of the formation of a new world order as an
alternative to the two-bloc model. At the end of the 20th century humanity
has not only destroyed the iron curtain but has also built new bridges in
order to live on the basis of new principles and standards. At the same
time, humanity has rejected Utopias and the theoretical dogma upon which it
has been developing for more than a century.
After the collapse of the Berlin wall, politicians, philosophers and
economists found themselves in a theoretical vacuum. Concepts became
confused, traditional doctrines were beginning to lose their grasp of the
new realities. In some cases extreme pragmatism limited the possibilities
for development allowing only momentary personal benefits and egoism. In
other cases all manner of religious and semi-religious sects tried to fulfil
the vacuum. We have clearly consigned to the past not only the era of the
traditional industrial technologies and related lifestyles but also the
two-bloc world dominated by state socialism and traditional capitalism.
After technology, social class and geopolitical factors, the modern
spiritual and ideological crisis is the third main reason for us to claim
that at the end of the 20th century an entire civilisation is disappearing.
Perhaps the most significant new reality is the globalisation of the
world and the birth of an entire series of new world phenomena: from changes
in the role of the national state to the internationalisation of culture,
sport and daily life. The entire Third Civilisation after the 16th and 17th
centuries has been a time of war and violence. The period of international
integration and later globalisation in the 19th and 20th centuries took
place as a result of the violent imposition of particular cultures and
authority over others. For a century and a half the struggle between the
classes has been the uppermost. Today, however, this is at an end. Because
of the nature of arms and the senselessness of wars, violence is becoming
ineffective. At the same time the imposition of specific cultures, nations,
races and power over others will give way to entirely new types of
relations.
Many people find it hard to believe that the changes will be on such a
large scale and universal. Toffler calls this fear "the shock of the
future"[38] Such people should take a look at the consequences of
new technologies in factories, around them, in their homes and the way in
which their lives have changed as well as the information which surrounds
them. These epoch-making changes which have taken place in the short space
of a few years are affecting, above all, the countries who are the main
proponents of progress, but with the globalisation of markets they will soon
spread throughout the entire world. Thus:
- The end of the era of nation states and the appearance of the global
world;
- The end of the two-bloc system and the end of centuries of violence,
international and inter-imperialist conflicts;
- The end of the domination of the major ideological and political
doctrines which characterised the political and social life of the 19th and
20th centuries;
- The end of the traditional industrial manufacturing processes and the
advent of new technology;
- The end of the class divisions of labour typical of the past 200-300
years;
- The end of traditional private property and its socialisation;
- The end of the domination of certain cultures and the appearance of
global culture and multicultural formations
All this does indeed mark the end of one and the beginning of another
civilisation within human development. These processes affect the whole of
human development as a consequence of the hitherto unseen levels of mutual
interdependence of countries and peoples and the overall processes of
forthcoming change.
But why a New Civilisation?
Why after the era of huge slave-owning states, medieval wars and
migration, after the crisis and collapse of the modern age is the world
entering a period of change in technology and manufacturing, economic and
political order, culture and education. The main feature of the Third
Civilisation - national self-awareness and the appearance of nation states
is changing. After the three major periods in human development, a fourth
period is now beginning whose characteristics are still to be revealed and
examined.
2. SOME THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITIONS OF CIVILISATIONS
From an historical point of view civilisations cannot be separated by
revolutionary dates and events. They tend to merge with one another as an
embodiment of the character
of human progress. The process is smooth rather than rapid,
humanist and natural rather than subjective and coercive.
T
o a large extent the existing processes of human development have been
interpreted as the transition from one system to another, from one social
structure to another. History has been "divided" into various types of
social and political structures, models and formations. William Rostow in
his search for an alternative defined the various stages of economic
development. Alvin Toffler in a more moderate form expressed the changes in
world development on the basis of three large scale technological waves and
the relevant social relations.
Up to now the dominant aspect of world social and political thought has
been the division of societies into separate models and systems. Capitalist,
communist, fascist, socialist and other models have been the vehicles for
the expression of the passions of nations, parties and politicians for a
particular type of social development. To a large extent this tradition was
conditioned by the imbalanced nature of world development and the fact that
the great thinkers of the 18th century to the present have based their
conclusions only on European culture.
