The study was carried out with financial support from the Russian Humanitarian Fund

as part of a research project14-06-00650 (2015)

Globalization, which permeates all aspects of modern society, can act as a factor of rapprochement or rejection. But, in general, global challenges are still a factor of rapprochement. And the post-Soviet educational space is no exception to this. general rule. At first, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a separation from the general directions of development, but this is a factor of separation from the Soviet past; from a global perspective, there was a rapprochement.

In general, we can say that globalization in education leads to a convergence of conceptual positions, which in the national context leads to a wider variety of vectors for the development of education in a particular country. Moreover, rapprochement as integration takes place under conditions of multi-vector clustering. That is, different clusters of convergence are being formed both on didactic problems of education and on general problems of the development of modern society.

In the last decade, globalization, diversity and unified education in response to global challenges have deployed the educational community to explore educational development strategies through deep, meaningful discussions of difficult global and local social problems, opportunities and actions that can lead to change in the entire education system or its individual structural part .

Education has the ability to transform and make changes in the development of society, at the same time, education is constantly transforming and changing itself both in global and local directions. Globalization, therefore, leads to changes through external and internal transformations as a bringing together factor.

Education systems are becoming increasingly socially, ethnically and culturally diverse due to the influence of the globalization factor. However, education is often defined through discourses of embedding into Western paradigms as globalized education systems become more and more dominant in the knowledge economy. Politicians, practitioners and ideologists of education help determine the ways in which the formation of a social lift through education is perceived as the right direction of development towards greater justice. Therefore, it is believed that education should take into account gender, racial, ethnic and other differences in teaching. That is, in a global world, each individual constructs his own educational trajectory, which will allow a person to find himself in adulthood in a global world, while maintaining his civic identity.

Across the world, in many educational settings and educational contexts, the overriding assumption remains that teachers are the holders of knowledge that must be imparted to students and that this happens in neutral, impartial and objective ways. However, learning has different perceptions, one teacher teaches everyone in the class the same way, but students can and do their learning in very different ways. Students and students, as well as teachers and teachers, are part of complex social, cultural, political, ideological and personal circumstances, and the accumulated experience of learning and learning will depend in part on previous experience, but also on age, gender, social status, culture, nationality , different abilities, etc. Therefore, the standardization of teaching in education plays the role of a framework for the teacher, while the training program of each teacher, being in the field of the standard, differs from the approximate program that the developers of the standard were thinking about. That is, teaching and learning as two mutually related aspects of education can have different directions.

Education is developed within an interdisciplinary framework, which increases intercultural awareness and promotes international exchange. In education, developments have been underway for a long time on internal interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary training, but today education is also beginning to develop interdisciplinaryly, taking into account development vectors in sociology, psychology, linguistics, political science and other humanities.

In the global world, everything is united, but grouped in different ways. The educational systems of the post-Soviet space before the collapse of the Soviet Union were rhizomorphic, structurally similar, despite the individual differences inherent in one or another republic. That is why it is so important now, after twenty years of development, to look at what has become of the rhizomes of education at the national level in the current time of postmodernism. Is there anything left of the common Soviet rhizome? Where have educational systems joined, to which rhizome? Or they began to form their own autochthonous rhizome of education. For this purpose, it is necessary to determine the criteria for clustering national education systems and the direction vector of rhizomism (adjacent to the rhizome of other countries or autochthonous formation).

Clustering criteria

Thus, we can identify five main criteria for local clustering of educational systems.

1. Language. So, at first glance, the criterion for clustering should be a single state language in the post-Soviet educational space. But the painful collapse led to the reverse paradigm of clustering in individual countries to the complete denial of the Russian language at the official level. However, in the world and in the post-Soviet educational space (PSEP), the Russian language is still a factor in clustering or local convergence of educational systems of individual countries. Among foreign languages ​​in the post-Soviet educational space, the main one is English; Arabic and Chinese have recently become widespread. Previously, there was one school in Moscow with in-depth study of the Chinese language, but now there are five. And the number of courses on studying Chinese, especially Arabic, is incalculable.

At the state level, Russian is still the language of clustering, but in some countries and even regions of Russia the Arabic language is intensively brought to the fore. It is difficult and unforgivably stupid for modern education policy to ignore this phenomenon.

2. Territory. The second clustering criterion is territorial geographic location. Thus, the following clusters can be distinguished:

• European (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova).
• Caucasian (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan)
• Baltic (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia).
• Asian (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan).

Perhaps in the Russian Federation today there is no noticeable clustering with Europe in general politics, but in education, of course, there is, remains and will be clustering with Europe. Our education and culture in general have never divorced ourselves from Europe, despite all the social cataclysms.

This criterion, due to its geographical affiliation, acquires features of a political science and cultural nature, since almost all countries have close interaction in education with Europe, and the Baltic countries are Europe itself in the post-Soviet space.

3. Confession.

The religious factor as a clustering criterion is dominant in our time, especially in the Muslim world. A factor of rapprochement outside countries and often a factor of separation within multinational and multi-religious countries. In the post-Eastern space there are two large clusters and several smaller ones. So, the main clusters:

1. Christian (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia).
2. Muslim (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan).

It is clear that these two clusters are not homogeneous, but consist of different religious movements within the cluster. For example, Catholicism and Orthodoxy in Christianity, Sunnis and Shiites in Islam. In addition, there are Buddhist clusters within a number of countries, pagan, Judaic, Confucian, etc.

But it should be noted that the legacy of the Soviet past in all countries of the post-Soviet space is distinguished by a large cluster of non-believers and even atheists. Moreover, in the education of almost all countries, much attention is paid to the problems of religious education, the rights of believers are in the center of attention of society and politicians, and the rights of a large cluster of non-believers have not been studied at all, and no one is concerned with respecting their rights. At the same time, all PSOP states are secular, which means that a solution to the problems of non-believers as a separate religious cluster is already overdue.

4. Politics.

In general, the convergence of educational systems is closely related not only to space and time, but to politics. Value systems in society, morality, moral ideals, etc. - everything leads to clustering. In the post-Soviet space there are also certain different vector political directions of development strategies.

Let's highlight the following clusters:

• European (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia). European education. Values ​​and ideals. Monitoring of education quality results is carried out within the framework of a single standard of the European Union (EU).
• Pro-European (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia). Countries in which the development strategy is designated as accession, and later full entry into the EU.
• Eurasian (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Armenia). The countries that are members of the Eurasian Cooperation Organization have common goals, and some common patterns are observed in education.
• Pro-Eurasian (Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan). Countries that share the ideals and values ​​of the pro-European and Eurasian clusters.

I would like to note that in the post-Soviet space clustering with China is almost invisible, although this state has the longest borders with Russia and Kazakhstan.

In general, it should be emphasized that all countries maintain convergence in education along the global vector, that is, an orientation towards Germany, France and especially Great Britain in Europe, of course, towards America, in Asia - towards Japan, China, Korea, Singapore, Turkey and the Arab countries. The factor of rapprochement with Russia is weakening in all countries to a negative level with Ukraine. In our time, Russia in the post-Soviet space occupies a special place for political reasons; it is practically in search of global partners outside the post-Soviet space.

5. Cooperation.

Due to the multidirectionality of globalization processes in the countries of the post-Soviet space, an additional criterion is put forward for local cooperation of some countries within the PSOP.

There are cooperation agreements with various purposes of association, subject to the ratification of such agreements. So, we can distinguish several such localizations:

• Central Asian cooperation (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia).
• Cooperation of independent CIS states (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Azerbaijan).
• GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova).
• Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan.
• Union State (Russia, Belarus).
• Customs Union and Common Economic Space (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan).
• Commonwealth of Democratic Choice (CDC) – Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Georgia.
• BRICS is an association of developing countries with large economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).

In addition to two localizations (GUAM and SDV), the Russian Federation participates in all local associations, moreover, it was the initiator of their creation, and in addition, the main material costs for servicing these unions also fall on Russia.

Clustering models

Thus, the clustering of the countries of the former USSR has changed not only its focus, but also in essence the clustering models have become different: from monopolar, led by Russia, to multipolar with different centers and vectors of direction of interaction (see Figures 1 and 2, respectively).

Of course, in the old model before 1991, such globalization in a single space proceeded differently, but unipolarity remained. Although different clusters were observed according to the same criteria.

Picture 1. Old PSOP clustering model before 1991

It should be noted that the forces of attraction of clusters to the center differed significantly in their strength between specific clusters and the center (compare the interpenetration in the Central Asian republics and the Baltic countries). Within a particular cluster, rapprochement with the center also occurred differently among individual states (compare the interaction of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan within the Central Asian cluster. In addition, there were weak ties between clusters with the obligatory participation of the center.

The modern clustering model has practically lost its center, that is, it has become multipolar. Additional points of attraction have appeared in almost all states with weakening ties with the Russian Federation. Correlations with the highest weight are shown in Figure 2. Russia is allocated to a separate cluster due to the current political situation, and its relationships are not indicated, since they have weakened significantly compared to the old model.

Figure 2. Modern PSOP clustering model

It should be noted that this model indicates connections in the field of education.

But in general, we see that the strengthening role of globalization in the post-Soviet space leads to multipolarity and multi-vectority. That is, states have become much freer in determining their priorities. But the strategies for the development of education in each state have a clear trend of being integrated into the global educational space with the rapprochement of one or another force with different local centers, while maintaining its autochthony. Unfortunately, moving further and further away from Russia.

That is, a new imperative of education appears as training, education and personal development.

New educational imperatives arise in national and cultural contexts and depend on various overarching issues, not all of them related to globalization processes:

1. Reducing the role and influence of the nation state in determining domestic policy in education. The financial crisis in most countries contributes to a reduction in the state’s obligations to educational opportunities and equal access to quality education, that is, there is simply a turn to the market, privatization and the choice of an education model as in the service sector rather than in the educational sector.
2. Expanding conditions of increasing diversity and increasing human awareness of social issues; controllability in conditions of permeable borders and an explosion of mobility; the widespread development and accessibility for all people of the media and modern technologies, which create completely new conditions for the formation of belonging and identification.
3. Developing attitudes, values ​​and understanding of the learner's development as a multicultural democratic citizen who can be part of this increasingly cosmopolitan world.

But still, globalization has become part of the historical process of development of education, which radically changes the landscape of public and private life, which is reflected in the field of education. Public education today is at a crossroads. It may not respond to the challenges of the time, as if nothing has changed in the world and in education in the 21st century. There is a growing risk of displacement of educational influences in educational organizations that are no longer accountable public administration and control. Thus, what is at stake today is the survival of the democratic form of educational governance and the accessibility of public education to broad sections of the population of different ages.

Bibliography

1. Kekhyan M.G. Main trends in the globalization of the education sector // Creative Economy. – 2013. – No. 1 (73). – pp. 84-88.
2. Matveeva S.E. Monitoring approach to clustering of education // Integration of education. – 2009. – No. 4. – pp. 63-67.
3. Nikolaeva E.V. From rhizome and fold to fractal // Bulletin of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University; Series: Humanities and social sciences. – 2014. – No. 2. – pp. 118-124.
4. Naydenova, N.N. Post-Soviet educational space in the context of pedagogical dimensions [Text] / V.A. Myasnikov, N.N. Naydenova; Russian Academy of Sciences Education, Institute of Theory and History of Pedagogy. – M.:ITIP RAO, 2006. – 18.3/9.2 pp.
5. Landon Newby (2012) The Education Cluster Thematic; Case Study Series. – INEE. – 46 pp.
6. Lingard, Bob. Politics, policies and pedagogies in education: the selected works of Bob Lingard. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2014.

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1. The essence of the globalization process

In a broad sense, modern globalization represents processes of internationalization occurring in all spheres of life - in economics, culture, technology, finance, communications, population migration, etc.

At the same time, the reasons causing this phenomenon, and its very origin, indicate that it is based on the rapid growth of international trade that occurred at certain historical stages. For the first time, the word “” (meaning “intensive international trade”) was used by Karl Marx, who in one of his letters to Engels in the late 1850s. wrote: “Now the world market really exists. With the entry of California and Japan into the world market, globalization is accomplished.”

A number of facts indicate this leading role of international trade in globalization processes. Thus, during the previous era of globalization, which began during Marx’s lifetime, the volume of international trade increased tenfold (for example, from 1815 to 1914, the volume of total exports of European countries increased almost 40 times). And the end of this era of globalization came precisely when, under the conditions of the Great Depression of the 1930s. All Western countries introduced measures of strict protectionism, which caused a sharp curtailment of international trade. Consequently, both modern globalization and its historical predecessors are based on intensive international trade, which constitutes the main content of this phenomenon.

2. Globalization in history

Modern Western European nations first encountered globalization at the end of the Middle Ages: a sharp increase in trade between Western European cities and countries led to the fact that already from the second half of the 12th century, according to I. Wallerstein’s definition, a “European world economy”, that is, a global economy, began to take shape. economy that covers most European countries.

However, even earlier Ancient Rus' and Byzantium encountered globalization. In particular, according to a number of economic historians, intensive international trade in the Mediterranean disappeared soon after the collapse of the ancient world, and the period of its absence continued throughout the 7th and 8th centuries. But then, during the 9th century, we again see a gradual increase in international trade, which now covers not only the eastern Mediterranean (primarily Byzantium), but also the territory of Ancient Rus'. Intense international trade between Byzantium, Russia and other neighboring countries, judging by archeology, reached its peak in the 10th-11th centuries. This is evidenced by a large number of treasures and placers of Byzantine coins found on the territory of Russia and dating specifically to this period. However, even before this, in the 9th century, globalization covered the neighboring region - the Volga region, the Caspian Sea and the states of the Arab East - it is Arab coins that predominate in the placers and hoards of coins of this period in Russia and are found in large quantities - until the end of the 10th century. The main trade route in Rus''s trade with the Arab East and Transcaucasia was the Volga and the Caspian Sea; and the intensive use of this trade route, judging by archeology, began in the last decades of the 8th century.

Thus, during this period, two processes of regional globalization developed in parallel: one of them, associated with the Volga-Caspian trade route, began already at the end of the 8th century. and continued until the end of the 10th century; the second, associated with the trade route Mediterranean - Black Sea - river basins flowing into the Black Sea (Dnieper, Don, Dniester, Southern Bug), began in the second half of the 9th century and continued until the second half of the 12th century. The first of these trade routes was called in that era “From the Varangians to the Persians”, the second - “From the Varangians to the Greeks”.

Globalization has always been based on a market economy (capitalism). It is impossible to imagine globalization - intensive international trade - in non-market conditions, for example, under the dominance of a subsistence economy or a rigid planning and distribution system. The explosive development of international trade, which is the essence of globalization, has always been the result of spontaneous market forces, and could never be the result of any plan or distribution.

This corresponds to the opinions of historians about what the economy was like during these historical eras. Thus, many historians of antiquity wrote that the ancient era was the era of capitalism. The German historian Ed Mayer believed that in antiquity humanity passed through the capitalist stage of development, and it was preceded by the “Middle Ages.” The historian M.I. Rostovtsev believed that the difference between the modern capitalist economy and the capitalist economy of antiquity is purely quantitative, but not qualitative, and wrote that in terms of the level of development of capitalism, antiquity is comparable to Europe in the 19th-20th centuries. The same opinion in relation to the era of Russian-Byzantine globalization was expressed by the historian G.V. Vernadsky, a specialist in Russian history: “Kievan Rus can be considered, both economically and politically, along with Byzantium, another continuation of the capitalist system of antiquity, opposing feudal era".

A number of facts confirm the validity of this opinion about the high level of development of the market economy in the ancient era and indicate the unusually large scale that international trade reached during that period. For example, 264 types of different professions are known to exist in Rome, indicating an unusually high level of specialization. After all, for the existence of any profession, there needs to be a stable monetary demand for relevant goods and services. And at the beginning of the 21st century, in a number of third world countries there will not be as many professions as we see in Ancient Rome. One can cite, for example, another fact: as the English historian A. Jones notes, with references to ancient sources, even the poor in the Roman Empire did not make their own clothes, but bought them ready-made. Unlike the Roman Empire, in modern world even in the 20th century one could find entire countries and regions where rural areas people made their own clothes.

Graph 1 illustrates data on the number of shipwrecks in various periods since 600 BC. to 650 AD, based on the findings of ship remains in the Mediterranean Sea. As you can see in the graph, the number of shipwrecks increased sharply in the period from 200 BC. to 200 AD – approximately 5-6 times compared to 600-400. BC. and compared to 400-650. AD, reflecting sharply increased trade volumes. At the same time, the carrying capacity of merchant ships increased. During the period of early antiquity (until the 3rd-2nd centuries BC) and late antiquity (starting from the middle or end of the 3rd century AD), only a few ships had a carrying capacity of over 300 tons. And during the heyday of antiquity, the tonnage of large ships exceeded 1,500 tons (see Chart 1), that is, it increased 5 times, while individual merchant ships could take on board up to 4-5 thousand tons of cargo. We do not have statistics on the average carrying capacity of merchant ships during different periods of antiquity. But if we assume that during the heyday of antiquity it increased, if not 5 times, but 3-3.5 times compared to early antiquity, and at the same time the intensity of traffic of merchant ships increased 5-6 times, as can be seen from the statistics of shipwrecks, then we can conclude that trade volumes in this period were 20 times greater than in early and late antiquity.

Sources: Interest rates: M.Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 1941, Vol. 1, p. 404; G. Glotz, Le travail dans la Grece ancienne, Paris, 1920, pp. 292, 437; W. Tarn, G. Griffith, Hellenistic Civilization, London, 1952, pp. 115-116; A. Grenier. La Gaule Romaine, in: Economic Survey of Ancient Rome. Baltimore, 1937, Vol. III, p. 491; M.I. Rostovtsev. Society and economy... vol. 2, p. 181; A.Jones, The Later Roman Empire… Vol. II, pp. 863, 868. Number of shipwrecks: K. Hopkins, Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C. – A.D. 400), Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 70, 1980, p. 106. Carrying capacity of merchant ships: G. Glotz, Histoire Greque, Paris, 1931, tome II, p. 414; G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome, Oxford, 1980, p. 17; A.Jones, The Later Roman Empire… Vol. II, p. 843

There is other evidence confirming a sharp increase in trade volumes as ancient civilization developed. For example, at the beginning of the 2nd century. BC. The trade turnover of Rhodes, which was at that time the largest trading center in the eastern Mediterranean, was 5 times higher than the trade turnover of Athens at the beginning of the 4th century. BC, and at that time they were the largest trading center in the entire Mediterranean. From 157 to 80 BC the number of Roman silver coins in circulation increased 10-12 times; another significant increase in money in circulation occurred at the end of the 1st century. BC. As many economic historians have noted, this was also due to the continued growth in trade and the size of the market economy, which required more money to service.

