Institution-formation theory and principles of its construction. Globalization and the main mechanisms of the development of society

It should be noted that systemic opposition plays an important role in the constant marginalization of the geopolitical periphery. It encompasses the so-called “anti-systemic movements”, i.e. mass protest social movements aimed at overcoming “backwardness” and raising the living standards of certain population groups in one way or another. These include various kinds of mass movements in the “core” countries, and communist and national-liberation political associations in the Third World (existing under a variety of slogans – from socialist and anti-globalist to national and religious fundamentalist).

The cumulative result of their existence is that by introducing local tensions into the system in the short term, they, in turn, become its stabilizing factor. To a large extent, the actions of these movements prevent the population from consolidating to counter the real causes that lead to the deterioration of their social and economic situation. In some cases, they create a legitimate pretext for building a repressive system and institutions of total control over the population. All of this is required for the effective functioning and risk reduction of the global economic vertical.

The uncertainty of global development is greatly exacerbated by the fact that new centres of civilization are beginning to compete with the countries of Europe and North America. As an example, China is moving steadily toward first place in the global economic vertical. On the one hand, it is a state with a constantly growing economy and industry. On the other hand, China is an independent civilization with a developed culture, dating back to the third millennium BC.

1.3 Globalization and the principles of its study

The phenomenon of globalization has been studied based on various views of reality. There are several ways to classify theoretical approaches. In a number of works, globalization is viewed as an objective historical trend of deepening interstate and inter-civilizational interactions and contacts. The study of this phenomenon was also carried out through the study of its geo-economic and geopolitical aspects, as well as the impact of globalization on the nation state and its structural subdivisions. In addition, attempts were made to comprehensively summarize the processes of globalization. It was implemented in the “world system” approach to the analysis of this phenomenon, which sees it as a period in the development of society characterized by increasingly multidimensional and comprehensive interactions between social subjects and entities.

One of the leading objective components of globalization is the global crisis of resources and demographics. It arose in the process of increasing global connectivity, that is, with the formation of economic, transport, and information components of globalization. Based on the analysis of this phenomenon, the resource- and environment-based approach to the assessment of global development appeared and grew in influence, and one of its offshoots was transformed into the “concept of sustainable development”. The basis of this concept is the clarification of objective natural resource limitations (“limits of growth”) that stand in the way of the material and economic activity of humankind. As a consequence, within the framework of this theory, studies have been conducted to determine the optimal size of the global population¹⁰.

Philosophers who developed several concepts of stage-by-stage development of humankind toward creating a single global society can be considered the forerunners of modern globalism. Fundamental works of this socio-philosophical school of thought were created by philosophers and scientists such as I. Kant, K. Marx, P. Teilhard de Chardin, V. Vernadsky, A. Toynbee, B. Russell, K. Jaspers, etc.

Based on the scale of the transformation of society, the era of globalization is similar to the “Axial Age”. This pivotal age, singled out by Karl Jaspers, was characterized by the formation of the first local civilizations, the separation and isolation of the political sphere, and the emergence of the world’s largest religions. During this age, the basic social structures and organizations that defined world history for many centuries were created¹¹. Such changes in society lead to significant difficulties in understanding and studying such a phenomenon in the history of social development as globalization.

This phenomenon is usually described in the well-known categories of internationalization of economies and integration of states, i.e. in terms of economic determinism and the concept of world politics as the interaction of sovereign states. Most models of globalization have been created based on periodization, with its characteristic economic determinism. This approach views globalization as an objectively determined, mainly economic, process of the spread and universalization of the Western economic model in its neoliberal version. This created the impression of becoming a global “super-society”¹² (A. Zinoviev), the proclamation of the “end of history”¹³ (F. Fukuyama), and the emergence of a global “Empire”¹⁴ (M. Hardt, A. Negri) with a Euro-Atlantic civilization core and several rings of the dependent and subject-less periphery.

