History of mankind since ancient times. How did human history begin?

Renowned anthropologist and population geneticist Alan Templeton has made a strong case against the theory, which has been generally accepted for the past 20 years. New genetic data show that ancient Eurasian humanity was not displaced by sapiens who emerged from Africa 80-100 thousand years ago, but mixed with them. The blood of Eurasian archanthropes, and possibly Neanderthals, flows in our veins.

Facts that everyone agrees on

Africa was the ancestral home of humanity, no one doubts this now. Approximately 1.9 million years ago, our distant ancestors - the early archanthropes, carriers of the pebble (Oldovai) culture, first went beyond the borders of their native continent, as evidenced, in particular, by recent finds in Georgia. Archanthropes spread widely throughout South Asia. 800-600 thousand years ago the second Eurasian expansion of people from Africa took place, this time carried out by more advanced representatives of the human race ( Homo antecessor and others like him, carriers of the Acheulean culture that had previously developed in Africa).

European and West Asian populations of these people, after several hundred thousand years, became Neanderthals, and in Africa, meanwhile, their distant relatives evolved into “anatomically modern humans” - Homo sapiens. About 100 thousand years ago, a small group of sapiens left Africa and gradually settled in Asia, Australia and Europe. All these are completely reliable facts. Experts argue about something else: did the representatives of the “last wave” mix with ancient Eurasian humanity or completely supplant it?

Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam in African Eden

Within twenty recent years the decisive advantage was on the side of the second point of view. The main argument was the results of analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) modern people, to a lesser extent - Y chromosomes. Based on the polymorphism of mtDNA nucleotide sequences, the evolutionary tree of this part of the human genome was reconstructed, the branches of which, if moving along them from top to bottom (backward in time), converged at one point in time and space: Africa, about 150 thousand years ago. So it appeared in scientific press and in the media “mitochondrial Eve” (mitochondria are passed on through the maternal line), and after her, in a similar way, “Y-chromosomal Adam” arose (only men have a Y-chromosome and is passed on from father to son), who lived at about the same time time and in the same place.

These results were received very strongly by the public, and, as usual, few people understood their true meaning. In fact, as Alan Templeton rightly points out, there is nothing surprising about either Adam or Eve. Any homologous sections of DNA somewhere in the past inevitably converge into one point, that is, into one ancestral DNA molecule. And this point does not necessarily coincide with the moment of the appearance of the species. Moreover, if you take different homologous sections of DNA, each of them will give its own “point of convergence”, different from the others. The approximate coincidence of the results for mtDNA and the Y chromosome is nothing more than an accident, partly explained by the fact that both of these regions of the a genome have a common property: they are present in each cell in only one copy (unlike most other regions of the a genome, which are present in duplicate). There is also an X chromosome, which occupies an intermediate position: in women it is present in two copies, in men in one.

Templeton showed that the expected time of convergence of an evolutionary tree constructed for a separate DNA section to one point depends on how many copies of this section are present in cells. It is mtDNA and the Y chromosome that should converge the fastest (as is observed, they converge approximately 150 thousand years ago). This does not mean that it was then that he appeared H. sapiens, this only means that these sections of the genome are not suitable for reconstructing more ancient events. Regions localized on the X chromosome converge in the more distant past (up to 2 million years); all other sites are of even greater antiquity, some even before the evolutionary lines of humans and chimpanzees separated.

The history of mtDNA is not yet the history of humanity

How can we conclude from mtDNA or another part of the genome that our ancestors left Africa at a certain time? This is possible if, soon after this event, one of the settlers developed a mutation in the DNA region under study, which then multiplied during expansion. And then a modern geneticist will see that the frequency of occurrence of this mutation in non-African populations is, for example, 10%, but it is not found in Africa. The time of occurrence of a mutation is determined on the basis of other, later mutations, using the “molecular clock” method. Well, what if, soon after leaving Africa, no mutation arose in this region of the genome? Then, of course, nothing will come of it: this section of the genome simply will not retain traces of the expansion that interests us.

In a word, Templeton convincingly showed (and most biologists agree with this, by the way) that one cannot draw final conclusions about the evolution and history of human settlement from one single section of the genome (for example, from mtDNA). Such conclusions require a comprehensive analysis of many different regions of the a genome.

Humanity has always been one

That's exactly what Templeton does. In 2002, he already published his results based on the study of 12 DNA sections (in addition to mtDNA and the Y chromosome, 10 more sections were included in the analysis). Critics then pointed to insufficient sample sizes, low accuracy and other possible methodological flaws. This time, Templeton increased the number of analyzed sections of the human genome to 25. The results did not change; on the contrary, they became much clearer and more convincing.

They consist of the following. Different sections of DNA retain traces different events in human history. The overall picture coincides surprisingly accurately with the one reconstructed from archaeological data. Three sections of DNA preserve traces of the oldest wave out of Africa about 1.9 million years ago. This means that the blood of ancient Asian archanthropes flows in our veins! Seven sections of DNA indicate a second exodus from Africa about 0.65 million years ago (Acheulean expansion). Representatives of this wave are also our direct ancestors. Finally, five more DNA sections (including mtDNA and the Y chromosome) support a third exodus from Africa about 100 thousand years ago.

Moreover, Templeton's data shows that the exchange of genes between the Eurasian and African populations of our ancestors almost never stopped, although it was greatly hindered by long distances. It turns out that ancient humanity was not at all a collection of isolated populations (races, subspecies, species...) - it was relatively unified over the past two million years!

Neanderthal question

The mtDNA of Neanderthals is very different from ours, and other parts of the genome have not yet been isolated from fossil bones. However, according to Templeton, this does not at all prove that our ancestors did not interbreed with Neanderthals and that modern people do not have even a shred of Neanderthal blood. For example, unidirectional hybridization could occur (sapien women could give birth to children from Neanderthal men) - in this case, mtDNA cannot tell us anything. Similar examples, when the genes of one people were transmitted to another only through men, are known from the later history of mankind.

Based on his data, Templeton calculated the probability that the theory of the complete displacement of all ancient inhabitants of Eurasia by sapiens was still correct. The probability turned out to be 10 –17. There is no less. The researcher believes that he has not only refuted this theory - it has been destroyed.

All that remains is to wait for counterarguments from the opposing side.

The time when humanity was born

We know that humanity was born approximately 2.5 million years BC.
The time in which this event took place is called the Stone Age in history.
This period, from the point of view of archeology - the science that studies the past of people - began approximately 2.5 million years ago and ended about 6 thousand years ago.

It consists of the following three main parts, periods:
Paleolithic(ancient, or lower stone age). At this time the first stone tools labor.
Mesolithic(Middle Stone Age). Tools of labor became more diverse.
Neolithic(New or Upper Stone Age). People learned to make a sickle and a hoe.

After the Stone Age, the so-called copper period(Chalcolithic). This name - the copper period - means that during this period people began to produce and use tools made of metal.
In the Middle East, the use of copper began somewhere between 7 and 5 thousand years ago; in Europe - a little later, 5 thousand years ago.

Following the copper period is bronze period, which began about 5 thousand years ago, when bronze products began to be produced in the Middle East (in Europe, this metal first began to be used only 5 thousand years ago).

AND last period ancient human history is iron period, which began around the 1st millennium BC.
It all started in Europe, where it was at this time that iron tools began to be produced and used.
In Africa and the Middle East, iron began to be used only from 700 BC.

Apes - primitive people(the first people) - were not at all like animals.

They walked with both legs and were as tall as chimpanzees. These “pseudo people” moved on their hind limbs and held their bodies vertically.

Primitive people lived not in trees, but on the ground, hiding in caves.

Having neither strong fangs nor sharp claws, the first people still had a huge advantage over other animals: walking with their feet, they used their hands to collect suitable stones and break out clubs; they already knew how to collect and use sharp bones or horns of killed animals .

