CC BY
67
Вестник Челябинского государственного университета. 2018. № 3 (413). Экономические науки. Вып. 60. С. 120—123.
УДК 330.101 ББК 65.010.1
RUSSIAN DREAM, CHINESE DREAM AND AMERICAN DREAM. VECTORS OF 21st CENTURY CIVILIZATION
Dr. Heinz Dieterich
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, Mexico
In article reviewed three main vectors for development of mankind in 21 Century: American Dream, Chinese Dream and Russian Dream. The class character of evolutionary processes in the society is shown, the importance of research of "Historic class projects" as realized shapes of the future social structure of mankind is grounded.
Keywords: American Dream, Chinese Dream and Russian Dream, Historic class project, Classes.
1. Historic class projects and Grand Narratives
Any social human subject, being individual or collective, acts according to its survival interests and the optimization of its respective survival strategies. The organization, explication and legitimation of the resulting praxis, has been termed "Weltanschauung" in German philosophy, Grand Narrative or "master narrative" (Jean-François Lyotard) in the postmodernist tradition, or "ideology" in Latin American parlance. As a polysemantic concept, it is of little utility for the required categorial precision of scientific analysis and rather prone to reactionary propagandistic use, as became very much evident after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its 20th Century Socialism. There is, however, no possible denial of the fact, that practical actions of human subjects follow an organizing software, a kind of Global Positioning system (GPS), which determines their operations in the space-timemotion environment, which is the cosmos and its subsystem, The Blue Planet. Within the potential institutional chaos of macro-organizations, composed of tens, if not hundreds of millions of members, like civil societies, social classes, nation states, etc., an action-guiding master plan or principle is the only possible alternative to chaos. This software for macro guidance and survival strategies of a collective subject, in this case, a social class, I will call its Historic Project. I sustain, that no ruling class or elite can maintain stable, prolonged relations of exploitation, dominance and alienation of other classes and peoples, without the support of such a power software, that gives it strategic autonomy. On the same token, no oppressed class or social subject can liberate itself without an emancipation software or Emancipatory Historic Project (software), developed by itself and for itself.
2. Marx, Engels and the Historic Project
The concept "Historic Project" is not being used in current social sciences. Neither did it play an im-
portant role in explicit form in the foundational work of Marx and Engels. It is, however, very useful to describe the three main activities of all ruling power elites: to exploit, to dominate and to alienate the nonelite sectors of society. The Historic Class Project (HCP) of a dominant elite encompasses the four essential types of social relations, which characterize human societies: the economic, the political, the military and the cultural relationships. Expressed in the terminology of Historic materialism, the productive forces, the relations of production and the political and non-political superstructures.
A dominant class can not exist without an HCP, and in that respect we can talk about the HCP of the Roman slaveholders, the European feudal landlords, the capitalists and the socialists. The concept is similar to that of Marx's "socio economic formation" (soziooekonomische Formation), but puts more emphasis on the fact that history is made by concrete configurations (projects) which are promoted by the dominant social subjects, and reacted to by the subordinate classes. The basic reason for the elaboration and preservation of a HCP is, of course, the appropriation of social value (Plusprodukt). Around this essence or nucleus exist many other spheres of discourse, narratives, symbolic systems, ideologies etc., which fulfill the function of indoctrinating different classes and social actors in benefit of the overall hegemony of the power elites.
Two further properties of the HCP are self evident. Their composition of rational and prerational axioms varies greatly. The feudal HCP, for example, recurs to an extramundane decisor (God) to "explain" and legitimize its exploitation, oppression and alienation of the masses, while the capitalist macro software uses for the same objective "the market". Socialism, in change, as a scientific explanation of reality, needs to explain the dynamics of social development and praxis through the basic systemic contradictions of
society and the anthropological constituents of human praxis. The second, equally obvious property, refers to the fact, that the class conflict for the appropriation of the collectively produced surplus product, is not only being carried out between two classes, but also between Historical Power Blocks, ethnic groups, gender interests, and so on and so forth.
Generally, a HCP contains four central elements, which are promoted through foundational documents or manifestos. 1. The program or the contents of the class proposal made. 2. The subjects of change or implementation. 3. The time periods required for the planned program. 4. The forms or methods of transformation (struggle). The contemporary global system has added an additional transversal aspect to the four contents mentioned, in the sense, that all of them must be conceived in their national, regional and global dimensions.
The class character or degree of democratic and humanistics virtues of these projects can be measured through its concrete posture towards four essential interactions: 1. Towards other human beings in the economic sphere (class problem); 2. With nature (ecological problem); 3. Vis-à-vis women (sexism problem) and with 4. Other ethnic groups (racism).
