Shortly after the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) began performing with a shift program economic paradigm in the country, and Anatoly Chubais had to publicly defend the current model, we have witnessed the so-called "reform" of the academy to increasingly limit its powers. The latest incident is the disruption of the election of the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences and attempts to resubordinate the election directly to the head of state. According to Academician Sergei Glazyev, the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences gives results that are the opposite of those officially announced, but scientists can still put the economy on the right track.
Sergey Yuryevich, please tell us about the latest events in the Russian Academy of Sciences, what kind of processes are going on and how do academicians evaluate them?
The reform that was imposed on the Academy of Sciences several years ago did not actually achieve its results, but had the exact opposite effect. It was expected that the work of scientists would be freed from excessive guardianship, the economic and bureaucratic burden of management, however, in fact, there was a very serious bureaucratization of the work of academic institutions. federal agency scientific organizations (FASO) behaves like a higher structure and forces scientists to write endless reports that the officials of this organization are not even able to understand and understand them. Petty regulation, formalism and over-bureaucratization very seriously hinder scientific process, complicating rather than simplifying the work of scientists.
What to do in this situation?
I think that we need to return to the principles that the president spoke about when the reform was being planned, and achieve the correct subordination. There is a leadership of the Academy of Sciences, it determines the main directions fundamental research, and FASO should be a service organization that operates within the framework of the duties determined by the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Still, how do you assess the situation with the election of the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences - what is happening?
I don't rate it at all. The elections were thwarted.
In your opinion, does the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences hinder the modernization of the economy, the creation of 25 million high-tech jobs - what the president has repeatedly called for?
The reform has nothing to do with this, because if we talk about the contribution of the Russian Academy of Sciences to economic development, then here we are sorely lacking a mechanism for the commercialization of research and development. This mechanism should include venture funds, development banks, investment funds. If FASO were to create a mechanism for introducing scientific achievements into practice, then it would be very good. Instead, officials are engaged in petty regulation on the use of property. Here you can figure out how to effectively use property without officials. But the task of organizing the promotion of scientific results into practice is precisely the function of government departments, which is stalling today. Therefore, the question of why the discoveries of our scientists are being introduced around the world, but not in our country, is not a question for the Academy of Sciences, but a question for the work of the Government, the Central Bank, which form economic policy and are responsible for creating conditions .
By the way, about the introduction of developments and attitudes towards scientists abroad. While the functionality of the Russian Academy of Sciences is being limited in our country, China has been actively returning its scientists from the United States, the Chinese press wrote about this the other day. Is it time for us to do the same?
China has been doing this for a long time and successfully, we are also making attempts. But the main thing here is not even the financing of scientific work, but for our foreign colleagues there is a system of grants that stimulates their return to Russian educational institutions, scientific organizations, main - practical implementation about which I have already spoken. It is very important for a scientist to see the result of his work in practice. Today, the barrier between fundamental and applied science in many branches of knowledge has actually been erased, and yesterday's scientific laboratories are becoming successful firms everywhere. In order for Russian minds not to be “exported”, but, on the contrary, to return to Russia, it is very important to create a favorable environment for innovative activity.
In recent months, various economic strategies, the mainstream is, apparently, Kudrin's strategy, but there are others, including the one proposed by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Now can we say that scientists are involved in this work or, on the contrary, are pushed aside from it?
Scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences have always had and still have a position based on scientific knowledge about the regularities economic development. Unfortunately, it has not been in demand by state authorities for 25 years. Those recommendations that are consistently defended by academic science have proven their practical effectiveness, manifested themselves in the economic miracle of China, in a number of other countries where a reasonable economic policy. Our economic policy is being pursued to please the comprador oligarchy, speculators and Western capital. We are following the trajectory of the IMF, whose task is not economic growth, but the creation of favorable conditions for the movement of American capital around the world. Wherever the IMF works, we see economic disasters.
Our country is not an exception here, but one of the typical examples of following the recommendations of the IMF, as a result of which investment activity is reduced, production is falling, but the economy is “successfully colonized” by Western capital. More than half of our industry is owned by non-residents.
If the goal is to turn Russia into a colony for Western capital, then the policy pursued by us for 25 years can be said to be very successful. But it has nothing to do with national interests or with the tasks of economic development.
If the goal is economic development, then what should be done?
It is necessary to implement not the recommendations of the IMF, but the recommendations of scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences, which are based on an understanding of the patterns of economic development, knowledge of international experience and have brilliantly proven themselves experimentally. We have a wonderful experiment, unique in economic history - at the same time as China, we began reforms on the transition from a directive to a market economy. China has performed an economic miracle, today it already produces six times more products than we do, and we have the worst economic disaster in world peacetime history. There are visual confirmations by which one can say which concept is correct and which is not.
Do you want to say that the failure of our concept has already been proven?
The failure of the libertarian concept of the Washington consensus has received experimental confirmation in Russia, and the concept of an integral economic policy that combines planning and market mechanisms gave excellent results. What else is needed for evidence, I do not understand.
Sergey Glazyev: Crises happen because of the inability to manage, part 1
TsG: The situation that has developed in Russia over the past year and a half, the situation associated with rising inflation, on the one hand, is caused by the fall in prices for black gold, and on the other hand, the lack of reaction of our financial institutions. Your comments?
SG: Objectively, the situation does not imply a crisis development of events, today our economy operates at two-thirds of its capacity, only 60% of industry and production capacity are loaded, large hidden unemployment at enterprises is forced vacations and part-time work. Plus, unlimited opportunities to attract labor resources from the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union and from Ukraine, that is, we have no restrictions on fixed capital in terms of production capacities for labor resources especially in terms of raw materials. We export two-thirds of raw materials, although we could process ...
