Opposition of Civilizations and the Role of State in the Era of Multipolar World

Abstract

To study long-term socio-economic processes and the factors that determine them, two methods, two approaches are usually used at the present time: the theory of the cyclic change of world economic structures (WES) and the theory of the evolution of civilizations. In the theory of civilizations, attention is focused mainly on the factors that have the most long – ​term impact on economic and social processes, namely, on value-sense factors and the principles of the structure of society. The current spiritual, ideological, and geopolitical opposition – ​the confrontation between the American-style approach to globalization and the multipolar world (MPW) – ​can be seen as the most important engine and threat to historical development. The purpose of the article is to describe this confrontation in the language of the theory of civilizations. The article describes the civilizational turning point, the transformation of Christian Western Europe into the civilization of the capitalist West. The main task of this transformation was to eliminate all the traditional highest senses and ethical restrictions for the domination of the capital accumulation attitude and the ideology of individualistic liberalism. The article presents some features of the MPW that allow us to consider it (along with the concept of transition to a new, integral WES) as an emerging new civilization, an alternative to the civilization of the West. The leaders of the development of the new civilization are Russia and China. In these civilizations, the most important sense center is the state. In Russia, the focus on perfecting and heightening the status of the state can largely compensate for the decline of spiritual and ideological factors. This article is a continuation of the articles (Volkonsky, 2018; Volkonsky, Gavrilets, Kudrov, 2020).