The use of sticks and stones helped them, our distant ancestors, survive in the difficult struggle for existence: by killing birds and small animals with them, digging up various edible roots, the first people defeated their greatest enemy at that time - hunger.

This was their weapon. The first weapon in the world.

The first people were already standing firmly on their feet, that is, they had, as scientists say, bipedal walking.

Apes did not live alone, but in whole groups - herds - and were always ready to come to each other's aid, which gave them the opportunity to fight their other enemy - predators.

Among the most famous apes, first of all, it is necessary to name Australopithecus (from the Latin word australis - southern) and Paranthropus.

The first humans, who first appeared in Africa, approximately 4 million years BC, were more human-like than the apes of today.

• The appearance of the first people

The first people, called Homo habilis (handy man), first appeared in Africa about 2.5 million years ago.

• Genus

A clan is a group of people whose members are related to each other by blood. For example, father, mother, son, daughter, aunt, etc.

• Human races

All people who currently live on Earth belong to the same biological type - Homo Sapiens.

• How races arose
• Great Glaciation

It was 24 thousand years ago. Temperatures across the planet dropped, and cold, snowy weather took over the Earth. The terrible ice age has begun...

• Beliefs of ancient people

Many hundreds of years primitive I didn’t know any religion at all. The first religious beliefs appeared among people only at the end of the ancient Stone Age, that is, about 50-40 thousand years ago.

• The Legend of Atlantis

Anything can become unusual. For example, a land that almost everyone has heard of, but no one has ever seen. This mysterious country who once died.

• Neolithic

Meanwhile, life went on. Glaciation ended, and people began to settle throughout the entire territory of our planet.

• The Ancient East

The word "civilization" arose from the Latin word "civilis" - civil, state. And it has this meaning - “the level of culture and development of a country or people.”

• "Clay Books" of the Sumerians

Scientists consider Mesopotamia to be the oldest civilization in the world, which arose approximately seven thousand years ago, on fertile lands in the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (currently the state of Iraq is located there).

When considering the development of civilization, one cannot ignore such a topic as the origin of humanity and its early history. And, in fact, here we have two options. The first is to accept the version that “official” science offers us, the second is to join the ranks of “alternatives”, supporters of alternative history. Which option is more correct and why do you even need to doubt the official version?

A detailed consideration of the situation in modern science is beyond the scope of this part; this will be done later. However, it can be said quite clearly that those who engage in science for the most part are, in fact, no more intelligent than ordinary people. The worldview proposed by science is not rational, but only rationalized. A significant part of those methods that are considered scientific are in fact irrational and illogical. Of the basic irrationalities of modern Western science (and all of it, in fact, is built on Western tradition), we highlight 2 problems that have special meaning for this topic. Firstly, often, and even as a rule, a plausible hypothesis is accepted as an official, “reliable” scientific theory, for which there is no clear and rigorous evidence in favor of alternative versions. Moreover, even if there are facts and evidence that contradict this official hypothesis, they are discarded, hushed up, and without any reason declared to be errors, falsifications and simply nonsense. Secondly, when communicating the “official” position of science to the broad masses, a simply monstrous reduction and simplification is carried out, even to the point of distorting the picture that specialists working in this field have. If experts know about alternative versions and interpretations of certain finds, know about the controversies surrounding them and the arguments given by one side or the other, know about inconvenient facts, etc., then in popular presentations all these features disappear and the controversial hypothesis put forward , for example, brought to the fore by the authority of some scientist, takes on the appearance of an indisputably proven truth. In history and archeology, these two problems manifest themselves very strongly, and the fact that politics and ideology have always had a very strong influence on history provides sufficient grounds to consider the official version of history, especially the ancient one, to be insufficiently reliable. And it’s no secret that Western historical science has already experienced a lot of “punctures” - for example, in the 19th century. Many historians considered Troy and Babylon described in ancient sources to be fairy tales (until their ruins were excavated), and theories of the origin of man in the first half of the 20th century. were built largely on the discovery of the so-called skull. "Piltdown Man", which later turned out to be a fake.

Of course, there are even more problems in the works of numerous “alternative” historians. More than 90% of their theories are complete nonsense, although they may initially make some impression on an unprepared reader. Often, “alternatives” act with much more delusional methods than scientists - they tear out individual fragments from myths, and arbitrarily interpreting them, passing them off as reliable facts, pulling in some secondary artificial arguments, completely ignoring everything that contradicts their version, etc. etc. There are also those who generate outright nonsense for the sake of PR. After reading such alternative grief theories, you will learn that recently there was a nuclear war on Earth, which threw 7/8 of the atmosphere into space, and that the entire world history until the 18th century was falsified, and that Stone Age people talked and wrote in modern Russian. However, there are also more adequate “alternatives” who pay attention to a fairly detailed study of the facts and provide visual and fairly convincing evidence in favor of the fallacy of official theories. For example, reports on expeditions organized by the “alternative history laboratory” deserve attention.

One way or another, in order to create a picture of the ancient history of mankind that at least partially claims to be reliable, it is necessary to carefully study and compare facts and evidence, and deeply check the validity of certain conclusions and theories.

What is the official version of the origin of man and the emergence of civilization? Human ancestors - ancient hominids lived in Africa. 6-7 million years ago, the branch leading to humans separated from the branch leading to the closest modern “relatives” of Homo Sapiens - the apes. A gradual evolution began towards more and more developed human species, while sometimes dead-end human species split off from the main branch and subsequently became extinct. As a result of the reduction of forests and the onset of the savannah, the ancient ancestors of man (Dryopithecines) climbed down from the trees, mastered upright walking, and began to use primitive tools. Then they learned to use fire, speech and primitive forms of culture appeared. Modern look- Homo Sapiens, according to modern ideas, appeared in Africa approximately 100-200 thousand years ago. For a long time, our ancestors lived by hunting and gathering, for this for a long time they settled from Africa almost all over the world, where, after the end of the last 10-12 thousand years ago ice age(the very interpretation of which by modern science is also controversial) in some favorable centers for this (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, Mexico and Peru) switched from hunting and gathering to agriculture and cattle breeding, and then in the same centers approximately 5-6 thousand . years ago (3-4 thousand years ago) the first civilizations arose.

Now let’s look at the controversial issues and problems of this official version and the arguments in favor of another version.

1) Strangeness in human origins.

The evolutionary version seems quite logical. Despite some confusion in the definitions of the species of ancient people, modern anthropologists are ready to draw a rough diagram of human evolution from early ancestors to the modern species:

The most interesting is the last transition - from Heidelberg man to modern Homo Sapiens. Based on archaeological data, it turned out to be difficult to establish the approximate circumstances, place and time of such a transition. For a long time, two theories competed - the theory of the origin of Homo Sapiens in one place and its subsequent settlement throughout the planet (with the displacement of other species of ancient people who settled earlier) and the theory of multiregional origin, according to which the process of “sapientation”, i.e. the transformation of archaic forms into Homo sapiens occurred independently in different regions. A significant word in this dispute in favor of the theory of origin from a single center was given by DNA studies of modern people. It follows from them that, firstly, the genetic diversity of modern people (despite the presence different races) is extremely small and significantly inferior to the genetic diversity among specific species of the same monkeys, despite the fact that the human population is much larger. And secondly, they lead to the conclusion that for all people on the planet there is only one common ancestor on the maternal line (the so-called “mitochondrial Eve”) and that all modern Homo Sapiens descended from a very, very small original population of people who lived approximately 100-200 thousand years ago. Modern science explains this by the “bottleneck effect” - once the ancestors of modern people, as a result of some natural disaster, epidemic, etc., almost became extinct, with the exception of only a few dozen people, and from these few survivors all modern humanity descended. In itself, this circumstance looks somewhat strange, but besides this, it provides arguments in the hands of supporters of an alternative version of the origin of man, namely, they intervened in the evolution of our species and took that very key, final step in the transition from a not very intelligent creature to a real person some external forces, for example, an alien civilization.

2) Mythology.