Sergey Glazyev: Our economy has become a financial donor, part 2
TsG: Sergey Yuryevich, if the crisis is man-made, obvious, then there are beneficiaries of the crisis, there are people who benefit from it, who make money on this crisis, apparently currency speculators and politicians somehow “fused” with them?
SG: Indeed, if this is done, then it is beneficial to someone, because economic policy reflects certain interests and it is never abstract. In this case, economic policy is conducted in complete contradiction with economic science. Economic science has consistently criticized this policy for 20 years, opposes it, and offers an alternative support policy. economic growth based on world experience, on understanding the patterns of functioning of the modern economy. The real policy is contrary to scientific recommendations and contrary to international experience generally accepted today among successful countries, which means it is beneficial to someone ...
Sergey Glazyev: We can expect a new shock therapy in the economy, part 3
TG: The Central Bank officially says everywhere that measures to increase the refinancing rate and shrink the money supply are a fight against speculation, but in fact, it is quite possible that the Central Bank is tied directly with speculators and makes money on it. It is not possible to assume otherwise.
SG: Well, someone makes money, I think this is the subject of an investigation. The fact that the ruble exchange rate is being manipulated is known to all market participants, but for some reason the financial regulator does not want to know anything about it, and we have come to the point that the US Department of Justice announced the launch of an investigation into the manipulation of the ruble exchange rate and has even punished Deutsche Bank for dubious operations in the Russian financial market. You have to disrespect yourself to allow such things. ...
For 25 years, the so-called. thug capitalism. An economic model was imposed on us, and in fact we gave our future into the wrong hands. About dangers and three scenarios Russian economy said the famous academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, adviser to the president Sergey Glazyev in the Realnoe Vremya program at Tsargrad.
It's time to learn from mistakes
Yuri Pronko:25 years, a quarter of a century. A very serious period in terms of the life of a particular person. And from the point of view of the life of a particular country, in this case, our Fatherland, it is of great importance. But is it worth rejoicing, are there any successes?
Sergey Glazyev: Most importantly, we need to learn from mistakes. Unfortunately, we do not learn from our own or from others. At one time, China began reforms at the same time as us, with the same idea of transition to a market economy. Today it has become the number one country. Then, 25 years ago, China produced products 2 times less than us, and today - 5 times more.
And when we begin to compare the current situation with what was in the Soviet Union, all sorts of fantasies begin among the apologists for the current policy. They say that the country almost fell apart by itself, that everything was bad, there was a total shortage, there was nothing on the shelves of stores ... and other emotional, even false statements. They prevent us from understanding the essence of what happened and understanding what we should do next.
Yu.P.: Let's take a look in retrospect then. Many, especially the younger generation, are not at all aware of what happened 25 years ago. It was decided to start "market reforms"...
S.G.: Ideologically, we decided to move to a market economy. And they imposed a certain model of a transitional economy on us. Even in statistics, the wording "transitional economies" appeared: there were economies developed countries, developing, and instead of socialist economies, transitional ones appeared. And this philosophy, which is actually false, has led us to a dead end.
Judge for yourself: 25 years is indeed a very long time. After the great October Revolution, 25 years later, the country, which began with civil war, from chaos, from the almost complete cessation of production - it then fell to almost zero ... And 1942 is already Stalingrad. In Stalingrad we defeated the largest army in the world. Practically there was a battle with the whole united Europe. There was then still no second front, no significant help from the allies. That is, we alone were put in a situation where all the economic and military power of Europe was against it, and the Germans could not do anything, because in 25 years a new economic system was created - more efficient, more powerful. Capable of delivering huge productivity gains when needed. And she proved to be more effective at that moment.
So 25 years is a very long time. Especially if we live in transition economy. In the Soviet Union it was fashionable to compare with 1913. We can follow the same path. And then for our younger generation it will be possible to compare the figures and show that in the 25 years that have passed since 1991, let's say, we have practically not grown in terms of the level of consumption of basic foodstuffs.
We have failed in terms of milk - we still consume 1.5 times less dairy products than we consumed before, we have grown only in vegetables. Of course, we have grown 6 times in terms of cars - because in the USSR cars were more a luxury than a means of transportation. We have grown rapidly information technology, which in the USSR were under a bushel of censorship, control and all sorts of restrictions.
Yu.P.:In this regard, our opponents always assert that, they say, these products were uncompetitive.
S.G.: Somewhere it was uncompetitive, but somewhere quite competitive. For example, many machine tools that were dismantled from factories near Moscow that produced equipment for the textile industry, let's say, today can be seen in Turkey, Bulgaria - they work. And they produce competitive products.
Basically, the technological base that was created then is still, at the very least, working in those industries that provide the economic well-being of our country today.
If we talk about performance indicators, let's take the most prosperous industries - the oil industry. Labor productivity in the oil industry is significantly lower than it was during the Soviet period. And this is with new technologies.
Previously, we saw that the world's largest corporation, Gazprom, was controlled from a high school building near the Universitet metro station. Therefore, from the point of view of the efficiency of labor productivity, there is also nothing to brag about in 25 years.
Talk about what Soviet economy would surely collapse - from the evil one. We made predictions, calculations. Growth rates have fallen to almost zero, and the strategy of accelerating scientific and technological progress proceeded from the fact that they need to be raised. Monstrous mistakes were made in reforming the economy. It never switched to a scientific and technical footing and began to slip in obsolete industries, but none of our forecasts suggested a fall of more than 5 percent.
In 1992, after the shock transition to the market, the collapse of production was twofold. And the decline in the standard of living was multiple. Indeed, then there was a real famine in the country for many people. If we had lived all this time in a stable environment, the population of Russia would now be 12 million more people. These are premature deaths - due to stress, alcohol, crime - because of all the chaos that has been created and plunged people into a state of loss of ground under their feet.
