Model of "catching up" development has its roots in the interwar period, although we can talk about earlier examples of accelerated industrial modernization of the economy: Germany after the unification of 1871 and Japan during the Meiji transformation. Economic history of the first half of the XX century. marked by at least two large-scale "catching up" experiments industrial development based on the mobilization method: accelerated industrialization of the USSR (1920-1930s) and accelerated militarization of Germany (1930s). In the post-war period, the USSR, the states of the world socialist system, and the liberated countries oriented towards them experienced a process of accelerated industrial development in the absence of market relations.
In a number of capitalist countries with medium development, a policy of accelerated industrialization began to be implemented, which had common features, despite some regional differences. During 1950-1960. countries with a "catching up" model showed unprecedented growth patterns (Japan, a number of countries in Latin America).
The most successful example catch-up development strategies Japan can serve, while most of the countries that have chosen this model have faced serious problems in the last 20 years. Among them are a number of Latin American countries of the so-called "Big Three" - Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, as well as their neighbors on the continent - Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, etc., where, under the influence of the global crisis of the 1920-1930s. the concept of an import-substituting economy gained popularity.
The representatives of the populist parties that came to power during this period put forward a self-reliance strategy aimed at creating a developed national industry. Given the weakness of national capital, the state was called upon to solve this problem. The popularity of the chosen strategy was reinforced by the success of the pre-war development of a number of Latin American countries, where growth rates in the late 1930s. were higher than most developed countries. For example, in Chile, the average annual growth in 1931-1940. amounted to 4.8%. During the war, there was a further strengthening of the industrial sector of the economy. In the first post-war decades, a wave of nationalization of leading industries swept almost everywhere.
Successes in the development of a number of import-substituting economies were most clearly manifested in the change in the structure of the economy of the once backward countries. From predominantly agrarian and trade-intermediary, they turned into industrial ones. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile reached in the second half of the XX century. average level of development. But already in the 1970s. in the "new industrial" countries of Latin America, crisis phenomena began to grow as a result of the global systemic crisis of the industrial society. At the same time, the crisis here was of a deeper nature. Its main reason was the lack of elements of the new post-industrial economy necessary to overcome in the form of its own fundamental science, a developed education system, etc. The crisis was supported by an extremely developed system government intervention, state enterprise. All this seriously impeded the beginning of reforms. It is obvious that under crisis conditions, the relatively inefficient economies of the South American countries were losing ground in foreign markets as well. They faced the problems of rapid demographic growth with a relatively low standard of living and poverty of the general population. In addition, society was not psychologically ready for radical liberalization. This was evidenced by the first reforms in Latin America in Chile, which were carried out under the conditions of the established military dictatorship of General A. Pinochet. In the 1980s other countries of the region began to move to the new model. This transition was painful and inconsistent. Despite the long period of reform, it did not lead to unambiguously positive results, which was expressed in periodic deep financial and economic crises, which are still shaking the economies of the leading Latin American countries.
Second common option models of "catching up" development is represented by the countries of Southeast Asia. Each of them in a different period began to industrialize the economy. In Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, it began immediately after the Second World War, in Indonesia and South Korea - in the early 1960s, in Thailand - in the late 1960s. This list can be continued with China, which has been actively implementing the industrial model since the 1970s, as well as two countries of the former world socialist system (Vietnam and Laos), which began to apply the strategy of industrial development dominance in the mid-1990s.
The industrial development of Asian countries consists of two stages. At the first, as a rule, the well-known Latin American model of an import-substituting economy was adopted in order to meet the needs of the domestic market, and after that the industry was reoriented to the external market. For example, South Korea developed according to a similar scheme. Asian model industrial countries in many ways resembles the features of the Japanese model. Some differences can be seen in the degree of monopolization of the economy, the level of development of the state patronage system, the role of foreign capital, the features of the sectoral structure, etc.
In the context of the beginning of the transition to a post-industrial society, the Asian model of industrial development, like the Latin American one, found itself in a deep crisis. Everywhere in these countries with some delay - from the second half of the 1980s. the former system of state regulation began to be dismantled, a consistent liberalization of the regime, including its demonopolization, was carried out, which makes the economies of the “Asian dragons” more open. This process is accompanied by deep financial and economic crises, typical for all countries that have chosen the model of "catching up" development.
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These dynamics, the polarization of wealth and power, have many and varied causes. However, it should be noted with all certainty that one of the most important such reasons was the blind adherence to the doctrine of "catching up" development, which dominated the minds of sociologists and politicians for most of the 20th century. As the practice of past centuries testifies, "catching up" development brought success only in the presence of two obligatory conditions. First, the "catching up" country could achieve significant results only when the "catching up" country was at higher levels of the same technological order as itself. Secondly, the practice of "catching up" can be effective only if mobilization methods, including direct coercion, serve as its adequate tool, if a person is considered, in fact, only as an instrument of production. Consequently, the limits of "catching up" development are not unlimited.
These considerations are quite obvious and, if necessary, can be easily explained. On the one hand, the "catching up" development model cannot be effectively used where the catching up side does not have the methods of producing the catching up side. If, for example, in the middle of the last century, some backward country could acquire the technologies of converter steel production, the chances of their introduction would remain minimal. On the contrary, when European methods for making cast artillery pieces became available to the countries that produced forged guns, they were quickly mastered and contributed to the rearmament of their armies. On the other hand, if the catching-up country aims to achieve the same coal production as the catching-up country, then such a goal can be solved by mobilizing forced laborers or increasing the wages of miners - even without large-scale technological modernization. When the goal is to create a new information product, then only the education received over decades and the desire for creativity rooted in the worker can become tools for achieving it.
In the first case, it turns out that a society that is agrarian in nature can catch up with the industrial society only with a gigantic exertion of forces and obvious technological borrowings; in the second, we see that the industrial society can no longer catch up with the post-industrial one, since the methods of mobilization, on which, by definition, any "catching up" development is based, are not applicable to the creativity of a free individual, which is the basis of the progress of the post-industrial society. Thus, the successes of "catching up" development are limited by the framework of the industrial production structure.
Theories of accelerated Westernization
In the 1950s and 1960s, the concept of an industrial society became more and more widespread, and most Western researchers, for obvious reasons, were clearly influenced by the ideas of technological determinism. At the end of the 50s, W. Rostow proposed the concept of stages of economic growth, highlighting five stages in the economic history of each nation - traditional society, "prerequisites for takeoff, takeoff, maturation, and the era of mass consumption." At the same time, he admitted the possibility of the sixth period, which he designated as beyond consumption, but its characteristics were not specified. In a traditional society, according to W. Rostow, "the development of the structure occurs within the framework of limited production functions, which are based on pre-Newtonian science and technology and a pre-Newtonian attitude to the material world", while he called the levels of investment activity the most important parameters of the main stages - takeoff and maturation , amounting to 5-10 and 10-20% of the national income, respectively. All other characteristics of certain stages were also purely technological in nature.
In the 60s, another prominent economist and futurist, G. Kahn, taking per capita income levels as a criterion for classifying societies, divided the countries of the world into five groups: pre-industrial, per capita income from 50 to 200 dollars; partially industrial, with an income of 200 to 600 dollars; industrial, with income from 600 to 1500 dollars; mass consumer societies, or developed industrial ones, with an income of 1.5 to 4 thousand dollars; finally, post-industrial ones, with an income exceeding $4,000. Here the technocratic approach reached its limit, since no characteristics of society other than the level of its economic development were taken into account at all.
In the context of this approach, Western theorists considered industrial development as an absolute value for which any ideological paradigm could be sacrificed. Their confidence was undoubtedly strengthened by the fact that in the 50s and 60s the Soviet Union really claimed the role of the leader of technological progress and was rapidly closing its gap from the United States, and Japan was becoming a dangerous competitor, capturing the traditional markets of American and European goods. At that time, many specialists in the West shared the opinion that the USA and the USSR were two models of an essentially unified industrial society, and "all shared the optimism about what could be achieved by introducing planned investment in new physical capital using reserves of surplus labour, import-substituting industrialization strategies... and central planning." It was at that time that the ideas of the convergence of Western market economies and economic systems of the socialist type became popular. All this explains why the West considered it possible and desirable to introduce the Western model of development throughout the world.
Post-industrial trends and prerequisites for the crisis of the "catch-up" development model
Below we will analyze the main shortcomings of this theory, but already here we can state that the main "trump cards" of the adherents of "catching up" development are either the ability to use monopoly rights for certain types of resources, or the possibility of large-scale technological borrowing, which makes it possible to organize production on their basis in a more efficient way. than in the homeland of these technologies. The idea of modernization based on its own sources is objectively embodied in the elements of communist practice, since in this case a virtually universal mobilization of the forces of the nation is inevitably required and it is assumed, in an explicit or implicit form, that the system is closed from the rest of the world. The history of the Soviet Union most convincingly testifies to the inefficiency of such a path. Thus, any strategy of "catch-up" development relies on the use of unique, objective or subjective, capabilities of a particular country to optimize the industrial economy.
In itself, such a practice is quite understandable and justified at certain stages of history. However, it is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that the resources that allow the rapid development of industrial production, as a rule, are not unlimited. Mineral reserves are being depleted, their prices are very unstable on world markets, and those industries that, under certain conditions, gave an impetus to industrial progress, may turn out to be a brake on it. Cheap labor in developing countries does not stay that way forever; as the standard of living rises, the costs of hiring increase and eventually tend to those indicators that have been achieved in more developed countries. Thus, neither natural resources nor cheap labor can become the basis for a breakthrough to post-industrial frontiers, since the accelerated accumulation provided by them has a natural limit and is not self-sustaining.
The only source of stable prosperity of the country is only the intellectual potential of the nation and the emancipation of its citizens. The 20th century has repeatedly confirmed this position. If in the 18th and 19th centuries England managed to lead on the basis of the achievements of experimental science, which were as natural as they were accidental, then at the beginning of the 20th century Germany took first place among the industrial powers virtually exclusively due to new industries, in particular chemistry. and electrical engineering, where the key success factor was the application of not experimental, but theoretical knowledge. The leadership of the United States in the middle of the century is due to their breakthrough in the field of high information technologies; here theoretical knowledge was no longer used for the production of new products, but for the generation of new knowledge itself. Such aspects of the development of Western societies have been repeatedly analyzed with the closest attention.
Thus, in conditions when information and knowledge become a direct productive force, a monopoly resource arises that is distinguished by previously unknown qualities and characteristics.
On the one hand, the assimilation of knowledge and information is a prerequisite for the production of new knowledge, and their alienation does not reduce the available amount of this resource; thus, it turns out to be inexhaustible, which radically changes the nature of the tasks and goals facing a person, forms a new system of motives for activity. On the other hand, access to this resource remains limited, since knowledge differs from most industrial goods in its rarity and irreproducibility, and the increase in costs used to create it is disproportionate to the results obtained; in this regard, the value of knowledge is regulated by the laws of the prices of monopoly goods, and its carriers find themselves in an exceptional position in relation to others.
