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19.01.2009

FORMATION OF THE “POLYIDEOLOGICAL” SOCIETIES

   

Gagik Harutyunyan

Everything that happens in the world today is characterized by the expert community as a system crisis. This wording is reasonable, because considerable changes, accompanied by economical recession, expansion of terrorism, creation of new seats of instability, take place almost in all areas of life activity. It should be mentioned that the forecasts of these developments are contradictive. The current situation contains risks for all the actors of international community, whether they are superstates or “common” countries.

Threat and chance. The emergency situations suppose coordinated strategy and centralization of all resources of state and society. In this context one of the main criteria of efficient activity of any country, including Armenia, is the approximation to fast-changing situation. Such an approach doesn’t suppose only “respondent”, passive attitude over external and internal challenges: initiative is one of the main components for appropriate response to the situation.

It’s significant that in Chinese hieroglyphs notion “crisis” is denoted by two symbols, one of them meaning “threat”, and the other – “unprecedented opportunity”. It’s also remarkable that in Japanese hieroglyph, denoting “crisis”, the third symbol is added – “attention”, which seems to be equivocal: one should have not only clear view of “surrounding environment” (external and internal), but also fit that environment appropriately. This oriental philosophy of language thinking nowadays is actualized, systemized and practiced on a wide scale in different conceptions of national security of leading states (particularly in the United States).

However it should be accepted that the distinct understanding of the system changes is not a simple task even for state structures with considerable intellectual resources.

Ideology crisis. The main attention in the comments on global crisis is paid to the difficulties which occurred in financial and economical sphere. Meanwhile, economical as well as political developments are caused by the crisis in the ideological sphere. As a result, liberal ideological propositions which are inherent in Western society and integral forms of management cede their exclusive positions. This is evidenced by:

  • The essential growth of the role of the state and its interference in the issues of “free market” regulation,
  • The bankruptcy of the biggest western companies, adherent of liberal strategy,
  • Their nationalization and transition to state control.

Particularly, today international community is going over “Capital” by Karl Marx, which seemed to be buried in oblivion. For instance, this previously ignored writing is republished with the unprecedented edition of 300.000 exemplars.

At the same time the current situation differs crucially from that of the 90th of the last century, when crisis led to the fall of the Soviet system, and, as a result, there was an attempt to proclaim socialist-communist ideas. The peculiarity of the current period is that ideological revaluation does not suppose the oblivion of classics of liberalism. One is getting impression that any ideological and economical model and method is applied to solve problems aroused at present if only they are efficient. In other words, the well-known approach works: “All methods are good except bad ones”.

National and universal ideologies. Meanwhile the foregoing principle has been used in China since the end of the last century. They seem to have found the formula of harmonious combination of socialistic, liberal and national postulates. It should be mentioned in this context that national ideologies, in contrast to universal theories (liberal, socialistic), as a rule, are less materialized. The methods of management, conditioned by them, having their own national peculiarities, are not dominant.

May be the only exception is Anglo-Saxon civilization for which liberalism is prevailing national feature, i.e. Anglo-Saxons always followed their own national ideology postulates. In our opinion, this has determined great achievements of that civilization in all areas of life activity. The other point is that in modern globalizing, narrowing world mutual influence of ideologies takes place on synergetic (reciprocally intensifying) principal. As a result, new dynamic conceptions which can be particularly efficient for active subjects of global community are formed.

In historical discourse the situation is different with Russia where the ideological field of society has always been far from being concordant. Alongside with the nationalist and liberal ideas men, socialistic concepts are also cordial to a vast sector of Russian society (it is supposed that the mode of life of Russian village communities is a national-ideological basis for socialism). It is known that in Russian history the clash of ideological concepts brought to revolutions (socialistic revolution in 1917 and “liberal” revolution in 1992) with their negative consequences and artificial domination of one of those concepts. In all appearances on this ground present Russian authorities somehow try to combine different ideological trends. It can be supposed that present system crisis should promote to stir up the processes directed to the ideological harmonization of that country.

Conclusions. The build-up of “polyideological” societies is conditioned by the aspiration for the adequacy to system crisis and the logic of globalizing world. Taking into consideration the fact that the USA, China and Russia are the leading actors and the developments taking place in these states influence global processes, we can suppose that the tendency of creating “polyideological” societies may become regularity.

In the foregoing context our society should also try to be adequate to newly formed realities. Particularly we should accept that some national ideas and ideological systems prevailing in our society need renewal and modernization, which firstly supposes the development of theoretic thought in that sphere.


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