For a long time, world development was interpreted only on the basis of
the traditions of one small part of the globe. European civilisation paid
little attention to the achievements of the Asian peoples and in the rare
cases when their achievements were recognised their assesments were
permeated with European provincialism. The accepted feeling was that
civilisation included only Europe and the European way of life. Over the
last two centuries more attention has been paid to the Asian methods of
manufacturing but European writers still viewed them as inferior to European
methods. I am not extolling the virtues of the Chinese or the Japanese, nor
am I exaggerating the achievements of the Indians, Persians or American
Indians. I just consider that globalisation requires us to change our
approach to research and to look at the world through the prism of
universality and the mutual dependence of the various world cultures.
In modern times the tradition of dividing society into separate
formations and models is becoming less and less adequate. It restricts
thinking and ideologises life. It presupposes the coercive implantation of
ideologies and idols. Such violent forms were used to impose catholicism,
Islam, capitalism and state socialism. One king, one idea, one leader, one
formation, one belief - this is the beginning of coercion and spiritual
debilitation. The unconditional belief in ideological systems has always
evolved into a type of slavery and overt or covert violence.
When in accordance with Marxist doctrine many nations were called upon
to build communism, this in practice meant the coercion of millions of
people and subsequent generations to follow one idea. As the rejection of
the injustices of capitalism, these ideas inspired many people. Later, when
these ideas became state policy and a compulsory credo, they gradually
became transformed into a yoke placed upon free thought and the freedom of
the individual. The Bulgarian people have a marvellous saying, "Who does not
work, shall not eat!" I shall never forget at the end of the 1970's a
Bulgarian communist leader paraphrasing this saying, "Who does not believe,
shall not eat!" Belief and convictions had been converted into a monopoly
and condition for existence.
Those who advocate the system of capitalism and who consider the fall
of the Eastern European regimes to be a conclusive triumph for world
capitalism are in a similar situation. They are also slaves to tradition, to
redundant systems and the belief that Eastern Europe has undergone a
revolution from socialism to capitalism. This is just not the case. What has
happened is something completely different: the releasing of the forces of
the new civilisation, the new world order and new relations between nations.
During periods of transition in world development only the civilisation
approach can save us from new illusions, the inventions of artificial social
models and their forced imposition. In practice this means a gradual and
evolutionary approach to reform and the slow coalescence of the future with
the present. No-one can deny the role of revolutions in history but at the
same time one must take into account the sad experience of the violence and
destruction which they bring with them. The more radical the revolution the
greater the probability that it will lead to "restorationism" or that it
will consume itself. The extremes and the violence of the French Jacobites
allowed Napoleon to become Emperor, dictator and aggressor. The extremes,
violence and Civil War in Russia after the October Revolution transformed
Stalin into the most loved leader and teacher of the world proletariate.
For a number of reasons revolutions have become anachronistic: the
rising level of integration of peoples and societies at the end of the 20th
century, the colossal opportunities for the ideological enslavement of
people via the media and for reasons of complex technological and market
relations. Rapid change, revolutionary leaps and sudden U-turns in the
modern world are inevitably destructive in nature. This has happened in a
number of Eastern European countries which have thrown themselves headfirst
into attempts to restore capitalism and the total rejection of their past.
All they succeeded in doing was to destroy half of their economies.
Today we are witnessing huge levels of dynamic social change which have
been hitherto unknown. Given the dynamic nature of these changes, each new
forced imposition of the civilisation approach to change leads to a usurping
and constriction of ideas, renders social relations inadequate and deprives
emerging new generations of freedom of choice. Hitler's unified world Reich
and the single world factory for workers and peasants promised by Stalin
lead to the loss of enormous human potential and tens of millions of human
lives. Today we are constantly barraged with ideas about eternal and
unchanging models with standard views of the "glorious future", of
capitalist and socialist ideals as the only salvation for the world.
