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Introduction

CONVERGENCE is a term used in economics to denote the convergence of alternative economic systems, economic and social policies of different countries. The term “convergence” gained recognition in economic science due to its widespread use in the 1960-1970s. convergence theories. This theory was developed in various versions by representatives (P. Sorokin, W. Rostow, J. C. Galbraith (USA), R. Aron (France), econometrics J. Tinbergen (Netherlands), D. Schelsky and O. Flechtheim (Germany). In it, the interaction and mutual influence of the two economic systems of capitalism and socialism during the scientific and technological revolution were considered as the main factor in the movement of these systems towards a kind of “hybrid, mixed system." According to the convergence hypothesis, a “single industrial society" will be neither capitalist nor socialist. will combine the advantages of both systems, and at the same time will not have their disadvantages.

An important motive for the theory of convergence was the desire to overcome the division of the world and prevent the threat of thermonuclear conflict. One of the versions of the theory of convergence belongs to academician A.D. Sakharov. At the end of the 60s. Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov believed in the rapprochement of capitalism and socialism, accompanied by democratization, demilitarization, social and scientific and technological progress; the only alternative to the destruction of humanity.

This historically inevitable process of rapprochement between Soviet socialism and Western capitalism A.D. Sakharov called it “socialist convergence.” Now some people, intentionally or unintentionally, omit the first of these two words. Meanwhile, A.D. Sakharov emphasized great importance socialist moral principles in a convergent process. In his opinion, convergence is historical process mutual learning, mutual concessions, mutual movement towards a social order, devoid of the shortcomings of each system and endowed with their advantages. From the point of view of modern general economic theory, this is a process of worldwide socialist evolution, instead of that world revolution, which, according to Marx and Engels, should have become the gravedigger of capitalism. In his works A.D. Sakharov convincingly proved that in our era world revolution would be tantamount to the death of humanity in the fire of a general nuclear war.

Newest historical experience allows you to better understand and appreciate the ideas of A.D. Sakharov. The future society must adopt the principles of political and economic freedom from modern capitalism, but abandon unbridled selfishness and overcome the harmful disunity between people in the face of worsening global threats. From socialism, the new society must take comprehensive social development according to a scientifically based plan, with a clear social orientation and with a more equitable distribution of material wealth, while abandoning total petty control of all socio-economic life. Thus, the future society must the best way combine economic efficiency with social justice and humanism. On the path to a future humane society, our country has made a historical zigzag. We were, as they say, carried away. Having put an end to the Soviet past overnight, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. We got gangster capitalism, the unscrupulous “freedom” of the 90s. It was a dead end. He inevitably led the country to degradation and, ultimately, to death. With great difficulty, the government renewed at the turn of the century managed to reverse the disastrous processes and pull the country back from the brink of the abyss. The socialist aspects of the convergent process are currently acquiring particular relevance. We have to, without compromising economic efficiency, skillfully integrate the attributes of social justice into our lives. It is necessary, without compromising mutually beneficial multilateral cooperation with the world community, to reliably ensure national security in this turbulent world and ensure the comprehensive socio-economic development of our country.

Nowadays the term “convergence” is used to describe integrating processes. The basis of global integration development is the general trends and imperatives of scientific, technological and socio-economic progress. They determine the rapprochement, i.e. convergence, of the economies of an increasing number of countries while maintaining their national characteristics.

1. The essence of the theory of convergence (rapprochement) of alternative economic systems

Convergence theory, a modern bourgeois theory, according to which the economic, political and ideological differences between the capitalist and socialist systems are gradually smoothed out, which will ultimately lead to their merger. The theory of convergence arose in the 50s and 60s. XX century under the influence of the progressive socialization of capitalist production in connection with the scientific and technological revolution, the increasing economic role of the bourgeois state, and the introduction of planning elements in capitalist countries. Characteristic of this theory are a distorted reflection of these real processes of modern capitalist life and an attempt to synthesize a number of bourgeois apologetic concepts aimed at masking the dominance of big capital in modern bourgeois society. The most prominent representatives of the theory: J. Galbraith, P. Sorokin (USA), J. Tinbergen (Netherlands), R. Aron (France), J. Strachey (Great Britain). The ideas of political theory are widely used by “right” and “left” opportunists and revisionists.

Convergence considers technological progress and the growth of large industry to be one of the decisive factors in the rapprochement of the two socio-economic systems. Representatives point to the enlargement of the scale of enterprises, an increase in the share of industry in national economy, the growing importance of new industries, etc. as factors contributing to the increasing similarity of systems. The fundamental flaw of such views is the technological approach to socio-economic systems, in which the social-production relations of people and classes are replaced by technology or the technical organization of production. The presence of common features in the development of technology, technical organization and the sectoral structure of industrial production in no way excludes the fundamental differences between capitalism and socialism.

Supporters of Convergence also put forward the thesis about the similarity of capitalism and socialism in socio-economic terms. Thus, they talk about an ever-increasing convergence of the economic roles of the capitalist and socialist states: under capitalism, the role of the state guiding the economic development of society is supposedly strengthening, under socialism it is decreasing, since as a result of the economic reforms carried out in socialist countries, there is supposedly a departure from centralized, planned management national economy and a return to market relations. This interpretation of the economic role of the state distorts reality. The bourgeois state, unlike the socialist one, cannot play a comprehensive guiding role in economic development, since most of the means of production are privately owned. At best, the bourgeois state can forecast economic development and carry out advisory (“indicative”) planning or programming. The concept of “market socialism” is fundamentally incorrect—a direct distortion of the nature of commodity-money relations and the nature of economic reforms in socialist countries. Commodity-money relations under socialism are subordinated to the planned leadership of the socialist state, economic reforms mean improving the methods of socialist planned management of the national economy.

