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Вестник Челябинского государственного университета. 2018. № 7 (417). Экономические науки. Вып. 61. С. 160—167.
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От редакции. Перед вами — не вполне стандартная для нашего журнала статья, а краткое изложение революционной идеи наших коллег — новой методологической парадигмы в оценке и прогнозировании развития мировой экономики. Данный материал ранее не публиковался, и этой публикацией мы хотим привлечь внимание к проделанной коллегами гигантской работе, не только к разработке междисциплинарного подхода, но и к его продвижению на множестве дискуссионных площадок в разных частях света — в Мексике, Китае, Европе и России. Надеемся, представленная статья найдет живой отклик у читателей и в дальнейшем мы продолжим дискуссию на эту тему.
A QUANTIFIED COMPOSITE INDEX OF RELATIVE GEOSTRATEGIC POWER OF NATION — STATES IN THE CURRENT WORLD ORDER (IRGP) AND THE GENERAL LAW OF EVOLUTION OF MODERN CIVILIZATION (RESUME)*
Heinz Dieterich'4, Raimundo Franc Rodrigo Ortiz1'4, Juan Carlos Olguin3,4
1 Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, Mexico 2 Institute for Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics (ret.), Habana, Cuba 3 Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, Mexico 4 Center for Transition Sciences, Mexico — Beijin
This new comprehensive interdisciplinary model for calculating the Relative Geopolitical Power of Nation States (IRGP) was developed by the Center for Transition Sciences (CTS), founded by the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in Mexico City. It differs from other existing models in several ways, among others: 1. An intensive two-year research effort indicated that a scientifically satisfying level of measuring the parameters involved can be achieved with seven power vectors. 2. The model permits a profound long term comprehension of Nation States' evolutions, because it is based on the General Law of Evolution of Modernity. That is a transcendental scientific innovation, because all other models basically provide momentaneous X-Rate-like diagnostics of a Nation States' power situation. 3. Another innovation our team devised is the combination of the synergies of Newton's, Darwin's, Marx-Engels' and Lorenz' paradigms, which permits a profound political understanding of the evolution of bourgeois class societies in modern times and therefore, the strategic conceptual tools to overcome current capitalist societies based on chrematistic market economic systems. 4. The internal structure of the current Attractor of Modernity is determined through nine subindexes. 5. Finally, the statistical use of publicly available empirical data within the framework of the geometry of basins of attraction, centroids and Mandami fuzzy logic, enabled the CTS-Team to graphically represent the results of their research.
Keywords: Geopolitical Power, Nation States, Law of Evolution of Modernity, Center for Transition Sciences (CTS).
1. Research Findings
1. The world system is a global Darwinian environment, where the human species — organized in Nation-States— competes for scarce resources. The status hierarchies, the "survival of the fittest" and the structure and dynamics of this macrosystem are determined by power.
2. Power is the capacity to impose one's will on other entities, even against the will of these entities. Social power exists infourforms: as political, military,
*© Heinz Dieterich
economic and cultural power. Geopolitical or Relative National Power is the sum of all national capabilities and attributes that determine its influence in the international system. Relative national power is the medium that regulates the metabolism with the global environment. Both, cooperation and conflict strategies are based on the combined use of all power forms, including nuclear power. The supreme power attribute of Nation States are nuclear world destruction and force projection capabilities. Only the United States and Russia possess this ultimate attribute of power.
3. Since its genesis in the English and French Revolutions, 300 years ago, the evolution of modern civilization has followed the operational logic of a global Complex Dynamic Reproduction and Survival System (CDRS) of homo sapiens, driven by: a) the historical projects of national and transnational power elites, in interaction with the masses and nature; and b) a system logic, that acts similar to a system of deterministic chaos.
4. The Attractor, that determines the General Law of Evolution and the patterns of development of Nations since the dawn of modern civilization (1688/1789), is the paradigm of bourgeois society; particularly the bourgeois societies of Central — and North-Europe and the USA. Bourgeois society, as any other type of civilization, presents life — projecthorizons/clusters, which seem desirable and possible for the citizens and the majority of mankind. These life-projects orient and define the political and social praxis of citizens. They are, therefore, the real attractor force that shapes modern history, together with the imperatives of the profit rate.
