируемых» геокультурных ареалах. Физическая деградация, депопуляция социумов – носителей «негодных», «необразцовых» геокультурных и этнорелигиозных смыслов и ценностей.

Культура. International relationships

Самопозиционирование в качестве центрального образца. Иерархическая стратификация других культур и экономик с их делением на высокие и низкие по признаку соответствия образцу. «Отрицательство» (denialism) – игнорирование, отрицание, невежество по отношению к другим геокультурным и экономическим пространствам. Когнитивный кризис образования: институциональное невежество, в том числе в области мировой географии.

Экономика. Production

Центральная роль, самоценное значение финансового сектора и банков (см. тж. о накоплении выше). «Экономика пузырей» («bubble economy»). Финансовый «пузырь»: деривативные рынки; «количественное смягчение» (quantitative easing); растущий государственный долг; пролиферация банков, страховых и перестраховочных компаний, финансовых компаний, ипотечных агентств, инвестиционных фондов. Введение новых, умозрительных индикаторов для подсчёта национального ВВП, умозрительное выведение значительных групп населения из статистики занятости. «Пузырь доткомов» («dotcom bubble»), кредитный «пузырь доступного жилья» («sub-prime mortgage bubble») и др. Возведение онлайн-торговли, интернет-маркетинга, онлайн-игр и мобильных приложений в разряд «интернет-экономики» или «глобальной интернет-экономики», с навязыванием выражению глубоких смыслов. Беспрецедентное расширение и усложнение правовой системы интеллектуальной собственности для охвата ею продуктов индустрии развлечений.

The ongoing rejection of the real sector, its "delegation" (outsourcing) to the second and third echelon countries. The growing abandonment of managerial tasks in “delegated” production; the emerging rejection of engineering and innovation tasks (through the same “delegation”). The departure of owners from management in the domestic market, the transfer of the function of disposal to hired directors. The increasing role of military violence to control foreign markets, to “open up” regional markets and clean them of local cultures.

Economic science

Использование науки для преимущественного изучения «глобальной модели», для её описания, а также лоббирования. Обилие статистических данных, ограниченный набор предпочтительных способов их обобщения и интерпретации, фактический запрет на использование целых групп эмпирических данных в качестве индикаторов. Обилие политэкономических исследовательских институтов (think-tanks), фондов, некоммерческих (или неправительственных) организаций для лоббирования «глобальной модели». Фрагментация экономического знания («экономика автозаправки»), когнитивный кризис в области обобщения и в навыках интерпретации. Фактическая неизученность национальных экономик, хозяйственных практик «мировой периферии». Использование целенаправленно отобранных индикаторов для демонстрации отставания.