A Worldview Approach to the Developmental Problems of Russia and the World

The article argues that the causes of the crisis situation in Russia and the whole world can be only understood through the prism of the worldview approach. This has been confirmed by many years of search, resulting in the development of a new cognition methodology which makes it possible to identify objective regularities in the development of the human community and to find the way to its further evolution.

Keywords: systemic crisis, worldview, new methodology of cognition, human individual, goal, time, sole efficiency criterion, coordination of interests, new model of life organization.

Both for Russia and for the whole world, the year of 2014 turned put to be a difficult period of grand trials and multiple contradictions. The ailing economy of Russia accumulated too many problems – reunification with the Crimea, the subsequent Western sanctions and, as a matter of response, the adoption of a number of prohibitory laws; collapse in the foreign-exchange market, a downfall of global oil prices, and the slow-down of economic growth. As a result, the situation in the Russian socio-economic sphere and the living standards of its population deteriorated tangibly. Experts refer to different factors that caused this situation, and some of them even state that ‘there are suspicions that the authorities dropped ruble intentionally’ (Grinberg 2014). However, the main point, according to Alexey Ulyukaev, the Russian Minister for Economic Development, is that ‘In order to counter the crisis, a strategic plan is necessary, but at present it is difficult to elaborate such a plan because one can hardly predict the volatility vector of the situation’ (Pavlova 2014).

For a long time, scholars in different parts of the world have been contemplating on the ways to transform the world order so that it would become possible to improve natural environment, get rid of poverty, resolve the food problem, eliminate the very possibility of periodically bursting-out wars, resolve a vast number of other problems and forever eliminate the crises that shake the foundations of human existence. Many prominent scholars focus their research on this complicated agenda, but so far no country of the world has a strategic anti-crisis development plan.

In the view of many economists the events currently taking place in the world serve as ample evidence of the second wave of the crisis which already started. However, as before, the monetary methods to resolve the problems through the currency emission and investments in all kinds of assets for the purpose of resale (shares, raw-resource assets, real estate, etc.) prevail over investments in fixed capital. This means a further slowing down growth. That is, the old methods to counter the crisis by monetary pumping of economy do not work any longer and therefore, such method is not an anti-crisis remedy that could eliminate the primary cause of the crisis.

Furthermore, on the one hand, it is recognized that at present no serious discourse is underway that could offer any realizable measures to eliminate the crisis. On the other hand, at numerous meetings, starting from World Economic Forums in Davos to the G20 summits, we hear the ever stronger statements that the 2008 crisis and the current second wave are nothing else but the crisis of the modern economic model. In this context, until the causes of the crisis of the model are identified, any system of institutions and mechanisms designed to reduce tensions arising in the course of realization of anti-crisis measures would be inefficient, to say the least.

Therefore, we must state that today the rhetoric of academic discourse has changed, and the focus of discussion shifted from particular issues (such as improvement, acceleration, modernization, and reform, etc.) to more comprehensive ones. As never before, it became necessary to develop a worldview approach to the currently prevailing crisis situation in the world as well to search for new economic evolutionary models and new concepts of economic development. However, in order to shift to a new model of economic development, one should have a theoretically verified and practically feasible idea of such a model.

On the other hand, we must also recognize that the global systemic crisis is growing and extending to all spheres of human life, while nobody is aware of its profound objective causes or knows the ways to overcome it.

Since the observers do not know the formula to overcome the crisis, they even more often feel the need to turn to history and look for answers therein. The findings, however, are not at all encouraging. For example, Dr. Jeffrey Sommers, Professor of Political Economy and Government Policy at the Wisconsin Milwaukee University and participant of the first Moscow Economic Forum (held in March 2013), while discussing the strict adjustment measures to be taken in the face of the looming recession of the Russian economy, warned that his biggest concern about such measures could be expressed best by quoting Mark Twain's ‘History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes’, and that the result might be quite unfavorable. The last case, continues Sommers, when a strict adjustment was applied – in Germany, Italy and Japan between the two world wars – resulted in fascism. This time the result will hardly be the same, on the contrary, Sommers supposes that it would be quite ‘unpleasant’, as strict adjustment cannot be permanently imposed on people, because in the end they will react, and nobody knows what kind of reaction that will be (Astashenkov 2013).