When commenting on myths, scientists like to explain their content as empty fantasy. Of course, it is hardly worth calling for everything described in them to be accepted as reliable facts. Many myths are obviously “fabulous” and unrealistic in content. It is clear that, for example, a magical cow that grants wishes, or a river that turns into a girl in the Mahabharata are clearly fairy-tale elements and it is stupid to try to read this fairy tale literally. However, if you think logically, even what is described in myths comes from somewhere. And if in myths different nations albeit in different words, but they talk about similar events; if there are specific elements there, this should lead researchers to certain thoughts. It is unscientific to attribute absolutely everything to fantasy.

But the myths do not support the official version. The myths of the peoples of the world do not say that people descended from not very intelligent ancestors and independently mastered certain achievements. On the contrary, all the myths of the peoples of the world say that man was created by certain gods, and also that it was the gods who taught him the basic technologies of antiquity, brought him gifts of cultivated plants and taught him how to grow them. And myths also tell about what wonderful abilities the gods and those people possessed, to whom they sometimes transferred part of their power. And if in some myths this is told allegorically and with a large share of fairy-tale elements mixed in, then in others it is quite specific and unambiguous. For example, the myths of the African Dogon tribe, which tell about the arrival of gods to Earth in the distant past, do not have any logical explanation within the official version. At the same time, the plausibility of the myth is supported by the astronomical information present in it, which coincides with the latest discoveries of modern astronomers and certainly could not have been independently discovered primitive tribe. Ancient Indian myths are full of descriptions of gods and their deeds, while they contain so many references to “vimanas” - flying machines and they are described in such detail that it is very difficult to attribute this to simple fantasy. In Manetho’s “History of Egypt,” which is considered one of the most valuable sources on the history of Ancient Egypt, the pharaoh rulers, according to the author, were preceded by a long period of rule by gods and demigods, and this period lasted 12 thousand years. However, while recognizing the reality of the pharaohs described in this work, modern historians consider the previous period to be a simple fiction.

3) Buildings and artifacts of the past.

Material evidence of the presence on Earth of those who possessed high technologies that exceeded the capabilities of modern civilization is in plain sight. Easy introduction to Egyptian pyramids, for example, leads to the unambiguous conclusion that their construction lay far beyond the capabilities of civilization Bronze Age. Neither the scale of construction, nor the huge size of the stone blocks, nor the amazing quality of their processing in any way agree with the official version. Moreover, an attempt by Japanese researchers in 1978 to build a small pyramid similar to the Cheops pyramid using ancient technology (which is believed to have been used in the construction of the pyramid) by Japanese researchers ended in failure.

Part of Djoser’s pyramid, clearly showing the difference in technology - apparently, using ancient blocks at the base of the pyramid, the ancient Egyptians completed it themselves

Baalbek - even today no one would be able to build buildings from such blocks

And such “impossible” structures in different parts there is still a lot of peace in the world: pyramids in Mexico, fortresses in Peru, a temple in Baalbek, etc., etc. Moreover, artifacts and ancient monuments that do not fit into the official version of history, but at the same time are completely reliable (which, however, do not prevents official science from still trying to deny them and declare them fakes) are not at all limited to huge buildings. Among them, for example, are Ica stones, Acambaro figurines, the Piri Reis map, the Saqqara collection, etc.

A detailed consideration of the theory of paleocontact and the reconstruction of actual events in the ancient history of mankind is beyond the scope of this concept. However, today enough facts have already accumulated that cast doubt on the official version. Probably, the direct intervention of extraterrestrial civilizations in the development of mankind actually took place, and the “launch” of human civilization, and perhaps the very appearance of the species Homo Sapiens, is the result of this intervention. However, approximately 5-6 thousand years ago or earlier, extraterrestrial civilizations stopped direct interference and gave humanity the opportunity to develop independently.

Materials for additional information:

World history is a single process that follows objective laws, that is, existing laws independent of the consciousness and will of people. In this sense, it is an objective and predetermined process. But this is such an objective predetermination that not only does not exclude, but, on the contrary, presupposes accidents. Historical process predetermined only in the main and fundamental things, but not in the details. What cannot not be is manifested in what may or may not be. Necessity always appears and exists only in accidents. Therefore, in history there have always been and are different possibilities for future development. But if the future in history is always alternative, polyfurcative (within certain objective boundaries, of course), then the past is without alternative and irreversible. To understand history, you need to abstract from the particulars, to reveal the objective necessity and predetermination that carves its way through all accidents.

World history is a single process that represents an ascent from the lowest to the highest. Therefore, there are stages of progressive development of humanity, and, consequently, world-historical eras. This understanding of history is called unitary-stage. Of all the concepts of history that have existed and exist, I consider the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations to be the best. Formations are stage types of society, identified on the basis of socio-economic structure.

Marxism, as you know, believes that the development of society is based on the development of production. The productive forces of society are growing, which leads to a change in systems of socio-economic relations, the types of social production - methods of production - are changing, which entails a change in types of society: one socio-economic formation is replaced by another, more progressive one. But the countdown of formations does not start from the very beginning of human history.

Its entire history is quite clearly divided into two qualitatively different periods, to the first of which the concept of socio-economic formation is inapplicable. It represents the period of transformation of human animal ancestors into people and zoological unification into human society, the period of anthroposociogenesis. The basis of this process was the formation of social production. The emergence of a completely new social quality necessarily presupposed and made necessary the curbing of animal individualism, the suppression and introduction of zoological instincts into a social framework. The most important means curbing animal egoism were the first norms of human behavior - taboos. Morality subsequently arose on the basis of tabooite. Unlike an animal, whose actions are determined by biological instincts, a person is guided by feelings of duty, honor and conscience.

The first was to curb the food instinct. Distribution relations emerged as a social framework for it - the initial and most important form of socio-economic relations. The first socio-economic ties were communist. Animal egoism could only be curbed by human collectivism. With the advent of the first form of marriage - dual-clan, group marriage - the sexual instinct was curbed. With the introduction of first food and then sexual instincts into the social framework, the process of formation of man and society was completed. People in the making have turned into people who are already formed and ready. The period of formation of society has ended, and the history of a ready-made, truly human society has begun. This happened quite recently, literally “the other day.” The period of anthroposociogenesis, which began 1.9–1.8 million years ago, ended approximately 40 thousand years ago. And socio-economic formations are stages of development of a ready-made, formed society.

In our country, the first form of existence of a ready-made society is usually called a primitive society, in Western literature – a primitive, or egalitarian, society. It was the only one that existed in the era from 40 thousand to 5 thousand years ago. This time is the era of primitive society. At the earliest stage of its development it was communist (primitive communist). At the stage when the entire social product was life-sustaining, no other form of distribution other than distribution according to needs could exist.

With the development of productive forces and the emergence of regular surplus products, communist relations became an obstacle to the development of society. As a result, distribution according to labor began to emerge, and with it the property of individuals, exchange and property inequality. All this prepared and made inevitable the emergence of private property, the exploitation of man by man, thereby the split of society into social classes and the emergence of the state.

The first class, or, as they are usually called, civilized societies arose in the 31st century. BC e., that is, approximately 5 thousand years ago. At this time, one of the features of the world-historical process was more than clearly manifested - the uneven development of human society as a whole. Some specific individual societies - sociohistorical organisms (abbreviated as sociors) - went ahead, others lagged behind them in their development. With the advent of such unevenness, human society as a whole began to consist of several historical worlds. One such historical world was made up of the most advanced sociohistorical organisms for a given era, which can be called superior (from lat. super- above, above), another or other worlds - lagging behind in development - inferior (from lat. infra- under).

The first class societies arose as isolated islands in the sea of ​​primitive society. One such class historical nest appeared in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates, another in the Nile Valley. The Egyptian civilization, at its inception, was a single sociohistorical organism, while the Sumerian civilization was a system of small sociohistorical organisms, city-states.