3. Cycles of globalization and patterns in their development

3.1. Examples of globalization cycles

The study of economic history allows us to identify periods during which globalization took place in certain regions. In some cases, periods of globalization (in the same region) followed one after another, which allows us to draw conclusions about the cyclical nature of this phenomenon. Thus, in the Mediterranean in ancient times, one can distinguish the Greco-Carthaginian cycle of globalization (VI century - mid-II century BC), when the centers of the emerging global economy were Ancient Greece and Carthage, and the Roman cycle of globalization (mid-II century BC). BC – III century AD), when Ancient Rome acted as such a center. In the more ancient history of the Mediterranean and in the history of Ancient China, similar cycles can also be traced (see Kuzovkov Yu. World history corruption, chapters V-VI). The same cycles took place in the history of Western Europe from the 12th century. Until now. During this period of time, there are 5 cycles of globalization:

1st cycle. Mid-12th century - end of the 15th century The center of the global economy is Italy and its trading states of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa. The end of the cycle was marked by the beginning of the decline of the Italian states and the 60-year war between France and Spain for dominance over Italy (the war between the Habsburgs and the Valois).

2nd cycle. Mid-16th century – second half of the 17th century. The centers of globalization are Holland and the Habsburg Empire, which later split into the Spanish and Austrian empires. The end of the cycle was marked by the defeat of the Spanish-Austrian Habsburg Empire in the Thirty Years' War and the English Revolution, after which England, Germany and Scandinavia switched to a policy of protectionism and fenced themselves off from globalization with customs barriers.

So, the main pattern of the globalization cycle is a sharp increase in international trade in the initial phase of the cycle, which during this period significantly exceeds the general indicators of economic growth, and this trend, as a rule, continues in the middle phase of the cycle. Only at the end of the cycle can these indicators level off or can a collapse in international trade occur, exceeding the drop in GDP or GNP.

3.3. Inflation and cyclical changes in gold prices

Along with this basic pattern of globalization cycles, there are other patterns. Thus, the beginning of a new cycle of globalization has always been accompanied in history by a curious phenomenon in the field of money circulation– general rise in prices (inflation) and depreciation of gold and silver . So, during the XIII-XVII centuries. in Western Europe there was a significant increase in the general level of prices expressed in silver and gold. Various assumptions have been made about the reasons for this phenomenon. For a long time there was, for example, a point of view that it was caused by the influx of gold and silver from the Spanish colonies in America. But this assumption contradicts the facts, as many economic historians write about. The rapid rise in prices expressed in silver began already in the second half of the 12th century, that is, several centuries before the influx of American gold into Europe, and continued throughout the 13th century. As a result, for example, the average price level for wheat in England in 1300-1319. was 3.25 times higher than in 1160-1199. Europeans did not even know about the existence of America at that time.

The main point of view in scientific circles today is I. Brenner’s assumption that the general rise in prices during this period was caused by the development of industry, the growth of trade and a sharp increase in speculative activity in the field of land ownership and finance or, in the interpretation of I. Wallerstein, “a general increase in capitalist activity” in the era of the formation of a global economy. As we can see, the first period of a general rapid rise in prices (the second half of the 12th century - the first half of the 14th century) coincided with the first cycle of Western European globalization. The second period of intensive general price growth (second half of the 16th century - first half of the 17th century), when the average level of prices expressed in silver in the West European countries increased approximately 3 times, coinciding with the second cycle of globalization.

In ancient times, the same inflationary trends occurred as in Europe in the 12th-17th centuries. According to G. Glotz, in the Greek city-states the price level expressed in silver has doubled since the beginning of the 6th century. BC. until the beginning of the 5th century. BC.; it then doubled again between 480 and 404, and doubled a third time by 330. In general, over two and a half or three centuries, the general price level increased 8 times. Thus, both the period of intensive price growth (in the first centuries of globalization) and the size of their increase in relation to gold and silver (8 or 9-10 times over several centuries) in the era of antiquity coincide with what happened in Europe during second millennium AD

The same phenomena occurred in Muscovite Rus' in the second half of the 16th century. under Ivan the Terrible, when Western European globalization first reached Russia. Here, in just 20-30 years, all prices in gold and silver increased 6-8 times (that is, gold and silver depreciated 6-8 times), which caused a severe economic and demographic crisis, which subsequently developed into the Troubles ( for more details see Kuzovkov Yu. History of corruption in Russia”, paragraph 8.2).

It should be noted that in some cases, when the cycle of globalization ended in a deep crisis and the cessation of the globalization process as such (and not the beginning of a new cycle), as was the case, for example, in antiquity in the 3rd century. AD and during the Great Depression in the 1930s, the result was the opposite process to the one described above . Happened rise in price of gold and silver , which could take on the character of deflation (a decrease in the price level). This is exactly what happened in the 1930s: when the US dollar was pegged to gold, the country experienced a sharp rise in the price of gold and the dollar, which was accompanied by deflation - a significant decrease in prices for all goods. The American government tried unsuccessfully to fight both, actively buying gold in the hope of bringing down its price and even prohibiting (April 5, 1933) American citizens from purchasing gold and owning this metal. Despite all these government efforts, the official price of gold in the United States approximately doubled during the first years of the Great Depression. At the same time, if we take into account deflation: a decrease in the prices of all goods in dollars, then in relation to the mass of goods, gold has increased in price not by 2 times, but more significantly. If we also make the calculation not according to the official, but according to the “shadow” price of gold (the price of illegal purchases of gold by American citizens), then we will come to the conclusion that gold in this period actually increased in price not 2 times, but several times.

At the end of antiquity (III century AD), when the global ancient economy collapsed, accompanied by a deep economic, social and demographic crisis, the rise in gold prices became much greater than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Roman copper and bronze coins towards the end of the 3rd century. depreciated so much that citizens used bags (follis) of these coins in payments among themselves, approximately 1000 coins in each bag. And one gold solidus under the emperor Diocletian (284-305) was equivalent to 348 bags of copper coins. Since usually the price of gold can exceed the price of copper, say, 2-4 thousand times, but not 350,000 times, we see to what incredible proportions the rise in the price of gold has reached in the context of the collapse of the global ancient economy.

According to the historian V.O. Klyuchevsky, at the end of the era of Russian-Byzantine globalization (XII-XIII centuries), when the collapse of previously very active international trade began, there was a significant increase in the price of silver: “the weight of the exchange mark, the silver hryvnia kun, under Yaroslav and Monomakh, which contained about half a pound of silver, from the middle of the 12th century. began to fall quickly - a sign that... silver was rising in price. In the second half of the 12th century. the weight of the hryvnia kun had already fallen to 24 spools, and in the 13th century. it falls even lower, so that in Novgorod around 1230 there were kun hryvnias weighing 12-13 spools.” So, from the XI to the XIII centuries. the weight of the silver hryvnia fell from half a pound (=48 spools) to 12-13 spools, or 4 times. If the general price level has not changed, then we are talking about a 4-fold increase in the price of silver relative to other goods at the end of the era of Russian-Byzantine globalization.

Similar trends have occurred during the modern cycle of globalization. The peculiarity of the modern cycle was that the linking of national money to gold and silver (which previously always existed) was completely eliminated by 1971, but the general features accompanying globalization remained unchanged. In the first phase of the cycle (1967-1982), all leading Western countries experienced strong inflation. So, in the period from 1949 to 1965 retail prices in the USA grew by only 29%, and from 1965 to 1982 - by 100%. Thus, the American dollar depreciated by 2 times over the specified period; other currencies, such as the Italian lira and the English pound, depreciated several times during this time. However, at the middle of the cycle, strong inflation in all Western countries ceased - just as it had during previous cycles of globalization.

The dynamics of the price of gold during the 5th cycle of globalization followed the same patterns as in the above historical examples. Although there was a significant increase in the first phase of the cycle (1967-1982), it could be explained by the strong depreciation of the dollar and the fact that before 1971, with the dollar officially pegged to gold, the official price of gold could be artificially low. However, in the next two decades (1983-2002), which represented the middle phase of the cycle, the price of gold even decreased slightly (from $330 to $300 per ton ounce), despite dollar inflation in the United States of approximately 4% per year . Consequently, for the same amount of gold in the early 2000s. it was possible to buy 2-2.5 times fewer goods than in the early 1980s. However, in subsequent years, as the cycle entered its final phase, this trend toward the depreciation of gold abruptly reversed and was replaced by a trend towards its rapid rise in price. Thus, from 2002 to 2011, the price of gold increased 6 times (from 300 to 1800 dollars per ton), while the general level of dollar prices (in the USA) over the same period increased only by approximately 1.5 times.

3.4. Reducing interest (rate of profit) and equalizing prices

The study of globalization processes in history has revealed two more patterns that occur during the globalization cycle. One of them is to equalize price levels at different commodity markets. The other is the steady decline in interest rates, as well as rates of return and returns on capital, during the cycle of globalization:

As shown in Chart 1, in ancient times interest rates were highest - more than 20% per annum - in the period before the formation of the global economy (before the 5th century BC) and after its collapse (from the 5th century AD .). Obviously, such a high interest rate is typical for a semi-subsistence economy, and not for a developed market economy. Accordingly, as soon as in the V-IV centuries. In the Hellenistic world, a market economy began to take shape, and the percentage there dropped sharply, settling at 12%.

Subsequently, as trade volumes and the size of the global market economy grew, the interest rate continued to decline: by the beginning of the 3rd century. BC. it dropped to 10%, and in the first half of the 2nd century. BC. – settled at the level of 6 2/3 -7% (see chart 1). In the second half of the 2nd century. BC. this trend stopped and the percentage increased slightly, and in the period from the 80s to the 20s B.C. again returned to the level of 12%, which was obviously explained by the action of special factors (see below). But subsequently the downward trend in loan costs continued, and from the last quarter of the 1st century. BC. the interest rate on ordinary loans fell to 4% per annum, where it remained until the beginning of the 3rd century. AD

In the era of Western European globalization, the same decrease in loan interest occurred as was the case in ancient times (see Chart 2). The most noticeable decline in interest rates, as in antiquity, occurred already at the first stage of the development of a market economy: from 20-25% at the beginning of the 13th century. it fell to 8-12% at the beginning of the 14th century. Subsequently, the percentage decreased much more - to 3% in Italy at the end of the 16th century. - early 17th century and in Holland in the second half of the 17th century, which by that time had become not only a trading but also a financial center of Europe (see Chart 2). The famous Italian historian C. Cipolla wrote about this decrease in interest rates as a real economic revolution of the 16th-17th centuries. , exactly the same economic revolution, as shown above, occurred in antiquity.

Sources: Interest rates: R.Lopez, Chapter V: The Trade of Medieval Europe: the South, in: Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Cambridge, 1942, Vol. II, pp. 334, 344; I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System... pp.76-77; C. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution. European Society and Economy, 1000-1700, New York, 1976, p. 213; V.Barbour, Capitalism in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century, Michigan-Toronto, 1963, p. 85. Wheat prices: F.Braudel, F.Spooner, Chapter VII: Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750, in: Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Volume IV, ed. by E. Rich and C. Wilson, Cambridge, 1967, pp. 395-400, 472-473

Chart 2 also illustrates the trend towards convergence and equalization of prices in European countries at the stage of formation of the global European economy. It shows that at the end of the 16th century. the difference in wheat prices between individual countries reached 7-7.5 times, and in the middle of the 18th century. it did not exceed 2 times. This clearly demonstrates the results of the globalization process during this period: European countries functioned less and less as separate markets and increasingly became part of a common market, part of the global economy, and their domestic prices were increasingly determined by world prices.

Charts 1 and 2 clearly show that the downward trend in interest rates and price equalization in certain periods stopped and was replaced by a reverse trend. In antiquity, this happened during the period from the destruction of Carthage and Corinth by the Romans in the middle of the 2nd century. BC. until the end of the Roman civil wars at the end of the 1st century. BC. In the history of Western Europe, this reverse trend occurred from the end of the 15th to the middle of the 16th centuries. - that is, it coincided in time with the 60-year war between the Habsburgs and Valois. The change in the main trend towards lower interest rates and leveling out prices to the opposite trend indicates that the cycle of globalization was interrupted during these periods, and after some time a new cycle of globalization began.

The very fact that wars can impede or disrupt international trade is beyond doubt. In particular, I. Wallerstein pointed out that the war between the Habsburgs and Valois, which took place mainly in Italy, disrupted the functioning of the global European economy, cutting off the countries of Northern Europe from its main center - Italy, and accelerated the process of formation of a new center of globalization in the north - in Holland. We see a similar phenomenon in antiquity: destruction by the Romans in 147-146. BC. former centers of the global economy - the physical destruction of the largest trade and craft centers (the cities of Carthage and Corinth), centers of highly developed agriculture (grain farming of Carthage, viticulture of Epirus), the ban on maritime trade of Rhodes by the Romans (see below), as well as Roman conquest and civil war II-I centuries BC. disrupted the functioning of the global economy of antiquity and led to the curtailment of international trade. But as soon as these factors ended, globalization continued - its new cycle began.

4. Shifts occurring as a result of globalization

4.1. Increased international competition

The very first and immediate result of the onset of globalization (intensive international trade) is a sharp increase in international competition. This corresponds to the generally accepted views of economists of various directions, and many examples can be given of this from economic history, from antiquity to modern times. Thus, in the era of modern globalization, under the influence of competition from Chinese imports in recent decades in the USA, Western and Eastern Europe, and Russia, there has been a significant decrease in own production many goods (shoes, clothing, consumer electronics, etc.) have been replaced by Chinese goods.

4.2. Mass migrations of people

Another consequence of globalization is mass migrations of people, which always occurred after the start of the next cycle of globalization. Thus, in the era of ancient globalization, millions of Romans and other Italics moved from Italy to North Africa. The main reason for this mass migration was that Italian agriculture, in which the majority of the population was employed, turned out to be uncompetitive compared to North African agriculture (where land productivity, taking into account two harvests per year, was 3-5 times higher than in Italy). Apparently, the same reason - the desire to find a way out of the permanent crisis in agriculture - served as the initial impetus that forced the Romans to begin the conquest of their neighbors in the Mediterranean (Carthage, Greece), after which emigration from Italy only accelerated. As a result, by the beginning of the 1st century. BC. About 2 million Romans and about the same number of other Italics emigrated from Italy.

During the 4th cycle of Western European globalization (mid-19th – early 20th centuries), a huge flow of emigration was sent from Western Europe. In total, from 1821 to 1924, 55 million people emigrated from Europe, more than half of them to the USA, the rest to other countries: Latin America, Canada, Australia, etc. Moreover, the largest emigration was from Great Britain (including Ireland) - 19 million people, approximately the same number as lived there at the beginning of this period. At the same time, as the English historians A. Milward and S. Saul point out, the main reason for emigration from Great Britain and Europe in general during this period was not the special attractiveness of America, but the dissatisfaction of the British and Europeans with their life in their homeland.

Today, in the era of the 5th cycle of globalization, which has become worldwide, the number of immigrants from third world countries in the USA, EU countries, and Russia amounts to tens of millions of people. And few will doubt that the main reason that drove and continues to drive today millions of residents of Africa, Latin America and Asia to the more prosperous countries of North America, Europe and Russia is the unsettled nature of their lives and the desire to ensure a decent existence for themselves, which they do not have them in their homeland.

The phenomenon of mass migrations in the context of globalization is explained by an inexorable economic logic - the logic of global competition, which worsens the lives of huge masses of people and causes them to strive to find “the best place in the sun.” Barring isolated examples of forced expulsion for political or social reasons, mass migrations have always occurred in history during the era of globalization, and they have always been directed from places without competitive advantages to places that have them. Thus, the USA and the EU were at the end of the 20th century. and are today not only more convenient for living, but also more competitive than most third world countries (since they already have developed economy; institutions; developed education system, etc.), which provides higher employment and job opportunities for immigrants that they do not have in their home country. In the same way, in the 19th – early 20th centuries. More than half of the emigration from Europe went to the United States, which, largely due to its economic policies, turned out to be more competitive and was able to ensure rapid industrial development and an increase in jobs that occurred at an even faster rate than the growth of the country's population.

In ancient times and the Middle Ages, globalization usually caused mass migration from north to south: in the south (in the northern hemisphere), agriculture is usually more efficient and competitive due to better natural conditions than in the north. As already mentioned, in antiquity, millions of Italians emigrated to North Africa due to significantly better conditions for agriculture there. In China since 2 AD. by 140 AD, according to official census data, the population of the northern regions of the country decreased by 17.5 million people, and the population of the central regions in the river basin. The Yangtze increased by 9 million, indicating a massive, almost total migration of people from north to south during the era of Chinese globalization.

In the era of Scandinavian-Russian-Byzantine globalization (IX-XI centuries), all European countries were flooded with Scandinavians (Vikings, Normans), who during this period emigrated in large numbers to the territory of Kievan Rus, England, France, Sicily, Byzantium, founded their settlements on Iceland and Greenland. Again this mass migration from north to south coincided with a period of intense foreign trade(trade routes “from the Varangians to the Greeks” and “from the Varangians to the Persians”); again the inhabitants of the North found themselves in the most unfavorable position; and again the mass migration was accompanied by wars and conquests, including England, conquered by the Normans in the 11th century.