Exactly because of the methodological vacuum many scholars, experts and policy-makers today neither understand the objective causes of the crisis nor do they see a way out of it. Therefore, they are unable to find a mechanism to overcome the crisis and to find a crisis-free path of evolution, or to shift from the antisocial model of economic development to adoption and realization of the concept and strategy of economic growth that would focus on prioritized development of the real sector as well as on the development of every human individual and his/her qualities.

Today many scholars ask especially one question: shall we treat the crisis of the global civilization development, wars, terrorism, man-made and natural catastrophes, etc. as temporary phenomena and some random events or rather as a chain of cause-and-effect relations resulting from the profound and objective laws which are common for nature and society as well as for the world system's co-evolutionary development?

Therefore, the main prerequisite for a transition to the crisis-free development is to get and master the knowledge on the objective causes of the global systemic crisis, to find the ways to overcome it and to understand the implications of any decision made. The time of development by the trial-and-error method is irreversibly a matter of the past.

2. New Methodology to Understand the Regularities of the Development of Human Community

For many years, I have been conducting research on objective causes of the crisis in the development of human-system and forecasting the future. Over thirty years ago, while trying to explain the contradictions of the Soviet economy, I found out that the then existing economic theories and scientific knowledge at large had been exhausted in their explanatory potentials in search for ways to overcome the negative phenomena. However, it also became clear that for resolving these problems, it was necessary – in Marxist terms – to find the only possible mode of production and relevant productive forces. Since then, I have conducted the search for a theoretical thinking at the political-economic level and for the methodological instruments that would help to visualize the objective picture of the development of the ways in which people live together, to identify objective causes of the emergence of crises and to propose a possible anti-crisis model of human relations for the present and future.

At that stage of my political-economic research, including, inter alia, the philosophical understanding of the problem, the dialectical-materialist method served as a methodological and theoretical basis, supplemented by the instruments of economic cybernetics. With the attained understanding of the fact that space and time are the major forms of existence, and that being without time is the same grand error as being without space, we selected time as the generalizing index (criterion) that would characterize the positive or negative dynamic in relation to the goal.

The offered criterion was novel in science because it helped to elaborate a periodization of possible forms of development of relations of production and relevant productive forces in terms of reduction or increase of time required to attain the development goal (Bondarenko 2012a: 16–24). The goal was formulated similar to most of the literature in political economy – to satisfy the continuously growing human needs and to create conditions for multi-faceted and harmonious development of personalities. As a result, we obtained a sort of Mendeleev's table for the human system. All political-economic laws were arranged through by the factor of time into a system with a reverse connection – that is, the laws, which from the very start imply saving of time and then become regulating and thus, by their reverse action, define the new spiral for acceleration or a slow-down of development. The given periodization revealed that it was impossible to achieve the above-set goal. It became clear that according to the law of growing needs we may exhaust all resources, but still will fail to attain the goal. Hence, we must look for another goal that would enable us to define the ultimate essence of the development of human beings and the entire human system.

The major political-economic conclusion at that stage of research, presented in my thesis in 1991, was as follows: (1) a new step forward was made in development of the Marxist methodology. The kernel of society was defined not as a community (as suggested by Marx) but as a particular human individual; (2) no country of the world had reached socialism yet; (3) socialism would only develop when property becomes private and at the same time public; this will mean that private production will become interconnected with the needs of a particular individual and commodities will be manufactured by demand (order) of a particular individual, and therefore, there will be no production of redundant and unnecessary commodities and the resources will be consumed more rationally and efficiently.

However, in the early 1990s, the form of relations of production started to correlate with the phase of primary capital accumulation, and the productive forces became correspondingly a limitation. Innovations were being rejected and development was limited and reversed.

Again, there was a question: was that conclusion a random one? So, it appeared necessary to achieve a deeper understanding of the problem, and the research was oriented to the global level. As a result, a new methodology for cognition was developed which enabled me to identify objective regularities in the development of the way people live.