We have become victims of the dogmatism of thinking
Yu.P.: I would divide these last 25 years into 3 stages. The first is what was implemented in the early 1990s and then called the "dashing 90s", then the "Zero" stage - the concept of President Putin to return to the state the main functional duty - to regulate economic processes, and the third stage - the witnesses and participants of which we are with you now. This is a new phase of the crisis. Is it possible to put the following formula: "The launch of ill-conceived conditionally market reforms provoked the collapse of the whole country?"
S.G.: Everything is more difficult. We have become victims of the dogmatism of thinking. Why did the Soviet Union in the last years of its existence face a sharp increase in chaos and huge imbalances? There was no disaster. But there were no prospects for development. The processes of disintegration, chaotization very quickly gained momentum.
Unlike China, where Xiao Ping's formula was: "It doesn't matter what color the cat is, as long as it catches mice," and where they proclaimed the transition to a market economy through the taboos that were in our ideology. China, step by step, has built its advanced economic development management model by today's standards, which has proven to be amazingly effective. After 25 years, China leads in terms of economic growth and has become the number one power in the production of goods today.
We are entangled in dogmas.
Dogma number one. Socialism does not allow the exploitation of man by man. In economics, this means a taboo on private ownership of the means of production.
Deng Xiao Ping left this dogma. He said: "In agriculture we will start by allowing up to 7 people to be hired.” And they started doing business there.
In our country, since private property is not allowed, it means that they have begun to elect directors. That is state enterprises they said: you are now independent, do what you want, you choose your own directors, you form your own funds. Well, what did it lead to? It was obvious that this would lead to a sharp bias in favor of wages and to a sharp increase in chaos in the management system, because our enterprises have never been independent. They were given assignments from the ministries. If someone can be made independent, it is large production and departmental systems, where everything was holistically arranged: research institutes, design bureaus, serial plants, pilot plants - it was a single whole.
Yu.P.: By the way, this was partially implemented in the gas industry.
S.G.: Yes, the Gazprom concern has appeared. The gas industry has large production chains that could not be broken without losing security and stability.
Since private property and exploitation are prohibited, it means entrepreneurship only in the form of cooperatives and in the form of very peculiar structures, which were called centers of scientific and technical creativity of youth, where all Komsomol leaders immediately rushed. That is, such "chimeric" forms arose, behind which there was no economic rationality, there was no mechanism of economic responsibility. And right there, state-owned factories were overgrown with collective cooperatives, in fact, quasi-private enterprises, through which money was transferred from a non-cash form to cash. What was the basis financial balance in that control system - division cash flow for cash and non-cash forms, cash plans.
But as soon as the flow began non-cash money into cash, it immediately spilled over into the sphere of consumption, demand exceeded the supply of goods, there was a monstrous shortage and a sense of impending disaster. Then indeed, to buy something, you had to stand in lines for a long time.
That is, the Soviet Union became a victim of the dogmatic thinking of our then leadership.
The transition to the market is a mistake
Transition to the market. This is the second trap of dogmatism. We were forced into a very primitive model, which was formulated in the well-known program "500 days" - that in these 500 days we will move to a market economy. At the same time, for some reason, everyone thought that it would be the American economy.
Not understanding what problems there are, what disproportions there are, but for some reason it was believed that all this would at least work for us. And the import of institutions began, and in the most primitive forms: "Let's privatize everything."
The people who did this actually had a different motive in their heads. They, like real Marxists, believed that it was all about the attitude towards property. Here we will transform the attitude to property, and immediately the economy will change dramatically. A slogan was thrown in: "It doesn't matter how to privatize, it doesn't matter who takes it - bandits, "red directors", foreigners or labor collectives." The transition to private property, from their point of view, was supposed to give the effect of increasing efficiency, "the feeling of the owner."
They did not understand that modern production is a very complex system. And the feeling of the owner is not enough here. This sense of mastery among people who were not familiar with complex production systems and who randomly seized control of enterprises led to the fact that they first dragged the wage fund from labor collectives into their pockets. Then they took the profits of enterprises for themselves through intermediary firms. Then the equipment was dismantled and sold abroad. And in the end, they turned the flagships of the world engineering into warehouses or, at best, into offices.
Yu.P.:It was a very scary period, the early 1990s. The most powerful city of Novosibirsk, which has not only a huge, but also a production potential - all this crumbled before my eyes.
S.G.: The result of a dogmatic approach that was thrown to us from Washington, where there are three formulas: privatization, general liberalization and the withdrawal of the state from the economy, the rejection of any planning. They even canceled the annual planning, they say, the enterprises themselves will figure it out. And macroeconomic stabilization by clamping the money supply.
We were deprived of the opportunity to print our own money. A secret economic miracle after the Second World War was that all the leading countries switched to fiat money. Japan was the first to start financing the recovery of the industry with the issuance of unsecured money for plans to expand production. The Soviet Union, of course, never experienced a shortage of money - there was a production plan, under which a financial plan was built.
thug capitalism
S.G.: Europe began issuing fiat money against bills that are not secured by anything, Central banks they simply controlled that enterprises repaid loans, and when we were thrown into this whirlpool called "shock therapy", paralyzing the state, depriving the state of the function of planning, the function of creating money, and said: "Well, you flounder there as you want, get out." And in the course of this voucher privatization, at best, red directors came to power at enterprises, who understood production, but could not provide any equipment in this situation - remember, there were non-payments, enterprises could not pay each other for products because there was no credit, did not have the skills to market conditions, branch science was completely destroyed, which turned out to be of no use to anyone, because it was necessary to look into the distant future in order to support science, to find money for it from somewhere, the motivation was short-term, so these red directors were quickly replaced by hucksters, roughly speaking, people who came from the street, who have short-term thinking, the main motive is to grab profits, get rich at any cost.
And it is no coincidence that Govorukhin called the incident a great criminal revolution. That is, instead of American modern capitalism, we got what is, by the way, well known in literature. Under the name, sorry, crony capitalism. This is not a very popular translation among us, they try not to notice it. Not to notice that the market is different: in America, in Africa, which means in Asia, and crony capitalism, that is, thieves' capitalism, is when neither the state really works, nor the market works.