It should be emphasized that the formation of a society in which knowledge and information serve as the most important production resource requires the maximum development of each individual, that is, it opens up new horizons for people, turns a person from a “cog” of an industrial machine into a free individual, and makes the progress of the social whole a derivative of the individual achievements of its constituent citizens. The resulting social system turns out to be the most dynamic of all known to history, and this alone cancels out the hopes of developing and industrialized countries for the successful implementation of the strategy of "catching up" development.
Formation of a post-industrial society and the foundation of its sustainability
This alone explains the steady increase in the skill level of industrial workers observed throughout almost the entire 20th century. So, if in 1890 only 7% of American youth aged 14 to 17 studied at school, then in the postwar years more than 90% received secondary education. In 1940, less than 15% of high school graduates between the ages of 18 and 21 were going to college; by 1993 this had risen to 62%. This "thirst for knowledge" received a worthy reward: beginning in the mid-1970s, the real incomes of college graduates began to grow against the backdrop of stagnation and a decrease in the incomes of people who received only a secondary education. Between 1978 and 1987 alone, the income of workers with a secondary education fell by 4%, while that of college graduates rose by 48%. However, a free society based on competition encourages people who achieve better results against the general background. Therefore, as soon as university graduates began to determine the general "background" in the labor market, the most valuable group of employees became workers who had academic degrees or who had actually proved the uniqueness of their abilities. From 1987 to 1993, the reduction in the average wages persons with higher education amounted to more than 2%; at the same time, holders of a bachelor's degree increased their income by 30%, and doctors of science - almost doubled. But specialists of this level strive not only to big income, but also to their own development, and, consequently, in the new social group formed by them, a motivational system is formed that differs significantly from the one in the center of which was the thirst for profit. From the moment the intellectual elite became the dominant class in Western societies, social transformations became irreversible.
It is no exaggeration to say that today the intellectual class constitutes the highest stratum in Western societies. There are numerous facts about this. If, for example, at the beginning of the century in the United States only 10% of the leaders of industrial companies had higher education, then today more than 60% of the management personnel are holders of doctoral degrees. Among the richest 1% of Americans (whose share of the US national wealth has risen from 19% to 39% in just the past 20 years), only one in fifteen receive their income as a return on invested capital, while more than half work in administrative positions in large companies, almost a third is represented by practicing lawyers and doctors, and the rest are people of creative professions, including professors and teachers. Four out of every five modern American millionaires have not increased their inherited assets, but have earned a fortune from almost nothing. It is also important that members of the intellectual class demonstrate a clear commitment to the values they have chosen: for example, if in 1980 only 30% of children whose parents received more than 67 thousand dollars a year graduated from college, today this figure has risen to 80%.
In modern Western countries, a society based on knowledge (knowledge-based societies) is steadily emerging, and this could not but affect the distribution of wealth not only within these countries, but also on a global scale. Today, 20% of the world's population living in developed countries accounts for 86% of the world's gross product; back in the mid-1990s, seven post-industrial powers owned 80.4% of the world's computer equipment, provided 90.5% of high-tech production, and controlled 97% of patents registered in the world13 (note that 80% of patents issued in developing countries also belonged to citizens post-industrial world). By this time, the West controlled more than four-fifths of the world market for services, the total volume of transactions in which exceeded $1 trillion in 1992. dollars Sales volumes of American intellectual property abroad increased from 1986 to 1995 by 3.5 times, and the trade surplus in this area exceeded 20 billion dollars; by 1995, the United States accounted for 72% of the world market for information and data processing services, the value of which was $95 billion in the mid-1990s.
Funds invested in knowledge-intensive industries have brought truly fantastic returns in recent decades (from 1960 to 1999 it averaged 45% per year, while investments in shares provided an average of 13.34% per annum), resulting in an influx of funds into financing of relevant "breakthrough" projects. If in 1995 direct investments in fundamentally new technological developments in the United States amounted to 6.4 billion dollars, then in 1997 they reached 11.5 billion dollars, and in 1999 - 35.5 billion dollars. More more generously filled investment funds those financing venture projects: if in 1995 they attracted about 9 billion dollars, then in 1999 - 56 billion dollars, and only in the first quarter of 2000 the volume of attraction amounted to 22.7 billion dollars; at the same time, investments in such funds provided an average return of 2% per annum in 1990, 20% in 1993, 34% in 1996, and 147 (!)% per annum in 1999. European countries also show similar dynamics: in 1999, investments in venture capital projects in the EU grew by 70%, and in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium this figure was more than 2 times. Over the past decade, institutional and private investors in the United States have spent an average of about $240 billion a year on research and development, and private companies have spent about $30 billion annually on improving the educational level of their employees, which is equivalent to spending on all areas of scientific research in Russia, China, South Korea and Taiwan. In 1997-1999, the United States allocated $635 billion a year to the development of all forms of education - more than twice as much as for military needs; the validity of such costs is confirmed by calculations showing that only the improvement higher education provided a quarter of the total increase in US gross national product in the 20th century.
The result was an unprecedented technological separation of the post-industrial world from all other countries and peoples. Today, the US accounts for 44% of the world's R&D spending, while Latin America and Africa account for only 1%; the number of scientific and technical workers per 1 million people in the United States is 126.2 thousand, while the world average does not exceed 23.4 thousand. In 1997, almost three-quarters of all Internet users in the world were American citizens, and the overall proportion of Americans Canadians and residents of Western European countries in this indicator exceeded 96%. The significance of this factor becomes clear if one considers that in 1998 the contribution to the world gross product of the industry that developed around this global network exceeded $236 billion, which is comparable to Russia's GNP in the same year. Technological progress has steadily accelerated in recent decades; if it took 35 years for one in four American families to have a car, since their production began, then the corresponding time intervals for a computer, mobile phone and Email were 18.13 and 7 years, respectively.
This technological gap is directly, in our opinion, associated with an increase in differences in general economic indicators characterizing the development of certain regions of the planet, which have been clearly identified since the mid-1970s. Based on the generally accepted estimate of the world gross product of 24 trillion. dollars as of 1993, then 19 trillion. of them were created in post-industrial states, and only 5 trillion. dollars accounts for all developing countries, where more than 80% of the world's population lives. Accordingly, the difference in the nominal annual incomes of citizens increased from 5.7 thousand dollars in 1960 to 15.4 thousand dollars in 1993 and 19.2 thousand dollars in 1999; thus, 1/5 of humanity at one pole of development appropriated 30 times more wealth in 1960 than 1/5 at the other, in 1993 - 61 times, and in 1999 this gap reached 74 times. It is characteristic that this happens in conditions when the real incomes of the population poorest countries have not actually increased over the past 120 (!) years, and extrapolation of this dynamics gives some researchers reason to assert that by the middle of the 21st century this gap could be 350 times. According to the UN Commission, 358 of the richest people in the world today own a fortune equivalent to that of the 2.3 billion most disadvantaged inhabitants of the planet, and 400 of the largest transnational corporations control Oz of all the main production assets that currently exist. Between 1975 and 1995, the share of wealth created in the world, which is at the disposal of 20% of citizens of developed countries, increased from 70 to 82.7%, while the share of the poorest 20% inhabiting the "third world" decreased from 2.3 to 1, 4%, and hopes for an improvement in the current situation look illusory.
Thus, modern economic situation in the postindustrial world is characterized by a number of fundamentally new circumstances. First, raw material and resource constraints on economic growth have been virtually eliminated, and consumption growth is primarily due to the use of information benefits, rather than traditional mass industrial goods. Secondly, an increasing part of the population is applying their abilities in the production of high-tech goods and services, as a result of which dependence on countries that remain manufacturers of industrial products decreases. And, finally, thirdly, economic growth acquires a new quality when the most effective form of accumulation becomes the development of people's own abilities, and the most profitable investment is investment in a person, his knowledge and talents.
Thus, the demand of Western countries for raw materials and industrial goods, the suppliers of which are states at the industrial stage of development, is sharply reduced. At the same time, as we have already noted, the basis of the catch-up development strategy is the import of technologies and the export of manufactured products to developed countries, which makes it possible to attract foreign exchange earnings to the catch-up economies and helps maintain economic growth. Consequently, the ever-increasing "closeness" of the Western world is becoming the most important obstacle to the implementation of "catch-up" development.
Self-sufficiency of Western civilization
The modern post-industrial economic system is based on the production and consumption of knowledge. This fact, along with the constantly noted "globalization" of information flows, causes the growing isolation of Western countries from the rest of the world, which is taken into account much less often.
The expansion of the knowledge economy, firstly, has radically reduced the need for National economy developed countries in the material elements of production, especially raw materials, and, secondly, it radically changed the attitude of man to the environment, making possible a sustainable ecological balance. As a result, the West received a potential opportunity to reduce the intensity of economic interaction with other countries and peoples.
Today, the opportunities for rational use of raw materials, not to mention the replacement of exhaustible natural resources with synthetic materials, are wider than ever before. If a copper cable laid along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1966 could provide 138 parallel telephone calls, then a fiber optic cable installed in the early 90s can serve 1.5 million subscribers simultaneously; at the same time, the share of the cost of materials and energy in the cost of manufacturing a copper cable reached 80%, and in the production of fiber optic cable it does not exceed 10%. According to Sprint's forecasts, by 2002 the costs of servicing transatlantic telephone conversations will be reduced by 17 times compared to 1998, which will reduce the cost of a telephone conversation by almost 85%. The range of industries that refuse to use rare resources is expanding: during the 80s, the Kodak Corporation patented a method of photographing without the use of silver; the Ford company announced the creation of catalysts based on a platinum substitute; chip manufacturers no longer needed gold contacts and conductors. In 1991-1997, the mass of industrial products represented in American exports per dollar, their prices fell by more than 2 times, while in 1967-1988 this figure decreased only by 43%116. It is expected that in the next thirty years the needs of the OECD member countries in natural resources per 100 dollars of national income produced should decrease 10 times - to 31 kg compared to 300 kg in 1996117. Today it can be argued that the technological revolution has practically removed the problem of the imminent depletion of mineral and energy reserves from the agenda, as a result of which post-industrial countries now live in a new world - a world of unlimited resources.
As a consequence of these changes, the ecological situation in Western countries has been steadily improving for more than twenty years. AT last years in EU countries, from 4.2 to 8.4% of GDP is spent on environmental programs, and this trend shows a steady increase. Modern technologies eliminate up to two-thirds of NO(2) and three-quarters of SO(2) from production waste and emitted gases, which will reduce the share of North American countries in the global volume of harmful emissions into the atmosphere from today's 26.7 to 21.9 by 2010 %. The United States became the only country in 1996 to completely phase out the production of ozone-depleting substances, and the share of OECD countries in global carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere has remained virtually stable over the past thirty years. At the same time, most European countries allocate from 0.5 to 1% of their gross national product for the development of international programs to protect the environment, which is about 60 billion dollars a year.
