The role of violets in the economy and the innovation process

Large organizations are constantly criticized for their conservatism, bureaucratization, wastefulness, uncontrollability. At the same time, for all their shortcomings, they are the core of any modern developed economy. Of the total number of firms in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, they make up no more than 1–2%, but they also create from 1/3 to 1/2 of the gross national product (GNP) and produce more than half of all industrial output.

Along with weaknesses, violets undoubtedly have many advantages.

The field of scientific and technical activity of violets, as well as state companies, is predictable, current, program-targeted scientific and technological progress (risk breakthroughs into the unknown - a chance for explorers). Violents are mainly involved in carrying out planned search and applied research (sometimes fundamental, especially in the pharmaceutical industry), in creating new models and upgrading (improving) previously produced equipment. These are innovative product strategies.

For large firms vital importance has a permanent reduction in costs. The innovative solution to this problem lies in the transition to new resource-saving technologies that they create themselves or, more often, adopt from developers and early innovators.

Violenti do not refuse to join the production of new products at the stage of maturation of their mass market.

New large firms most often appear in new industries or sub-sectors, and internationally - in new, dynamically developing countries. The creation of a violet requires large-scale investments. This is how many large organizations appeared in a number of industries a century ago, violets were formed in industrialized countries(for example, in Japan, South Korea), they also appeared in newest industries(computer, biotechnology). To be successful in the market, a large corporation must make interconnected investments in three areas:

1) creation of large-scale production;

2) creation of a nationwide and then an international sales and marketing network;

3) creation of an effective administrative apparatus.

Russia is known in the world as a supplier of all kinds of new ideas and inventions. But she is also known for the fact that, due to the lack of timely investments, she very rarely takes these ideas to large-scale production. The first steam locomotive that remained in the Urals, “dry” cement production technology, continuous steel casting, TV, radar, etc.

Violents acquire the features of "proud lions" - firms with a clear production profile and low diversification (does not penetrate into related industries and sub-sectors). At the same time, in the release of "their" mass goods, "lions" are technological leaders. Features of their positions in the market: technical or organizational advantages in an important and promising market segment. For example, Philips dominated the production of lamps, Toyota- compact cars, JV Khrunichev-Lockheed - launch vehicles for heavy commercial satellites.

The strength of the "lions" - concentration on a narrow, but massive and promising range of goods; high expenditures on R&D and the creation of the most powerful research structures, which, as the core of the organization, do not disappear under any circumstances.

The “Proud Lion” launches a mechanism of self-accelerating growth that is extremely beneficial for him. It starts with a massive market invasion with a new quality product at affordable prices. This happened, for example, with the program Windows corporations microsoft, the most widely used operating system for personal computers (PCs). Soon the first millions of users appeared.

Next, for the already known operating system it became profitable to write specific applications, which thousands of software companies immediately took up. This has become an additional argument for consumers in favor of purchasing the program. windows, through which they gained access to a host of other programs compatible with it.

Sales increased, the number of users increased, the cost per copy decreased, the price decreased, which rekindled the interest of software firms, and so on. With each round of self-accelerating growth, the “lion firm” is further and further separated from its competitors. Dynamic "lions" are most aggressive in competition in the upper echelon of the "pyramid of corporations".

The growth potential of the market segment in which the “lion” has been dynamically developing, sooner or later dries up. The active evolution of the violet ends, and it moves into the position of a “powerful elephant”, when the violet firm loses its dynamism, but instead acquires increased stability. In this state, it can exist for several decades. Stability is provided mainly by three factors: large size; diversification; the presence of a wide international network of branches.

The "mighty elephant" in the conditions of a stable existence is characterized by the effective tactics of the "dexterous second". It is impossible to be the first in the release of new products all the time with fierce competition. The risk of a pioneer is great, but large-scale production cannot take risks.

Often "elephants" avoid the role of the first when a new product appears on the market, but they are nearby, in the background.

Leading corporations begin to act only when the success of the novelty is noticeable. Οʜᴎ push the innovator company aside and come to the fore. The essence of the smart second tactic is that a firm does not have to be the first to get the most benefit from an innovation. Discovery, invention are mainly of scientific and technical importance. It becomes commercially profitable only with mass replication and application in different areas, that is, with deep diffusion. It is here that the advantages of the "violent - elephant" manifest themselves. Thanks to its widely diversified and mass production, it is the “elephant” that benefits the most from the application of the novelty in a wide variety of areas.

"In history IBM success often provided non-technological innovations. Unfortunately, in so many cases we were second in their implementation. But the technology turned out to be less important than the methods of distribution and sale... We systematically sold more than those with the best technology, because we knew how to explain the matter to the client, how to help with the introduction of machines, and how to bind the client to us after the purchase. The secret of our approach to sales: "system knowledge". (T. Watson, Jr., head IBM).

To implement this approach, “violent-elephant” creates in itself special structural units of strategic intelligence that monitors the promotion and commercialization of other people's inventions, which ensures the rapid creation of analogues that, if possible, surpass the original. The overall goal of the follow-the-leader method is to reduce the risk of innovation and reduce R&D costs by replacing free search with imitation of proven samples.

The situation of the "lion" - the whole business is developing rapidly. The situation of the "elephant" - only some areas of activity are developing successfully, while others are lagging behind. Over time, the dynamism of the "elephant" falls. His creative ability is declining. The "mighty elephant" turns into a "sluggish hippopotamus". While maintaining a gigantic turnover, the corporation gradually loses the ability to achieve a commensurate profit, and even becomes unprofitable. Causes:

1) strategic mistakes associated with too wide diversification and the corresponding dispersal of forces;

2) the general decline of the industry, the deadening of capital, the lack of prospects for production.

In a number of cases, the situation can still be corrected by a strategy of disinvestment, that is, getting rid of unprofitable industries and reducing costs in organizations that remain.

Table 3

G. Spencer approaches the problem of revealing the essence of evolution, considering it as an upward movement, as a transition from simple to complex, and, first of all, opposing evolution to the process of decomposition, disintegration, and does this very thoroughly. First of all, being a consistent positivist, he points to the existence of patterns common to all forms of matter - from inert, inanimate to social. The general essence of the changes that occur in the course of evolution with matter in all its varieties and forms is, according to Spencer, as follows.

Various material bodies can exist in two contradictory processes - in integration (ie, in unification, merging) and in motion. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account that: 1) loss (more precisely, binding) of movement leads to integration; 2) in turn, during the disintegration of a single body - that is, during disintegration - the material particles that were previously part of it and now being separated begin to move again. It is these two processes, which are in antagonism with each other, that form what Spencer calls 1) evolution and 2) decomposition. Decomposition (or dispersion) implies the release of motion and the disintegration of matter. Evolution, on the other hand, is a process of unification, integration of matter and binding of motion.

Spencer illustrates these processes of evolution and disintegration in his Fundamental Principles with numerous examples of the processes of transition of the most diverse forms of matter from a homogeneous (homogeneous) state to an inhomogeneous (heterogeneous) one.

In the course of evolution, movement is redistributed. Say, the particles of matter that were part of the molten mass of the planet, were in a disorderly, chaotic motion. As this mass cooled, a thin, but gradually thickened, hard crust formed. The movements of its individual parts - raising and lowering, stretching and contracting - became more and more ordered, acquired a rhythmic and oscillatory character. The same thing happened with the liquid and gaseous shells of the Earth.

Similar processes take place in living organisms. Strengthening integration, heterogeneity and certainty entails a redistribution of the associated movement (we are talking not only about the simplest mechanical, but also about more complex forms of movement - like any change in space and time), i.e., energy and resources, and ultimately and constitutes what is called the development of functions.

The most important manifestation of the strengthening of heterogeneity is the differentiation of the parts of a single whole and the functions they perform within this framework. This is a rather complex, ambiguous concept understood in different contexts. In ontogenesis (i.e., in the process of development of an individual organism), this is understood as the transformation of individual, initially identical, embryonic cells that do not differ from each other into associations of specialized cells of tissues and the body, performing functions that are fundamentally different from each other. And in phylogenesis (the process of the historical development of a whole genus of organisms), this term refers to the division of a single large group (genus) of organisms into many subgroups that differ in their functions (species), a process called speciation. Spencer introduced the concept of social differentiation into social theory, applying it to describe the process of the emergence of specialized institutions and the division of labor, which is universal for the entire social evolution.

As society develops, Spencer believed, the complexes of social activities that were previously carried out by one social institution are distributed among others - newly emerged or pre-existing institutions. Differentiation is the increasing specialization of different parts of society, thereby creating more and more heterogeneity within society.

For example, there was a time when the family initially had reproductive, economic, educational, and partly political functions. However, as societies develop, the complexes of various social activities that were previously carried out by one social institution - the family - become divided among other institutions. In any case, in modern societies, specialized institutions labor activity and formations definitely develop outside the family.

Now, together with Spencer, we can give the most general definition of the process called evolution: “Evolution is the integration of matter, which is accompanied by a scattering of motion, during which matter passes from a state of indefinite, incoherent heterogeneity to a state of definite coherent heterogeneity, and the motion preserved by matter undergoes a similar transformation."

At the same time, it should be noted that, referring to social evolution, Spencer does not agree with the idea of ​​continuous and uniform linear development. According to such an idea, the various savage and civilized peoples would have to be placed on opposite rungs of the same general historical scale. He also believes that "the truth lies rather in the fact that social types, like the types of individual organisms, do not form a certain series, but are distributed only into divergent and branching groups."

In general, the evolutionary theory of development includes a number of principles that are used in various forms. Although there is no complete agreement on the essence of evolutionary theory, it is nevertheless possible to speak of two main types of evolutionary tradition in sociology. The first type postulates a non-linear but rather ordered progressive nature social change. The second type is based on direct analogies with the process of evolution of the plant and animal world.

A powerful impetus for the emergence and rapid development of the second type of evolutionary concepts was the Darwinian theory of natural selection. At the same time, the basic principles of evolutionism as a social theory were based on the belief that the past of mankind as a whole and of any individual society can be restored. Firstly, by studying primitive societies coexisting with industrial ones, and secondly, by studying those relic or rudimentary remnants and customs that have been preserved in developed societies (just as a paleontologist restores the appearance of a prehistoric monster from several preserved fossilized bones). The most consistent supporters of the evolutionary tradition have often, and apparently not without reason, been criticized for their somewhat loose handling of historical facts and the active use of the “scissors and glue” method, i. social context.