In other words, the novelty of this methodology consists in the fact that it allows defining objective regularities of different aspects of the development of humankind – whether the civilizational dimension, or the complex dynamics of a long-term historical development, or at the local, regional and global levels, or with respect to socio-economic and political systems, or an integral system. The major innovative point is that all the afore-mentioned subjects are considered, studied and analyzed through the prism of attaining a single and objectively set ultimate goal of development – that is, through the prism of the systemic approach.

One should note that as early as in 1784 Immanuel Kant in his ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’ considered the world history as a purpose-oriented process. Looking for the way to bring history under a law, he believed that such law of history must be a law of development. Kant saw the solution of the task in re-establishing the purpose to which history originally gravitated, as this would attach to it a logical and regular nature. In his view, to bring history under a law would be the same as to subordinate it to movement toward a certain goal. In other words, his proposal to comprehend history in teleological terms and to search for the purpose of nature in the meaningless course of human deeds, as with this purpose the creatures acting without their own plan would have their history correspond to a certain plan of nature (Kant 1963–1966: 8). Thus, according to Kant, the reason and purpose of history is to bring reasonable natural properties of a human individual to the accomplished development. And, such purpose of history is exactly a purpose of nature. At the same time, the development of reasonable human properties is expressed in the growth and accumulation of knowledge and use thereof by human individuals for reasonable organization of their life. According to Kant, the ultimate goal of the existence of the world is the supreme good, and the notion of the supreme good combines the full realization of moral law together with physical well-being of humans as natural creatures.

Many authors of the Reports to the Club of Rome also sought to formulate the global community's development goal, and to develop new ideas for reorganizing the international order (RIO) as well as to find a new, perfect social organization. For instance, in the third report to the Club of Rome, the authors described the major goal of the global community in terms of universal human values as equal opportunities within and beyond countries, as a dignified life and moderate welfare for all citizens of the world (RIO… 1976). However, there are weak hopes that the voice of those authors would be heard.

Another paper, whose authors considered global problems through the prism of the system of goals and values, and thus realized a cardinal transition from the qualitative to quantitative analysis, was the report entitled as ‘Goals for Mankind’. The focus was on the concept of ‘new humanism’ and the idea of prior importance of individual human characteristics that would bring about the ‘human revolution’ as well as ‘revolution of consciousness’ and societal transformation. Another cornerstone of the report was the global solidarity concept suggesting that norms of human behavior and norms of government policy would determine the ‘new standard of humanism’. To this end, however, in view of the authors led by Erwin Laszlo, a world-known professor of philosophy systemic and political sciences, honorary doctor of several universities, program director at the UN Institute for learning and research, and President of the Vienna Academy of Futures Studies, it would be necessary to articulate the global development goals and to present the latter to the world public.

Consistent with this task, Dr. Laszlo and his team analyzed the ‘atlas of goals’ pursued by different regions, countries, confessions, multinational corporations, UN and other international organizations both at the national and transnational levels. Also, they interviewed the maximal possible number of representatives from different spheres and areas of human activities, and finally set forth the four global goals: (1) global security – that is, elimination of wars and conflicts, and renunciation of violence; (2) solution of the food problem at the global level, elimination of starvation, and building of a global system that would make it possible to satisfy nutrition needs of all people in the world; (3) global control over consumption of energy and primary resources that would allow a rational and ecologically safe use of energy, control of technologies and economically efficient nature management; and, (4) global development oriented at a qualitative growth, that is to improvement of life quality and social justice in distribution of material and spiritual goods (Laszlo 1977).

Proceeding from such objectives, the authors of the report offered several scenarios for the ‘world solidarity revolution’, where the main role was assigned to different combinations of religious communities, intellectual groups, political leaders, government circles, businesspeople, etc. The authors hoped that scholars, religious figures and representatives of the business community in one country would be able to render influence on their respective counterparts in other countries, and then, acting ‘all together’, they would be able to address critical issues and work out the shared methods for joint resolution. Regrettably, this has not happened so far.

I have chosen a somewhat different method for defining the global development goal. My task was to identify the objective and initially set final goal of development. In this case, the final or ultimate goal is the one that cannot serve as a means to reach the goal of a higher level and at the same time is a source (through in reverse order) of a qualitatively new spiral in development of a whole system and its any sub-system.