At the same time, the development of the post-industrial economy, firstly, increased the degree of its self-sufficiency and, secondly, reoriented trade and investment flows, previously sent to the "third world", to the most highly developed states. The result is a real "closure" of the Western world in itself.
Possessing technologies for deep processing of secondary raw materials, the post-industrial world today controls no less volume of resources than developing countries. In the mid-1990s, 70 million tons of steel, 3.5 million tons of aluminum, 1.45 million tons of copper, 1 million tons of tin, 22.5 thousand tons of titanium and much more were recovered from waste in the USA mineral raw materials; the share of recycled materials in the total consumption of a certain type of raw material was 68.5%, 40.0%, 38.6%, 61.5% and 49.0%, respectively. At the same time, the main centers of industrial production also remain concentrated in post-industrial countries, and in the 1990s, sales of cheap Asian equipment in the US and European markets began to decline, while the supply of high-quality domestic products began to grow. In the current situation, in Texas, where farmers' incomes are among the highest among agricultural workers in the world, cheaper wheat is produced than in Nigeria, and the productivity of Dutch farmers, even according to official statistics, is 100 times higher than in Russia. Over the past decades, post-industrial countries have become the largest exporters of not only industrial, but also agricultural products, including, for example, peanuts and soybeans - traditional imports from the poorest countries in Africa and Asia.
As a result, rapidly growing volumes of commodity flows are concentrated within the boundaries of the post-industrial world. If in 1953 the advanced industrial powers sent 38% of their total exports to countries of the same level of development, in 1963 this figure was already 49%, in 1973 - 54, then in 1990 it reached 76%. If, for example, in 1959 the share African countries in French exports was 28.2%, and from there France received 20.3% of imports, by the mid-80s the corresponding figures were 7.8 and 5.9%. On the contrary, bilateral trade and investment flows between the EU and the US have grown 5-fold over the past thirty years and in 1990 exceeded $1 trillion. As a result, in 1997, only 5% of trade flows beginning or ending in the territory of one of the OECD member states went outside this set of countries, and post-industrial powers today import goods from developing countries for an amount not exceeding 1.2% of their total GNP. At the same time, it should be noted that although there are imbalances in trade between individual post-industrial states, in general, the trade of the G7 countries with the rest of the world is quite balanced: with exports in 1999 of more than 5 trillion. dollars, the negative trade balance is only 28 billion dollars, that is, a little more than 0.5% of exports, or less than 0.1% of the GNP of developed countries. It should also be noted that the entire region of Southeast Asia (10 ASEAN countries, Japan and South Korea combined) has a trade turnover with other countries that is 13% less than the US and 16% less than the European Union.
Internal contradictions of the "catch-up" development model
By the end of the 20th century, it became clear that the rise of Western societies based on the liberal tradition was largely due to the natural course of their evolution. From this point of view, the reason for the failures of both the countries of the socialist camp and the developing states, which have never been able to achieve naturalness and self-sufficiency in their development, is also understandable.
The 20th century showed the world two models of "catching up" development. One of them is purely industrial, represented by the experience of the USSR in the 30s, Germany in the 30s and 40s, and the countries of the socialist camp in the 50s and 60s. Another model to some extent copied the features of the post-industrial development of Western societies; this model was followed by Japan in the 70s and 80s and the states of Southeast Asia in the 80s and 90s. Both of these models contained a fundamental conflict between self-sufficiency and the naturalness of development, a conflict that did not give rise to a constructive solution, but prevented the successful implementation of the goals set.
In the first case, where the principle of self-reliance dominated (mainly for ideological or political reasons), a self-sufficient economy caused autarky, supported by the tightening of authoritarian regimes. This led to the use of harsh mobilization measures, activated if not open protest, then social apathy and, ultimately, embodied in a backward, stagnating economic system, incapable of competing with market economies.
In the second case, where some openness was combined with the principles of accelerated development, the desire to use Western experience was embodied in large-scale technological and organizational borrowings, coupled with a clear focus on foreign markets as suppliers of capital and inexhaustible consumers of finished products. In this version of the model, the much greater naturalness of development, which did not require strong political pressure, could not, however, compensate for the dependence on external factors of weak susceptibility to new trends in the development of the post-industrial world. Considering that it is precisely those countries that followed the second model that have achieved significant success in recent decades, we will focus primarily on the contradictions of the type of “catch-up” development that was implemented in Japan, the countries of Southeast Asia and China.
We will consider in this chapter six such contradictions and the groups of circumstances that give rise to them.
The first of them lies in the obvious one-sidedness of the industrial development of all "catching up" countries. Thus, in the states of the Soviet bloc or Nazi Germany, either the military sector or heavy industry dominated, the achievements of which did not reflect positively on the well-being of the people. In Japan, and to an even greater extent in Asian countries, every researcher is struck by the rapid development of mechanical engineering and electronics. Massively acquiring American and European patents, Japanese and Asian manufacturers increased the output of relatively inexpensive consumer goods. Such a course of industrialization could be considered very successful if it were not for the obvious inability of the domestic market of these “catching up” countries to absorb the mass of goods produced by them. It is known that already at the end of the 60s, when no more than 165 thousand cars were operated in South Korea, a plant was put into operation there, designed to produce 300 thousand cars a year; in the 80s, the production of electronic equipment in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong consistently exceeded the needs of the domestic market by 6-7 times, and real estate objects being built in these countries were purchased by foreign investors by 60-70%. It is quite obvious that accelerated industrialization could not but require the concentration of the main efforts of the "catching up" countries in certain specific areas, but the possible negative consequences of such a strategy are no less obvious.
The second important group of circumstances is connected with the underconsumption of the population, which is caused by the industrial type of "catch-up" development and creates, in fact, an insurmountable obstacle to the formation of a capacious domestic market. It is known that developing countries embarking on the path of "catch-up" development had a low level of material well-being of the population. As a rule, they all switched to a policy of accelerated industrial growth under conditions when the value of the gross national product did not exceed $300 per person per year. In Malaysia, it was no more than $300 in the early 50s, in war-torn Korea, about $100 in the late 50s, in Taiwan, $160 in the early 60s, and in China, which was moving along the path of transformation. in 1978, - 280 dollars, and in Vietnam the level of 220 dollars was reached only by the mid-80s.
It was the low level of incomes of the population that turned out to be one of the conditions for accelerated industrialization, and for its implementation it was necessary to restrain the rise of this level. In the mid-1990s, when in developed countries the average hourly wage of an industrial worker ranged from 12 to 30 dollars, in Korea and Singapore the labor of a highly qualified specialist was paid at the rate of no more than 7 dollars, and in Malaysia - 1.5 dollars per hour. hour. In China and India, at the same time, workers received about 3, and in Vietnam - no more than 1.5 dollars a day. However, most research on modern competition suggests that "companies whose only advantage is low production costs are very rarely displaced from the dominant positions of the former leaders of [a particular] industry"; this rule, in our opinion, is fully applicable not only to individual companies, but also to entire states. Developing countries cannot gain a foothold in the markets of post-industrial powers only on the basis of the relative primitivism of their economies; at the same time, without gaining a foothold in these markets, they are not able to receive incentives for further progress.
The third group of circumstances, which also cannot be overlooked in the framework of our analysis, is related to the predominance of extensive factors of development in the "catching up" economies, which significantly hinders their economic progress. We emphasized above that sustainable development post-industrial powers in the 1990s is taking place against the backdrop of growing consumption of material and information goods by their citizens and a steady decline in the share of accumulation in national income. At the same time, a diametrically opposite trend is taking place in Southeast Asia. Despite the already low level of gross national product per capita, the countries of the region were forced to direct a significant part of it to the development of production, since industrial growth is unthinkable without a proportional increase in the volume of resources used. As a result, even at a relatively advanced stage of industrialization, in the early 1990s, the savings rate was 24% in Taiwan, 30% in Hong Kong, 35% each in Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea, 37% in Indonesia, and 47% in Singapore. , and in China it reached, according to some sources, a fantastic level of 50% of the gross national product.
But the low incomes of the population and the high savings rate were not the only sources of the impressive industrial breakthrough of the countries that adopted the doctrine of "catch-up" development. As in any agrarian country, the developing industrial production demanded additional workers recruited from among the peasants and artisans. The growth in the share of industry in the gross national product was accompanied, which is typical, by almost the same increase in the share of people employed in industrial sectors in the total number. active population. In Singapore, from 1966 to 1990, this figure rose from 27% to 51%; in South Korea, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s, it increased from 22 to 48%; in Taiwan, from 17% in 1952 to 40% in 1993. In parallel, the proportion of women in the total number of employees increased, as well as the length of the working day. As a result, in South Korea and Taiwan in the first half of the 1990s, the average working hours in the industrial sector reached almost 2.5 thousand hours per year, while in most European countries it was legally limited to 1.5 thousand hours. hours.
Contributing to the impressive achievements of the countries of Southeast Asia at the first stage of their industrial breakthrough, this nature of the numerical expansion of the industrial working class formed a stable dependence of local economies on the low level of labor costs; As a result, when the incomes of the population began to grow in the mid-1990s, the economic systems of these countries lost their most important competitive advantage and were on the verge of a crisis.
All this suggests that, despite the widespread use of technological borrowings from post-industrial countries, Asian economies developed exclusively by extensive methods until the 1997 crisis. If we compare the contribution of the productivity factor to the overall growth dynamics of the gross national product in various countries in the 1950s and 1970s, we can see that in Taiwan, with an average growth rate of 9.4%, only 2.6% of the increase was provided through productivity growth. GNP per year, in South Korea with a GNP growth rate of 10.3% - only 1.2%, in Singapore with an annual growth of 8.7% - only 0.2, while in France these figures were 5.0 and 3.0%, respectively.
Thus, despite a number of fundamental differences that exist between countries that preferred the first, closed, or the second, relatively open to the outside world, paths of "catching up" development, the methods used by them to accelerate industrial progress remained very similar. Therefore, the opinion of P. Krugman, who notes that "the young industrial countries of Asia, just like the Soviet Union in the 1950s, achieved rapid growth mainly due to the amazing mobilization of resources; their progress, like the development of the USSR during a period of high growth rates , was stimulated primarily by an unprecedented increase in labor and capital costs, and not by an increase in production efficiency", should be recognized as objectively reflecting the main difference between the post-industrial type of progress and the practice of "catching up" development.
