It's time to rise from the ashes! How can Russia defeat the collective West

Yuri Voronin, Doctor of Economics

The current decade for Russia is very responsible and even fateful.

Today, in these most difficult political and economic conditions, the country faces the most important task - the development of a national development strategy, the formation of a strong, dynamically developing economy, which is impossible without switching to a new economic model with a focus on new industrialization, technological sovereignty. "The absolutely key issue is what we need to do in the very near future – to achieve Russia's technological sovereignty," Russian President Vladimir Putin said.Putin during a conversation on April 4 with the workers of Tulazheldormash.

Primary in this complex, interconnected process is a new economic model. It is quite legitimate that the Moscow Economic Forum (April, 2023) put forward the issue of economic development in modern conditions and the formation of new industrialization among the most important, having considered it at the first plenary session.

The economists and practitioners who spoke quite rightly noted that the formation of a new industrialization implies an increase in investments, their accumulation and subsequent investments in production facilities and acceleration of scientific and technological progress, a reduction in the tax base, a change in the structure of employment and consumption, an increase in the requirements for the level of human capital, which forms education, healthcare, learning and creativity employees.

Unfortunately, the forum did not answer the main question: why will the proposals that can ensure high-quality economic growth and technological sovereignty remain on paper, as it was with the previous statements of the forums? What needs to be done to really form a new industrialization?

First of all, let's define the political and economic essence of the category of industrialization, especially in the current specific Russian conditions? Industrialization is not just a complex process associated with an increase in the productive forces of society, the acceleration of scientific and technological progress, innovative processes as the basis for increasing labor productivity, production growth rates in all sectors of the economy, It is from this angle that most economists and practitioners at MEFE consider the problem.

Industrialization, as a political and economic category, its nature, pace, sources of financing, as well as goals and social consequences, are determined and formed by the totality of industrial relations. In the current Russian conditions, this totality, unfortunately, is distorted by the prevailing principles of liberal-market relations, which have led the country's economy into a stagnant impasse over the thirty-year period of "reform".

New industrialization is a stage of implementation within the framework of the economic basis. If Russia does not switch to a new economic model covering the entire national economic complex, then within the framework of the old Russian flawed model of liberal-market fundamentalism, one can only dream of a new industrialization, it simply will not be.

Therefore, it is not only impossible, but theoretically incorrect and even extremely dangerous to consider the formation of a new industrialization in isolation from the totality of Russian basic economic relations and that flawed liberal economic model, fixated on getting extra profit at any cost, from the point of view of efficiency, simply failed, led to total import dependence.

The need to form a new economic model and a new industrialization in Russia objectively puts forward the demand to stop playing on the economic field of oligarchic capitalism, to play by its rules, to be dependent on their currency - dollars and euros, to keep money there, to borrow there, to rely solely on Western technologies. Russia has huge resources that need to be mobilized and used effectively.

However, today the Russian industry, energy, including structure-forming campaigns, firms and the defense industry, is in private hands. All of them have their own plans of a purely corporate format, and, therefore, are poorly aimed at general industrialization on the scale of the country as a whole. Therefore, private capital, especially in corrupt liberal-economic Russia, and even disfigured by a flawed model of market fundamentalism, is not ready to invest its money in a long-term project, considering it more profitable for itself to export capital to offshore or even finance the economy of opponents by investing in their securities. The special operation in Ukraine has revealed even more clearly this vice of the liberal-market functioning of the economy of conservative capitalism.

This implies the need to nationalize key defense industry enterprises and system-forming enterprises. SVO has clearly revealed the bottlenecks of the domestic economy, its dependence on critically important imports. All this is perfectly understood and tracked by our opponent. Therefore, the main blow is being dealt and will be dealt in this area.

Without nationalization, no new industrialization, the formation of technological sovereignty is simply impossible, since only the state can concentrate the necessary resources to solve these most difficult tasks. Private business cannot and will not do this.