Putin returned the vertical of power
Yu.P.: I will return again to the gas industry - it turned out that specialists in this industry, lobbyists understood the inadmissibility of such chaos, and after all, they were able to save the core, Sergey Yuryevich.
S.G.: Well the secret here is that the Prime Minister then this transition period turned out to be Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin, and in this industry he understood the need to maintain large production and technological ties ...
Yu.P.: That is, it turns out, powerful political support ...
S.G.: That is, he did not allow Gazprom to be torn to pieces, and oil industry also managed to gather in large corporations. As for engineering, it turned out to be unprotected, and, in fact, we saw economic growth in only two areas - this is trade, which began to swell, and financial sector, which also began to swell due to uncontrolled credit emission and due to servicing the operation in conditions of imbalance, when the financial margin turns out to be very large.
Yu.P.: By the way, I will remind our viewers that it all ended sadly. It all ended, in the end, with a massive collapse.
S.G.: All this ended, in the end, with the catastrophe of 1998, after which a new stage began, you are quite right to say, a new leader came. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin immediately returned the power vertical. He proceeded, I think, from considerations of national security, because further this economic chaos was followed by the disintegration of the country without any doubt. Because the regions began to independently build foreign economic relations - it immediately turned out that we have rich regions, where raw materials are in Siberia, and poor regions, where there was mechanical engineering. And they began to toss all sorts of separatist projects. The federal treaty, remember, then arose, after the federal treaty...
Yu.P.: Some had associated membership in the Russian Federation…
S.G.: So, so the arrival of Vladimir Vladimirovich saved the country from collapse, to say nothing. He restored the vertical of power, he managed to return constitutional powers to the state, to ensure the unity of the country. But then a small miracle occurred in the economy - oil prices rose, and suddenly it turned out that we can so easily ride the wave of the world economy on purely raw material reserves.
The unequal exchange trap
Yu.P.: That is, it turned out that the political decisions of Vladimir Vladimirovich and the sharp increase in hydrocarbons gave synergy?
S.G.: Gave stabilization. stabilization in administrative system in management, politics and economics. But this stabilization, you see, consolidated those vicious elements of the economic management system that had been formed at that time. Firstly, the destruction of the high-tech sector, it has not been able to rise, so far we cannot produce engineering products in the required volumes, by 2/3 we switched to an imported technological base, and found ourselves in the trap of non-equivalent exchange. As then in the 90s, people still do not understand that the main factor in technological growth is scientific and technological progress.
Much is said about this, but they do not understand how to do it, how to achieve scientific and technological progress, how to finally switch to this innovative development path. After all, with these conversations, they have been going on all zero years, we have in terms of innovative activity for all these indicators of implementation new technology and innovative activity we are at a very low level. In terms of development spending, we fell somewhere in the last century, far away, at the beginning of the last century, and in terms of the budget structure, we do not look like a state of development, we look more like a traditional state. Where the role of the bureaucracy and power structures is rather exaggerated. While the whole world has already switched to the development state. And actually the whole macroeconomic system is focused on development. Modern macroeconomic theory gives recipes for what to do and...
Yu.P.:Can you explain?
S.G.: Moreover, the economic practice is before our eyes - I once again refer to China, because we need to be compared not with the RSFSR of the 90s, we need to be compared with the People's Republic of China. They started with worst conditions they were less developed. They did not have such a gigantic scientific and technical potential as we do. Today they are leaders not only in terms of production volumes. They are leaders in the production of innovative, science-intensive products.
The fact is that economic development is a complex process. This is not a production function in econometric models. This is a complex system for managing the cultivation of high-tech industries, that is, a connection between science, production, education, money, and so on is required. You can't do it without planning.
And while we let ourselves be fooled by the utopias of various liberal fundamentalisms, China has not given up on planning when it began to create a real market economy. They, in fact, created a new system of industrial relations. We call it the new world economic order. What Pitirim Sorokin dreamed about when he said that - fifty years ago, but said - there will be new system, where the best features of a market economy and planned economy- socialism and capitalism - will be united. We will get synergy, and this system was created by China. Where strategic planning is combined with market self-organization, where state indicative planning is combined with private enterprise, where state property on infrastructure facilities allows the state through public capital investments to create favorable conditions for the development of private entrepreneurial energy and initiative, and we see an amazing result.
Yu.P.: Sergey Yuryevich, but China is slowing down, and our officials from the Ministry of Economics constantly pay attention to this.
S.G.: Firstly, high rates economic growth cannot continue indefinitely, the country is gaining power, scale, its inertia is growing. But the slowdown occurred, by the way, after the Chinese leadership began to implement the recipes of the Washington international organizations.
Eurasian integration based on new principles
Yu.P.: Explain...
S.G.: There was a big World Bank report with recommendations to the Chinese leadership to stop stimulating economic growth, curtail public investment, liberalize financial market- and two years later they got the result - a sharp slowdown in growth rates by one and a half times and a financial bubble on shanghai stock exchange, which led them to destabilization.
Now they are rewinding, as they say, back. They rethink their experience. They learn from their mistakes - they used to learn from ours, they are already learning from their own - and now it has already been decided that growth rates should not be lower than 6.5%. To do this, the state again increases capital investments. At the same time, they create their own foreign economic comfortable environment for working with partners. The doctrine of the economic belt of the Silk Road has been proclaimed, which, by decision of the heads of our states, is associated with the Eurasian Economic Union.
And we are building our Eurasian integration on new principles. This is not global liberalization for transnational capital. This is building a new economic development space, where a common market is combined with a common development strategy. Where we are not trying to unify everything. Our Eurasian Economic Union has limitations. Not like in Europe - the European bureaucracy absorbed everything - we have transferred to the supranational level only what is necessary for building cooperative ties, creating common market, creation general rules competition, but as regards development institutions, fiscal system, financial and economic policy, monetary policy, each country has the opportunity to implement its own model.