Another pattern of migration in the era of globalization in antiquity and the Middle Ages was migration from less populated to more populated places. This phenomenon was exactly the opposite of what usually happened in the absence of globalization. This is also understandable from an economic point of view: in densely populated areas, a person needs to spend less effort on survival: maintaining infrastructure, ensuring the construction and maintenance of housing, safety from external enemies and wildlife. It is also much easier and more efficient to do any business here if it is related to the provision of even the simplest services: clients are nearby and you don’t have to walk or travel far to see them, as would be the case in a sparsely populated area. And even more so if we are talking about more complex types of business related to cooperation: if different parts and parts are transported over a long distance before the finished product is made from them, then its final cost can increase very significantly. In the conditions of high competition and instability that accompanied globalization, these advantages became critical. This pattern: migration from sparsely populated areas to densely populated areas continues to be one of the main patterns today that determine the trends of migration processes in the context of globalization.

4.3. Changing economic and demographic landscape

Another shift brought about by globalization is the dramatic change in the economic and demographic landscape of countries participating in globalization. One of its main reasons is precisely the pattern of migrations from sparsely populated to densely populated areas noted above.

This is manifested in hypertrophied urbanization and the formation of zones of high population density and high economic activity adjacent to zones of stagnation and desolation. This phenomenon is well known to many countries of the world at the beginning of the 21st century: take, for example, the rapid economic activity of Moscow and its environs and the desolation zone starting about 200 km from Moscow. But it has been known since ancient times.

For example, in the 9th century. along the entire Baltic coast (in northern Germany, northeastern France, etc.) a number of large trading cities arose that participated in the Baltic-Russian-Byzantine trade. And this despite the fact that in these countries themselves at that time there was a very sparse population, and the largest city there was an order of magnitude smaller in area and number of inhabitants than these trading cities.

A similar phenomenon was the formation of cities in Kievan Rus. As V.O. Klyuchevsky noted, most large Russian cities in the 8th-11th centuries. was located along the main river route "from the Varangians to the Greeks", and thus a very high concentration of population formed here. At the same time, other cities that lay aside from the trade route, even during the heyday of Kievan Rus, fell into decay and completely disappeared. So they disappeared during the X-XI centuries. the city of Gnezdovo near Smolensk, Sarskoye fortification near Rostov and a number of others.

During the first cycle of Western European globalization (XIII-XV centuries), a characteristic phenomenon for Germany was “wustungen” (devastation): many areas and settlements fell into decay or disappeared, while cities in their neighborhood grew and reached large sizes. The same process during this period occurred in England and a number of other countries, and, as historians note, it was, as a rule, small towns and villages that fell into desolation and disappeared, while large cities grew. The same thing, as we know, happened in the era of ancient globalization, when some cities reached very large sizes. Thus, the number of inhabitants of Rome, even during the period of severe desolation of Italy, reached 1 million, Carthage - up to 700 thousand, Alexandria and Antioch - up to 500 thousand.

Of course, an important factor here was the availability of convenient transport links, which increased the competitiveness of both the city and its residents. That is why such rapid population growth in the context of globalization occurred, first of all, in cities located along the sea coast or along the most important trade routes: be it the cities of antiquity, Kievan Rus or medieval Western Europe.

But hypertrophied population growth due to migration occurred not only in individual cities, but also in large areas, as we see in western Europe during the second cycle of European globalization (second half of the 16th century - 17th century). Thus, in Spain, against the backdrop of the general depopulation of the country and the transformation of most of it into desert, a zone of high concentration of population arose along its eastern Mediterranean coast, which actively traded with the outside world. In Germany, where desolation also occurred and the population as a whole was almost halved, the same concentration arose along the main trade artery - the Rhine. In France, such a zone arose in the northeast, along the border with Flanders, with severe devastation of the southern regions, and in England - along the southern coast and along the lower reaches of the Thames.

Accordingly, when the influence of globalization ceased for one reason or another, as in Germany and England from the middle to the end of the 17th century. (due to the introduction by these countries of high protectionist customs barriers), then reverse processes began to occur. Historical maps of population density, published in the book of the French historian P. Chaun, demonstrate that in the second half of the 18th century. (under the protectionist system) the population of England was distributed more evenly across its territory than a century and a half earlier (when the country was under the influence of globalization). The English historian Charles Wilson notes that if before the 18th century. In the north of England, industry was very poorly developed and there was a very low level of wages among workers compared to the southern counties, but during this century industry there developed rapidly, and the level of wages rose almost to the level of the south of England and London. In Germany, over two centuries of protectionism, the same thing happened: in the 19th century we see here a fairly even distribution of the population and the absence of such uneven population density, hypertrophied growth of individual cities and imbalances in income levels, as, for example, in France, where globalization is all this time almost did not stop. As the policies of these countries changed, the directions of internal migrations again changed sharply.

At the beginning of the 21st century, after Great Britain had pursued a policy of free trade for a century and a half (with a short break) and was under the influence of globalization, the distribution of its population resembles the picture that, according to P. Chaun's population density maps, was in the first half of the 17th century V. (after a century of globalization): a hypertrophied concentration of population in the south of the country and around London, suffocating from a lack of drinking water and space, simultaneously with the desolation of its northern regions, which has been intensifying in recent decades.

The general conclusion is that the consequence of globalization is extremely uneven development different countries and regions, which is the result of intense global competition.

It should be added that the results of such uneven development are quite predictable. In conditions of global competition, that is, competition between different countries and territories, some a priori find themselves in a winning situation, others in a obviously losing situation. This is clearly seen in the example of Rome and Italy in antiquity and Scandinavia in the 8th-11th centuries, when both the Romans and the Scandinavians tried, with more or less success, to overcome the obvious loss in economic competition with their southern neighbors not only through emigration, but also by external grips. But it was not only the countries that found themselves who always won in more favorable climatic conditions , but also countries that had more advantageous location in terms of trade routes and transport, as well as countries that, by the time of the next surge in globalization, had reached highest population density . Classic examples of this kind are northern Italy and Holland, the unusually rapid flourishing of which occurred respectively during the first (XIII-XV centuries) and second (second half of the 16th - 17th centuries) cycles of European globalization. Both countries had during this period highest density population among all European countries, which determined their leading role. Thus, according to economic historians, the population density in Northern Italy and the Netherlands in the 13th-14th centuries was about 80 people/sq.km, while, for example, in France - only 35 people/sq.km . , and even less in other European countries.

But in the first cycle of Western European globalization, northern Italy had a clear advantage, since it was located on the main trade routes of that period - along the Mediterranean Sea to the Levant and caravan routes further to the East. This was one of the reasons that allowed it to become the center of the emerging global economy at that stage. And after the opening of the sea route to India around Africa and the discovery of America, the location of Italy lost its former role: it now found itself on the sidelines of the most attractive trade routes, which moved to the Atlantic coast. Accordingly, now direct access to the Atlantic, and not to the Mediterranean Sea, has become key to success in global competition. And these benefits led not only to the rapid economic take-off of Holland, which overnight became the center of the global economy, but also to a powerful flow of migration there from neighboring countries, which, as we found out, in the context of globalization is always directed to those countries that have competitive advantages in front of others. Thus, the population of Amsterdam from 1600 to 1650, that is, in just half a century, mainly due to the influx of foreigners, grew from 50 to 200 thousand people.

5. The impact of globalization on the economy, demography and social sphere

5.1. Economic instability

The intensification of wars, mass migrations, and uneven development of countries and regions are sufficiently indicative to already get an idea of ​​the impact of globalization on the life of human society. However, this influence is not limited to the above. Another consequence or pattern of globalization is sharply increasing economic instability . It stems even from the very fact of mass migration, as well as from the fact that increased competition and the influx of new or cheaper goods force the population to continuously reconsider both their consumer habits and their participation in production. As a result, huge masses of people, in the course of migration or changes in lifestyle, radically restructure their participation in the international division of labor: in those industries where they previously acted only as consumers, they begin to act as producers, and vice versa. This leads to powerful shifts in supply and demand for many goods and constant and difficult to explain price changes.

This instability can be illustrated by many examples; Particularly revealing are those that compare the situation in countries that have been influenced by globalization with the situation in those countries that have protected themselves from it through protectionism. Thus, from the end of the 17th century, when England pursued a policy of protectionism in relation to its agriculture, sharp fluctuations in grain prices and mass hunger, which were previously as frequent as in other countries of Western Europe, disappeared. At the same time, in France and Spain, which did not pursue such a policy, sharp fluctuations in grain prices, accompanied by massive famine, continued throughout the 18th century.

Similarly, after the start of the modern (5th) cycle of globalization in the late 1960s. The instability of world prices has sharply increased. World oil prices, which until the early 1970s. practically did not change and demonstrated amazing stability, from then until now they have demonstrated equally amazing instability, sometimes changing 2-4 times over the course of a year or two to three years. The same applies to world prices for most other types of raw materials: their amplitude of fluctuations in recent decades is incomparably greater than the amplitude of fluctuations in commodity prices in the decades (1950-1960s) preceding the beginning of the modern cycle of globalization.

Economic instability and uneven development in the era of globalization concerns not only individual sectors of the economy, the prices of individual goods and individual provinces, but also economic development countries in general. The rapid prosperity of Holland in the 16th-17th centuries was followed by an equally sharp decline and degradation. At the beginning of the 19th century. The Prussian ambassador to Holland wrote that half of the population of Amsterdam was below the poverty line - that is, living in poverty. Before this, in the 17th century, the same fate befell the previously prosperous cities of northern Italy: Venice, Florence, Genoa. The unprecedented economic development achieved by Great Britain in the early to mid-19th century, when it became the “workshop of the world,” gave way to economic stagnation and the loss of its leading role in the world economy within just a few decades after the transition in the mid-19th century. from a policy of protectionism to a policy of free trade. There are a number of other examples of no less dramatic deterioration in the economic situation of certain countries in the context of globalization (Poland, Spain, France in the 17th-18th centuries, Scandinavia, Rus', Byzantium in the 11th-13th centuries, etc.). In the conditions of modern globalization, we also see the beginning of the decline of countries that until recently were the undisputed leaders of the world economy (USA, Western Europe), and the promotion to world leaders of countries (China), which until recently were the periphery, the backward agricultural outskirts of the world economy.

5.2. Declining birth rate and population growth

Economic instability, as well as increased competition in the era of globalization, have a detrimental effect on fertility and demographic growth. All eras of globalization have been characterized by a decline in fertility and population growth, and in many cases during these periods there was a population decline (for more details, see the section “Demographic Concept”).

5.3. Increased speculation at the expense of economic growth

In economics, another consequence of globalization, along with increased global competition and instability, is the growth of speculation, primarily in goods. The very sharp increase in foreign trade during these periods is largely speculative in nature, since, as has been shown, it is many times faster than the growth of production, and in many eras of globalization it occurred against the background of the decline of the latter. The growth of commodity and other speculation to the detriment of the development of production is one of the characteristic consequences of globalization:

Thus, a characteristic feature of the first five centuries of Western European globalization (XIII-XVII centuries) were sharp price fluctuations. Grain prices could rise or fall 4-5 times over the course of a year or two years, and, according to French historians, in France during the 16th century the amplitude of their fluctuations reached 27 times. Economic historians see sharp price fluctuations as one of the main reasons for the mass famines that periodically recurred in Western Europe during these centuries. The population was always a loser from such price hikes, since they could not plan their expenses, the level of necessary savings, or even the price of bread several months in advance; as a result, a significant part of them went bankrupt and joined the ranks of the lumpen proletariat. But trade speculators were always winners, since price conditions were their profession, and strong price fluctuations made it possible to make huge profits by purchasing goods at low prices in one place and reselling them in another. But, of course, commodity speculation on a large scale was possible only under conditions of intensive foreign trade, which made it possible to transfer masses of goods from one place to another and profit from differences in prices and shortages of goods.

At the same time, as already mentioned, after the introduction of a system of protectionism in Great Britain and Germany at the end of the 17th century. both the sharp price fluctuations and widespread famines subsequently disappeared there, although they continued in France, Spain and other countries that pursued free trade policies. In particular, S. Kaplan, I. Wallerstein and other authors believe that the sharp increase in grain speculation, which caused a shortage of bread and mass famine in France in the second half - the end of the 18th century. was one of the reasons that caused the French Revolution of 1789.

In the last two cycles of globalization, along with commodity speculation, financial speculation has also taken on a large scale. It is no coincidence that the Great Depression, which put an end to the 4th cycle of globalization, began with the stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929, which, in turn, was the result of an unprecedented rampant speculation in the financial market. For a number of years leading up to the Great Depression, the United States was gripped by a real “stock market fever,” when not only professional stock market players and financiers, but also millions of ordinary Americans participated in investments in stock market, which were often speculative in nature - the acquisition of Florida land options in anticipation of their speculative growth; the acquisition of shares in investment trusts, which were essentially “financial pyramids”; purchase of securities on credit provided by a bank or broker, counting on speculative profit, etc. After the onset of the Great Depression, investment trust shares depreciated by a factor of 100 or more, as did investments in other speculative assets, in contrast to investments in shares of manufacturing companies, which proved much more resilient and, by the end of the Great Depression, had almost regained their previous value.

An even greater surge in financial speculation is observed in the era of modern globalization. Generally the general pattern of any era of globalization was and is the growth of trade and speculation with a slowdown in the growth rate of the real economy : industry, agriculture and other sectors. All the largest global and regional production crises and any prolonged depressions occurred or began precisely in the era of globalization: the “crisis of the 14th century” and the “crisis of the 17th century” in Western Europe, the European depression of the 1860s - 1880s, the Great depression 1929-1939 and others. The modern cycle of globalization, already in its initial phase, was accompanied by the recession of 1967-1969. in Western Europe and the USA and the major world crises of 1974-1975. and 1980-1982 (although in the previous two decades there was not a single serious crisis in these countries), continued with a series of major regional crises in the 1990s (South-East Asian countries, countries of the former USSR) and the global financial crisis of 2008.

Of course, the entry of the economy into a period of crises in the era of globalization is reflected in the rate of economic growth, which decreases or fades out completely; At the same time, there is a further increase in the volume of international trade and speculation, both commercial and financial. Before the start of the modern (5th) cycle of globalization, Western economies were growing at an unprecedented rate. US GDP from 1940 to 1969 increased by 3.7 times, which is an absolute record for the country. Western Europe also experienced unprecedented economic growth after the war, coupled with extremely low unemployment. Average annual GDP growth rates during 1950-1970. in general, for all countries of Western Europe they amounted to 4.8%, and in Germany they were significantly higher. Unemployment in the 1960s on average in Western Europe was 1.5%, but in Germany it was even lower - only 0.8% of the country's working population.

Since the late 1960s, when the modern (5th) cycle of globalization began, this trend towards increasing economic growth and decreasing unemployment has reversed and the opposite trend has emerged. Thus, the economy of West Germany in 1967 was struck for the first time in the post-war period economic crisis, and unemployment, previously stable at less than 1%, rose in 1967 to approximately 2%. In the United States, unemployment rose to 3% by 1969, and by the end of 1970 it reached a record level of 6% for the post-war period; annual inflation in the country during the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s was 1-1.5%, and in 1969-1970. reached 5.5%. In the 1970s the situation continued to deteriorate. If on average for 1960-1970. the unemployment rate in France, Germany and Great Britain was 1.4%, 0.8% and 1.6%, then by 1976 it reached 4.4%, 3.7% and 5.6% in these countries, respectively, and in the USA it was 7.6%.

Average annual growth rate of GNP in Western industrialized countries (%)

1960 - 1970	1970 - 1980	1980 - 1990	1990 - 2000
5,1	3,1	3,0	2,2

Source: Lomakin V.K. World economy. M., 2002, table 14.1

Already in the 1970s, after the beginning of the modern cycle of globalization, the rate of economic growth in the industrialized countries of the West decreased by almost 2 times, and this downward trend continued in the future. Unemployment increased several times, reaching by the early 1980s. in some of these countries an unprecedented level of 10%.

20 years later, by 2009-2011, this level of unemployment from “unprecedentedly high” turned into “normal” - average for these countries, and in some countries (Spain, Portugal, Greece) unemployment reached 20% and even 40%. As for industrial growth, it has essentially stopped in recent decades - the deindustrialization of the United States and Western Europe has begun, the process of decline of industrial enterprises or the transfer of production to other countries. All economic growth in these countries in the last two decades has occurred only due to “virtual” sectors: services, financial sector, Internet, telecommunications, etc.; there was no growth in the real sectors of the economy.

If we talk about the world economy as a whole, then here, too, after the start of the next cycle of globalization, process of attenuation of economic growth rates . Thus, the average annual growth rate of world GDP per capita in the 1960s was 3.5%, in the 1970s it decreased to 2.4%, in the 1980s - to 1.4%, in the 1990s - to 1 .1%, and in the 2000s, apparently, decreased even more, and this despite the fact that population growth in the world by the beginning of the 21st century also decreased significantly.

Thus, all available evidence (which is discussed in more detail in The Untold History trilogy) supports the conclusion that globalization and economic liberalization promote increased trade and speculation at the expense of economic and industrial growth. This conclusion is shared by a number of modern authors:

Thus, I. Wallerstein writes in relation to the history of the development of capitalism in Western Europe that, in contrast to protectionism, which plays an important role in the state achieving long-term advantages, it serves “to maximize short-term profits by the class of traders and financiers.”

Many other authors: D. Stiglitz, G. Reisegger, D. Harvey, argue that trade liberalization destroys industry and does not allow new industries to develop, and point to the hypertrophied development of the financial and speculative sphere in the conditions of modern globalization.