To the greatest extent, various theories of social evolution dominated sociology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among them, one of the most influential was social Darwinism. This doctrine (by the way, having practically nothing in common with Charles Darwin himself and H. Spencer) took various forms, but most of the variants boiled down to two main provisions. The first provision is that in the development of societies there are powerful and practically irresistible forces similar to the forces acting in animate and inanimate nature. The second position is that the essence of these social forces is such that they produce an evolutionary process (in the direction of progress) through a natural competitive struggle between social groups. The most adapted and successful groups and societies, winning this kind of struggle, give birth to new generations with stronger adaptive properties, and thereby increase the overall level of evolution of society, which is expressed in the survival of the fittest. For some authors, especially L. Gumplovich and, to some extent, W. Sumner, this concept acquired racial overtones: it was argued that some races, possessing by nature signs of superiority, are downright inevitably called upon to dominate others.

A sharp dispute over the legitimacy of evolutionary theories has not subsided to this day. It usually revolves around the problem of the applicability of Darwinian principles to the evolution of human society, which, however, has a qualitatively different nature. Indeed, if we strictly adhere to these principles, then we must consider society as a certain set of elements (or properties), devoid of any order. In nature, selection is blind, spontaneously and randomly filtering out the best examples of various types of living and non-living creatures (the best - in the sense the best way adapting to changes in the environment). In this case, and social evolution is a process of change due to random variations and natural selection. Competition between people, social groups, societies and social phenomena leads to the fact that some types of social phenomena begin to prevail, because they better adapt (or help society adapt) to changing conditions, while others, on the contrary, come to naught and die.

Positivist social evolutionism was convinced of the uniformity of the operation of the laws of nature in the various worlds - physical, biological and social. The principles of development, according to positivists, are universal for all sciences. G. Spencer, for example, focused on the search for similarities and general patterns of evolutionary processes. For him, social evolution is an important, but still only part of the Great Evolution, which initially represents a certain directed process of the emergence of more and more complex forms of existence of inorganic and organic nature. Let us note that the above definition of evolution given by Spencer is, in principle, universal: it is applicable to the evolution of inanimate matter on an astronomical scale, and to the evolution of biological organisms, and to the evolution of human communities. The process of any evolution according to Spencer consists of two interrelated "sub-processes":

¦ differentiation - constantly emerging heterogeneity and increasing diversity of structures within any systems;

¦ integration - the unification of these divergent parts into new, more and more complex wholes.

Consequently, the concept of "progress" Spencer, in fact, uses not so much in an intellectual, moral or evaluative sense, but rather in a morphological sense, like biologists who distinguish between "higher" and "lower" organisms according to their degree of complexity.

Naturally, this kind of interpretation met with very active opposition from many philosophers, sociologists and theologians. Their critical argumentation was quite persuasive. Indeed, social evolution cannot be directly traced from biological evolution. Society is not a chaotic, disordered collection of individuals. It always has a certain structure and organization. Therefore, it is hardly possible to interpret social evolution and the social changes it causes as random mutations. The selection resulting from this process cannot be entirely passive. Society consists of people who have higher nervous activity and developed anticipatory reflection, and therefore goal-setting. In other words, the selection of social change is largely produced by the social environment itself. Meanwhile, this environment, as already mentioned, is organized, it not only makes a selection, but also creates innovations itself or borrows them from outside, introduces, tests, modifies, etc. Such innovations, as a rule, are not the subject of free or random choice, since they are largely conditioned by the entire course of previous historical development.

These criticisms were already largely taken into account by sociologists of subsequent generations - Durkheim, Kovalevsky, Radcliffe-Brown. Using a comparative approach, they emphasized the important interdependence of institutions within a social system. Society was seen as a self-regulating organism whose needs are met by certain social institutions. Individuals adapt their behavior to the requirements of the institutions that have developed in this society. Due to this, they gradually acquire a hereditary predisposition to certain types of social behavior. In some ways, this process, of course, is similar to natural selection - in the sense that "useful" customs and rules of behavior help society survive and function more efficiently, which determines the "positive", progressive direction of social change. Therefore, they are fixed in subsequent generations in the same way that “useful” (that is, allowing one to effectively adapt to changing natural conditions) physiological characteristics are fixed in the body and transmitted to its offspring.

The vast majority of theorists of social evolutionism are convinced of the existence of intellectual and technological progress in society. Not all evolutionists agree with the existence of moral progress. Those who share the view of its existence belong to the current of the so-called evolutionary ethics. They proceed from the fact that the very existence of morality is one of the most important factors in the survival of society, since it is the basis for the interaction and mutual assistance of people. Note that within this trend there were also disagreements. Some sociologists argued that the main thing in the moral-evolutionary process is a kind of formation of social-individual heredity, when society, based on the needs of its development and effective functioning, imposes on individuals and social groups their own demands, which they willy-nilly are forced to perceive and internalize. Thus, the individual will and consciousness are, as it were, excluded from this process. Others have argued that true social evolution occurs only through a process of moral and rational choice. At the same time, some supporters of the first point of view believed that moral evolution does not at all cancel the struggle for existence, but only softens, humanizes it, forcing the further, the more often to use peaceful, i.e., moral means as weapons of struggle.

Among the supporters of social evolutionism, there were also discussions about which of the factors have a stronger influence on the process of evolution: internal or external.

Supporters of the first, or endogenous, concept believed that the development of society is explained exclusively (or mainly) by the solution of problems of internal origin for a given society. Thus, social evolution was in many respects likened to organic evolution, since it went through the same stages - selection of the fittest, transmission by inheritance of qualities that help to survive and adapt, fixing them in subsequent generations, etc.

Adherents of the second, exogenous, theory, on the contrary, argued that the basis of social development is the process of borrowing useful customs and traditions, that is, the spread of cultural values ​​from one social center to another. There was even a special trend - diffusionism (from Latin diffusio - seepage). His focus was primarily on the channels through which these external influences could penetrate, be transmitted, and infiltrate a given society. Among such channels, conquests, trade, migration, colonization, voluntary imitation, etc. were considered. One way or another, any of the cultures (except, perhaps, artificially closed, fenced off from the outside world) inevitably experiences the influence of others - as more ancient , and modern ones. This process of interpenetration and mutual influence in sociology is called acculturation. It usually manifests itself in the form of the perception of one of the cultures (as a rule, less developed, although sometimes it happens vice versa) elements of another. Thus, in the 1920s and 1930s, American sociologists studied the influence of “white” culture products on Indians and black Americans and came to the conclusion that it was necessary to distinguish two groups - donor and recipient.

Thus, diffusionism is in many respects a counter, mutual process. Thus, we note how, under the influence of the process of convergence (which will be discussed below), many social institutions and elements of a common culture developed by Western European civilization, up to the domination of the nuclear family, penetrate into the developing societies of Asia and Africa, along with the fundamental principles of the economy and organization of production. However, don't we observe in most Western societies a general fashion for a number of Eastern religious cults (totalitarian sects, for example, are originally a product of a non-Western civilization), for Eastern martial arts, meditation, styles and trends in art that bear a clear imprint of Eastern traditions. Classical American jazz, for example, was largely influenced by purely African tendencies in music. Japanese management has long been spoken of as an outstanding social phenomenon, and attempts are being made to transfer many of its elements to Western soil.

There is a very significant difference between the endogenous and exogenous concepts of evolution. Endogenists are closer to a biological interpretation, since they liken societies and individuals within them to competing organisms that seek to displace and even, if possible, destroy each other. Diffusion of culture, in fact, has no analogues in biological evolution. It implies the ability of "competitors" not only to cooperate (cases of symbiosis are widely known in the plant and animal world), but also to learn from each other.

It should be noted that today the influence of evolutionary theories in sociology has largely weakened. The exception is the surge that was seen among the American functionalists in the 1950s and 60s. This revival is sometimes called neo-evolutionism. This trend is based on the statement about the tendency to utilize the principles of natural selection and adaptation, arising from evolutionary theory in the biological sciences. Functionalism used the organismic model of society and found in Darwinian theory an explanation of how social organisms change and survive, combining these explanations with their own basic provisions.

The starting point was to affirm the need for societies to adapt to their environment. The environment includes both the natural environment and other social systems. Changes in society, from whatever source, provide base material evolution. These changes, which increase a society's adaptive capacity as measured by the extent of its own survival, are selected and institutionalized following the principle of survival of the fittest.

Sociological functionalism defined differentiation as the main source of adaptation, that is, the process by which basic social functions were divided and assigned to be performed by specialized collectivities in autonomous institutional spheres. Functional differentiation and the following structural differentiation parallel to it provide the opportunity for each function to be carried out most effectively. At the same time, anthropological approaches often referred to specific evolution (the adaptation of an individual society to its specific environment), while sociologists focused on general evolution, which is the evolution of higher forms within the development of human society as a whole. This general perspective assumed a non-linear direction of change and the fact that some societies are higher on the progress scale than others, assumptions not made by representatives of specific evolution.

Concluding the conversation about the problems of theories of social evolution, we will try to say in a few words about the prospects for its further development. We are talking about a shift in emphasis from recognition as a central criterion of continuously growing productive forces to problems of a different order. These problems are quite closely related to the ideas of the outstanding Russian thinker V. I. Vernadsky about the noosphere.

Vernadsky considers humanity as a kind of integrity that has arisen inside the Earth's biosphere, but is acquiring ever greater autonomy from it. Of course, this autonomy has its limit, since the self-organization of any living substance (at least for the time being) has its limits on the resources of the planet on which it lives. Vernadsky sees the unity of evolution and history in the fact that life, like humanity, are planetary phenomena. Living matter, transforming the inert matter of the planet, forms the biosphere, while humanity, transforming not only the inert matter, but also the biosphere (to which it itself belongs), forms the noosphere.

The "pressure" of living matter on the environment is carried out through reproduction; scientific thought, by creating numerous technological devices, essentially leads to a new organization of the biosphere. Being part of the biosphere, humanity must comply with the "rules" of the inclusion of matter in the biospheric cycle. At the same time, the presence of reason, as it were, takes a person out of the circle of direct subordination to these rules. As long as a person felt himself a part of nature, as long as the power of his scientific thought and the force of its influence on nature were incomparable with planetary forces, he could feel himself a part of the natural environment. Today, the situation is changing significantly right before our eyes: there is not only destruction certain types animals and plants (and at the same time - the violation of the structure of the biosphere), but also the depletion of non-renewable mineral and organic resources. A situation arises, called the ecological crisis (some scientists gloomily view it as the threshold of an ecological catastrophe), leading to a disruption of homeostasis on a planetary scale.

There is an objective need to define the boundaries of this destabilizing influence of the mind. However, this can only be done by the mind itself - by realizing the parameters set by the biosphere, beyond which normal life activity cannot be carried out at all. In other words, what "formerly was considered only as the conditions of human life - nature and demographic factors, today turns into historical limits that limit the human mind as a geological force."