The fourth group of circumstances that significantly exacerbated the problems of the "catching up" countries is associated with large-scale capital imports that accompanied this type of development from its first steps. Back in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, the United States provided massive economic assistance to South Korea and Taiwan, the amount of which was, respectively, 5-6 and 10% of the gross national product of these countries. Subsequently, the inflow of Western capital began to increase by commercial basis and turned out (especially in the 80s and early 90s) to be so active that old loans were returned from new ones, and investors bought securities East Asian companies, sometimes without even analyzing their financial situation in detail. Of course, foreign investment in itself cannot and should not be regarded as a negative phenomenon; on the contrary, they represent the most effective tool for transferring post-industrial production technologies to the "third world". However, in countries that have embarked on the path of "catch-up" development, the expansion of foreign investment often becomes the reason for the aggravation of the one-sidedness of their economies. From the very beginning of the accelerated development, Southeast Asia began to turn into assembly shops of international corporations; it is known, for example, that in the 1980s the number of computers produced in South Korea increased by 20 times, but 95% of them were produced under licenses; the cost of domestic components did not exceed 15%, and all the software installed on them was imported from abroad. The downside of foreign investment is a monstrous dependence on the supply of components and technologies: by 1995, the imports of the ten newly industrialized countries in Asia amounted to 748 billion dollars, which was 12 billion dollars more than EU imports.
The path chosen in Southeast Asia not only did not imply a gradual reorientation to its own forces, but, on the contrary, required more and more additional investments, and for the time being, their influx increased. From 1987 to 1992 alone, the volume of foreign direct investment in the Malaysian economy grew by almost 9 times, in the Thai - from 12 to 15, in the Indonesian - 16 times. The influx of gigantic funds into these countries (and the growth rate of foreign investment in the 1980s and 1990s steadily exceeded the growth rate of the gross national product) made it virtually unnecessary to increase the efficiency of production, because the import of technological innovations from abroad increased. As a result, already in the mid-1990s, there was a decrease in growth rates, but this went unnoticed by most investors: direct investment by foreign companies in the countries of the region in 1996 alone amounted to $93 billion, having increased by more than 3 times.
Quite characteristic in this regard is the "dizziness from success" that has spread in the countries of the region. Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which have become leaders in "catching up" development, have become so confident in the correctness of their policies that they continued to increase their investments even when the riskiness of this practice became obvious. This led to a significant overvaluation of all national assets and contributed to an artificial increase in demand for land, real estate and durable goods. In such a situation, the problem of production efficiency receded into the background, and quantitative growth came to the fore, production for the sake of production, the expansion of which depended on additional investment. There was a vicious circle, which sooner or later had to open.
It is also important to note that during the 1990s the composition of investments directed to developing countries changed significantly: in 1996, despite the rapid development of stock markets, total investment in shares and commercial loans turned out to be less than foreign direct investment; thus, the post-industrial West has moved from a policy of extracting speculatively high profits in emerging markets to expansion production activities. Since then, the industrial development of the East Asian countries has largely become the development of the potential of Western companies operating in these countries.
The fifth group of factors that determined the lack of self-sufficiency of "catching up" development seems to us to be especially important, since under their influence the dependence of "catching up" countries on the export of their own products has developed. The concept of foreign market orientation has been and remains one of the foundations of the Asian model of industrialization. However, it has at least two fundamental shortcomings. On the one hand, countries professing this concept are extremely vulnerable to changes in demand in Western markets; A classic example of such vulnerability is provided by the consequences of a sharp decline in demand for raw materials in the first half of the 1980s, which severely hit the economies of most Third World countries and predetermined the new face of the world economic system in the last years of the 20th century.
On the other hand, there is a need for a tough protectionist policy, as a result of which not only domestic prices can be significantly inflated (for example, in the late 80s, food prices in Japan were on average 20 (!) times higher than in the United States , which cost Japanese consumers $40 billion annually), but frank dumping is also practiced on world markets, designed to ensure the strength of positions for the goods of a particular country in the markets of post-industrial powers. Meanwhile, in the 1990s, such a policy ceased to bear fruit, since maintaining high export volumes required, firstly, additional (and, moreover, inefficient) investments and, secondly, significantly increased dependence on changes in the world market.
As a result, the "catching up" countries create a situation where the parameters of their development differ radically from the parameters of the "catching up" countries. Indeed: the share of products exported by post-industrial states is no more than 7-8% of their GNP, while in China it is 21.2%, in Indonesia - 21.9, in the Philippines - 24.4, in South Korea - 26.8%, Thailand - 30.2%, Taiwan - 42.5%, Malaysia - 78.8%. However, this figure reached a truly fantastic level in Hong Kong and Singapore, where it amounted to 117.3 and 132.9%, respectively. Taken as an absolute, the principle of export orientation of developing economies led to the fact that in the 80s the economic growth of South Korea and Taiwan by 42 and 74%, respectively, was due only to American purchases of industrial products from these countries; for Brazil, American imports provided more than half, and for Mexico - almost 85% of the trade surplus.
It is obvious that the dependence of developing countries on the post-industrial world is becoming blatantly disproportionate. The share of export goods of these countries supplied to the USA, Western Europe and Japan, ranges, as a rule, from 45 to 60%, while in the trade turnover of France and Italy the share of exports to developing countries is 4.3%, Germany - 5.5, Great Britain - 7.7, USA - 16.3, and only Japan maintains this indicator at a much higher level - 30.4%. Thus, in modern conditions, the loss emerging markets would have turned out to be much less painful for post-industrial countries than the reduction in supplies to Europe and the United States for "catching up" states. This was revealed in practice in the mid-1990s: if in 1995 the volume of exports from South Korea increased by more than 30%, from Malaysia - by 26%, from China - by 25%, and from Thailand - by 23%, then the corresponding indicators in 1996 were already 4.2, 4.0, 1.5 and 0.5%. At the same time, their dependence on the supply of patents and components remained exceptionally large; the result was the financing of industrial development by covering the deficit from debt sources, and this indicated a near and inevitable crisis. By 1996, Southeast Asia's current balance of payments deficit had reached $36.5 billion, growing by more than 10% in one year, of which South Korea accounted for nearly two-thirds.
By the mid-1990s, the economic development of the "catching up" countries, be it the states of Southeast Asia, the countries of Latin America or the economies of Eastern Europe, clearly demonstrated that it is fully dependent on the import of Western technologies and capital and the export of its own products. to post-industrial countries. Thus, even the apologists of "catch-up" development began to be convinced that it is possible to catch up with the developed world as quickly as possible and to advance along this path as far as the developed world itself would like.
And, finally, the sixth group of circumstances, important in the context of this chapter, determines the absolute technological, intellectual and cultural dependence of the "catching up" countries on the post-industrial world. All these countries have a negative balance in the balance of technology trade with the West. The rudimentary state of the middle class cannot serve as a basis for the formation of a social stratum in which education would be perceived as a significant value, and the desire for creativity would become an urgent need, as in post-industrial societies. Although in Japan or South Korea almost all children attend school today, this remains more a tribute to tradition than dictated by internal motives; how else to explain that 60% of the top managers of American companies have doctoral degrees, and 30% of Japanese managers have not even studied at college? At the same time, in China and Indonesia, only 45-50%, and in Thailand - less than 40% of young people study in secondary school. Furthermore; if in France 44% of school graduates enter higher education institutions, and in the USA this figure reaches 65%, then in Malaysia it does not rise above 12%; as a result, no more than 5% of young people aged 20 to 24 study at universities.
These are the main reasons for the lack of self-sufficiency of the "catch-up" development model, making it internally contradictory, unable to withdraw the countries that have adopted it from the dictates of the post-industrial powers. Somewhat apart in this series stands another important circumstance common to all "catching up" countries. It simultaneously proceeds from all six named positions, and conditions them; therefore, we cannot put it on a par with them and explore it outside the context of the development of each country. We are talking about a very special role of the state, which inevitably participates in any mobilization scheme of development.
The role of the state
The role of this factor is so great that in the 1980s the West introduced the concept of "developmental state" to designate a state that preaches and ensures accelerated development. However, by the mid-1990s, it became obvious that the theoretical constructions built around this concept did not provide answers to many questions, including such fundamental ones as: which sectors of the economy benefit the most within the framework of this model, which social layers, such a state machine should be based and, finally, whether it is capable of ensuring the transition to a natural, self-reproducing development that does not involve artificial stimulation.
In recent years, it has been increasingly noted that, no matter how active the state's efforts are aimed at ensuring rapid economic growth, "no country in the world has yet achieved genuine development through the implementation of individual projects"; we also believe that a modern post-industrial society can take shape only on the paths of natural, if you like - harmonious, economic progress, which goes in parallel with changes in social relations and motives of human activity, and thus, it is formed in an evolutionary way, and cannot be built according to plan proposed in advance by a single economic center.
Practice shows that state intervention in the economy of developing countries took place in a number of areas. It was the state, being at the origins of "catching up" development, that determined the most important priorities of economic policy; it is it, through the use of both restrictions and subsidies, that interferes to a large extent in the affairs of private companies, changing real price ratios and artificially highlighting certain particular industries or development programs. Suffice it to recall how, in the early 1960s, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Industry of Japan created an association, which included such giants as Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba, NEC and Mitsubishi, and gave the new consortium a giant soft loan, which was the beginning of the Japanese computer industry. It was the state that encouraged underconsumption, either by initiating an influx of public funds into the banks it controlled, or by launching a policy of controlled inflation that reduced the purchasing power of the population. Thus, in Indonesia, from 1990 to 1995, the nominal minimum wage grew by 10% per year, but its dollar equivalent remained virtually unchanged, amounting to 30 cents per hour; Something similar is happening in China.
The state was most of all responsible for the extensive methods of industrial development preached in Asia. Suffice it to recall that the Korean government consciously pursued a policy of subsidizing the largest enterprises, despite the low efficiency of their activities: sales of 32 billion dollars, Samsung's profit was only 439 million dollars, which corresponds to a profit margin of 1.5%); in Taiwan in the 1980s, loans for the development of export industries were issued at an interest rate that was half the interbank rate and almost four times lower than the average price of loans prevailing in the market. The state stimulated the inflow of foreign investment, and it also took measures to limit free competition in domestic markets. Finally, the state has created a huge, inefficient bureaucracy (in relatively prosperous Japan, for example, there are 420,000 grass-roots managers and 90,000 employees of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries for 170 thousand farmers), which often turns out to be a brake on economic development or a direct threat to the economic security of the country (suffice it to recall the example of the organization of a whole network of semi-state companies in Indonesia, which allowed the family of President Suharto to make the largest fortune in Asia, reaching, according to some estimates, $ 40 billion). The crisis that began in the countries of the region in 1997, to a much greater extent than anything else, testified to the inefficiency and unviability of the statist model of industrial progress, which seemed optimal just a few years ago.
In conclusion, it should be repeated: a post-industrial society cannot be built; the only way to form it is evolutionary development, which occurs on its own basis, and its most important component is the disclosure of the personal potential of citizens who have reached a high level of material well-being.
