HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

Abstract. The modern centrifugal processes of deglobalization are increasingly alarming. Because the multipolar world has already caused world wars twice. What will happen this time? Is a global apocalypse a fatal inevitability? – Doubtful. After all, integration processes in the economy objectively determine the main vector of social progress in the direction of forming a monolithic world, which a priori excludes the likelihood of military conflicts. Against this background, Russian aggression against Ukraine and the formation around this drama of two poles of world confrontation – the axis of autocratic evil on the one hand, and world democracy on the other – is perceived as a civilizational anomaly: a global conflict of authoritarian imperialism with democratic globalization, tyranny with freedom, the past with the future. At the heart of this conflict are not just random aggressive-expansive whims of autocrats, but a failure of formational evolution - the incompatibility of the base and the superstructure (according to Marx): the economic base in the global space is currently predominantly modern-capitalist, while the state-political superstructure in some places still remains authoritarian-archaic - a mutated remnant of the feudal Middle Ages. This is the root cause of the long series of global cataclysms deliberately provoked by autocrats, starting from the First World War – the desperate opposition of authoritarianism to world integration processes that erode the economic foundation of autocratic regimes, bringing them doom. The problem of confrontation between authoritarian imperialism and capitalist globalization is the focus of this study.

Novelty of the research. For the first time, the Marxist method of materialist understanding of historical processes is used in favor of capitalist liberalization and the triumph of democratic globalization. The superstructure of state-political power in authoritarian countries must be brought into line with the economic basis of modern capitalism through democratization and the provision of civil liberties.

Keywords: Historical Materialism, Formational Concept, Social Evolution, Civilization, Globalization, Democratization.

1. Authoritarianism is the cause of the civilizational crisis

The treacherous aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine is a manifestation of a deep civilizational crisis of our time, which has become a consequence of a failure of global-historical evolution. The reason for this is a twice mutated relic of the wild Middle Ages in the form of modern authoritarianism, a kind of "dinosaur" of the feudal past, which has survived, unfortunately, to this day. This autocratic mutant has been distorting social evolution for more than a century, starting with the colonial-imperial fever at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, having raped it with two world wars and threatening a third... A hundred years since authoritarianism has been terrorizing humanity with its imperial ambitions, counteracting the centripetal tendencies of globalization processes that are destructive for it. Instead of a monolithic world, today we have a multipolar world in which not a single global problem can be solved, starting with economic and to environmental ones. In the abnormal conditions of deglobalization and geoeconomic fragmentation, even the best macroeconomic programs and methods of their implementation are unable to cope with the pressing problems of today. Because if we start to solve them correctly (for example, by overcoming the astronomical state debt by reducing budget expenditures, and not by yet another state borrowing), other problems will immediately “emerge”, even more serious, up to the most acute socio-economic, socio-political and military-political ones. And this is not the worst thing that can happen.

In order to understand the deep sources and nature of the modern civilizational anomaly, one should (without emotion, impartially) pay attention to the Marxist methodology of the materialistic interpretation of historical processes. For Marx, with all his ideological shortcomings, came closer than others to a genuine understanding of the essence of social evolution, having laid the materialistic factor of the development of productive forces at its foundation. Another thing is that, having taken the path of a materialistic understanding of history, Marx immediately (without having managed to fully follow this path of knowledge) resorted to suggesting voluntaristic sentiments in the mass consciousness: he passionately called on the proletariat to reorganize human society, neglecting the objective laws of social evolution, unceremoniously violating them. But this is already on his conscience. Marx's theoretical developments, nevertheless, deserve attention. And we should focus on them as much as possible in order to understand the essence of modern processes. This is the focus of the author's article: based on the ideological principles of the materialistic understanding of history, to give a holistic picture of modern civilizational development in order to understand the problems facing it and determine ways to overcome them. This refers, first of all, to the destructive tendency of deglobalization in the modern world: the sources of its origin, the driving forces and counteraction to the threats it poses.

Democratic globalization is not someone's invention, but an objective process of social evolution dictated by the development of productive forces. In order to "ban" globalization, it is necessary to reverse economic integration. Is it possible?.. Without a global cataclysm - no. A similar drama is unfolding before our eyes now. The basis of the modern conflict is the process of forced disintegration initiated by authoritarianism. It is from this angle that we should consider the attempt of mafia-authoritarian Russia to tear Ukraine out of global integration processes by military means, forcibly drawing it into its agonizing autocratic empire. Such a course of events contradicts the natural tendency of social evolution. In order to counteract neo-authoritarian revenge, the countries of the world democracy should, having united on a single economic platform, mobilize the unused reserves of the market economy by reforming, first of all, their defective financial system. Only by uniting into a single whole can the countries of the democratic community resist the axis of authoritarian evil, thereby restoring the natural movement of civilization in the mainstream of social evolution toward a monolithic democratic world.