8.2 Market Nature and society: the unity of the processes of self-organization

The scheme of the evolution of society is based on the same empirical generalizations that were considered in the section "The search for a new world outlook". There the general laws of evolution of the inert and living world were carried out. Recall them in brief:

• The Universe is a single self-developing system (the “Supersystem Universe”), which makes it possible to consider all development processes as components of a single global evolutionary process.
• In all processes, random factors are present in this system, and their very occurrence occurs under conditions of some uncertainty. In other words, stochastics and uncertainty permeate all floors of the organization of the system.
• The laws of selection prevail in the world; they single out permissible virtual states from possible virtual states.
• In the universe dominates heredity; the present and the future depend on the past (we emphasize that they are not determined by the past, but depend on it).

The last three empirical generalizations practically coincide with the Darwinian triad — variability, heredity, selection.

• The principles of selection allow for the existence of bifurcations, that is, the transition of an object into many new states is possible. This leads to the fundamental unpredictability of evolution.

These empirical generalizations are valid for processes occurring in living, inanimate nature and in society.

Let us dwell on the role of the researcher: he is not implicated in the phenomenon under study. The intervention of the observer turns him from a researcher into an active participant in the events. This is especially noticeable when studying the processes of the microworld or phenomena of a social nature. The former were discussed in section 5.1, and the processes taking place in society will be discussed below. But these conclusions are the consequences of the first empirical generalization, since man is part of a single evolving system. He studies the world not from without, but from within and, therefore, any picture of the world is a representation of the part about the structure of the whole.

The given empirical generalizations allow to obtain consequences suitable for all levels of the system, that is, describing the world synergetic process. First of all, in the process of evolution, stochastics and bifurcations lead to irreversibility and continuous growth of the diversity and complexity of the forms of the material world. This is a universal statement, valid both for the world of inert matter, and for living matter and society. There is a continuous increase in the diversity and complexity of both the Supersystem Universe, and its individual parts. The nature of the possibility of such a process, but its details fundamentally unpredictable.

In the process of self-organization, there is a continuous destruction of existing structures that become material for the emergence of new ones. Among the latter, the appearance of more complex ones is possible; they require for their description a larger number of bits of information. The evolutionary process consists not only in the improvement of new structures, but also, to a greater extent, the replacement of the “stable” with a more “stable”, ie, more adapted to the changed environment. The emergence of new structures is a consequence of the stochastic beginning. This creativity of Nature takes place on all floors of the system. But the consolidation of new forms is due to their competition, i.e., selection. This is the mechanism of the market. The word “Market” (with a capital letter) should not be confused with the term “market” which is now widely used.

Let us pay attention to the mechanism of maintaining the stability of systems such as a biocenosis or economic system. It is supported not so much by the stability of the elements of the system, but rather by the elimination of less perfect elements and their replacement by new ones that emerged in the process of self-organization. In technical systems, stability is ensured by the stability of the elements that make up the system. This is the main difference between technical systems and natural systems, where the destruction of less stable elements and their replacement by new elements occurs. Thus, Nature ensures the stability of systems living in a changing environment, without a clearly defined program of its improvement.

Exactly the same process occurs in the Market, where some structures are continuously replaced by others, more adapted to the changed situation.

We repeat that among these new forms of organization appear more and more complex, they require large amounts of information for their description: the growth of diversity is accompanied by the growth of complexity.

Within the framework of a single evolutionary process, at some stage, the mind of Man arose, it is continuously improved and transformed into the mind of Humanity. And what will happen next, while it is impossible to predict.

Above was described the general scheme of universal evolution on all floors of the System. The process of self-organization, despite its spontaneity, has a focus: a growing variety of forms of organization, complexity of structures, the amount of information with which they can be described.

Let us dwell on the trends in evolution that lead to the unification. Let's call their manifestation the mechanism of cooperation. The manifestation of cooperativity is already observed at the level of inanimate nature, some examples are considered in section 4. In the development of living matter, these processes play a significant role. Unicellular creatures unite in multicellular. In society, cooperativeness has a special place.

We will call the process of combining elements into systems “assembly mechanisms”. Cooperative mechanisms lead to new organizational structures with systemic properties. As a rule, the properties of systems are not derived from the properties of elements. It is impossible, for example, to predict the behavior of the crowd, knowing all about every person that makes it up. System properties depend on the structure of relationships and the number of elements. Crowd properties manifest themselves at a critical number of individuals. The algorithms of assembly mechanisms are far from clear and seem to be in the nature of fundamental laws.

One of the simplest “assembly mechanisms” can be considered an approach called reductionism : the properties of a system can be derived by knowing the properties of its constituent elements and the laws of the interaction between them.

The widespread use of this principle in science has led to remarkable results. The first successful attempt to implement the ideas of reductionism is celestial mechanics. Gravitational forces and the laws of Newtonian mechanics allowed the French mathematics of the early nineteenth century. Laplace to create a theory of the universe, known as celestial mechanics. The method of reductionism also suggests the possibility of replacing a real complex phenomenon with a strongly simplified model, the construction of which is the art of the researcher.