These ideas seek to provide coming generations with outlines and
definitions of what they will have to do, what their truth will have to be
and what their faith will have to be. Such advocacy of a model of
development denies the right of the free creativity of coming generations.
This is not only undemocratic but dangerous. It means that the new stages of
human progress will have been set out beforehand and that our sons and
daughters will have to follow us and mindlessly carry out the will of their
forebears. I entirely support the proposal of the World Federation of the
Future Studies (I believe it was proposed by B. de Juvenal) to talk not of
the "future" but of "futures". No-one has the right to impose a single model
for tomorrow or to delineate a categorical one-dimensional future. Each
subsequent generation shall be entitled to its own present and future,
changes and solutions and how to overcome the problems of its own
time.[39]
The downfall of standard theoretical models and social formations is
also inevitable. The new era will not consist of attempts to find
substitutes for socialism, capitalism and liberalism but to find humanist
principles upon which the existing models, ideas and cultures can give
meaning to new life styles. If we accept the opposite idea and follow the
line of division of the world into social and political formations, if we
define some of them as leaders and the others as insignificant, this will
lead inevitably to the restoration of confrontation and will open the way to
denial and the transformation of differences not into stimuli for
development but into destructive forces. The advocacy of the division and
models of the 19th and 20th centuries or the division of the world into
capitalism and socialism, liberalism or social democracy will turn the clock
back and reject the opportunity for the creation of a better world.
Does this mean that development needs to its own devices like a free
flowing river or a chaotic melee of currents? Such an extreme thesis is as
dangerous and inadequate for the new era as the theory of previously defined
social and economic formations. If the division of the world into systems
and models gives rise to confrontation and kills freedom and continuity then
the lack of ideology and the absence of rules will cause chaos and the
widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. In both cases we will
remain within the embrace of the Third Civilisation instead of creating
solutions for tomorrow. Evidently, humanity cannot accept either the
coercive, cabinet models of society or chaos and chaotic development.
History has frequently shown that periods of great chaos sooner or later
give rise to dictatorships and vice versa.
The 20th century was a century of systems, of the gaps between them, of
confrontation and a century of war and violence. It is time that all this
was replaced with principles and laws which would embrace the universality
of the world and guarantee the processes of globalisation and reject the
interdependence of imperialism. We could overcome the contradiction between
the globalisation of the world and the evident need to preserve the wealth
of national and local cultures by combining the differences and transforming
them into a mutually complementary system rather than repressing and
destroying them. This would be the main distinguishing feature between the
outgoing civilisation and the emergent Fourth Civilisation.
Modern humanity does not need to invent artificial models and to impose
them on individual countries, but it does clearly have to sustain universal
principles, standards and laws which are adequate to the level of
globalisation. This requires the provision of conditions within which the
different cultures can combine and mutually complement each other in order
to achieve the reconciliation of cultural and civilisational contradictions.
My conclusion entails the rejection of the divisions of world development
into models, formations and social strata etc.. The more correct principle
is to replace such opposition with the acceptance of the common principles
of human life and with the relevant legislation to define the standards
required for all countries and peoples.
International law already contains a whole series of such principles
and legislation and it is gradually becoming an ineluctable part of global
awareness. Human rights are one example. This includes the rights of private
initiative, personal choice in life, labour and a dignified existence.
Another group of principles are connected with the free exchange of goods,
people, services and information and with the opening-up of countries and
peoples to each other. Another entire group of principles has arisen from
the common recognition of borders and their inviolability, the unification
of border and customs regimes and the joint efforts in dealing with
international crime. In practice this means the rapprochement of national
legislations, the mutual recognition of the rights of citizens and
organisations. I am not convinced that the concept of "democracy" is
sufficient to explain what needs to be done. Parliamentary democracy and
pluralism have existed for a number of years and they have been unable to
stop the processes of violence, poverty, wars, over-armament and all the
other chronic problems of the Third Civilisation. Democracy clearly is
merely a starting point from which development needs to be continued.
