ition of private ownership and coercive nationalism. The
experiment was unsuccessful and retrospectively is seen in negative terms.
On the other hand, however, liberalism supported private property but
underestimated the role of socialisation and integration. Despite its
attempts to triumph over the corpse of Marxism, the liberal idea is unable
to provide adequate explinations for the modern era. For almost two
centuries, humanity has vacillated between these two approaches to social
thought. Neither Marxism, however, nor Liberalism were sufficiently
convincing. Marxism-Leninism aimed to give social guarantees to all but
destroyed and limited in the process all freedom of private initiative and
progress. Liberalism and capitalism were based on the absolutism of
"private" ownership which did not bring harmony or equilibrium but divided
the world into the eternally poor and the eternally rich.
No-one today denies the need for the protection of human rights or the
right of all to organise private production: Neither the Chinese communists
who have lead the reform process in China guaranting long-term economic
growth, nor the Russian communists now in senior management positions in
private banks and companies. No-one would dispute the need for the
opening-up of societies and free competition between companies from
different countries. Who, on the other hand, would oppose the idea of the
social state, the struggles of the poor and the deprived for a better life
or the battles of the enviromentalists to halt the production of
environmental pollutants?
When 120 years ago the representatives of the classical bourgeoisie and
Marxist political economics first crossed swords, the English cotton mill
workers and Silesian miners were working 16 hours a day while their
employers lived in resplendent luxury. The profound social gaps, the
inter-imperialist wars and conflicts not only divided people but also the
theoreticians and politicians who defended their interests. What were the
reasons for the divisions between liberal and conservative doctrines and the
social democrat and communists? Above all this was the question of private
ownership, the exploitation of hired labour, the origin of value and market
equilibrium etc.. The gap between ideological views was widened further by
the ambitions of leaders and politicians and reaching its height during the
fifty years of the 20th century when political radicalism appeared on a
hitherto unknown scale. Communism and fascism became the extreme forms of
class opposition and world wars - the bloody result of radicalism and
totalitarianism.
After the Second World War, perhaps, frightened by the extent of the
destruction, politicians began to search for ways to mitigate extremism.
Despite the cold war, a process of gradual and sometimes contradictory
rapprochement began to take place. Khrushchev accepted the principle of
peaceful co-existence and began to speak of the replacement of the
dictatorship of the proletariate with the national-democratic state. In 1948
Tito and in 1968 Kadar in Hungary breathed life into the processes of
"socialist" private property while retaining the single-party system. All
the Eastern European countries began to search for the possibilities of
change. In the West, first of all L.Erchard and then a number of other
leaders accepted the idea of the social state and guaranteed significant
benefits for their workers and employers. The anti-monopoly legislation in
the USA and Western Europe allowed millions of small and medium producers to
prosper. One of the most effective areas of new legislation was that which
allowed for the participation of workers in the management and ownership of
the factories in which they worked. The West began to speak of "peoples'
capitalism" and the East spoke of "socialist self-management": ideas which
were much more close to each other than the class and political foundations
from which they originated. This gradual rapprochement came not only from
the insight of a number of politicians and researchers but above all the
changes in the technological base of production and the mutual influence of
the two blocs. Of course, as I mentioned a little earlier the adaptation to
the new realities was much stronger and effective in the West than in the
East where it was more cosmetic and superficial. The slow rapprochement of
ideological concepts was also an expression of the common crisis engulfing
the world and which was a crisis of the values and ideas which had dominated
over the past two centuries.
If one looks at the evolution of the parties within the Socialist
International, one loses all concept of the traditional left. The Italian
party of the Democratic Left (the former Communist Party of Italy) declared
itself in 1995 in favour of a movement towards liberalism. The Japanese
Socialist Party made a similar declaration. The Spanish and French
Socialists underwent a similar ideological evolution as did the British
Labour Party. Similarly the wave of new programmes and declarations made by
the conservative and liberal politicians calling for more social guarantees
and assistance for the poor is also deceptive. It is no secret that during
the last 20 or 30 years both the left and the right have begun to resemble
one another. In 1995 Jacques Chirac lead his presidential campaign with
promises of social involvement while at the same time the leader of the
British Labour Party, Tony Blair, called for a rejection of the ideas of
nationalisation. After a painful rapprochement of the basic ideas over the
past 30 years and "great compromises", there is a clear need today for a new
theoretical synthesis.
With the large-scale economic and geopolitical changes of recent years
the world has entered a new era which offers not only new ideological
concepts but a new synthesis of academic thought. When I speak of synthesis,
I mean the mechanical fusion of existing doctrines which has been already in
progress over the past 2 or 3 decades, leading to a new basis from which new
doctrines on the social and political development of the world will be born.
The synthesis which will produce new political ideas does not require
the rejection or the justification of either the qualities of liberal or
socialist ideas. Human rights, private property, the civic society, market
economics - these are the undisputed achievements of liberalism. Social
harmony and justice, solidarity, the dialectics of development, the
aspirations for social balance on the other hand are rooted in the different
variations of Marxism. These are all forms of our modern existence which are
of major significance for the future of mankind. This should also include
the more specific issues of social benefits, for example.
Such an ideological synthesis, however, should in no way mean the
unification of socialist and liberal ideas. In my opinion it is incorrect to
speak of social-liberal theory, or of some mechanical unification of parts
of Marxism and other parts of liberalism. The synthesis I am speaking of
does not come from the unification of political and academic views but from
the objective processes which affect humanity as a whole. They relate to new
realities which are formed on the basis of new social phenomena and
processes.
Above all, this raises to the question of the character of the present
transition, the crisis of the Third Civilisation and its historical fate.
There is no doubt that modern mankind is faced with an entirely new set of
problems essentially different from those of the doctrines of the 19th and
20th centuries. The entire basis upon which we have to formulate our views,
notions and ideas has changed. The new world economic order, global
ecological problems, the intermingling of cultures, changes in the role and
the position of the nation state, new social and professional groups,
require another type of thinking and other types of ideological connections
and systems. In what way will the globalisation of the world take place -
via new forms of imperialism or via a new world order? What will this order
be? Neither liberalism nor Marxism, nor any other theory can provide an
exhaustive answer to these questions. Firstly, because these theories were
constructed on the social problems of the 19th century and secondly, because
all theories which have attempted to explain the world over the past 300
years began their life based on the culture of individual nation states and
individual classes.
The new theoretical synthesis of which I am speaking will have a global
character. It will have be based not only on those liberal and social ideas
of the 19th and 20th centuries which have stood the test of time but also on
those which have come from other ideological influences. It is no longer
possible to ignore the achievements of Japan, South Korea or Thailand in the
organisation of labour. We cannot ignore the historical legacy and economic
and philosophical achievements of these countries as well as a number of
countries in Asia and Latin America.
Thus, this new theoretical synthesis cannot be purely social-liberal
nor purely Marxist or Euro-Atlantic. It will be global, multicultural and
will appear gradually in the coming decades. Today, a number of avant-garde
researchers are looking for projections of this synthesis. Some of them
involuntarily fall under its influence while others have simply realised
that all the traditional notions of man and society are inadequate and
outdated. Any interpretation of contemporary life requires new methodology,
concepts and categories.
The new theoretical synthesis is far from being a formulation of a
unified global theory for the future of the world and much less is it a
single doctrine of a social model which will lead to the "glowing future of
communism" or the even more "glowing future of the capitalist future". This
is to look back to the situation of the 17th-19th century when the advent of
the modern age and the renaissance of the human spirit raised about 25-30
cardinal questions and stimulated the development of social theory.
At that time a number of generalisations were made, firstly at a
philosophical level and then on an economic and political level which led to
a principle change in the evaluation of history and world development. After
Kant, Hegel, Hobbs and Smith came Marx, Sei, Mill, Bernstein, Lenin,
Trotskiy, Von Mizes, Stalin and many others. Despite their arguments and
mutual refutation they were all theories from the era of the Third
Civilisation. They followed the laws of the emerging processes of
industrialisation and the domination of the world by a small number of
states. The theoretical synthesis of this period was limited to "the
domestic problems of individual countries and regions" which were then
related to the common geo-political regions. The problems of freedom and
private property, exploitation and the rights of the proletariate, value and
market price were resolved in the context of groups, national or class
interests. Today such an approach would resolve nothing. For the first time
it is clear that without a global view, without a global approach, the
questions of the modern era will remain unanswered.
The next few years will see the gradual formation of a new theoretical
foundation as a result of the world entering a new period of its
development. This synthesis is closely linked with the new problems which
the world is facing today and attempts to find new solutions for existing
and emerging problems. When I mention the global approach, I mean problems
such as global warming and the condition of the oceans and the seas etc.. I
also mean the way in which global life is organised, the general principles
of its formation at a moment when no single country or people can be
isolated from on another.