5.4. Globalization and social sphere

Of course, the attenuation of economic growth rates has a very significant impact on the situation of the population - after all, the average standard of living of the population is determined precisely by basic economic indicators (national income, gross domestic product), and not by indicators showing an upward trend, such as the dynamics of international trade volumes or the scope of global financial transactions. Moreover, all cycles of globalization have typically been accompanied by sharp increases in inequality in income distribution, so in many cases The standard of living of the bulk of the population during the cycle of globalization not only did not increase, but decreased :

Thus, in Ancient Greece, the average wage of an unskilled free wage worker increased from 1 drachma per day in the 5th century. BC. up to 1.5 drachmas per day in the 4th century. BC. But during the same period, the price of bread increased 2.5 times, so real wages decreased by almost 2 times during the first century of ancient globalization. It is known that at both the first and second stages of Western European globalization in the 2nd millennium, there was a sharp decline in the real incomes of the bulk of the population of England. Thus, from 1208 to 1225, real wages in England decreased by 25%, and by another 25% from 1225 to 1348. By the end of the 15th century. (the end of the first stage of globalization) it again recovered to approximately the same level, but then began to decline again: from 1501 to 1601, the average real wage of English carpenters fell 2.5 times. And finally, with the beginning of the era of protectionism in England, it began to grow again, doubling in 1721-1745. compared to 1601

These data on the decline in the standard of living of the population in England during the 1st and 2nd cycles of European globalization are consistent with data for other Western European countries provided by economic historians. As F. Spooner points out, during the second half of the 16th century. - beginning of the 17th century wages in European countries lagged behind price increases, and overall the general standard of living in Europe was steadily declining, which he confirms with a number of data for England, France, Germany, Austria and Spain. According to the calculations of the French historian J. Delumeau, in order to earn a hundredweight of grain, a hired worker in France at the end of the 15th century. had to work 60 hours in the middle of the 16th century. this required already 100 hours, and in the last third of the 16th century. – already 200 hours. Consequently, during the second cycle of globalization in France, the real wages of workers fell by more than 3 times.

During 3-5 cycles of globalization (XVIII - early XXI centuries), there was also a decline in the standard of living of a significant part of the population, which reached its peak in the middle and end of the cycle and caused social protests, revolutions and the growth of terrorism. Thus, the active involvement of France in international trade during the 18th century. (3rd cycle of globalization) and the gradual liberalization of the foreign trade regime in the country in the second half of the century were accompanied by impoverishment of the population and mass hunger, and the complete liberalization of the foreign trade regime in 1786-1789. ended with mass unemployment and the famine of 1788-1789. and the French Revolution of 1789

The beginning of the 4th cycle of Western European globalization (1820s - 1920s) was also marked by a deterioration in the situation of the population in Western Europe and a series of revolutions in 1848-1849. The subsequent long economic depression in Europe in the 1860s–1880s. caused a new wave of social unrest (the growth of the labor movement, the Paris Commune of 1870, the emergence of mass socialist parties, the First and Second International, etc.) against the backdrop of a decline in the standard of living of a significant part of the population.

The end of the 4th cycle of globalization was marked by the Great Depression, which was accompanied by mass unemployment and poverty that affected large parts of the population of North America and Europe. Thus, from 1929 to 1932, the US national income fell from 80 to 40 billion dollars, industrial production also decreased by 2 times. 45% of industrial workers lost their jobs; in total, by the end of H. Hoover’s presidential term (March 1933), more than 15 million people, or 30% of the working-age population of the United States, were unemployed. In Germany, by 1932, the fall in industrial production was 39% compared to the 1929 level, and unemployment reached 40% of the working population.

The break between the 4th and 5th cycles of globalization was marked by an unprecedented increase in the well-being of the population in Western countries and throughout the world, which was a consequence of unprecedentedly high rates of economic growth and unprecedentedly low unemployment (see above). In the 1960s There is a widespread belief among Western economists that a “welfare state” has been built in the USA and Western Europe, that there will be no more crises, and the capitalist economy will provide the residents of these countries with a steady increase in well-being.

However, after the start of the 5th cycle of globalization in the late 1960s. these theories were quickly forgotten, and the illusions quickly disappeared. Not only the crises and mass unemployment, but also a deterioration in the living standards of the population, not only in the countries of the third and former second world, but also in the most developed countries of the West. Thus, the number of US residents who found themselves below the poverty line, according to even official American statistics, reached 11.2% by 2000, and 15.1% in 2010, while in the 1960s there were practically no such people it was completely. Every seventh American today receives food stamps, whereas previously there were only a few such people. Unemployment in the US in the 1960s was only about 2%; in recent years official unemployment there it stays at the level of 9-10%; its real level is much higher. Thus, the unemployment rate U6 calculated in the USA, in contrast to the usually mentioned U3 indicator, in 2011-2012. was 15-16%.

In third world countries the decline in living standards and unemployment rates are much more significant; In many countries, the majority of the population fell below the poverty line. As E. Reinert writes, “even the most outspoken supporters of globalization agree that most of sub-Saharan Africa has become impoverished over the past 25 years.” According to D. Harvey, unemployment in Latin American countries in the 1980s averaged 29%, in the 1990s it was already 44%; Today, in many third world countries, unemployment is 70% or more.

5.5. "Cumulative effect"

In general, when talking about the impact of globalization on the economy, demography and social sphere, it is necessary to take into account the “cumulative effect” that results from this influence in all these areas. Thus, the negative trends that have begun in the field of demography (aging population) after several decades will begin to have a constant negative impact on the economy and social sphere, which is already the case in most European countries. The growing social stratification of society and the impoverishment of the population as a result of globalization have an equally bad effect on the economy. After all, mass demand for industrial and agricultural products is created not by individual businessmen and speculators who enrich themselves through trade and financial transactions, but by the entire population of the country; and if its effective demand falls more and more, then there are no conditions for economic growth, but, on the contrary, there are all conditions for continued economic stagnation:

John Maynard Keynes, in one of his works, pointed out that population aging, due to the tendency of older people to consume less and save more for a rainy day, causes a decrease in demand for consumer goods and leads to a cessation of economic growth. And since most of the funds are put aside in the form of savings, but there is nowhere to invest this money (since the economy is not growing), the consequence could be an unprecedented drop in interest rates. Half a century after Keynes expressed these thoughts, events in Japan fully confirmed them. As a result of the cessation of growth of the Japanese population and its aging, the country’s economy, which was associated with the “Japanese miracle” back in the 1970s, has stopped growing since the early 1990s, and interest rates have remained at zero there for more than two decades.

No less, and perhaps more, influence on economic growth in Western countries is exerted by the impoverishment of the bulk of the population, causing a general reduction in demand. This causes a chain reaction: production is curtailed - a significant part of the population finds itself unemployed - the population and enterprises are unable to pay off previously taken loans - a mass of individual defaults leads to a general banking and financial crisis. In turn, the financial crisis creates uncertainty and further aggravates the economic crisis. This is exactly how events unfolded during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and this is exactly how they have unfolded in recent years, after the financial crisis of 2008.

5.6. Globalization and the rise of monopoly

In order to use these methods, traders needed military power, so they either created their own (private) colonial armies and flotillas, or used the military power of their state. With this military power they protected their trade monopoly and prevented other merchants from using their trade routes. Hence the continuous trade wars that took place between all countries actively participating in foreign trade.

If we try to create a general description of how international trade developed during the era of globalization, we will see that it was an almost continuous series of monopolies established over world trade flows by one or 2-3 leading trading powers:

era	Region of globalization	Country that has established a trade monopoly
II millennium BC	Eastern Mediterranean	Crete (Minoan Kingdom)
V-IV centuries BC.	Eastern Mediterranean	Athenian state
V-III centuries BC.	Western Mediterranean	Carthage
II century BC. – III century AD	Mediterranean	Rome
XII-XIV centuries	Mediterranean	Venice, Genoa
XV-XVI centuries	New World	Spain
XV-XVI centuries	Africa, South and Southeast Asia	Portugal
XVI-XVII centuries	Baltic, North Sea	Holland
XVIII century	New World, Africa, Asia	France, Great Britain, Holland
XIX century	New World, Africa, Asia	Great Britain

The fact that in all the above cases it was about trade monopoly , which did not allow any competition, is well known; there is plenty of historical evidence of this. Thus, Carthage, in its heyday, prohibited all foreign ships from sailing into the Western Mediterranean - to the shores of Africa, Spain and Sardinia, and any foreign ship encountered there was captured or sunk (this trade monopoly of Carthage was even stipulated in its trade agreements with Rome in the 5th century . BC.) . Rome in the 2nd century BC. destroyed his trading competitor, Rhodes, which had previously monopolized maritime trade in the eastern Mediterranean. The Romans introduced bans on many types of trade for Rhodian merchants, and also, in order to completely undermine their trade, created a competing trading center on the island. Delos in the Aegean Sea near Rhodes. Venice, in the era of its power, prohibited Byzantium from maintaining its fleet and destroyed any Byzantine trade, military and even fishing vessels that could undermine its trade monopoly in the eastern Mediterranean. Spain, in its heyday, prohibited any foreign ships from sailing to the coast of Latin America, which were immediately destroyed or captured by the Spaniards; and all territories in the New World, Africa and Asia were divided between Spain and Portugal in accordance with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494.

In the XVII-XVIII centuries. control over world trade routes was divided mainly between Holland, France and England, between which there were endless trade wars. Finally, by the 19th century, England firmly captured the “palm”, putting all world trade routes under its control. The British fleet in that era became the real master of the oceans and seas of the planet. Thus, British warships often checked the contents of the holds of any foreign ships and often simply captured them. For example, during the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain captured about 1,000 American ships and held them along with their crews, explaining this by the need to blockade the European continent, where the French ruled. But even after the end of the wars with France in 1815, she continued a similar practice in relation to American merchant ships. According to the English historian D. Grigg, in the 19th century “the world’s oceans were British lakes, and the world’s markets were British fiefdoms.”

Thus, international trade itself in the era of globalization has always been the clearest example of monopoly. The modern era is no exception - today we can also give many examples of trade monopolies that exist in the markets of certain goods and monopolize the corresponding channels of foreign trade supplies.

As for a country trade monopoly, similar to the trade monopoly of Carthage, Spain or England in the corresponding eras, we do not see it in the conditions of modern globalization. But instead of a trade monopoly, we see another monopoly - a currency monopoly. The leader of the modern global economy, the United States, promptly ensured that its currency was used as a global means of payment (this was recorded in the decisions of the Bretton Woods International Monetary and Financial Conference in 1944). And then, in 1971, he canceled the peg of the dollar to gold and the exchange of dollars for gold at a fixed rate (which was provided for by the decisions of the conference). This actually meant the monopoly right of the United States to uncontrollably print world paper money and pay with this money for all goods of international trade. Accordingly, with these printed dollars, the United States pays for all its imports, which have long far exceeded exports, and lives at the expense of the rest of the world, remaining the richest nation, not caring at all about what will happen in the future with the trillions of issued paper dollars. Thus, we see that the leader of modern globalization manages just fine without a world trade monopoly; he has a much better one - currency monopoly .

In the real sector of the economy: industry, agriculture, there are also many examples of monopolism that arose or intensified under the influence of globalization. As already mentioned, due to uneven climate, population density and other factors, some countries always found themselves in more advantageous conditions when globalization emerged, while others found themselves in less advantageous conditions. And those countries that found themselves in the most advantageous position could use it to create a monopoly, which often happened. Thus, North Africa in antiquity, thanks to its unique capabilities in agriculture, monopolized the production and export of grain throughout the Mediterranean region, which was accompanied by the decline of Italian agriculture, the mass emigration of Italians to Africa and the desolation of Italy that began already by the 1st century. AD

For the development of industry the above competitiveness factors: favorable warm climate, high population density, natural transport routes , - are even more important than for the development of the economy as a whole. Thus, the famous English economist K. Clark cites precisely these factors as determining the successful development of a market economy. According to E. Reinert, since 1500, economists have written about these factors as important for the development of industry, and cites a number of authors. Only thanks to their presence (in the context of globalization and free trade) can one country acquire natural competitive advantage over other countries and create on this basis industrial monopoly . An example of such a monopoly in the modern world is China, which has all this set of factors and, thanks to them, has the lowest production costs in the world. At the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st centuries. China, largely thanks to these natural advantages, turned into the “workshop of the world” and flooded the whole world with its cheap goods.

In addition, the very fact of the presence of a developed industry, and the lack of it in neighboring countries, can also become the basis for an industrial monopoly. In the era of the 4th cycle of globalization (19th century), such an example was England, which by that time had completed the industrial revolution and, thanks to globalization, had become the “workshop of the world.” As the German economist Friedrich List wrote in 1841, “A nation such as England, whose industry is far ahead of that of other countries, maintains and expands its industrial and commercial supremacy best by free trade"(emphasized by Liszt). The role of free trade in maintaining the English industrial monopoly is evidenced by the following statement by a representative of the Whig party in the English Parliament in 1846: as a result of free trade, “foreign countries will become valuable colonies for us, despite the fact that we will not have to bear the responsibility for governing these countries.” .

England maintained this industrial monopoly throughout almost the entire 19th century. - until the USA and Western Europe at the end of the 19th century. did not protect themselves from globalization through protectionist policies and did not create their own advanced industries.

The examples given above concerned the monopoly of individual countries in trade, industry, and agriculture. But the same examples of monopolism, strengthened by globalization, can be cited in relation to one or more companies that have monopolized entire sectors of the economy.

The main mechanism contributing to the enhancement industry monopoly , are mergers and acquisitions, which always increase sharply in the context of globalization. Thus, if in 1959-1968, before the start of the modern (5th) cycle of globalization, an average of 39 mergers and acquisitions took place annually in West Germany, then in 1969-1979. this figure increased almost 10 times – to 354. At the same time, we see the beginning of economic crises and declines in production (1967-1969, 1974-1975, 1980-1982), which indicated the attenuation of investment activity, and the rate of economic growth in developed Western countries in 1970-1982. e years decreased by almost 2 times compared to the 1960s (see above). Thus, already in the first decade of the current cycle of globalization, a tendency towards the attenuation of productive investments - in production, new technologies, etc. - was clearly evident. and a sharp increase in investments aimed at buying up other companies and creating various kinds of financial and industrial groups and other monopolistic conglomerates.

These trends continued in the future, as the process of globalization became more powerful and began to cover more and more countries. According to data cited by economic observer of the Financial Times newspaper M. Wolf, in 1995 there were 9,251 mergers and acquisitions in the world and their volume amounted to $850 billion, and 11 years later, in 2006, the number of such transactions was already 33 141 and their volume is 3.9 trillion dollars. Thus, mergers and acquisitions during this time increased almost 5 times, while the volume of investments around the world during this time increased in current prices by less than 2 times - and in constant prices almost did not increase at all.

It is known that during the previous (4th) cycle of globalization, preceding the Great Depression of the 1930s, the process of concentration and monopolization of industry was just as intense. This gave V.I. Lenin the basis at the beginning of the 20th century to conclude that the era of monopoly capitalism had begun. Soon after Lenin, A. Berle and G. Means in the USA, Hilferding in Germany and other Western economists came to the same conclusions - about the extreme concentration and monopolization of industry. An example of the role mergers and acquisitions played in this is J. Goldschmidt, who was involved in mergers and acquisitions in Germany and earned so much money from them that he became the owner of one of the largest banks in the country - Danat Bank (Darmstaedter- und National Bank ) . It was this bank, keen on mergers and acquisitions and speculation in industrial assets, that went bankrupt in July 1931, intensifying the economic and financial crisis in Germany. A. Berle and G. Means, who studied the processes of monopolization in the United States in the decades preceding the Great Depression, found that only in the period from 1919 to 1929. at least 49 of the 200 largest US companies ceased to exist as a result of mergers and acquisitions.

Here are just a few examples of industry monopolies that emerged at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. as a result of mergers and acquisitions: absorption of Western European automobile concerns (Opel, Rover and others) by their American and Japanese competitors; the formation of the giant American ConocoPhillips (as a result of the merger of two large American oil and gas companies); formation of the giant Bavarian-Austrian-Italian banking holding UniCredit; merger of French automakers Peugeot and Citroen; the merger of several Italian banks to form Banca Intesa, the formation of the English pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and the German Bayer-Schering (both were created as a result of the merger of two large national pharmaceutical companies); the unification of all Russian aluminum companies into a conglomerate called “Russian Aluminum” (Rusal); formation in the USA, on the initiative of President Clinton, of the global aluminum cartel led by Alcoa.

6. Features of modern globalization and its prospects

Modern globalization as a whole is developing according to the same laws as its predecessors. But there are also features:

1. The scale and spread of modern globalization far exceeds anything that came before. In the past, there have always been countries and regions that did not feel the impact of globalization; in the modern world there are no more such countries and regions left. The size of international trade flows, as well as the size of population migrations in the modern world, far exceeds what they were even during the previous (4th) cycle of globalization, not to mention earlier cycles.

2. Financial transactions and speculation have reached unprecedented levels. Thus, the total volume of financial transactions in the world from 1983 to 2001 increased almost 60 times, while the volume of world GDP during the same period increased only approximately 2 times. The total volume of financial transactions in 2001, according to D. Harvey, amounted to about 40 trillion dollars, of this amount, it is estimated that only 0.8 trillion dollars (2%) were necessary to support trade and investment, the remaining 98% financial transactions were purely speculative transactions. According to G. Reisegger, US GDP in the early 2000s amounted to only 0.5% of the volume of financial and foreign exchange transactions on American financial markets, and the US GDP itself, according to him, “only less than a third consists of finished goods, and more than 2/3 comes from services, often in the field of the virtual economy.” Thus, the world economy has found itself at the mercy of speculative financial capital, the volume and power of which is enormous compared to the capital concentrated in the real sector.

3. International payments use monetary units (dollar, euro) that are not tied to gold, as was the case during previous cycles of globalization. On the one hand, this contributes to faster growth of international trade - since the United States and Western Europe do not need to spend gold to import the goods they need, they can only print more paper money - dollars and euros - and pay for these imports. On the other hand, the use of unbacked paper money (dollar and euro) in settlements creates a potential threat of collapse of the entire system of international payments and the curtailment of international trade.

4. In previous cycles, globalization largely spread through the colonization of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America (through the British, French, Spanish and other colonial empires). In the modern world, where there are no colonial systems, globalization is spreading through the system of international organizations (WTO, World Bank) and through direct political and military intervention of the USA and NATO (“color revolutions”, military interventions, bombing of “undesirable countries”, etc. ). This creates a threat of further growth of military conflicts and a zone of political instability in the world. In the modern world, there is almost no region left that is not affected by social explosions, revolutions and the growth of terrorism: the Near and Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Southeast and South Asia, Latin America, the countries of the former USSR. However, in the future we can expect a further expansion of the list of countries affected by political and social instability and military conflicts.