Further development followed two paths. The first is the emergence of new historical nests that existed like islands in the sea of ​​primitive society. One of them appeared in the Indus Valley - the Harappan civilization, the other - in the Yellow River Valley - the Yin or Shang civilization. The second way is the emergence of many class sociohistorical organisms in the space between Egypt and Mesopotamia and in the vicinity of them. All of them, together with Egypt and Mesopotamia, formed a huge system of class sociohistorical organisms that covered the entire Middle East. This Middle Eastern historical arena, having emerged, became the center of world-historical development and, in this sense, the world system.

All sociohistorical organisms that found themselves outside the historical center constituted the world periphery. Some of these sociors were class, others were primitive. With the advent of the first class sociologists and especially with the emergence of the Middle Eastern world system, the second era of development of the ready-made human and the first era of the history of civilized society began - the era of the Ancient East.

The basis of the original class societies was that antagonistic mode of production, which, following K. Marx, is most often called Asian. Its peculiarity is that it was based on general class private ownership of both the means of production and the individual producers of material goods. In this case, the private owner was only the exploiting class as a whole, and not one of its members, taken individually. General-class private property acted in the form of state property, which determined the coincidence of the ruling class with the composition of the state apparatus. Therefore, this production method is best called politary (from the Greek. polity- state). All politarists constituted a corporation - a political system, headed by a politarch, who was both the supreme manager of the surplus product and the ruler of the state. The politarch had the right to life and death of all his subjects, including politarists.

An indicator of the level of development of productive forces is the volume of product created in a society per capita. This indicator - the productivity of social production - can be increased in different ways.

In a political society, the increase in the productivity of social production and thereby the productive forces was achieved mainly by increasing working time - the number of working days per year and working hours per day. This temporal (from lat. tempus– time) the method of increasing the productivity of social production was limited. Sooner or later, a limit was reached beyond which an increase in working time led to the physical degradation of the main productive force - the human worker. There was a pullback. All this has been repeated many times in the history of political sociohistorical organisms.

First of all, the cyclical nature of the development of societies of the Ancient East is connected with this: they arose, flourished, and then entered into eras of decline and even death. The political, socio-economic formation was a dead end. She was not able to transform into another, more progressive one.

The way out of the impasse became possible because, in addition to political societies, primitive societies continued to exist, including the latest of them - pre-class ones, and of various socio-economic types. The pre-class societies that were adjacent to the Middle Eastern world system were subject to powerful cultural, political and economic influences from it. As a result, they learned all the main achievements of political societies, which significantly affected their entire development.

It became different from the evolution of protopolitarian (emerging politarian) pre-class societies from which the first politarian societies emerged. Subjected to the influence of the world political system, pre-class societies eventually also turned into class societies, but only of a completely different type than the ancient Eastern ones. Ultimately, they established not a political, but a qualitatively different mode of production, precisely the one that is usually called slave-owning, or ancient.

In the 8th century BC e. A Greek historical nest arose, then Etruscan, Latin, and Carthaginian nests joined it. All of them, taken together, formed a new historical arena - the Mediterranean, which has since become the center of world-historical development. So, on the scale of humanity, in the form of a change in the world systems of sociologists of two different socio-economic types, the political formation was replaced by the ancient formation. The transfer of the historical baton from the political Middle East to the ancient Mediterranean has been completed. With the transfer of the historical center to the emerging new ancient arena, the Middle Eastern political historical arena ceased to be a world system. It became part of the world periphery. With the transformation of the Mediterranean historical arena into a world system, the second era of world history ended - the era of the Ancient East and the third - the era of antiquity began.

If in the era of the Ancient East, outside the world system there were only many primitive sociohistorical organisms and several isolated political historical nests, then in ancient times the class historical periphery began to consist of many political historical arenas. They filled most of the Old World, and by the 1st millennium BC. e. two political historical arenas - Mesoamerican and Andean - emerged in the New World.

It is generally accepted that the ancient world was based on slavery. But slavery is different from slavery. Slavery in itself is not yet a mode of production. It is an economic and legal state in which one person is the complete property of another. But a slave does not necessarily have to be used in the production of material goods. He can be a valet, a nanny, a teacher, an official, etc. Even when a slave is used in production, his labor can play a purely auxiliary role. In this case, they talk about domestic, or patriarchal, slavery.

The labor of slaves becomes the basis of society only when special economic units of production arise, main force which consist of slaves. And this necessarily presupposes the systematic import of slaves from outside society. This is exactly what ancient slavery was like. Slavery also existed in ancient Eastern society. But it was only in the ancient world that a special method of production, based on the labor of slaves, arose - servar (from lat. servus- slave) method of production.

Increasing the productivity of social production was based in the ancient world on increasing the share of workers in the population of society through the import of additional work force from outside the sociohistorical organism. And this meant tearing out this workforce from the surrounding sociology. The main source of slaves was the historical periphery, primarily the late primitive - pre-class, or barbarian, periphery.

Thus, the ancient world lived largely at the expense of the barbarian periphery. Characteristic for ancient society the method of increasing the productivity of social production can be called demographic. Its capabilities, as well as the capabilities of the temporal method, were limited.

The normal functioning of ancient society presupposed continuous external expansion. But this attack on the historical periphery was bound to choke sooner or later. When this happened, a general decline and degradation of the ancient world began. The ancient (servar) socio-economic formation, like the political one, turned out to be a dead end. It, like the political one, could not turn into a more progressive formation.

With the decline of the ancient world, the barbarian periphery launched a counteroffensive. At the end of the 5th century. already n. e. The ancient world system came to an end. The ancient world collapsed under the blows of the barbarians. The entire territory of the last great ancient power - the Western Roman Empire - was conquered by Germanic tribes. And this opened up the possibility of breaking out of the historical impasse in which humanity once again found itself.

In the territory Western Europe(former Western Roman Empire) there was an organic merger, a combination of Roman (class) and German (pre-class) socio-economic structures (Roman-German synthesis), as a result of which socio-economic relations of a qualitatively new type arose - feudal.

Feudal sociohistorical organisms, taken together, formed a new historical arena, which became the center of world-historical development and thereby the world system. The ancient socio-economic formation was replaced by the feudal one. The change from the ancient formation to the feudal one occurred, like the earlier change from the political formation from the ancient one, within the framework not of individual sociohistorical organisms, but of human society as a whole, and had the character of a historical relay race. It, like the change in the ancient political formation, occurred in the form of a change in world systems of sociohistorical organisms of different types and was accompanied by a territorial movement of the center of world-historical development. With the beginning of the formation of the feudal Western European world system ancient era was replaced by the fourth era of world history - the era of the Middle Ages.

Outside the world system, many primitive sociohistorical organisms and a large number of political historical arenas continued to exist. In Northern, Central and Eastern Europe there was a process of transformation of pre-class societies into class societies. But neither ancient socio-economic structures nor their fragments were there. Therefore, the Romano-Barbarian synthesis could not take place there, and, accordingly, feudalism could not arise there.

But these societies were in the zone of powerful influence of existing class societies - Western European, on the one hand, Byzantine, on the other. As a result, they took a step forward and at the same time to the side, to the side. There arose class societies of several special socio-economic types, different from the political, and from the ancient, and from the feudal. These non-mainstream socio-economic types can be called socio-economic paraformations.

Thus, along with the main line of human history, several side historical paths. One historical world was formed in Northern Europe, the other in Central and Eastern Europe. From last to further development Another new historical world separated - the Russian one.

Characteristic feature In the late Middle Ages there was a very close symbiosis of feudal and trade-burgher modes of production. It was the development of cities with their trading and burgher economic system that prepared and made possible, and then necessary, the appearance in the 16th century. a new mode of production - capitalist. Capitalism independently, spontaneously arose in only one place on the globe - in Western Europe. With the transformation of feudal-burgher sociohistorical organisms into capitalist sociors, the world Western European feudal system was replaced by a Western European, but already capitalist system. It immediately became the center of world-historical development and thereby the world system. With the change of world systems, there was a transition from the era of the Middle Ages to the fifth era of world history - the era of Modern Time.