I am convinced that the new civilisation will be integrated slowly and
gradually into the heart of the old one. This will take place first of all
in the most developed countries and subsequently in those countries which
until recently resembled the Third World. This will be not be a socialist,
capitalist, liberal or conservative model but this will be a process of
development from differinent starting points to common principles and
trends, a development which resolves certain difference in order to give
rise to others. To this end the Fourth Civilisation may base itself on
universal principles and legislation and the combination of different
cultures and traditions.
It is unlikely that these principles will develop all of a sudden or
that they will be accepted by all. Together with human rights and the laws
of world economic and cultural relations there is a need for many more new
solutions. The arsenal of conventional methods available to the Third
Civilisation is inadequate to give a chance to the poor and we will be
unable to resolve the contradictions between the rich. Moreover, we will be
unable to create new, just principles of international economic and
political competition. The chaos and the conflicts will continue and
together with this, the danger of the restoration of confrontation and the
bloc model, and consequently the artificial continuation of the Third
Civilisation.
There is no doubt that mankind is aware of the end of the Third
Civilisation and can feel the buds of the new era. The sounds of the new
millennium are coming from the signals of space ships, the countless
satellite dishes, from the electronic pulses of hundreds of millions of
computers and the global awareness which is opening up a path into the minds
of the people of the world every minute of every day.
3. THE DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF THE FOURTH CIVILISATION
The most significant distinguishing feature of the Fourth Civilisation
is linked to the processes of globalisation. For several millennia, tribes,
ethnic groups, cultures and nations have reflected the specific features of
their natural environment. The Fourth Civilisation not only combines these
features but also unifies the diversity in order to recreate it...
E
ach era in human development has its own features. The civilisation
approach allows for the characteristic features of the new not to be severed
abruptly from the past but to be appreciated as constant and gradual factors
of influence. Just as during periods of transition in the past the new
appears within the old era and spreads gradually to become the predominant
essence of the new civilisation.
When we speak of the characteristics of the Fourth Civilisation it
should be born in mind also that they are not only political, or only
technological or only cultural. Changes in technology, culture and politics
exert mutual influences and the influence of new civilisation frequently
appears on the borders which separates them. Such is the case now at the end
of the 20th century when an enormous intermingling of cultures, economics,
traditions, habits and customs is taking place. This is the most important
characteristic of the Fourth Civilisation.
A.Toynbee is an opponent of the unity of civilisations. In his analysis
of the life of the Assyrians and the Egyptians, he is undoubtedly correct.
However, this cannot be said about the end of the 20th century when the
mutual interdependence of nations has reached a hitherto unknown level.
During the first three civilisations we observed the slow consolidation of
autonomous cultural civilisations. The three great eras in human existence
showed a growth in homogeneity and almost universal coordination. During the
first cultural civilisations (from the 5th millennium BC to the 4th and 5th
AD), the first great migration of nations (4th-9th centuries), the
appearance and domination of nations and nation states (15-10th centuries
A.D.) humanity has been ruled by one constant logical requirement - to live
in the conditions of growing economic, cultural and political dependence.
Table 2
The Distinguishing Features of the Fourth Civilisation
First Civilization
(5000 BC-4[th]/5[th] AD)
Second Civilisation
(300-1400 AD)
Third Civilisation
(1400-1900 AD)
Fourth Civilization (2000...)
Technology
Agricultural instruments and irrigation.
Crafts and Agriculture
Industrial technology
Information technology and communication
Manufacturing Structures
Slave ownership
Colonies Feudal structures Manufactories
Factories and Concerns
Internally autonomated technologies and communications
Major forms of ownership
Slave ownership
Feudal
Private, Private monopolies
Socialised multi-sector
State forms of government
Empires
Migration, collapse of empires, city states
Nation states
Global world, local regional societies
Geo-political structure
Autonomous forms
-
Colonial system
bi-polar world
Polycentrism, global regulation
Culture
Autonomous civilisations
Cultural mixing via violence
National cultures
Multicultural society and global culture.