The new theoretical synthesis will pose the question of the world
economic order in a new way and will re-examine the concept of "private
ownership" and its place in the system of human relations. It will also
raise the question of an entirely new notion of the limits of the nation
state and its relationship with local and global power structures and new
approaches to the problem of the rights of man and the protection of his
privacy. In other words, the new theoretical synthesis will at one and the
same time raise new problems and new views. This will not mean severing
links with the past, nor separation from the theoretical legacy of the 19th
and 20th centuries. However, this will mean the renewal and restructuring of
systems of academic categories and the laws which provide explanations to
the further processes of human development.
A number of new theories will appear out of these new theories. There
will be those who will want to protect different national, regional and
cultural interests. There will no doubt be those who will want to defend the
interests of the new world elites and those parts of the world population
which are in crisis. It would be wonderful if the new theoretical synthesis
could lead to the establishment of general principles of human development
while at the same time avoiding mass ideologisation.
At the end of the 18th century the French bourgeois revolution thrust
Europe along the path of liberalism. At the end of the 19th century free
competition was replaced by militant imperialism and opposed by socialism.
At the end of the 20th century we are witnessing the end of an entirely new
era and the aspirations of humanity to take a decisive step in the direction
of something new and better. We are living in a time of new movements
towards a renewal which requires new theories. New ideas are born at times
of crisis and change such as the industrial revolution in England at the
beginning of the 19th century, or immediately after the First World War.
Each social and world crisis stimulates the birth of new ideas.
During the plague in the Middle Ages there was an increased interest in
music. Perhaps this was an attempt to prove the triumph of life over death.
Today at a time of cataclysm and economic chaos, of cruel pragmatism and the
murderous processes of consumerism, new ideas might be the equivalent of
spiritual rebirth. These ideas will not appear out of the blue and from one
single source. It is important, however, that they are able to interpret the
new realities, to predict the risks and the dangers with which we are faced
and to continue the traditions of renewal of the human spirit.
Let us then look at the dimensions of the new theoretical synthesis and
apply it in an examination of the most important contemporary phenomena.
Chapter Five
THE FOURTH CIVILISATION
1. WHY A NEW CIVILISATION?
"If we begin now, we and our children will be able to participate in
the exciting reconstruction not only of out-dated politicalstructures but
also of civilisation itself."
Alvin Toffler
T
here is no doubt that the changes in Eastern Europe and the subsequent
geopolitical crisis are the greatest historical events at the end of the
20th century. Some academics have even compared these events with a
re-examination of the results of the Second World War. Indeed the end of the
cold war overturned the results of Yalta and Potsdam. Even so, I feel that
such an evaluation is insufficient. I believe that the collapse of Eastern
European state socialism was an essential sign of the beginning of the end
of one era and the beginning of another in the development of civilisation.
Of course, these two eras cannot be defined on the basis of one particular
event. These two eras are not divided by revolutions but a series of
qualitative changes.
Am I exaggerating? Have I succumbed to the influence of A.Toffler and
his technological waves or J.Lukac who maintains that after five centuries
of democratic aspirations we are experiencing the end of the modern age? I
want to be careful not to allow my imagination to run wild with facts and
events. I have examined them and re-examined time after time and I am
convinced that the changes which we have witnessed are not local but
historical. This is not only the end of the cold war and not only a
technological revolution, it is something more.
Could we have avoided these changes? If Gorbachev had not begun the
reform processes of perestroika, the changes in the USSR might have been
delayed a little longer. If Gorbachev had used a different tactic, the world
might have followed the path of reasonable convergence rather then chaos and
local wars. Nevertheless the replacement of the two-bloc system was
inevitable and sooner or later it would have happened. The changes at the
end of this century are not only industrial, political or spiritual but a
combination of factors affecting not only one or another state. They are
universal.
Let us look are technology. A.Toffler, albeit extreme in a number of
cases, is correct here. He was the first to describe the comprehensive and
epoch-making consequences of the emergence of new electronic communications
and bio-technology. In the same way as the industrial revolution in England
in the 17th and 18th centuries led to a chain reaction throughout the entire
world, today this is being done by the microchip and the robot, the
satellite dish and cable television. As a consequence of computers and
avant-garde communications technology not only have production processes
changed radically, but also the nature of labour itself. Knowledge and
information are undoubtedly substituting physical labour and revolutionising
all social relations.
The processes of technological renewal have lead to profound changes in
the social and class structure of society. It has reduced and is continuing
to reduce the number of traditional workers throughout the world. We have
become witnesses to a combination of changes in the social structure not
only of Europe and America but also such countries as South Korea, Thailand,
Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. The changes in the social and class
structure have been caused by evolutions in the type of ownership. This
series of related processes: new technologies, property, social and class
structures has revolutionised all social relations and has prepared the
transition from the Third Civilisation to the New Era.
The geo-political renewal is profound and universal. In the space of
just a few years one of the two world systems has ceased to exist. The
flagship of this system, the USSR has broken up, followed by the collapse of
Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. A series of local wars erupted. The
unification of Germany put an end to the sad years of post-war reality and
turned it into the largest European economy. Both Germany and Japan now find
themselves in new situations with much greater opportunities than before.
All the most significant political and economic alliances of the world,
including the USA, Canada, the EU, China and India are faced with new
realities.
Perhaps some people regard these changes as a temporary phenomenon with
perhaps a dulation of perhaps 2 or 3 years and that the processes ended with
the collapse of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact. These are mere illusions. In
1989-1991, we experienced only the beginning of the reform processes arising
from the common crisis of the two-bloc system. After the first phase of
rapid reform, 1989-1991 the world will experience to a greater or lesser
extent a period of global disorder, tormented "equilibrium" and only after
this - the complex process of the formation of a new world order as an
alternative to the two-bloc model. At the end of the 20th century humanity
has not only destroyed the iron curtain but has also built new bridges in
order to live on the basis of new principles and standards. At the same
time, humanity has rejected Utopias and the theoretical dogma upon which it
has been developing for more than a century.
After the collapse of the Berlin wall, politicians, philosophers and
economists found themselves in a theoretical vacuum. Concepts became
confused, traditional doctrines were beginning to lose their grasp of the
new realities. In some cases extreme pragmatism limited the possibilities
for development allowing only momentary personal benefits and egoism. In
other cases all manner of religious and semi-religious sects tried to fulfil
the vacuum. We have clearly consigned to the past not only the era of the
traditional industrial technologies and related lifestyles but also the
two-bloc world dominated by state socialism and traditional capitalism.
After technology, social class and geopolitical factors, the modern
spiritual and ideological crisis is the third main reason for us to claim
that at the end of the 20th century an entire civilisation is disappearing.
Perhaps the most significant new reality is the globalisation of the
world and the birth of an entire series of new world phenomena: from changes
in the role of the national state to the internationalisation of culture,
sport and daily life. The entire Third Civilisation after the 16th and 17th
centuries has been a time of war and violence. The period of international
integration and later globalisation in the 19th and 20th centuries took
place as a result of the violent imposition of particular cultures and
authority over others. For a century and a half the struggle between the
classes has been the uppermost. Today, however, this is at an end. Because
of the nature of arms and the senselessness of wars, violence is becoming
ineffective. At the same time the imposition of specific cultures, nations,
races and power over others will give way to entirely new types of
relations.
Many people find it hard to believe that the changes will be on such a
large scale and universal. Toffler calls this fear "the shock of the
future"[38] Such people should take a look at the consequences of
new technologies in factories, around them, in their homes and the way in
which their lives have changed as well as the information which surrounds
them. These epoch-making changes which have taken place in the short space
of a few years are affecting, above all, the countries who are the main
proponents of progress, but with the globalisation of markets they will soon
spread throughout the entire world. Thus:
- The end of the era of nation states and the appearance of the global
world;
- The end of the two-bloc system and the end of centuries of violence,
international and inter-imperialist conflicts;
- The end of the domination of the major ideological and political
doctrines which characterised the political and social life of the 19th and
20th centuries;
- The end of the traditional industrial manufacturing processes and the
advent of new technology;
- The end of the class divisions of labour typical of the past 200-300
years;
- The end of traditional private property and its socialisation;
- The end of the domination of certain cultures and the appearance of
global culture and multicultural formations
All this does indeed mark the end of one and the beginning of another
civilisation within human development. These processes affect the whole of
human development as a consequence of the hitherto unseen levels of mutual
interdependence of countries and peoples and the overall processes of
forthcoming change.
But why a New Civilisation?
Why after the era of huge slave-owning states, medieval wars and
migration, after the crisis and collapse of the modern age is the world
entering a period of change in technology and manufacturing, economic and
political order, culture and education. The main feature of the Third
Civilisation - national self-awareness and the appearance of nation states
is changing. After the three major periods in human development, a fourth
period is now beginning whose characteristics are still to be revealed and
examined.
2. SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITIONS OF CIVILISATIONS
From an historical point of view civilisations cannot be separated by
revolutionary dates and events. They tend to merge with one another as an
embodiment of the character
of human progress. The process is smooth rather than rapid,
humanist and natural rather than subjective and coercive.