Another option was put forward by J. Galbraith. He does not talk about the return of socialist countries to the system of market relations, but, on the contrary, states that in any society, with perfect technology and a complex organization of production, market relations must be replaced by planned relations. At the same time, it is argued that under capitalism and socialism there allegedly exist similar systems of planning and organization of production, which will serve as the basis for the convergence of these two systems. The identification of capitalist and socialist planning is a distortion of economic reality. Galbraith does not distinguish between private economic and national economic planning, seeing in them only a quantitative difference and not noticing a fundamental qualitative difference. The concentration in the hands of the socialist state of all command positions in the national economy ensures a proportional distribution of labor and means of production, while corporate capitalist planning and state economic programming are unable to ensure such proportionality and are unable to overcome unemployment and cyclical fluctuations of capitalist production.

Convergence theory has become widespread in the West among various circles of the intelligentsia, with some of its supporters adhering to reactionary socio-political views, while others are more or less progressive. Therefore, in the struggle of Marxists against Convergence it is necessary differentiated approach to various proponents of this theory. Some of its representatives (Galbraith, Tinbergen) associate the theory with the idea of peaceful coexistence of capitalist and socialist countries; in their opinion, only the convergence of the two systems can save humanity from thermonuclear war. However, deducing peaceful coexistence from convergence is completely incorrect and essentially opposes the Leninist idea of the peaceful coexistence of two opposing (rather than merging) social systems.

In its class essence, the theory of convergence is a sophisticated form of apology for capitalism. Although outwardly it seems to be above both capitalism and socialism, advocating for a kind of “integral” economic system, in essence it proposes a synthesis of the two systems on a capitalist basis, on the basis of private ownership of the means of production.

Being primarily one of the modern bourgeois and reformist ideological doctrines, at the same time it also performs a certain practical function: it tries to justify for capitalist countries measures aimed at implementing “social peace”, and for socialist countries - measures that would be aimed towards the rapprochement of the socialist economy with the capitalist one along the paths of so-called “market socialism”.

2. Internal and external convergence

We are talking about a contradiction inherent in convergence, and not about a mechanical opposition: divergence - convergence. Within a complex system, any autonomy manifests itself in a complex of centrifugal forces, and any interaction of autonomous structures within unified system there is convergence, or a complex of centripetal forces that direct the different to the identical and thereby reveal the alternative nature of autonomies. Study of any intrasystem interactions (we are talking about large social systems ah, which include civilizations) in the aspect of convergence reveals to us alternative, polar structures, the social tension around which forms the energy of transformation necessary for their self-development. The concept of convergence as centripetal interaction structural components system should be supplemented by an indication that, in its mechanisms, convergence is a subjective, institutional relationship. It presupposes a conscious overcoming of the centrifugal nature of any autonomy. Thus, convergence is not only the result of the development of civilization, not only its condition, but also its algorithm.

Convergence arose as a mechanical interaction of the opposite - as interstate efforts to maintain the peaceful coexistence of the two systems. Only in this regard is the use of the dichotomy “divergence - convergence” justified. In the 60s, the presence of general patterns of economic growth was discovered and the need to optimize the economy arose. Within both social systems, similar processes began, determined by the formation of macro- and microeconomic structures and the development of social institutions. Contacts between the two systems have become more stable and have acquired appropriate channels. This enriched the content and mechanisms of convergence. Now it could be described in terms of the interaction of different things: convergence as the mutual diffusion of two systems. The 90s saw a sharp increase in integration processes in the world, an increase in the degree of openness of the economy and society and the resulting globalization: the world economy and the world community are being formed with a clear priority for Western civilization. Today we can talk about the subordination of convergence to the laws of dialectical identity - national economies and national socio-political structures, the world market and world institutions of socio-political interaction. It can be argued that convergent processes are grouped around the economy as a rational (market) focus and the state as an irrational (institutional) focus.

The internal contradiction of convergence between the rational, actually economic, and the irrational, actually institutional, gives rise to a special kind of duality - internal and external convergence. They can be compared to the small and large circles of blood circulation.

Internal convergence. It connects the economy and the state within the country, or more precisely, within the state community, which has now replaced the national (ethnic) community itself.

In a liberal economy, a mass social subject becomes economic due to the fact that it acts as a mass financial subject: income and savings, including budget debts to the population, take the form of bank deposits. This simple fact has an important consequence, namely that monetary turnover is reduced to financial turnover and reaches the system of aggregated owners. Hence the turnover of stock securities representing property, mass markets for corporate shares, the universal distribution of collateral lending in the form of both long-term industrial investments and current financing of expenses of legal entities and individuals, the integration of bill turnover (term loan money) into the financial and monetary system and etc. That is why the normal functioning of the economic system presupposes its transformation into a monetary system according to Keynes.

This kind of transformation becomes possible provided that the economy is open and included in the systemic relations of world markets, headed by global financial capital. In turn, the global forms of world financial capital fix the rational, effective trajectory of its development as a single integrated system. For the domestic economy, the integrity of the system of global financial capital appears to be extra-state, while for the latter it is interstate. This is where internal and external convergence meet.

The identity of the internal economic system of the social system is mediated by the unity of the economy and the state. It lies not only in the fact that for the state the economy is an object of regulation. financial structures do not allow one to abstract from the subjective nature of the economy. As a result, the state carries out partnerships with its economy aimed at increasing the efficiency of the domestic market and maintaining its external competitiveness. Such relations between the economy and the state are prepared not only by the subjective nature of the economic system, when it is headed by financial capital, but also by the development of the functions of the state as the supreme social institutional subject. Both conditions are closely related to the openness of the economy and its globalization.

External convergence has its own core: the market (the world market led by financial capital) - the state (interstate integration and related socio-political structures). The market creates a resource base for social development, defending its priorities and thus influencing the community of states. A situation is emerging that is similar to internal convergence, namely: the world market, while maintaining its integrity in conditions where the basic position of financial capital has emerged, does not remain neutral in relation to social processes and state relations, since the financial system cannot be separated from the state.