Table 2 shows that the common content is the result of new technology
but that it also affects the manufacturing structures, the forms of
ownership, political systems, culture and spiritual life. This also leads to
profound changes in the methods and forms of human interaction:
manufacturing forms, the means of exchange of the product of labour and the
definition of human consumption. A typical feature of the Fourth
Civilisation will be the trans-national corporations but not those of the
20th century. They will have a strongly decentralised and localised
structure. There may also be a boom of small and medium scale local
business. Another feature of the new era will be the parallel globalisation
of one part of manufacturing processes and localisation of other processes.
The entire analysis of the collapse of the old civilisation shows that this
process will be combined with the further development of international
cooperation of labour of the transnational and multi-national corporations.
Moreover, there is an emerging tendency for technological monopolies to
disappear and the decision making processes and profit allocation to be
decentralised. If this trend develops, the interdependence of the world will
not lead to a growth in international economic monopolism but to the
combination of globalisation and the development of local economic
structures.
I believe that the main feature which has undermined the Third
Civilisation and which will embody the Fourth is the growth in
communication. While the First Civilisation was characterised by primitive
agricultural technology, the Second Civilisation introduced a number of
crafts and the Third introduced industrial technologies, the main
determining feature of the new civilisation is the appearance of new forms
of communication and modern information and computer technology which have
revolutionised life. It is modern communications which have led to
globalisation and the gradual disappearance of the geo-political and
economic structures which were typical of the outgoing civilisation.
The Second half of the 20th century was a time of colossal development
in international transport, radio and telephone. During the last couple of
decades the most powerful new technologies of the new civilisation -
television and satellite communications, have begun to dominate the entire
world. Today there are over 1 billion televisions and 2.5 billions radios in
the world which are constantly bombarding us with information. Satellite
links have connected almost all the countries and peoples of the world in a
single flow of information. This phenomenon has also played an enormous role
in the areas of manufacturing and culture as well as in the social and
political life of almost every country in the world. There is practically no
area of life in which global communications have not exerted a renewing
influence. The environment in which the people of the Fourth civilisation
shall live is thousands of times more satiated with information than at any
time before and will lead to a qualitative change in the entire life of man,
his opportunities for work and participation within the cultural process of
life.
There is little doubt that the Fourth Civilisation will be
distinguished by a series of profound changes in the form of property
ownership. The typical type of ownership in the First Civilisation was
slavery. The Second Civilisation was dominated by Feudal Relations and
peasant farmers tied to the land. The Third Civilisation opened the way to
private ownership and monopolism and the exploitation of hired labour. The
key element of the new civilisation will be cooperative socialised ownership
and the integration of hundreds of millions and billions of people in common
forms of ownership and the simultaneous reduction in economic monopolism.
The key distinguishing feature of the Fourth Civilisation is the
emerging new world political order. During the First Civilisation the most
advanced ethnic groups and nations formed or established their own empires.
To this extent the First Civilisation was a time of great empires, permanent
wars and colonisation. Babylon and Greece, India and China, Macedonia and
Rome were typical examples of this. The collapse of empires was a result of
the crisis of the slave owning era. The entire Second Civilisation was the
time of the great migration of peoples, the destruction of certain states
and the appearance of new. During the period of the Third Civilisation, the
migration slowed down and stopped and the world population became stabilised
within the borders of nation states. It was at this historical moment that
the spiral of history once again began to revolve demonstrating that
rejection gives rise to further rejection and that epochs tend to reproduce
many of their qualities time after time at higher levels.
The end of the Third Civilisation is connected with a much large
migration of people than has hitherto been seen. This is the result of the
new forms of communication, transport, the opening up of countries and the
needs of world business. This trend has led to a reduction in the role of
the nation states and has made their borders more formal. After a process in
which the nation states united the whole of the world population within
their borders and after the stronger nation states established a world
colonial system based on expansionism, the opposite process is now
beginning. This process will lead to the gradual optimisation of the super
powers and the creation of more and more states which will play the role of
regional centres. I believe that political polycentrism will replace the
bi-polar world and will give rise to the need for global and mutually agreed
political and economic regulation.