T
o a large extent the existing processes of human development have been
interpreted as the transition from one system to another, from one social
structure to another. History has been "divided" into various types of
social and political structures, models and formations. William Rostow in
his search for an alternative defined the various stages of economic
development. Alvin Toffler in a more moderate form expressed the changes in
world development on the basis of three large scale technological waves and
the relevant social relations.
Up to now the dominant aspect of world social and political thought has
been the division of societies into separate models and systems. Capitalist,
communist, fascist, socialist and other models have been the vehicles for
the expression of the passions of nations, parties and politicians for a
particular type of social development. To a large extent this tradition was
conditioned by the imbalanced nature of world development and the fact that
the great thinkers of the 18th century to the present have based their
conclusions only on European culture.
For a long time, world development was interpreted only on the basis of
the traditions of one small part of the globe. European civilisation paid
little attention to the achievements of the Asian peoples and in the rare
cases when their achievements were recognised their assesments were
permeated with European provincialism. The accepted feeling was that
civilisation included only Europe and the European way of life. Over the
last two centuries more attention has been paid to the Asian methods of
manufacturing but European writers still viewed them as inferior to European
methods. I am not extolling the virtues of the Chinese or the Japanese, nor
am I exaggerating the achievements of the Indians, Persians or American
Indians. I just consider that globalisation requires us to change our
approach to research and to look at the world through the prism of
universality and the mutual dependence of the various world cultures.
In modern times the tradition of dividing society into separate
formations and models is becoming less and less adequate. It restricts
thinking and ideologises life. It presupposes the coercive implantation of
ideologies and idols. Such violent forms were used to impose catholicism,
Islam, capitalism and state socialism. One king, one idea, one leader, one
formation, one belief - this is the beginning of coercion and spiritual
debilitation. The unconditional belief in ideological systems has always
evolved into a type of slavery and overt or covert violence.
When in accordance with Marxist doctrine many nations were called upon
to build communism, this in practice meant the coercion of millions of
people and subsequent generations to follow one idea. As the rejection of
the injustices of capitalism, these ideas inspired many people. Later, when
these ideas became state policy and a compulsory credo, they gradually
became transformed into a yoke placed upon free thought and the freedom of
the individual. The Bulgarian people have a marvellous saying, "Who does not
work, shall not eat!" I shall never forget at the end of the 1970's a
Bulgarian communist leader paraphrasing this saying, "Who does not believe,
shall not eat!" Belief and convictions had been converted into a monopoly
and condition for existence.
Those who advocate the system of capitalism and who consider the fall
of the Eastern European regimes to be a conclusive triumph for world
capitalism are in a similar situation. They are also slaves to tradition, to
redundant systems and the belief that Eastern Europe has undergone a
revolution from socialism to capitalism. This is just not the case. What has
happened is something completely different: the releasing of the forces of
the new civilisation, the new world order and new relations between nations.
During periods of transition in world development only the civilisation
approach can save us from new illusions, the inventions of artificial social
models and their forced imposition. In practice this means a gradual and
evolutionary approach to reform and the slow coalescence of the future with
the present. No-one can deny the role of revolutions in history but at the
same time one must take into account the sad experience of the violence and
destruction which they bring with them. The more radical the revolution the
greater the probability that it will lead to "restorationism" or that it
will consume itself. The extremes and the violence of the French Jacobites
allowed Napoleon to become Emperor, dictator and aggressor. The extremes,
violence and Civil War in Russia after the October Revolution transformed
Stalin into the most loved leader and teacher of the world proletariate.
For a number of reasons revolutions have become anachronistic: the
rising level of integration of peoples and societies at the end of the 20th
century, the colossal opportunities for the ideological enslavement of
people via the media and for reasons of complex technological and market
relations. Rapid change, revolutionary leaps and sudden U-turns in the
modern world are inevitably destructive in nature. This has happened in a
number of Eastern European countries which have thrown themselves headfirst
into attempts to restore capitalism and the total rejection of their past.
All they succeeded in doing was to destroy half of their economies.
Today we are witnessing huge levels of dynamic social change which have
been hitherto unknown. Given the dynamic nature of these changes, each new
forced imposition of the civilisation approach to change leads to a usurping
and constriction of ideas, renders social relations inadequate and deprives
emerging new generations of freedom of choice. Hitler's unified world Reich
and the single world factory for workers and peasants promised by Stalin
lead to the loss of enormous human potential and tens of millions of human
lives. Today we are constantly barraged with ideas about eternal and
unchanging models with standard views of the "glorious future", of
capitalist and socialist ideals as the only salvation for the world.
These ideas seek to provide coming generations with outlines and
definitions of what they will have to do, what their truth will have to be
and what their faith will have to be. Such advocacy of a model of
development denies the right of the free creativity of coming generations.
This is not only undemocratic but dangerous. It means that the new stages of
human progress will have been set out beforehand and that our sons and
daughters will have to follow us and mindlessly carry out the will of their
forebears. I entirely support the proposal of the World Federation of the
Future Studies (I believe it was proposed by B. de Juvenal) to talk not of
the "future" but of "futures". No-one has the right to impose a single model
for tomorrow or to delineate a categorical one-dimensional future. Each
subsequent generation shall be entitled to its own present and future,
changes and solutions and how to overcome the problems of its own
time.[39]
The downfall of standard theoretical models and social formations is
also inevitable. The new era will not consist of attempts to find
substitutes for socialism, capitalism and liberalism but to find humanist
principles upon which the existing models, ideas and cultures can give
meaning to new life styles. If we accept the opposite idea and follow the
line of division of the world into social and political formations, if we
define some of them as leaders and the others as insignificant, this will
lead inevitably to the restoration of confrontation and will open the way to
denial and the transformation of differences not into stimuli for
development but into destructive forces. The advocacy of the division and
models of the 19th and 20th centuries or the division of the world into
capitalism and socialism, liberalism or social democracy will turn the clock
back and reject the opportunity for the creation of a better world.
Does this mean that development needs to its own devices like a free
flowing river or a chaotic melee of currents? Such an extreme thesis is as
dangerous and inadequate for the new era as the theory of previously defined
social and economic formations. If the division of the world into systems
and models gives rise to confrontation and kills freedom and continuity then
the lack of ideology and the absence of rules will cause chaos and the
widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. In both cases we will
remain within the embrace of the Third Civilisation instead of creating
solutions for tomorrow. Evidently, humanity cannot accept either the
coercive, cabinet models of society or chaos and chaotic development.
History has frequently shown that periods of great chaos sooner or later
give rise to dictatorships and vice versa.
The 20th century was a century of systems, of the gaps between them, of
confrontation and a century of war and violence. It is time that all this
was replaced with principles and laws which would embrace the universality
of the world and guarantee the processes of globalisation and reject the
interdependence of imperialism. We could overcome the contradiction between
the globalisation of the world and the evident need to preserve the wealth
of national and local cultures by combining the differences and transforming
them into a mutually complementary system rather than repressing and
destroying them. This would be the main distinguishing feature between the
outgoing civilisation and the emergent Fourth Civilisation.
Modern humanity does not need to invent artificial models and to impose
them on individual countries, but it does clearly have to sustain universal
principles, standards and laws which are adequate to the level of
globalisation. This requires the provision of conditions within which the
different cultures can combine and mutually complement each other in order
to achieve the reconciliation of cultural and civilisational contradictions.
My conclusion entails the rejection of the divisions of world development
into models, formations and social strata etc.. The more correct principle
is to replace such opposition with the acceptance of the common principles
of human life and with the relevant legislation to define the standards
required for all countries and peoples.
International law already contains a whole series of such principles
and legislation and it is gradually becoming an ineluctable part of global
awareness. Human rights are one example. This includes the rights of private
initiative, personal choice in life, labour and a dignified existence.
Another group of principles are connected with the free exchange of goods,
people, services and information and with the opening-up of countries and
peoples to each other. Another entire group of principles has arisen from
the common recognition of borders and their inviolability, the unification
of border and customs regimes and the joint efforts in dealing with
international crime. In practice this means the rapprochement of national
legislations, the mutual recognition of the rights of citizens and
organisations. I am not convinced that the concept of "democracy" is
sufficient to explain what needs to be done. Parliamentary democracy and
pluralism have existed for a number of years and they have been unable to
stop the processes of violence, poverty, wars, over-armament and all the
other chronic problems of the Third Civilisation. Democracy clearly is
merely a starting point from which development needs to be continued.
I am convinced that the new civilisation will be integrated slowly and
gradually into the heart of the old one. This will take place first of all
in the most developed countries and subsequently in those countries which
until recently resembled the Third World. This will be not be a socialist,
capitalist, liberal or conservative model but this will be a process of
development from differinent starting points to common principles and
trends, a development which resolves certain difference in order to give
rise to others. To this end the Fourth Civilisation may base itself on
universal principles and legislation and the combination of different
cultures and traditions.