5. The decline of previous centers of globalization (USA, Western Europe) and the rise of new ones (China) is happening too quickly in comparison with previous cycles, which threatens to aggravate the military-political situation and the Third World War. Thus, the First World War arose as a result of the rapid rise of Germany as the new center of the global economy and as a result of the rapid decline of the old center - Great Britain and its ally France.

The study of the patterns of development of globalization allows us to predict the following probable development of events within the current cycle of globalization:

Global financial crisis 2008-2009 and stagnation in 2010-2011. will develop into a new Great Depression, which will affect most countries of the world;

Increasing problems with US debt will give rise to a “flight from the dollar”, which will lead to the collapse of the international payment system and the entire global economy, causing a chain reaction in all countries and aggravating the global economic crisis;

The United States will unleash a series of new regional wars in order to establish control over strategic resources, strengthen the position of the dollar and fight global competitors; it is possible that they will escalate into a major military conflict (World War III);

Gold and silver will increase in price many times over, and holders of dollars and shares will lose their savings as the global monetary, financial and economic crisis deepens;

Negative trends in the economy can be reversed by the transition of large states (Russia, India, China, continental European states, etc.) from liberal economic policies to protectionist policies with the implementation of structural economic reforms and the construction of a regional economic model as a counterweight to the global one.

7. Study of globalization by modern Western science

The books in the “Unknown History” trilogy provide many facts indicating that there is no objective study of globalization in the West:

Too little has been done by Western science in the field of studying the processes of globalization in history, which would help to correctly assess the prospects of modern globalization. Essentially, the only serious research in this area is the work of I. Wallerstein on the “European world economy” of the 12th-19th centuries; however, no one bothered to analyze, generalize, or, let alone develop, these works, written back in the 1970-1980s;

There is no scientific economic theory of globalization in the West;

The very essence of globalization as intensive international trade is distorted, it is argued that the word “globalization” itself was coined only in the 1980s, which calls into question the historical parallels of modern globalization;

Historical facts indicating the impact of globalization (free trade) on demography and the economy are suppressed or distorted;

Any reference to the impact of globalization (free trade) and protectionism is removed from economic and demographic works:

“... in the liberal economic science that prevails today, there is no clear understanding of either the process of globalization itself or its consequences... This fact is recognized ... by the famous American economist D. Stiglitz, who has published several books on globalization. He writes, for example, about “erroneous economic theories” used by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which for several decades have demanded that many countries become more involved in globalization processes (p.17). The latest event is the powerful global financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 against the backdrop of globalization, which is compared to the Great Depression of 1929-1939. and which came as a complete surprise to the liberal economic science, only confirms this. There are many examples of how the discipline has deliberately ignored research into the impact of globalization and protectionism on the economy for many decades. For example, at a major international seminar of economists and economic historians in 1963, dedicated to the problems of economic growth, not a single passage in the reports was devoted to this burning topic. In the transcript of the seminar, I was able to find only two short random remarks on this topic, which were exchanged between the Japanese and German professors (see: Chapter XIII). And from the report of the economic historian D. North on the industrialization of the United States, which was based on his article published in the collection of the University of Cambridge, all facts and phrases concerning the role of protectionism in American industrialization were thrown out (; 2, pp.680-681). In other modern economic books or collections you will also not find any serious studies of the impact of protectionism or globalization on the economy and economic growth.

Exactly the same situation exists today in demographic science, which has abstracted itself from studying the influence of these factors on demographic growth. Meanwhile, it is known that in the 18th century, humanity was convinced that protectionism leads to accelerated population growth: this was an axiom recognized by almost all European states. Although all demographers in the West should know this fact, just as doctors should know who Hippocrates is, not a single modern Western demographer, as far as I know, has dared to test this axiom. Even in the 2006 special issue of the demographic journal Journal of Population Research, dedicated to globalization (which is resoundingly entitled “Globalization and Demography”), there is not a word on the above problem, it is simply a collection of articles describing modern world demographic trends: population aging, widespread falling birth rates, etc., which are already well known to everyone. The reason is simple: if one of the Western demographers actually tried to test the 18th-century axiom on the available historical material, he could put an end to his future career as a scientist.

Why this happens is not at all difficult to understand. Globalization has become, since the 1960s, the main policy direction of Western states and the main idol to which the leaders of these states have since prayed. Accordingly, the word “protectionism” has become almost a dirty word both in the mouths of Western politicians and in the mouths of liberal economists. If any country today decides to introduce an increased import duty - even Russia, which is not a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), then everyone will begin to unanimously scold it, accusing it of almost abandoning a market economy in general and of striving to build an authoritarian one. economy. What kind of objective study of globalization or, conversely, protectionism and their consequences for the economy and demography can we talk about given such politicization of this issue?

It is not surprising, therefore, that even economic historians are forced to write about this problem in the language of half-hints or even refuse to draw any conclusions themselves, even vague ones. And those economic historians: I. Wallerstein, C. Wilson, P. Bairoch and others - who dare to draw such conclusions, hide them in the thickness of their voluminous works, never bringing them to the conclusion ( p. 165-166, 184; pp. .233-234)" (Kuzovkov Yu. World history of corruption, paragraph 18.4).

“Despite the fact that the entire current Western ideology is built on the praise of globalization, no Western economist has ever seriously considered this phenomenon - with numbers and facts in hand, using data from at least the last few centuries. So, we see that a completely unfamiliar and unexplored path of development (globalization) has been imposed on humanity, which, quite possibly, leads it to the abyss. And a strict taboo has been imposed on any research on this path” (Yu. Kuzovkov. Globalization and the Spiral of History, Chapter XIII).

“In general, before convincing their countries of the need to continue their participation in globalization, political leaders would do well to understand what consequences this policy will lead to. And as was shown above, there was no objective analysis of globalization as a historical, economic and social phenomenon until recently. Moreover, as many facts show, conscious attempts are being made to prevent such an analysis and the dissemination of its results. Therefore, in the end, we have a terrifying picture: humanity launched a project called “globalization”, without knowing the patterns of development of this phenomenon and without trying to understand them. It’s the same as if a child decided to fly an airplane and took off into the air on it, without having the slightest idea of ​​what to do with it next and how to land it on the ground.

Unfortunately, we have to admit that ignorance of the laws of development of human society, primarily its economic and social development (and globalization is among these laws), can actually contribute to the onset of a global catastrophe in the 21st century. Man has almost deciphered his gene and is about to create or clone his own kind; solved a number of mysteries of the Universe and got ready to explore space, learned to manage nuclear energy, created perfect electronic systems and artificial intelligence. But he still cannot (or does not want) to study the laws of the functioning and development of human society in order to take these laws into account when forming public policy. Therefore, humanity today is increasingly reminiscent of a child who decided to fly a plane in the air” (Yu. Kuzovkov. Globalization and the spiral of history, afterword). See, for example: F. Lot, La fin du monde antique et le debut du moyen age. Paris, 1968, pp. 72-73; G. Glotz, Histoire greque, t. 3, Paris, 1941, p. 15; G.Salvioli, Le capitalisme dans le monde antique, Paris, 1906

C. Wilson, England's Apprenticeship, 1603-1763, New York, 1984, p.344

R.Lopez, Chapter V: The Trade of Medieval Europe... p. 306; P.Chaunu, La civilisation... p. 254

L.Genicot. On the Evidence of Growth of Population in the West from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries, in: Change in Medieval Society. Europe North of the Alps, 1050-1500, Ed. by S. Thrupp, New York, 1964, p. 23

I.Wallerstein. The Modern World-System II… p. 45

E.Wrigley, R.Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871. A Reconstruction, Cambridge, 1981, pp. 340-341; P.Chaunu, La civilisation… pp. 383, 388-389; Milward A., Saul S., The Economic Development... p. 42

C. Wilson, The Economic Decline of the Netherlands, in: Essays in Economic History, ed. by E.Carus-Wilson, London, 1954, p. 263

J.Delumeau. Chapitre 15. Renaissance et discordes religieuses, 1515-1589, dans: Histoire de la France. Des Origines a nos jours, dir. par G.Duby. Paris, 1997, p. 388

S.Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the reign of Louis XV, Hague, 1976, Vol. 2, p. 488; I.Wallerstein, The Modern World-System III. The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730-1840s, San Diego, 1989, pp. 86-93

The current stage of human development represents colossal changes and unification processes in the global economy. At the end of the twentieth century, it became fashionable in economic literature to call these processes globalization. But they began much earlier - in the second half of the nineteenth century. The basic laws of the process, which is now commonly called the globalization of the economy, were studied by many scientists of the late 21st and early 20th centuries. Then this process had a more suitable name for it - the formation of imperialism as a monopoly stage in the development of capitalism (the word globalization indicates unification, but obscures the question of how exactly and on what basis it is carried out). In this article, it is not possible to analyze the wealth of factual material on the basis of which one can judge with complete confidence the history of globalization in the twentieth century. The reader will easily recall, for example, two world wars, which resulted in new divisions of the world into zones of economic expansion and other major historical events. The history of the transformation of one or another capital (bank, company, etc., including all mergers and acquisitions), which had a serious impact on the world economy, can only be presented in a separate work dedicated only to this. Moreover, an interested reader can easily find a lot of information that allows him to trace this story. Here I would like to draw attention only to the main stages and trends of the globalization process as a whole and see (also in general terms) how they determine the functioning of the labor market.

Since at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries the process of globalization (the formation of monopoly capitalism) manifested itself only as the unification of production and banking capital into financial capital and the establishment of the expansion of financial capital, scientists of that time mainly paid attention to the analysis of the activities of banks and the influence of the concentration of financial capital on the development of production. The works “Imperialism” by J. A. Hobson, “Financial Capital” by R. Hilferding, “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism” by V. I. Lenin are considered classic works. These works showed with all scientific rigor that free competition had come to an end.

The main characteristic of the current stage of development of the world economy is the transformation of free competition into monopoly and competition between monopolists. Monopoly becomes superior to free competition. This gives rise to new contradictions. The monopoly stage of capitalism, according to Lenin, is characterized by the following features: 1) concentration of production and capital, reaching such high degree, which gave rise to monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life; 2) the merger of banking and industrial capital and the creation on its basis of “financial capital”, a financial oligarchy; 3) the fact that the export of capital, in contrast to the export of goods, acquires special significance; 4) that international monopoly unions of capitalists are being created that divide the world among themselves; 5) completion of the territorial division of the world between the largest capitalist states.

The trends noted by Lenin further deepened and developed. Their development was accompanied by a number of large-scale global crises and new redistributions of the planet. In the second half of the twentieth century, capitalism, which formed as a system of international financial capital, where banking corporations gained control over industrial development, began to transform into a system of industrial capital with international technological chains of industrial production. At this stage of development, capital no longer needs colonies in the old (late 19th - early 20th century) sense of the word; most former colonies gained independence (48-60). This, however, did not change their subordinate position, but only worsened it. For example, most of the formally independent countries of Latin America were brutally exploited and plundered colonies of American (US) capital throughout the twentieth century. Neocolonialism played an extraordinary role in the formation of the modern world labor market.

Transnational companies have entered the arena of global competition and control not only entire industries, but also complexes of related industries. Many industries that do not belong to transnational companies are beginning to play the role of auxiliary, service industries, where the organization of production and the form of exploitation of labor are often at a lower level of development than in the “main” industries.

Thus, the essence of the modern globalization process is the unification of the entire world economy into a single industrial system based on monopoly capitalism. Its main features are the complete loss of independence of national markets and the establishment of expansion of transnational corporations, whose interests determine the public policy of capitalist countries, competition between monopolies (transnational corporations), and the reorientation of the world economy to serve the interests of transnational corporations. Therefore, at this stage of development of the world economy, there is a rapid transfer of production to countries with higher rates of profit, and on the other hand, a deepening of the global division of labor.

At the end of the twentieth century, as a result of the trends described above, the global division of labor deepened enormously and the modern world labor market was created. It is characterized, on the one hand, by the deepening specialization of individual countries and even continents, and on the other, by the openness of borders both for the transfer of production to countries with cheaper labor, and for increasing the flow of labor migration depending on the demand for it in one or another countries. The modern world labor market is a complex unified system, which in turn consists of national markets, but cannot be reduced to them. Changes in the demand and supply of labor in individual national labor markets are a local expression of changes that occur in the structure of the world market, in the global production system.

The globalization of the labor market includes two main trends. The first is the deepening of the specialization of national production of individual countries (continents). This determines the specificity of supply and demand in national labor markets, and through specialization includes national production and the national labor market in world production in a specific, defined way. The second is the rapid transfer of production (this may concern entire industries) to countries where the rate of profit is higher. The second trend is the reason for rapid changes in the structure of national labor markets. This is an increase in demand for labor of appropriate qualifications in the event of a transfer of a certain type of production to the country and, at the same time, a decrease in demand for labor that was employed in enterprises that in this country became unprofitable and were closed or repurposed. In each individual country, these processes have their own characteristics and specifics.

Thousands of jobs are constantly appearing and disappearing around the world, and competition between workers in different countries is becoming fiercer. This is a constant source of unemployment, which means the absence or unsatisfactory amount of means of subsistence for part of humanity.

The problem of training a workforce that could meet the needs of production also makes itself felt. And capital is much more interested in this than in the fate of billions of people who earn their living by their own labor.

On the one hand, the production of labor must be as cheap as possible, and on the other hand, it must satisfy demand, which is constantly changing. Here it is necessary to note the contradiction between these two demands of capitalism. Cheap workforce training is inextricably linked with reducing training costs. This entails a decrease in the quantity and quality of knowledge and reduces it to the necessary minimum to perform one or another production function (lawyer, programmer, mechanic, assembly line worker...). At the same time, every change in demand in the labor market requires people who live by selling their labor to quickly retrain. This becomes a huge problem for narrow specialists, and for areas of production where there is not enough labor with the required qualifications. Capitalists are losing money.

In the world, the number of people who are directly employed in the sphere of material production is constantly increasing, but in the so-called developed countries this share is smaller due to the fact that production from these countries is transferred to countries with cheaper labor. The prevailing trend here is towards a constant increase in the number of people working in the service sector, and people who perform redistribution work material assets(bank employees, lawyers, managers, etc.). This trend served as the basis for the creation of myths about the post-industrial and information society. The main mistake of their authors is the failure to understand that the development of social production can no longer be considered on the example of individual (developed) countries, without taking into account the rest of the world, since there are no longer really separate economies.

It must be taken into account that there are two relatively independent segments in the global labor market. The first of these covers a highly skilled workforce that has relatively constant employment and consistently high wages. This is the elite of the world proletariat (USA, EEC, etc.). The second - much larger segment - mainly covers labor from poor countries, which are in much worse conditions. In the second segment, we can distinguish workers who migrate illegally to rich countries, since in their homeland they cannot find a job that would allow them to have the necessary means of living. By the way, up to 7 million Ukrainian citizens working in Russia and EU countries fall into this category. Their salaries are usually much lower than those of local workers who do the same work. They are in such a position that they do not require the creation of appropriate working conditions and the provision of social guarantees (medical insurance, compensation in case of temporary or complete loss of ability to work). As a result, illegal labor migrants are displacing local workers. This is good ground for the spread of racist and xenophobic sentiments. Capitalists easily use them to increase discrimination in the labor market based on nationality or citizenship, which makes it possible to lower wages that are already low for this country.

Capital is not interested in how this affects the lives of the people working for it and the lives of their families. The capitalist is forced to constantly look for the labor he needs, which would cost less. After all, otherwise he will lose in competition with other, more successful and cunning capitalists. And the point here is not at all that the capitalist is bad or good. But in essence the system of world capitalism.

Related information.

An analysis of the development of the world economy at the end of the 20th century revealed the following trends.

In the post-industrial era (1950 - 1980):

• 
  technological progress changes supply and demand in the market;
• 
  a sharp increase in investments in R&D;
• 
  development of international markets;
• 
  rapid change in production technology.

The 80s of the century are characterized by:

• 
  saturation of domestic markets;
• 
  rapid technological progress;
• 
  increased competition, faster growth of exports;
• 
  trend of globalization of R&D.

In the 90s the following were observed:

• 
  further intensification of competition;
• 
  the growing trend of globalization of the world economy;
• 
  shortening innovation cycles and high costs of preparing the production of new products;
• 
  the need for global markets, large scale production in order to justify large innovative investments;
• 
  strong R&D potential, the criteria for success in the market are technical competence and the pace of innovation;
• 
  the development of computer networks leads to the practical integration of R&D, marketing, and production in real time.

So, we can distinguish two main trends in the development of the global economy:

• 
  its globalization;
• 
  a sharp increase in the importance of innovation and especially R&D in the economy.

Of course, these two trends did not develop in isolation. The globalization of the economy has resulted in the transfer of part of the R&D of corporations from the mother country abroad and the corresponding intensification of innovation, which is reflected in the strategic management of corporations, expanding the scope of their global activities. The increasing importance of innovation as a firm's strategic resource has essentially led to the merging of strategic and innovation management companies into a single discipline, the basis of which was knowledge management. It should be noted that this development of trends has most clearly manifested itself literally in the last five years.

Innovative business can be viewed from two perspectives:

• 
  as a means of providing a strategic advantage to companies for which innovation itself is not the main type of business;
• 
  as a type of business whose product is specific scientific, scientific, technical and other results that can be used as the basis for innovation in other industries.

Porter explicitly points out the place of innovation in a company's achievement of competitive advantage: “Every successful company applies its own strategy. However, the nature and evolution of all successful companies turn out to be fundamentally the same. The company achieves competitive advantage through innovation. They approach innovation in the broadest sense, using both new technologies and new ways of working... Once a company achieves a competitive advantage through innovation, it can only maintain it through continuous improvement... Competitors will immediately and certainly surpass any company , which will stop improving and introducing innovations."