The logic is as follows. If any socio-economic and political system can be considered through the prism of the realization of the final goal, then such goal is a planetary one. This leads to the following conclusion. If the existing practice of socio-economic and political development in any country of the world is juxtaposed to the theoretically outlined – or, rather, objectively preset – ultimate goal, it is possible to reveal some redundant or missing links in the mechanism of the realization of the goal and to identify the least time-consuming and hence the most efficient and sustainable way to its attainment.

So, the essence and the scientific novelty of the new methodological tool-kit consider in the fact that its basis is formed by the objectively preset and purpose-related nature of the human-community development. To this end, as said above, it was required to define not just the purpose of the human system development, but rather the ultimate goal, which cannot become a sub-goal of any higher-level objective within the framework of human existence on Earth. That is, to define the objective reason of the human system development means to understand that each particular human individual does not live in order to contribute to GDP growth or to manufacture a maximal possible amount of weapons for his/her own annihilation. A human individual can and should live only to attain a maximal development and realization of his/her spiritual and intellectual potential with the concomitant growth of his/her level of consciousness and physical perfection.

In other words, the objectively set goal is as follows: in the course of his/her development, each human individual must and can reach his/her own perfection or the Supreme Reason. Otherwise, the development can be diametrically opposite – that is, the blind-alley scenario, retrograde development to the point of starting everything anew, or a catastrophic final in form of apocalypse.

The second component of the new methodological tool-kit is its integrity, systemic nature and cross-disciplinary approach which are based on the premise that the world is a single entity and the laws of nature and society are general; thus, the world can only be cognized, if and when all sciences and spiritual knowledge merge in a universal, systemic, integral and cross-disciplinary (or, rather, trans-disciplinary) knowledge. Therefore, these elements should be systemically united through an identification of the functional target of the system as a whole and of any aspect of it (civilizational, formational, national, confessional, territorial, scientific, socio-economic, socio-technical, socio-cultural, political, organizational, etc.), and independently of the prevailing development model (whether the neo-liberal, Keynesian, totalitarian, or their combination). Only this knowledge allows to understand that the financial, economic, social, managerial, organizational, science-tech and, more generally, the systemic crisis of the world as well as all currently existing negative phenomena are links of one and the same chain. Hence, the integral, systemic and uniform solution must be found for the whole world, but with proper consideration of the diverse interests of all residents of our planet.

For the sake of justice one should note that scientists learned for a long time to combine or borrow from different disciplines. But, the spiritual knowledge is another story with some positive shifts underway. For example, Frijof Capra in his book The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, as well as in other works, states that both physics and metaphysics inevitably come to one and the same knowledge. All his works bear the same underlying message that implicit connections exist between everything. Seeking to find a scientific resolution for the puzzle of life, Frijof Capra, proceeding from the theory of systems, tries to synthesize the latest attainments and discoveries made in physics, mathematics, biology, sociology, and other disciplines with the spiritual knowledge of the Orient (Capra 1975).

Another novelty of the methodology (designed for identification and cognition of objective regularities in the development of social system) consists in the selection of the major criterion that would encompass the whole variety of processes, separate the essence from the phenomenon and the objective from the subjective, as well as draw a generalizing assessment to characterize positive or negative development of the human system with respect to the ultimate objective.

In this respect one should note that the indices of GDP, GNP, human-potential development, happiness, etc., do not reveal regularity, objectivity and the direction of the variety of processes, because the economic development proceeds faster than the relevant research. Besides, as contemporary analysts note, the reliability of global statistical data is highly doubtful and a large share of statistical information used in the analysis of economic processes is nothing else but an interpolation of main parameters based on the models constructed during the ‘boom’ period of mathematical programming between the late 1950s and early 1970s. Therefore, such models cannot provide a relevant description of modern economy, at least, because the typical growth rates extend beyond the small-error field of such models. Even the authors of reports to the Club of Rome noted that computer simulation makes it clear that any model inevitably reflects the subjective views, ideas, and preferences of its developers, and this becomes already evident in the selection of data. Therefore, such models could not serve the means to cognize objective processes and cause-effect relationships. And, finally, to forecast future is an unrewarding and sometimes even dangerous job, because negative scenarios and their underlying ‘thought forms’ often come true by way of a self-fulfilling prophecy. For many times it has been scientifically proven that thoughts are material and can be an instrument for creating, curing, raising crops, correcting weather, etc., – and, for killing or forcing a human individual to commit inhuman actions and even crimes.