It is unlikely that these principles will develop all of a sudden or
that they will be accepted by all. Together with human rights and the laws
of world economic and cultural relations there is a need for many more new
solutions. The arsenal of conventional methods available to the Third
Civilisation is inadequate to give a chance to the poor and we will be
unable to resolve the contradictions between the rich. Moreover, we will be
unable to create new, just principles of international economic and
political competition. The chaos and the conflicts will continue and
together with this, the danger of the restoration of confrontation and the
bloc model, and consequently the artificial continuation of the Third
Civilisation.
There is no doubt that mankind is aware of the end of the Third
Civilisation and can feel the buds of the new era. The sounds of the new
millennium are coming from the signals of space ships, the countless
satellite dishes, from the electronic pulses of hundreds of millions of
computers and the global awareness which is opening up a path into the minds
of the people of the world every minute of every day.
3. THE DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF THE FOURTH CIVILISATION
The most significant distinguishing feature of the Fourth Civilisation
is linked to the processes of globalisation. For several millennia, tribes,
ethnic groups, cultures and nations have reflected the specific features of
their natural environment. The Fourth Civilisation not only combines these
features but also unifies the diversity in order to recreate it...
E
ach era in human development has its own features. The civilisation
approach allows for the characteristic features of the new not to be severed
abruptly from the past but to be appreciated as constant and gradual factors
of influence. Just as during periods of transition in the past the new
appears within the old era and spreads gradually to become the predominant
essence of the new civilisation.
When we speak of the characteristics of the Fourth Civilisation it
should be born in mind also that they are not only political, or only
technological or only cultural. Changes in technology, culture and politics
exert mutual influences and the influence of new civilisation frequently
appears on the borders which separates them. Such is the case now at the end
of the 20th century when an enormous intermingling of cultures, economics,
traditions, habits and customs is taking place. This is the most important
characteristic of the Fourth Civilisation.
A.Toynbee is an opponent of the unity of civilisations. In his analysis
of the life of the Assyrians and the Egyptians, he is undoubtedly correct.
However, this cannot be said about the end of the 20th century when the
mutual interdependence of nations has reached a hitherto unknown level.
During the first three civilisations we observed the slow consolidation of
autonomous cultural civilisations. The three great eras in human existence
showed a growth in homogeneity and almost universal coordination. During the
first cultural civilisations (from the 5th millennium BC to the 4th and 5th
AD), the first great migration of nations (4th-9th centuries), the
appearance and domination of nations and nation states (15-10th centuries
A.D.) humanity has been ruled by one constant logical requirement - to live
in the conditions of growing economic, cultural and political dependence.
Table 2
The Distinguishing Features of the Fourth Civilisation
First Civilization
(5000 BC-4[th]/5[th] AD)
Second Civilisation
(300-1400 AD)
Third Civilisation
(1400-1900 AD)
Fourth Civilization (2000...)
Technology
Agricultural instruments and irrigation.
Crafts and Agriculture
Industrial technology
Information technology and communication
Manufacturing Structures
Slave ownership
Colonies Feudal structures Manufactories
Factories and Concerns
Internally autonomated technologies and communications
Major forms of ownership
Slave ownership
Feudal
Private, Private monopolies
Socialised multi-sector
State forms of government
Empires
Migration, collapse of empires, city states
Nation states
Global world, local regional societies
Geo-political structure
Autonomous forms
-
Colonial system
bi-polar world
Polycentrism, global regulation
Culture
Autonomous civilisations
Cultural mixing via violence
National cultures
Multicultural society and global culture.
Table 2 shows that the common content is the result of new technology
but that it also affects the manufacturing structures, the forms of
ownership, political systems, culture and spiritual life. This also leads to
profound changes in the methods and forms of human interaction:
manufacturing forms, the means of exchange of the product of labour and the
definition of human consumption. A typical feature of the Fourth
Civilisation will be the trans-national corporations but not those of the
20th century. They will have a strongly decentralised and localised
structure. There may also be a boom of small and medium scale local
business. Another feature of the new era will be the parallel globalisation
of one part of manufacturing processes and localisation of other processes.
The entire analysis of the collapse of the old civilisation shows that this
process will be combined with the further development of international
cooperation of labour of the transnational and multi-national corporations.
Moreover, there is an emerging tendency for technological monopolies to
disappear and the decision making processes and profit allocation to be
decentralised. If this trend develops, the interdependence of the world will
not lead to a growth in international economic monopolism but to the
combination of globalisation and the development of local economic
structures.
I believe that the main feature which has undermined the Third
Civilisation and which will embody the Fourth is the growth in
communication. While the First Civilisation was characterised by primitive
agricultural technology, the Second Civilisation introduced a number of
crafts and the Third introduced industrial technologies, the main
determining feature of the new civilisation is the appearance of new forms
of communication and modern information and computer technology which have
revolutionised life. It is modern communications which have led to
globalisation and the gradual disappearance of the geo-political and
economic structures which were typical of the outgoing civilisation.
The Second half of the 20th century was a time of colossal development
in international transport, radio and telephone. During the last couple of
decades the most powerful new technologies of the new civilisation -
television and satellite communications, have begun to dominate the entire
world. Today there are over 1 billion televisions and 2.5 billions radios in
the world which are constantly bombarding us with information. Satellite
links have connected almost all the countries and peoples of the world in a
single flow of information. This phenomenon has also played an enormous role
in the areas of manufacturing and culture as well as in the social and
political life of almost every country in the world. There is practically no
area of life in which global communications have not exerted a renewing
influence. The environment in which the people of the Fourth civilisation
shall live is thousands of times more satiated with information than at any
time before and will lead to a qualitative change in the entire life of man,
his opportunities for work and participation within the cultural process of
life.
There is little doubt that the Fourth Civilisation will be
distinguished by a series of profound changes in the form of property
ownership. The typical type of ownership in the First Civilisation was
slavery. The Second Civilisation was dominated by Feudal Relations and
peasant farmers tied to the land. The Third Civilisation opened the way to
private ownership and monopolism and the exploitation of hired labour. The
key element of the new civilisation will be cooperative socialised ownership
and the integration of hundreds of millions and billions of people in common
forms of ownership and the simultaneous reduction in economic monopolism.
The key distinguishing feature of the Fourth Civilisation is the
emerging new world political order. During the First Civilisation the most
advanced ethnic groups and nations formed or established their own empires.
To this extent the First Civilisation was a time of great empires, permanent
wars and colonisation. Babylon and Greece, India and China, Macedonia and
Rome were typical examples of this. The collapse of empires was a result of
the crisis of the slave owning era. The entire Second Civilisation was the
time of the great migration of peoples, the destruction of certain states
and the appearance of new. During the period of the Third Civilisation, the
migration slowed down and stopped and the world population became stabilised
within the borders of nation states. It was at this historical moment that
the spiral of history once again began to revolve demonstrating that
rejection gives rise to further rejection and that epochs tend to reproduce
many of their qualities time after time at higher levels.
The end of the Third Civilisation is connected with a much large
migration of people than has hitherto been seen. This is the result of the
new forms of communication, transport, the opening up of countries and the
needs of world business. This trend has led to a reduction in the role of
the nation states and has made their borders more formal. After a process in
which the nation states united the whole of the world population within
their borders and after the stronger nation states established a world
colonial system based on expansionism, the opposite process is now
beginning. This process will lead to the gradual optimisation of the super
powers and the creation of more and more states which will play the role of
regional centres. I believe that political polycentrism will replace the
bi-polar world and will give rise to the need for global and mutually agreed
political and economic regulation.
Finally, I believe that there is another essential feature of the new
civilisation which deserves attention: the intensive cultural mixing and
formation of a global culture for the first time in the history of the
world. Together with this unique product of globalisation we will be obliged
to accept the principle of multi-cultural societies. This will lead to end
to violence and the imposition of certain cultures over others and the
creation of conditions for the mutual interaction of different cultures and
traditions. For the first time, today, but even more so in the future, we
shall be witnesses to the appearance of cultural and economic values which
will not belong to any one country. These will be phenomena which both in
terms of their origin and consequences will have a global character.
4. INEVITABILITY AND WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN.
I do not believe in the absolute determination of events. People have
not yet come to grips with the strength of their common creation. They are
still too weak in the face of nature. Nevertheless there are processes which
no-one can avoid...
I
t is quite clear that the Fourth Civilisation will not appear overnight
nor is it possible to specify a date when it will. It will appear gradually,
reshaping our daily lives, political and economic systems and geopolitical
and cultural processes. It would be frivolous to specify a deadline for the
advent of the new era. None of the civilisations which have existed until
now have appeared suddenly despite the dates and events which historians
like to use for their convenience.
There is also no doubt that the entire 21st century will be a time of
restructuring of the economic and political structures of the Third
Civilisation and of the narrowing of their influence and the increase in the
influence of the new civilisation. It is true that the nature of social
processes today is incomparably more dynamic than at any other time in
history. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that global
communications are much more rapid and widespread than ever before. This
facilitates the processes of globalisation and the restructuring of the
world economic and political life.