Finally, I believe that there is another essential feature of the new
civilisation which deserves attention: the intensive cultural mixing and
formation of a global culture for the first time in the history of the
world. Together with this unique product of globalisation we will be obliged
to accept the principle of multi-cultural societies. This will lead to end
to violence and the imposition of certain cultures over others and the
creation of conditions for the mutual interaction of different cultures and
traditions. For the first time, today, but even more so in the future, we
shall be witnesses to the appearance of cultural and economic values which
will not belong to any one country. These will be phenomena which both in
terms of their origin and consequences will have a global character.
4. INEVITABILITY AND WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN.
I do not believe in the absolute determination of events. People have
not yet come to grips with the strength of their common creation. They are
still too weak in the face of nature. Nevertheless there are processes which
no-one can avoid...
I
t is quite clear that the Fourth Civilisation will not appear overnight
nor is it possible to specify a date when it will. It will appear gradually,
reshaping our daily lives, political and economic systems and geopolitical
and cultural processes. It would be frivolous to specify a deadline for the
advent of the new era. None of the civilisations which have existed until
now have appeared suddenly despite the dates and events which historians
like to use for their convenience.
There is also no doubt that the entire 21st century will be a time of
restructuring of the economic and political structures of the Third
Civilisation and of the narrowing of their influence and the increase in the
influence of the new civilisation. It is true that the nature of social
processes today is incomparably more dynamic than at any other time in
history. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that global
communications are much more rapid and widespread than ever before. This
facilitates the processes of globalisation and the restructuring of the
world economic and political life.
At the same time these dynamic processes could be stopped in their
tracks or rejected by a whole series delaying factors. I do not support the
idea of a priori optimism about the future and even less so the illusion
that the emerging new phenomena will impose themselves automatically without
direct human involvement. The inevitability of the advent of the new
civilisation comes from the complex character of its driving forces, from
its incessable expansion, its avant-garde technology and the irreversible
nature of the social and political reforms which began this century. Is it
not already clear that the Third Civilisation is collapsing in front of our
very eyes? Is it not evident that the dictatorial regimes and closed
national states are vaingloriously dying? Economic prosperity is possible
only when peoples are open to one another and the combined manufacturing and
cultural processes in the presence of new structures of ownership.
Almost the entire modern population of the world will experience
several decades of transition. In the most industrialised nations this will
last for 30 or 40 years. For the rest of the world about twice as long.
No-one can say exactly, since the rate of change depends exclusively on the
human factor and the level of our common awareness. These transitional
decades will be exciting but very difficult. There will be people who will
greet the changes with triumph, others will see only the difficulties and
will predict the end of the world. In reality the period oftransition will
be at the same time both progressive and difficult, dark and light, exciting
and dramatic. It is very important whether mankind will become aware of the
new direction or whether the modern intellectual elite of humanity will
understand the nature of change and will unite around it to recognise its
own responsibility.
If humanity and the world political and intellectual elite understand
the need for common activities and the coordination of efforts and if this
understanding is on a global rather than provincial and national level then
the laws of the Fourth Civilisation will be consolidated relatively quickly
and probably by the beginning of the 21st century we will be able to speak
of new geo-political and economic structures and specific dimension of the
new civilisation. There is another possible direction for world development
- for the changes to be disputed and halted, for us to continue to live with
the mentality of violence and the instincts of national domination. In this
event we will experience a multitude of conflicts, disputes and larger or
smaller wars. Each collapse of geopolitical structures creates not only the
powers of progress but also the conservative powers which delay and halt the
processes. This is also the case with the Third Civilisation. There is no
doubt that at the end of the 20th century and during the final years of the
second millennium, humanity is entering a new age. The main question is
whether we will be worthy of this new age - this interesting and complex
time in which we are living.
Chapter 6
THE PARAMETERS OF THE NEW SYNTHESIS
1. THE SOCIALISATION AND DEREGULATION OF OWNERSHIP
Private ownership will be a characteristic element of the Third
Civilisation. All attempts at the nationalisation of private ownership have
been purely illusory. Despite this the nature of property, including private
property, is changing.