5. The internal structure of the Attractor of Modernity — the civilizatory model that world majorities strive for — can be determined and empirically measured through parameters like the GDP per capita; the Gini Index (coefficient); the availability and quality of Public Services (public health, transportation, education, security, etc.); the material quality of life; the existence of employment opportunities; affordable housing; effective political rights (democracy); civil rights (f.i. freedom of opinion, religion etc.) and ecological qualities, among others. Applying these metrics of our attractor model to modern civilization, Denmark and Sweden appear as the Centroide of the world hierarchy of quality of life.
6. The attractor's global capacity to determine the configuration of world civilization, was only broken once: when Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao Zedong designed and established a 2nd and alternative Attractor: the Socialism of the 20th Century. If humanity wants to create an alternative, non-capitalist world order, it must develop a new, a Third Historical Attractor: the Socialism of the 21st Century.
7. China, among all nations, is uniquely prepared to develop the new World Narrative of 21st Century Socialism and fill the ideological and spiritual global void, that the collaps of 20th Century Socialism and the anti-spirituality of Western capitalism have produced. It would give China a global cultural momentum that the national Chinese dream and the
regional silk road megaprojects alone, can't achieve. The Western narrative of democracy and free markets is global. A powerful antidote of the type mentioned would serve as a cultural defensive Great Wall in the world system, for China. China is the only State Actor, that has the power and the socialist character of socio-economic organization, that can create the needed new global narrative.
8. Since the establishment of the world system 500 years ago, it has been dominated by the West. Our calculation and projection of global power metrics show, that it will be impossible for any single Eurasian or Asian power —China, Russia or India— to break the Western domination of this global system. In other words, it will be impossible for any of these countries to obtain singlehandedly strategic autonomy and self-determination vis-a-vis the West in the 21st century.
9. The strategic notion that China can obtain and maintain strategic autonomy against the US in the future, results from a serious methodological error in the understanding of the dynamics of the world system. Our calculations show that in 2025, both China and the US will hold an about equal share of global power, that is, of 28 %; while Russia and India will hold about 9 % and 7 % and Japan about 5 %. However, inferring from the 28 % power ratios, as many analysts do, that China will be able to perform with strategic autonomy as an independent equal pole in a pentagon-structured world order in the 21st Century, is almost certainly, a fallacy.
10. Since 1917, no emerging nation in the world order competing for world power has ever confronted the US as a single nation; but rather as the leader of the power bloc known "the West". The double defeat of Germany in World War I and II; of Japan in World War II; of the Soviet Union in the Cold War and the current aggression of NATO against Russia, clearly illustrates that fact. Therefore, China's 2025's global power ratio of 28 % can't be compared to the 28 % ratio of the USA, but must be compared to the share of about 60 % of Western world power, in 2025.
11. Obtaining and preserving strategic autonomy for China in the first half of the 21st Century requires, therefore, at least, a strategic alliance with Russia. This would be the minimum power level necessary (37 %) to maintain strategic autonomy with the West. The optimum world power share for the three emerging powers could be obtained, if China, Russia and India managed to negotiate a strategic alliance. If they can build that alliance, than they will dispose of a world power base of about 44 % of the total,
in 2025. Under this premise, strategic autonomy for each of them would be guaranteed, as well as an effective structural multipolar world system. Without such an alliance the West will continue to dominate global markets and global power and a structural multipolar world will not be more than a formal notion. In essence, the West with its basic institutions of chrematistic market economies and plutocratic formal democracies, will continue being the attractor of global civilization.
12. The world system as a Darwinian environment, makes it impossible for most nations to obtain self-determination and an adequate quality of life standard for their citizens, in a reasonable period of time. Even leaving aside the problem of insufficient natural resources for the universalization of First World living standards, about three quarters of all nations will not or never be able to achieve the desired life quality of the systems centroide = Denmark in a reasonable period of time. A linear projection of development years necessary to reach the centroide quality of life-situation (Denmark), based on GDP growth rates for the last three to six decades, produces disturbing and tragic conclusions. Haiti, for example, would need under current conditions 1,800 years; Brazil 89; Mexico 100; Turkey 130; Pakistan 181 and Kyrgyzstan 362.
