Step on the same rake: why Russia, like a century ago, lags behind the developed countries

An interesting historical pattern was noticed by network analyst Dmitry Milin in his blog:

“If the“ long ”20th century was the century of the working class, then the 21st century became the century of the“ creative class ”.

In the 20th century, the economic and military power of the state depended on the quantity and quality of representatives of the working class. The feudal mode of production, which did not require literacy and could be carried out by fairly primitive skills of rural manual labor, which does not require labor skills in large collectives, was replaced by capitalism with industrialization. For industrial production, competent, organized, capable of collective labor masses of workers were required.

The famous phrase by the professor of geography from Leipzig, Oscar Peschel, attributed to Otto von Bismarck"... Public education plays a decisive role in the war ...when the Prussians beat the Austrians, it was the victory of the Prussian teacher over the Austrian school teacher" is not really about the war, but about numerical superiority the German proletariat over the Austrian.

The German economic miracle of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (that same “long” 20th century, which is slightly wider than the formal time frame) required and created a large and well-educated (by the standards of the time) working class, which is for two world The war showed its advantage on the fronts over the less well-educated armies of countries with a smaller number of proletariat, in particular the largely illiterate peasant Russian / Soviet army, especially in the initial 2MB period on the Eastern Front.

In the 21st century, the economic and military power of the state depends on the quantity and quality of representatives of the creative class. In the 20th century, compared with the 21st, there was a rather small amount of original scientific and engineering work. Most of that small creative class was not engaged in creativity, but in copying drawings to transmit them to the working class, which had to be competent enough to understand and implement these drawings in finished products.

In the 21st century, everything changed, the need for original research and development work increased qualitatively and quantitatively, but the need for skilled workers decreased due to the onset of robotization and increased productivity of industrial equipment.

Moreover, among the working class, the stratification of truly highly qualified operators of industrial equipment and the practically illiterate lumpen proletariat began, usually consisting of migrants from countries with late or not industrialized labor willing to work for a small fee.

Similarly, in the military sphere, as the complexity of weapons increases, so do the requirements for the operators of these weapons. Managing an impact drone worth millions of dollars yesterday you can’t plant a worker. This requires serious specialized education, which the secondary school of the industrial 20th century can no longer give.

The creative class of the “long” 20th century has also undergone changes. The post-industrial transition with its deep division of labor has led to the fact that a relatively small number of leading design engineers and scientists (von Braun, Korolev, Edisson) creating original drawings (with numerous, but much less creative attendants for blueprint copiers) turned into a large and complexly structured creative class, which includes scientists, engineers, designers, programmers, technology managers, But the problem of copying drawings with the introduction of mass computerization has generally disappeared. If you have an original drawing, you can make as many copies as you want on paper or without paper at all, transfer the program immediately to a machine with a computer that will turn out the necessary part.

The economic and military leaders in the 21st century were countries with a more massive and better educated creative class, as the 20th century, the countries with a more massive and better educated working class were economic and military leaders.

Russia, with public contempt for the creative class, produced by the authorities and state propaganda at all levels, guarantees itself backwardness and withdrawal to outsiders, both economically and militarily.

This can be clearly seen by the level of created and the possibilities of using drones, in which the Russian Federation loses not only to the United States and Western Europe, but also to China, Turkey, Iran.

The world has changed, but Russia, like at the beginning of the 20th century, “looks back” into the past, endlessly savoring past victories (not understanding and going to understand how and why they happened) losing to the present and future to other countries...”