Revolution is often understood as any (usually violent) change in the nature of the government of a given society. However, sociologists usually refer to such events ironically as coups d "etat (literally translated from French - a coup d'état), calling them "palace revolutions." A fundamentally different meaning is put into the sociological concept of "revolution": this is happening within a certain (usually short by historical standards) period of time, a total change in all aspects of the life of society - both economic, political, and spiritual, i.e. a radical change in the nature of all social relations. "Palace revolutions", if they lead to some significant social changes, they almost always refer exclusively to political sphere, having practically no effect (or very little effect) on other areas of social life.

There are no theories in sociology that would claim to formulate general sentences containing the truth about all revolutions - both modern and in general historical retrospective. The existing sociological concepts of the social revolution are quite clearly divided into Marxist and non-Marxist.

It should be noted right away that until recently modern sociology was dominated, both in terms of prevalence and degree of influence, mainly by Marxist concepts of social revolution. It is in Marxist theory that a clear distinction is drawn between political changes in government and radical changes in the life of society: recall the division between base and superstructure discussed in the previous chapter. In a broad methodological sense, a revolution is the result of resolving fundamental contradictions in the basis - between production relations and the productive forces that outgrow them.

In one of his works devoted to the analysis of the situation in India, K. Marx argued that periodic changes in government, the change of royal dynasties cannot by themselves lead to a change in the nature of society and the nature of the mode of production prevailing in it. Revolution, however, according to Marx, is precisely the transition from one mode of production to another, as was the case, for example, during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, which took place thanks to the bourgeois revolution.

Central to the Marxist theory of social revolution is the question of the struggle of the main antagonistic classes. The direct expression of the contradiction mentioned above in the economic basis is the class conflict, which can take various forms, up to the most “explosive” ones in the social sense. Generally speaking, according to Marxist theory, all human history is nothing but the history of continuous class struggle.

Of the two main antagonistic classes, one is always progressive, expressing the urgent interests and needs of social progress, the other is reactionary, hindering (based on its own interests) progress and stubbornly unwilling to leave the historical forefront. What is the task of the advanced (for a given socio-economic formation) class? First of all, in seizing the historical initiative from its antagonist and breaking his hegemony. This is not easy to do, because the “arsenal” of the ruling class contains not only economic and military power, but also centuries of experience in political governance, and most importantly, total possession of information, knowledge, and culture. Consequently, in order to fulfill its historical mission, the advanced class must solve at least two tasks. First, he needs to get the appropriate knowledge, i.e. education. Here, the most far-sighted and wise representatives of the old class usually act as teachers and mentors, who, moving into the camp of supporters of the advanced class, thus play the role of a kind of Prometheus, stealing divine fire from the lords of Olympus and carrying it to people. Secondly, the advanced class must be ready for the active use of violence, since the old class will not give up its positions without a fight.

At the end of the 19th century, within the framework of Marxism itself, an influential trend arose, the founder of which was E. Bernstein, a student and comrade-in-arms of K. Marx. He decided to apply the main provisions of Marxist theory to the analysis of the trends that had taken shape in the development of Western European capitalist society at the turn of two centuries. Bernstein's main idea boiled down to the following: to remain faithful to the foundations of Marxist theoretical postulates, but at the same time "revise", i.e., reconsider some of the radical political conclusions from them concerning the immediate and future tactical actions of the Social Democrats. This approach caused a storm of indignation among the "orthodox" Marxists. The then leader of the German Social Democracy K. Kautsky published a work called "Anti-Bernstein" (apparently echoing Engels' famous work "Anti-Dühring"), in which, in fact, he excommunicated Bernstein from Marxism. Meanwhile, an analysis of historical events from the height of the century that has passed since then shows the correctness of the "revisionist" Bernstein rather than the "orthodox Marxist" Kautsky.

We will not touch on all the fragments of this discussion. Let us note only those of them that are directly related to the topic of our conversation. Bernstein doubted the inevitability of a revolutionary explosion, which, according to Marx, should soon sweep away the capitalist system and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary, he believed, the statistical data on the development of capitalism in Western Europe testify to opposite trends and show that the transition to socialism will be relatively peaceful and will take a relatively long historical period.

The early stages of capitalist industrialization are indeed characterized by rather violent social conflict both in industry and in society at large, and this conflict at times threatened to culminate in revolution. As capitalism matured, conflicts subsided and became less threatening. The main sociological explanation for this process is the institutionalization of the conflict. It is suggested that one of the reasons for the violent nature of the conflict was the destruction of pre-industrial social bonds and regulation at the dawn of capitalism. With the completion of the transition to a mature industrial age, new regulatory and integrative institutions are developing. Institutionalization results from the separation and autonomy of political conflict from social conflict, and the former ceases to overlap with the latter. The rise of civil rights means that the interests that dominate industry no longer drive politics. Citizenship also integrates workers into society.

Another process that falls into the category of institutionalization is the development of specialized institutions for the resolution of conflicts in industry, if it is already separated from politics. The state, as a kind of social arbiter, develops norms and rules according to which contradictions between employers and employees should be resolved. Collective bargaining between employers and trade unions is a new function of those social institutions within which negotiations are conducted and contradictions between capitalists and workers are smoothed out.

It must be emphasized that Bernstein referred his conclusions exclusively to the developed industrial countries of the West. This logically followed from the Marxist concept, it was in these countries that capitalism as a socio-economic formation matured to the fullest extent and created significant prerequisites for the transition to a more progressive mode of production. In accordance with the logic of Marx himself, the socialist revolution had to take place primarily in the most developed countries, for “not a single social formation perishes before all the productive forces have developed, for which it gives enough scope, and new, higher production relations will never appear before the material conditions ripen in the depths of the old society itself. Thus, strictly following the concept of Marx, socialist revolutions should have taken place initially in the developed industrial societies of the West - where the objective prerequisites for them were ripe to the maximum extent. (By the way, Kautsky later reconsidered his own views on the theory and practice of Marxism, for which he was accused of renegade by Lenin.)

What, then, should capitalism transfer to socialism as the basic elements of further development?

Firstly, of course, the material and technical foundation, a huge material wealth. This is not only about highly developed industry, highly productive agriculture and the advanced technologies accumulated in them. An important condition for society's progress towards socialism must also be a sufficiently high level of well-being for each of its members. The fact is that the material poverty of a significant part of the members of society will constantly give rise to a desire for crude leveling communism, which, in the words of the early Marx, “is only a generalization and completion of the relations of private property; at the same time, envy is universal and constituted as power ... Crude communism ... is only a form of manifestation of the vileness of private property, which wants to assert itself as a positive community.

Secondly, the new system must inherit from capitalism a highly developed democracy. Democracy in bourgeois society is not established by the highest command, it is quite organically woven into the fabric of all social life, forming the natural objective conditions for the existence of the individual, the most favorable environment for the functioning of capitalist production relations, thus constituting an integral element of capitalist civilization.

Thirdly, we can talk about yet another "basic element" of socialism, formed by capitalist production relations. The proletariat is beginning to be seen not only as a class, as a powerful political force, but also as a completely new type of worker - a competent, skilled, conscientious worker who is simply incapable of working badly, carelessly, carelessly. Such a worker is brought up by a rigid capitalist selection system, when preference is always given to the more skillful and diligent, and fierce competition in conditions of unemployment, and the strengthening of the law of labor change, and the highest technical culture of production, and many other factors.

The creation of all these conditions for the transition from capitalism to socialism (given here, of course, not in full) - that is, revolutionary changes during the transition from the capitalist socio-economic formation to the socialist one - cannot be a matter of a short-term, even a heroic period, it must take an entire historical epoch. The people of a given country must create the material basis of socialism with their own hands. If it is received “as a gift”, it is unlikely that this will be able to significantly change the state of public consciousness of large masses of people. Not to mention the fact that such a "gift" is unlikely to be able to raise the "average skill of the nation" to the required modern level. The conquest of legal and political freedoms, the struggle for them must become an integral part of one's own history: the habit of democracy cannot be acquired by watching the democratic life of other peoples on the TV screen ...

However, even after Lenin, many sociologists paid close attention to the fact that the main revolutions of the 20th century took place not at all in the “center”, but on the “periphery” of world development, in the most backward regions of Asia and Latin America. Meanwhile, in the “center”, class conflicts did not stop, moreover, they crystallized more and more intensively into those forms that today have received in sociology the name of the institutionalization of the conflict.

Even today Lenin's thesis has not lost its influence on the sociologists of the Marxist school. So, in 1966, the French sociologist L. Althusser persistently repeated the idea that the revolution is most likely in the weakest link in capitalist society, because social contradictions are most clearly visible there. However, the main problem for modern Marxist theories of revolution is the viability of world capitalism, despite the obvious presence of political conflicts, industrial strikes, and economic downturns. These theories explain the absence of revolutionary action by the working class, as a rule, by the balancing role of the increase in the well-being of the working class, the growth of its civil rights, as well as the powerful influence of the ideological apparatus of the capitalist state.

The positions of the Marxist sociology of the revolution were even more shaken in connection with the well-known events in our country and in the countries of Eastern Europe, which, in fact, led to the collapse of the practice of building “real socialism”. However, it would still be premature to talk about its complete disappearance from the scientific horizon: the logical scheme of K. Marx's concept is very tightly put together.

Non-Marxist sociologists also showed interest in the problems of social revolution. With a huge variety of their theoretical approaches, several stages of periodic “wave-like” growth of such interest can be distinguished.

The first stage refers to the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, when a number of works by such sociologists as B. Adams, G. Lebon, C. Ellwood and others appeared, who were primarily interested in studying the problems of social instability and social conflict, and precisely through this prism considered all phenomena, one way or another connected with the revolution.

The second stage is associated with a strong surge of sociologists' interest in the social revolution in connection with the events of 1917 in Russia: the February bourgeois-democratic revolution and especially with the October Revolution and its consequences both for Russia and for Europe. During this period, even a special trend appeared, called the "sociology of the revolution." It is closely connected with the name of P. A. Sorokin, who in 1925 published a book under the same title. In this work, he quite reasonably argued that the First World War and the October Revolution, inextricably linked with each other, were the result of huge upheavals in the entire socio-cultural system of Western society. At the same time, he very gloomily predicted that the consequences of these historical events promise even more serious upheavals to humanity in the not so distant future.

An important milestone in the development sociological concepts revolution began in the 1960s. This period is generally characterized by serious instability in all areas. social life, moreover, not only in the underdeveloped "periphery", but also in a relatively prosperous, well-fed industrial "center". During these years, major social conflicts took place in a number of Western countries, which seemed to many to be the beginning of a new revolutionary wave. Concerned about this, the governments of some countries, primarily the United States, have allocated large subsidies for the development of research programs dedicated to studying the causes of revolutionary situations, the social forces involved in them, and also predicting the possible consequences of such events. These studies of the theorists of the "third generation" of the sociology of revolution were characterized by the desire to study revolutionary processes not on a global scale, but in specific regions and countries.