The development of capitalism occurred in two directions: in depth and in breadth. Development in depth is the formation and maturation of capitalism in Western European countries. Bourgeois revolutions thundered there, as a result of which power passed into the hands of the capitalist class, and the industrial revolution unfolded - the replacement of manual production with machine production. With the advent of machines, an adequate technical base was provided for capitalism, and as a result, the steady progress of the productive forces of society began. The technical method of increasing the productivity of social production, which came to the fore under capitalism, in contrast to the temporal and demographic methods, seemed to have no limits.

Along with the development of capitalism, its development went deeper and wider. In the process of the evolution of class society, the world systems that existed in certain eras always had a great impact on the historical periphery. But this influence in previous eras affected only a greater or lesser part of the peripheral sociors, which formed the immediate, or internal, periphery. These sociohistorical organisms became dependent on the center and, in particular, were exploited by it. The outer periphery continued to lead a completely independent existence.

With the advent of the global Western European capitalist system, the situation changed. Over the course of several centuries, the world capitalist system has drawn almost the entire periphery into its sphere of influence. For the first time, all sociohistorical organisms that existed on the globe formed one system. The world historical space that emerged as a result of the unfolding process of internationalization was clearly divided into two main parts.

The first part is the world capitalist system, which was the center of historical development. She did not remain unchanged. If initially it included only the states of Western Europe, then later it included the countries of Northern Europe and sociohistorical organisms that arose in other parts of the world by spinning off from Western European societies (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). The Western European world system then simply became Western.

The second part is all the other sociohistorical organisms that continued to make up the historical periphery, which in the end all, with the rarest exceptions, became, firstly, internal, and secondly, dependent on the historical center. The dependence of the periphery on the center meant the dominance of the center over the periphery. This dependence of the societies of the periphery on the countries of the center (and, accordingly, the dominance of the latter over the former) was expressed in the fact that the center exploited the periphery in various forms and appropriated free of charge part of the product created in the societies of the periphery. This exploitation is not intrasocior (endosocior), but extrasocior (exosocior), intersocior (intersocior). There is no term for this type of exploitation. I will call it international slavery, international slavery.

There are two main forms of this exploitation. One involves turning the country into a penal colony. This is colonial exploitation, colonial slavery. Another form is when a country that formally remains a sovereign and, in this sense, politically independent state is subject to exploitation. This kind of sociohistorical organisms can be called dependents (from lat. dependetio- dependence), and the form of their exploitation - dependent slavery.

The involvement of peripheral countries in the sphere of dependence on the center entailed the penetration and development of capitalist relations in them. The countries of the periphery, which were previously dominated by various kinds of pre-capitalist socio-economic relations, including ancient political ones, began to transform and eventually turned into capitalist socio-historical organisms.

Here one of the important features world historical development. As can be seen from everything said above, world history is not a process of the simultaneous rise of all sociohistorical organisms from one stage to another, higher one. There never have been and never could have been socio-historical organisms that went through stages of historical development. One of the reasons is that there have never been sociohistorical organisms that would have existed throughout human history. Not only stages changed in history, but also sociohistorical organisms. They appeared and then disappeared. They were replaced by others.

Therefore, socio-economic formations have always been primarily stages of development of human society as a whole. Only human society as a whole could go through all the formations without exception, but in no case one sociohistorical organism taken separately. Formations could be stages in the development of individual societies, but this was not necessarily the case. Some socio-economic formations could be embodied in certain sociohistorical organisms, while others could be embodied in completely different ones. Only such an interpretation of the theory of socio-economic formations, which is called global-stage, global-formational, corresponds to historical reality.

As we have already seen, starting from the emergence of the first class societies, the change in socio-economic formations took the form of a change in world systems of superior sociohistorical organisms, entailing a change in world-historical eras. Each such world system of superior sociohistorical organisms prepared and made possible the emergence of another, more advanced one. The replacement of the Middle Eastern political world system by the Mediterranean ancient world system, the ancient one by the Western European feudal system, and the latter by the Western capitalist world system is the main line of world history.

With the advent of each new world system, the nature of the historical development of inferior sociohistorical organisms that found themselves in the zone of its influence changed. They could no longer develop the way organisms that had become superior developed, or go through the stages that the latter went through. The steps passed by superior sociohistorical organisms often became passed by inferior sociors, who never reached them.

This pattern emerged with particular clarity with the advent of the world capitalist system, into the sphere of influence of which the entire historical periphery was drawn. From then on, for all societies, no matter what stage of historical development they were at, the transition to capitalism and only capitalism became inevitable. Historians sometimes say that certain societies can and do bypass, skip certain stages of historical development. In fact, under the existing conditions, they could not avoid them. When the advanced part of humanity reached the stage of capitalism, then for all inferior societies, without exception, all stages of development that they themselves did not go through turned out to be already passed for them.

From here, it would seem, the conclusion followed that as soon as all inferior sociohistorical organisms become capitalist, the division of human society as a whole into historical worlds and thereby into a historical center and historical periphery will disappear. But real historical development It turned out to be more difficult.

The capitalism that arose in peripheral countries, due to their dependence on the world center, turned out to be qualitatively different from what existed in the states of the latter. In science it is called dependent, or peripheral, capitalism. For brevity, I will call it paracapitalism (from the Greek. rarA- near, near), and the capitalism of the center - orthocapitalism (from the Greek. orthos- straight, correct).

If the countries of the center belonged to the capitalist socio-economic formation and thereby to one historical world, then the societies of the periphery belonged to the para-capitalist socio-economic paraformation and thereby to another historical world. IN late XIX V. Tsarist Russia also joined the list of dependent paracapitalist countries.

The capitalist world system has not been politically unified for a long time. There was rivalry between the states that were part of it over colonies and spheres of influence. The split of the center into factions that fought for the division and redistribution of the peripheral world led to two world wars (1914–1915 and 1939–1945).

Peripheral capitalism, generated by dependence on the West, doomed these countries to backwardness and their population to hopeless poverty. Therefore, revolutions began to mature in them, with the goal of eliminating paracapitalism and liberating the country from exploitation by the West - socio-liberation (national liberation) revolutions.

The first wave of these revolutions unfolded in the first two decades of the 20th century: Russia, Persia, Turkey, China, Mexico and Russia again. One of these revolutions - the Great October Workers' and Peasants' Revolution of 1917 in Russia - ended in victory. It marched under the banner of socialism, but did not and could not lead to a classless society. Russia's productive forces are not ripe for this.

Therefore, the revival of private property and class society in the country was inevitable. And it was reborn, but in new form. In Russia, a new type of politicalism arose - neopolitarism. But the country's liberation from semi-colonial dependence on the West made its powerful leap forward possible. From a backward, largely agricultural country, Russia became Soviet Union, in a matter of years became the second industrial power in the world, and then became one of the two superpowers.

The October Revolution, having snatched Russia from the peripheral world, laid the foundation for a new world system - neopolitarian, which finally took shape after the second wave of socio-liberation revolutions that swept through the 40s and 50s. XX century for countries of Central Europe and Eastern and South-East Asia. As a result, the territory of the para-capitalist periphery sharply decreased and two world systems, two world centers emerged on the globe. This configuration of the world historical space was expressed in public consciousness in the thesis about the existence of three worlds: the first, which was understood as the ortho-capitalist center, the second - the world neo-political system, which was usually called socialist, and the third - the para-capitalist periphery, which continued to depend on the ortho-capitalist center.

But by the end of the 20th century. Neopolitarism in the USSR and Central European countries has exhausted its progressive possibilities. A new, this time truly socialist, revolution was needed, but in reality a counter-revolution took place. In the new states that emerged after the collapse of the USSR, including its largest “stump” - the Russian Federation, but excluding Belarus, and in most neo-politan countries of Europe, a restoration of peripheral capitalism took place. They again became dependents of the West.