In other words, today, as never before, the existing model of the human-community development (with all its transformations) comes into conflict with scientific and technological achievements. Today humankind stands at the verge of self-annihilation by its own intellectual attainments. However, human society is still presented as probabilistic, quite unpredictable and not strictly controllable, absolutely incompatible with the goals, proclaimed by the UN and other high-level organizations in the conceptualising sustainable development, the ‘Millennium Declaration’ as well as in the concept, strategy and principles of information and civil society. On the other hand, scientific knowledge based on the analysis and generalization of empirical data and a huge mass of information, indices and calculations made after the pattern ‘from the past to the present and future’ does not reveal a true picture of the world and does not reflect the reality. Therefore, we need another paradigm, index and information-uptake rate – that is, another methodology of cognition which could disclose objective regularities in the human-community development. Thus, we can make a conclusion that the need in a different approach to the laws of human existence, in a new methodology for cognition of the human system and in a new measure for all processes is somehow in the air and today it is needed as it had never before the case.

These examples show the scale of responsibility for the decisions made to create the global society and its institutions, especially, if such decisions ignore the effects of the profound general laws providing the basis of the human-system development. Therefore, the most important task is to create proper conditions for evolutionary development of the societal system towards achieving the goal, and to bring the whole humankind to one and the same time-bound space, because its resolution will make it possible to overcome the crisis in development of the global community as well as to streamline and unify the whole complex of knowledge and theories.

Here comes another conclusion: from the point of the systemic idea on the status of human-system development and on the selected means to reach the goal and mechanism for its realization, it is the time that can be such a universal criterion. Today the human knowledge, growing like an avalanche, becomes immediately outdated. The knowledge based on the empirical analysis of the past and present, always lags behind since with implementing the conclusion the picture will change completely so that a linear prediction is not possible.

Thus, the third provision of the new cognition approach is the definition of the only possible criterion – the time, which can measure and juxtapose all processes and phenomena. By applying this criterion, we can measure and juxtapose things immeasurable in other indices, and, what is the main point – to correlate the facets of human and societal life with the target ideal and to identify the achieved stage in relation to the goal.

The only chance for knowledge to remain relevant is to go move to the front of the actual socio-economic and political processes, giving it from there a new direction. This can only be achieved if knowledge is obtained on the basis of cybernetic, systemic, and cross-disciplinary approaches and if it does not proceed from the empirical analysis, subjective assessments and theories developed o this foundation, built along the pattern ‘from the past to the present and future’, but rather from the theoretical approach ‘from the future to the present and past’. We must know a priori which socio-economic and political structures and what technological system are relevant to this goal, and the mechanisms for its realization. Meanwhile, the closer we approach the goal, the faster is the pace of processes. Hence the time period between the emergence of a material and spiritual need of each particular individual or the society as a whole and the satisfaction of the need would become the sole criterion of efficiency in attainment the ultimate goal.

So, the fourth provision of our methodological tool-kit is the defined criterion of the human-system development which is the time between the need to realize the single goal of development and the reality, in which the society and each particular individual find themselves in relation to such goal at any given moment of time. If the time between arising and satisfaction of a particular individual's need tends to decrease continuously and to reach the point of zero, then the human system develops sustainably and efficiently towards the overall goal. Thus, we gain an absolutely new understanding of the human system development. If we apply this criterion, it would become possible to control or manage the time between arising and satisfaction of a particular individual's need. And, to control (manage) time is the same as to control development. Only in this case, the human system would start sustainable and efficient development towards the goal in the interests of each particular individual.