But even if a lower reference point of life quality is used, like South Korea, there is virtually no hope for the three quarters of Nations, to repeat the Asian Tiger's performance metric in a reasonable period of time. Calculating Average Annual (Compound) Growth Rates for South Korea since 1961, the result is that the country needed about half a century of 6.5 % average annual growth with political stability and strong anti-corruption and pro-education programs, to obtain its current level of quality of life. This institutional environment for growth hardly exists in most of the currently severely underdeveloped nations.
13. In the absolutely power-determined global Darwinian system, only five Nation States or power blocs decide the course of world affairs and evolution. All other nation states play no role in world affairs. In terms of world governance they are a quantite negligeable in an oligopolistic global order. The five determining power actors are the USA, the European Union, China, Russia and India. (Japan is not decisive, because it has no nuclear weapons.)
14. Certainly the most decisive long term variable in the development of National and Geopolitical National Power is what we have called the Strategic
Development and Dominance Software (SDDS) of the State Actors; that is the capacity of the leading or dominant classes to optimize the use of all power attributes available for the achievement of strategic national aims. In other words, it is a Qualitative Variable that refers to the Leadership Quality in World Dominance/Software or the World Governance Capability (WGC) of a national elite or vanguard or State. The exit or failure criterion of that variable is the capability of a Nation-State to successfully implement its defined "national interests" in war and non-war dynamics for world-repartition (Weltverteilungskriege). The quality of national and geopolitical SDDS depends on different variables, which we grouped into twelve sub-indexes. For the elaboration of national SDDS-scores we chose the time frame from the outbreak of the Great Depression (1929) until 2014. We found two leading classes/ Nation-States outstanding in this category: the USA and China. The USA, because of its success in the construction and global imposition of the "American Century" in the world system; China's Communist Party since the hegemony of Mao, because it was able to correctly chart its strategic path to become a world power and innovate itself rapidly and positively visa-vis changing global circumstances
15. The current structure of the world order is not multipolar, but bipolar. One pole is "the West" and the other pole is the emerging Sino-Russian strategic alliance. If the second pole fails to consolidate itself, than the world will be dominated by the West, that is, it will be essentially unipolar.
16. The illusions about a possible peaceful coexistence with the only Nation State in history, that has used nuclear weapons of mass destruction against the defenseless civilian population of another country, the USA, may be due to flawed methodology or ignorance of the Darwinian nature of the world system and the modern West; but the political consequences of such a view, converted into practical foreign policy doctrine, could be catastrophic.
17. The construction of a New World Narrative, Liberation Metrics and 3rd Attractor for 21st Century Civilization is one of the most urgent and important tasks of contemporary science and progressive foreign policy. The Basin of Attraction of human history, determined by Nature, productive forces (technology) and historical projects of state and non— state actors, allows for a very different socioeconomic and political organization of the world order; a new setup that would transcend the current bourgeois political system and chrematistic market
economy, characterized by profound asymmetries, injustices and violence. Assuming this mission is an urgent task for humanity and all progressive forces. China is uniquely positioned to play a proactive role in this mission, because of its national power and the vanguard role of the Chinese Communist Party.
18. Note on methodology. After analyzing the variables used in publicly available National Power Indexes we concluded that the following six variables provide a realistic geopolitical power metric for the current world order. In a further analysis we will factor in the nuclear world destruction capabilities of Nation States.
1. Dynamic quantifiable Variables:
VI. GDP p.c. (current US$ 2012) and nominal GDP V2. R&D (Research and Development Expenditure, current US$ 2011) V3. ME (Military Expenditure, current US$ 2012)
2. Relatively Constant Variables:
Vc 1. Demographic power (Population) Vc
2. Surface Area (Territorium)
3. Dynamic qualitative Variable:
Vq 1: = Strategic Domination and Development Software (SDDS)
In the resulting 6-dimensional Basin of Attraction of modern evolution we weighted total world power in each category as 1. Thus, the relative geopolitical power of a Nation-State can vary from 0 to 1, in each category. The total world power as measured with these parameters equals 6. We than evaluated the shares of total world power which the most powerful Nation-States obtained in each category and summed them up. This way we obtained a ranking for the world power status hierarchy of Nation States, which can also be expressed as a percentage of global power.