At the same time these dynamic processes could be stopped in their
tracks or rejected by a whole series delaying factors. I do not support the
idea of a priori optimism about the future and even less so the illusion
that the emerging new phenomena will impose themselves automatically without
direct human involvement. The inevitability of the advent of the new
civilisation comes from the complex character of its driving forces, from
its incessable expansion, its avant-garde technology and the irreversible
nature of the social and political reforms which began this century. Is it
not already clear that the Third Civilisation is collapsing in front of our
very eyes? Is it not evident that the dictatorial regimes and closed
national states are vaingloriously dying? Economic prosperity is possible
only when peoples are open to one another and the combined manufacturing and
cultural processes in the presence of new structures of ownership.
Almost the entire modern population of the world will experience
several decades of transition. In the most industrialised nations this will
last for 30 or 40 years. For the rest of the world about twice as long.
No-one can say exactly, since the rate of change depends exclusively on the
human factor and the level of our common awareness. These transitional
decades will be exciting but very difficult. There will be people who will
greet the changes with triumph, others will see only the difficulties and
will predict the end of the world. In reality the period oftransition will
be at the same time both progressive and difficult, dark and light, exciting
and dramatic. It is very important whether mankind will become aware of the
new direction or whether the modern intellectual elite of humanity will
understand the nature of change and will unite around it to recognise its
own responsibility.
If humanity and the world political and intellectual elite understand
the need for common activities and the coordination of efforts and if this
understanding is on a global rather than provincial and national level then
the laws of the Fourth Civilisation will be consolidated relatively quickly
and probably by the beginning of the 21st century we will be able to speak
of new geo-political and economic structures and specific dimension of the
new civilisation. There is another possible direction for world development
- for the changes to be disputed and halted, for us to continue to live with
the mentality of violence and the instincts of national domination. In this
event we will experience a multitude of conflicts, disputes and larger or
smaller wars. Each collapse of geopolitical structures creates not only the
powers of progress but also the conservative powers which delay and halt the
processes. This is also the case with the Third Civilisation. There is no
doubt that at the end of the 20th century and during the final years of the
second millennium, humanity is entering a new age. The main question is
whether we will be worthy of this new age - this interesting and complex
time in which we are living.
Chapter 6
THE PARAMETERS OF THE NEW SYNTHESIS
1. THE SOCIALISATION AND DEREGULATION OF OWNERSHIP
Private ownership will be a characteristic element of the Third
Civilisation. All attempts at the nationalisation of private ownership have
been purely illusory. Despite this the nature of property, including private
property, is changing.
W
hen I speak of the new synthesis as the methodology of analysis of the
modern world, I mean above all the changes in the way of thinking which were
typical of the 19th and 20th centuries. The new theoretical synthesis is a
result of the real processes taking place in society in the 20th century,
the consequence of technology and ownership. Here I support entirely the
theory of Karl Marx who was the first to prove beyond a doubt the link
between technology (manufacturing powers) and ownership (manufacturing
relations). There is no doubt that this methodological connection is also
supported by modern social phenomena and processes. Changes in technology
render certain forms of management ineffective and replace certain forms of
ownership with others. The mass of small scale producers of goods in the
19th century were connected with factory production. The large investments
in rail transport, the production of steel and electrical energy at the
beginning of the 20th century stimulated the development of trusts and large
scale enterprises leading to the domination of monopolistic ownership. At
the end of the 20th century new computer and communications technology gave
rise to integrated and decentralised production. In this way ownership has
been a driving force in the development of social systems.
The authors of the theory of the management revolution believe that in
the modern world the significance of ownership has declined and that
authority is now only linked with direct management. In other words, it is
not the class of property owners but the class of managers which governs the
economic life of society. George Galbraith saw ownership only as one of the
sources of power. "Ownership today," he wrote, "does not have the same
universal significance as a source of power, but this does not mean that it
has lost all its significance."[40] A.Toffler went further. In
his book "Forecasts and preconditions"[41] he reached the
conclusion that ownership is just a left-wing mania and that in the society
of new technology the main thing is not property but information. I find
such notions inadequate In an analogous way the ideologues of communism
believed, and many of them today persist in believing, that during the
processes of economic development ownership would disappear and take with it
the class divisions of society. In the communist meaning of the word,
ownership disappears completely because the "entire ownership of property
shall become public" and the products of labour are allocated "from everyone
according to his possibilities and to everyone according to his needs". I
believe that there is no point in criticising a viewpoint which was never
sustained by the realities of life.
In place of the determining role of ownership in power Alvin Toffler
substitutes the role of information. This idea indeed deserves further
attention. He who considers himself the source of information is the bearer
of power rather than he who is the owner of the means of production. It
should, however, be noted that this approach is still concerned with
ownership as something which guarantees power. Therefore, we are not
speaking of the removal of ownership (property) but a change in the object
of this ownership. In the First Civilisation, people owned the primitive
instruments of labour, in the Second Civilisation ownership attained the
level of manufactories and in the Third Civilisation ownership to the level
of large scale industrial complexes.In the Fourth Civilisation, however, the
question of ownership will relate to the means of information gathering and
provision and the means for the conservation and transfer of this
information. But is this not once again some form of ownership or some form
of property? Managers of modern corporations exercise their rights of
ownership upon thousands and quite frequently, hundreds of thousands of
other owners. They are the combined expression of these rights not only
because they own management information but also because this property by
being divided between many people is integrated by the owners themselves.
Consequently ownership has not disappeared but has taken on new forms which
will lead to new social consequences.
While people and society exist there will always be forms of property
and ownership. While production and consumption exist there will always be
relationships of possession, use and disposal, or in other words, ownership.
It is no accident that such categories have been preserved from Roman times
to our days. Ownership is and remains the foundation for the construction of
social structures, including the structures of power, the structure and the
nature of human society. For this reason, when we speak of the transition
from one civilisation to another and a new ideological and theoretical
synthesis this is also inevitable in ownership relations. Thus, just as in
ancient Rome where the ownership of large numbers of slaves meant greater
power and in the 19th century the ownership of machinery and factories
equated to greater social authority, then today the ownership of new forms
of technology guarantees new forms of authority within society itself.
Therefore, when speaking of the dimensions of the new synthesis then we
ought also to speak of the trends and changes in the ownership relations.
Modern changes in ownership can be examined both globally and
nationally, micro-economically and macro-economically. Moreover, these
changes should be examined historically as trends which were born during the
Third Civilisation and will come to fruition with the advent of the Fourth
Civilisation.
Why should the evolution of ownership give us grounds to speak of such
fusions and synthesis? As early as the middle of the 19th century when
private ownership was already established as the dominant force, a series of
theoreticians were aware that private ownership was undergoing change. The
greater the accumulated material benefits of ownership the greater the
integration of large numbers of property owners which eventually lead to the
concentration and centralisation of property in the hands of fewer people.
This trend persisted throughout the whole of the 19th century and
undoubtedly lead to the transition from the stage of free competition to the
stage of monopolisation of the market and its division amongst the
wealthiest owners.
The conclusion which the followers of Marx arrived at in response to
this issue was for the specific period logical. They concluded that
monopolisation destroys free competition, mutates development and opens the
way for the socialist revolution. For Lenin, Trotskiy and, in particular,
for Stalin the socialisation of ownership was tantamount to nationalisation,
for all private property to come under the control of the authority of the
workers peasants. It is now clear that this approach led to the real
desocialisation of ownership and its alienation from people. In Western
Europe and the United States the ownership development trends moved in the
opposite direction. Anti-monopoly legislation was introduced and the
practice of stimulating small and medium scale business was developed along
wtih the expansion small shareholder.
I find this process a brilliant confirmation of the thesis of the
dialectics of socialisation and autonomation as well as the unity of the two
categories of globalisation and localisation. However, there is also another
possible conclusion which is equally important - the process of
socialisation can and must develop not by means of nationalisation but by
means of market forces. Lenin's prediction that the over-concentration of
capital would increase the contradictions of capitalism which would collapse
of its own accord did not come true. The concentration and centralisation of
capital have a definite limit beyond which the process of autonomation and
deregulation begins anew. The whole of the history of mankind is filled with
such waves of concentration and then autonomation of social structures.
Let us take a look at a number of major trends in the development of
property during the last three or four decades. The first of these is the
change of environment in which the private property owner finds himself. At
the end of the 20th century the private owner in Scandinavia, Germany,
France or the USA has nothing in common with the private owner of the 19th
century. A whole series of social laws oblige the private entrepreneur to
observe the laws of a minimum wage, health and safety, social security,
environmental requirements, training and re-training of staff etc.. Small,
medium and large-scale property owners have found themselves in an entirely
new market and social context. Their activities are influenced by consumer
councils, quality control, trade unions, independent media etc..