In addition, globalization is largely considered based on the concepts of civilizational theories. Thus, these ideas helped the concept of “hybridization” of society, which enjoyed a certain popularity. It suggests that one of the significant characteristics of globalization is the process of cultural, racial, and ethnic mixing, i.e. meticization¹⁵. Thus, “hybridization” is the mixing of races and peoples into a single social community, with a common culture. In this case, it should be noted that this concept reduces the emergence of a new social reality to a mechanical superposition, an overlay of already known phenomena and entities. It does not take into account, and does not presuppose, possible qualitative changes in the society as a result of convergence.

Therefore, most of the concepts describing globalization are developed within two main groups of theories. The first is represented by formational models, which base the development of society on the economy. The second group consists of civilizational theories, with their typical focus on the regional peculiarities of human development. At the same time, a significant number of hybrid theories have been created that simultaneously use the methodological basis of these two types of concepts.

As an example, we can cite the theoretical constructs of A.A. Guseinov¹⁶. He believes that globalization is the transformation of historically established, quite independent cultural-civilizational and national state forms of social life into a single system that encompasses all humankind. And this new system is inevitably opposed to those forms of collective, which it is designed to remove in favour of some new synthesis, which is so broad as to be universal.

The conflict between the global and the local becomes particularly evident and enters a dramatic confrontation when globalization goes beyond the economy, capturing the cultural, political, and ideological – in the broad sense of the term (world view, mental) – sphere of life. Thus, according to V.S. Stepin, globalization is a choice between two scenarios, which are known as the concept of the “golden billion” and the concept of a “dialogue of civilizations”¹⁷.

The concept of the “golden billion” arises from the perception of globalization as the domination, the triumph of the civilization of the West and Western nations, “the end of history” (Fukuyama)¹⁸. Everyone else should strive to emulate them under the threat that they will otherwise be doomed to a peripheral or semi-peripheral existence. Accordingly, the future global society is thought of as a similar feudal-hierarchical system with western European civilization in the centre and concentric circles of different levels located around it. The concept of a “global human anthill” as the ultimate and final variant of humanity’s integration within the framework of the Western paradigm was sociologically predicted and depicted in A.A. Zinoviev’s works¹⁹.

The idea of a “dialogue of civilizations” as an extremely abstract position, deprived of clearly formulated goals and attachment to social subjects, is formulated in the preface to the Russian translation of F. Braudel’s book The Grammar of Civilizations: “Globalization is developing simultaneously with the emergence of a multipolar world. Civilizations must learn … to accept the existence of other civilizations, to recognize that they will never achieve domination over others, to be ready to see others as equal partners²⁰.” The concept of a “dialogue of civilizations” justly believes that the sociocultural sphere is not a carbon copy of the economy. It is based on the principle of “equality” of civilizations, cultures, and peoples, and sees the ideal global society as “unity in diversity”.

In fact, behind the concept of a “dialogue of civilizations”, there is the desire of the already established global periphery to resist the pressure of the West in terms of the unification of cultures and values and to develop its project of existence in a united world. From this perspective, globalization is a challenge to cultural-civilizational and national identity that applies to all development scenarios, including the concept of a “dialogue of civilizations²¹.”

Nevertheless, it should be noted that today the process is happening in a slightly different manner: namely, the ideology of the largest community – the people of the Western world, the “golden billion” – is being formed. It is a subjective, group outlook on reality that serves the global confrontation as regards people’s material well-being. And the confrontation within the new, global community inevitably arises due to the growing struggle for natural resources due, in particular, to the exponential growth of the population.

At the same time, the idea of a “dialogue of civilizations” as an ideal and almost conflict-free development, presented as an alternative to the real practices of globalization and the real strategy of globalism, is not, in fact, a real alternative. This position is, at best, more of an ideal tendency, if not wishful thinking.

Moreover, this wish is so abstract that it fails the test not only of social practices but also of the concretization and development of a local applied model of such a “dialogue”.

Behind globalism, there are very real interests and actors involved in global events. At the same time, behind the “universal” abstract idea of a “dialogue of civilizations” we cannot see any substantial economic interests that would outweigh the benefits of globalism for elites, including local elites. Similarly, there are neither actors interested in symmetric, equal dialogue nor subjects capable of ensuring it. Nor is there an arbitrator standing above the fray interested in, and capable of, forcing the participants of globalization who have real economic and other kinds of power to join the “dialogue of civilizations”.