As a result, there was a change in the configuration of the world historical space. All countries of the world were divided into four groups: (1) the ortho-capitalist world center; (2) old dependent periphery; (3) new dependent periphery and (4) independent periphery ( North Korea, China, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Cuba).

This configuration was superimposed on a new process that began in the last quarter of the 20th century - globalization. If it began at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries. internationalization consisted of uniting all sociors into a single world system, while globalization consisted of uniting all sociors into one world-wide (global) sociohistorical organism.

The world system by this time included two large groups sociologists, one of whom exploited the other. As a result, the global sociology began to take shape as a class one, as split into two global classes. The world ortho-capitalist system began to turn into a global exploiting class, and the countries of the dependent para-capitalist periphery - into a global exploited class. And where there are classes, class struggle is inevitable. Humanity has entered an era of global class struggle.

The ortho-capitalist center acted as the attacker. The most favorable conditions were created for him. If in past times it was split into warring factions, then after the end of the Second World War it became largely united. It has one leader - the USA. It united organizationally: a significant part of its sociologists entered a common military alliance - NATO and a common economic union - the EU. Imperialism developed into ultra-imperialism.

However, in the period until the early 90s. The possibilities for action of the ortho-capitalist center were very limited. The ultra-imperialist beast was muzzled in the form of a powerful neo-political world system. The ortho-capitalist center was forced to come to terms with the loss of a large number of countries from the para-capitalist periphery, and with the disappearance of the colonial system, after which all surviving para-capitalist sociors became dependents.

With the collapse of the USSR and the disappearance of the global neo-political system, it seemed that the time had come for revenge.

Even earlier, it became clear to the countries of the center that dependencies were more difficult to exploit than colonies. Therefore, the Western center was faced with the task of once again establishing its complete and undivided dominance over the peripheral world and re-colonizing it.

But a return to the colonies of the previous type under the new conditions was impossible. The solution was found in the installation in peripheral countries of such regimes, under which their governments would forever turn into puppets of the West, especially the United States. In order for the leaders of these countries to be easy to keep in obedience and to change without unnecessary difficulty, these regimes had to be outwardly democratic. A. A. Zinoviev proposed calling such countries “democratic colonies.” I will call them satellites. The United States and its allies began to fight for world domination under the slogan of democratization of all countries of the world.

The greatest danger to the West was, of course, the countries of the independent periphery. He started with them. But China was clearly too tough for him. The first victim was Yugoslavia. The parts that “fell away” from it - Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina - immediately turned into satellites. The West launched a bandit attack on Yugoslavia, which remained part of Serbia and Montenegro. Kosovo was separated from Serbia. As a result of the “color” revolution organized primarily by the United States, it became a satellite of the West. The final chord is the separation of Montenegro, which had previously become a satellite.

Under the banner of the fight against international terrorism, NATO troops entered Afghanistan. The US and UK attacked Iraq. The country was occupied by foreign troops. A “color” revolution was carried out in Ukraine, and a similar coup d’etat was attempted in Belarus, which ended in complete failure. Every now and then there is a leak of information about the impending missile and bomb attack on Iran.

Along with the military and political offensive, there is an ideological and cultural expansion of the center. But what the West is now spreading outward is not its great culture, which was created in the Renaissance and Modern times, but the current commercial culture, which has nothing in common with true art. A wave of propaganda of violence, cruelty, immorality, debauchery, homosexuality, etc. pours from the West in a muddy, stinking stream.

This Western pseudo-culture, of course, stands immeasurably lower than the local indigenous culture of the peoples of the periphery. The majority of the population of peripheral countries greets it with hostility. As a result, in their eyes, resistance to the West appears primarily as a struggle to preserve their traditional cultural values. As a consequence, a significant number of Western and not only Western political scientists understood the global class struggle as a clash of civilizations: Western, on the one hand, non-Western, on the other.

The pressure of the West is met not only by ideological protest, but also by other forms of resistance. A manifestation of the global class struggle is the powerful anti-globalist movement that has unfolded in recent decades, as well as international terrorism under the banner of radical Islamism.

But the main characters in the global class struggle are still not individual people or even large groups of them, but socio-historical organisms. The world that emerged after the disappearance of the global neo-political system is usually characterized as unipolar. This is both true and false. False, because the world is split into two groups of countries with opposing interests. True, because of these two groups of sociohistorical organisms, not just even a system, but also a powerful organized economic, political and military force only the center appears, which allows it to dominate and trample all the principles of international law, to act according to the principle of the landowner from the famous Nekrasov poem:

There is no contradiction in anyone,

Whom I want– have mercy,

Whom I want– I'll execute you.

Law– my desire!

Fist– my police!

The blow is sparkling,

The blow is tooth-breaking.

Hit the cheekbones!

As for the countries of the periphery, they have never formed unified system. They were united only by dependence on common masters. These countries were divided, and many contradictions existed and still exist between them. Therefore, they were not a force. The center took advantage of this disunity. He was always guided by the long-known rule - “divide and conquer.” To do this, he used both the carrot and the stick. Some countries in the periphery, on the one hand, out of fear, and on the other, out of a desire to receive handouts from the master’s table, became satellites of the center. This is how a servile, lackey, lackey periphery was formed, which in its attitude towards other peripheral countries surpassed even the owners in terms of impudence.

Almost all countries of Central and Southern Europe(Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc.), as well as Georgia. For the most part, they were included in organizations that initially united mainly only the countries of the center - NATO and the EU. It is the countries of the center and the countries of the lackey periphery that are usually meant when they talk about the international, or world, community, referring to its opinions, its assessments of current events.

The countries of the rest of the periphery are not taken into account: it is as if they do not exist. And it’s clear why: in any class society, not excluding the global one, the dominant ideology is always the ideology of the ruling class.

The creation of the Kholuy periphery was largely initiated by the United States. The countries of the center form one bandit gang. But this does not mean that there is complete unity between them. There are contradictions both between individual ordinary members and between the latter and the “ataman”. The leader often puts pressure on the rank and file, trying to turn them from junior, but still partners, into servants. They put up all possible resistance.

Sometimes the rank and file try to curb the leader when he gets too carried away. For example, France and Germany opposed the US plan to attack Iraq. And the United States, having achieved the admission of the countries of the lackey periphery into NATO and the European Union, uses them to put pressure on its not always quite submissive ortho-capitalist partners.

If the Kholuy periphery as a whole still agrees to support the existing state of affairs, then the rest of the periphery as a whole is dissatisfied with it. But many of these dissatisfied people are forced to put up with the existing order. And even those who are his opponents do not dare to enter into open conflict with the countries of the center.

But now, in addition to hidden opponents of the “new order,” more and more direct, open ones are beginning to appear. These are primarily countries of the independent periphery, in particular Iran and Belarus. Now the third wave of socio-liberation revolutions is taking place before our eyes. They originate in Latin America. The countries in which these revolutions are unfolding rise from their knees and challenge, first of all, the leader of the center - the United States. These are Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua.

The struggle against the West requires the unification of the periphery countries for its success. And this objective necessity is increasingly beginning to make its way, often regardless of the subjective intentions of the ruling elites of peripheral countries. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) arose in Eurasia, including Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Mongolia, Iran, India, and Pakistan are taking part in its work as observers. They all want to join it; Iran has even submitted an official application.

Although the leaders of the SCO countries strongly emphasize that this organization was not created for the purpose of confronting any other countries, its anti-American and, more broadly, anti-Western orientation is obvious. It is not for nothing that the United States was denied the right to participate in its activities even as an observer. Many political scientists see the SCO as a kind of anti-NATO. Joint Russian-Chinese military exercises were held within the framework of the SCO. Within the CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) was created.