In this regard, the importance of innovative business as the main activity of firms is growing sharply. It is enough to mention the numerous research institutes, design bureaus, consulting firms, service offerings for business process reengineering, etc. However, it is known that only 5% of started R&D finds its successful completion in the form of recognition of new products on the market by consumers. Among the main reasons for this situation are, as a rule, the wrong choice of the R&D portfolio, the lack of comprehensive development of marketing, technical, economic, investment, and production aspects. In most cases, when performing R&D, the strategic significance of the development, its consistency with the strategic aspects of the company’s activities (methods of its strategic planning, image, attitude to risk), as well as the time aspect of performing R&D and implementing its results (replication and marketing of new products) are not taken into account. This is largely due to the lack of a clearly defined unified methodological approach to the strategic management of R&D.

The current stage of development of the world market is characterized by increased dynamics, instability and, above all, globalization of business. At the same time, the widespread introduction of global information systems has led not only to the use of e-commerce, but also to the emergence of a tendency to move towards so-called network organizations, the divisions of which are geographically remote from each other. A network organization can consolidate resources around the world, which is one of the decisive factors for success in global competition.

There is a wide range of features of firms’ strategic actions, including those of a network (virtual) nature, in global market conditions, which will be indicated below and which should be assessed from a unified methodological perspective.

The main conclusions from global experience are as follows:

– the innovative component of business is becoming a key factor in global competition;

– there is a tendency to consider the actions of firms to solve competitive problems as a synthesis of strategic and general management, economics, organization theory and human resource management;

– there is a close merging (and even intertwining) of the tasks and approaches of the strategic and innovative management of the company. We can talk about the need to develop the theory and practice of unified strategic innovation management;

– The globalization of the world economy has only accelerated the course of these processes. Globalization and the world economy are fundamentally different things. The basis for globalization was the new world information technology infrastructure and the policy of liberalization of management. In a global economy, institutional elements work as a whole in real time. At the same time, there is no gap between global and local strategies.

1.2. Main characteristics of globalization of the world economy

In his work, M. Porter notes the following main trends in the development of international competition:

• 
  transformation of international companies from multilocal to global. This orients the entire world system of production and market relations towards the centralized struggle of a global company with its competitors. Consequently, the development of strategy for such companies can only be carried out centrally;
• 
  the potential for global competition is small if the gains from global production volumes grow in the same proportions as the costs of servicing (including management) of these volumes;
• 
  global volumes are very important to maintain high levels of investment in R&D (in fact, knowledge-intensive industries tend to become global);
• 
  Global competition is distinguished by the breadth of coverage of different countries with individual parts of the “value chain”. Therefore, both configuration (geographical distributions) and coordination (organizational issues) are important;
• 
  in global competition, the sources of competitive advantage associated with geographic location are a complex of relationships between four groups of factors (“Porter’s diamond”):

– conditions for factors of production;

– state of demand;

– related and supporting industries;

– sustainable strategy, structure and rivalry of local companies.

• 
  In global coordination, enormous organizational problems arise (linguistic and cultural differences, distances, desire for autonomy, the desire to adapt to local conditions as much as possible, etc.).

Ways to solve these problems:

– clear positioning and a global strategy understandable to everyone;

– recognition of the task of implementing a global strategy in local conditions as a difficult problem;

– unification of information and accounting systems, ensuring quick adjustments to operational decisions;

– encouraging personal contacts and information exchange.

Operations in “home markets” continue to play an important role as the basis for global competitive advantage, especially in knowledge transfer and innovation processes.

The problem of deepening and transforming these features of the global economy is considered in the work of M. Castells. His definition of a global economy is “an economy in which key components have the institutional, organizational and technological capability to operate as a whole in real time on a global scale.” Among these key elements, he includes financial globalization, globalization of markets for goods and services, informationization based on global networks, and the blurring of boundaries in the world of science and technology. All this is happening against the backdrop of a clear weakening of the role of government regulation and makes firms, not countries, the real trading agents.

Today, globalization is characterized by the systemic integration of world markets and regional economies, all areas human activity, as a result of which there is accelerated economic growth and accelerated implementation of modern technologies and management methods. At the same time, the changes caused by the processes of economic integration are of a profound nature, affect all spheres of human activity, and pose the task of bringing the social parameters of the development of society, its political structure, and macroeconomic management technologies into line. In the modern process of integration of national (and regional) economies into a single world economy, there are a number of differences and features compared to what happened in the recent past:

1. Before most of the world did not participate in the global economy. Today, more countries than ever before have opened their borders to trade, finance, investment and information. Not only developed, but also developing countries are reforming their economies.

2. If at the beginning of the century globalization was caused by the need to reduce transport costs, now it is due to the reduction in the cost of communications.

Revolutionary changes have occurred in the field of global communications and the emergence of the “information society”. The Internet is the fastest growing means of communication in the entire history of civilization - the number of Internet users around the world is increasing by 100 million people per year and reached 375 million people by the beginning of 2004. These changes will inevitably cause no less transformative effect in the economy than the industrial revolution did in its time. Elements of such transformations are already clearly visible - electronic trading not only in consumer goods, but also in enterprise shares. In 2002, US businesses conducted nearly $350 billion in online transactions, and over 50% of corporations conduct customer service and billing online. Today, the volume of transactions concluded via the Internet and other means of electronic communication in Europe reaches 17 billion euros, and by 2004, according to experts, it can grow to 500 billion euros.

A cheap and effective communications network allows firms to locate various components of production in different countries, while maintaining direct organizational and information contacts, and direct management of commodity and financial flows.

Modern information Technology also reduced the need for physical contact between producers and consumers and allowed some services that previously could not be sold in international markets to be traded. At the same time, the costs of servicing the turnover of goods and services are significantly (manifold) reduced.

3. Although the net turnover of global capital may be less than in the past, gross international financial flows have become much larger. For example, the world's daily foreign exchange turnover increased from US$15 billion in 1973 to US$1.7 trillion in 2000.

Over the past 25 years, capital markets have become global markets, reflecting financial side exchange of goods and services. The increased volume of international trade transactions also required an increase in money turnover. According to World Trade Organization(WTO) overall growth in world trade in 1999. remained at the level of the previous 1998. and amounted to 4.5%. Trade in goods increased by 3.5% to US$5.46 trillion, while trade in services increased by 1.5% ($1.34 trillion).

To an unprecedented extent, the international capital market serves as an investment field for professional investors (investment and pension funds) and private capital owners. On average, only 15% of transactions in the foreign exchange market are related to exports, imports and long-term capital turnover. The rest are purely financial in nature.

Moreover, capital markets have long been classic national markets. They were limited to national currencies, which were also fixed thanks to a system of fixed exchange rates and were protected by a number of rules. This system changed dramatically with the transition to a flexible exchange rate (1973) Today capital markets are increasingly becoming global and transnational.

4. Currently about 20 percent of the world economy's output is produced by subsidiaries of transnational corporations. A third of global trade comes from transactions between parent companies and their foreign subsidiaries, and another third from trade between companies in transnational strategic alliances. The UN has 35 thousand transnational entities with 150 thousand branches. That is, the factor of transnationalization with the obvious orientation of corporations towards the information market and the market of advanced technologies is becoming increasingly significant in the development of the globalization process.

5. In recent years, more and more an opportunity for every entrepreneur in the world and investor to protect themselves from the risk of unexpected and sharp changes in exchange rates and interest rates and quickly adapt to unexpected financial shocks such as oil shocks or the unification of the two Germanys, as well as guarantee some financial discipline for the state, preventing governments from pursuing inflationary policies and policies of increasing public debt. In the context of the dominance of market relations in the global dimension, states are forced to implement a more reasonable economic strategy.

6. Savings and investments are allocated more efficiently. This means that poor countries that are in dire need of investment are not in such dire straits. Investors are not limited to their home markets, but can search around the world for those favorable investment opportunities that will provide the highest returns. Investors have more choice to allocate their portfolio and direct investments.

7. Finally, economic globalization occurs along with a revolution in technological processes, which, in turn, cause significant shifts in the hierarchy of nations. The country’s place in the modern world today is more determined by quality human capital, the state of education and the degree of use of science and technology in production. Abundance of labor and raw materials is becoming less and less a competitive advantage as the share of these factors in creating the value of all products declines.

Summarizing these and a number of other observations, we can say that modern globalization is characterized by a systemic shift in the dynamics of the world economic system. If earlier the success of entrepreneurship depended more on the classical combination of production factors, today this success is largely determined by a complex (non-linear) combination of elements of knowledge, the integration of these factors and technologies, the pooling of capital, information and intellectual resources.

Entrepreneurship is becoming less and less tied to any country or territory with increased information dependence, and turning to innovation and investment is becoming the most important condition for success.

Thus, we can highlight the following main character traits modern globalization:

• 
  creation of a unified global information space;
• 
  increasing financial and investment centralization, with the help of which credit and investment resources are formed, accumulated, allocated and used;
• 
  the growing importance of information, new technologies, innovations, knowledge and experts;
• 
  the continuous expansion of the global oligopoly;
• 
  the growth of a layer of transnational enterprises, the creation of transnational economic diplomacy;
• 
  the intensification of world trade and the capital that serves it, despite the latter’s growing dominance over production and trade;
• 
  tendency towards convergence of mechanisms and tools for managing production processes.

In the coming years, the process of globalization will be characterized by:

• 
  integration of economic and information development of economies, creation of a unified information and investment space;
• 
  integration of markets, market management systems and production systems;
• 
  rapid development of information and telecommunication technologies;
• 
  the creation of new investment technologies based on reliable information support, strict legal regulation of investment decisions at the international and interstate levels;
• 
  the use of high technologies in all spheres of life and production, which will necessitate a radical re-equipment of the material and technical base of all types of human activity, which will lead to significant changes in human lifestyle and thoughts;
• 
  harmonious, balanced development of the investment market infrastructure, integration of the functions and tools of investment institutions;
• 
  unification, canonization of investment legislation, creation of interstate agreements in the field of investment and capital management, strengthening its influence on investment processes;
• 
  the ability to move capital to any country that offers more favorable conditions for investment.

This rapid change in the global economy requires consideration of a number of common issues, such as:

– regionalism, international trade and multinational location of firms;

– theoretical foundations of international entrepreneurship;

– networks and alliances as the institutional basis of entrepreneurship;

– future trends of globalization;

– ways of international technology transfer;

– organizational forms of global entrepreneurship;

– competitive thinking and benchmarking in practice.

According to M. Porter, the competitiveness of a nation depends on the following factors:

– the ability of the industry of a particular nation to innovate and modernize;

– awareness of the fact that the basis of competition is increasingly shifting towards the creation and development of knowledge;

– the company’s ability to achieve competitive advantage through innovation;

– awareness of the fact of creating competitive advantages through innovation;

– awareness that there is only one opportunity to maintain the achieved competitive advantages - to constantly improve them;

– the presence of four attributes of competitive advantage (“diamond rule”);

– the right approach to globalization through selective use of sources of advantage in the diamonds of other countries;

– the ability to benefit from research conducted abroad, for which the company must have highly qualified specialists and form a high level of its own research activities;

– understanding that competitive advantage comes from long-term improvements (not from protecting today's secrets).

Thus, M. Porter clearly correlates the competitive advantages of a company and its ability to carry out and implement innovations, that is, to organize an innovative business, as a key factor for success in global competition.

He questions established explanations of national competitiveness:

– macroeconomic (for example, low budget deficit and rate bank loan- V South Korea everything is the other way around);

– low cost of local labor in export industries (not so in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden);

– excess natural resources (not so in South Korea and Japan);

– government intervention in the economy (the opposite is true in Italy and Taiwan).

The only reasonable explanation for the competitiveness of individual nations: the presence in these countries of firms that have been able to use their distinctive advantages to create competitive ones. The most promising method of achieving such advantages is innovation and, especially, its strategic aspect. Such global experience can be used in Russia as well. The role of the state in this case should be, first of all:

– in economic stimulation of innovative activity with a clear ranking of individual works;

– timely protection of intellectual property rights;

– organizational assistance in the implementation of the most significant work in the state plan (for example, by organizing appropriate program-target planning).

This correlates well with the previously cited idea of ​​M. Castals that firms are becoming the main trading units on the world market. While they address the challenge of optimal global geographic location, operations in “home markets” continue to play a critical role in gaining competitive advantage. This is explained by the following circumstances:

– there are large differences in the conditions of economic activity in local markets;

– the world's leading competitors in each industry are concentrated, as a rule, in one or two metropolitan countries;

– the “critical mass” of activity (especially its nerve center) of global companies is usually concentrated in one place.

Global strategies can undermine the competitive advantage of the home base by dispersing activities, accessing other markets, attracting new skills and new technologies. But for all this to work, coordination is necessary, which can be carried out mainly from the metropolitan country. Thus, we should not talk about the disappearance of the role of location during globalization, but about its significant modernization.

In this case, everything that is discussed in the strategic aspects of innovative business management does not lose its significance in the context of business globalization, but only requires certain adjustments and rethinking. For example, M. Porter points to the use of the following non-standard solutions in global competition:

– the use of critical investment processes with zero or even negative return on investment capital;

– a wide variety of purposes of financial activity in various foreign countries subsidiaries;

– designing an assortment of products with increased strength and selling them at reduced prices;

– integration of global competition and marketing in private markets;

– the role of intelligence in global business management;

– the merging of economics and sociology in strategic management;

– globalization of small business.

1.3. Innovation is a driving factor in global competition

All over the world, companies that have achieved international leadership use strategies that are different from each other in every way. However, although every successful company has its own strategy, the underlying operating principles—the nature and evolution of all successful companies—are fundamentally the same.

Companies achieve competitive advantage through innovation. They learn new ways to compete or find better ways to compete using old ways. Innovation may take the form of a new product design, a new manufacturing process, a new approach to marketing, or new technique advanced training of workers. Most innovations turn out to be quite simple and small, based more on the accumulation of minor improvements and achievements than on a single, major technological breakthrough. This process often involves ideas that are not even “new”, ideas that were literally “in the air” but were not purposefully applied. At the same time, there is always an investment of capital in upgrading skills and knowledge, in physical assets and enhancing brand reputation.

Some innovations create competitive advantages, creating fundamentally new opportunities in the market, or filling market segments that other competitors have not paid attention to.

If competitors are slow to respond, such innovations lead to competitive advantages. For example, in industries such as automobiles and consumer electronics, Japanese companies have achieved initial advantages by emphasizing compact, smaller, less energy-consuming models that their foreign competitors have neglected as less profitable, less valuable, and less valuable. attractive.

In international markets, innovations that bring competitive advantage anticipate both internal and external needs. For example, as international interest in product safety grew, Swedish companies such as Volvo, Atlas Copro and AGA were successful in the market by anticipating favorable market opportunities in this area. At the same time, innovations that are timely for the domestic market may even hinder the achievement of competitive success on an international scale. For example, the lure of the powerful US defense market has diverted the attention of US materials, tooling and machinery companies away from attractive global commercial markets.

In the process of innovating and making improvements, information is of great importance - information that is either not available to competitors or that they are not looking for. Sometimes innovation is the result of simple investments in research and development or market research. More often than not, innovation comes from deliberate effort, from openness and searching for the right solutions without being blinded by any assumptions or formulaic common sense.

For this reason, innovators often find themselves on the sidelines of a particular industry or country. Innovation may come from a new company whose founder has an unconventional background or simply has not been recognized by a long-established, established company. Or the ability to generate new things can come to an existing company through senior managers who are just starting out in the industry and are therefore more able to sense new opportunities and strive to achieve them. Innovation can also occur when a company expands its reach, bringing new resources, skills, or perspectives into a new industry. They may come from another nation, with different conditions or methods of competition.

Except in a very small number of cases, innovation is the result of extraordinary effort. A company that successfully introduces new or better ways to compete pursues its goal relentlessly, often enduring severe criticism and overcoming significant obstacles. In fact, achieving success when introducing an innovation usually requires pressure, awareness of the need and even a certain aggressiveness: the fear of losses is often an even more powerful driving force than the hope of winning.

Once a company achieves a competitive advantage through innovation, it can only maintain it through continuous improvement. Almost any achievement can be repeated. Korean companies had nearly matched the capabilities of their Japanese competitors in mass-producing standard color televisions and VCRs; Brazilian companies have developed technological processes and developed designs comparable to competitive Italian firms producing special types of leather shoes.

Competitors will immediately and certainly bypass any company that stops improving and introducing innovation. Sometimes initial advantages, such as customer relationships, economies of scale in existing technologies, or reliability of distribution channels, are sufficient to allow an inert company to maintain its position for years or even decades. However, sooner or later, more dynamic competitors will find ways to circumvent these advantages based on their innovations, or create better or cheaper ways of doing similar business.

What are the reasons why specific companies based in certain countries are able to make significant upgrades? Why do they tirelessly follow the path of improvement and search for increasingly complex sources of competitive advantage? What makes them able to overcome the major obstacles to making the changes and innovations that so often accompany success?

The answer to these questions lies in the four attributes of a country, attributes that each individually and collectively form the basis of a country's competitive advantage, the space that each state creates and maintains for its industries. These are the attributes:

1) conditions for factors. A country's position in factors of production, such as the availability of skilled labor or infrastructure needed to compete in a given industry;

2) state of demand. The nature of demand in the domestic market for an industry product or service;

3) related and supporting industries. The presence or absence in a given country of supplier industries or other related industries that are internationally competitive;

4) sustainable strategy, structure and competition. The conditions existing in the country for the creation, organization and management of companies, as well as the nature of internal competition.

These factors determine the emergence of a national environment in which companies are born and learn to compete (Figure 1.1). Each of the vertices of the diamond shown in the figure - and the diamond as a whole - illustrates the essential components for achieving success in international competition: the availability of resources and skilled labor is necessary to ensure a competitive advantage in the industry; information that shapes the opportunities that companies perceive and the ways in which they deploy their resources and employee skills; the goals of the owners, managers and individual employees of the company; and, crucially, the company's pressure to invest and innovate.

When domestic conditions permit and support the rapid accumulation of specialized assets and expertise—in some cases simply through greater effort and commitment—companies gain a competitive advantage. When the domestic environment allows for a better flow of information and understanding of the needs for a particular product and production process, companies also gain a competitive advantage. Finally, if domestic conditions force companies to continually innovate and invest, companies not only gain a competitive advantage, but also build on existing advantages over time.