Financial subject structures of the modern market have partnerships with socio-political subject structures. They are convergent in relation to each other. Meanwhile, the natural metamorphosis of financial flows into cash transforms the market into a system of objectified, or real, relations available for regulation on the principles of rationality. The requirements of rationality express the need to ultimately achieve unity of economic and social development, equilibrium economic growth, ensuring a tendency towards equality of capital gains, product and income, that is, to the formation of a trend of a neutral type of economic growth.

It is paradoxical that the tendency towards market rationality is a derivative of the convergence of the market and the state. Moreover, the paradox here is double: if, within the framework of internal convergence, the rationality of the economy ensures its susceptibility to social factors, then within the framework of external convergence, the subjectivity of the economy (its socialization) contributes to the preservation of its rationality.

In the national economy, the openness of its internal market fixes its rational nature, the formation of autonomous economic structures and institutions, in contrast to socio-political ones. All this is necessary only as a condition for the subordination of the national economy to society and the state as the supreme social entity. Moreover, the state acts as a relay of social goals and initiatives into the economy.

The statehood of the society with which an individual identifies himself provides not only institutions for the realization of personality, but also institutions for its development. In this regard, the question arises about the relationship between democracy and liberalism. Apparently there are different types democracy, including liberal democracy as its highest type. In this case, the democratic structure of society includes individual rights, the development of amateur collectivity and the state’s desire for social consensus.

The individual, her institutions and the market with its institutions equally belong to a liberal society, and in the same way its property is the unity of internal and external convergence with its poles - the market and the state. Convergence works to connect them, not to tear them apart. This is typical for developed market countries, but how then to evaluate the marginalization that accompanies the processes of world globalization and integration? It is probably possible to assume the emergence in the future of forms of socialism arising on the basis of marginalization, which is opposed by capitalism in the person of developed capitalist states. The latter means the formation of a certain monopoly of Western civilization in the world community, capable at the same time of serving as a socio-economic basis for the development of other civilizations. While there is a monopoly, there is a revival of early forms of convergence: the coexistence of developed capitalist countries with countries of secondary socialism and their divergence complementing this primitive convergence.

As for complex forms of convergence at the level of globalization, their content consists in the formation of a unified system of civilizations. On the one hand, the impetus for unification comes from the openness of Western civilization. The closer the convergent ties between the foci of the economy and the state within Western civilization, the more intensively the world market is formed as an integrity and the socio-political unity of the world takes shape. On the other hand, against this background, the internal dynamism of all other civilizations and their orientation towards Western liberal values (individual freedom) are intensifying.

3. Convergence and systemic evolution of socialism

Let us turn to the analysis of convergence taking into account the problems of market transformation in Russia. From the point of view of internal convergence, market transformation is impossible without its own institutional basis. It must present the socio-economic structure of socialism, since all components of the economy of socialism must be “drawn” into the processes of market transformation. These components cannot lose the quality of subjectivity, in the growth of which lies the whole meaning of liberal reforms. At the same time, these structures must go through successive stages of market transformation. Otherwise, the economy cannot become open and find its niche in the world economy.

Institutions are the weakest point of Russian reforms. So far, the transformations have affected only financial capital and the system of commodity-money and financial-money circulation. The federal budget, which is still the focus of the economy, cannot be considered a market institution, while the state is trying to prevent the leadership of financial capital in the formation of the overall investment monetary system. The government is downright proud of the development budget, adding to it the formation of the Russian Development Bank. But this link itself speaks of the creation of an institution of budgetary financing of production, which does not apply to a series of consistent market reforms: this, of course, is a retreat, although the state is confident that it is acting in the direction of market transformation. In the list of strategic objectives of the state formulated by World Bank specialists, we will not find such as the need to finance production. Let us list them, because they clearly indicate global trend development of the state as the supreme social or, more precisely, institutional subject: “Establishing the foundations of the rule of law, maintaining a balanced political environment that is not subject to distortion, including ensuring macroeconomic stability, investing in the basics of social security and infrastructure, supporting vulnerable groups, protecting the environment.”

Is the situation with the state's debts to the population resolvable within the framework of market institutions? Certainly. To do this, it is enough to include them in banking transactions, for example, by transferring debts to fixed-term personal accounts at Sberbank, nominating savings in dollars and developing a payment program in a few years, but at the same time opening bill lending to citizens secured by these savings. It is clear that a secondary market for bills of exchange will immediately form, the accounting of which should also be included in a special convertibility program with partial payment of rubles and dollars and further restructuring of part of Sberbank’s debt on bills of exchange. This scheme corresponds to the task of transforming the passive mass of the population into active market financial subjects. The state in Russia operates in a mode of non-market behavior, combining, for example, the provision of guarantees to citizens on foreign currency deposits with their partial nationalization.

Let us note that going beyond the limits of market logic is planned whenever the state acts as a participant in the process of forming the resource base of the economy. Thus, we constantly hear that it is necessary to attract tens of billions of foreign currency and ruble “stocking” savings for investment in the economy instead of discussing the issue of banking institutions that would ensure a stable turnover of income, including savings of individuals.

The institute proposed by A. Volsky and K. Borov for “unwinding” barter chains and converting them into monetary form in order to make them taxable cannot in any way be considered market-based. In reality, the shadow economy is multifaceted and tax evasion is far from its most important function. For the purposes of market transformation, it is important to use the market nature of the shadow economy. Within its framework, industrial investments are made at the expense of unaccounted dollar turnover. In order to use them in the legal economy, it is necessary to create a special institution - the Bank of Capital, capable of combining operations on the nominal corporatization of enterprises, the formation of a mass market for corporate shares and the development of collateral investment lending and the full internal convertibility of rubles into dollars, financial assets into rubles and dollars for everyone types of legal entities and individuals and for all types of banking operations.