Yu.P.: Does each participant retain their economic status?
S.G.: Yes, our state leaders recognize that there is competition among jurisdictions in our Eurasian Economic Space, that is, each country can maintain its own development model in order to maximize competitive advantages. And no one imposes total liberalization and unification on anyone, as is done in the European Union, right down to family relations.
So, that is, we are forming a new economic structure, it turns out that those proposals of Russian science, Soviet science, which were first rejected by the leadership of the CPSU, and then, based on dogmatic considerations, were not accepted by the new Russian leadership, again, based on dogmatic considerations of a transition economy by importing American institutions, they were taken up in China. In China, there were many trips of our leading scientists from the Soviet Union, they talked about how you can combine the plan and the market. The Chinese leadership took the path of evolutionary development, they did not listen to Washington, they acted by constant experiment in small steps, they groped, one might say, the road - almost blindly.
Privatization of the banking system is the biggest mistake
Yu.P.: But we rushed into the pool headlong.
S.G.: And remember, we had - "you can't be a little pregnant, you can't jump over the abyss in two jumps" ... The Chinese, on the contrary, formulated how to jump over the abyss in two jumps. And they created a modern market economy led by the public sector. And this government sector in terms of volume, there is already less market space today. Less private sector. But it continues to play the role of a generator of development, the role of a locomotive - the public sector in this system is the locomotive of economic development. And the public sector is not only railways, airports and military-industrial complexes, it is primarily the banking system.
One of the grossest mistakes of our reformers was privatization banking system. Creation of pseudo-banks that began to earn money on fraudulent transactions and we lost control over the movement of money. And we still have at least formally restored this control today, because most of the money is in state banks, but these state banks work on their own. No one asks them any plans, no one gives them any recommendation where to invest money, and in general there are still no plans. We hung...
Monetarists are wrong
Yu.P.: One of the accusations that constantly flies at your address is that "Glazyev wants to roll out the financial sector" ...
S.G.: Once again I will say: money is an outstanding invention of mankind. But not in the sense of gold coins, as monetarists think, but in the sense of tools to support economic growth. Feature of large economic systems The twentieth century was the transition to fiat money, which I spoke about. Money has become a tool for financing development above all. Credit money does not cancel, of course, gold coins, but today the weight of gold coins in general money supply negligible.
You see how today the leading countries of the world are moving to a new technological order. How they create money, cheap. The European Central Bank even gives a bonus if commercial Bank invests money in real sector issued at negative interest.
I'm not saying that this is good or bad - this is a medical fact, as they say. Money, since 1947 (in Japan, then in Europe), and since 1971 in America, has become fiat money. They are secured by the obligations of states that use money emission to finance state budget. Almost all the dollars that are in the world go through the US budget, and they are printed for the purchase of US Treasury bonds.
The same goes for the euro. In Japan, money also passes through the financing of development institutions and the budget. China is still in many respects, following the Soviet tradition, creating money for production development plans. This is not rigid planning - this planning system is based on a constant dialogue between the state, business and science. These plans are not drawn up by officials in ministries - officials simply act as conductors, coordinators of this process - but the real content of development plans, the fabric of this indicative strategic planning is formed by entrepreneurs together with scientist-engineers who undertake to increase production, modernize, introduce new technologies, create new jobs, and the state allocates resources for these plans, ensures macroeconomic stability, subsidizes R&D (research and development).
It should also be noted that 85% capital investments Today, in advanced industries, this is R&D. And here even WTO rules allow subsidies. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the share of spending on science in the leading countries of the world today is 3-4% of GDP.
We will have to pay for the technological backlog
Yu.P.: And here I take out another trump card of your opponents, who say: "Well, yes, Glazyev is right in his reasoning. But look, the enterprises made a serious profit last year? They did. There was a profit in the previous year? Yes. But they are not investing!"
S.G.: You know, first of all, this is not true. We have a lot of bankruptcies today. Moreover, the number of bankruptcies, overdue loans began to grow sharply since the Central Bank raised interest rates. We are reducing the volume of loans in the economy, because enterprises cannot borrow at such interest rates - it is more expensive for themselves. Profitability does not allow.
Let me remind you once again that the level of capital investment in our country is two times lower than it was in 1990. In China, I note, 20 times more. And the amount of money there is 20 times more. That is, credit modern economy is a mechanism for advancing economic growth. And all the classics monetary theory, including the famous Tobin, said: "The main task of the monetary authorities is to create the most favorable conditions for the growth of investment." That's why monetary policy must ensure economic development.
In a situation where monetary policy is subject to some kind of monetarist criteria such as lowering inflation, there are very serious disruptions in the reproduction of the economy. Because money for the economy is like blood for the body. When there are few of them - it's bad, when there are a lot of them - it's also bad.
And we calculated a regularity on a large statistical array: for each state of the economy there is its own optimal amount of money. If there is less money than is needed for normal reproduction, there is a contraction of production, the cessation of investment. The economy begins to shrink, production is reduced, the purchasing power of money is falling. And that means inflation is on the rise. And the most unpleasant thing is that the technological backlog is growing. And the price for technological backwardness is a chronic devaluation of the currency. Just a loss purchasing power of money.
Therefore, it is impossible to reduce inflation by compressing money in an under-monetized economy. This leads to the degradation of the economy, technical level and ultimately to a new round of the devaluation-inflationary spiral. What we went through, actually, for the third time.
And we are still driven into this corner. That is, instead of creating our own development system, with our own priorities, proceeding from the laws of scientific and technological progress, proceeding from the maximization of our competitive advantages, we followed the lead of the dogmatists, who gave us from Washington a model that was fabricated for African countries. The Washington Consensus was invented for African countries that could not pay off their debts forever.
