Russia has no place in a globalized world - methodologist Georgy Shchedrovitsky

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The founder of the movement of methodologists, Georgy Shchedrovitsky, not long before his death, in early 1994, predicted where New Russia was heading. He called perestroika "the revolution of the nomenclature," but this nomenclature is not capable of creating a modern state. The lot of Russia is to be a resource-based, discriminated appendage of the West.

However, in relation to the post-Soviet space, the Russian Federation will continue to play the role of a "small imperialist." The West left the Russian Federation as a "residual empire" for the autonomous maintenance of stability on the territory of the former USSR. The existing nomenclature does not know how to work with systems that possess thinking and reflection. He also correctly predicted the contours of the "new world": "civil society" and the "rule of law" are gradually leaving, giving way to organizations of a different type - "intellectual programs", corporations and "regions."

Georgy Shchedrovitsky from the beginning of his scientific career professed economic determinism, or "classical Marxism" - the primacy of economics over politics, base and superstructure. After 1991, he also remained true to this principle, and in 1994, in his work "The Search for Form", published in the collection "Other", he spoke about the present and future of Russia, proceeding from such a Marxist analysis.

The Interpreter's blog has already written what a methodology is and on what principles it is based. After the death of Shchedrovitsky, methodologists were not in demand by the authorities. The situation changed with the arrival of such prominent methodologists as the head of the presidential administration Anton Vaino and the first deputy head of the presidential administration Sergei Kiriyenko in the presidential administration. The technocratic, "modeled" approach to management systems has again become in demand. Therefore, it is even more important to look at the ideas of the founder of the methodology, Georgy Shchedrovitsky, in order to understand how the followers of his theory and practical methods of management see the future of Russia.

What the Brave New World will look like

Back in 1994 - let me remind you that this is the peak of the devastation of Russia, when almost no one here cared about visionary work - he predicted very accurately what socio-political relations would look like in the new globalized world:

- Significant changes have taken place in the labor market, where the growth in the importance of preparatory work (programming, design, planning, staging), in comparison with performing, and the general intellectualization of mental activity led to a shift from the strategy of "selling" to the principles of "renting" (leasing) working time …

- The relations between society and the state have significantly transformed. The role of state institutions and concepts of state sovereignty in solving domestic and intercountry problems has diminished. Separate functions of the traditional state began to be transferred to the supranational level (the level of coalitions of states and superregions), as well as to the level of territories (local authorities, communes, municipalities, lands). "Civil society" and "rule of law", as the leading characters of the European historical process, are gradually "leaving the scene", giving way to other types of organizations: "intellectual programs", corporations (close-knit groups and associations using corporate forms of organization) and "regions ". In these conditions, competition is intensifying between three (at least) concepts of statehood: legal, bureaucratic and target-oriented.

- Literally within one century, the leading type of political culture has changed: from leadership to party culture and from it to program culture.

What is restructuring

- Paraphrasing Karl Marx, it can be argued that the changes in the USSR were caused by the global contradiction between the level of development of the productive forces characteristic of the world economy and the level of production relations that developed on the territory of the Soviet Union. Roughly speaking, the need for perestroika was dictated by the deep lag of the production and consumption system that had developed in the USSR from the patterns, standards and forms of organization characteristic of world economic cooperation at the end of the twentieth century.

- The proto-subject of cultural and historical transformation was the national "nomenclature". It was this social stratum, having already “felt the taste of privatization” of processes and management systems (including the existing state apparatus), and saw opportunities for realizing their class interests. In sociological terms, the so-called. "Perestroika" is a "coup" carried out by the "nomenklatura" (dreaming of becoming a bureaucracy) in order to strengthen the most modern bureaucracy, and by virtue of this already has a top-level character.

Russia's place in the world

- In the modern world economy there is no definite and prepared place for Russia; there is no "void" that could be filled with the existing economic and social morphology. All market niches (both actual and potential) are already occupied, all types of direct integration into the World Economy (MH) through specialization have already been designed and implemented by other countries and transnational corporations (TNCs) ahead of five to seven, and sometimes even more years. The Moscow Art Museum has everything (without Russia).

- World processes, having acquired their situational representative-carrier in the person of the domestic "nomenclature" and being implemented in the fabric of the existing (formed on the territory of the former USSR for the last 100-150 years) cultural, social and economic organization, will undoubtedly acquire a completely new form, surprising and unpredictable, which will be the product of mutations.

- There is a huge adaptive potential of the post-Soviet social structure.

