Abstract
In the article, the E. Wallerstein world-system methodology is supplemented by the analysis of the counter-system factor in world history of the late Х1Х - the beginning of the ХХ1 century. The author dwells on the analysis of the key stages of the counter-system development. This is a) a counter-systemic challenge embodied in the K. Marx theory; b) Lenin's attempt to make a global counter-system revolution; c) the Stalinist technology of constructing and global expanding the counter-system structure; c) self-destruction of the socialist counter-system during Gorbachev's rule; d) the development of counter-system processes at the beginning of the 21st century, in which China begins to play a decisive role.The first(Marxist) stage is characterized by the theoretical development of the alternative world-system concept, new world-system which should replace the existing one. Marx formulated the basic principles of how the existing world-system should be reorganized. He made first steps towards in practical reorganization of world revolutionary process. According to Marx, Western Europe and, above all, Germany (by the end of the 19th century) have the most numerous and politically organized proletariat. So exactly this region should have become the “assemblage point” of a new world system with new social relations, new state and new government.The second (Leninist) stage is associated with an attempt through the "world revolution" completely eliminate the bourgeois world-system . However, this Lenin’s installation was not fully realized, limiting itself only to a breakthrough of the old world system "weak link". Nevertheless, a new configuration arose: a counter-systemic neoplasm appeared and began to develop rapidly. It carried distinct signs of a historical alternative. Appeared situation about which Marx did not write and Lenin could not foreseen.The thirdstage in development of the world-system alternative was the Stalinist USSR with its mobilization technology for an alternative future constructing. Stalin's strategic plan was not in the spontaneous "world revolution", but in the consistent projection of a pre-prepared world-system model (Soviet-style of socialism) on the rest of the world.This Stalinist project clashed with active resistance from the old world-system/ It generated German Nazism as a weapon of a global competitor eliminating. However, in reality, everything turned out differently than expected: before attacking his enemy, Nazism attacked his masters. This made them seek support from the USSR, their strategic adversary. So the situational “anti-Hitler coalition” was established.Ultimately, both competing world-systems did not achieve (each for himself) the full result. The capitalist world-system failed to destroy and assimilate the socialist world-system. The socialist world-system failed to totally crush the capitalist world-system and cover the whole world. The protracted process of "tug of war" between the socialist and capitalist world-systems has begun,After the death of Stalin, the socialist world-system lost its strategic initiative. The Stalinist successors are mired in petty political intrigues in short-sighted and ineffective geopolitical combinations, in imitations of a “victorious movement” towards communism. Having stopped in its external advancement, the socialist world-system began to lose its innovative potential, and, consequently, competitiveness.The logical conclusion to the involution of the post-Stalinist world-system was the fourth (Gorbachev’s) period. The socialist world-system, strategically disoriented, decaying morally and cheaply sold out by its own corrupt elite, became an object of absorption of the victorious capitalist world-system.However, from the beginning of the 21st century, the fifth period of world-system transformations had began. Anti-systemic moods are growing in the now-days world and anti-system processes are developing. The main "markers" of these processes were a) Islamist air attacs on the New York "twin towers", b) Russia's neo-imperial ambitions, and, c) most importantly, the emergence of the Chinese global alternative.The Chinese world-system alternative embodies a new strategy that is adequate to the realities of the 21st century. Its essence lies in the consistent “embedding” of a new world-system cluster into the existing world-system. One of the manifestations of such a new convergent strategy is the “Belt and Path project”. It can turn the Eurasian continent into a grandiose construction site with a huge scientific and technical scope. The article suggests that it is a new wave which is moving from the East. And that may symbolize the end of the 500-year history of the old capitalist world-system and the beginning of a new historical era.
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