The institutional approach to reform involves preserving the old socialist integration formations, but at the same time carrying out a market transformation of their internal space, which would change their design, mechanisms of reproduction (and therefore stability), relations with the market, the state and the individual. Under socialism, the sphere of social production, which was an integral object of centralized planned management, possessed this kind of “compact set” property. How is the problem of its transformation into market integrity - the internal market - solved?

It is impossible to preserve the division of market (self-accounting) relations into two vertical turnovers inherent in socialism - natural-material and financial-monetary with the primacy of natural planning and the reduction of finance to the price projection of natural-material turnover (the integral vertical of finance was ensured by the budgetary-monetary system of socialism). Market transformation of social production as an entity means the need to form productive capital as a component of market-macro equilibrium. In this regard, special banking institutions should be created to support the market structures of small and medium-sized businesses, involve the shadow economy in legal market turnover, and create a market “bridge” between the micro- and macro-economy. The capital bank mentioned above is intended to become the basis for the development of the system of domestic market institutions.

For a transition economy, the most important problem, which has not yet been resolved, is the reproductive characteristics of institutions and, above all, the definition of the boundaries of subjectivity. The insufficient reproductive integrity of the emerging institutions of financial capital contributes to the tendency towards their politicization - the desire to enter the government, the State Duma, and create their own political centers of influence on the state and society. At the same time, the inability to see the reproductive aspect of a market economy from the point of view of institutions paralyzes the reforms themselves in the sphere of social production. One can feel the strong influence of ideas that lie within the neoclassical paradigm and practically express the logic of economic determinism: to fragment social production into separate market enterprises and launch the process of their market adaptation, which itself will lead to the formation of a market infrastructure, the emergence of market demand and supply, etc.

It was noted above that it is the institution that connects the old and the new, and not the resource. It follows from this that the reform should be based on a system of macro-subjects: the state - financial capital - productive capital - the aggregated mass subject of income. Their systemic connections activate the reproductive component of the macro-level market equilibrium; capital, product, income. In this case, the primacy of institutionalism will not mean a departure from the economy as a rational system of financial, monetary and commodity turnover, but the replacement of economic determinism with an objectively necessary algorithm for the formation of the market. In turn, such a replacement means a change in the way of bringing real economic actions into conformity with market laws: instead of objectification, or reification, internal convergence. We are talking about conscious interactions that bring together the old and the new, the economy and the state, aimed at maximizing the social energy of development, preserving the economic and social integrity of Russia while constantly strengthening the open economy regime, meeting the objectives of identifying Russian society with Western Christian civilization.

Internal convergence makes possible approaches to reform that are incompatible with economic determinism and which, outside the framework of internal convergence, would require purely political solutions, that is, revolution rather than evolution. We mean important points systemic evolution of socialism.

4. Formation of the market, starting with macroeconomic entities

Here the following sequence emerges: first, financial capital arises, then the state “enters” the economy as a subject of internal debt, after which productive capital is formed. The process should end with the formation of banking institutions that involve the mass of the population as financial subjects in financial and monetary circulation. In this chain of transformations, crises indicate a violation of the market equilibrium according to Keynes and thus the need for a corresponding correction of institutional development.

Using the specification of monetary turnover as a prototype of capital and its circulation. The formation of financial capital was initially based on the development of currency and money markets and currency and monetary turnover, the formation of the state as a market subject - on the turnover of state bonds and other government securities. Accordingly, the formation of productive capital cannot do without the development, on the basis of the Bank of Capital, of a mass market for corporate shares, including turnover of ownership documents (controlling stakes, etc.), collateral investment lending. The formation of income as a component of market equilibrium presupposes the circulation of income and savings within the framework of the income cycle. In principle, the formation of any functional capital coincides with the formation of its circulation, that is, a stable specified monetary turnover that has its own reproductive base, banking institution and investment mechanism. It follows from this that the systemic unity of circuits should be based on mechanisms that weaken the centrifugal tendencies of specified monetary turnovers.

During market transformation, monopolization plays no less a role than market liberalization. More precisely, the movement goes through monopolization to liberalization and to the formation, ultimately, of a system of oligopolistic markets. This is due to the fact that primary institutions, being connected to their circuits, as their systemic relations strengthen, first build the structures of macroeconomic market equilibrium (according to Keynes), and then deploy them into adequate competitive markets. It is monopoly structures that become subjects of foreign economic relations, primarily with global financial capital. And the openness of the Russian economy and its participation in globalization processes provide, in turn, powerful support for the development of competitive markets, or, in other words, economic liberalization.

To create the starting conditions for market transformation, whether privatization is paid or free of charge does not matter, but its mass character and the object—income—are extremely important. The positive social role of mass privatization as the basis for the formation of a liberal orientation of reforms is practically not comprehended by the Russian scientific community. Privatization is assessed from the position of an effective owner, while the problem of its formation relates to the tasks of transforming socialist fixed production assets into productive capital. Mass privatization has created a universal monetary form of ownership, which, under certain institutional prerequisites, can easily cover income and serve as the beginning of the formation of a mass financial entity.

In addition, privatization “divided” income and wages, creating conditions for increasing the level of income through its capitalization, without which the circulation of income as an element of macroeconomic market equilibrium could not have developed. This is the first economic function mass privatization.

Finally, mass privatization formed a new global distribution (capital - income) and thereby laid the first brick in the creation of a system of circuits and a market equilibrium that unites them according to Keynes. It is this second economic function of mass privatization that has the main macroeconomic significance. Thanks to the new distribution structure, the intersectoral integrity of the microeconomy was destroyed and the transition from an inflationary and inefficient sectoral structure to an efficient one began. What is significant here is that the contradiction between the sectoral industrial core and the production periphery, which arose in the process of socialist accelerated industrialization, received a mechanism for its resolution. Now another contradiction is relevant - between the normative and shadow economies. It is solvable subject to the primacy of the institutional (convergent) approach. The difficulty is that this approach does not accept a “budgetary” economy and assumes the formation of a general investment monetary system led by financial capital. The government must realize the need for dialogue between financial capital (and the economy as a whole) and the state.