According to Academician N. N. Moiseev, classical rationalism and ideas of reductionism, which reduce the study of complex systems to the analysis of its individual components and their interactions, are the most important stage in the history of not only science, but also civilization. But these approaches turned out to be not universal: the formation of collective behavior and collective consciousness obey, as mentioned above, other laws, require a different methodological approach, in particular, opening "assembly mechanisms" (assembly algorithms).

The market (with a small letter) in the usual economic or everyday sense is a distribution tool. This is only a special case of the Market (with a capital letter), which was created by Nature and serves to compare the "quality" of various forms of organization of matter and their rejection. It determines the development of inert, living matter and social structures. So, the market is the implementation of the general principles of self-organization of the material world in the production and trade sphere. In the development of society, the market has played a prominent role.

At the beginning of the last century, the English economist David Ricardo (1772 - 1823) began to study market relations and formulated the law of value for the commodity market for the case when the number of sellers and buyers is large. It turned out that the market forms such a loop of negative feedback in which the price of a commodity tends to its value, that is, to the socially necessary labor costs (Ricardo's market).

With relative weakness of monopolies, this market is a fairly satisfactory model of the market mechanism.

Let us return to the concept of Market, which is able to maintain the equilibrium of a system due to the competition of system elements for resources (conditions). In the process of competition, part of the elements perishes and is replaced by new ones, more relevant to these conditions. Thus, the Market serves as the most complex hierarchically organized system of rejecting old ones and replacing them with new continuously emerging structures. The whole process of self-organization of matter can be imagined as the functioning of a grandiose market mechanism with a large number of rules for rejecting virtual structures and ways for further development. Any attempt to replace the selection rules in Nature with the preferences scheme that has developed in the minds of this or that subject is doomed. One day it will inevitably be rejected by the Market.

The market selects far from the best and most promising, it is ruthless and blind, it is not given to it to foresee the evolutionary dead ends. The assertion on earth of the homo sapiens population occurred without any goal-setting. The market is constantly evolving: selection rules are multiplying and becoming more complex.

At a certain stage in the evolution of the Market, the human mind is included in its mechanisms. Consider what he can bring to the process of evolution.

The Market Mechanism retains its place in the evolution of the biosphere, since there is no other mechanism in the self-organizing Universe. But the human mind introduces qualitatively new elements into the character of the functioning of the Market. Before the advent of Man, the Market made a selection based on the ability of applicants to adapt to external conditions. It did not take into account the trends of changes in conditions. Such a market is blind, and a feature of the mind is that it is able to foresee the peculiarities of development, its tendencies, to predict evolutionary scenarios.

In other words, the inclusion of the mind will improve the structure of feedbacks, it introduces derivatives (trends), i.e. the replacement of static feedbacks with dynamic ones. But the main feature of the Market - the continuous replacement of less advanced structures with more perfect ones - remains. The market remains a Market, but with a certain foresight, behind which the details of possible development remain hidden. It is difficult for a person to predict the course of events, but he is given to foresee the dangers in the near future and to formulate a system of prohibitions. The market selects solutions that meet the best situation of the moment (with minimal forecasting possibilities), and most often unfolds the process of history in one direction or another.

In crisis conditions, civil society, its institutions, and the state assume the burden of responsibilities. The mechanism of market development is attacked by the “rein” of the mind. But at the same time, it is important not to “overreact”, since two misfortunes always threaten society — totalitarianism and chaos. It is necessary to find the optimal measure of state influence. On the one hand, we must not slip into excessive regulation of development, embark on the path of slavery and the accompanying stagnation and degradation of society. But on the other hand, society faces chaos, waste of energy and, ultimately, the same stagnation and degradation. Here, the mind is manifested in the selection of such effects on social development, in which the mechanisms of the market work in the right direction for society.

In 1929, a crisis suddenly broke out on the New York Stock Exchange. Other exchanges began to fall behind her. A wave of bankruptcies swept through the capitalist world, and the existing system of market relations was facing the threat of collapse. People did not feel the threat was approaching; regular recessions and booms of business seemed natural. In fact, the era of "wild capitalism", the era of the Klondike, the "wild market", when Reason is not involved, ended. The discrepancy between production and consumption has crossed possible boundaries and market regulatory mechanisms have ceased to operate.

Three-time US President Roosevelt proposed and implemented a tightly controlled state program to use the country's financial, human, and production resources. For several years, these events allowed to overcome the crisis without destroying the freedom of private entrepreneurship.

There are still a number of successful political and economic decisions. This is the economic policy of Erhard in West Germany, and the revival of the Japanese economy, and the amazing rise of Taiwan and South Korea. Such successes were the result of targeted actions by the governments of these countries, which skillfully influenced market relations. It is necessary to take into account the specific conditions, traditions of the country, general trends in world development.