Where post-materialist values are sacrificed to industrial development, such a society cannot come into being either. The drama of the current situation lies in the fact that none of the countries that are able today to move along the path of "catch-up" development can independently develop and control the volumes of information and knowledge based on which the countries of Europe and the USA are moving forward, and decades of borrowing new technologies do not generate technological breakthroughs. It is impossible to catch up with the post-industrial society by industrial methods.
Conclusion
The achievements of post-industrial societies are obvious and indisputable. For the first time in the history of mankind, an economic system is emerging, for which information and knowledge become the main resource; on this basis, the negative impact of economic progress on the human environment is radically reduced. For the majority of the population of the Western world, the need to constantly struggle to maintain the achieved standard of living disappears; a developed system of social guarantees is established in the society. A new system of social relations is being formed, in which the main criteria for classifying a person as a higher or lower class of post-industrial society are his creative potential, personal abilities to assimilate knowledge, operate information flows.
At the same time, the successes of post-industrial societies, which raised the importance of creativity and knowledge, sharply devalued not only all previously known material factors of production, but also mass consumer goods. The possibilities of unlimited consumption of information and knowledge created an infinitely capacious market for post-industrial states, but at the same time significantly reduced the capacity of markets for the products of developing countries. Since the mid-1980s, the states of the "third world" have become recipients of foreign industrial productions, assembly shops of international corporations. At the same time, they all ended up in a situation from which there is and cannot be an exit to the "high road" of post-industrial progress. Producing and delivering to the "first world" mass industrial goods, developing countries use cheap resources and labor at their disposal to create them; consequently, they export goods that are declining in direct proportion to the volume of exports, while maintaining the income of their workers at a relatively low level that keeps them competitive.
On the contrary, post-industrial states primarily export information and knowledge-intensive products, high-tech equipment and patents, that is, they transfer to the "third world" inexhaustible resources, the number of which in the post-industrial world itself does not decrease, no matter how much their exports increase. Furthermore; the production of such goods requires constant improvement of the qualifications of workers and, therefore, implies an increase in their material and spiritual consumption. Globalization has become a very effective tool for establishing uniform global production standards; thus, it caused the need for developing countries to constantly adapt to the needs of the post-industrial world and, consequently, to export their goods more and more intensively, exchanging them for new information technologies.
Of course, in any country, including the post-industrial one, the industrial sector of the economy exists and is being modernized. This gives us reason to talk about the possibility of "catching up" development, reducing the gap in this particular area, as the former inefficient industrial production in developing countries becomes more advanced based on the use of advanced technologies. However, two obvious conclusions follow from this: on the one hand, narrowing the gap is possible, but eliminating it is unrealistic; on the other hand, even narrowing the gap can only be achieved through active borrowing of the technological achievements of developed countries. Thus, on the eve of the 21st century, the ideologists of "catch-up" development must finally understand that the name of the theories they defend comes from the word "catch up" and not "catch up."
In such a situation, the countries of the "third world" face a difficult choice. One possibility is to follow the path of copying the achievements of Western societies. In this case, it is highly likely that these states will receive the support of the post-industrial world, integrate into the structures of the post-industrial civilization, and although they are unlikely to "catch up" with the most developed countries in the foreseeable future, they will nevertheless ensure sustainable development, social stability and a high degree of security from external and internal conflicts. This trend is most pronounced in Europe, where members of the European Union are actively incorporating former socialist states into their ranks; it is less noticeable in Southeast Asia, where rapidly developing countries, although increasingly moving in the wake of the US and Japan, nevertheless do not join supranational organizations like the EU. In the case of moving along this path, developing countries de facto exchange their sovereignty for economic development, transferring it to the supranational structures of the post-industrial world and receiving from them a powerful impetus that activates economic progress.
Another possibility is demonstrated by those developing countries that, observing the growing unevenness of world development and striving to withstand pressure from the post-industrial powers, choose a policy of self-reliance and decide to follow the path of increasing self-isolation. Isolationism, as a rule, gives rise to totalitarian regimes, strengthens the role of the military and increases spending on unproductive needs - from the self-enrichment of rulers to the fight against their own people. Sooner or later, such countries come to an economic dead end, destroy their human potential and in this regard cause nothing but pity and sympathy.
The historical mission of the post-industrial society is to introduce developing countries to modern standards of production and state of the art life. Developed states can solve this problem, since they have gigantic material and information resources for this. Developed states must solve this problem, since further polarization in the modern world will give rise to many not only social, but also environmental problems that threaten the very existence of mankind. The dangers posed by the division of civilization into rich and poor countries are no less than those posed by a people divided into opposing social groups. In 1962, in a speech given at American University, President J.F. Kennedy said, "If a free society cannot help the multitude of people who are poor today, it cannot save the few who are destined to become rich." However, the means of assistance that J.F. Kennedy, in modern conditions, there may be a direct extension of the jurisdiction of the post-industrial world to developing countries.
We will not, in these concluding remarks, evaluate in detail the positive and negative sides various options for such integration; we only note that the past few decades have shown us an example of a balanced and balanced approach, presented by the history of the European Community. Within the framework of a united Europe, today the model of the gradual expansion of the post-industrial world is being put into practice. At its first stages, the most important task remains the harmonization of relations between the developed states themselves, which can only be carried out as their cultures interpenetrate, unify the norms of law and legislation, form the loyalty of individual nations to each other, and realize the conglomerate of relatively heterogeneous countries as united by a single great community mission. .
Then external expansion begins, which in this case is carried out according to strict rules. First, the European Union has all the attributes of a sovereign state: a parliament, an executive commission and supreme court; in the near future, the creation of joint armed forces and the adoption of a single citizenship may follow. Secondly, the prerogatives of national governments are already today subject to a single policy; This is best seen in the process of transition to a single European currency, during which the governments and central banks of the participating countries took a number of concerted actions, some of which did not quite correspond to their national interests. Only by having the practice of sacrificing national interests to the interests of the community can one demand the same type of behavior from other countries; and it should be noted that the United States is unlikely to become the center of such an association, since it has never been seen behaving in a similar way. From these positions, the EU countries formulate the conditions for the entry of new candidates; the most important of them is the de facto rejection of elements of sovereignty in favor of common European structures, the transition to a single currency, the unification of customs and economic legislation, and the admission of free competition in the entire common economic space. Joining a post-industrial civilization, obtaining the rights of EU citizens, access to the economic potential of a united Europe is "bought" by the loss of part of the rights of a nation state. We also consider the expansion of the Union to be the most important positive element of the European experience, not so much at the expense of the countries with which its members have the closest economic relations (in this case, Algeria and Morocco would be much closer to joining the EU than, say, Estonia or Slovakia) , how much at the expense of states that gravitate towards the majority of Western European nations due to the peculiarities of their history and culture. We consider it possible to repeat once again that the example of the European Union seems to us the best way to spread post-industrial trends to a relatively close periphery.
At the beginning of our book, we considered various theories of accelerated social progress and noted among them the concept, ironically called "dependency". Its supporters argued that the countries of the "periphery" were dependent in their development on the states of the "center", since for centuries the latter artificially slowed down the development of the former. One may agree or disagree with such a thesis, but in conclusion one should pay attention to the fact that the era of genuine, and not potential, "dependency" is not behind, but in the future; It is in the 21st century that the developing countries will fully feel their dependence on the post-industrial civilization, a dependence that cannot be canceled or overcome by any internal efforts aimed at ensuring "catch-up" development.
I would like to illustrate this conclusion with the following example, which, in our opinion, reflects the situation that has developed in the world by the end of the 20th century. Technological advances have made post-industrial countries like a boat, moving confidently along the river, representing progress. Developing states are like rowboats, and any movement forward is given to them immeasurably more difficult, and they have three options for movement. Firstly, they can ask the crew of the boat to take them in tow, in which case they will move at virtually the same speed, not approaching the developed countries, but also keeping up with them; it is possible that additional efforts will even contribute to narrowing the gap, but, as we noted above, not to eliminate it. Secondly, they can continue to move in the same direction as the civilized world, however, relying on their own strength; in this case, after a while, they will certainly be at the place where the motor boat was recently, but he himself will have long since disappeared behind the bend of the river. And, finally, thirdly, they can choose the opposite path and, being proud of their own characteristics and the specifics of historical experience, turn against the current; in this case, they will remain in place or go back, completely losing hope for any optimistic future. Which of these development options seems to be preferable, it is hardly worth explaining.
Vladimir Mau
Post-Communist Russia in the Post-Industrial World: Problems of Catch-Up Development The starting point for our analysis is the rather obvious thesis that in the last third of the 20th century the USSR faced a crisis of the industrial system and that Russia is currently facing the task of advancing towards a post-industrial society. Since there is a significant technological and economic backwardness of Russia from the most advanced countries (which is measured by indicators of per capita GDP or labor productivity), we are faced with the problem of overcoming this gap, or catch-up development.
Thus, at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. Russia faced challenges similar to those it faced at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, in contrast to the situation a hundred years ago, the question is now being raised not of catching up industrialization, but of catching up post-industrialization. This is precisely the key long-term problem of the development of Russian society. And it is precisely the solution of the problem of reducing and overcoming the backlog from the most developed countries of the world that can and should become the central idea that unites society, its elite and various interest groups.
From the very beginning, we must limit the object of our research to the problems of the specifics of catching up development in the industrial and post-industrial world. Although the term "catching up development" is not entirely successful. It inaccurately characterizes the tasks that the country should solve. Economic history shows that overcoming the backlog, reaching the advanced economic frontiers requires not re-passing through all the stages of technical progress characteristic of developed countries, but a socio-economic breakthrough based on the assimilation and processing of technological, social, organizational experience accumulated by developed countries. Strictly speaking, it is more accurate to speak not of catching up development, but of a breakthrough strategy. Catch-up development as a historical phenomenon First, socio-economic backwardness can only be considered in relation to the era of economic growth, that is, starting approximately from the end of the 16th century.
And the task is quite different when there is economic growth that changes the living conditions of almost every generation of people. Here, the overtaking country should not only develop, but develop faster than the advanced one. In addition, it is not enough to simply perceive and adapt the achievements of the latter, since such a path, at best, will allow not to increase the gap, but to look for and find ways (institutions, mechanisms) that are not known to a more developed country. This is the first rule of catching up - you can't just follow the path of the most developed country.
Secondly, the problem of lagging behind arose only at a certain stage of growth, when there was a differentiation of industries and it became clear that different sectors of the economy make an unequal contribution to strengthening the economic (and therefore both political and military) power of a given country. This was not evident practically until the 19th century. In any case, for A. Smith, the problem of lagging behind is only quantitative, not structural. As you know, A. Smith did not see a special role for industry - for him, agriculture was a priority industry. And this is not surprising, because in his era it was agrarian monarchies that were examples of the most powerful and prosperous states. And that is why Smith considered it necessary to pursue an economic policy that would ensure the development in each country of those sectors where there is a comparative advantage in the international division of labor. It was precisely the most effective disclosure of the country's internal resources that seemed to him the main condition for successful development. These recommendations were, therefore, almost completely devoid of a structural component, of certain sectoral priorities. Only the 19th century showed that the problem of lagging behind is largely structural, that is, it involves the allocation of advanced industries and sectors in a given phase of economic development. This leads to the second lesson: catch-up development always involves deep structural reforms.