3. Brief Fundamental Conclusions Drawn from Applying the New Methodology for Cognition

In the framework of the present article we cannot give a detailed presentation of the results of the application of the new methodology, which, however, have been described in detail in such books as Forecasting the Future: A New Paradigm (Fetisov and Bondarenko 2008a) and Crisis-Free Development: A Myth or Reality (Bondarenko 2014a). Besides, these, results have been presented in numerous articles and conference papers published in Russia and abroad (a smaller part of such publications is included in the References: Fetisov and Bondarenko 2008b: 220–270; Bondarenko 2014b; 2008: 109–104; 2009: 78–83; 2011а: 4–12; 2012b: 7–22; 2013a: 89–93; 2013b: 12–19).

In brief, the new methodological tool-kit made it possible:

• to proceed beyond the limits of the entire human system and to view it as a single whole of the ‘past–present–future’ in relation to the objectively set development goal: to satisfy the highest need of any human individual to become spiritually, intellectually and physically perfect and at the same time to attain a high level of consciousness;

• not to rely upon empirical data and subjective judgments on the past and present;

• to understand in terms of time and space the objective picture of the human system development depending on the positive (sustainable) or negative (unstable) orientation to realization of a single goal.

In turn, it helped us to understand that over whole multi-century path of the human community development there have been only the two paradigms of development (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. The outlay of the human system development

• the first paradigm: the direct connection, short in time and space, exists between production and consumption. It started from the point, when everything was produced at the level of manual labor, and people consumed all products. Hence the time between the appearance and satisfaction of a particular individual's need was the shortest. That was the pre-industrial type of production for manufacturers' own needs and for specific consumers at the household level (craftsmen);

• the second paradigm: the connection between production and consumption is indirect or mediated. This paradigm of development dates back to the emergence of primitive technologies, labor division, market, brokers' class and the universal equivalent of exchange with results of such labor – money. With a gradual territorial expansion and development of foreign trade, the direct interconnection between production and consumption underwent a transformation into the indirect one. Its development in time and space accelerated in line with the transition to the industrial mode of development. The major landmarks of the process were the formation of the mass industrial production of the belt-line type, growing domestic and foreign trade as well as territorial expansion to the global level, plus mass consumption. Such type of production is oriented to satisfy demand of an abstract end-user through an elementary, archaic and market form of contact that would be mediated by the increasing time and space. In such circumstances, the uncertainty of consumption resulted in appearance and then the world-wide growth of disproportion in the time spent for production and time for circulation of commodities and money up to an absolute de-synchronization. The time for circulation is much longer that the time for production. Despite the massively grown volume of material and of production, the dynamics of their movement has strongly departed from the monetary form (both real and, in particular, virtual). Development in relation to the goal has become elemental, and involution substitutes evolution. Cycles, crises and all other negative phenomena in the human community development are the products of such paradigm of development. It is not without a reason that the beginning of the first Kondratieff's cycle (according to Sergey Glaziev) is dated to 1830, marked by the starting blossom of the industrial epoch, while the crises are results of the immensely long time between the emergence and actual satisfaction of a particular human individual.

The monetary methods of countering the financial crisis do nothing else but contribute to such breaking away of the link between real products and money, and contribute to the even stronger growth of disproportions between the time for production and circulation of commodities and money. As a matter of chain reaction, the financial crisis even faster transforms into economic, political and, finally, the systemic crises. This is the currently prevailing developmental model.

The essence of the second developmental paradigm consists in the belt-line mode of mass production, oriented to maximal profit rather than to satisfaction of a particular individual's needs as well as his/her comprehensive development and improvement. The basic relationship between human individuals is presented by the interconnection (desynchronized in time and space) of different technology for manufacturing of goods and intangible values as well as consumption thereof by an abstract consumer rather than by a particular individual. All crises of this paradigm of development took place at the peak of the growing time-bound and spatial disproportion between the arising and satisfaction of a particular individual's need.

The current systemic crisis is actually the peak, agony and inevitable decline of the modern development paradigm which is the model of human relations, based on the indirect connection between production and consumption and which has completely exhausted itself.