The absence of the actors interested in the implementation of this scenario of globalization development is explained by the fact that the life and death issues important to these actors are being resolved in the course of their interaction. The result of direct interaction between the “wolf” and the “lamb”, devoid of spatial and mechanical barriers, is obvious, regardless of the calls of the weaker side for an equal dialogue. As a result, the idea of a “dialogue of civilizations” is, at best, a form of appeal by the losing side to the mercy of the winners, a form of “incorporation” into the Western model of globalization.

Another form of appeal by local outsiders to the mercy of the leaders of global development is the idea of “preserving civilizational (cultural) diversity”, clearly repeating the slogan of “preserving the biodiversity” of the environment. The slogan of “preservation of diversity” is nothing else but a strategy of preserving the physical existence of the ethnocultural community at the cost of the loss of historical subjectivity and transformation from a subject into an object of protection – the transition of the local society into the status of a protected biological object. Nevertheless, for many primitive ethnic groups, obtaining the status of a protected object (small indigenous peoples with a traditional economy) was a relatively successful way out of the “trap of globalization”.

In general, the pressure of globalization on local societies and groups yields two types of reactions. The first one manifests in the closure and development of protective group consciousness, in the transformation of local societies into diasporas. The second type manifests in the aspiration of local and regional communities, politically formed as states, to enter globalization on their own, most favorable, conditions. A third type is also possible – the development of a separate global project. But this has the highest resource requirements and, without reservations, is available only to China.

In any case, even when criticizing, “rejecting” globalization in its Western expansionist version, it is necessary to recognize that the problem itself and the challenges associated with it remain. This happens because the foundations of globalization – the globalization of the economy, the transformation of local societies into open systems, the removal of spatial and informational barriers, the growing crisis of resources and demographics – exist and develop objectively.

Contemporary Russian studies of globalization lie within the framework of several theoretical approaches that unwittingly reflect the balance of social forces and interests in and around Russia.

The neoliberal view of globalization, which, to a large extent, has acquired the status of the official concept of reform and development of the Russian Federation, reflects the views of modern Russian elites, whose interests are largely associated with the raw material economic cycle and the global economic order. It is simply a local adaptation of the views and theoretical constructions of such classics of neoliberalism as F. Hayek²², M. Friedman²³, and K. Popper²⁴. Accordingly, the negative consequences of total liberalization of all spheres of human existence are presented as “objectively inevitable” and, as a consequence, as an alternative-free and uncontrollable phenomenon. Any attempt to manage it threatens an even worse outcome.

In general, liberal approaches to globalization, as an extreme form of economic determinism, are characterized by the denial of the systemic complexity of social development, fundamentally irreducible to the phenomena and laws of the economic and material order.

Thus, the neoliberal concept of globalization, which has taken hold of the elites and expresses their interests in a concentrated way, acquires the character of an objective historical factor. In general, neoliberalism is not only a theoretical model describing the real processes of the modern age. Its main task is to create standard perceptions whose implementation in economic policy is one of the characteristic manifestations of globalization. In particular, neoliberalism, taken as a phenomenon of social consciousness, can be seen as a theory justifying the separation of the ruling classes from local societies and the formation of a global elite. The main provisions of this concept are based on the direct results of the vertical fragmentation of society and the crisis of post-industrial nations.

Significant scientific results, achieved in the socio-ecological fields, which consider globalization in terms of the development of the global crisis of resources, demographics, and the environment. It should be noted that this field has been controlled from the very beginning by representatives of global elites with the help of some international organizations and foundations that organize scientific research.

By manipulating the “global threats”, the adherents of the concepts of “sustainable development” and “zero growth” motivate the withdrawal of states and relevant social communities to abstain from choosing their own path of development. They advocate the creation of supranational institutions with global political power that are uncontrollable and non-transparent for the participating countries, and justify the “objective necessity” of reducing the living standards and social guarantees of the bulk of the population and even the “inevitable decline” of the world’s population.

However, the term “sustainable development” clearly reflects the interests of global financial elites who lobby for the preservation and increase of disparity between the “global core” and “global periphery”, the solution of global contradictions, which is found at the expense of economic and political outsiders of the global community.