At the start of the reforms, their alpha and omega was privatization, at modern stage market transformation - the formation of a system of institutions and the development of internal convergence. From the point of view of the prospects for liberal development, a huge role is played by the formation of a system of social institutions as a mechanism for the formation public consciousness. Here the individual is a true leader, since it is he who is the bearer of the critical evaluative function of social consciousness. The individual needs the fullness of freedom - both economic freedom in the collective, the experience of which capitalism brought to Western Christian civilization, and deeply personal freedom of reflection and assessment outside the collective, that is, the experience of latent spiritual existence that socialism brought to Western Christian civilization.

We have already said above that external convergence is built on the primacy of rational market relations. And it is unlikely that this primacy will ever be shaken, since it leads to globalization, which turns the world market into a rigid rational structure. At the same time, external convergence uses a subjective (interstate) form to protect the rational space of markets, regardless of the degree of their integration. Moreover, with the deepening of market integration, international market institutions emerge that put pressure on states and, through them, on domestic markets, encouraging them to open up. As for the social “pole” of external convergence and interstate interaction as a system of national institutional centers, in this space an infrastructure is being formed for realizing the leading role of the individual in society and bringing the latter to self-identification within the framework of a single Western Christian civilization. At the same time, class restrictions on the development of social relations in the direction of liberalism are overcome, which is impossible on the basis of the neoclassical approach (the class structure is derived from the structure of factors of production). Meanwhile, the separation of the social sphere from the economy, necessary for the development of liberalism, cannot and should not be complete. It is important that their connection is carried out at the level of the individual as a consumer of goods, money and finance, that is, at the level of a mass financial subject of income. All this indicates that the openness of the Russian economy and its activity in the field of external political contacts are very important positive conditions for reforms. The state would make an irreparable mistake if it succumbed to the demands heard in society to move away from the policy of openness.

The dramatic experience of socialism as an illegal totalitarian state, capable, however, of being an extreme civilizational form of exit from difficult or dangerous situations for society bordering on social collapse, will forever remain in the historical memory of Western civilization. But from the point of view of convergence, as we understand it, socialism will always be a matter of public choice.

Today, a return to socialism again threatens Russia, since the mechanisms of market behavior of the state and other subjects of economic transformation have not yet been worked out, despite the fact that socialist traditions and their adherents - the communist and parties close to it - are still alive. But the situation is not hopeless. The convergent aspect of the analysis opens up encouraging prospects for our country.

Conclusion

economic market convergence

The theory of convergence has undergone certain development. Initially, she proved the formation of economic similarities between the developed countries of capitalism and socialism. She saw this similarity in the development of industry, technology, and science.

Subsequently, the theory of convergence began to proclaim the growing similarities in cultural and everyday life between capitalist and socialist countries, such as trends in the development of art, culture, family development, and education. The ongoing rapprochement of the countries of capitalism and socialism in social and political relations was noted.

The socio-economic and socio-political convergence of capitalism and socialism began to be complemented by the idea of convergence of ideologies, ideological and scientific doctrines.

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The essence of the theory of convergence (rapprochement) of alternative economic systems

Convergence considers technological progress and the growth of large industry to be one of the decisive factors in the rapprochement of the two socio-economic systems. Representatives point to the consolidation of the scale of enterprises, the increase in the share of industry in the national economy, the growing importance of new industries, etc., as factors contributing to the increasing similarity of systems. The fundamental flaw of such views is the technological approach to socio-economic systems, in which the social-production relations of people and classes are replaced by technology or the technical organization of production. The presence of common features in the development of technology, technical organization and the sectoral structure of industrial production in no way excludes the fundamental differences between capitalism and socialism.

Supporters of Convergence also put forward the thesis about the similarity of capitalism and socialism in socio-economic terms. Thus, they talk about an ever-increasing convergence of the economic roles of the capitalist and socialist states: under capitalism, the role of the state guiding the economic development of society is supposedly strengthening, under socialism it is decreasing, since as a result of the economic reforms carried out in socialist countries, there is supposedly a departure from centralized, planned management national economy and a return to market relations. This interpretation of the economic role of the state distorts reality. The bourgeois state, unlike the socialist one, cannot play a comprehensive guiding role in economic development, since most of the means of production are privately owned. At best, the bourgeois state can forecast economic development and carry out advisory (“indicative”) planning or programming. The concept of “market socialism” is fundamentally incorrect—a direct distortion of the nature of commodity-money relations and the nature of economic reforms in socialist countries. Commodity-money relations under socialism are subject to planned management by the socialist state; economic reforms mean improving the methods of socialist planned management of the national economy.

Convergence theory has become widespread in the West among various circles of the intelligentsia, with some of its supporters adhering to reactionary socio-political views, while others are more or less progressive. Therefore, in the struggle of Marxists against Convergence, a differentiated approach to the various supporters of this theory is necessary. Some of its representatives (Galbraith, Tinbergen) associate the theory with the idea of peaceful coexistence of capitalist and socialist countries; in their opinion, only the convergence of the two systems can save humanity from thermonuclear war. However, deducing peaceful coexistence from convergence is completely incorrect and essentially opposes the Leninist idea of the peaceful coexistence of two opposing (rather than merging) social systems.

