/View.info/ In October 1990 I gave a lecture at Columbia University. One of the attendees sarcastically asked, “Don’t you think the bell tolls for Communism?” I told him that John Donne has a poem where there is such a stanza, Hemingway used it as an epigraph: “Never ask for whom the bell tolls. The bell is tolling for you!” I meant that the destruction of the Soviet system is the beginning of the end of your system, in 10-15 years. The audience laughed… But in 2008 the crisis really came. The crisis that was predicted in the West in the early 1980s.
And now the question arises, for whom does the bell toll? It fights for the existing world system. And if Russia remains mentally, economically, socially in such a relaxed form a part of this world, then the bell will toll for her as well.
Another thing is that if Russia was not part of this world, but was, say, a socialist system in itself, everything would be different. As expected in the American forecasts of the early 1980s.
In the early 1980s, Reagan commissioned forecasts from three groups of economists for the next 15 years. And they came to absolutely identical conclusions, after which they summed up the total result together. The forecast was as follows: a “double-edged” crisis is ahead – 1987-1992/93. Production was expected to fall in the capitalist segment by 20-25%, in the socialist segment – by 10-12%.
The political result of this whole story for the West was the coming to power of the Communists in Italy and France, alone or in alliance with leftist forces. In the United Kingdom, the Labor left is back. And in the USA – no one returned anywhere, but black riots broke out in all major cities.
There was a separate prediction for the Soviet system: it should have gone through this crisis much more easily. But it happened as it did. Capitalism was not built, but we suffered from its sores, be healthy. The people who built criminal capitalism are at best suffering from the ills of global capitalism.
Apparently, this period in the history of mankind, which was characterized by rapid growth, is ending forever. I am referring to the technical breakthrough that tentatively goes from the middle of the 18th century to the 80s of the 20th century.
It should be said that after the Neolithic Revolution, economic growth in ancient, during the Middle Ages, in Asian societies was 0.2% per year. That was the symptom. And suddenly there was a jerk! But this surge is indeed coming to an end.
This does not mean that tomorrow everyone will switch to a pre-industrial economy. But it means that there really is a certain limit. Basically, this is nothing new for those who once, in the 60s, followed the conferences in Byurakan, here in Armenia, devoted to the search for extraterrestrial civilizations.
There has been much discussion about whether we are alone in the universe. And essentially the viewpoints of Stanislav Lem and our astronomer Shklovsky collided. Lem said, “we’re alone.” Shklovsky said, “To hell with us in the whole universe.”
But Kardashev, who created his own typology of extraterrestrial civilizations, found a third solution. He said that “we are alone in the sense that the technical phase of any civilization cannot last longer than a certain time.” His hypothetical scheme is very important for us now, for the prospects for the development of Earth civilization and the post-capitalist system.
As Kardashev himself said, our modern system – capitalism / socialism together – uses only 0.16 of the planet’s energy potential. And there is practically no prospect of using anything more.
This does not mean that development stops there. Or it doesn’t mean we have to apply the Club of Rome and Schwab version. Because Schwab really, with the exception of shareholder capitalism, did not invent anything new compared to the swindlers of the Club of Rome.
I remind you that the Club of Rome was founded in 1968. Formally, it was created by three people – Alexander King (Great Britain), Aurelio Peccei, representing the Vatican, as well as the South German and North Italian elite, and Germaine Guiciani. He was the son-in-law of Kosygin and the son of the only deputy of Beria, who was not shot, but only removed the epaulettes and orders.
The Club of Rome was one of the means of infiltration of the Soviet nomenclature, when in the second half of the 60s it de facto abandoned the real construction of communism, de facto (in ideology, of course, no one said this), in the capitalist system.
There were two organizational modes of integration. This was the structure “Network” and also “Firm” of Pitovranov. And the second is the Club of Rome.
The Club of Rome already in 68-69 began to prepare the first report “The Limits of Growth” on the model of Forrester’s “One World”. And even then it was clear what model we were talking about – reduction of consumption, reduction of the planet’s population.
The most interesting thing is that at the same time an alternative system was developed in the Soviet Union. In 1965, at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute “V.I. Lenin” a laboratory for the analysis of system development of systems was established (“Laboratory of systems for management of systems development”, abbreviated “LaSURs”). It was run by an absolutely fantastic guy. He is little known, but I think that someday Russia will be marked in the second half of the 20th century with the name of this man – Pobysk Kuznetsov.
They developed their own model of world system development. If there were five variables and capital in The Limits to Growth, there were 30 variables here. And a person who has seen both versions would say that “LaSURs” was written by a very intelligent Ph.D., and “Limits to Growth” by an excellent student. According to the LaSURs model, the system goes into an asymptotic regime, but it can feed up to 30 billion people.
Then a lot of interesting things happened. The leaders of LaSURs were accused of wasting money. Pobisk Kuznetsov was expelled from the party and exiled to the Serbian Institute. His friends got him out of there, then brought him back to the party.
He even advised Andropov and predicted the crisis of the capitalist system at the end of the 20th century. But the system was broken. This happened for one simple reason: since the Soviet nomenclature bet on entering the Western world through the Club of Rome, all alternatives had to be eliminated. In addition, there was still a struggle in the various groups of the Soviet nomenclature.
What is very important to us here? That all of this means that the problems Schwab is talking about are the problems of the capitalist system. Moreover, the transition from the exponent to the asymptote is planned in such a way that the owners of the capitalist system smoothly transition into the owners of another system. But for this they have to significantly reduce the population of the planet.
Moreover, if earlier there was talk of two billion, now there is talk of half a billion. There is such a primatologist Jane Goodall, she is involved in globalist structures. Goodall recently said, “The population of the planet should be the same as it was 500 years ago.” Then it was 491 million.
I often hear: “Well, what can an ordinary person do in such a situation?” The fact is that in transitional situations, when the old system is breaking down and the new one is not yet formed, necessity and chance almost equalize. And when, in an equilibrium situation, a butterfly sits on a scale, it can weigh itself. And then there is an inertial process.
And precisely in such periods that we are experiencing, very often the development of events depends on the individual choice of each person. And to decide, you need to have knowledge. So I will take the liberty of adding the final phrase from my book The Bells of History:
“Only a subjective and free rational knowledge of society will teach men not to be afraid of the ringing of the bells of history.” He will teach you how to live without hope of reward, because being a man is the greatest reward. To live without illusions, because life is the best of illusions. To live without idealizing the past, without complaining about the present and without fearing the future. To learn the courage to be and the courage to know. To know and to be a man, a man free from defeat…” Everything depends on man, especially when social worlds collapse and the bells of History toll.
Translation: SM
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