This time-bound and spatial flow of ideas, commodities, money, and information, alongside with the immensely long time between the emergence and satisfaction of a particular individual's need objectively serve the perfect conditions for absolutely all negative phenomena. To draw the examples, let us consider just a few phenomena. Poverty and inequality, the dollar-based Bretton-Woods system, slowing-down economic growth rates, recession, growing prices and inflation, de-industrialization, primitive production and trade, terrorism and corruption, natural abnormalities and disasters, terrorist actions, the recent events in Ukraine, the EU, the USA and Russia, etc., – all these are the links of one and the same chain, and a result of the indirect developmental model. Within this model of human relations, the factor of time plays a most negative role.

The existing development model, based on indirect human relations, does not comply with the current era of cosmic speeds and digital, info-, cognition, nano- and other technologies. The advanced technologies make the economic and other realities rapidly change and thus, they are no longer compatible either with the above-described production and consumption or with the indirect (mediated) type of connection with a particular individual.

Exactly at this point we find an objective cause of the currently observed gap between theory and reality. This happens because during the afore-mentioned long time of ‘in-between’, the interests of the state, business, and society run counter and fail to coincide with interests of a particular individual as well as with interests of those, who possess knowledge. Thus, science is put to oblivion and ostracism.

Fig. 2. Schematic Outlay transition to the new (first) development paradigm

We find ourselves currently in the period of transition from one development paradigm to another (Fig. 2). The periods of transition are frequently the most difficult times for mankind, especially, when the transition to the objectively set goal of development seems to be derived from a trial-and-error method.

The worldview approach allows understanding the objectively inevitable transition and ‘reinventing’ of the first direct paradigm of development, as well as of some other, different models of growth and relationships. This model becomes feasible only with the digital technologies of the twenty-first century, through which the production can again re-orient to the satisfaction of individual needs avoiding the production of redundant goods. The transition to the indirect connection between production and consumption can reduce the ‘in-between time’, eliminate the primary cause of the systemic crisis and make it possible to proceed to the evolutionary mode of development.

Fig. 3. New Model of Life Organization at Every Local Level

The general pattern of the new model (which has been discussed and described in many of my publications), is presented in Fig. 3. This is a new model of relations, or a new model of development of production forces at each local level relevant to such relations, and the mechanism for adjustment of interests between state, society, business, and particular individual.

The main point is that the worldview approach enables us to formulate and to substantiate the need in development and realization of the megaproject defined as ‘Territory of the Faster Growth: Everything for People’. In 2014, this problem was in the focus of the Round-Table discussion held within the framework of the Moscow Economic Forum (MEF-2014). The participants of the round-table approved proposals on the Megaproject and the respective resolution was published on the MEF website (Bondarenko 2014d).

The main idea of the Megaproject with respect to strategic tasks suggests the necessity to form simultaneously all elements (i.e., new production relations, relevant production forces, etc.) proceeding from the essential goal of the human system development on the basis of real-time coordination of the state, society and business interests with interests of particular individuals.

Elsewhere I have already pointed out that the most important points in terms of resolving the tactical tasks for the realization of the Megaproject are as follows:

1. The project can and should be developed by the scholars and scientists from all institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

2. The development of the Megaproject and of the offered model demands building of an international cross-disciplinarian team of academic and practical experts, and also the involvement of the entire global intellectual community, linked and interacting via Internet.

3. To realize the pilot project in different Russian cities and then to provide transfer and proliferation of the new life-organization model throughout the whole territory of the country.

4. Partnership of the state, business, society, and particular individuals, all united by their shared interests, would generate the hope that the theory and reality will coincide in time and space.

The information below can fully confirm my theoretical conclusions.

Fig. 4. Cars manufactured using industrial techniques

Would you guess, what is there in Fig. 4? The unsold cars – just a tiny piece of the tip of the iceberg. So far, there are quite a few of such parking lots packed with new cars. Car producers have to purchase the ever bigger land plots in order to deploy the accumulating residuals. Every week plants produce dozens of thousands cars, but the sales are rather moderate. However surprising this might be, but there are more cars than human beings on our planet – almost ten billion cars! The stocks of unnecessary cars pile up throughout the world. Their number is growing continuously and, as it seems, endlessly.

However, this problem can be resolved through the digital production.