Why Russia won't have a place in this world

- The place of the ideological framework that ensures the consolidation of power groups and the implementation of power relations themselves (in relation to other social groups) is today occupied by a poorly edited set of social-patriotic and imperial ideologemes. The latter is:

a) a natural response to foreign policy challenges (including the desire of developed countries to preserve the Russian Federation as a "residual empire" for the autonomous maintenance of stability on the territory of the former USSR),

b) the result of realizing the fatality of purely nationalist slogans for the transnational (multi-national) social structure that has formed over the past 300-400 years, c) as well as the effect of reflection on the existing spatial organization of economic and political activity on the territory of Russia (in particular, the significance of the processes of "development" of Siberia and the Far East not only for Russia itself, but also in the geopolitical and geo-economic perspective).

- Today, the claims of the cultural, economic and economic "colonization" of the territories of the former USSR by the United States, Europe and the APR countries are already quite clearly indicated. If Russia cannot in the near future (15-20 years) become the center of a new (both in form and content) continental consolidation (on the Eurasian continent), then it will become an arena for other continental and world empires (proto-empires).

- Being in its historical origin the result of territorial expansion and colonization, the Russian Federation today has no stable borders. A new contour of geopolitical and geoeconomic tensions is forming around Russia; these tensions pose the danger of serious and protracted regional conflicts.

- Being discriminated from outside, Russia in relation to the nearest periphery and "internal colonies" behaves like a "shark" of international competition.

- In the late 1960s and early 70s, there was an opportunity to take the place of the "newly industrialized countries", but it was missed. The ruling group cherished the hope that the second wave of industrialization in the Asia-Pacific region (APR) would not take place, and a little later - that it would be possible to slip into the "club" of influential countries on the crest of the world raw materials (and primarily energy) crisis. However, these opportunities were used extremely ineffectively. Today the MX really includes only the gas industry and some segments of the arms production. In the medium term, Russia's oil resources have lost their role as values of global importance (although they constitute an important sector of the domestic economic complex and the CIS economy), most of the industries are not able to enter the world market with competitive products. But even if this happens and Russian export industries "enter" the world market, this will not yet mean a full-fledged "inclusion" (participation) in the MX.

How to overcome backward governance systems in Russia

- To be an "elite" today does not mean to control the main channels and flows of movement of "resources"; this means purposefully including them in various world and country processes, seeking the most efficient use and growth of the resource base itself.

- Unfortunately, the existing "nomenclature" does not have the necessary culture (primarily and mainly social, humanitarian and philosophical), appropriate intellectual and technological training, has no idea about the type of processes taking place in society and cannot give them the necessary speed and direction.

In particular, this is manifested in the inability to work with mass political processes in the conditions of interprofessional communication, incomplete information, uncertainty and collective action, in the conditions of innovation, crisis; this manifests itself in a lack of understanding of modern requirements for research and design work, inability to use network forms of organization, information technology, mobile corporations and multifocal management systems characteristic of "high" forms of activity and thinking. The existing "nomenclature", unfortunately, does not know how to work with systems that possess thinking and reflection.

- Roughly speaking, she is simply illiterate in the social and humanitarian field, and "economism" (as a special injection of the humanitarian approach) cannot compensate for the radical absence of a complex of social and humanitarian knowledge and modern anthropotechnics.

- Faced with the task described above: to fit the disintegrating and newly emerging systemic integrity of Russia into the systemic integrity of the world economic and cultural development of thinking and activity, the nomenclature gives in and seeks to replace this task with a number of pseudo-goals: support (stabilization) of production, development of investment projects, "restoration" empire or its economic and political counterparts, maintaining ideological control over the processes of learning and human development.

Who will replace the Russian nomenclature

- Who, what social and professional group will replace the nomenclature dreaming of becoming a "bureaucracy" and a financial and industrial oligarchy? Which group will replace the modern bureaucracy that has privatized the state apparatus and the financial system as a subject of reproduction and development of systems of activity? What resource can be comparable in power of influence with a monopoly over the distribution of finances and rights? What is the dynamics of the change of the leading subject of development in the global context and in the specific conditions of Russia?

- Firstly, in a global context, such a social group (a potential subject of development and reproduction) must possess the most modern technologies of collective thinking and problem solving with new methods of production and use of knowledge; it is "knowledge" (in the broad sense of the word), and not capital, that will play the role of a key (closing) resource for the entire emerging formation of thought activity.

- Secondly, in Russia this mission can be undertaken only by the group that, simultaneously with solving "internal" (properly Russian) problems, will be able to pose and solve world problems (to present Russian problems as global ones).

- For the internal situation, this means that in parallel with the post-Soviet "nomenclature" and the financial "oligarchy" a layer of free professionals is being formed, creating a market for names and a market for qualifications in various fields of activity. We are confident that at the turn of the 21st century there will be a population of "interlockers" - strategic intermediaries between different types of knowledge and types (spheres) of activity. A specific way of existence and reproduction for this group is the form of frame groups, intentional associations, intellectual corporations and business networks.

- The change of form (or disintegration of the form) in the overlying floor (management) occurs earlier (in physical and activity time) than in the lower one.