If in the historical - diachronic - dimension the development and improvement of culture is ensured by continuity, then in the geographical - synchronous - dimension the same function is performed by the processes of interpenetration and mutual enrichment of cultures, often denoted by the broad term - acculturation. Just as an individual person is unthinkable in isolation from his own kind, in the same way no culture is capable of fully existing in absolute isolation from the material and spiritual achievements of other human groups. “The real values of culture,” writes D.S. Likhachev, “develop only in contact with other cultures, grow on rich cultural soil and take into account the experience of neighbors. Can grains develop in a glass of distilled water? Maybe! - but until the grain’s own strength is exhausted, then the plant dies very quickly. From here it is clear: the more “independent” any culture is, the more independent it is. Russian culture (and literature, of course) is very lucky. It grew on a wide plain, connected to East and West, North and South.” Nowadays there are practically no cultural communities completely isolated from the world, except, perhaps, for small indigenous tribes, lost in the rural areas of Latin America or in some other secluded corner of our planet. In other words, any nation is, in one way or another, open to the perception of other people’s experiences and at the same time ready to share their own values with near and far neighbors. Thus, one culture, as it were, “penetrates” another and makes it richer and more universal.

The processes occurring" on the "cultural" map of humanity, which changes without sharp transitions and immeasurably slower than its economic and political panorama, are not, however, limited only to spontaneous and non-violent interpenetration and mutual enrichment of cultures, but also take more radical forms, such as for example, like assimilation and transculturation.

Assimilation(from lat. assimilation- assimilation) consists in the complete or partial absorption of the culture of one, usually less civilized and weaker, people by another foreign culture, most often through conquest, subsequent mixed marriages and the purposeful “dissolution” of the enslaved ethnic group in the ethnic group of the enslaver. The last bastion in this case is language, with the loss of which the assimilated culture dies. Thus, with the arrival of Europeans, numerous tribes and nationalities of America, Africa and other regions of the “third world” underwent almost complete ethnocultural assimilation, just as it was in the imperial practice of Stalinism in relation to “small” peoples former USSR. Naturally, of course, the more numerous a nation is and the richer its culture and history, the more difficult it is to be influenced by external forces. In this case, what may happen is not the absorption of one people by another, but their mixing in some new synthesis, forming an original, already “hybrid” culture. Vivid examples Latin America gives this: the merger of the ancient and rich civilization of the Aztecs with the culture of Spain gave the world the unique culture of Mexico; the Inca Empire, destroyed by the conquistadors, continued in the equally distinctive “Indo-American” cultures of modern Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador; as a result of centuries-old mixing of the Portuguese, local ethnic groups and Africans in the person of millions of black slaves brought to America, the unique “African-American” culture of Brazil was born, etc. It should be borne in mind that many Latin American peoples still retain two- and even trilingualism, as evidence of the enormous vitality of their original cultural substrate.

Transculturation- a concept less developed in specialized literature, although widespread in life. It lies in the fact that a certain ethnocultural community, due to voluntary migration or forced relocation, moves to another, sometimes very distant habitat, where the foreign cultural environment is completely absent or is represented very little. Transculturation can be considered the settlement and development by white colonists of the vast lands of North America or Australia, where Aboriginal tribes, despite desperate military and spiritual resistance, were unable to have a noticeable impact on the culture of the conquerors. One way or another, the original culture of the United States can be considered the result of transculturation processes, although over time it turned into a kind of “melting pot” where the cultures of many ethnic groups and peoples are mixed; The fate of French-speaking Canada, the direct heir of French culture, was similar; With certain reservations, what has been said also applies to the formation of Haitian culture, which still, in its deepest origins, belongs more to Africa than to America or Europe. If we take examples from the life of Russia, then the entire history of vast German settlements and autonomies, which were later, as we know, liquidated by I. Stalin, is connected with transculturation, as well as his “experiments” with the forced resettlement of entire peoples.

The processes of transculturation for the people involved in them are far from painless. This or that ethnocultural community, like a plant, being transplanted to a different soil, can die or change noticeably, adapting to new circumstances and a new environment. However, some scientists, and in particular the largest German philologist, ethnographer and cultural scientist Leo Frobenius(1873 - 1938), they believe that due to the presence in each culture of a certain stable “code”, a certain “soul” that resists alien influences (padeuma) her vitality and ability to preserve her individuality are very great. “We can assert,” writes Frobenius, “that the style of cultures - in the highest sense of this concept - is determined by space and is constant, despite various ways manifestations within this space. They will exist invariably: in the humid tropics and subtropics - a mystically colored culture; in a country like the United States, it is a hunting culture (it makes no difference whether the hunt is for buffalo or dollars).”

Mutual contacts and mutual enrichment of cultures, as well as the processes of assimilation and transculturation, can be facilitated or, conversely, inhibited by a number of objective factors. We have already repeatedly spoken about the role of the geographical environment and geographical space. For example, nations, even neighboring ones such as Russia and China, separated by powerful mountain ranges and deserts, just like Japan and the USA, between which a vast ocean stretches, have historically had less opportunity for any mutual influence than, say, Russia and European countries, connected by seas and plains and located in close proximity to each other . The linguistic and ethnic factor is no less important. For example, cultural interpenetration between related Slavic peoples, which found its expression, in particular, in the movement of Pan-Slavism, was carried out much easier than, say, their exchange with neighboring Hungary, whose ancient population, as a result of transculturation, found itself at the junction of the Slavic, Roman and Germanic worlds . At the same time, thanks to the same language and common original ethnic group, despite the vast distances, there are much fewer obstacles to spiritual exchange between such English-speaking “white” countries as Great Britain, the USA, Canada and Australia, which once represented the same European culture as part of the British colonial empire.

The favorable or unfavorable course of history itself can contribute to the mutual sympathies of peoples, and, consequently, the processes of mutual enrichment of cultures, and sometimes slow them down. It is enough to compare, for example, the cultural ties of Russia with our two neighbors, the fraternal Slavic peoples - Bulgarian and Polish. Historical events such as, on the one hand, have had and continue to have a diametrically opposite impact on their relationships and spiritual closeness with us. Russian-Turkish wars XIX century, which has been nourishing the Bulgarian-Russian brotherhood for more than a hundred years; and on the other, our long-standing conflicts and disagreements with Poland - from the False Dmitrys in 1604 - 1610. to Katyn in 1940, which still burden the memory of Russians and Poles, despite their blood relationship.