We gave our future into someone else's hands
Yu.P.: Some of your opponents (Minister Siluanov in particular) say: "Oh, we don't know anything about the Washington consensus."
S.G.: This is strange, because the Financial Academy - we gave a lecture about it there. What I want to draw your attention to in conclusion is that by abandoning an independent development policy, by refusing to plan, to create our own money, as all countries do, we have given our future into the wrong hands. If we do not create money, if we do not form plans, others will do it for us. As a result of this policy, 70% of the monetary base of our economy is formed under foreign money. Therefore, it is not surprising that we specialize in raw materials. But we could today... But we could develop 10 times more products per ton of extracted raw materials. Our resource potential allows us to increase the volume of production tenfold. It is one thing to trade oil, another thing is plastic, clothes made from oil, modern construction materials, etc.
If we had a normal connection business activity, entrepreneurial energy with credit mechanisms ... After all, in the world now no one has problems with obtaining a loan, only in our country - go to Europe, they will chase you, give you loans, and ask you if you have a good reputation, if they know that you are not a crook, you will not steal. And in America it's exactly the same: engineers are welcomed with open arms - they are given venture loans, then market loans. That is, the simplest thing that the state can do is to provide business with money. This is the simplest. It is more difficult to grow new schools of engineering, it is more difficult to build complex products. But to provide money is done quickly and easily. There is, of course, a mechanism of responsibility, control over the targeted use of money.
All these systems assume that the flow of credit resources created Central Bank, must be tightly controlled in terms of intended use. Not like ours, again: they injected money to save the banks, the banks transferred this money to currency market, increased foreign exchange assets. This has happened twice in a row.
Control system dysfunction
Yu.P.: Furthermore, Accounts Chamber, Tatyana Golikova openly stated from the rostrum of the State Duma: out of that amount of more than 800 billion rubles, 400 billion were transferred to credit institutions, which showed a negative trend. That is, losses increased even after the money was driven there, and in general the question hangs in the air: who will answer for this?
Yu.P.: Concluding our conversation, I cannot but return to the events of 25 years ago. After all, we were witnesses of the parade of sovereignty, which destroyed our fatherland with you. We were born in the Soviet Union and I'm proud of that. In your opinion, did the republics that became independent states gain anything from an economic point of view? All these conversations about who feeds whom and so on...
S.G.: Some republics collapsed. Unfortunately, Ukraine today is in a catastrophic situation, including because of the European choice. She went not at all where her economic interests are. Georgia, again, because of outside interference. That is, those republics that collapsed became victims of the brutal intervention of external forces. American, in fact, management and the European Union.
Belarus looks the best today, despite the crisis. They already produce twice as much goods as they did in the Soviet Union. This proves that a development model is possible even in limited, small parts of our Eurasian Economic Union, and pockets of economic growth have been formed. If then the Soviet leadership had taken the pragmatic path (not dogmatic, but pragmatic), and would have begun not to break everything, but to create market relations next to the scheduling mechanism…
Today, by the way, economics It has been proved (referring to the book of Academician Makarov) that a complex control system is more effective than a simple one. This is because the economy is complex. And the main function of the state in the model of the new world economic order is not only China - it is Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and India, which is leading today - in these countries, the main function of the state is the harmonization of interests. These are socialist elements in some sense. China is a socialist market economy, Japan and Korea are private economies. But everywhere the state is engaged in the harmonization of interests. In areas such as market competition, regulation is aimed at creating the most favorable conditions for the growth of production, to improve living standards.
Therefore, not everything can be done. It is necessary to develop market relations within the limits that give the growth of production. And not like we have today: the Moscow Exchange has become the main center of profit in the country. The volume of operations there today is 10 times greater than the volume of the gross domestic product.
And it's an American model. She's falling apart today. Because the American model is focused on maximizing profits at any cost. It doesn't matter if you produced something or just built a financial pyramid and deceived someone - you made a profit if it's all legal.
But we see that, despite the fact that today, in 5 years, three times more dollars have been printed than in the entire previous history of the United States, the effectiveness of this model is very low. Only a small part of this money issue reaches the manufacturing sector. A volume financial pyramids just grew up. The national debt has doubled during the Obama presidency, although he promised to stop it, the standard of living is not rising. This model is falling apart because it no longer provides economic growth. But it does not provide economic growth already due to the disproportions that have developed. Because the financial oligarchs, having the opportunity to issue unlimited dollars, control the Federal Reserve System, and they have been doing this since 1971.
The Soviet Union collapsed under the pressure of imbalances associated with central planning. Because a very rigid system did not allow the redistribution of resources in favor of new technologies, they were kept in the old, hopelessly outdated technological structures.
And the American system is now collapsing because of the imbalances it has created. Through the issue of fiat money in favor of the financial oligarchy. China has managed to create a fundamentally new world economic structure, a new system of economic relations, a new system of institutions that shows the direction in which to go. And today, in fact, we have little choice: either we remain on the periphery of the American system, and now the Chinese system, and we will be torn apart - we have already found ourselves in a rupture with Ukraine because of this. Or we form the institutions of a new world economy, form our own model of an integral system, where economic interests are combined, in such a way that entrepreneurial activity is directed to the common good, to the growth of production of goods and the rise of people's well-being, and then we are built into the core of a new and technological order, and world economic order.
We actually have three scenarios. When there are discussions on growth rates. Now, if we do nothing, it will be so with us: plus or minus 2%. Depending on market conditions and world prices. But the whole world goes on and on. The drop in efficiency is again devaluation and devaluation. It is impossible to achieve price stabilization in the conditions of falling and degradation of production. The reduction of inflation is achieved through the growth of production and through the introduction of new technologies. All these countries have shown this brilliantly. In China, the volume of loans in relation to GDP has grown by about five times.