At the same time, in Russia, the foundation in the field of fundamental sciences about nature could not fail to culminate in scientific achievements, significant not only in the applied sense but also in the general philosophical one. Firstly, this concerns the concept of physical economics of P.G. Kuznetsov²⁵ and several works on globalistics and system analysis of global development, which were carried out by Russian researchers. Among the latter, we should mention the works of the world-renowned geophysicist and climatologist K.Y. Kondratyev and his associates²⁶, and the works of A.P. Fedotov²⁷ and A.I. Subetto, with their focus on the noosphere²⁸.

The crisis of the formation-based approach as a form of economic determinism elicited a natural interest in the civilizational approach, which focuses on problems of a sociocultural order. Among the Russian authors who consider globalization from the standpoint of the civilizational approach, the concepts of Y.V. Yakovets and E.A. Azroyants should be highlighted.

Thus, the work “Globalization and the interaction of civilizations”²⁹ puts forward the main ideas of the modern civilizational approach to globalization:

1. Human history is a periodic change of global civilizations, which assumes the form of consecutive global historical cycles.

2. Each global civilization can be conventionally represented as a five-step pyramid, where the demographic substratum with its biosocial needs and manifestations lies at the foundation. At the top of the pyramid, there are phenomena of a spiritual and cultural nature, including culture, science, education, ideology, ethics, and religion. Social transformation begins at the bottom step and gradually transforms all steps of the pyramid, leading to a change of one civilization into another one.

3. With each historical cycle, the intensity of inter-civilizational interaction increases, resulting in humanity gradually becoming a unified social system.

4. The modern age represents a transition from industrial to post-industrial global civilization.

5. Globalization transformations are typical of the establishment of modern post-industrial global civilization.

6. The main contradiction of the neoliberal-technocratic model of globalization is that it does not serve the interests of humanity but, rather, the interests of the largest transnational corporations (TNCs).

This concept explains the fact that sociocultural unification and the convergence of local societies present a threat because they reduce the viability and development potential of humanity. The answer to this challenge is the establishment of “fourth-generation” civilizations. This theory, which is based on the idea of a historically evolving structure of local civilizations, including the change of civilizational leadership, is developed in detail in various works³⁰,³¹. This concept substantiates the fact that the tendency towards socio-cultural unification of local civilizations currently plays a major role. In other words, the convergence of local civilizations is heading towards a global one. This theory takes the neoliberal model of global convergence (“westernization”, according to A. Zinoviev’s terminology³²) as the basis, without seeing or proposing any alternative models of development or subjects interested in alternative development.

Meanwhile, global unification is impossible at the very least because there is a struggle of peripheral local civilizations against the currently dominant civilization of the West. This struggle will inevitably produce fundamentally different kinds of social life and fundamentally different social norms and rules, alternative values, and models of social life.

Having absorbed the whole world, the global civilization will inevitably generate new ways of forming groups and structures.

However, Y.V. Yakovets’s rejection of the formation-based approach leads to the rejection of his main achievement – the notion of conflict and group interests as the driving forces of social and historical development. It also leads to the rejection of the achievements and possibilities of sociological structuralism, which sees society as a system of objectively existing social groups and structures that include, in particular, class and ethnocultural communities.

E.A. Azroyants³³ develops his original model of globalization as the concept of historical cycles and distinguishes three main cycles in human evolution: the emergence of humans; the establishment and development of the social community; and, ultimately, the establishment of a global megasociety as the highest “spiritual and moral” form of human existence.

Development cycles are connected with transitional periods, which contain situations where it is possible to make a history-defining choice of the future path, the crossroads, from which different historical development paths branch out. Each cycle is seen as an evolutionary niche, a transition in the course of which there is a choice of a probable way of developing the local or global society. At the same time, the current situation, which is characterized by the global crisis, does not exclude the possibility of a fatal outcome for local civilizations and humanity as a whole as one of these options.