From a conventional point of view, it would seem that internal competition is something completely unnecessary: ​​it leads to duplication of effort and prevents companies from achieving large scale production. The correct solution, from this point of view, is to select one or two leading national companies with large-scale production and sufficient strength to withstand foreign competitors, and guarantee them the necessary resources and government support. In reality, however, national leaders are largely uncompetitive, even if they receive large subsidies and strong government protection. In many leading industries that have only one national leader, such as an aerospace agency or a telecommunications powerhouse, government has played a large role in destroying competition.

Rice. 1.1. Determinants of a country's competitive advantage (“Porter's Diamond”)
Static efficiency is significantly less important than dynamic improvement, which is extremely stimulated by internal competition. Internal competition, like any other competition, creates pressure on companies to innovate and improve. Local competitors force each other to lower prices, improve quality and service, and create new products and processes. However, unlike competition with foreign companies, which tends to be analytical and distant, local competition often goes beyond purely economic competition and becomes quite independent. Competitors located within the same country involve quite active hereditary hostility in their activities; they are fighting not just for market share, but also for people, technical excellence and, perhaps most importantly, for “bragging rights.” The success of one nationally competing company proves to others that advances in the field are possible and often attracts new entrants to the industry. Companies often attribute the success achieved by foreign competitors to the existence of some "special" advantage for them. In the case of its internal competitors, there are no such psychological benefits for the losing company.

Geographic concentration increases domestic competition.

Another benefit of internal competition is the pressure it creates to continually improve sources of competitive advantage. The presence of domestic competitors automatically eliminates the types of advantages that come from simply existing in a particular country - factor costs, access or preferential access to the local market, or costs to foreign competitors who import into that market. Companies are being forced to go beyond the above, achieving more sustainable benefits as a result. Moreover, domestic competition will force companies to be more responsible in obtaining government support. Companies are less likely to lock themselves into government contracts or support protectionism in their industry. Instead, each industry will seek and benefit from more constructive forms of government support, such as assistance in foreign market development, investment in specific educational structures, or other special factors.

Paradoxically, it is strong internal competition that forces companies to enter the foreign market and achieve success in it. Particularly in the case of a large-scale economy, local competitors force each other to pay close attention to the foreign market and improve their efficiency and profitability. When tested by fierce domestic competition, the strongest companies are able to achieve success abroad.

Each of the four named components of success determines the corresponding point on the diamond of the country’s competitive advantages; the action of one of the components often depends on the state of the other three. For example, demanding customers will not automatically lead to improved products if the quality of human resources does not enable companies to meet customer requirements. Specific deficiencies in factors of production will not stimulate renewal if competition is not strong enough and the company's goals are not supported by significant investments. Overall, a weak position in any of the components will limit the ability of a given industry to progress and innovate.

At the same time, positions in a rhombus also have the property of mutual reinforcement; they make up a system. Two elements, internal competition and geographic concentration, are particularly powerful in turning the diamond into a single system - internal competition because it stimulates improvement in all other key areas, and geographic concentration because it generates and enhances the interaction between four separate factors.

The role of internal competition illustrates the operation of the diamond as an internally reinforced system. Fierce internal competition stimulates the development of specific arrays of special factors, especially if all competitors are located in the same city or region.

Internal competition also encourages the emergence of related and supporting industries. For example, Japan's world-leading group of semiconductor technology manufacturers has stimulated the development of leading semiconductor equipment manufacturers.

These effects can work in all directions: sometimes world-class suppliers become new entrants to the industry they supply to. Or very sophisticated buyers may become a supplier industry themselves, especially when they have the necessary skills and the vision that the new industry will be of strategic importance. The Japanese robotics industry (eg Matsushita and Kawasaki) first developed robots for domestic use and then began selling robots to other countries. Today, these companies are strong competitors in the robotics industry. In Sweden, Sandvik moved from special steels to hammer drills, and SKF from special steels to ball bearings.

Another effect of the systemic nature of the diamond is that it is quite rare for countries to have only one competitive industry; rather, the diamond rule creates an environment that supports clusters of competitive industries. Competitive industries are not scattered haphazardly throughout the economy - they are usually connected to each other by vertical (buyer-seller) or horizontal (common consumers, technology, channels) connections. Such groups do not disperse physically either: they tend to be concentrated geographically. One competitive industry helps the emergence of another in a process of mutual reinforcement. For example, Japanese consumer electronics companies have transferred their success in semiconductor technology to the production of memory cards and integrated circuits. The success of Japanese laptop computer companies, which contrasts with the limited success in other segments, reflects the strength in other compact portable products and the leading knowledge and experience in LCD displays gained in calculators and watches.

Once a cluster has formed, mutual support arises from all industries in the group. The benefits extend forward, backward and horizontally. Aggressive rivalry in one industry spreads to other industries within the cluster through technology transfer, market position development, and diversification of incumbents. Market entry from other industries within the cluster spurs upgrading by stimulating R&D approaches and facilitating the introduction of new strategies and skills. Through the channels of suppliers and consumers in contact with many competing companies, information and innovation flow freely. Interrelations within the group, often quite unexpected, lead to the awareness of new ways of competing and new opportunities. Such a cluster becomes a means of maintaining diversity and overcoming narrow-mindedness, inertia, and lack of flexibility.

The benefits of clusters in innovation and productivity growth compared to an isolated location may be more important than the benefits in ongoing productivity, although there are also risks. Some characteristics of the same cluster that improve current performance are even more important for innovation.

Firms included in a cluster are often able to respond more adequately and quickly to customer needs. With regard to the current needs of buyers, firms in the cluster benefit from the concentration of companies that know the needs of buyers and have established relationships with them, from the presence of firms in related industries, the concentration of specialized information collection structures, and the demands of customers. Firms in a cluster can often recognize consumer demand trends faster than individual firms competing with them. For example, computer companies in Silicon Valley and Austin are quick and efficient at responding to customer needs and tastes, and few can match them in this regard.

Participation in a cluster also provides advantages in access to new technologies, working methods or supply opportunities. Cluster firms quickly learn about advances in technology, the availability of new components and equipment, new concepts in service and marketing, etc. and constantly monitor these things, since these tasks are facilitated by ongoing relationships with other cluster members and personal contacts. Membership in a cluster makes it possible to directly observe the activities of other firms. In contrast, an isolated firm has worse access to information and is forced to pay more; there is also an increasing need for it to devote resources to achieving new knowledge within its own structure.

The potential benefits of clusters in recognizing the need and creating opportunities for innovation are great, but equally important is the flexibility and ability they provide to quickly respond to this need. Often, a firm within a cluster can much more quickly find sources for new components, services, equipment, and other elements required when introducing innovations, regardless of whether these elements are a new production line, a new process, or a new supply model. Local suppliers and partners can and do become involved in the renewal process, thereby ensuring that the products they supply better meet the needs of firms. New specialized personnel can be easily recruited to fill special vacancies that arise when using new approaches directly in the local area. Mutual complementarity, useful in the process of innovation, is more easily achieved when the participants are located close to each other.

Firms in a cluster can experiment at lower costs and may not make large commitments until they are confident that a new product, process, or service will bring benefits. In contrast, a firm that relies on obtaining resources from distant sources must devote significantly more attention to negotiating contracts, securing shipments, obtaining required technical support and service, and coordinating activities with a large number of other entities, while a firm that relies on vertical integration , encounters inertia. Trade difficulties associated with innovation reduce the value of domestic investments, creating the need to maintain existing products and processes while developing new ones.

These and other innovation-driven benefits are amplified by the immediate pressures—competitive pressures, equalization pressures, and constant comparison—that exist in geographically concentrated clusters. The similarity of the basic environment in which firms exist (eg, labor costs, similar support facilities), along with the presence of a large number of competitors, forces them to think creatively about their differences. It is quite difficult for individual firms in a cluster to remain leading for a long time, but many firms are growing faster than similar firms located elsewhere.

1.4. Innovation and the theory of the firm

According to E. Penrose's theory of the firm, management competence and human resources control the limits of a firm's growth. In this case, increasing management competence becomes a strategic goal and the following statement is true: “The only sustainable source of competitive advantage is the ability to “learn.”

Identifying imbalances in what a firm can do and what it needs is the best way to encourage learning and competency among the firm's staff. In particular, this becomes especially important when combining internal creative knowledge with external ones. This is important both for risk management and for minimizing transaction costs.

It is useful in this regard to define three basic functions of the firm in three categories:

1) placement of accumulated resources (static);

2) exploitation of used resources when entering new areas of activity (dynamics of the first kind);

3) acceleration of learning and creation of new competencies (dynamics of the second kind).

These three functions are the central points of three different theories of the firm, namely classical, resource-based and learning-based. A real firm performs all three functions, but in the long run the success and growth of the firm depends on its ability to create new competencies. These three functions may have different weights in different parts of the economy. Where the rate of change increases dramatically, the third function becomes a central management concept.

Concluding the consideration of a systematic approach to innovation as a fundamental factor in competition, it is advisable to note the systemic connection of the main characteristics of such an approach (Fig. 1.2).

Rice. 1.2. A modern systematic approach to assessing the role of innovation in competition

1.1. Origins of strategic innovation management

Innovative business can be viewed from two perspectives:
· as a means of providing a strategic advantage to companies for which innovation itself is not the main type of business;
· as a type of business, the product of which is specific scientific, scientific, technical and other results that can be used as the basis for innovations in other industries.

The indisputability of using innovation as the basis for achieving a strategic competitive advantage for companies does not require special proof. Porter's seminal work /1/ explicitly states: "Every successful company applies its own strategy. However, the nature and evolution of all successful companies are fundamentally the same. The company achieves competitive advantage through innovation. They approach innovation in the broadest sense, using , both new technologies and new ways of working... Once a company achieves a competitive advantage through innovation, it can only maintain it through continuous improvement... Any company that stops improving and innovating will be immediately and surely surpassed by competitors.”

In this regard, the importance of innovative business as the main activity of firms is growing sharply. It is enough to mention the numerous research institutes, design bureaus, consulting firms, service offerings for business process reengineering, etc. However, it is known that only 5% of started R&D finds its successful completion in the form of recognition of new products in the consumer market. Among the main reasons for this situation are, as a rule, the wrong choice of the R&D portfolio, the lack of comprehensive development of marketing, technical, economic, investment, and production aspects. In most cases, when performing R&D, the strategic significance of the development, its consistency with the strategic aspects of the company’s activities (methods of its strategic planning, image, attitude to risk), as well as the time aspect of performing R&D and implementing its results (replication and marketing of new products) are not taken into account. This is largely due to the lack of a clearly defined unified methodological approach to the strategic management of R&D.

The current stage of development of the world market is characterized by increased dynamics, instability and, above all, globalization of business. At the same time, the widespread introduction of global information systems has led not only to the use of e-commerce, but also to the emergence of a tendency to move towards so-called network organizations, the divisions of which are geographically remote from each other. A network organization can consolidate resources around the world, which is one of the decisive factors for success in global competition.

There is a wide range of features of firms’ strategic actions, including those of a network (virtual) nature, in global market conditions, which will be indicated below and which should be assessed from a unified methodological perspective.

The main conclusions from global experience are as follows:
– the innovative component of business is becoming a key factor in global competition;
– there is a tendency to consider the actions of firms to solve competitive problems as a synthesis of strategic and general management, economics, organization theory and human resource management;
– there is a close merging (and even intertwining) of the tasks and approaches of the strategic and innovative management of the company. We can talk about the need to develop the theory and practice of unified strategic innovation management;
– The globalization of the world economy has only accelerated the course of these processes. Globalization and the world economy are fundamentally different things. The basis for globalization was the new world information technology infrastructure and the policy of liberalization of management. In a global economy, institutional elements work as a whole in real time. At the same time, there is no gap between global and local strategies.

1.2. Main characteristics of globalization of the world economy

In his work /1/ M. Porter notes the following main trends in the development of international competition:
· transformation of international companies from multilocal to global. This orients the entire world system of production and market relations towards the centralized struggle of a global company with its competitors. Consequently, the development of strategy for such companies can only be carried out centrally;
· the potential for global competition is small if the gains from global production volumes grow in the same proportions as the costs of servicing (including management) of these volumes;
· global volumes are very important to maintain high levels of investment in R&D (in fact, knowledge-intensive industries tend to become global);
· global competition is distinguished by the breadth of coverage of different countries with individual parts of the “value chain”. Therefore, both configuration (geographical distributions) and coordination (organizational issues) are important;
· in global competition, the sources of competitive advantage associated with geographic location are a complex of relationships between four groups of factors (“Porter’s diamond”):
- conditions for factors of production;
- state of demand;
- related and supporting industries;
- sustainable strategy, structure and competition of local companies.
· in global coordination, huge organizational problems arise (linguistic and cultural differences, distances, desire for autonomy, the desire to adapt to local conditions as much as possible, etc.).

Ways to solve these problems:
- clear positioning and a global strategy understandable to everyone;
- recognition of the task of implementing a global strategy in local conditions as a difficult problem;
- unification of information and accounting systems, ensuring quick adjustments to operational decisions;
- encouraging personal contacts and information exchange.

Operations in “home markets” continue to play an important role as the basis for global competitive advantage, especially in knowledge transfer and innovation processes.

The problem of deepening and transforming these features of the global economy is considered in the work of M. Castells /2/. His definition of a global economy is “an economy in which key components have the institutional, organizational and technological capability to operate as a whole in real time on a global scale.” He lists these key elements as: financial globalization, globalization of markets for goods and services, informatization based on the globalization of networks, and the erasing of boundaries in the world of science and technology. All this is happening against the backdrop of a clear weakening of the role of government regulation and makes firms, not countries, the real trading agents.

As follows from /3/, today globalization is characterized by the systemic integration of world markets and regional economies, all spheres of human activity, as a result of which accelerated economic growth and accelerated implementation of modern technologies and management methods are observed. At the same time, the changes caused by the processes of economic integration are of a profound nature, affect all spheres of human activity, and pose the task of bringing the social parameters of the development of society, its political structure, and macroeconomic management technologies into line. In the modern process of integration of national (and regional) economies into a single world economy, there are a number of differences and features compared to what happened in the recent past:

1. First of all, most of the world did not participate in the global economy at the beginning of this century. Today, more countries than ever before have opened their borders to trade, finance, investment and information. Not only developed, but also developing countries are reforming their economies.

2. If at the beginning of the century globalization was caused by a reduction in transport costs, now it is caused by a decrease in the cost of communications..

Revolutionary changes have occurred in the field of global communications and the emergence of the “information society”. The Internet is the fastest growing means of communication in the entire history of civilization - the number of Internet users around the world will increase this year by 100 million people and reach 375 million people by the beginning of next year. These changes will inevitably cause no less transformative effect in the economy than the industrial revolution did in its time. Elements of such transformations are already clearly visible - electronic trading not only in consumer goods, but also in enterprise shares. It is projected that in 2002, US businesses will conduct approximately $350 billion in transactions on the Internet, and over 50% of corporations will conduct customer service and billing via the Internet. Today, the volume of transactions concluded via the Internet and other means of electronic communication in Europe reaches 17 billion euros, and by 2003, according to experts, it could grow to 340 billion euros.

A cheap and effective communications network allows firms to locate various components of production in different countries, while maintaining direct organizational and information contacts, and direct management of commodity and financial flows.

Modern information technology has also reduced the need for physical contact between producers and consumers and has allowed some services that previously could not be sold in international markets to be traded. At the same time, the costs of servicing the turnover of goods and services are significantly (manifold) reduced.

3. Although the net turnover of global capital may be less than in the past, gross international financial flows have become much larger. For example, the world's daily foreign exchange turnover increased from US$15 billion in 1973 to US$1.7 trillion in 2000.

Over the past 25 years, capital markets have become world (global) markets, reflecting the financial side of the exchange of goods and services. The increased volume of international trade transactions also required an increase in money turnover. According to World Trade Organization(WTO) in general, the growth of world trade in 1999 remained at the level of the previous 1998 and amounted to 4.5%. Trade in goods increased by 3.5% to US$5.46 trillion, while trade in services increased by 1.5% ($1.34 trillion).

To an unprecedented extent, the international capital market serves as an investment field for professional investors (investment and pension funds) and private capital owners. On average, only 15% of transactions in the foreign exchange market are related to exports, imports and long-term capital turnover. The rest are purely financial in nature.

Moreover, capital markets have long been classic national markets. They were limited to national currencies, which were also fixed thanks to a system of fixed exchange rates and protected by a number of rules. This system changed dramatically with the transition to a flexible exchange rate (1973) Today capital markets are increasingly becoming global and transnational.

4. Currently about 20 percent of the world economy's output is produced by subsidiaries of transnational corporations. A third of global trade comes from transactions between parent companies and their foreign subsidiaries, and another third from trade between companies in transnational strategic alliances. The UN has 35 thousand transnational entities with 150 thousand branches. That is, the factor of transnationalization with the obvious orientation of corporations towards the information market and the market of advanced technologies is becoming increasingly significant in the development of the globalization process /2/.

5. In recent years, more and more an opportunity for every entrepreneur in the world and investor to protect themselves from the risk of unexpected and sharp changes in exchange rates and interest rates and quickly adapt to unexpected financial shocks such as oil shocks or the unification of the two Germanys, as well as guarantee some financial discipline for the state, preventing governments from pursuing inflationary policies and policies of increasing public debt. In the context of the dominance of market relations in the global dimension, states are forced to implement a more reasonable economic strategy.

6. Savings and investments are allocated more efficiently. Thanks to this, poor countries that are in dire need of investment are not in such a desperate situation. Investors are not limited to their home markets, but can search around the world for those favorable investment opportunities that will provide the highest returns. Investors have more choice to allocate their portfolio and direct investments.

7. Finally economic globalization occurs along with a revolution in technological processes, which in turn cause significant shifts in the hierarchy of nations. The country's place in the modern world today is more determined by the quality of human capital, the state of education and the degree of use of science and technology in production. Abundance of labor and raw materials can become less and less a competitive advantage as the share of these factors in creating the value of all products declines.

