Socialism is back
In Hanoi, 26 – 27, September, the international geopolitical congress “100 years of real socialism and the theory of post-capitalist civilization” was held. Representatives from eight countries — Vietnam, China, Singapore, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and Mexico — analyzed the impact of the Great October Socialist Revolution on humanity. It was said about the eternal significance of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The problems of the formation of the sixth technological order, ways of overcoming international contradictions and conflicts were discussed.
Confirming the exceptional importance of October for the formation of modern civilization, the participants of the congress stated that a bipolar world order had been established, the main centers of power in which NATO and the SCO. The main threat to humanity recognized the possibility of establishing a monopolar world. Russia and China are viewed as the only force that can prevent this.
The main organizers of the congress were the major scientific centers of the countries of Southeast Asia, Mexico and Europe: the Academy of Social Sciences of Vietnam (similar to the Soviet Institute of Marxism-Leninism), the community of scientists of the World Advanced Research Program (WARP Group), the Mexican National Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology, the Autonomous City University of Mexico.
Two plenary sessions were held - at the beginning and before the end of the congress and four sections - two each day. The plenary discussed problems of general importance, in particular geopolitical. Section sessions were devoted to more specific issues - the development of real socialism in the modern world, the fourth industrial revolution in relation to Vietnam, the lessons of Great October for Vietnam.
The Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences organized and held a top-level congress. Despite the short time of the event, its participants were offered an interesting cultural program. The main languages of the congress were Vietnamese and English with simultaneous translation. The Chinese and Russian delegations provided translators into Vietnamese and then synchronously into English.
At the meetings sounded 29 reports. After each speech, time was allotted for discussion. Let us dwell on the most interesting and important for the Russian reader topics covered by all participants.
Post-Soviet trends
The Great October Socialist Revolution was of great importance for the formation of the modern world. Almost all the speakers noted the exceptional role of this event for the peoples of non-Western civilizations, at the time of its accomplishment, most of them were in colonial dependence. It was emphasized: if it had not been for the USSR with its economic and military might and the socialist camp, there would not have been even the prerequisites for liberation from the oppression of the metropolises. Only an example of the relations of the Soviet Union and the countries that have taken its path, the fear of the leaders of the capitalist states and their business elites before the revolution, forced to go to large-scale democratic reforms. At the same time, in terms of real data on the current situation, the speakers noted that there was a tendency in the world to intensively curtail the social gains of the past. And this is connected with the collapse of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism in the post-Soviet space.
In analyzing the experience of the USSR, much attention was paid to the study of the reasons for its collapse: social, economic, spiritual and theoretical, in particular, the conservation of the theory of Marxism-Leninism. One of the main factors in the collapse of the first socialist country was the rebirth of the party economic nomenclature. Lured by the possibility of seizing public property, she went to the destruction of the country and the restoration of capitalism, thereby committing an unprecedented crime against its own people. So the collapse of the USSR is not the merit of the West, but the result of the betrayal of the parthozelits.
Congress participants recognize that Marxism-Leninism remains relevant. Moreover, there is nothing to replace this teaching. They regard Marxism as the only theoretical basis for developing an acceptable model of the future socio-political formation, which will eventually replace capitalism. However, during the discussion, two conflicting schools emerged. One, let's designate it as a reformist, upholds the thesis about the need to develop the basic tenets of the theory of Marxism-Leninism, with the possibility of the existence of its various models reflecting national characteristics: Chinese, Vietnamese socialism ... Its supporters are mainly representatives of the countries of Southeast Asia, primarily China and Vietnam. Another school, which is logical to call conservative and where one of the leading ideologists is the informal leader of the community of scholars of the Worldwide Advanced Research Program, Heinz Dietrich, is based on the fact that the foundations of Marxism-Leninism cannot change while retaining their significance.
According to supporters of this trend, only the forms of manifestation of the teaching in modern life are subject to adjustment. In particular, new matrices of democracy can be developed, for example, based on the achievements of information technologies. The concept of “Participation Democracy” was made by a prominent British scholar, Professor of the University of Glasgow, Paul V. Coxhott. For a long time, he and his students are developing this doctrine. The bottom line is that today democracy dominates the electoral process. And then the elected government acts independently and in most cases in a completely different way than it declared. According to Kokshot, modern technologies allow not only to choose, but also to include the population in the decision-making process by voting for options. Experiments, very successful, were conducted by his group at the local level. Kokshot worked out in detail the technology of the functioning of “Participatory Democracy” using the Internet and cellular communication systems, demonstrating the promise and reality of this approach. However, some participants (including Russian ones) noticed that the technology is undoubtedly important, but the issue has not yet been worked out theoretically. In particular, the scope of implementation of this method and the principles of its application are not defined. As an example, a possible vote on the country's budget was given. In this voluminous document several hundred people can figure out the whole country, the rest are unlikely to waste time studying it, which means that the voting will be blind. And there are plenty of such examples when the choice, even if it concerns the whole nation, must be made by specialists.
Disputes between supporters of schools sometimes became quite tough. This indicates that the socialist idea in the modern world is not dead, but is alive and developing. If we take into account that it is practiced (even if in a specific form) at least almost 1,5 billion Chinese, numerous Vietnamese people, some Latin American countries - in total more than 30 percent of the population of the Earth, socialism certainly has a future!