Let us try to briefly describe the essence of some sociological concepts of the social revolution of non-Marxist content and let the reader judge for himself how adequately they describe the processes taking place in society.

Elite circulation theory. One of the founders of this theory was the Italian economist and sociologist Vilfred Pareto. He believed that any society is divided into an elite (i.e. a small group of people who have the highest index of activity in the area to which they have devoted themselves - primarily in management) and non-elite (i.e. everyone else). In turn, the elite includes two main social types: "lions" - those who have the ability to use violence and do not stop before using it, and "foxes" - those who are able to manipulate the masses with the help of cunning, demagoguery and hypocrisy. The process of periodic change of these types in power forms a kind of circulation. This circulation is natural because "lions" are more adapted to maintaining the status quo under constant conditions, while "foxes" are adaptable, innovative and more easily replaceable. When one or another type lingers in power for too long, he begins to degrade if he does not yield to another type, or if he does not recruit into his ranks those representatives of the lower strata (non-elite) who have the necessary abilities (also a kind of “circulation”, but already personal composition of this type of elite). This degradation creates a revolutionary situation, the whole meaning of which, in fact, comes down to updating or changing the type of elite that is in power or its personal composition.

In other words, a revolution occurs when the timely circulation of the elite, both horizontal and vertical, is not ensured. Therefore, one of the main social functions revolution lies in clearing the channels of social mobility. If there is no timely circulation of the elite - whether peacefully or through violence - society begins to stagnate and, as a result, may simply perish or at least lose national independence.

Modernization theories. The concept of "modernization" is, in the words of A. Kovalev, "a fuzzy collective term, which abroad refers to heterogeneous social and historical processes, both historically accompanying industrialization in the countries of developed capitalism, and in the countries of the "third world" now accompanying it after collapse of the colonial system. From this arose some derivative terms used in sociological texts, for example: “premodernist”, that is, referring to what takes place in the pre-industrial period of development, in a traditional society; "postmodern" - that is, characteristic of societies that have outgrown the framework of industrialization and entered the post-industrial period of development.

It should be noted that for a certain period of time, modernization theory in American sociology was the dominant analytical paradigm for explaining the global processes by which traditional societies reached their modern state. The concept of modernization includes several constituent parts. Let's list them.

1. Political modernization. It is connected with the development of a number of key institutions in the system state power– political parties, parliaments, the right to participate in elections and secret ballots that support participation in decision-making.

2. Cultural modernization. It, as a rule, generates secularization and increased adherence of members of society to nationalist ideologies.

3. Economic modernization. It is considered separate from industrialization (which is possible only in pure abstraction) and associated with profound social changes - an increasing division of labor, the use of management techniques, improved technology and the growth of commercial facilities.

4. Social modernization. It is associated with growing literacy, urbanization and the decline of traditional authoritarianism.

All these changes are considered from the point of view of increasing social and structural differentiation. Within the framework of the general theory of modernization, the emphasis is on the concept that considers the revolution as a crisis that arises in the process of political and cultural modernization of society. The point is that the most favorable ground for revolution is created in those societies that have embarked on the path of modernization, but carry it out unevenly in various spheres of their life. As a result, a gap appears between the growing level of political education and the awareness of fairly wide sections of society, on the one hand, and the levels of economic transformation lagging behind them, as well as the development of political institutions and their democratization, on the other. This creates the conditions for a revolutionary explosion.

There are also concepts that are more socio-psychological than sociological connotations. Among them, in our opinion, the so-called theory of relative deprivations deserves special attention (the term "deprivation", denoting a state that arises as a result of a feeling of deprivation, deprivation of something important, was previously used more actively by psychologists than sociologists). This theory was formulated by the American sociologist Ted Garr in his book Why Men Rebel based on an extensive analysis of historical data, as well as many years (from 1957 to 1963) of empirical research in more than 100 countries around the world. Based on surveys of the populations of these countries about how they evaluate their past, present and future and relate it to their ideal of a good life, Garr developed a "measure of relative deprivations." When he compared this measure with the extent of civil tensions in the same countries between 1961 and 1965, he found a strong relationship, supporting the hypothesis that the higher the level of relative deprivation, the greater the scope and intensity of domestic violence in a given society. used.

The essence of the measure of relative deprivation is the gap between the level of requests (KL) of people and the possibilities of achieving (VD) what they desire. As a result, a wide variety of situations can develop, but their essence boils down to the following positions:

¦ drop in VD at constant US;

¦ an increase in US at a constant VD;

¦ drop in VD with a simultaneous increase in US.

The gap between UZ and VD creates a state of mass frustration in society and creates an extremely fertile ground for a political explosion leading to unrest and violence.

These are the main approaches of non-Marxist sociological concepts to the explanation of the factors and mechanisms of the social revolution. However, there are other concepts of social revolutions, which we will discuss in the next paragraph.

In modern sociology, within the framework of the question of the development of human society, it is not so much the Marxist concept of the successive change of socio-economic formations that dominates, but rather the “triadic” scheme, according to which this process is viewed as a consistent movement of individual societies and humanity as a whole from one type of civilization to another - agrarian , industrial and post-industrial. According to many modern sociologists, including Russian ones, historical practice has confirmed that such a scheme is more in line with the truth. Thus, V. M. Lukin argues, in particular, that the reason for this correspondence was a more logical choice of starting positions: if in the dogmatized Marxist scheme rather secondary points were taken as the basis - forms of ownership, class relations, then in the civilizational scheme, the most fundamental structure of socio-historical activity is technology (and this is one of the most important components of the productive forces).

Let us note, by the way, that in the Marxist scheme, the core of the basis is by no means relations of production, but namely productive forces, i.e., the totality of personality-qualifying, technical and technological factors of a given mode of production. One of the starting points of the formational approach is the thesis that the productive forces are the most mobile, dynamic element of the basis (that is why they, at some historical period, come into conflict with more cumbersome and inert production relations, "outgrowing" their framework) . Although, alas, “neither Marx himself, nor subsequent Marxists developed the technological aspect in a sufficiently universal way. social production, despite constant assertions about the paramount importance of this aspect.

Since the 60s of the twentieth century, starting with the work of W. Rostow "The Theory of Stages of Economic Growth", the periodization of historical development began to be carried out using the ideal-typological allocation of various societies depending on the level of economic growth and socio-cultural conditions of various countries and regions. This typology is based on the dichotomy of traditional and modern societies. Moreover, the second of the identified types today is increasingly divided into industrial and post-industrial societies. However, to be completely consistent, the traditional society, covering a huge historical period, including, in accordance with the formational approach, the slave and feudal stages, can hardly be considered as a "starting" one. Indeed, how legitimate would it be to attribute to traditional societies, for example, the tribes of African Bushmen, Australian aborigines, or inhabitants of other hard-to-reach areas where primitive communal relations remain largely untouched? Therefore, it seems to us appropriate to put "primitive society" at the beginning of this chain. True, this concept, which came from evolutionary anthropology, is perceived and used in sociology very ambiguously. Nevertheless, we accepted it as a starting point and below we will try to substantiate and argue this choice, showing more or less clear criteria that separate primitive societies from traditional ones.

The transition from one type of society to another takes place as a result of a global revolution of a certain type. The general scheme of the progressive (ascending) development of human societies can be depicted graphically (Fig. 21).

Rice. 21. Scheme of the progressive development of human societies

As we have already said, a "revolution" in sociology is understood, as a rule, as a sharp change in all or most of the social conditions. However, in the history of mankind there have been revolutions of a different kind. They, perhaps, were not so sharp, i.e., they did not occur during a short period of time, at least comparable to the life of one generation, but could take the life of several generations, which in the historical sense is also not so lot. However, the impact that they had on the fate of mankind was, perhaps, much more significant and powerful than the impact of any social revolution. We are talking about radical changes in the nature of the productive forces, which could be called global revolutions. We call them “global” because, firstly, their development knows no national boundaries, proceeds in different societies located in different parts of the planet, approximately according to the same laws and with the same consequences, and, secondly, these consequences affect not only on the life of mankind itself, but also on its natural environment. The most important factor in such revolutions is the fundamental change in technology, which indicates their close connection with the productive forces.

It is difficult now to give any exact chronological date (or at least a period of time) beginning of the agricultural revolution. Using the periodization of G. Morgan and F. Engels, who followed him, one could point to the middle stage of barbarism, which "... in the east begins with the domestication of domestic animals, in the west - with the cultivation of edible plants." Thanks to these truly historic changes in technology, man becomes the only living being on the planet who begins to some extent come out of the slavish subordination of the natural environment and ceases to depend on the vicissitudes and chances of gathering, hunting and fishing. Most importantly: "... an increase in production in all sectors - cattle breeding, agriculture, home crafts - made the human labor force capable of producing more products than was necessary to maintain it." The Australian archaeologist W. Child, who called such a revolution "agrarian" (although there is another term for it - "Neolithic", indicating its beginning in the Neolithic), believed that it was thanks to her that the transition from barbarism to the first slave-owning civilizations. As a result, a class division of society arose and the state appeared. We will not go into too much detail about the consequences of this event for all spheres of social life, but it is undeniable that they were truly colossal.

We cannot know exactly when, but probably early enough - first in animal husbandry, and then in crop production - selection work begins. In any case, the activity of the biblical Jacob in crossing white sheep with black ones (he was promised a reward and a dowry in the form of a flock of sheep only with a motley color by his father-in-law Laban) already refers to a very high level of this kind of knowledge in animal husbandry and in some ways already anticipates modern genetic engineering. There are a number of parameters of scientific knowledge (albeit at an elementary level) here: empiricism, empirical verifiability, generalizability, and others.

Let's note one more essential moment. All primitive tribes and peoples that are at the stage of savagery, in terms of the organization of social life, are more similar than different from each other in terms of their life activity, regardless of which part of the world, in which lost area they live. They have almost the same social institutions, mores and customs. They use the same technologies and tools to obtain food. They have very similar ideas about the world around them, and religious rituals.

Differences begin in the period of the birth of the agrarian revolution, at the transition from the lower stage of barbarism to the middle, when the intellectual potential of man is first clearly manifested. And here, more clearly than in previous millennia, differences in the natural conditions of the habitat begin to emerge. “The Old World,” notes F. Engels, “possessed almost all domesticated animals and all types of cereals suitable for breeding, except for one; the western continent, America, of all domesticable mammals - only llama, and even then only in one part of the south, and of all cultivated cereals, only one, but the best - maize. As a result of this difference in natural conditions, the population of each hemisphere has since developed in its own special way, and the boundary marks on the boundaries of individual stages of development become different for each of the two hemispheres.