Thirdly, the characteristics of lagging behind differ significantly at different stages of the technological development of civilization. The concept of advanced and backward industry changes as society develops. The same industry can go from the most important prerequisite for growth to its brake (the history of the coal industry is a classic example). But in the most general terms, it makes sense here to talk about the difference between the understanding of backwardness in an industrial society (in comparison with the traditional one) and in a post-industrial society (in comparison with the industrial one). That is why it is possible and quite natural not only to transform a backward country into an advanced one, but also an advanced country into a backward one.
A country's lagging behind can be characterized by both quantitative and qualitative indicators, and their interrelation is extremely important. The most general quantitative characteristics of the level of socio-economic development are, of course, indicators of per capita GDP - its absolute level and growth rates.
But purely quantitative changes in indicators of the level of economic development (including GDP) cannot be absolutized also because serious structural shifts can be accompanied by a decline in production. On the contrary, an increase in production volumes, even some acceleration in growth rates, can also occur in the context of the beginning economic crisis. The experience of the late USSR can serve as an example of this: in the 1970s, quantitative growth indicators, although not high, looked quite decent against the background of stagflation in the Western world, and after the proclamation of the "acceleration" policy, growth rates in 1987-1988. even slightly increased. However, despite the statistical "well-being", the qualitative lag behind the West and the growing systemic crisis of Soviet communism deepened.
To characterize the processes taking place in the country (overcoming or narrowing the gap), specific indicators can also be used that are indicative of this particular phase of socio-economic development. For example, for the period of early industrialization, the number of industrial enterprises and the number of people employed on them, the use of machines. In the era of a mature industrial society (when the main factor in the growth of production efficiency was economies of scale), the important indicators were the concentration of capital and labor, the saturation of production with machines and mechanisms, the level of production of coal, iron, steel, cement (in absolute terms and per capita). On the contrary, in modern early post-industrial society high level the concentration of industries that were the pride of the industrial era is already a heavy burden (both economic and social), and indicators characterizing the development of high technologies, the pace of production renewal, the level of development of the social sphere (especially education and healthcare) and in general service industries.
Features of the analysis of catching up development in the post-industrial era
There are a number of specific factors that significantly complicate the analysis of catching up development in relation to the post-industrial world.
First. Post-industrial society is only in the process of its formation. Its basic, constitutive features may not yet have fully manifested themselves. So far, it is even difficult to say with certainty to what extent modern society bears post-industrial features.
Second. The situation is aggravated by the absence of any experience of catching up development in the post-industrial world. That is, the phenomenon itself, which we intend to analyze, is missing. All the most successful examples of catching-up development (including those over the past fifty years) belong to a fundamentally different class of problems - to the transformation of traditional societies into industrial ones. Moreover, as the events of the last decade show, the example of an industrial leap in these societies does not at all guarantee their successful adaptation to the challenges of the post-industrial era. By the beginning of the 1990s, the rapid growth of Japan and the countries of Southeast Asia ran into serious obstacles related precisely to the limited nature of the industrial growth model and their inability (at least for now) to move into a post-industrial coordinate system. It can be assumed that China, which is now rapidly growing, will face serious problems of the same kind later.
Third. The very specificity of the post-industrial system (to the extent that we are now familiar with it) brings additional analytical difficulties. The most important characteristic of this system is the obvious increase in the uncertainty of all parameters of the life of society. This is due to two features of the post-industrial society, which radically distinguish it from the industrial society. First, there is a sharp increase in the dynamism of technological life, which causes an equally sharp narrowing of the time horizons of economic and technological forecasts. Secondly, one can speak of an almost unlimited growth of needs and, accordingly, a sharp expansion of the possibilities for satisfying them (both in terms of resources and technology). All this greatly increases the scale of the economy and at the same time sharply individualizes (one might say, privatizes) it - both needs and technological solutions become more and more individual, which causes an increase in the overall level of uncertainty.
Dynamism implies a rejection of sectoral priorities established and supported by the state. The problem here is not the general inefficiency of state intervention in economic life, but the change in the very principles of functioning economic system. If in the industrial era it was possible to set growth priorities for 30-50 years and, upon reaching them, to really enter the ranks of advanced countries (which was done at one time first by Germany, and then by Japan and the USSR), now priorities are changing rapidly. For example, you can try to surpass the whole world in the production of computers per capita, develop programs for the production of the best aircraft and telephones in the world, but by the time they are successfully implemented, it turns out that the world has gone far ahead. Moreover, he went in a direction, the existence of which, when developing the program of universal computerization, no one had any idea. Therefore, the main thing in the coming post-industrial era is not "hardware" (even if from the area of the notorious "hi-tech"), but information flows. The state's abuse of the notorious strategic planning is "pernicious arrogance" (to use the expression of F. Hayek) and can only lead to the conservation of the backlog.
Thus, the problem of identifying the comparative advantages of the country becomes much more significant than in the context of industrialization. Again, as in the early stages of modern economic growth, it is necessary to abandon predetermined and predetermined breakthrough sectors and focus on identifying those factors that are most significant for a given country under given circumstances.
Individualization determines the importance of decentralization. If for an industrial society the most important characteristic was economies of scale, then in the post-industrial world its role is increasingly reduced. Of course, where mass standard production remains, economies of scale remain, and the role of the largest centralized firms remains. But as science and the possibilities of its practical application in the economic and social life, the possibility of economies of scale is also reduced, and, consequently, the creative potential of centralization. The collapse of the Soviet system was largely due to the fact that the system based on centralized decision-making turned out to be in principle unable to solve the problem of "turning science into a direct productive force of society", although this has been constantly discussed at CPSU congresses since the 1970s. The Role of the State in Solving the Problems of Catch-Up Development Taking into account all the factors and limitations listed above, we can try to formulate the contours of a practical policy that would currently ensure the solution of the problems of catching-up development.
Traditionally, the policy of catch-up development assumes the performance by the state of specific functions, which, in fact, make it possible to bridge the gap with more developed countries. The question of the role of the state has always caused particularly heated discussions, since it always goes beyond the scope of theoretical controversy and directly reflects the political struggle that is being waged in any society that is aware of the problem of its backwardness and does not want to put up with such a state of affairs. In our opinion, the basic guidelines (methodological principles) for the study of this problem are contained in the works of A. Gershenkron, although they (these guidelines), of course, must undergo a significant transformation in order to become applicable to the problems of the development of modern society.
Gershenkron distinguishes two aspects of the state's activity in a catching up society - "negative" and "positive". , into real.
The "negative" role of the state, according to Gershenkron, is to eliminate obstacles to economic growth: creating a favorable environment, removing institutional restrictions, gaining political stability by the country. The specific set of actions here depends on the circumstances of the country's historical development, on the presence or absence of factors that constrain economic development at a given level of development. productive forces. Moreover, very often we are talking about circumstances previously created by the state itself.
The "positive" prerequisites include a set of special measures to stimulate accelerated development. They are no less diverse and, in fact, act as certain institutions that ensure economic growth. AT different countries ah and in different eras, the most important institutions for growth could be investment banks(in Germany) or direct state participation in economic life(in Russia at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries).
What is the reason for the significant positive role of the state in solving the problems of catch-up development? There are two possible answers to this question. Gershenkron, based solely on the experience of industrialization, explained it by the level of backwardness of the country: the stronger the backwardness, the more actively the state should intervene directly in the economic process. As backwardness is overcome, the role of the state may weaken somewhat; it, say, gives way to banks, as was the case in relatively more developed Germany. Another answer to the question about the scale of state intervention is related to the experience of the last decades of the 20th century; it suggests that the role of the state to a large extent depends on the stage of socio-economic development, differing significantly in the industrial and post-industrial world. Let's take a closer look at this aspect of the matter.
The difference between the positive role of the state in the industrial and post-industrial world is primarily due to the nature of the productive forces of a particular era. Their qualitative difference, which was discussed in the previous section, predetermines the divergence (more precisely, the opposite) of the principles of behavior of state power in the field of solving the problems of a technological breakthrough. In an industrial society, the central question public policy is the concentration of resources on breakthrough areas of technological progress, the mobilization of all the forces and means available to a given society. A fundamentally different level of technological uncertainty makes this kind of policy in a post-industrial society impossible and ineffective. Instead of concentrating resources main task is to ensure the maximum adaptability of society and each economic agent, the creation of such a political and legal environment in which all of them are focused on actively identifying and fully satisfying the interests and needs of their counterparties (each other).
Let us define a set of economic and political conditions that, in our opinion, contribute to solving the problems of catching up development in a post-industrial society. In other words, we will talk about some list of positive aspects of public policy in the modern world.
Political regime. First of all, the question arises of ensuring political stability and the adequacy of the political regime to the tasks facing this country. Economists and political scientists have analyzed in detail the relationship between socio-economic and political development. But, apparently, there is also a connection between the level of socio-economic development of society and the political regime that is most favorable for bridging the gap with the most developed countries. In other words, the type of tasks to be solved is connected in a certain way with the stage (level) of socio-economic development, and therefore the political regime that is optimal for catching up industrialization and post-industrialization must differ.
It is quite obvious that if the industrial breakthrough of backward countries required authoritarian regimes capable of concentrating forces and means on priority areas, then a post-industrial breakthrough is possible only in conditions of stable democracy. The work of the past decade has shown how and why economic growth forms the common basis for the establishment of political democracy and civil liberties. However, in a society whose development is based on the movement of information flows and the individualization of needs, the feedback is no less important: for modern economic growth, appropriate political prerequisites are needed - institutions that guarantee freedom (political, intellectual) and property (again, not only and not even as much for tangible products as for intellectual property).
Ensuring the adaptability of society implies the disclosure of the creative activity of all agents and is hardly achievable if their initiative, both economic and political, is suppressed. Freedom of creativity, freedom of information flows, freedom of inclusion of individuals in these flows is the most important prerequisite for a breakthrough. In other words, it is necessary to create political and economic conditions favorable for the development of intelligence in the country. To paraphrase a well-known cliché from Soviet times, one can say that freedom is turning into a direct productive force of society. Currently (on present stage development of productive forces), the connection between adaptability and liberal democracy looks quite obvious.
Another political circumstance that the power must provide and which is important in any type of catch-up development is to maintain a consensus (unity of views) on the basic principles and guidelines of development between the main groups and social strata, especially within the political, economic and intellectual elite of the country. We are talking about the need to form and maintain a community of elite ideas about the desirable directions and prospects for national development.