3. The General Law of Evolution of Modernity
The two dominant civilizatory projects of modern history, capitalism and socialism, are the product of the Basin of Attraction, which has determined the general law of evolution of modern society, since 1648/1789. A quantitative-qualitative analysis of the Basin of Attraction of Modernity, carried out by the Center for Transition Sciences of the Metropolitan Autonomous University (CTS-UAM), on the basis of interdisciplinary science and a Comprehensive National Power Indexes, strongly indicates that the contemporary world order operates like a hierarchical Darwinistic system. After the demise of 20th Century Socialism, the dynamics of this formative evolutionary macro system of humanity can be characterized as those of a deterministic chaos, with essentially one attractor and zero degrees of freedom for about 98 % of all nation-states. Its hierarchic Darwinistic nature, based upon the interests of national power elites and nation states, profit rates of chrematistic market economies and limited world resources, stems from the bourgeois revolutions of 1648/1776 and 1789.
After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the transformation of 20th Century Socialism in China through Deng's "reform and opening up" program (1978), it is not entirely clear if the triumph of the original revolutionary projects of Lenin and Mao were only a temporary deviation from capitalism in the evolution of modernity—an intermediate
step from backward underdevelopment to modern capitalism—or if they still indicate a possible non-chrematistic development of humanity. Whatever the end results of these processes will be, there is no doubt, however, that after the brief phase of unilateral US-domination of the world system (1990—2017), the penta-shaped multipolar international order of the future is coming into being, with its five dominant global powers: the USA, China, Russia, India and the European Union. The grand narratives of the American Dream, the Chinese Dream and now — through President Putin's March 1st Address to the Federal Assembly — the Russian Dream (Russkaya mechta or Русская мечта), reveal the structural ideas of these hegemonic national power elites and vanguards about the future architecture of mankind: the ecumene of the 21st Century.
4. The American Dream
The global balance of power makes it virtually impossible for China to match or overcome the objective Western power advantage in a foreseeable future. This strategic disadvantage is further aggravated by the fact that the dominant power elite of the Western imperialist block—the military-industrial-intelligence complex, the neo-fascist political class that calls itself "neoconservative" (neocons) and the financial capital of the United States—is not willing to allow a peaceful competition between the current socialist and capitalist countries. It has developed a neo-fascist mindset that does not accept the principles of peaceful coexistence or Deng Xiaoping's "peace and development" and Hu Jintao's "harmonious world" environment for Chinese modernization. In this neo-fascist mindset, "American exceptionalism" and "the American Century" are the functional equivalents to Hitler's "Aryan superiority" and the "Thousand-Year Reich" (Tausendjaehriges Reich).
The US power elite have made it clear that it is willing to risk a preventive nuclear war in order to maintain its world dominance (The American Century, Trump's "America First", etc.). Its de facto abandonment of the vital international treaties about nuclear and biological weapons (Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty [NPT] and Biological Weapons Convention [BWC]), on which the international security architecture rests, as well as its foreign policy, is based on the premise to eliminate Russia's and China's "information centers of gravity" and their "second-strike capabilities," within a policy of "nuclear colonialism of the 21st Century." China and Russia are misconstrued as the principal obstacles to the persistence of the unipolar West-dominated world. Therefore, they have to be disintegrated and subordinated, as was successfully achieved with the Soviet Union.
122
Dr. Heinz Dieterich
Every event on a global scale today is marked by a gigantic confrontation between the West and Russia-China, with a strategic offensive of the United States and its NATO-allies, to break up the emerging world powers of Russia and China, following the model used for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, etc. This policy, a repeat of the containment and roll-back strategy of the first Cold War, adheres to the doctrine which the Washington Post journalist Charles Krauthammer summed up as follows:
We have overwhelming global power. We are history's designated custodians of the international system. When the Soviet Union fell, something new was born, something utterly new—a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe. This is a staggering new development in history, not seen since the fall of Rome. Even Rome was no model for what America is today1.
Pentagon Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz defined the resulting foreign policy objectives of the United States in 1992. They were first implemented by Clinton (Yugoslavia, Iraq) and remained the guiding principles of US foreign policy under Bush and Obama. The Wolfowitz Doctrine dictates that the "first objective" of American foreign and military policy is, to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat [to US unilateral action] on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power2. (Roberts 2015).
A "hostile power" is a country sufficiently strong to sustain strategic autonomy vis-à-vis Washington. It is obvious that this is a dynamic extension of the Second World War strategic State Department Policy Planning Staff-Papers and an agenda for global US hegemony. Putin has designated NATO's activities a threat to its national security and accused the United States of pursuing a policy of containment towards it, in the latest sign of deteriorating relations between Moscow and the West.
5. Xi's Chinese Dream
President Xi Jinping's call for the foundation of a Chinese Dream in 2012. expresses the nation and the
1 Roberts P. C. 2015. "Why World War III Is on the Horizon." Global Research. Accessed March 16, 2017. http://www. globalresearch.ca/why-world-war-iii-is-on-the-horizon/5498272.
2 Roberts P. C. 2015.
Party's vital need for a new paradigm of 21st century's socialist civilization, qualitatively different from the civilization of the American Dream and that of 20th Century Socialism. As the third grand paradigm to be built during the last century by the CPC, after Mao's "New Democracy" (1940), based on the "Bloc of four social classes theory", and Deng Xiao Ping's "reform and opening up", (1978) — a state-guided growth model based on Oliver Cromwell, Friedrich List and Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) — it is part of the "primary stage of socialism" in one of the three most powerful nations on earth. At the same time, the only real global development prospect for a socialist world society and system. The future of China and humanity depends on the quality of this new strategic socialist project, which must solve the national and universal aspects of the task.