2. Introduction
In the increasingly interdependent world system of the 21st century the correct assessment of the main metrics of world power is a vital necessity for all actors. On the level of inter-state relationships, these actors comprise Nation-States, proto-Regional States, Alliances (European Union, NATO, SCO) and the proto-Global State (UN Security Council, WHO, FMI etc.). On the non-state level transnational forces and Non State Actors (NSAs), such as Transnational Corporations (TNC) are at play. The architecture and dynamics of both global spheres are essentially controlled by "the West". The emergence of superpowers Russia and China, however, has forced
this 500-years old unipolar system into a transition mode which entails the possibility of nuclear extinction of mankind.
At the dawn of the 21st century, the concept and metrics of relative national geopolitical power are therefore more important than ever. Nation-States and non-state actors permanently interact as competitors, adversaries, allies, enhancers and constrainers. In this Darwinian environment the question of power for what, and against whom, is essential to the Risk Management of Nation States and global power elites. The optimization of the performance metrics of strategic autonomy, survival and development-policies and adequate tactical approaches depends on the evaluation of national geopolitical power and the ability to use this power.
Due to the practical utility and necessity of Comprehensive Country Risk Management Indices, there have been numerous attempts to construe statistical measures of national power. Classic models are the University of Michigan's Composite Index of National Capability (CINC, 1963, "Correlates of War" project,) and the University of Denver's International Futures' National Power Index (Ifs, 1980), the most comprehensive forecasting model publicly available today. Newer developments include the National Power Index, elaborated by the Foundation for National Security Research (FNSR, 2012), New Delhi, and China's index of Comprehensive National Power (CNP, 2009) developed after a request by President Deng Hsiao Ping in 1990. A research group at the Academy of Military Science (AMS), headed by Senior Colonel Huang Shuofeng, and a civilian research group at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), headed by one of the inventors of the concept of "structural multipolarity", Gao Heng, used the premises established by Deng. Both groups came to the conclusion that China will merely become one pole among five equals in the future, despite its enormous land mass and demographic power. They differ however, in the assessment of power ratios for other countries and their speed of development.
A category of indexes in their own rights are the risk assessment indices in finance and economics. They can be used with enormous benefits in the calculation of the more holistic national power assessments.
The quality, realism and results of these descriptive and/or analytical tools vary, but they generally share a common methodology. Due to the complex nature of human society and the world system and the almost infinite number of interacting variables involved,
researchers are forced to select both qualitative and quantitative variables they deem useful for the measurement of power and development metrics. These variables or factors or attributes are weighted and combined in a national power index which exhibits the obtained National Power scores. These National Power scores can then be used to express a state's relative share (percentage) of total global power.
The differences in the results and realism of these models derive: a) from the selection of the variables considered to be most pertinent for the evaluation, and b) from the weighting applied to them. These subjective influences and pragmatics of research design are objectively unavoidable. Building a realistic and satisfying model to represent the status quo of national and relative geopolitical power and power instruments is therefore a daunting task. Building an ideal metric system may be impossible, but a relative approximation of model results to reality may be judged to be a satisfactory outcome of the research process. The quality of the model must therefore be judged on the realism and the prognostic capacities it empirically demonstrates.
3. Basic Characteristics of our IRGB model: Epistemology, Research Objectives, Methodology
3.1. Epistemological status of world system and basic concepts / World System and Power
Def. 1: The modern world system is a Complex Dynamic Reproduction and Survival System (CDRS) of homo sapiens, driven by: a) the historical projects of national and transnational power elites, in interaction with the masses and nature, and b) a system logic that can be understood by the combination of paradigmatic elements elaborated by Newton, Darwin, Marx/ Engels and Lorenz (N-D-M/E-L system logic). This bio-geographical macrosystem operates essentially as a system of deterministic chaos. Its dynamics and structures are determined by power.
Def. 2: Power is the capacity of an entity "to impose its will upon other entities, even against the will of the latter" (Max Weber).
Def. 3: National Power can be defined, as in NATO Military Terminology, as "the sum of all resources available to a nation in the pursuit of national objectives".