Predominant occupations of this or that tribe or people by some specific type of agricultural labor create the new kind division of labor and leave a deep imprint on the nature of the direction of development of the whole culture as a whole. Pastoral tribes are predominantly nomadic, while agricultural tribes are increasingly sedentary. This creates potential opportunities for the emergence of small settlements among the agricultural peoples, and then cities as centers of cultural and intellectual development.

The consolidation and development of the social progress achieved with the help of the agrarian revolution has probably taken mankind a journey of several millennia. Separate discoveries, improvements and inventions (related to the technique and technology of both agricultural and industrial production) that were made along this path, different in significance and influence on the life of society, were sometimes truly brilliant, but in general this influence and the social changes can hardly be attributed to their nature as revolutionary. And yet these changes, gradually accumulating, along with social changes in other spheres of life, ultimately lead to the next global revolution.

If history has not preserved for us information about when and where the agrarian revolution began, then the time and place of the beginning of the next global revolution - industrial (or industrial) can be called with a much higher degree of accuracy - the end of the 18th century, England. F. Engels even names the year in which two inventions appeared, which became a kind of capsule, the igniter of this revolution - 1764 from the Nativity of Christ. “The first invention that brought about a decisive change in the condition of the working class was the jenny built by the weaver James Hargreaves of Standhill near Blackburn in North Lancashire (1764). This machine was a rough prototype of the mules and was driven by hand, but instead of one spindle, as in the usual hand spinning wheel, it had sixteen or eighteen spindles driven by one worker.

In the same year, 1764, James Watt invented the steam engine, and in 1785 adapted it to drive spinning machines. “Thanks to these inventions, which were further improved, machine labor triumphed over manual labour. This victory simultaneously marked the start of a rapid and gigantic rise in social intelligence in human history.

Here I would like to make a small digression in order to more clearly show one of the main features of the industrial revolution, which played a decisive role in the entire further development of mankind. If you ask any representative of our generation who was the inventor of the steam engine, eight out of ten will certainly name Ivan Polzunov: all Russian history textbooks have said so. In fact, the project of a steam-atmospheric machine was announced by I. I. Polzunov in 1763 - a year earlier than Watt. However, fate played a cruel joke with him: he lived in a country that was still relatively far from the onset of the industrial revolution, and his steam engine remained, in modern terms, a laboratory, experimental model. Meanwhile, Watt's steam engine, twenty years later, found industrial application, and Watt, together with his companion M. Bolton, became a successful manufacturer, engaging in the serial production of steam engines. Watt, by the way, went down in history not only as a talented inventor (whose name is imprinted on every electric light bulb today as an indication of its power in “watts”), but also as one of the founders of the school of “early scientific management". In the same way, the whole world knows not V. Mozhaisky as the inventor of the aircraft, as Russian history textbooks wrote, but the Wright brothers. The inventor of the radio in the eyes of the whole world (with the exception of Russia) is not Popov, but Marconi.

The example of the invention of the incandescent electric light bulb, the patent for which was obtained in 1876 by the Russian electrical engineer P. Yablochkov, is also indicative. Few people know that this light bulb had an operating life of less than an hour. Thomas Edison undertook to refine it, as a result of which an industrial design came out of his laboratory with a resource of at least 6-7 hours and, most importantly, relatively inexpensive and technologically advanced in mass production (this information was heard in one of the TV shows "Obvious - incredible"); Is it any wonder that, in the opinion of any more or less educated Western man in the street, the inventor of the electric light bulb is Edison.

These examples once again show one of the most characteristic features of the industrial revolution: for the first time in history, it closely linked the industrial introduction of technical innovations with economic efficiency and thereby opened the eyes of many enterprising people to the great importance of intellectual (and therefore, in a practical sense, useless, as it seemed before). ) products. These examples reveal an important social pattern: any intellectual product - be it a technical invention, a scientific concept, a literary work, an ideological theory or a political doctrine - is a product of its era. It, as a rule, is born and receives recognition almost always on time: it is precisely by the time when the demand for it is ripe that consumers will appear (and in a fairly large number), i.e. people who are able to appreciate it and use it in their lives and practical activities. In the case of “premature birth”, fate, alas, can “bestow” oblivion on such a product (especially in those cases when it is not imprinted on material carriers).

Thus, machine labor triumphed over manual labor. The technical, technological, even political, and especially economic events that followed, grew in a truly avalanche-like manner, and even the briefest, most cursory description of them takes Engels (introduction to The Condition of the Working Class in England) a dozen and a half pages. We will dwell on the various characteristic features of this process in the next chapter, noting only that among the most important of these features is the emergence of the factory system, as well as a sharp increase in the attention of entrepreneurs to the achievements of scientific and technical thought and a rather energetic introduction of these achievements into industrial practice. This process entailed a rather rapid and significant expansion of the circle of people professionally engaged in research, design and technological works. Attention to the development of fundamental science has also increased, for which both the state and private entrepreneurship began to allocate a significant amount of financial resources.

Law of economy of time. Most of the social consequences of the industrial revolution "extend" up to our time and deserve, no doubt, closer consideration. However, the introduction of the achievements of human intellect directly into the productive sphere, that is, into machine production, is of a very contradictory nature. On the one hand, machine labor quickly gains a final victory over manual labor, which greatly reduces the cost of all manufactured products. The consumer benefits from this on an unprecedented scale. It was thanks to this victory that the industrial revolution gave a powerful impetus to the development of productive forces, incommensurable with all previous history. Such a revolution is indeed like an explosion. For some one and a half centuries, there appear - and, moreover, in huge quantities - machines, equipment, machine tools of incredible power and productivity: it begins to work in full force the law of economy of time.

The revolutionary upheaval in industry is characterized by an increase in labor productivity in all spheres of social production. If at the dawn of the industrial revolution, in 1770, the productivity of technical devices exceeded the productivity of manual labor by 4 times, then in 1840 it was already 108 times.

And it's not just about the fact that the productivity of "live" labor reaches unprecedented heights. One gets the impression that time is generally compressed to previously unthinkable limits. Thus, thanks to the appearance on a mass scale of high-speed vehicles, the previously seemingly endless expanses of our planet are sharply reduced. And on a trip around the world, which took Magellan almost three years, Jules Verne's hero Phileas Fogg spends only eighty days - and this is no longer fantastic, but quite realistic prose of the late 19th century.

In the context of the problem of the development of social and individual intelligence that we are considering, a sharp increase in the speed of dissemination of information and an increase in its circulation are of particular importance. If before a simple letter could go for years from the sender to the addressee, now this speed was equal at first to the speed of vehicles in general, and then significantly surpassed them thanks to the emergence of new means of mass communication, such as the telegraph, radio, Internet, equaling almost the speed of light.

Strictly speaking, any law must establish the necessary, stable and recurring connection between certain phenomena in nature and society. Thus, in the formulation of any law there should always be at least indications of: 1) those phenomena between which a connection is established; 2) the nature of this connection. Without such an indication, there is probably no wording of the law itself (which, in our opinion, the wording of the "economic laws of socialism" has suffered to a large extent in recent times). The law of saving time, or, as it is more commonly called, the law of increasing productivity (productive power) of labor, can be represented in terms of the labor theory of value: “... the greater the productive power of labor, the less work time necessary for the manufacture of a known product, the smaller the mass of labor crystallized in it, the lower its cost. On the contrary, the lower the productive power of labor, the greater the labor time required for the manufacture of the product, the greater its value ”(our italics. - V. A., A. K.).

Here, as befits this law, there is an indication of a causal (causal) relationship. In order for fundamental, revolutionary changes in the growth of labor productivity to take place, no less revolutionary changes in the means of labor are required. Such changes, of course, cannot occur without the participation of the human intellect, just as they cannot but cause serious changes in its very quality. We have already seen above that the spinning wheel with the beautiful female name Jenny, with the invention of which, in fact, the industrial revolution begins, allowed one worker, even using his own muscular strength (foot drive), to produce during the same working time 16-18 times more products. The combination of muscular strength with the steam engine pushed these boundaries even wider. The steam engine was, in fact, the first inanimate source of energy to have a truly industrial use, with the exception of the power of falling water and wind, which were used before, but still on a much more limited scale. Since that time, a sharp increase in demand from capital for intellectual products begins, it acquires its own value, the share of which in the total volume of capital is steadily increasing.

Of course, the impact of the accumulation of various scientific knowledge on the development of the economy is not unambiguous and not straightforward, especially at the stage of initial capital accumulation (or, as W. Rostow calls it, the stage of preparing the conditions for economic growth). In fact, a revolution in the technical and social conditions of labor entails an inevitable reduction in the cost of work force, since "the part of the working day necessary for the reproduction of this value has thus been reduced"

1. Moreover, the introduction of the latest achievements of science and technology into the direct production process at this stage leads not so much to an increase in general mental development, but to a certain degree to the stupefaction of the “average” worker, since in large-scale industry there is a “separation of the intellectual forces of the production process from physical labor and their transformation into the power of capital (our italics. - V. A.) "

2. As Engels emphasizes: “Let factory workers not forget that their labor is a very low category of skilled labor; that no other work is easier to learn and, considering its quality, better paid; that no other labor can be obtained by such a short training, in such a short time, and in such abundance.

The master's machines actually play a much more important role in production than the labor and art of the worker, which can be taught in 6 months and which any village laborer can learn.

True, this situation does not last very long (at least on a predominant scale), since as industrial societies develop, the effect of the law of labor change gradually begins to increase, which we will consider a little later.

However, the law of economy of time in this era begins to manifest itself not only in the avalanche-like growth in the volume of production of a wide variety of material products. Above, we mentioned how much the travel time between different geographical points has been reduced; how, thanks to a significant increase in the speed of movement and a reduction in the cost of these movements per unit of distance and time, a huge variety of diverse points of geographical space became achievable for most members of society, and how the time for transmitting information was rapidly reduced.

The increase in the rate of circulation of information, and with it the rate of increase in social intelligence, increases faster than the rate of all other processes that make up the essence of the development and evolution of society. Thus, it can be argued that the law of economy of time has the greatest influence as the industrial, that is, modern, society develops, in fact, not so much on the increase in the volume of production, the mass and range of material products (consumption and production), but on the increase the volume of production and the rate of circulation of intellectual products. This is precisely one of the most important prerequisites for the information revolution and the emergence, ultimately, of what is called the information society.

The law of the rise of needs. The industrial revolution "launched at full speed" and the operation of a number of other socio-economic laws (which had been very weak in previous eras). Thus, the operation of the law of the rise of needs, which previously functioned very limitedly - perhaps within a very thin layer of the wealthy and cultured elite of society, acquires a mass character. This law manifests itself in the era of the industrial revolution already in the fact that many objects, things, goods, tools and pleasures that were previously available only to the rich (not to mention new ones, previously unknown to the richest people of the past), thanks to a significant reduction in price and mass production are included in the daily routine of many ordinary members of society.