Fig. 5. The first car, manufactured by means of the 3D-printer

This was proved by Jim Kor, an inventor, who assembled a city car from 3D printed spare-parts. The car is rather small, light, and efficient and, what is the main point, environment-friendly. Jim Kor feels convinced that his project is a herald of the true revolution in the car production. From here it is evident that the future of the automobile industry will belong to smaller independent companies, developing original projects, and such companies can be located at any local level. Manufacturing of parts at 3D printers would enable them to start producing cars of diversified models.

Today, however, the excess production extends not only to cars and other commodities, but as well to money and information. For example, China, Mongolia and other countries have whole new towns built to please the investors hunting for high profits – however, the demand is very low because of high prices.

The case-study performed by the National Committee for Development and Reforms and the Academy of Macroeconomic Studies shows that between 2009 and 2013 about 6.8 trillion USD were invested in vain because the Chinese government sought to stimulate the economic growth while the agents in the construction sector were hyperactive to undertake the task. As noted by the authors of the case study, in the afore-mentioned period about 50 per cent of all investments in the Chinese economy were ‘inefficient’. Today this is evidenced, in particular, by ‘ghost towns’ with unpopulated multistory apartment houses, dead motor roads and dormant steelmaking plants (Nevelsky 2014).

All these examples show that the model of human relations based on the belt-line mass production and its indirect connection with consumption has completely exhausted itself since it is cost-ineffective and has brought the negative consequences we face today.

I would like to make a special emphasis on the point that a broad access to digital technologies in production already poses a challenge to the traditional business models within the indirect development model, because the main factor at the basis of digital production is personalization – that is, manufacturing of products for the individualized ‘market’! And this is not just the statement, I made in my works over thirty years ago. The same or similar statements are made by other scholars and can be found in global mass media. Thus, the regularities of the human-community development, identified at the theoretical level via the worldview approach find the confirmation in real life.

Fig. 6. Gun, manufactured by 3D-printer

However, the digital revolution in production has also a reverse side. In Fig. 6 we see a gun manufactured by means of a 3D-printer. One can easily imagine what will be going on in the world, if in future any individual can ‘print’ fire arms by means of 3D-printers. There have already been few such cases. But what will happen, if manufacturing of such items becomes a mass phenomenon?

It is quite clear, what threat the nano-, bio- and cognitive technologies can pose for mankind, if applied widely within the framework of the currently existing development paradigm (see already Bondarenko 2012c: 48–52).

Thus, we see that the revolution in production is already gaining momentum. But, it makes many people ask a question: How are we going to live, learn, work and play? How shall we abide by moral and ethical norms and resolve moral and ethical problems, and how shall we protect our lives if any person can do anything anywhere using such technologies?

Regrettably, there is almost no discussion on the necessity to transform the basic foundations of societal development, namely, to build a new model of human relations that would be relevant to the new forces of production. In Russia, we hear talks on the need to modernize industry on the basis of the sixth technological mode and the so-called NBIC (nano-bio-info-cogno) technologies. However, nobody even cares to think about the transformation of human relations in the context of such issues as to what and how people will produce by means of these innovations, will they be able to satisfy at least the daily-living needs, and, most important – what will be the purpose of production by means of innovations? (Akayev and Rudskoy 2014)

In other words, the results of the industrial revolution will only serve good to the humanity, if this revolution is accompanied with changes in the human-relations model and with the formation of a qualitatively new model of growth.

And, the new model of growth implies:

• mental realization and acceptance of objectivity of the human-community development goal;

• the acceptance of the inevitable necessity to create simultaneously all basic elements, including the new model of life (new production relations) and relevant productive forces, together with the mechanism to coordinate the state, society, business interests with a particular individual's interests in the real-time regime;

• the tasks, instruments and mechanisms that should provide minimization of all processes between the emergence and satisfaction of a particular individual's need and provide an efficient use of resources;

• orientation on particular individual's needs and production by order and without manufacturing anything redundant is the only possible condition that can also promote higher labor productivity;

• a balance should be established between technological and social changes in the real-time or proactively. Due to this solution of the problem, the primary cause of the crisis would be eliminated, and the system would operate proactively in relation to foreign and domestic threats;

In other words, the new growth model brings increasing opportunities to create conditions for each human individual to attain perfection!

References

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