The same applies to other countries. The overmonetization of China's economy, as well as Japan's, is not accompanied by rising prices. Because the main means of fighting inflation, as well as economic growth, is the same scientific and technological progress. Reducing costs, increasing efficiency, expanding the production of goods. We are quite capable of making this model, because we formed many elements ourselves. We were the first in the world to design this model back in Russian Empire. Having such historical experience, of course, it is absolutely sad to observe how the scientific and production potential is used today by less than half. Today we can produce twice as much.
Therefore, the fork is as follows: either we do nothing, and then plus or minus two percent and endless stagnation, or we form a modern model of economic management on the principles that I spoke about, a new world economic order. This will give us about 4-5%. If we add to this a strategy of accelerated development based on a new technological order with a concentration of credit resources that we ourselves create in key areas of global economic growth, raising our potential and using the possibilities of Eurasian integration, then we can reach up to 10% per year.
Hybrid state is not viable
At the same time, a vivid and clear understanding of the qualitatively new processes of global development partly diverts attention from what is happening within Russia itself. Meanwhile, Russian society will be able to respond adequately to the challenges of the time, considered in great detail, only after it completes the process of restoring its subjectivity, that is, recognizing itself as a self-sufficient whole with independent value, achieving a deep understanding of its interests and switching to serving them, and not interests of our enemies.
It is in the still remaining lack of subjectivity of the Russian state that our Achilles' heel is the reason that the thirty years of national betrayal are still not over. There is a feeling that we, like Moses of the Jews, will be dragged for forty years (that is, even less than a decade, just something!) Through the scorched wilderness of “liberal reforms and democratic transformations” until the last one dies, remembering that the people are capable of to govern itself in its own interests, and not be the manure for the growth of the global speculative business and its associated hangouts.
The current Russian state, in full accordance with the fashion of the current era, is of a hybrid nature. The socio-economic sphere is still managed according to the liberal logic of 1990 and is a tool for plundering the Soviet legacy human capital) and its legalization as personal wealth in the West. However, the logic of global competition in the period between Putin's Munich speech and the organization of the fascist coup in Kyiv forced even such a state machine to turn on the mechanism of self-defense, and foreign policy aimed, albeit extremely crooked and helpless, but still to protect national interests countries.
Such a chimerical construction is not viable and cannot last long: one of two incompatible motivations must prevail. It is essential that even the offshore aristocracy needs sovereignty not for the development of Russia, but for the plunder of this territory in the interests of the West, therefore the position of the patriots is internally contradictory and therefore weak. We clearly see this in the example of the monstrous failures of the post-Crimean period (which is worth one image catastrophe at the Olympics) and the fact that Crimea itself, instead of a showcase for Russia, has now been turned, as far as one can judge, into a managerial catastrophe. The maximum that the patriotic representatives of the “offshore aristocracy” have reached is an attempt to build a kind of “internal West” in Russia and continue to destroy it in a liberal way in the interests of their estates here, and not “there”, in fashionable countries, but still not to develop the country in the interests of the people! Such a return to the logic of the last Romanovs will not help anyone and will not save anyone.
Russia is the enemy of all global groupings, -
but differently
The visit of the heads of our intelligence services to the United States, I hope, prevented an attempted coup d'état according to American standards of "color revolutions" - immediately after the elections. But also because it would be a false start: Russia is not yet so desperate as to kill itself like Ukraine, even if with the help of the West.
The continuation of the liberal socio-economic policy, not to mention the obvious manifestations of Kozyrevism in foreign policy, will doom Russia to destruction before the end of Vladimir Putin's last term. Of course, by various humiliations and demonstrations of Russia's helplessness, the Americans will effectively discredit both it and the very idea of patriotism associated with it by society, that is, the independent development and existence of our country and people. And we are only at the very beginning of the path of demonstrating to us the insignificance and squalor of the “offshore aristocracy” ruling us: anyone who thinks that the Olympics and Syria will be limited is very painfully mistaken. The American specialists will also use the time they have received to try - this time in full accordance with their standards - to buy out the leadership of not only the political class, but also the Russian special services.
To be sure, the US elites in a state of cold civil war are heterogeneous - and this reflects the heterogeneity of the non-Chinese, that is, the Western and pro-Western part of the global ruling class. The liberal part, trying to save global markets, is doomed - and Trump's emerging victory in the fight for the domestic American agenda only emphasizes this. Even Obama, with transatlantic and Pacific partnerships, has already torn apart the global market - he simply cut BRICS out of it, drawing borders at approaches that are too far away, beyond the strength of the United States. Trump, on the other hand, is taking them too close: right along the US borders. But the future belongs to those who recognize the inevitability of the collapse of global markets (and censorship on Facebook and Google news shows that even the information space will be destroyed) and wants to lead it to follow its scenario and in its interests.
The Russian leadership - both liberal and power - is not even capable of thinking in such categories and is therefore an object, not a subject. Attempts by representatives of the global governing class to discuss with them the prospects for the collapse of global markets began, according to some estimates, in 2006 - and, I'm afraid, the diagnosis “there is no one to seriously talk to” is now the final one for the global managing class.
Therefore, the hopes of the victorious, conservative part of the global elites that Russia will be able to create its own macro-region (and they need it, since the more macro-regions, the more degrees of freedom they have and, accordingly, profits), are now dead. Having abandoned the desire to denazify Ukraine and reunite with it, the current Russian leadership has thus abandoned the possibility of an independent future for our country. As a result, Russia is rapidly turning into a “strategic rear of great China”: whoever does not have his own strategy dooms himself to becoming an alien element. And in this capacity, by excessively strengthening China, Russia also becomes an enemy of the conservative, patriotic part of the global elites, who, due to their Western origin, are not interested in the excessive strengthening of China and, moreover, seek to destroy it as a rapidly strengthening strategic competitor.