Own. The formation of an adequate system of property relations is another fundamental task of the authorities. In relation to a post-industrial society, we should talk about guarantees of private property rights, which is directly related to providing conditions for a creative person. This rather general statement should be realized in a number of specific aspects of the functioning of property relations.
Of particular difficulty here are the problems of functioning and enforcement of intellectual property rights. There is a fairly common assumption that ensuring the strictest enforcement of intellectual property rights is one of the main conditions for a post-industrial breakthrough. At the same time, there are works that defend the opposite thesis: the rapid growth in the world of post-industrial values requires the most complete removal of restrictions on the movement of information, and hence the renunciation of the right of private ownership of intellectual labor products.
While this discussion is rather speculative, therefore, the maximum that we can do is to make some assumption: for the pioneer countries of post-industrialization, the protection of intellectual property rights was very important (or even played a critical role), while for catch-up development in this era, significant simplicity and maximum accessibility play a role information resources(information about new phenomena and technologies). Moreover, the timing effective use new knowledge is sharply reduced due to the acceleration of scientific and technological progress and the dissemination of information.
economic freedom. Political freedom in the post-industrial world is inseparable from economic freedom. A statistical indicator that more or less adequately reflects the level of economic freedom can be the budget burden in GDP. The conclusion that it is necessary to ensure a sufficiently low budget burden (about 20-25% of the budget of the general government in GDP) to achieve high growth rates remains the subject of discussion in terms of both the adequacy of its measurement and the applicability of this indicator in dynamic analysis (whether growth accelerates with a decrease in budget burden?). An analysis of the existing (albeit rather limited) experience in the development of the post-industrial world allows us to draw only two conclusions so far.
First, in order to solve the problems of catching up post-industrialization, the budget burden must apparently be lower than that of the pioneer countries. This is a significant difference from catching up industrialization, which is characterized by a higher concentration of resources in the budget of the catching up countries. The lower budget burden corresponds to high technological and economic uncertainty: relatively large resources must remain in the hands of private actors in economic life.
Secondly, the budget burden is not only a quantitative but also a structural problem. Not only the figures characterizing the scale of state intervention are important, but also the directions in which these funds are used. Thus, a more developed education system is the most important factor in post-industrialization, and this requires appropriate government spending.
Borrowing institutions. Catch-up development involves the formation new system institutions. The difficulty, however, lies in the impossibility of direct and unambiguous borrowing of the institutions formed in the pioneer countries. Some of these institutions play, so to speak, a universal role, that is, they are important for the sustainable functioning of any developed society. But far from all of them are able to play an unambiguously positive role in overcoming the gap in socio-economic development. In a number of cases, an institution that has proven its effectiveness in a developed society can be a brake on the path of the accelerated development of a backward country. Conversely, seemingly obsolete institutions sometimes play the role of a growth-accelerating factor. Finally, institutions seemingly capable of ensuring economic growth do not always take root in a different social or cultural environment.
In general terms, one can distinguish between: (1) institutions important for the sustainable functioning of the economy in modern society; (2) institutions that are characteristic of a developed society but hinder the solution of the problems of catching up development; (3) institutions that are absent in the advanced countries, but which ensure the solution of the problems of catch-up development. This distinction is very conditional. At different stages of economic development and in different countries, the significance of individual institutions can be directly opposite. The most striking examples are private property and competition, the limitation of which was typical of catch-up development in the era of mature industrialism, while in a post-industrial society, guarantees of private property and the promotion of competition are (or may be?) important factors of progress.
Structural policy. In the post-industrial world, competition again becomes a significant factor in economic life, which leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to limit the role of individual economic decisions of state power (that is, direct state intervention in economic life) and increase the role of universal decisions. The state should, first of all, ensure the possibility of individual economic agents to make decisions and be responsible for the results of their implementation. In other words, it must rigidly support uniform rules of conduct.
The rejection of sectoral priorities does not mean the rejection of priorities in making economic and political (including budgetary) decisions in principle. Numerous studies testify to of exceptional importance investment in human capital and especially in education and health care. This factor was very important during the period of industrialization, and in modern conditions its significance becomes simply exceptional. Apparently, the ability of the state to concentrate resources on the development of education and healthcare is one of the most important factors in accelerating socio-economic development in the post-industrial era. Moreover, state participation in this matter plays a very important role, since in a relatively backward country, the opportunities for private investment in education are rather limited.
highly developed countries, having set foot on a new path of civilization of the post-industrial society, are developing nevertheless based on different market models .
Liberal (American) model built on the system all-round encouragement of entrepreneurial activity , the efforts of the most active part of the population. This model is focused on achieving personal success of the "economic man ". It is based on principles of monetarism .
A decrease in the level of financing of social government programs is recognized as a prerequisite for economic recovery, since it allows preventing citizens from becoming dependent and activates incentives for their business activity. With an efficient market a working person is able to earn and solve their problems (housing, medical, etc.) without the help of the state. low-income groups an acceptable standard of living is created for the population through partial benefits and allowances. However, the problem of income equalization is not posed.
liberal model focuses on a strong manufacturer which does not need protectionist measures. Therefore, such a model is called liberal. She promotes the need to abandon protectionist measures in the field of foreign trade and foreign exchange relations (duties, quantitative restrictions on imports, foreign exchange interventions, devaluations, etc.).
The structure of efficient producers can function successfully if it is based on the same effective monetary policy Central Bank . central bank, not the state liberal model is the main macroeconomic coordinator. It should create a low inflation background for economic processes. The prevention of possible inflation should take place on the basis of a deficit-free state budget. Thus, the regulation of the real sector in the liberal model is carried out indirectly through the functions
The Central Bank, influencing the financial markets and the supply of money supply.
The liberal model that the United States adhered to from the very beginning of its development focused on scientific and technological progress (NTP) . It made it possible to save on the wage fund, which was very important in the conditions of an expensive labor force in this country. On this basis, the entrepreneurial mentality of the country was formed, which perceives scientific and technical progress as an inevitable process. Leadership in scientific and technical progress in the world markets allowed American business to receive additional benefits.
Strict antimonopoly regulation of the domestic market limits the possibility of obtaining monopoly profits on it. But the way out to the world market allows you to use such opportunities . Working in the world market strengthened the innovative focus of American business, because this market, with its tough competitive conditions, forced it to be even more dynamic.
Realization of the fact that monopoly rent is possible only while maintaining leadership in the scientific and technological progress , naturally, stepped up the United States in the development of this path. They were actively involved in the process of general computerization of production and actually reached the limit of demand for personal computers.
Since the post-war period, no country in the world has invested as much in education, research and technological development as the United States. The result was the clear leadership of the United States in the market for technological advances . It should be emphasized the method of financing STP. State provides support not specifically to a particular enterprise, but direction technical progress."
Leadership-based development in STP is built on investment in people. This is precisely what the program of President B. Clinton aimed at. "Human capital" accounts for approximately 3/4 of the national wealth of the United States.
The US has emerged as a large open economy with an extremely large domestic market and highly competitive manufacturers. US business activity determines the course of the economic cycle in other countries. The leading position of the United States in world economic relations concerns both foreign trade and the export of loan capital, portfolio and direct foreign investment. The US economic field attracts a powerful flow of foreign investment. The national money of the United States, in essence, began to perform the function of world money, which gives the country additional income.
Russia, focusing on the liberal model, should keep in mind that such a path gives scope for an already existing developed market mechanism . In Russia, such a mature mechanism not yet . It faces the task of creating its foundations and competitive regime. Therefore, the use of the principles of the liberal model cannot become the exclusive and only direction. Such a model should be superimposed on structural reforms.
Western Europe occupies a special place in the world economy. The core of the Western European states is a country close in terms of level and economic mechanisms. Main economic power The region accounts for four countries: Germany, France, Italy and the UK, which have concentrated 70% of Western European GDP and half of the region's population.
Being highly developed economies, the Western European states evolved on the basis of quality competition according to the laws of the market of monopolistic competition.
European development model consistently uses principles of social oriented economy . It is set up to prevent social tension, protecting the socially vulnerable segments of the population. To perform this function, it is actively used redistribution of income through progressive taxation. The high social burden that falls on the state budget through social programs leads to a higher severity of taxation compared to the American development model.
European development model contributed to the progressive growth of living standards in the country, increase in savings processes necessary for subsequent investment. Thus, the base of the investment climate in the country was formed - the key to its stable economic growth.
Population with rising prosperity changes the social structure . The economic basis for the marginalization of the population is gradually being washed away, the so-called middle class is growing. He becomes the main payer of taxes and thus - the financial backbone of the state.
Following this model requires substantiation of the maximum allowable social burden on the state budget . Social security should not extinguish the motivation to work and the desire to improve qualifications. Severity of taxation should not dampen investment incentives . Meanwhile, many European countries began to experience certain problems due to:
The congestion of the budget of the social component requires a reduction in the social obligations of the state. However, this causes dissatisfaction among the population, which is accustomed to the established standards of life.
The European development model is based on the active role of the state in regulating the economy. Ideas about its mandatory withdrawal from the economy, giving way to the process of coordination of the blind elements of the market, are unpopular here. The state is obligated strategic development guide . The state actively influences
The European development model has demonstrated to the whole world positive effects of international integration. The world was also shown the benefits of development based on the use of a single technological order. He contributed to the cumulative effect of the division of labor, which overcame fragmentation national markets. Europe has formed a single market . And this unity allowed even small countries to use the positive economies of scale and reach common standards of competitiveness. The cooperation of firms from different countries has become closer, which also gave impetus to the growth of production. Thus, Europe has shown the effect of development on the basis of a rich, but single market space, subject to uniform principles and regulations.
A feature of European development in the postwar years, and especially in the last two decades, is the use systemic effect , which is based on achieving the consistency of economic processes. This effect is the most important growth factor along with investment.
Tolerance (tolerance) EU to the national cultures of various countries also gives additional economic effects. going on absorption (absorption) of the best and gradual mutual enrichment with the achievements of world cultures. In this, the European path compares favorably with the American one, which is based on the opposition of the American way of life to the traditions and customs of other peoples.
We must pay tribute and political orientation of the EU, which does not claim world leadership and does not seek to impose its own standards devices to the rest of the world. This frees the EU from the huge costs of maintaining the "status of a world power", which, in turn, brings not only political dividends, but also economic benefits.
Russia should draw lessons from the European model, assessing its achievements and possible difficulties.
Japanese Development Model designed for a highly developed export-oriented country.
At the start of post-war development, its market suffered from the dominance of imports, as national production was either destroyed or uncompetitive. The Japanese government realized the need to close the industrial gap by extracting the missing technologies through the acquisition of licenses. On their basis, in fact, all industries were rebuilt during the 50-70s.
Japan's industrial transformation did not occur spontaneously. She obeyed a system of thoughtful measures, priority areas that were formed on the basis of joint work of government structures and business . The famous Japanese structural policy was put into action. As a result, Japan has a relatively unified technological order has been created , subject to structural balance.