Closely related to the historical factor influencing the destinies of national cultures is the political factor. After all, history, as we know, is the same politics, only thrown back into the past. The most obvious example of the detrimental impact of politics on culture and, in particular, on its ability to spread in space was the notorious “Iron Curtain” - an unsuitable, although not unsuccessful attempt to cut off numerous nations the former USSR and, above all, the Russian people, from world civilization. At all, natural processes The development of national cultures on the territory of our country was largely paralyzed by the Stalinist policy of deportations, genocide, great-power chauvinism and forced Russification. As a result of such practices of suppression of national and ethnic identity, combined with imperial isolationism, domestic culture suffered incalculable losses. However, speaking about the connection between politics and culture, it can be argued that the spiritual sovereignty of any, even the smallest ethnic group, being a challenge to any unitary government, has never coexisted with dictatorial regimes and totalitarianism.

As humanity develops, in the fate of the culture of all countries without exception, it has played an important, if not decisive, role since the middle of the 20th century. The global technological factor we have already mentioned begins to play. Here, from the point of view of the processes of acculturation, assimilation and transculturation, first of all, we mean progress in the field of electronic information technologies, means of transport, communications and preservation, replication and dissemination of information. Almost under their pressure, closed cultural communities are gradually “eroded”, their mutual diffusion takes on an irreversible and worldwide character. And the more “technological” a country is, the more opportunities for enrichment it acquires. An example in this case is the United States, which not only strives to absorb all the most significant achievements of science and art of other peoples, but also becomes a huge reservoir where “brains and talents” attracted by the high standard of living flock.

The problem of interpenetration and mutual enrichment of cultures is not limited to the description and analysis of various ethnocultural processes, but poses another theoretical question for scientists: are all spheres of a particular cultural community equally permeable to foreign borrowings and at the same time capable of self-giving? It turns out not. Despite the artificial obstacles caused by competition, the achievements of technology, natural science and exact sciences, as A. Weber pointed out. The most striking discoveries and innovations in the field of art and literature are relatively freely adopted by other peoples, as evidenced, for example, by the universal significance of many artistic “isms” - from realism to abstractionism, recognized both in the West and in the East. Languages, especially vocabulary, are quite susceptible to mutual influences. A manifestation of this is the numerous foreign language layers in any developed language, as well as the steady growth of international terminology, understandable to a person of any nationality. There is, however, an area - the untouchable core of any culture - where interpenetration and interaction is reduced to a minimum or completely excluded. This is folklore, purely national artistic styles, refracted in folk crafts, morals and customs, everyday phraseology and some other manifestations of unrelated and territorially distant national-ethnic groups that have not yet been affected or slightly affected by the scientific and technological revolution.

In the social sciences of the West, for a long time, two opposing assessments of the changes taking place collided. The first - the “theory of convergence” - evaluates these phenomena as a process of rapprochement between capitalism and socialism as a result of the proximity of their industrial foundations. The second - the “theory of divergence” - is based on opposing assessments and proves the growing opposition of these systems. Convergence theory (lat.

convergentio - bringing together different things, up to the possible merging into a single one) - a doctrine that substantiated the peaceful coexistence of two systems, capitalism and socialism, the possibility and necessity of smoothing out the economic, political and ideological differences between capitalism and socialism, their subsequent synthesis into a kind of “mixed society”. It was developed in the mid-1950s by a number of Western sociologists, political scientists, economists and philosophers: J. Galbraith, W. Rostow, B. Russell, P. Sorokin, J. Tinbergen and others. This concept appeared during the years of ideological and military confrontation between two social -political systems, socialism and communism, whose representatives fought among themselves to redivide the world, trying to impose, often by military means, their order in all corners of the planet. The confrontation, in addition to the disgusting forms it took in the political arena (bribery of African leaders, military intervention, economic assistance, etc.), brought humanity the threat of thermonuclear war and global destruction of all living things. Progressive thinkers in the West increasingly came to the idea that the madness of competition and military race must be countered with something that would reconcile the two warring social systems. Thus was born the concept according to which, by borrowing everything from each other best features and thereby moving closer to each other, capitalism and socialism will be able to coexist on one planet and guarantee its peaceful future. As a result of the synthesis, something between capitalism and socialism should appear. It was called the “third way” of development.

The objective conditions for the convergence of capitalism and socialism were revealed by the famous American economist and sociologist John Galbraith: “Convergence is associated primarily with the large scale of modern production, with large investments of capital, advanced technology and complex organization as the most important consequence of these factors. All this requires control over prices and, as far as possible, control over what is bought at those prices. In other words, the market must be replaced by planning. In Soviet-style economic systems, price control is a function of the state. In the United States, this management of consumer demand is carried out in a less formal manner by corporations, their advertising departments, sales agents, wholesalers and retailers. But the difference apparently lies more in the methods employed than in the ends pursued... The industrial system does not have the inherent capacity... to provide purchasing power sufficient to absorb all that it produces. Therefore, it relies on the state in this area... In Soviet-style economic systems, careful calculations are also made of the relationship between the amount of income received and the cost of the commodity mass provided to customers... And finally, the industrial system has to rely on the state to provide trained and educated personnel, which have become a decisive factor in production in our time. The same thing happens in socialist industrial countries."