Thus, today we are subject to destruction for both groups of the global elite: liberal - as an obstacle to the expansion of the "zone of chaos" (without which it is impossible to drive the capital of the whole world into US government securities, paying for their lives and maintaining the unity of global markets), conservative, or patriotic - as a factor in the strengthening of China.
The first are our irreconcilable enemies, the second are strategic allies, for a strategic alliance with them, however, it is necessary to fight tactically. After all, the rejection of our interests destroys us as a factor in global politics and thereby deprives us of strategic value in their eyes. Our potential value for the conservative part of global business is a clear illustration of the well-known formula "you can only rely on what resists."
The described path does not have any acceptable alternatives for us, however, the resources for moving along it (both material and financial, and personnel and ideological) can only be obtained through the comprehensive modernization of Russia. It is impossible to carry it out without destroying the liberal clan in the leadership, but this requires a leap into the unknown, for which the country's top leadership has neither group forces nor personal determination.
Global landscape:
our interests are the basis of a humane future
Meanwhile, the respite between crises, used by key global players to change the rules of the game and the configuration of active forces (USA) or increase resources and concentration of funds (China), is close to exhaustion.
The American genius is delaying the disruption of the world economy into a global depression, during which the collapse of single markets macro-regions since 2001 - but this delay cannot go on forever. Its instrument is the chaos of new territories and the ever greater intimidation of the speculative capitals of the world so that they, as in the last "safe haven", fled to the United States and, paying for their consumption, thereby supporting the world financial infrastructure they created.
The expansion of the "zone of chaos" cannot go on indefinitely; at the same time, drawing countries with nuclear weapons (for example, Russia) into its funnel can lead to a global catastrophe. Actually, our country, having stopped the spread of the "zone of chaos" in Syria and the settlement of conflicts with Ukraine and Turkey, is putting an end to American model containing the global depression.
And a breakdown in it means a war of all against all by all accessible ways and makes the highest demands both on societies and their economies, and, above all, on their management system.
We are still completely unprepared for this.
Appeals to the experience of the interwar period and the Second World War are useful in order to prevent complacency, which at any moment can become suicidal. However, we must not forget that the crisis ahead of us is much worse than that overcome by our great-grandfathers, if only because it will be accompanied by a massive destruction of cultural identities, which will probably become the main real, and not proclaimed, goals of the struggle.
The Second World War, for all its horrors, was fought within the framework of the Western European civilizational paradigm. Its only full-fledged non-European participant - Japan - has become such precisely by virtue of the adoption, even external, of Western social technologies and entry into the space of Western civilization with the help of this.
The essence of the Second World War was a radical enlargement of the number of macro-regions (from five to two), which expanded the scope of competition in each of them, weakened the monopolization of markets and, thus putting an end to the Great Depression, gave the world 40 years of peaceful development.
The cultural aspect was of a subordinate nature and consisted in an attempt to destroy non-Western societies: the Soviet Union as an Eastern European civilization, the very existence of which meant the existence of a European alternative to the West and, accordingly, its historical inferiority, and China as a non-Westernized, unlike Japan, giant of Asia.
Both of these goals were not achieved, and the result of the war in terms of cultural confrontation was a sharp weakening of the West due to the strengthening of the eastern, socialist alternative to it. Within the framework of Western civilization, the leadership was seized from the United States, which entered the stage of decline in Great Britain, but this victory was devalued by the emergence of an alternative to the West as such.
The destruction of the Soviet Union provided the United States with global leadership, which they could not cope with due to the objective, organic incompatibility of the functions of the arbiter of global markets and their own key player. The "playing judge" inevitably destroys not only its opponents, but the game itself as such - and this is another, not economic, but managerial reason for the inevitability of the collapse of global markets into macro-regions.
From an economic point of view, this will be a disaster, primarily due to a sharp reduction in the scale of most commercial transactions. The administrative, cultural and other superstructures of big business will be deprived of funds (which they received precisely due to the large scale of operations and draining the funds of the underdeveloped part of the world) and collapse, which will mean the end of Western civilization as we know it.
It is quite possible that the current private military companies (PMCs), created by global business to non-publicly solve delicate problems and block political opposition to globalists at the level of nation-states, having lost their traditional nourishment, will switch to “grazing” and, freed from the control of states and those behind them global business, will become an independent factor in the struggle for power - as it was in the Middle Ages.
Market shrinkage will destroy many modern technologies for which there simply will not be consumers - and will create huge prospects for Russia, whose culture is most consistent with the “closing” (simple and super-productive) technologies created mainly in the depths of the Soviet military-industrial complex. They continue to develop in the pores of the social organism and are the golden key to the future, which you just have to be able to take.
However, the main struggle of the depression era is for the cultural recoding of peoples. The transformation into the meaning of life of huge groups of the population of hatred incompatible with life, which was successfully carried out in the Baltic States, partly in Poland and is in full swing in Ukraine, is only a harbinger of large-scale operations that will be conducted as part of the struggle of macroregions for survival.
At the same time, Western Europe will turn out to be the main “battlefield”: residual prosperity will make it attractive for expansion, and its own culture has already been crushed by the liberal ideology of globalism. As a result, today's Europeans have rejected and trampled on what we call "European values" in the old fashioned way, replacing them with intellectual, moral and volitional impotence erected into a principle, and in fact refused to prolong the family (since children interfere with consumption and build a career), clearing the the very space of Western Europe for political Islam and its bearers.
The key question of the next 30 years, during which the European Union will smoothly transform into the European Caliphate, is who and why will train political, administrative and cultural personnel for the new project of a united Europe. Keeping this role for the US will keep it dominating the West, even if it becomes Islamic. China will not be able to train Islamic personnel due to the bleeding problem of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (and the United States, even if it does not attack China in 2020-2021, despite the emerging balance of external and internal needs, will make every effort to remained as sharp as possible).