Def. 4: Geopolitical or Relative National Power is the sum of all national capabilities and attributes that determine its influence in the international system. It is the medium that regulates the metabolism with the global environment.
Def. 5: IRGP is a quantified composite Index of Relative Geostrategic Power of Nation States, that expresses a Nation-State's geopolitical power as a relative share (percentage) of total global power.
Def. 6: Power exists in four basic forms: political, economic, cultural and military power. The importance of each of these interacting forms of power as well as the outcome of their application is situational (contextual). All modern states constantly use combinations of these forms of power to achieve their objectives.
Def. 7: A Nation-State is a territorially defined configuration of the four social human forms of power (power system), governed by a dominant class which exercises its structural power through the de jure and/ or de facto control of the economic surplus and mode/ means of production; and its direct executive power through both a civilian and an armed bureaucracy (apparatus which is different from society), which is called the state. The type of the State (feudal, slaveholder, capitalist, socialist) is determined by the mode of production, although its form (democratic, dictatorial, fascist, etc.) can vary.
3.2. Research Objectives
1. Determine the power structure towards which the world system is evolving, with which velocity it is doing so and what it will be like in 2025. In other words, determine the status hierarchy of Nation-States in the world system for 2025.
2. In order to do so, diagnose the empirical status quo of the world system (2013), based on the assessment of national power ratios, the current status hierarchy and the global order's system logic, as a Darwinian type of global environment, which operates in accordance with the laws of deterministic chaos (and is driven by a combination of N-D-M/E-L system logic...).
3. Determine the General Law of Evolution of modern civilization (since 1688/1789) by finding the Attractor of the modern World System (of modernity).
4. Develop a quantified comprehensive Index of Relative Geostrategic Power of Nation States (IRGP) in the current world order, considering human societies as complex dynamic systems with partially quantifiable power attributes.
5. Determine the evolutionary and survival chances for individual nations.
6. Identify the power requisites for possible effective and democratic world planning and governance in the current system; reduce uncertainties about national interests and strategic and tactical planning for
achieving them; improve the recognition of deliberate and unintended consequences of national policies in the contemporary global Darwinian environment.
7. Create a world evolutionary alternative to the contemporary global Darwinian and class environment of chrematistic market economies with bourgeois superstructures (formal democracies), by combining the scientific metric of modernity with the development of a new attractor for the social development of mankind in the 21st Century. The institutionality of this new and alternative third attractor will be qualitatively superior to modernity's first and second historic attractors (bourgeois civilization and 20th Century Socialism), since it will be based on a system of participatory democracy, non-profit post-market political economy and classless societies.
3.3. Research Strategy, Methodology used
3.3.1. War and Peace scenarios
We first decided to differentiate possible future scenarios for Nation States into peace-time scenarios and war situations, since they present qualitatively different evolutionary and reproduction/survival conditions for Nation-States. The possession of nuclear world destruction and force projection capabilities, however, must be considered a decisive positive factor for their owners, in both scenarios. This is so for two reasons. The possession and delivery capacity to globally destroy any adversary by means of nuclear weapons means that the owner of these weapons can't be removed by force from the attractor's privileged power-zone. This destructive capacity also gives the owner a comparative advantage in bargaining power and absolute terms over all non-nuclear States in its evolution towards the attractor. In other words, it constitutes a "blackmailing" capability. This capability has been used quite often in modern history, particularly by the U.S. power elite.
3.3.2. Model assumptions, Static Phase, and 1st Implementation Approximation
A) Timeframe: 2010—2025
B) Peace time evolution
C) No endogenization of the impact of global systems on national power, or measurement of connectivity in global system
3.3.3. Methodological aspects of Input Variables
After analyzing the enormous number of
parameters available for measuring national power and those employed in the most used models we came
to the conclusion that the following type and number of variables would be sufficient to construe a IRGP with adequate diagnostic and prognostic capacities for the defined research objectives:
1. Dynamic quantifiable Variables:
V1. GDP p.c. in nominal terms
V2. R&D (Research and Development Expenditure, current US$ 2011)
V3. ME (Military Expenditure, current US$ 2012)
V4. TPG (Total Patents Granted 2012)
2. Relatively Constant Variables:
Vc 1. Demographic power (Population)
Vc 2. Surface Area (Territorium)
3. Dynamic qualitative Variable:
Vq 1: = Strategic Domination and Development Software (SDDS)
3.3.4. Hypotheses
To test the pretended diagnostic and prognostic qualities of the model under the formulated assumptions we formulated the following hypothesis:
• Hypothesis 1: At the level of quantitative analysis of the evolution of national power the GDP is an excellent macro-indicator.
