Twenty per cent of the world’s population – that is, the inhabitants of the nucleus or “golden billion” – saw their per capita income in real terms grow approximately 50 times during the last two centuries. At the same time, 80 per cent of the world’s population saw a growth three to five times at best, while in some cases it remained basically on a medieval level or became even lower than it was before the establishment of a global economic system.158
Apart from the nucleus and the periphery, a third zone is often marked out in a system, a so-called “half-periphery’, the most flexible element. Its existence is a constant of a kind, but any one state finding itself in it is a variable, conditioned on sharp and continuing competition.
Admittedly, competition for a place in the vertical structure is being led within the nucleus (the fight between developed countries for hegemony) as well as among the states on the periphery (the fight to enter the half-periphery with the hope of entering, in time, the nucleus of the global economic system). However, the latter have little hope in this fight as the nucleus has expanded its borders as much as it could as a result of possible expansion of the fight for monopoly.
Nevertheless, a new type of inclusion of the social periphery of the global system in the nucleus is accelerating – migrational expansion (colonization) of the global periphery into “golden billion” states, transforming the old contradiction between nucleus and periphery into qualitatively new forms.
The global economic system was built on the laws of monopoly, and the vicious fight taking place in the nucleus was a competitive fight not so much for equal access, but mostly for monopoly over global markets – i.e. for redistribution and reshaping of the spheres of exclusive influence.
Originally, in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, this manifested itself in the fight for control over sea routes and the most profitable littoral trade hubs in the countries of the East and the New World, through which an intense exchange of trade with Europe was being conducted. Then, starting from the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when Europe experienced an industrial revolution, a vicious fight began for the promotion of cheap European goods in Eastern markets. Finally, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the nucleus countries led the fight for a final remaking of the world order, as it concerned not only markets for manufactured goods but also objects of the export of capital – that is, investment targets.
The state, with its institutions, remains the most important tool in the fight for global dominance. The Western European nation state, since the beginning of the modern era (i.e. the beginning of the functioning of the global economic system) and the expression of interest in trade and business circles, has played a vital role in the process of establishing the global periphery and the creation of various levels of payment for labour and consumption, corresponding to the three main zones.
The positioning of Asia’s Japan, which began ascending within the nucleus in the last third of the nineteenth century, is testament to the fact that the relationship between nucleus and periphery is wider than the West-East antithesis and the clash of civilizations.
At the same time, the liberation of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America from political colonial dependence did not bring any major changes to the global economic system.
Coercion by force was required to lower the status of the defeated state and to include the victim of the expansion into the global economic system as a source of materials, a market and an investment target.
By the twenty-first century, when most countries on the periphery were steadily functioning, the need for the application of force drastically decreased along with spending on these endeavours, although the need for them was not completely exhausted, as many believe. Direct military pressure – albeit in new forms, lowering the extent of the permanent military presence in the countries of the periphery – has persisted and will persist in the foreseeable future, which may be seen in the examples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and others.
The significant financial and social expenditures on governing the colonies with their primitive material production after the war – which did not recoup the cost of supporting colonial administration and security forces – led to the dissolution (according to several substantiated opinions, the dismantling from above) of the largest colonial empires of Europe and the transformation of former colonies into a neo-colonial exploitation regime. Characteristically, the United Kingdom offered partial independence to its colonies and protectorates after war, thus passing the government expenditures and moral responsibility for the low standard of life from the metropolis onto the administrations of new states.
Therefore, the transformation of colonial dependency into neo-colonial turned out to be not liberation but a form of raising the profitability of the capital through the nationalization of expenses (put onto governments of new states in the periphery) coupled with the privatization of profits from the most profitable companies remaining property of the capital of nucleus countries.
At the same time, decolonization of the countries of the global periphery, which took place a historically short period from the beginning of World War II to the middle of the 1960s, lowered political contradictions between countries of the capitalist nucleus (leading to two world wars between nucleus empires), giving the capital equal access to the markets of former colonies.
Paradoxically, it was decolonization – which lowered political contradictions between nucleus countries fighting for monopoly over resources and markets of colonies, included in the economy of metropolises – that allowed them to grow closer politically (NATO, EU, G7, etc.), focusing on the victory in the Cold War and, above that, accelerating economic globalization.
Evidently, obtaining nominal independence – i.e. a change in the international legal status of various territories – is essentially incapable of automatically changing its position in terms of the global economic hierarchy.
The established system of economic elites, increasingly independent from national governments, is keeping a number of countries and a group of elites on the periphery as eternal debtors, which allows other groups to stay part of the nucleus, raising their standard of living at the expense of the resources of the periphery.
Characteristically, systemic opposition, including so-called “anti-system’ movements – i.e. mass social protests oriented towards overcoming “backwardness’ and increasing in some way the standard of living of certain population groups – is an important part of the process of permanent marginalization of the geopolitical periphery. This includes other workers’ movements in the nucleus countries, and communist and national liberation movements in third world countries (under various slogans, from national to religious to fundamentalist).
The joint result of their actions lies in the fact that, while introducing local tensions into the system short-term, they become, in turn, a stabilizing factor, creating legal grounds for building up the system of repression and total control over the population – which, in fact, is what is required for the global economic hierarchy to function efficiently and with fewer risks.
The uncertainty of global development is to a great extent being strengthened by the fact that, apart from old power hubs, China, combining civilizational-cultural, economic, industrial and power centre functions, is confidently moving forward into first place in the global economic hierarchy.
Another attribute of globalization, closely linked to the growth of a propensity for conflict and differentiation, is a major acceleration of social processes, engendering the problem of loss of control and, correspondingly, the instability of development.
Steady acceleration of social processes is increasingly frequently leaving behind their analysis and study, and, correspondingly, purposeful regulation. An additional factor contributing to the diminishing control