The law of the rise of needs was introduced into scientific vocabulary by V. I. Lenin at the end of the last century in his essay “On the so-called question of markets”, where he wrote: “... The development of capitalism inevitably entails an increase in the level of needs of the entire population and the working proletariat. This increase is created in general by an increase in the frequency of product exchanges, leading to more frequent clashes between the inhabitants of the city and the countryside, of different geographical areas, etc. ... This law of the rise of needs has fully affected the history of Europe ... The same law is manifesting its effect in Russia ... That this undoubtedly progressive phenomenon should be put on credit precisely to Russian capitalism and nothing else is proved by the already well-known fact ... that the peasants of industrial areas live much “cleaner” than the peasants who are engaged in agriculture alone and are almost not affected by capitalism.

Actually, Marx and Engels pointed to such a possibility in the first chapter of their "German Ideology": "... The satisfied first need itself, the action of satisfaction and the already acquired instrument of satisfaction lead to new needs, and this generation of new needs is the first historical act." Probably, the operation of the law of the rise of needs was manifested both in previous eras and in societies of the traditional type. Convinced of the convenience of using new, unknown to their ancestors, tools of labor and personal consumption items, people quickly get used to them, and any of their disappearance from their lives or a decrease in the level of their consumption is already considered as a decrease in the very standard of living. (Although until relatively recently, not only their ancestors, but they themselves, unaware of their existence, completely dispensed with such items and at the same time felt sufficiently satisfied.) Nevertheless, during the era of traditional societies, the overall level of inquiries of the vast majority population remains very low, weakly, almost imperceptibly changing over time. Many generations live in a circle of almost the same set of needs. There is reason to believe that this range of needs, say, for the “average” Russian peasant of the late 18th century, is unlikely to differ sharply from the set of needs that his ancestor had three or four hundred years ago. (By the way, this was also determined by the extremely low development of communication networks.)

The situation changes radically with the onset of industrialization. We mentioned above that the main features of an industrial society manifest themselves systematically in history. The set of socio-economic laws that we are considering is no less connected and integral system. Thus, the expansion of the scope of the law of the rise of needs is brought to life by the intensification of the law of economy of time: many types of consumer products are significantly cheaper due to mass production, and many previously unknown types of it appear on the market. It is because of the cheapening of essential commodities that the cost of labor power also becomes cheaper. At the same time, the totality of these processes leads to a situation that K. Marx calls the absolute impoverishment of the working class. Let's try to define this situation.

The relative impoverishment of the proletariat is much easier to understand: it arises from the fact that the rate of increase in the income of the working class lags behind the rate of increase in the income of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, although in an industrial society there really seems to be an increase in the income of the "average" worker, the rate of this increase lags more and more behind the rate of profits received by the bourgeois class. But how to understand the essence of absolute impoverishment? K. Marx in most cases directly connects it with a decrease in the level of wages of workers in comparison with their previous position. However, already E. Bernstein, only a decade and a half after Marx's death, emphasizes as a stable trend the universal growth of incomes of the working class in absolute terms. In this context, the essence of the absolute impoverishment of the proletariat can only be understood in the following way: the growth rate of its income lags behind the growth rate of its needs in quantitative, but especially in qualitative terms.

During the life of one generation, more and more new, previously unknown types of consumer products appear, and most importantly, they very quickly turn into essentials. A kind of symbol of this process was the activity of Henry Ford, who formulated as the mission of his business the creation of a car accessible to the average American (remember the famous phrase of Ostap Bender: “A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation”). Of course, advertising also makes a considerable contribution to the development of this process, but still the main role belongs to the dizzying growth rates of mass production, that is, to the strengthening of the action of the law of economy of time already known to us.

So, the operation of the law of the rise of needs leads to the fact that in almost all strata of industrial society, the requirements for the quality of life are changing at a rapid pace. And an increasing place among the ideas about this quality is occupied by education and advanced training. Against the background of the growing educational level of friends, colleagues, neighbors and their children, the “average” layman is already beginning to consider it normal for his children to receive a more complete education, improve their own educational and qualification level, familiarize their family with cultural achievements and increase interest in politics. Thus, the needs of intellectual development and self-development are increasingly affected by common law elevation of needs.

The law of change of labor. A very special place among the socio-economic laws is occupied by the law of change of labor, which could be regarded as a kind of version of the "law of the rise of intellectual needs." Marx introduces the concept of this law in the first volume of Capital: “... The nature of large-scale industry determines the change of labor, the movement of functions, the all-round mobility of the worker ... On the other hand, in its capitalist form it reproduces the old division of labor with its ossified specialties. We have seen how this absolute contradiction destroys all peace, stability and security of the worker's living situation, constantly threatens, together with the means of labor, to knock out his means of subsistence from his hands and, together with his partial function, to make himself superfluous ... This is - negative side. But if the change of labor now makes its way only as an irresistible natural law and with the blind destructive force of natural law, which runs into obstacles everywhere, then, on the other hand, large-scale industry itself, by its catastrophes, makes it a matter of life and death to recognize the change of labor, and therefore the greatest possible versatility of the workers, the universal law of social production, to the normal implementation of which relations must be adapted (our italics. - V. A., A. K.).

What Marx said can be concretized in the form of the following basic provisions of the law of labor change.

1. The interests of the progressive development of social production require the constant bringing of the nature of the labor force (educational, skilled, psychological, etc.) in line with the current and rapidly changing organizational and technological level of production.

2. This, in turn, necessitates the constant readiness of the participants in the production process to bring their knowledge, skills and abilities into the same correspondence both quantitatively and qualitatively (up to changing their specialty or even profession) - then what Marx calls all-round mobility.

3. This law is objective, that is, it operates outside and independently of the will of people, what they want or do not want, realize or do not realize - with the blind and even "destructive" power of natural law. Cancel, destroy or slow down its action is not given to anyone, it can and should only be taken into account, adapted to it. The power of this law will be truly destructive until its mechanisms are revealed, and their action is directed in the direction of production relations that is beneficial for the subject.

4. The law of the change of labor comes into full force at the stage of the emergence of large-scale industry (it is “the nature of large-scale industry that determines the change of labor”) and, as the industrial and then the scientific and technological revolution develops, it asserts itself more and more powerfully. To the greatest extent, the manifestation and nature of the action of this law depend mainly on the level of productive forces, since it reflects precisely the nature and pace of their development.

5. The action of this law, like no other, stimulates the development of the intellect - and above all the individual. This development, in the words of Marx, “as a matter of life and death”, which poses such a task: “... replace a partial worker, a simple carrier of a known partial social function, with a comprehensively developed individual, for whom various social functions are successive modes of life (italics ours - V. A., A. K) "

Note that the process of changing labor was carried out before the industrial revolution. But is there any reason to assert that he was subject to the operation of the law of change of labor - at least in the context in which it was formulated by Marx? Let's say, before the invasion of capitalist relations into agricultural production, the peasant had to be, involuntarily, an agronomist, a livestock breeder, and a carpenter. However, this circle of occupations was quite clearly defined, and the peasants did not go beyond it from generation to generation. Consequently, the meaning of the change of labor, determined by the law we are talking about, does not refer to any change in the types of activity by the same individual.

Thus, as a result of the industrial revolution, human society passes into a qualitatively different state, called industrial civilization. The speed of social changes is increasing to an enormous extent: their quality and volume are sharply increasing, and the time during which they occur is reduced to one and a half to two centuries.

However, objectivity requires addressing the negative consequences of the industrial revolution. Whether we like it or not, one of the basic tenets of dialectics is that everything comes with a price. Along with the indisputable benefits that the industrial revolution brought to mankind, there appeared (and also in colossal volumes) the instruments of death, whose "productivity" also fell under the general effect of the law of economy of time. Yes, in fact, the benefits themselves turned out to be not so indisputable: by stimulating the production of more and more volumes of products and goods, developing in the consumer the habit of goods and the desire to acquire more and more of them, the era of the industrial revolution brought humanity to the threshold of planetary catastrophes. scale. Even if we ignore the very real danger of self-destruction in a thermonuclear fire, it becomes impossible to turn a blind eye to how the insatiable moloch of the industry requires an increasing amount of resources for its subsistence - raw materials and energy.

And man, armed with weapons of enormous power, makes strenuous efforts to feed this Moloch, risking undermining the very foundation of his own existence - nature. In other words, it is the results of the industrial revolution that force us to take a fresh look at the essence of socio-historical evolution, which we discussed in the first paragraph of this chapter.

At the same time, the growing shortage of all types of raw materials, energy (and even - in a certain sense - human resources), apparently, and served as one of the main factors that determined the emergence and development of the third of the revolutions we are considering - the information one. Already its first fruits are felt as a true blessing.

That part of humanity that lives in the countries that fell into the sphere of influence of this revolution seems to have forever got rid of the fear of the specter of starvation that has loomed on the historical horizon for so long (remember the ominous seer Malthus!). The population of these countries is provided in abundance with essential products (as well as the second and third). But the main thing, perhaps, is not even that. Science, which used to be more of a useless luxury than a real necessity, has turned into a truly productive force of society and therefore began to recruit more and more people into its ranks. The share of the population professionally engaged in science is growing. And this, in turn, requires appropriate information support. However, the scientific and technological revolution of the second half of the twentieth century expands the material possibilities for such provision. If the industrial revolution first of all “lengthened the arms” of a person, increased his muscular power many times over, then the scientific and technological revolution significantly expanded the possibilities of human intelligence, creating machines, devices and devices that practically unlimitedly increased the memory capacity and accelerated the elementary processes of information processing by millions of times.

This created the preconditions for the information revolution to collapse on the world. Having completed the massive renewal of fixed assets by the beginning of the 800s of the twentieth century (focused mainly on the goals of energy and resource saving), the economies of the most developed countries shifted their main focus to automation and computerization of all production processes, including management. The basis of this process is electronic information and the development of automatic production on its basis. If you try to formulate the essence of one of the most important aspects of this revolution, then it seems to be that it is precisely this that turns information (almost any!) into a good available for mass consumption - just as the industrial and scientific and technological revolutions available material goods. The possession and use of knowledge cease to be the privilege of the elite.