• Hypothesis 2: Afunctional relationship exists between the GDP (VI) and the V2, V3, V4, in which the evolution of V2, V3 and V4, closely follows the evolution of the GDP. The relationship between the independent variable VI (GDP) and the dependent variables V2, V3 and V4, can be proven by statistical correlation and regression analysis.
• Hypothesis 3: The evolution of the independent variable VI is a function of the independent Variable Vq 1 SDDS.
3.3.5. Verification of Hypotheses
Using publicly available data bases, like World Bank and IMF statistics, we applied commonly used statistical procedures to the data, like weighting, logarithmic scaling, lineal regressions etc. The results, with 40 countries, normalized, log scale, confirmed the validity of all hypotheses. A major statistical revelation was that the behavior of VI to V4 shows remarkable similarity, which expresses itself in mathematical terms as a type of hyperbolic distribution of the form:
y - cx-a.
In order to see if these similar patterns of variable behavior respond to common causal factors, we converted the data to a logarithmic scale and applied a linear regression analysis. The respective quotients ranged from 0.94 to 0.97, proving that effectively there
is a high degree of auto-similarity in the behavior of these variables.
The similarity in the four-variable pattern behavior (V1-V4) indicates que V2, V3 and V4 reflect, probably in a non-linear way, the behavior of V1, the GDP.
The nature of this relationship will be subject to further analysis, but it seems safe to state that the evolution of the GDP is the independent variable, which determines in a non-linear way the evolution of the other dynamic variables.
3.3.6. Model assumptions, Static Phase, 2nd Implementation Approximation
As a result of the tests of the first implementation approximation we took several important methodological decisions.
1. We dropped the Total Patents Granted (TPG) variable, since its metrics vary from country to country and because its behavior mimics the dynamic pattern of the R&D variable.
2. We reorganized the variables in three groups:
A. Surface Area and Population, that is territorial and demographic power;
B. GDP p.c. in nominal terms, R&D and Military Expenditure (ME), that equals a Nation's adaptation capabilities and
C. Strategic Domination and Development Software (SDDS), that is global governance and imposition capacity
3. We reduced the statistic universe to a sample of the most influential/powerful nations, ranked by the IRGP.
4. We consider SDDS to be the most important adaptation capability. Therefore we put it as a separate parameter from GDP, R&D and ME.
5. In a certain phase of the research we took advantage of a heuristical methodological analogy with Newton's second law of motion. In one of the Asiatic national power indexes Newton's third law is used to construe a power performance formula. We opine that this is a mistake, since complex dynamic systems can't be adequately characterized with the classical laws of mechanics.
3.3.6.1 Strategic Domination and Development Software (SDDS)
We can now consider relative geopolitical power of a Nation State as a combination of objective and subjective power, that is as interacting hardware and software capabilities, the adequate or inadequate use of which enhances or reduces the adaptation and evolutionary capabilities of any Nation State.
The quality of SDDS depends on different variables, which we grouped into twelve subindices of SDDS, among them: the cognitive analytical capacity of the Decider, to adequately interprete his tactical and strategic environment in order to discern immediate and future threats and opportunities; that is, it must correctly discriminate its 4-zone environment: favorable/beneficial — neutral — hostile — antagonistic; the efficiency of its internal decision making system; dynamic analysis of 4-zone environment and probability calculation of possible strategies and tactics, designed to optimize own interests (cost/benefit analysis); the resources/power to achieve objectives; the capacity of the power elite or vanguard for innovation and its internal and social mobility; the consent of the majority of the population for the dominant class's historic project, over a considerable period of time, etcetera.