Summarizing these and a number of other observations, we can say that modern globalization is characterized by a systemic shift in the dynamics of the world economic system. If earlier the success of entrepreneurship depended more on the classical combination of production factors, today this success is largely determined by a complex (non-linear) combination of elements of knowledge, the integration of these factors and technologies, the pooling of capital, information and intellectual resources.

Entrepreneurship is becoming less and less tied to any country or territory, with increased information dependence, and turning to innovation and investment is becoming the most important condition for success.

Thus, we can identify the following main characteristic features of modern globalization:
· creation of a unified global information space;
· increasing financial and investment centralization, with the help of which credit and investment resources are formed, accumulated, allocated and used;
· the growing importance of information, new technologies, innovations, knowledge and experts;
· continuous expansion of global oligopoly;
· growth of a layer of transnational enterprises, the creation of transnational economic diplomacy;
· intensification of world trade and capital serving it, despite the latter’s growing dominance over production and trade;
· tendency towards convergence of mechanisms and tools for managing production processes.

In the coming years, the process of globalization will be characterized by the following:
· integration of economic and information development of economies, creation of a unified information and investment space;
· integration of markets, market management systems and production systems;
· rapid development of information and telecommunication technologies;
· creation of new investment technologies based on reliable information support, strict legal regulation of investment decisions at the international and interstate levels;
· the use of high technologies in all spheres of life and production, which will necessitate a radical re-equipment of the material and technical base of all types of human activity, which will lead to significant changes in the way of life and thoughts of a person;
· harmonious, balanced development of the investment market infrastructure, integration of the functions and tools of investment institutions;
· unification, canonization of investment legislation, creation of interstate agreements in the field of investment and capital management, strengthening its influence on investment processes;
· the ability to move capital to any country that offers more favorable conditions for investment.

This rapid change in the global economy requires consideration of a number of general issues, such as:
- regionalism, international trade and multinational location of firms;
- theoretical foundations of international entrepreneurship;
- networks and alliances as the institutional basis of entrepreneurship;
- future trends of globalization;
- ways of international technology transfer;
- organizational forms of global entrepreneurship;

- competitive thinking and benchmarking in practice.

According to M. Porter /1/ the competitiveness of a nation depends on the following factors:
- the ability of a particular nation's industry to innovate and modernize;
- awareness of the fact that the basis of competition is increasingly shifting towards the creation and development of knowledge;
- the company's ability to achieve competitive advantage through innovation;
- awareness of creating competitive advantages through innovation;
- awareness that there is only one opportunity to maintain the achieved competitive advantages - to constantly improve them;
- the presence of four attributes of competitive advantage (“diamond rules”);
- the right approach to globalization through selective use of sources of advantage in the diamonds of other countries;
- the ability to benefit from research conducted abroad, for which the company must have highly qualified specialists and form a high level of its own research activities;
- understanding that competitive advantages come from long-term improvements (not from protecting today's secrets).

Thus, M. Porter clearly correlates the competitive advantages of a company and its ability to carry out and implement innovations, that is, to organize an innovative business, as a key factor for success in global competition.

He questions established explanations of national competitiveness:
- macroeconomic (for example, low budget deficit and bank loan rate - in South Korea the opposite is true);
- low cost of local labor in export industries (not so in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden);
- excess natural resources (not so in South Korea and Japan);
- government intervention in the economy (the opposite is true in Italy and Taiwan).

The only reasonable explanation for the competitiveness of individual nations: the presence in these countries of firms that have been able to use their distinctive advantages to create competitive ones. The most promising method of achieving such advantages is innovation and, especially, its strategic aspect. Such global experience can be used in Russia as well. The role of the state in this case should be, first of all,
- in economic stimulation of innovative activity with a clear ranking of individual works;
- timely protection of intellectual property rights;
- organizational assistance in the implementation of the most significant work in the state plan (for example, by organizing appropriate program-target planning).

This correlates well with the previously cited idea of ​​M. Castals that firms are becoming the main trading units on the world market. While they address the challenge of optimal global geographic location, operations in “home markets” continue to play a critical role in gaining competitive advantage. This is explained by the following circumstances:
- there are large differences in the conditions of economic activity in local markets;
- the world's leading competitors in each industry are concentrated, as a rule, in one or two metropolitan countries;
- the “critical mass” of activity (especially its nerve center) of global companies is usually concentrated in one place.

Global strategies can undermine the competitive advantage of the home base by dispersing activities, accessing other markets, attracting new skills and new technologies. But for all this to work, coordination is necessary, which can be carried out mainly from the metropolitan country. Thus, we should not talk about the disappearance of the role of location during globalization, but about its significant modernization.

In this case, everything that is discussed in /4/ about the strategic aspects of innovative business management does not lose its significance in the context of business globalization, but only requires certain adjustments and rethinking. For example, M. Porter points to the use of the following non-standard solutions in global competition:
- the use of critical investment processes with zero or even negative return on investment capital;
- a wide variety of purposes of financial activities in various foreign subsidiaries;
- designing an assortment of products with increased strength and selling them at reduced prices;
- integrating global competition and marketing in private markets;
- the role of intelligence in global business management;
- merging economics and sociology in strategic management;
- globalization of small business.

1.3. Innovation is a driving factor in global competition

The main characteristics of innovation as the main driving factor in global competition are considered by M. Porter /1/. Here are his main considerations.

All over the world, companies that have achieved international leadership use strategies that are different from each other in every way. However, although every successful company has its own strategy, the underlying operating principles—the nature and evolution of all successful companies—are fundamentally the same.

Companies achieve competitive advantage through innovation. They learn new ways to compete or find better ways to compete using old ways. Innovation may take the form of a new product design, a new manufacturing process, a new approach to marketing, or a new methodology for employee development. Most innovations turn out to be quite simple and small, based more on the accumulation of minor improvements and achievements than on a single, major technological breakthrough. This process often involves ideas that are not even “new” – ideas that were literally “in the air” but were not purposefully applied. At the same time, there is always an investment of capital in upgrading skills and knowledge, in physical assets and enhancing brand reputation.

Some innovations create competitive advantages, creating fundamentally new opportunities in the market or filling market segments that other competitors have not paid attention to.

If competitors are slow to respond, such innovations lead to competitive advantage. For example, in industries such as automobiles and consumer electronics, Japanese companies have achieved initial advantages by emphasizing compact, smaller, less energy-consuming models that their foreign competitors have neglected as less profitable, less valuable, and less valuable. attractive.

In international markets, innovations that bring competitive advantage anticipate both internal and external needs. For example, as international interest in product safety grew, Swedish companies such as Volvo, Atlas Copro and AGA were successful in the market by anticipating favorable market opportunities in this area. At the same time, innovations that are unique to the domestic market may even hinder the achievement of competitive success on an international scale. For example, the lure of the powerful US defense market has diverted the attention of US materials, tooling and machinery companies away from attractive global commercial markets.

In the process of innovating and making improvements, information is of great importance - information that is either not available to competitors or they are not looking for it. Sometimes innovation is the result of simple investments in research and development or market research. More often than not, innovation comes from deliberate effort, from openness and searching for the right solutions without being blinded by any assumptions or formulaic common sense.

For this reason, innovators often find themselves on the sidelines of a particular industry or country. Innovation may come from a new company whose founder has an unconventional background or simply has not been recognized by a long-established, established company. Or the ability to generate new things can come to an existing company through senior managers who are just starting out in the industry and are therefore more able to sense new opportunities and strive to achieve them. Innovation can also occur when a company expands its reach, bringing new resources, skills, or perspectives into a new industry. They may come from another nation, with different conditions or methods of competition.

Except in a very small number of cases, innovation is the result of extraordinary effort. A company that successfully introduces new or better ways to compete pursues its goal with great determination, often enduring severe criticism and overcoming significant obstacles. In fact, achieving success when introducing an innovation usually requires pressure, awareness of the need and even a certain aggressiveness: the fear of losses is often an even more powerful driving force than the hope of winning.

Once a company achieves a competitive advantage through innovation, it can only maintain it through continuous improvement. Almost any achievement can be repeated. Korean companies had nearly matched the capabilities of their Japanese competitors in mass-producing standard color televisions and VCRs; Brazilian companies have developed technological processes and developed designs comparable to competitive Italian firms producing special types of leather shoes.

Competitors will immediately and certainly bypass any company that stops improving and introducing innovation. Sometimes initial advantages, such as customer relationships, economies of scale in existing technologies, or reliability of distribution channels, are sufficient to allow an inert company to maintain its position for years or even decades. However, sooner or later, more dynamic competitors will find ways to circumvent these advantages based on their innovations, or create better or cheaper ways of doing similar business.

What are the reasons why specific companies based in certain countries are able to make significant upgrades? Why do they tirelessly follow the path of improvement and search for increasingly complex sources of competitive advantage? What makes them able to overcome the major obstacles to making the changes and innovations that so often accompany success?

The answer to these questions lies in the four attributes of a country, attributes that each individually and collectively form the basis of a country's competitive advantage, the space that each state creates and maintains for its industries. These are the attributes:
1) conditionsfor factors. A country's position in factors of production, such as the availability of skilled labor or infrastructure needed to compete in a given industry;
2) state of demand. The nature of demand in the domestic market for an industry product or service;
3) related and supporting industries. The presence or absence in a given country of supplier industries or other related industries that are internationally competitive;
4) sustainable strategy, structure and competition. The conditions existing in the country for the creation, organization and management of companies, as well as the nature of internal competition.

These factors determine the emergence of a national environment in which companies are born and learn to compete (Fig. 1). Each of the vertices of the diamond shown in the figure - and the diamond as a whole - illustrates the essential components for achieving success in international competition: the availability of resources and skilled labor is necessary to ensure a competitive advantage in the industry; information that shapes the opportunities that companies perceive and the ways in which they deploy their resources and employee skills; the goals of the owners, managers and individual employees of the company; and, crucially, the company's pressure to invest and innovate.

When domestic conditions permit and support the fastest accumulation of specialized assets and expertise—in some cases simply through greater effort and commitment—companies gain a competitive advantage. When the domestic environment allows for a better flow of information and understanding of the needs for a particular product and production process, companies also gain a competitive advantage. Finally, if domestic conditions force companies to continually innovate and invest, companies not only gain a competitive advantage, but also build on existing advantages over time.

Fig.1. Determinants of a country's competitive advantage (“Porter's Diamond”)

From a conventional point of view, it would seem that internal competition is something completely unnecessary: ​​it leads to duplication of effort and prevents companies from achieving large scale production. The correct solution from this point of view is to select one or two leading national companies with large-scale production and sufficient strength to withstand foreign competitors, and guarantee them the necessary resources and government support. In reality, however, national leaders are largely uncompetitive, even if they receive large subsidies and strong government protection. In many leading industries that have only one national leader, such as an aerospace agency or a telecommunications powerhouse, government has played a large role in destroying competition.

Static efficiency is significantly less important than dynamic improvement, which is extremely stimulated by internal competition. Internal competition, like any other competition, creates pressure on companies to innovate and improve. Local competitors force each other to lower prices, improve quality and service, and create new products and processes. However, unlike competition with foreign companies, which tends to be analytical and distant, local competition often goes beyond purely economic competition and becomes quite autonomous. Competitors located within the same country involve quite active hereditary hostility in their activities; they are fighting not just for market share, but also for people, technical excellence and, perhaps most importantly, for “bragging rights.” The success of one nationally competing company proves to others that advances in the field are possible and often attracts new entrants to the industry. Companies often attribute the success achieved by foreign competitors to the existence of some "special" advantage for them. In the case of its internal competitors, there are no such psychological benefits for the losing company.

Geographic concentration increases domestic competition.

Another benefit of internal competition is the pressure it creates to continually improve sources of competitive advantage. The presence of domestic competitors automatically eliminates the types of advantages that come from simply existing in a particular country - factor costs, access or preferential access to the local market, or costs to foreign competitors who import into that market. Companies are being forced to go beyond the above, achieving more sustainable benefits as a result. Moreover, domestic competition will force companies to be more responsible in obtaining government support. Companies are less likely to lock themselves into government contracts or support protectionism in their industry. Instead, each industry will seek and benefit from more constructive forms of government support, such as assistance in developing foreign markets, investments in certain educational structures, or other special factors.

Paradoxically, it is strong internal competition that forces companies to enter the foreign market and achieve success in it. Particularly in the case of a large-scale economy, local competitors force each other to pay close attention to the foreign market and improve their efficiency and profitability. When tested by fierce domestic competition, the strongest companies are able to achieve success abroad.

Each of the four named components of success determines the corresponding point on the diamond of the country’s competitive advantages; the action of one of the components often depends on the state of the other three. For example, demanding customers will not automatically lead to improved products if the quality of human resources does not enable companies to meet customer requirements. Specific deficiencies in factors of production will not stimulate renewal if competition is not strong enough and the company's goals are not supported by significant investments. Overall, a weak position in any of the components will limit the ability of a given industry to progress and innovate.

At the same time, positions in a rhombus also have the property of mutual reinforcement; they make up a system. Two elements, internal competition and geographic concentration, are particularly powerful in turning the diamond into a single system - internal competition because it stimulates improvement in all other key areas, and geographic concentration because it generates and enhances the interaction between four separate factors.

The role of internal competition illustrates the operation of the diamond as an internally reinforced system. Fierce internal competition stimulates the development of specific arrays of special factors, especially if all competitors are located in the same city or region.

Internal competition also encourages the emergence of related and supporting industries. For example, Japan's world-leading group of semiconductor technology manufacturers has stimulated the development of leading semiconductor equipment manufacturers.

These effects can work in all directions: sometimes world-class suppliers become new entrants to the industry they supply to. Or very sophisticated buyers may become a supplier industry themselves, especially when they have the necessary skills and the vision that the new industry will be of strategic importance. The Japanese robotics industry (eg Matsushita and Kawasaki) first developed robots for domestic use and then began selling robots to other countries. Today, these companies are strong competitors in the robotics industry. In Sweden, Sandvik moved from special steels to hammer drills, and SKF from special steels to ball bearings.

Another effect of the systemic nature of the diamond is that it is quite rare for countries to have only one competitive industry; rather, the diamond rule creates an environment that supports clusters of competitive industries. Competitive industries are not scattered haphazardly in the economy - they are usually connected to each other by vertical (buyer-seller) or horizontal (common consumers, technology, channels) connections. Such groups do not disperse physically either: they tend to be concentrated geographically. One competitive industry helps the emergence of another in a process of mutual reinforcement. For example, Japanese consumer electronics companies have transferred their success in semiconductor technology to the production of memory cards and integrated circuits. The success of Japanese laptop computer companies, which contrasts with the limited success in other segments, reflects strength in other compact portable products and the leading knowledge and experience in LCD displays gained in calculators and watches.

Once a cluster has formed, mutual support arises from all industries in the group. The benefits extend forward, backward and horizontally. Aggressive rivalry in one industry spreads to other industries within the cluster through technology transfer, market position development, and diversification of incumbents. Market entry from other industries within the cluster spurs upgrading by stimulating R&D approaches and facilitating the introduction of new strategies and skills. Through the channels of suppliers and consumers in contact with many competing companies, information and innovation flow freely. Interrelations within the group, often quite unexpected, lead to the awareness of new ways of competing and new opportunities. Such a cluster becomes a means of maintaining diversity and overcoming narrow-mindedness, inertia, and lack of flexibility.

The benefits of clusters in innovation and productivity growth over isolated locations may be more important than the benefits in ongoing productivity, although there are also risks. Some characteristics of the same craftsman that enhance current productivity appear to be even more important for innovation.

Firms included in a cluster are often able to respond more adequately and quickly to customer needs. With regard to the current needs of buyers, firms in a cluster benefit from the concentration of companies that know the needs of buyers and have established relationships with them, from the presence of firms in related industries, the concentration of specialized information collection structures, and the demands of customers. Firms in a cluster can often recognize consumer demand trends faster than individual firms competing with them. For example, computer companies in Silicon Valley and Austin are quick and efficient at responding to customer needs and tastes, and few can match them in this regard.

Participation in a cluster also provides advantages in access to new technologies, working methods or supply opportunities. Cluster firms quickly learn about advances in technology, the availability of new components and equipment, new concepts in service and marketing, etc. and constantly monitor these things, since these tasks are facilitated by ongoing relationships with other cluster members and personal contacts. Membership in a cluster makes it possible to directly observe the activities of other firms. In contrast, an isolated firm has worse access to information and is forced to pay more; there is also an increasing need for it to devote resources to achieving new knowledge within its own structure.

The potential benefits of clusters in recognizing the need and creating opportunities for innovation are great, but equally important is the flexibility and ability they provide to quickly respond to this need. Often, a company within a cluster can much faster find sources for new components, services, equipment, as well as other elements required when introducing innovations, regardless of what these elements represent a new production line, a new process or a new supply model. Local suppliers and partners can and do become involved in the renewal process, thereby ensuring that the products they supply better meet the needs of firms. New, specialized personnel can easily be recruited to fill special vacancies that arise when using new approaches directly in the local area. Mutual complementarity, useful in the process of innovation, is more easily achieved when the participants are located close to each other.

Firms in a cluster can experiment at lower costs and may not make large commitments until they are confident that a new product, process, or service will bring benefits. In contrast, a firm that relies on obtaining resources from distant sources must devote significantly more attention to negotiating contracts, securing shipments, obtaining required technical support and service, and coordinating activities with a large number of other entities, while a firm that relies on vertical integration , encounters inertia. Trade challenges associated with innovation reduce the value of domestic investments, creating pressure to maintain existing products and processes while developing new ones.

These and other innovation-driven benefits are amplified by the immediate pressures—competitive pressures, equalization pressures, and constant comparison—that exist in geographically concentrated clusters. The similarity of the basic environment in which firms exist (eg, labor costs, similar support facilities), along with the presence of a large number of competitors, forces them to think creatively about their differences. It is quite difficult for individual firms in a cluster to remain leading for a long time, but many firms are growing faster than similar firms located elsewhere.

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