W
hen I speak of the new synthesis as the methodology of analysis of the
modern world, I mean above all the changes in the way of thinking which were
typical of the 19th and 20th centuries. The new theoretical synthesis is a
result of the real processes taking place in society in the 20th century,
the consequence of technology and ownership. Here I support entirely the
theory of Karl Marx who was the first to prove beyond a doubt the link
between technology (manufacturing powers) and ownership (manufacturing
relations). There is no doubt that this methodological connection is also
supported by modern social phenomena and processes. Changes in technology
render certain forms of management ineffective and replace certain forms of
ownership with others. The mass of small scale producers of goods in the
19th century were connected with factory production. The large investments
in rail transport, the production of steel and electrical energy at the
beginning of the 20th century stimulated the development of trusts and large
scale enterprises leading to the domination of monopolistic ownership. At
the end of the 20th century new computer and communications technology gave
rise to integrated and decentralised production. In this way ownership has
been a driving force in the development of social systems.
The authors of the theory of the management revolution believe that in
the modern world the significance of ownership has declined and that
authority is now only linked with direct management. In other words, it is
not the class of property owners but the class of managers which governs the
economic life of society. George Galbraith saw ownership only as one of the
sources of power. "Ownership today," he wrote, "does not have the same
universal significance as a source of power, but this does not mean that it
has lost all its significance."[40] A.Toffler went further. In
his book "Forecasts and preconditions"[41] he reached the
conclusion that ownership is just a left-wing mania and that in the society
of new technology the main thing is not property but information. I find
such notions inadequate In an analogous way the ideologues of communism
believed, and many of them today persist in believing, that during the
processes of economic development ownership would disappear and take with it
the class divisions of society. In the communist meaning of the word,
ownership disappears completely because the "entire ownership of property
shall become public" and the products of labour are allocated "from everyone
according to his possibilities and to everyone according to his needs". I
believe that there is no point in criticising a viewpoint which was never
sustained by the realities of life.
In place of the determining role of ownership in power Alvin Toffler
substitutes the role of information. This idea indeed deserves further
attention. He who considers himself the source of information is the bearer
of power rather than he who is the owner of the means of production. It
should, however, be noted that this approach is still concerned with
ownership as something which guarantees power. Therefore, we are not
speaking of the removal of ownership (property) but a change in the object
of this ownership. In the First Civilisation, people owned the primitive
instruments of labour, in the Second Civilisation ownership attained the
level of manufactories and in the Third Civilisation ownership to the level
of large scale industrial complexes.In the Fourth Civilisation, however, the
question of ownership will relate to the means of information gathering and
provision and the means for the conservation and transfer of this
information. But is this not once again some form of ownership or some form
of property? Managers of modern corporations exercise their rights of
ownership upon thousands and quite frequently, hundreds of thousands of
other owners. They are the combined expression of these rights not only
because they own management information but also because this property by
being divided between many people is integrated by the owners themselves.
Consequently ownership has not disappeared but has taken on new forms which
will lead to new social consequences.
While people and society exist there will always be forms of property
and ownership. While production and consumption exist there will always be
relationships of possession, use and disposal, or in other words, ownership.
It is no accident that such categories have been preserved from Roman times
to our days. Ownership is and remains the foundation for the construction of
social structures, including the structures of power, the structure and the
nature of human society. For this reason, when we speak of the transition
from one civilisation to another and a new ideological and theoretical
synthesis this is also inevitable in ownership relations. Thus, just as in
ancient Rome where the ownership of large numbers of slaves meant greater
power and in the 19th century the ownership of machinery and factories
equated to greater social authority, then today the ownership of new forms
of technology guarantees new forms of authority within society itself.
Therefore, when speaking of the dimensions of the new synthesis then we
ought also to speak of the trends and changes in the ownership relations.
Modern changes in ownership can be examined both globally and
nationally, micro-economically and macro-economically. Moreover, these
changes should be examined historically as trends which were born during the
Third Civilisation and will come to fruition with the advent of the Fourth
Civilisation.
Why should the evolution of ownership give us grounds to speak of such
fusions and synthesis? As early as the middle of the 19th century when
private ownership was already established as the dominant force, a series of
theoreticians were aware that private ownership was undergoing change