The germ from which the information revolution matured more than five hundred years later was Johannes Guttenberg's printing press. Until that time, the exchange of information was very weak, and information and knowledge leaked to a person, as they say, in scattered drops. Knowledge, skills and abilities were transmitted mainly orally and "at a glance" - from father to son, from teacher to student, from generation to generation. Reading, that is, the process of obtaining information through a material intermediary, the carrier of this information, fixed in a sign system, was the lot of a relatively small part of humanity. Objectively, apart from other reasons (such as, for example, the high cost of material - up to the appearance of relatively cheap paper), the widespread literacy was hindered by the too low labor productivity of book copyists. Needless to say, manuscripts and incunabula are rarities not only today, but were such in the very era of their production. It was the printing press that helped the information drops to connect into a stream - at first weak, thin, but over the centuries turned into a full-flowing river.

The information revolution is aimed at resolving this global contradiction: on the one hand, the scientific and technological revolution, due to the fact that the law of labor change has intensified, has sharply increased the demand for knowledge; on the other hand, a huge mass of the population, even in developed countries, is simply not able to master the required volume of a colossal mass of information (obtained, we note, by others), while at the same time more and more urgently needing it.

Based on the foregoing, we can draw some general conclusions about the place and significance that global revolutions had in the history of human society. Undoubtedly, all of them had an international universal character and inevitably spread around the globe. E. A. Arab-Ogly notes that “each of these revolutionary upheavals in the development of the productive forces of society was the prologue of a new era in world history and was accompanied by profound irreversible changes in economic activity society. Each revolution gave rise to new branches of social production (at first Agriculture, then industry, and now the sphere of scientific and information activities), which eventually turned into dominant ones, and society began to devote a lot of effort and attention to them.

The social consequences common to all global revolutions could be summarized in the following main points.

¦ Each global revolution led to a sharp, multiple increase in the productivity of human labor in a relatively short time compared to the previous period of socio-historical development.

¦ All global revolutions were accompanied by a huge growth in the material, material wealth of society.

¦ In the course of global revolutions, the division of labor was significantly deepened, many qualitatively new types of professional activity. As a result of this, there was a mass movement of the population from traditional to new branches of material and spiritual production.

¦ In the course of technological revolutions, many types of activities that were previously considered fruitless and idle turned into the most productive and meaningful.

¦ As a result of global revolutions, there were profound changes in the way of life of people.

¦ Each of the global revolutions ultimately led to the emergence of a new type of civilization.

1. In most sociological concepts, social evolution is seen as an upward movement - as a transition from simple to complex. Evolution is also opposed to the opposite process of decomposition (disintegration). As society develops, as H. Spencer believed, the complex of social activities that were previously carried out by one social institution is redistributed among other newly emerged or previously existing institutions. Differentiation is the increasing specialization of different parts of society, thereby creating more and more heterogeneity within society. G. Spencer gives a universal and most general definition of evolution: “Evolution is the integration of matter, which is accompanied by the binding of motion, during which matter passes from a state of indefinite, incoherent heterogeneity to a state of certain connected heterogeneity, and the motion preserved by matter undergoes a similar transformation.”

2. The most important manifestation of the strengthening of heterogeneity is the differentiation of parts of a single whole and the functions they perform within this framework. Spencer introduced the concept of social differentiation into sociology, applying it to describe the process of the emergence of specialized institutions and the division of labor, which is universal for the entire social evolution.

3. Among the supporters of social evolutionism, there have been discussions about which of the factors have a stronger influence on the process of evolution: internal or external. Supporters of internal factors, or endogenous evolution, believed that the development of society is explained mainly by the influence on it of causes of internal origin. Adherents external factors, or exogenous evolution, on the contrary, argued that the basis of social development is the processes of borrowing useful customs and traditions, the spread of cultural values ​​from one social center to another.

4. Up until recently, modern sociology has been dominated mainly by Marxist concepts of social revolution. According to their point of view, revolution in the methodological sense is the result of the resolution of fundamental contradictions in the basis - between production relations and the productive forces that outgrow them. Central to the Marxist theory of social revolution is the question of the struggle of the main antagonistic classes.

5. In sociology, a number of the most famous and influential non-Marxist sociological concepts of social revolution are distinguished. The elite circulation theory (V. Pareto) claims that the main task revolution consists in “cleansing” the horizontal and vertical channels of mobility, since without a periodic change in the power elite and a qualitative change in its composition, the normal functioning of society is impossible. The theory of modernization as a factor of revolution focuses on the gap between the growing level of political education and awareness of fairly wide sections of society, on the one hand, and the real levels of economic transformation lagging behind them, as well as the development of political institutions and their democratization, on the other. 6. In accordance with a number of modern sociological theories, three global revolutions can be pointed out, the core of which is a fundamental change in technology, which indicates their close connection with the productive forces. The agrarian revolution leads to a transition from a primitive society to a traditional one. The Industrial Revolution transforms an agrarian society into an industrial one. In the course of it, the effect of three socio-economic laws is sharply enhanced: the law of saving time, the law of the rise of needs, the law of labor change. happening on present stage social development, the information revolution will transform the industrial society into a post-industrial one.

1. How does G. Spencer's definition of evolution sound?

2. What are the main provisions of social Darwinism?

3. What are the main differences between the endogenous and exogenous approaches to describing the process of social evolution?

4. What is acculturation?

5. In the course of the social revolution, what is the task of the advanced - for a given socio-economic formation - class?

6. What is the essence of the institutionalization of the conflict?

7. What is the main idea of ​​the elite circulation theory?

8. What is the main factor in all global revolutions and what are the general consequences of such revolutions?

9. What two inventions can be considered as the "trigger" of the industrial revolution?

10. List three socio-economic laws that begin to function "in full force" during the industrial revolution.

1. Vernadsky V. I. Reflections of a naturalist. Book. 2. - M., 1977.

2. Gumilyov L. R. Ethnogenesis and biosphere of the earth. - M., 1993.

3. Darwin Ch. The origin of man and sexual selection. - M.-L., 1959.

4. Kozlova M. S. Ecological meaning of human evolution // Chelovek. - 1998. No. 4.

5. Lenin V. I. On the slogan of the "United States of Europe" // Lenin V. I. Poln. coll. op. T. 26.

6. Marx K. To the criticism of political economy. Preface // Marx K, Engels F. Sobr. cit., 2nd ed. T. 13.

7. Rose G. Progress without social revolution? - M., 1985.

8. Soares K. Society in the process of change // Sociological research, - 1991. No. 12.

9. Modern Western Sociology: Dictionary. - M., 1990.

10. Spencer G. Basic principles. - St. Petersburg, 1897.

11. Sorokin P. A. Sociology of revolution // Sorokin P. A. Man. Civilization. Society. - M., 1992.

12. Sorokin P. A. Sociocultural dynamics and evolutionism // In the book: American Sociological Thought. - M., 1994.

13. Tylor E. B. Primitive culture. - M., 1989.

14. Turovsky M. B., Turovskaya S. V. The concept of V. I. Vernadsky and the prospects for evolutionary theory // Problems of Philosophy. - 1993. No. 6.

15. Fadeeva T. M. Social revolution and traditions // Sociological research. - 1991. No. 12.

16. Engels F. Preface to the work The situation of the working class in England // Marx K., Engels F. Sobr. cit., 2nd ed. T. 2.

New large firms most often appear in new industries or sub-sectors, and internationally - in new, dynamically developing countries. Creating a violet requires large-scale investments. It was in this way that many large organizations appeared in a number of industries a century ago, violets were formed in industrial countries (for example, in Japan, South Korea), they appeared in the latest industries (computer, biotechnology). To be successful in the market, a large corporation must make interconnected investments in three areas:

• - creation of large-scale production;
• - Creation of a nationwide and then an international sales and marketing network;
• - Creation of an effective management apparatus.

Russia is known in the world as a supplier of all kinds of new ideas and inventions. But she is also known for the fact that, due to the lack of timely investments, she very rarely takes these ideas to large-scale production. The first steam locomotive that remained in the Urals, the invention of the radio is a priority for A. Popov, and all over the world it is considered the brainchild of the manufacturer G. Marconi; "dry" technology of cement production, continuous casting of steel, TV, radar, etc.

Violents acquire the features of "proud lions" - firms with a clear production profile and low diversification (does not penetrate into related industries and podotasli). However, in the release of "their" mass product, "lions" are technological leaders. Features of their position in the market: technical and organizational advantages in an important and promising market segment. For example, the Philips concern dominated the production of lamps, Toyota - compact cars, Khrunichev-Lockheed JV - launch vehicles for heavy commercial satellites.

The strength of the "lions" is the concentration on a narrow, but massive and promising range of goods; high expenditures on R&D and the creation of the most powerful research structures, which, as the core of the organization, do not disappear under any circumstances.

The “Proud Lion” launches a mechanism of self-accelerating growth that is extremely beneficial for him. It starts with a massive market invasion with a new quality product at affordable prices. This happened, for example, with Microsoft's Windows program, which is the most common operating system for personal computers. Soon the first millions of users appeared.

Further, for the already known operating system, it became profitable to write specific applications, which thousands of programming firms immediately took up. This has become an additional reason for consumers to purchase the Windows program, through which they have access to a host of other programs that are compatible with it.

Sales increased, user numbers increased, cost per copy decreased, price decreased, rekindling the interest of software firms, and so on. With each round of self-accelerating growth, the firm - "lion" breaks away from competitors further and further. Dynamic "lions" are most aggressive in competition in the upper echelon of the "pyramid" of corporations.

The growth potential of the market segment in which the "lion" is developing dynamically, sooner or later dries up. The active evolution of the violet ends, and it passes into the position of a “powerful elephant”, when the violet firm loses its dynamism, but instead acquires increased stability. In this state, it can exist for a number of decades. Stability is provided mainly by three factors: large size; diversification; the presence of a wide international network of branches.

The "mighty elephant" in the conditions of a stable existence is characterized by the effective tactics of the "dexterous second". It is impossible to be the first in the release of new products all the time with fierce competition. The risk of a pioneer is great, but large-scale production cannot take risks.

Often "elephants" avoid the role of the first when a new product appears on the market, but they are nearby, in the background. Entry corporations begin to act only when the success of the novelty is noticeable. They set off the innovator company and come to the fore. The essence of the smart second tactic is that a firm does not have to be the first to get the most benefit from an innovation. Discovery, invention are mainly of scientific and technical importance. It becomes commercially profitable only with mass replication and application in various fields, i.e. with deep diffusion. It is here that the advantages of the violet - the "elephant" - appear. Thanks to its widely diversified and mass production, it is the “elephant” that benefits the most from the application of the novelty in a wide variety of areas.

“In the history of IBM, success has often been driven by non-technological innovations. Unfortunately, in so many cases we were second in their implementation. But technology turned out to be less important than marketing and sales methods... We systematically sold more than those with the best technology because we knew how to explain things to the client, how to help with the implementation of the machines, and how to bind the client to us after the purchase. The Secret of Our Sales Approach: "Systems Knowledge" T. Watson, Jr., CEO of IBM

To implement this approach, Violent - "elephant" creates in itself special structural units of strategic intelligence that monitors the promotion and commercialization of other people's inventions, which ensures the rapid creation of analogues that, if possible, surpass the original. The overall goal of the follow-the-leader method is to reduce the risk of innovation and reduce R&D costs by replacing free search with imitation, proven samples.