The totalitarian regime persisted in maintaining a distance between
"national ownership" and "the ownership of all workers and peasants" and its
citizens. The industrialised nations of the West, however, shortened the
distance between ownership and the mass of the people. The change in the
environment, control via market forces and anti-monopoly legislation
increased the unilateral nature of private and social interests. In the
1980's the owner of small shop in Bordeaux, Boston or Gutheburg was much
more socialised and integrated within society than the director of a state
shop in socialist Bulgaria or Czechoslovakia. The "private" owner is subject
to more social rules than his counterpart in a state shop. The private owner
cannot change prices at a whim, he has to observe very strict rules relating
to discipline, hygiene, the police and, most importantly, competition which
requires him to aspire to the highest possible levels. On the contrary, the
director of a state shop is dependent only on senior management and is
little interested in the consumers or local public opinion.
I remember a shop in the suburb of Sofia where I lived in the 1970's
and 1980's. It was dirty and inconvenient. The staff were impolite and rude.
Everyone in the area was dissatisfied but they were obliged to do their
shopping there. There was no other choice and little possibility of the
staff being replaced. Similar examples can be given in all areas of state
owned bureaucracies. The conclusion is obvious: nationalisation does not
mean socialisation. Administrative and bureaucratic control is not a
guarantee for citizens to assume ownership responsibility.
This alienation was the specific basis for the collapse of the Eastern
European totalitarian regimes but emphasises the general trend which is
taking place in the West as well. This is a trend towards the socialisation
of ownership or, in other words, the more complete integration of private
owners into civil society. This process manifests itself via the increase in
horizontal control upon free private activity: through competition;
international integration of millions of owners and, what is by far and away
the most important element, the direct involvement of millions and millions
of citizens as owners and co-owners of the means of production.
In the East powerful state ownership isolated the majority of its
citizens from the ownership of the means of production, in the West, as a
result of the opposite process, people felt more involved in the system and
in society. Albeit to varying extents, citizens' involvement in private
ownership was the most common feature of all the developed Western
countries. Initially, this was a faltering process, resembling "peoples'
capitalism", but with time this trend became more and more tangible and grew
in strength. In 1929, there were a little over 1 million shareholders in the
USA with a share value of about 1.5 billion dollars. By the mid 1980's there
were 42 million individual share owners[42]. Although they mainly
represent small share packages, the trend is indicative. On the other hand,
through their involvement in pension funds, the citizens of the USA own a
significant part of the share capital of the country. It is a relatively
well-known fact that the pension funds of the USA own about 25% of the
shares of all the major companies traded on the major world stock exchanges.
We might take a look at the shareholders in the large industrial
companies in Germany (see table 3). Although as in the USA, France or the
UK, the majority of shareholders are small and their votes exert hardly any
influence on company management, these figures are very indicative. They
show a stable trend affecting all sides of life.
Table 3
The number of individual shareholders in the ten largest German
companies.[43]
Branch
Company
No.Shareholders
Share of ind.shareholders
Other major owners
Automobile, aviation, electronics
Daimler Benz
470,000
62.7%
Deutsche Bank (24.4%) The Government of Kuwait (12.9)
Electronics, telecommu-nications
Simenz
607,000
over 90%
The Simenz family (7%)
Automobiles
Volkswagen
none
over 80%
The government of Lower Saxony (16%)
Energy production, Transport
Bebe Holding
405,000
none
Allianz Holding (12%)
Energy production, petrol
RWE AG
210,000
none
Local governments
Chemical industry
BASF
370,000
over 85%
Allianz Gruppe (14.4%)
Chemical industry
Bayer AG
295,000
over 60%
Banks and Insurance companies (38%)
Mettalurgy, commerce
Tissen AG
240,000
64.9%
Foundations and families (35%)
Machine production, telecommu-nications
Manesman AG
200,000
Over 95%
-
Energy Production
Chemical Production
Transport
WIAG AG
100,000
45-50%
Government of Bavaria, banks
Although differing in some specific details, the situation in Japan is
somewhat similar. The anti-monopoly measures introduced in Japan directly
after the Second World War changed the economic structure of the country and
deprived the most powerful Japanese families (Mizui, Mitsubishi, Sumimoto
etc.) of direct control over management. Over the past 30-40 years the
Japanese directors have used their joint efforts to create a number of very
powerful conglomerates combining the concentration of resources with strong
decentralisation in the decision-making processes. Moreover, from a formal
point of view, private ownership has been separated from management via a
tiered system of share-holding involvement. I would like here to mention a
Japanese study carried out in the 1970's but which is still applicable
today. In a classification of 189 large Japanese enterprises carried out on
the basis of type of ownership, 90% of them were controlled by senior
management on the basis of long-term empowerment rights entrusted to them by
the shareholders (table 4). Of course, here as everywhere in the
industrialised world, the "ownership" was distributed amongst hundreds of
thousands and millions of people making it expedient for it to be conceded
to management. I relate these trends in the development of the world in
general to the changes in what we refer to as democracy and technical
progress. The new trends in ownership on a world scale have been stimulated
throughout the 20th century by the clear impossibility of guarantee
uncontroversial development without the need for bridging the enormous gap
between the poor and the rich and the exploitation trap. On the other hand,
changes in ownership have been stimulated also by the need for greater
efficiency and also the technological changes of the past 20-30 years.
Table 4
Classification of 189 major Japanese corporations according to type of
ownership
Type of ownership and control
Number of companies
% of the total
Private ownership
0
0
Ownership of the majority of the capital
3
2
Ownership by shareholders owning up to 10-50% of the capital
17
8
Control by senior management
169
90
Total
189
100
Source: T.Kono. Strategy and Structure of Japanese Enterprises
McMillan, 1987, p.51.
On the basis of an analysis of the experience of the most developed 7
or 8 countries the following generalisations can be made:
First. The world is undergoing a slow but steady process of
socialisation of private ownership or the transition of private ownership
into a new social framework as a result of the development of labour
legislation, competition, market structures, financial capital and the
intermixing of millions of enterprises and their finances. To this extent
the socialisation of ownership is inseparable from the progress and the
development of history in general.
Second. If private ownership is subjected to constant socialisation
this is due to the involvement of a growing number of people as owners and
co-owners of the means of production. Through the involvement of a growing
number of shareholders the ownership of the large economic structures
becomes diffused and the significance of the large family properties becomes
reduced.
Third. The management of ownership is subjected simultaneously to two
trends - socialisation or the combination of millions of owners in common
systems (or common regulations) and deregulation caused by the impossibility
of large socialised ownership to be centrally managed. Ownership is divided
between more and more people in the world. It is managed in a more
decentralised manner but it is also socialised through the voluntary
combination of millions of individual properties.
Fourth. The technological and social processes came into conflict with
the alienated form of ownership which existed in the Eastern European
countries until 1989. Inequality amongst the people living in the conditions
of totalitarian socialism led not only to a lack of stability and social
guarantees but also to alienation from authority and ownership. From a
purely formal point of view, all the citizens of these countries were the
owners of the means of production but in reality ownership was exercised by
a minority.
Fifth. The opening up of the world and globalisation have provided the
stimulus to international forms of ownership, to the intermixing of more and
more private, share-holding and mixed forms of capital.
These five irreversible trends are a direct expression of what I would
call a new synthesis. Private ownership in the manner in which the classic
proponents of political economics of the 19[th] century portrayed
it is dead. Social ownership or the "ownership of the people" as advocated
by Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev no longer exists. It is practically absurd to
make contrasts between social systems divided on the basis of private versus
socialised ownership. Other forms of ownership which typify the genesis of
the Fourth Civilisation are coming onto the agenda. It is easiest to refer
to this type of ownership as "mixed". When in the 1950's and 1960's
P.Samuelson first used this term, it appeared at the time to be correct. At
that time the level of socialisation and autonomisation of ownership was at
such a level that the processes of "mixing" had indeed begun. However, this
was rather a fusion of state and private property (Western Europe and Japan)
and the large family enterprises and millions of private owners in the USA.
In the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's the process of deregulation and
socialisation of ownership entered a new phase caused by the acceleration of
globalisation, the appearance of new integrating technologies and the
related social processes. For this reason, to continue to use the
intermediate term "mixed ownership", in my opinion is inappropriate. There
is little doubt that today and in coming decades we shall have many, many
types of "mixed ownership". Mixed ownership is a recurrent theme during the
entire duration of the transition from the Third to the Fourth Civilisation.
Nevertheless it is a remnant of the past, a combination of the two
predominant forms of ownership which existed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
A typical feature of the Third Civilisation was private individual
ownership. For the duration of the transition between the Third and Fourth
Civilisations, the typical features will be the differing forms of mixed
ownership. A typical feature of the Fourth Civilisation will be integrated
(socialised) and multi-sector ownership.
By the term "integrated ownership" I do not mean corporate ownership
but the completion of the processes of corporatisation. Integrated ownership
is maximally individualised and maximally socialised ownership.
Individualised - with individualised rights (decision making, control,
profit sharing). Socialised - as a system of juridical, economic, social and
moral standards which each owner is obliged to observe and which places
individual, group, national and global interests in a common dimension.