A significant thirty-year puncture in the scientific, technical and socio-economic development of Russia was caught by the United States and the collective West. Therefore, they deal the main blow to the political and economic field, the financial potential of Russia: the sanctions attack is aimed at isolating the Russian economy from the world, collapsing it, and then destroying the political system, dismembering Russia.

Over a thirty-year period, Russia has not reached the 1990 level in most indicators. The aggregated index of industrial production now stands at 85% compared to the 1990 level, for textile and clothing production this level is 54.6%, for wood processing and the production of wood products - 51.4%, for the production of machinery and equipment – 53.0%, for the production of vehicles and equipment – 70%, for the extraction of minerals (except fuel and energy) - 72.0%.

Today, in terms of economic indicators, standard of living, level of security, level of corruption and management efficiency, Russia ranks 90-99 among 142 countries of the world. Over the past 7 years, the standard of living of Russians has fallen by 10%, and 30% of the population have incomes of less than 19,000 rubles a month.

The new Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, signed at the end of March, rigidly marked Russia's place in the world. Russia has self-determined itself as an original Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power, one of the sovereign centers of world development, playing a unique role in maintaining the global balance of power and ensuring the peaceful, progressive development of mankind. An important political decision has been made. But this political decision objectively assumes as the second logical step – the formation of a new economic model of a mobilization nature on the basis of new industrialization, which will rely primarily on the domestic national economic complex and the domestic market of the country.

These most difficult political and economic tasks cannot be realized without changing the political and economic basis, which requires the political will of the guarantor of the Constitution of the Russian Federation - the President of the Russian Federation.

First. From a political and economic point of view, putting the Russian economy on the trajectory of economic growth based on new industrialization, taking into account the total sanctions pressure of the collective West, requires a change in the socio-economic course, the starting point of which is the fundamental rejection of the monetarist liberal model of "growth", nurtured and nurtured by the ideology of liberal-market fundamentalism of the Western model, the rejection of harmful to the country The Washington Consensus and the mechanisms that were launched in the 1990s.

Thirty years of experience in "reforming" according to the recipes of the Washington Consensus has clearly shown that one should not "develop" contrary to the scientific theory of socio-economic formations. This was clearly manifested in Russia, which decided in the early 90s to return to the camp of capitalism and its flawed, anti-people ideology.

Second. Based on the world experience of the USSR, Japan, Sweden, France, China, South Korea, the most acceptable model for the Russian Federation could be a socio-economic development model based on a state planned market mechanism that forms a socially just society of the socialist type. Planned-market (!) on a state basis. This will radically change China's attitude towards Russia!

The third. To talk about a course for a new industrialization under the current government, the heads of state corporations, which are largely controlled by neoliberals, "effective managers" - adherents of the global financial elites who brought the country to the crisis – is nonsense, absurd. It is necessary to remove these "effective managers" from the economic block, the management of state corporations, replacing them with specialists.

Fourth. If Russia sets the task of winning the hybrid war unleashed against it by the United States and the collective West, it is necessary to quickly build a modern scientifically verified management system for the national economic complex and especially for the development of the economy, taking into account new industrialization, increasing technological sovereignty.

In the meantime, the government, reacting to sanctions, is just feverishly, reflexively plugging holes in the Russian economy, trying to form a more or less stable, but, unfortunately, primitive management system in these conditions, constantly slipping into "manual management" within the framework of the flawed current neoliberal market model.

And, finally, the fifth, most important thing in the context of a hybrid war against Russia: the scrapping of the old model of the economy and the formation of a new mechanism of socio-economic development, the implementation of the formulated concept of the country's survival is impossible without the implementation of at least for the period of the first five-year plan of the civilization economy. World practice has repeatedly used its levers to revive economies. Characteristic in this regard is the experience used in the Soviet Union after the Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the United States - to get out of the Great Depression of the 30s, Germany and other countries after World War II, China's experience in deploying a strategy for building socialism with Chinese specifics.

If we do not implement the basic principles of the new political and economic basis as the basis for high-quality economic growth based on new industrialization, we will lose to the West in the next three to four years, finally losing our allies in the CSTO and the CIS, and also put Russia on the verge of collapse.