Xi's call has four important characteristics: 1. As General Secretary of CPC, elevated to the "core" leader of the Party and the country by the CPC Central Committee on October 27, 2016, putting him in the distinguished ranks of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, the president is responsible for the evolution and safety of the only existing socialist world power; 2. The great success of the national Marxist development model of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping has put the president at the helms of an unparalleled structural transition process in modern history, which includes the world's biggest ever urban boom, the creation of the largest middle class ever with its Western-oriented universal dreams and ideologies, and a prolonged economic growth process without equal; 3. The essence of the Party's hegemonic guidance function in pursuing the nation's rejuvenation is to be found in the "living soul" of Mao Zedong's Thought and revolutionary praxis, which can be resumed into three basic aspects: seeking truth from facts, the mass line, and independence and self-determination. This brilliant synthesis of scientific socialism's revolutionary theory and praxis holds the key to the transition path for the future of China (and mankind); 4. Xi's professional formation in one of the most complex applied sciences (chemical engineering) and his wide-spanning life experiences, including seven years of manual farm labor during the Cultural Revolution, make the president a uniquely qualified person to understand the gateways to the future and the determining forces for China's socialist evolution.
During the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, in October of 2017, Xi's remarks on the concept of building a community with shared future for mankind, have revealed the true relevance of this new Historical Project of the Chinese Communist Party: from the national rejuvenation of China, the
project expanded to become a universal blueprint for the global society, a new Socialism of the 21st Century. As Xi explains in his "Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era", the PCC projects the "socialist modernization" of the country from 2020 to 2035. In 2050, he assures, China will be "a great socialist country".
Thus, the voice that was extinguished in the implosion of 20th Century Socialism in the Soviet Union, has now reappeared in the worldwide competition for global soft and hard power. The plutocratic bourgeois democracy and its chrematistic economy, praised by Fukuyama as the culmination of human institutional evolution, may, at the end, turn out to be no more than another temporary stage of development in the saga of homo sapiens.
6. Putins Russian Dream
On March 1st, 2018, in his Address to the Federal Assembly, President Putin defined the new Historic Project for the Russian Federation: the Russian Dream. It is the first time since the October Revolution in 1917, that the country presents a rational, coherent national development project, with realistic parameters for its internal economic, social, military and cultural evolution, together with a blueprint for its role in the 21st Century. If one wanted to synthesize its essence, it could be resumed as the development of a welfare state, based on a strong middle class, high tech innovation, a strategic alliance with China and a shield of advanced strategic weapons, which makes it impossible for the USA, to attack the country. In his transcendental discourse, Vladimir Putin defined a clear and reasoned position of Russia vis-à-vis five transcendental topics of the national and global agenda.
1. The evolution of humanity and its national societies is determined by its global attractor, the middle classes. These are the result of the scientific-technological revolutions of the 20th century. Their appearance "between" bourgeoisie and proletariat is an objective process of the evolution of the productive forces. They constitute in political, cultural, military and social terms, the center of gravity of all contemporary politics.
2. The survival capacity and the geopolitical degree of strategic autonomy of any nation
state today correspond to the essential truth of Charles Darwin's scientific paradigm: the survival of the fittest. Translated into operation terms, this axiom means, that the strategic freedom of any nation depends on its potential of thermonuclear destruction and its potential of national economic production.
3. The ideological vacuum produced by the implosion of 20th Century Socialism, is now being filled. When the vulgar positivistic propagandist Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history, he ignored two fundamental characteristics of the universe: a) that the cosmos is only composed of matter (Einstein: e = mc2), but of matter in motion. And that motion inevitably means change; b) that it is an absolute anthropological condition for human beings, to organize their praxis on multiples form of software, including grand narratives, historic projects, metaphysics and so on). The ontological condition of the universe and the absolute anthropological one explain, why three decades after the implosion of the soviet system, three fundamental historic projects of dominant national actors compete to become the dominant soft power of the ecumene: el American Dream, that is, American Capitalism first; el Chinese Dream of "building a community with a shared future for mankind" and the Russian Dream, Russkaya mechta or Русская мечта: a middle class standards' society behind a nuclear shield.
4. The system of world governance, understood within the scientific frameworks of Darwin, Marx, Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz, will be dominated by five hegemonic powers: China, Russia, the USA, India and the European Union. All other countries will be secondary or irrelevant in terms of power.
5. The quality of the strategic vision and the capabilities of transforming the national, regional and global realities of modernity, demonstrate that Putin and Xi Jinping are the most capable global leaders that exist in the global society today. And, that there are many reasons to consider them legitimate successors to Lenin y Mao Zedong.
Information about the author 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.
Bulletin of Chelyabinsk State University.
2018. No. 3 (413). Economic Sciences. Iss. 60. Pp. 120—123.