The economic theory about the need to achieve macro-equilibrium and maintain it began to be actively introduced into economic practice. In the 60s. Japan actively used the ideas of the Nobel laureate V. Leontieva on balancing the economy , which, at the request of the Japanese government, helped draw up the inter-sectoral balance of the country's production of 2000 items. As a result, the Japanese government received a very powerful tool for economic regulation of the economy.
It sought to reproduce annually optimal industry structure . Excessive production in any industry would mean a fall in sales prices and a subsequent regrouping of industries, which threatened to lose the found stability. The Japanese government began to use not quite marketable an economic policy tool that has not been picked up by other countries: annual industry development quotas .
In the area of microeconomics Japanese model showed the whole world the success of the use of "human relations" between labor and capital. The joint well-coordinated work of both sides of the labor process accompanied the prosperity of large firms that successfully expanded into the world market. Lifetime employment system in any intense developing country with flexible economic proportions, it could not take root. In Japan, it has flourished until recently.
The renewal of production based on licenses, the balanced development of the economy, the active industrial policy, supported by the innovations of effective management, allowed Japan to switch to a new stage of industrial modernization .
The need to purchase resources for production made Japan from the very beginning to focus on high performance criteria characteristic of the world market. The introduced new equipment and the created products had to meet these requirements. The high world price for resources has become the lowest starting point for efficiency. The Japanese economy successfully coped with such difficulties, which, in turn, strengthened the desire to develop on the basis of high efficiency parameters. The shortage of raw materials forced Japan to seek innovations in the use of resource-saving technologies. The successful development of the world market was actively supported by the Japanese government by stimulating commodity exports.
However, the 1990s were for the Japanese economy heavy.
The Japanese model, aimed at overall balance, turned out to be non-equilibrium due to the fault of the state, which sought to limit the market in performing its balancing functions. Limitation of market forces in the domestic market unnecessarily monopolized the economic structure. The backlog in the system of training specialists capable of independent creative work did not allow Japan to successfully master the innovative development model. The state of the internal potential of the Japanese economy began to determine its foreign economic activity. Focusing on the production of goods using high technology, Japan began to increase exports to highly developed countries, and above all to the American market, since it was there that there was a high demand for such products.
The focus on the American market has led to competitive friction with American corporations. Therefore, Japan switched to the development of the nearby and weaker Asian region in comparison with it. The foreign economic strategies of Japanese firms made it possible for their owners to earn new capital, and the country began to enrich itself, lowering the bar for outstripping requirements in innovative scientific and technological progress.
Japan today need a new strategy for economic growth, which would allow her to take a more reliable position in the development of an innovative model. Model development of the industrial type, it has already exhausted.
Russia must assess success factors "Japanese miracle" and consider how such factors are international in nature and whether they can be used in its economic development. To do this, it is necessary to evaluate the positive effects of such a model and the limits of its validity.
Japan has demonstrated to the world the success of strategic development based on technological impulse.
She linked developmental successes to the progressive industrialization of the country, which she adapted to the existing requirements of the world market. Russia, like Japan, must also evaluate its own market based on the criteria for the effectiveness of the external market.
Japanese structural policy combined two tasks:
Russia also should not break these two processes.
The path to success lies not in the primitivism of the labor force, but in its qualifications and the continuous process of its learning . Russia should not forget about this long-term factor of economic growth.
Japanese model did not break the national mentality . She found ways to use the traditions and foundations of the nation in a new way of developing the country.
However, there appeared threats of conservatism associated with the orientation of development towards large economic giants. Such a warning is especially important for Russia, since it has already formed similar structures that dominate the domestic market. Russia must build its national strategies, maintaining a competitive environment .
The desire to save money on fundamental research and development has led Japan to serious restrictions in the transition to an innovative development model. She began to lose leadership in this area. Russia risks losing its scientific potential if it does not urgently support the knowledge economy, since the current generation of scientists will not receive a worthy replacement. Then the possibilities of an innovative way of development will be lost for a long time.
Oligarchic development model formed on the basis of increasing the role of large corporations that have grown into financial-industrial groups (FIGs) and penetrating power. On this basis, there fusion of economic and political power of monopolies .
Having achieved economic power, FIGs seek to penetrate the state-political system, subordinating it to their private interests. In this case, the negative effects of the monopoly market grow. Economic science regards such processes as the destruction of market mechanisms, as the basis for imbalances, inflation, and social tension. The penetration of oligarchic structures into power is dangerous and possibility of totalitarian regimes who, with the help of the power of the state, carry out the transfer of national resources in favor of individual monopolistic clans of society.
At the same time, with the help of the state, oligarchic structures maintain their dominance, creating and multiplying barriers to the entry of competitors in the market in the form of new capital. As a result, the conditions for the free movement of resources are violated. The automatic mechanism for balancing economic proportions ceases to function. Disproportions are growing . The economy becomes deformed and does not contribute to the economic growth of the country. Its potential is used for the personal enrichment of a narrow circle of people , and not for the growth of the welfare of the whole society In such economies, billions of dollars are possible with a few individuals while the rest of society vegetates in a quagmire of everyday problems.
The danger of the monopoly market and its extreme manifestation in the form of an oligarchic state-capitalist society has long been noted. Was the threat to the democratic foundations of society is also recognized, generated by this direction of economic development. After the defeat of the totalitarian regime of fascist Germany, which showed the whole world its threats to national security and democratic freedoms, an active antimonopoly policy began to be pursued in all countries with a developed market economy. Counterbalances were also created for the penetration of oligarchic structures into power.
A monopoly market is created whenever competition is restricted. In developed countries, an active antimonopoly policy is being pursued today, limiting monopoly power and fostering a competitive environment. Therefore, there, despite the leading positions of large corporations, competitive market supported.
AT countries with immature markets danger of monopolization economy and its oligarchic direction are quite high. They are caused by an underdeveloped capital market, handicapped spillover of assets across industries and regions, weak potential for the formation of an alternative to the production monopoly. We should also keep in mind the weakness of democratic institutions in these countries, which facilitates the penetration monopoly structures into power and strengthens their economic dictate.
Threats of Russia sliding into oligarchic capitalism are quite real. At one time, the state contributed to the formation of large integration structures. It was thought that it was they who were capable of investing and modernizing the economy. As a result, at the end of the XX century. the structure of the leading industries after the process of privatization and operations with small blocks of shares, the markets settled down and were divided. Technological monopoly inherited from old system, began to be supplemented by integration formations stimulated by the state. As a result, the Russians faced new deformations typical of the oligarchic model of development. They put it:
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Model of "catching up" development goes back to the interwar period, although we can talk about earlier examples of accelerated
Noah industrial modernization of the economy: Germany after the unification of 1871 and Japan during the Meiji transformation period. Economic history of the first half of the XX century. marked by at least two large-scale experiments of "catching up" industrial development based on the mobilization method: the accelerated industrialization of the USSR (1920-1930s) and the accelerated militarization of Germany (1930s). In the post-war period, the USSR, the states of the world socialist system, and the liberated countries oriented towards them experienced a process of accelerated industrial development in the absence of market relations.
In a number of capitalist countries with medium development, a policy of accelerated industrialization began to be implemented, which had common features, despite some regional differences. During 1950-1960. countries with a "catching up" model showed unprecedented growth patterns (Japan, a number of countries in Latin America).
The most successful example catch-up development strategies Japan can serve, while most of the countries that have chosen this model have faced serious problems in the past 20 years. Among them are a number of Latin American countries of the so-called "Big Three" - Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, as well as their neighbors on the continent - Bolivia, Venezuela , Peru, Chile, etc., where, under the influence of the global crisis of the 1920-1930s. the concept of an import-substituting economy gained popularity.
The representatives of the populist parties that came to power during this period put forward a self-reliance strategy aimed at creating a developed national industry. Given the weakness of national capital, the state was called upon to solve this problem. The popularity of the chosen strategy was reinforced by the success of the pre-war development of a number of Latin American countries, where growth rates in the late 1930s. were higher than in most developed countries. For example, in Chile, the average annual growth in 1931-1940 was 4.8%. During the war, there was a further strengthening of the industrial sector of the economy. In the first post-war decades, a wave of nationalization of leading industries swept almost everywhere.
Successes in the development of a number of import-substituting economies were most clearly manifested in the change in the structure of the economy of the once
backward countries From predominantly agrarian and trading and intermediary countries, they turned into industrial Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile reached a medium level of development in the second half of the 20th century. But already in the 1970s, crisis phenomena began to grow in the “new industrial” countries of Latin America as a result of the global systemic crisis of industrial society. At the same time, the crisis here was of a deeper nature. Its main reason was the lack of elements of the new post-industrial economy necessary to overcome in the form of its own fundamental science, a developed education system, etc. The crisis was supported by an extremely developed system of state intervention, state entrepreneurship. All this seriously hindered the start of reforms. It is obvious that under crisis conditions, the relatively inefficient economies of the South American countries were losing ground in foreign markets as well. They faced the problems of rapid demographic growth with a relatively low standard of living and poverty of the general population. In addition, the society was not psychologically ready for radical liberalization. This was evidenced by the first reforms in Latin America in Chile, which were carried out under the conditions of the established military dictatorship of General A Pinochet In the 1980s, the rest of the countries of the region began to switch to a new model. This transition was painful and inconsistent. Despite the long period of reform, it did not lead to unambiguously positive results, which was expressed in periodic deep financial and economic crises, which to this day are shaking the economies of the leading Latin American countries.
Second common option models of "catching up" development is represented by the countries of Southeast Asia. Each of them in a different period began to industrialize the economy. In Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, it began immediately after the Second World War, in Indonesia and South Korea - in the early 1960s, in Thailand - in the late 1960s. This list can be continued due to China, which actively introduced the industrial model with 1970s, as well as two countries of the former world socialist system (Vietnam and Laos), which began to apply the strategy of industrial development dominance in the mid-1990s.
The industrial development of Asian countries consists of two stages. At the first, as a rule, the well-known Latin American model of an import-substituting economy was adopted in order to meet the needs of the domestic market, and after that, the industry was reoriented to the external market. For example, South Korea developed according to a similar scheme. The model of Asian industrial countries in many ways resembles the features of the Japanese model. Some differences can be seen in the degree of monopolization of the economy, the level of development of the state patronage system, the role of foreign capital, the features of the sectoral structure, etc.
In the context of the beginning of the transition to a post-industrial society, the Asian model of industrial development, like the Latin American one, found itself in a deep crisis. Everywhere in these countries with some delay - from the second half of the 1980s. the former system of state regulation began to be dismantled, a consistent liberalization of the regime, including its demonopolization, was carried out, which makes the economies of the “Asian dragons” more open. This process is accompanied by deep financial and economic crises, typical for all countries that have chosen the model of "catching up" development.
The concept of catch-up development
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