To write this article, I was prompted by a dispute with the user Atalef over which countries have capitalism and which countries have socialism. Is it possible to call economic relations in the Russian Federation capitalism? How does capitalism in Russia differ from capitalism in China or the United States or Norway? I'll start with the definitions.
Capitalism - a socio-economic formation based on private ownership of the means of production and exploitation of hired labor with capital ... (Great Soviet Encyclopedia).
Capitalism - it is a modern, market-based economic system for the production of goods, controlled by "capital", that is, the value used to hire workers (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy).
Private property - one of the forms of ownership, which implies the protected right of a natural or legal person, or their group on the subject of ownership (http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/1190505).
Based on the definitions, the two most important parameters that allow us to speak about the capitalist system are private propertywhich is protected by law and exploitation hired labor. Indeed, for example, in the slave-owning society there is also the right to private property, but the slave-owners are not exploited by hired workers, but by the living means of production owned.
In any society (and in the Russian Federation, and in the USA, and in Norway, and in China), in which there is the right of private property, wage labor is capitalist. Another thing is that capitalist societies are different.
First, let's consider the phenomenon of the so-called Swedish socialism. In Sweden (Norway, Finland) there is the right of private property and wage labor. It means there can be no talk of socialism. But what about the big social guarantees imposed on the citizens of these countries? In this regard, we can talk about social stateand not about socialism. The omniscient Wikipedia speaks of a social state like that.
Welfare state (him. Sozialstaat) - a state whose policy is aimed at the redistribution of material benefits in accordance with the principle of social justice in order to achieve every citizen a decent standard of living, smoothing social differences and help to those in need.
The main thing in this definition is exactly the smoothing of social differences. That is, it is not their leveling, but smoothing due to the fact that the state is directing a part of the surplus funds and resources to improve the living standards of the poorest segments of the population. So, these Scandinavian countries are the most advanced along the path of building a welfare state, although its elements can be traced in Russia (pension system subsidized in part from the federal budget, maternity capital, disability and survivor pension, benefits, etc.). Therefore, the Scandinavian countries we can confidently call capitalist social states.
You can also consider the phenomenon of the so-called state capitalism. A good example of this variant of the capitalist system was Nazi Germany. Private ownership and hired labor are also present in this type of capitalism. But the state regulates relations between large capitalist groups (for example, engineering / aircraft manufacturing corporations).
Also typical of state capitalist systems were the “right” dictatorships of Latin America, and in the post-Soviet space Belarus is out of competition here. To the state capitalism could be attributed, and the country "capitalist socialist camp", because there are no large corporations whose leaders could control the state. However, these states themselves are controlled by TNCs and “elder brothers” like the US or the EU. So they are simply affiliates of these larger systems.
It seems that we can observe state capitalism in modern Russia, when the largest monopolies are either in the hands of the state or groups of oligarchs, the relations between which are regulated by the state. Nevertheless, one should not overestimate the role of the state in the domestic “state” capitalism. Since all the same, the state as a whole is ruled by oligarchs. Oligarchs are big businessmen who have managed to convert their fortunes into political capital and were able to manage state policy. In order to see the inferiority of Russian state capitalism, it suffices to compare the actions of the leaders of the states - Hitler and Putin. Hitler could hold his state in his hands until his death in the furnace of complete defeat and defeat, which suggests that the German rich, although they influenced the division of profits, but still obeyed the central government. Whereas Putin’s is “not a 37 year”, he cannot curb the appetites of domestic oligarchs and cannot even change the obviously disastrous liberal economic policies by going against their interests. What makes us understand: Putin is only a hired manager, as he himself put it, “a slave in the galleys.” True, it has great rights and powers, but is not able to go beyond them.
The largest representative of state capitalism in the modern world, of course, is China, in which most of the major industries belong to the state. This allows the Chinese for two decades to develop dynamically and even in a crisis to have a positive growth dynamics. real GDP. This development cannot be explained solely by Western investments.
Since Russian capitalism cannot be called state capitalism, it is oligarchic capitalism. Although the most typical example of oligarchic capitalism was militaristic Japan, in which there was no visible center of power at all and large monopolies (zaibatsu) fought among themselves, using state mechanisms. Also to the oligarchic capitalist systems include the United States and the EU countries. There, too, there is no clearly pronounced center of power on the part of the state, because their “rulers” become “lame ducks” a short time after their election. And for trying to create such a center, Kennedy lost his life. And if the state is not an authority, it means that someone else is really in charge, that is, the oligarchs.
All of these capitalism variants are in reality the varieties of the highest degree of capitalism - monopoly capitalism. And to understand what this system is, let's move from simple to complex.
As you know, capitalism is preceded by a stage capital accumulationwhich is characterized by a weak state system. The state cannot protect the right of private property of small owners. But, nevertheless, the emerging large owners quite successfully use, including, and state structures to protect those who have stolen from others, for example, may incite the rival grouping of pocket "cops" (equivalent to the Wild West - the sheriff bought) or substitute a competitor for tax checks. That is, the institution of private property with its protection is present, and hired labor is also available. Moreover, this stage is very conducive to the growth of the wage labor market, since a large number of self-employed people are being ruined, as well as the outflow of citizens from the civil service, which does not provide sufficient income. And where else to go to those who do not fit into the "market", how not to go into bondage to successful neighbors? Therefore, let's say, the USA of the times of the Wild West or the RF of the times of “dashing 90's,” when future oligarchs inherited the legacy of the USSR, can be called capitalist systems, say, “zero level”, or wild capitalism. Europeans had a more civilized and lengthy period of capital accumulation, marking the phase of transition from feudalism to capitalism. Although in Europe it was not without blood (the French bourgeois revolution, Cromwell in England, etc.).