For the elaboration of national SDDS-scores we chose the time frame from the outbreak of the Great Depression (1929) to today (2014). We found two leading classes/Nation-States outstanding in this category: the USA and China. The USA, because of its success in the construction of the "American Century"; China's Communist Party performance success in the unparalleled economic and social development of the country and the defense of its sovereignty, since the time of Mao Zedong's party leadership until today.
3.3.6.2
We than applied the empirical data series to the new model and produced a World Power Distribution Index for two variables, territorial and demographic power (SA, TP); for three variables, that is adaptation capabilities, GDP p.c., R&D and ME; and a composite integrated World Power Distribution Index for six variables (SA, TP, GDP p.c., R&D, ME and SDDS). These World Power Distribution Index data were than processed with Mamdani fuzzy logic methods and expressed in a tridimensional model.
4. The Epistemological Status of the World System
On the basis of quantum physics and classical physics the world system operates as an organizational macrosystem of the homo sapiens species, which essentially follows the evolutionary logic of all higher life forms, as described by Charles Darwin; and the evolutionary logic of class societies as described by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. National class societies are complex dynamic systems within the
global environment of modern civilization (since 1648/88). This global environment (the world system) evolves in similarity to the laws of deterministic chaos-systems. To be more specific, similarly to the dynamics of the Lorenz attractor.
5. The Attractor Model of modern civilization: the General Law of Evolution of Modernity
The Basin of Attraction of Human History is composed of three fundamental elements: Nature, Productive Forces (Technology) and People, that is, Vanguards/Elites and Masses with their historical projects. The Basin of Attraction is a sub-set of the space-phase, that is, an abstract model in which, in mathematics and physics, all possible states of a system are represented; with each possible state of the system corresponding to one unique point in the phase space (Wikip.)
In our social phenomenon model the phase-space is constituted by all values which its six variables (TP, SA, GDP, ME, R&D, SDDS), can potentially assume. That is, it represents mathematically the degree of civilizatory evolution/development that can be achieved, in the abstract, by any Nation-States, measured by the corresponding variables. The Basin of attraction, however, is the set of empirical ranks/ data which characterize a Nation-States' comparative position in world society. The Basin of Attraction defines the space in which the system "Nation-State" can exist in a given historical moment.
The evolutionary dynamic of the system is determined by the attractor, that is, the most advanced configuration of the model of bourgeois society according to the six variables. The attractor is constituted by about 52 countries. Within the attractor there is a Dominant Group, a global oligarchy of Nation-States. It is composed of 6 dominant world powers, which form the top of our Relative Geopolitical National Power-Index: USA, China, Russia, Japan, India, Germany. The Centroide, in
this case Denmark and Sweden, is the center of the system, that is, the most popular and most desired civilizatory model of advanced bourgeois society, of quality of life, which the masses in the dominant countries and, in general, on a world scale, pretend to achieve. It is the center of their world vision and their everyday praxis.
We than measured the distance from each country to the Centroide in three different measurement units: 1. GDP p.c. nominal; 2. Millimetric distances on the chart, and 3. The development-years necessary to obtain the living standard (in GDP p.c.) of the Centroide (Denmark), for each country, according to their long-time growth ratios.
If we represented the evolutionary paths of the Nation-States in question, each point on one of the curves represents a moment in time of the evolution of a specific Nation-State towards the attractor, according to the variables chosen. Each evolutionary path is unique according to the objective historical conditions within the Nation and on a world level. That means, in mathematical terms, that none of the curves intercepts any other, as in the following Lorenz attractor graphic is shown.
Lorenz attractor graphic
Information about the authors
Dr. Heinz Dieterich — Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Science Advisor to the University President and Director of Center for Transition Sciences (CTS); World Association for Political Economy, Vice President; World Advanced Research Project, Coordinator, Mexico City-Berlin.
Dr. Raimundo Franco — CTS researcher. Former Director of the Institute for Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics, ICIMAF, La Habana, Cuba.
MSc. Rodrigo Ortiz — CTS researcher. Economist and Chinese Studies, Mexico — Beijing.
M.Sc. Juan Carlos Olguin — Electronic engineer and Master in Controll Systems / Artificial Intelligence, Universidad Autónoma Chapingo and CTS.