In Latin America, an organization was created called the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin American countries consisting of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, which is distinguished by a sharp anti-American orientation. Honduras recently joined. The desire to jointly resist the United States is associated with the creation in 2008 of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) consisting of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. US military bases are being dismantled in Ecuador and Paraguay. A triangle Caracas – Minsk – Tehran emerged. The abbreviation BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) arose to designate a peculiar informal union of four largest countries peripheral world. Thus, the first steps have been taken towards uniting the peripheral world.

The position of Russia, which is the largest power in the world by territory, occupying more than half of Europe and a significant part of Asia, is of enormous importance for the fate of the peripheral world. The ruling elite of the Russian Federation, which emerged as an independent state after the collapse of the USSR, immediately took the path of fully pleasing the West and especially the United States. The Russian leadership, neglecting the interests of its own country, diligently followed all the instructions of the “Washington regional committee.”

This continued even after B.N. Yeltsin was replaced as president by V.V. Putin. The Americans ordered the sinking of the Mir - they drowned it, ordered to close the tracking station in Cuba - they closed it, demanded to leave the base in Cam Ranh (Vietnam) - they left it, etc. The number of concessions was endless. But in response to them, Russia received demands for more and more concessions and spitting in the face.

Russia was dragged into the lackey periphery, but at the same time they were denied handouts that other voluntary lackeys of the West received. In response to the desire of the Russian leadership to please the United States and the West, they diligently engaged in throwing a noose around her neck. The goal is to lead Russia as a slave under threat of strangulation. This was expressed in the constant approach of NATO to the borders of Russia, and in the creation of military bases, radars and missile systems on the territory of new members of this alliance.

Sooner or later, complete neglect of the Russian leadership national interests began to threaten the very existence of the country. A change in policy became more and more urgent. And the changes began. But they walked with a constant eye to the West, with constant retreats, endless vacillations and hesitations. Russia opposed, for example, tough sanctions against Iran, but, however, not against sanctions in general. On this occasion, one involuntarily recalls the famous Russian saying about something dangling in an ice hole.

But then Georgian President M. Saakashvili threw his army, armed to the teeth by the United States and a number of other states and trained by American instructors, against tiny South Ossetia with the goal of the wholesale extermination or expulsion of the Ossetian population. If successful, he was going to do the same with Abkhazia.

M. Saakashvili hoped that Russia, despite all the warnings expressed, would not dare to stand up for the Ossetians, fearing the inevitable sharp condemnation of these actions from the United States and, in general, the entire West as a whole. But the Russian leadership, knowing full well what would follow, decided on a conflict with the West. The Rubicon has been crossed.

Parts Russian army literally in five days they completely defeated the Georgian troops, destroyed the air and naval forces of Georgia and eliminated almost all of its military infrastructure (bases, radar stations, etc.). Georgian soldiers fled in panic, prompting observers to quip that the Georgian army appeared to have been trained by American running instructors. The road to Tbilisi was open, but Russian troops, having forced Georgia to peace, stopped.

The international community mentioned above erupted in a storm of indignation. People who presented themselves as irreconcilable defenders of human rights unanimously rushed to the defense of Saakashvili and his accomplices, thereby, in fact, completely approving the genocide they had undertaken. But Russia, despite all these hysterical cries, continued the work it had begun: it recognized and reliably guaranteed the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Of all the Western countries, the United States was especially excited. From the lips of their leaders, after the end of hostilities, threats and urgent demands for the most severe punishment for Russia began to pour out. The most servile satellites of the West (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) came up with proposals to impose severe sanctions against Russia. Some Western European countries also started talking about sanctions. But, having calculated their possible consequences, they fell silent. It became clear that they would boomerang against themselves.

The United States and NATO sent their warships to the shores of Georgia, completely forgetting that the time of “gunboat diplomacy” was over, and it was never used against countries such as Russia. The presence of this fleet in the Black Sea turned out to be completely pointless. Even the leaders of the European Union understood this, expressing concern that this would only lead to an escalation of tensions, when they need to be eased. Convinced that there was and will not be any benefit from the presence of military vessels in the Black Sea, the United States was forced to withdraw them. It all came down to wasting fuel that is now so expensive. This did not bring any benefit to the United States, nor did it add glory. As a result, the United States and the West as a whole were unable to take any real measures against Russia. Thus, they clearly demonstrated their powerlessness.

As a result of these events, a serious blow was dealt to the prestige of the United States, which was unable to protect its most devoted lackey, which was a harsh lesson for all other American lackeys.

Russia won a huge military and political victory. The main thing was her victory over herself. Russia has become convinced that it can defend its interests without fear of the West and regardless of it. This was a lesson for the whole world: both for the center and for the periphery. It turned out that even one country, such as Russia, can successfully resist the West. It became clear that if united, the periphery could completely end its dominance over the world.

The threats of the United States and the West to put Russia in a position of isolation from the whole world turned out to be ridiculous. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad noted on this occasion, NATO and the EU are not the whole world. In the peripheral world, excluding the lackey periphery, Russia's actions everywhere aroused understanding and approval. The President of Iran immediately said this. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the same thing. Nicaragua announced the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign states. The SCO, which together with observers represents half of the population of our planet, expressed approval of Russia's active actions in the Caucasus. They unanimously condemned the aggression of Georgia and expressed agreement with the actions of Russia and the CSTO countries. But it was not possible to isolate Russia not only from the whole world, but even from Western Europe. The European Union, having condemned Russia, at the same time several times emphasized the need for further close cooperation with it.

In general, the events of August 2008 were turning point in history modern world. As French President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted, from that moment on the unipolar world came to an end. It has become absolutely clear that in addition to the world community to which Western politicians and publicists, as well as their henchmen, belong and about which they endlessly talk, outside of it there is partly emerging, partly already existing, another, second community, which has more reason to call itself world, because it represents 5/6 of the Earth's population.

The struggle between the center and the periphery will be long. But its outcome as a whole is already predetermined: the defeat of the West is inevitable. And his economic power will not help him. The largest of the independent periphery countries, China, is becoming a powerful economic force. In 2007, it already controlled 13.2% of global industrial production, catching up with the leader of the center - the United States, whose share was approximately 20%. According to the forecast of the research center “Global Insight”, already in 2009 these countries will change places: the share of China will be 17%, the USA – 16%.

But the main thing, of course, is the unity of the periphery countries. By uniting, the periphery will end the dominance of the West and its dependence on it. The destruction of the exploitation of the countries of the periphery by Western states will mean the elimination of para-capitalism and thereby capitalism in these countries in general. Having ended exploitation by the West, the periphery will thereby cease to be a periphery. She will become the center.

As for the ortho-capitalist center, deprived of the influx of surplus product from the outside, it will be doomed to radical changes in its social order. Now in the West there is a lot of literature that discusses scenarios for the future of humanity. And in most of these works there is invariably a statement of the long-ago and steadily continuing decline of the West. Almost all of these works draw an analogy between the modern situation in the West and last centuries the existence of the Roman Empire, when it was heading towards its inevitable death as a result of complete internal decay and the pressure of external enemies - barbarians.

Authors of various persuasions write about this: from extreme left-wing radicals to liberals and even extreme right-wingers. In this regard, the title of the book by the American arch-reactionary P. J. Buchanan, “The Death of the West” (2002), is more than eloquent.

The essence of the matter is that capitalism has now exhausted all its former progressive possibilities. It has become a brake on the path of human development. It turned out that the use of a technical method of developing productive forces so characteristic of capitalism in the conditions of this society is approaching the limit. In the pursuit of profit, capitalism has developed technology so much that it now threatens the nature of the planet and thereby the existence of humanity.

Capitalism at a new level and in a new form revives the individualism that dominates the animal world, unbridles zoological instincts, destroys morality, deprives people of the sense of duty, honor and conscience and thereby turns them into a special kind of animal - animals with thinking and technology. Its preservation dooms humanity to degradation, ossification and, ultimately, death. To survive, humanity must end capitalism.