Today the thousands of computerised companies involved in management,
software, legal services provide a prototype for the future. Their success
is due to the horizontal structures of management, share-holding involvement
in ownership, mutuality and the realisation of a commonality of interests.
These have been the dominant trends within the majority of modern companies
since the 1980's. They no longer have a single distinct owner as a result of
the appearance of a multitude of new industrial and institutional ownerships
in the industrial and financial corporations. Modern corporations, however,
are not only losing their single family owner, they are at the same time
restoring many of the rights of the professional shareholders and, most
significantly, control over management and allocation of profit.
To give an illustration of this I will use the well structured approach
of the American researcher D.Margota (table 5). While during the period from
the 1930's to the 1980's responsibility (management) and control gradually
passed into the hands of the managers, after the 1980's the predominant
trend has been for control to pass into the hands of the shareholders.
Computer technology and modern management schemes have allowed for these
developments. In general terms, modern corporations have been obliged
constantly to increase their capital. One result of this has been the
closure and disintegration of family ownership, the decentralisation of
management and control and the impositon of more and more rules from
"without". In the 1930's - 1980's we underwent a management revolution.
After the 1980's the revolution developed into two parallel revolutions -
globalisation and the blue collar revolution. The role of the highly skilled
worker has become more prevalent in ownership and control and will continue
to increase in significance in the coming decades.
Table 5
The development of control and responsibility in modern corporations.
Corporations pre 1930
Corporations 1930-1980
Corporations post 1980
Owner/Manager
Ownership, control, responsibility, (management)
-
-
Managers (non-owners)
-
Control
Responsibility (management)
Responsibility (management)
Owners of shares, employed in corporations
Ownership
Ownership
Ownership, control
Individual external owners
Ownership
Ownership
Ownership
Source: D. Margotta, The Separation of Ownership and Responsibility in
the Modern Corporation.
Business Horizons, Jan-Feb, 1989
What is happening in the millions of small and medium juridically
independent companies? In Western Europe, Japan and the USA they have been
appearing as spin-offs from the larger companies or entering into the
periphery of large-scale production processes within the distribution,
commercial or financial systems. The ideal private owner died at some time
between 1950 and 1970. The era of the old Grandee or other Balsacian hero
who spent every evening counted out his profits has passed. The time of the
standardised and integrated owner has come. He buys his franchise from
"Pizza Hut" or makes plastic mouldings for "General Motors" or sells pears
to "Kaufman". Everything and everyone is already involved in integrated and
intermixed forms of ownership. All are already socialised to some extent. If
anyone remains unintegrated, he will either die or become a member of the
group of social outsiders who are of use to no-one.
I have been speaking here of the determining trends which have come to
us from the industrialised nations and about what drives the transition and
defines tomorrow. Why do I believe that despite the enormous differences in
the economic levels of different countries these trends will impose
themselves? The reason is that these are trends which have appeared as a
result of modern technology, from the character of globalisation and which
have been valid for four fifths of world manufacturing history. Of course,
different societies will approach the common features of the Fourth
Civilisation gradually from different starting points and on different
paths. There is no doubt, however, about their common fate. This is the fate
of progress...
2. POST-CAPITALISM
In November 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down everyone proclaimed the
victory of capitalism. In actual fact, capitalism was itself beginning to
draw its last breath - slowly and quietly dying like a victorious warrior.
T
here are no frozen social systems, or eternal mechanisms of government.
The most dynamic element is technology and the least dynamic - economic
relations. The most lasting and conservative elements are the political
systems. However, there is no such thing as an eternal system. Capitalism
passed through an early feudal stage, reached its height when free
competition dynamised the whole system and then fell victim to the struggles
between empires, two world wars and hundreds of colonial wars.
Daniel Bell quotes a quite remarkable thought by the Arab philosopher
Ibn Haldun, "Societies pass through specific phases whose transformations
are a symptom of their own fall[44]. This is true of every
society. They develop, they achieve a certain level of progress and reach
their own heights of development. Then all . societies destroy themselves.
This does not always happen through revolutions, turbulence and violence but
through reforms and reformation of the roots and culture of life. Capitalism
in Western Europe and North America was different from capitalism in Japan
and probably more distinct from the forms of capitalism in Latin America.
Today there are similar processes taking place everywhere. They are perhaps
more rapid and remarkable in the USA, Europe and Japan, more anaemic in
Brazil and Argentina and more accelerated in South Korea etc..
What were the typical characteristics of capitalism? In the 19th
century and up until to the middle of the 20th century they were the
division of society into the bourgeoisie and proletariate: the growing
differentiation between the poor and the rich; the domination of economic
and political life by a group of monopolists and nationalism and colonialism
aimed at the economic and political division of the world. There are no
doubt many other features of capitalism which could be added. However, these
are the main features of what remains of classical capitalism.
The transformations of ownership mentioned above demonstrate clearly
that the bourgeoisie which existed 40-50 or even 100 years ago practically
no longer exists. It is not a homogenous class with a dominant place in
society or a single, unified attitude to the means of production, as Lenin
might have called it. The class of the rich has not disappeared in the USA,
Japan or in Germany. However, it is different in essence and character. Most
importantly, the traditional owners of the means of production are of much
less significance and have been replaced by managers, associated groups of
small and medium owners, media magnates, the stars of show business and
innovators. The division, diffusion and socialisation of ownership has lead
to the decay of the bourgeoisie. It has disintegrated into different groups
sometimes with conflicting interests. Significantly, the origin of ownership
is no longer based solely on inheritance. Indeed, the majority of the
wealthiest people mentioned in "Forbes" have not inherited their wealth but
have accumulated it as a result of their own enterprise. The most famous
example of this is Bill Gates, the creator and owner of MicroSoft. The old
bourgeoisie has its successors in the same way as the feudal aristocracy has
its own exotic representatives. None of these, however, fall within these
categories. One group of the former bourgeoisie which has not managed to
adapt to the requirements of modern competition has begun to resemble the
middle class in terms of income and way of life.
There have been more serious changes in what Marx and Engels referred
to in the 19th century as the "proletariate". In the 1930's and 1940's the
proletariate in the USA and Europe was still an homogenous group with a
clear place in society. Today, this class and even such a social group does
not exist. Technological progress has led to the disappearance of the
proletariate and divided it into different social groups. A large number of
former proletarians are now involved in the growing services sector. Today,
the number of traditional factory workers has declined to 20-25% of the
active population in the majority of the industrialised countries. The
workers themselves are more diversified and many of them are now employed in
intellectual rather than physical labour. "Intellectual workers and those
employed in the services sector", wrote P.Drucker with justification, "are
not classes in the traditional meaning of the word".[45] Neither
are they the proletariate in the Marxist meaning of the word. It is no
accident that the movements of employees and trade unions in the most
developed industrialised countries during the last 15-20 years have reduced
significantly.
In the most developed 24 countries of the world there is a large group
of citizens, in some cases more than 50-60% of the population with
relatively stable middle-incomes which permit a high standard of living. On
the other hand the ratio in income between the richest and the poorest has
begun gradually to reduce. 60 or 70 years ago the incomes of the richest
families were ten or more, even hundred time greater than the average
incomes of the poor. According to the statistics of the World Bank at the
end of the 1980's, the ratio of income between the richest and the poorest
20% of the population was as follows: USA 7.5; Japan 4.3; Germany 5.0;
Belgium 4.6; France 7.7 and Italy 7.1. The number of the extremely wealthy
and the extremely poor has begun to reduce significantly. There have been
changes in the social conditions of the unemployed. Social benefits for
pensioners and young people in Austria, for example, have reached levels
unheard of in Eastern Europe.
I am far from convinced that the developed nations of the West and
Japan have resolved all their social problems or that they have created an
harmonious society. I can, however, state clearly that the foundations of
capitalism have been destroyed and that the Western European countries have
outgrown capitalism. They are now in the process of transition to something
different, something new and clearly demonstrated by the evolution of the
market and market relations. The liberal market of the 19th and 20th
centuries was the basis of mature capitalism. Its zenith was symbolised by
the boom of electricity, internal combustion engines and the charm of Paris
by night. The main feature of the market was the free exchange of goods, the
formation of market values and, consequently, the stimulation of one or
other type of production. Monopolisation of production has modified the
basic categories of the market but has not abolished its role as the main
regulator of economic life. The major question is the development of the
market after the boom of small and medium scale business, demonoplisation
and the computer revolution. I believe that we are at the beginning of a
process of transition from post-monopolistic market to a situation of
horizontal market relations. I believe that J. K. Galbraith was the first to
turn his attention to such an idea. Many people who clearly seem to be used
to the concept of the market find it difficult to believe that this great
invention of the Third Civilisation might be replaced by something else.