E.A. Azroyants rightly believes that humanity is experiencing a civilizational crisis corresponding to the transition from the second cycle, i.e. the establishment of a community, to the third, the establishment of a “megasociety”. Accordingly, the current liberal model of globalization (globalization of TNCs and financial capital) does not allow a new level of development to be reached, which requires the development of a qualitatively new, “humanistic” model of global development. However, according to the author, the modern world has not formed social actors that are capable of, and interested in, “resisting TNCs and managing globalization in the interests of the entire humankind”.

At the same time, E.A. Azroyants believes that the spiritual and technological types of development of society have different goals. As a result, technological development under certain conditions objectively generates social regression, which manifests itself in the sphere of social relations. Under the conditions of neoliberal globalization, there is both cultural and civilizational unification and general degradation of culture.

However, the appeal to “network structures” with their amorphousness and lack of explicit control centres – the appeal that is popular today, in the age of artificial “social networks” – only highlights that the concept is subject-less. It has no place for real political actors and their interests.

In general, these theoretical constructions are limited to a statement regarding the factual side of globalization. They emphasize its inherent system of growing internal contradictions, but are limited to the moral condemnation of the “new world order”. In this case, declaring the civilizational approach as a methodological basis, E.A. Azroyants, under the name of “historical cycles”, de facto offers his version of the formation-based approach. He repeats the main postulate of economic reductionism (and liberal fundamentalism as its variety) about the fatal inevitability of the merger of cultures and civilizations as the global economy is being established.

Thus, the works of Y.V. Yakovets and E.A. Azroyants are typical contemporary works on the sociology and culturology of civilizations. They project and theorize the passive reflection of local social groups (including local civilizations), which are pushed by globalization to the periphery of social life together with their system of interests. Notably, the civilizational approach in these situations proceeds from a convergent and essentially staged model of development of social communities. In these concepts, the development of society is assumed to progress by merging the preceding communities until a global culturally homogeneous society (megasociety, “global humanity”, etc.) emerges. This concept ignores the obvious tendencies of modernity toward ethnocultural divergence, fragmentation, and the reinvigorated importance of ethnicity and religion.

S. Pivovarov³⁴ raises the question of the current state of the formation-based and civilizational approaches as complementary. He notes, in particular, that the formation-based approach borrows key ideas from Christian thought, including the universality of history, its regularity, and the possibility of periodization.

A.I. Fursov stands out among the proponents of the formation-based approach, as he considers history to be more than a struggle of classes, social groups, and state bodies within a particular social formation³⁵. He believes that societal development is characterized by long cycles of confrontation between the elites and the grass-roots movements. They can expand so far as to reach the global level in the last cycle of history. According to A.I. Fursov, the present moment is characterized by global revenge of the elites and, as a consequence, by a global collapse of the social gains of the majority.

A.I. Fursov sees the mutual need for social cooperation, which requires a certain structure of the “social pyramid”, as a factor that determines the balance between “the upper” and “the lower” that coexist within society. Thus, population shortages after the wars and epidemics of the Middle Ages led to the emancipation of the third estate. The needs of industry, first for workers and then for a market for manufactured goods, led to the containment of elites and the rise of the social status of the masses. The phenomenon of socialism emerged. It appeared first as a doctrine and later as a social system. This phenomenon was largely responsible for the appearance of the “middle class” in the bourgeois industrial countries. Thus, according to A.I. Fursov, globalization is another revenge of the elites, who have broken away from the nation state basis and extract resources from the “privatization of the welfare state” created in the industrial era.

When analysing the views of this author, it should be noted that his concept, for all its originality and importance for science, does not consider mechanisms of conflict and contradictions in society. At the same time, these phenomena contribute not less but rather more to the transformation of society than the need for cooperation between individuals.

Thus, a comparative philosophical and methodological analysis of the known theories of globalization, which are created within the framework of various scientific disciplines, shows that they represent the diversity of this era as a set of individual patterns. Most of these concepts reduce globalization, which is a comprehensive phenomenon, to private, albeit essential, phenomena of an economic, sociocultural, or political nature. These concepts, both apologetic and critical, are characterized by the absolutization of convergent aspects of development. They see such processes of transformation of society as monopolization and unification, including economic, social, and ethnocultural, as the leading tendencies of development of society. They deny the phenomenon of social regression and processes of divergent nature, which are objective trends that are inherent in globalization.