When Western countries are deprived of the opportunity to exploit the rest of the world, their only option will be the elimination of capitalism. When it is destroyed throughout the world in both its forms (both para-capitalist and ortho-capitalist), the era of transition to a society of a fundamentally different type will begin - a society without private property and exploitation of man by man. The division of human society as a whole into a historical center and a historical periphery will disappear. Humanity will merge into a single society.

But, unfortunately, another development option cannot be completely ruled out. The rulers of the ortho-capitalist West, sensing the approach of inevitable defeat, may decide to use nuclear weapons. Then both humanity and its history will come to an end. In the third orbit from the Sun, a dead, deserted planet will circle.

The obsolescence of capitalism and the danger that the continued existence of this economic system poses to humanity is more than clearly demonstrated by the enormous first financial and then comprehensive economic crisis that broke out in 2008. It forced many of its inveterate defenders to think about the future of capitalism, and the governments of capitalist countries to take measures that run counter to the basic principles of the functioning of the capitalist economy. The head of the American Chamber of Commerce, E. Somers, said that the era of the free market has ended and the era of state regulation of the economy has begun, which does not exclude the nationalization of banks and enterprises. The former head of the US Federal Reserve System, A. Greenspan, spoke directly about the usefulness of nationalizing the country's banks in conditions of a severe crisis. In the United States, this process has already begun, which prompted one of our publicists to publish a condemning article entitled “The Socialist States.” The German government also plans to nationalize problem banks. The representative of the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Maria de Belem Roseira, described the prevailing opinion that market mechanisms can provide a solution as a deep mistake social problems. In fact, they cannot be solved without infringing on the “free” economy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the current economic crisis was caused by the “bad” capitalism that has existed until now, it needs to be abolished and replaced by another capitalism, this time “good”. Existing capitalism must indeed be destroyed. But it can not be replaced by some other - better capitalism, for there is no such thing and cannot be, but only by a society based on public ownership of the means of production - communist.

Strange civilization Tsaplin Vladimir Sergeevich

What is human history?

What is human history?

A persistent myth remains the concept of history, which considers a person as an object carried by the waters of an existing historical river independently of him. But there is no “historical river” that exists independently of man, and the conclusions drawn from the results of a real “historical swim” have not yet taken generally accepted forms. Both in the distant and less distant past, there were people who understood this and were therefore significantly ahead of their time. But one can hardly envy their fate, if only because they were doomed to misunderstanding of their contemporaries and loneliness.

The unprogrammed nature of the history of the formation of mankind and the abundance of prejudices naturally resulted in random and chaotic actions. The specific motives have always been selfishness and the immediate nature of most considerations, dictated by an ineradicable desire to survive and an extremely primitive understanding of the reasons for the development of civilization as a whole. Therefore, enthusiasm for the supposedly extraordinary knowledge and achievements of our ancestors is clearly exaggerated and even sanctimonious. It should be recognized that all their “knowledge and wisdom” is nothing more than a later romantic invention, adherence to fantastic ideas or triviality. Therefore, we should not try to attach any special meaning to their actions, to be proud of them as the greatest achievements, if we really consider our ancestors to be real people. We can hardly imagine that the lives of entire generations were spent making or moving some multi-ton ritual slab or statue, but the limitations of our own ideas does not mean that our predecessors possessed the secret of anti-gravity! “Historical” retrospectives appear, explaining that Tutankhamun either died at a young age from illness, or as a result of his head being pierced by intriguing courtiers, and Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo either because he was opposed by a stronger opponent, or because he was suffering from an attack of hemorrhoids and could not effectively control the troops! These descriptions end up in articles and history books, becoming either generally accepted or controversial, but creating the illusion of knowledge of historical facts and the specific motives of the characters. The surviving evidence allows only a rough and schematic description of some of the events that took place and details of the life of the ancestors, supplementing with imagination most of the missing details, without being able to either prove the authenticity of the picture drawn or provide additional arguments in favor of one’s interpretation of what happened. The vast majority of artifacts or manuscript evidence have disappeared forever.

On mine bookshelves“history books” are represented by a rather random set of titles: “History of Military Losses” by Boris Urlanis, “History crusades"Bernhard Kugler, "The History of the Exodus" by Jacques Derozhi, "The History of Secret Alliances" by Georg Schuster, "Stages (history?) of the development of sociological thought" by Raymond Aron, "The History of the Russian State" by Karamzin and "Russian History" by Kastomarov, followed by Oswald Spengler with with his “Decline of Europe”, “Comprehension of History” by Arnold Toynbee, “Do We Understand History Correctly” by Nosovsky and Fomenko, mathematicians of Moscow University, “History of Western Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell, etc., not counting numerous references to “history” in less specialized sources. But aren’t the biographies of people who made a significant contribution to the development of human civilization history? There are a lot of “stories” and you come to the conclusion that all these private stories make up general HISTORY human civilization and it would be most appropriate to place emphasis on the general aspects of the formation of humanity, which are not fundamentally different from the learning and maturation of each individual person, characterized, perhaps, by a somewhat more utilitarian orientation. History is the biography of humanity. As dynamic as the biography of any individual person on different stages his growing up, learning, communicating with other people and enriching experiences, and just as random. Norbert Wiener wrote: The learning of an individual is a process that occurs throughout his life, ... the human race as a whole learns to some extent in the same way as the individual does.

One of the main conclusions when studying the process of the formation of civilization is the assertion that nature doomed people to self-learning and gradual maturation that has been going on for millennia. This is an inevitable consequence of the fact that nature has not endowed the brain, capable of thinking, with a single byte of information, neither about thinking itself, nor about its “master” - man, nor about the surrounding world. Therefore, the history of civilization, which began with the awareness of the expediency of social relationships, was accompanied by a chaotic accumulation of practical knowledge about nature, fantastic ideas and the search for forms of coexistence. This is a school in which there were no omniscient teachers, there was no program and schedule, but there were countless successive students, each of whom made their own mistakes, learned their own lessons, managed to learn something during their lives, learn something previously unknown and teach some of this knowledge to your children. Children, thanks to this, were able to start from increasingly “higher grades” and, in turn, passed on a slightly larger amount of knowledge to the next generation of “schoolchildren.” Therefore, history resulted in a sequence of events, forms and ideas born as a result of trial and error, attempts to correct them, i.e. to the emergence of new errors and new attempts to correct them. This chaotic chain of dramatic movements was accompanied by adaptation of the surrounding world and clashes between individuals and communities, because before today the main problems were solved mainly at the expense of neighbors. The search for a solution ultimately led to greater sociality, but by no means to a predetermined, logical sequence of actions and events, which, due to a misunderstanding, they are trying to look for in this chaotic process. Remember the parable of Buridan’s donkey, which, if he had followed the laws of inanimate nature, would certainly have died of hunger, simply due to the impossibility of making a well-founded (legal, logical!) choice in favor of one of the identical armfuls of hay, being exactly in the middle between them. But neither Buridan's donkey, nor all the other donkeys (in all senses of this word-concept) during the entire existence of life on Earth ended their existence in hungry cramps, wondering where to start the meal, simply because they are capable of illogical, i.e. . random actions that do not follow from a specific law. As a result of irregular “poking” from side to side, the donkey will definitely stumble upon one of the armfuls of hay. Human communities developed in a similar way - at random. But the chaotic nature of this process has led to the fact that in recent decades the situation in the world has begun to resemble a powder keg, where curious children dispel the darkness with a burning torch.

This does not mean that there was nothing in common in the history of unrelated human communities. The general thing, of course, was and is. But this is not connected with some external factor - history, but with the biological and intellectual similarity of people in general. Naturally, this similarity gave rise to common motifs and everyday details, and the randomness and diversity of natural conditions were insignificant differences, which were called “national culture” and “history of national development.”

To summarize, we can state that, having created a living being, nature doomed it to evolution, and by creating a mind in a living being, nature doomed it to history.

What is good and what is bad EurabiaOn April 19, the newspaper Haaretz stunned its readers with the following message: The European Union will not consider removing Hamaz from the list of terrorist organizations until Hamaz demonstrates