Indeed, the market will not be replaced by any form of ready-made
committee-designed model. The market will simply be revolutionised by new
technology and the replacement of traditional supply and demand by the
super-organised planning of consumption, its stimulation and satisfaction
with a perfect system of organised manufacturing. In the developed countries
entire sectors of the markets are already being traded as futures; stock
exchanges react to the smallest of changes, managers act within the tightest
of limits and if they get it wrong they simply leave the game. This is true
of the automobile and plane building industries, space technology, computers
and practically types of high technology as well as many other sectors.
Credit cards, smart cards, cash dispensing machines and all methods of
electronic payment have been extremely influential on the transformation of
the market. They may by some be considered as merely new forms of market
mechanisms. However, in my opinion these technological innovations have
outlined a trend towards a transition from the basic market mechanisms to
principally new social relations and a new state of the market. For the
moment these are still only trends in the most developed parts of the world.
However, the improvement in efficiency which they offer will lead to their
inevitable expansion to other parts of the world in the same way as
electricity or the radio and television.
New computers and communication technologies have a multiplying effect
on all countries and markets. They are the basis of the fundamental changes
in the way in which business in done. This has led to a change in the nature
of supply and demand and the transition from the "trade in goods" to the
"trade in ideas". It will not be too far into the future when new computer
networks will allow consumers to place their orders even before a particular
article is produced, at the stage of its inception and design.
Consumers will become the managers of production. They will reject what
they consider unnecessary and predetermine the type, quantity and quality of
goods. In California there is already a computer trade network where
consumers can order goods in this way.The stage of exchange will become
strongly modified and the market will become a bridge between demand and
manufacture.
At the beginning of the 1950's Joseph Stalin in one his most
"remarkable" works[46] predicted the disappearance of the
relationship between goods and money. His approach of destroying money
through total nationalisation inflicted heavy damage to many Eastern
European nations and Asian peoples. By destroying the market and money
through bureaucracy, Stalin and his followers also destroyed freedom and man
himself. In 1986 in one of my early works I wrote that "money-goods
relations will disappear only when they reach the peak of their development,
when the market itself reaches a stage of perfection and not by moving
against the current of development." I believe that a similar process is
taking place today. With our new computer networks we now have the
exceptional opportunity of changing the nature of exchange and removing
inequality and monopolistic profits. I do not doubt that the new computer
networks (such as the Internet) will create a revolution in the market and
will transform us into an amazingly well organised environment for the
exchange of needs, ideas, opportunities and goods. Such possibilities are
being predicted for the financial markets and relations between banks and
between banks and their customers. At the beginning of 1996 the founder of
MicroSoft, Bill Gates outlined in one of his articles some exciting new
ideas which would revolutionise banking. No-one, not the bankers or the
corporations or small and medium business, not even show business or the
individual can ignore these changes.
What is happening to the capitalist society? Gradually, slowly, it is
become uprooted and changing its basic nature. P.Drucker came to the
conclusion that capitalist society is being re-born into a society of
knowledge and a society of organisations. I agree entirely with his use of
the term "the post-capitalist society".[47]
The question whether the most developed societies in Europe, America
and Japan have turned into societies of organisations is clearly much more
complex. Undoubtedly the process of globalisation which is taking place at
the moment via the transnational corporations (organisations) limits the
nation state while increasing their own role. However, I feel that this is
an inadequate description of post-capitalist societies under change.
I would make the following generalisation: there four major processes
which have changed and will further change the nature of capitalist
societies. The first of them is the socialisation and re-distribution of
ownership. The second is the profound nature of the changes in the social
and class structures, the disappearance of traditional classes and the
appearance of new social strata. The third is the integration of the market
economy and the replacement of the typical capitalist market with a highly
organised system of exchange and distribution of goods. The fourth is the
limitation of the role of the nation state and the globalisation and growth
in the role of organisations (manufacturing and non-manufacturing).
All these processes have progressed so far at the end of the 20th
century that it is possible already to speak of the evolutionary renaissance
of the capitalist society and the existence of post-capitalist relations in
all the industrialised countries (with the exception of the ex-communist).
Of course, there are slight structural exceptions, e.g. the management and
structural models of the USA and Japan. I also accept the distinguishing
features of the American and the Rhine model (Germany, France, Austria
etc.). There is, however, no doubt that all four processes are taking place
in the industrialised countries and a consequence of the global market is
that the differences between them are constantly reducing. They will not
disappear completely, in fact some of them may produce other differences.
Nevertheless, the common movement towards a new civilisation will continue.
Capitalism is indeed dying. Proudly and quietly, like a victorious
warrior in a pyrric victory.
3. POST-COMMUNISM
The post-communist countries had three possible directions of
development: backwards to the ashen illusions of neo-communism; forwards to
primitive capitalism; or towards the challenges of the Fourth Civilisation.
D
uring the first years after the collapse of the Eastern European
totalitarian regimes, certain more avid supporters of the former communist
parties began to state publicly their beliefs that communist ideology after
all was not such a bad thing and that in reality communism had not really
been implemented properly. The systems which had existed in Russia and the
other smaller Eastern European countries had been a mutated form of
socialist ideas. They developed their beliefs that at some time in the
future communism might reappear. These are not only the ideas of demagogues,
but hypocrites. It is true that the society which existed in Eastern Europe
was, according to official doctrines, not "communist" but "socialist", and
that this was the "first stage of communism", the "first, lowest stage of
communism". All of us who lived at that time in Eastern Europe had to
believe that sooner or later the "glorious future" would arrive. I mention
this at the beginning since I have met critics who categorically reject the
term "post-communism". Nevertheless, the term post-communist means that
communism has been overcome and that it will never return. It is not only a
rejection of a doctrine but also a specific way of thinking.
The post-communist period for the whole of Eastern Europe, Russia and
to a large extent such countries as China and Cuba is indeed unique. Not to
understand this uniqueness is one of the greatest errors of the 20th century
which has caused and will continue to cause much damage to the Eastern
European nations. When I speak of uniqueness, I mean that at the end of the
1980's the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia possessed an
integrated material and technological infrastructure. At that time the GDP
per head of population in Eastern Europe was between 2 and 6 thousand
dollars, i.e. at the level of the medium developed countries. At the time of
the changes these countries had a well-educated population, highly developed
culture and significant social benefits.
Should the post-communist countries have accepted the ideology and
forms of development more typical of primitive capitalism? Everything which
I have said until now is a clear indication that the global changes at the
end of the 20th century have a common, civilising approach not merely a
change of regime in Eastern Europe. There were two main choices for the
post-communist countries after the failure of perestroika: either to reject
their past and begin afresh with the development of capitalism or to join
the common movement towards a new civilisation. The first of these paths was
more attractive in terms of ideology but much more short-sighted. The second
meant to accept the forms of development of post-capitalism and on this
basis to begin the conscious reconstruction of the former socialist
societies.
In practice the revolutionaries of 1989 did not stop to ponder this
dilemma. The collapse of perestroika threw the Eastern European countries
into political battles, conflicts and the collapse not only of the
totalitarian structures but also of the major management, industrial and
social mechanisms. This collapse in practice led to the universal
predomination of emotions and political conflicts over rational and sensible
economic changes. In the first few months after the fall of the Berlin wall,
in Prague, Sofia and in Bucharest nothing was sacred. Their entire past
history was rejected - decades during which several hundred million people
had lived were rejected. The old nomenclature was purged in the most
impulsive manner and replaced by new, inexperienced leaders. It took some
time for emotions to settle and for the stress of the "gentle revolutions"
to subside.
On the whole 1989--1991 in Eastern Europe was the beginning of an
abrupt, impulsive process of capital accumulation. For a certain period a
number of extreme anti-communist movements gained popularity. Some wanted
revenge, other wanted radical revolutionary reforms. The movements copied to
greater or lesser extents the solutions and models of the beginning of
capitalist development. As a result, all the Eastern European countries
found themselves facing similar phenomena - falling production, the
destruction of regional economic links, widespread crime and corruption and
the indiscriminate re-distribution of capital. These phenomena were
particularly marked in Russia, Bulgaria, Albania and to a certain extent in
Rumania. The countries of the Visegrad group and Slovenia were less
affected.
The greatest contradiction of the "liberal" anti-communist model was
the re-distribution of ownership. For half a century (in Russia 70 years)
the citizens of Eastern Europe had lived in conditions of uniformity and the
domination of egalitarian ideas. To a large extent the gentle revolutions of
the end of the 1980's were based economically on the fact that the communist
elite had accrued vast privileges for themselves and had become transformed
into an economically dominant social stratum. This was the pre-dominant
propaganda which was used in the majority of the Eastern European countries
in 1989-1990.
For the same reasons the populations of these countries did not accept
the rapid disintegration of society into rich and poor and the usurping of
former "socialist" property by a small group of the nouveaux riches.
Legislation guaranteeing the restitution of property in Bulgaria, Rumania,
Hungary and elsewhere created in many people a sense of revenge. Even after
the processes of mass privatisation in the Czech Republic and Russia the
majority of the population felt deceived and did not receive any direct
economic dividends