The congress participants stated that humanity is entering an era associated with the transition to a new technological structure, and the existing social relations do not correspond to it, giving rise to deep contradictions that have shaped the modern civilization crisis that has engulfed all spheres of activity. Permission is possible only through the formation of a new society - post-capitalist. The primary task of the advanced scientific community is the development of its structure and principles of functioning.
The basis of the new social construction should be a worldview based on an understanding of the unity of the spiritual, informational and material foundations of the universe.
In speeches and discussions on the sidelines, it was noted that the ideological systems developed earlier were not fully capable of providing such an approach. This is due to the fact that existing theories focus mainly on the formation of power, limiting at best conceptual issues of economic development, which is clearly not enough for a full-fledged ideological design. The opinion was expressed that the most important condition for the progressive development of society is the correctly chosen criteria for assessing the quality of social activity. Modern approaches are based on the concepts of benefits, the meaning of the development of society and its subsystems (up to the individual) is reduced to extracting maximum profit. Accordingly, the economic and any other activity is oriented towards this, and not towards the growth of the socially useful product. As a result, the system of social production is out of balance. Actually capitalism crises are such an imbalance.
Therefore, the highest criterion of production efficiency should be its compliance with the needs of society. In this understanding, profit, profit or profitability are purely private and local, auxiliary character and can not be the main thing, as it is today. And the meaning of the development of society will not be reduced to a race for profit, but will be to eliminate the imbalances that arise.
It justified the assumption that the main driving force of modern social processes, in particular revolutions, will be the intellectual proletariat, which replaced the industrial one (“And Lenin is so networked”). Agreeing that there is such a tendency, as well as the expediency of isolating such a social stratum in modern society, the participants stressed: the question still needs to be worked out.
Brains of liberalism
It is worth noting a very unusual presentation of a world-famous scientist - neurobiologist from the University of Oslo (Kongsberg Hospital) Gernot Ernst, with a report on the study of the nature of morphological changes in the human brain depending on its psychological characteristics. Significant textured material shows that people with different moral attitudes have certain differences in morphology - they develop in their own way some parts of the brain. The changes are insignificant, but are detected by a detailed and in-depth study with the complex application of modern methods. From this it follows that individualists, oriented to consumption at any cost (sticking to the liberal idea of “take everything from life”), are not only psychologically but also physiologically different from antagonists. We note that in this, strictly speaking, there is nothing special, but fundamental conclusions inevitably follow, which can have certain political consequences.
Associate Professor Dmitry Pletnev from Chelyabinsk University presented a paper on the analysis of contradictions that naturally arise in corporations. In such groups, there are three types of relationships: subordination, cooperation, and the struggle for personal interest. In corporations of the capitalist world, the first and third predominate in different proportions. In socialist companies, by which he understands various state structures, including ministries and departments, relations of subordination and cooperation prevail, which is more promising from the point of view of the development of these organizations.
Naturally, special attention was paid to global problems. Participants agreed that tensions are rising in the world. Some positive developments only shade the overall bleak picture. The failures of Western and, above all, American geopolitics in the 21st century did not allow us to direct the development of the global crisis to the right direction for transnational elites. The consequence of this was the realization by the leading non-Western powers of the danger for them of globalist geopolitics, on the one hand, and on the other, of the ability to successfully counter it with collective efforts. Centrifugal tendencies in the EU are strengthening - parties and movements of euro-skeptics increase their influence in society so much that the UK is leaving the “common European home”. Complicated US-EU relations. That is, there is a trend towards a sharp weakening of the unity of Western civilization with a clear prospect of losing the grounds for world domination in the foreseeable future.
Tendencies to the rapprochement of Russia and China, other countries - members of the SCO, by contrast, are gaining momentum. The signing of the declaration on the joint fight against terrorism means that the first step has been taken towards turning this organization into a military-political bloc. After all, various extremist transnational organizations are the most important tool of hybrid wars unleashed by the West, primarily the United States.
There is a new bipolarity. In the spiritual and moral sense, it is a confrontation between the liberal values of permissiveness and the traditional foundations of social construction, extreme individualism and the collectivist worldview. In geopolitics, the classic confrontation of the continental mass of Eurasia and the outer crescent of marine spaces covering it: tellurocracy and thallassocracy will take shape. The zone of the main confrontation will be the inner crescent of the intermediate zone - Riemland. These are North Africa, the Near and Middle East, Central and South-East Asia, and the Asia-Pacific region. The basis of world bipolarity will be the confrontation between NATO and the SCO, around them regional communities will be built, formed on a bloc or bilateral basis. The spatial structure of the world will take on this form: the SCO, sweeping along the West-South-East perimeter, is hostile to its political-economic alliances, NATO and the US eastern allies in the Pacific. The basis of the SCO is the Eurasian core: Russia and China. The opponents - the United States.
With an exceptional role in the SCO of Russia as a country with the most powerful nuclear-missile and military-technological potential, it is in this structure that is the main target of the blow of the united West trying to consolidate the geopolitical successes of previous years in Eastern Europe and restore where possible. control over the regions.
On the whole, the congress was held under the sign of mutual understanding, awareness of the need for tremendous theoretical and practical work on the formation of a world order model acceptable for the survival of civilization. The need for further joint work in this direction was confirmed.
Information