The situation of the "lion" - the whole business is developing rapidly. The situation of the "elephant" - only some areas of activity are developing successfully, while others are lagging behind. Over time, the dynamism of the "elephant" falls. His creative ability is declining. The "mighty elephant" turns into a "sluggish hippopotamus". While maintaining a gigantic turnover, the corporation gradually loses the ability to achieve a commensurate profit, and even becomes unprofitable. Causes:

• - strategic mistakes associated with too wide diversification and the corresponding dispersal of forces;
• - the general decline of the industry, the deadening of capital, the lack of prospects for production.

In a number of cases, the situation can still be corrected by a disinvestment strategy, i.e. getting rid of unprofitable production and reducing costs in retained organizations.

The role of violets in the economy and the innovation process

Large organizations are constantly criticized for their conservatism, bureaucratization, wastefulness, uncontrollability. However, for all their shortcomings, they are the core of any modern developed economy. Of the total number of firms in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, they make up no more than 1–2%, but they also create from 1/3 to 1/2 of the gross national product (GNP) and produce more than half of all industrial output.

Along with weaknesses, violets undoubtedly have many advantages.

The field of scientific and technical activity of violets, as well as state companies, is predictable, current, program-targeted scientific and technical progress (risk breakthroughs into the unknown - a chance for explorers). Violents are mainly involved in carrying out planned research and applied research (sometimes fundamental, especially in the pharmaceutical industry), in creating new models and upgrading (improving) previously produced equipment. These are innovative product strategies.

For large firms, continuous cost reduction is vital. The innovative solution to this problem lies in the transition to new resource-saving technologies that they create themselves or, more often, adopt from developers and early innovators.

Violenti do not refuse to join the production of new products at the stage of maturation of their mass market.

New large firms most often appear in new industries or sub-sectors, and internationally - in new, dynamically developing countries. The creation of a violet requires large-scale investments. It was in this way that many large organizations appeared in a number of industries a century ago, violets were formed in industrial countries (for example, in Japan, South Korea), they also appeared in the latest industries (computer, biotechnology). To be successful in the market, a large corporation must make interconnected investments in three areas:

1) creation of large-scale production;

2) creation of a nationwide and then an international sales and marketing network;

3) creation of an effective administrative apparatus.

Russia is known in the world as a supplier of all kinds of new ideas and inventions. But she is also known for the fact that, due to the lack of timely investments, she very rarely takes these ideas to large-scale production. The first steam locomotive that remained in the Urals, the "dry" technology of cement production, continuous casting of steel, TV, radar, etc.

Violents acquire the features of "proud lions" - firms with a clear production profile and low diversification (does not penetrate into related industries and sub-sectors). However, in the release of "their" mass product, "lions" are technological leaders. Features of their positions in the market: technical or organizational advantages in an important and promising market segment. For example, Philips dominated the production of lamps, Toyota- compact cars, JV "Khrunichev-Lockheed" - launch vehicles for heavy commercial satellites.

The strength of the "lions" - concentration on a narrow, but massive and promising range of goods; high expenditures on R&D and the creation of the most powerful research structures, which, as the core of the organization, do not disappear under any circumstances.

The “Proud Lion” launches a mechanism of self-accelerating growth that is extremely beneficial for him. It starts with a massive market invasion with a new quality product at affordable prices. This happened, for example, with the program Windows corporations microsoft, the most widely used operating system for personal computers (PCs). Soon the first millions of users appeared.

Further, for the already known operating system, it became profitable to write specific applications, which thousands of programming firms immediately took up. This has become an additional argument for consumers in favor of purchasing the program. windows, through which they gained access to a host of other programs compatible with it.

Sales increased, user numbers increased, cost per copy decreased, price decreased, rekindling the interest of software firms, and so on. With each round of self-accelerating growth, the lion firm is getting further and further away from its competitors. Dynamic "lions" are most aggressive in competition in the upper echelon of the "pyramid of corporations".

The growth potential of the market segment in which the “lion” has been dynamically developing, sooner or later dries up. The active evolution of the violet ends, and it moves into the position of a “powerful elephant”, when the violet firm loses its dynamism, but instead acquires increased stability. In this state, it can exist for several decades. Stability is provided mainly by three factors: large size; diversification; the presence of a wide international network of branches.

The "mighty elephant" in the conditions of a stable existence is characterized by the effective tactics of the "dexterous second". It is impossible to be the first in the release of new products all the time with fierce competition. The risk of a pioneer is great, but large-scale production cannot take risks.

Often "elephants" avoid the role of the first when a new product appears on the market, but they are nearby, in the background.

Leading corporations begin to act only when the success of the novelty is noticeable. They push the innovator company aside and come to the fore. The essence of the smart second tactic is that a firm does not have to be the first to get the most benefit from an innovation. Discovery, invention are mainly of scientific and technical importance. It becomes commercially profitable only with mass replication and application in different areas, that is, with deep diffusion. It is here that the advantages of the "violent - elephant" manifest themselves. Thanks to its widely diversified and mass production, it is the “elephant” that benefits the most from the application of the novelty in a wide variety of areas.

"In history IBM success often provided non-technological innovations. Unfortunately, in so many cases we were second in their implementation. But the technology turned out to be less important than the methods of distribution and sale... We systematically sold more than those with the best technology, because we knew how to explain the matter to the client, how to help with the introduction of machines, and how to bind the client to us after the purchase. The secret of our approach to sales: "system knowledge". (T. Watson, Jr., head IBM).

To implement this approach, “violent-elephant” creates in itself special structural units of strategic intelligence that monitors the promotion and commercialization of other people's inventions, which ensures the rapid creation of analogues that, if possible, surpass the original. The overall goal of the follow-the-leader method is to reduce the risk of innovation and reduce R&D costs by replacing free search with imitation of proven samples.

The situation of the "lion" - the whole business is developing rapidly. The situation of the "elephant" - only some areas of activity are developing successfully, while others are lagging behind. Over time, the dynamism of the "elephant" falls. His creative ability is declining. The "mighty elephant" turns into a "sluggish hippopotamus". While maintaining a gigantic turnover, the corporation gradually loses the ability to achieve a commensurate profit, and even becomes unprofitable. Causes:

1) strategic mistakes associated with too wide diversification and the corresponding dispersal of forces;

2) the general decline of the industry, the deadening of capital, the lack of prospects for production.

In a number of cases, the situation can still be corrected by a strategy of disinvestment, that is, getting rid of unprofitable industries and reducing costs in organizations that remain.

In 1858, C. Darwin and A. R. Wallace suggested that existing species were not created independently of each other and are not immutable, but each species, gradually changing, over time can give rise to a new species. That species are not constant but change or evolve was not a new view. However, the new hypothesis was that natural selection is a necessary process, managing and controlling these changes. Darwin's concept is built on the recognition of objectively existing processes as factors and causes of the development of living things. He explained the objectively existing expediency in the structure and functioning of organisms, their mutual adaptability to each other. The basis of the Darwinian triad is variability, heredity and natural selection.

Variability

The first link in the Darwinian triad is one of the most important properties of living nature - variability, i.e. a variety of characters and properties in individuals and groups of individuals of any degree of kinship. You will not find two identical individuals in nature, even in the offspring of one pair of parents, individuals will always differ. Darwin draws attention to the great diversity of plant varieties and animal breeds, the ancestors of which are one species or a limited number of wild species.

Variability is any manifestation of uncertainty, stochasticity (randomness). They constitute the natural content of all the processes of the microworld, but they also take place at the macro level. Variability underlies the functioning of all the mechanisms of our world at any level of its organization.

Heredity

The next property of living systems after variability is heredity - the property of parents to pass on their traits to their descendants, the next generation. This property is not absolute: children are never exact copies of their parents, but a cat always brings into the world only kittens, and only wheat grows from wheat seeds. In the process of reproduction from generation to generation, not traits are transmitted, but a code of hereditary information that determines only the possibility of developing future traits in a certain range. It is not a trait that is inherited, but the norm of the reaction of a developing individual to an action external environment.

Natural selection

In some cases, the survival of the species is ensured by the mass nature of the offspring (the moon fish spawns more than 300 million eggs, of which several individuals survive). In other cases, care for offspring is shown, which leads to greater survival.

Three main forms of struggle for existence:

interspecific;

intraspecific;

fight against unfavorable environmental conditions.

At present, the theory of natural selection has been supplemented with new facts, and many new approaches have been developed. The concept of "natural selection" refers to the fundamental concepts not only of evolutionary doctrine, but of all biology. From the point of view of biology, the fittest, the fittest, survive.

There are three main types of selection:

moving;

stabilizing;

destructive.

With a driving, or centrifugal, selection, individuals that have changed in some way compared to the average norm for a given species have a greater probability of leaving offspring. One type of deviation from the norm is selected. This is how bacteria more resistant to antibiotics, faster hares, drought- and frost-resistant plants are born. This is the way for the emergence of new species that are better adapted to environmental conditions than parent species.

Stabilizing or centripetal natural selection preserves the average value of traits (the norm) in the population and does not let the individuals that deviate from this norm into the next generation. This is the way to keep the views unchanged.

With destructive ( destruction - a violation of the normal structure of something), or tearing, selection selects not one, but several signs of deviation from the norm (two or more). This is the way of splitting the ancestral species into child groups, each of which can become a new species. At the same time, the previously single species breaks up into groupings (races, forms) that differ morphologically, in terms of reproduction time, or in preferred food. A person uses destructive selection, breeding meat and dairy breeds of cattle, different breeds of dogs, varieties cultivated plants etc.

The mechanisms of evolution are based on adaptations (adaptation of organisms to the environment) and catastrophic phenomena.

The main feature of catastrophic mechanisms is the uncertainty of the future, which is a consequence of the fact that the future state of the system when its characteristics pass through the threshold state is determined primarily by chance, and it is present everywhere.

Principle A. Poincaré. Law of Divergence

The meaning of A. Poincare's principle is that if the evolutionary flow comes to a crossroads - the intersection of several channels of evolution - there are several options for the further development of the evolutionary process. The nature of development changes qualitatively, and there are as many of these variants as there are channels of evolution that come to a crossroads. Channel selection is unpredictable and undefined. What will new organization system - it is impossible to predict in principle, since the choice of the channel depends on those random factors that are inevitably present at the moment the system enters the crossroads of evolution channels.

The evolutionary concept in biology has successfully passed the test of time, embodied in the modern theory of evolution and is the foundation of all biological sciences.