Further, capital owners want to secure the loot in the fun times of its accumulation. And for this you need to maximize the state. This process is accompanied by the pacification of society, people clearly benefit from a decrease in the level of criminal and economic lawlessness. In our memory, this process occupied the end of 90-x and the beginning of 2000-x. This time developed classical or market capitalism. When large owners have not yet digested the past feast and allow citizens and small businessmen to fatten up fat. Let me remind you only for the sake of improving the protection of your capital. Moreover, this “fatty” has already been taken into account in the parishes of large-scale ledgers. Also at the time of market capitalism accounts for the link of power and big capital and the transformation of the nouveau riche, the rich, but without political power, into oligarchs who place their people in posts in the state apparatus.
In Europe and the USA, this golden period of capitalism, when you could really make money by creating a large machine-building corporation from your home workshop, lasted almost the entire 20 century and ended with the fall of the USSR. Although the monopolization of markets began as early as the beginning of the 20 century, the presence of an ideological rival forced Western oligarchs to wait, they did not risk showing their bestial grin to their fellow citizens while there was an alternative. But as soon as the USSR was gone, the Western capitalist system went into sprawling. Like mushrooms after the rain, transnational corporations appeared, which began to be pushed around not only by small business rivals and hired workers, but even by small states and the periphery of capitalism. In Russia, capitalism also very quickly moved to monopolistic phase. In just a few years, everything that could bring a good income, regardless of the type of property, private or remaining state-owned, was seized by raiders of oligarchs. At the same time, bandit raids were no longer used, quite official bodies were thrown into the attack - the police, the prosecutor's office, the tax inspectorate. I remember well, and I already described in earlier articles raider attacks of such enterprises as the Amur prospector artel, AK Dalavia, and even the simplest design institute Dalairoproekt. All this happened after 2008. The jubilant Russian oligarchs decided that under the banner of liberal Medvedev they were accepted into the family of world capitalist predators and had a feast during the crisis. However, this process did not stop even when it became clear that the West could “accept” our newly-minted oligarchs only in the form of food. The logic of capitalist development is inexorable. We can well see this in the example of trade. Where the small shops and shopping centers with the shops of small merchants ruled the ball, the signs of retail chains flaunted, and the selling small business is driven into ghettos of remote villages and depressed single-industry towns.
Why is this happening, what kind of logic is it? Capitalism is a system of continuous development.. But the development is not intensive, implying a reduction in the cost of production due to new technologies and methods of management, it is more expensive and long, and therefore ineffective in the economic struggle, and extensive. First, the capitalist economy captures foreign markets and resources (colonization, neo-colonialism). And when external expansion options are exhausted, it is the turn of the redistribution of the domestic market with the destruction of the weaker neighbors. Anyone who stops developing, lags behind and loses the competition. Therefore, any successful subject of the capitalist economy will try to grow and, naturally, as a result of competition and victory of the strongest, market monopolization. We observe the peak of the monopolization process on the example of the WTO, which is already erasing state borders to quench the appetites of TNCs. At present, the globalization process of capitalist monopolies is in its final stages. There are no large market segments or resources in the world that are not integrated into the world capitalist system. Do not take it as a big market for the DPRK or Cuba! And so we see the beginning of the process of devouring capitalism itself.
If there is nothing more to capture, then to increase competitiveness, the capitalist begins to save on everything: from the wages of hired workers to raw materials. That leads to a drop in incomes of the population, most of which are already hired workers, as well as a drop in product quality, which we see in the example of any goods, from cars to clothes and household appliances that become disposable, working until the end of the warranty period. In turn, the fall in household incomes leads to a decrease in demand and a further reduction in the market, launching a new round of cuts in monopolist spending. The incomes of all the leading capitalist countries — the USA and the EU countries — are already feeling the fall in revenues. So far this wave has not particularly captured the small capitalist countries - Scandinavia, Israel, Australia. The reason for this is that in these small countries, TNCs are not so strongly represented. And most of the domestic market is controlled by the state (Scandinavia) or the competitive environment of small and medium-sized businesses (Israel). Therefore, the problems of TNCs concern them to a lesser extent. But still, the logic of the development of capitalism is inexorable. For example, the Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific partnerships are precisely designed to pump fat from such islands of capitalist well-being, such as Singapore, South Korea or the Nordic countries. Is this the reason for Israel’s problems with its eternal allies from Europe and from across the ocean?
How can the world capitalist experiment end? There are several options. Restarting the system through a crisis. Military or economic. These options are not very desirable for capitalists. That war, that the economic crisis will lead either to a weakening of states that may not be able to protect private property, as was the case in Russia in October 1917, or, conversely, will strengthen the role of the state, as it was in the US under Roosevelt, and the state itself suit the cleaning of the pockets of the oligarchs. It is clear that restarting the system is fraught with losses either from above or below. There are also options for the regress of social relations with the non-economic consolidation of power and wealth. That is, the apocalyptic theocratic feudalism, or the anti-utopian neo-feudalism in the form of the so-called "electronic concentration camp". These options, too, as they say, are not honey, for the existence of a feudal system requires an elite, which is legitimized no longer by capitalists' money, like the current pseudo-elite, but by “religion”, “tradition”, etc. And in the case of electronic feudalism, someone must administer this electronic web. In both cases, the new elite can get out of submission, because it has either independent legitimacy or the technical ability to rob the shadow masters of life. In the worst case scenario, the collapse of civilization can lead to the slave and primitive communal system. The only thing that capitalism cannot reach is socialism. Well, judge for yourself, does a monopolist-oligarch want to share money and power with his employees?