Speaking about the conditions for the emergence of the theory of convergence, its supporters pointed to the presence on both sides of the “Iron Curtain” and a number of other common features characteristic of the modern era. These included a single direction of scientific and technological progress, similarities in the forms of organization of labor and production (for example, automation), demographic processes common to developed countries, numerous parallels in urbanization, bureaucratization, “mass culture”, etc. Direct mutual influences were also noted, for example, the assimilation by Western governments and large firms of certain elements of the Soviet planning experience" 5 . Political reason The emergence of the theory of convergence was the geopolitical results of the Second World War, when a dozen socialist countries appeared on the world map, closely connected with each other, with a population of over a third of all living on Earth. The formation of the world socialist system led to a new redistribution of the world - the mutual rapprochement of previously separated capitalist countries, the division of humanity into two polar camps. In arguing for the need for their rapprochement, some scholars pointed to Sweden, which has achieved impressive successes both in the field of free enterprise and social protection population, proving the real feasibility of convergence. The complete preservation of private property with the leading role of the state in the redistribution of social wealth seemed to many Western sociologists to be the embodiment of true socialism. With the help of the mutual penetration of the two systems, the intellectuals intended to give socialism greater efficiency, and capitalism - humanism.

The idea of convergence came into the spotlight after the famous article by J. Tinbergen appeared in 1961. Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994) - an outstanding Dutch mathematician and economist, laureate of the first Nobel Prize in economics (1969), older brother of Nicholas Tinbergen, Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine (1973). He made a fundamental contribution to science with the discovery of the so-called “cobweb theorem”, as well as the development of problems in the theory of dynamics and methods for statistical testing of theories of the business cycle. In the 1930s, he built a complete macroeconomic model for the United States in the form of 48 different equations. He substantiated the need to bridge the gap between the “rich North” and the “poor South”, believing that, by developing the problems of developing countries, he would help correct the harmful consequences of colonial oppression and make his feasible contribution to the payment of their debts to former colonial countries from the former metropolises, including his own country. In the 1960s, J. Tinbergen was a consultant to the World Bank, the UN and a number of Third World countries. In 1966, he became chairman of the UN Development Planning Committee, having a significant influence on the formation of international development strategy in the 1970s. Throughout his life he adhered to humanistic ideals of social justice, and in his youth he was a member of a socialist youth organization 226.

The idea of a synthesis of two opposing social systems - Western-style democracy and Russian (Soviet) communism, was put forward by P. Sorokin in 1960 in the article “Mutual rapprochement of the USA and the USSR towards a mixed socio-cultural type.” The friendship between capitalism and socialism will not come from a good life. Both of them are in deep crisis. The decline of capitalism is associated with the destruction of its foundations - free enterprise and private initiative; the crisis of communism is caused by its inability to satisfy the basic vital needs of people. At the same time, P. Sorokin considers the very concept of Soviet society to be deeply erroneous. It is based on totalitarianism. The communist regime in Russia will come to an end anyway, because, figuratively speaking, communism can win the war, but it cannot win the peace. The salvation of the USSR and the USA - two leaders of hostile camps - lies in mutual rapprochement. It is all the more possible because the Russian and American peoples, according to P. Sorokin, are very similar to each other, just as two countries, systems of values, law, science, education and culture are similar.

The creator proved himself to be a passionate fan of the theory of convergence atomic bomb in the USSR academician HELL. Sakharov, who dedicated his book “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” (1968) to her. One of the first to realize the nuclear threat, the outstanding physicist began a lonely and selfless fight for a test ban back in 1955 nuclear weapons, culminating in the famous Moscow Treaty of 1963. Sakharov repeatedly emphasized that he was not the author, but only a follower of the theory of convergence: “These ideas arose as a response to the problems of our era and became widespread among the Western intelligentsia, especially after the Second World War. They found their defenders among people such as Einstein, Bohr, Russell, Szilard. These ideas had a deep influence on me; I saw in them hope for overcoming the tragic crisis of our time." Another of its supporters, B. Russell, also a world-famous scientist, established the still existing international human rights organization Amnesty International, which takes prisoners of conscience from the most different countries. In the 1970s, Z. Brzezinski gave the theory of convergence a geopolitical dimension.

The theory of convergence served as a theoretical and methodological basis for the concepts of socialism with a human face and social democratic ideology that emerged later, namely in the 1980s. As a scientific theory it died, but as a guide to practice it influences Europeans well into the 21st century. Liberal capitalism in its original form no longer suits Europeans. That's why they're for last years replaced conservative governments in the leading countries of the “old continent” - France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy. Socialists and Social Democrats came to power there. Of course, they are not going to abandon capitalism, but they intend to give it a “human face.” In 1999, then US President Bill Clinton took the initiative to create a Public political center, which, uniting the best minds in America, will become a link between the governments and moderate movements of the West and Asia. The task of the new association is to create a “global economy with a human face.” This involves introducing the principles of social justice into the market economy. The American-style “third way” is intended to establish the US’s leadership role in the world in the 21st century.

Its opposite, “divergence theory,” argues that there are far more differences than similarities between capitalism and socialism. And it intensifies over time, both systems, like escaping galaxies, are moving in opposite directions with increasing speed. There can be no flow or mixing between them. Finally, the third theory, or better yet, a set of theories, chose a compromise path, arguing that the two socio-political systems can unite, but first they must change greatly, and in an asymmetrical way: socialism must abandon its values and move closer to the ideals of a market economy . Otherwise, these theories are called the concept of modernization. Already at the end of the perestroika years, the paradoxical concept of Francis Fukuyama, an American scientist of Japanese origin, acquired great public resonance. Based on the theory of convergence and the historical changes that took place in the USSR, he concluded that with the collapse of communism as a historically significant social system, the last global contradiction, the contradiction between the two systems, is removed from world history. The world is becoming monopolar as the values of liberal democracy triumph where they were previously denied.

Galbraith J. New industrial society, M., 1969, p. 453^-54.
See: Burtin Yu. Russia and convergence // October, 1998, No. 1.
Sakharov A. Memoirs, vol. 1, M., 1996, p. 388.

See pages where the term economic convergence is mentioned. The rapprochement of modern cultures and the interpenetration of vocabulary Theories of interpersonal interaction

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